All posts tagged: Literacy

Graphic Novels Build Kids’ Literacy Skills, and More Library News

Graphic Novels Build Kids’ Literacy Skills, and More Library News

Published by Jenni Sidey

Katie’s parents never told her “no” when she asked for a book, which was the start of most of her problems. She has an MLIS from the University of Illinois and works full time as a Circulation & Reference Manager in Illinois. She has a deep-rooted love of all things disturbing, twisted, and terrifying and takes enormous pleasure in creeping out her coworkers. When she’s not at work, she’s at home watching the Cubs with her cats and her cardigan collection. Other hobbies include scrapbooking, introducing more readers to the Church of Tana French, and convincing her husband that she can, in fact, fit more books onto her shelves. Twitter: @kt_librarylady View All posts by Katie McLain Horner Source link

It’s Okay If Your Kid Only Reads Comics–They’re Building Literacy Skills

It’s Okay If Your Kid Only Reads Comics–They’re Building Literacy Skills

Published by José Betancourt

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Graphic Novels Help Kids Build Literacy Skills Even though educators and librarians have known for decades that comics are actually good for kids to read, it’s really nice to see more and more writing–with links to the evidence–about the power of the graphic novel. Comics help kids build crucial literacy skills, and because kids enjoy reading them, it’s a win-win for all. This is a nice read that lays out the research in a highly readable and sharable way. Want your kids to pause their scrolling for a bit? Keep ’em elbow deep in comics! ‘Making The Scarlet Letter Into My Career’: My Life as a Sex Writer This is an excerpt from a a memoir coming out this week, and it’s a good one. There are so many careers that the general public finds “less than,” and many of those have to do with sex–be it sex work or in the case here, taking …

School gardens can boost science learning, agriculture and food literacy

School gardens can boost science learning, agriculture and food literacy

Published by Jenni Sidey

School gardens help students learn science and connect with agriculture – but making them happen isn’t easy I used to teach high school science in Oklahoma, and one day I brought in a stalk from a cotton plant with bolls of cotton still attached. Students asked me why I glued cotton balls to a stick. My students and I lived in a rural town surrounded by pastures of cattle and goats and fields of wheat, soybeans and cotton. I was amazed to learn how little my students understood agriculture. After a few related incidents, I started incorporating agriculture into my science classes. When most Americans lived on farms, agriculture was part of daily life. Most kids did farm chores, and planting and harvest seasons dictated the schedule of the school year. Today, most Americans are several generations removed from agriculture, and agriculture is seen as a career instead of a part of daily life. As an agricultural extension specialist focused on horticulture, I’ve found that gardens can be an excellent teaching tool. By integrating gardens into …

As Literacy Rates Lag, a Pediatric Hospital Is Screening for Reading Ability

As Literacy Rates Lag, a Pediatric Hospital Is Screening for Reading Ability

Published by Sam Flores

For some young children in Columbus, Ohio, reading assessments don’t start in the kindergarten classroom — they happen first in the doctor’s office. With concerns rising about lagging childhood literacy rates across the country, Nationwide Children’s Hospital has begun screening children’s literacy skills starting at age 3 during pediatrician visits. The idea is to catch reading struggles early on and guide parents on how to help their kids. “They are all doing developmental screenings, they’re all talking to parents repeatedly,” said Sara Bode, the hospital’s medical director of school-based health. “So this is an opportunity.” The pediatric hospital chose clinics to provide the literacy screenings largely based on their proximity to schools with lower performance scores on kindergarten readiness assessments. Across Columbus City Schools, more than 63% of kindergarteners were behind on language and literacy skills during the 2024-2025 school year, according to state kindergarten readiness assessment, or KRA, data. Concerns about childhood literacy extend far beyond Columbus. Nationally, the percentage of fourth graders considered proficient in reading sits just above 30%, according to the …

