In Focus: Screening for Reading Difficulties
According to the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), universal screening is a critical first step in identifying students who are at risk for reading difficulties and who might need more instruction. Screening should take place at the beginning of each school year in kindergarten through grade 2. The WWC recommends that schools create a building-level team to facilitate the implementation of universal screening and progress monitoring. Early screening and progress monitoring should focus on skills such as: letter naming fluency, phoneme segmentation, nonsense word fluency, word identification, and oral reading fluency. In accompanying videos, learn more about how to implement a screening program and use the data effectively.
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Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential pieces of the instructional puzzle to ensure that all students become fluent readers. For screening, passages are selected from text at the student's grade level. Here's how teachers can use words-correct per-minute (WCPM) results to make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students.
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First week jitters? Assessing kids those first few days and weeks of school probably isn't a great idea. Kids need a chance to settle in to school, to learn the new routine, and generally become more comfortable in the new classroom. Hopefully, by waiting, a child's assessment results more accurately reflect her true skills. So, what's a teacher to do during those first few days? Some thoughtful planning, watching, and listening can yield some terrific information about student skills.
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For Parents
This research-based online tool is fast, free, and easy-to-use — just 20 questions that parents and caregivers can ask a four-year-old to see if she is on track for learning how to read. To use the tool, all you do is read the question that appears on the screen. Your child will answer by pointing to one of four pictures. When you're finished with all 20 questions, a score will appear.
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In Focus: Phonemic Awareness
Basic listening skills and "word awareness" are critical precursors to phonological awareness. Learn the milestones for acquiring phonological skills. (Excerpted from Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) by Louisa Moats and Carol Tolman).
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These short video clips give you the chance to watch and learn effective phonemic awareness activities. Many of the video clips are from Reading Rockets' PBS television series Launching Young Readers.
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Children who can segment and blend sounds easily are able to use this knowledge when reading and spelling. Guess-the-word, blending slide, sound blending using songs, and the segmenting cheer give kids good practice with these essential skills.
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For Parents
There's a reason we learn nursery rhymes as young children. They help us develop an ear for our language. Rhyme and rhythm highlight the sounds and syllables in words. And understanding sounds and syllables helps kids learn to read!
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Books & Authors
"You know what?" Erica S. Perl is the author of the wonderfully silly, begging-to-be-read-aloud picture book, Chicken Butt, as well as the sequel, Chicken Butt's Back. Perl's other titles for young readers include Dotty, a gently told, perceptive story about school days and imaginary friends and Ninety-Three in My Family, a lively rhyming story that is part tall tale and part counting book. Her books tap deep into what's funny, what's real, family, friends, and growing up.
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Send a back-to-school e-card to the young readers in your life! Our 2011 back-to-school e-card features an illustration by Julia Denos from Erica Perl's book, Dotty. You can also download and print our Dotty-inspired lunch box notes.
Bus driver, digger man, firefighter, baker, snail trainer, or pickle inspector? Explore jobs people have (real and imaginary!) in these picture books for kids 0-8 years old.
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Dramatic, powerful weather has been in the news lately. Help your child learn more about what causes different weather conditions and how meteorologists make predictions. After reading the paired fiction and nonfiction books recommended here, try some of the hands-on activities — like cooking up a batch of lightning pancakes or inventing a bit of tornado poetry!
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Ideas for Teachers
Reading intervention programs play an important role in helping all students become confident, skilled readers. There are lots of programs available to schools. If you are planning to purchase an intervention program for instruction, it's important to do your homework and get as much information as you can about a program's features, benefits, and effectveness. This article provides basic comparative information about a range of commercially available intervention programs.
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Lots of teachers want to start using technology in their classrooms, but just aren't sure where to start. In this free online book, you'll find introductions to more than 70 web tools for K-12 teachers, with detailed sections on good blogging tools for elementary grades and how to use Skype. Web tools like Fotobabble (talking photos) or Weebly (class websites) give kids a chance to write and publish their work in new way — and give parents a window into their child's classroom and learning.
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What items would you select to showcase the life of an Egyptian pharaoh, inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin, or the writer Laura Ingalls Wilder? On this website, students become the curators and create their own 'museum boxes' filled with images, text, video, and audio.
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Ideas for Parents
Learn about Response to Intervention (RTI), a multi-step approach to helping struggling readers before they fail. RTI is being adopted in schools across the country — is your child's school one of them? Find out what universal screening, progress monitoring, and research-based instruction mean; the role of RTI in eligibility for special ed; and how parents can be involved in the RTI process.
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Discover some simple hands-on activities and games that can be done at home or in your backyard to help your child develop a deeper understanding of cause and effect — and strengthen reading comprehension and scientific inquiry skills. Children's books that extend the activities are also included. (In English and Spanish)
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Subscribe to our Growing Readers parent newsletter to receive your free tip sheet each month.
For kids who want to hear one more story…visit the Read to Me website where kids 'push play' to watch videos of favorite stories like Chrysanthemum, Lily's Big Day, and Fancy Nancy, being read aloud with enthusiasm and charm by a variety of celebrities. The site also includes lesson plans filled with discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities for exploration and creativity. There's also a phone service where kids can access stories anytime.
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Research & News
[Arizona's Kyrene School District] offers what some see as a utopian vision of education's future. Classrooms are decked out with laptops, big interactive screens, and software that drills students on every basic subject. The digital push here aims to go far beyond gadgets to transform the very nature of the classroom, turning the teacher into a guide instead of a lecturer, wandering among students who learn at their own pace on Internet-connected devices. Hope and enthusiasm are soaring here. But not test scores. Since 2005, scores in reading and math have stagnated in Kyrene, even as statewide scores have risen.
At a time when school budgets and staff rosters are shrinking, technology can seem like an affordable solution to maintaining quality instruction. This New York Times article examines the pros and cons of the new digital classroom and what parents, teachers, and administrators in the Kyrene district think about it all.
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In this comprehensive study of time and learning policies, discover how schools, school districts, and states around the country are developing and implementing innovative and cost-effective ways to expand learning time for students in an effort to boost academic achievement and provide a well-rounded education.
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This reboot of the U.S. Department of Education website, Ed Data Express, provides visitors with new ways to analyze and interpret the mountain of information that the department collects. Robust new data visualization tools allow you to create your own easy-to-understand charts, graphs, and trend lines.
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We are walking by the lake.
Abuela probably wants to go for a boat ride.
"Vamos a otra aventura," she says.
She wants to go for another adventure.
That's just one of the things I love
About Abuela.
She likes adventures.
— From Abuela by Arthur Dorros, from our booklist Favorite Latino and Spanish-Language Books
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