Today’s Literacy Headlines

To not only adapt during this time of great disruption but design something new and better, we have to start with an unwavering commitment to creating the conditions where all students are seen, heard and truly belong. For me, an essential piece of that vision is positioning afterschool staff and culture as a critical component of the thriving education ecosystem of the future. The afterschool and expanded learning community is built for this type of scenario. California’s publicly funded afterschool programs have diverse staff; 74 percent live in the communities they serve, and they often share the same ethnic, socioeconomic and class background as the students they work with. Afterschool programs are often located in communities with three-quarters of students eligible for Free or Reduced Price Meals and more than double the proportion of English learners as schools without expanded learning programs.

When teaching students with dyslexia through online learning platforms, educators should assess their existing resources. Technology help is often available through school specialists or online webinars hosted by the creators of the software. Using any existing strategies that can easily transition to distance learning will maintain consistency. It’s also important to reach out to parents who may not know the best way to help their dyslexic child succeed. The Orton-Gillingham approach — which teaches students how to decode words — converts well into a remote setting. For example, when using the phonogram card drill, instructors can hold the cards up to the camera. By using the mirror setting, they can also see what the students are seeing and be sure it reads correctly to the student. Instructors can use a document camera to conduct the blending drill.

When students at Anser Charter School in Garden City, Idaho returned to in-person classes Sept. 28, everything about school looked different than six months ago. Anser is an EL Education school, meaning it focuses on learning through projects and expeditions that regularly take students outside the school’s walls. Learning away from the classroom is nothing new for veteran Anser students. What is new, for at least part of many days, is that the classroom itself will be outside the school walls as well. It’s an accommodation designed to decrease risk of COVID-19 transmission at the 375-student, K-8 school. Across the country, schools — some charter, some private, some district-run public — are figuring out ways to minimize the spread of COVID-19. Since studies increasingly show that the virus transmits less readily outdoors than in, creative leaders and teachers are figuring out ways to get their students into the fresh air.

Parent-teacher interactions are tougher in this remote or hybrid learning setup so many of us are working through. Without the face-to-face interactions at dropoff or pickup, or traditional parent-teacher conferences, some parents are feeling disconnected from their children’s teachers. Teachers are struggling to build relationships, too. I’m an administrator at an elementary school in Camden, New Jersey, where schools are still all-online or operating with a hybrid model. I’ve seen firsthand that there are no shortcuts or easy ways out of the communication challenges that make a year like this one so hard. Even veteran teachers are anxious. But developing strong ties between schools and families has never been more important — and the basics are still the same. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned.

Kids, this comic is for you. You’ve been living through this pandemic for months – and you might be feeling sad, frustrated or upset. But there are lots of different ways to deal with your worries – and make yourself feel better. Here’s some tips and advice to help you through. Print and fold a zine version of this comic here. Here are directions on how to fold it. This comic is based on interviews conducted by NPR’s Cory Turner with Tara Powell at the University of Illinois School of Social Work, Joy Osofsky at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, Krystal Lewis at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown’s School of Public Health and Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content at Sesame Workshop.

At the beginning of the school year, students’ existing reading preferences provide starting points for connecting them with books. Valuing their tastes shows students we trust them to make their own decisions about what they read. We can build their confidence by offering books that match their interests. As the year progresses, deeper knowledge of students’ preferences and abilities helps us challenge them beyond their comfort zones and offer books that expand their reading experiences. While we do not want students to miss the expansive joys of reading and the increased social comprehension reading widely provides, adults must recognize that children who read a lot, and express strong reading preferences, have highly developed reading identities already. Yes, we have a responsibility to encourage them to read widely, but don’t despair if your most avid readers don’t choose to read a poetry book this year. t. Continue offering books that stretch them, but don’t take it personally if they push back on your suggestions.

Four educators share strategies for encouraging students to WANT to read, including by illustrating that it makes them smarter and that it makes them better writers.

