The department’s Office for Civil Rights stepped in when participants at school board meeting complained that the district’s library book screening process was discriminatory based on sex, race, color, and national origin. Investigators found that Forsyth County Schools’ response was not sufficient to “ameliorate any resultant racially and sexually hostile environment,” the department said in announcing a resolution of the complaint.

“Communications at board meetings conveyed the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment,” the Office for Civil Rights found. “Indeed, one student commented at a district school board meeting about the school environment becoming more harsh in the aftermath of the book removals and his fear about going to school.”
students expressing similar views.

In January 2022, Forsyth County Schools removed eight books from its media centers due to “sexually explicit content.” The titles included The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez and Me Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, the Forsyth County News reported.

That removal process began when a parent complained about content in the books, according to the Forsyth County News.

The Office for Civil Rights acknowledged that the district’s review committee “rejected suggestions to handle challenged books in ways that it believed would target certain groups of students.” The district also posted statements on its media center websites that the resources provided in its libraries should reflect the students in each school community.

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The committee also asked families to talk to their children about not checking out books that do not match their values or beliefs.

The resolution of the civil rights complaint now requires Forsyth County Schools to issue a statement to students explaining the library book removal process and to offer support to students who have been impacted. This includes explaining that the removal of the eight books in January 2022 was based solely on “sexually explicit content” and that future screenings will consider whether books “promote diversity by including materials about and by authors and illustrators of all cultures.”

Each Forsyth County middle and high school will also conduct a climate to determine whether additional steps need to be taken to ensure students do not feel discriminated against when books are challenged and reviewed.

The post Removal of 8 books may have created fear and harassment in Georgia district, feds say appeared first on District Administration.

Anti-censorship nonprofit PEN America and Penguin Random House have sued the Escambia County School District and its school board for removing LGBTQ-themed books from school libraries earlier this year. The lawsuit accuses the Florida Panhandle district of trying “to exclude certain ideas from their school libraries by removing or restricting books, some of which have been on the shelves for years—even decades.”

In a development that may or may not be related, the district fired its superintendent, Tim Smith, Tuesday night, the Pensacola News Journal reported.

“Books have the capacity to change lives for the better, and students, in particular, deserve equitable access to a wide range of perspectives,” Nihar Malaviya, CEO of Penguin Random House, said in a statement. “Censorship, in the form of book bans like those enacted by Escambia County, is a direct threat to democracy and our constitutional rights.”

Escambia School District Communication Coordinator Cody Strother told the Tallahassee Democrat that he was “unable to make comment on potential pending litigation.”

The Escambia County School Board called an emergency meeting in February to order the removal from district libraries of three LGBTQ-themed books: When Aidan Became a Brother, All Boys Aren’t Blue and And Tango Makes Three. The first title is about a transgender boy who becomes a big brother while the second is a memoir about growing up a queer Black man in New Jersey. The last book is about two male penguins who raise a chick.

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Prior to voting on the bans, school board member Kevin Adams noted that students could still check the books out of the public library. But dissenting board member Patricia Hightower rejected claims that such books could indoctrinate children or steer them toward an LGBTQ+ lifestyle. “Reading books opens your mind but it doesn’t change who are you or what you are,” Hightower said. “It makes you a more compassionate, caring person.”

The bans are a violation of both the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution because the books that were removed are by non-white and LGBTQ authors, and address themes or topics related to race and identity. The school board also ignored the recommendations of a district committee empaneled to review and evaluate books, the lawsuit claims.

“By ignoring these recommendations, the school district made clear that its interests are in censoring certain ideas and viewpoints, not pedagogy, and that it is willing to allow an extremist minority to substitute its political agenda for the judgment of educators and parents,” the organizations said.

The authors involved in the suit have all had their books removed by the district or restricted from student access. The writers include author and children’s book illustrator Sarah Brannen, young adult fiction authors David Levithan, George M. Johnson and Ashley Hope Pérez, and children’s book author Kyle Lukoff. Other plaintiffs in the suit include Lindsay Durtschi and Ann Novakowski, who are parents of children who attend Escambia County schools.

“Children in a democracy must not be taught that books are dangerous. The freedom to read is guaranteed by the constitution,” said Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America. “In Escambia County, state censors are spiriting books off shelves in a deliberate attempt to suppress diverse voices. In a nation built on free speech, this cannot stand.”

