Today’s Literacy Headlines

When Colorado’s kindergarten enrollment plummeted during the first year of the pandemic, people wondered: Where did the kids go and will they come back? A year later, many young students have returned to public schools. The rebound hasn’t restored statewide kindergarten enrollment to pre-pandemic levels, but the trend line is positive. At the same time, first-grade enrollment continues to decline — partly because more families opted for kindergarten even if their children were age-eligible for first grade.

We spoke with a handful of child development experts about what parents, teachers and other caregivers can do to help prepare and protect kids from all the scary news out there, whether it’s fighting overseas, a school shooting, devastating wildfire or a global pandemic. Advice included: limit their exposure to breaking news; ask: “What have you heard and how are you feeling?”; give kids facts and context; “Look for the helpers”; and take positive action together.

More young elementary students are at-risk of falling behind in learning to read than two years ago, according to a report from Amplify that analyzed performance results from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills assessment. The 2021-22 mid-school year assessment results show 47% of kindergartners and 48% of 1st graders were ready for core instruction in early literacy skills results, down from 55% of kindergartners and 58% of 1st graders in 2019-20.

For millions of parents who don’t speak English, navigating their child’s school system can be a behemoth undertaking. They are constantly getting important missives from school—from field trip permission slips to report cards to information about college applications or financial aid—that they may not understand. It’s a reality that Marifer Sager is working to change in the Portland, Ore., school district as the senior manager of the language-access-services and multicultural affairs department. Sager oversees translation services for the 47,000-student district, which is home to families that speak more than 130 languages. In that role, she makes sure that all districtwide written communications go out in the five most prominent non-English languages that are spoken at home—Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Somali, and Russian—and that those missives are clear and culturally appropriate.

We often teach the way we were taught. When I became a language specialist, I parroted the well-meaning intentions of my teachers by pulling multilingual learners (MLs) out of their classes to receive dedicated English instruction. But impact and intention are two different things. Pulling MLs out resulted in their being labeled as “other” by their classmates and receiving a watered-down curriculum. Now I have come to realize that co-teaching is a more equitable model, where MLs can remain in the class with their peers to receive grade-level instruction from both the content or homeroom teacher and the language specialist.

I was heartened to hear recently about New York City schools Chancellor David Banks’ plans to open a school specifically for students with dyslexia. A new school for kids with reading challenges and other learning disabilities is what many parent advocates have been waiting for. It is highly unlikely, however, that it will be available in time to help those of us who have suffered through an already broken system that has been further hobbled by the COVID crisis.

What’s a librarian’s role in school when children can no longer go to the library? That’s a question many school librarians across the country had to grapple with when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools into remote learning in March 2020 and they had to figure out how to continue serving students and teachers as the K-12 landscape abruptly changed. Nowhere was that disruption more widespread than in the country’s largest school district, New York City, with its 1.1 million students. For Melissa Jacobs, the director of school library services in New York City, it was a golden opportunity to rethink how her staff supports instruction for students and teachers. 

Young children learning to read — especially Black and Hispanic students — are in need of significant support nearly two years after the pandemic disrupted their transition into school, according to new assessment results. Mid-year data from Amplify, a curriculum and assessment provider, shows that while the so-called “COVID cohort” of students in kindergarten, first and second grade are making progress, they haven’t caught up to where students in those grade levels were performing before schools shut down in March 2020.

How many ways are there to tell a story? Infinite, right? Adam Rubin believes so. He writes children’s books. Maybe you’ve spent your fair share of nights reading “Dragons Love Tacos” with your kids? That’s his. His newest collection is six completely different stories, but they all have the same title, “The Ice Cream Machine.” But Adam leaves room for a seventh story, one that hasn’t been told yet. NPR’s Rachel Martin talks to Adam Rubin about his series of short stories all with the same title: The Ice Cream Machine. He’s asking kids to write a story with that title and send them to him.

On February 1, NBC News reported that Texas parents, having “swarmed school board meetings to call for the removal of library books that deal with race, racism, sex, gender, and sexuality,” were challenging 50 specific books. On the list of 50, second from the top, was one of my children’s books: When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball. The book, a biography for young readers, recounts the early life of Wilma Rudolph, a Black woman who as a girl overcame poverty, great physical difficulties, and racism to bring Olympic glory to her country. What possible reason would merit its banning? According to NBC, a parent said my book was “opining prejudice based on race.” This, however, is not correct. My biography gives facts, not opinions. In other words, it tells truths, specifically that many White people in the United States acted with prejudice, sometimes extreme, against other people solely because of their skin color.

