Fostering a creative spirit will give your child experience identifying a problem and coming up with new ideas for solving it. Here are four ways to encourage creativity in your young child.
Deborah Heiligman writes fiction and nonfiction, for kids of all ages. She’s published more than 26 books, exploring topics as diverse as religious celebrations around the world, babies, butterflies, honeybees, and a particularly charming “loves-to-hear-a-book” dog (our kind of dog!). Her 2009 book, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith was nominated as a National Book Award Finalist.
The purpose of this National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) report is to examine the concepts, potential benefits, practical issues, and unanswered questions associated with responsiveness to intervention (RTI) and learning disabilities (LD). A brief overview of the approach is provided, including attributes, characteristics, and promising features, as well as issues, concerns, unanswered questions, and research needs.
With reader’s theater students work together to present an oral reading of a script, typically adapted from literature, plays, or other written texts. Reader’s theater is a an engaging activity used to promote reading fluency, especially oral expression.
If you think your child might have a learning disability, this article will help. Dr. Larry Silver tells parents the clues to look for in pre-school and elementary school children. Then the article talks about how to get a “psychoeducational evaluation” to find out for sure.
Studies have indicated that as many as 40-75% of children with specific language impairment will have problems in learning to read. This article offers tips for parents and educators to help learners develop their language skills.
When a doctor develops a treatment plan for a sick child, the doctor uses objective data from diagnostic tests. Your child’s individualized education program is similar to a medical treatment plan, and you need objective tests to know that your child is acquiring reading, writing, and arithmetic skills.
Get an overview of developmentally appropriate teaching practices recommended by the International Literacy Association (ILA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
From tailored learning experiences to flexible school structures, there are certain characteristics of instruction that is designed to meet the needs of individual students. Learn about these characteristics in this overview of what it means to teach every child.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides the opportunity for all students to access, participate in, and progress in the general-education curriculum by reducing barriers to instruction. Learn more about how UDL offers options for how information is presented, how students respond or demonstrate their knowledge and skills, and how students are engaged in learning.
Meteorologist Ron Gird shares tips and resources to take kids on a weather preparedness adventure! You’ll find helpful facts about severe weather and how to stay safe — it’s information worth repeating often.
In this webcast, Carol Ann Tomlinson, G. Michael Pressley, and Louise Spear-Swerling outline the most effective strategies teachers can use to address the many different needs of each of their students — so that all kids get the chance to learn to read.
Phonics instruction teaches the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. To read, children need to understand the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language. Decoding is when we use letter-sound relationships to translate a printed word into speech.
Early identification is crucial when it comes to helping children who are having trouble learning to read. This seminal article by Joseph Torgesen explains the assessment process and reviews the more commonly used assessment tools.
Orton–Gillingham was the first teaching approach specifically designed to help struggling readers by explicitly teaching the connections between letters and sounds. Many reading programs include Orton–Gillingham ideas, including a “multisensory” approach, which is considered highly effective for teaching students with dyslexia.
As you teach content areas to ELLs of diverse backgrounds, you may find that they struggle to grasp the content, and that they approach the content from very different perspectives. Drawing on your students’ background knowledge and experiences, can be an effective way to bridge those gaps and to make the content more accessible. This article offers a number of suggestions to classroom teachers as they find ways to tap into the background knowledge that students bring with them.
Use the power of stories to explore what’s different and the same, new and shared, about ourselves and our experiences. These nine books find wonderful ways to express universal themes through African Americans, both fictional and real.
From preserving our past to breaking down boundaries, libraries serve to improve our democracy and our lives. Learn twelve ways they improve our country in this tribute to libraries.
Discover the typical literacy milestones for your pre-kindergarten child, and how to support your child’s developing skills in reading and writing. Use the links on the left to find activities, videos, and other resources to build skills in these key areas: understanding what print is, recognizing the sounds in speech, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing.
Because success with technology depends largely upon critical thinking and reflection, teachers with relatively little technological skill can provide useful instruction. But schools must support these teachers by providing professional development and up-to-date technology for use in classrooms.
