Today’s Literacy Headlines

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education released today a webinar on ensuring web accessibility for students with disabilities for schools utilizing online learning during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. In addition, OCR published a fact sheet for education leaders on how to protect students’ civil rights as school leaders take steps to keep students safe and secure. These resources will assist education leaders in making distance learning accessible to students with disabilities and in preventing discrimination during this Administration-wide response effort.

The superheroes—and comics creators—are here to save the day. Today, DC launched DC Kids Camp, an at-home program for kids home from schools that are closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Fans can watch videos by DC’s roster of middle grade authors and illustrators, including Meg Cabot, Agnes Garbowska, Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, Minh Lê, Michael Northrop, Ridley Pearson, Kirk Scroggs, and Gene Luen Yang, who will teach them how to make their own Green Lantern ring, do superman origami, create a comic superhero, and more.

With schools and libraries closed, children’s programming cancelled, and even playgrounds and playdates discouraged for now, parents and caregivers have a lot of hours to fill while spending time with small children. These suggestions and resources for engaging children ages two to seven will help. Start with a schedule – children thrive on routine and predictability.

Every summer for over a decade, I have hosted a #bookaday challenge—a public commitment to read or share a book for every day of the long summer school break. Over the years, #bookaday has become a community of readers sharing and celebrating books. Whether you read a book every day or not doesn’t matter, really. The folks posting book recommendations and reading experiences using the #bookaday hashtag provide a network of readers to interact with if you wish. Asking folks on Twitter and Facebook last week, there’s interest in holding a Coronavirus social distancing #bookaday challenge, so that readers who miss talking with other readers can gather and share. Here are the “official” #bookaday guidelines.

Schools and libraries closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak may extend their E-rate supported Wi-Fi networks for use by the general public while on school or library property. That’s according to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which clarified yesterday that offering this service to their communities would not jeopardize these institutions’ federal E-rate funding. Specifically, libraries may offer access to E-rate funded services on their premises as well as services that are “integral, immediate and proximate to the provision of library services to library patrons.” And because the mission to serve the public is ongoing, libraries are permitted to allow the public to access E-rate funded services even when they are closed to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the FCC announcement. Similarly, closed schools may allow access to E-rate funded services “to community members who access the Internet while on a school’s campus” so long as they do not charge for the use of the service.

According to the most recent federal data, about 14 percent of households with school-age children do not have internet access. Most of those are in households that make less than $50,000 a year, and many live in rural areas. Among those who do have access, not all have a broadband connection. That can make it tough to move to a digital workflow even when classes are meeting as scheduled. As recently as 2018, nearly one in five students said they had trouble completing homework because of internet access. These access issues make it a formidable challenge for districts to move instruction online in a pinch, even if enough computers could be distributed. But across the country, districts, service providers and even the federal government are easing the burden for unconnected families in an attempt to bridge internet access gaps at breakneck speeds.

Here at WY Lit, we have experience tutoring our own struggling readers. It can be hard. We wanted to share some of our experiences and our favorite resources with you. We learned how to do this and so can you. Simply doing homework with your child can be emotionally taxing. Throw in full-time homeschooling, an unexpected difficulty learning to read, your child’s anxiety, your own insecurity about teaching them to read and then what is going on in the world right now, and you have the perfect storm for a most unpleasant homeschooling experience. The best thing you can do for a struggling reader is to read to them or listen to books with them. This teaches them to love escaping into books, and continues to expose them to the structure of written language, vocabulary and background knowledge at their comprehension level while they become proficient readers.

On the second day of her school’s COVID-19 related closure, sixth-grade teacher Elizabeth Raff sent her students a video through Google Classroom. In it, she talked about what she had been up to, including celebrating her son’s second birthday at home, and she told her students that she missed them and wanted to hear how they were doing. She invited them to send her an email, and she promised to reply. Within a few hours, her inbox was flooded. In a survey conducted by Education Week, 41 percent of school leaders said they could not make remote learning accessible to every student for even one day. Though educators in such districts cannot teach classes or give assignments, they can still play a valuable role in their students’ lives by staying connected in this time of uncertainty and heightened anxiety. “We know that strong, secure bonds with our teachers are really important in social-emotional development. To suddenly lose out on that under such strange and unprecedented circumstances can be really hard on kids,” said Jamie Howard, a senior clinical psychologist in the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute and the director of the Center’s Trauma and Resilience Service.

