Today’s Literacy Headlines

Boys are falling behind in school. They are less likely than girls to be ready for kindergarten. They read at lower levels. They graduate from high school at lower rates. This gender gap in education has significantly widened just in the last generation. One group is uniquely positioned to help put boys on the right track in their first year of formal schooling: men who teach kindergarten. Yet only around 3 percent of kindergarten teachers are men. We interviewed a dozen men with the job about being a rarity in their field. The teachers spoke about drawing on their own experiences as boys in school to address the challenges boys face today.

English learners accounted for 10.6 percent of all public school students in fall 2021, up from 9.4 percent in fall 2011. That’s according to federal data updated in May which tracks this student population’s growth over time and other statistics of note including English learners’ racial/ethnic identities, home languages, and English learners identified as students with disabilities. Data on the percentage of students that were English learners in fall 2021 by state shows how this population of students has grown in parts of the country not historically associated with large numbers of English-learner students.

Aficionados of the arts have long argued that art transforms us, but in recent years, neuroscience has shown just how music can shape the architecture of the brain. This cognitive research illuminates the connection between music and learning and gives heft to longstanding arguments for the power of music education that are newly relevant in the wake of California’s Proposition 28, which sets aside money for arts education in schools. 

Nearly 15 million children were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year, doubling pre-pandemic numbers, and millions have lived through at least one traumatic experience, such as parent death or abuse. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2024 Kids Count Data Book examines the causes driving the “astonishing” rates, resulting in bleak educational outcomes and disproportionately impacting Native, Black and Latino children. 

It may seem counterintuitive to focus on student attendance during the summer, but the break can give schools crucial time to connect students at risk of disengaging during the school year. The five recommendations are: review attendance data to target students at risk of absenteeism; reach out to families at home; leverage your summer programs; ensure students return to school healthy; and plan to start your school year off right by building a strong sense of school connectedness among students.

The 2024 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards were announced this week, honoring books in three categories—Picture Book, Fiction, and Nonfiction/Poetry. The Picture Book winner is Do You Remember? by Sydney Smith, the Fiction winner is Remember Us by Jacqueline Woodson, the Nonfiction Award winner is The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity by Nicholas Day, and the Poetry winner is Kin: Rooted in Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford.

In a recently published study in the journal npj Science of Learning, researchers have discovered a significant relationship between the way children tell stories and their reading abilities. This research found that children who displayed more complex narrative structures in their oral stories tended to perform better on reading tests several months later. This link appears to be independent of the child’s intelligence and understanding of others’ perspectives.

Scientists detect differences in brain activity that could explain why comprehension is better on paper. The advantage for paper is a small one, but it’s been replicated in dozens of laboratory experiments, particularly when students are reading about science or other nonfiction texts.

For young magazine readers with literary pretensions, it wasn’t just our best option; it was our only option. Cricket was beautiful. Its logo looked as if it had been painted by a calligraphy brush, moving from elegant but clear lettering into a delicate image of its namesake insect. The cover of the first issue I remember seeing featured a Margot Zemach illustration of a regal tiger reclining on a green bench; the back cover showed the equally regal back of his head. Inside were poems, stories, cartoons; work by Madhur Jaffrey and Hilary Knight — but also by other children, my age and younger.

The integrated English language development (ELD) service model guides educators to combine content and language instruction. The model provides inclusive, equitable access to core content while improving linguistic and academic outcomes for emergent multilingual students.

To counteract the imbalance in information about Indigenous people, teachers can respectfully share resources that highlight important and deeply rooted knowledge.

From bedtime stories to storytime on the classroom rug, read-alouds are a powerful educational tool for students across grade levels. Reading aloud can capture young people’s interest in stories and can help them process their emotions. Over 80% of children aged 6-14 who are read to said they love or like read-aloud time, according to a Scholastic survey. The same report found that despite positive feelings towards read-alouds, the frequency of read-alouds tends to decrease as children get older, peaking at age 5. 

Every fall, I look forward to the challenge of matching our students with books they don’t want to put down. However, even with comfortable seating, ample book access, consistent time, supportive classmates and a knowledgeable teacher offering recommendations, not all students embrace our reading routine right away. Each student is at a different point in their reading journey. While we can all agree that labels suck, in my experience, many (but certainly not all) students fall into one of three reading categories: instant starters, bike riders and smart skeptics.

