Today’s Literacy Headlines

When Jaclyn Brown Wright took over as principal of Brewbaker Primary School in Montgomery, Alabama, she knew she needed to figure out a way to boost literacy rates. Brown Wright knew the stakes were high: In Alabama, students can be held back if they are not reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Brown Wright turned to something unconventional for help: an artificial intelligence avatar named Amira. Amira is the namesake of an AI reading program that aims to improve reading ability by giving kids a personal literacy assistant and tutor. The program listens to children as they read short stories aloud and tracks several literacy skills, including how well they recognize sight words, their ability to decode words and their vocabulary. Students are then given practice activities that target skills they need to work on.

When I was little, I used to love the books where you would connect the dots to make pictures. Some were very easy, you could tell what the picture was going to be even before you started, but some were very complex, and you had no idea what was going to emerge. The topic of Sept. 11, 2001 is very complex. On that day, when I was trying to comfort a classroom of terrified eighth graders — much less understand it myself — I couldn’t see the dots that needed to be connected. This month marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks … And as I prepare to share that day, its causes, its meaning, and its repercussions with my children, I have to find a way to connect the dots — as I was not able to do for my eighth graders two decades ago. Books will be my pencil.

University of Missouri researchers will train elementary teachers in Missouri’s Jefferson City School District and Fulton Public Schools on strategies to improve communication with parents using funding from a four-year, $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The effort is intended to alleviate tension and other roadblocks in engaging and collaborating with parents to ultimately improve interventions and achievement for at-risk students.

A park bench can be so much more than just a place to sit and wait. Perhaps it has a puzzle built into it, or weights that allow children to make measurements. As researchers who study the connections between play and development, we are interested in how reimagining public spaces can infuse playful learning opportunities into children’s time spent outside of school. In a July 2021 article we wrote for the peer-reviewed journal Trends in Cognitive Science, we outline how experts can help communities create fun public spaces where children can learn as they play. To support children’s learning, public play spaces need to be designed in line with the six principles of learning, which reflect how children absorb new information most effectively.

Embed student voices and perspectives into the classroom is one piece of advice educators offer in this third pandemic-affected school year.

From immigration and lucha libre to family high jinks and the first day of school, these stories illuminate the uniqueness and universality of the Latinx experience. Shine a light on them during Latinx Heritage Month, September 15–October 15, and beyond.

For many adults, the events of September 11, 2001, are etched into memory—everyone has a story to tell about where they were when they learned the towers fell. But for children and teens, 9/11 may feel far away and removed. As the 20th anniversary approaches, these works of fiction and nonfiction will help young people understand this devastating moment, from a novel about a Muslim teen encountering Islamophobia in the wake of the attacks to picture books that gently yet clearly lay out the events of the day.

Research shows that the body must first be interacting with the world to activate and open up the mind for learning.Some students will remain online this school year – due to health or other concerns – while others will return to in-person classrooms. I believe both models of school can better incorporate the body to support learning. The following tips are for educators designing remote or in-person classes, though parents and students can also encourage and help sustain an active classroom culture.

8 new picture books explore the many different paths to fall learning.

After years of research, neuroscientists have discovered a new pathway in the human brain that processes the sounds of language. The findings, reported last month in the journal Cell, suggest that auditory and speech processing occur in parallel, contradicting a long-held theory that the brain processes acoustic information then transforms it into linguistic information.

As most students return to in-person learning, school-based speech-language pathologists might encounter questions about student communication skill losses related to lack of in-person instruction and service delivery. While telepractice allowed many SLPs to continue providing services online throughout the pandemic, this approach may have been less beneficial than in-person sessions for some students. Use these steps to determine whether loss of communication skills is pandemic-related—and bring students back to pre-pandemic skill levels and beyond.

Shelve the fad methods. There’s one tried-and-true way, and it works for children of all races and classes. We have known how to teach Black children, including poor ones, how to read since the Johnson administration: the Direct Instruction method of phonics. In this case, Black children don’t need special materials; districts need incur no extra expenses in purchasing such things. I consider getting Direct Instruction to every Black child in the country a key plank of three in turning the corner on race in America (the other two are ending the War on Drugs and sharply increasing funding and cultural support to vocational education).