South Carolina education officials on Monday were to start placing hundreds of school buses equipped with Wi-Fi in low-income neighborhoods around the state to serve as mobile hotspots for students. The idea of delivering internet connectivity to students via buses is not new—the Austin Independent School District in Texas, for example, is putting Wi-Fi on hundeds of its buses to smooth the way for remote learning. But South Carolina is widening its focus statewide in seeking to use Wi-Fi-enabled buses during extended closures caused by the coronavirus. “We’re going to place the buses in high-poverty and rural areas,” said state Department of Education spokesman Ryan Brown. “They’ll be in areas where they can be accessed easily. Parents can drive up or students can ride their bikes and access the internet within a certain range.”

As the nation shifts to online learning during the novel coronavirus outbreak, language and access barriers may shut many of the nation’s nearly English-learner students out of the learning process. A December 2019 report from the U.S. Department of Education found that few teachers reported assigning English-learners to use digital learning resources outside of class, in part because of concerns about students’ lack of access to technology at home. The same report also revealed that teachers who work with English-language learners are more apt to use general digital resources rather than tools designed specifically for English-learners and that English-learner educators reported fewer hours of professional development with digital learning resources than did mainstream teachers.

It’s an old-fashioned skill, but it’s still relevant in today’s world. Several weeks ago, my family took a four-hour road trip to visit the grandparents. Before long, the kids were asking where we were and how much longer it would take to get there. I tried explaining, but then pulled an old Ontario road map out of the glove box and passed it to the back seat. The kids unfolded it and I showed them exactly where we were, where Grandma and Grandpa live, and the route we were going to travel that day. They were fascinated, never having seen the province of Ontario laid out like that before. They pored over the map for a long time, asking about all the towns, provincial parks, and other landmarks we’ve visited recently, and I pointed them out on the map. It made me realize that I take for granted the mental map of my home province and that, unless my own kids become familiar with reading paper maps too, they won’t possess a similar mental version and are likely to have a poorer sense of direction.

First Book, a national nonprofit that gets books, education materials, and other life essentials to children in need has a new, immediate mission—get seven million books to kids whose schools are closed but don’t have books at home or internet access. The organization that serves a network of more than 450,000 educators who serve low-income communities is asking for help, as well as offering educators to sign up and share their funding needs. First Book has also created a new and constantly updated resource for educators, parents, and students looking for help with remote learning or just getting through this unprecedented situation.

Every elementary school student in Glastonbury was sent home with an iPad on the day Connecticut’s governor declared a “public health emergency” to blunt the spread of the coronavirus. On it were all the learning platforms students would need to resume learning online. Students without internet access at home were provided a connection by the district. A few days later classes for this suburban town’s nearly 6,000 students went virtual. That morning, Molly Willsey’s first graders logged onto their iPads just after 9 a.m. and started their school day. In one of Connecticut’s poorest cities, however, the transition hasn’t been nearly as seamless. In Bridgeport, where one out of every 26 public school students in the state attend school, some children were sent home with with worksheets and assignments, but this was an effort by individual teachers and not a coordinated approach by the district. Many of Bridgeport’s students went home empty-handed.

As publishers adjust to the school closures and needs of educators and public librarians, Audible has stepped up with a new offering, Stories.Audible.com. The site will be “a place where anyone, in any country, can enjoy unlimited streaming of hundreds of titles for kids and families for free,” according to the company’s announcement. The books were selected by Audible editors and are a mix of education, entertainment, and general-interest titles. “As long as schools are closed, we will be open,” the announcement said.

