Today’s Literacy Headlines

It’s possible that a number of schools might be welcoming Afghan refugee students soon. How can teachers/schools/districts best support them?

These two titles focused on sight examine its principles as one of the five senses and the invention of glasses.

After months of classroom turmoil sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, up to 250,000 public school students now face new struggles triggered by Hurricane Ida.

It can be difficult for librarians working in schools where students face special challenges.However, the libraries that serve these students may not have the funding for the necessary resources. That’s where individual librarians can make a difference and help bridge the gap with personal attention and a focus on community.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, American educators have experienced unprecedented change and challenges. Yet teachers also gained new insights on themselves, their students and their practice. Now, as the Delta variant sparks ongoing worries about school building re-openings, five teachers share the unplanned lessons they will carry into the new school year and beyond.

As the new school year launches, NEA is unveiling its latest list of recommended children’s and YA books, as well as a 2021-2022 Read Across America digital calendar.

As summer break wanes, district leaders in Philadelphia are using billboards, open houses, a back-to-school bus tour, and social media ads to bring students back after a tumultuous year. The effort is especially urgent for Philadelphia’s youngest students, who opted out by the thousands last year. Experts worry that if those children don’t return, they could miss out on learning during a critical time in their development, exacerbating existing inequities.

An enrolled tribal member, Sadie Perry lives in the southeast corner of the Navajo Nation on a property with three buildings, two horses and 11 family members, including her six grandsons and one of her daughters, who is ailing. When the coronavirus began sweeping across the world last year, Perry quickly loaded up on pandemic supplies, including food to feed her family, diesel to power her generator and water to fill her tank. But there is one essential that has always been scarce in this part of the country and that she couldn’t stock up on: Broadband access.

When LaMonica Williams saw that students in a New York City kindergarten classroom were having trouble reading, she asked their teacher what the main challenge seemed to be. “They just keep reading words that aren’t on the page,” Williams recalled the teacher telling her. Williams, a reading coach, suggested a small change to help students better understand that each written word corresponds with one spoken word. Instead of teaching students to point with one finger under each word as they read, she suggested the teacher show students how to use two fingers to “frame” a word, with one finger at the beginning and one at the end of each word. “As soon as they did that one simple change, students understood,” Williams said.

Back to school season is here, and with it comes a lot of changes. Whether your child is just starting school or going back after summer vacation, it can be both exciting and stressful. At Life Kit, we’re rooting for you and want to help keep that stress to a minimum. We’ve gathered some episodes that we think will help, from what to do about anxiety to how to have tough conversations that might come up because of school.

A vivid homage to the graffitied streets of the Boogie Down Bronx and an interstellar quest for the perfect natural hair style are part of a new wave of picture books celebrating Afro Latinx culture and characters, in an industry where these stories are still few and far between. “I want to show kids of diverse backgrounds that they can go on fantastical adventures, too,” said New York-based illustrator and toy designer Yesenia Moises, author of “Stella’s Stellar Hair.” She noted that in children’s media, stories featuring protagonists of color are often about overcoming struggle, or are “hyper-focused” on identity and race. “I want to step away from that for a moment to be able to show that … their worlds can be vibrant and full of color.”

Tens of millions of students may now be months or, in some cases, even a full year behind because they couldn’t attend school in person during the pandemic. Significant setbacks are especially likely for the most vulnerable students — kids with disabilities and those living in poverty, who didn’t have a computer, a reliable internet connection or a workspace to learn at home. Educators will have to do something different for the 2021-22 school year to make up for those losses. No catch-up strategy can possibly benefit all students. But studies do point toward which strategies are most effective, how they can best be implemented — and what approaches might be a waste of time and money. Here’s a rundown of the most relevant research.

As a book lover, sociologist and someone who understood the power of books, I knew I wanted literature to be part of my daughter’s upbringing, and to have her learn about her heritage through the lens of other cultural experiences. As excited as I was to build my daughter’s library, I found myself extremely frustrated at what I saw. The small selection of books featuring Indian or South Asian characters on the market were developmentally inappropriate, culturally inaccurate or insensitive, and not what I wanted on my daughter’s bookshelf. It was in this moment I realized I must do something about this. This is how Mango & Marigold Press came to be. The work we do at Mango & Marigold Press helps to amplify the voices of diverse multiracial authors and illustrators.

