Today’s Literacy Headlines

During the summer, Education Week’s Larry Ferlazzo shares thematic posts bringing together responses on similar topics from the past eight years. Today’s set focuses on reading. Contributors include Daniel Willingham, Kylene Beers, Donalyn Miller, and Nancy Frey.

Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney are literally the couple that met at the copy machine. They attended business events, went out to lunch, and from there, “we started sharing about our lives,” Brian says. He was an illustrator, she was a writer, and “We thought, wow, we could really do some amazing things together.” The Pinkneys have now been together for 30 years, and in that time, they’ve collaborated on nearly 20 children books. Their latest is Martin Rising: Requiem for a King, a series of documentary poems chronicling the final days of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life — written by Andrea and illustrated by Brian. Andrea and Brian are coworkers for the long haul. They’ve collaborated on baby board books, biography picture books, and narrative non-fiction books for older kids.

Lee Bennett Hopkins, who in scores of anthologies he edited as well as in his own writings used poetry as a tool to teach and fire the imaginations of young readers, died on Thursday Aug. 8 in Cape Coral, Fla. Beginning in the late 1960s he published more than 100 anthologies over a half-century. There were volumes on particular subjects, about animals, space, inventions, art, punctuation, the different people youngsters were likely to encounter when they began attending school. He drew on writers known mostly within the children’s literature universe and on household names like Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes and E. E. Cummings. And he wrote poetry himself, often slipping one of his works into the anthologies he edited. Whether somber or silly, poetry could reach children in a particularly powerful way, Mr. Hopkins believed.

A student’s ability to comprehend a text will vary depending on his familiarity with the subject; no degree of “skill” will help if he lacks the knowledge to understand it. In the United States, where schools are all teaching different things, test designers try to assess general reading ability by presenting students with passages on a range of subjects and asking multiple-choice questions. Many of these questions mirror the American approach to literacy instruction: What’s the main idea? What’s the author’s purpose? What inferences can you make? Test designers also attempt to compensate for the inevitable variation in students’ background knowledge. But kids with less overall knowledge and vocabulary are always at a disadvantage. While the tests purport to measure skills, it’s impossible for students to demonstrate those skills if they haven’t understood the text in the first place. The bottom line is that the test-score gap is, at its heart, a knowledge gap.

When I was a high school English teacher, I prided myself on my work ethic. But I was too bogged down to, let’s say, pick up The Handbook of Reading Research and read the information-rich but dense 30-page research articles on best practices. Instead, my approach to instruction was based on what I learned in college, professional development, and trial and error. I was a good teacher, but I could have been better. After beginning my doctorate in educational leadership with a specialization in literacy, I was forced to read those long, complicated articles. I was astounded by how much I didn’t already know. I was on the front line; why hadn’t anyone told me about, for example, Self-Regulated Strategy Development, which I now use as the backbone of my instruction? Why was all of this research being conducted if it wasn’t disseminated to the people who could use it the most: teachers? Research should inform what’s actually happening in the classroom to make maximum use of what’s being discovered. While there’s a great need to bridge the gap at the system level, it’s possible to bring more evidence-based practice into your classroom.

Evan Hempler clambers up the treehouse in his backyard to check his “weather station.” “I use this yo-yo to catch moist air to make a prediction, like how much moisture is in the air,” he explains. A colorful pinwheel monitors the wind. Evan has a high IQ and excels at building things, his mother Ronda says, but from the time he was a toddler, he struggled with speech and later reading and writing. A diagnosis of dyslexia didn’t come until Evan was in third grade. Now, he wants to tell everyone about people like himself who have the condition. Evan and his brother David, 7, hosted a booth at Port Orchard’s Festival by the Bay to raise awareness of dyslexia. “Dyslexia is a reading difference, not a disability,” Evan said, showing off his booth under construction. “This board will say, ‘Dyslexia is my super-power.’ I like it because it makes me better at engineering. … But reading and spelling is harder for me because I have dyslexia, sometimes math.”

Navigating new places and spaces, meeting teachers, and making friends—it’s all part the school experience. Here you’ll find a selection of 2019 picture books that can ease the way.

If you were to visit any preschool or kindergarten classroom, you’d surely find that shared book reading is a common activity used to facilitate discussions and support a young child’s language and literacy development. A new study, published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, examined the extent to which preschool teachers use different types of questions during classroom-based shared book reading. Researchers found that only 24 per cent of what teachers said during the shared book reading were questions, and the kids answered the questions accurately 85 per cent of the time. In today’s episode, I’m joined by one of the study’s authors, Dr Tricia Zucker, who is an Associate Professor with the Children’s Learning Institute at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston. We chat about what the main findings were to come from the research, whether the questions teachers were asking were too simple for students, and how teachers could improve their questioning practices to ensure children are given the appropriate level of challenge.

