Today's Reading News

School's Out for Summer--Now What?

The Huffington Post

May 22, 2013

As millions of children start streaming out of schools for a much-anticipated break, it's important to remember that there is a price to pay for summers free of learning. Students who don't engage in educational activities over the summer lose between one and three months of learning every year on average. In reading, the loss is cumulative; by the end of sixth grade, students who lose their reading skills over the summer will be as much as two full years behind their classmates.

Reading Becomes Summer Fun Time

Wausau Daily Herald (WI)

May 22, 2013

Keeping kids reading over the summer is important. While some children enjoy reading, others would rather do just about anything else. So what is a parent of a reluctant reader to do? Look to your child's interests. Ask yourself, what is their favorite movie, hobby, sport or pastime? Look for a book with a similar plot line or topic matter.

Study Shows Graphic Novels Add Value to K-12 Student Learning

IVN (San Diego, CA)

May 22, 2013

Graphic novels may have a place in the classroom as an alternative form of literature, according to researchers. The results found in the study, published in Boston University's Journal of Education, are complex. For nearly every category of educational use, the response was overwhelmingly "never." Yet, a fourth of the teachers did say that they used graphic novels for struggling students or English Language Learners (ELL) either once a month or once a week.

Teaching Dyslexic Children: Spotting the Signs and Supporting Your Students

Guardian Professional (UK)

May 22, 2013

The one thing my postgraduate teacher training course had simply not prepared me for was that more than a third of my first class of seven and eight year-olds might not be reading and writing with any degree of confidence. Granted, it was a school in special measures, and many of the pupils did not have the clear structure, support or guidance at school, or, in some cases, at home, that would help progress their literacy skills.

Common-Core Tests in Works for Students with Severe Disabilities

Education Week

May 22, 2013

Mary Skinner-Alexander, a high school special education teacher in the Sioux Falls, S.D., district, has a student who communicates by directing his gaze at printed cards. Other students in her self-contained special education class of 9th through 12th graders are reading at the level of early-elementary students. And all will be expected to learn--and be tested on--academics based on the Common Core State Standards.

2013 Summer Reading List for Ages 4-14

Patch.com

May 21, 2013

Great reads for kids of all ages. Great Beginner Reads and Great Illustrated Books. Editor's note: Author James Patterson's ReadKiddoRead Foundation provided this list of great summer books for kids.

Study Finds Advantage to Broader Head Start Curriculum

Education Week

May 21, 2013

When Head Start programs used a broad curriculum that emphasized both academics and social awareness over specific academics alone, pupils outperformed their fellow Head Start alumni in kindergarten, a new study found. The study, done by Karen L. Bierman, Robert L. Nix, Brenda S. Heinrichs, Celene E. Domitrovich, Scott D. Gest, Janet A. Welsh and Sukhdeep Gill, looked at 356 Pennsylvania children whose preschool teachers had used the "REDI" curriculum--otherwise known as the Research-based, Developmentally Informed Intervention Program funded by the federal Interagency School Readiness Consortium.

Holding Them Back: Is Repeating a Grade Ever the Right Thing?

Education News

May 21, 2013

In recent years, it seems as though more and more young students are being retained, or held back a grade, in their school. For parents who must decide whether to retain a slow learning child or send them into the next grade level, the contributing factors can be wide, varied, and difficult to sort through. Holding a child back a grade is a choice that's most often based on one or more of three factors: Standardized test scores, poor social skills, or serious struggles with learning "the basics." When these issues begin to make parents, educators, and school officials begin to consider retention, difficult decisions must be made.

Sandoval Targets English Language Learners with Proposal to Increase Program Funding

Las Vegas Review-Journal

May 21, 2013

Gov. Brian Sandoval said Monday he is proposing to allocate the $60.5 million in increased tax revenue projected by the Economic Forum to public education priorities, upping the total added spending to K-12 in the new budget to $484 million. About $21 million of the new funding is proposed to provide additional support for English Language Learners, bringing the total commitment to this program to $50 million. Another $39.5 million is proposed to lower class sizes in 199 all-day kindergartens that will be funded around the state, from the current average of 26 students per teacher to 21.

