Bridging Home and School: A Parent and Educator Panel

Advancing Early Literacy in Mississippi

Overview: Mississippi has seen unprecedented gains in early childhood and literacy outcomes over the last seven years. Learn how focused policy, effective coaching, professional development, and consistent funding have changed the education landscape in Mississippi, resulting in improved kindergarten readiness rates, consistent improvement year after year on statewide assessments, and nation-leading gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Connection to Equity: Quality early childhood experiences, including effective classroom teachers in early grades, have a tremendous impact on long-term educational attainment for students. The Mississippi Department of Education is committed to ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality early childhood program as a foundation to graduate from high school ready for college and career.

Most Recommended For: state leaders, district leaders, school leaders

Engaging Our Youngest Learners: Making Remote K-2 Literacy Sing!

Overview: Remote instruction for our youngest learners can be joyful, engaging, and effective!  EL Education’s Director of Curriculum Design will share the challenges that emerged at the onset of COVID-19 for primary students and how EL Education utilized the Characteristics of Primary Learners to design OER Flex Curriculum resources for effective remote literacy instruction.  This session will showcase videos of remote instruction, strategies to set students up for success in remote learning, and protocols to maximize student engagement. 

Connection to Equity: School closures due to COVID-19 have disrupted learning for all students, but particularly for our youngest students who are learning to read. This session outlines how learning to read can continue, through an evidence-based science of reading approach, and can be engaging to appeal to K-2 students in the remote learning environment.  

Most Recommended For: district leaders, school leaders, teachers, parents/caretakers

Empowering Parents to Promote Children’s Reading Success

Overview: All families deserve to partner with educators to coach their children at home. But, what does this collaboration look like? Join a national member of Springboard Collaborative to understand the research base behind FELA (Family-Educator Learning Accelerator), an approach to accelerating student reading growth through collaborating with families. Leave with tools, resources, and a series of self-reflection questions to evaluate and refine your current approach to collaborating with families, and receive concrete guidance to support planning and implementing FELAs in your school or district network.

Connection to Equity: Honoring parents as assets goes far in breaking down the power imbalance between school and home. Our experience has been that as families gain the teaching/coaching skillset, they also become savvier and demanding consumers of education.  FELAs are built on foundations of trust and healthy relationships, and the understanding that families can be active and equal partners in a child’s education and growth. We will highlight this as part of the session and will share practical tips on how to build relationships and form a collaboration with families.

Most Recommended For: state leaders, district leaders, school leaders, teachers

Providing Foundational Skills Materials for All Tennessee Children

Overview: The Tennessee Department of Education partnered with national experts, the Core Knowledge Foundation and TN teachers to develop a comprehensive, sounds-based foundational skills curriculum that is  freely available for all educators. These resources include daily lessons for PreK through second grade students. Lessons can include daily sounds-based activities or the sounds-based activities can supplement other activities throughout the school day. In addition, the department has included professional learning and teaching resources for educators to support them in teaching science-based reading instruction. 

Connection to Equity: All students deserve a strong start to their literacy instruction. Research (Kilpatrick, Paige, and Vellutino et al.) shows us that a sounds-based approach is essential for all learners. These materials and support ensure that all teachers have top-quality, easily available professional learning and teaching resources to ensure they are teaching early literacy for all learners. 

Most Recommended For: state leaders, district leaders, school leaders, teachers, and parent/caretakers

The ABCs of Background Knowledge

Overview: In this session, participants will explore the important role of background knowledge when constructing meaning from a text.  Strategies will be provided to assist educators in activating, building, and categorizing that will equip ALL students with the knowledge they need to fully comprehend while also teaching the standards.

Connection to Equity: When reading, students who have prior knowledge about what they are reading have an advantage in constructing more thorough meaning than those who do not.  Prior knowledge is often gained from experiences and hearing the associated language, but not all students have the same experiences.  Educators can support all readers in comprehension, regardless of their experiences, by incorporating specific strategies into their teaching.