To support kids with ADHD in elementary and middle school, the educators we spoke with said they’re focusing on the fundamentals of smart online teaching: brain and body breaks, chunking lessons into shorter units, and connecting with and soliciting feedback from their students—but especially those with ADHD—as often as possible. “In regular classrooms, the whole first quarter is about understanding students’ learning styles and creating partnerships with them to learn what I might do to help them,” says New Orleans elementary school educator Sari Levy. “We can’t forget that point when we’re teaching digitally.” Here’s a breakdown of what we found teachers are doing for their kids with ADHD.

We Need Diverse Books, AKA WNDB, is a non-profit, grassroots organization of children’s book lovers that advocates for es­sential changes in the publishing industry. Our aim is to create a world in which every child can see themselves in the pages of a book. WNDB offers a range of dynamic initiatives for writers, illustrators, educators, librarians, publishing professionals, and anyone looking for the next great children’s book. People who work in publishing, library services, or education can advocate for the inclusion of diverse books at their school, workplace, and community. Their voice can ensure that literature and texts featuring diverse characters are reflected in curricula and available for free in public libraries. Learn more in this Q&A with Locus Magazine.

When the squirming third graders sitting six feet apart in her classroom tried to get Abigail Boyett’s attention, she pointed to the pair of leopard ears sitting on her head. Months into the school year at San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District, the Lewis Elementary School third graders knew the fuzzy headband meant their teacher was focused on the other half of the class, the students sitting at home tuning into the lesson through Zoom. Both “roomies” and “zoomies” were supposed to be working independently on multiplication assignments, while Boyett pulled aside two who had struggled to grasp the concept. Teachers across the country are struggling to adapt to hybrid classroom approaches cobbled together in response to the enduring pandemic. Many say they’re having trouble reaching the students who need their help the most.

5th grade teacher Denice Garrett is working to keep her students engaged when they’re not working on class or homework. Because access to books has been limited by the pandemic, she started a Donors Choose project to purchase books for her students’ home libraries. “I want to have an opportunity to give my students books at home that they can share as well as their families to engage in a home library,” said Garrett. “I want to give back to my students and provide them with opportunities so they can have the resources that they need.”

Close to two-thirds of district leaders said their school systems are doing “hybrid learning”— a mix of in-person and online instruction. The precise nature of that mix, though, varies greatly from school to school. The ongoing chaos of the pandemic sometimes obscures the lessons schools are learning and the strategies they’re employing to overcome steep challenges. Education Week talked to educators from school districts across the country about how they developed their hybrid learning models, how they’re working so far, and what they have planned for the months ahead. Here is a look at hybrid models in six school districts and the challenges of making those approaches work.

What are ways to help students develop intrinsic motivation to read? The late Ken Robinson talked about the importance of creating conditions where intrinsic motivation can be developed and nurtured. He compared it to a farmer, who doesn’t force crops to grow. No, the farmer creates favorable conditions where they develop. This series will be discussing how to create those kinds of favorable conditions where an intrinsic desire to read can grow within our students. Creating the conditions that develop an intrinsic interest in reading is a longstanding challenge that is exacerbated by distance learning. In this episode, we explore ways to encourage students to read in traditional and online classes.

Like most American children, I grew up reading fairy tales. As a person of color, I accepted that the characters in the stories often didn’t look like me or reflect my experience. That’s just how they were. Yet one of the enduring features of fairy tales is how easily they can be adapted to the times and perspectives of their readership. Two new books — “The Magic Fish,” by Trung Le Nguyen, and “The Little Mermaid,” by Jerry Pinkney — open up the possibilities by recasting fairy tales, including a Hans Christian Andersen classic, for a more diverse generation. In doing so, they ruminate on the ways imaginary tales help children of all experiences shape their own personal narratives and how stories give us hope.