The Decline of K-12 Literacy and What Might Help

The Decline of K-12 Literacy and What Might Help

Published by Jenni Sidey

It’s often preached that high school students struggle in places afflicted with poverty, family breakdown, and other social woes. However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that students from wealthier regions are demonstrating academic excellence. So argues a Substack writer known as Dissident Teacher, who writes on issues facing contemporary K-12 classrooms. Youth literacy is a widespread issue across demographics. Something else is going on here. Reflecting on his own interaction with students in a wealthy district, Dissident Teacher writes, Many kids were functionally illiterate and innumerate. The writing of 9th-12th graders in English was often incoherent, full of fragment sentences and errors in English grammar, usage, and mechanics. Students couldn’t seem to organize their thoughts meaningfully and employed little vocabulary beyond the 6th grade level. Only the most proficient and frequent readers produced work that didn’t require major revision. Students didn’t know enough about Western civ to turn out an intelligent paper on any piece of literature, whether novel, short story, or poem. They hadn’t read enough in any genre to have a working model of …

Don’t blame media literacy for our naivete

Don’t blame media literacy for our naivete

Published by Sam Flores

Perhaps you have feelings about MTV’s untimely alleged passing on Jan. 1. What, didn’t you see all the New Year’s Eve eulogies sliding across your feed like tears ribboning down millions of teenagers’ cheeks? The communal misery was intense if you happened to stumble across some sad pool of it. “MTV is going off the air at midnight tonight . . . man. There was a time when MTV was THE channel to be watching on New Year’s Eve,” rued one Bluesky user. He’s right. It’s been many years since the land of continuous “Ridiculousness” repeats gave us any reason to pay attention to it on most days, let alone in the waning hours of Dec. 31. But if anybody bothered to click through their TV provider’s schedules that day, they may have cheered right up at seeing that MTV is very much alive. At least the bamboozled weren’t tricked into leaving their homes on New Year’s Eve and gathering with hundreds of others to watch midnight fireworks on the Brooklyn Bridge — a highly …

Understanding and Addressing Limited Health Literacy

Understanding and Addressing Limited Health Literacy

Published by Jenni Sidey

Adult literacy advocate Toni Cordell recounts the story of feeling comforted when her doctor told her that her medical concern could be solved with an easy surgery. She agreed to proceed without asking further questions and didn’t understand the medical consent forms because she didn’t read well. At a follow-up office visit a couple of weeks after the procedure, Cordell was shocked when the nurse asked, “How are you feeling since your hysterectomy?” Cordell thought to herself, “How could I be so stupid as to allow somebody to take part of my body, and I didn’t know it?” She admits that although she graduated from high school, she only had a fifth-grade reading level, which she had always tried to hide from others. Cordell’s story is unfortunately all too common, and it reflects the widespread and well-known problem of limited health literacy. Other examples of health literacy difficulties include incorrect use of medicines, filling out medical forms incompletely, failure to carry out health care instructions, and making unhealthy lifestyle choices like smoking, poor diet, and …

Declining Literacy Rates and What Happens Next

Declining Literacy Rates and What Happens Next

Published by Jenni Sidey

In 1975, Newsweek ran a front-page feature article called “Why Johnny Can’t Write.” It’s a 4,000-word essay about television, education, and children’s declining literacy rates. That was fifty years ago, and many people today might dismiss the piece as needlessly alarmist. Even back then, critics noticed the incoming tide of screens and debated over how watching images on a screen might change the way we think, communicate with each other, and, yes, read. Were the worries legitimate? And what might those people think about our current social moment when screens are not limited to homes but exist in our pockets? A new video podcast, hosted by UnHerd, features philosopher Jared Henderson and Times critic James Marriott and centers on the question of whether we’re heading toward a “post-literate society.” Both men cite alarming decline in literacy rates, connecting the trend to technological shifts and the educational COVID slump, which young people across the country are still struggling to get over. They also expressed doubts over social media’s ability to sustain healthy social discourse. Literacy, they …