Today’s Literacy Headlines

Working out of her basement, and with no teaching experience, Ms. Colvin created a nonprofit that helped people around the world learn to read. Literacy Volunteers, was chartered by New York State as a nonprofit with 77 tutors, 100 students. After a 2002 merger with Laubach Literacy International, the organization became ProLiteracy, with hundreds of programs and 100,000 tutors in 42 states and 60 other countries, offering lessons in scores of languages at homes, workplaces, prisons and other sites. For 60 years, Ms. Colvin remained a teacher and administrator, traveling widely and writing 12 books on her work.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a set of bills Tuesday aimed at improving student reading proficiency, which dwindled after the COVID pandemic, by mandating literacy screenings for K-3 students and implementing new educator training on reading instruction next school year, among other initiatives.

Nearly a decade ago, Cecil County Public Schools had some of the lowest-performing elementary schools in Maryland, and teachers used a variety of homegrown curriculum and curated resources to varying effect. Today, our schools all use Bookworms, a highly structured, open-source curriculum published by the University of Delaware. We adopted and implemented Bookworms districtwide at a rapid clip in 2016 and quickly saw gains in the share of students in grades 3–5 scoring proficient on statewide tests. We have consistently fine-tuned our practices to maintain progress in the years since. Most major changes don’t happen without a long lead time or thoroughly debated pilot. And many changes cannot be sustained over the long haul. Our experience with Bookworms is a counterexample to both. It is possible to move fast and build reforms that last. Here’s how.

Every teacher at the Health Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego shares in the responsibility of teaching students literacy skills, regardless of the subject they teach. That’s because so many students, even incoming ninth graders, arrive at the school without basic reading skills, according to Douglas Fisher, an administrator at the school. While some students also receive one-on-one remediation, Fisher said that research shows those interventions aren’t enough to close the gap.

Linda B. Gambrell, professor emerita in the Eugene T. Moore School of Education at Clemson University and a past president of the International Reading Association (IRA, now the International Literacy Association, ILA), died on August 6, 2024, at the age of 82. Considered a towering figure in the literacy field, Gambrell’s contributions as a researcher, educator, leader, and friend leave an indelible mark on the profession and the countless lives she touched.

D.C. students who got frequent, small group tutoring improved their reading and math scores after the return to in-person classes, attended more classes and had a stronger sense of belonging at school, according to new research into the city’s multimillion-dollar tutoring program. The findings from Stanford University are encouraging, researchers said: Although students have yet to fully recover from the pandemic-induced slump that saw test scores plummet and absenteeism rise, children in D.C. are making progress.

The practice of 3rd grade retention has trended upwards in recent years, but the research on the practice is complex, and it has been criticized by education experts who argue that such policies are ineffective over the long term. Why do these early literacy retention policies overwhelmingly focus on the end of 3rd grade? Is this target of when kids should know how to read warranted? Here’s what development and education experts had to say.

These tips from an experienced English language learning specialist can help you prepare for your first year, with a focuson strategies for supporting ELLs, communicating with classroom teachers, and maintaining a positive relationship with colleagues.

What can the news, features, essays, interviews, photos, videos, podcasts and graphics in The New York Times teach your students about composing for a real audience? Our writing curriculum is a road map for teachers as well as an invitation to students. For teachers, each of the 9 units focuses on a different genre or type of composing that your students can find not just in The Times but also in all kinds of real-world sources. For students, these units offer confirmation that they have something valuable to say, choices about how to say it and a global audience eager to listen. 

The school district, along with the advocacy group Philadelphia Alliance to Restore School Librarians (PARSL), applied for and received a nearly $150,000 federal grant to develop a plan for increasing the number of school libraries. Study after study has shown a positive correlation between having a quality school library program and student achievement in reading. It is a correlation, not a causation, she stressed: Schools with libraries are likely to be better funded overall, with a more stable teaching staff and other resources. But the research also shows that having trained librarians is especially beneficial for low-income districts.

