We know a lot about teaching reading well. I say this (too) frequently in my work as a literacy researcher and teacher educator. We know a lot about teaching reading well. I say it so much because I want the teachers I work with to know that there are scientific ways to help young children become… Read more »
Science of Reading? Yes!
Feeling confused about what to do in the early literacy classroom? Wondering about strategies and practices that are better for your students? Worried if you’re doing it “right”? There’s a lot of talk about the science of reading on the internet lately, and while much is scientifically accurate and useful, some is less supported by… Read more »
Let It Snow!
Many young children are not provided adequate access to informational text in early literacy classrooms (Duke, 2000). However, reading informational texts early and often is very important for children! Informational texts help children to develop content knowledge, learn new vocabulary, and gain familiarity with subject area language conventions. What’s more, we now know that children’s… Read more »
Culturally Responsive Literacy – Día de los Muertos
What are you learning about with your students? Fall to Winter in the PreK-3 classroom usually means one thing – holidays. While we know you’re busy picking books, scripting plays, making treats, and coordinating your holiday teacher sweaters, we thought the season was ripe for recommending some fresh ideas for doing holidays inclusively with your young… Read more »
Translanguaging for Young Literacy Learners
We live in an increasingly complex, multilingual society where young children from a variety of ethnic, racial, and linguistic backgrounds work together to learn literacy in our classrooms. As we’ve written about before, there are many different Englishes (Fu et al., 2019). Our emergent bilingual students, in particular, will bring diverse English practices that include… Read more »
Rich Language Modeling in Diverse Books
As you’re working to diversify your library, you might consider exploring the linguistic diversity of the students in your classroom and in American society at large. Linguistically diverse children’s books can help accomplish this! Read below to learn a bit more about dialects of English and speakers of English as a new language, then find… Read more »