Literacy Leadership Blog

News and reflections from experts and practitioners on the latest literacy research, events and daily practice

K-12 | Read to Achieve

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The Power of Play in Literacy and Socio-Emotional Learning
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August 21, 2023 by User

In childhood education, literacy and socio-emotional learning (SEL) are of the utmost importance. While traditional teaching methods play a meaningful role, play-based learning approaches can revolutionize the way children develop their reading skills—by fostering a love for learning!

There are many benefits for teachers in understanding the power of play in the classroom. Play doesn’t have to mean unstructured chaos; there are endless learning opportunities that can be found in hands-on, creative activities. The play-based approach nurtures a holistic learning experience for kids and can have a profound impact on their reading abilities.

Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) and the Classroom

Second Graders LearningSEL helps children learn to manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, show empathy, and establish and maintain positive relationships. This type of learning is an essential component of a child's holistic development, fostering their emotional well-being, self-awareness, and social skills.

By integrating play into literacy instruction, we provide children opportunities to develop their SEL skills, leading to improved reading outcomes and overall emotional resilience!

The Power of Play in Learning to Read

Play is the natural language of children. It’s through play that they explore, experiment, and make sense of the world around them. Play-based learning approaches leverage this innate curiosity and enthusiasm, creating an engaging environment that fosters language development, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.

By incorporating play into literacy instruction, educators can tap into children's intrinsic motivation, making the learning process enjoyable and meaningful. Play-based learning is especially valuable for students who struggle with reading—alleviating pressure to perform and allowing them to explore literacy in a safe, fun, and engaging manner.

With play-based learning, children explore and discover new concepts independently (instead of absorbing information solely from the teacher).

How to Incorporate Play-Based Learning into the Classroom

Students Learning in a Classroom SettingOpportunities for play in the classroom can be self-directed by the child, guided by a teacher, or organized with a game.

With a bit of planning and creativity, any lesson can include a playful aspect! For example, in a literacy class, children could create a mini-theatre during a read-aloud. Activities like “What Is it?” also help build vocabulary through engaging guessing games (Edutopia). In addition, incorporating music can help children learn phonics, alliteration, and rhymes.

4 Play-Based Literacy Activities

1. Alphabet Treasure Hunt

Create a thrilling alphabet treasure hunt by hiding objects or cards representing different letters around the classroom. Give children a list of letters to find, or give them clues related to each letter’s sound or a word that starts with that letter.

As they search for the hidden treasures, they’ll reinforce letter recognition skills and have a blast!

2. Sensory Letter Play

CHildren Using ManipulativesEngage children’s senses while exploring the alphabet through sensory letter play. Fill a tray or a large container with sand, rice, or any sensory material. Bury alphabet magnets or foam letters in the sensory material and encourage children to dig them out and see which words they can spell.

As they discover each letter, ask them to name it, make its sound, or think of words that start with that letter. This hands-on activity promotes tactile exploration and strengthens letter associations.

3. Alphabet Obstacle Course

Transform learning the alphabet into an exciting physical adventure by setting up an alphabet obstacle course.

Use colorful tape or chalk to create a path around the classroom, forming the letters of the alphabet. Each letter can represent a different station or activity. For example, when a child reaches the letter “A,” they can act like an alligator. At the letter “B,” they can act like a bird, etc.

This activity combines movement and letter recognition to make learning interactive and dynamic.

4. Letter Collage

Encourage creativity and reinforce letter recognition by creating a letter collage!

Provide children with various magazines, newspapers, or colored paper. Ask them to search for pictures or words that begin with a specific letter and cut them out. Then, help them glue the pictures onto a larger sheet of paper in the shape of the corresponding letter.

This activity enhances fine motor skills while developing letter associations and vocabulary.

Fostering Student Potential

As educators, we have a unique opportunity to foster the full potential of our students by integrating play into literacy instruction. By recognizing the multifaceted nature of literacy and the importance of socio-emotional learning, we can create an enriching environment that nurtures children's reading abilities while fostering their emotional well-being and social competence.

Through play-based learning experiences, children become active participants in their own learning journeys, driven by intrinsic motivation and a love for exploration.

Play-based learning empowers students to become confident readers, effective communicators, and empathetic individuals. Educators can harness the power of play to create a generation of lifelong learners who not only excel academically but also thrive emotionally and socially!

