Today’s Literacy Headlines

A Delaware-based study found that a substantive increase in young immigrants leads to sizable academic gains for students who were already in English learner programs or who had graduated from them. And at a time when immigrant students are portrayed as a drain on U.S. schools, researchers also found that those who had never been enrolled in English learner programs were not significantly impacted. Their performance improved, but by a negligible amount. 

It’s not enough for schools to help students with learning differences or disabilities shore up their academic weaknesses. Students also need to learn how to communicate with others—particularly adults—about their unique needs, experts say. Self-advocacy is a vital skill for future success in college and the workforce for students with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or other learning challenges. Throughout their lives, neurodivergent students will find themselves in situations where they must explain the particulars of their learning differences or disabilities to teachers, coworkers, and employers as well as what accommodations they need to succeed—whether it’s a formal individualized education program, extra time to perform tasks, or simply what they know helps them do their best work.

Perhaps the ultimate test is whether it merits a reread, even after all the objects have been found. Scientists tell us that tasks like solving puzzles or finding hidden images are linked to the brain’s reward system. “Aha” moments when we locate an elusive item release a hit of dopamine, which creates a sensation of pleasure and motivates us to keep going. This may help explain why Highlights has never stopped running “Hidden Pictures,” and why the Where’s Waldo?, I Spy and Can You See What I See? series are still going strong, decades after their debuts.

If knowledge matters more than academic skills, how should administrators and teachers alter the curriculum and instruction in schools to best serve students? We’ve confirmed the theory. Now what does it mean for practice? Decades ago, E.D. Hirsch created the Core Knowledge Foundation, as he believed his insights pointed primarily to the challenge of getting curriculum right: Schools must sequence a knowledge-rich progression of learning both across and within grades. He’s correct about the centrality of curriculum, but there are also instructional practices that teachers can adopt to prioritize knowledge even if their school or district doesn’t adopt Core Knowledge or another knowledge-rich curriculum such as Wit and Wisdom.

Jeff Kinney is on the road again. A new “Wimpy Kid” release and subsequent road trip by the author and his team have become an annual event each fall. For Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hot Mess, the 19th book in the best-selling series, Kinney scheduled a tour of 14 interactive shows, as well as three planned school events and at least five spontaneous pop-ups along the tour route, stopping at bookstores, libraries, and outdoor areas. At the schools and pop-up visits, Kinney will give kids the opportunity to choose a free book from a diverse collection provided by First Book.

Struggling readers in upper elementary grades and beyond can benefit from decoding instruction to help boost their reading proficiency, including comprehension skills, according to a new study. Without foundational word recognition skills, it can be difficult for struggling older readers to improve their comprehension of grade-level texts, the study by the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund and the Educational Testing Service found. Early and targeted interventions are critical for helping upper elementary and middle school students understand texts that have increasingly complicated sentences and multisyllabic words.

Human brains can discern the basic structures of written language from a single glance — enabling us to quickly consume the torrent of information fed to us by smartphones, a new study finds. This means that people can process words as quickly as we comprehend visual scenes, a skill that enables us to continually observe and navigate the world around us. The new finding, published in the journal Science Advances, could help reveal key clues about how our brains encode language, the researchers said.

A new study offers evidence that “the human cortex displays a progressive increase in phonetic encoding during nursery rhyme listening across the first year of life.” The implication: at seven months, infants can already detect phonological information in singsong rhythms, where the rhythmic information supports that. This speaks to the vital importance of library programs for the very young to help model songs and rhymes to families. 

A study published in the journal JAMA Network Open indicates that autism prevalence jumped from 2.3 per 1,000 to 6.3 per 1,000 during the decade 2011-2022. The highest prevalence of autism was seen among children ages 5 to 8, the study found. “The improvement and expansion of universal developmental screening likely accounts for some of the increase in diagnosis rates we found in this study,” said Luke Grosvenor, the study’s lead author and a research fellow at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research.

A whole-school approach helps teachers model how to break down discipline-specific texts. One of the core findings in the research on how students learn to read is the importance of developing the background knowledge needed to keep learning new content. But what gets more complicated, researchers point out, is that the tools that experts in each discipline use to read begin to evolve differently as the texts get more sophisticated.