Researchers, educators, teachers, administrators, school board members, and advocates with expertise in literacy and the education of English learner/emergent bilingual students have come together to form the National Committee for Effective Literacy (NCEL), with the aim of improving research, policies, and practices to ensure that English learner/emergent bilingual students leave school as proficient readers and writers in English (and preferably another language), who thrive and succeed at school and in their communities.

Having ready access to better assessment information not only helps policymakers understand whether pre-K investments are paying off, but also gives teachers and parents the information they need to effectively support young children as they transition to kindergarten. States, however, face a range of challenges building these types of assessment systems. New America, MDRC, and the Alliance for Early Success recently convened state pre-K advocates and policymakers from a diverse set of states to discuss their experiences doing this work. Here are some of the lessons they shared:

The United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) launched its annual Outstanding International Books list to celebrate and elevate the most exemplary international titles that U.S. publishers and distributors bring in from the rest of the world each year. The 42 titles on the 2022 Outstanding International Books List (OIB) are significant for both their exceptional quality and globe-spanning origins. Access the downloadable pdf here.

A first-grade teacher describes how she changed her approach to teaching reading using research-based insights. Her instruction includes daily phonemic awareness, application and practice throughout the school day, more decodable books, and swapping sight word memorization for heart words.

When it comes to autism, intervening well before the start of school can make a big difference in a child’s academic progress and quality of life. That’s why legislators in Nebraska are considering making autism screening as much a requirement for the start of school as a physical exam or a vision test. If the bill is approved, Nebraska would become the first state to require autism assessment as part of pre-school health screening, though special education advocates have long fought for better and earlier screening.

Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson discuss how their book, 1619 Project’s “Born on the Water”, helps young Black children feel affirmed in where they come from. The book starts off with a young Black girl receiving a homework assignment where she is asked to trace her roots and draw a flag that represents her ancestral land. At first, the little girl feels ashamed. She doesn’t know where her family came from. But her grandmother has answers for her and tells her the story of the Tuckers of Tidewater, Anthony and Isabella, enslaved together on a plantation. They married and had a son named William.

Teacher preparation programs at many universities do not provide a solid grounding in the science of reading. When I was pursuing my master’s degree, I didn’t receive much training in the science of reading and was instead prepared to teach students with a focus much closer to that of whole language. When I got into the classroom and started teaching, I found that the instruction I had been taught to provide was not helping my struggling students become proficient readers. This was incredibly distressing, and so I began to dig into the research, which is both compelling and extensive.

There are probably no tarot cards or crystal balls in the central office of North Carolina’s Union County school district. But you could be forgiven for thinking that someone there has a sixth sense about the future. The district went big on intensive tutoring years before it became the go-to strategy for helping students regain their academic footing after months of virtual schooling. It invested in mental health access before many other communities embraced it to help kids navigate through the emotional turbulence of the pandemic. It revamped its technology professional development right before teachers really needed a keen understanding of digital tools, helping the district avoid some of the scrambling that characterized many other districts’ transition to remote learning.

A new theme park designed to bring the iconic show “Sesame Street” to life will have a host of accommodations in place to welcome children with disabilities when it opens soon. Sesame Place San Diego will be designated a Certified Autism Center when it opens to the public next month, officials said. As a Certified Autism Center, Sesame Place San Diego will offer designated quiet spaces throughout. All staff will complete autism sensitivity and awareness training before opening and there will be a sensory guide available on the park’s website to help families prepare for their visit, officials said.

“Active nonfiction” describes a category of books “that help[s] kids make and do things.” It includes everything from craft books and cookbooks to field guides and books that come packaged with models or games. Gina, a fourth grader, has a clear and simple reason for enjoying active nonfiction: “It teaches you to do the things you want to do.” Jack, also a fourth grader, has a different reason for preferring these books. “You get to do things while you read,” he says. “That makes me feel calmer.”

Dale Farran has been studying early childhood education for half a century. Yet her most recent scientific publication has made her question everything she thought she knew. “It really has required a lot of soul-searching, a lot of reading of the literature to try to think of what were plausible reasons that might account for this.” And by “this,” she means the outcome of a study that lasted more than a decade. It included 2,990 low-income children in Tennessee who applied to free, public prekindergarten programs.

Robin Lake is the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which shortly after schools shut down, began tracking closures across 100 large districts. and has continued to collect data on school reopening, academic recovery efforts and other pandemic-related policies. In January, she talked with The 74 about equity, learning loss and the “unacceptable” status quo in education.

The award-winning children’s book author talks about stories that are like friends you can turn to—and the importance of featuring characters who ‘share a common thread of humanity.’