Today, what’s called “structured literacy” is instead being promoted by experts in fields like linguistics and neuroscience as an effective way to teach all students, beginning in kindergarten, and as a must for struggling readers. In structured literacy, phonemic awareness (that is, working with the sounds of spoken words) is developed as a pre-reading skill, and phonics is taught explicitly and systematically, with much less focus on memorization of sight words and using clues other than the letters themselves to figure out the words when reading. This is done alongside developing vocabulary and language comprehension—both very important aspects in learning to read. While the term “structured literacy” was new to me, the components certainly made sense, especially the more I found out about how the brain learns to read. In fact, it was a relief to understand why reading wasn’t clicking for some of my students—and to have concrete steps to follow to help ensure better results moving forward.

Author of Zoey Lyndon’s Big Move to the Lou and Zoey Lyndon and the Sticky Finger Bandit, Micheal Anderson has been positively overwhelmed by how her stories have resonated with readers. The Amazon review pages for her books are flooded with kind words. STEM features heavily in the Zoey Lyndon books, and Anderson recalls a note from a teacher that said several girls in her class inquired about joining a science club after reading one of the books in class. Parents leave comments telling her their girls are reading the books, and one even sent photos of readers re-creating a science experiment that took place in the book.

In a massive bid to gauge reading skills following COVID-related learning disruptions, New York City’s education department is introducing literacy screening for its nearly 200,000 children in kindergarten through second grade. The success of the screening will hinge on how well schools use the information and the quality of the interventions they’re able to offer. That remains a big question mark, as officials have long struggled to provide rigorous literacy instruction. By third grade, close to half of students have already fallen behind grade level in reading, according to state tests.

It’s possible that a number of schools might be welcoming Afghan refugee students soon. How can teachers/schools/districts best support them?

These two titles focused on sight examine its principles as one of the five senses and the invention of glasses.

After months of classroom turmoil sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, up to 250,000 public school students now face new struggles triggered by Hurricane Ida.

It can be difficult for librarians working in schools where students face special challenges.However, the libraries that serve these students may not have the funding for the necessary resources. That’s where individual librarians can make a difference and help bridge the gap with personal attention and a focus on community.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, American educators have experienced unprecedented change and challenges. Yet teachers also gained new insights on themselves, their students and their practice. Now, as the Delta variant sparks ongoing worries about school building re-openings, five teachers share the unplanned lessons they will carry into the new school year and beyond.

As the new school year launches, NEA is unveiling its latest list of recommended children’s and YA books, as well as a 2021-2022 Read Across America digital calendar.

As summer break wanes, district leaders in Philadelphia are using billboards, open houses, a back-to-school bus tour, and social media ads to bring students back after a tumultuous year. The effort is especially urgent for Philadelphia’s youngest students, who opted out by the thousands last year. Experts worry that if those children don’t return, they could miss out on learning during a critical time in their development, exacerbating existing inequities.

An enrolled tribal member, Sadie Perry lives in the southeast corner of the Navajo Nation on a property with three buildings, two horses and 11 family members, including her six grandsons and one of her daughters, who is ailing. When the coronavirus began sweeping across the world last year, Perry quickly loaded up on pandemic supplies, including food to feed her family, diesel to power her generator and water to fill her tank. But there is one essential that has always been scarce in this part of the country and that she couldn’t stock up on: Broadband access.

When LaMonica Williams saw that students in a New York City kindergarten classroom were having trouble reading, she asked their teacher what the main challenge seemed to be. “They just keep reading words that aren’t on the page,” Williams recalled the teacher telling her. Williams, a reading coach, suggested a small change to help students better understand that each written word corresponds with one spoken word. Instead of teaching students to point with one finger under each word as they read, she suggested the teacher show students how to use two fingers to “frame” a word, with one finger at the beginning and one at the end of each word. “As soon as they did that one simple change, students understood,” Williams said.

Back to school season is here, and with it comes a lot of changes. Whether your child is just starting school or going back after summer vacation, it can be both exciting and stressful. At Life Kit, we’re rooting for you and want to help keep that stress to a minimum. We’ve gathered some episodes that we think will help, from what to do about anxiety to how to have tough conversations that might come up because of school.

A vivid homage to the graffitied streets of the Boogie Down Bronx and an interstellar quest for the perfect natural hair style are part of a new wave of picture books celebrating Afro Latinx culture and characters, in an industry where these stories are still few and far between. “I want to show kids of diverse backgrounds that they can go on fantastical adventures, too,” said New York-based illustrator and toy designer Yesenia Moises, author of “Stella’s Stellar Hair.” She noted that in children’s media, stories featuring protagonists of color are often about overcoming struggle, or are “hyper-focused” on identity and race. “I want to step away from that for a moment to be able to show that … their worlds can be vibrant and full of color.”