Choosing instructional materials wisely is one of the most important jobs education leaders and teachers have, perhaps now more than ever. Unfinished academic instruction resulting from the COVID-19 crisis demands better ways to reignite student engagement and accelerate learning. At the same time, the disparate impact of the pandemic on students of color and growing efforts to quash discussions about systemic racism in schools reveals an urgent need to approach this work through a racial equity lens. This report argues that embracing high-quality instructional materials that are both rigorous and relevant is crucial to addressing these priorities.

As many students with disabilities return to school in person for the first time in over a year, federal education officials are spelling out what districts nationwide need to do to serve them. In a letter sent this week to state and local education agencies, the U.S. Department of Education is making clear that despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rights of students under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to a free appropriate public education, or FAPE, have not changed. That means that school-age students with disabilities should have individualized education programs in effect at the start of the school year and plans should be implemented for infants and toddlers with disabilities to receive the services they’re entitled to, the letter indicates.

It’s the third week of school at Remington Elementary in Colorado Springs and the first-grade teachers gathered in a small classroom say more students than usual are struggling with letter names and sounds — skills typically mastered in kindergarten. A bar chart projected on a television screen bears out these observations, showing that 40% of the school’s first-graders are behind in literacy, with most of those scoring in the lowest “red” category and the rest in the second-lowest “yellow” category on a common reading assessment. “Yeah, that’s scary,” said Principal Lisa Fillo, who’s led a reading instruction overhaul at the school over the past several years. Now, educators at Remington, like those across Colorado and the nation, are beginning to size up the challenge ahead, particularly in the early grades where the building blocks of successful reading are formed.

The pandemic forced educators across the globe to innovate and be creative — and social-emotional learning became a cornerstone of many virtual classrooms. Throughout this school year, educators, coaches, and school leaders have engaged in virtual professional development and one-on-one coaching sessions to hone their social-emotional learning skills and knowledge to meet the needs of all learners. The following are some of the most effective strategies all educators should take within them into next year.

When food banks work with schools to send children home with a backpack full of food over the weekend, they do better on reading and math tests, I found in a recent study. These effects are strongest for younger and low-performing students. Adoption of a BackPack Program appears to shrink the gap in test scores between economically disadvantaged and advantaged students by about 15%. We also show the program is more effective for the youngest students in our study – third graders – and for students with the lowest test scores.

Laura Bilbro-Berry stepped into her first classroom as a teacher in 1992. She realized both the weight and the depth of her responsibility almost immediately. About a third of her elementary school students struggled with reading, and the “whole language” instructional approach that her college taught her to use wasn’t working. “I realized pretty early on that I needed more information,” she said. “And so I found those things that I knew were really important. I didn’t have a name for that information. We didn’t call it the ‘science of reading.’ But I knew that’s what my kids needed in my classroom.” Nearly 30 years later, Bilbro-Berry leads the UNC System’s educator preparation program (EPP), which produces about 40% of the state’s teachers. Now, Bilbro-Berry is in position to make sure those future teachers get the information that she didn’t in college.

A new study by researchers at the Yale Child Study Center demonstrates that puppets can attract and hold the attention of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), raising the potential for developing more engaging therapies that strengthen social engagement and facilitate learning. The study, published in the journal Autism Research, is the first to test anecdotal evidence that children with ASD, like most youngsters, pay attention to puppets.

Last year’s COVID-19 lockdown disrupted the idea of school as we know it and it forced educators to think outside of the box. For one elementary school principal in North Carolina, thinking outside of the box had him heading outside — literally. Nicholas L. Dixon, principal of Foust Elementary School in Greensboro, had long been a supporter of outdoor learning, so when his school won a grant of $13,000 from the North Carolina Outdoor Heritage Advisory Council last year, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with the windfall: build an outdoor classroom that would inspire not only students but teachers as well. The school was able to debut the outdoor space in December, right around the time students first began returning for in-person lessons and were adjusting to a new normal. First-graders were among the first to try out the space and luckily, Dixon told NPR, it was an instant hit — and it still is today.

