Today’s Literacy Headlines

I’m still pushing the integration of STEM with language arts through my writing, but I’m going one step further. I want educators to discover the benefits of STEM thinking in combination with children’s books as a viable way to create an inclusive classroom environment for children of diverse cultures, socio-economic strata, and physical abilities. Hands-on inquiry is a natural fit with STEM thinking. Research shows that inquiry-based learning increases student achievement and self-confidence, but there may be another advantage. In the doing, students find inclusion.

As Americans practice social distancing due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, WETA has assembled a wide range of resources to help parents and children talk about the health crisis, know the facts about the coronavirus, how it spreads and how you can help protect not just yourselves, but your loved ones and vulnerable people around you. WETA has also collected resources for teachers and parents to keep kids learning at home if your schools and afterschool programs have been closed.

As educators, parents, and students enter this unknown territory of school closures and remote learning, kid lit authors and illustrators have been stepping up to help. Many are parents themselves and juggling the same school/work balance amid the stress and uncertainty. “Gina and I are transitioning to homeschooling,” tweeted Jarrett J. Krosoczka, creator of the graphic novel Hey Kiddo among other titles. “We need to keep the kids on a schedule, and we are imagining we are far from alone. We want to help. Every weekday at 2pm ET for at least the next few weeks, I’ll host free webcasts for you and your kiddos. http://youtube.com/studiojjk ”

As educators turn to online programming and classroom management due to the COVID-19 outbreak and school closures, ed tech providers are making their tools freely available. Here’s what some companies are offering, along with resources that have always been free.

Given the uncertainty we’re all experiencing due to the coronavirus outbreak, it’s not easy to “keep calm and carry on,” as teachers are expected to do. Most are preparing for (or already experiencing) a school closure. And students are worried as they try to make sense of the quickly changing situation. To help reduce students’ anxiety and your own about the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve put together some ideas and resources focused on news literacy, media balance, and healthy communication. We hope they’re helpful as you navigate this difficult time.

As each passing day brings more school closures, educators and families scramble to respond to a situation that is uncertain and without precedent. Will the term be extended? Will the year be lost? The rapid imposition of social distancing took many by surprise, and each school and individual teacher must contend with unique challenges as they grapple with the crisis.The web offers countless best practice guides and curated tool inventories, but educators currently in triage mode are not in a position to craft ideal online learning programs. This brief guide aims to help educators, administrators, and parents better navigate the pitfalls of making the quick jump to online learning. It curates useful tools and resources with a view to maintain the indispensable human touch of teaching and learning during this period of social distancing.

More than 30,000 K-12 schools in the United States are being shuttered because of worries about spreading the coronavirus, affecting at least 20 million students, most of whom will be asked to shift to online learning. Educators experienced with remote learning warn that closures are a serious threat to children’s academic progress, safety and social lives. They say that running a classroom digitally is much harder than bringing an adult workplace online, and that it can disproportionately affect low-income students and those with special needs. Here are some of the warnings and tips that teachers well-versed in remote learning have for schools planning to move online.

As more schools and districts across the county announced closings, school librarians are working hard to do what they do best—put books in kids’ hands. On Thursday, Captain Elementary School librarian Tom Bober tweeted that with the likelihood of an extended break, he “drastically” expanded the number of books each student could take home from his Missouri library and brought the entire student body through to checkout what they wanted. “The shelves are a mess,” he tweeted along with pictures of smiling kids holding stacks of books, “but these kids have some great books going home.” Next comes mass remote learning, unchartered territory at this mass level. There are many issues to contend with including technology and attention spans. Some elementary school librarians are concerned about possible copyright violations of reading books aloud online, and a virtual storytime for younger kids was being made available from the Brooklyn Public Library.

To really learn a new skill, you need to practice. That theory drives much of Katie Farrell’s reading instruction. In her 1st grade class at Bauer Elementary School in Hudsonville, Mich., Farrell teaches students phonics—how letters on the page represent the spoken sounds children hear. But for some kids, the learning only really clicks once they practice these patterns in decodable books. These short texts are written with a high proportion of words that are phonetically regular—meaning they follow common sound-spelling rules—and mostly include words with phonics patterns that children have already learned. Yet, teachers are divided when it comes to decodable books.

