Today’s Literacy Headlines

In the U.S., an estimated 15 percent of children ages 3 to 17 have developmental delays or disabilities; in children’s first years, some of these delays may be evident in late acquisition of skills like crawling, walking and talking. Research shows that early help from experts in the form of speech, physical or occupational therapy and support from pediatric specialists can have profound results for children and often help them meet the same milestones as their peers. In some cases, infants and toddlers who get early support make so much progress they no longer need services or qualify for special education when they start school. Now, the pandemic has forced in-person therapies for infants and toddlers online and onto devices, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some experts say remote therapy for young children has returned early intervention to an important piece its original mission: training parents to be experts who can support their children’s development.

Five educators share strategies for introducing primary sources to students, including English-language learners.

Children’s book creator LeUyen Pham remembers the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as a time of contrasts and confusion. Unanswerable questions swirled everywhere. So Pham did what authors do. She wrote. At first she wrote without a plan, observing what she saw in her neighborhood and in the world. Soon, a pattern emerged. A juxtaposition between what was happening outside and inside, both literally and figuratively. It was almost like a nursery rhyme, said Pham, who has illustrated more than 100 books and was a 2020 Caldecott honoree. Within months, she turned her jotted-down ideas into the text and art for Outside, Inside, a picture book published in January. The book never says words like “coronavirus” or “quarantine,” yet through digitally illustrated scenes of families, workers and neighborhoods pulled from real life in 2020, it’s a literary time capsule that can help kids and adults reflect on their experiences during the pandemic.

A study by researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) provides new evidence about the pandemic’s impact on learning among students in the earliest grades, showing distinct changes in the growth of basic reading skills during different time periods over the past year. Results from a reading assessment given to first- through fourth-graders nationwide show that the students’ development of oral reading fluency – the ability to quickly and accurately read aloud – largely stopped in spring 2020 after the abrupt school closures brought on by COVID-19. Gains in these skills were stronger in fall 2020, but not enough to recoup the loss students experienced in the spring.

Everyone is worried about the year of lost learning but there’s less consensus among politicians and policymakers on what to do about it. Proposals are circulating for summer school, afterschool, remedial instruction, giving students an extra year of school and a somewhat fuzzy concept of “acceleration.” Yet some of the strongest research evidence points to an intensive type of tutoring as a way to help children catch up. Education researchers call it “high-dosage” tutoring and it has produced big achievement gains for students in studies when the tutoring occurs every day or almost every day. In the research literature, the tutors are specially trained and coached, adhere to a detailed curriculum and work with one or two students at a time. The best results occur when the tutoring takes place at school during the ordinary school day.

Many authors and illustrators have provided access to their work and engaged with children remotely, allowing deeper connections to form between creator and mentor, child and text. Through recorded read-alouds, students can listen to authors read their own texts. Through virtual visits to schools and recorded interviews, authors and illustrators give students an opportunity to ask questions about the texts they are studying, writerly processes, and craft moves. With growing access to texts and their creators across multiple platforms, mentor texts can be selected with responsiveness to students and their communities.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), signed into law by President Joe Biden on Thursday, includes billions in funding for public education, libraries, early childhood programs, and internet connectivity resources. There is nearly $130 for K-12 schools, much of it earmarked for helping to safely open school buildings. The bill also allocates more than $1 billion for summer enrichment and after school programs, as well as $3 billion for education technology. Child Care and Development Block Grants and Stabilization Fund will receive $39 billion and Head Start programs $1 billion, both of which present partnership opportunities for libraries.

Most school leaders expect the 2021-22 school year will be largely in person. Now they’re planning supports for students to make up for the harmful academic and social impacts of the last year. Among the ideas: increasing summer learning opportunities and other ways of extending learning time. In theory, school districts nationwide will have much more funding than they usually do to spend on these efforts. The Biden Administration’s COVID-19 recovery bill directs more than $122 billion to states and school districts. Districts must spend at least a fifth of their share to address learning loss. The law specifically name-checks summer learning, extended-day programs, comprehensive after-school programs, and extended school-year programs as evidence-based approaches to try—even as mounting research suggests that it’s a fifth strategy, sustained tutoring programs integrated into the regular school day, that seems to produce the largest results.

[Video] Though it can seem daunting, getting students outdoors for even 30 minutes offers many benefits, during the pandemic and beyond. This checklist can help get you started.