Every kid imagines their favorite storybook coming to life. And one urban planner is making those childhood dreams come true for kids in Ohio. Kauser Razvi founded Literary Lots, which creates temporary, real-life children’s book scenes in Cleveland. Past installments include scenes from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This year, the Literary Lots team turned a vacant lot in Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood into a scene straight out of The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, Razvi says.

“Put the world on pause,” author Jason Reynolds tweeted on Tuesday, seeming to sum up the feeling of the literary community as it mourned the death of author Toni Morrison. The Nobel Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and creator of the seminal works Beloved and The Bluest Eye, among others, was 88. Heartfelt reaction from admirers and authors she influenced flooded social media. Reynolds, the Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist, wrote about Morrison’s impact on him. “You taught me boundlessness. No Boxes. That I get to fight for freedom, and make my own simultaneously. Thank you, Mother Morrison.” He continued, “I had to grow into Toni’s work like growing into a suit meant for me, when it was time. When I was ready. But the suit had always been meant for me. Had always been waiting for me.”

Foldable paper microscopes? A tabletop card game about killer snails? Interactive design games for kids? They’re all great end-of-summer activities to get kids thinking again about science, technology, engineering, and math, according to the National Science Foundation. “It’s about that everyday learning around the dinner table or walking down the street, with things we encounter and have the opportunity to explore and understand,” said program director Julie Johnson, the NSF’s lead on efforts to advance informal STEM learning in contexts other than school. The NSF published a blog post highlighting a range of tools, games, activities and public television shows it has supported, all of which Johnson said can be considered “informal learning resources” that “promise self-exploration and choice.” While each is different in how it aims to promote learning, all share a focus on helping all children build the belief that they can become effective scientists.

As Alabama students return to school this week, the youngest among them is heading toward a new hurdle never before attempted in this state. This year’s first-graders, come two years from now, will have to read on grade level. If not, they will not advance from third to fourth grade. That’s according to a new law passed by the Alabama Legislature this spring. The Alabama Literacy Act was designed with the goal of improving academic achievement across the state by ensuring early learners get a solid foundation in reading. Assistant State Superintendent Elisabeth Davis is heading up the state’s efforts to implement the new law, which covers everything from requiring teachers to be trained in the science of reading to regular assessments of how well young students are reading to working with parents to help their children read. Even though there are still decisions to be made about the tests and materials that will be used, one of the most important parts—teacher training—is already underway.

How do students best learn to read? Equally important, how do students learn to love reading? The Common Core emphasizes reading comprehension skills, like identifying the main idea of a text. Yet in her new book, “The Knowledge Gap,” Natalie Wexler argues that teaching those skills in a vacuum, rather than centering instruction around interesting and rigorous content knowledge, hurts both student achievement and engagement. In the excerpt here, Wexler observes two elementary school classrooms, each one taking a different approach to teaching reading. When young children are introduced to history and science in concrete and understandable ways, chances are they’ll be far better equipped to reengage with those topics with more nuance later on. At the same time, teaching disconnected comprehension skills boosts neither comprehension nor reading scores. It’s just empty calories. In effect, kids are clamoring for broccoli and spinach while adults insist on a steady diet of donuts.

The most important point raised in Natalie Wexler’s new book The Knowledge Gap is nearly an afterthought. It’s in the book’s epilogue. After a compelling, book-length argument in favor of offering a knowledge-rich education to every child and documenting our frustrating lack of progress in doing so—to raise reading achievement, promote justice, even, she suggests, to end school segregation—the author makes a surprising observation. “I’d love to point to a school district, or even a single school, and say: This is how it should be done,” Wexler writes. “Unfortunately, I have yet to see an American school that consistently combines a focus on content with an instructional method that fully exploits the potential of writing to build knowledge and critical thinking abilities for every child.”

Students with learning disabilities can struggle with reading comprehension, written expression and problem solving. Children who display learning deficits could have a disorder such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, auditory processing disorder, nonverbal learning, or visual perceptual/visual motor deficit. What’s being done to identify and accommodate students living with these kinds of disabilities? What do parents need to know to be a good advocate for their child? What resources are available to educators? Are learning deficits harder to identify in biligual students?

