Today’s Literacy Headlines

I find it hard to believe, but there are some kids who don’t like to read nonfiction. They’re fiction readers through and through, but consider nonfiction to be dry, boring, and generally uninteresting. Aside from my personal horror at this attitude, the reality is that kids will have to read nonfiction now and for the rest of their life. To be successful in school, to be informed citizens, to do their jobs, and just to collect information in general, being a literate nonfiction reader is an important skill. One of the best kinds nonfiction to hook these die-hard fiction fans is history. It is, after all, just another kind of story. I’ve looked over a lot of the recently published history titles and selected six that are not only accessible and interesting, but also include diverse perspectives, break new ground, or introduce readers to remarkable people, places, and events. Even fiction fanatics will be enticed!

Research confirms that getting middle schoolers on the path to college and career readiness requires a truly engaging curriculum. We need to channel middle schoolers’ excitement with their new ways of seeing and being in the world into tackling challenging academic experiences. That’s why we created four actionable principles of middle school ELA engagement. When it comes to ELA, these principles won’t just help your students “get through” middle school. They’ll help you get through to your middle schoolers. Your students bring a unique and complex set of needs into your classroom. If you want to do more than just hold their attention for five minutes—that is, if you want to deliver the deep engagement that leads to deep learning—you’ve got to provide both content and pedagogy that speak to those needs.

A practice known as “shared book reading”—engaging children by pointing to pictures, discussing word meanings, and the sequence of events in a book during one-on-one or small-group settings—has widely been presumed to boost language growth for English-learners. Now, a new analysis from researchers at Florida State University of more than 50 reading studies has determined that to be true. In the report, “Shared Book Reading Interventions with English Learners: A Meta-Analysis,” the researchers reviewed 54 studies that included nearly 4,000 students, and found that many different forms of shared reading can facilitate language growth for English-learners—who are over-represented among students who read at below-basic levels in U.S. schools. In any form, shared book reading allows adults to model the skills of a proficient reader, focusing on fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Graphic novel adaptations of prose works have been earning critical praise for some time. Now, with graphic novels firmly established on library shelves, publishers are turning to them as source material for novels and chapter books. These trends are expanding audiences and creating opportunities for creators. While graphic novels can offer a surefire way to get developing readers into books, prose adaptations of graphic novels, too, provide a new avenue. They draw in comics fans who want more of their favorite characters—and readers who like the story line but not the graphic format. In the prose-to-comics direction, even an award-winning, critically acclaimed novel such as Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak can gain a new dimension when adapted to graphic format.

Google found that some of its most successful and innovative products came from projects its employees developed on their own time. So the company instituted a 20-percent time policy, where employees could use 20 percent of their work time on a passion project. In classrooms, teachers give students a set amount of time to explore a topic about which they are passionate. Usually the inquiry results in a project, solution or analysis shared with the rest of the class. It’s the opposite of a standardized curriculum – which makes some teachers nervous – but in the Genius Hour idea, 7th grade ELA teacher Joy Kirr saw an opportunity to bring joy to reading. She decided to try giving students time in class to read whatever they wanted. There were no expectations other than that students learn something and share it with the class. There would be no grades because it didn’t make sense to compare projects that are so different. Kirr asked her principal if she could try out Genius Hour and his response opened the door for everything that followed. According to Kirr, he asked, “Do you think it’s right for your kids?” She said yes and has used that question as a guidepost for every other shift that came from this first step.

“I want to say something important about writing,” Pirette McKamey told 25 seniors in her English class at San Francisco’s Mission High School one fall afternoon in 2012. It’s incredibly hard, and always incomplete, she explained. “I’ve reread some of my essays 20 times and I still go, ‘I can’t believe I made this mistake or that mistake. I’m going to read a powerful essay as a model today,” said McKamey, who frequently shares her students’ work at the beginning of class as a way to showcase examples of effective and creative approaches to writing. She appreciated the student’s paper for “the heft of its content,” she told the class. “It also feels real. It was written with real engagement and honesty.” Today, there is a growing consensus that students need strong writing skills to succeed in the workplace and to fully participate in society, but educators passionately disagree on the best ways to teach those skills.

According to the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), 40 states (including Washington, D.C.) still either do not have sufficient licensing tests on the science of reading in place for elementary and special education teachers, or they have no test at all. The disconnect between how teachers are trained and how states license them to enter classrooms are at complete odds with how we evaluate student academic growth over time; we’re basically holding young students to a higher standard of proving proficiency via formal, standardized assessments than we do their teachers. “If we are asking students to demonstrate their content knowledge, then we must ensure teachers have the content knowledge to teach,” said Heather Peske, the senior associate commissioner at the Center for Instructional Support in Massachusetts, a state that sets the bar high on reading credentials for both elementary and special education teachers.