Shelby County Schools officials are moving forward with a plan to hold back for a year second grade students who are behind in reading. The district will put the policy in place just before a new state law mandates retention of third graders lagging in reading. The school board approved the policy in 2019 to begin this fall and set the stage by tracking students’ reading skills throughout the school year and improving reading instruction. Educators consider third grade a critical year. Students who aren’t proficient by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school, research says. The Memphis district is trying to boost struggling students before they reach that year.

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation announced the winners of the 2021 Ezra Jack Keats Awards this week. The winner of the writer award is Tricia Elam Walker for Nana Akua Goes to School. Heidi Woodward Sheffield won the award for illustrator for Brick by Brick, which she also wrote. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the awards, given to early-career creators whose work depicts the multicultural world in the spirit of Keats, the author and illustrator of the Caldecott-winning The Snowy Day.

Norton Juster, who wrote one of children’s literature’s most beloved and enduring books, “The Phantom Tollbooth,” died on Monday at his home in Northampton, Mass. He was 91. “The Phantom Tollbooth,” first published in 1961, is the story of a bored boy named Milo who, when a tollbooth inexplicably appears in his room, passes through it into a land of whimsy, wordplay and imagination. The book was illustrated by the man Mr. Juster shared a duplex with at the time, Jules Feiffer, who was early in his renowned career as a cartoonist and author. It has sold almost five million copies, has been reissued multiple times and was turned into an animated film and a stage musical.

A former special education teacher shares how to identify and support struggling readers in middle and high school — even in a remote learning environment. The reasons that students remain struggling readers in middle and high school are frequently based on myths and misconceptions. The first big myth, based on reading assessment measures, is that comprehension is the problem. The majority of reading assessments and standardized tests for older students focus on reading comprehension measures without determining gaps in the essential components that lead to comprehension: decoding, fluency, and vocabulary. A low comprehension score doesn’t tell teachers what they need to know to intervene, yet the proposed solution is often more reading “strategies.” This is generally unsuccessful because, as stated by Dr. Anita Archer, “There is no reading strategy powerful enough to compensate for the fact that you can’t read the words.”

Reading books aloud to children stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world. It helps them develop language and listening skills and prepares them to understand the written word and then be able to write, often considered to be the highest form of critical thinking. The Reading Group, a collaborative working group of Opportunity Santa Fe, an initiative of the Santa Fe Community Foundation, is guided by the phrase “learning to read, reading to learn.” Made up of people from multiple educational organizations within the city and state, one of this year’s projects is dedicated to developing home libraries. This fall, we were awarded a Molina Foundation “Families Learning Together” grant of 55,000 books and magazines for children and young people valued at more than $400,000.

Bobby is a sixth grader at North Brookfield Elementary School in western Massachusetts. He’s crazy about the Loch Ness monster. He’s into math and Minecraft. And he likes online learning. “It’s a lot easier to focus,” he says. “I can be in my room and be a lot more comfortable doing stuff.” President Biden has said that his goal is to have the majority of K-8 schools operating in-person by the end of his first 100 days in office. That’s a welcome goal for the many parents who worry about their children falling behind while learning virtually during the coronavirus pandemic. But some are realizing that their children do better in online school. By most accounts, it’s the case for students who focus better when they are not around classmates.

It started with the closure of a single high school in Washington state on Feb. 27, 2020. A school employee’s relative had gotten sick and tested positive for the coronavirus. The school underwent a deep cleaning and reopened two days later. One month later, nearly every school building in the United States was shut down, an unfathomable moment. Schools scrambled to stand up a remote learning program—some virtual, some by passing out packets of learning materials. Now, one year in, most of America’s schoolchildren still are not back in classrooms full-time, learning from teachers standing in front of them. From the arrival of the coronavirus in the U.S. to the growing wave of teachers receiving their first doses of a vaccine, here’s a look at how a full year of living and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded.

One year after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered classrooms around the country and the world, U.S. parents are guardedly optimistic about the academic and social development of their children, an NPR/Ipsos poll finds. But 62% of parents say their child’s education has been disrupted. And more than 4 out of 5 would like to see schools provide targeted extra services to help their kids catch up. This includes just over half of parents who support the idea of summer school. Fully 29% of parents told us they were likely to stick with remote learning indefinitely. That included about half of the parents who are currently enrolled in remote learning. Perhaps in response to this interest, many schools, states and districts are looking at continuing to offer a remote public school option, districtwide or even statewide to make it more efficient.