Over the last several decades, psychologists have unearthed a wealth of evidence on how children learn. But for three basic reasons, it’s proven hard to translate that evidence into classroom practice. There’s overwhelming evidence that, especially when students don’t know much about a topic, it’s best to provide information explicitly. But the prevailing theory in the education world has long been that it’s better for even novice learners to “discover” or “construct” knowledge for themselves, often in largely self-directed groups. Consistent with that theory, teacher-training programs encourage educators to value imparting skills over information—including supposed skills in reading comprehension and critical thinking. The reasons for the disjunction between the worlds of education and science are complex. But the obstacles to getting the findings of cognitive psychology into classroom practice fall into three basic categories.

More than 30 studies point to better reading comprehension from printed material. The benefit for reading on paper was rather small, after averaging the studies together. But 29 of the 33 laboratory studies found that readers learned more on paper. Genre is also important. In the studies that had students read narrative fiction, there was no benefit for paper over screens. But for nonfiction information texts, the advantage for paper stands out. The mounting research evidence against screens is important because it clashes with textbook publishers’ long-term plans to emphasize digital texts.

For the past three years, Greenwood Community Schools has seen early detection as the biggest key in helping children who suffer from dyslexia, and now all public schools are required to identify and assist those students. The law now requires every school district to have at least one reading specialist trained in assisting students with dyslexia. The law also requires schools to screen students for reading-based disabilities, and provide help through intervention for students who are or may be at risk of being identified as dyslexic. Greenwood schools has been using the a method to train its teachers to assist students from kindergarten through second grade, with the intention of making sure they are ready for the IREAD exam in third grade, said Lisa Harkness, the district’s curriculum director and its designated reading specialist. The method helps children develop literacy skills by breaking down why letters and words sound the way they do.

It’s summer break, but 14 rising third-graders spent a recent morning at Denver’s McMeen Elementary learning about proper nouns. Some of the 14 students were learning English as a second language. Others were native English speakers who struggle in reading. For 3½ weeks this summer, they all signed up to spend their mornings practicing literacy and language skills, and their afternoons doing fun activities as part of Denver Public Schools’ “summer academy.” The academy, which is free for families, has several purposes. It started years ago as a way to help English language learners maintain the progress they made during the school year. For nearly 30,000 of Denver’s 93,000 students, English is a second language; the most common first language is Spanish. Recently, the district has extended summer academy invitations to any students in kindergarten through third grade identified as reading “significantly below grade level,” who could use a similar literacy boost. The academy also serves as a training ground for teachers new to the district who must learn the way Denver teaches English language development.

In order to narrow the achievement gap between low-income and affluent students, schools may benefit from adopting elementary curricula focused on building knowledge, according to an article in The Atlantic. Previous case studies show students from different socioeconomic backgrounds and spanning different reading levels do not differ in reading skills, but rather in the knowledge and vocabulary that provides the context needed for reading comprehension. When kids from both lower and higher reading levels had the same knowledge, their comprehension was essentially identical.

Renée Watson is a New York Times best-selling, Newbery Honor,and Coretta Scott King Award–winning author. “I believe there are many ways to speak. We all have a choice to use or not use our voices. To engage or to keep to ourselves. When I teach writing workshops with young people, we talk about our artistic voices. We talk about how what we create is a way of speaking up for what we believe. We talk about our everyday voices, how we can be kind with our words, how we can use our words to bring comfort to someone. I push my students to read widely, to take in stories they relate to and don’t relate to. I encourage my students to write their world. As it is, as it can be. I invite students to speak their truths.”

Drawing distinctions between English-learners who struggle with the language and those who have learning disabilities is difficult. Educating English-learners or students with disabilities often requires special training and a firm grasp of sometimes complex federal policy. The prospect of identifying and supporting dual-identified students—who are eligible for extra support for both English-language acquisition and learning with a disability—often leaves teachers feeling underprepared and overwhelmed. A new brief from New America, English Learners with Disabilities: Shining a Light on Dual-Identified Students, offers a series of recommendations to help educators “more accurately identify ELs with disabilities and provide appropriate instructional services” by addressing gaps in educator knowledge, and inherent weaknesses in student referral strategies and assessment tools.

When 6-year-old Madison Smith finished reading her “Wreck-It Ralph” book, it marked her 1,000th book before starting kindergarten. Her mother, Crystal Smith, began reading to Madison as a baby. The mother-daughter duo read up to 10 books a day. Time spent reading has led Madison to develop a love for books and learning. According to a study conducted at Ohio State University in April 2019, children whose parents read one book a day from birth enter kindergarten having heard 1.4 million more words than a child not read to daily. This creates the “million word gap,” which is one explanation of the differences in vocabulary and reading development in young children.

