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May 2012

In Focus: Summer learning
Books & Authors: Interview with Henry Cole | Books for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month | Interview with Linda Sue Park
Ideas for Educators: Book trailers | Too much strategy instruction? | Universal design for learning
Ideas for Parents: Top 13 vocabulary apps | River-themed family literacy bag | Developmental milestones questionnaire | How well does my child hear and talk?
Research & News: Peer-assisted learning strategies | Technology and young children

In Focus: Summer Learning

Get Ready for Summer

Unpack our Summer activity "beach bag" — designed for teachers to share with families — and launch a Summer full of active and enriching learning experiences. What's in the bag? Ideas for encouraging everyday reading and writing, as well as links to online resources on how to start a neighborhood book club, reading incentive programs, volunteering and active citizenship, kid-friendly gardening projects, great science-focused websites, and much more.
See Summer resources >

Here are a few one-page articles to print and share with families:

Summer Learning, Side-by-Side [English, Spanish]
Use Summer Fun to Build Background Knowledge [English, Spanish]
Summer Reading and Fluency: Tips for Parents
Finding a Great Summer Program: A Checklist for Parents

Michael's Successful Summer

Michael is an eight-year-old whose dyslexia has made school a struggle. Follow him to a six-week intensive summer program at the Landmark School — a well-known school for children with learning disabilities based in Beverly, Massachusetts. The Landmark program features explicit instruction, a slower pace, and lots of repetition to help students like Michael. (From our Adventures in Summer Learning show).
Watch video >

The Library Is Open

Teachers: Invite or ask your school librarian to coordinate a visit from the children's librarian at the public library near the end of the school year. Ask them to talk about summer activities, educational videos, and audio books at the library and to distribute summer reading program materials.

Parents: Find out if your local public library is part of the Collaborative Summer Library Program, a grassroots effort to provide high-quality summer reading programs for kids. The theme for 2012 is Dream Big: Read! Our bilingual sister site, Colorín Colorado, offers tips for parents in Spanish about visiting the local library.
Top 9 reasons to rediscover your public library > [English, Spanish]

Find many additional resources for teachers, librarians, and families in our Summer Reading section

Books & Authors

Animal Faces: Our Interview with Henry Cole

Author and illustrator Henry Cole — creator of Celeste, The Worrywarts, Katy Duck, and many other beloved characters — talks about his early career as a science teacher (who always drew for his students!), why it takes patience to draw what you really see, how he gets those comical animal faces to look just right, and why he loved using a plain Number 2 pencil to create the evocative illustrations for his book A Nest for Celeste.
Watch interview >

Celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage!

A good book can open a child's eyes to new places, new customs. From food (Bee-Bim Bop!) to family stories (Grandfather's Journey) to folktales (Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story): discover the rich culture, humor, and traditions of Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Hawaii in this collection of picture books for kids 3-9 years old.
Go to booklist >

Additional booklists for APA Heritage Month:

For more APA Heritage Month resources, including information for ELL teachers, visit Colorín Colorado's APA Heritage Month resource section.

Bee-Bim Bop! Our Interview with Linda Sue Park

Park has been a writer for as long as she can remember — she had her first piece of writing (a haiku) published at the tender age of nine. She brings Korean history and culture vividly to life through her richly imagined stories for young readers. Park creates unforgettable characters that cross centuries and continents, yet still feel fresh and relevant — like the 12th century orphan, Tree Ear, from her Newbery winning novel A Single Shard.
Watch interview >

Ideas for Educators

Watch, Connect, Read: Exploring Children's Literature Through Book Trailers

Mr. Schu is a K-5 teacher-librarian on a mission: to get the right books into the hands of every child. Video book trailers are one terrific way to connect young readers with books they will love. On his completely absorbing blog (Mr. Schu Reads), you can get a front row seat to lively presentations by some of your favorite authors and illustrators, tour children's literature landmarks, push play on hundreds of book trailers, join Mr. Shu on his Newbery Challenge, check out his bookshelf on goodreads, and more.
Visit book trailer blog >

Too Much Strategy Instruction?