The Lingokids app provides a platform that harnesses the power of play, helping children thrive in learning a new language. Lingokids’ interactive learning universe immerses kids in a modern curriculum in English with an array of experiences that deliver learning through play. Most importantly, the app teaches literacy, along with other academic and life skills, through interactive games, quizzes, puzzles, digital books, videos, and songs—so engaging that kids don’t even realize they’re learning!

When children interact with Lingokids, they’re seamlessly blending play and learning in a way that is delightful and fun! Discover more activities, support, and educational tools on the Lingokids blog!

References:

Morin, A. (2021) Play-based activities that build reading readiness, Edutopia. Available at: https://www.edutopia.org/article/play-based-activities-build-reading-readiness/.

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The State of Literacy…The Gateway to All Learning
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August 1, 2023 by User

Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children. What if you couldn’t read above a third-grade level…follow a recipe, find a doctor, locate a destination on a map, or understand your child’s report card? Life would be challenging to say the least. Approximately 50% of Americans read so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as reading prescription drug labels. 

According to ProLiteracy, 54% of adults in America read below a 6th grade level. There are more than 43 million adults who cannot read or write above a third-grade level. Children of adults with low literacy skills are 72% more likely to have a low reading level in school. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), estimates 65% of fourth graders in the U.S. read below proficiency levels, and these students are 400% more likely to drop out of high school. 

Low levels of literacy result in $225 billion losses in U.S. workforce productivity, correlates to more juvenile and federal crimes, and greater dependence on social welfare programs.  In the world, illiteracy costs the global economy $1.5 trillion annually. If all children in low-income countries had basic reading skills, 171 million people could escape extreme poverty. 

Lack of literacy skills affects vulnerable and marginalized populations in greater proportions – Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC); low income; multilingual learners; and people with learning disabilities.

Literacy begins at home 

A child’s home, community, and school all play significant roles in creating holistic environments in which a child learns to read. Family literacy and access to reading material is critically important in early reading development. This is the time when parents and caregivers  must build a home learning environment that supports academic performance when a child enters school. 

Reading to a child just twenty minutes a day enables them to experience new viewpoints. Speaking with a child about any topic expands their thinking, widens their world view, and fosters their agency to build background knowledge, a critical component to reading comprehension mastery. 

Literacy in early childhood 

In early childhood, children must acquire all the essential skills necessary to become successful learners to effectively move on to complex material and study grade level texts. At this stage, our brains are adept at learning new information, and children are sponges for knowledge. Yet, according to the Children’s Reading Foundation, 40% of children are entering kindergarten one to three years behind. 

Fundamental reading skills 

Immersing children in language-rich environments with evidence-based reading instruction that is grounded in the science of reading and brain-based learning, enables children to comprehend more of what they read, especially those with reading difficulties. These fundamental skills for reading mastery are critically important: 

  • oral language (listening and speaking), 

  • the alphabetic code (ability to discriminate sounds in words and vocabulary), 

  • print knowledge concepts (understanding meaning, letters and sight words), and 

  • writing. 

Learn more about the definitions of these skills in this guide, Beyond the Buzzwords Glossary.

Literacy is for ALL people

At Learning Ally, we believe literacy is for everyone. Improving literacy skills will improve democracy, and support diversity, equity, and inclusion. It will improve our mental and physical health, our social and emotional well-being, our relationships, and our world. 

Learning Ally partners with schools, educators and families to solve the literacy crisis through education, access, supplementary reading tools, and professional learning programs to share important information about how the brain learns to read and the science of reading.  We foster a community of educators and parents, and stand behind a whole child literacy™ approach to encourage more educators to take a holistic view of the variables surrounding each child’s learning abilities, potential, and differences. Literacy is the gateway to all learning. It is Learning Ally’s mission, and we want to help you open the gateway so every child can learn, grow and succeed. 

Sources:

Prosperity for America - 84+ Literacy Statistics in the United States

The World Literacy Foundation - The Economic-Social Costs of Illiteracy

The National Literacy Institute

Valerie Chernek writes about educational best practices through the use of technology and the science of reading in support of teachers, children, and adolescents who struggle with learning differences. 