Many students in Jessica Everett’s kindergarten class don’t yet know how to hold a pencil. It’s one of those foundational skills of literacy — like turning pages, following the left-to-right direction of sentences — that many forget they once had to learn. It’s a starting point, and from there, Everett will dive into phonics: teaching the sounds associated with every letter, writing them down, practicing sight-reading and putting words together. This year, she’s doing it all from behind a computer screen. Everett said she’s taken to calling parents her “co-teachers” and explaining each lesson to them as she goes, emphasizing the reading and research behind the multisensory approach to teaching reading. Communication is constant, she said.

Before the coronavirus came into our collective lives, I was largely unaware of what my kids and their teachers did in school all day — and vice versa. Dylann Gold, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at N.Y.U. Langone, said that the pandemic has dissolved social boundaries. To establish more boundaries and to keep your kids focused during the day, Dr. Gold advised creating a visual schedule — with picture cues for younger kids and task lists for older ones — that clearly lays out all of the things they need to do before, during and after the school day.

If your student or child had to rapidly transition to an at-home learning environment as a struggling reader, an English language learner, or one with dyslexia, there are many ways that the support they were receiving in school can transfer to their home. Creating authentic learning experiences such as having your child help prepare meals, shop, and participate in outings to parks or museums can improve literacy. Simply engaging in conversation in the language spoken at home around shared experiences, explaining your thinking, and asking open-ended questions so your child can share their thoughts, facilitates a deeper level of communication. This builds metacognition, which is key for comprehension and reading success. There are many ways parents and educators can further support their readers, whatever their need. We broke down specific strategies you can use to make learning at home as effective as possible.

Should teachers spend the precious time they have helping students dig deeply into a specific issue, problem, or question? Or should they teach more broadly about a wide variety of topics? The argument for the former approach—called “deep learning”—is that it improves student engagement and prepares kids to be better problem solvers in a world with increasingly complex challenges around health, economics, social justice, and climate change. A broader approach, the counter argument goes, introduces students to a greater mix of topics, giving them a better sense of all the issues and problems society is facing. Taking that “deep learning” approach is now more difficult than ever, as students are stuck at home learning remotely either full time or part time, or in socially distanced classrooms where collaboration, project-based learning, and lab experiments are hard, if not impossible, to do. That doesn’t mean teachers aren’t trying.

Voters around the country supported measures to strengthen ECE. States and localities have significant sway when it comes to designing and funding ECE programs, and these programs were on the ballot in a handful of places. There was already public support for investing more in ECE prior to 2020, but the pandemic has shined a glaring spotlight on our country’s child care crisis and brought urgency to this issue. Much of the action around ECE in this election was at the local level. For example, voters in Multnomah County,OR, which includes Portland, passed Measure 26-214 to create a universal pre-K program for three- and four-year-olds. Voters in San Antonio, TX overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition A to expand the city’s Pre-K for SA program, which provides high-quality pre-K in four centers and offers professional development and grants to other pre-K providers.

With remote learning looking like the state of play this fall, publishers have extended permissions for read alouds of their titles. To help educators and librarians engaged in online learning and storytimes held via Zoom and other virtual means, many publishers relaxed copyright restriction on their works at the start of the pandemic. The new Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster policies appear in this article, in addition to updates from Boyds Mills Kane, Enchanted Lion, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Sourcebooks, and TeachingBooks. These are included in SLJ’s full COVID-19 Publisher Information Directory.

Four teachers offer several suggestions for online tools to promote interactive learning, and many others offer readers’ comments about their favorites. Some of the tools discussed are Google slides, Padlet, and Nearpod.

Over the last decade, and certainly since March, when the pandemic shut down our schools, educators have become increasingly aware of the necessity to help students build social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies. In Meriden Public Schools in Connecticut, 77 percent of students are eligible for free and reduced-price meals, and the strains of poverty have increased significantly since the pandemic. As educators, we recognize that meeting the needs of the whole child requires us to start early to avoid having disengaged and disenfranchised students in middle and high school. In response, Meriden has created a district-wide SEL program across our eight elementary schools.

