The curriculum framework offered here is a model for Common Core planning and implementation that can be adapted to K-12 in self-contained or departmental settings.
Wordless picture books may be better defined by what they do contain — visually rendered narratives — rather than what they do not contain. This article challenges traditional ways of looking at wordless picturebooks and offers a few approaches for integrating wordless picturebooks into a wider range of classrooms, preschool through middle school.
Get the basics on social-emotional learning (SEL) — what it is, and how SEL supports the healthy development of children in school and in life. You’ll also find ideas on how to integrate SEL into literature studies and writing instruction.
Word hunts are a fun and engaging word study activity that encourages students to apply their knowledge of spelling patterns, sight words, or vocabulary words in a real-world context.
The term “onset-rime” refers to the division of a syllable into two parts: the onset and the rime. The onset is the initial consonant sound, blend, or digraph, and the rime is the following vowel and all subsequent sounds in the syllable. Understanding onset and rime is fundamental in phonological awareness.
Recent studies indicate that teaching phonemic awareness and the alphabet together generally has a much higher impact on later reading achievement than phonemic awareness teaching alone.
In addition to the unique gifts and interests that autistic students bring to the classroom as people, their responses can serve as an early warning system for pedagogical problems that are happening in the classroom as a whole.
Knowing vocabulary words is key to reading comprehension. The more words a child knows, the better he or she will understand the text. Using a variety of effective teaching methods will increase the student’s ability to learn new words.
Speech recognition, also referred to as speech-to-text or voice recognition, is technology that recognizes speech, allowing voice to serve as the “main interface between the human and the computer.” This Info Brief discusses how current speech recognition technology facilitates student learning, as well as how the technology can develop to advance learning in the future.
Get the basics on the four different types of writing — narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive texts — as well as the reasons why we write.
This article presents a developmental framework of informational writing developed from a study of children’s writing in K-5 classrooms. See examples of children’s compositions at each developmental level, and learn how to use this continuum to support increasingly more mature forms of informational text.
Discover how one elementary teacher set up her classroom library, making it easy to use and inviting — encouraging her students to find joy in selecting and reading books they will love.
Learn the critical social communication milestones for babies and toddlers, from 7-24 months of age. These milestones cover five developmental domains — play, language, social interaction, emotional regulation, and self-directed learning.
Children with print awareness can begin to understand that written language is related to oral language. Children who lack print awareness are unlikely to become successful readers. Indeed, children’s performance on print awareness tasks is a very reliable predictor of their future reading achievement.
Concept sorts ask students to think about what they know as they compare and contrast it to new information. They are a lively, interactive way to introduce and review vocabulary and concepts across disciplines.
Acclaimed authors and illustrators for young people — Jeannine Atkins, Ekua Holmes, Rita Williams-Garcia, Heather Lang, and Katherine Paterson got together to talk about women and girls in fiction and nonfiction books — and what makes a heroine.
When a student is trying to decipher the meaning of a new word, it’s often useful to look at what comes before and after that word. Learn more about the six common types of context clues, how to use them in the classroom and the role of embedded supports in digital text.
Learn more about books across multiple genres that are representative of the diverse world in which we live, including diversity in race, class, disability, and religion. You’ll also find innovative approaches for bringing children and books together, as well as content analyses and descriptions of titles that share common features.
This article discusses strategies for writing poetry with ELLs, presents an overview of poetry forms that can be used effectively in writing lessons, and suggests some ideas for ways to share student poetry.
Dr. Walpole is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include the design and effects of school-wide reforms, particularly those involving literacy coaches. She works with literacy coaches, reading specialists, and administrators to build school-wide systems to support teachers, especially those working for children at risk.
