Today’s Literacy Headlines

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.

Amid the stress and disruption of the pandemic, parents and caregivers have had less time and energy to engage their babies and toddlers in conversation—and the lack of talk already shows in their language skills. New studies from Rhode Island Hospital and the nonprofit LENA Foundation find that infants born during the pandemic vocalize significantly less and engage in less verbal “turn-taking” behaviors found to be critical for language development. As those babies grow, experts worry they will need significant supports to be ready for school.

Two million students in 86 school districts across the country have had their access to books restricted because of book bans this school year, according to a new report by PEN America, a free speech advocacy organization. While book bans—specifically books with LGBTQ characters and people of color, or about race and racism—have been reported by media outlets across the country this year, the report sheds light on how widespread the book bans actually are through anecdotal accounts and by tracking what kinds of books are being targeted.

The ability to map letters to sounds is considered an important indicator of early literacy skills. Previous research shows that letter sound mappings in kindergarten is strongly associated with later reading success. A new study published in Child Development provides initial evidence that daytime naps could be beneficial for preschool children’s learning of letter-sound skills. “Having a nap after learning might facilitate the capacity to utilize newly learned information in a new task,” said Hua-Chen Wang, lecturer in the School of Education at Macquarie University.

Teaching students to identify and express their own emotions—and consider those of others—empowers them, and sets them up for learning. Here are practices to help kids at different grade levels develop the vocabulary and practice the emotional literacy skills to better understand and more effectively participate in the world around them.

A new multimillion-dollar effort will fund K-12 tutoring projects, experiment with new models, and bring more clarity to what works and what doesn’t—and create a tutoring network connecting dozens of districts and some states.

Patricia MacLachlan, an award-winning writer known to millions of young readers as the author of “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” a novel about two motherless farm children and the gentle woman who comes to the prairie to make them whole, died March 31 at her home in Williamsburg, Mass. Mrs. MacLachlan wrote more than 60 children’s books during her half-century career, which she began in her mid-30s after her own children started school, leaving her time in the day to collect her memories and observations and turn them into stories.

Dionysos: The New God is the last of George O’Connor’s Olympians, a series of graphic novels he’s been writing and illustrating for the last 12 years. Each book retells the ancient Greek myths through the lens of one of the gods or goddesses, from Athena, goddess of wisdom, to Hephaistos, god of the forge. O’Connor’s illustrations are bursting with action, humor and lots of details. He researched the ancient myths in order to get as close as possible to the original stories.

California education leaders say hiring more literacy coaches and specialists to work with both teachers and students is a key to getting all students to read by the third grade by 2026, amid what some have called a national literacy crisis. Literacy coaches mainly train teachers and school staff on literacy instruction, conduct professional development and facilitate whatever reading curriculum the school uses. Specialists work directly with the students in one-on-one or small-group settings.

Effective retrieval practice strategies help students identify what they know about a given concept and retain that information for the long-term. Here are some deeper dives into seven retrieval practices that work.

“It is impossible to overestimate Ross Todd’s influence on the school library profession,” said Joyce Valenza, who worked with Todd at Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information since 2014 but knew him for more than a decade before that. An associate professor of library and information science at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Todd was committed to using evidence-based practice in school librarianship and research in the school library field that focused on three things—understanding how children learn and build new knowledge from information, evidence-based practice for school libraries, and information utilization for learning.

Colorado has unveiled an online database showing what reading programs schools use in kindergarten through third grade, part of a broader state effort to improve how schools teach reading. It’s part of a package of publicly searchable data mandated by a 2021 state law championed in part by dyslexia advocates. The effort represents Colorado’s first attempt to shed light on details that have long been out of reach for parents and the public, including what reading curriculums schools use and whether those programs have the state’s seal of approval. A 2019 state law requires Colorado schools to use reading curriculum backed by science. State officials have established a list of a dozen core programs that meet this bar.

STEM teacher Kyley Longo-McGarvey loved the idea of creating a sensory path at her school, Myers Elementary—but what makes this path extra-special is that her students designed it, in collaboration with their peers in special education. Because of the pandemic, notes occupational therapist Wendy Bush, “We’re seeing more dysregulation in the kids.” So, not only will Myers’s sensory path be used for kids with sensory needs; it’s a place where any kid can blow off some steam.

How can school leaders know which of the myriad ELA curricula on the market deliver the most comprehensive content knowledge? Thankfully, there’s a new tool to assist them. The Knowledge Map Project, an initiative of the Institute of Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University and Chiefs for Change, evaluates twelve ELA curricula and rates how well they deliver content knowledge.[1] The project team, led by David Steiner, has performed the challenging task of reading each text in each grade level and analyzing them in terms of the knowledge they offer students about the world and the human condition. How topics are sequenced across grade levels is also evaluated to determine how well students have the opportunity to build on prior knowledge in a systematic way.

The benefits of early-childhood education can take a decade or more to come into focus, but a new study in the journal Child Development suggests preschool may help prepare students for better academic engagement in high school. Researchers at the nonprofit ChildTrends, Georgetown University, and the University of Wisconsin tracked more than 4,000 children who started kindergarten in Tulsa, Okla., public schools in 2006. Some 44 percent of the students participated in the Sooner State’s universal state-funded preschools, which include partnerships between school districts and early-learning organizations. Another 14 percent of the students had participated in federal Head Start programs, and the rest did not participate in either program.

