Today’s Literacy Headlines

There’s undeniable entertainment in watching an all-powerful Superman dish out justice to the bad guys. But it can be even more satisfying to see the job done by a hero without laser vision or invincibility or even much in the way of muscles. This is why underdogs work so well in children’s literature, where, to the target readership, everything from a school bully to a burdensome homework assignment can feel as overwhelming as a supervillain.

Why is it that most adolescents are struggling with reading proficiency? There are countless reasons why a student would struggle with reading, but often at the core is the pull reading method. In this instructional model, the teacher starts with her or his own comprehension of a text and works toward the goal of pulling students to this understanding. Although the mind-set behind this approach is well-intentioned, I believe it’s detrimental to students’ reading confidence and engagement for a few important reasons. How does an educator teach a student to fish or, rather, close read, without pulling students toward her or his understanding of a text? The answer is the push method. To get students working toward self-sufficient comprehension, the push method demands explicit reading instruction, a strategy affirmed by countless research studies.

Story time is a classic part of the school day for the nation’s youngest learners. Before they can read, preschoolers and early elementary school students sit with teachers and watch and listen as stories are narrated to them. Besides learning new vocabulary words and starting to connect written and spoken language, they learn to love stories and build a foundation for reading that can serve them for the rest of their lives. Melissa Malzkuhn has developed a new way for deaf children to get the same benefits of story time through an app. Malzkuhn is the founder and creative director of the Motion Light Lab in the Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. The VL2 Storybook Apps, available as individual books in the Apple app store, bring together English and American Sign Language so young children can connect the two languages.

Children cannot grow out of dyslexia. Rather, the dyslexia will only have more severe consequences over time with lack of intervention. It is critical to keep an eye out for all possible red flags at every grade level to understand when intervention is needed. Every individual is completely different, so educators must figure out each student’s strengths and weaknesses. In addition, depending on the severity of the symptoms, it’s possible that they could show up at different ages, which is why it’s critical to watch for these red flags throughout all grade levels. There is also a misconception that students cannot be screened for dyslexia until as late as second or third grade. In fact, early screening, if possible, is key.

Just a quarter of the roughly 3,700 children’s books published in the U.S. and Canada last year feature nonwhite characters. Lisa Philip of WUNC reports some parents and children’s authors of color are trying to change that.

U.S. children are becoming less likely to live in extreme poverty or to be imprisoned, according to the latest annual report of federal data on child health and well-being. The 2018 America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, published by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics in the National Institute of Chid Health and Human Development, collects data from 23 federal agencies that work with children and families, and it gives insight into risks and supports for children in and out of the school day. The data also show more preschool-age children are participating in center-based child care, including Head Start and private preschool centers. However, the data also show more than a third of older school children have no after-school enrichment or care.

We are seeing new articles in the media saying that American elementary school educators don’t understand the science of how to teach kids how to read — and even if they do, some resist it. These reports then suggest that a return to explicit phonics instruction and the dismissal of other approaches is the only valid response to scientific research. Though pendulum swings between phonics- or basic-skills-focused instruction and meaning-focused instruction have been ongoing for decades, this round of debates has set up a new straw man, Balanced Literacy. Unfortunately, what these reports get wrong about Balanced Literacy demonstrates exactly the kind of thinking that limits opportunities to develop literacy for all children. Many students aren’t being taught to read because of the same misconceptions perpetuated by articles that have recently raised the alarm about current methods of teaching reading and identifying reading disabilities such as dyslexia.

Angie Schreiber sees it time and again: dyslexic students failing to learn to read through traditional teaching techniques. But she says she knows how they can flourish. Schreiber’s private teaching service in Emporia uses an approach known as structured literacy. The method drills students on myriad rules of English sound and spelling that most of us never learned consciously. For years, dozens of parents of children with dyslexia have gone to the Kansas Legislature with stories of students who don’t get what they need in school — or get it years late, when catching up is many times harder. Many want the type of lessons Harrison receives. Now, a state task force could make that happen — with potential, and controversial, effects for how schools teach all children to read.