In 1988, Katherine Paterson wrote in the Book Review that children need not only the happily-ever-after of fairy tales, but also “proper endings” in which “hope is a yearning, rooted in reality.” She says, “I know children need and deserve the kind of satisfaction they may get only from the old fairy tales. Children need all kinds of stories. Other people will write theirs, and I will write the ones I can. As a writer I have a responsibility always to come humbly and childlike to the empty page — a responsibility always to be ready to be surprised by truth, ready to be taught, even to be changed. It is a joy to write for the young, for most often they will come to my story eager to be surprised, to be taught, to be changed and to give their unique vision to the filling out of my imperfect one. And in this exchange of life and vision, of heart and mind, we come to know that we belong to one another.”

On Election Day, Multnomah County, which includes Portland, Ore., passed one of the most progressive universal preschool policies in the nation. The measure, to be paid for by a large tax on high earners, will provide free preschool for all children ages 3 and 4, in public schools and in existing and new private preschools and home-based child care centers. It will also significantly raise teachers’ wages so they are equivalent to those of kindergarten teachers. It seeks to overcome the central problem in early childhood care and education: It is unaffordable for many families, yet teachers are underpaid. The solution, Multnomah County voters decided, is to finance preschool with public funding instead of private tuition, and to pay teachers much more. It also seeks to overcome some of the pitfalls of universal preschool policies in places like New York and Washington, D.C. In doing so, early childhood researchers say the policy could serve as a blueprint for the rest of the country.

The coronavirus pandemic has allowed a long-standing educational myth to take on new force. Educators often claim that their efforts to serve some groups of children, primarily Black, Latino, and Native American, are hindered by things their families fail to do—things like supervise homework, comply with school requests, and communicate with teachers. During pandemic-initiated distance learning, these family contributions may be even more important than during normal classroom learning and even less possible, given that COVID-19 has hit families in these groups particularly hard. Concerned for their students, many educators fear that the pandemic will exacerbate the “family-disengagement problem.” We take a different view. Family disengagement is not inevitable during the pandemic or at other times. Our team of researchers and practitioners working toward school improvement in the Forest Grove, Ore., district believes that families of every background are ready to partner with schools when schools speak the right cultural language.

Texas has failed to prove it did enough to overhaul a system that illegally left thousands of public school students who have disabilities without needed special education services, according to a letter federal officials sent the state last month. A 2018 federal investigation found the state had been effectively denying students with disabilities the tools and services they need in order to learn, in violation of federal law. After visiting 12 Texas public schools in May 2019, the U.S. Department of Education did not find sufficient evidence Texas had done what was necessary to reach all the students who were previously denied special education services.

Strengthening students’ grasp of language and knowledge takes more than merely learning a weekly list of core words, contended Dr. Elfrieda “Freddy” Hiebert, author of Scholastic W.O.R.D., in a recent edWebinar sponsored by Scholastic Digital Solutions. The webinar explored a more strategic approach to vocabulary acquisition. Words should be taught in the service of knowledge: Learners build their vocabulary and knowledge through knowledge-centered text. To do this, she advised clustering English language arts reading around informational and narrative texts that share topics. But repeated core vocabulary, with a focus on the 2,500 more frequent morphological families across texts (particularly for beginning and struggling readers), reinforces learners’ grasp of words and their contextual changes. This approach helps students acquire a richer bank of words while developing knowledge. They are also engaged in a deeper level of reading that adds more complex words to their vocabulary.

Growing up disabled, I could not find much representation of experiences like my own. Neurodiverse and mentally ill, I struggled to find positive and uplifting books that showed hopeful outcomes to living with my symptoms and conditions. Fortunately, today’s kid lit doesn’t shy away from disability but embraces it. Now more than ever, disabled younger readers have books that offer better representation of the diverse spectrum of disability. In the best children’s books about disabilities, you’ll find picture books and middle grade novels that showcase unforgettable characters navigating disability and life in an abled world.

