Today’s Literacy Headlines

Bradley, who has autism and is non-verbal, participates in an education department program to help make up for occupational and physical therapies that were often difficult or impossible to deliver remotely. The initiative, called Sensory Exploration, Education & Discovery (SEED), serves students with disabilities who have sensory issues that are “dramatically impacting their school performance,” said Suzanne Sanchez, the education department’s senior director of therapy services who helps oversee the program. The SEED program operates after school and on Saturdays at 10 sites across the city — two in each borough. It’s part of a broader effort backed by roughly $200 million in federal relief funding to provide students with disabilities extra services outside of the traditional school day to address pandemic disruptions.

Well, sure, hat rhymes with lots of satisfying words, including fat, flat, mat, splat, sat and cat, as Dr. Seuss, a great lover of hats who gave Bartholomew Cubbins 500 of them, made plain. The rhymability alone makes it good material for a picture book as well as a musical. But a hat can be deeply symbolic, too, as Stephen Sondheim well knew (in “Sunday in the Park With George” it stands for nothing less than art itself). Jon Klassen showed this in his lauded Hat Trilogy, and so do a barbershop quartet of new books with wildly different tones.

At a House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties meeting today to “examine the ongoing efforts to prohibit discussion in K-12 classrooms about American history, race, and LGBTQ+ issues, and to punish teachers who violate vague and discriminatory state laws by discussing these topics,” a letter signed by 1,300 children’s literature authors was read into the record. It was signed by authors of different generations and genres, award winners, and bestsellers, including Christina Soontornvat—who drafted the letter—Jason Reynolds, Judy Blume, Rick Riordan, Jacqueline Woodson, Dav Pilkey, Alex Gino, Jenny Han, Jeff Kinney, Angie Thomas, and Yuyi Morales.

Parents and teachers expressed strong and widespread support for incorporating social-emotional learning in K-12 schools, despite recent efforts to politicize the practice, according to two surveys released this week. One poll found nearly all teachers (94%) said students do better in school when teachers integrate SEL into the classroom. Although there’s wide support for SEL practices, more than half of teachers surveyed said they weren’t prepared to serve students effectively in this area. As schools work to strengthen students’ mental and social-emotional well-being, leaders should also prioritize teachers’ personal health, the teacher survey recommended.

Students with reading disabilities can interact with texts in a variety of ways. They can decode, they can listen to an in-person read-aloud, or they can listen to human audio text or digital text, also called text-to-speech (TTS). Using TTS allows for equity and access. If struggling readers are limited to text they can decode, how can they enjoy the richness of written language, participate in class discussions, learn academic content, and develop a love for reading? Text-to-speech opens up new worlds for them. Research demonstrates that using text-to-speech tools increases engagement and allows students to access grade-level content and material, as well as websites and books of interest. Interaction with curricular content can help students improve their vocabulary, comprehension, reading accuracy, and fluency. Perhaps most importantly, the use of TTS improves students’ positive feelings about reading and school.

Accusations continue to be hurled that the achievement levels are set far too high. Why isn’t “basic” good enough? And—a concern to be taken seriously—what about all those kids, especially the very large numbers of poor and minority pupils, whose scores fall “below basic?” Shouldn’t NAEP provide much more information about what they can and cannot do? After all, the “below basic” category ranges from completely illiterate to the cusp of essential reading skills. The achievement-level refresh that’s now underway is partly a response to a 2017 recommendation from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that urged an evaluation of the “alignment among the frameworks, the item pools, the achievement-level descriptors, and the cut scores,” declaring such alignment “fundamental to the validity of inferences about student achievement.”

Teachers need more help to be able to provide the individualized attention they say children in the early grades need to recover from the time they missed in school. Maggie Berger is a former first grade teacher and now a reading specialist in San Antonio, Texas. Her school serves immigrant families from Central America, Mexico, and Afghanistan. There were many families in her district who continued to choose online learning even after classrooms had opened, Berger said. And when students did come to school there was not always a physical teacher in the classroom. This school year, Berger said, has been very challenging. “We have many kids who are still playing catch up,” she said. Most of her first graders are still working on their letter sounds. “They did not get what they needed in kindergarten. They don’t have handwriting. They don’t know how to form letters.”