In California, for example, more than 1 in 3 kindergartners was chronically absent. But the tiny town of Livingston, in California’s sprawling Central Valley, is an outlier – and a powerful lesson in the ways a district can proactively prevent wide-scale absenteeism. Three key factors: teaching young parents that kindergarten attendance matters; helping parents make sense of pandemic health rules; and making school a place children want to be.

Principals can conduct these a few times per semester, perhaps accompanied by instructional coaches and district literacy specialists. Through learning walks, principals can determine what additional support and resources—like extra professional learning community sessions or training—their educators need. Principals usually spend about 15 to 20 minutes in each class on their learning walks, to check on how teachers are implementing the lesson plan.

When a school begins to move its practices closer to the “science of reading,” the large body of knowledge about how kids learn to read, they must manage a number of significant changes. Schedules may need to adjust. Teachers and leaders both need training. Students will need to adjust to new routines. Often, all these parties will also be working with new curricula. Large or small, districts largely follow a three-step plan to roll out a new, science-of-reading-based curriculum: build knowledge, train, and sustain.

By offering flexible spaces and creative activities that give students a chance to relax and connect, the library can become a haven for belonging—and the heart of a school.

Kids don’t need to know what zydeco is, or that Mandy and the Meerkats are a nod to Diana Ross and the Supremes, to dig this spoof of vintage vinyl: “Animal Albums From A to Z,” by Cece Bell. This elaborately conceived yet winningly goofy picture book comprises 26 album covers — all allegedly vintage — beginning with “Accordion Americana,” by the Tejano musician Arnie Dillow (an armadillo who recorded for the Musica Avocado label), and ending with “Zigzag Zinnia,” by the Zydeco Zebras (on Zucchini Records). 

Tennessee fourth graders showed significant improvement on state tests for English language arts, while third grade scores were mostly steady after achieving historic gains last year, state officials said. In a news release, Gov. Bill Lee credited the state’s comprehensive literacy strategy, including early investments in tutoring to help struggling readers improve after the pandemic disrupted schooling in 2020. Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds praised the hard work of students, educators, and families.

Governor Laura Kelly signed into law the Kansas Blueprint for Literacy legislation, which would “amend teacher education programs to improve classroom instruction in reading,” adhering to “evidence-based research on phonemic awareness, phonetics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.” See also updates for California, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Maryland.

Teachers can engage students in end-of-year reflection using these mentor texts to model SEL competencies and writing skills.

The Texas Education Agency has spent three years piloting a promising set of ELA materials, which became freely available late last month: a structured and sequenced, knowledge- and vocabulary-rich curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade, including reading materials, teacher’s guides, activity books, and supporting resources—all online, all downloadable, all free to anybody who wants to use it.

Barnes and Noble’s summer reading program is back in full swing this summer, with kids getting an opportunity to earn a free book. The company’s summer reading program encourages children in Grades 1-6 to read at least eight books over the summer, whether they be purchased at retail stores, borrowed from libraries or even borrowed from friends. Any child who reads at least eight books over the summer will be eligible to receive a free book from a participating Barnes and Noble store.

As the school year comes to a close, one problem is plaguing educators across the country: chronic absenteeism. In 2023, roughly 1 student out of 4 was chronically absent across the school year. The problem is aligned with historic drops in reading and math scores nationwide. But parents – according to a new NPR/Ipsos poll – don’t yet see the urgencyOnly about a third of parents, our poll found, are able to properly define chronic absenteeism. Can you?

Substituting some high-dosage tutoring time with high-quality educational technology can cut costs by one-third and scale back on the number of tutors needed by half without compromising tutoring’s impact on student learning, according to a working paper released Monday by University of Chicago Education Lab.

Ever since the one-room schoolhouse faded from the American prairie, some reformers have argued that clumping students by age is ill-advised. After all, where a child’s birthday falls on the calendar is only a crude proxy for their academic readiness. Some students enter kindergarten with emerging literacy and robust knowledge, while others can’t count to ten. And any teacher will tell you of the difficulty trying to teach a class with multiple grades-worth of differences in academic readiness.

Research examining thousands of students in eight cities suggests that ‘balanced’ summer program of academics, enrichment gets results. Researchers at Arizona State University examined over 35,000 Summer Boost students in eight cities, finding that in just 22 days of programming, on average, students saw about three to four weeks of reading progress and about four to five weeks in math. In reading, that works out to making up about 22% of COVID learning losses; in math, it’s about 31%. While students across all demographic groups got a boost, English Language Learners saw the strongest growth, achieving about seven to eight weeks worth of learning in just over four weeks. 