Although educational apps for preschoolers abound, many don’t include sound teaching strategies. That’s the takeaway from a new study published today in the academic journal Learning, Media and Technology. “From our review of a small portion of this market, it does not appear that popular literacy and math apps for preschoolers are employing many of the techniques that we know help young children learn,” wrote Melissa N. Callaghan and Stephanie M. Reich, education researchers at the University of California, Irvine. Among the biggest problems the researchers identified: poor feedback, ineffective guidance and modeling, and lack of responsiveness to children’s individual skill levels.

Only 11 states have licensing tests that measure whether both elementary special and general educators have mastered the specific building blocks of reading instruction. That analysis comes from the Washington-based National Council on Teacher Quality, which analyzed the licensing tests for elementary teachers nationwide. In 2000, the National Reading Panel synthesized decades of research in reading instruction and identified several pillars of scientifically-valid reading instruction. But that knowledge is sometimes assessed only partially on state licensing exams, NCTQ found. In some cases, teachers can pass their licensing test without having to demonstrate that knowledge at all. And in in five states—Alabama, New Mexico, Minnesota, Mississippi, and New Hampshire—NCTQ found that general elementary-education teachers are asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the science of reading, but special education teachers are not. That’s particularly worrisome because so many students are first referred to special education because they are struggling to read, said Elizabeth Ross, the managing director of state policy for NCTQ and the author of this report.

Classroom teachers daily face the struggle of engaging students in writing. One reason students may struggle with writing is lack of background knowledge. Research has shown that background knowledge is essential for understanding text; if students have not developed sufficient background knowledge on a topic, it will be very difficult for them to write about it. Wide-reading, simulations, experiments, videos, and field trips are all traditional ways teachers can build background knowledge and, with today’s technology, virtual reality can also be a means to build background knowledge and motivate students to write.

On a June morning in this rural eastern North Carolina community, about a dozen families grabbed the edges of a rainbow parachute, making plastic balls bounce in its ripples. Grandparents, parents and children switched between water games, parachute activities and swing-sets spread across a playground. The fun and games are serious business to the group that runs them, the Down East Partnership for Children, a 25-year-old nonprofit that provides educational and health resources to families of young children in rural Nash and Edgecombe counties. The goal of these meetings is to highlight the importance of basic interactions between parents and their kids, and provide a way for families to meet other families, get connected with resources and prepare children for kindergarten.

A new tourist trail has been launched across Scotland which includes locations with links to characters from children’s books. Harry Potter, Peter Rabbit and Peter Pan are among the stories which have connections along the route. Marc Lambert, chief executive of Scottish Book Trust, said: “Scotland has a rich history of iconic literary characters, created or inspired by its places and people. Visiting locations with a special connection to favourite stories or figures is a real thrill for fans of any age, and Scotland’s Storybook Trail is packed with superb suggestions. Now is the perfect time to take a trip round our beautiful country and enjoy again, or for the first time, some of the greatest Scottish stories ever told and the places where the creative spark started – just don’t forget to pack a book.”

The release of the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), has given rise to concern that reading scores of U.S. students have stalled for the past decade. At a NAEP Day event held in April, a panel of reading experts discussed how curriculum and instruction needs to change to improve reading performance. ILA unpacks and expands on this conversation in its latest brief, Exploring the 2017 NAEP Reading Results: Systemic Reforms Beat Simplistic Solutions.Collectively, the panelists’ responses emphasized the primary role of knowledge and vocabulary in comprehension performance. As a means of increasing knowledge building, two panelists agreed that curriculum and instruction should require students to read more challenging, grade-appropriate materials rather than texts that fit their instructional level.

The research arm of the federal Education Department has released a how-to guide for educators who work with English-language learners. The eight-page report from Regional Education Laboratory Northwest is designed to help educators identify the strengths and needs of ELLs — whether they’re a newcomer to the United States, a long-term English-learner struggling with the language, or a student who is somewhere in-between. “We have a tendency to treat English-learners as one monolithic group,” said Tim Blackburn, a senior adviser for English-learner projects at REL Northwest. “There are many different types of language-learner students and our programs have to be designed with intentions to meet their specific needs.” The guide also outlines the rights of English-learners and their families, details how factors such as home language and prior education can influence students’ performance in school, and offers tips for schools on selecting the best-fit English-learner program model.

