Beloved and exquisitely talented, Jerry Pinkney (1939-2021) gifted us with his beautiful storytelling and picture books, meant to be shared on laps and in classrooms and libraries everywhere. His beautifully detailed watercolor illustrations won numerous awards, including five Coretta Scott King Awards and five Caldecott Honor Medals. In 2010 he was awarded the Caldecott Medal for The Lion & the Mouse,” a retelling of the Aesop fable set in the Serengeti, with the characters surrounded by other African wildlife.
In this exclusive video interview with Reading Rockets, Jerry Pinkney talked about telling stories through pictures and creating real, true portraits — as well as growing up as a “slow reader” and the early encouragement he received as a young artist.
The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language — and that there is an organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
It’s a busy life filled with lots of things to do and even more distractions. But there’s one pursuit that can be fun for everyone involved, plus it has benefits that will have a lifelong impact. All that’s needed is a comfy place, an adult, one child or more, and a good book to share.
Some kids, especially those having difficulty in school, dread report card time. Here are some suggestions for making report card time a little less scary and a little more productive.
The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn the alphabetic principle — the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language — and that there is an organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
Find out what to look for in a classroom that supports inclusion. Features include how the students are grouped, social skills programs, and use of multi-modal learning aids and assistive technology.
Learning a second language for school is not simply a linguistic challenge; it poses social, cultural, academic, and cognitive challenges as well. This article describes a conceptual model for acquiring a second language for school that reflects all these challenges, and makes recommendations for instruction stemming from this model.
In addition to the unique gifts and interests that autistic students bring to the classroom as people, their responses can serve as an early warning system for pedagogical problems that are happening in the classroom as a whole.
If you think your child might have a learning disability, this article will help. Dr. Larry Silver tells parents the clues to look for in pre-school and elementary school children. Then the article talks about how to get a “psychoeducational evaluation” to find out for sure.
PBS Kids has been a leader in autism awareness, developing original programming for television, web, and mobile platforms. Learn about the children’s program and find links to games for kids and companion resources for parents and educators.
The best strategy for developing reading fluency is to provide your students with many opportunities to read the same passage orally several times. To do this, you should first know what to have your students read. Second, you should know how to have your students read aloud repeatedly.
Young children learn by doing. Discovering what they can do with objects leads to learning to talk and to pretend. Find out what actions with objects children should be learning each month from 9 to 16 months. By 16 months, children should use at least 16 actions with objects.
Learn about factors related to school culture, teaching climate, and school-wide discipline practices that can aid or hinder a student with ASD’s educational progress.
