Reading Instruction

While the effects of reading struggles are often far-reaching, there is an upside: Efforts to increase reading success have the potential to positively influence a student’s long-term trajectory. With this in mind, schools looking to have a broad impact on student outcomes can implement systematic and sustainable long-term practices, such...

More than 1 million students drop out of high school every year in the United States (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2010), which equates to almost 7,000 students leaving school each day of a typical school year. These numbers are alarming to say the least, especially considering the positive impact of...

One in five students has a language-based learning disability, according to the Dyslexia Center of Utah, a nonprofit advocacy group. Further, the group notes on its website, the majority of such students have dyslexia. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however, as the Dyslexia Center of Utah also...

Here’s a simple yet powerful point that bears repeating: “All teachers want their students to master the skills that will allow them to enjoy reading books and writing their own texts.” This line comes from a 2019 blog post by Dr. Deborah K. Reed, director of the Iowa Reading Research...

Thanks to inclement weather, elementary school teacher and college lecturer Justine Bruyere stumbled onto an innovative way to build her young students’ literacy skills. As Bruyere recalled in a recent piece for the online education site Edutopia, one of her second-grade students came to her for help with spelling during...

How can a school help students make gains on annual math and reading tests while also ensuring the development of long-term, transferable academic skills? One answer, based on a model in use at Concourse Village Elementary School in New York City, is to adopt a collaborative, “literacy-first” approach to teaching...

Sheila Valencia—a language, literacy, and culture professor at the University of Washington, Seattle—is right. In a post for the teacher resource site Edutopia, Valencia made this point: “Many reports and research studies have documented the adolescent reading challenge—too many students are unable to learn and build new knowledge from the texts...

Classrooms across the United States are changing rapidly. Today more than ever, teachers are likely to encounter students whose native language, race, or socioeconomic status differs from their own. Indeed, according to a 2017 Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece by education policy writer Maureen Downey that touched on the changing demographics in...

The so-called reading wars flared up again recently when reporter Emily Hanford released a radio documentary series about reading instruction through American Public Media. In a 2018 “Hard Words” episode, Hanford dived directly into the conflict at the heart of the reading instruction wars: Is it best to use phonics-based...

It is clear that screens and software learning programs are here to stay, both in the classroom and in the private lives of students and teachers. A 2017 post on Tech Edvocate—a website devoted to all things connected to digital learning—outlines the many ways in which technology is having an...