Using accordion-style pacing — pressing students into small groups, then pulling the whole class together for direct instruction — teachers can create a rich environment for building key literacy skills.

“Book ban” is one of those headline-ready terms often used by the news media, including NPR, for stories about the surge in book challenges across the U.S. The practice of censoring books has been around for centuries. But what does it actually mean to ban a book today? The answer depends on who you ask. Here are a handful of definitions from people entrenched in the issue.

The library and literary world will descend upon San Diego at the end of the month for ALA Annual. No matter the still unknown status of LibLearnX and the Youth Media Awards announcements, Annual remains the event where those honors are celebrated, issues and upcoming books are discussed, and ­librarians share ideas, interests, and sources of concern. SLJ asked attendees what they are looking forward to.

Teachers can inspire an interest in poetry by having young learners make observations about the world around them. “When my wife, Jill, asked me to work with her class, it was April and our high desert location was awakening into spring. This was an opportunity to take poetry out of the classroom and connect with the natural world. However, this was not the first time the students had been invited to respond poetically.”

According to a new report from the Center for American Progress, “libraries and librarians not only spark a love of learning; they are crucial to reversing low reading assessment scores across the country.” Policy recommendations include: Increase funding for school libraries; require the presence of school librarians; require federal school library data updates with appropriate definitions; and include school libraries as school-based indicators in state accountability plans.

In the midst of a national push to reshape how reading is taught, state leaders should take a closer look at how their tests can nudge schools to invest more effort into building students’ background knowledge and for children to spend more time immersed in reading and discussing reading whole books. A pilot program in Louisiana could present an alternative model for the country. The state has been experimenting with a new kind of exam that is closely aligned to a state-created curriculum called Guidebooks. 

The library world came to know and love Mychal Threets through his social media posts centered on enthusiastically recounting library stories and celebrating library joy. Threets shared five reasons he loves libraries with SLJ. The common thread among them is library joy and the human connection he says libraries represent. Here, he is joined by 22 others — like Linda Sue Park, Lois Lowry, and Jacqueline Woodson — who are pretty fond of libraries, too.

NIEER’s new preschool ‘Yearbook’ reveals record pre-k levels for the 2022 school year, with Mississippi and New Mexico among the top states making gains. Expanding access, however, doesn’t mean states have to cut back on quality by lowering training requirements for teachers or increasing class sizes, the report’s authors note.

When teachers and parents talk to kids about having ADHD, autism or learning disabilities, they set them up for success. When kids have a better understanding of the condition that affects their learning, they tend to have a better self-concept, and they are more likely to feel empowered and motivated to self-advocate. These keys unlock a child’s potential, resulting in better academic performance and better mental health.

Amid the worsening literacy and numeracy crises in our schools, Doug Lemov, former teacher, education expert and author of the bestseller “Teach Like a Champion,” believes that there should be far greater awareness of what the research says about how the brain works, that parents and teachers should know how kids learn best. Lemov says, “Attention is always the currency of learning. To learn something you first have to pay attention to it and sustain that attention. When attention is fractured, both learning and performance are lowered. And, of course, a habit of paying lesser attention reduces long-term learning. So, students both learn less and can produce poorer versions of what they do know when their focus is diminished.”

“Too often we refer to play as just play,” said Kristine Mraz, adding that the “just” implies that it has no purpose or value. As an early childhood educator, instructional coach and coauthor of Purposeful Play, Mraz advocates for incorporating guided play as a central aspect of the classroom rather than an activity reserved for recess. According to Mraz, guided play broadly refers to educational activities that are gently steered by an adult using open ended questions and prompts, while still giving children the freedom to explore a learning goal in their own way. 

Pandemic-related school closures and social distancing, playtime replaced by screen time, and school schedules squeezed in favor of academics are all blamed for a demise in both natural play and recess time, experts said. At Marcy Arts Elementary School in Minneapolis, teachers and administrators noticed a few years ago — when the school reopened to in-person learning after COVID-19-related closures — that some students had significant gaps in how to interact in a play setting with other students, said Assistant Principal Jessica Driscoll. 

