Explore our primer on the key components of reading, including oral language, phonemic awareness, decoding, orthographic mapping, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing.
In this special Reading Rockets video series, experts answer real questions from families about reading and writing, and how to support their children’s literacy at home.
In this special Reading Rockets video series, experts answer real questions from families about reading and writing, and how to support their children at home.
In this special Reading Rockets video series, experts answer real questions from families about writing and how to support their children’s literacy at home.
In this online lesson, reading expert Linda Farrell helps second grader Chloe master the three key elements of reading fluency — accuracy, reading rate, and reading with expression. Watch how Ms. Farrell gives Chloe explicit instruction and encouragement through all three steps, each building on the previous stage.
Helping kids connect with what they read. Hosted by Frank McCourt, this episode highlights effective strategies to help kids understand — and care about — what they read, the ultimate goal of learning how to read.
All children deserve quality reading instruction that is based on research and best practices. How can you know if your child is getting good reading instruction at school? Find out what good reading instruction should look like and questions you should ask your child’s teacher.
Reading expert Linda Farrell shows Xavier how to read and spell unfamiliar multisyllable words with one vowel letter in each syllable. First she makes sure that Xavier has three prerequisite skills: being able to read one-syllable nonsense words, knowing how to count syllables in spoken words, and naming the vowel letters. Xavier learns that every syllable has a vowel, and that he can count the vowel letters to break a long word into syllables to make it easy to read. To figure out how many syllables are in a word, Ms. Farrell teaches Xavier to ask two questions: How many vowels are in the word? Are the vowels together or apart? In a separate video below, Ms. Farrell listens to Xavier read aloud to help him read with accuracy.
An empowering and upbeat show for kids ages 7-12. Reading Rocks! is a buoyant PBS television special that appeals to kids and encourages struggling readers to keep trying. Hosted by Nick Spano, the show uses wacky humor to offer stories of hope to children who are trying to learn to read.
Our one-page parent tips offer easy ways for parents to support their children’s literacy development. The tips — for babies through grade 3 — are available in English and 12 other languages.
Reading Rockets offers a rich library of classroom strategies, articles, parent tip sheets, FAQs, videos, research briefs and more — providing research-based and best-practice information for educators, parents, and others who work with young readers. Browse by the topics listed below!
Discover the many reasons why reading aloud with your child has such a big impact on their literacy development and social-emotional growth. And get tips on how to read aloud (make it fun and interactive), plus links to finding great read-aloud books.
Browse our resource library (including research briefs and guides), expert Q&A, glossary, quotes about reading, educational apps, books about reading, writing, and instruction — and more!
Browse our library of research briefs, guides, literacy organizations, and literacy-focused web resources. Filter by topic and resource type to quickly find the resources you’re looking for.