Tens of millions of students may now be months or, in some cases, even a full year behind because they couldn’t attend school in person during the pandemic. Significant setbacks are especially likely for the most vulnerable students — kids with disabilities and those living in poverty, who didn’t have a computer, a reliable internet connection or a workspace to learn at home. Educators will have to do something different for the 2021-22 school year to make up for those losses. No catch-up strategy can possibly benefit all students. But studies do point toward which strategies are most effective, how they can best be implemented — and what approaches might be a waste of time and money. Here’s a rundown of the most relevant research.

As a book lover, sociologist and someone who understood the power of books, I knew I wanted literature to be part of my daughter’s upbringing, and to have her learn about her heritage through the lens of other cultural experiences. As excited as I was to build my daughter’s library, I found myself extremely frustrated at what I saw. The small selection of books featuring Indian or South Asian characters on the market were developmentally inappropriate, culturally inaccurate or insensitive, and not what I wanted on my daughter’s bookshelf. It was in this moment I realized I must do something about this. This is how Mango & Marigold Press came to be. The work we do at Mango & Marigold Press helps to amplify the voices of diverse multiracial authors and illustrators.

Choosing instructional materials wisely is one of the most important jobs education leaders and teachers have, perhaps now more than ever. Unfinished academic instruction resulting from the COVID-19 crisis demands better ways to reignite student engagement and accelerate learning. At the same time, the disparate impact of the pandemic on students of color and growing efforts to quash discussions about systemic racism in schools reveals an urgent need to approach this work through a racial equity lens. This report argues that embracing high-quality instructional materials that are both rigorous and relevant is crucial to addressing these priorities.

As many students with disabilities return to school in person for the first time in over a year, federal education officials are spelling out what districts nationwide need to do to serve them. In a letter sent this week to state and local education agencies, the U.S. Department of Education is making clear that despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rights of students under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to a free appropriate public education, or FAPE, have not changed. That means that school-age students with disabilities should have individualized education programs in effect at the start of the school year and plans should be implemented for infants and toddlers with disabilities to receive the services they’re entitled to, the letter indicates.

It’s the third week of school at Remington Elementary in Colorado Springs and the first-grade teachers gathered in a small classroom say more students than usual are struggling with letter names and sounds — skills typically mastered in kindergarten. A bar chart projected on a television screen bears out these observations, showing that 40% of the school’s first-graders are behind in literacy, with most of those scoring in the lowest “red” category and the rest in the second-lowest “yellow” category on a common reading assessment. “Yeah, that’s scary,” said Principal Lisa Fillo, who’s led a reading instruction overhaul at the school over the past several years. Now, educators at Remington, like those across Colorado and the nation, are beginning to size up the challenge ahead, particularly in the early grades where the building blocks of successful reading are formed.

The pandemic forced educators across the globe to innovate and be creative — and social-emotional learning became a cornerstone of many virtual classrooms. Throughout this school year, educators, coaches, and school leaders have engaged in virtual professional development and one-on-one coaching sessions to hone their social-emotional learning skills and knowledge to meet the needs of all learners. The following are some of the most effective strategies all educators should take within them into next year.

When food banks work with schools to send children home with a backpack full of food over the weekend, they do better on reading and math tests, I found in a recent study. These effects are strongest for younger and low-performing students. Adoption of a BackPack Program appears to shrink the gap in test scores between economically disadvantaged and advantaged students by about 15%. We also show the program is more effective for the youngest students in our study – third graders – and for students with the lowest test scores.

Laura Bilbro-Berry stepped into her first classroom as a teacher in 1992. She realized both the weight and the depth of her responsibility almost immediately. About a third of her elementary school students struggled with reading, and the “whole language” instructional approach that her college taught her to use wasn’t working. “I realized pretty early on that I needed more information,” she said. “And so I found those things that I knew were really important. I didn’t have a name for that information. We didn’t call it the ‘science of reading.’ But I knew that’s what my kids needed in my classroom.” Nearly 30 years later, Bilbro-Berry leads the UNC System’s educator preparation program (EPP), which produces about 40% of the state’s teachers. Now, Bilbro-Berry is in position to make sure those future teachers get the information that she didn’t in college.