Walking into Interstate Books4School, one would assume it’s a private industrial warehouse for books. Dozens of 6-foot metal bookcases stretch to the back of the building where packing materials and boxes wait to be shipped. But despite the warehouse appearance, Books4School is an open-to-the-public bookstore with a simple goal of getting affordable books into kids’ hands. Don’t let the unconventional environment fool you — owners and siblings Molly and Randy Fields want you and your kids to come and browse Books4School’s stacks. Books4School began as a supplier of trade books with a 35 percent discount on cover prices, but is now a 50,000-square-foot warehouse home to more than 2 million children’s books, including bilingual Spanish-English books, providing discounted books to children from newborns to the 12th grade.

Teaching students the science of how their brains change over time can help them see intelligence as something they can develop, rather than innate and unchangeable, finds a new analysis of 10 separate studies in the journal Trends in Neuroscience and Education. Teaching students the concept of neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to make new neural connections as a result of experience—is a common tactic in helping students develop a so-called “growth” rather than “fixed” mindset. But recent research has questioned how much students really understand or benefit from this approach. Researchers from the Montreal, Canada-based Laboratory for Research in Neuroeducation at the University of Montreal analyzed 10 high-quality experimental studies of growth mindset interventions on students from age 7 into adulthood that included instruction on neuroplasticity. They looked at measures of students’ academic enjoyment, motivation, goals, and resilience after failure following participation in these mindset interventions. They found that while on average, such interventions improved students’ motivation, they particularly benefited students and subjects which prior studies have shown are at high risk of developing a fixed mindset.

A recent report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute on the Common Core reading standards has challenged whether teachers are implementing the standards rigorously. As a high school English teacher in Kentucky, I have taught under the Common Core for six years. I am confident that the standards aren’t a problem. If anything, they have made my instruction stronger and more rigorous. While naysayers have been quick to point to the Fordham report as evidence of backsliding in education, I found several encouraging signs in the report that give me hope for the direction of education in our country. For instance, the report notes that teachers are using a variety of tools to gauge text complexity — something educators haven’t always focused on as heavily. Understanding text complexity helps us to better challenge students by gradually introducing more rigorous texts so students are able to access content above their reading level.

Shelby County Schools is partnering with a teacher training program to transform a low-performing elementary school into one that specializes in raising the literacy skills of students. The Memphis Teacher Residency, a teacher training program, would be responsible for staffing the classrooms. Each classroom would have a resident from the program training under a more experienced lead teacher. The residents, who are recent college graduates, are paid during their three years of training, and earn a graduate degree through the program. Shelby County Schools would retain administrative control over the school, and staff from other elementary schools would visit as a “lab school.”

Multitiered systems of support—including response to intervention and positive behavior interventions and support—have become almost ubiquitous among schools trying to find more personalized ways to support students’ academic and behavior needs. But with a lot of moving parts, schools often struggle to make these complex systems effective in the long run. But how principals and district superintendents approach data use and coordination in the first year of implementation predicts how well schools will be able to sustain their support efforts, according to a study in the journal Education Researcher. In either behavior or academic contexts, these systems include: universal screening tools that allow teachers to identify which students need help; evidence-based interventions to get those students back on track; multiple “tiers” of intensity to increase support for students who don’t improve; and progress monitoring, so that educators have the data on how well a student is responding to the extra help and can make changes if needed.

The 18 states that received federal Preschool Development Grants have collectively worked to increase the number of high-quality slots available for children from low- and moderate-income families, according to the latest progress report on the grant program released by the U.S. Department of Education. The grantee states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. They have used the funds either to start or expand state-run pre-K programs. The grants have provided about $250 million a year over four years to the states. The progress report said that states have used the money in a variety of areas, including increasing program length from half-day to full-day; limiting class size and decreasing staff-child ratios; providing teacher coaching, and adding comprehensive services to programs. The progress report said that an additional 49,000 children benefitted from those quality initiatives.

Current conversations about screentime often reduce the discussion to a simplistic debate: How much time should youth spend on devices? Although many scholars argue that web-based inquiry, multimodal creation, and communication of ideas in web-based environments support the development of fundamental skills of digital literacy, conversations about screentime in education, medicine, and mass media focus predominantly on the time youth spend on devices. These discussions overlook fundamentally important questions about what youth are learning by using digital devices, with whom, and for what purposes. Although research over the last two decades has shown that reading and writing in digital spaces requires complex skills, literacy development is often not addressed in conversations about screentime.