Newark students have made scant academic progress so far this school year, according to sobering new test scores that underscore the severity of the pandemic’s toll on student learning and the extraordinary measures that will be required for students to recover. Based on mid-year assessments, no more than 6% of students in any grade from 3-7 are expected to reach the “proficient” level on the state math tests slated to begin next month, according to data that Newark Public Schools officials shared last week. By contrast, 27% of students in grades 3-8 met the state’s benchmarks on the annual math tests in 2019, before the pandemic shut down schools and drastically curtailed learning. Reading scores on the mid-year tests, which students in grades 1-7 took in February, were only slightly higher. In each of the tested grades, about 10% of students or fewer are expected to meet state English standards this year, the data show.

The time that teenagers and tweens spend on YouTube, TikTok, and other video-sharing sites has taken off during the pandemic, while reading time among those age groups remains flat. That was one of the key findings of a recent survey by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit research organization. Media use—defined as everything from reading books to watching videos to scrolling social media—by kids ages 8 to 18 was already on the upswing before the pandemic. But the pace of the acceleration has quickened significantly due to technology-related media use.

Planet Word, the Washington, D.C., museum dedicated to inspiring a love of language, opened a new permanent exhibit called Lexicon Lane on March 26. A combination escape room and puzzle hunt, Lexicon Lane is designed to resemble an old village and offers 26 unique puzzle “cases” for visitors to solve. But before you even enter the museum, there’s a tree in the way. It is virtually impossible to enter the museum without noticing the 18-foot “Speaking Willow” that is stationed in front of its K Street entrance.

One way to inspire discussion about the reading process is to read picture books about reading and learning how to read. These books should be read not only in the classroom but also at home by parents and caregivers. Reading about reading is one of the most helpful ways of immediately addressing the social and emotional needs of beginning readers. The picture books that follow explore the theme of reading from a variety of points of view, but each title assures children that reading achievements can be small, medium, or large—essentially affirming that all reading is worth celebrating.

Museums for Digital Learning (MDL) is a free learning platform that provides K–12 educators with curated museum collection resources and activities aligned with national content standards. Developed by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Newfields Lab of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, the Field Museum in Chicago, and History Colorado in Denver, MDL offers a way for museums of all disciplines to leverage digitized museum collections to support K–12 educators and students.

The new question of the week is: What is the best professional-development session you ever participated in, and what made it so good? Who among us hasn’t spent endless hours in pointless, terribly conceived, and horribly executed professional development? However, on occasion, amid these ordeals, some of us may have had a slightly more positive experience. Educators will share those pleasant surprises in this three-part series, and we can only hope that professional-development providers will be reading these commentaries.

These titles that celebrate moms illustrate a diversity of motherhood. There is no one way to be a mom.

A more flexible test, given on the devices schools and students are already using, that quickly produces actionable information for educators and policymakers: That’s the vision going forward for the test known as the Nation’s Report Card. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is the only national, comparative gauge of K-12 student achievement. The pandemic—as it did with so many other fields—utterly upended things, resulting in the disappointing cancellation of its 2021 administration. Now its leaders say they’ve taken what they’ve learned to heart and are devising plans for a more resilient, purposeful exam.

The school’s leaders at P.S. 236 concluded that the reading curriculum they were using — created by Columbia University’s Teachers College and long championed by the city’s education department — wasn’t working for their students, who are predominantly low-income and largely not proficient readers. They decided to ditch the widely used program where students are often encouraged to independently read books of their choice. Instead, even as the pandemic threatened to derail their plans in September 2020, they moved ahead with a transition to a new reading curriculum where students collectively tackle challenging history and science texts. “We could not wait till we were back to normalcy,” said Lisa Schwartz, a literacy coach assigned to the school. Newly appointed schools Chancellor David Banks recently offered his own blunt assessment of the Teachers College curriculum: “It has not worked.” But changing how a school teaches reading is more complex than simply buying new materials, and the shift underway at P.S. 236 may offer lessons to other elementary schools in New York City considering a curriculum overhaul.

A new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders released this month includes changes to the definitions of both autism and intellectual disability that experts say will further clarify the diagnoses. The American Psychiatric Association issued the updated manual, which mental health care practitioners, researchers and insurers rely on for decision-making in diagnosing and treating patients, following a three-year process to reflect scientific advances since the fifth edition was published in 2013.

In her new book, Beyond Coding, Umaschi Bers links teaching coding in elementary school to fostering literacy skills and strength of character. The CAL KIBO curriculum developed Bers’s DevTech Research Group at Tufts University introduces powerful ideas of computer science, such as repeat loops, in direct conversation with powerful ideas from literacy, such as repetition. However, before getting to this, it focuses on the concept of sequencing. Sequences can be found in natural languages through words and stories and also in artificial languages.