Classroom voting can go beyond superficial sessions of “raise your hand if….” Designing election activities that encourage children to cast a vote and abide by the choice of their group can foster a greater understanding of citizenship, civics, and responsibility to their community.

What can middle-grades teachers do with students who may not have received the evidence-based structured literacy instruction most kids need to learn how to read fluently by third grade? The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has put together an educators’ practice guide with recommendations that can help. Here are three: teach kids to decode multisyllabic words, teach kids how to read fluently, and teach comprehension skills while building background knowledge. 

Amy Hest is a quiet giant of picture book writing whose name you may not know. The noisy giants, those with name recognition, tend to be author-illustrators: Sendak, Seuss, Steig, Carle, and more recently Blackall, Lin, Klassen, Morales. Less likely to be on your radar are authors who don’t illustrate, people whose books look different from one another because they’re illustrated by different artists. Over the course of 38 picture books, plus many chapter books and middle grade novels, Hest has paid the utmost attention to the emotional lives of her young characters.

Kate Kinsella offers evidence-aligned strategies to build reading fluency within dedicated ELD and content-area coursework. ELs require robust oral language and English language development in tandem with explicit reading and writing instruction. The Building Fluency Routines have a proven track record of improving student engagement and literacy in linguistically diverse classrooms while not requiring reading intervention certification to effectively execute. 

I wanted to understand how well ChatGPT handled a different aspect of writing: giving feedback. My curiosity was piqued by a new study, published in the June 2024 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Learning and Instruction, that evaluated the quality of ChatGPT’s feedback on students’ writing. A team of researchers compared AI with human feedback on 200 history essays written by students in grades 6 through 12 and they determined that human feedback was generally a bit better. Humans had a particular advantage in advising students on something to work on that would be appropriate for where they are in their development as a writer. But ChatGPT came close.

Fifth-grader Andreana Campbell and third-grader Kewon Wells are tending to a garden box after school at Eugene Field Elementary School in Tulsa, Okla. It’s one of countless after-school programs across the country that rely on federal pandemic-era relief dollars known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funds. But those federal dollars are starting to expire this fall, leaving the future of many after-school programs – including the one at Eugene Field – up in the air.

The winner of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee has been crowned. Bruhat Soma, a 12-year-old from Florida, bested the competition Thursday with his spelling of “abseil,” a word used to describe descending a vertical surface area with a rope attached to one’s body. Soma spelled 29 out of 30 words correctly in Scripps’ second-ever spell-off, in which competitors have 90 seconds to spell as many words given to them as possible.

The drumbeat for a more nuanced treatment of the Science of Reading got louder last week with a hard-hitting new Fordham Institute monograph, Think Again: Should Elementary Schools Teach Reading Comprehension? In it, author Daniel Buck chronicles the recent history of efforts to teach reading comprehension, concluding—and here I’m using distinguished researcher Hugh Catts’ words, not Buck’s—“Reading comprehension is not a skill someone learns and can then apply in different reading contexts. It is one of the most complex activities that we engage in on a regular basis.”

Mo Willems gives us the 30-second elevator pitch for the Mo Willems Workshop YouTube channel. “Up until now, my characters have worked in books, but what do they do when they’re not being read? These shows are a chance to see my characters at play and, hopefully, encourage play at the same time. Each show goes to the core personality traits of the characters. There’s a wide, funny gap between The Pigeon’s deep assurance and shallow expertise. Knuffle Bunny is about real kids’ real stories. I like to doodle.”

Amid a nationwide literacy crisis, New Mexico stands out for its dead last ranking in reading performance on the federally administered nation’s report card. Arsenio Romero has been New Mexico’s secretary of education only since last year. But he has ambitious plans to work on turning around his state’s literacy reputation, and he wants to do it fast—including a big push this summer. As part of an ambitious $30 million statewide initiative to boost literacy rates, New Mexico has planned a free four- to six-week summer reading program open to all public school students entering kindergarten through 9th grade.

The traditional approach to teaching reading comprehension in elementary schools may not be fully helping young readers learn the essential themes of a text. Rather, students need broader cross-disciplinary knowledge to better understand what they are reading, according to a new brief by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. To maximize instruction in reading comprehension, Fordham recommends schools expose students to knowledge-rich curricula, and that teacher preparation programs should emphasize the importance of knowledge building.