As educators, how do we build literacy-rich environments to grow happy readers? After years of achievement roadblocks, Yorkville Grade School, a Title 1 elementary school in a consolidated unit district 50 miles west of Chicago, made a shared decision to place growing happy readers at the top of the priority list. We refocused on books, and students rediscovered book joy. This unified centering on books, choice, and voice can transform the way a school lives and breathes. Here are some tips that can help you and your school grow happy readers.

How might we truly personalize instruction and blow up the whole notion of “grade levels” so that elementary students can learn at their own pace, and get what they need as they recover from the pandemic? So that, every single day, every single pupil experiences just the right amount of challenge without feeling either bored on the one hand or overwhelmed on the other? And in a way that ensures that the farthest-behind kids don’t stay that way, but make it back to grade level within a reasonable amount of time? These are great questions, but there are no easy answers. If there were, every school in America would be doing personalized learning already. But for elementary-age children especially, it’s really quite hard to figure out how to let them “move at their own pace.”

Because English learners are far from monolithic, it’s dangerous to paint them with one brush, especially when it comes to teaching reading. It is critical that we consider students first, before considering content. It’s also important that language acquisition be addressed in balance with reading instruction. All states have language standards to support linguistic development. ELs may not have had the same opportunities with English as native English speakers, but they have other experiences with language, including speaking and hearing another language since birth. And in addition to language, students enter classrooms with backgrounds and experiences that influence their ability to read. Additional factors come into play when teaching reading to English learners. If a child has already “cracked the code” in their first language (L1)—so that they understand the connections between sounds and symbols—reading instruction will differ from that of a child who has not yet cracked the code in their L1.

In the fall of 2020, amid the pandemic, I held weekly virtual writers workshops with two small groups of young authors (6- to 8-year-olds and 9- to 12-year-olds) from all over the U.S. and across Canada. Participating students spoke English, Spanish, and French in the home, presented neurotypically and with neurodiversities, and varied in their motivation to write. The time we spent together was not about teaching any prescriptive form of writing or preparing for standardized writing assessments. Instead, I hoped to cultivate authoring joy while connecting virtually across country and state lines. This remote learning workshop shone a light on the need for writing circles. Time spent in writing circles facilitates strong communities, gives students a lift, and reinforces the need for authentic communication. An online writing group—which could be adapted for in person learning—builds confidence in students’ ability to express their ideas.

Texas educators are going back to class to learn how to best teach children to read. As part of House Bill 3 that passed in the last legislative session, teachers in certain grades are required to participate in reading academies. Reading academies are “year-long, intensive, job-embedded trainings and coaching fellowships aligned to the science of teaching reading,” according to the report. “With HB 3, every teacher in grades K-3 and every principal is required to attend a reading academy by 2022-23. Reading academies have the potential to be the most effective reform to improve literacy outcomes for students in Texas.” Reading Interventionist Amanda Childress at Johnston-McQueen Elementary School in Longview ISD is participating in the training virtually. Though she has an extensive background in teaching reading, Childress said the program can still help educators. The program is doing a great job teaching the science of reading, Childress said.

The business that manages Dr. Seuss’ work and legacy said today that it plans to stop publishing six of the author’s children’s books, due to racist stereotypes and offensive content in the stories. The decision, announced on the author’s birthday, which schools have long celebrated, could have big consequences for many classrooms and libraries. Dr. Seuss, who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel, remains a beloved staple in the early reading canon—despite growing concerns about racist and xenophobic tropes embedded throughout his books written for young kids. But Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, which advocates against banning books, said this isn’t exactly censorship. Librarians have several options in situations like this, Caldwell-Stone said: They can keep the book in circulation, they could move it to a research collection, or they could weed it out altogether. “Often, the decision is to keep the book in the collection, but it may not be surfaced in storytimes or displays,” she said. How libraries approach the Dr. Seuss books is going to differ, she said, based on individual guidelines for collection curation and community demand for certain books.

[Just] confirmed as the 12th U.S. secretary of education, Dr. Cardona rose through a public school system where he eventually returned to pay it forward – as teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, and Connecticut state education commissioner. He built a reputation along the way as an inclusive leader who remembers his roots – a unifier whose leadership, colleagues say, lies in his profound ability to collaborate, juggling competing views like he used to juggle worlds as a native Spanish-speaker in mostly white Meriden. Education secretaries may not run schools directly, but they can set a tone. And, steering clear of an ideological divide within the Democratic party, the Biden administration choice of Dr. Cardona as a conciliatory tone-setter was a smart move, says Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

Fierce divisions seem to drive a wedge into so much of American life at this moment and how we view government. Now a prominent team of educators says one part of the solution likely starts with what’s being taught in our schools. They’re out with a new plan that calls for revamping history and civics classes in schools. This approach, they say, can be both patriotic and reckon with difficult legacies. The goal is to engage students in a process of inquiry, working with primary sources to really help them dig into a broad understanding that integrates perspectives. Harvard Professor Danielle Allen, a principal investigator for the group Educating For American Democracy project, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.

