Literacy Now

ILA institutes take an in-depth look at pressing issues facing literacy instruction with leaders in the field. These full-day courses unpack the latest research findings and explore best practices in leadership, curriculum, instruction, and more.

At ILA 2018, attendees can choose from 10 institutes designed to accommodate a variety of audiences. Here’s your guide to choosing the one that best fits your goals, interests, and learning style.

Set a high-level goal

To make the most out of Institute Day, it is critical to set a goal. Whether it’s something general, such as to build your professional network, or something specific, such as to learn new read-aloud techniques, setting a goal will help you filter through the offerings and find the course that will benefit you most—even after the conference is over.

Ask yourself, what do you want to take away from the experience? If you want to build specialized knowledge and expertise, look for a course that aligns with ILA’s conference tracks, such as Institute 01: ILA 2018 Research Institute: Best Practices in the Teaching of Reading, Institute 02: Principals’ Leadership for Literacy Instruction: It Matters, or Institute 03: Coaching for Comprehensive Literacy Improvement: A District-Wide Approach.

Some courses, such as Institute 08: More Mirrors in the Classroom: Increasing the Effectiveness of Literacy Instruction with Culturally Relevant Texts will introduce new information, trends, and best practices while others, such as Institute 10: Rethinking Reading Instruction with Technology: Strategies for K-8 ELA Teachers, will yield more actionable tactics. Whatever the goal, make sure you’ll be able to apply what you learn to your daily practice.

Seek out the people you want to connect with

With a more intimate setting and focused content, institutes serve as a unique opportunity to engage with like-minded professionals, ask questions, bounce off ideas, and receive feedback in real-time. Institute presenters and copresenters include prominent scholars such as Maureen McLaughlin, John Guthrie, Douglas Fisher, and Ernest Morrell as well as inspiring educators and authors, such as Kylene Beers, Colby Sharp, Cornelius Minor, and Donalyn Miller.

What goal is your institution, district, or classroom currently working toward? What practices or programs could you learn from or adopt? Identify presenters who have overcome similar challenges and can impart valuable insights and advice.

Choose your learning format

As an educator, you’re accustomed to offering students differentiated learning opportunities. Institute Day incorporates a variety of learning formats, from interactive workshops to all keynote formats.

For those who learn by doing, Institute 05: Creating Engaged and Attentive Readers and Writers: Texts and Tools that Change How Kids Read and Write will integrate breakout sessions, group presentations, and other hands-on activities. At Institute 04: Changing Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction: Implementing Word Study in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts, presenters and group leaders, including Donald Bear, Latisha Hayes, and Kevin Flanigan, will work side-by-side with attendees to help them develop tailored word study implementation plans.

For the experiential learner, several institutes offer strong case study content, relevant examples, and practical applications. During Institute 07: Let’s Talk About That! How Purposeful Conversation Improves Middle and High School Literacy and Learning Across Content Areas presenters will share classroom-tested “protocols, tips, and ideas” to promote productive student discussions.

At Institute 09: Reframing the Gradual Release of Responsibility: Connecting Read Aloud, Shared, Guided, and Independent Reading for Deeper Comprehension, literacy consultants will present effective reading strategies and demonstrate "next generation" instruction.

If you prefer to learn through words, Institute 06: Intentionally Planned Best Practices That Motivate Early Literacy Development presenters will drive a conversation around evidence-best practices for developing literacy for early learners.

To learn more and register for Institute Day, visit literacyworldwide.org/conference/institute-day.

Alina O’Donnell is the communications strategist at ILA and the editor of Literacy Daily.

Almost all of our students have abandoned the regular reading of books.

Let us say this again: Almost all of our students have abandoned the regular reading of books.

A strong statement, for sure, but not one we have come to lightly. We have reached this conclusion after surveying our high school students, many of whom have come from years of classrooms focused only (or mostly) on the whole-class reading of difficult texts. In these environments, they have found alternatives to actually turning the pages. They are practiced in participating in fake discussions spun from reading SparkNotes summaries. They have become experts in the art of hiding. And, sadly, we have found that this applies to all our students—even those at the honors level.

If we do not alter our approach to the teaching of reading—if we don’t figure out a way for students to rediscover the magic of books—we will graduate a generation of nonreaders, fake readers, and unprepared-for-college readers.

So how can we reconnect kids to reading? We believe the answer lies in providing our students with a balanced reading diet. In our classrooms, “balanced” means a rich foundation of independent reading, regular book club opportunities, and the study of a few core texts in a school year.

