Literacy and Reading

Why are so many toys today labeled "educational"? How could parents be more empowered to size up toys and choose the ones that will be best for their children's play and learning? In honor of holiday shopping, Early Education Initiative Director Lisa Guernsey and Claire Green, President of Parents' Choice, discuss trends in children's toys.

This fall, the Harvard Graduate School of Education is publishing a series of one-page memos for policymakers and early learning leaders on how to improve young children’s literacy. Using evidence from research on reading and its precursors, these Lead for Literacy one-pagers are designed to help leaders avoid common mistakes in their early education programs. Nonie Lesaux, a Harvard education professor and reading expert, leads the research group behind the project.

A recent segment on PBS NewsHour creatively knit together two oft-forgotten elements for ensuring that more children learn to read: the power of the pediatrician and the disparities in access children face not just in preschool but also in full-day kindergarten.  

Apps on iPads are dominating the ed-tech conversation these days, but last week I had an opportunity to move beyond a trumpeting of the touchscreen and examine how online, digital media could change the early ed workforce. In a presentation for a meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers in Indianapolis, I talked to early childhood specialists in state education agencies about some untapped areas for enhancing training and forming partnerships among educators , including librarians, via digital technology.

On October 2, 2012, Lisa Guernsey gave a presentation on technology's role in early education at a meeting in Indianapolis for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The presentation, Digital Intersections: Where and How Digital Technology Should Meet Early Childhood Policy, explored the science of learning via media for young children and charted several areas, such as teacher training, library partnerships and parent engagement models, where state leaders could encourage more thoughtful adoption of technology among early educators. 

In yesterday’s Orlando Sentinel, I question the findings of a study that suggests retention improves third graders’ reading scores in Florida. The study didn’t isolate retention from Florida’s other literacy initiatives so we don’t really know what made the difference. Florida’s reading law requires much more than retention.

Millions of children are not able to read on grade level by the end of third grade. In response, state legislatures are passing new reading policies, many of which require students to repeat third grade if they are struggling readers.

Florida, an early adopter of literacy policies that include this threat — known as retention — has been joined in recent years by several states with similar policies for holding children back. But is retention an important or even necessary part of the solution to children's reading deficiencies? That is a question left unanswered.

Take a guess: What is the single most important year of an individual’s academic career? The answer isn’t junior year of high school, or senior year of college. It’s third grade.

On Thursday this week, the Early Education Initiative and the Future Tense project at Slate magazine will kick off the back-to-school season with an event here in Washington, D.C. designed to shake up typical notions of elementary school. Today's young kids are now using technology to express themselves, make things, and share ideas. What do they have to teach us about the way they learn? 

Getting Schooled by a Third Grader: What Kids’ Gaming, Tweeting, Streaming and Sharing Tells us About the Future of Elementary Education

A new study by Sarah Miller, Paul Connolly and Lisa Maguire of Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland suggests that while volunteer tutors can be effective at helping students improve their reading speed and ability to read aloud, volunteers with little to no training are unlikely to help a child improve his or her reading comprehension or reading confidence -- skills that may be more effectively taught by professional educators.