It’s just kind of neat watching a grown child collaborate with their parent, don’t you think? Periodically we’ve seen it done with different pairings over the years. Sometimes it’s overt, as when Jonah Winter and his mother work on books like Diego, or when Rebecca Emberley and Ed Emberley collaborate on stories like the mildly perverse (in all the right ways) Chicken Little. In such cases of these you get the sense that the child and parent are really having a blast making a book together. So who are your favorite child/parent collaborators? Emma Walton and Julie Andrews? Is it a collaboration if your dad drew you into a story, like John Steptoe did with his kids when he created Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters?

English teachers are increasingly trying to teach comprehension using short texts and excerpts from novels. But if they just read whole novels aloud at a fast pace, they might get better results. Elementary school teachers have long used brief texts to teach reading comprehension, but now English teachers in middle and high school are also abandoning the idea of teaching whole books and novels. One factor is the pressure to raise scores on standardized reading tests that began in 2001 with the passage of No Child Left Behind. The tests aim to assess comprehension abilities through questions about short passages on disconnected topics, and teachers try to prepare their students by mimicking that approach in their instruction. Pretty much no one has argued that the way to boost comprehension is to have teachers read entire challenging novels aloud at a fast pace, pausing only occasionally to make sure everyone is following the story. And yet, a recent study from England suggests that approach can be powerful.

When author Ellen Oh co-founded We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) five years ago, the focus was on the importance of marginalized youth seeing themselves in books. Over the years, Oh has realized that they were taking too narrow a view by zeroing in on getting the books to kids from marginalized communities. “While that is deeply important, just as important is the need for all children to read widely and diversely about all communities,” says Oh, the organization’s CEO and president. “It’s focusing on the importance of all aspects of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s groundbreaking essay of ‘Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors.’ So it has become increasingly important to talk about how diverse books are good for all children, all readers. In that way, we teach children empathy where none might have been before.”

Dav Pilkey got the idea of a lifetime in second grade, when he was sent to sit in the hallway. “I was having a lot of trouble in school,” he told TODAY’s Jenna Bush Hager. “I had just been diagnosed with what they now call ADHD. And I had — I have — dyslexia. My teacher didn’t know what to do with me. So she was sending me out into the hallway.” Pilkey says he didn’t want his friends to think of him as “the bad guy.” So he drew “Captain Underpants” as a way to entertain his friends. More than four decades later, Pilkey has entertained millions of second-graders. His “Captain Underpants” and “Dog Man” series have sold more than 100 million copies, become a movie, a Netflix series, and now, a traveling musical.

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides an opening for states, school districts, and communities to change the relationship between early childhood programs and schools in fundamental ways that can greatly benefit children and families. Decades of research confirm that the programs that serve young children and their families are most effective when they are of high-quality, aligned, and coordinated, leading to “continuity of high-quality experiences.” Yet quality is inconsistent and fragmented in our mixed delivery system of public and private programs, and the central disconnect between early childhood programs and elementary schools is particularly problematic. The ESSA plans many states have developed present opportunities to improve quality and significantly deepen collaboration between schools, districts, and community organizations.

Beau Terry is a bright student who “absolutely loves” school. However, it did not always come easy for him. Beau has dyslexia and struggled to read but did not get the help he needed in public school. Beau’s mom, Christie Aitken, said there were public school teachers who wanted to help, but said there were not intervention programs in place at the time ten years ago when Beau was younger. Aitken said Beau transferred out of public school and into private school where he got the individualized attention he needed. She is now celebrating the passage of an Alabama law that she says will give the additional help students need. The law would require all students K-3 struggling to read get an individual reading plan to help them become proficient readers. Those with dyslexia would also participate in specific intervention programs aimed at helping with areas like language development and fluency, according to the new law.

Across the community, dozens of miniature freestanding schoolhouses, robots, telephone booths and huts dot the yards of homes, churches and even some schools. They’re filled with other worlds just waiting to be discovered — romance, mystery, fairy tales, thrills and more — all free for the taking. Did folks in the area get together one day and decide to start giving away books? Well, sort of. It’s all part of an international effort with the motto “Take a book, share a book” that continues to grow 10 years after it was launched. These structures are called Little Free Libraries (LFL), an effort driven by a registered nonprofit that aims to inspire a love of reading and build community through neighborhood book exchanges. The organization began in Hudson, Wis., in 2009 and has since expanded to more than 90,000 registered libraries in all 50 states and 91 countries around the world.

Many teachers struggle giving science instruction its due. In fact, the 2018 National Study of Science and Mathematics Education reported that many elementary school teachers do not even provide science instruction every week. According to the National Science Teachers Association Position Statement, “Elementary science instruction often takes a back seat to math and reading and receives little time in the school day.” If STEM is so important, how can we give students more exposure to it? I was surprised to learn from Linda Kekelis, an education researcher and advisor for the STEM NEXT Opportunity Fund, that parents are one of the biggest influences on kids’ interest and persistence in STEM. Parents can not only spark a new interest in STEM, they can also encourage their kids to pursue a pathway to a related career.