11% of Black students in the city public schools read at grade level. Black Men Read is working to change that with tutoring, summer reading camp. Tutors worked with Webster University to receive proper tutoring training and used techniques from the University of Florida Literacy Institute, which teaches linguistic and reading comprehension, to guide their lessons. Founder Keyon Watkins hopes to offer this training for parents in the future so they can implement these methods at home.

Q&A with journalist Emily Hanford, creator of the hit podcast Sold a Story, on the national reckoning around how we teach kids to read in schools—and where we’re still getting it wrong. Hanford’s reporting tapped into decades of research in cognitive science, educational psychology, and neuroscience about how the brain learns to read—a body of evidence often referred to as “the science of reading”—and made the case that many schools used debunked strategies to teach the skill.

The increased popularity of the Science of Reading marks a monumental change in the U.S. educational system. Such a well-developed, scientific body of knowledge can be leveraged through easy-to-implement teaching tactics in the early years, when the brain is most pliable and receptive. It gives early childhood educators the tools to understand the cognitive processes in a child’s brain that lead to strong literacy skills. But without an effective “myth-busting” session, many of these misconceptions will continue to confuse educators and parents alike.

New teachers, classmates, routines and expectations – a new school year almost always means change for both kids and their caregivers. And that can be nerve-wracking for everyone. To help families ease into the transition, Life Kit asked teachers, pediatricians and child development experts for their best back-to-school advice. These tips have been edited for length and clarity.

It’s no secret that today’s students are coming of age in a complex and rapidly evolving world. Science fiction, educators say, may be able to help them make sense of it. From stories about robots to climate change dystopias, these books can help students grapple with the societal issues shaping their futures.

Show your students that you care by learning their names and pronouncing them correctly. This effort makes students feel seen and valued.  These strategies can help teachers commit students’ names to memory, even in large classes.

Colorful primers, inspirational biographies and books by former champions will get kids excited for the Paris Games — and teach valuable lessons along the way.

If solutions work for some children in some places, “why not everywhere for every student every day?” asked Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten. Local and state school systems should replicate and scale evidence-based promising practices for students with disabilities, rather than use new and quick fixes, said U.S. Department of Education leaders at the opening session of the Office of Special Education Programs conference this week.

In April 2021, the N.C. General Assembly passed the Excellent Public Schools Act of 2021. Implementation of the law started in schools and districts with Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS)® training, which includes 160 hours of study across eight units and takes two years to complete, equipping teachers with instructional tools based on decades of research into the science of reading.  For the third year in a row, North Carolina’s kindergarten through third grade students outperformed the national average on end-of-year literacy assessments.

Teachers can encourage students to persist through challenges and share their stories by modeling the power of writing using picture books. Sharing books that connect to the writing process, demonstrate the benefits of writing, and highlight how authors craft stories can show students that writing is worth the risk-taking and challenges they may face in your classroom. Additionally, using these books as springboards that scaffold student writing can be an efficient and effective way to build a community of writers in your classroom.

A new wave of research over the past decade has looked at how much parents talk about numbers and shapes with their children, and whether these spontaneous and natural conversations help children learn the subject. Encouraging parents to talk about numbers could be a cheap and easy way to improve the nation’s dismal math performance. A team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Irvine, teamed up to summarize the evidence from 22 studies conducted between 2010 and 2022. Here are four takeaways from their meta-analysis.

Routine low-stakes writing should be part of every student’s literacy diet. Ungraded and low-pressure, this type of writing improves kids’ writing stamina and builds language fluency, says Rebecca Alber, an instructor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. Across grade levels, engaging and creative writing prompts encourage kids to explore their opinions, reflect on experiences, and build strong arguments.

Before there was a feature film or a book, there was Crockett Johnson. Harold first appeared in 1955 and has been a familiar presence on bookshelves ever since. He is not quite as famous as the Cat in the Hat, who arrived two years later; he is certainly less of a show-off. Johnson, far less prolific than Seuss, never became a household name or a pop-culture brand. Harold is another story. 

Educators and parents of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities are optimistic about artificial intelligence’s potential to create more inclusive classrooms and close educational gaps between students with disabilities and those without, concludes a report from the Special Olympics Global Center for Inclusion in Education. However, both groups are also concerned about the possibility that AI use in schools could decrease human interaction and that schools with fewer resources could be left behind, the report found.

