A new organization is pushing for children’s TV and video programs to automatically display captions to boost literacy. It’s an easy thing to do, and it has even more research behind it than advocates realize.

The circumstances in which we find ourselves as educators at this moment call for flexible and reflective thinking about the goals toward which we might aim and the goals that we might set for our students. I believe we will need to adjust our goals, and likely readjust them again at a later time. Ultimately, this means we will need to be flexible with expectations.

Writing well can be taught. While teachers may hold a clear vision for how they would like their students to write, getting students to produce effective and beautiful writing independently can remain elusive. Teaching students how to self-regulate when writing dramatically lifts not just the quality of writing, but overall literacy.

To help you make the most of time away from the classroom, we have created a special page where you can download activities, use trial versions of resources, and find a vast library of authoritative content, including webinars, blogs, and podcasts—all of which can be accessed for free, at any time.

Phonemic awareness is an essential foundational skill for unlocking the alphabetic principle to read words. It follows that weak phonemic awareness negatively impacts a student’s ability to readily blend words, leading to weak comprehension; we cannot understand what we cannot read.

The complexities of reading are many. Throughout the years, much attention has been given to K–2 reading instruction and rightly so. However, what happens when the students get bigger and the words they have to read get bigger and more unique?