Home Visiting Programs are Preschool in Its Earliest Form

The Washington Post

May 20, 2013

Caleb Cantres-Maldonado was all of 6 weeks old and just stirring from a nap when his mother propped him up and pointed him in the direction of a picture book. "Look what I have! See the book?" said Milenka St. Clair, a family support worker who visits Caleb's Manassas home once a week. "It's a drum! What else do you see?" Caleb's head flopped to one side. St. Clair tapped the page loudly, then moved it left and right and up and down. The baby's eyes, still cloudy and a little crossed, followed her movements.

Schools Enlist Parents to Improve Students' Readiness Every Day

Education News

May 20, 2013

Educators are finding that kids aren't coming to school prepared to learn because they are not getting proper rest, discipline, and attention from their parents. According to Graeme Paton in the The Telegraph, in order to help parents, Britain will be handing out leaflets to remind them to make sure kids get the proper amount of sleep, are well fed, have time set aside for homework, have quality time spent with them and come to school prepared with the proper supplies.

Mobile Apps Make Field Trips More Interactive

Education Week

May 20, 2013

As districts cope with tightening budgets and testing schedules, field trips often fall by the wayside. But a new generation of field trips may make it easier to integrate curriculum and even assessment into real-world local settings students can explore. Researchers and educators in a symposium at the American Educational Research Association conference here this month suggested the next generation of field trips may use "augmented reality" to make traditional museum or zoo tours more interactive--or even create a field trip in a neighborhood or empty lot for a school that otherwise could not afford one.

Educators, Legislators Aren't on Same Page on Ohio School Reforms

The Columbus Dispatch (OH)

May 20, 2013

A survey of more than half of Ohio school superintendents revealed, with few exceptions, a wide gap between themselves and legislators regarding what policies will have the most impact. Fewer than 10 percent of superintendents say new state-issued A-F report cards for districts and individual schools will boost student learning. And only 1 in 5 believes Ohio's new third-grade reading guarantee will improve schools. It requires schools to provide assistance to struggling readers and hold back students not reading at grade level by the end of third grade.

One in Five U.S. Kids has a Mental Disorder; ADHD the Most Common: CDC

New York Daily News

May 20, 2013

Up to 20 percent of children in the United States suffer from a mental disorder, and the number of kids diagnosed with one has been rising for more than a decade, according to a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In the agency's first-ever study of mental disorders among children aged 3 to 17, researchers found childhood mental illnesses affect up to one in five kids and cost $247 billion per year in medical bills, special education and juvenile justice.

Study: Math Skills at Age 7 Predict How Much Money You'll Make

The Atlantic

May 17, 2013

PROBLEM: So far as we're able to predict a child's likelihood of leading a successful life, it's no secret that the assets we're born with (intelligence) or into (socioeconomic status) are important. But to what extent do learned abilities, like basic academic skills, fit into that equation?

PD Program Targets Cross-Curricular Reading and Confidence

Education Week

May 17, 2013

Two topics we've been hearing a lot about recently are reading (especially how the common core will change its instruction) and social/emotional learning (which many teachers believe can boost achievement--and which the common core does not touch). At an event in downtown Washington yesterday, panelists discussed a professional development program that attempts to brings the two together and, according to several studies, is having positive effects in both areas.

Julia Steiny: School Recess Is Good For Kids' Mental Health

Education News

May 17, 2013

"I'd pull up, park, and the doors to the cafeteria would open. Teaching assistants herded the kids out to some grass. There was no real equipment, just a bin with 2 wiffle balls, no bats; 3 rubber balls, two deflated, no pump. The kids stood there for about 7 minutes and then got herded back in. I imagined herding cows out to graze. Except that they couldn't graze. They stood. I noticed the kids looked kind of sad, uninvolved, and not wanting to be there." And that, my friends, was those kids' recess.