Though independent reading and whole-class study of texts are critical, we have found that creating vibrant book club experiences are particularly helpful in reestablishing reading habits in our students. Specifically, book clubs do three kinds of important work:

• Book clubs allow our classrooms to be responsive. This year, we selected book club titles around the topic of equity. Students picked from a wide range of fiction and nonfiction titles, from below–grade-level to college-level texts, thus meeting the needs of the diverse reading abilities found in our classrooms. (Check out the sidebar for the list of books we used.) We picked equity as a theme because it is a vital part of discourse today. Our students need a part in the conversation. Charlottesville, “Take a Knee,” DACA, and Black Lives Matter are dominating headlines, and they demand to be studied in the moment. Our unit was responsive to the times, and relevancy motivates our students to read.
• Book clubs raise reading volume. One thing we are sure all students need—and too many students will graduate without—is a deep volume of reading. What should college freshmen expect in the first year? Five thousand pages of reading (according to reDesign, an organization that specializes in teaching and learning practices) and 75 text-based discussions with students who come from many parts of the world and from religious traditions and family cultures unlike their own. We must create opportunities for our students to practice the speaking and listening, the reading and responding, and the thorny thinking that can result from examining current issues with peers. Book clubs increase the volume of reading because students are responsible to their peers. Having an audience beyond their teacher brings a renewed energy for reading.
• Book clubs connect students to other readers. We build conversations around books to engage more students in productive talk. Students are too often alone together, as MIT professor Sherry Turkle named the isolation that is caused by a devotion to screen time. You know this. Our classes are quiet when we come in from hall duty. Most students scroll through likes and posts or are animatedly texting. Their friend groups are larger than ever, but less intimate. In the awkwardness of adolescence, it is easier to cultivate a presence online than to make eye contact and to speak, or to actively listen as others respond to your thinking. Small-group conversations are less natural and occur less frequently outside of school today, so they must become an essential part of our classrooms.

We used Flipgrid to connect our students across the United States, from New Hampshire to California, and then to education majors at Miami University in Oxford, OH. We included college students in our book clubs this year because many young adults find the adjustment to college in the first year difficult, particularly those who are the first in their family to attend. We teach those students, so we used book clubs to build a bridge from our students to college readers.

Both of us teach students from the working class. Their parents want them to rise above financial struggle, but they don’t know how to prepare their children for the demands of college or the workplace. They depend on us—teachers in the local public school—to know what their kids need. It is a sacred trust. We stand on the front line of preparing students for the future, and motivating them to read is a crucial part of this preparation.

When we recognized that almost all of our students had abandoned regular reading, it was time to reimagine our teaching of reading. We look forward to sharing more thinking on motivating young readers at the ILA 2018 Conference in Austin, TX, this July. We hope you will join us.

Penny Kittle, an ILA member since 1999, teaches English at Kennett High School in New Hampshire. She is coauthor of 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents with Kelly Gallagher and author of Book Love: Developing Depth, Passion, and Stamina in Readers (Heinemann).

Kelly Gallagher, an ILA member since 2003, teaches at Magnolia High School in California. He is the author of several books, most notably Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It (Stenhouse).

This article originally appeared in the open access March/April issue of Literacy Today, ILA’s member magazine.

Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher will be featured speakers at the ILA 2018 Conference, July 20–July 23, in Austin, TX. To learn more, visit literacyworldwide.org/conference.

Earlier this month, educators, technologists, and learners across the world celebrated Open Education Week, a global event that seeks to reduce barriers, increase access, and drive improvements in education through open sharing and digital formats. 

Organized by the Open Education Consortium, the event showcases open projects, resources, and ideas and encourages the further creation and dissemination of educational resources. While OEW may have passed, advocates can continue to celebrate and advance open education all year long. Here’s the why and how:

What is open education?

The open education movement started in response to two critical issues facing educators and students. Most are aware of the rising costs of learning materials; a study published by U.S. Department of Labor found that the cost of textbooks increased by 88% from 2006–2016. Eliminating these costs can significantly reduce financial barriers for our most disadvantaged students.

Furthermore, open resources have the additional advantage of being published under a Creative Commons license. This means teachers can take portions of open texts or digital materials, add their own material or include them within a lesson, and share with other teachers. One example of this is the Mixxer Language Exchange site hosted by Dickinson College, which connects language learners with native speakers as part of a mutual language exchange. Users can practice via Skype or submit a short writing piece and ask for corrections. The site also provides “lessons” that integrate materials from the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) to support and guide exchanges.

Next steps

We believe that education should be open and free, and there are several resources to help teachers interested in collaborative learning. Those just getting started may want to check out  MERLOT, an open educational resource project from the California State University. Anyone can contribute or use materials from the repository, which includes whole courses, open textbooks, small instructional modules, and more. Those looking for open textbooks should browse California’s Cool4Ed library, Minnesota’s Open Textbook Library, OpenStax from Rice University, and aggregators of these resources, such as OER Commons’ hub.

Finally, institutions and governments are becoming proponents of openness in education. The Cool4Ed library was established by California legislation that called for the establishment of an open educational resources council and a digital open source library. Community colleges have started an OER Degree Initiative to create entire degree programs that exclusively use open textbooks and online resources. The open education movement has also for the first time succeeded in allotting federal funds for the creation of open and free textbooks. Open education still has a long way to go, but it’s slowly becoming a reality.

Todd Bryant is a language technology specialist at Dickinson College.

Each year, thousands of literacy educators, professionals, advocates from across the world gather to attend ILA’s annual conference. The event attracts attendees of varying backgrounds, expertise, and experiences, who share and connect over a love of the written word.