Writing for an audience — even just a single reader — can have a positive impact on students’ motivation and enjoyment when completing writing assignments, particularly if they have someone in mind while writing. By thinking about who may be reading what they’re writing, students will consider how they craft an assignment, whether that’s jotting down thoughts in a journal, finishing an essay that will be read by their teacher, or creating materials shared with peers, said writing expert Steve Graham. 

While children’s stories and rhymes that serve up spoonfuls of comfort are nothing new either, a growing number of post-pandemic picture books seem precision-tooled to pre-empt specific childhood fears with soft-edged scenarios that encourage and reassure. These two books about falling and being scarily on one’s own exemplify the well-meaning but sometimes overly message-y trend.

Starting around three and a half years of age, most children can comprehend simple stories and fairy tales. Audiobooks can be particularly useful during car rides, bedtime routine and quiet playtime. For school-aged children, they can engage reluctant readers by providing an alternative way to experience books. And most importantly, they can nurture kids’ intellectual growth – much more than videos. Here are five ways that audiobooks can enhance children’s ability to learn.

As we prepare for a new school year, we have an opportunity to make our classroom spaces function in allyship with our students. Small changes and a deliberate setup can positively impact students’ focus, independence, and performance. In fact, research shows that factors like light, greenery, and even the height of the ceiling can impact human behavior. A tweak to your desk setup can also significantly increase student engagement. Leaning on concepts of Universal Design for Learning and executive function, we’ll explore easy ways to set up a brain-friendly room. 

Dramatically reducing chronic absenteeism requires attention to “everything, everywhere, all at once” to understand and address the ecosystem of root causes identified by Attendance Works that include barriers to attendance, disengagement from school, aversion to school, and misconception about the impact of absences. We propose a three-pronged approach that includes re-engaging students, supporting families, and generating timely data. 

For some authors, finding their book on a “banned” list can feel almost like a badge of honor, putting them right there with classics like The Bluest Eye and To Kill a Mockingbird. But the reality is, most banned books never get the kind of recognition or readership that the most famous ones do. And books by underrepresented authors have been disproportionately targeted by bans.

Dr. Gary Willow writes about how he’s brought in support and built homegrown expertise to boost literacy skills in Maryland. Bringing the science of reading to the classroom requires careful research, strong collaboration and consensus-building, aligned professional learning, and robust ongoing support for school leaders.

Boxes of new science of reading workbooks sit at the front of classrooms at East Woods Intermediate School in Hudson, Ohio, ready for teachers to start using when students return to school next month. Like a third of the 600 districts across the state, the Hudson schools near Cleveland didn’t use science of reading books until Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the state legislature ordered districts last summer to implement the curriculum by the 2024-25 school year.

“Tree. Table. Book” and “Not Nothing” feature young people whose friendships with the very old unlock fading memories. What’s seven decades between friends? The narrator of Lois Lowry’s “Tree. Table. Book”, 11-year-old Sophia Henry Winslow (who calls herself Sophie), has a best friend who’s 88 years old — another Sophie, last name Gershowitz, who lives next door to her in their small New Hampshire town. In spite of the age gap, the two have “a friendship of the heart,” as Sophie the younger puts it.

Juicy sentences, a term used by Charles and Lily Wong Filmore, describes rich, complex, meaning-packed sentences that students closely examine with teacher guidance. Breaking one complex sentence down into small parts enhances students’ awareness of vocabulary, syntax, and sentence structure.

A little boy goes on a quest — into two very different forests — to discover the truth about dragons. “You must put your favorite cloak around your shoulders and your sturdiest boots upon your feet,” Julie Leung writes in her Caldecott Honor children’s book. Leung was grappling with the idea of her son growing up feeling like he needed to choose between cultures — his mom’s Chinese heritage or his father’s American heritage. So she turned to folklore. “There’s such different interpretations of the dragon mythology between Eastern and Western cultures,” Leung says, “it’s a perfect metaphor.” To depict the two mythologies, Hanna Cha illustrated the book in two completely different styles.