Younger children seem to have suffered the most from school closures imposed during lockdowns. In addition to affecting literacy and numeracy skills, lockdowns also hindered the development of language and communication, physical co-ordination and social and emotional skills, according to new research. The findings point towards the early years of education as a key target for interventions to help reverse the Covid-19 learning loss. And they back up fears at the start of the pandemic that the social and emotional impact of lockdowns could be as damaging as the effect on education.

Summer library programs offer a great opportunity to guide students toward podcasts they’ll enjoy. Connecting families to kidcast playlists this summer through your website, newsletter, and/or social media channels can engage kids and families in your community with great screen-free content. This year’s summer playlists include an ocean of podcasts in line with this year’s Collaborative Summer Library Program theme, “Oceans of Possibilities.” We have crossed genres and audio styles to bring a range of podcasts to fit different age ranges and needs.

All kids are readers. Some just haven’t discovered it yet. That’s the belief of Kitty Felde, former NPR correspondent and current host and executive producer of the podcast “Book Club for Kids.” In May, she joined Kerri Miller for a Friday episode of Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how to get kids reading over their summer break. Here are a few of her top tips. One example: If you have a reluctant reader, any book is a good book. Felde recommends parents or caregivers take kids to a library or a bookstore and let them choose any book they show interest in.

Across Iowa, students with dyslexia may see new initiatives to help them better understand their coursework. The Iowa Department of Education is hoping to release a dyslexia guidance for school districts which would implement many recommendations from the Iowa Dyslexia Board. “We need to be teaching in a manner that is systematic explicit instruction, cumulative instruction,” says Nina Lorimor-Easley, a board member for Decoding Dyslexia Iowa. “We need to really lean hard into evidence based instruction.”

New York City will require all elementary schools to adopt a phonics-based reading program in the coming school year — a potentially seismic shift in how tens of thousands of public school students are taught to read. The announcement came as part of a wider $7.4 million plan by Mayor Eric Adams to identify and support students with dyslexia or other reading challenges, including screening students from kindergarten through high school and creating targeted programs at 160 of the city’s 1,600 schools.

Parents should not recoil from all forms of SEL. At the same time, those promoting SEL need to do a better job about engaging those parents. Families have a right and responsibility to know what’s being taught in the classroom. Teachers would do well to focus on the lessons that have buy-in from home. Mostly, teachers just need to be explicit about which character traits they are teaching to students and be consistent with their follow-through. There’s even a time and place to teach edgier concepts like social justice, provided there is parental buy-in. When there is mutual trust, families and schools can work together to teach children the social skills required for success in school and life.

Just as a coach needs to know their players, a teacher must know their writers. You must be aware of students’ understanding of the writing process, their ability to work independently and self-start, and their skill level with writing, as well as what’s important in each student’s life. Here are three ways to get to know your students that will allow you to better support them as writers and help alleviate the common struggles of writing time.

To get a sense of what schools should prioritize in their summer planning, I reached out to some of the most innovative and beloved summer learning programs to ask them what they are focusing on in the months ahead. All three are different in design, but are going into this summer with five shared priorities: giving kids learning options that (1) don’t feel like school, (2) focus on healthy relationships, (3) provide voice and choice, (4) are joyful and fun, (5) are able to re-energize and replenish. Here are some of the most innovative programs operating today.

The words give the 12-year-old boy confidence. The tiled letters sharpen his focus like a sliver-thin laser. He excels at playing the game’s English and Spanish versions. Scrabble is Ricky Rodriguez’s world. In kindergarten, a friend gave him a Scrabble Jr. game for his birthday. “It gave him an arena to be successful and thrive,” said his mother, Erin Rodriguez, 45. “It’s a way for him to have fun. He’s like a sponge. It’s like his baseball. Finding things that make them happy and enjoy doing, that’s my dream for all of my kids.”

The data is unequivocal: School libraries and librarians are pivotal to the educational and emotional well-being of students. Administrators should make sure that professional librarians are available for students. Librarians wear many hats, but their role can be broken into three key parts: literacy advocate, resource manager, and research specialist. In the event that your school doesn’t have a librarian, there are ways educators can try to fill in the gaps.