While major technology investments have consistently failed to deliver on big promises in the past (interactive white boards, personalized learning etc.), we find ourselves in a new era where a “quarantine back-up plan” must seemingly always be a ready option when it comes to teaching. That means no matter how we feel about technology in education, we need to get better at this distance-learning thing – and preferably fast. Some version of this could be the new normal for quite some time. And so, what are some effective principles of instruction that might be of use in a distance learning environment? And, what are some ways technology might even be used to hone aspects of instruction given these circumstances?

You can’t recreate a whole school experience instantaneously. But despite becoming a homeschool teacher overnight, you can more easily manage the process with some clear guidelines. We offer a series of tips that we hope can serve as realistic expectations for a self-quarantined family with work obligations and also kids across a wide spectrum of ages and grades. 1. Create an environment conducive to learning. 2. Routines and a schedule are crucial. 3. Academics should take the front seat. 4. Find a balance.

Due to the coronavirus, homeschooling is becoming the new normal. It’s stressful, but an abundance of resources can help caregivers provide a rich and engaging educational experience while schools are closed—and beyond. The current enforced school vacation provides families with an opportunity to give kids what they want and need—and may not be getting at school. One of the best things parents can do, if they have time, is to read aloud and engage in open-ended discussions. Fiction is fine, but delving into books on history and science is a powerful way to build kids’ knowledge. And it’s almost never too early to start. Consider reading a cluster of books on the same general topic—the American Revolution or sea mammals—to give kids a chance to absorb and retain information and the vocabulary that goes with it.

Children’s books can serve as a powerful catalyst for addressing serious issues and helping students cope with childhood trauma, says NC State College of Education Associate Professor of Literacy Education Angela Wiseman, Ph.D. She has curated a list of children’s literature that can help teachers and parents address serious issues such as parental incarceration, addiction and parental loss with young readers. She also highlights several online resources that can help educators connect students who have experienced trauma with appropriate support.

Any parent balancing work, homeschool and the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic is bound to have their limits tested by sheltering in place with kids who haven’t seen their friends or participated in sports. Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist and author of Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls, knows well about the stress families face in ordinary times. In these extraordinary times, she has the following advice for families to help get through the crisis.

With a pandemic pressing tens of thousands of the nation’s school districts into extended closures, special education administrators across the nation are wrestling with a weighty dilemma: how to provide services to students with disabilities. Federal law mandates that individuals with disabilities have an equal opportunity to participate in everything schools provide—including online learning. But a mix of factors—lack of clarity in state laws, unclear guidance from the U.S. Department of Education, and a reluctance to run afoul of federal law—has left some school districts struggling to get their online learning programs off the ground.

As educators across the United States grapple with the new reality facing them and their students as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, many are being advised to implement digital learning—some for the first time. Whether teachers have done this before or not, it’s new territory for everyone. An e-learning day or two during a snowstorm last winter does not amount to what the education field is facing right now: prolonged, indefinite school closures enforced with hardly a moment’s notice. Even Stacey Schmidt, superintendent of Porter Township School Corporation in Indiana, which has been holding e-learning days every year for over 10 years, said her district is trying to figure out what this will look like over a longer time period. She stressed that educators be forgiving of themselves and their students, and offered some key priorities for decision-making.

With schools closing to stop the spread of coronavirus, you may find yourself working from home with a new side-gig: teacher. If you’re new to homeschooling, you’re probably wondering how you can help your kids learn and keep them occupied while you work. Is it possible to avoid a screen time free-for-all and keep your sanity? With everything from free lessons from Scholastic to a daily doodle with Mo Willems, these free homeschool resources will help.

Many preschool classrooms include learning centers (for example, a writing center, a science center, a water table) where children use hands-on materials to explore, play, and learn about specific topics. Bring the spirit of learning centers into your home with prop boxes—plastic bins or cardboard shoe boxes you fill with materials and props related to one topic, such as math or writing. Here are 10 ideas.