A 2019 state law toughened up rules on how Colorado schools teach reading — establishing new training requirements for teachers and placing guardrails on the kind of curriculum schools can use in kindergarten through third grade. But for the average parent, figuring out if schools are using proven approaches to reading instruction and following the new state rules still isn’t easy. That’s why a statewide dyslexia advocacy group, in partnership with a local school improvement consulting firm, created a free online guide that parents and caregivers can use during discussions with teachers, principals or other school staff. The eight-page guide, Colorado Literacy Dialogue Tool for Parents/Caregivers, walks parents through key questions they should ask about reading instruction. In addition to listing words and phrases that indicate a school is using scientifically based materials and strategies, the guide also cites names and phrases that may raise red flags about a school’s approach.

For nearly all of our students in today’s COVID-19 pandemic, book access remains severely restricted or largely digital. Across the United States, teachers, librarians, school leaders, and nonprofits have gone to great lengths to get books into the hands of young readers particularly during this pandemic. We all play a role in the collective work to increase book access; these trying times are bringing out creative solutions. Here are just a few ideas on how to flood students with books, as we muddle our way through a school year unlike any other.

Paul Tough is the author of “Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why,” the October selection for the NewsHour-New York Times book club, Now Read This. The coronavirus pandemic has upended American life. What are its consequences for the education realm, which is already characterized by major inequalities? Tough joins PBS NewsHour to discuss troubling trends in K-12 and higher education.

In this time of virtual and hybrid learning, navigating the intricacies of distance learning can be tricky, especially when it comes to phonics. Research shows that time on task with a teacher has the most impact on reading proficiency. But how do we get the most out of our limited time in front of students? Although reading instruction can be more challenging online, here are some strategies to make it work.

These new works from Tomi Ungerer, Sophie Blackall and Christian Robinson are realistic and — without being soppy — filled with hope.

“I’m not a reader.” It’s a common refrain Julia Torres, a teacher-librarian in Denver Public Schools, has heard throughout her 16-year career. She’s seen students tear up books, throw them away or check them out only to immediately return them all because they didn’t have confidence in their ability to read. As a librarian, Torres feels strongly that libraries should be spaces of liberation, places where students can develop a love of reading at any stage. Reading is a skill that everyone can grow to love, but too many negative experiences during a child’s literacy education can result in trauma that appears as boredom, apathy or even anger. In an American Library Association presentation , Torres and Julie Stivers, a teacher-librarian at Mt. Vernon MS in North Carolina, explored how reading trauma is inflicted on students and what librarians can do to interrupt and prevent that trauma from occurring.

It’s been a challenge to shift kindergarten online, as that particular year of school is a huge leap for young students discovering not only how to actually be in school — and all that entails — but also developing new skills such as learning how to read. But there are steps educators can take to ease the transition, both to school and an online space. Taking a step back from educational pressures, such as learning to read, also may help if that’s a possibility. If reading is a goal, creating smaller groups to work on phonics is one way to help focus students, and spelling practices where young children write a word and hold it up to the camera may encourage active involvement.

Can teachers really convey things like the importance of cooperation and how to resolve conflict when students only see their friends in tiny boxes through Google Meet or Zoom? What about the intense work that’s required to teach a 5-year-old child how to decode words? And then there’s the children, who aren’t really built for it. “Kindergartners usually need a lot of movement and exploration, and these are things that you can’t really do remotely, especially having to sit and stare at a screen,” said Lily Kang, a kindergarten teacher in the Boston area who’s teaching her students online this year. Not far away, Catherine Snow, a professor of education at Harvard, agreed: “The biggest worries about missing in-person kindergarten are about socio-emotional development, learning to work in groups, and things like that,” she said. Having a parent or guardian to assist kindergarten children with online learning makes a big difference.

Listening to students read aloud is an essential practice for any primary-grade teacher. It is no less essential than a swimming coach watching children swim or a piano teacher listening to a child play. Listening to students read aloud provides an important opportunity for the teacher to coach or prompt students when they are stuck on a word or when they encounter other problems when reading. Listening to students read aloud is also a potential tool for formative assessment. That is, it can provide information to inform next steps in instruction. For example, we might ascertain from listening to students read aloud that they are successfully decoding most consonant-vowel-consonant words (e.g., rip) but not consonant-vowel-consonant-e words (e.g., ripe), or that they don’t attend to the captions when reading an informational text.