Podcast: Rating Early Elementary Teachers When Reliable Data Don't Readily Exist

New America's Early Education Initiative

May 16, 2013

Despite a dearth of reliable data on children's progress in those grades, school districts and states are moving ahead with new systems for evaluating teachers that require the inclusion of data on students' outcomes. The experiments are already underway as part of a national push to use students' test scores as one of multiple measures of how well teachers are doing their jobs. In the early grades -- pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first and second -- this is problematic, given that standardized testing data does not exist for such young children, and what does exist is primarily focused on basic literacy skills.

Common Core Supporters Firing Back

Education Week

May 16, 2013

Supporters of the Common Core State Standards are moving to confront increasingly high-profile opposition to the standards at the state and national levels by rallying the private sector and initiating coordinated public relations and advertising campaigns as schools continue implementation. In states such as Michigan and Tennessee, where common-core opponents feel momentum is with them, state education officials, the business community, and allied advocacy groups are ramping up efforts to define and buttress support for the standards -- and to counter what they say is misinformation.

Building a Playground: 'Construction Kitties' and 'Dig, Dogs, Dig'

The New York Times

May 16, 2013

As the wildly successful "Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site" has shown, stories about trucks need not be tough. There can be warm, fuzzy elements amid the concrete and scrap metal. Even a teddy bear can find its way in. Perhaps there's just something appealing about the juxtaposition of soft, fluffy animals and heavy-metal loaders, which feature in two new picture books this season. In both "Construction Kitties," by Judy Sue Goodwin Sturges, with illustrations by Shari Halpern, and "Dig, Dogs, Dig," by James Horvath, a crew of smiling pets get to work building -- what else? -- a playground.

The Most Important Problem Facing American Children Today

The Washington Post

May 16, 2013

What is the most important problem facing American children today? According to the Academic Pediatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is the effects of poverty on the health and well being of young people. But, they concede, there is no sustained focus on childhood poverty, or a unified pediatric voice speaking on the problem, or a comprehensive approach to solving it.

Tools for Teaching: Developing Active Readers

Edutopia

May 15, 2013

Adults forget all that they do while reading. We are predicting, making connections, contextualizing, critiquing, and already plotting how we might use any new insights or information. Yep, we do all that when we read. As teachers, we need to train students in each of these skills, and begin to do so early on. I was recently in a second-grade classroom where 70 percent instruction was in English and 30 percent in Spanish. Most of the children spoke Spanish as their first or home language.

John Jensen: Setting the Conditions for Boys -- and Everyone -- to Learn

Education News

May 15, 2013

In his article "Solving the 'Boy Crisis' in Schools," (Huffington Post, May 1, 2013), Michael Kimmel notes statistics indicating boys' worse achievement in school than girls. He suggests boys' perceptions of masculinity as the determining variable; what, in boys' eyes, is respectable as "real work." While boys and girls may indeed view classroom work alternately, a different elephant stands in the room.

Head Start Centers Feeling 'Sequester' Pain

Education Week

May 15, 2013

When the automatic federal budget cuts known as sequestration went into effect in March, Margaret Molloy and her staff at a Head Start agency in the Tucson, Ariz., area started looking for places to make cuts. Child-Parent Centers Inc., which oversees 40 centers serving nearly 2,800 children in the southeastern part of the state, made plans to scale back on classroom supplies, learning materials, and conference travel. Some center maintenance, such as painting, would be deferred the upcoming school year.

Utah Charter School Nurtures Entrepreneurial Spirit

National Public Radio (NPR)

May 15, 2013

A new charter school in Utah wants to equip students in kindergarten through ninth grade with a solid foundation in business. Students' daily lessons are peppered with concepts like sales and marketing, finance and entrepreneurship, says first-grade teacher Tammy Hill. "And that plays into leadership and improved math skills. And finance plays into every part of their lives."