Today’s Literacy Headlines

Four educators offer suggestions on helping students develop critical-thinking skills, including through the use of “evaluative praise.”

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have significantly impacted school library budgets and spending this year, according to the results of the latest SLJ School Library Budget and Spending Survey. About 38 percent of librarians reported a decrease in their library budget from 2019–20. Many schools are looking for donations and other sources of funding to supplement their budget losses, while teachers are spending hundreds of dollars of their own money on items for the library and also searching for free and donated materials though sites such as DonorsChoose. The percentage of funding coming from book fairs decreased as well, from 17 percent in 2017-18 to 14 percent this year.

Everything was normal last spring up until the minute it wasn’t, as the world seemed to stop on a dime and schools found themselves transitioning overnight to remote instruction. But while the great COVID pivot may have felt instantaneous, it took far longer to begin to grasp the consequences for students and families of these long-run closures. Here at The 74, we’ve chronicled those consequences over the past 12 months via our new PANDEMIC hub. Now looking back through the seasons at which stories were most shared and widely circulated, a few obvious trends emerge about the evolving reality for students and readers’ top concerns. Here are a dozen of the key lessons we’ve learned over the past 12 months about the students most impacted by the public health crisis.

Only 35 percent of America’s 4th graders read proficiently, and access to educational opportunity and literacy in the United States remains overwhelmingly defined by ZIP code, race, socioeconomics, and ethnicity. In failing to set so many students up for future success, we have not only cheated our children, but we have failed our teachers. They have been fighting a constant battle to help their students thrive in a system set up to fail them, generation after generation. Teaching remotely for many months has not lightened those stress loads nor revised the necessary objectives ahead. Here’s an urgent two-point plan to fix what’s been fundamentally broken for generations as we think about what classrooms should look like in the 2021-22 school year ahead and beyond.

Whether a part of online or in-person classes, videos are a teaching tool that can enable students to learn new concepts and skills and engage in practice activities, all at their own pace. What actually happens when students watch instructional videos in class, however, doesn’t always lead to the expected outcome. From my own experience in a classroom and through my interactions with these teachers, I’ve discovered some strategies to help students learn from videos, regardless of the educational setting. It turns out that I had missed a huge step in the learning process. I had never taught my students how to learn from a video. First, think about your objectives for the video.

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools and libraries last spring, nothing felt the same. But one thing that didn’t change was the curiosity of kids. Even as their lives were upended by the new virus, they wanted to know more about it, and more about the workers who kept the world spinning while the rest of us stayed home. Those who make books for kids felt the same curiosity. While many adults coped with the lockdown by taking up new hobbies or baking bread, some authors and illustrators found that leaning into the situation with creativity was a better fit. A year into the pandemic, those projects are beginning to hit bookshelves. They include everything from hopeful picture books and tributes to scientists and essential workers to historical perspectives on public health.

For many elementary school teachers, teaching students how to read is a central part of the job. But the majority of states don’t evaluate whether prospective teachers have the knowledge they’ll need to teach reading effectively before granting them certification, according to a new analysis from the National Council on Teacher Quality. According to NCTQ’s evaluation of state licensure tests for teachers, 20 states use assessments that fully measure candidates’ knowledge of the “science of reading,” referencing the body of research on the most effective methods for teaching young children how to decode text, read fluently, and understand what they’re reading. For special education teachers, a group that regularly works with students with reading difficulties, just 11 states’ certification tests meet this standard.

Digital picture books have been a godsend during the pandemic. With libraries shuttered and bookstores a nonessential trip, many parents have downloaded book after book on tablets and smartphones to keep their little ones reading. But when the pandemic is over, many parents will face a dilemma. Should they revert back to print or stick with e-books? Do kids absorb and learn to read more from one format versus the other? A new analysis of all the research on digital picture books, published in March 2021, helps to answer this question. The answer isn’t clear cut: paper generally has an edge over digital but there are exceptions. Digital books can be a better option with nonfiction texts and for building vocabulary. Some digital storybooks were better; researchers found that certain types of story-related extras seemed to boost a child’s comprehension but they were rare.

April has long been known as “Autism Awareness Month,” but advocates are pushing this time around for a federal designation of the month focused on acceptance instead. The Autism Society of America is spearheading an effort calling on local, state and federal leaders across the nation to name April “Autism Acceptance Month.” The group is seeking support from members of Congress and the White House for the designation. The Autism Society notes that advocates have been using the term “acceptance” over “awareness” for some time, but the government has been slow to adjust. Other groups including Easter Seals and the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities are supporting the effort. “It’s not enough to know that someone has autism, we need to accept and push for inclusion so that individuals can fully participate in our social fabric,” said Christopher Banks, president and CEO of the Autism Society.

Marianne Carus, the German-born, Sorbonne-educated founder of Cricket, the lively and erudite monthly magazine often called “The New Yorker for kids,” died on March 3 at her home in Peru, Ill. She was 92. Ms. Carus began Cricket in 1973 after years of dismay over what she considered the sorry state of children’s reading material, including the books that her own three children brought home from school. “Good literature is literature you cannot put down,” she explained.. “And children for some reason did not get the best literature in the schools or in their homes.”

The history of vaccines is a deserving addition to Don Brown’s Big Ideas That Changed the World graphic nonfiction series, and the arrival of “A Shot in the Arm!” couldn’t be more timely. Narrated by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), this fascinating and enlightening journey takes us around the world and introduces us to a range of scientific superstars of germ theory and vaccination development. One of the book’s shining moments is a clever infographic depiction of how vaccines help antigens more efficiently fight certain pathogens.

The right to be taught how to read is a birthright of all Americans, argues attorney Mark Rosenbaum. And schools have a responsibility to teach them, says reading expert Nell Duke. They are allies in a series of legal cases to try to establish the “right to read,” and they join podcast co-hosts Karin Chenoweth and Tanji Reed Marshall in this second installment of a series of podcasts about reading instruction. (The first was a conversation with reading researcher Alfred Tatum.) Among other things, they discussed the three legal cases Rosenbaum has brought.