I had thought my initial conversations with my kids about COVID-19 had been good enough. But with adults, kids at school and the news all hyper-focused on this coronavirus outbreak, my reassuring voice needed to be a little louder. So before lights out, we talked. I asked what they had heard about the coronavirus. We got it all out — their questions, their “I heards” and their fears. The rest of the conversation had three themes. First, I shared age-appropriate facts and corrected misinformation. Second, I reassured them that they are safe, which is the most important message my kids can hear from me. Third, I emphasized simple things our family can do to be “germ busters” — for all types of germs that are out there! Here are four ways we can help young kids build germ-busting habits.

The three principles of UDL—provide multiple means of representation, provide multiple means of action and expression, and provide multiple means of engagement—remind all educators to ensure that English language learners always have the option to build background knowledge, interact with information visually and auditorily, access rich scaffolds and supports to help highlight the patterns of language, and have numerous opportunities to express what they know in ways that are authentic and meaningful, all while experiencing the value of collaboration and feedback.

There are proven and effective methods of literacy instruction that we know will work for all students, and those methods are already being implemented by many school leaders and educators here in Tennessee. But as we move in the right direction and use proven approaches to teach students, we need to ensure that every student in the early grades receives the type of instruction they need for reading success. This is an opportune time to work together in order to create a state of proficient early readers by embracing the science of reading and providing our youngest students with the fundamental reading skills needed to prepare them for a lifetime of academic and employment success.

Overall, roughly half of the county’s students meet state reading standards, but there are huge differences among student groups. Roughly 70 percent of white and Asian third-grade students meet state reading standards; only about 40 percent of African American third-graders meet them, and less than 30 percent of Hispanic third-graders do. Only 27 percent of third-graders who receive federal meal assistance meet standards. Similar gaps continue through the grades. Superintendent Jack R. Smith rather courageously brought in Johns Hopkins University and Student Achievement Partners to do an audit of the county’s curriculum. The resulting report in spring 2018 explained why so many Montgomery County students are unable to meet reading standards. Among other things, it found that the county had “no systematic support for the development of foundational skills” in reading. Decades of research have found that most children need systematic instruction in the 44 sounds of the English language and how to map those sounds onto the 26 letters of the alphabet automatically and fluently, but Montgomery County as a district has refused to incorporate this knowledge into its reading instruction.

Last year I wrote a story about parents who fight to get special education services they believe their children need but aren’t getting in their public school. One of the parents I featured in that story, Melissa Lazaro, has a son who is dyslexic, and she suggested that I dig deeper into what’s going on with dyslexia. I also knew that her son now attends NewBridge, so I was curious to see what a school designed for dyslexic children looks like. Dyslexia isn’t just about special education. More broadly it’s about how to teach reading well. Multiple sources I spoke to stressed that what works for dyslexic students can also benefit all students, because they are effective ways to teach reading and spelling. The principal at Chaparral Elementary, Rhiannon Sharp Buhr, noted that as a teacher she had used similar strategies with English learner students, and it really helped them learn English too.

Hundreds of thousands of people in San Diego County likely have a neurological disorder that makes reading difficult — a disorder called dyslexia. Some experts estimate as many as 5 to 15 percent of the general population has it to some degree but many have never been diagnosed. Dyslexia is unrelated to intelligence, but it hampers people’s ability to learn to read. Yet staff at many schools will not use the word dyslexia, and some don’t know what it is, according to parents, dyslexia experts and school officials. Few teachers have been trained how to teach dyslexic students effectively. Experts say dyslexia is likely one reason why only 16 percent of California’s students with identified disabilities met reading standards in state tests last year and only 55 percent of students without identified disabilities met the standards.

COVID-19 information is coming fast from cities and schools, and we’re not seeing much library input. So, as high school librarians who want to help teachers and get ahead of the confusion, we put our heads together and made our own plans.

Little Free Library (LFL) donated its 100,000 book-sharing box today and will celebrate the milestone with a giveaway of 100 Little Free Library boxes to places that serve children in the United States and Canada. Schools, community centers, and public libraries can apply through April 11. Each library will come with a starter set of books from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The 100,000 Little Free Library site was given to the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans in Houston. The milestone moment for LFL, which began in 2009, was marked with a special ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of preschoolers, who received free books.

