Encourage kids to write about their feelings and experiences. You’ll grow lifelong readers and learners if you do.
Focus Comes from Emotion
To lead children into reading proficiency, we must first activate the emotional needs that the artful language and the compelling illustrations touch in them.
Knowing How to Find Answers to Questions Provides Unlimited Knowledge of the World
Children who are not taught to access the joys and power of libraries and their books, the internet and other information sources are at a disadvantage when it comes to learning about life and the world.
Expression Over Accuracy
Let’s never forget that the most important purpose of developing literacy is it’s promise in supporting personal understanding and lifelong learning.
Books Celebrating their Readers
The representations in books of things familiar to the new reader paves the way for them to develop lifelong affection for books and reading.
Sharing Books Builds Community and Literacy
Deep sources of ideas and information, like books, fortify family and community cultures.
The Flow of Books and Reading
THE central goal of a good education is joyful, daily reading and learning…for life.
The ScienceS of Reading
Science gives us microscopic and macro views of the world. Consider how both can inform the science of literacy education.
A Powerful Gift to Give
Book giving should be a much more elaborate interaction between giver and the receiver than just delivering a thoughtfully selected, prettily wrapped present.
Give and Take
The open handed sharing of valuable personal resources forms the basis for solid and fulfilling relationships.
Reading Nonfiction Can Launch Kids into the Future
Children who read nonfiction will gain a deeper understanding of the world and be better prepared to write factual information in their future careers.
Ask Questions that Inspire Connection and Reflection
Conversation about shared experiences can develop children’s closeness with others and deepen everyone’s natural reflections about themselves and their lives.
How to Help Kids Be Successful AND Fulfilled
There are simple ways adults can help kids grow up to lead fulfilling lives, like allowing them to explore their interests through reading and conversation.
Go with the Flow
Go with a child’s flow of wanting new books to read. They’ll offer clues as to what opens their floodgates of excitement and interest. Watch, listen and meet them where they’re at.
Book and Toy Sets can Boost a Child’s Desire to Read and to Learn
Text and toy sets can help little ones begin to sense how books and things they love are connected to their families’ cultures.
Skill Without Joy is Rare
There’s a basic, simple solution that nearly doubles the number of children doing well in learning to read.
Grow Readers to Grow Communities
Literacy is always about sharing. It can serve as the accumulating glue that holds communities together and builds lasting paths to lifelong personal growth and enduring relationships in life.
They’re Watching Us
Our actions SHOW little ones our values.
Great question!
Kids learn to ask questions from the kinds of questions we ask of them.
Inhale, Exhale, Grow
Set the stage for lifelong learning by teaching kids to breathe in wonderful information through reading and to breathe out their experiences and thoughts through writing.
Be a Model–of Reading for Fun
If you want children to love reading, show them how much fun it is.
The End of Education?
Living is learning. If we aren’t learning, we are just existing.
“My Old Kentucky Home” and How It has Changed
Old books, songs and other media with racist content can be crucial conversation starters and catalysts for societal change.
Diverse Books Offer Kids a World of Possibilities
A wide variety of books can keep the humdrum and mundane of everyday life from elbowing out the truly glorious and fertile growth possibilities that are so much larger than what is offered to children at home or in the standard curricula of K-12 education.
The Gift of Literacy
Gifting a book is an expression of care.
You can do this! Just watch me!
Really, the only defensible goal of learning to read in school is not to increase yearly test scores, but to help children become eager, daily readers of self-selected books.
Child Development Should Include Relaxing with Books
Nurturing relaxed daily reading may very well be the finest contribution that a family can make in supporting a child’s development.