More school book bans occurred during the first half of 2022-23 than in the previous two semesters, escalation that anti-censorship groups are now dubbing the “Ed Scare,” PEN America announced earlier this year. That bans are being driven by new laws passed in several states that restrict what can be taught in public schools even though an American Library Association poll found 70% of parents oppose bans.

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We needed to create a literacy framework and implement new curriculum and products to support that framework. Around that time, we also hired a new executive director of literacy for grades K-12.

A multi-pronged approach—which included the computer-based Lexia Core5 Reading platform—to closing gaps in the district’s instructional quality has worked out very well. In fact, literacy in Fort Worth ISD has changed dramatically since we implemented our literacy framework, curriculum and resources.

Right out of the gate

We started with an intensive few months of framework development focused on the pillars of robust literacy instruction. That literacy framework dictates how literacy is taught at Fort Worth ISD, and is grounded in the science of teaching reading across these four fundamental areas: comprehension, knowledge of words and word parts, writing, and oral reading fluency.

Working with Tim Shanahan, a literacy educator in reading instruction and comprehension, we set forth a plan to help students learn academic vocabulary and get “academic-rich” content to lay the foundation for reading comprehension at a young age. As they then navigated decoding and fundamentals and moved into grades 3-5, the focus would shift away from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” We also wanted our teachers to have the resources, tools, and professional development that they needed to help students throughout the entire journey.

The latter was important because you can have a framework that lives 30,000 feet in the air, but if you’re not providing the resources, tools, professional development, coaching and “boots on the ground” for teachers, that framework will just stay up in the sky.

5 steps to literacy framework success

Here are five ways we brought our literacy framework back “down to earth” and ensured that it supports principals, teachers and students alike:

1. Get the fundamentals down first. Tim helped us nail down this focus to: Knowledge of Words and Word Parts, Oral Reading Fluency, Comprehension and Writing. This helped us focus on lifting up disciplinary literacy, making sure that we were very strong in content, and ensuring students were learning academic vocabulary. We knew that this would help us build up and reinforce comprehension at an early age.

2. Shift to “reading to learn.” We wanted to ensure that our students got academic-rich content as they navigated decoding and fundamentals. Then, as they progress through grades 3-5, the focus shifts from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

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3. Go beyond elementary grades. Our literacy framework includes an obvious focus on grades K-2, but our middle school principals noticed our success with the literacy program and asked for a similar tool. We decided to add a tool for students in grades 6-8, with a specific focus on sixth and seventh graders who are below the 65th percentile.

4. Make it easy for teachers and principals. When our executive director of literacy sits with teachers to help them better understand phonemes, for example, all of the lessons and related resources are in the literacy platform. We also have professional development for principals who aren’t always privileged to those levels of support when a new piece of technology is introduced. Our principals know what they should be looking for and can monitor that activity and inform instruction on their campuses.

5. Choose a reliable tech partner. We’ve dealt with many companies in terms of people and accessibility. With the team from our literacy program provider, we can call or email, whether it’s an interface not working or a link, and we get immediate responses. For a district this size, that’s important. I can’t fill out 99 Google forms or talk to a chat or an AI robot. I don’t have time for that when I have 95 teachers that can’t get into Zoom.

The results of our efforts so far have been very positive. We’ve seen a significant uptick in “quality usage” of our literacy programs over the last year for students in kindergarten through fifth grade and it’s paying off.

For example, Carroll Peak Elementary School started the school year with 66% of its students reading below grade level. The principal reports they are now down to 31% below grade level, and they are up to 46% of their students are on grade level, versus 27% at the beginning of the year.

In addition, 23% of students are reading above grade level, compared to just 7% at the start of the year. These are all positive points for a school that just one year ago was struggling to get its students reading at grade level. In the end, it’s less about minutes spent on the platform and more about the skills and units gained. We’ve also seen a tight correlation between our literacy program data and our NWEA MAP data, which is pretty exciting.

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More than eight in 10 parents want their students to be proficient in reading, to love reading and to learn about science and history while learning to read. Some 57% said learning to love reading is more important while 43% said achieving proficiency should be the top priority, the survey found.