In the plains of West Tennessee, between Jackson and Memphis, lies the quaint community of Brownsville. We are the home of “Nutbush City Limits” and its famous singer Tina Turner, NBA player Tony Delk and NBA champion Jarvis Varnado. Our community is of low socioeconomic status; 71 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Haywood County Schools has about 3,000 students, 66 percent of whom are black and 6 percent of whom are Hispanic. Although we’re small in size, there is nothing small about what’s going on in Haywood County Schools. Our journey to high-quality instructional materials began when district leaders realized there was a lack of equity in our classrooms. Teachers were working extremely hard and students were doing what was asked of them, but the level of rigor and text complexity in our English language arts classrooms varied substantially, even within the same grade level.

There is a crack in our nation’s foundation. Although it is historically referred to as the achievement gap, today we more accurately call this the teaching and learning gap. When children fail to reach their full potential, this weakens families’ fundamental ability to thrive. Over 30 years ago, the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) developed a family literacy model that is still showing positive results for families as they strive to improve their academic and economic trajectories through multigenerational learning. To truly close the gap in achievement between low-income and higher-income students, we must invest in the entire family. Family literacy offers a space for both children and their families to learn—together. In NCFL’s family literacy programs, children are becoming kindergarten ready or are reading at grade level while their parents or caregivers are learning job skills and how to navigate school systems, advocate for their children, and support their children’s education.

For years, cognitive scientists have warned that we’re squandering the opportunity to increase students’ brain power and ability to learn, and economists have reported the early years provide the best bang for the educational buck. Two nationally acclaimed longitudinal studies show that preschool participants outperform nonparticipants on behavioral, health and educational outcomes in adulthood. As the bumper sticker put it: “Pay now or pay later.” Some other studies show the early advantages gained in preschools can fade over time, so we’re now told we also need to take a hard look at what happens after prekindergarten. Common sense should tell us there needs to be coordination and follow-through. But all too often, apparently, that is not the case. Providing high-quality preschool experiences, sustaining the early boost participants get, aligning the content and instructional methods of preschool with early school years, ensuring that teachers are thoroughly trained in the science of reading and focusing much more on consistently building strong background knowledge is a complicated assignment, but it’s worth tackling.

Aspiring teachers are unfamiliar with basic principles of learning science and should learn how to connect those principles to practice, according to a new report from Deans for Impact. Last fall, Deans for Impact, a nonprofit group of education school leaders, created a network of six colleges of education that want to better integrate learning science in their curriculum and clinical experiences through a $1.5 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. During a two-year improvement cycle, the cohort will participate in site visits, gatherings, and virtual coaching from Deans for Impact. “A lot of people are talking about the science of reading,” Benjamin Riley, the executive director of Deans for Impact said, referring to the body of research from many decades on how children learn to read. “We know more than just reading. There’s a science of learning, and schools of education can do a lot about that. … There’s not a single teacher who couldn’t benefit, I think, from knowing these principles.”

Schools are on the frontlines of responding to coronavirus as it appears in American communities, and federal health officials are urging school districts to prepare for spread of the illness. Here, find the most relevant news, information, and resources about how schools should prepare and respond.

A new tool from REL Southeast can help school leaders identify evidence-based practices—such as those recommended by What Works Clearinghouse—while observing classroom literacy instruction. The tool consists of three parts: (1) a Pre-walkthrough Meeting Guide to facilitate conversation between school leaders and teachers before the walkthrough; (2) a set of eight walkthrough checklists, differentiated by grade band and classroom type, which are based on best practices in literacy instruction; and (3) a Post-walkthrough Meeting Guide to facilitate debriefing between school leaders and teachers. The data collected should provide a sense of strong and weak areas of literacy instruction and could be used in planning professional development. The tool can help school leaders enhance teachers’ knowledge of literacy instruction, communicate to teachers expectations about literacy instruction, and establish consistent language regarding literacy content and instructional strategies.

Developing and establishing an independent reading program that works for all students and meets curricular goals can be challenging for new educators, not only because they are busy, but because they are still learning the lay of the land. It’s more typical for mid-career educators to take on the task. Either way, independent reading often becomes an add-on to the curriculum, rather than a strategically designed part of course design. But developing a plan should be a priority for educators at all levels, particularly when librarians and language arts teachers work together to make space for independent reading. They can do so by curating inclusive collections, using a variety of sources to check the temperature of a classroom and school climate regarding attitudes and biases about reading, and developing a school-wide culture of independent reading.