Paul Tough, author of the PBS NewsHour October pick for the NewsHour-New York Times book club, Now Read This, joins Jeffrey Brown to answer reader questions about “Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why.”

Rebecca Palacios, a National Teachers Hall of Fame inductee on why getting parents and guardians involved in their kids’ earliest school experiences has always been key. When parents and caregivers get involved in their preschool-age kids’ learning, research shows, it’s the number one predictor of early literacy success and academic achievement in later grades. “One of the biggest mistakes I made in my career, early on, was not involving the families in my work,” said Palacios.

Seeking ways to teach safely during the pandemic, schools across the United States have embraced the idea of classes in the open air, as Americans did during disease outbreaks a century ago. The efforts to throw tents over playgrounds and arrange desks in parks and parking lots have brought new life to an outdoor education movement, inspired in part by Scandinavian “forest schools” where children bundle up against frigid temperatures for long romps in the snow. Here is a look at four American schools where students are learning in the open air, and where at least some parents and teachers hope that the temporary measures might become permanent, for as long as the weather cooperates.

Approximately 3.7 million 5-year-olds were expected to enroll in kindergarten this fall. In pandemic times, most of them — 62 percent by one estimate — were slated to start the school year sitting at home in front of a computer. Asked what 5-year-olds stand to lose if their entire kindergarten experience is moved online, Laura Bornfreund, the director of early and elementary education policy at New America, was concise: “All of it.” And children who already have the least stand to lose the most. Research has shown that high-quality early education benefits children, especially children from low-income families, through to their adulthood. A strong start can improve academic achievement, financial independence, even heart health. For the most vulnerable students, missing kindergarten could become a permanent handicap.

A new report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) stresses that states should play a “coordinating role for their school districts and ensure that they have the capacity, pedagogical support, and resources to address the needs of ELs.” Drawing from the report’s insights, here are three areas where state leaders can do more to support ELs today and lay the foundation for more equitable systems in the future: ensure that ELs receive equitable access to federal, state, and local funding; coordinate resources and guidance to support EL instruction in all learning settings.; and share guidance and tools related to EL entry, exit, and assessment procedures.

It’s important to remember that students develop socially and emotionally at the same time as they develop academically. That’s why it’s crucial to integrate SEL skills into the daily instruction you’re offering to your students. A classroom where good decisions are consistently being made, and where students learn the value of self-control along with the true impact their actions and words can have on others, will be a positive learning community for all, even during a pandemic. How will you ensure your students are learning and growing socially, emotionally, and academically during virtual learning? Here are a few easy ways to maintain SEL skills in the virtual elementary classroom this school year–when children need this focus more than ever.

In July, Slate sat down with four teachers for a candid conversation about their hopes and fears for the coming school year. “I’m scared,” one said. “The opportunity gap is just going to widen,” said another. And they all agreed: “When a kid or a teacher dies, everything is going to change.” We’re now halfway through the fall semester—time for a midterm check-in. Our panel of teachers reconvened to talk about how remote learning is going, what it’s like to be back in the classroom, and the ups and downs of what may (hopefully) be the strangest academic year of their careers. Our teacher are Matthew Dicks, a fifth grade teacher in West Hartford, Connecticut; Brandon Hersey, who teaches second grade in Federal Way, Washington, and is also on the Seattle school board; Cassy Sarnell, an early childhood special education teacher in Albany, New York; and Amy Scott, an eighth grade English teacher in Durham, North Carolina.