In a recent blog post by Prof. Daniel Willingham, a UVA Professor and Cognitive Scientist at the University of Virginia, Willingham wonders whether teachers are spending too much time teaching strategies. Willingham fears the "collateral damage" of too much strategy instruction is bored kids who never get the opportunity to sink into a book. In considering how often the instruction takes away from a child's reading, Willingham asks, "How can you get lost in a narrative world if you think you're supposed to be posing questions to yourself all the time?" When thinking about effective instruction, it may be that the questions to ask are about time. How many minutes are available for instruction? How many of those minutes are used for strategy instruction (or prereading)? Is that the best use of those minutes? We'd love to hear what you think.
See blog post >

Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the Needs of All Students

Katherine, a speech-language pathologist in a large elementary school, works hard to provide appropriate and relevant services to students in general education classrooms. She doesn't do much pull-out, instead preferring to work in classrooms using adapted classroom materials. She spends a lot of time modifying materials and developing personalized resources for specific students. As she packs up her bag filled with paperwork to finish at home, she thinks, "There must be a better way to meet the needs of all the students on my caseload."

Discover how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can support young learners with different needs and abilities. UDL offers options for how information is presented, how students respond or demonstrate their knowledge and skills, and how students are engaged in learning.
Learn more about UDL >

Ideas for Parents

Our Top 13 Vocabulary Apps

Crosswords, Scrabble-style games, and interactive explorations of homophones, synonyms, and opposites — browse our baker's dozen of fun apps that engage young kids with words.
See vocabulary apps >

River Rhythms

Our new themed literacy bag — all about water and rivers — encourages hands-on fun and learning centered around paired fiction (Paddle-to-the-Sea) and nonfiction (The Big Rivers: the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Ohio) books. Build a simple stick raft (and take it out for a test run!), create and listen to the sounds of the river right at home, or compose your own river-inspired rap or folk song.
See literacy bag >

Checking in on Developmental Milestones

The first five years are critical in a child's life. And this is the most important time to get your child support for a developmental delay or special need. Children develop skills, or "milestones," at their own pace. How is your child doing? You only need 10-20 minutes to check with the Ages & Stages Questionnaire from Brookes Publishing. The results will help you see if your child's developmental progress is on time — and alert you to any issues you'll want to talk about with your pediatrician.
Take the questionnaire >

How Well Does My Child Hear and Talk?

Most children are able to listen to simple stories, songs, and rhymes by the time they are one to two years old. However, every child is unique and has an individual rate of development. Learn more about the developmental milestones for hearing, understanding, and talking — and where to get help if you are concerned.
Go to article >

Find more resources in our Speech, Language, and Hearing section

Research & News

Peer-Assisted Learning/Literacy Strategies (PALS)

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) released an updated report on Peer-Assisted Learning/Literacy Strategies (PALS). Children in PALS classrooms work in pairs on reading activities to improve reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. The WWC reviewed 45 studies; two met WWC evidence standards and one met WWC evidence standards with reservations. Based on these three studies — which included more than 3,000 K-1 beginning readers — the WWC found PALS to have potentially positive effects on alphabetics, no discernible effects on fluency, and mixed effects on comprehension for beginning readers.
See the full report >

Technology and Young Children

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media released a new position statement: Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8. The statement provides research-based guidance to all those who care for young children as they consider if, when, and how to use technology and interactive media in early childhood programs (schools, centers, family child care) serving children from birth through age 8.
See the full statement >

Pockets

What's in your pockets right now? I hope they're not empty:
Empty pockets, unread books, lunches left on the bus — all a waste.
In mine: One horse chestnut. One gum wrapper. One dime. One hamster.

— a sijo poem from Tap Dancing on the Roof by Linda Sue Park