With schools closed in the majority of states due to the coronavirus and the length of those closures looking increasingly long, millions of parents are now finding themselves juggling full-time jobs and full-time parenting. In many districts, students are following online learning programs. In other cases, students are learning from their parents who have become unofficial teachers and launched homeschool programs. But for parents and caregivers of young children who can’t learn online, have shorter attention spans and need much more attention, the prospect of working and caring for children can seem daunting, if not impossible. Here’s a look at some research and advice from experts that may help parents navigate the next few weeks (or longer) with their young children.

As schools across the country have closed their doors in response to COVID-19, the needs of English learner students are top of mind. English learners (ELs) represent a growing share of the U.S. student population and federal law mandates that they receive specialized instruction to support their English language development. Given how rapidly school closures have happened, there remain many unknowns about how distance learning will play out for these students. To be sure, the move to online learning will be challenging for all students, but these challenges will be exacerbated for ELs and other students who receive specialized support and instruction.

As schools shift to remote learning models for the foreseeable future, parents and caregivers are finding themselves in a new role—that of the school co-teacher. Though parents are naturally a part of their children’s ongoing education, co-teaching is a new role for many of them. The goal is not to replicate a typical school-day schedule or intended curriculum online or at home. The goal is to help students continue to feel connected (to the teacher, to each other, to the school), known, and nurtured even though a significant part of their routine has been disrupted.

Scholastic offers free online courses as schools across the country shut down due to COVID-19 on the company’s digital learning hub, which is accessible on all devices, including smartphones, and requires no sign-up, the company announced Friday. In the Scholastic Learn at Home program, sudents will have access to approximately three hours of meaningful learning opportunities per day, including projects based on exciting articles and stories, virtual field trips, reading and geography challenges, and so much more. Users are asked to choose a grade level, separated into pre-K and kindergarten, first and second grade, third through fifth grade, and sixth grade and above.

In order to encourage reading and classroom read-aloud experiences, and to support schools and public libraries forced to close by the escalating COVID-19 outbreak, Penguin Random House is permitting teachers, librarians and booksellers to create and share story time and read-aloud videos and live events, according to the following guidelines.

As educators worry and wonder about reading books aloud online and copyright laws, Scholastic has changed its policy to adapt to the current coronavirus crisis and unprecedented impact on teachers and students. Through June 20, teachers can post readings of Scholastic books online if they follow the guidelines. Read the entire letter to teachers, and policy guidelines in this article.

I’m still pushing the integration of STEM with language arts through my writing, but I’m going one step further. I want educators to discover the benefits of STEM thinking in combination with children’s books as a viable way to create an inclusive classroom environment for children of diverse cultures, socio-economic strata, and physical abilities. Hands-on inquiry is a natural fit with STEM thinking. Research shows that inquiry-based learning increases student achievement and self-confidence, but there may be another advantage. In the doing, students find inclusion.

As Americans practice social distancing due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, WETA has assembled a wide range of resources to help parents and children talk about the health crisis, know the facts about the coronavirus, how it spreads and how you can help protect not just yourselves, but your loved ones and vulnerable people around you. WETA has also collected resources for teachers and parents to keep kids learning at home if your schools and afterschool programs have been closed.

As educators, parents, and students enter this unknown territory of school closures and remote learning, kid lit authors and illustrators have been stepping up to help. Many are parents themselves and juggling the same school/work balance amid the stress and uncertainty. “Gina and I are transitioning to homeschooling,” tweeted Jarrett J. Krosoczka, creator of the graphic novel Hey Kiddo among other titles. “We need to keep the kids on a schedule, and we are imagining we are far from alone. We want to help. Every weekday at 2pm ET for at least the next few weeks, I’ll host free webcasts for you and your kiddos. http://youtube.com/studiojjk ”

As educators turn to online programming and classroom management due to the COVID-19 outbreak and school closures, ed tech providers are making their tools freely available. Here’s what some companies are offering, along with resources that have always been free.

