The 2020 Aspiring Teacher Scholarship was sponsored by LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling), Voyager Sopris Learning’s landmark professional learning series on the science of reading. Alabama uses LETRS as a key part of its statewide literacy initiative to teach educators the science of reading and give them the skills to teach language and literacy to every student, even those with reading challenges like dyslexia.

Assessment can sometimes feel like that pile of puzzle pieces—which ones fit together? How do data fit together to create a comprehensive picture of a school, classroom, or individual student? Much is now known regarding which skills are highly predictive of later reading outcomes, and several excellent tools are available for this purpose. In kindergarten and first grade, timed tasks including letter naming, basic phonemic awareness, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) provide insight into who is at risk and to a certain extent; why.

The science of reading ... has allowed me to transition from a traditional classroom teacher to a virtual classroom teacher. Anyone can open a reading program and read the scripted text, but what happens when you do not have that reading program? LETRS provides you with the why (science) and the how (science) to teach reading, no program needed. LETRS teaches the science of reading which can be applied to any student, while being based on their individual level.

After time away from live classroom instruction and what middle schoolers knew as the “norm,” how can we make the transition back to school easier, to engage students in learning immediately, and to effectively create literacy success for all students?

Writing your own items is one way to gather evidence from students about their knowledge and skills. This evidence can support inferences you make about student learning to help with decisions about the next unit of instruction, placement in learning groups, needs for remediation, and other classroom choices. For writing TEIs, there are some special considerations. Here are five tips to writing your own TEIs.

Learning to read in a language you are simultaneously learning to speak and understand is more complicated than learning to read in a language you already know. This is the challenge faced by millions of English learners (ELs) whose English proficiency is low and school achievement generally poor. What do we know about teaching English learners to read and write and develop as English readers and writers?