Six Dr. Seuss books — including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said. “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday. “Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families,” it said. As adored as Dr. Seuss is by millions around the world for the positive values in many of his works, including environmentalism and tolerance, there has been increasing criticism in recent years over the way Blacks, Asians and others are drawn in some of his most beloved children’s books, as well as in his earlier advertising and propaganda illustrations.

The creator of the extraordinarily popular “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series has been one of the few children’s book authors to host in-person events throughout the pandemic, even if they weren’t his usual raucous affairs. For Kinney, virtual events are just not enough. “I have to see kids,” he said. “I’m not embarrassed to say it’s a psychological need.” The socially distanced author visit has become a mainstay of Kinney’s schedule. Early in the pandemic, he would sit in a chair on the sidewalk and put his books into passing cars with a nine-foot grabber. By October, he had upped his game with the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End” Drive-Thru Pool Party Tour. Families would stay in their cars and drive through an elaborate series of stages, tunnels and tents, complete with an underwater vignette, a tiki hut and a lifeguard dunk tank. Kinney ended the pool party by delivering signed copies of his book with a six-foot pool skimmer. All attendees were required to wear masks and stay in their cars.

In the fall and winter of 2020, New America embarked on a snapshot study to gather data on how—or if—people were discovering, accessing, and using their public libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on materials that libraries made available online. Our findings, which include data from a national survey of 2,620 people, highlight the need for more inclusivity, more focus on providing internet access, and more awareness-raising initiatives with local organizations and schools. The stories in this report—of libraries developing mobile Wi-Fi options, creating digital navigator programs to support digital literacy, launching more online programs, and making use of outdoor spaces—show the possibilities of transformation and partnership. The report concludes with eight recommendations for investment in library transformations, expansion of policies such as E-Rate and the Emergency Broadband Benefit to provide better internet access at home, and more collaboration with local schools and organizations.

When Marilyn Pryle, a teacher in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, began scheduling silent reading time for her ninth- and 10th-grade students during the first 10 minutes of each class, it became “one of the most profound and rewarding shifts in classroom teaching I have made in my career,” she writes for MiddleWeb. Now, instead of skimming entire books at the last minute, Pryle’s students “read, and can’t stop reading,” she writes. “They often finish their books in two weeks, or less. They want to know what will happen, so they read during study hall, at home, and during our classes.” It’s a shift that Pryle, who is an author and last year’s Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year, believes reinforces what many educators already know: if we want students to read—perhaps even grow to love reading—time for in-class reading needs to be prioritized in the school day.

Many districts, including the one where I work, are making plans to begin teaching in the physical classroom after being fully online since last March. Teacher vaccinations and decreasing COVID-19 infection rates in the community are now making that move a possibility. Many schools are considering an option that has several names—concurrent, hybrid, hyflex—and most include teaching students who are in our physical classroom at the same time we are teaching some who are online. What better way to learn how to do this kind of teaching than from those who have been at it for months?

I understand that Theodor Seuss Geisel was a product of his times. But racism, bigotry, and hatred should never be celebrated, even in the writing of some of our most celebrated authors. As the country gears up for National Read Across America Day on Tuesday, Dr. Seuss’ birthday, I want to encourage school districts across the state, including the Cobb County School District (where my son is a student), administrators, and teachers to truly reconsider and maybe even do away with its emphasis on Dr. Seuss. Instead, let us use this day to broaden our literary repertoire and dig into stories and children’s books that highlight diverse characters, that illuminate diverse authors, and that truly allow our students—all of our students—to see themselves reflected in healthy, positive, and uplifting ways.