K-12 parents also have some ideas about how they want their children to learn to read and learn to love reading. They overwhelmingly prefer a reading curriculum that covers phonics instruction, daily writing, and content-rich texts grounded in history and science. Nine in 10 parents think students should learn to write at the same time they learn to read.

“At such a divisive moment, it’s heartening to hear so much agreement from parents—writing matters, science and history matter, foundational skills matter and a love of reading matters,” said Gina Cline Rose, CEO of the American Reading Company.

Nearly all parents also agree that: students should have fun while learning to read, students like reading more when they get to pick the topics they read about and there is not enough emphasis on topics like history and science.

Reading curriculum: Coast-to-coast

The survey zeroed in on parents’ views on the reading curriculum in several states. In Delaware, New York, Texas and Wisconsin the vast majority think the textbooks and curriculums used to teach reading are excellent or good, and even more believe their child is properly taught to read.

And about two-thirds of parents in each of those states describe their child’s reading ability as “above grade level.” Another quarter of parents thinks their children read at grade level.

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I spend many of my days in buildings around the country of every shape and size: large and small, new and old, well-funded and shoestring. I often meet in empty classrooms with layer upon layer of evidence of teaching and learning on the walls. There could be 600 people who call that school home, and it’s humbling to sit quietly and consider the gravity of the work we are called to do as educators.

Our world never stands still

Whether you are in your preservice years, well into your tenure, or a veteran like me, we are poised for yet another seismic shift in practices around reading instruction. It will take time, patience, and selflessness—the heart of what defines an educator—because this is very hard work.

Many of us are or will soon be immersed in the study of the science of reading—what the latest research says works for helping our children evolve from emergent to extraordinary readers. It is a time of great learning for us all, but theory will only get us halfway home. We need clarity of practices that will enable the enactment of that science in classrooms across America every day for every child.

D. Ray Reutzel’s perspective

In the spirit of “look back to move forward,” I spent some quality time about four years ago with D. Ray Reutzel, a titan of academic research. Ray can turn a casual conversation into a master class on the history of American reading. We met before Emily Hanford’s brilliant journalism shook America awake, before the science of reading became a movement. After recounting some of the wrong turns in our pedagogy over the last 40 years, Ray said, “Of course, all of this could have been avoided if every educator at every level would simply learn to demand—show me the science.”

Ray’s insightful whitepaper, ”Putting the Science of Reading to Work,” is the story of how we got here, and how we can get it right this time. It will help us move past various interpretations of the “how” and stay focused on the “why”—the proof.

He reminds us that science guides us beyond foundational skills and informs both theory and teacher moves. The science of reading is based on empirical research studies that describe the underlying processes of how children become proficient readers and how to effectively teach humans to read.

What doesn’t work

Let’s take the painful underperformance of Reading First, our last foray into sweeping explicit instruction as a nation. Despite the deluge of dollars, high-integrity training channels, and the best scientifically research-based reading research available to us at the time, we were not successful in realizing the dream of getting all children reading by Grade 3:

Well into Reading First, evaluations concluded that there had been “no consistent pattern of effects over time in the impact estimates for reading instruction in grade one or in reading comprehension in any grade.”¹ The fourth graders who took the NAEP Reading assessment in 2009 had been three years old when Reading First began to be implemented. Consequently, they should have benefited from the program in every grade, from kindergarten through Grade 4.

Nevertheless, 67% of them scored below the proficient level in reading.² This and other evidence led to the conclusion that there was “almost no improvement in student performance” during Reading First.³

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How could that be? And how can we not waste our moment and our momentum this time? How will we not recreate the flaws of the past?

Getting the science of reading right this time

Many agree that these findings are at least partly due to how we focused the entire reading instruction solely on the code (i.e., the alphabetic principle) and ignored the rich world of language comprehension. We honored the science over the science of instruction. This time, we must afford instructional time for all the enmeshed, interdependent skills children need to become automatic in the complex work of making meaning.

This time let’s make space for high engagement, wonder, the development of a positive reading identity, and the “honoring of the young bilingual mind.”  These elements are as important as our work to ensure facility in our challenging and sometimes perplexing written word.

We can say we were triumphant when our children read broadly, with pleasure and purpose, for deep transferable knowledge of the world and themselves. To get there, let’s project the perfect “yes, and” instead of our decades-long “either/or” and end the philosophical tug-of-war that put fashion over facts, star power over substance, and ego over efficacy. It is time to teach reading based on what we know those young, beautiful brains before us need.

