#reading

top of page

Thinking and Linking

‘Proud Boys’ interrupt Pride event

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 14, 2022
1 min

‘Proud Boys’ interrupt Pride event

Drag Queen Story Hour was starting at a Bay Area library when a group of men entered shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs, reports Iran Dahir on BuzzFeed News. Panda Dulce, a social worker, resumed reading to children after intruders were removed. The men accused the organizer of being a pedophile and one wore a T-shirt showing an AR-15 with the text “Kill your local pedophile.” Deputies escorted the men out, and drag queen Panda Dulce went on with the event, which had a

No learning loss in Sweden

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 13, 2022
1 min

No learning loss in Sweden

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels In Sweden, which kept schools open throughout the pandemic, first- through third-graders made normal progress in reading, concludes a newly published study. There was no learning loss. Disadvantaged students did not lose ground. Keeping schools open avoided “lasting damage” to children, writes Alex Gutentag on Tablet. “When Sweden kept schools open for children up to age 16 without masks in the spring of 2020, for example, not a single child di

More Michigan 3rd graders fail reading test

Joanne Jacobs

May 31, 2022
2 min

More Michigan 3rd graders fail reading test

Third graders who are a year behind in reading are supposed to repeat the grade under Michigan’s “read by grade three” law, but few are held back, reports Tracie Mauriello on Chalkbeat. This year, with nearly all students tested, 5.8 percent of third graders are at least one grade level behind, an increase of 60 percent from last year. Parents can request exemptions, writes Mauriello. Last year, “administrators granted them liberally, holding back only 0.2% of those eligible

School board loses focus on academics

Joanne Jacobs

May 10, 2022
2 min

School board loses focus on academics

Shanthi Gonzales “Schools aren’t meeting students’ needs” in Oakland, California, writes Shanthi Gonzales, who’s resigning from the school board after more than seven years. She’s moving to northern California. The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board hasn’t focused on school quality, Gonzales writes. “Students aren’t being adequately prepared for their next steps.” As a result, the district is losing enrollment, forcing budget cuts and (very controversial) school clo

Dean, you didn’t prepare me to teach reading

Joanne Jacobs

Oct 11, 2018
2 min

Dean, you didn’t prepare me to teach reading

“Schools aren’t teaching reading in ways that line up with the science,” concludes American Public Media’s Emily Hanford in Hard Words. Many teachers go through training programs without learning how to teach reading effectively — including systematic, explicit instruction in phonics, she found. The story struck a chord with teachers, writes Robert Pondiscio, a former teacher. One such response, posted to the Facebook page of Decoding Dyslexia-Arkansas, was a letter from teac

Michigan 3rd graders must ‘read or flunk’

Joanne Jacobs

Sep 24, 2018
2 min

Michigan 3rd graders must ‘read or flunk’

Justin Jennings went to Purdue with a basketball scholarship — and third-grade reading skills, he recalls. With intensive tutoring help, he completed a degree in African-American Studies, then went on to earn several master’s degrees. Now superintendent of a low-income, low-performing Michigan district, he’s trying to improve reading instruction before the state’s “read-or-flunk” law goes into effect, reports Ron French on Bridge. Superintendent Justin Jennings looks at donat

If schooling was as important as football

Joanne Jacobs

Sep 18, 2018
1 min

If schooling was as important as football

Vesia Hawkins loves football, she writes on Volume & Light, which follows Nashville schools. This year, she’s taking her young cousin to play on the youth team coached by her husband. She asks: What would happen if parents were as engaged, aware and demanding about their children’s schooling as they are about their football prowess? Community youth football teams are teeming with parents and family members pacing sidelines and screaming for their little loved ones. They want

New teen fiction genre: School shootings

Joanne Jacobs

Sep 3, 2018
2 min

New teen fiction genre: School shootings

Lilia Martinez, 15, a student in Michigan “estimates that of the 28 books she read over the last school year, both for pleasure and schoolwork, as many as 20 of them had themes of school violence,” write Walsh. In addition to books, “movies, TV shows, and other popular entertainment” have featured school shootings, writes Walsh. Here’s Ed Week‘s gallery movies, TV and fiction with school violence themes. Teachers believe the genre motivates teens to read. “The biggest way to

Digital readers crave excitment

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 22, 2018
2 min

Digital readers crave excitment

She cites cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, author of The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads and the father of four children. Digital kids “have less patience for being bored,” says Willingham. “What I think that all the digital activities have in common is that, with very little effort from me, something interesting happens. And if I’m bored, another interesting experience is very easy to obtain.” Willingham said it’s a mistake for

For teens, texting crowds out books, TV

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 21, 2018
2 min

For teens, texting crowds out books, TV

For today’s teens, “time on digital media has displaced time once spent enjoying a book or watching TV,” concludes Jean Twenge, author of iGen and a San Diego State psychology professor. “Less than 20 percent of U.S. teens report reading a book, magazine or newspaper daily for pleasure, while more than 80 percent say they use social media every day,” her new study finds. Twelfth-graders average “nearly two hours a day texting, just over two hours a day on the internet — which