Working memory is crucial to learning—providing both the cognitive space and the cognitive tools to process new thinking. Research shows that distractions, confusing material, or an overwhelming amount of information can tax a student’s working memory. Here’s how to better support this essential executive function.

A 2021 study reveals the ways in which new and experienced teachers think about discipline — plus 6 takeaways for managing your classroom effectively this year. Understandably, there’s a significant gap between how novice and expert teachers approach classroom management—one that can take years of experience and training to fill, according to the new study. And while there’s no replacement for spending time in the classroom, an awareness of the right strategies, and the right mindsets, can put new teachers on the fast track to adopting tactics that work but might feel counterintuitive or risky. Meanwhile, more experienced teachers can benefit from insights that may help them sharpen or extend their existing playbook.

Just when schools were getting ready to reopen for the new school year, cases of COVID-19 started surging in the United States, driven in large part by the more contagious delta variant. School administrators around the country are working to bring students back into the classroom safely, while still providing kids an enriching learning environment. As an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Washington, I have spent the past year and a half working with a group of epidemiologists and health professionals to collect, review and evaluate the scientific evidence about COVID-19 for state and local public health agencies. Our group concluded that vaccines and masking work well for preventing COVID-19 outbreaks in schools, but other strategies like plexiglass barriers and temperature checks are probably not worth the effort.

All schools throughout Alabama can now boost literacy instruction via LETRS® (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) professional learning. This professional learning experience provides the knowledge and tools for successfully applying the science of reading in classrooms. The Alabama State Department of Education funding is to support kindergarten through third grade teachers, in addition to Pre-K, administrators, and other support positions that impact K-3 literacy in the state. The Alabama State Department of Education adopted use of LETRS as part of the Alabama Literacy Act, which in addition to providing foundational literacy support, also provides intensive support for the state’s lowest performing elementary schools.

As a novice teacher, Timothy Shanahan recalls doing round robin reading with his third-grade students—even though his professors in graduate school strongly advised against it, and he vividly remembered his own negative feelings about the practice, he confesses in a 2019 blog post. It’s not uncommon for classroom literacy practices to stick around in spite of, as in the case of round robin, well-established research and readily available resources offering a variety of research-based alternatives for improving reading fluency and deepening comprehension and engagement. As students return to school and educators begin to plan for instruction that adequately challenges kids but also catches them up after a year of uneven pandemic learning, there’s a valuable opportunity to reconsider—and ultimately retire—some of the stale literacy practices that research suggests aren’t the best use of limited instructional time. We combed through our Edutopia archives to find practices that shouldn’t make the cut and selected more effective alternatives that come recommended by literacy experts and experienced educators.

Despite years of research and practice, there is still no definitive blueprint for teaching grammar. The only thing that remains clear and uncontested is that grammar is most likely to be understood within the context of authentic reading and writing activities. However, without knowledge of what meaningful contextualization looks like in practice, many teachers, particularly new teachers, are bound to continue teaching the rules of English in an isolated, drill-like manner. Looking at writing in meaningful contexts, including cartoons, helps students see how they can apply the rules of English. Here are some practical suggestions to help you support your students.

When school resumes in the fall, even if education returns to pre-pandemic “normal” – with students attending classes all day and in person – teachers are likely to use more online tools and virtual resources than they did pre-COVID. That means parents need to be prepared to continue the role of facilitator of learning and technology specialist for their school-aged children. As teacher educators who are reevaluating how to prepare teachers for future learning disruptions, we’d like to offer parents and caregivers some tips for the upcoming back-to-school season.

If you read in English, chances are that there are a few countries that take up the vast majority of your reading. Only 2–4% of books published in English are translated, and even books published in English in countries other than the U.S. and UK often don’t get picked up and publicized in the same way that U.S. American works do. This is even more pronounced when it comes to children’s books, where the same books top the charts year after year. Parents tend to buy and read to their kids the same books their parents bought and read to them. If you want to branch out, though, and discover children’s books published all across the world, here’s a great place to start! TheToyZone has gathered up the most popular children’s books from each country and put them into these gorgeous graphics.

