Entering kindergarten can a joyful but also an anxious time, particularly for parents of children with disabilities. These best practices can help make for a smoother transition: using a collaborative team approach to involve families, setting transition goals, and focusing on the needs and strengths of individual children.
Much vocabulary is learned without formal teaching. We gain words from conversation, observation, television/media, and reading. However, research shows that explicitly teaching vocabulary can measurably improve reading comprehension — if we teach the right words well enough. Here are five key principles to effective vocabulary instruction.
Parents want the best for their children. Reading can open a window on the world, bringing chances to learn, enjoy and create. Even though schools teach reading and writing, home is the first and best place for your child’s love of reading to grow.
The “paragraph hamburger” is a writing organizer that visually outlines the key components of a paragraph — topic sentence, detail sentences, and a closing sentence.
Good communication development starts in the first year of life and goes far beyond learning how to talk. Communication development has its roots in social interaction with parents and other caregivers during everyday activities. Here are a few tips for supporting your child’s social communication.
Kristina Robertson is a professional development outreach specialist for WIDA and an ELL educator with extensive experience as a classroom teacher and professional development leader.
Eve Bunting is a spellbinding storyteller, both in conversation and in writing. In this exclusive video interview with Reading Rockets, Eve Bunting relates amusing stories from her childhood in Ireland and offers insights into her books, some of which are unflinching in tackling tough subjects.
Explore annotated writing samples from kids in pre-K through grade 3, and see next-step suggestions for instruction. You’ll also learn about writing milestones and different purposes of writing — along with ideas for how to make room for writing during the day.
It’s important to remember that a lack of sleep can greatly impact your preschooler’s behavior and ability to have a good day at preschool. Try this little experiment with your child to make sure they understand and maintain an appropriate sleep schedule.
Over the years, Reading Rockets has had the opportunity to interview many beloved children’s authors and illustrators. Here, we share our video interviews with winners of the prestigious Newbery Medal and Honor Awards.
The IEP guides the delivery of special education and related services and supplementary aids and supports for the child with a disability. Without a doubt, writing and implementing an effective IEP requires teamwork. So, who’s on the team?
Walk into any truly excellent school and you can feel it almost immediately — a calm, orderly atmosphere that hums with an exciting, vibrant sense of purposefulness. This is a positive school culture, the kind that improves educational outcomes.
Handwriting is a complex skill that is not often taught directly. It is not unusual for some students with disabilities to have difficulty with handwriting. These students may also have sensory integration problems. Handwriting Club is a format that provides direct instruction in handwriting combined with sensory integration activities. This article describes all the steps and materials necessary to organize and conduct a handwriting club.
Children who struggle with reading often need extra help. This help usually comes from the school, but some parents choose to look outside the school for professionals who can assess, diagnose, tutor, or provide other education services.
Use picture books to teach young writers how to organize plot logically. This article includes examples of basic plot structures, along with picture books that use those structures.
This article says that according to a new study, former full-day kindergartners were more than twice as likely as children without any kindergarten experiences and 26 percent more likely than graduates of half-day programs to have made it to 3rd and 4th grade without having repeated a grade. This study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
ELL students learn new words everyday, and it’s essential that they have a deep understanding of what those words mean. Without comprehension, new words are useless. The key to helping ELL students succeed is to give them explicit instruction in the academic language of the content they are learning in class. This article offers some strategies and resources for getting started!
Signs and symptoms of dysgraphia are described. You’ll also learn about effective accommodations and modifications such as allowing more time, simplifying the task, and allowing assistance for part of the task. The last section of the article has remediation recommendations to help the student improve their writing and overcome their dysgraphia.
