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Get Ready for Summer! Ideas for Teachers to Share with Families
Reading Rockets has packed a "virtual beach bag" of activities for teachers to help families get ready for summer and to launch students to fun, enriching summertime experiences. Educators will find materials to download and distribute as well as ideas and resources to offer to students and parents to help ensure summer learning gain rather than loss.
Top 10 Resources on Speech, Language, and Hearing
Discover the importance of early language, listening, and speaking on literacy development. If you suspect that your child or a student is struggling with speech, language, and/or hearing problems, learn more about testing and assessment, accommodations, and additional professional help. You'll also find tips on reading aloud with children who have speech and language problems or who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Top 10 Resources on Tutoring & Volunteering
Explore how carefully supervised and well implemented tutoring programs can make a difference to struggling readers. Learn about finding the right tutor, tips for tutoring, evidence that tutoring works, how you can help, and even an easy-to-use assessment tool to make the most of a child's tutoring experience.
Key Shifts of the Common Core State Standards: English Language Arts and Literacy
The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (ELA) and Literacy are rigorous, internationally benchmarked, and aligned with college and work expectations. The standards set requirements not only for English language arts but also for literacy across the content areas, including history/social studies, science, and technical subjects.
Getting to Know the Common Core State Standards
Get the basics on the Common Core State Standards — what they are, who created them, goals, how they address content-area literacy, and what they offer for ELLs and special education students.
Going Green with English Language Learners
Tips for teaching environmental literacy to English language learners.
Science fiction is a type of fiction where the stories revolve around science and technology of the future. Science fiction texts are often set in the future, in space, in a different world, or in a different universe or dimension. As exciting as these books can be, it's useful to remind your child that while science fiction may be based loosely on scientific truth, it is still fiction.
Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the Needs of All Students
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides the opportunity for all students to access, participate in, and progress in the general-education curriculum by reducing barriers to instruction. Learn more about how UDL offers options for how information is presented, how students respond or demonstrate their knowledge and skills, and how students are engaged in learning.
A Therapeutic Environment Called School: How Charismatic Adults Can Help Kids with LD
All children with learning disabilities need "charismatic adults" in their lives at school. These are educators who enthusiastically and purposefully accept students for who they are and identify and reinforce the strengths of all students. They perceive all students as being capable of succeeding at academic and social demands as long as they are provided with appropriate interventions.
Loneliness, Self-Efficacy, and Hope: Often Neglected Dimensions of the LD Learning Process
Students with learning disabilities often feel lonely and socially isolated in school. Learn more about how families can help their children build resilience, self-esteem, motivation, and family relationships.
Go on a "bees" reading adventure! Teachers can support reading together at home with Reading Rockets family literacy bags — designed to encourage hands-on fun and learning centered around paired fiction and nonfiction books. (Level: Third Grade)
Go on a "river" reading adventure! Teachers can support reading together at home with Reading Rockets family literacy bags — designed to encourage hands-on fun and learning centered around paired fiction and nonfiction books. (Level: Third Grade)
Literature-Based Teaching in Science: Poetry Walks
Read and discuss poetry with nature imagery with students. Take students on a poetry walk around the school, neighborhood, or community to observe and collect sensory images from direct experience with nature: the sights, sounds, smells, and textures of things outdoors. Students can take a poetry journal with them to write down words as they observe, listen, smell, and touch things outside the classroom.
Poetry is full of joy, expressiveness, and the pure delight of language. Explore how to introduce poetry to young readers, the value of nursery rhymes in learning about language, writing poetry in the classroom, great poetry books for sharing, and interviews with beloved children's poets. Visit our National Poetry Month section for more resources. As poet Carl Sandburg said, remember that with poetry you're stuffing "a backpack of invisible keepsakes."
Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects a child's handwriting. Children with dysgraphia usually have other problems such as difficulty with written expression. Learn more about causes, the importance of early assessment, dysgraphia and spelling, and effective instructional strategies that strengthen written language skills.