Twenty percent fewer kindergartners are on track to learn how to read than their peers were at this time last year, and most haven’t made much progress since the fall, according to new assessment data released Wednesday. Thirty-seven percent of this year’s kindergartners are on-track in early reading skills, compared to 55 percent during the 2019-20 school year, just prior to the pandemic. Among first graders, 43 percent are on target, compared to 58 percent last year. “Teachers are working hard. They’re doing what they can,” said Paul Gazzerro, director of data analysis at Amplify, a K-8 curriculum provider that collected the data from about 400,000 students across 1,400 schools in 41 states. “We’re just not seeing the bounce back that we’re hoping for.” While all students are performing worse than they would have in a normal year, the gaps are especially pronounced for Black and Hispanic students. The results provide further evidence of the crushing effect school closures have had on young children’s early reading development — to the point they might not catch up, Gazzerro said. Amplify’s experts, however, said that while teachers tend to resort to lower-level instruction when children fall behind, it’s important to “double down” with grade-level material and that K-1 provides a key window to close the gap.

Hands-on learning strategies help English language learners participate in discussions—whether in-person or online. In Mary Modaff’s third-grade classroom, Amina, an immigrant from Bosnia, was demonstrating a push caused by air to her classmates. As she placed a paper airplane in front of a hair dryer, she told her classmates over video, “It goes there, and there, with one. Push.” Mary had the class watch the video again, this time pausing after Amina’s words. She asked, “Who can build on Amina’s claim? What is her evidence that there is one push?” Students talked about her clip, in the chat and out loud. Amina, often hesitant and shy in the whole group, was radiantly, keenly present. Mary was creating virtual interaction between students by bringing together home and school experiences to develop language skills and science understanding. She aligned her teaching to the new vision of the 2020 English Language Development Standards from WIDA, already recommended for adoption in Wisconsin and poised for adoption in all 40 states in the WIDA Consortium.

As parents home-schooling during the Covid epidemic have discovered, explaining science to kids is hard. It can expose the deficiencies in our own understanding — what exactly is a gene anyway? — or leave us unable to communicate what we do know, in language accessible to young children. (How do you define DNA for someone who doesn’t know what a molecule is?) These are problems that authors, illustrators and editors of children’s science books wrestle with all the time. The solutions they have found have never been more varied or creative, offering many routes into the world of science for all sorts of young readers, and their grown-ups.

A year ago, the kindergartners learning English in Tanya Gan Lim’s class were thriving. Back then, she’d bring in props and pictures to help her students learn the language and sound out words. Then she’d lavish them with praise, even if they stumbled, to build their confidence. Lim teaches in Prince George’s County Public Schools, just outside Washington, D.C. She is used to planning every minute of class, but that’s harder to do now that class time is punctuated with frozen screens, garbled audio and children wandering away from the camera. Sometimes, her kindergartners don’t have supplies. Lim, a former English learner herself, says it is harder to build relationships and engage her students virtually. And Lim worries about her students when they go to their regular, online classes for the rest of the day. “In the mainstream classrooms, they feel shy, they don’t want to talk, they don’t want to make mistakes,” she says.

In every classroom I’ve taught in, I have created space to engage children in the histories of Black people. But I found myself still looking for more communities and outlets for this celebration and research over the years. To solve the problem, I created a Black history club. I wanted to share what I know about the accomplishments, beauty, struggles, successes, determination, activism, fight, injustices, and persistence of Black people with elementary-age students who will go on to share it with others. The kids meet every Thursday to talk about Black histories they’ve found and want to explore. For an hour every week, they discuss everything from defining what Black history is to wondering who the Black Panthers are to learning about the origins of hip-hop. This didn’t happen overnight or after one meeting. It has taken time and space to create opportunities for them to be who they say they are: young historians. The recipe for creating a young historian is pretty simple. It takes just five ingredients—resources, time, opportunities, space, and students—and a bit of preparation.

Mo Willems became a quarantine hero with his live videos teaching kids to doodle. A year later, the children’s author and illustrator is preparing for a one-year anniversary “Lunch Doodle with Mo Willems” on March 15 — and introducing kids to a new kind of art. Willems’ next book, “Opposites Abstract,” was inspired by his work as education artist-in-residence at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C. With “Opposites Abstract,” Willems colorfully illustrates concepts like dark and light and hard and soft. He hopes this different kind of art will inspire kids.

The day will come when all teachers return to the classroom for hybrid or full in-person learning. If you are one of the many early childhood teachers taking first steps back into the classroom after teaching remotely, you may be wondering how you will establish routines, set up norms, and strive to create a community mid-year. Here’s a look at how one first grade teacher creates routines and fosters a safe, nurturing environment for her students.