“As you can see, individual differences in writing can be seen as early as kindergarten,” says Cynthia Puranik, associate professor in the College of Education & Human Development. On her computer, she pulls up writing samples from two kindergarteners who were asked to print words that they know. One child manages “hot,” while the second, incredibly, executes “somber, “sarcasum” [sic] and “redundant.” Despite the achievements of the second child, test results show that most U.S. students struggle to meet grade-level writing standards. Puranik is working to improve children’s performance on the page. She studies the early development of writing skills and how educators can effectively nurture good writers. She received $3 million last year from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to study a writing intervention program she developed in which children help teach one another. We recently spoke with Puranik about the importance of writing and the best way to help children learn to do it well.

In spring, state and federal mandates for high-stakes testing often crowd authentic reading experiences for students. Beyond the demands of test administration, spring often brings more schoolwide events like assemblies, field trips, sports competitions, fine arts performances, award ceremonies, and other changes to the regular schedule. Students may miss regular library visits or in-class reading time as a result. Further reducing access, if the library serves as a test administration site or performance and display space, or the librarian provides tutoring or test administration support, the library may be closed for days at a time. How can we keep reading momentum and interest going through the spring and prepare students for independent reading during the summer months? While the end of the school year seems distant, it is not too early to start transitioning students from school reading to home reading.

The district I lead — Lauderdale County — is located about 60 miles from Memphis, in a rural community in northwest Tennessee where nearly a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. We have amazing teachers, administrators and parents. Our students are as full of potential as children anywhere in the country, but across grades 3-8, only about a quarter are proficient in reading on the state’s TNReady assessment. We have all the ingredients for success; what we didn’t have was a core reading and language arts program to get us there. But our school district has begun to have real success implementing Wit & Wisdom, a content-rich English language arts curriculum that is referred to as a “humanities” program by its publishers. We started implementing Wit & Wisdom three years ago, attracted to it because data told us that, while we were doing a pretty good job of teaching students to read the words on the page (to decode), they weren’t really understanding (comprehending) what they read. This meant that our students would not be able to use their reading as they would need to in the years ahead.

For too many children, reading acquisition is a struggle. Many demonstrate the early markers of dyslexia, a language-based reading disability that historically affects 10-15% of children. When parents and early childhood educators understand dyslexia as a deficit in a child’s ability to understand sound structures, they are better prepared to observe some of the early warning signs. Phonological awareness is a fundamental literacy skill; it enables children to take a stream of oral language and divide it into individual words, words into syllables, and syllables into individual sounds. We now know that the precursors of dyslexia are visible as early as age 3, demonstrated in weakness in phonological skills, letter knowledge, rapid naming, and working memory. None of these behaviors stands alone in a diagnosis of dyslexia, but the following are early markers of dyslexia.

The world is filled with many different kinds of people. Getting to know them is interesting, exciting, and fun. The same can be said about the world’s books. Cracking open a good book is to understand that the world is far richer than just our own individual experiences. As a special education teacher at Kemp Elementary School in Commerce City, CO, students are at the center of everything I do. I strive to connect with all students, to discover their passions, and to unlock their potential. Introducing new books to my students inspires their natural curiosity, imagination, and love of learning. That’s why I’m excited my school will soon benefit from a Read Across America grant from the National Education Association (NEA) that will bring 1,000 books into the school districts of Adams County, north of Denver and a rural school district outside Colorado Springs.

Just how expert do teachers need to be in reading science in order to be effective reading teachers? I suspect it’s enough to have a working knowledge of the components of reading (phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and fluency), a well-designed instructional program, and to be a competent diagnostician—savvy enough to recognize reading failures early and prescribe an effective intervention or referral. Expecting tens of thousands of elementary school teachers to develop deep expertise in the science of reading to improve instruction isn’t a winning strategy. It’s an invitation for already overwhelmed teachers to continue to default to their comfort zone: balanced literacy and cheerleading for “lifelong love of reading.” The complexities of reading instruction put state policymakers in a bit of a bind. It’s not hard to make districts, schools, and teachers do something; it’s very hard to make them do it well. Doing something complicated, doing it well, and on a mass basis is unheard of. It will take a judicious combination of leaning on ed schools to raise their game, incentivizing quality curriculum adoptions, targeted teacher professional development—and a lot of patience and political will—to keep the science of reading train on the tracks, and to improve outcomes for kids.

Dr. Louisa Moats: The body of work referred to as the “science of reading” is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, nor a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students.