Schools are required to test the progress of their English learners each year to determine whether they still need language instruction services or can exit out of such programs. In close to 40 states, that test is known as the WIDA ACCESS test. Offered both online and in a paper format, ACCESS tests students’ proficiency in four domains: speaking, reading, listening, and writing in English. The questions are modeled along academic content they would see in regular classes. For instance, reading questions might be about a science topic. The test is checking for language use in academic contexts, not content knowledge nor social language. Teachers who specialize in English-language instruction say their general education peers play a key role in prepping students to succeed on the ACCESS test. 

Indiana and Ohio joined the growing number of states last year mandating teachers use the   science of reading, but the neighboring states have gone in opposite directions with another  reading strategy — holding back struggling third graders. In Ohio, where students who scored poorly on state reading tests had to repeat third grade for the last decade, the state legislature ended the requirement last summer in a bill that also adopted the science of reading. In Indiana, state officials just restored mandatory retention of low-scoring third graders after a seven year absence.

Children’s book creators Doreen and Brian Cronin admit they were at first a touch apprehensive about working together as a new couple. Brian had never collaborated with an author before. But they couldn’t really help it, says Doreen. Their first picture book together was last year’s Lawrence and Sophia. They quickly followed up with Mama in the Moon, about a baby sloth who falls out of a tree at night and has to wait for his mom to s l o w l y come get him. Brian Cronin says he hopes the book helps kids fall asleep. Doreen Cronin agrees. “I think it’s comfort, safety, and I think it puts us in kind of a quiet space,” she says, “and I hope it does, out in the world. Give us some quiet space. Give kids a quiet space.”

I have always set up storytelling cultures in my own classrooms, and I‘ve helped teachers do the same in theirs. When I speak to colleagues about the concept, they accept the many benefits but pose a valid question: How do you maintain a culture of writing and storytelling? That’s something I’ve been exploring recently as I continue to visit my wife’s class daily, and the students continue to write stories and enjoy telling them to their peers. Here, I have some tips about how to achieve this, based on what I find works for this age group. 

Some of the most effective learning strategies are those known as desirable difficulties. Desirable difficulties increase challenge in a way that is useful and pedagogically appropriate. Examples of strategies that fall into this category include retrieval or self-testing, spacing out practice, variation in practice, self-explanation when reading notes, and interleaving. However, could it be the case that for some learners, there are already enough difficulties in the classroom, without adding more?

Do children’s books about frightening events make the very young more afraid, or do they comfort them? Two new picture books dive into refugee childhoods. Both “The Mango Tree” and “Simone” in gentle, moving ways [show] young children that yes, there is sadness and suffering in the world, but we have family and friends and other helpers to see us through.

Early-learning experiences have exponential power: they can shape lifelong learning habits and accelerate literacy, particularly for English-language learners. To unlock that potential, educators and providers must ensure that students acquire a critical mass of vocabulary and related content knowledge from engaging social studies and science texts and activities.Knowledge-rich preschool curriculum is the key. To assist states and preschool providers as they revisit their literacy lessons, the Knowledge Matter Campaign recently updated its K–8 English Language Arts curriculum review tool to include “Early Childhood Essentials.”

No doubt, books and empathy go hand-in-hand or, in this case, ear-to-ear. In a climate of contagious divisiveness, acknowledging and accepting all manner of differences is paramount to being good citizens and, most importantly, good people. For both May’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and beyond, consider lining shelves and adding to TBR piles with some of these edifying, entertaining 2024 choices.

Nathaniel Messick thought he’d learned a lot about reading. The biology teacher-turned-principal of the Fertile-Beltrami school in northwest Minnesota had little knowledge about “evidence-based” literacy instruction when he first took on the role in 2014, so he taught himself the basics by reading the teacher guides that were part of the school’s curriculum. Hoping to become more valuable as an instruction leader, he even put himself through the LETRS for Leaders training program, which took him deep into the research about how children learn to read. But Messick has had no time to rest on his laurels. In 2023, Minnesota became one of the 38 states to pass legislation overhauling how reading is taught. Like those others, the state is trying to shift towards a vast body of theoretical knowledge and practice called the “science of reading.”

As Ohio public school districts are starting to implement the science of reading, colleges and universities across the state will be examining their teacher preparation programs. Ohio’s two-year, $191 billion budget included science of reading provisions — $86 million for educator professional development, $64 million for curriculum and instructional materials, and $18 million for literacy coaches.