Central to turning around public education in Detroit—a city that has suffered from crushing debt, contracting student enrollment, and cratering student achievement—is reengaging the parents who had been largely cut out of district decision-making. That’s the bet that Superintendent Nikolai Vitti and Assistant Superintendent of Family and Community Engagement Sharlonda Buckman have made. Their initiatives have focused on bringing families back into the district fold by giving them a voice in how the school system goes about improving education and the resources to support their children’s schooling.

As someone who has spent 27+ years buying books for public libraries, I have always been astounded by how hard it is particularly to find titles about and by Native voices. And when you ask people about Native representation that typically refer to Westerns, Little House on the Prairie, or The Indian in the Cupboard, all of which rely on harmful stereotypes and most of which are not in any way, shape or form written by someone who is tribally enrolled in a Native tribe. None of these titles are good representation and many of them are, in fact, harmful representation. So I was very excited to hear that author Cynthia Leitich Smith would be starting her own publishing imprint called Heartdrum. Smith is herself a Muscogee Creek author and has been long active in the publishing business, so she is the perfect person to head up an initiative like this.

Reading aloud daily demonstrates a commitment to literacy in an authentic and nonthreatening way. When students see teachers sharing literacy in this way, it allows them to simply enjoy a good book. Too often, children view reading as an arduous task because teachers have coupled reading with comprehension questions at the end of each chapter. Modeling reading strategies is a great way for educators to demonstrate what good readers do when they don’t know a word, understand a plot twist, or agree with a character in the story (even if they really do). Read-alouds promote student choice and leadership. Before starting a new novel, students can nominate books that interest them. This allows teachers to ensure that students are exposed to books that have characters that look like them, or it can challenge students to consider the perspectives of others who are different.

We have two daughters, one in fourth grade, the other in second. Our fourth grader, whom I’ll refer to as “Em,” loves reading. She stays up late to finish a chapter of whatever series she’s enjoying at the moment, and is always eager to search for the next installment online. Our second grader, “Tess,” is the opposite. She’s at the point now where she can sound out most words, but getting her to do the nightly reading assigned by her teacher is torture, and any time we suggest that she read by herself, she refuses. She’d rather play dress-up. I feel like we did right by her sister but failed her! How do we encourage Tess to be more interested in reading?

A glimpse into the lives of six New York City third graders reveals that remote learning can feel discouraging and difficult for students and their caregivers, but it can also include moments of joy and connection. Third graders occupy a gray area when it comes to managing remote learning independently. While many can navigate devices more easily than those in younger grades, others have some difficulty, and reading can still pose significant barriers. As a result, these students’ days are largely intertwined with their caregivers — in these six cases, their mothers. These moms spend hours supporting and worrying about their children, grappling with how hands on they can or should be, while perhaps juggling other children and, in several cases, their own jobs.

Most picture books are recommended for kids ages 4 to 8. That’s already too narrow. But picture books are tossed out even faster since many schools expect kids to read by the end of kindergarten. Don’t let this happen. First, appreciate what picture books, the real wizards of the literary world, do. With remarkable economy, they excel at the twin arts of visual and textual storytelling. Anyone who has ever read a picture book to a child has witnessed this magic firsthand. You’ll be reading along aloud and the child will laugh, not at anything you’ve read but at something she has read in the pictures. While you are reading one story, told in words, she is reading another, told through art. The illustrator doesn’t merely reflect the words on the page; she creates an entire narrative of her own, adding details, creating secondary story lines.

Whose shoulders do I stand on? What do I stand for? So asks 22-year-old Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman in “Using Your Voice Is a Political Choice,” an electrifying TED Talk featured on the podcast TED Talks Daily. For Black History Month, we spotlight Gorman’s talk and other podcasts spotlighting Black changemakers: Those who have inspired, mentored, collaborated, led, invented, or innovated to bring about greater equality and justice in their own creative ways. The playlist reflects a variety of audio storytelling techniques, including short biographies, direct interviews, engaging activities, creative kid conversations, and profound voices of inspiration from poets and dreamers.

Max was 5 when he was diagnosed with a language-based learning disability. But his mother says the signs were visible earlier. She says Max had a hard time learning how to talk. At 5, Max was identified much earlier than most students. “Difficulties with reading can be related to language deficits. Teachers should pay close attention to language-based tasks. For example, if students are showing difficulty grasping the concept of rhyming, this could demonstrate challenges with the phonological processing that is related to dyslexia,” said Brittney Newcomer, a school psychologist and the associate director of learning experiences at Understood. Not all students have difficulty with the same skills, and not all students who have difficulties have learning disabilities. Newcomer suggests that teachers pay attention to clusters of signs, such as when a student has a heightened difficulty in learning numbers, days, colors, the alphabet, and/or shapes.