In the past 10 years, the education field has discovered a lot about the science of learning. Contributors share ways to use that in school.

As the pandemic upended life in the United States, more than one million children who had been expected to enroll in these schools did not show up, either in person or online. The missing students were concentrated in the younger grades, with the steepest drop in kindergarten — more than 340,000 students, according to government data. Now, the first analysis of enrollment at 70,000 public schools across 33 states offers a detailed portrait of these kindergartners. It shows that just as the pandemic lay bare vast disparities in health care and income, it also hardened inequities in education, setting back some of the most vulnerable students before they spent even one day in a classroom.

In the days since Eloise Greenfield died, the remembrances and stories of her impact on individuals and children’s publishing have been pouring in for the poet and author, who passed August 5 at age 92. Greenfield, whose first book, Bubbles, was published in 1972, wrote more than 40 books for children, including poetry, biography, picture books, and chapter books. Her most famous work was Honey, I Love, which was published in 1978. She received the 2018 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, along with the 1997 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, given for a body of work to a living American poet. In 2016, Greenfield received the Teaching for Change Education for Liberation Award. “Not only did she revolutionize children’s literature, she also (in big and small ways) supported generations of African American children’s books authors who followed her,” a post on Teaching for Change’s website said about Greenfield.

Learning disruptions have been an unfortunate but all-too-frequent sight during the pandemic. But not every student felt those effects evenly as schools shifted between remote and in-person options. Even under typical circumstances, learners with autism or other neurological differences are often more sensitive to changes in their environments. So given the lingering uncertainties about COVID-19’s impact on schooling this fall—and the trajectory of the fast-spreading delta variant—perhaps it’s no surprise that many families with neurodivergent children are opting to continue with remote learning. “We’ve had about 50 families stay online. And with that request, it prompted us to officially apply for our online schools here in the state of Arizona,” says Dana Van Deinse, director of partnership and online programming at Arizona Autism Charter Schools, which serves more than 400 students. “So really, it came about from demand.”

Take the 8 question quiz! Once you complete the quiz, you can see how your score compares to your peers, get the correct answers with detailed explanations, and be provided with additional readings and resources on the topic.

During the summer, I am sharing thematic posts bringing together responses on similar topics from the past 10 years. Today’s theme is on the inclusive classroom. You can see the list of posts here.

Danielle Young coined the term “Black Boy Joy” in 2016 after watching Chance the Rapper exude happiness at MTV’s Video Music Awards. A welcome contrast to how young Black men are often portrayed in the media, it soon became a hashtag. In the introduction to his anthology of the same name, Kwame Mbalia (author of the Tristan Strong series) confesses that he doesn’t like watching the news, because growing up it was “always reporting on some local shooting or some death or some other tragedy that made my mother shake her head and my father scowl … because nine times out of 10, a face like mine was on the screen.” That’s why Mbalia invited 16 Black author friends to help him highlight “the revelry, the excitement, the sheer fun of growing up as boys in and out of the hood.” From stories (by the likes of Jason Reynolds, Varian Johnson and Tochi Onyebuchi) to poetry (Dean Atta) and comics (Jerry Craft), “Black Boy Joy” has something for every type of reader.

For millions of students, this is a summer like no other in the history of American public education. The last day of the school year was followed by just a brief pause before classes started again for a wide range of programs financed by more than a billion dollars in federal funds under the American Rescue Plan. That windfall sent educators scrambling this spring to find the best ways to spend it. Many districts are trying to focus on students who have lost the most during months of remote learning. Educators say they are especially concerned about students living in poverty, English-language learners and students with disabilities. But kids of all ages — from kindergarten to high school — suffered academically and emotionally during months of isolation. There’s no definitive count yet of how many students are enrolled this summer in a wide range of new options, from a push to close early learning gaps in Texas to a summer program in Oregon that helps kids learning English. A recent survey by the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that most large urban districts are offering an average of five weeks of summer learning, with many combining academics and activities like field trips or sports.

