AdLit News Headlines

A focus on belonging, creativity, and metacognition is helping one school lead students away from superficial learning.

Middle school students build literacy skills and explore who they are growing to be in an independent reading unit centered on the theme of identity.

Push students past simple recall into deeper thought and engagement by adding this short follow-up question to your repertoire.

How do you devise high school SEL lessons that don’t feel preachy and align with adolescents’ cognitive and psychological development. Read to find out!

Seven years after students from a small, suburban Rhode Island high school successfully advocated for the adoption of financial literacy standards, state lawmakers have made proficiency in personal finance a requirement for high school graduation, beginning with the class of 2024.

Educators can take the initiative to provide safe and welcoming spaces in their classrooms and school community.

Even before the pandemic upended school, test scores in both reading and math declined for 13-year-old students, the first drop registered in a half century in testing meant to measure student proficiency over time.

High school teachers focus on what they learned from pandemic instruction to support students’ learning in the classroom this year.

Listen as Thomas and Adeyemi discuss their journeys as authors and the importance of diverse voices in Young Adult Literature.

For socially marginalized girls, access to second chances during adolescence, such as the opportunity to reenter education or gain technical skills, can play a key role in fostering well-being and improving life outcomes for them and their families.

Experts and educators have many suggestions to help children understand what they read.

Think middle grade readers aren’t brave enough handle creepy stories? Clearly you haven’t been around enough middle graders lately. Kids love to get scared. Here are nine truly terrifying books for fearless middle grade readers. And yes, adults are going to love (and be afraid of) these books too!

Ariana Grande, Maroon 5 and others have pitched in to help adolescents obtain free, mental health care. 

Catcher in the Rye’s meaning has remained a part of literary discussions and education programs since its publication in 1951 because its themes are still relevant even for modern students. Take a look at a few of the lessons this novel teaches.

Educators need to consider the context, the content, and the individual child when deciding how much screen time kids should have.

Documents that a whistle-blower provided to The Wall Street Journal showed that Instagram made body-image issues worse for one in three teenage girls. Those findings are not surprising to many young women.

What are some good adult reading possibilities for teens? A longtime children’s and teen librarian offers a wide selection of mystery, romance, nonfiction and science fiction selected by fellow librarians and teens.

Researchers at The University of Miami will use an Institute of Education Sciences grant to study the effects of an intensive reading program for middle school students with or at-risk for reading disabilities.

A climate of disinformation in students’ homes lives is making it harder to teach critical thinking.

The NY Times invites students (age 11-19) to choose an issue or question in science, technology, engineering, math or health, then write an engaging 500-word explanation. Contest Dates: Feb. 2 to March 9, 2022.

Hundreds of students, parents and residents in York County, Pa., protested limits on books told from the perspective of gay, Black and Latino children.

Assignments that align with standards and hone students’ critical thinking skills can boost their engagement in learning.

Rather than buying into the false assumption that high-achieving kids will do fine on their own, we need to do a better job of making sure that all high achievers, including those from low-income backgrounds, get the education they deserve.

Teachers can support students in developing skills that allow them to effectively evaluate content from a variety of media sources.

An online petition to reinstate slavery that made its rounds at a high school in Kansas City this month is the latest in a series of incidents sparking outrage from parents and students who say race-related controversies at the school are an all-too-common occurrence.

In America, around 17 million children are battling hunger. An entrepreneur has teamed with rap star Gunna to open a free grocery store inside his old middle school in Georgia to try to begin to change that.

Students missed homecoming, field trips and classes, while also handling anxiety and economic precarity. Now, they must leap into the future, with the school’s help.

Monica Zepeda is a triple threat of the literary variety. She is a teen librarian at the Beverly Hills Public Library in Los Angeles County, a debut young adult author, and an award-winning screenwriter. Her first YA novel, Boys of the Beast, won the Lee & Low 2019 New Visions Award for new authors of color, and will be published in February 2022. Zepeda spoke with PW about her role as teen librarian, and the journey she took while crafting Boys of the Beast.

More and more kids are talking openly about their mental health and while that may feel alarming, it’s actually a good sign that young people are confiding in adults. Now that in-person learning is back in session in most parts of the country, many school systems are trying to meet the overwhelming mental health needs of students. 

Listen in as Kacen Callender talks about the pressure to make characters from marginalized backgrounds “good,” and the fun you can have when you ignore some of that pressure.

