Choose wisely! This list is not exhaustive, but gives parents and educators a good idea of what to look for when considering an app and evaluating its educational value. Use app review sites and advice from literacy experts — including your local media mentor or librarian — to find materials that match children’s needs.
Background knowledge is crucial to a child’s academic success. Young children, especially those from at-risk communities, need broad and deep exposure to informational text and rich vocabulary in order to develop more complex thinking skills.
Jigsaw is a cooperative learning strategy that asks groups of students to become “experts” on different aspects of a topic and then share what they learn with their classmates.
Writing instruction is an essential component of literacy in K-5 classrooms. Children who practice daily writing strengthen phonemic awareness, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, critical thinking, and communication skills.
A psychologist specializing in language-based learning disabilities explains how to talk to children about their LD: All the parts you need to be smart are in your brain. Nothing is missing or broken. The difference between your brain and one that doesn’t have an LD is that your brain gets “traffic jams” on certain highways.
Teaching is an act of practical reasoning, persuasiveness, problem solving, and communication. It needs to be shaped by science but much of it is improvisation rooted in experience.
A mother describes the warning signs for dyslexia in her daughter that she didn’t see clearly. She also shares the life-changing resources that helped her understand what dyslexia is and how to get her daughter the support she needed to thrive.
Alphabetics is a term for the letter-sound elements of learning to read, including phonemic awareness and phonics. In this summary, find out what practices for teaching alphabetics have been proven effective by research.
Individualized education program (IEP) goals cannot be broad statements about what a child will accomplish. Goals that cannot be measured are non-goals. Learn how to help the IEP team devise specific, measurable, realistic goals.
This article says that according to a new study, former full-day kindergartners were more than twice as likely as children without any kindergarten experiences and 26 percent more likely than graduates of half-day programs to have made it to 3rd and 4th grade without having repeated a grade. This study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
Think-alouds have been described as “eavesdropping on someone’s thinking.” With this strategy, teachers verbalize aloud while reading a selection orally. Their verbalizations include describing things they’re doing as they read to monitor their comprehension. The purpose of the think-aloud strategy is to model for students how skilled readers construct meaning from a text.
Many students encounter difficulty as they transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” in fourth grade, and this difficulty can be even more pronounced for English language learners. Featuring Nonie Lesaux, this webcast explores effective strategies for instruction and assessment that can help teachers support their ELL students.
This article discusses current research-supported instructional practices in reading and writing. It also reviews alternatives to ability-achievement discrepancy in identifying students for special education services, as well as introduces the idea that ability-achievement discrepancies should be based on specific cognitive factors that are relevant to specific kinds of learning disabilities rather than Full Scale IQ.
Revising is the process of reviewing, refining, and improving written compositions. It is a crucial step in the writing process and goes beyond simply correcting spelling and grammar; it also involves rethinking and refining the content, structure, and style of a written piece.
Get the basics on social-emotional learning (SEL) — what it is, and how SEL supports the healthy development of children in school and in life. You’ll also find ideas on how to integrate SEL into literature studies and writing instruction.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) influences how a child sees and experiences the world. Children on the autism spectrum bring many strengths to the classroom, yet they may also have challenges with social skills, language, and behaviors that require additional classroom supports for learning to read.
Launa Hall’s travels take her to Italy, land of transparent orthography, where she discovers how real-world learning opportunities and strong, long-term relationships between teachers and students benefit students of all ages.
A visual schedule communicates the sequence of upcoming activities or events through the use of objects, photographs, icons, or words. Find out how to set up visual schedules in your classroom to support your students with ASD.
Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects writing abilities. Learn the warning signs and strategies that can help. There are techniques for teaching and accommodating early writers, young students, or help yourself if you struggle with dysgraphia.