As we prepare to welcome our youngest learners to classrooms this fall, preschool and early childhood teachers are likely wondering how to best prepare children with the skills necessary to be kindergarten ready. Given that many preschool-aged children weren’t in formal in-person learning programs last year, building the academic and executive functioning skills they need for kindergarten is especially important for this incoming cohort of students. Executive functioning skills include organizing and prioritizing, staying focused on tasks, and regulating emotions. Children begin developing executive functioning skills rapidly between the ages of 3 and 5. Preschool and early childhood teachers play an important role in helping young learners develop academic skills (such as recognizing letters, colors, and numbers) and developing the executive functioning skills they need to be prepared for kindergarten.

Is your classroom bookshelf all that it can be, for every kid in your class? Here’s how to bring it up to speed. Providing “windows and mirrors” so that students can both see themselves and be exposed to new realities isn’t a novel concept for teachers. But as we grow increasingly aware of the many people whose stories remain untold一and the ripple effect our collective ignorance has on shaping our discourse and our cultural priorities—it’s worth revisiting what’s been sitting on classroom bookshelves.

The return of in-person learning last spring led to a boost in young children’s reading skills, but performance hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels and racial gaps have grown wider, according to new data from curriculum provider Amplify. Compared to winter results, the end-of-year data on the widely used Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or DIBELS, shows that fewer students were at risk of not learning to read — a decline to 38 percent from 47 percent in kindergarten and a drop to 32 percent from 43 percent at first grade. But the scores at third grade, a critical year for developing more advanced reading skills, haven’t bounced back in the same way. The results provide some hope that a full in-person return to school this fall could see young children quickly regain the early literacy skills they missed while learning from home.

When disabilities and developmental delays are caught early, it can significantly impact a child’s ability to learn new skills and overcome challenges. Parents also learn strategies to support and advocate for their child. Librarians should never diagnose. However, as information professionals, we can let families know about EI, a community program providing services, including speech therapy, physical therapy, and special instruction, to qualifying children up to age three. The first step is making sure they know that EI exists and is free, voluntary, and confidential; a doctor’s referral isn’t necessary. Keep brochures at your children’s information desk. Libraries can also help address inequities and racial disparities in how EI services are accessed and provided.

They’re getting their hands dirty growing organic veggies. They’re cracking jokes while gaming on the Wii. They’re sporting medieval armor and waving foam weapons on a grassy battlefield. Just your typical summer vacation shenanigans, but with a twist: It’s all at school. This July, over 11,000 students in Tulsa, Oklahoma — about a third of the district’s total enrollment — have returned to academic buildings for fun-filled programming that explodes the typical conception of summer school. As national leaders including U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona underscore the importance of re-engaging young people this summer on the heels of a year marred by the pandemic, and with billions in federal relief dollars earmarked for summer enrichment activities, Tulsa Public Schools has seized the moment, delivering learning opportunities to students in tandem with community building and joy.

Floyd Cooper, a celebrated children’s book illustrator who explored the African American experience in stories rooted in history, like one about a boy in Alabama in 1955 trying to comprehend why a Black woman on his bus refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, died on July 15 in Bethlehem, Pa. He was 65. Over 30 years and some 100 titles, Mr. Cooper illustrated children’s stories that not only carried his earthy and golden pastel impressions of Black life, but that also strived to recount chapters of African American history that he felt weren’t taught enough in classrooms — if they were taught at all.

Dip into these picture books about pools and beaches, swimming and sailing, calm waters and stormy seas.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released updated guidance for schools Monday, recommending that all students over 2 years old, along with staff, wear masks, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. The new AAP guidance comes less than two weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its own recommendations, calling for indoor mask-wearing for unvaccinated students ages 2 and up, as well as staff. (Children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination.) The CDC notes, however, that schools might find universal masking necessary in areas with low vaccination rates, increasing community transmission or a number of other factors. Both sets of guidance focus on getting students back into classrooms.