What are some of the most common mistakes teachers make when working with ELLs, and what should they do, instead? Many of us who teach English-language learners make lots of mistakes in our classroom practice. This six-part series will explore what the most common mistakes teachers make with this vulnerable population and what should be done in their place. Today’s column features responses from Marina Rodriguez, Altagracia (Grace) H. Delgado, Dr. Denita Harris, and Sarah Said. Here are my choices: confusing lack of proficiency in English with lack of intelligence; looking at ELLs through the lens of deficits instead of assets; and trying to rush ELLs to be “reclassified” as English proficient to look good under the Every Student Succeeds Act. The biggest mistake that many schools are making now during the pandemic is not providing extra support to ELLs.

Using the popular game in station rotation activities during distance learning is a way to bring an element of play and collaboration to writing assignments. It is a playful approach that aligns with Resnick’s 4 Ps — projects, peers, passion, and play. What’s more, it embeds the self-determination theory, the idea that students become motivated when they have a sense of autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Students are immersed in exploring a digital environment where they already may feel competent, and so have a sense of autonomy. These worlds are multiplayer, enabling students to feel like they are again in a community—pixels don’t require physical distancing.

A review by graphic novelist Nathan Hale (Hazardous Tales series) in comics format helps inquisitive young citizens learn how we choose who runs our country.

Early childhood literacy advocacy has been a quiet casualty of our current annus horribilis. Back in the BCE years (Before Covid Era), considerable interest had been building among practitioners and policymakers in curriculum and instruction built on the “Science of Reading.” That critical conversation has been largely sidelined for obvious reasons as states, districts, and schools prioritize setting up and running remote and hybrid learning plans and focus on a return to in-person schooling with public health imperatives more than instructional ones, first and foremost. But a pair of recent events have re-energized literacy advocates and may help push the conversation about reading instruction back to the front burner in a way that’s been absent for the last several months.

When the pandemic disrupted school in the spring, Brandie Gogel did everything she could to keep her students with disabilities on track. She used YouTube to broadcast music therapy sessions. She made paper packets for students who couldn’t connect to the internet. When summer rolled around, she continued to meet regularly with her elementary schoolers over Zoom, hosting virtual field trips on her own time. Still, parts of their special education plans had to be put on hold. Without being in the same room, some things just weren’t possible. Now, Gogel is back in her classroom in Polk County, Florida, where schools have been open for two months. Already, she’s seen students’ communication and motor skills getting stronger. But things haven’t exactly returned to normal.

“The word of the year is ‘pivot’” our assistant middle school principal told us as we prepared to return to school this fall. At the time, I expected that meant being flexible in my lesson plans, being ready for day-to-day disruptions, and accepting challenges as they come. Turns out, it also means pivoting my head back and forth between my Google Meet screen and the students in my classroom. My school is offering in-person classes for the many parents and students who opt in. We keep these students in two groups, sending half in person Monday and Tuesday and the other half Thursday and Friday. Wednesday is an all-remote day for deep cleaning and community building for teachers and their advisories. We will soon pivot once again and offer more students the chance to come in person for four days instead of two. A handful of families have already elected to keep their children fully remote and will likely continue to do so.

Picture books enable readers to see themselves reflected in the larger world. With increasing Muslim representation in published books, all readers can explore the diversity of Muslim communities, identities, and cultural backgrounds as they intersect to create unique expressions of Islamic cultures and practices. Picture books also offer a visually intimate look into Muslim experiences and places where individual and private family traditions, conversations, and interactions flourish. The books featured in this article were published in 2019–20 (with one from 2018) by mainstream publishing houses.

World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, today announced Cynthia Leitich Smith as the winner of the 2021 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. The biennial NSK Prize recognizes outstanding achievement in the world of children’s and young adult literature. Leitich Smith is a New York Times and Publishers Weekly best-selling YA author of the Tantalize series and Feral trilogy and won the American Indian Youth Literature Award for Young Adult Books for Hearts Unbroken. She is the author-curator of Heartdrum, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, which will launch its first list in winter 2021. Leitich Smith is a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation.