My recently published book Andrews Awesome Adventures with His ADHD Brain shares my son’s experiences having inattentive-type ADHD, and my insights on parenting an ADHD child. In doing research for the book, I came to discover the hidden benefits associated with my son’s ADHD and how reinforcing those strengths could help him to be successful in all areas of his life. Creativity is one of the superpowers of ADHD, and a lot of human progress has been thanks to “outside-the-box” thinkers.

These stories about artists and illustrators known for their inventive use of materials encourage creativity in young learners.

Prekindergarten will only realize its promise when it’s first class. That’s the conclusion of “Pre-K Effectiveness at a Large Scale,” a nationwide analysis of preschool’s effect on fourth graders’ reading and math achievement scores, conducted at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. In states with high-quality programs, attending pre-K boosts a student’s fourth-grade math scores by 2.8 percentiles and African-American students gain even more. However, the caliber of pre-K for the typical student in the average district isn’t good enough to generate substantial benefits. The bottom line: “For large-scale expansion of pre-K to make sense, policymakers must keep the quality up.”

Literature has always been an indispensable part of society. At a young age, we’re introduced to books at home, and later at our school or neighborhood libraries. Helping us navigate this world were our librarians, who used their expertise to guide and enrich our journeys into literature. Here’s a look at what diverse children’s lit can do for our kids.

New research is showing the high costs of long school closures in some communities. On average, students who attended in-person school for nearly all of 2020-21 lost about 20 percent worth of a typical school year’s math learning during the study’s two-year window. But students who stayed home for most of 2020-21 fared much worse. On average, they lost the equivalent of about 50 percent of a typical school year’s math learning during the study’s two-year window. The findings are consistent with other studies.

One of the world’s most widely used reading intervention programs for young children has taken another hit to its credibility. Reading Recovery — a one-on-one tutoring program for first graders — has long been controversial because it’s based on a theory about how people read that was disproven decades ago by cognitive scientists. A 2019 story by APM Reports helped bring public attention to the fact that reading programs based on this theory teach the strategies struggling readers use to get by. In other words: Children are taught to read the way that poor readers read. Now, a new, federally funded study has found that, by third and fourth grade, children who received Reading Recovery had lower scores on state reading tests than a comparison group of children who did not receive Reading Recovery.

Over 20,000 of you expressed your appreciation for the hard work and determination of your fellow educators —sharing personal stories about the creative, caring, and dedicated professionals who made a big difference for you during a trying year. You told us about educators who stepped up to cover your class, who mentored and supported you, shared veteran insights and tricks of the trade, and passionately brought their subject matter to life for students every single day, all across the country.

Starting in the late 1990s, the math skills of students in elementary and middle schools began to improve. A few years later, reading skills started improving, too. Racial gaps in reading skills also shrunk during this period. There appear to be two main causes. First, many states began to emphasize school accountability starting in the 1990s. A second major cause of increased learning seems to have been school funding: It rose during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Welcome to one of the more hope-filled, albeit cautious, Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Months in recent history. As antidotes to and balms against racism and phobias, stories can help soothe, support, and strengthen. Among stories that enlighten and entertain are myths and folklore that encapsulate perennially recognizable, universal narratives. To explore Asian folklore–inspired titles, we caught up with four authors (and one translator) whose recent titles found inspiration in their Asian heritage, their titles exemplifying a fluidity of countries, cultures, and identities.

Show respect to classified staff members. Asking them to mentor students goes a long way toward that.

Although reading comprehension is often talked about as a single skill, NC State College of Education Associate Professor of Literacy Education Dennis Davis says the process actually involves an orchestration and accumulation of multiple subskills. Although a lot of research focuses heavily on teachers’ knowledge of reading subskills related to phonemic awareness, morphology and word reading, Davis said not as much is known about how to help teachers better understand the language comprehension aspect of reading. One common issue related to reading comprehension is that a student simply doesn’t know enough about the subject that they’re reading about to be able to understand it, so building background knowledge is key.

As the battle against book banning attempts continues across the country, School Library Journal and Penguin Random House have partnered with PEN America, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English, FReadom, and Library Journal to create a poster that promotes free expression and supports the fight against censorship.“Open Books, Open Doors,” with original artwork by award-winning illustrator Rafael López, features a child stepping into a larger-than-life book that transports them into a beautiful new world.

