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.
Is your school using the Common Core standards? Get to know what the four main areas of the Common Core reading standards mean and simple things you can do at home to help your child build skills in these areas.
Is your school using the Common Core standards? Get to know the four “anchors” of the Common Core writing standards and simple things you can do at home to help your child build skills in all of these areas.
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. Find out how you can 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.
Expository text can be challenging to young readers because of the unfamiliar concepts and vocabulary it presents. Discover ways to help your students analyze expository text structures and pull apart the text to uncover the main idea and supporting details.
Learn how to implement a research-based text structure strategy that infuses text structures at every step of reading comprehension instruction, beginning with the introduction of the lesson, previewing of text, selecting important ideas, writing a main idea, generating inferences, and monitoring comprehension.
Getting information from a nonfiction text can be especially challenging for ELLs, who may not have had much experience working independently with expository texts. This article offers ways that teachers can help ELLs work effectively with nonfiction texts and includes strategies for introducing components, structure, and purpose of expository texts.
Inferential thinking is a key comprehension skill that develops over time through explicit teaching and lots of practice. Find strategies for teaching inferencing, watch a demonstration, and observe a classroom lesson in action.
An Inquiry Chart (I-Chart) is a tool that enables students to generate meaningful questions about a topic and organize their ideas. Students integrate prior knowledge or thoughts about the topic with additional information found in several sources.
In this article written for Colorín Colorado, ELL expert Susan Lafond provides an introduction to the Common Core State Standards through a series of FAQs.
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 for an audience gives kids a reason to use their developing reading and writing skills. Here are some tips to get you and your child started with free, safe blogging sites.
Is your child enrolled in kindergarten in a school that is implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)? In this overview for parents, learn more about what Common Core is and how to know whether a teacher is providing developmentally appropriate instruction to address the CCSS for your child. Here are some of the questions you might ask yourself.
The Knowledge Matters Campaign is an advocacy initiative focused on the critical role of knowledge-building in reading comprehension and critical thinking, with the belief that introducing all young children to rich disciplinary content and vocabulary levels the playing field for learning. The campaign highlights English language arts (ELA) curricula that are carefully designed to build background knowledge in science, history, literature, and the arts, alongside sound foundational skills instruction.
