We all use strategies throughout our day to remember the variety of facts and ideas we need to retain. It is valuable for teachers, therapists, and parents to understand the memory process in order to become better equipped to help our students understand and use strategies.
Watch our exclusive video interviews with top children’s book authors and illustrators. You’ll discover how family history weaves itself into Jacqueline Woodson’s powerful stories, why Erin Entrada Kelly says there are many different ways to be strong and mighty, why Patricia Polacco’s warm family tales seem so real, and many more insights into your favorite book creators.
Reading fluency is a child’s ability to read a book or other text accurately, with reasonable speed, and with appropriate expression. A fluent reader doesn’t have to stop and “decode” each word and can focus attention on what the story or text means. Fluency is the bridge between decoding words and understanding what has been read!
Generally, research has found that digital books are read with lower comprehension and more mind wandering. But there are some strategies teachers can try to support comprehension with digital text.
Browse our collection of books to help you continue to deepen your knowledge about reading, writing, and effective classroom instruction. You’ll also find books on reading motivation and reading aloud to children.
In classrooms around the country, teachers need to teach reading to children who don’t speak English, and they haven’t been trained. Experts Diane August, Margarita Calderón, and Fred Genesee discuss the best research-based practices for teaching English language learners.
Reading expert Linda Farrell works with Reese to master the name of every letter. She helps Reese sing the alphabet song clearly and with no mistakes. She teaches him to look carefully at letters as he names them. Ms. Farrell also helps Reese identify every letter of the alphabet accurately, including differentiating between letters that look similar (in Reese’s case, ‘y’ and ‘v’). Learning the name of every letter is a critical pre-reading skill.
Learn about 10 instructional practices for English language learners (ELLs) that research shows to be highly effective. These guidelines emphasize an asset-based approach to teaching ELLs and can be integrated into your regular teaching routines.
Children take their first critical steps toward learning to read and write very early in life. Long before they can exhibit reading and writing production skills, they begin to acquire some basic understandings of the concepts about literacy and its functions.
Reading expert Linda Farrell shows Xavier how to read and spell unfamiliar multisyllable words with one vowel letter in each syllable. First she makes sure that Xavier has three prerequisite skills: being able to read one-syllable nonsense words, knowing how to count syllables in spoken words, and naming the vowel letters. Xavier learns that every syllable has a vowel, and that he can count the vowel letters to break a long word into syllables to make it easy to read. To figure out how many syllables are in a word, Ms. Farrell teaches Xavier to ask two questions: How many vowels are in the word? Are the vowels together or apart? In a separate video below, Ms. Farrell listens to Xavier read aloud to help him read with accuracy.
Teachers do their best to improve students’ fluency, but sometimes the information they have to work with is incomplete and, therefore, leads them down the wrong path. For example, silent reading or ‘Round Robin’ reading seem like good ways to improve fluency. But, in fact, increasing fluency requires more practice, more support, and more guided oral reading than either of these strategies can deliver.
Put together a summer listening program for your child. Listening is an engaging way to learn, so your child may love listening to books and other written documents. Have them listen to music and stage plays, comedy routines, and other works. Point out background sounds, such as the way the peppy tune on a sound track adds fun and humor to an adventure tale. Learning to listen is particularly helpful to children with learning disabilities.
School psychologists working in districts that use Response to Intervention (RTI) can offer expertise at many levels, from system-wide program design to specific assessment and intervention efforts with individual students.
Texts that are challenging and that represent a wide range of genres and content areas need to play much bigger roles in comprehension instruction. These texts expose students to rich content and vocabulary and can help build knowledge.
Reading stamina is a child’s ability to focus and read independently for long-ish periods of time without being distracted or without distracting others. Find out how you can help your child develop reading stamina.
For young children who have struggled socially or academically during preschool, transition to kindergarten needs careful planning and attention. See four suggestions for parents of children who may need extra help making a successful move to kindergarten.
Ron Fairchild and Loriene Roy — nationally recognized experts on reading and summer learning — address how to make the most out of the summer months. Taking advantage of high-quality programs and accessing community resources can turn potential summer loss into summer gain.
Alphabet knowledge is the ability to recognize and name uppercase and lowercase letters, recognize letter symbols in print, and know that there are sounds associated with each letter. Alphabet knowledge is a key pre-literacy skill and lays the groundwork for future reading success.
Welcome to Target the Problem! — information to help parents and classroom teachers understand the specific problems a child may be having with reading. You’ll find practical suggestions on what you (and kids themselves) can do to help students overcome or deal with their reading difficulties.
Semantic maps (or graphic organizers) help students, especially struggling students and those with disabilities, to identify, understand, and recall the meaning of words they read in the text.