The moon is a less aspirational subject these days, and, as the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission approached, I grew curious how contemporary children’s-book authors reckon with that now distant—old-timey, even—event.The recently published “My Little Golden Book About the First Moon Landing,” written by Chip Lovitt with illustrations by Bryan Sims, is perhaps the closest analogue among newly published books for “You Will Go to the Moon.” The text begins, “On July 20, 1969, two human beings walked on the Moon for the very first time. It is an amazing story!” There are other new books for kids that grapple more directly with the meaning of the Apollo program. “Rocket to the Moon!,” written and illustrated by Don Brown, is a witty graphic novel for slightly older kids that ends with a look back on Earth from space—seeming to imply that, if nothing else, the program gave us a quarter of a million miles’ worth of perspective on our home planet. Brian Floca’s “Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11,” a wonderful book, from 2009, that has been reissued this year in an expanded edition, ends by striking a similar there’s-no-place-like-home chord, showing us the Apollo 11 capsule splashing down safely in the Pacific, the astronauts returning “back to family, back to friends, to warmth, to light, to trees and blue water.” The most graceful evocation of this epiphany that I have found in a book for young people comes from “The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins,” which was written, illustrated, and designed (it includes photos, charts, and documents) by Bea Uusma Schyffert and first published in Sweden.

On a hot Sunday afternoon, beneath royal blue umbrellas pitched in the courtyard of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA) downtown, about 50 kids transform long strips of paper into colorful canvases under the direction of Hervé Tullet, the internationally renowned author of more than 80 interactive children’s books, including the wildly popular “Press Here.” They roam around like little Jackson Pollocks with inky markers in their fists, filling in blank space with fat pink circles or wonky green lines, contributing to the emerging patterns. “I give instructions, very clear, very simple, very bold,” the French-born Tullet says of his approach to the collective art-making practice literally underfoot, the latest iteration of his Ideal Exhibition. Through workshops and instructional videos, anyone can perform Tullet’s process and become an artist of the multisite project, part of which will hang in the ICA LA’s project room and evolve through Sept. 8 as gallery-goers continue to contribute. Tullet sees the Ideal Exhibition as a culmination of what he’s always done on the page: champion creativity and collaboration.

How many K-12 public schools, districts, and students are there? What does the American student population look like? And how much are we, as a nation, spending on the education of these youth? These data points can give perspective to the implications and potential impact of education policies. The Education Week library provides answers to these questions, and some other enlightening facts.

When preschool teachers read books in their classrooms, the questions they ask play a key role in how much children learn, research has shown. But a new study that involved observing teachers during class story times found that they asked few questions – and those that they did ask were usually too simple. Only 24 percent of what teachers said outside of reading the text were questions, the results found. And the kids answered those questions correctly 85 percent of the time. “When kids get 85 percent of the questions right, that means the questions the teacher is asking are too easy,” said Laura Justice, co-author of the study and professor of educational psychology at The Ohio State University. “We don’t want to ask all difficult questions. But we should be coaxing children along cognitively and linguistically by occasionally offering challenging questions.” While this study was done with teachers, the same lessons apply for parents. Previous research suggests that most parents don’t ask any questions at all when they’re reading with their children, according to Justice.

Although preschool can provide children with a vital foundation for success later in life, only 43 percent of four-year-olds nationwide have access to public preschool. The rate varies widely, with no options available in some rural and low-income areas, sometimes called “childcare deserts.” But a community outside Denver has found an innovative way to bring education to kids. The school on wheels sets up each morning beside this park. Eight children, ages 3 to 6, attend the morning session. Most speak Spanish at home. This community is over 90 percent Latino.

Some research has linked focusing on social-emotional competencies to higher academic performance and better outcomes outside of school. But while most teachers say it’s important for them to teach these skills, many still don’t feel equipped to help students manage their emotions—especially when it comes to the children who are facing the greatest hurdles, according to a new nationally representative survey from the Education Week Research Center. It’s not just teachers. Colleges of education have been slow to embrace the teaching of social-emotional learning as part of their core curricula for prospective teachers. Principals also report in surveys that they favor the teaching of SEL, but time constraints and lack of teacher training are a major barrier.