Most Recommended For: district leaders, school leaders, teachers, parents/caretakers

Teaching reading in Spanish: Lessons and resources from Puerto Rico

Overview: This session will provide an overview of the K-3 early literacy landscape in Puerto Rico, with a focus on the state of K-3 reading in the Puerto Rico Department of Education. We will then discuss various initiatives that Flamboyan Foundation has led to strengthen the teaching of reading, including through work with educators, resource development, research, and partnerships with PRDE and other organizations.

Connection to Equity: PRDE serves Puerto Rico’s most socioeconomically disadvantaged children: 85% of K-3rd students live below the poverty level.  In recent years, 22% of 1st graders have received a D or F in Spanish Language Arts and 12% were not  promoted to 2nd grade. In addition, PRDE students have been disproportionately impacted by two devastating hurricanes, massive school closures, an ongoing string of earthquakes, and now the COVID-19 pandemic, to name only some of the most significant events of the last three years. Ensuring these students can become proficient and critical readers is a matter of equity and justice.

Most Recommended For: state leaders, district leaders, school leaders, teachers, parents/caretakers

Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning for Early Literacy Success

Overview: The mindsets and skill sets that support meaningful, engaging, and affirming grade-level instruction are found in teacher knowledge, beliefs, and actions —  and in the resulting student learning experiences. In this session, we’ll introduce these concepts as a means of achieving culturally relevant instruction and practice identifying how they show up in teacher actions and student learning experiences in the early literacy classroom.

Connection to Equity: Combining antiracist ideology with culturally relevant pedagogy allows all students to experience meaningful, engaging, and affirming grade-level instruction. 

Most Recommended For: state leaders, district leaders, school leaders, teachers

Accelerating What Matters Most for Early Reading 

Overview: Reading science emphasizes two critical pieces of early reading instruction: systematically securing foundational skills and building knowledge and vocabulary. But, what does this prioritization look like in practice? And what does it take to engage in these practices online?  Join us to hear about the work of the Early Reading Accelerators, how first grade teacher Crystal Graham is making the Early Reading Accelerators happen remotely, and explore a free suite of resources to support this essential content for every reader.

Connection to Equity: Reading science has shown us what needs to be amplified in early reading, but for this practice to be equitable for students, we must also address “the how.” Many students need support with reading, but students of color, students from families experiencing poverty, and English Learners are less likely to have access to resources that facilitate reading success, including: effective instructional practices and adaptations for the virtual classroom, appropriate individualized supports, or teachers and materials that reflect their own identities. To implement the Early Reading Accelerators equitably, we also must consider student supports, culturally relevant content and practices, and aligned instructional materials.

Most Recommended For: state leaders, district leaders, school leaders, teachers, parents/caretakers

Knowing and Doing Better—Concrete Actions for School Leaders to Address Early Literacy

Overview: Tara and Liz, school leaders at Meeting Street Schools in Charleston, South Carolina, will share their story of how they transformed their PreK-2 literacy program using science-based strategies for teaching the foundational skills of reading from David and Meredith Liben’s book, Know Better, Do Better.  Participants will learn about the importance of examining their current practices with honesty and urgency through the lens of science-based reading instruction and learn about real ways to make changes to their K-2 reading program to ensure all students are mastering the critical foundational skills of literacy by the end of second grade

Connection to Equity: When practices align to what works in early literacy, students will get exactly what they need to ensure they are fluent readers by the end of second grade, positioning them to successfully read and comprehend complex texts in third grade and beyond.

Most Recommended For: school leaders, district leaders, teachers

The Science of Reading in Action

Overview: SchoolKit, a national professional learning partner to state education agencies and school districts, will provide a brief and concise overview of “the science of reading” and research-based best practices for teaching students to read.  We will then explore SchoolKit’s Framework for Equitable Early Literacy Instruction, a model to bring the science of reading to life for all students.