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Strengthening the Bones of Comprehension: 7 strategies for improving sentence comprehension through direct instruction
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July 10, 2023 by User

Members of the Learning Ally community may already be familiar with The Reading Rope. Grounded in the Science of Reading, the reading rope is an analogy which depicts successful literacy as a braided combination of many sub-skills. “When we break this down, we have to teach kids to decode. We have to teach kids vocabulary. We have to teach kids about syntax and sentence sense…So there's a lot of essential skill building” says Laura Stewart, Chief Academic Officer at 95 Percent Group

Of the many skills which are woven into the rope, Stewart is raising awareness of one which is especially overlooked: Syntax. In language, syntax is the study of how words can be ordered and arranged in sentences to create meaning. Stewart posits that many students who struggle with comprehension may be getting stuck at this sentence level. “Less fluent readers may not have the stamina to hold sentences in [their] working memory until a meaning is extracted,” she explains. Luckily, Stewart met with the Learning Ally community to share 7 strategies for improving sentence comprehension through direct instruction.

1. Use “Teacher Talk” to Solidify Understanding. One of Stewart's first and easiest recommendations is to familiarize kids with the concept of complete sentences. “I might tell the children that a sentence tells us about someone or something. A sentence tells us what someone is doing or what something looks like” She says. Because sentences can carry many meanings and take on many forms, it’s important to start young students with a simplified frame of reference. “We're not really defining it. We're kind of modeling it for them… I've often heard teachers describe sentences to kids by saying a sentence has a who and a do”. 

2. Make a Game of Counting Sentences. After students grasp a theoretical understanding of sentences, it's time to put that knowledge into practice. Teachers should read out loud slowly to their students, pausing after each sentence to mark another tally or raise another finger. “What we're doing is reminding children to listen for a complete idea,” she explains. “This is a great way for students to develop sentence prosody, because sentences do have a certain rhythm”.

3. Ask Students “What’s Missing?” This strategy is another great way to train students to listen for sentence completeness. Stewart recommends starting orally by presenting students with a sentence fragment, either a subject or a predicate. Then, ask the students to answer “What’s Missing?”. By giving a non-example, teachers can further model what is, and what is not, a complete sentence. This works well for younger students who will struggle with more abstract explanations.

Stewart adds that “[these] strategies are simply something that we can do throughout the day…. We don't have to actually make this part of our ELA block… This is just something that we can tune our own teacher antenna to and make this part of our teacher talk”. In contrast, these next four steps are a bit more hands on, and will be more appropriate for older students.

4. Have Students Arrange Sentence Anagrams. Similar to a traditional anagram, which is a word formed by rearranging letters, Stewart’s “Sentence Anagrams” are formed by rearranging fragments. This activity works well when paired with a text read together in class. In this activity, teachers should ask students a question about information learned in the text. Students are then provided with the answer in the form of a dis-organized sentence–or un-scaffolded elements. The objective is for students to properly arrange the sentence elements to form a complete answer. “One of the most effective ways is to actually use sentence cards,” she says, which allows students to easily visualize the way words are ordered to create meaning.

5. Don’t Shy Away from Parts of Speech. “One question I quite often get is: do we teach parts of speech?” Stewart admits. Her answer is yes. “We really want to focus on this idea, that different words in a sentence serve different functions in that sentence”. While parts of speech and coding have historically been brushed aside, Stewart emphasizes that it is an important part of understanding syntax. Instruction about sentence coding can even pair nicely with Sentence Anagram activities. “[Teachers should] really focus on the mobility of the different parts of a sentence”.

Of course, literacy isn’t just about reading comprehension. As students get older, it’s important to connect their understanding of syntax with their writing skills. “I often see writing instruction that emphasizes whole compositions. And I think we're missing an important step,”  she explains. “We need to teach kids to develop a well-constructed sentence. Because sentences are the bones of all writing”. 

6. Challenge Students to Elaborate on Basic Sentences. According to Stewart, this is one of the trickiest strategies on her list. In this activity, students start with a simple sentence and expand it to “make it more meaningful and interesting”. Students can be guided through expansions by asking questions that align with each part of speech. For example, students can expand the predicate by asking “where?” and “when?”. They can go further by asking “to whom?” “for whom?” or  “for what?”. They can also expand the subject by asking questions about traits. Traits can be physical or relational, and they can even describe ownership or amount. For example, “The boys ran.” can be expanded to “Yesterday, the three boys ran to get groceries”.

7. Explore Sentence Variety in Student Writing. The goal of this strategy is “to create more interesting compositions by focusing on sentence level… types of sentences, length of sentences, [and] beginnings of sentences” says Stewart. For older kids, this may involve formal instruction on sentence types like interrogative, declarative, imperative, and exclamatory. Older students can go through their work, labeling  sentences to make sure they have one of each type.  But younger students can also practice diversifying their sentences. “One way that we can teach our students about sentence variety is to have them just count the number of words in their sentences”. Another trick for younger students is to circle the first word of each sentence. Students should “try not to start two sentences with the same word”, says Stewart.