The Common Core literacy standards were intended to shift instruction toward building knowledge and away from illusory reading comprehension “skills.” But many teachers have stuck with “skills” and added nonfiction—a losing combination. For decades, schools—especially at the elementary level—have spent many hours trying to teach reading comprehension “skills” like “finding the main idea” or “making inferences.” But, as cognitive scientists have long known, the most important factor in reading comprehension isn’t skill; it’s knowledge of the topic. If schools want to boost comprehension, they need to build knowledge through history, science, literature, and the arts—the very subjects that have gotten short shrift to make room for comprehension “skills.”

This week’s column features first books in new series and the latest books in episodic series that can be read in any order as well as standalone titles that will entice readers to earlier books. We’ve included picture books and early chapter books for younger readers and books in a variety of genres for older readers. All are perfect for summer reading.

In order for students with a vast array of needs to master dense, rigorous curriculum and to demonstrate success on high-stakes assessments, they must have consistent opportunities to talk, read, and write about content-area concepts. To meet this challenge, teachers may reconcile their constrained time with the need to provide students opportunities for critical literacy practice by adopting the talk, read, talk, write (TRTW) routine. TRTW is a simple way to deliver content that is centered around students’ practice of literacy skills rather than centered on a teacher’s direct teaching of a concept. The TRTW routine can be used to teach an entire lesson but is also easily adapted as a routine for teaching individual terms or concepts.

School readiness once was thought to be solely the function of the child and family with focus primarily on pre-academic skills. We now recognize that schools and communities also are responsible for school readiness, and that a child’s experiences from birth impact the social, emotional, physical and cognitive development needed for school success. Pediatricians have a significant role to play in school readiness. They have longstanding relationships with children and families that are established early and grow over time. In many instances, pediatricians are at the forefront of advocating for access to health care, home visitation, preschool mental health consultation, early literacy funding, quality early childhood programs and child care subsidies. In multiple ways, pediatricians are an integral link between children and their families to school and community programs that promote school readiness.

Back in the 1950s, I walked around the block to my local library in Castro Valley — a first taste of independence at the age of 8. I loved the blond Swedish triplets Flicka, Ricka and Dicka. I loved reading about the Founding Fathers plus some Betsy Ross. Then there were the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Lovelace and some Beverly Cleary. By current standards, the library shelves (and my favorites) were devoid of diversity and real-life angst. But much has changed, as can be seen in four new books that give visibility to the once unseen and recognition to subjects once taboo. I can’t help but compare what was available back in my day to what is available today.

“Molly of Denali,” the new PBS cartoon about a 10-year-old Athabascan girl with a video blog about life in rural Alaska is the first nationally distributed children’s series with a Native American lead. It follows the spunky and inventive Molly Mabray and her friends as they solve kid-friendly problems, like earning enough money to buy an inflatable tube to ride on the water or finding ways to keep four-legged creatures out of their garden. It also represents what is perhaps PBS’s most ambitious effort yet to educate its young viewers about a distinct cultural group, while investing in making sure that members of that group are involved at every level of production. Dozens of Alaska Native writers and advisers were recruited to help create the children’s series.

The mobile tech revolution is barely a decade old, and it brings special challenges to parents and caregivers, says pediatrician Jenny Radesky, who sees patients at the University of Michigan and is one of the top researchers in the field of parents, children and new media. “The telephone took decades to reach 50 million global users, and we had Pokémon Go do that within, like, two and a half weeks,” Radesky says. “So we all feel like we’ve been blown over by a tidal wave of all this new stuff.” Most of us feel like we’re failing, at least at times, to manage the competing bids for attention that come from work, kids, partners and from our digital devices. While she doesn’t want to come off as “judgy of parents,” Radesky and other experts shared four takeaways from the research that can guide parents who want to improve their relationships both with their kids and with technology.

The International Literacy Association (ILA) announced today the launch of the ILA National Recognition for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals, an initiative that recognizes outstanding licensure, certificate, and endorsement programs that prepare reading/literacy specialists in the United States—the only one of its kind. ILA National Recognition evaluates education preparation providers (EPPs) who seek the organization’s stamp of approval and award the designation on the basis of adherence to ILA’s Standards for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals 2017 (Standards 2017). Standards 2017 addresses the demands of 21st-century literacy instruction through rigorous field work, digital learning, and equity-building practices.

The International Literacy Association has put out a new brief endorsing “systematic and explicit” phonics in all early reading instruction. “English is an alphabetic language. We have 26 letters. These letters, in various combinations, represent the 44 sounds in our language,” the ILA brief released last week reads. “Teaching students the basic letter-sound combinations gives them access to sounding out approximately 84% of the words in English print.” It’s a strong statement from an influential, big-tent organization whose members, which include teachers, researchers, and parents, have traditionally held a wide range of views on reading approaches. “It’s kind of a refreshing piece,” said Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “A lot of people think ILA is an anti-phonics group, but it’s a large group.” The ILA’s word choices in this brief are important. Systematic phonics means that students are exposed to each sound-letter pattern in the English language in turn. Explicit means that those patterns are directly taught by teachers, not “discovered” via indirect prompting or inquiry activities. This may seem like common sense: Of course students need to be taught letters and sounds. But for any of you who have spent any time in the early-reading space, it gets right to the heart of the decades-old reading wars.