As Halloween creeps up, these five audio dramas deliver chills and thrills. 

Teacher collaboration across disciplines provides middle school students with work that reinforces learning and develops their research and writing skills.

If the ultimate goal of K–12 education is to offer equitable access to high-quality curricula leading to greater college access and success, policymakers need to rethink their approach to AP and look beyond it.

The open letter by Martin Luther King Jr. is an excellent resource for teaching persuasive writing and much more.

The middle grade graphic novel boom of the past several years has publishers looking at new ways to tell old stories, and two trends have emerged: faithful adaptations of backlist books, particularly series, along with imaginative reinventions of classics in the public domain.

Listen to twin brothers from rural Arkansas who reflect on their path to college in the midst of the pandemic.

Grade inflation is awful. Giving students higher grades than they earned rewards them with grades they don’t deserve and makes them think they know more than they do. Right? Maybe not.

Listen as Jason Reynolds, an award-winning author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, speaks with Manoush Zomorodi about reaching kids through stories that let them feel understood.

‘Black Boy Joy’ brings together 17 stories of positivity. Kwame Mbalia came up with the idea for his book during the summer of 2020 protests. He wanted to show that Black boys’ lives aren’t only about the “bad stuff, the trauma” often shown in the media. 

Executive dysfunction is perhaps the most visible and debilitating symptom of ADHD for middle school students, many of whom would benefit from a 504 Plan with thoughtful accommodations. Here, learn how to pursue the most appropriate supports for your teen.

As we go back to school, many students of color are hurting and want to be heard

Many middle-schoolers wouldn’t leisurely read a book about Greenland, but, then again, they probably haven’t picked up one of Ellen Prager’s adventure stories.

Hastings Middle School students are seeing a lot of success with a recently implemented program that uses goal setting to close the gap on academic shortfalls.

Her new book “The Beatryce Prophecy” sprang from a draft she started and then abandoned after the death of her beloved mother. 

There are novels about Black boys finding joy, nervy thrillers, fantasies filled with magic, angsty romances and much, much more.

Recent national surveys have show that the majorities of teens are pessimistic about the country’s future but optimistic about their own personal futures. Are certain groups of teens more optimistic than others? Yes!

These podcasts for elementary through high school students address emotions, kindness, mindfulness, choices, bullying, homework, and being the new kid at school.

Despite years of work by some educators and advocates to increase equity in career and technical education, the Department of Education’s newly released data on student enrollment in career and technical education classes shows deep racial disparities remain. 

A recent viral news story reported that a generation of young men is abandoning college. The pattern has deep roots.

Sixty educators from across the United States built a community around teaching with The Times. We hope their projects can inspire your own.

This eclectic roundup of YA titles features the latest by Anna-Marie McLemore, Indigenous literature from Latin America, and some delectable rom-coms.

For more than a decade, suicide rates have been increasing in Black children and adolescents, and a new study says the sharpest rise occurred among young girls.

The 2021 Library of Congress National Book Festival will include an extraordinary lineup of authors for children, teens and kids of all ages – all featured in videos on demand accessible from the start of the festival, which runs Sept. 17-26.

2021 might be more than halfway over already but there certainly has been no slowing down in the publishing industry and especially in middle grade as things are getting even more interesting! 

When teachers act as facilitators of class discussion rather than leaders, students see themselves as valuable contributors to their own learning.

A review of three inspiring, new YAL novels that let “young people who have who have seen and lived through recent history — tell their stories.”

Four educators write about necessary supports for students and their families this year to proactively address pandemic stress and trauma.

The 2021 Young Adult Colloquium was launched with the goal of sharing the magic of Black characters with educators, while also preparing those educators to take what they learned and apply it to the classroom. 

A chat with author Tanita S. Davis about her new middle grade novel, Partly Cloudy(opens in a new window), along with book recommendations, writing, and more! From award-winning author Tanita S. Davis comes a nuanced exploration of the microaggressions of middle school and a young Black girl named Madalyn who learns that being a good friend means dealing with the blue skies and the rain—and having the tough conversations on days that are partly cloudy. 

We have long known that a transmission-of-knowledge model, where students passively receive and then reproduce information, isn’t how learning occurs. Better to flip the script and examine what’s getting in the way of learning, realizing that there are cognitive barriers to effective teaching.