Native American mythology, which stretches across North, Central and South America, transmutes from one tribe to the next. Fifteen thousand years old, it abounds with divine characters, celestial battles and natural manifestations of human behavior. Its legends probe identity, origin and one’s connection to Mother Earth — concepts that Native American communities in the United States and Canada gather together to celebrate. “Ancestor Approved” is a Native American-themed short story anthology with one such gathering, a powwow, at its center. A powwow is a festive, bustling, multigenerational affair at which children and adults perform traditional dances in their tribe’s regalia, sell handmade wares and enjoy Native foods such as fry bread. As expected in a book for young readers, the school-age protagonists of the stories make friends, honor their heritage and learn how to respect others.

The National Summer School Initiative (NSSI), an ambitious pilot aimed at improving virtual learning last summer has earned high marks from participants, according to a new report. The program was rated in surveys as both engaging to students and beneficial in improving teacher performance. Evidence of its academic impact is still to be collected. The findings are being weighed at a moment when policymakers are still considering how educators should handle the summer of 2021. NSSI was rolled out as a five-week summer offering by 50 schools and school networks, eventually reaching about 11,800 predominantly non-white and low-income students enrolled in grades 3-8. Pupils took part in live, remote math and reading instruction five days per week, mixed with supplemental literacy classes and self-directed mindfulness sessions. 513 “partner” instructors were paired with 15 mentor teachers, many selected from high-performing charter networks like KIPP and Uncommon Schools.

Lynn Wu, a rising freshman at Tesoro High School in Orange County and a finalist in the 20th annual Braille Challenge uses a blue Perkins Brailler to read. Today, fewer than 10% of Americans with visual disabilities read and write tactile script. This steep decline in tactile literacy is what spurred the Braille Institute, an L.A.-based nonprofit serving people with low vision or blindness, to launch its Braille Challenge in 2000. “Up until the Braille Challenge, kids simply were not getting enough access to technology for Braille,” professor Yue-Ting Siu said. “Right now, with all the technology that’s available, it’s easier than ever to get Braille under a kid’s fingers.” Yet blindness remains such a profound disadvantage, it can push even bright, privileged students like Lynn from the top to the bottom of our stratified academic world. Students with visual disabilities finish high school at less than half the rate of typically-developing children, and even those who earn a bachelor’s degree find work far less often than their sighted peers.

In helping kids overcome the academic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, don’t devalue recreation and enrichment for children once this school year ends. That’s an emerging argument from Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. A member of the Senate education committee, Murphy says that while he doesn’t want to dismiss concerns about lost learning time and what children need to catch up on academically, that doesn’t capture the entirety of what’s happened to students. Many who have been affected mentally and emotionally by school closures and other effects of COVID-19 need summer programs provided by organizations like the YMCA, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and local parks and recreation departments, he says. That will help them recover in ways that sitting in classrooms during the summer months simply won’t.

Years of research show that principals can significantly impact student achievement. Now, a major new study quantifies just how much difference an effective principal can make. Replacing a below-average principal with someone in the above-average category—for, example, a principal in the bottom 25th percentile on effectiveness with one in the 75th percentile or above—can add the equivalent of 2.9 more months of learning in math and 2.7 more months of learning in reading during a single school year, according to the report released by the Wallace Foundation. Those findings came from a review of six rigorous longitudinal studies using data on more than 22,000 principals in the Miami-Dade and Chicago districts, as well as statewide data on principals in Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Tennessee. It’s part of a larger in-depth review of hundreds of studies and research on principals over two decades.

Glenda Liner started this school year with a lot of familiar names on her class roster. But as she geared up for more remote teaching, it was the newcomers she worried about. So before the year began, she visited each of her new students’ homes — at a careful distance — to say hello and talk about the school year ahead. “It made a difference,” said Liner, who teaches on Chicago’s South Side and has been an educator for 20 years. For her students, all kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders with autism, that in-person check-in helped her gauge their skills and needs. “Can they write? Do they need occupational therapy? I need to see them.” Chalkbeat spoke with Liner about her approach to remote teaching, the loss of field trips, and how she used her own vegetable garden to teach science.

