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    In Memoriam: Kylene Beers

    ILA Staff
     | Jun 23, 2025
    Kylene BeersKylene Beers, PhD, a beloved member of the International Literacy Association for 35 years, passed away on June 20. 

    A tireless advocate for literacy and beloved educator and author, Kylene’s work transformed how we teach and engage with young readers. Her passing leaves a profound void in the world of education —as evidenced by the outpouring of heartfelt messages on her Facebook page—but her legacy endures in classrooms, libraries, and minds around the world.

    Kylene began her career as a middle school teacher, where she first recognized the disconnect many struggling readers experienced with traditional instruction. That insight became the foundation for a career devoted to closing that gap—not through rigid prescriptions, but with compassion, curiosity, and trust in every student’s potential for learning. Her groundbreaking book When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do became a beacon for educators seeking practical strategies for teaching literacy.

    She was published in several ILA journals as well as Literacy Today, where she shared unique insight into independent reading along with colleague Bob Probst in a wildly popular article from 2021. The two have co-authored several influential works including Notice & Note and Disrupting Thinking, which urged educators to move beyond compliance-driven instruction and foster deeper engagement with texts. Kylene and Bob were also featured speakers at the ILA 2018 Conference, where they shared their philosophy not only on building better readers, but also shaping more thoughtful, empathetic citizens.

    The two participated in the ILA Next Middle Pathway Workshop, a professional learning event centered on teaching in digital and hybrid settings. They led participants through a writing prompt modeled after the poem “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyons, where Kylene shared that writing is more than a way to show what we’ve learned, stating that, “Sometimes, like in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, we should probably use writing as a way through what we’re feeling.”

    As a former president of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Kylene was a respected leader and voice for student-centered pedagogy. In 2024, NCTE awarded her the James R. Squire Award, to which Bob wrote in her nomination letter, “She has been a model of devotion to teachers and students, to the development of literacy for all, that we would do well to emulate.” 

    Most recently, Kylene organized and hosted literacy institutes at her ranch in Waco, Texas, where she engaged with teachers from across the United States and Canada. Her final project, the next institute, is currently taking place as of this writing, proving her ongoing contribution to literacy education will continue to inspire the next generation of educators.

    Kylene will be remembered for her tireless efforts to reach students, her pioneering insights into reading, and her endless joy for supporting all teachers.

    If you would like to share a personal remembrance of Kylene, please email social@reading.org.
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    Boosting Fine Motor Skills Through Targeted Intervention and Purposeful Play

    Jaimie Catterall
     | Jun 20, 2025
    Elementary students writing

    Fine motor skills are a foundational part of early childhood development that play a critical role in a child's ability to perform everyday tasks and succeed academically, especially in earlier grades. In kindergarten, these skills become increasingly important as handwriting emerges as a primary method for learning and demonstrating knowledge across subjects. Without strong fine motor development, students may struggle with tasks like pencil grip, cutting with scissors, and writing legibly, which can impact their confidence and academic growth.

    In this post, I explore the importance of fine motor skills and handwriting in early education, highlight the impact of targeted interventions and purposeful play, and offer practical classroom strategies to support young learners in building these essential skills.

    Fine Motor Skills and Handwriting

    Fine motor skills are used in tasks like picking up objects, feeding oneself, threading, drawing, cutting, and dressing. They typically develop after gross motor skills and require time, patience, and practice to strengthen. By kindergarten, most children should be able to use the tripod grip with a pencil, grasp objects, use scissors to cut lines, zip and button clothes, and have mostly legible writing of letters and shapes. Some factors that can affect fine motor skills include certain medical conditions and learning differences that may require more professional assistance. Handwriting is especially important at this stage as it supports academic success across subject areas.

    One study suggested that when classroom teachers worked with occupational therapists in their classrooms, they saw a significant growth in student fine motor skills and writing abilities. The occupational therapists ran a 13-week intervention program for at-risk preschoolers with the classroom teacher in hopes of increasing the knowledge of fine motor skills and how it affects writing readiness.

    The goal of this program was to enhance the teacher's understanding of foundational prewriting skills, fine motor development, and multisensory processing needed for writing readiness in kindergarten. The preschool students that started at the beginning of the program, who were not being able to complete any prewriting or tracing skills, reportedly made significant growth in those tasks by the end of the 13 weeks.

    Another study highlighted the importance of play-based learning with a goal in mind. Goal-oriented play involves active movement that engages the body's muscles, helping to stimulate and strengthen muscle function. Motor exercises benefit all children, especially ages five to six when motor development is best stimulated. The more students are playing and developing those fine motor skills, will help their eyes and hands work together when writing starts to take place. 