Students are identified as English-language learners, in theory, to prevent educational inequity, but that classification may present another problem for children: teacher bias. Research from Ilana Umansky of the University of Oregon and Hanna Dumont of Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education suggests that English-learner classification has a “direct and negative effect on teachers’ perceptions of students’ academic skills.” Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the researchers examined teacher perceptions of 2,166 students who spoke a language other than English at home. They focused on teachers’ perceptions of students’ skills and knowledge in four areas: language and literacy; math; social studies; and science. Their findings indicate that, across all the grade levels and content areas, teachers had lower perceptions of the academic skills and knowledge of those students who were classified as English-learners. They also found, however, that the teachers’ negative bias or low academic perceptions were virtually nonexistent for English-learners in bilingual settings, such as dual-language programs and traditional bilingual programs, where a teacher or paraprofessional is using a language other than English at least half the time.

Scholastic has revealed a new ALA READ poster and bookmark, featuring original “Dog Man” artwork by Dav Pilkey and a message to kids: “Be a Reading Supa-Buddy. Do Good,” “It’s such an honor to be asked by the American Library Association,” Pilkey said. “I’m grateful for librarians for their dedication to the community and children’s literacy.” The poster echoes Pilkey’s “Do Good Tour,” which kicks off next month and hopes to highlight how books inspire readers, as well as the ability to make a positive difference in the world. Pilkey, the American Association of School Librarians’s 2019 national spokesperson, is combining this message of service and inspiration with a tour for his latest installment in the “Dog Man” series. Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls publishes August 13 and “delves into the importance of not just being good but doing good,” according to Scholastic.

When Esaïe Prickett sat down in the living room with his mother, father and four older brothers, he was the only one wearing Google Glass. As Esaïe, who was 10 at the time and is 12 now, gazed through the computerized glasses, his family made faces — happy, sad, surprised, angry, bored — and he tried to identify each emotion. In an instant, the glasses told him whether he was right or wrong, flashing tiny digital icons that only he could see. Esaïe was 6 when he and his family learned he had autism. The technology he was using while sitting in the living room was meant to help him learn how to recognize emotions and make eye contact with those around him. The glasses would verify his choices only if he looked directly at a face. He and his family tested the technology for several weeks as part of a clinical trial run by researchers at Stanford University in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. Recently detailed in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics, the trial fits into a growing effort to build new technologies for children on the autism spectrum, including interactive robots and computerized eyewear.

A supportive school reading culture is one where there is availability, opportunity, encouragement and support for reading. But how do schools actually go about building this kind of culture in their own contexts? To answer this question, Senior Lecturer at Edith Cowan University Dr Margaret Merga went straight to the source – teacher librarians – to gain their valuable insights into the factors that enable and constrain the development of a whole school reading culture. The results from this research were published in the Australian Journal of Education in a paper titled, Building a school reading culture: Teacher librarians’ perceptions of enabling and constraining factors. In today’s episode, I sit down with Margaret to talk more about her study and its findings, including the role that school leadership plays in the development and maintenance of a school reading culture.

What started as a way to give parents a break and excite students about reading has now attracted authors from around the world to send books for Principal Archie Moss to read on Facebook Live. Moss has read bedtime stories every Tuesday night since February when he announced the push for more reading while at Bruce Elementary School’s Black History Month event. Moss’ weekly bedtime stories attracted global media attention as Shelby County Schools leaders search for ways to incorporate literacy into more aspects of student life. Superintendent Joris Ray recently encouraged local leaders and celebrities with ties to Memphis to get online and follow Moss’ example.

If “the classics” are as important as we seem to think they are as an education system, why don’t we make them more accessible by laying down the foundations for them earlier? Spending an hour in a children’s department at a library will quickly prove to you that graphic novel is king—the format seems to be more digestible and certainly more exciting for young readers—so it follows that we ought to share the classics earlier in these formats and reintroduce them in full later on, particularly if we have determined that plot comprehension is a necessary part of interacting with a piece of literature in an academic setting.