New research shows that some older students hit a “decoding threshold.” Over 20% of students in fifth through seventh grade stumble over words they don’t recognize or can’t sound out, often preventing them from grasping the main idea of reading materials for school, according to the study released Wednesday from the Educational Testing Service and the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund.

AI offers educators valuable resources to help build libraries that are both diverse and accessible. For instance, AI tools such as Perplexity can assist in curating a wide range of multicultural texts, making it easier to build both digital and physical classroom libraries.

Research shows little benefit from phonics instruction in Grades 2 through 12. However, more recent studies show that students who fall below a decoding threshold fail to benefit from other kinds of reading instruction. This exploration of the evidence suggests that these students are likely to need support in the reading and spelling of multisyllabic words and words with common morphological elements. Explicit instruction with a focus on the decoding, spelling, and meaning of such words would make a lot of sense.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology on Thursday released its highly anticipated guidance to help K-12 leaders integrate artificial intelligence into their school districts. The AI toolkit’s development was prompted by President Joe Biden’s October 2023 executive order, which called for his administration to create resources that would help teachers implement the technology. 

Allycia Uhrhan’s 6th graders at Truman Middle School in St. Louis started their field-science week collecting data on fish hatching at nearby Forest Park. But the trip really started the prior week, in English class, where teacher Kristina Kohl had students dig into history and science articles about the park to pair with Uhrhan’s ecology readings. Once the students returned, they wrote up lab reports and reflections on their field day in both classes.

Administrators can use an approach focused on transparency and data-driven action to improve academic outcomes in low-performing schools. The path to improvement may be difficult, but the results can be transformative with the right focus and a commitment. If you’re leading a district through tough times, my advice is simple: Be honest with your community and let data guide your decisions. The effort is worth it, and the impact on your students’ lives will be profound.

These tips for using artificial intelligence with younger learners guide teachers to age-appropriate exploration of this technology. The heart of the challenge is to remember that when we evaluate how new tools work with our students, those tools may change the process of instruction, and that’s OK. 

Stitching data literacy lessons into early elementary school curriculum can be simple, given that young children can understand data use and concepts since they’re typically using data already without even realizing it, math curriculum experts say. Tracking the weather and tapping into a child’s natural curiosity are two ways to build young learners’ understanding of data.

Adults can offer prompts, reading suggestions, and support, but that what’s most important is that young writers own their work, discover their own processes, experience encouragement but not too much intrusion from adults. As with so many other aspects of teaching or parenting, we may never know what sticks. But if we can help set the wheels in motion, we can let young writers take it from there.

The Emerson challenge is a direct response to work the St. Louis NAACP is doing to improve reading scores and close the literacy gap for Black students, said Jesse Dixon, an Opportunity Trust consultant and one of the project leaders for the challenge. The branch also launched a campaign this year called Right to Read, which is working with superintendents, teachers, parents and nonprofits to get all third graders in the city and county of St. Louis reading well by 2030. 

In The Walk, a child and her grandmother put on their jackets and hats and leave their house. They stop at home, stores, and even the barbershop — smushing their faces up against glass windows, knocking on doors, inviting friends and neighbors to join them on their walk. The group is made up of young and old — one woman with a walker, kids holding hands. The procession grows and grows as they reach their destination: the polls. It’s time to vote. “The message is clear,” says author Winsome Bingham, about her 2023 children’s book. “We’re stronger together. That’s the message.”

By planning more collaborative and communicative conferences, teachers can foster strong relationships with families that last all year long. The more teachers make the process accessible, the higher the likelihood that caregivers will show up and contribute to helping support their student’s growth. Families can be brought in with simple communication tools before conferences even begin. Planning ahead for translators where needed and providing families context about their child’s progress in advance helps them prepare to engage in conversation, which ensures that the meetings are more collaborative and equitable. 

Illinois’ Kindergarten Individual Development Survey, or KIDS, can predict how students will perform on state standardized tests, such as the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, in third grade, according to a new report. Researchers also found that white and Asian American students scored higher in KIDS than their Black and Latino peers and students who were eligible for free or reduced lunch, English learners, and students with disabilities – a gap that continued to grow larger in third grade.