Given the uncertainty we’re all experiencing due to the coronavirus outbreak, it’s not easy to “keep calm and carry on,” as teachers are expected to do. Most are preparing for (or already experiencing) a school closure. And students are worried as they try to make sense of the quickly changing situation. To help reduce students’ anxiety and your own about the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve put together some ideas and resources focused on news literacy, media balance, and healthy communication. We hope they’re helpful as you navigate this difficult time.

As each passing day brings more school closures, educators and families scramble to respond to a situation that is uncertain and without precedent. Will the term be extended? Will the year be lost? The rapid imposition of social distancing took many by surprise, and each school and individual teacher must contend with unique challenges as they grapple with the crisis.The web offers countless best practice guides and curated tool inventories, but educators currently in triage mode are not in a position to craft ideal online learning programs. This brief guide aims to help educators, administrators, and parents better navigate the pitfalls of making the quick jump to online learning. It curates useful tools and resources with a view to maintain the indispensable human touch of teaching and learning during this period of social distancing.

More than 30,000 K-12 schools in the United States are being shuttered because of worries about spreading the coronavirus, affecting at least 20 million students, most of whom will be asked to shift to online learning. Educators experienced with remote learning warn that closures are a serious threat to children’s academic progress, safety and social lives. They say that running a classroom digitally is much harder than bringing an adult workplace online, and that it can disproportionately affect low-income students and those with special needs. Here are some of the warnings and tips that teachers well-versed in remote learning have for schools planning to move online.

As more schools and districts across the county announced closings, school librarians are working hard to do what they do best—put books in kids’ hands. On Thursday, Captain Elementary School librarian Tom Bober tweeted that with the likelihood of an extended break, he “drastically” expanded the number of books each student could take home from his Missouri library and brought the entire student body through to checkout what they wanted. “The shelves are a mess,” he tweeted along with pictures of smiling kids holding stacks of books, “but these kids have some great books going home.” Next comes mass remote learning, unchartered territory at this mass level. There are many issues to contend with including technology and attention spans. Some elementary school librarians are concerned about possible copyright violations of reading books aloud online, and a virtual storytime for younger kids was being made available from the Brooklyn Public Library.

To really learn a new skill, you need to practice. That theory drives much of Katie Farrell’s reading instruction. In her 1st grade class at Bauer Elementary School in Hudsonville, Mich., Farrell teaches students phonics—how letters on the page represent the spoken sounds children hear. But for some kids, the learning only really clicks once they practice these patterns in decodable books. These short texts are written with a high proportion of words that are phonetically regular—meaning they follow common sound-spelling rules—and mostly include words with phonics patterns that children have already learned. Yet, teachers are divided when it comes to decodable books.

I had thought my initial conversations with my kids about COVID-19 had been good enough. But with adults, kids at school and the news all hyper-focused on this coronavirus outbreak, my reassuring voice needed to be a little louder. So before lights out, we talked. I asked what they had heard about the coronavirus. We got it all out — their questions, their “I heards” and their fears. The rest of the conversation had three themes. First, I shared age-appropriate facts and corrected misinformation. Second, I reassured them that they are safe, which is the most important message my kids can hear from me. Third, I emphasized simple things our family can do to be “germ busters” — for all types of germs that are out there! Here are four ways we can help young kids build germ-busting habits.

The three principles of UDL—provide multiple means of representation, provide multiple means of action and expression, and provide multiple means of engagement—remind all educators to ensure that English language learners always have the option to build background knowledge, interact with information visually and auditorily, access rich scaffolds and supports to help highlight the patterns of language, and have numerous opportunities to express what they know in ways that are authentic and meaningful, all while experiencing the value of collaboration and feedback.

There are proven and effective methods of literacy instruction that we know will work for all students, and those methods are already being implemented by many school leaders and educators here in Tennessee. But as we move in the right direction and use proven approaches to teach students, we need to ensure that every student in the early grades receives the type of instruction they need for reading success. This is an opportune time to work together in order to create a state of proficient early readers by embracing the science of reading and providing our youngest students with the fundamental reading skills needed to prepare them for a lifetime of academic and employment success.

