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From Anecdotes to Action: Using Data to Drive Instruction
Data is an incredibly important tool in education, as we think about what our students currently know and are able to do, and the goals we set for them in terms of how we want them to progress and develop their knowledge and skills. There is no shortage of assessments, and there is no limit to the amount of anecdotal and observational data we can collect on our students. Thinking about our assessment landscape can help us figure out which data we are gathering that are actionable, and how to look at many different data points to make instructional decisions.
Unlocking the Impact of Collaborative Learning Communities in Education
Whether through Professional Learning Communities, Communities of Practice, or Learning Collectives, working in a group is a powerful way to enhance learning. When we work and learn together, our collaboration pushes us beyond the limits of independent learning and results in dynamic, rewarding learning.
Harnessing the Power of Syllable-Type Instruction for Reading Success in 2024
Curious about the power of syllable types? Read on to explore effective ways to incorporate syllable-types into your instruction, along with two free resources.
Peggy Price, M.Ed., Fellow/OGA, on “Debunking Neuromyths” for READ with Parents Series presented by IDA-NNEA
In this free, recorded webinar, Peggy Price discusses common myths and misinformation about how we learn to read and how our brains work to enable reading.
The Transformative Power of Prioritizing Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is the ultimate goal we have for our students. These professional learning opportunities and resources can help clarify reading comprehension and how best to tailor our instruction to allow students the opportunity to practice strategies that result in thorough comprehension.
The Orton-Gillingham Approach: Better Teacher Training, Better Reading Outcomes
Anyone who chooses to become a teacher and devotes years to an undergraduate or graduate degree in education deserves to be taught evidence-based instruction with adequate mentoring and support.
The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: A Book Study
For educators interested in nurturing students’ reading skills, here’s a wonderful opportunity to enhance your teaching toolkit.
Why is Assessment Important?
Assessment expert Dr. Melissa Farrall explains how assessment helps us understand why children do what they do, and maps out how we can better meet their unique needs.
Learning How to Read is Harder Than You Think
Reading is a complex skill we learn through explicit instruction and deliberate practice. Here are four ways to support reading success!
The Reading Crisis and What We Can Do to Fix It
Effective literacy instruction in schools is our most powerful tool to advance equity of educational outcomes. Together, we can ensure that every child can read, write, learn, and thrive.
Types of Testing for Learning Disabilities
Testing helps us understand how a child learns best, giving us a full profile of their strengths and needs.
What is Dylsexia?
Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects language, reading, and writing. Learn more about what dyslexia is and how to help people with it.
Whole Language Vs Structured Language Approach to Teaching Reading
A long-running debate about the best way to teach children to read centers on two main approaches: whole language and structured literacy.
Write On! Three Ways to Teach Your Preschooler That What They Say Can be Written Down
Early literacy games to play at home that focus on building awareness about speech to print: how what we say can be written down.
Sharing Stories, Building Brains
Besides being a great way to connect with your child, reading and talking about books are keys to helping your child develop language, build comprehension and learn more about print.
Five Games to Help Young Children Learn to Read
Activities to help with early reading that are fun and not overwhelming, and leave children asking for more.
Phonological Awareness
Being aware of syllables helps us learn new vocabulary, sound out words, and spell.
Helping Kids Connect Speech to Print
People are motivated to read and write because we know that print contains a message. We also know that anything we say can be put into print.
Shared Book Reading
Besides being a great way to connect with your child, reading and talking about books are keys to helping your children develop language, build comprehension, and learn more about print.
How to Help Struggling Learners
When children and teens struggle in school, families often don’t know what to do or where to turn. Michelle Szabo, the Stern Center’s Director of Instruction, offers some advice to help students who are falling behind.
Middle School Matters: Advancing Adolescent Reading
This paper will address what can be done in middle school for the adolescent literacy learner, identified in the research as beginning in grade 4, in order to benefit from the opportunities that literacy affords.
You Can Do Anything: Book Inspires Kids with Dyslexia
Confidence is earned, not learned.
When a child lacks confidence, academic and social-emotional skills suffer. Lacking confidence, a child drifts through school like a sailboat on a calm day—bobbing on the surface, needing wind.
Congratulations! Your child is Discharged from SLP Services. Now What?