What’s the best way to help young Latino students and/or young kids who are still developing proficiency in both English and another language, known as dual language learners, or DLLs? It’s one of the most stable findings in education research: These kids uniquely benefit from early education programs. Why? It’s simple: because these programs give them an early start on English acquisition and sometimes provide them with opportunities to keep growing in their native languages. 

Disciplinary literacy goes beyond the idea of reading widely in the content areas and their own vocabularies. It underscores that the tools one uses when conducting a literary analysis is different from those one would use to peruse a scientific technical study. But the connection to the general goal of skilled reading is clear: Learning how to read in different disciplines can enhance the content knowledge that underlies reading comprehension. Timothy Shanahan, who sat on the 2000 National Reading Panel and later helped develop the concept of disciplinary literacy, took questions from EdWeek on how it fits into K-12 schools’ larger aims on reading.

It is imperative for WIDA to explicitly integrate phonological awareness and word recognition skills into their standards, proficiency level descriptors, and assessments. This integration would ensure that ESOL programs can better support multilingual learners by aligning their instructional approaches with the structured literacy training that educators are receiving under recent literacy legislation.

Propelled by impressive academic recovery metrics, Superintendent Tony Watlington has curriculum rollouts, facilities improvements and more on the agenda. We recently caught up with Watlington to learn more about the lessons learned so far from the rollout of Accelerate Philly, what he credits the district’s impressive academic recovery to, and where he thinks pandemic relief funds were best invested. 

Teaching the historical method—the way in which history is researched, interpreted, and written about—poses many challenges. Nevertheless, introducing students to the historical method will go a long way in helping them understand how history comes to us, the manner in which it is recorded and preserved, and some of the common pitfalls of studying history. Understanding the historical method can strengthen students’ writing, reading, and analytical skills. Short activities built on examining photographs, artifacts, and other resources from the past can help students think like historians.

Universal literacy screeners are valid and reliable assessment measures that are given to all students three times a year. They are brief measures of reading skills that don’t take up a lot of class time when administered (about one minute long and mostly online). Likewise, the results are immediately available to analyze. Screeners can certainly identify students at risk for reading difficulties, but they can also identify skills a majority of students may be struggling with that could be addressed in Tier 1 instruction.

With Thanksgiving and National Native American Heritage Month celebrations on the horizon in November, there are ways that schools can look to local organizations representing Indigenous people to ensure lessons and curricula involving Native Americans are accurate. Schools can look to tribal organizations and nonprofits representing Indigenous people for resources to improve curricula.

Does the arrival of English learners in a school district and the resulting need to invest resources in serving them hurt the academic outcomes of U.S.-born, non-English learners? Is the growing English-learner population leading to adverse effects on other students? No, says a new study published in an American Educational Research Association journal this month. “At least in the context of Delaware, … we do not find an adverse effect on the educational outcomes of students in host communities, and we even find positive effects for existing English learners, either current or former.”

Many preschool children spend too much time indoors huddled around screens. Despite the fact that time in nature increases opportunities for play and exercise, boosting children’s health and development and reducing hyperactivity — the bane of our short-attention span era — most American preschoolers don’t get enough time outdoors, according to a new national report from the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). “Outdoor nature-based learning is vital for young children’s health, development, and education .. Increased screen time and reduced exposure to nature are linked to serious health problems, such as obesity, diabetes, hyperactivity, stress, asthma, and allergies.”

Kindergarten readiness assessments can reveal if children are in need of additional supports and identify students’ baseline skill levels, but they can be time-consuming and disrupt the process of young students acclimating to school, according to teacher insights released Thursday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an independent watchdog of the federal government. Some teachers also voiced concerns about assessment accuracy and the assessments’ relevance for instruction.

To the best of my knowledge, “When We Flew Away,” by the acclaimed novelist Alice Hoffman, is the first book to imagine Anne’s life in the years before the diary, as the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands mounted. Starting in May 1940, just before the Nazi invasion, and continuing up to the day the Franks went into hiding, in July 1942, the novel envisions what Anne might have been like before the cataclysm that shut her away from the world and made her into “the voice of the Holocaust,” as Hoffman describes her in an afterword to the novel.