To learn more, check out the Science of Reading webinar series featuring D. Ray Reutzel and download his whitepaper. Listen to Elizabeth Bassford’s episode on The Extraordinary Educators podcast.

References:

1. Gamse, Jacob, Horst, Boulay, and Unlu, 2008
2. National Center for Educational Statistics, 2010
3. Cunningham, 2017

The post Show me the reading science: An expert explains how to get it right appeared first on District Administration.

Literacy skills are paramount for kids to grow both academically and emotionally and the research has shown us, time and time again, that reading over the summer helps students in the following school year. This is even more important given the recent research around how school disruptions, caused by the pandemic, have millions of children playing catch up, and because children’s participation in competing priorities only grows as they age.

The 8th edition of the Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report—the latest of the national survey that began in 2006—helps make the connections needed between schools and families to support summer reading success for more kids.

Give families more information about summer reading

More than 90% of parents of school children—across ages 6-17, racial backgrounds, and areas of the country—agree that reading during the summer will help their child during the school year. This is great news! At the same time, far fewer parents know “why” summer reading is important.

Only half of parents (52%) are aware of the loss of skills during the months that school is out, which has historically been discussed as the “summer slide.” Decades of research confirm that children lose, on average, one month of instructional knowledge over the summer break. Accumulated over time, children in middle school who have experienced summer learning loss may have lost as much as two years of reading achievement.

Interestingly enough, parents’ awareness of summer reading has not changed since the last survey in 2018. Arguably, a great deal has shifted in the hearts and minds of those parenting children during the pandemic so it’s assuring that summer reading is still on parents’ minds. It is our belief that if schools and partners help to educate more families about the WHY of the importance of summer reading, more children will benefit.

As the data also shows, parents of frequent readers are more likely to be aware of the summer slide than parents of moderately frequent or infrequent readers (59% vs. 52% and 46%). Parents of younger children, age 6-11, are also more likely to be aware than parents of older children, age 12-17 (58% vs. 45%). It stands to reason that if parents are unaware of the potential for learning loss, it is also less likely that they will take action to guard against it. Together, we can bridge that gap.

Send home books and resources

The Kids & Family Reading Report shares guidance on how to help families support their children’s literacy this summer—and all year—through resources.

First and foremost, children need the adults in their lives to be thoughtful about book access. Children rely heavily on school for access to books. More than 40% of kids say they get most of the books they read for fun from their school or classroom library. When schools are closed for the summer, a primary source of books is no longer available to children, making access to books at home more critical.

Access to books at home has been a persistent issue documented by the Kids & Family Reading Report since 2012. Among those surveyed in 2022, 43% of families with children ages 6-17 have fewer than 50 books for kids at home. Those who have fewer books at home are more likely to be Black or Hispanic families and families with less education and lower income. Given that access to books is crucial in combating reading loss during the summer months, bringing more books into the home will ensure these demographics are not more impacted by learning loss than others.

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The benefits of home libraries for students are irrefutable, but they can be supercharged if parents are offered training and support to enhance and encourage student learning. Parents tell us it would be helpful to have support for skill-building around what their child is reading. Items that parents indicated would be helpful include:

• Questions or conversation starters about the reading (36%)
• A summary of the book or story (35%)
• Recommendations for the best next book (31%)
• Activities that go along with the reading (30%)
• A list of vocabulary words in the reading (26%)
• A summary of how the reading helps development, such as rhyming words for young readers, simple sentences for early readers and important themes for teen readers (17%).

Half of parents (51%) indicate they want more than just one type of resource with as many as one in 10 looking for four or more types. Parents of children ages 6-11 are particularly likely to want multiple resources, with six in 10 parents (61%) indicating that more than one support resource would be helpful. This data is strengthened by other academic findings that show how comprehension strategies, when provided to families, can maximize the effects of home libraries and summer reading.

Tap into kids’ interests for success

More great news, the data also tells us that kids are already primed to read and just need our help to keep their spark engaged. The study shows 80% of school-aged children agree that reading books during the summer will help them during the school year. What’s more, 61% of school-aged children enjoy summer reading, with younger children ages 6-11 more likely to say they enjoy summer reading than older children ages 12-17 (68% vs. 55%). So let’s lean into what keeps their interests in reading.