For many parents of young children with language or speech articulation problems, the day your child meets their goals and is discharged from services is cause for celebration.
Reading is Not a Guessing Game: Putting Research Into Practice So Kids Can Read
What do you think happens when a child can’t figure out how to pronounce that word? Take a moment to recall a time when you struggled with an activity and couldn’t figure it out, then imagine having the added stress of being watched closely by your teacher, parent or friends while the pressure builds for you to “just get it.” We get anxious. We then try to avoid it altogether.
Your Child’s Reading Level is Only the Beginning
A 2012 study, Double Jeopardy: How Third Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation, by the Annie E. Casey Foundation makes explicit that high school graduation rates are dramatically impacted by reading level at the end of third grade, an effect compounded by poverty. That study and dozens since then prompt parents to […]
Dyslexia, Music, and Multisensory Learning
Chloe was referred to the Stern Center for a comprehensive evaluation in response to concerns regarding math and spelling. While she has had no difficulty with math concepts or reasoning and is good at spatial thinking and 3-D challenges, her math facts are not yet automatic.
The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach
The Orton-Gillingham Approach is a direct and explicit, language-based, and multisensory approach to teaching reading, writing, and spelling. Initially developed in the 1930s by Dr. Samuel T. Orton, a neuropsychiatrist and pathologist, and Anna Gillingham, an educator and psychologist, the Orton-Gillingham (OG) Approach is the underlying foundation of all multisensory structured language instruction, inspiring many creative OG-based programs such as Wilson Language Training®.
Get Your Library Card Now!
A 2016 study reveals that book readers live longer than non-book readers (Bavishi, Slade, Levy; PubMed.gov of the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health)! “After adjusting for relevant covariates including age, sex, race, education, comorbidities, self-rated health, wealth, marital status, and depression,” the study found that “book reading contributed to a survival advantage that was significantly greater than that observed for reading newspapers or magazines.”
“Eye’ve” Got it!
I read a lot; always have. Fifty novels a year. Various weekly and monthly publications. Regular professional articles and occasional books. Encountering a new word used to lead me to the dictionary, which meant getting up and walking to my reference shelf, but now I just use my iPod to google the vocabulary interloper and then hope to claim it as my own
“All Things in Moderation” – Children & Screen Time
We all know the phrase “all things in moderation” well and practice it in a variety of areas of our lives. When it comes to parenting, moderation is more often the rule than the exception. However, applying moderation is sometimes harder than it seems when you don’t know quite as much as you’d like about what you are attempting to monitor.
Word Games, Etymology, Jabberwocky, Diagramming, and Library Cards
Language matters to me. Among my earliest memories are playing word games with my parents and siblings on those interminable family vacation trips. Fast on the heels of that (thanks to the elasticity of memory to a 62-year-old) is my delight, thought suspect by my 7th grade peers, in the daily etymology lessons in middle school English classes.
Fun Ways to Help Your Child Become a Strong Reader: Part 2
Without question, one of the best ways to help your child develop early literacy skills is by reading with/to them and by giving them access to reading materials around the house, in the car, and in public spaces. But did you know that there are other activities, besides explicitly reading to them, that can help them become strong readers? Let’s explore some together!
Early Childhood – The Exciting Span of Merging Skills Birth to Eight
A lot happens for children from birth to age eight. We have all heard the amazing reports about how experiences early in life impact brain development. Babies’ brains make 700 neural connections every second during the first three years of life! By six months of age, babies encode the sounds of the language they hear and watch the mouths of people who talk to them so they can do likewise.
Inspired by Reading & Candy Eating!
Here it is a couple days before Halloween and your children still haven’t figured out how they want to dress up. They’ve gone through the usual characters but nothing is “cool” enough, or their friend is already dressing up as that character and – Gasp! – It is a total fashion no-no to dress as the same thing “Duh, Mom!”
Growing a Reader
There is so much information that comes at you as a parent as to why reading with your child is so important. Reading aloud increases vocabulary, it improves listening skills and imagination, and it sets your child on the road to greater success at school. All of this pressure to read to your child can be very overwhelming.