Yes, educators must teach to certain writing standards. But reaching standards and finding joy, creativity, and a sense of identity through writing are not mutually exclusive. Rather, I feel more confident that my students are reaching the standards when they find joy in what they write. Where I teach, in Minnesota, one of the 1st grade writing standards declares that students should “write narratives and other creative texts in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.” Note that the word “creative” is right there in the standard! The standard is also quite broad and allows room for children to write in various forms and styles. When teachers dictate what or how students write during a school year, it limits their potential.

Today, less than one-third of teachers with English language learners in their classrooms have the requisite preparation to teach them effectively; only 20 states require all teachers to have training in working with this group. By providing our teachers the strategies to keep these learners from falling behind, they can identify the challenges that limit language proficiency and foster a welcoming environment for language development. But before instruction even begins, teachers should first learn key information about their students, including: What language is spoken at home? How much, if any, English do they know? Have they had any previous English language instruction? If so, how much? Do their parents/family speak English? What are their parents’ educational levels? At what age did the student arrive in the United States? Next, establish a school environment that is comforting, non-intimidating and conducive to learning.

The new nonprofit Gaining Ground delivers books in Tulsa to Union Public Schools children. Students at those schools were given 10 books at the end of the school year. They are theirs to keep, but they can bring them and trade them in when the Gaining Ground Book Bus arrives in their neighborhood over the summer. There are no late fees or library-type cards because these books are the children’s to keep as long as they choose. They don’t just provide the books to stop “summer slide,” as they call it. “This is really about the love of reading,” founder Lisa Shotts says. “Reading is the foundation for everything. Reading builds passion.” All the teachers who work on the bus are volunteers.

Throughout my career, I have taught countless students who have struggled to overcome their learning differences, while also trying to learn English and master the content in their academic subjects. Many of these students have surprised their parents, teachers, and administrators by achieving success despite formidable odds. Despite their obstacles, English-language learners with disabilities can thrive with the help of specific teaching strategies. Teachers must also adopt a positive attitude to help ELLs with disabilities reach their full potential. This affirming approach focuses on emphasizing students’ strengths rather than their deficits. Students feel motivated when the teacher acknowledges their past experiences, special skills, interests, and talents. This gives them the confidence to try new and challenging activities.

With 10 million students in grades K-12 struggling to read, taking those struggling readers from disengaged to enthused may seem like a huge feat. However, doing just one thing to take action can cause a wave of reaction throughout the entire school. In a recent edWebinar, Nelda Reyes, a dyslexia interventionist at De Zavala Elementary in San Marcos (TX) Consolidated Independent School District, shared how she was able to establish a culture of reading at her school by creating a sense of belonging, building awareness, and never taking no for an answer. Before Reyes started any initiatives at De Zavala Elementary, the general feel in her classroom regarding reading was a lack of enthusiasm, interest, or any conversation about books and authors. Promoting a school-wide reading culture, as well as recognition for the struggling readers (many who have never had that feeling before), was crucial to curbing these negative feelings. She successfully created an atmosphere of reading and literacy at her school with the following strategies.

As technology becomes more ubiquitous in classrooms, many schools are choosing Chromebooks because it’s one of the least expensive devices, a big win for schools balancing spending priorities. But many teachers aren’t using these new tools for much more than notetaking and slideshow presentations. Tanya Avrith is a self-proclaimed techy-teacher. She teamed up with Holly Clark, an education strategist, to write “The Google Infused Classroom,” a book they hope will help teachers see Chromebooks as more than a testing device or an expensive notebook. Avrith and Clark focused on two powerful tech tools to bring creation to Chromebook classrooms: Book Creator and Adobe Spark.

Amid the clinking of iced tea glasses and salad forks, Philadelphia officials welcomed a group of more than 700 teachers, experts, bureaucrats, and foundation executives to the Logan Hotel in Center City Tuesday for a conference called GLR week. Their goal: to sell Philadelphia as a city on the vanguard of early childhood education and, in particular, early literacy. GLR stands for “Grade-Level Reading” and this annual conference of education bigwigs is run by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a coalition dedicated to boosting the number of low-income children reading proficiently by the end of third grade. That push includes Read by 4th, a sprawling campaign made up of over 100 local nonprofits and government agencies, managed by the Free Library of Philadelphia, dedicated to early learning. The campaign has given away tens of thousands of books, trained “reading captains” in communities across the city, and tried to integrate more focused reading instruction into summer and after-school programs. Philly has also bet big on early childhood education.

