Reading Instruction

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...

The connection between learning to read and learning to write is noteworthy, if not profound. In a post to the Psychology Today website, education researcher and consultant J. Richard Gentry made this declaration: “Writing is one of the best ways to teach beginners how to read.” 

Today’s youngest students are often expected to be able to read by the end of kindergarten. This amounts to a sea change in comparison to previous years, when first grade was considered the typical year for reading skills to take hold. In 2016, researchers from the University of Virginia published...

In 2014, The New York Times provided space for an intriguing debate when researchers, administrators, and educators were asked to share their thoughts on a fundamental yet controversial topic: reading instruction. The precise question asked was whether “schools should use the student-centered balanced literacy program to teach reading or require...

For some struggling readers, the source of the difficulty is clear. But what about students whose reading struggles seem to vary from one day to the next? For example, a student might quickly and correctly answer comprehension questions only to seem “lost” when it’s time to write a reader response,...

A 2018 post on the online education news site Education Week recently posed an intriguing question: “What if a DNA test could show how to teach a student with dyslexia?” This is a theory currently being tested in New Haven, Connecticut, in conjunction with Yale University and its robust research...

An understanding of the writing process is important for young writers. However, the time involved in editing and revising means that not every piece of writing can—or should—be taken all the way to the publishing stage. So when students put the work into making their writing publication-ready, that effort needs...

We have a very diverse student body with a wide range of academic needs and strengths. Wanting to “fill a gap” in our student literacy proficiency—without having to take additional time away from instruction to assess individual students—we started looking for a solution to streamline and improve our current instruction...

All words are powerful, but some words have superpowers. Consider words and phrases that indicate relationships between ideas, like also, however, as a result, in addition, for example, and in contrast. These are signal words, and they are sentence superheroes. The ability to identify and understand the meaning of signal...

In the fall of 2016, Scholastic and YouGov conducted their biannual survey and put together the “Kids and Families Reading Report.” The results underscored the relationship between student reading and educational success, while also demonstrating the critical role that literacy educators play in fostering a love of reading. Perhaps the...