Teachers may not know how kids learn to read

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 19, 2018
2 min

Teachers may not know how kids learn to read

How do children learn to read? Most states don’t require new elementary and special-education teachers to show they understand the “science of reading,” concludes a new 50-state analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). Even states that test the literacy knowledge of elementary teachers often exempt special-education teachers, notes NCTQ president Kate Walsh. Only 11 states “connect two rather self-evident dots—between children’s failure to learn how to read

Coaching works for teachers

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 2, 2018
1 min

Coaching works for teachers

Personalized training for teachers is effective, write Matthew A. Kraft and David Blazar in Education Next, but taking coaching to scale poses challenges. Traditional forms of professional development — daylong seminars delivering “the same tips and tricks to an entire department, grade level, or school” — have “little or no effect on teacher quality,” they write. One-on-one instructional coaching, based on classroom observations, does make a difference, they conclude, after

Joanne Jacobs

Jul 28, 2018
1 min

Build a book: Crafting ‘Treasure Island’

Microsoft, is trying to “schoolify” Minecraft, the wildly popular world-building game. The latest idea, Litcraft, lets kids build models of fictional islands, reports Alison Flood and Sian Cain in The Guardian. Treasure Island is the first. While regular Minecraft is rife with literary creations – the whole of George RR Martin’s sprawling setting for Game of Thrones, Westeros, has been created in its entirety, as have several different Hogwarts – Litcraft is not all fun and g

How Core kids learn reading, writing

Joanne Jacobs

Jul 25, 2018
2 min

How Core kids learn reading, writing

Fordham’s Reading and Writing Instruction in America’s Schools looks at how teaching has changed in the Common Core era. Middle and high school teachers report students are better at citing evidence from the text, a Core priority, the report finds. However, teachers are “more likely to assign texts based on students’ current reading levels—as opposed to their grade levels—contrary to the intent of the standards.” In addition teachers are assigning fewer classic works of liter

Summer reading

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 22, 2018
1 min

Summer reading

My husband’s grandson is turning 3. Mom and Dad requested a gift of Newtonian Physics for Babies. Here are some other ideas: #NewtonianPhysicsforBabies #reading

Are test scores irrelevant?

Joanne Jacobs

May 16, 2018
1 min

Are test scores irrelevant?

Students defended their Providence, Rhode Island middle school in a panel discussion sponsored by Generation Citizen, reports the Providence Journal. Roger Williams Middle School is better than its reputation, students said. “They described a school where the adults care, where students feel safe and where their passions, whether it’s theater or sports, are allowed to flourish.” “While the students rightly made the claim that test scores shouldn’t define a school, they seemed

Nation’s report card shows ‘lost decade’

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 10, 2018
2 min

Nation’s report card shows ‘lost decade’

Reading and math proficiency isn’t improving for fourth- and eighth-graders, according to the 2017 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), known as the “nation’s report card.” The best students did better and the worst students did worse, widening achievement gaps. Except for a slight uptick in eighth-grade reading since 2015, scores remained about the same. It’s been a “lost decade” for educational progress, writes Mike Petrilli. Hechinger’s Jill Barshay calls it a

Parents of dyslexics: Teach phonics

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 15, 2018
2 min

Parents of dyslexics: Teach phonics

Parents of children with dyslexia forced their school district to teach phonics, reports Emily Hanford on NPR. Upper Arlington, Ohio schools had been using the whole-language method, which “holds that learning to read is a natural process” that doesn’t require direct instruction, she writes. Instead, children were surrounded by books. That didn’t work for dyslexic students — or for many of their classmates. People with dyslexia have an especially hard time learning to read be

Bilingual ed for black English?

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 14, 2018
2 min

Bilingual ed for black English?

Remember Ebonics? Worried about black students’ reading skills, Oakland’s school board declared black English to be a separate, “genetically based” language, not merely a dialect, in December, 1996. A resolution implied teachers would use Ebonics in class. The National Head Start Association ran an ad slamming the use of Ebonics in school. Among those who hated the idea were Maya Angelou, who was “incensed,” and Jesse Jackson, who called it “madness” to make “slang talk a s

To teach reading, teach history, science …

Joanne Jacobs

Nov 30, 2017
1 min

To teach reading, teach history, science …

Reading isn’t a “general skill that can be applied with equal success to all texts,” writes cognitive scientist Dan Willingham in the New York Times. “Comprehension is intimately intertwined with knowledge.” Credit: Lilli Carré In the early grades, teachers should spend less time on literacy and more time teaching science and social studies, he writes. The more students know, they more they’ll be able to understand when they read. Year-end standardized tests should reflect wh

bottom of page