Jeff Smith is the creator of Bone, the series often credited with kicking off the boom in graphic novels for children when it was published beginning in 2005. Now Smith has a picture book set in the world of Bone, “Smiley’s Dream Book,” aimed at kids ages 2 to 6 — who may be the series’ future readers. I talked to Smith about where the Bone characters came from, how Bone ended up as a series for children, and what the transition from comics to picture books was like for him.

When my first picture book for children was published, I was invited to do readings at schools and bookstores. As the author of five books for adults, I was familiar with the sometimes dispiriting realities of such events. If people actually show, at least a few will have no idea who you are but are simply drawn to the toothpicked cheese cubes and free wine. Others will be friends I have planted in the audience, ready to jump in and pose a question if yawning silences occur during the Q&A. But when I went to the first reading for my book “I’m Afraid Your Teddy Is in Trouble Today” at an elementary school, I felt like I had entered a secret neurotic-author fantasyland. My name was plastered everywhere on posters the kids had made. They had brought in their teddy bears to show me and made their own tribute books. After the reading, an eager mob of kids enveloped me in a group hug. My experience is hardly unique. Children’s book authors describe school visits where students have made up board games or songs or elaborate plays inspired by the books. They are interviewed by the principal over the intercom or by kids from the school paper. Contests are held for the coveted prize of lunch with the author in the cafeteria; handwritten thank-you notes arrive by the hundreds.

On windswept fields outside Fargo, North Dakota, a bold experiment in education has begun. In a lone building flanked by farmland, the Northern Cass School District is heading into year two of a three-year journey to abolish grade levels. By the fall of 2020, all Northern Cass students will plot their own academic courses to high school graduation, while sticking with same-age peers for things like gym class and field trips. The goal is to stop tethering teaching to “seat time” — where students are grouped by age and taught at a uniform, semester pace — and instead adopt competency-based education, in which students progress through skills and concepts by demonstrating proficiency. That alone isn’t unusual; a majority of states now allow competency-based pilot programs, and many schools have fully implemented the approach. What makes Northern Cass notable is that very few mainstream schools, let alone districts, have set out to topple grade levels.

While most Upstate students are resting and recharging over the summer months, many of Spartanburg’s youngest readers have spent the break from class getting a leg up. It’s an attempt to head off what education leaders have deemed as the “summer slide,” a term describing the performance and learning decline some students experience following extended breaks from the classroom. It’s a problem that compounds over time, according to the national reading advocacy group Reading is Fundamental, which can ultimately put students behind their peers by up to three years of learning by the end of fifth grade.Statistically, the summer slide effects students living in poverty more than those from families with more resources, according to the Spartanburg Academic Movement. While SAM has partnered with all seven Spartanburg County school districts to find data-driven methods to turn the summer slide into a “summer climb,” those lessons might be most valuable for students at Spartanburg’s four highest-poverty schools.

Bringing books to life – transporting an author’s words and worlds from typewritten pages into physical spaces – marvelously rouses the passion for reading within young readers. Just imagine your excitement if you learned that Tad Lincoln had lost his famous father’s speech — and that it’s up to you to find the script in time! Imagine the fun of uncovering the clues you’ll need by solving riddles and math problems. For Melanie Koss, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, no imagination is necessary. She’s witnessed such life-changing joy at NIU STEM Read field trips, the brainchild of STEM Read Director Gillian King-Cargile: Students in secondary grades come to campus for a day of activities that unpack “the science behind the fiction.” Koss says, the children and adolescents who participate in STEM Read activities will develop and sharpen their problem-solving skills across all subjects.

People’s favorite childhood stories often stick with them throughout their lives. When the book-centric social media site Goodreads tracked the books most reread by its users, many of them were children’s books, including J. K. Rowling’s entire Harry Potter series, C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. For many, having kids of their own provides an opportunity to share these beloved stories with the next generation. But revisiting them alone as adults can also provide comfort, relaxation, and the pleasure of rediscovery. Not only do rereaders rediscover the story, but they may also rediscover themselves. Rereading “reminds us that we can experience something intensely and not be seeing everything at the time. And going back, we see something different,” says Jill Campbell, an English professor at Yale. “It’s a way of thinking more about a book that’s had an impact on you, but it’s also a way of thinking about your own life, memories, and experiences. The continuities and the differences.”