When educators think of literacy – the ability to read and write – they often place more importance on students’ abilities to read and fully understand a piece of writing. But experts say critical and creative writing skills are equally important. And, they say, they are too often overlooked in the classroom. Compared to reading, writing is more active. It helps students be independent thinkers, take ownership of their stories and ideas and communicate them clearly to others, says Elyse Eidman-Aadahl. She heads the National Writing Project, which offers help for teachers who want to push students to write more. Teaching reading together with writing improves both skills, says Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who heads a New York City writing center, Writopia Lab.

Although summer allows educators and students a few months to rest and recharge before school resumes in the fall, families have the important responsibility of ensuring what their children learned over the previous 10 months is not lost during days spent swimming in the pool or building sand castles at the beach. The term commonly used among educators for the skills students lose between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next is known as the “summer slide.” So what can families do to avoid the summer slide? Although not exhaustive, the recommendations below can help children maintain their academic skills during their months off. One recommendation: Expect children to read—books, magazines, graphic novels, newspapers—for at least 20 minutes each day on the level at which they were reading when the school year ended.

In this week’s column, we review U.S. editions of books that originated in Great Britain and Ireland. Included are books by authors and illustrators who continue to receive national and international recognition and are popular with readers on both sides of “the pond.”

A decade ago, just five states had any laws that mentioned dyslexia. Now if AB-110–a modest bill about developing a dyslexia guidebook–passes the Wisconsin senate and is signed by the governor, that state will become the 46th to have legislation specifically addressing the needs of children with that condition. This year alone, according to the website Dyslegia, more than 75 dyslexia-related bills are expected to be introduced in state legislatures. Why the wave of laws around this learning disability? Legal experts, teachers and literacy advocates point to one organization in particular: Decoding Dyslexia, a decentralized group of parents who have used social media and online resources to mobilize, raise awareness, and lobby state and federal legislators. Decoding Dyslexia started in 2011, when some parents–mostly mothers–in New Jersey discovered they were having almost identical struggles with different schools and districts. Their children had a hereditary disability, which had a treatment–dyslexic kids have to be taught to read more painstakingly, with special attention to what’s known as “phonemic awareness,” or the sound each letter makes–but the schools were unwilling or unable to provide the services they needed.

As teachers, we have some misconceptions about vocabulary. Many of us think, “If I discuss the target words during our read-aloud, I’ve effectively taught new vocabulary!” But that’s not true. Research shows that effective vocabulary instruction requires an explicit, multifaceted approach. This means that we need to incorporate many opportunities throughout the day to help students retain this new information. Hearing words during a read-aloud is just not enough. We also need to make sure our students get repeated exposure to vocabulary words across different texts, repeatedly, over time.

The Elgin Partnership for Early Learning is partnering with Greater Elgin Family Care Center to bring the While You Wait early learning initiative to center’s waiting rooms this summer. Modeled after the successful Language in the Laundromat Campaign, which created early learning experiences for families at two local laundromats in Elgin, the While You Wait initiative will create early learning spaces and experiences for families in waiting rooms. This initiative is part of Elgin Partnership for Early Learning’s strategy of reaching families where they are in the community and bringing early learning materials and activities within families reach. Elgin Partnership for Early Learning created bilingual, educational flipbooks with activities for parents to interact with their children as they wait to be seen by their doctor.

According to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, any toddlers who have more exposure to other children, such as those in daycare, may be particularly good at certain word learning skills. Young language learners acquire their first language(s) from the speech they are exposed to in their environment. For some children, like those in daycare, this environmental speech includes a large quantity of speech from other children, rather than from just adults and parents. Researchers at the University of Waterloo showed that toddlers processed the child speaker’s productions as well as those of an adult and with the same level of sensitivity to phonetic detail previously shown for adult speakers. This means that the toddlers understood the child speaker at roughly the same ability as an adult speaker. Although all of the children were good at processing child speech, the study found that toddlers who had more exposure to other children were better at associating a new word to a new object, which is a key process for language learning.

Changes in education policy often emanate from the federal government. But one policy that has spread across the country came not from Washington, D.C., but from Florida. “Mandatory retention” requires that third-graders who do not show sufficient proficiency in reading repeat the grade. It was part of a broader packet of reforms proposed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in 2002. Now 19 states have adopted the policy, in part because Bush has pushed hard for it. Florida’s law also included millions of dollars for supports like reading coaches and summer school sessions. Professor Nell Duke at the University of Michigan points out that the short-term gains could be due to those interventions, rather than retaining children. Oklahoma adopted mandatory retention in 2014. The policy was not accompanied with large state investments in its schools; in fact, it has one of the lowest rates of per pupil expenditure in the country. And yet, over the past 20 years, it has created one of the most comprehensive public pre-K programs in the country. Seventy-three percent of its 4-year-olds are enrolled.