Creativity is an important characteristic to foster in your child. Fostering a creative spirit will give your child experience identifying a problem and coming up with new ideas for solving them. Here are four ways to encourage creativity in your young child.
Standards That Impact English Language Learners
In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Diane Staehr Fenner and John Segota discuss the ways in which language proficiency and teaching standards can help shape the instruction of English language learners. They also discuss the relationship between these different sets of standards and their connection to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards.
State Policies on Dual Language Learners in Early Childhood
In this article written for Colorín Colorado, early childhood expert Karen Nemeth discusses the policies at the state level that impact English language learners (also known as dual language learners), as well as policy considerations for educators who want to become more familiar with their own state's policies.
Policy and Accountability Requirements: Survey for Reflection and Action
The following survey is an excerpt from Chapter 3, "Policies and Accountability Requirements for English Language Learners," from English Language Learners at School: A Guide for Administrators, 2nd Edition.
How to Create Language Policies at the Local Level
This excerpt by Rebecca Freeman Field from English Language Learners at School: A Guide for Administrators, 2nd Edition answers the following question: How do we develop a language policy that is appropriate for our school and community context?
Developing Research and Information Literacy
Explore two ways you can help your child begin to develop information literacy: learning to tell the difference between fact and opinion, and figuring out if a source of information is reliable.
Interactive writing makes the writing process visual to the whole class. Reading literature is an excellent way to initiate interactive writing in the class, and the teacher can continue using literature as the class does interactive writing with any new book that is read throughout the year.
In this excerpt from Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice, Wayne Wright offers an introduction to No Child Left Behind legislation for English language learners, including information on accountability, assessments, English language proficiency standards, and implications for ELL identification and instruction.
Celebrate Dr. Seuss and Music In Our Schools Month
Share music and playful rhythms to help students generate and organize writing ideas. Kick off Music In Our Schools Month on Dr. Seuss's March 2 birthday with this pre-writing activity.
10 Things You Can Do to Raise a Reader
Parents are a child's first teacher, and there are many simple things you can do every day to share the joy of reading while strengthening your child's literacy skills.
Writing in journals can be a powerful strategy for students to respond to literature, gain writing fluency, dialogue in writing with another student or the teacher, or write in the content areas. While journaling is a form of writing in its own right, students can also freely generate ideas for other types of writing as they journal. Teachers can use literature that takes the form of a journal by reading excerpts and discussing them with students.
Research has shown the positive effects of improvised story dramatization on language development and student achievement in oral and written story recall, writing, and reading. Learn how to integrate story dramatizations into the classroom, using stories that students are familiar with.
Go on a "building" reading adventure! Teachers can support reading together at home with Reading Rockets family literacy bags — designed to encourage hands-on fun and learning centered around paired fiction and nonfiction books. (Level: First or Second Grade)
Oral history is a method to learn about past events from the spoken stories of people who lived through them. When students conduct oral history research with members of their families or community they are participating in active learning rooted in the student's own experience. Students are actively engaged in collecting data when they do oral histories. Not only are they learning history, they are learning to be historians.
Winter Vacation: 10 Reading Ideas for Parents
Winter vacation is a great time to read with your kids. It's also a good time to make reading (and writing) fun! Try some of the ideas below — and remember that it's ok to do these activities in your home language!
Many kids love to read about science and nature as well as real people, places, and events. Nonfiction books present information in engaging and interesting ways. Find out how you can help your child learn to navigate all the parts of a nonfiction book — from the table of contents to the diagrams, captions, glossary, and index.
The Nation's Report Card: Reading 2011
A nationally representative sample of 213,100 fourth-graders participated in the 2011 assessment. Learn more about the key findings and trends in this Reading 2011 snapshot.
The Facts on Charter Schools and Students with Disabilities
Learn the answers to 10 commonly asked questions that families and educators of students with disabilities have about charter schools. You'll also find links to state-specific resources that can help you better understand how charter schools work in your individual state.