Librarians can use the audio storytelling in kidcasts to help young listeners explore the lives and issues of extraordinary, yet often unseen and unheard, women. Young, curious minds can build knowledge, grow empathy, and draw inspiration from these remarkable outliers that were often described as being “ahead of their time.”

Ashley Bryan, an eclectic artist and children’s book illustrator who brought diversity to an often white-dominated genre by introducing generations of young readers to Black characters and African folk tales, died on Feb. 4 at the home of his niece Vanessa Robinson in Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston. He was 98. Mr. Bryan had already built a 20-year career as an artist when, in 1965, he read an article in Saturday Review bemoaning the lack of diversity in children’s books. Already a devotee of African traditions and stories, he saw a chance to use his talents to bring those tales to life on the page. He wrote down many of them himself, often in verse, injecting rhythm into tales that until then had usually been recounted in dry prose by anthropologists. He would then pair those stories with his art, sometimes painting, sometimes collage — whatever style felt right for moment.

A growing number of schools across the U.S. are creating so-called wellness centers (alternately called calming rooms) that give students a place to take a break when they’re feeling overwhelmed.

Sound walls guide students to investigate phonemes and make informed choices when they’re unsure how to spell out a sound.

Education Week spoke with two teachers about how they’re using Wordle in the classroom and what their students are taking away from the game.

A book reading program at a Cave Creek animal rescue is helping rehabilitate - not just for the readers, but for the listeners, too. The Books in the Barn Program at Healing Hearts Horse Rescue involves school-aged children reading to a unique audience: horses. And they’re all ears.

A team of neuroscientists at Cardiff University have released the latest findings from a multi-year study exploring the doll play’s short and long-term developmental impact.

Teachers can ignite students’ enthusiasm for writing with creative assignments based on the books, movies, and TV shows they love.

The children’s publishing world remembers a giant in the industry. Ashley Bryan’s legacy includes more than 70 books and a generation of creators he inspired with his work and kindness.

Dillon Helbig, a second-grader who lives in Idaho, wrote about a Christmas adventure on the pages of a red-cover notebook and illustrated it with colored pencils. When he finished it in mid-December, he decided he wanted to share it with other people. So much, in fact, that he hatched a plan and waited for just the right moment to pull it off.

Author Cynthia Levinson knew that Jewish artist and activist Ben Shahn would be a great subject for a children’s book. Her work, The People’s Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art, won the 2022 Sibert Award. While Levinson was thrilled when The People’s Painter was named a Sydney Taylor Award notable picture book, she is also happy that recognition by a wider-reaching committee at the Youth Media Awards can bring a bigger audience.

Thankfully, cultivating a culture of reading out loud to children is easier than ever, with increased accessibility of digital and print resources. Even though demands on parents have never been greater, especially in traditionally under-resourced families where they may have to work multiple jobs, reading at home can be done using devices we almost all already have in hand — our phones — without any significant additional financial investment.

By designing learning experiences with a wide variety of loose parts, teachers make room for conversations and relationships to flourish.

A boys’ “book battle” is part of a statewide effort to address the gender gap in literacy. “You just want to keep reading and reading.”

Teachers are trying their best to play multiple roles in the lives of their students at an underfunded public school with limited support from the higher-ups. Sound familiar? That’s the premise of ABC’s new workplace comedy “Abbott Elementary.” Created by Quinta Brunson, who also stars in the show as 2nd grade teacher Janine Teagues, the show follows a group of teachers and their principal at a Philadelphia public school as they navigate challenges in and out of the classroom with laughs and heart. Brunson spoke with Education Week about how the show captures the nuances of the teaching profession, the significance of Black teachers and predominantly Black schools like Abbott, and the hope that the show can garner more support for real teachers across the country.

In addition to recognizing the civil rights movement, teachers can use Black History Month to call attention to the achievements of Black Americans in other areas. If you were to set up a Black history “Man on the Street” interview to ask what names people connected with Black History Month, you’d undoubtedly repeatedly hear Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman because of their significance in the struggle for civil rights and abolition. You might even hear about music and sports icons like Billie Holiday and Michael Jordan. Names you’d hear less often would be those of the hosts of famous millionaires, inventors, scientists, writers, and other Black American influencers from diverse industries and sectors. To celebrate Black achievement, here are some resources you can share with your students.