During the pandemic, all kinds of technologies helped save K-12 education from completely collapsing. Zoom and Microsoft Teams empowered educators to deliver live instruction and talk with students face to face virtually, many teachers who previously saw no need to use their learning management systems became regular users of them, and digital devices were distributed in record numbers to students all over the country. The result is that teachers’ and students’ technology skills have leapfrogged to the next level and the tech infrastructure in schools is now far more robust than it ever was before the pandemic. But with the crisis easing and most schools planning to return to full-time in-person instruction in the fall, educators now have to make some very important technology decisions. These stories examine all those questions and provide a roadmap for how schools should approach the use of technology for the 2021-22 school year and beyond.

Even as students are sorting through information online more than ever, the number of school librarians who could help them learn the fundamentals of research and media literacy have been quietly disappearing. A report published today from the School Librarian Investigation: Decline or Evolution? (SLIDE), a research project through Antioch University Seattle and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, highlights an ongoing decline in the number of districts nationwide with school librarians. According to the findings, there were about 20 percent fewer librarians during the 2018-2019 school year in the 13,000 districts examined than a decade prior. But the absence of these educators isn’t equally distributed; Smaller, rural districts, and those with higher proportions of English-language learners, Hispanic students, and low-income students were more likely to lack a librarian.

Despite gains at many Early Literacy Grant schools and enthusiasm from school leaders, the program has been a minor player in Colorado’s bid to help children read better. The program has doled out $5 million to $7.5 million annually and accepts a new crop of 20 to 30 schools every other year on average. It’s touched only about 10% of Colorado elementary schools over its eight-year history. In contrast, Colorado’s primary effort to help struggling readers, which awards every district and charter school money based on their number of struggling K-3 readers, typically distributes $26 million to $33 million a year. Until last year, districts had wide latitude on spending those dollars — with some using the funding to buy discredited reading programs or items that have little to do with reading instruction, such as tote bags or lip balm. Of a dozen educators and administrators Chalkbeat interviewed about Early Literacy Grants, most said scaling up the program could make a big difference.

For as long as there have been books, there have been censors who have tried to keep them away from other people. Today these efforts run the gamut from outright bans to limiting a book’s availability by getting it removed from library shelves or cut from classroom syllabuses. The American Library Association publishes lists of the most frequently banned and challenged books, which, revealingly, contain mostly children’s and young adult titles.“You Can’t Say That,” a collection of interviews conducted by the children’s literature expert Leonard S. Marcus, offers an antidote to the censors, elevating the voices of 13 authors whose books for kids have been challenged. Marcus probes not just what made these works controversial, but also the life paths that led the writers to pursue their subjects, and how they reacted to campaigns to muzzle their work — all of which are sure to interest their young fans, as well as students of free speech.

These powerful stories of seven trailblazing women—including a scientist,a marine biologist, a World War II military pilot, a popular singer, an astronomer, an astrophysicist, and a code breaker during the world wars—who were pioneers in their fields will enlighten and inspire young readers.

As schools launch summer programs and plan for the fall, they’re left with a tremendous responsibility (and a windfall of federal money) to try to fill in the gaps for students who have spent a year trying to learn through a computer screen. Researchers and educators are considering various methods to fill these gaps, including small-group instruction, extended school hours and summer programs. But, while the results of research on what might work to catch kids up is not always clear-cut, many education experts point to tutoring as a tried-and-true method. Guilford County Schools turned to tutors early in the pandemic to confront unfinished learning. The district, with 126 schools (including two virtual academies) and nearly 70,000 K-12 students, created an ambitious districtwide tutoring program using a combination of graduate, undergraduate and high school students to serve as math tutors. Now, over the next few months, the district hopes to expand their program to include English language arts and other subject areas and plans to continue it for at least the next several years.

For most of the 18 rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Zaila Avant-garde went through each word with ease before winning the champion title and making history on Thursday night. The 14-year-old from Harvey, Louisiana, received the Scripps Cup at the tournament in Florida after correctly spelling “murraya,” a genus of tropical Asiatic or Australian trees. It wasn’t just an historic night for the state of Louisiana. Avant-garde became the first Black American to win the bee. In the spelling bee’s 96-year history, she’s only the second Black contestant to win after Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica, who won in 1998. Her spelling bee training is intense: “For spelling, I usually try to do about 13,000 words (per day), and that usually takes about seven hours or so,” she said.