Loren Long has illustrated books by Barack Obama, Madonna and Amanda Gorman. His No. 1 best seller, “The Yellow Bus,” took him in a different direction — one that required time, patience and toothpicks. In his telling, the bus goes through five incarnations. First it delivers children to school. Then it transports the elderly to the library. Later, parked in a quiet corner of a city, the bus becomes a shelter for people with nowhere else to go. Eventually the bus gets towed to a field near a river and the goats move in.

Many parents want more structured summer programs for their children, but they cite the programs’ cost as a major reason for their lack of participation, concludes a new report. The demand for more summer learning opportunities comes as parents, educators, and policymakers look for ways to help kids catch up on academic skills, and improve their social, emotional, and mental health.

Virtual field trips have always offered engaging and innovative alternatives to in-person field trips that are either too cost-prohibitive or geographically impossible to visit. Students can see large-scale processes up close, explore outer space, go back in time to visit ancient civilizations, or travel to different countries to see famous landmarks. 

Every year, school districts across the country spend millions of dollars on curricula, the planned sequences of materials teachers use to guide instruction. But many teachers say those materials don’t always work well — at least not without changes. Teachers say curricula aren’t culturally relevant or inclusive, don’t prioritize a student’s perspective, ability and experience and seem to be created by providers who are removed from the classroom. In some cases, teachers say a lack of professional development on how to implement a curriculum can make it hard to use.  

At the beginning of each month, 4-year-old Ada Caldwell, 4,  runs to the mailbox to see what new book is inside. The free books are sent to Ada’s mid-Missouri home by the Imagination Library, a nationwide program that singer Dolly Parton started in 1995 to send books to any child under 5 who registers, regardless of  family income. The idea is to foster reading early in a child’s life. By 2016, Imagination Library was sending a million books a month to children around the globe.

Last year, my school district aimed to raise literacy scores by 10 percent as measured by DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. Here are the strategies that helped our students become more engaged and successful in their reading: invest in research-based Tier 1 (whole class) literacy programs; build your decodable text library; regularly monitor progress; provide frequent distributed practice of skills; create cozy reading corners in classrooms; and host joyful schoolwide celebrations.

Elementary students in Indianapolis Public Schools will learn English language arts with a new curriculum this coming school year that emphasizes background knowledge and foundational skills. The district is switching to the Amplify Core Knowledge curriculum in time for the state deadline for all schools to adopt reading curriculums based on the science of reading by the 2024-25 school year. 

Summer reading can increase your child’s literacy skills. But literacy experts say things like the traditional focus on reading books from a lengthy list shouldn’t be students’ sole goal when school is out. Instead, they say, parents should also be reinforcing other language skills that bolster literacy.

As they tune in to see newer events like breaking, skateboarding and surfing at the July 26-Aug. 11 Games, students can exercise math, science and English language arts skills — often without even realizing they are learning. Here are a few ways to channel learning activities into summer classes, or when students return to school in the fall.

Perhaps you’ve tried implementing literacy stations and it collapsed. Or perhaps excessive noise and motion gave you a headache. Or maybe you’re not sure the students are actually learning. You want to do stations, but it’s hard. Beyond a basic knowledge of what stations “should” look like, teachers struggle with implementation. Here are some ways to work on your stations routine during your reading block. Follow these steps and you should have effortlessly flowing rotations… if you stay consistent. 

Inclusive classrooms with specially designed instruction can benefit students with and without disabilities, two early childhood educators say.

How to integrate the science of reading, plan for effective review sessions with your students, think about inquiry-based learning, and more. Our understanding of what works in classrooms has shifted considerably in the last decade. Cognitive scientists have used powerful new technologies to peer into the learning brain, revealing the critical—and often underestimated—importance of downtime and brain breaks. Other researchers, meanwhile, have pored over hundreds of experimental studies to identify outstanding practices teachers can count on, and quantified the benefits when those practices are applied with fidelity.