Overall, roughly half of the county’s students meet state reading standards, but there are huge differences among student groups. Roughly 70 percent of white and Asian third-grade students meet state reading standards; only about 40 percent of African American third-graders meet them, and less than 30 percent of Hispanic third-graders do. Only 27 percent of third-graders who receive federal meal assistance meet standards. Similar gaps continue through the grades. Superintendent Jack R. Smith rather courageously brought in Johns Hopkins University and Student Achievement Partners to do an audit of the county’s curriculum. The resulting report in spring 2018 explained why so many Montgomery County students are unable to meet reading standards. Among other things, it found that the county had “no systematic support for the development of foundational skills” in reading. Decades of research have found that most children need systematic instruction in the 44 sounds of the English language and how to map those sounds onto the 26 letters of the alphabet automatically and fluently, but Montgomery County as a district has refused to incorporate this knowledge into its reading instruction.

Last year I wrote a story about parents who fight to get special education services they believe their children need but aren’t getting in their public school. One of the parents I featured in that story, Melissa Lazaro, has a son who is dyslexic, and she suggested that I dig deeper into what’s going on with dyslexia. I also knew that her son now attends NewBridge, so I was curious to see what a school designed for dyslexic children looks like. Dyslexia isn’t just about special education. More broadly it’s about how to teach reading well. Multiple sources I spoke to stressed that what works for dyslexic students can also benefit all students, because they are effective ways to teach reading and spelling. The principal at Chaparral Elementary, Rhiannon Sharp Buhr, noted that as a teacher she had used similar strategies with English learner students, and it really helped them learn English too.

Hundreds of thousands of people in San Diego County likely have a neurological disorder that makes reading difficult — a disorder called dyslexia. Some experts estimate as many as 5 to 15 percent of the general population has it to some degree but many have never been diagnosed. Dyslexia is unrelated to intelligence, but it hampers people’s ability to learn to read. Yet staff at many schools will not use the word dyslexia, and some don’t know what it is, according to parents, dyslexia experts and school officials. Few teachers have been trained how to teach dyslexic students effectively. Experts say dyslexia is likely one reason why only 16 percent of California’s students with identified disabilities met reading standards in state tests last year and only 55 percent of students without identified disabilities met the standards.

COVID-19 information is coming fast from cities and schools, and we’re not seeing much library input. So, as high school librarians who want to help teachers and get ahead of the confusion, we put our heads together and made our own plans.

Little Free Library (LFL) donated its 100,000 book-sharing box today and will celebrate the milestone with a giveaway of 100 Little Free Library boxes to places that serve children in the United States and Canada. Schools, community centers, and public libraries can apply through April 11. Each library will come with a starter set of books from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The 100,000 Little Free Library site was given to the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans in Houston. The milestone moment for LFL, which began in 2009, was marked with a special ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of preschoolers, who received free books.

In the plains of West Tennessee, between Jackson and Memphis, lies the quaint community of Brownsville. We are the home of “Nutbush City Limits” and its famous singer Tina Turner, NBA player Tony Delk and NBA champion Jarvis Varnado. Our community is of low socioeconomic status; 71 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Haywood County Schools has about 3,000 students, 66 percent of whom are black and 6 percent of whom are Hispanic. Although we’re small in size, there is nothing small about what’s going on in Haywood County Schools. Our journey to high-quality instructional materials began when district leaders realized there was a lack of equity in our classrooms. Teachers were working extremely hard and students were doing what was asked of them, but the level of rigor and text complexity in our English language arts classrooms varied substantially, even within the same grade level.