Perhaps most important, is choice. Every year we have conducted the survey, kids remind us how important it is for them to be able to personally select their own books. Over 90% of kids agree that:

1. Their favorite books are the ones they pick out themselves (93%)
2. They are most likely to finish the books they pick out themselves (92%)

We know children are more likely to read the books they choose on their own, and with a vast variety of genres and formats available, their individual preferences can be the key to supporting their year-long reading habits. Chapter books and picture/story books are the most popular types of books among kids, but children are increasingly interested in graphic novels and comic books.

In 2022, 37% of children said that graphic novels are one of their favorite types of books, an increase of 15 percentage points from 2018 (22%). Interest in graphic novels has increased across all age groups, but particularly among 9- to 11-year-olds. In 2018, 27% of that group liked reading graphic novels, in 2022 that number rose to 50%. Interest in comic books and picture books has also increased, although not as dramatically. Furthermore, children are interested in both fiction and nonfiction – half of kids (48%) say they like fiction and nonfiction the same.

Finally, bring the community together to make summer reading exciting. Half of kids (52%) say “I like going to events that involve reading at my school or in my community.” Creating a social environment around reading, bringing a variety of selections to them and allowing children to choose books to read during the summer may encourage more children to read and enjoy reading for fun!

Let’s help families make summer reading happen

Parents and children alike know that reading during the summer will be helpful during the school year, and many children enjoy reading books for fun during the summer. However, there is still work to be done around parental awareness of why summer reading is important, particularly among groups with lower socioeconomic status.

And kids are providing us with helpful hints on how to keep them engaged. By providing families with the books and opportunities to engage around stories with concrete strategies, we will all be contributing to higher summer reading rates to maintain and accelerate student achievement.

The post How educators can strengthen summer reading connections with families appeared first on District Administration.

Despite this, we know there are steps schools and districts can take to move the literacy dial in a positive direction and create a culture of reading. Here’s what we know works:

1. Talk non-stop about books and reading: Ask everyone in your building to make a conscious effort to share anecdotes about what they’re reading. Morning announcements, bulletin boards, lunchrooms and after-school clubs are all opportunities to change a student’s perception of reading as a source of drudgery and dread to one of unexpected fun and adventure. Over time, these routine exchanges help develop a pervasive culture of reading.

2. Provide numerous choices and options for reading: To pique interest (which is typically the first and hardest challenge in getting students to read), provide lots of options. Providing reading choice helps students discover their own interests and encourages them to seek out more reading opportunities. Don’t discount the value of audiobooks, comic books and graphic novels.

If you’re one of the many schools or districts that improved Wi-Fi access and made more devices available to enable remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, take advantage of digital content. Digital reading materials are a cost-effective way to provide instant access to an incredible selection of stories.

Educators can give students in-school access to curriculum titles and class sets, as well as at-home access to both assigned and pleasure-reading titles. We know that students from households with fewer books often struggle more with literacy, so digital reading programs can go a long way in helping to remedy the deficit of books at home.

3. Share resources across departments and buildings: One encouraging post-pandemic outcome has been an increase in collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas. Applied to literacy objectives, teamwork can mean sharing budgets for reading materials or working across building boundaries for expertise in preparing and submitting grants. It also means sharing enthusiasm and commitment.

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Leaders must be all-in on reading—whether that’s integrating reading activities into core subjects like mathematics and science or promoting school- or even district-wide reading challenges and events.

4. Enlist help from local communities: The pandemic also gave families an unprecedented up-close-and-personal look at education. Parents can assist in the classroom, help host book clubs, become volunteer readers and much more.

5. Reach out to your vendors: Don’t be afraid to ask for resources. Some vendors offer a wealth of free or low-cost resources to help schools:

• Engage and inform families
• Solicit funding
• Promote reading on social media
• Add reading-focused content to school websites
• Create themed reading activities linked to trending topics

It’s incumbent on vendors to do our share, so get us involved. Talk to your vendors, join vendor educator communities, use the resources on their websites or ask their teams for help with grant writing.

When educators, local communities and vendors come together, we can create a true culture of reading—in and out of the classroom.

The post How do we create a culture of reading in our schools and districts? appeared first on District Administration.