We’ve all seen the viral photos by now. An adorable little two-year-old named Kenzo, smiling proudly at his TV as he watches the new Disney movie Encanto. Why is he smiling? Because he thought the character of Antonio, who bears a striking resemblance to him … was him. At two years old, Kenzo was incredibly excited to see himself on screen. To relate to a character. To be seen, and know he matters. Librarians certainly know the importance of representation in all forms of creative expression, including books. We see it every day in our branches. The way a child’s eyes light up when they can relate to a character in their favorite story. The way they engage with stories that reflect their experiences.

As the omicron wave spikes across the United States, K-12 education is one of many systems buckling under the weight of expanding needs. Recent headlines highlight staff and busing shortages, parental anxieties about both in-person and distance schooling and disputes between unions and districts. Yet teachers’ experiences in their classrooms can be overlooked in these conversations. As part of our research into teaching, since March 2020, we have been following the experiences of a group of elementary school teachers in one suburban school district in the Midwest. We’ve seen variations in teachers’ experiences and well-being over the course of the pandemic, yet our research suggests their situation continues to be incredibly challenging.

Watercress, a semi-autobiographical story by Andrea Wang, pictures a Chinese American girl and her family in 1970s Ohio. While driving through golden late-summer cornfields in their faded red Pontiac, they pull over to pick wild watercress in a muddy roadside ditch. Back home, they prepare the watercress with garlic and sesame. The girl rejects the greens, which she associates with free meals and secondhand clothes, until her parents share powerful “When I delivered the artwork, I had been living with the pictures very closely for months,” he recalls. “When the book came back [with complete layout], it felt so gratifying. A lot of times I write and illustrate, and get to see it all together from the start. But in this case I feel the text elevates my artwork.” As Chin basks in his Caldecott success, he feels “excited and thrilled” that author Andrea Wang received a Newbery Honor for Watercress too.

A new online tool was introduced this week that showcases innovative, high-potential actions that states, districts and schools are taking right now that deserve additional consideration and emulation. The Ed Recovery Hub identifies strong practices in recovery across a variety of school community needs. These include promising approaches for accelerating student learning, supporting educators and families, and improving facilities and technology.

With Black History Month around the corner, here are 28 books to share with kids and teens that chronicle the strength, tenacity, and joy of Black Americans throughout history.

A caged, talking gorilla breaks free of his captivity with the help of some buddies in Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan. Two neighbors become besties while one of them receives messages from the universe in Jen Wang’s Stargazing. A gallant mouse seeks fun and adventure in Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Desperaux. These are the stories that could only happen in children’s literature, bringing with them a sense of wonder that permeates kid lit. But kid lit has lessons for adults, too.

Some of the most compelling evidence to support a phonics-focused approach comes from historical observations: When schools start teaching systematic phonics, test scores tend to go up. As phonics took hold in U.S. schools in the 1970s, fourth–graders began to do better on standardized reading tests. In the 1980s, California replaced its phonics curriculum with a whole language approach. In 1994, the state’s fourth-graders tied for last place in the nation: Less than 18 percent had mastered reading. After California re-embraced phonics in the 1990s, test scores rose. By 2019, 32 percent achieved grade-level proficiency. Those swings continue today. In 2019, Mississippi reported the nation’s largest improvement in reading scores; the state had started training teachers in phonics instruction six years earlier. For the first time, Mississippi’s reading scores matched the nation’s average, with 32 percent of students showing proficiency, up from 22 percent in 2009, making it the only state to post significant gains in reading in 2019.

America’s librarians awarded top honors to their favorite children’s books of the year on Monday. The Newbery — celebrating its 100th year — and Caldecott medals, as well as several other honors, were among those awards. The John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished children’s book this year went to The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. In the book, a girl named Petra must travel to another planet to carry on the human race after Earth has been destroyed. The Randolph Caldecott Medal, which the American Library Association awards to the most distinguished American picture book for children, went to Watercress by Andrea Wang and illustrated by Jason Chin. It was also a Newbery honor book. The story focuses on a little girl who comes to learn about her heritage after her family stops the car by the side of a road to collect watercress.

Angeline Boulley did not win a Newbery or a Caldecott medal this year from the American Library Association. Those are the two oldest and arguably most prestigious awards in children’s literature. But they’re among 22 awards the ALA handed out this week to books for kids, and a few names kept coming up during the ceremony, Boulley’s among them. An enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Boulley was honored with the American Indian Youth Indian Awards for her YA novel Firekeeper’s Daughter. It won the William C. Morris Award for a debut book by a first-time author writing for teens, and the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults. That’s three significant awards.

Middle grade novels with neurodivergent characters have become increasingly more prominent. This reflects a larger phenomenon: the growing acceptance of neurodivergence or neurodiversity, a concept coined in the late 1990s to signify that not all brains function the same way – and that this is okay.