Stop the Summer Slide: Make Summer Reading Fun and Easy This Year
Summertime brings with it long lazy days at the beach, hot fudge sundaes and ice cream cones, baseball games and BBQs. Forgotten are the days of getting up early, studying for tests, writing papers, and for many children, reading. As books and writing settle naturally to the back of children’s minds over vacation, so too does their education
Babble to Books: Reading with Your Very Young Child
The value of reading to infants and toddlers has been well documented by recent research studies. Reading aloud with young children, talking about the pictures on a page or even paraphrasing words expands children’s imaginations and encourages language development. Reading aloud allows infants and young children to hear the sounds of our language combined in words and sentences.
Create a Reading Habit
Bedtime stories are a long-standing family tradition in my family. Growing up I was read to every night before bed, a chapter here, a story there, and now do the same for my two boys who are three and five. Each night after brushing their teeth, my boys pick a couple of books off the bookshelf and the three of us hunker down in one of the big beanbag chairs we have sitting on the floor.
10 Great Books That Help Promote Phonological Awareness
Reading aloud with your children is one of the best ways to prepare them for future reading success. Shared Book Reading helps your child develop language, build comprehension and learn more about print (see our Top 10 List of Books to Read Aloud with Your Young Child through Shared Book Reading).
Cool Literacy and Learning Links
Do we all have “attention deficits”? Or is there something else going on? Let’s try this little experiment, conceived by Simons and Chabris for their classic study on sustained inattentional blindness (1999).
Dyslexia: Failure is Not an Option
I wish I would have known what was going on when my eldest daughter, Madeline, started learning to read. She hated it. She loved all of her other subjects but reading was painful. She used to hide under the table to avoid it. The most frustrating thing about this was that the school kept telling me that Madeline was fine.
Interesting Literacy and Learning Links
Ted Talk: Nancy Kanwisher: A Neural Portrait of the Human Mind. Brain imaging pioneer Nancy Kanwisher, who uses fMRI scans to see activity in brain regions (often her own), shares what she and her colleagues have learned: The brain is made up of both highly specialized components and general-purpose “machinery.” Another surprise: There’s so much left to learn
Interesting Literacy and Learning Links Round-Up
Brain Teaser:
This one has caused a lot of debate! What do you think?
Take a new test aimed at the world’s English Language Learners. Wondering how your English skills stack up? Try the sample questions at the end of the article on testing ELL students and see how you would fare. Do you agree or disagree with the answers?
10 Great Books to Read Aloud with Young Children
Our Building Blocks coordinator, Brenda Buzzell, has compiled a list of books that are not only fun to read with young children, but also helpful in promoting the three focus areas of the Building Blocks program: Shared Book Reading, Phonological Awareness and the Speech-to-Print connection.
10 Reasons to Keep Reading Aloud to Your Toddlers Even When They Prefer to Climb on Your Head
Do you get frustrated while reading aloud with your toddler? You pick out the perfect book. You get your child all comfortable on your lap. After one, maybe two, pages your little one tries to eat the book, hops off your lap and starts playing with a different toy, starts climbing all over you and in general seems completely uninterested in the story you are reading?
How To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part I)
How-To: “Help Get Your Child Ready to Read- Games”, is a four-part series of how-to videos for parents, and early child care providers and educators that shows you different games you can play with your children to help get them ready to read in kindergarten. This week’s How-To is all about rhyming and showcases a great game to play while driving in the car, sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office or while grocery shopping.
How To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part II)
This week’s How-To is a strategy to teach kids about syllable awareness and how words are made up of different parts and sounds. Children progress from simpler to more complex tasks when working with syllables:
How to: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part III)
This week’s How-To focuses on the sounds of letters. This is important because the ability to think about the individual sounds in a word is one of the strongest indicators of future reading success.
How To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part IV)
This week’s “How-To” focuses on vocabulary. Did you know that children from middle to high-income families have heard 30-million more words than their peers from low-income families by the time they are four? Unfortunately, this gap keeps widening as kids move through school.
Unlocking Literacy for My Student
Have you ever had a student who did not know their letters and sounds coming into first grade? Who could not segment or blend sounds?
A Chapter Here, A Comic Strip There
Bedtime stories are a long-standing family tradition in my family. Growing up I was read to every night before bed, a chapter here, a story there, and now do the same for my two boys who are two-and-a-half and nine months old.