There is a crack in our nation’s foundation. Although it is historically referred to as the achievement gap, today we more accurately call this the teaching and learning gap. When children fail to reach their full potential, this weakens families’ fundamental ability to thrive. Over 30 years ago, the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) developed a family literacy model that is still showing positive results for families as they strive to improve their academic and economic trajectories through multigenerational learning. To truly close the gap in achievement between low-income and higher-income students, we must invest in the entire family. Family literacy offers a space for both children and their families to learn—together. In NCFL’s family literacy programs, children are becoming kindergarten ready or are reading at grade level while their parents or caregivers are learning job skills and how to navigate school systems, advocate for their children, and support their children’s education.

For years, cognitive scientists have warned that we’re squandering the opportunity to increase students’ brain power and ability to learn, and economists have reported the early years provide the best bang for the educational buck. Two nationally acclaimed longitudinal studies show that preschool participants outperform nonparticipants on behavioral, health and educational outcomes in adulthood. As the bumper sticker put it: “Pay now or pay later.” Some other studies show the early advantages gained in preschools can fade over time, so we’re now told we also need to take a hard look at what happens after prekindergarten. Common sense should tell us there needs to be coordination and follow-through. But all too often, apparently, that is not the case. Providing high-quality preschool experiences, sustaining the early boost participants get, aligning the content and instructional methods of preschool with early school years, ensuring that teachers are thoroughly trained in the science of reading and focusing much more on consistently building strong background knowledge is a complicated assignment, but it’s worth tackling.

Aspiring teachers are unfamiliar with basic principles of learning science and should learn how to connect those principles to practice, according to a new report from Deans for Impact. Last fall, Deans for Impact, a nonprofit group of education school leaders, created a network of six colleges of education that want to better integrate learning science in their curriculum and clinical experiences through a $1.5 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. During a two-year improvement cycle, the cohort will participate in site visits, gatherings, and virtual coaching from Deans for Impact. “A lot of people are talking about the science of reading,” Benjamin Riley, the executive director of Deans for Impact said, referring to the body of research from many decades on how children learn to read. “We know more than just reading. There’s a science of learning, and schools of education can do a lot about that. … There’s not a single teacher who couldn’t benefit, I think, from knowing these principles.”

Schools are on the frontlines of responding to coronavirus as it appears in American communities, and federal health officials are urging school districts to prepare for spread of the illness. Here, find the most relevant news, information, and resources about how schools should prepare and respond.

A new tool from REL Southeast can help school leaders identify evidence-based practices—such as those recommended by What Works Clearinghouse—while observing classroom literacy instruction. The tool consists of three parts: (1) a Pre-walkthrough Meeting Guide to facilitate conversation between school leaders and teachers before the walkthrough; (2) a set of eight walkthrough checklists, differentiated by grade band and classroom type, which are based on best practices in literacy instruction; and (3) a Post-walkthrough Meeting Guide to facilitate debriefing between school leaders and teachers. The data collected should provide a sense of strong and weak areas of literacy instruction and could be used in planning professional development. The tool can help school leaders enhance teachers’ knowledge of literacy instruction, communicate to teachers expectations about literacy instruction, and establish consistent language regarding literacy content and instructional strategies.

Developing and establishing an independent reading program that works for all students and meets curricular goals can be challenging for new educators, not only because they are busy, but because they are still learning the lay of the land. It’s more typical for mid-career educators to take on the task. Either way, independent reading often becomes an add-on to the curriculum, rather than a strategically designed part of course design. But developing a plan should be a priority for educators at all levels, particularly when librarians and language arts teachers work together to make space for independent reading. They can do so by curating inclusive collections, using a variety of sources to check the temperature of a classroom and school climate regarding attitudes and biases about reading, and developing a school-wide culture of independent reading.

“As you can see, individual differences in writing can be seen as early as kindergarten,” says Cynthia Puranik, associate professor in the College of Education & Human Development. On her computer, she pulls up writing samples from two kindergarteners who were asked to print words that they know. One child manages “hot,” while the second, incredibly, executes “somber, “sarcasum” [sic] and “redundant.” Despite the achievements of the second child, test results show that most U.S. students struggle to meet grade-level writing standards. Puranik is working to improve children’s performance on the page. She studies the early development of writing skills and how educators can effectively nurture good writers. She received $3 million last year from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to study a writing intervention program she developed in which children help teach one another. We recently spoke with Puranik about the importance of writing and the best way to help children learn to do it well.