The welcome and overdue shift to teach phonics explicitly and to align instruction more broadly with research from cognitive psychology and neuroscience has seen only green lights ahead and tailwinds in the last few years, but an important caution is being offered by one key figure in the movement. Margaret Goldberg, a teacher and co-founder of the Right to Read Project, has expressed concerns that weaknesses in implementation threaten the momentum behind “SoR.” Worse still, those threats are going mostly undiscussed for fear that speaking up will damage, slow, or setback the science of reading.

The reading “wars” have heated up again, but most teachers—and our students—could probably benefit from a “cease-fire.” These posts offer suggestions to find a path forward in ways that can support all teachers and students alike.

Starting around three and a half years of age, most children can comprehend simple stories and fairy tales. Audiobooks can be particularly useful during car rides, bedtime routine and quiet playtime. For school-aged children, they can engage reluctant readers by providing an alternative way to experience books. And most importantly, they can nurture kids’ intellectual growth – much more than videos. Here are five ways that audiobooks can enhance children’s ability to learn.

When students didn’t come back to Maple Elementary after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, Niki Espinoza, the school’s community school coordinator, noticed right away. Espinoza found a study by a Stanford education researcher that showed that sending mailers to parents about their child’s attendance could reduce absenteeism. Espinoza decided to try it out. Her experimentation revealed three insights that are pivotal in addressing absenteeism: Parents aren’t informed about the effect absences have on their child’s education, parents often don’t know how many days of school their child has missed, and schools must be prepared to address the root causes of absences.

Sometimes we forget that moving is not just about goodbyes. It’s also about hellos. These nine picture books, listed alphabetically — some brand-new and all published within the last 10 years — communicate to children that while moving has its costs, it can have benefits as well.

How do we ensure that our multilingual students are developing critical literacy skills in the target language as well as in English? As districts work to provide systematic phonics instruction, it is important to keep our perspective inclusive and ensure that we maintain a holistic approach to literacy instruction.

Until recently, there has been little good evidence for the effectiveness of online tutoring, where students and tutors interact via video, text chat and whiteboards. Now, some new U.S. studies could offer useful guidance to educators. Results indicate that tutoring via video, text chat and whiteboards can be effective, but the large gains of in-person tutoring don’t always translate to the virtual world.

During class, you might ask a student to say the morning message, share about their weekend, discuss a topic with a classmate, or even practice reading aloud. Their days are filled with speaking. With some practical tools from drama education, we can certainly help our students with their communication. As early as preschool, students can learn how to improve their speaking skills using techniques borrowed from actors.

Administrators eager to facilitate early community-building and social and emotional learning discussions on the topic of substitute teachers can invest in a small picture-book library (see below) that puts this topic front and center. Using the familiar platform of the daily read-aloud, students and teachers can consider a book’s story and illustrations to prompt questions and concerns associated with their own classroom protocols if their homeroom teacher is absent. Offering this list as a resource to parents/caregivers could additionally offer comfort and the opportunity for parents to continue the discussion at home.

The science of learning tells us that restoring children’s opportunities for joyful, intentional play—using a rigorous, research-based approach called Playful Learning—has the potential to improve children’s academic and social-emotional outcomes, at a time when doing so is particularly important. Decades of research on the science of Playful Learning show that children benefit most from a “balanced diet” of play opportunities across a spectrum of playful instruction, guided play, and free play.

After ranking 44th in the nation for inclusionary practices—defined by how many students with disabilities are learning alongside their general education peers—Washington state began working to change that trajectory. Here’s how it’s working to improve the experience of special education students in K-12, and the research behind its efforts.

Why do so many young children struggle with word problems in math? Researchers believe one reason is that students often learn to interpret word problems by focusing on key words such as “and” or “total.” Relying too much on key words can lead students astray, particularly because word problems get more complex as students go through school. Because these types of math problems require so many skills beyond number manipulation — like reading and executive function, for example — excelling at word problems is a good indicator that a student is doing well in school overall.

The effort includes $90 million in grants awarded to more than 250 schools to adjust curriculum and support teacher training. It provides funding for the adoption of literacy strategies “that are developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, and grounded in the science of reading and writing,” said Angelica Cruz, director of literacy at the Oregon Department of Education.