Past Issues

Books & Authors

Our New National Ambassador for Young People's Literature: Walter Dean Myers

Reading Is Not an Option. That's the simple, profound message that Walter Dean Myers wants to spread far and wide as he takes on the role of ambassador to young readers across the country. Myers discovered at an early age that books could take him to places far beyond his neighborhood. In this interview, Myers talks about the impact that learning to read had on him and why it's important to him to write about the urban African American experience.
Watch interview >

Drawing from Memory: Our Interview with Allen Say

Allen Say writes and illustrates evocative picture books about family, culture, and creative expression. Say won the Caldecott Medal for Grandfather's Journey, the story of his father's own journey from Japan to the U.S. and back again. In this interview, Say vividly remembers his early apprenticeship in Tokyo with post-war cartoon master Noro Shinpei, describes a first career as a commercial photographer, and recounts how he finally returned to his love of storytelling through words and pictures.
Watch interview >

Take Flight!

Discover stories about aviation pioneers, hummingbirds, Chinese kite flying, paper airplanes, and a young girl whose imagination carries her high above New York City — in this collection of beautiful picture books for kids 3-9 years old.
See new booklist >

Stories for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Celebrate the life and civil rights work of Dr. King on January 16th, the National Day of Service, where volunteers across the country work together to make a difference in their communities. The booklists below include fiction and nonfiction books about ordinary people who stand up for what's right as well as stories about helping others and giving back.
See booklist >

See Making a Difference booklist >

Ideas for Educators

Featured Strategy: List-Group-Label

List-group-label is a form of semantic mapping. The strategy encourages students to improve their vocabulary and categorization skills and learn to organize concepts. Categorizing listed words — through grouping and labeling — helps students organize new concepts in relation to previously learned concepts.
See strategy >

Go inside Cathy Doyle's second grade classroom in Evanston, Illinois to observe her students learning the list-group-label strategy. Cathy builds the lesson around the concept of gardening, based on a recent classroom read-aloud, The Gardener.
Watch list-group-label in action >

70 Ways to Use an iPad in Your Classroom

Here are just a few of the things your students can do with the iPad: make music, practice letter formations, write a puppet show, practice oral fluency, create an e-book, take a virtual field trip with Google Earth, turn the iPad into a walkie-talkie, turn on collaborative whiteboards for idea sharing, play tangrams, and much more.
View slideshow >

Working and Playing with Words

Browse this treasure trove of online activities and reference materials about word study. Topics include high-frequency sight words, word families, word games, and word study activities (add an ending, letter chart, locomotion letters, and more).
Visit Literacy Connections website >

Ideas for Parents

How to Read Nonfiction with Your Child

Many kids love to read about science and nature as well as real people, places, and events. Nonfiction books present information in engaging and interesting ways. Help your child learn to navigate all the parts of a nonfiction book — from the table of contents to the diagrams, captions, glossary, and index. (From our Growing Readers series, in English and Spanish.)
See article >

Subscribe to Growing Readers >

The Nature of Building

Our new themed literacy bag — all about building and architecture — encourages hands-on fun and learning centered around paired fiction (Roberto: The Insect Architect) and nonfiction (Construction Zone) books. Learn about nature's own architects by exploring animal homes in your neighborhood, practice the art of design by creating blueprints together, and take the building challenge! Can you build a two-foot structure strong enough to support 100 pennies — without using tape or glue?
See literacy bag >

You've Got Mail!

Celebrate National Letter Writing Week (January 9-13) by encouraging your child to write a real pen-to-paper letter. It can be a personal note (a belated thank you for holiday gifts), a fan letter to a favorite author, or a persuasive letter to a local official about a community service project. Here are some activities to get you started.
See article >

Related blog post:
The gift of a thank you letter >

Related booklist:
Letter Writing with Flare >

Research & News

Bringing Speech Recognition to the Classroom

According to the report of the National Reading Panel (2000), the single best practice for developing reading fluency is one-on-one guided oral reading. Most classrooms are not staffed to provide enough guided oral reading practice. In this new report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Marilyn Jager Adams, a pioneer in literacy research and practice, points to evidence that basic speech recognition technology — widely used in telephone call-routing and directory assistance — can be tapped as a cost-effective and scalable way to provide individual reading support to improve early childhood literacy, particularly fluency.
Download report >

Children in Poverty Need Opportunities to Play

Play is essential to the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being of children beginning in early childhood. It provides time for parents to be fully engaged with their children, to bond with their children, and to see the world from the perspective of their child. However, children who live in poverty often face socioeconomic obstacles that impede their rights to have playtime, thus affecting their healthy social-emotional development. In this follow-up report to its earlier statement on the importance of play for all children, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) looks at specific concerns affecting the 15 million children living in poverty in the U.S.
Read report >

Response to Intervention with English Language Learners

Looking through the lens of culturally responsive practice, this report considers how best to implement Response to Intervention (RTI) in a way that will provide equitable educational opportunity for students who are English Language Learners.
Read report >

"The value of reading has escalated in my lifetime. As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this."

— Walter Dean Myers (From an interview on School Library Journal)