From Title IX to a cure for malaria and anime to folklore, these 11 titles showcase the rich impact that Asian American and Pacific Islanders have had on American culture.

A classroom full of toys, puzzles, costumes, books, flags from around the world and energized children is a place Clementine Gasimba gravitates toward. “I enjoy being with children, and it’s my passion to be with children,” said Gasimba with a big smile on her face. What makes this particular preschool classroom unique is the children — among them, they speak up to 10 different languages. Knowing half a dozen languages herself, Gasimba can speak and relate to many of the children. Gasimba is one of several teachers at The Little Village, an early childhood center part of an organization called The Village Institute. The Village Institute aims to serve refugee families from a holistic approach, providing housing, language resources, childcare, job readiness, and mental health services, all under one roof. That includes a pipeline where refugee women, including Gasimba and Harriet Kwitegetse, can go through education and certification courses to help advance their careers. In this case, the training put Gasimba and Kwitegetse directly back into serving other refugee families by leading a preschool class.

Consistent exposure to music, like learning to play a musical instrument, or taking voice lessons, strengthens a particular set of academic and social-emotional skills that are essential to learning. In ways that are unmatched by other pursuits … learning music powerfully reinforces language skills, builds and improves reading ability, and strengthens memory and attention, according to the latest research on the cognitive neuroscience of music.

In addition to arming teachers with the knowledge needed to help EL students learn how to read, we should encourage educators to make connections between students’ first languages and the English language. This does not mean the teacher must become fluent in every language represented in their classroom. There is, however, a benefit to knowing the general structures of those languages and determining if there are structural similarities between the students’ native languages and English.

When we revise, we look at organization, sentence fluency, and word choice. It’s the revision element that students ultimately didn’t understand. I also wasn’t giving my students enough opportunity to publish their work, which made the revision and editing process feel redundant and inauthentic. Here are three ways I transformed how I taught the revision process.

The Canopy project, a collaborative effort to surface and share a diverse set of innovative learning environments, is releasing an updated dataset to help shed light on the practices and priorities of innovative learning communities. The data is free to access, and project organizers plan to release in-depth analysis in the coming months.

One of the world’s most widely used reading intervention programs for young children took a hit to its credibility today following the release of a new study at the American Educational Research Association conference. Reading Recovery — a one-on-one tutoring program for first graders — has long been controversial because it’s based on a theory about how people read words that was disproven decades ago by cognitive scientists. A 2019 story by APM Reports helped bring widespread public attention to the fact that reading programs based on this theory teach kids the habits of struggling readers. The new, federally funded study found that children who received Reading Recovery had scores on state reading tests in third and fourth grade that were below the test scores of similar children who did not receive Reading Recovery.

As more states and districts are embracing the “science of reading,” some educators and advocates have raised the question: Will these methods work for English-language learners? Over the past five years, at least 17 states have passed legislation enshrining the “science of reading” into law, in hopes that policy changes will move instructional practice in the classroom. The National Committee for Effective Literacy, a new advocacy organization formed this year, has argued that states that have taken up these initiatives have narrowed literacy instruction to “a few foundational reading skills” that fail to meet the needs of English learners. Education Week spoke with researchers who study early literacy development in ELLs to compile this short overview of the research.

Over the past few years, some states have spent millions of dollars and passed new laws in an attempt to shift the way that schools teach kids how to read. Many zero in on the foundations of reading, especially, with the goal of ensuring that teachers are using evidence-based methods for teaching the building blocks of literacy—like identifying letters and sounding out words. A new coalition of researchers, educators, and advocates for English-language learners is pushing back against these policy changes, claiming that new legislation and guidance will disadvantage ELLs with a “one-size-fits-all approach” to teaching reading. This group, the National Committee for Effective Literacy, released a policy paper earlier this year, claiming that the new approaches focus on drilling phonics skills in isolation, robbing English learners of the context that can support them in learning a new language and leaving teachers without enough time to work on developing students’ oral language. They say that these methods ignore research on dual language development.

English is gibberish, “X” is for bear and a shared word is everyone’s cup of tea — in new work by Young Vo, Ellen Heck and Andrea Wang.

