Literacy

Back to school season is upon us. For the millions of students embarking on a new school year, that means setting goals to get them on a path to be ready for college and career success. Teachers and families are not only helping those students set their goals, they also…

By Ash Vasudeva and Amy Slamp Common Core and Literacy Design Collaborative tools provide the foundation for strengthening teaching and learning. With states and districts implementing new academic standards based on the Common Core State Standards, teachers have more opportunities than ever to collaborate around the shared goals of strengthening…

What Randall Carswell likes most about an online instructional tool called Quill is that it forces his 8th grade English students to slow down. Having grown up in a digital world, he says, their tendency is to skim through reading assignments, paying little heed to grammatical structure and overlooking critical…

Teachers know that meeting students’ individual needs in a bustling classroom is a Sisyphean task. But the job may be getting easier, thanks to a variety of new digital literacy tools. Last year Debra Rook began using Newsela, a program that uses news articles about current events to build reading comprehension,…

Cross-posted on Impatient Optimists Being able to read well opens whole new worlds to students. Literacy is crucial to mastery of any subject and to success in college and career. But it is also a door to the imagination, to stories, and to knowledge about the world—a way to experience a…