With these seven strategies, Stewart hopes that students of all ages can gain a better grasp of how sentences are created and understood. And with learning loss as a result of the pandemic, this instruction seems urgent. “We know that many of our students do not express themselves orally in complete sentences.” But by developing a general understanding of syntax, students can expect to see improvement in their writing and their reading comprehension. “Sometimes students make an error in decoding and if they have good syntactic awareness, they can repair that error spontaneously”.

Article by: Michael Manzi. Michael was a struggling reader. Now, he writes articles and blogs to promote research-backed literacy interventions for students across the education spectrum.

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U.S. Educators Recognized For Outstanding Contributions To Literacy
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June 21, 2023 by User

For Immediate Release:

Announcing Learning Ally 2023 National Achievement Awards Winners

June 21, 2023 - Princeton, NJ – Learning Ally, a national nonprofit working with U.S. schools and districts to improve literacy for all students has announced the winners of its 2023 National Achievement Award, also known as the Winslow Coyne Reitnouer Excellence in Education Award

The announcement took center stage at the organization’s Spotlight on Dyslexia – a two day virtual professional learning conference for educators. The Award recognizes innovative educators and schools driving new initiatives to improve reading outcomes, and is named for Winnie Reitnouer, a long-time supporter of Learning Ally and champion of literacy for students with reading challenges. 

Winners receive monetary prizes and national recognition, and are chosen by a national selection committee. Notable achievements include building new reservoirs of knowledge about the science of reading; applying evidence-based reading practices to enhance class instruction; encouraging literacy leadership among colleagues, and expansion of accessible content to create equitable learning experiences.

This year’s winners are:

  • Wanda Anderson, Arlington, VA. A certified Reading Specialist and Wilson Dyslexia Practitioner who has more than 30 years of teaching experience in rural, urban and suburban schools and organizations.

  • Tina Herbst, Hillsborough County Public Schools, Plantation, FL. Supervisor of Instructional Support and Assessment in the Exceptional Student Education Department.

  • Leana Malinowski, Middlesex County, NJ. Early elementary teacher selected as the 2022-2023 Middlesex County Teacher of the Year and a State Teacher of the Year Finalist..

  • Andrea Spradling, Palm Beach FL. Faculty member of the American Heritage School of English who helped to launch and teach the first American Heritage School summer program for elementary students.

  • The Professional Development Team at St. Louis, MO Public Schools. Committed to building learning experiences and competencies that align to district, state, and national standards with the goal of deepening educators’ knowledge, through seminars, meetings, and work sessions to become literacy leaders.

Terrie Noland, V.P. of Educator Initiatives at Learning Ally said, “These extraordinary leaders are making powerful transformations in literacy education. They are on the leading edge of growing their professional knowledge on brain-based teaching so that all students, especially those with learning and print disabilities, receive every opportunity to reach their full potential.” 

About Spotlight on Dyslexia

Spotlight on Dyslexia is held annually for educators of all roles. Leading literacy experts share proven strategies, interventions, and accommodations to build out teaching capacity and support for students with dyslexia. To learn about the power of literacy instruction using the latest research of how the brain learns to read, archived sessions are available until December 31, 2023 for up to 30 continuing education certificates. 

For information about the National Achievement Award, or Spotlight on Dyslexia, visit www.learningally.org or call 800-221-1098.

About Learning Ally                                              

Learning Ally is a leading education nonprofit dedicated to empowering educators with proven solutions that help new and struggling learners reach their potential. Our range of literacy-focused offerings for students in Pre-K to 12th grade and catalog of professional learning allows us to support more than 2 million students and 445,000 educators across the United States.

 

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Finding Dyslexia in a Sea of Struggling Readers: The Challenges Are Real
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June 8, 2023 by User

Struggling readers are a challenge for every educator. How do you identify each child’s reading struggles? Do they need vocabulary building? Do they comprehend what they read? Do they struggle to decode words, a signal they may have a learning disability like dyslexia? Are they demonstrating behavioral problems? How do we effectively identify the characteristics of dyslexia based on screening school age children? Tim Odegard

Helping educators support children with reading barriers is a specialty of Dr. Tim Odegard, Professor of Psychology at Middle Tennessee State University. Dr. Odegard also leads the efforts of the Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia. Here is a recap of his  discussion at last year's 2022 Spotlight on Dyslexia conference. 