Even as adults, we are still learning ways to deepen our reading, including how to think critically about what we are reading, how to evaluate the validity of information, how to immerse and read deeply in an ever-distracting world, and more.

Reading instruction, and practice with reading strategies, must go beyond the ELA classroom be a part of every subject area. For example, when eighth grade students are issued a history or biology textbook, some will be able to comprehend it while most will benefit from instruction in how to take effective notes, integrate text with visual features on the pages, determine main ideas, explain key vocabulary and terms, and effectively summarize the information they learn.

There are strategies that can help with all of these skills. History, biology and other “reading teachers” need to teach their content and build knowledge AND teach reading strategies, opening students up to learn additional content from texts beyond what they learn from classroom lectures and hands-on experiences.

Engagement and motivation

Engagement and motivation are key to developing strong readers—across all disciplines. If students aren’t able to maintain focus or stay engaged with the texts they are reading, they will likely struggle.

Strategies that help with skills such as attentional focus, visualization, planning, and self-monitoring are great ways for teachers to help students stay engaged with the content that they are reading. One research-based strategy is to teach children to break up longer tasks into shorter ones, by marking stopping places with a sticky note, or setting a timer (Sanders et al., 2021). Another strategy is to focus on the purpose they have for reading and make a plan, and then to check in with that purpose before, during and after reading (Jacobs and Paris, 1987).

Reading teachers and complex texts

As students continue through school, they’ll need to read and independently comprehend increasingly complex texts. Going beyond reading just the words on the page to fully understand and interpret more complicated texts is a must in any classroom.

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In a history class, students may be tasked with writing an essay explaining the complex causes for World War I, drawing information from primary sources. In science, students may be assigned reading about competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and be asked to show what they understand about each individual author’s proposal in a class presentation. Teachers of these subjects should teach strategies for determining importance or evaluating and synthesizing information alongside content to help students make sense of texts they read, both in class and for homework.

For example, one high-leverage strategy for understanding main ideas is to teach children to chunk text into parts—the parts could be as short as a paragraph or as long as a section. At the end of each chunk, they can jot or sketch to capture the main ideas. Then, at the end of the longer piece, they can read back over their notes from each chunk, combine them, and state an overarching main idea (Schumaker, Denton, and Deshler 1984; Schwamborn et al., 2010).

Research has also shown that clueing readers into text structure sets them up to understand important information, and identify the relationships between the information. Teaching a series of strategies about how to recognize and read texts that are organized by cause and effect, problem and solution, or compare and contrast can help students synthesize and comprehened information (Meyer, 1985).

Invigorated by vocabulary

Being an expert in a topic includes knowing the words and terms for that topic; the relationship between vocabulary development and knowledge building is reciprocal (Cervetti, Wright, & Hwang, 2016); Wright et al., 2022). In many subject-specific texts, new vocabulary is defined for readers in glossaries, sidebars, or key terms boxes. But to really know the word, readers need to be able to offer an explanation that requires synthesizing information from context.

Strategies can help with this. For example, you might teach readers to notice each time a word/term/phrase appears in a text. Then, tell them to learn about that word from the context each time it appears—it might be additional information within a sentence or even visual information in a photograph or diagram where the word appears in a caption. Finally, they can put together the information they learned from each mention.

Choosing to incorporate strategy instruction alongside content learning is like the age-old “give a man a fish, teach a man to fish” proverb. When you include strategy instruction, students learn more content beyond what you could cover in your class period because they are set up to better understand what they read about those topics beyond the school day. And the strategies also help them to learn how to learn and how to think—which will help them grapple with any content, from any discipline.

References:

Cervetti, G. N., Wright, T. S., & Hwang, H. (2016). Conceptual coherence, comprehension, and vocabulary acquisition: A knowledge effect? Reading and Writing,29(4), 761–779.

Jacobs, J. E., & Paris, S. G. (1987). Children’s metacogni- tion about reading: Issues in definition, measurement, and instruction. Educational Psychologist, 22(3–4), 255–278.

Sanders, S., Rollins, L. H., Mason, L. H., Shaw, A., & Jolivette, K. (2021). Intensification and individualization of self- regulation components within self-regulated strategy development. Intervention in School and Clinic, 56(3), 131–140.