In San Antonio, Texas, elementary school principals get hands-on coaching and advice from early childhood experts during visits to pre-K classrooms. In Alabama, principals can attend a unique leadership academy to learn about how to support teachers working with young children. In Minnesota, a series of workshops offered across the state aims to educate school leaders and teachers on child development and pre-K through third grade work. These are just a few of the promising efforts identified by New America, a Washington-based think tank, in a series of reports that detail the need to better prepare principals to work with young learners—and that also highlight some potential solutions. Research shows there is a clear need for this: A 2015 survey found only 20 percent of early-career principals in schools with pre-K classrooms felt “well-versed” in early ed; and a 2017 nationwide scan by New America found in most states, principals start without “the knowledge and skills they need to best serve young students.”

Eleven words. The parents of the advocacy group Decoding Dyslexia Wisconsin pressed for years to see this 11-word definition enshrined in state law: “Dyslexia means a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin.” Last month, they succeeded as Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a bill into law that includes the definition and makes Wisconsin one of nearly 40 states to require dyslexia guidebooks for school districts. The push is part of a long and ongoing fight to get the learning disability defined in state law and persuade educators to say the word dyslexia. It comes amid a nationwide debate over dyslexia—what it is, what it means for children, and how schools should address it. The public struggle is between renowned reading researchers who think “dyslexia” is an overused word and that the heavy-focus on phonics instruction called for to help struggling readers is an unproven overreach and the parents and disability advocates who argue on the other side that schools and teacher preparation programs are not doing nearly enough to help children learn to read.

Schools are constantly fighting for more resources: money, effective teachers, facilities. But one pivotal factor in student learning and child development isn’t often on the negotiating table: Time. The benefits of strategies like pushing back high school start times, hitting math and reading early in the day for elementary school students, and making sure students get a break to process their learning, have been documented in a deluge of research studies and championed by prominent organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But many schools aren’t putting that advice into action, an Education Week survey of school and district leaders conducted in December found. Less than half—41 percent—of those surveyed said their district had examined what brain science research says about learning and used that information to guide or inform scheduling or start times. The problem—teachers, administrators, and experts say in interviews—is the system itself.

Rachel Spears, an AmeriCorps volunteer at the Maurice A. Donahue School, was in her element on a recent February morning as she led preschoolers in a spirited chant to help them identify words that start with the same sound. Spears, a 35-year-old University of Connecticut graduate and Suffield resident, is one of three AmeriCorps volunteers assigned to Donahue using an innovative research-based curriculum to help children from prekindergarten to third grade develop the skills they’ll need to become proficient readers by grade four, which is a critical benchmark for children’s academic success.

Sydney Smith (Small in the City, Neal Porter Books) and Ashleigh Corrin (Layla’s Happiness, Enchanted Lion Books) have won the 2020 Ezra Jack Keats (EJK) Award for writer and illustrator, respectively. The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, in partnership with the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), recognizes “talented authors and illustrators early in their careers whose picture books, in the spirit of Keats, portray the multicultural nature of our world.”

According to Vanderbilt education researcher Ilana Horn, math is “inherently interesting” to all children. In the absence of diverse, relatable role models, though, kids receive messages from pop culture that math is only for certain people. Books revolving around math can spark curiosity and increase math engagement among kids of all ages. A growing library of children’s nonfiction tells true stories of mathematicians who explored and advanced our understanding of numbers and patterns in real life. Below are more than 10 children’s books about diverse people who played a role in math history.

Only about a third of third graders in Tennessee can read on grade level. About 64% of third graders are not set up for success, research shows. They aren’t reading on grade level and they aren’t considered proficient on state tests — and those are problems that will likely follow them through upper grades, high school graduation, their careers and their lives. Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, like her predecessors, wants to change that. Schwinn wants to tackle the state’s literacy crisis by ensuring teachers actually know how to teach and that schools and districts have access to appropriate, high-quality materials for teaching and learning. New The legislation would require every educator who is responsible for reading instruction, including classroom teachers, special education teachers and other certified or classified staff in schools, to have specific training by 2022.

March 2nd is National Read Across America Day which encourages students of all ages—especially those without access to books and libraries—to read more. Luckily, there are organizations committed to this initiative year-round. For instance, New York City-based Pajama Program promotes comforting bedtime routines for children facing adversity “so they can wake up rested and ready to thrive.” This involves providing them with pajamas and bedtime books. Meanwhile, national nonprofit ParentChild+ supports school readiness by sending educators right to the toddler’s home. With a focus on refugees, immigrants and families in crisis, learning specialists are trained to educate both parent and child on how to engage in more read-aloud activities. Educators from ParentChild+ often remind caregivers of the things children love most in books: beautiful, vivid pictures, rhyming text, animals, children who look like them, and children whose lives are very different from theirs. Here are just some of their favorites, including classics and new reads that promote cultural awareness.