In spring, state and federal mandates for high-stakes testing often crowd authentic reading experiences for students. Beyond the demands of test administration, spring often brings more schoolwide events like assemblies, field trips, sports competitions, fine arts performances, award ceremonies, and other changes to the regular schedule. Students may miss regular library visits or in-class reading time as a result. Further reducing access, if the library serves as a test administration site or performance and display space, or the librarian provides tutoring or test administration support, the library may be closed for days at a time. How can we keep reading momentum and interest going through the spring and prepare students for independent reading during the summer months? While the end of the school year seems distant, it is not too early to start transitioning students from school reading to home reading.

The district I lead — Lauderdale County — is located about 60 miles from Memphis, in a rural community in northwest Tennessee where nearly a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. We have amazing teachers, administrators and parents. Our students are as full of potential as children anywhere in the country, but across grades 3-8, only about a quarter are proficient in reading on the state’s TNReady assessment. We have all the ingredients for success; what we didn’t have was a core reading and language arts program to get us there. But our school district has begun to have real success implementing Wit & Wisdom, a content-rich English language arts curriculum that is referred to as a “humanities” program by its publishers. We started implementing Wit & Wisdom three years ago, attracted to it because data told us that, while we were doing a pretty good job of teaching students to read the words on the page (to decode), they weren’t really understanding (comprehending) what they read. This meant that our students would not be able to use their reading as they would need to in the years ahead.

For too many children, reading acquisition is a struggle. Many demonstrate the early markers of dyslexia, a language-based reading disability that historically affects 10-15% of children. When parents and early childhood educators understand dyslexia as a deficit in a child’s ability to understand sound structures, they are better prepared to observe some of the early warning signs. Phonological awareness is a fundamental literacy skill; it enables children to take a stream of oral language and divide it into individual words, words into syllables, and syllables into individual sounds. We now know that the precursors of dyslexia are visible as early as age 3, demonstrated in weakness in phonological skills, letter knowledge, rapid naming, and working memory. None of these behaviors stands alone in a diagnosis of dyslexia, but the following are early markers of dyslexia.

The world is filled with many different kinds of people. Getting to know them is interesting, exciting, and fun. The same can be said about the world’s books. Cracking open a good book is to understand that the world is far richer than just our own individual experiences. As a special education teacher at Kemp Elementary School in Commerce City, CO, students are at the center of everything I do. I strive to connect with all students, to discover their passions, and to unlock their potential. Introducing new books to my students inspires their natural curiosity, imagination, and love of learning. That’s why I’m excited my school will soon benefit from a Read Across America grant from the National Education Association (NEA) that will bring 1,000 books into the school districts of Adams County, north of Denver and a rural school district outside Colorado Springs.

Just how expert do teachers need to be in reading science in order to be effective reading teachers? I suspect it’s enough to have a working knowledge of the components of reading (phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and fluency), a well-designed instructional program, and to be a competent diagnostician—savvy enough to recognize reading failures early and prescribe an effective intervention or referral. Expecting tens of thousands of elementary school teachers to develop deep expertise in the science of reading to improve instruction isn’t a winning strategy. It’s an invitation for already overwhelmed teachers to continue to default to their comfort zone: balanced literacy and cheerleading for “lifelong love of reading.” The complexities of reading instruction put state policymakers in a bit of a bind. It’s not hard to make districts, schools, and teachers do something; it’s very hard to make them do it well. Doing something complicated, doing it well, and on a mass basis is unheard of. It will take a judicious combination of leaning on ed schools to raise their game, incentivizing quality curriculum adoptions, targeted teacher professional development—and a lot of patience and political will—to keep the science of reading train on the tracks, and to improve outcomes for kids.

Dr. Louisa Moats: The body of work referred to as the “science of reading” is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, nor a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students.