I would argue that audiobooks are most definitely reading, offering rigor of a different sort and that these types of materials not only provide a path to story and information for kids who have visual impairments, dyslexia diagnoses or learning disabilities, but that they are powerful learning tools for all of us. Listening to an audiobook requires a different kind of focus; it’s all about listening actively. And for those for whom traditional text comprehension is elusive or presents a struggle, audiobooks open up a whole world of possibilities for enjoying amazing literature. Their minds grow while exploring interwoven plotlines, character development, story arcs and themes. These concepts and constructs, so critical to growth as a reader, would likely be beyond their reach if they are only permitted to interact with the work through print.

At one  of her regular televised Covid briefings in early December, Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island addressed the residents of her state to deliver a round of bad news. Stern and matter-of-fact, Raimondo urged viewers to do their part by not socializing; encouraged residents to take advantage of the state’s plentiful testing facilities; gave a thank-you to school leaders and teachers for all their hard work; and then paused for what seemed like the first time in 30 minutes, as if she considered all she had said so far to be preamble and she was only now getting to the heart of her message. “Every day that a child is out of school,” she said, “is a problem for that child.” She shook her head slowly as she spoke. As bad as the numbers were in Rhode Island, she was about to bear down on a conviction she had held since the spring: Schools must remain open for in-person learning. When Rhode Island’s school-opening plan had fully rolled out by late September, only one public-school district, Pawtucket, was primarily remote. Some teachers and students got sick. Principals had to improvise constantly. But it worked — mostly.

In a move long awaited by educators, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines on Friday for how to operate schools safely during the pandemic. The recommendations, more detailed than those released by the agency under the Trump administration, attempt to carve a middle path between people who want classrooms to reopen immediately and those teachers and parents who remain reluctant to return to in-person instruction before widespread vaccination. With proper mitigation, such as masking, physical distancing and hygiene, elementary schools can operate in person at any level of community virus transmission, the guidelines state. The guidelines say teacher vaccination, while important, should not be considered a prerequisite for reopening shuttered schools.

Many students may be learning virtually, but children from lower-income families are less likely to have live contact with their teachers than kids from wealthier families, according to an analysis of census data published Feb. 11 by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Twenty-one percent of children from families making less than $25,000 a year reported having had no “live contact” with a teacher in the past week, whether in-person, by phone, or virtually. That’s compared with 11 percent for kids whose families make at least $200,000 a year. One big reason children from lower-income families may have had less teacher contact: Kids who live in poverty are less likely to have access to the internet for learning than wealthier children.

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 41 titles on the 2021 Outstanding International Books List (OIB) are significant for both their exceptional quality and globe-spanning origins. Access the downloadable pdf in this article.

In 2016, San Diego author Matt de la Peña won the prestigious children’s literature award for “Last Stop on Market Street,” a picture book that deals with inequity. The Newberry is rarely awarded to picture books, and de le Peña was also the first Hispanic author to ever receive it. Additionally, the book’s illustrator, Christian Robinson, was awarded the Caldecott Medal. On the surface, t de la Peña’s “Milo Imagines the World” does appear to be a traditional kind of story about using your imagination. What isn’t clear from the cover, though, is that the book tackles a subject not often depicted in literature meant for young readers: incarcerated parents.

Any discussion about “equity” in education that is not first and foremost a discussion about literacy is unserious. Wide and persistent gaps between White and Black students, stretching back decades, make it abundantly clear—or ought to—that state education officials have no more urgent business to attend to than ensuring that every child can read in every school under their control or influence. To its credit, the Council of Chief State School Officers understands this rock-bottom priority. CCSSO has emerged in recent years as a consistent, informed, and energetic proponent of the “science of reading,” and has put considerable effort into championing state initiatives to encourage the adoption and implementation of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) in literacy. Its new report, A Nation of Readers, describes “concrete actions” that state leaders can take to improve the caliber of reading instruction and materials in classrooms within their borders. It’s required reading for any state or district official in a position to influence curriculum adoptions, professional development, or teacher training and certification.

When serving students with ASD in a remote setting, educators should focus on the following: relationships, consistency, social skills, and fluid instruction. As more and more schools shift back to in-person learning, special education teachers should emphasize the need for a coordinated strategy. Once the students return, they will depend on you to provide a positive learning environment. Focus on compassion, communication, and encouragement. After the student has readjusted, use a diagnostic assessment to determine potential strengths and deficits. Use this data to guide instructional planning, implement academic interventions, and determine the accommodations needed to excel in the classroom setting. Increase student engagement by using relevant content. At the same time, be aware of the social and emotional needs of the student and the hidden curriculum.