Reading is Language – Dyslexia is a Written Language Issue

“I'd like to start by highlighting that reading is language and dyslexia is a written language issue,” says Dr. Odegard. "Reading is the interaction between attentional systems in our brain. In our lives, we are immersed in oral language. It is the primary means of interacting with others. We are born with language processing centers for oral language systems that enable us to learn automatically, as well as process visually. Because of this, we have evolved highly integrated areas in our brains that form clusters of networks. This allows us to both express ourselves orally, as well as to receive and understand spoken language. The system that fires first is receptive. We're born into a world of sounds and pops of lights. We learn the statistical structure through exposure of verbal streams of auditory information that come into our ears and get processed. Those of us with dyslexia struggle to access written language. As an individual with this learning disability, I can tell you that life isn’t fair to insist that we must read, write and spell well automatically and effortlessly to be successful. It’s just not that way for dyslexics. Reading and writing are the modalities that we use to engage the world, and our society demands it of us. It is a non-negotiable expectation for all of us, but truly difficult for dyslexics. 

We Must Be Taught to Read

Public education has the potential to be the great equalizer to establish equality and social justice for every child. Every child has the right to go to school and receive access to information in a modality that works for them. Yet, a stark reality is millions of children are struggling to read simple passages and answer questions about what they read. Children must be taught directly how to read and write words. We do not learn how to do these activities merely by being exposed to written language. Ideally, once we are exposed to reading and writing instruction, our brains should work in a direct and systematic way, but that does not just happen for dyslexics. Reading is not a default mode in our brains. Our ability to hear the internal structures of words and their sound is in response to our learning the alphabetic code of written language. If we are not taught these skill sets, we do not learn how to read. Language development and written language development are symbiotic and relational. They feed off one another. 

Characteristics of Dyslexia

The goal of reading is to have strong oral language development and print skills. We must learn how to put words together to express ourselves. We must learn what the meaning units of words are. This is called morphology. We need vocabulary. We need reading comprehension, and we need background knowledge. Phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid naming, these skills are all associated with, and predictive of, individuals with dyslexia. 

In your classes, you will have strong readers and poor readers. Dyslexia lies on a continuum of severity. To identify students with dyslexia, look for inaccurate or non-fluent word recognition. The child who fits the characteristics of dyslexia doesn’t decode words or spell well, is inaccurate and less efficient in word reading and decoding abilities, and does not read fluently. They have phonological processing deficits, lack sound symbol correspondence knowledge, and automaticity when reading. They may be persistently slow in their rate of response to instruction. There may be a genetic predisposition as well. Some people are pre-wired to struggle.

Behavioral Profile and Social Determinants

There are also social determinants to brain development caused by environmental factors. The World Health Organization defines social determinants of health as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, learn, work, and age. How can you begin to mitigate this? We should look for skills, behavior, and social determinants in struggling readers, and implement early identification and intensive and sustained instruction and remediation processes. In Kindergarten, you are identifying print-focused risk in emergent literacy skills. 

Specify how screening for dyslexia relates to universal screening as part of RTI and MTSS, as well as eligibility testing for learning disabilities under IDEA. Get it out in the open, talk about it, hash it out, figure out what works. Measures should be quick and easy to administer with accuracy and pre-literacy constructs. Undertake an audit to find gaps in your existing practices, materials, and personnel to screen for dyslexia. Develop a plan to address the gaps. Perform ongoing assessments. Record the data, aggregate the data, make the data usable and useful at the systems level and at the student level. 

There are forty-nine U.S. states that have dyslexia laws on the books and most call for universal screening to determine if a student is at risk for reading failure or not meeting grade level expectations. Yet analysis of public data in states that require reporting on identification of students with dyslexia in public schools suggests that educators are under-identifying dyslexia. 

These recommendations can be carried out at multiple levels of an educational ecosystem, and at the state department of education, district level, building level, and classroom level. You can learn more and download helpful resources and recommendations from our Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia site.

Learning Ally’s Professional Learning Services are designed to strengthen educator’s instructional capacity so they can deliver a deeper, richer learning experience and promote better academic outcomes. 

About Tim Odegard

Tim Odegard, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and holds the Katherine Davis Murfree Chair of Excellence in Dyslexic Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. He also leads the efforts of the Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Annals of Dyslexia. Before joining the faculty at MTSU, Tim served on the faculty at the University of Texas Arlington and UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. In addition to being a research scientist, Tim is a reading therapist, having completed a two-year dyslexia specialist training program at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas during his NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship.

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