“I don’t write for children,” Maurice Sendak told Stephen Colbert in his last on-camera appearance, four months before his death in 2012. “I write — and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’” Sendak has enchanted generations with singularly illustrated stories that delight children and emanate existential consolation for the trauma of living. Sendak’s posthumously published collaboration with the writer and director Arthur Yorinks, is not one of those books. At least not at first glance. Rather, it is the playful story of two friends’ adventures in a topsy-turvy world, part “Alice in Wonderland,” part Grimm fairy tale, part prescient analogue for the nonsensical cultural moment we inhabit. “One day Presto and Zesto, good friends, took a walk and ended up in Limboland,” we read. “They didn’t mean to go there, who would go there, but they had a lot on their minds.”

Jennifer Serravallo is the author of over 10 books on reading assessment and instruction. She was a a NYC elementary teacher and later a senior staff developer at Columbia University’s Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. She has also taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Vassar College and Teachers College. As is true with all of my books, my aim is to help teachers better know their students in order to tailor their instruction. The tools I provided in The Reading Strategies Book are in the form of strategies organized by reading goals. However, as I detail in The Reading Strategies Book, strategies can look and work differently across texts at varying text levels. That’s where Understanding Texts & Readers comes in. The information I provide about leveled texts and how it relates to comprehension offers teachers the tools of clearly defined text characteristics and many examples of student responses with annotations. This knowledge will help teachers choose the right goals and the right strategies at the right time to support students’ comprehension.

Laurel Highlands School District was one of four districts selected by WQED Education and PBS Kids to participate in a program that combines literacy and computer science. District officials are calling the partnership a “game changer” that will enhance and expand early literacy opportunities for Laurel Highlands students and have a lasting impact on the community. WQED and PBS Kids will assist in converting the district’s four elementary schools — R.W. Clark, Hatfield, Hutchinson and Marshall — into “smart schools.” Each school is set to receive 15 PBS Kids tablets, as well as iPads, literacy and coding programs, family programs and branding materials. WQED and PBS Kids will also provide the district with professional development, curricula and instructional practices. Laurel Highlands will have access to PBS characters for district and community events, as well as the opportunity to host PBS Kids world premier events.

Stacks of heavy cardboard boxes, sealed with duct tape, crowd the guest bedroom of the Patton family’s Arabella Street home. But they’re not stuffed with family belongings. Each box contains books donated by authors and publishers from around the country, Canada and even Japan, en route to a small town in the Mississippi Delta. Camille Patton, 17, maintains two Free Little Libraries in Leland, Mississippi, where she has relatives. It’s a city of fewer than 5,000, with high poverty and low literacy rates. “I hope my library can play some small part in helping to improve literacy and that children in Leland start to get more of the opportunities that have been available to me,” said Camille, a student at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans.

A group of Democrats in the U.S. Senate have introduced their version of a bill designed to address the national shortage of teachers who work with English-language learners. The Reaching English Learners Act would create a grant program under Title II of the Higher Education Act, the part of the law that regulates teacher preparation, to pave the way for colleges and school districts to develop curricula for aspiring ELL teachers. U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, who has emerged as an English-learner advocate on Capitol Hill, introduced the bill. Among the co-sponsors of the legislation are U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California — which is home to more than 1.5 million English-learners — and U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, who began her formal education as an English-learner. Lawmakers in both chambers want the grants to help develop educators who can recognize and address the social-emotional needs of English-learners, identify and teach English-learner students with disabilities, and promote family and community engagement in ELL programs.

The Shaywitzes — experts in dyslexia at Yale who have been married to each other for 55 years — remain as focused as ever on a research endeavor they began 35 years ago. Sally, 76, and Bennett, 79, both academic physicians, run the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. Their goal is not just to widen understanding of the scientific underpinnings of dyslexia, the most common learning disorder in the United States, but to push for public policies aligned with that knowledge. For years, dyslexia was largely misunderstood as a reading problem that caused children to reverse letters, and often was seen as a sign of laziness, stupidity or bad vision. The Shaywitzes’ work has shown there is no link between dyslexia and intelligence, and that dyslexia is not something one outgrows.

Middle-grade readers live in a wonderful-awful, in-between time that holds both the last moments when toys seem magical and the first breathless discoveries of what deodorant and mascara wands are meant to do. By now, they know about the world’s harshness, but they may not be quite ready to face it full on. These three powerful authors push the edge of comfort in their latest works — presenting the loveliness that the best childhood moments hold alongside the realities of inequity, profound loss and deep neglect. Readers (and their parents) will be all the better for it.