Just because school’s out doesn’t mean books should be returned to their shelves! Reading routines are an essential part of your child’s development, and summer is the perfect time to make reading strategies a regular part of the day. Think about it–without the pressures of a curriculum, homework, and after-school activities, your child has plenty of free time to explore the topics and genres they really want to read about. Here are our top summer…
Researchers have identified a phenomenon called summer slide, the loss of students’ academic skills when school is not in session, which is largely due to a lack of summer reading. A recent study of third to fifth graders showed that on average students lost about 20% of their school-year gains in reading. Reading especially benefits young children, and having adults in their lives who prioritize summer reading is crucial to developing frequent readers. Here are some…
There will always be some students that are revolted by the prospect of reading, and reluctant readers certainly have their reasons. Perhaps they haven’t found a book, author, or genre yet that they like, and they don’t know where to begin. Maybe they would prefer to occupy their time with different forms of media or more kinesthetic activities. Or they could find reading boring — not long after they start reading, they lose track of…
Every year, librarians and staff at The New York Public Library select noteworthy new kids books for readers and recommend them as their Best Books of the Year. Here are some of their recommendations for kids books in 2025. 1. Amina Banana and the Formula for Friendship by Shifa Saltagi Safadi; illustrated by Aaliya Jaleel. Amina is eager to make friends after moving to Indiana from Syria. She’s sure her formula will lead to success,…
Thousands of titles have been removed from public schools across the country this year. PEN America has documented nearly 23,000 banned books in public schools nationwide since 2021, a number never before seen in the life of any living American. This censorship is being mobilized by groups espousing conservative viewpoints and has spread to nearly every state. It predominantly targets books about race and racism or books featuring individuals of color and LGBTQ+ people and…
We live in a catch-up culture, where people feel perpetually behind and forced to hustle near the finish line after being waylaid by hurdle after hurdle. This contributes to the false belief that we can make up in intensity what we lack in good pacing, but we can’t cram kids’ way to reading. This advice on teaching reading comes from “Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six” by Maya Payne…
Reading is taught, not caught. This phrase has been in circulation for decades, but it bears repeating with each new generation of parents, and it has never been more fully supported by compelling evidence. Learning to read is a complex, unnatural, years-long odyssey, and parents should bear no illusions that their kids will pick it up merely by watching other people read or being surrounded by books. Parents are influential in helping kids navigate the…
Teaching phonics is one of the most effective ways to help children learn how to read. A key component of the Science of Reading, phonics instruction teaches children how to correlate sounds with letters or groups of letters, empowering them to decode and encode words. Phonics instruction is essential to helping students learn how to read and write; without this foundational reading skill, students will struggle to read with fluency and comprehension. Unfortunately, phonics instruction…
Nearly a half century ago, a landmark study showed that teachers weren’t explicitly teaching reading comprehension. Once children learned how to read words, no one taught them how to make sense of the sentences and paragraphs. Some kids naturally got it, and some didn’t. Since then, reading researchers have come up with many ideas to foster comprehension. Educators continue to debate how much to emphasize some ideas over others. Although the research on reading comprehension…
Ten years ago, Roy F. Smith, an English teacher at Round Rock High School in Texas, was inspired by the idea of putting a text under a microscope while reading “The Art of X-Ray Reading” by Roy Peter Clark. Smith, who has been teaching for 24 years, developed what he calls “spotlight reading,” a quick activity used at the start of class to get students to engage with written language without worrying about a grade.…