A new study by researchers at the Yale Child Study Center demonstrates that puppets can attract and hold the attention of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), raising the potential for developing more engaging therapies that strengthen social engagement and facilitate learning. The study, published in the journal Autism Research, is the first to test anecdotal evidence that children with ASD, like most youngsters, pay attention to puppets.

Last year’s COVID-19 lockdown disrupted the idea of school as we know it and it forced educators to think outside of the box. For one elementary school principal in North Carolina, thinking outside of the box had him heading outside — literally. Nicholas L. Dixon, principal of Foust Elementary School in Greensboro, had long been a supporter of outdoor learning, so when his school won a grant of $13,000 from the North Carolina Outdoor Heritage Advisory Council last year, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with the windfall: build an outdoor classroom that would inspire not only students but teachers as well. The school was able to debut the outdoor space in December, right around the time students first began returning for in-person lessons and were adjusting to a new normal. First-graders were among the first to try out the space and luckily, Dixon told NPR, it was an instant hit — and it still is today.

Working memory is crucial to learning—providing both the cognitive space and the cognitive tools to process new thinking. Research shows that distractions, confusing material, or an overwhelming amount of information can tax a student’s working memory. Here’s how to better support this essential executive function.

A 2021 study reveals the ways in which new and experienced teachers think about discipline — plus 6 takeaways for managing your classroom effectively this year. Understandably, there’s a significant gap between how novice and expert teachers approach classroom management—one that can take years of experience and training to fill, according to the new study. And while there’s no replacement for spending time in the classroom, an awareness of the right strategies, and the right mindsets, can put new teachers on the fast track to adopting tactics that work but might feel counterintuitive or risky. Meanwhile, more experienced teachers can benefit from insights that may help them sharpen or extend their existing playbook.

Just when schools were getting ready to reopen for the new school year, cases of COVID-19 started surging in the United States, driven in large part by the more contagious delta variant. School administrators around the country are working to bring students back into the classroom safely, while still providing kids an enriching learning environment. As an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Washington, I have spent the past year and a half working with a group of epidemiologists and health professionals to collect, review and evaluate the scientific evidence about COVID-19 for state and local public health agencies. Our group concluded that vaccines and masking work well for preventing COVID-19 outbreaks in schools, but other strategies like plexiglass barriers and temperature checks are probably not worth the effort.

All schools throughout Alabama can now boost literacy instruction via LETRS® (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) professional learning. This professional learning experience provides the knowledge and tools for successfully applying the science of reading in classrooms. The Alabama State Department of Education funding is to support kindergarten through third grade teachers, in addition to Pre-K, administrators, and other support positions that impact K-3 literacy in the state. The Alabama State Department of Education adopted use of LETRS as part of the Alabama Literacy Act, which in addition to providing foundational literacy support, also provides intensive support for the state’s lowest performing elementary schools.

As a novice teacher, Timothy Shanahan recalls doing round robin reading with his third-grade students—even though his professors in graduate school strongly advised against it, and he vividly remembered his own negative feelings about the practice, he confesses in a 2019 blog post. It’s not uncommon for classroom literacy practices to stick around in spite of, as in the case of round robin, well-established research and readily available resources offering a variety of research-based alternatives for improving reading fluency and deepening comprehension and engagement. As students return to school and educators begin to plan for instruction that adequately challenges kids but also catches them up after a year of uneven pandemic learning, there’s a valuable opportunity to reconsider—and ultimately retire—some of the stale literacy practices that research suggests aren’t the best use of limited instructional time. We combed through our Edutopia archives to find practices that shouldn’t make the cut and selected more effective alternatives that come recommended by literacy experts and experienced educators.

Despite years of research and practice, there is still no definitive blueprint for teaching grammar. The only thing that remains clear and uncontested is that grammar is most likely to be understood within the context of authentic reading and writing activities. However, without knowledge of what meaningful contextualization looks like in practice, many teachers, particularly new teachers, are bound to continue teaching the rules of English in an isolated, drill-like manner. Looking at writing in meaningful contexts, including cartoons, helps students see how they can apply the rules of English. Here are some practical suggestions to help you support your students.