At Partnership Schools, we are excited that so many Ohioans are excited about the “science of reading.” In 2023 legislation that took effect this school year, Governor DeWine and the General Assembly have mandated that all reading curricula follow this approach—one we know well, since Partnership Schools have implemented it for over a decade. So what have we learned so far about effectively implementing research-backed reading curricula in our classrooms?

Author and educator Doug Lemov says carving out time to read-aloud with middle school or even high school students can help improve fluency and strengthen the comprehension muscles we want them to flex: “analysis and interpretation cannot happen without a fluent reading,” he said. Meanwhile, a 2013 study focused on middle school read-alouds found they can help model positive reading behaviors for reluctant readers, expose students to beautiful language and literature, and guide them toward higher-level thinking. 

The Philadelphia school district’s demanding new English language arts curriculum is getting mixed reviews from teachers. One of their major complaints is that they must spend a lot of time making sure they can use provided materials in their lessons. They also say there is not enough class time to help lagging readers, and that they haven’t been adequately trained to teach the new curriculum. At the same time, teachers do not dispute its emphasis on the science of reading, which is now generally accepted as the best method for literacy instruction. There are also indications that teachers are seeing students engage better with reading materials and demonstrate stronger literacy skills.

Like worksheets, question cubes use pre-made question sets, but they lead to a much different kind of engagement by incorporating collaborative learning strategies. Research has shown repeatedly the value of interactions with others in student engagement. Collaborative learning increases social skills, promotes creativity, develops higher-level thinking skills, and overall leads to a better learning experience, which in turn leads to deep learning.

Leveled books have been a staple in early elementary reading instruction for more than two decades, with 61 percent of K-2 and special education teachers having said that they use them for small group work. But as the “science of reading” movement has spread, these texts have come under fire. Initially, they encourage students to guess at words rather than use their phonics skills, researchers say, which can prevent children from mapping the letter-sound connections that allow them to become fluent readers. A second problem is how they sort students into levels. 

Baseball is America’s game, one of our most enduring and exuberant inventions. The speed and finesse of its stars have inspired generations of young people. In a pair of new books set about a century ago, baseball is thrillingly played by two Black girls pursuing their passion in the face of tremendous obstacles. Both “hold fast to dreams,” as Langston Hughes exhorted, as well as to the line drives they dive to catch.

As an intervention teacher, I’m afforded an opportunity to advocate for students across their school day. By forming connections and letting them know I’m in their corner, I hope to build stronger relationships with them that give them motivation to work even harder or challenge themselves further. Of course, students can improve without this connection, but building relationships can accelerate this process. Kids want to work hard, learn how to read, feel confident, and meet their goals. 

High-quality out-of-school-time programs play an important role in children’s holistic development, extending and complementing their academic experiences in valuable ways. Research shows that participation in high-quality programs can improve academic outcomes — a critical benefit as school and district leaders decide what’s best for their students, and part of what made these programs such an appealing target for stimulus money. But what’s really special about them isn’t just the opportunity to improve academic skills. It’s that they are — simply put — fun. 

The Ship in the Window is the story of Mabel, the mouse, who lives in a little cabin on a lake. She lives with a boy and his father, whose prized possession is a model ship. Mabel dreams of taking the ship out on the lake, but the father doesn’t let anyone get near it. Until one night, Mabel finally gets her chance at adventure. The Ship in the Window is illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell.

“A really important pillar of Norway’s early ed philosophy is the value of childhood in itself,” said Henrik D. Zachrisson, a professor at the Centre for Research on Equality in Education at the University of Oslo. “Early ed is supposed to be a place where children can be children and have the best childhood possible.” The government’s view isn’t that child care is a place to put children so parents can work, or even to prepare children for the rigors of elementary school. It’s about protecting childhood.

There’s no question that many American parents desperately need more support. Yet the surgeon general is missing one important strategy that is within the control of every parent: a look in the mirror. What if the ways in which we are parenting are making life harder on our kids and harder on us? What if by doing less, parents would foster better outcomes for children and parents alike?

If there’s a toddler in your life, chances are you know the name Sandra Boynton. Reading her board books to little ones at bedtime is part of the nightly ritual in homes across America. For our Weekend Spotlight series, John Yang visited Boynton on her farm in Connecticut.

