Tag Archives: literacy

The nation’s largest family and community literacy conference, presented by The National Center for Families Learning. Gather with family literacy professionals, educators, researchers, advocates, coalition members, and policy makers from across the United States for the latest resources in education, networking opportunities, and plenty more. For more information, please visit the NCFL website.

To celebrate Children’s Book Week, the oldest literacy initiative in the country, we asked Cooney Center staff members to reflect on their favorite children’s books: the books whose spines we wore out, even if we knew the words by heart; the books that sparked hours of laughter and debate with our parents and friends and the books that helped us to become life-long readers. Did your favorites make the cut? Executive Director Michael Levine’s childhood favorites were Where the Wild…

The Cooney Center’s Executive Director Michael Levine and the New America Foundation’s Lisa Guernsey will present the keynote address at Ready at Five’s  D Is For Digital School Readiness Symposium. Together, they will present the findings from the Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West report. For more information on the symposium, visit the official site.

Recently in one day, I witnessed two expert panels discussing critical issues for our educational system: the first one was on implementing the Common Core for English-language learners, the second was on how games offer an exciting new frontier for student learning and engagement. In the morning, I listened in to an Alliance for Excellent Education panel including Stanford professor Kenji Hakuta and Carrie Heath Phillips, director of Common Core implementation at the Council of Chief State School Officers. That…

Hosted by the National Center for Family Literacy, this event invites literacy professionals, educators, policy makers, and philanthropists to discuss approaches, resources, and strategies in literacy and learning. This year the conference will invite writers of the new Common Core Standards to frame the conversations. For more information, please visit the official site.

This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post on May 29, 2012. When it comes to learning to read well, the U.S. is locked in a stubborn cycle of conflict. Recall the infamous “reading wars” of the 1980’s and 90’s between advocates of phonics and those of the whole language methodology. The U.S. commissioned a National Reading Panel (NRP) which set forth key guidelines to help settle policy, distribute funding, and inform practice. However, there remains disagreement that a laser focus on…

Is that a poem in your pocket? What was your favorite poem from childhood? Do you, like me, occasionally shudder with the echoes of an older brother who could recite “For Sale” from memory? Does a poem evoke fond childhood memories like a shared memory between siblings, as it does for Research Fellow Sarah Vaala? Whatever your connection, poems have the ability to engage us all with a long tail effect.   Today is national Poem in Your Pocket day.…

A brief message from our friends at Reading Rockets and AdLit.org who are working with the Library of Congress and the Ad Council to help support the Explore New Worlds. Read. It has been 100 years since Edgar Rice Burroughs first introduced readers to Tarzan and “John Carter” — a hero whose Martian adventure hits the big screen this month in the new Disney film of the same name. Give K-12 readers the chance to learn more about Edgar Rice Burroughs and…

Rebecca Herr Stephenson, Cooney Center fellow, has been in the New York office for a few days this week working with the Research team on the e-book QuickStudy out at the New York Hall of Science. We were thrilled that she brought a copy of her newly released book, Teaching Harry Potter: The Power of Imagination in Multicultural Classrooms, which she co-authored with Catherine L. Belcher. The authors interview teachers who choose to teach Harry Potter in their classrooms and…

We’re pleased to help our friends at Reading Rockets spread the word about their great new mobile site. But even beyond the great content that the site provides, they’re also offering the chance to win some great prizes, including an iPod Nano. Rachael Walker shares more information on the new mobile website and how to win below: For more than ten years, Reading Rockets has been spreading the word about research-based reading instruction and offering the latest information on what…