On a cloudy afternoon in late fall, a group of teachers filed into a church basement to learn something they thought they already knew: how to teach reading. America has a literacy problem, and Washington state is no exception. On a national reading test last administered in 2019, students in fourth grade scored, on average, 240 out of 500. In Washington, that number was 241. Mercer Island is one of a handful of Washington districts trying to address that problem. In this small, mostly white and wealthy district, teachers have been learning new practices that rely on research on how brains learn to read, a practice known as structured literacy. This research suggests we’ve been teaching in a way that does not work for everyone.

Such preparation goes into a smooth, exciting summer program—and each year, it’s a new challenge to keep things fresh and manageable for staff. That’s especially true these days. After two years of remote and hybrid programming, with varying levels of success, many schools and libraries have significantly rethought or streamlined their summer reading initiatives, with more reading choice; outdoor, online, or in-person options; and more. Here’s how six libraries are updating and refreshing their plans for 2022.

For my grade 6 performing arts class, I wanted to make interdisciplinary connections to the literature and language studies of Homer’s The Odyssey. As my other middle school grades were all doing poetry recitals and writing, the ode seemed to be the obvious choice. I abandoned any idea of using classical or 19th-century odes; their strict forms and archaic language would be too intimidating. Pablo Neruda was our role model. I started the unit by having the students select a Neruda ode to learn how to recite. The absurd, emotional, entertaining, and imaginative odes captivated the students. You can write a poem about a lemon? You can celebrate “broken things”?

At the beginning of the school year, when Becky Ashcraft attended an open house at her 12-year-old daughter’s school, she was surprised to find there was no teacher in her daughter’s classroom – just a teacher’s aid. “They’re like, ‘Oh, well, she doesn’t have a teacher right now. But, you know, hopefully, we’ll get one soon,’ ” Ashcraft recalls. Ashcraft’s daughter attends a public school in northwest Indiana that exclusively serves students with disabilities. She is on the autism spectrum and doesn’t speak. Without an assigned teacher, it was difficult for Ashcraft to know what her daughter did everyday.

It has been 15 years this month since “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” made author Jeff Kinney one of the world’s most popular writers. We spoke with Kinney about the bestselling series, his children’s literature and the mark he’s left.

Some students have always needed intensive, structured phonic-based instruction to help them master the structure and many tricky rules of the English language. But educators at Columbus School in Carteret, N.J. say the number of kids here who need this level of intervention has grown — as it has around the country after uneven learning experiences during the pandemic. Although the federal government sent a massive influx of money to help schools troubleshoot, it left districts to grapple with how best to use the funds. Some are turning to tutoring (which, if done well, can be effective), while others are expanding after school programs. But, some experts say, schools should also invest in deeper changes that tackle the root of the problem: Many teachers aren’t well versed in the science of reading and the best ways to teach to the widening range of abilities they are seeing in students.

For many students—particularly those that are historically underserved—the summer break from learning perpetuates inequitable achievement gaps, according to an overview of current research studies that examined K-8 student progress during a typical school year (non pandemic) and over the summer released by NWEA. The research reveals important information about the degree to which being in school reduces achievement gaps and points to the importance of high-quality summer programming in supporting student success.

Young children, 3 and 4 years old, acquire knowledge by playing; they investigate, raise, and evaluate hypotheses, creating meaning for their interactions and experiences. While they play, children learn how to recognize and solve problems by exploring different situations, which allows them to acquire knowledge in the physical, social and emotional, and cognitive areas. It’s through play that children legitimize their learning processes and have the opportunity to be protagonists in their own learning development.

Increased access to early intervention services for infants and toddlers at-risk of developing delays and disabilities would help the Part C program under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act better serve underrepresented populations, according to a FY 2023 budget proposal justification from the White House. The request comes at a time when Part C enrollment has fallen, likely due to fewer well-child pediatrician visits during the first year of the pandemic. Experts in early childhood development, however, expect Part C enrollment over the next few years to rise to — or even exceed — pre-pandemic levels.