Feedback from postconference surveys, #ILAchats, and social media activity consistently indicates that conference attendees value author interactions. As a result, ILA will now offer an entire day of programming dedicated to children’s and young adult literature, to debut at the ILA 2018 Conference, taking place in Austin, TX, from July 20–23.

Children’s Literature Day 2018 will include keynote speeches, educational sessions, book signings and giveaways, and more. Here’s a snapshot of what’s included with registration:

• Keynote speeches by Marley Dias, 13-year-old founder of #1000BlackGirlBooks and the youngest person on Forbes 30 Under 30 list; Colby Sharp, fifth-grade teacher and cofounder of Nerdy Book Club; and Kwame Alexander; poet, educator, and New York Times bestselling author of 24 books.
• A plated lunch during the afternoon keynote (Sharp) and the presentation of ILA’s Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Awards.
• One Author Meetup of your choosing. Four categories (Early Reader, Middle Grade, Early Young Adult, and Older Young Adult) feature a mix of up-and-comers and well-established veterans.
• Free titles from each featured author in the selected Meetup.
• Hands-on workshops (also spanning four age-level categories) where you’ll create title-focused classroom materials alongside the authors who wrote the books and gain practical, teacher-generated ideas for incorporating those books into your curriculum.

Learn more and register for ILA 2018 at ilaconference.org.

Alina O’Donnell is the editor of Literacy Daily.

Today’s post-Columbine generation has never known a world without school shootings. Last Wednesday, thousands of students and teachers across the country participated in National Walkout Day in response to the mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, FL. They were met with mixed reactions from district officials, some of whom prohibited participation, citing security risks, disruptions to learning, and the need to refrain from expressing political views during the school day as justification. In some instances, students were physically blocked from exiting the building by school employees.

We argue that this is a missed opportunity for meaningful learning about the democratic process and for teaching students how to advocate for their rights. Furthermore, teaching is a political act; it is impossible to take a neutral stance when making curricular decisions, choosing which books to include or exclude in our classrooms, and deciding whose voices and histories are being told and valued. We believe our students should not be asked to divorce their rights to freedom of speech or expression upon entering school. As educators, we owe it to our students to create spaces where they have the right to safely express their views and where their voices are valued.

In a field driven by top-down mandates, educators’ voices are often stifled and silenced, creating a culture of compliance. As the instructional coach at my school, I, Marie, was approached by many teachers who wanted to be a part of the movement to honor and show solidarity with the victims of Stoneman Douglas High School. I agreed that this was an important opportunity to teach students about civic engagement, but the teachers and I felt limited in what we could do as a result of the district’s communication that outlined appropriate activities, so I reached out to Katie to brainstorm possible solutions.  

After careful consideration, we decided that literature could create a conduit for conversations centered around social change. We encouraged teachers to read aloud Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Toniatiuh, which examines the Mendez family’s actions that led to school desegregation. The text was used as the foundation for classroom discussion, which provided reflection for taking action.

Students connected the events in the text to current conversations around policy change. They channeled their feelings through authentic writing experiences—students chose to write letters to first responders, to the students of Stoneman Douglas High School, or to fellow classmates. They shared words of gratitude for the first responders, expressed feelings of hope and encouragement to the victims, and stated their desire to end school violence. Knowing a group of students organized and led the movement added an element of genuine awe as these elementary students began to realize how powerful a group of young people can be. They learned that they too have a voice and can make a difference.

Real world reading, writing, and discussion were used as tools to foster meaningful response and to help students cope and support each other. Through each modality, a deeper understanding of their experiences was embraced in a caring and nurturing environment within the classroom community. Choosing to advocate for our students in this way allowed us to frame the larger ideas concerning the school shooting.

At such a pivotal moment, teachers embraced tough conversations and provided a framework for future activism. Students who participated in National Walkout Day experienced an important movement as part of living history that takes learning far beyond the pages of the textbook and stretches beyond their classroom and school walls. Even when banned from participating, educators still found ways to engage their students in valuable lessons about the democratic process while imparting essential literacy, social, and life skills.

Other books to teach young students about social activism include the following:

• The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist by Cynthia Levinson (Simon & Schuster, 2017)
• Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel (HarperCollins, 2013)
• Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney (Little, Brown, 2010)
• Malala Yousefzai: Warrior With Words by Karen Leggett Abouraya (StarWalk Kids Media, 2014)
• Let the Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson and Frank Morrison (Houghton Mifflin, 2018)
• ¡Sí, Se Puede! / Yes, We Can!  by Diana Cohn (Cinco Puntos Press, 2005)

Katie Stover Kelly is an associate professor of education at Furman University in Greenville, SC, and coauthor of From Pencils to Podcasts: Digital Tools to Transform K-6 Literacy Practices (Solution Tree, 2017) and Smuggling Writing: Strategies That Get Students to Write Every Day, in Every Content Area, Grades 3-12 (Corwin, 2016). Her new coauthored book with Lester Laminack will be published by Heinemann this fall. Find her on Twitter @ktkelly14.

Marie Havran is an elementary instructional coach in Greenville, South Carolina, and an adjunct professor at Furman University. Find her on Twitter @MarieHavran.