    Classroom Implications

    As a kindergarten teacher, at the beginning of every year I observe my students and make notes of who is having difficulties holding a pencil or crayon, writing their name, and cutting lines with scissors. Throughout the year, I will provide targeted instruction and engaging activities to support students who are struggling, giving them opportunities to practice and strengthen their fine motor skills in fun and meaningful ways. My goal is to help students strengthen their fine motor skills early so they are not still struggling later in the year and can show progress in their writing.

    One way teachers can support fine motor skill play is offering fine motor activity bins. I keep these bins in my classroom so that all students can choose one in the morning. These bins include:

    • Playdough
    • Screwing on nuts to bolts
    • Putting links together to make a chain
    • Squeezing a tennis ball to open a slit and putting small beads inside
    • Pokey pin papers where they will use a golf tee to poke the dots on a picture
    Consider incorporating items that children can physically hold and manipulate into your teaching. The more hands-on materials and tools you use during lessons, the more beneficial it will be for young learners.

    When teaching handwriting, it is so important to explicitly teach holding a pencil, correct letter formation, spatially showing where each letter should be, and writing left to right. For students who aren't yet able to independently write letters and words, I use a highlighter to write them first, allowing the students to trace over and practice that way. For students with physical disabilities, I recommend using a pencil grip, selecting smaller pencils, breaking their crayons in half, or using thicker crayons to help with their grip. Some students can benefit from writing on a slanted surface so their shoulder and upper arm muscles are being strengthened.

    At-Home Activities

    If a student is not making adequate progress with these handwriting skills throughout the year, I will try to incorporate more fine motor activities into their learning. I also share simple fine motor activities with parents for their child to complete at home using materials they already have, without the need to purchase anything. Some of these activities include:

    • Peeling fruit
    • Squeezing sponges to transfer water into buckets
    • Peeling stickers or tape
    • Using a spray bottle
    • Rolling playdough or bread dough
    • Buttoning and zipping clothes
    Developing strong fine motor skills in early childhood is essential for building the foundation needed for handwriting and overall academic success. As handwriting becomes a central mode of learning in kindergarten, students who struggle with fine motor tasks may face challenges in keeping up with writing tasks. With intentional support through targeted interventions, purposeful play, and engaging hands-on activities, educators can help students strengthen these skills early on. By observing student needs, incorporating fine motor practice into daily routines, and partnering with families, teachers play a vital role in supporting each child’s development. Investing time in building fine motor abilities not only prepares students for writing but also fosters confidence, independence, and long-term academic growth.

    Jaimie Catterall has been teaching kindergarten for 10 years at the Spring Lake Park School District in Minnesota. She specializes in phonics and early writing instruction, helping young learners build strong literacy foundations. She is also passionate about supporting students' social-emotional growth, creating a classroom environment where children feel safe, confident, and ready to learn.

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    Writing as Play: Engaging Elementary Students

    Literacy Today 
    magazine: Reflecting Every Reader
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    Centering Bilingual Books in Every Literacy Classroom

    Valerie Butrón and Rita Guzmán
     | Jun 12, 2025

    Bilingual read aloud elementary

    As literacy coaches and bilingual educators, we work alongside teachers across a variety of classrooms: general education, bilingual, and special education. One of the most versatile and underutilized tools we see time and again is the bilingual picturebook. These books don't just support language learners—they elevate comprehension, vocabulary, and engagement for all students.

    Bilingual Books in General Education Classrooms

    In one first-grade classroom we supported, the teacher used a bilingual picturebook during a read-aloud even though none of her students spoke Spanish fluently. As she paused to ask comprehension questions and draw out vocabulary connections, students became highly engaged. Several began to notice cognates and root words, and one student proudly pointed out a Spanish word she'd seen on a sign in her neighborhood. That moment sparked a short writing activity where students shared words they knew from different languages. The teacher later told us it was one of the most energizing literacy blocks of the year.

    In Bilingual Classrooms: Building Bridges

    In a dual language classroom, bilingual books offer a seamless bridge between students’ home languages and academic content. One third-grade bilingual teacher used a picturebook about a cultural celebration to anchor both language and literacy standards. English-dominant and Spanish-dominant students participated in reciprocal read-alouds, switching languages and supporting one another in real time. This built not only fluency and comprehension, but also classroom community and confidence. The teacher noted that bilingual texts allowed students to bring their full linguistic selves into the learning space.

    For Special Education: Access and Affirmation

    In a special education resource room, a teacher used a bilingual book with side-by-side text to support a small group of students with IEPs. For one student with emerging English skills and a speech-language impairment, seeing the story in both languages helped reduce frustration and build confidence. The teacher paired the book with picture supports and sentence stems to scaffold comprehension. What surprised her most was how the visuals and rhythm of the bilingual text increased student participation and prompted spontaneous discussion—something rarely observed with more traditional leveled texts.