It’s good news that Neruda’s question poems (39 of the original 74) have been freshly translated into English by Sara Lissa Paulson and presented for the first time in picture book form, with stylized, dreamlike illustrations by the Chilean artist Paloma Valdivia — English on one side of the page, Spanish on the other. For me, the issue with this new edition of “Book of Questions” lies not with the gorgeous illustrations, or the text, but with a question Neruda himself didn’t ask: For whom is this book intended? This is tricky. The illustrations and the scale (generously oversize) suggest it might be intended for a lap-sitter. The text — lyrical, meditative, philosophical — tells me otherwise.

These four metacognitive activities help students connect new lessons to prior learning, find patterns, and assess their strengths and weaknesses by articulating what they know and what they don’t.

Interest in social-emotional learning is surging as many parents and educators are concerned about the long-term effects of the pandemic on kids’ social skills. But at the same time, SEL is also facing increased pushback as the concept has gotten caught up in debates and legislative bans over teaching about “divisive” topics. So, how do school and district leaders walk this tightrope? Some of the advice includes: dump the jargon and explain things in language parents can understand, communicate the purpose and goals of your curriculum, and recruit a variety of voices to talk about the benefits of social-emotional learning.

Second-grade students can find deeper engagement in writing when they know their work has an audience beyond the teacher. Says teacher Jennifer Wilkinson, “I started doing research into student engagement during writing, which helped me appreciate the power of multimodal writing choices. The definition of what we consider to be writing is rapidly evolving as advances in technology make it possible for even our youngest learners to use video, mix text with audio, and even write code to share their thinking. Kids are more engaged when they know that they have real-life reasons for writing and when they can choose the modality that works for them. This year, I came up with ways to make these strategies work for my young learners.”

Despite the frustrations with remote learning during the pandemic, the survey data clearly show that schools across the country are making virtual learning an option in different ways and at different levels for the long haul. What this means is they will also have to address concerns that online-only instruction is a weak alternative to in-person learning. Here are seven tips for making online instruction more effective. Tip #2: Make students feel welcome and connected immediately. Getting kids to feel connected to you and each other is even more important in an online environment because students aren’t sharing a physical space. That sense of community should start from the very beginning, educators say.

As with other problems that long dogged the education system, the pandemic exposed the lack of resources along with barriers that English-learning students face in receiving an equitable education, says Leslie Villegas, a senior policy analyst at New America’s Education Policy Program. She was part of a research duo that interviewed 20 English-language education leaders across the country to learn how they and students managed during virtual schooling. Their new report found that the sudden shift to remote instruction—and all its limitations—had a “disproportionate impact” on students who were learning English.

Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) training is the most recognized aspect of North Carolina’s year-old science of reading law. It’s the squeaky wheel on the axle of the Excellent Public Schools Act (EPSA) — and the early response from teachers is mixed. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt said she’s seeing marked improvement in her travels across the state, but admits there are still some visits where she sees persistent use of balanced literacy curriculum and poor instructional practices.

As schools grapple with pandemic-related concerns about balancing in-seat instructional time with non-essentials like trips, new research published in The Journal of Human Resources argues that field trips, and the vital educational experiences that they provide—whether it’s a visit to a local museum or a big commitment like a national park trip—deliver a host of positive social and academic outcomes and are worth the effort.

Learning to sound out, or “decode,” words involves a finite set of skills that, when practiced in a systematic way, usually lead to success. But reading comprehension is different. It’s not just a reading process. It’s inextricably connected to the process of learning in general. And cognitive scientists have found that the key factor in learning new information is how much relevant information you already have.

To avoid widespread school readiness gaps, experts say teachers and parents need to give children born since the pandemic an immediate language infusion. Already, studies find a third of children who started school during the pandemic need “intensive” reading help, and the need may become even more widespread for children born in the last few years. Researchers find many of these infants and toddlers have had less exposure to rich language environments and show slower language development.

Here are 30 ideas for helping your students appreciate poetry — and experiment with it themselves.

Like many primary teachers, Coral Walker has worked closely with students who struggle to learn how to read. As the state has received an influx of federal pandemic relief funding, literacy advocates are pushing for change. At the same time, there’s a growing consensus that students could benefit significantly if more teachers in the state went through a training program focused on the science of reading. That’s what Coral Walker is doing. She is completing the second half of a two-year training called LETRS — language essential for teachers of reading and spelling. It’s primarily online, with videos, activities and teaching guides.