Monday March 2nd is the National Education Association’s Read Across America day as well as Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Pediatricians at SSM Health have implemented a program that would make the late author and illustrator proud. The program is called “Reach out and Read,” and it is implemented in examination rooms across the country. Dr. Bethany Crawford,a pediatrician at SSM Health St. Mary’s, said during a wellness check-up they give the child a book to help assess their development.

Just as publishers have been churning out a steady stream of excellent graphic fiction, they’ve also been providing visual readers with quality graphic nonfiction books. Many visual readers, it turns out, are also fact-seekers — they like books that provide information. They are curious about the world and want their books to provide answers. And even the most avid story lover is not always in the mood for a made-up tale. For all these kids, you cannot go wrong with the books below, which manage to make the real world thrilling, accessible and endlessly attractive.

The first assignment that Elizabeth LaGamba, assistant professor at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, gives to her Current Issues in Reading Research graduate students each semester is to read the most recent What’s Hot in Literacy Report from ILA. In addition to sharing their feedback with the class, one of the requirements is to send their response to ILA. LaGamba wrote an article for Literacy Today about why she includes this as an assignment in her class and what it is about the report that she finds valuable. You can find her article, “A Guide to Professional Growth: Using The ILA 2020 What’s Hot in Literacy Report to Frame Our Study of Current Issues in Reading Research,” in the March/April issue. Here we share the feedback we received from her students in January when the 2020 report was released.

As librarians, we see how so many kids readily connect to comics and how this connection to books is helping to create lifelong readers. Dave Burbank, my library’s comics expert, likes to reassure worried parents that many young readers are drawn to the genre because comics bear a resemblance to the screens so ubiquitous in our kids’ lives, yet they are reading a book — not staring at a phone or tablet. We know that comics are especially beneficial to struggling or reluctant readers, as well as English-language learners. These books also offer all readers a way to practice important reading skills such as building vocabulary, understanding a sequence of events, discerning the plot of a story and making inferences. And comics give young readers training in visual literacy — helping them read and interpret images — an essential skill in our highly visual world.

Last fall’s release of the 2019 NAEP reading assessment — the so-called Nation’s Report Card for literacy — kicked off a new national debate about the best way to teach children to read. With two out of three children struggling to learn to read, and a widening gap between the highest and lowest performing children, state and district leaders (along with the general public) are again questioning what actually works. In this episode, Professor James Kim discusses why learning to read is so challenging, and he describes results of a pilot study of his new curricular model, called MORE, which focuses on building domain knowledge.

A handful of large, high-profile studies funded by the federal government over the past decade have returned near-zero impacts of PD on student learning. Fortunately, scholars have studied many other teacher professional learning in the past two decades, and recent evidence points to two forms as particularly promising: (1) teachers take a deep dive into new curriculum materials, and (2) individualized, intensive, and sustained teacher coaching. Focusing directly on instruction—through delving into curriculum materials or through coach feedback and teacher reflection—can be a powerful lever for changing that instruction. Many successful PD programs feature informal accountability for change—coaches regularly appear in teachers’ classroom to check in, keeping instructional improvement on the front burner. Coaching and curriculum-focused PD may help teachers focus on building their skill in one kind of instruction, rather than having their heads continually turned by different instructional approaches.

While having full-on conversations with babies can seem bizarre, it actually boost language skills, according to a new study. Unlike traditional ‘baby talk’, which typically includes talking with a different cadence at a higher tone using incorrect grammar, “parentese” is a version of ‘baby talk’ that follows adult grammar patterns, just in a different tone of voice and a slower tempo. The new study comes from the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, at the University of Washington. Researchers examined how parent coaching about the value of parentese affected adults’ use of it with their own infants, and demonstrated that increases in the use of parentese enhanced children’s later language skills.