    Why It Works

    Valerie Butrón and Rita Guzmán readingBilingual books are rich with context, visuals, and rhythm—all powerful tools in supporting early literacy. When used intentionally, they:

    • Promote vocabulary development through repeated exposure and cross-linguistic connections
    • Support comprehension by engaging students in multiple modes (oral language, visuals, discussion)
    • Invite students to bring their backgrounds and interests into reading
    Even when teachers aren’t bilingual themselves, they can still use these books effectively. We’ve coached many educators on simple strategies like:
    • Previewing key vocabulary in both languages
    • Using visuals and gestures to support unfamiliar words
    • Encouraging students to share background knowledge or personal connections

    A Tool for All Classrooms

    Whether in general education, bilingual, or special education settings, bilingual picturebooks are not just for multilingual learners—they’re a high-impact tool for all students. They promote literacy through engagement, relevance, and inclusivity.It’s time we move bilingual books from the margins to the center of our literacy instruction. Not because it’s a trend or a cultural checkbox—but because it works.

    Valerie Butrón and Rita Guzmán, EdD, are co-founders of Tumbao Bilingual Books. They are experienced literacy coaches and former classroom teachers who support educators and districts across the country in designing effective and joyful language-rich instruction.

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    Writing as Play: Engaging Elementary Students

    Literacy Today magazine: Reflecting Every Reader
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    Writing as Play: Engaging Elementary Students

    Morgan Brandt
     | Jun 05, 2025
    Elementary school notebooks

    A pastor at my church, Steve Treichler, recently shared, “People do that which is fun.” Though he was instructing on leadership-building qualities and how to get community members to engage, the same pithy insight applies in the classroom: If you want your students to be engaged, make it fun. Effective teachers know good writing instruction must include explicit, academic tasks, but if personalization and fun are absent from writing, we will quickly lose our students. Having fun not only increases engagement, it builds relational bonds, crafts memories, produces more resilient children, and, ultimately, results in kids enjoying school and learning. 

    As a current first grade teacher who has taught a range of elementary grades, I recognize that teachers today are faced with more pressure than ever. When faced with a shortage of time and a heavy load of standards, unfortunately, writing is often cut first for the sake of time. There is too much at stake if we lose budding, creative, unique writers and thinkers to a diet of only academic, serious writing, or cut it out altogether. In the name of joy, I make a case here to elevate practices of writing for authentic audiences, playing with words, and celebrating together.

    Involving Others

    Writing is an inherently social activity contrary to the mental image of a student writing independently at their desk. Partner writing, sharing published writing, and authentic audiences are an easy onramp to engage students in social, joyful, purposeful writing. Sharing writing builds teamwork and the writing community by allowing students to listen and learn from each other, take risks, give feedback, and exchange praise.

    Each year, I compile finished writing projects into class books that are available in the classroom library, which thereafter brings weeks of enjoying friends’ writing, all while fostering connections as classmates. Around each Valentine’s Day, I introduce letter writing to authentic audiences, which includes sending letters to people around school. This links writing to a meaningful purpose: To connect with those you care about. Writing a thank-you note to a cafeteria worker or setting up a classroom mailbox for letters to classmates goes a long way toward building students’ writing agency and excitement that their writing has the potential to brighten someone’s day. 

    A picture of a bookbag, composition notebook, plush toy, and book

    Writing as Play

    Beyond summaries, paragraphs, and essays, students need opportunities to laugh, make mistakes in a silly way, and stretch creative muscles in writing if we ever expect them to return on their own. Using mentor texts as a model for playful ideas is a surefire way to prime the pump of joy and creativity in young writers. After reading some excerpts from books like Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, students get carried away in their own story creations modeled after a wonderful, out-of-the-box structure. A colleague even created an “If You Take a Mouse to School” home-to-school class book bag with a notebook and mouse stuffed animal (pictured above) to send home to families for the chance to continue the mouse’s adventure outside of the writing block by creating their own pages.

    From tying in games like Telestrations, where a small group alternates drawing and writing sentences, during indoor recess, to writing nonfiction facts as riddles to guess the object, to using silly words from a word bank to make poems, there are many simple writing activities that leverage fun. These are powerful, low-prep experiences that model to students we do not only write for academic purposes, but because writing allows us to think in new ways, bonds us together, and makes us laugh. Ultimately, we write because we enjoy it.

    Celebrating

    A bucket full of classroom foldersFinally, one of the best ways to create a culture of writers and ensure joy is to celebrate! Writers need to know that their work and thinking are celebrated, and worthy of shared delight. Often in my classroom, I elevate sharing at the end of a unit by the practice of the author’s chair, zhuzhed up with a red curtain projected on my screen. Intermediate elementary students love the prop of a microphone. After particularly satisfying journeys through the writing process, our class celebrates with a publishing party, complete with apple juice and popcorn to cheers each writer after they share in a small group of three to four peers. This celebratory sharing can also be modified to fit in a couple students at a time during morning meeting or closing circle, followed by finger snaps of recognition.