Schumaker, J. B., Denton, P. H., & Deshler, D. D. (1984). The Paraphrasing Strategy: Instructor’s manual. University of Kansas Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities.

Schwamborn, A., Mayer, R. E., Thillmann, H., Leopold, C., & Leutner, D. (2010). Drawing as a generative activ- ity and drawing as a prognostic activity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(4), 872–879.

Wright, T. S., Cervetti, G. N., Wise, C., & McClung, N. A. (2022). The impact of knowledge-building through conceptually-coherent read alouds on vocabulary and comprehension. Reading Psychology, 43(1), 70–84.

The post Why reading strategy instruction belongs in every content area classroom appeared first on District Administration.

Developing self-guided reading habits is one of the biggest predictors of academic success across all subject areas, from math to social studies. But too often, reading can feel like just another assignment—especially when it involves stressful quizzes and restrictive reading levels.

Instead of a quiz-based approach, motivational psychology and gamification focus on growing students’ autonomy, competence, and community connection to reading in order to foster a deep-rooted intrinsic motivation to read. To best facilitate students’ long-term reading success, schools should pursue inclusive reading strategies that instill confidence and support self-guided reading development.

Challenges that build community momentum, offer differentiated options, and reward student success are key to encouraging reading for fun and all the benefits that come with it.

Self-guided reading strategies

Implement these three data-driven motivational strategies in your school or district’s reading programs to unlock your students’ love of reading.

1. Set achievable reading goals for students and the whole school—and then build up. Working toward attainable individual reading goals within bigger community reading competitions helps students find their reading momentum and get swept up in the excitement of contributing toward a school-wide or district-wide reading effort. This is a powerful strategy to help struggling or reluctant readers, who can develop learned helplessness after repeatedly failing comprehension quizzes or missing their goals.

Within reading challenges, awarding badges for smaller amounts of reading, like 10 or 20 minutes, can feed students’ confidence and help them work up to bigger goals. Promoting reading time and effort instead of pages read or book points earned is another crucial step to reshaping students’ self-view and creating a love of self-guided reading. And at the school or district level, tracking progress toward bigger community reading goals or contests can create an all-in mindset and widespread culture of reading. Plus, a little friendly competition can activate a positive and contagious drive to read and succeed.

2. Offer differentiated reading options and diverse topics. We all want to feel ownership over and connection with our reading choices. Encouraging free choice reading and offering lots of reading options, both in terms of format and topic, is critical for helping students see the value and relevance in reading.

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Rather than locking students into set reading choices at a prescribed reading level, promote exploration through all different types, topics, and levels of books. Large print books, graphic novels, and ebooks with read-aloud options all play an important role in students’ reading success. Giving students a library with a variety of subjects and topics that recognize the diverse experiences and interests of your student body gives every reader something to love.

3. Reinforce gains with small rewards, surprise prizes, and lots of recognition. Positive reinforcement is hugely important in forming long-lasting habits, and reading is no different. Schools that publicly uplift and reward reading create a positive feedback loop that encourages star readers and struggling readers alike.

A few specific types of rewards, like books, small prizes, surprise rewards, and public praise and recognition, are especially impactful in fueling students’ intrinsic motivation to read. Weekly reading leaderboard announcements, surprise “Prize Patrol” classroom visits that recognize star readers, and library treasure chests of small baubles and tokens for hitting key reading milestones are all great ways to encourage continued reading success.

Using positive and inclusive reading programs can transform your school’s reading culture, grow students’ intrinsic drive to read, and uplift academic outcomes. There’s no better time to revamp your literacy strategy and reading platforms to incorporate reading challenges that scale up individual and community reading goals, encourage self-selected reading choice, and reward reading gains.

The post 3 easy and inclusive ways to develop self-guided reading habits appeared first on District Administration.

In fact, the science of reading is simply the best research available into how students learn to read. As an academic coach, I’ve been working with teachers in Suwanee County School District for years to deliver foundational literacy instruction. Here’s the why and how behind our adoption of the science of reading.

Why is the science of reading Important?

The science of reading is a body of research from fields such as psychology, neuroscience, education, linguistics, and others. It describes how the brain learns to read and offers best practices for instruction. Unfortunately, many teachers are not being taught how to use the science of reading in their classrooms, though the situation is improving. A 2020 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality found that, for the first time, more than half of teacher preparation programs in the country were adequately teaching key elements of the science of reading to students.