Connection to Equity: The research has shown us what works for all students to learn how to read.  Our concrete framework to help ensure schools set up their teachers and students for a successful early literacy instructional program that promotes equity.

Most Recommended For: state and district leaders, teachers, parents/caretakers

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Early Readers: Transforming the Instructional Core

Overview: In this session, participants will engage in a discussion centered around developing a curriculum rooted in diversity, equity, and inclusion for young learners. CenterPoint has identified key instructional practices to transform how written and taught curriculum can be implemented to support all learners within the language arts classroom. Key practices include careful text selection, integrated reading, writing, thinking, and speaking as well as digital and real-world applications. Participants will also explore how to increase the knowledge and skills of the teacher to make instruction student-centered.

Connection to Equity: This session defines explicit ways to transform curriculum into a student-centered, equity-focused, and inclusive experience for all students through careful planning, teacher knowledge, and resource selection.

Most Recommended For: district leaders, school leaders, and teachers

High Quality Instructional Materials as a Lever for Equity in Early Reading

Overview: This session will focus on current research and data around implementing high quality instructional materials and its impact on equity.  Participants will learn about the EdReports foundational skills tool and published foundational skills reports. Participants will also learn about how the foundational skills tool aligns with the Science of Reading with a focus on understanding indicator language within the tool and how to navigate published reports. 

Connection to Equity: Ensuring that all students have access to aligned, high-quality instructional materials in foundational skills is a lever for equity, providing educators with a starting point for quality foundational skills instruction for all students.  EdReports’ foundational skills tool reviews supplemental foundational skills materials for alignment to standards and research-based practices with a focus on systematic and explicit instruction in K-2. The reports published online provide insight to states, districts, and educators about current materials they may be using or materials they may adopt. 

Most Recommended For: state leaders, school leaders, district leaders, teachers

Establishing Empathy by Selecting Culturally Responsive Books for Underserved Students

Overview: This session will focus on how to select books for underserved students, our most vulnerable population during the pandemic.  Children must see themselves in books to identify with their own personal and cultural knowledge as well as spark interest for further exploration of the world around them to discover empathy.  Participants will explore the process of crafting student-centered literacy instruction, from selecting texts that pique student curiosity and engagement, to crafting learning experiences that leverage students’ existing funds of personal and cultural knowledge.  Participants will also discover how to identify books and classroom activities that center the needs, interests, and strengths of traditionally underserved groups, including survivors of trauma and students experiencing housing insecurity.

Connection to Equity: The pandemic has exacerbated the equity gap due to our most vulnerable students being disengaged in literacy through lack of access to culturally responsive instruction and culturally relevant curriculum, such as the texts we select for our underserved students. This session will focus on how to identify books and classroom activities that center the needs, interests, and strengths of traditionally underserved groups.

Most Recommended For: state leaders, district leaders, school leaders, teachers, parents/caretakers

What Do Elementary Teachers Learn About Early Reading? A Window into the Current State of Teacher Preparation

Overview: NCTQ’s Teacher Prep Review, which examines more than 1000 elementary teacher preparation programs, offers a unique window into what future elementary teachers learn about teaching their students to read. In this session, participants will explore NCTQ’s findings about the current state of reading instruction. We’ll also talk about how the best teacher education programs provide great reading education to aspiring elementary teachers, and what state policymakers and school district leaders can do to improve what teacher preparation programs teach about early reading instruction.

Connection to Equity: The 2019 NAEP assessment found 35 percent of fourth grade students to be “below basic” in reading. The lion’s share of these students (two-thirds!) are Black and Latino children, who struggle to achieve in the face of an inequitable education system. This situation is particularly disturbing because it is so unnecessary. More than forty years of research has provided the roadmap needed to slash the rate of reading failure from three in ten children to one in ten. It begins with making sure that all teacher preparation programs equip elementary teachers with the ability to use research-based methods of teaching reading.

Most Recommended For: state and district leaders