Amid the push for tangible outcomes like higher test scores and graduation rates, it can be tempting to think that school culture is just too vague or “soft” to prioritize. That would be a mistake, according to Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell, an expert in education leadership and management. As she explains, researchers who have studied culture have tracked and demonstrated a strong and significant correlation between organizational culture and an organization’s performance. Once principals understand what constitutes culture — once they learn to see it not as a hazy mass of intangibles, but as something that can be pinpointed and designed — they can start to execute a cultural vision. At a recent session of the National Institute for Urban School Leaders at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Bridwell-Mitchell took a deep dive into “culture,” describing the building blocks of an organization’s character and fundamentally how it feels to work there.

The number of students with disabilities who spend most of their school day in regular classrooms has risen over the decades, and represented about 63 percent of school-age children and youth in the 2016-17 school year. But the academic outcomes for students with disabilities remains poor. And that’s because there’s been pressure on placing students in general education classrooms, when the focus needs to be on effective educational practices, whether they’re in inclusive settings or not, says Allison Gilmour, an assistant professor of special education at Temple University. “Location isn’t the same thing as services,” said Gilmour, the author of “Has Inclusion Gone to Far”, an editorial published in the journal Education Next. “We need to shift our focus from where students are educated, to how they’re actually educated.”

There is little more difficult than trying to engage a whole class of students in reading a novel that is a poor match for the group. There are things teachers can do to influence the experience in one direction or another, but a great deal rests purely on the book itself. I’m a vocal advocate of student centered whole novel studies, even though there are many educators I respect who avoid whole class novels altogether in favor of student selected independent reading and smaller book clubs. I agree the element of choice is powerful, and I incorporate a lot of choice reading time into my class. I also know that a well-chosen book and a student-centered approach can bring students together around a shared literary experience. But how do we make that choice with so many different readers to think about? When I search for books for whole novel studies, I consider the merits of each title in five key dimensions.

In the growing conversation about expanding early learning opportunities in Indiana, a central question is: Is preschool worth it? As policymakers consider the outcomes of limited city and state pre-Kindergarten programs, many want to see proof of how well preschool prepares children for kindergarten. Some remain skeptical of the gains, even as early childhood education advocates point to studies showing the benefit of preschool many years on. But with 18 years of teaching experience, Sequin says she often can clearly see the differences between preschool graduates and those who didn’t go to preschool, as soon as they come into the classroom. Children may get a head start on academics in preschool, but the behavioral piece — knowing how to transition into the classroom — is the greatest advantage that preschoolers have, said Michael Conn-Powers, director of the Early Childhood Center at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community.

The Council for Exceptional Children and the federally-supported Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform, also known as CEEDAR, came up with 22 “high-leverage practices” spread across four domains that should be mastered by newly-minted special education teachers. Now, the same organizations have created videos showing some of those practices in action. The four videos, each about 20 minutes long, offer examples of a handful of these practices: “provide constructive and positive feedback,” “systematically design instruction towards learning goals,” “use explicit instruction,” and “use strategies to promote active student engagement.” CEC and CEEDAR say these practices aren’t just appropriate for students with disabilities; they’re effective instructional techniques for all students.

A single parent, Don Kimberlin supports his kids through his contracting business in Seymour, Indiana, a small city in Jackson County. But he has struggled to find affordable, high-quality childcare. During the first frantic year after his twins were born, he even stopped working to stay home with them, burning through his savings. In early spring 2017, a friend told him that Zion Lutheran School (where regular pre-K tuition is $6,410 per child annually) was accepting 4-year-olds through a state grant program that provides free tuition for low-income parents. The structured program and veteran staff appealed to Kimberlin, as did the faith-based instruction, he said, sitting in the school’s bright lobby one recent morning after dropping his kids at their classroom. Kimberlin’s kids, now 5, are among 2,234 children in 15 counties who enrolled in Indiana’s On My Way Pre-K for 2017-18, the most since the state started the pilot program in 2015.

It is a rare children’s book author who is singled out as a “reliably bad child-rearing influence,” but for the Austrian writer Christine Nöstlinger the words were intended as a high compliment. They came, somewhat tongue in cheek, in the citation for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which compared her irreverent “bad influence” to that of Lindgren, the Swedish author and political activist. Ms. Nöstlinger shared the initial Lindgren prize with Maurice Sendak in 2003. Her work is “characterized by disrespectful humor, clear-sighted solemnity and inconspicuous warmth,” the citation said. “She is a staunch supporter of children and those living on the margin of society.” Ms. Nöstlinger wrote more than 100 books, not all for children, and her work has been translated into 30 languages.