My favorite moments with my students happen one-on-one. These moments often take place when a child is reading to me while I observe, take notes, and share what I notice about her strengths and needs as a reader. Whether you’re collecting information by listening to a student read, doing a formal assessment, or holding a reading conference, here are six ideas for making the most of that valuable one-on-one time. Tip #6: Teach the reader, not just the reading. While I have the child sitting beside me for a conference, I usually take a minute before or after we read to ask questions like, “How’s our class going for you? Any problems? How’s your baby sister doing?” Taking that half-minute to ask how students are doing can convey that we care about them as human beings, not just as a collection of reading levels and test scores. Over time, those little human moments can strengthen, reinforce, or repair the relationship at the heart of teaching.

Charlottesville (VA) bought Into Reading for kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers, and it will be used in all six elementary schools this fall. Albemarle County purchased Being a Reader, a K-2 program from the Center for the Collaborative Classroom, for all first-grade teachers and plans to expand it to either kindergarten or second grade next school year. The curriculum purchases are a key step in the divisions’ plan to improve its baseline support and instruction for all students, so that fewer students struggle to read later on. Experts say a high-quality reading program should address oral language development, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary — components that build on one another. Historically, Charlottesville and Albemarle have bought programs that address only some of those areas and left it up to teachers to fill in the gaps.

Following the “staggering” results of an early identification program for students at risk of dyslexia this month, over 500 Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) students have started to receive additional monitoring or specialized services. As part of its ongoing efforts to boost literacy by diagnosing dyslexia early, PAUSD educators administered the Shaywitz Dyslexia Screener to 2,100 K-3 students. Of the 546 students deemed at-risk, 239 will receive additional monitoring without specialized services, 225 will receive additional in- and out-of-class instruction, 73 were referred for further testing and nine were referred to Tier III supports which includes professional interventions.

Parents are increasingly concerned about the technology in school, while at the same time, ed tech is pushing its way into more and more of education world, from personalized learning which most often means a student in front of a screen, all the way down to computerized pre-school. In response to this issue, the Children’s Screen Time Action Network has released a “Screens in Schools Action Kit.” The kit provides parents and teachers both with information and explanations that help lay out the issues, as well as providing the language with which to discuss these issues (for folks whose position is “This stuff bothers me, but I’m not even sure want exactly to say about it”). It’s not arguing for the eradication of tech, but a balanced, measured approach.

We hardly think twice about spell-check and other auto-correct features in writing software—in fact, their absence would make some feel rather lost and empty. These days, text and email apps will even construct full responses that can be delivered with a quick tap of a finger. But the increasingly sophisticated technologies that people have come to rely on should not absolve personal responsibility for learning how to spell, write or communicate, says Dave Eggers. And their growing presence in the classroom is especially cause for concern. “I think that there is a mentality that’s sort of overtaken humanity that everything in life is being examined for how we might digitize it,” says the prolific writer and Pulitzer finalist. “Increasingly there’s less choice about when you use technology and when you don’t.” By no means is Eggers a luddite. But he’s passionate about the need for “refuges that are havens for quiet creativity and analog creation … a place to be weird.” That’s a spirit that is very much a part of 826, a network of elaborately whimsical tutoring and writing centers that Eggers helped launch in 2002. Eggers recently joined us for an eclectic conversation about many facets of education—including designing what he calls “unnecessarily beautiful” learning spaces.

In my practice as a school psychologist, I have seen evidence of the research finding that academic performance and mental health can have a two-way relationship. Students who do not develop strong reading skills are at greater risk for developing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and behavior problems. If you think your child has a language delay or difficulty with phonological awareness or decoding, discuss your concerns with your child’s teacher. Do not wait until your child is failing and falling behind to advocate for intervention and/or assessment. Early intervention has very high success rates for supporting reading development, but it is much more difficult to improve reading skills in older students.

The Ohio Department of Education began six years ago gathering experts statewide to study the state’s literacy data and identify gaps in learning, as well as examine how students were learning to read and how Ohio’s teaching methods compared to other more successful states. They began learning about the science of how the brain reads and found it needs explicit instruction to learn the sounds and letter connections to read words correctly. The experts developed a state improvement plan that aligns literacy instruction to the science of reading and helped create an interactive online edition of a training program designed to help teachers learn how to teach reading to their students based on the way the brain learns to read. That training program – called the third edition of Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, better known as LETRS – is now being used by many Stark County schools and it has led to changes in how students here are being taught.