We are still just beginning to understand the many ways that the Covid-19 pandemic has affected our schools, our students, and all who work in education. We all faced and continue to face countless challenges. For us to move forward, we need to understand how deep these challenges run, how the pandemic has affected student achievement, and how our education system—including assessments—can adapt, innovate, and produce improved student outcomes. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), perhaps better known as The Nation’s Report Card, is in schools now, collecting vital data on what today’s students know and can do at this critical point in their academic careers, their learning experiences during the pandemic, where they struggle, and how we all can help. We’ll also learn about the impact on our teachers, and our schools.

Embedding important terms in stories created with upper elementary and middle school English learners helps them build their academic vocabulary. Interactive digital stories support students in acquiring academic and content vocabulary by embedding the vocabulary within a light, memorable narrative. As students cocreate the story with the teacher by naming characters, supplying backstory, identifying connections, summarizing key points, and more, they become invested in the tale. This interactive experience then serves as a conceptual and linguistic touchstone throughout the unit.

Schools are making a major transition from just communicating with parents to actually engaging with them. This premise led the conversation during a March 8 panel among three school communication experts at SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas. Four tips emerged to support best practices for approaching family engagement strategies, including listening to the school community, not assuming how families communicate and more.

The Eric Carle Museum of PIcture Book Art has announced its 2022 Carle Honors honorees. The Honors recognize people and organizations in four categories: Artist, for lifelong innovation in the field; Angel, an individual or organization whose resources help create illustrated children’s book exhibitions, education programs and more; Mentor, for editors, designers, and educators who are champions of the art form; and Bridge, for individuals or organizations who work in other fields and have brought the art of the picture book to larger audiences. The 2022 honorees are Faith Ringgold (Artist), Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (Angel), Ajia (Bridge), and Cheryl and Wade Hudson (Mentors).

Louisa Moats is frequently quoted for describing the teaching of reading as “rocket science.” Teaching children to read is complex work that requires knowledge of reading science and of the child as a reader. If teaching reading is rocket science, books are the rockets sending children to places we can often only dream of visiting. Librarians will always be needed to bring the world of books to life for children. They have skilled expertise to support children to apply their literacy skills while also developing a love of reading. As the field continues to make sense of the science of reading, we need school librarians to continue to expand the literary landscape available to children.

Teaching students the neuroscience of emotions helps normalize emotional responses while empowering young people with the science of why we have big feelings and how they happen in the brain. In biological terms, emotions are our brains’ response to stimuli or experiences. While some are certainly more pleasant than others, emotions aren’t good or bad. All emotions are information.

To help connect educational innovations with the learners who want and need them most, the America’s Languages Working Group is launching a first-of-its-kind online portal: Model Programs and Practices Advancing Access and Equity in US Language Education is a registry of programs that can be emulated and adapted by on-the-ground efforts across the country to introduce students from diverse populations to effective language instruction. The portal collects advances in pre-K–12, college and university, and community-based language education, specifically the advances that improve access for more of the nation’s neglected learners and languages.

One small town experiments with new messaging platform to reach families that don’t speak English at home. The requests for translation from families of Tussing Elementary School in Reynoldsburg, OH, ranged from simple reminders that parents needed to sign a form to helping cope with medical emergencies. But during the pandemic, when communication with families at home became even more difficult, the Pickerington Local School District decided to try something new: the TalkingPoints translation app.

Getting your little ones to read daily is just as important as what they read. Reading diverse and inclusive books offers a powerful opportunity to teach your child about empathy and the world around them. Utah Library Association President, Rita Baguio Christiansen, said representation is something that helps to form a child’s identity. “Books are mirrors, and windows and sliding doors. We want all children to be able to see themselves in books and experience other experiences, other cultures, and backgrounds,” she said.

When I think of the parents I’ve interviewed in the past two years, some of the most affected in the early days of the pandemic were those whose children have learning disabilities or differences. Remote school was hard for everyone, but it was particularly difficult for families whose children — 14 percent of all American public school students — needed additional support to learn. As the majority of students return to some semblance of normal, I decided to check back in with parents of kids with learning differences.

If, for some reason, you happen to find yourself feeling overwhelmed or anxious about matters personal, professional or geopolitical, a new hotline offers advice on how to deal with those big feelings. “If you’re nervous, go get your wallet and spend it on ice cream and shoes,” a distinctly young-sounding voice enthusiastically advises. At various points since it became operational late last month, about 9,000 people an hour were calling PepToc, a hotline dispensing the wit and wisdom of students at West Side School, a small primary school (enrollment: 147) in rural Healdsburg, Calif., about 70 miles north of San Francisco.

Rates of children’s physical inactivity, misbehavior, and unmet health needs shot up during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic alongside concerns about parental stress, according to a new analysis of federal data on child well-being. Meanwhile, the numbers of children diagnosed with depression and anxiety stayed on pre-pandemic trendlines, growing steadily between 2016 and 2020. In findings with significant implications for the work of schools, researchers at the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration examined a trove of parent-reported data collected between 2016 and 2020. They analyzed five-year trends and looked for statistically significant increases between 2019 and 2020 in an effort to identify problems that may have been worsened by the pandemic and the continuation of troubling patterns that predate the national crisis.