    Young writers deserve to experience joy, choice, and delight in writing if we expect them to share their thoughts beyond academic contexts and develop as thinkers and word lovers. Though writing does give us the skills to summarize and convey the main ideas of what we learn, to sever the craft from personal expression and reflection is doing a disservice. Students are academic learners, but they are also thinkers and feelers who must experience writing socially and joyfully if we ever expect them to write with their authentic voices throughout their lives. And isn’t the goal for children to use writing to tell someone they care, to bring about change in their communities, and to inspire joy no matter where life takes them?

    As a teacher who faces the Tetris puzzle of fitting in all of the academic demands, I urge teachers not to neglect the necessity of writing for fun. With some brainstorming, we can take simple steps to craft our students’ attitudes about writing to be social, playful, and celebratory in ways that keep young writers eagerly picking up their pencils with a smile.

    Morgan Brandt is a first grade teacher in Mounds View, Minnesota, where she loves fostering joy and play as her students learn. She has taught elementary grades 1-5 and holds bachelor's degrees in elementary education and Spanish education from the University of Northwestern, St. Paul, and a K-12 Reading License from Concordia University, St. Paul. She is currently pursuing a master's in literacy.

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    Finding Purpose Outside the Classroom: Motivating Adolescents in the Tier III Reading Setting 

    Literacy Today
     magazine: Reflecting Every Reader
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    Danielle V. Dennis Named Vice President of ILA Board of Directors

    ILA Staff
     | May 27, 2025
    Headshot of Danielle DennisThe International Literacy Association (ILA) announced the results of the ILA 2025 Board Election today, introducing Danielle V. Dennis as the newly elected vice president of the Board.

    Dennis, dean of the College of Education at the University of Rhode Island, brings two decades of experience as a literacy professor and leader to the role.

    An ILA member for over 25 years, Dennis served as a member-at-large on the Board from 2020–2023, chairing the Publications Committee and serving as the Board liaison for editorial team searches for all three of ILA’s journals. In addition, Dennis was chair of the Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation Award Committee from 2021–2023; served as a member of the Program, Governance, and Fundraising Committees; and acted as the Board liaison to the Dyslexia Task Force. Dennis is currently serving on the Research Committee as well as chairing the Assessment Task Force. Her new term begins July 1, 2025.

    For twenty years, Dennis has been building and enriching school-university partnerships both in the United States and abroad. She has dedicated her career to supporting teacher development and exploring deep research in building teacher capacity in literacy through sustained professional development, the design and implementation of curriculum, and policy initiatives that enhance or inhibit equitable educational experiences of children and teachers, particularly as they relate to literacy assessment.

    “ILA plays a critical role in shaping literacy policy and practice around the world,” said Dennis. “As Vice President, I’m honored to continue collaborating with our members, councils, and global partners to advance our shared commitment to research-based instruction and equitable access to literacy for all learners.”

    Three new Board members-at-large were also elected for the 2025–2028 term:

    La Tasha FieldsLa Tasha D. Fields, professor at Madison College. She has been an ILA member since 2006, and currently serves on the boards of the Stritch Family Literacy Center and the Madison Reading Project. As an Adult Basic Education (ABE) reading instructor, Fields works closely with students and will soon serve as the 2025–2026 Director of Reading for Madison College. She has also served in leadership roles such as Milwaukee Area Reading Council President and Wisconsin State Reading Association Vice President and President.

    Headshot of Deborah MacPheeDeborah MacPhee, professor at the School of Teaching and Learning at Illinois State University. She has been an ILA member since 1999, and has worked as a literacy coach in two elementary schools; directed a university-based literacy center; and conducted research that critically examines discourses of literacy coaching, professional development school interactions, and metaphors in media of the science of reading. In 2023, MacPhee co-authored a book on literacy teaching and learning titled Learning to Be Literate: More Than a Single Story.

    Headshot of Margaret VaughnMargaret Vaughn, professor of Literacy, Language, and Technology at the College of Education at Washington State University. She has been an ILA member since 2009, serving as a reviewer and contributor for all three ILA journals. With research focused on equitable literacy practices and outreach, Vaughn has held several leadership positions in literacy organizations, including the Literacy Research Association, the United States Board on Books for Young People, and the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers. 

    Dennis, Fields, MacPhee, and Vaughn were elected by ILA’s membership during the ILA 2025 Board Election, which was conducted online between April 1 and April 30, 2025. The new vice president and members-at-large will begin their terms on July 1, 2025.
     
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