Ensuring that new teachers coming out of school—and those already in the field—know the science of reading can make an enormous difference in students’ lives. If you come to class on the first day of school as a teacher, and you find you have a student with dyslexia, how will you help your student learn to read? In Florida, where I teach, teachers can’t diagnose a student with dyslexia, but we still have to help students overcome it. Fortunately, the science of reading equips teachers to help students with dyslexia—and in fact all students—learn to read most effectively.

Professional development for the science of reading at all grade levels

I began working with teachers on the science of reading about four years ago when my school, Suwannee Pineview Elementary School, piloted Reading Horizons in six classrooms. Their professional learning specialist helped get me started with the science of reading, and then I just started reading every book, blog, and article I could get my hands on, and listening to every podcast I could find.

Since then, our district has rolled the program up through several elementary schools and even into our middle and high schools. I received additional training in Reading Horizons Elevate, which is designed for students in middle and high school, because teachers in those grades tend to not be comfortable with teaching foundational skills. I wanted to be prepared in every way possible to help these teachers with students that struggle with decoding.

Most of our professional learning has come in small training sessions covering a variety of topics within the science of reading. Most of those have centered on structured literacy, which is basically how to apply the science of reading to instruction in a systematic way. When teachers are introduced to the new reading program, they are trained on the simple view of reading and Scarborough’s Reading Rope, which introduces a lot of science of reading ideas.

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We’ve held training sessions on individual parts of the rope, such as morphology, syntax, phonemic awareness, and phonological awareness. Some teachers, like me, get really excited about the science of reading and want to learn everything they can about it, and they have opportunities to really dig in deeper. For example, some coaches in our district took what they had learned at a state conference and they offered a session about the science of reading during a country-wide professional learning day.

Supporting teachers through the transition

When we adopted the science of reading, I was lucky to have all new teachers at the kindergarten and first-grade level, so they didn’t have to unlearn any less effective habits. I just told them, “This is our practice,” and they were eager to learn.

Even if it was an easy start for teachers of our youngest students, years later many of our teachers need ongoing support. I’m in and out of their classrooms every day, so they can ask me questions whenever they arise. Often, at the beginning of the year, they’ll ask me to model a lesson for them, and of course, I oblige. Once I even spent an entire week in a teacher’s classroom modeling lessons until they felt comfortable doing it on their own.

I have found that teachers of older students can struggle a bit more with the transition to the science of reading. The basics, such as phonics and phonological awareness, can be difficult for them to master. They tend to think struggling students are having trouble with comprehension, even when they’re actually having problems with decoding. As they’ve received more training over the last few years, I’ve seen these teachers beginning to realize, “Oh, I need to do something different, and it’s not more comprehension strategies,” so I think the answer is simply continuing to work with them.

They just need support in the classroom and modeling. When I first started coaching the science of reading, I had some middle and high school teachers ask me how to do a fluency prompt. It’s not that they were bad teachers or not good at teaching literacy. They just weren’t trained in literacy, because students are usually reading on their own by the time these teachers work with them.

I have found that sight words can produce that “aha!” moment when understanding of the science of reading begins to fall into place. A lot of times, teachers just want to run flashcards in front of students, but that’s ineffective because it takes so many repetitions for words to become recognizable on sight. When I can help teachers understand that the brain reads through phonological awareness—connecting sounds to letters—and connecting that to semantics, they begin to understand the language triangle—and the rest will start to fall into place.

Start slowly but start now

For teachers who are just learning about the science of reading and how to implement it, I would say go slowly. There’s a lot of research and, for teachers who aren’t excited to learn about reading, it can feel overwhelming. Just as our district has had plenty of small professional learning sessions and offered ongoing support for teachers with questions, I would recommend beginning simply and layering in new concepts over time.

The other piece of advice I would offer is to start now. The science of reading isn’t new. It’s already been around for decades. Often, the teachers I work with tell me that they wish they could go back and apologize to previous students for not teaching them better strategies. But teachers can’t adopt teaching methods we don’t know about.

What we can do is learn and practice the best methods available today to give our students the best opportunity to have a successful future in school and beyond. When it comes to literacy, the best methods are the science of reading.

The post How to support teachers who are adopting the science of reading appeared first on District Administration.