Worried that far too many students have weak reading skills, states are passing new laws that require aspiring teachers—and, increasingly, teachers who are already in the classroom—to master reading instruction that’s solidly grounded in research. In the past three years alone, at least 11 states have enacted laws designed to expand evidence-based reading instruction in grades K-3. Legislative analysts and activists who monitor the issue have noticed a flurry of recent state action on it. “There is an absolute buzz around the science of reading. There’s no question that states are getting on board with this,” said Laura Stewart, the director of the Reading League, a group that works to build understanding of what research says about good reading instruction.

Each year, our district middle schools participate in the Battle of the Books. If you are unfamiliar with the Battle of the Books, it is a massive book trivia contest in which participants battle in teams of three to answer questions about a list of 25 books everyone has read. It’s a shared reading experience of epic proportions. About 10 years ago, we started Battle of the Books merely to get kids reading and talking about books they might not normally choose. In hindsight, we recognize these battles have impacted our students far beyond that initial goal. Here are four areas in which these battles of the books have had an impact on our students far beyond our initial goal: exposure, teamwork, background knowledge, and insight.

Before he became a best-selling writer, Dan Brown was an aspiring musician. In 1989, he self-produced an album of children’s music he arranged on synthesizers, titled “Musica Animalia.” It sold around 500 copies, and Brown soon forgot about it. He had better luck as a novelist, with page-turners like “The Da Vinci Code,” “The Lost Symbol” and other thrillers that collectively have more than 220 million copies in print. Now, three decades later, Brown is reviving his musical career with a hybrid children’s album and picture book that grew out of the music and poems he wrote for “Musica Animalia.” The book, “Wild Symphony,” is aimed at 3- to 7-year-olds. The story features a mouse conductor who recruits other animals to perform in his orchestra, dispensing wisdom about the value of patience, kindness and respect along the way. Readers can listen to the musical accompaniments for each page with a smartphone app that uses augmented reality to scan the page and play the music for “Bouncing Kangaroo,” “Wondrous Whale” and “Brilliant Bat.”

English-language-learner enrollment in K-12 schools has increased by more than 1 million students since 2000, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Education. There are now an estimated 4.9 million children in U.S. public schools learning the English language. These students are in classrooms in most school systems—and enrollment is surging in states across the South and Midwest that had almost no English-learners at the turn of the century. The report tracks enrollment from the 2000-01 school year to the 2016-17 school year, the latest year for which numbers are available and provides a quick look at national demographic trends.

For most of her life, people questioned whether Nicki Vander Meulen belonged—in a traditional K-12 classroom, in law school or on the school board of one of Wisconsin’s largest school districts. When doctors diagnosed Vander Meulen with Asperger’s syndrome, attention deficit disorder, and cerebral palsy as a child, her parents fought for her right to attend the neighborhood elementary school. The school’s principal thought she belonged in a school for the severely disabled. Her parents knew otherwise. Despite a counselor who told her that she’d never graduate from college, Vander Meulen went on to graduate from high school with honors and earn undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin—where her law school classmates questioned whether the university providing a notetaker for her constituted an unfair advantage. Now, a board of education member for Madison, Wis., schools and a juvenile defense attorney, Vander Meulen may be one of the few people in the nation on the autism spectrum serving in public office. Vander Meulen recently spoke with Education Week about her life as a school board member with autism and her work as an advocate for children with disabilities.

Expanding upon their efforts to prepare more children for kindergarten, the Boston Children’s Museum and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) recently announced plans to double the number of states participating in a school readiness initiative from three to six. Building a National Network of Museums and Libraries for School Readiness is an initiative that aims to expose children to informal learning opportunities early on so that by the time they enter kindergarten, not only are they meeting academic standards, but they’re equipped with certain social and developmental skills. The network will target vulnerable populations that are less likely to have access to so-called “school readiness” activities that foster social interactions and skills development among young children. Vulnerable populations include those living in rural areas, immigrant children, English learners and the socioeconomically disadvantaged.

Over the past few years, Jana Beth Francis has led schools in a districtwide adoption of new elementary and middle school English/language arts and math curricula, designed to build students’ knowledge and engage them in more intellectually challenging work. Now, she’s supporting principals and teachers as they learn how to teach in a new way—which means heading out to the rural-suburban district’s 20 schools on a regular basis to look at student work and observe classrooms. She is part of a burgeoning national movement around universal, high-quality curriculum. More districts are now looking to materials designed to build knowledge coherently through grade levels, aiming to prepare students with a strong foundation for reading comprehension. But many school systems are still figuring out how to support their teachers with PD that helps them use these new resources effectively.