Literature introduces people to worlds they have never set foot in, which is why it is so important for classroom libraries to be full of diverse stories that reflect students’ backgrounds and cultures. Students seeing themselves in the stories they read to foster a sense of belonging, recognition, and most of all, validation, is crucial—representation matters. Students also need to read stories that show experiences other than their own to expand their worldview. Teacher Natalya Gibbs believes that early exposure to diverse literature forms understanding students who can relate to people of all walks of life. Even as learning has shifted online, the ethos of a diverse library can be carried over and adapted to the virtual classroom.

Early reading teachers and researchers are reacting with surprise, frustration, and optimism after the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, the organization that designs one of the most popular reading programs in the country, outlined a new approach to teaching children how to read. A document circulated at the group’s professional development events, first reported on by APM Reports on Friday, calls for increased focus on ensuring children can recognize the sounds in spoken words and link those sounds to written letters—the foundational skills of reading. And it emphasizes that sounding out words is the best strategy for kids to use to figure out what those words say. While the document suggests that these ideas about how to teach reading are new and the product of recent studies, they’re in fact part of a long-established body of settled science. Decades of cognitive science research has shown that providing children with explicit instruction in speech sounds and their correspondence to written letters is the most effective way to make sure they learn how to read words.

When created well, instructional videos can be a highly effective medium for supporting instruction in remote, hybrid, and flipped or blended learning environments. Effective instructional videos are concise—no more than six minutes if possible, as that is the proven drop-off point for attention—have a clear purpose and focus, and, above all, are interesting and engaging. Fancy equipment or software isn’t necessary to create great instructional videos, although there are free or low-cost apps and programs for enhancing and improving videos to make them more engaging for learners. I’ve found success creating instructional videos that fall into three broad categories: screencasting, explainer videos, and live demos.

Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver have done this Zoom thing before. That’s what it’s like, in the time of COVID, to promote a book — in this case their children’s book “Lights, Camera, Danger!,” the second in their “Alien Superstar” series, which they discussed Sunday at the Times Festival of Books. Though they are 35 books into their collaboration, Winkler and Oliver have a new mission now — to help kids adapt to a radically changed world by helping them escape. “One of the things that’s really important to us in our books is to make sure that they’re entertaining,” says Oliver. “If we can bring a little lightness and a little joy, that’s a nice thing. … It motivates us more to get our work done because it really has an important place in kids’ lives.”

The author of one of the nation’s most influential and widely used curriculum for teaching reading is beginning to change her views. The group headed by Lucy Calkins, a leading figure in the long-running fight over how best to teach children to read, is admitting that its materials need to be changed to align with scientific research. The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, where Calkins has served as founding director for more than 30 years, says it has been poring over the work of reading researchers and has determined that aspects of its approach need “rebalancing.” Calkins’ changing views could shift the way millions of children are taught to read. Her curriculum is the third most widely used core reading program in the nation, according to a 2019 Education Week survey.

The odds are that, at one point or another, all of us teachers are going to end up teaching in some version of a “hybrid” environment this school year. That could mean teaching some groups of students two days each week in the classroom, while they spend the rest of the time doing asynchronous online work. Worst of all, it could mean teaching students simultaneously online and face to face. This series will share the experiences of educators who have already begun teaching in this kind of situation. In today’s post, the teachers stress the importance getting to know your students, benefits of a “flipped” classroom, differentiation, and more.

Classroom libraries should include culturally inclusive texts. More important, though, teachers should be using these texts to affirm and challenge students in real and intentional ways. It starts with read-alouds. Instead of dropping the books in a bin in your classroom library, put them in your daily lineup. We know that students benefit from being read aloud to on a daily basis, so be conscious of the books you’re choosing to read. Think about how texts can be tied into your existing curriculum. Teaching about drawing conclusions? This skill can be applied to many books, and I am sure that one of your diverse texts will fit the bill. Consider using different texts even when introducing math or science concepts. It may take a little more time to prepare the lesson, but it will be worth it to allow students another opportunity to see themselves in literature. Let’s not stop there. Take things a step further by allowing students to really discuss the texts.

From preschool to college, education continues to evolve in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In their own words, people who are living and working through this experience shared their victories, frustrations and strategies.