When school resumes in the fall, even if education returns to pre-pandemic “normal” – with students attending classes all day and in person – teachers are likely to use more online tools and virtual resources than they did pre-COVID. That means parents need to be prepared to continue the role of facilitator of learning and technology specialist for their school-aged children. As teacher educators who are reevaluating how to prepare teachers for future learning disruptions, we’d like to offer parents and caregivers some tips for the upcoming back-to-school season.

If you read in English, chances are that there are a few countries that take up the vast majority of your reading. Only 2–4% of books published in English are translated, and even books published in English in countries other than the U.S. and UK often don’t get picked up and publicized in the same way that U.S. American works do. This is even more pronounced when it comes to children’s books, where the same books top the charts year after year. Parents tend to buy and read to their kids the same books their parents bought and read to them. If you want to branch out, though, and discover children’s books published all across the world, here’s a great place to start! TheToyZone has gathered up the most popular children’s books from each country and put them into these gorgeous graphics.

In the past 10 years, the education field has discovered a lot about the science of learning. Contributors share ways to use that in school.

As the pandemic upended life in the United States, more than one million children who had been expected to enroll in these schools did not show up, either in person or online. The missing students were concentrated in the younger grades, with the steepest drop in kindergarten — more than 340,000 students, according to government data. Now, the first analysis of enrollment at 70,000 public schools across 33 states offers a detailed portrait of these kindergartners. It shows that just as the pandemic lay bare vast disparities in health care and income, it also hardened inequities in education, setting back some of the most vulnerable students before they spent even one day in a classroom.

In the days since Eloise Greenfield died, the remembrances and stories of her impact on individuals and children’s publishing have been pouring in for the poet and author, who passed August 5 at age 92. Greenfield, whose first book, Bubbles, was published in 1972, wrote more than 40 books for children, including poetry, biography, picture books, and chapter books. Her most famous work was Honey, I Love, which was published in 1978. She received the 2018 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, along with the 1997 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, given for a body of work to a living American poet. In 2016, Greenfield received the Teaching for Change Education for Liberation Award. “Not only did she revolutionize children’s literature, she also (in big and small ways) supported generations of African American children’s books authors who followed her,” a post on Teaching for Change’s website said about Greenfield.

Learning disruptions have been an unfortunate but all-too-frequent sight during the pandemic. But not every student felt those effects evenly as schools shifted between remote and in-person options. Even under typical circumstances, learners with autism or other neurological differences are often more sensitive to changes in their environments. So given the lingering uncertainties about COVID-19’s impact on schooling this fall—and the trajectory of the fast-spreading delta variant—perhaps it’s no surprise that many families with neurodivergent children are opting to continue with remote learning. “We’ve had about 50 families stay online. And with that request, it prompted us to officially apply for our online schools here in the state of Arizona,” says Dana Van Deinse, director of partnership and online programming at Arizona Autism Charter Schools, which serves more than 400 students. “So really, it came about from demand.”

Take the 8 question quiz! Once you complete the quiz, you can see how your score compares to your peers, get the correct answers with detailed explanations, and be provided with additional readings and resources on the topic.

During the summer, I am sharing thematic posts bringing together responses on similar topics from the past 10 years. Today’s theme is on the inclusive classroom. You can see the list of posts here.

Danielle Young coined the term “Black Boy Joy” in 2016 after watching Chance the Rapper exude happiness at MTV’s Video Music Awards. A welcome contrast to how young Black men are often portrayed in the media, it soon became a hashtag. In the introduction to his anthology of the same name, Kwame Mbalia (author of the Tristan Strong series) confesses that he doesn’t like watching the news, because growing up it was “always reporting on some local shooting or some death or some other tragedy that made my mother shake her head and my father scowl … because nine times out of 10, a face like mine was on the screen.” That’s why Mbalia invited 16 Black author friends to help him highlight “the revelry, the excitement, the sheer fun of growing up as boys in and out of the hood.” From stories (by the likes of Jason Reynolds, Varian Johnson and Tochi Onyebuchi) to poetry (Dean Atta) and comics (Jerry Craft), “Black Boy Joy” has something for every type of reader.