The last word, after hundreds of competitors fell to some of the dictionary’s worst verbal terrors, was murraya. When Zaila Avant-garde, 14, spelled it correctly on Thursday night, she put her hands to her head, beamed and twirled, her arms outstretched and confetti raining across the stage. Zaila, 14, an eighth grader from near New Orleans, had just won the 93rd Scripps National Spelling Bee, becoming the first Black American student to take the cup after 10 other finalists stumbled in the competition’s final rounds. It was a remarkable achievement for a girl who only began spelling competitively two years ago. Not only did she dissect word after word on spelling’s biggest stage, she had already set three Guinness world records for dribbling, bouncing and juggling basketballs. All before the ninth grade.

Connecticut has become the latest state to pass legislation requiring that reading instruction be based on the science of reading. According to the state’s recently enacted budget bill, every school district in the state is required to focus its reading curriculum on the science of reading by 2023, despite opposition from some educators and parents. Known as the Right to Read act, the Connecticut bill also calls for $12.8 million in spending to ensure that school districts can hire reading coaches to prevent students falling behind and establishes a Center for Literacy Research and Reading Success that will oversee the state reading curriculum for students in grades pre-K–3.

The components of a functional early-literacy system are clear: high-quality, systematic curriculum; trained teachers; targeted assessments; effective data meetings; and sufficient time on task. There are also clear processes to assess, group, and instruct students, as well as monitor their progress. What we don’t yet know is how to help schools combine the component parts and move through the steps with sufficient precision to produce reliable results for every child, in every classroom. If school leaders set the intention to ensure 100 percent of the class of 2032 achieves mastery of foundational reading skills, the path would require at least three things.

If there was ever a summer when parents could assist their children in brushing up on their skills, this is it as experts predict learning loss to be as much as 35%. The good news is that there are some simple, inexpensive ways that parents can help their children get ready for school academically and mentally.

The William S. Gray Citation of Merit honors a nationally or internationally known individual for their outstanding contributions to multiple facets of literacy development—research, theory, practice, and policy. Steve Graham, an ILA member since 2007 and the Mary Emily Warner Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, is a leading expert on the educational psychology of writing and the connections between reading and writing. His research, spanning over 30 years, focuses on identifying the factors that contribute to writing development and difficulties, developing and validating effective instructional procedures for teaching writing, and the use of technology to enhance writing performance.

With the Summer Olympics scheduled to begin July 23 in Tokyo, Games-obsessed young readers—and anyone looking for a little escape or inspiration—will find something in these titles.

Instead of spending their last summer before school playing, two dozen 4- and 5-year-olds in Indianapolis started class six weeks early this year to get a head start before kindergarten. The students attend Kindergarten Kickstart, a five-week program meant to ease their transition to kindergarten. The program is open to students enrolled at Tindley Genesis Academy, an Indianapolis charter school that serves mostly Black and Latino students, many of whom are from low-income communities. Students stay from 9 a.m. to noon, easing into a school setting with short bursts of time in the classroom.

Patricia Reilly Giff, a prolific children’s book author whose work was driven by the idea that remarkable stories could be spun from the lives of ordinary people, died on June 22 at her home in Trumbull, Conn. She was 86. Ms. Giff, who did not start writing until she was in her 40s, gained prominence with the Polk Street School series — 14 illustrated books, published from 1984 to 1990, about the antics and learning struggles of second-grade students in Ms. Rooney’s classroom. The books drew on Ms. Giff’s experience as a reading teacher. Two of her later books — “Lily’s Crossing” (1997) and “Pictures of Hollis Woods” (2002) — earned Newbery Honors, an important recognition for children’s literature. Ms. Giff said she focused on writing stories “that say ordinary people are special.” In total, she wrote more than 100 books for young readers, ranging from the humorous to the historical.