Federal stimulus dollars are dedicated to helping students recover from virtual schooling. Many districts are spending some of that money on virtual tutoring. Critics say online tutoring rarely matches up to in-person tutoring, and that only a few such services replicate strategies that research has shown to be most effective: a paid, trained tutor who has a consistent personal relationship with a student; sessions during the school day, so that students do not skip lessons; and at least three sessions per week.

The Newbery Committee has recognized Kwame Alexander twice: He won the Newbery Medal in 2015 for The Crossover and capped it with a Newbery Honor for The Undefeated (both HMH) in 2020. His work has popularized poetry with a range of readers, while his centering of Black experiences and his commitment to building community has demonstrated the broader importance and impact of his work. Alexander says, “I love writing. I love being able to create stories that are meaningful and significant, but my purpose and my passion is creating community. That’s always been in my DNA.”

The dreaded summer reading lists. For decades, teachers have been handing out assigned reading, mostly comprised of old “classics,” which can lack appeal and relevance for today’s young readers. In this first-ever poll by School Library Journal (SLJ) and NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), educators can weigh in on reading lists currently in distribution. Here you’ll have the chance to choose the titles you’d like culled from required reading and those books you would urge students to read instead.

Commercial test providers Curriculum Associates and NWEA have done what the NAEP designers may not have considered: created standardized tests for students as young as five. Banish from your head images of kindergarteners filling in bubble sheets. Instead, imagine kids playing an interactive game, much as they would on an educational app or website, during short testing sessions with plenty of “brain breaks.” The i-Ready and MAP Growth fall kindergarten assessments may look like games, but they also work to gather data that thousands of school districts use to identify student needs, spot trends, and target instruction. Now that almost all NAEP exams are given on devices, too, there’s little reason to think that officials couldn’t design and offer a kindergarten exam as well.

Fantasy and historical fiction have long been creative playgrounds for authors to comment on contemporary issues. Two new books for young readers — one by a legend of the field, the other by an emerging voice — continue that tradition by exploring how fear and misinformation can be used to manipulate people, and how learned experience is sometimes more valuable than received wisdom.

Upper elementary teachers can make small shifts in how they teach writing to spark students’ interest and promote critical thinking. Find out how one teacher uses the “grapple” strategy, student-created anchor charts, free writing time, oral brainstorming, and teacher mentor texts to boost writing in her classroom.

Dana Goldstein, a Times education reporter, weighs in on questions that she hears frequently from parents. “We’ve met new substitutes, scrambled to source tiny KN95 masks, and once again found ourselves wondering how to amuse (and tolerate!) two exuberant children during a frigid, virus-constrained winter. … All to say, I’m here with you during this pandemic. And I’ve heard many questions from parents during the Omicron surge. Here is what I’ve learned from my reporting.”

In 2002, Linda Sue Park won the John Newbery Medal for A Single Shard, a novel set in 12th-century Korea. Her stories have celebrated Korean food and family (Bee-Bim Bop! 2005), examined the joys and constraints of Korean girlhood (Seesaw Girl, 1999), and explored the painful history of Japan’s colonization of Korea (When My Name Was Keoko, 2002). Through meticulous research and carefully crafted stories, Park has enchanted more than one generation of readers. Park says, “You will never again love a book the way you do when you’re a child. Beyond that kind of fierce adoration, people remember their favorite childhood books for the rest of their lives. That’s what we get to do, those of us who write for young readers: We create the books that people remember forever. Privilege, responsibility, joy.”

Outraged at the parents and politicians who are trying to rid school libraries of books they denounce as inappropriate or even pornographic, a band of Texas school librarians is fighting back. Shortly after Texas state Rep. Matt Krause called for the state’s school libraries to review a list of 850 books for possible removal, four librarians formed “#FReadom Fighters” to resist what they call “a war on books.” School districts in at least 30 other states are embroiled in book debates like the one in Texas.

Pandemic-related school closures, which caused an alarming rate of learning loss among the country’s most vulnerable students, have prompted some administrators to reconsider the school calendar. An earlier start date, a later end date and numerous, elongated breaks throughout the year could allow more timely remediation for children in need — and enrichment for those who are not. Such thinking has received at least tacit support from U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “Why do we go back to the same system that gives kids two months without engagement in the summer?” he asked in November. “We need to rethink that.”

What are your favorite classroom games? In the midst of the pandemic, I’m finding games an essential part of classroom instruction. They serve two (and many more) purposes: engagement in learning and distraction from COVID.