For millions of students, this is a summer like no other in the history of American public education. The last day of the school year was followed by just a brief pause before classes started again for a wide range of programs financed by more than a billion dollars in federal funds under the American Rescue Plan. That windfall sent educators scrambling this spring to find the best ways to spend it. Many districts are trying to focus on students who have lost the most during months of remote learning. Educators say they are especially concerned about students living in poverty, English-language learners and students with disabilities. But kids of all ages — from kindergarten to high school — suffered academically and emotionally during months of isolation. There’s no definitive count yet of how many students are enrolled this summer in a wide range of new options, from a push to close early learning gaps in Texas to a summer program in Oregon that helps kids learning English. A recent survey by the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that most large urban districts are offering an average of five weeks of summer learning, with many combining academics and activities like field trips or sports.

As we prepare to welcome our youngest learners to classrooms this fall, preschool and early childhood teachers are likely wondering how to best prepare children with the skills necessary to be kindergarten ready. Given that many preschool-aged children weren’t in formal in-person learning programs last year, building the academic and executive functioning skills they need for kindergarten is especially important for this incoming cohort of students. Executive functioning skills include organizing and prioritizing, staying focused on tasks, and regulating emotions. Children begin developing executive functioning skills rapidly between the ages of 3 and 5. Preschool and early childhood teachers play an important role in helping young learners develop academic skills (such as recognizing letters, colors, and numbers) and developing the executive functioning skills they need to be prepared for kindergarten.

Is your classroom bookshelf all that it can be, for every kid in your class? Here’s how to bring it up to speed. Providing “windows and mirrors” so that students can both see themselves and be exposed to new realities isn’t a novel concept for teachers. But as we grow increasingly aware of the many people whose stories remain untold一and the ripple effect our collective ignorance has on shaping our discourse and our cultural priorities—it’s worth revisiting what’s been sitting on classroom bookshelves.

The return of in-person learning last spring led to a boost in young children’s reading skills, but performance hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels and racial gaps have grown wider, according to new data from curriculum provider Amplify. Compared to winter results, the end-of-year data on the widely used Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, or DIBELS, shows that fewer students were at risk of not learning to read — a decline to 38 percent from 47 percent in kindergarten and a drop to 32 percent from 43 percent at first grade. But the scores at third grade, a critical year for developing more advanced reading skills, haven’t bounced back in the same way. The results provide some hope that a full in-person return to school this fall could see young children quickly regain the early literacy skills they missed while learning from home.

When disabilities and developmental delays are caught early, it can significantly impact a child’s ability to learn new skills and overcome challenges. Parents also learn strategies to support and advocate for their child. Librarians should never diagnose. However, as information professionals, we can let families know about EI, a community program providing services, including speech therapy, physical therapy, and special instruction, to qualifying children up to age three. The first step is making sure they know that EI exists and is free, voluntary, and confidential; a doctor’s referral isn’t necessary. Keep brochures at your children’s information desk. Libraries can also help address inequities and racial disparities in how EI services are accessed and provided.

They’re getting their hands dirty growing organic veggies. They’re cracking jokes while gaming on the Wii. They’re sporting medieval armor and waving foam weapons on a grassy battlefield. Just your typical summer vacation shenanigans, but with a twist: It’s all at school. This July, over 11,000 students in Tulsa, Oklahoma — about a third of the district’s total enrollment — have returned to academic buildings for fun-filled programming that explodes the typical conception of summer school. As national leaders including U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona underscore the importance of re-engaging young people this summer on the heels of a year marred by the pandemic, and with billions in federal relief dollars earmarked for summer enrichment activities, Tulsa Public Schools has seized the moment, delivering learning opportunities to students in tandem with community building and joy.

Floyd Cooper, a celebrated children’s book illustrator who explored the African American experience in stories rooted in history, like one about a boy in Alabama in 1955 trying to comprehend why a Black woman on his bus refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, died on July 15 in Bethlehem, Pa. He was 65. Over 30 years and some 100 titles, Mr. Cooper illustrated children’s stories that not only carried his earthy and golden pastel impressions of Black life, but that also strived to recount chapters of African American history that he felt weren’t taught enough in classrooms — if they were taught at all.

Dip into these picture books about pools and beaches, swimming and sailing, calm waters and stormy seas.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released updated guidance for schools Monday, recommending that all students over 2 years old, along with staff, wear masks, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. The new AAP guidance comes less than two weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its own recommendations, calling for indoor mask-wearing for unvaccinated students ages 2 and up, as well as staff. (Children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination.) The CDC notes, however, that schools might find universal masking necessary in areas with low vaccination rates, increasing community transmission or a number of other factors. Both sets of guidance focus on getting students back into classrooms.