Teachers of every content area can introduce place-based learning that encourages students to understand the vital importance of rivers in multiple contexts.

Oftentimes teachers and other adults can forget what it’s like to be a student learning information for the first time. Additionally, there are other issues that can influence the ability to retain information. “The more you know, the easier it is to learn new things,” said Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. When children learn new information, their ability to take in that information is informed by their prior knowledge of a related topic.

In the last few years, school districts across the country have seen significant declines in reading and math, leading to lower test scores. Parents of Black and Latino students, in particular, feel schools are failing their kids, and many young people have stopped attending class altogether. While students struggle, large school districts keep fiddling around the edges with incremental changes that won’t make a difference fast enough. Things are different in the Houston Independent School District. One year into the state intervention in the district, our results show meaningful growth for students and schools because we’ve embraced wholesale systemic transformation.  

There are concrete ways to support neurodivergent students right now and all year long that can decrease their stress and improve the likelihood of positive outcomes. Yes, these students have unique challenges. But each and every one of them also has unique strengths, and we have the opportunity to boost their confidence and nurture their strengths.

Roughly 1 in 5 children in the United States are estimated to be neurodivergent, with a range of learning and thinking differences. Those differences have nothing to do with intelligence—but derive from how their brains receive, process, and respond to information. For educators to more effectively support such students, they need to first understand some basic facts and figures. Here are data snapshots of five common types of neurodiversity and learning differences in students.

Parents can improve kids’ reading comprehension by limiting their screen time and sharing books with them. Children of parents who encourage reading perform better at reading comprehension and, equally significant, at understanding social experiences and creating mental constructions of others’ behavior. 

Authors John Schu, Jas Hammonds, Jonell Joshua and Elvira K. Gonzalez spoke at the Brooklyn Book Festival on representation in YA and children’s books. “Books can be the perfect prescription to let us know that we’re going to be okay,” said author and children’s librarian John Schu during a panel at the Brooklyn Book Festival. “Stories affirm our experiences.”

As spooky season approaches, the master of children’s horror recommends creepy-crawly classics and modern thrills for young readers.

A bestselling author of books for young readers was announced Tuesday as one of 22 winners of the 2024 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, widely known as the “genius grant.” Jason Reynolds ’05 will receive a $800,000, no-strings-attached award in recognition of his work “depicting the rich inner lives of kids of color and ensuring that they see themselves and their communities in literature,” the foundation said.

In celebration of Latinx Heritage Month, SLJ reviews director Shelley Diaz will speak with Newbery Medalist and National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature Meg Medina about Latinx representation in children’s literature, her most recent picture book,  No More Señora Mimí, upcoming projects, and more on Monday, October 14 from 1 to 2 p.m. ET. Medina is the 2019 Newbery Medal winner for Merci Suárez Changes Gears. 

“Deficits-based” approach vs “strengths-based” — such drastically divergent approaches to neurodiversity can be confusing to classroom teachers aiming to find meaningful ways to support neurodiverse students. Many education experts advise that teachers should take a “middle-of-the-road” stance, espousing the benefits of a strengths-based approach to teaching neurodiverse students while cautioning against referring too readily to neurodiverse diagnoses as “superpowers.”

To better support my fifth-grade multilingual students, I started to incorporate strategies that I learned through Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD) into our small groups. Project GLAD is a teaching method that uses diverse strategies to help bilingual students learn both content and language at the same time. With just a few strategies, I noticed an increase in engagement as measured by participation. 

While tutors can facilitate the reading process, students need to be self-motivated. Tutors can help students pronounce words and teach them the basic building blocks of reading. However, if students don’t read on their own time, they can’t take their skills to the next level. That’s why it’s so important for teachers and families to impart kids with a love of reading. The combination of phonics and a genuine interest in reading creates lifelong learners.

Education Week interviewed five high school students who attend Jemicy School, an independent co-ed school for grades 1-12 in Baltimore that specializes in serving students with dyslexia and related language-based learning differences. The students opened up about their individual journeys with dyslexia, explained what the diagnosis has come to mean to them, and offered some advice for teachers.