ELL News Headlines

Schools are obligated to provide interpretation services for families of English learners, but most don't. Now there’s some momentum to change that.

Meg Medina, the current National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, has worked with the Literary Initiatives Office of the Library of Congress to create a project called Cuéntame!: Let’s Talk Books. The idea at the heart of Cuéntame — which means "tell me," or, literally, "story me" in Spanish — is that talking about books is something that children should feel totally at ease doing, just as they'd talk about any other topic with their friends, family and teachers. Too often in school, talking about books is reserved for "book reports" or presentations.

At Clinton Hill Early Learning Center (opens in a new window) in the South Ward, everything is designed with the city's youngest children in mind. Many of the wall decorations are just 2 feet off the ground — the perfect view for infants and toddlers. The lobby overflows with plants and sunlight, the classrooms are filled with color, and the courtyard has climbing structures, toys, and, most importantly, padded flooring. Clinton Hill Early Learning Center offers one solution for closing gaps in financing early childhood education. The center is funded by the Maher Charitable Foundation, a philanthropy (opens in a new window) that engages in early childhood education projects and policy efforts and has previously funded the expansion of Newark early learning facilities.

Simona Goldin is a research associate professor in the University of North Carolina's department of public policy and at the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC). Her research focuses on trauma-informed practice and how to transform the preparation of beginning teachers to teach in more racially just and equitable ways. She shares three lessons on recovering after an active shooter shook her campus.

Share these titles featuring Indigenous characters with young children, tweens, and teens all year long!

More than a decade after it was phased out in most schools, elementary school students in California will begin learning cursive writing next year — thanks to a new law.

Scholastic is reversing course, saying it will no longer separate diverse stories for school book fairs after weeks of mounting backlash from educators and authors. The educational company, which both publishes and distributes books, waded into hot water last month after it confirmed that it was changing its policy for its middle school book fair offerings. It said it was putting most of the titles dealing with race, gender and sexuality into their own collection, and allowing schools to decide whether to order it, as they would with any display.

Today's post is the latest installment in a series on simple moves teachers can make that offer the potential for large classroom impacts.

Board books are a solid hit with tots and sturdy sellers in the publishing industry. They're also a powerful tool for neurodevelopment in young children. The science behind board book learning supports the market boom around their popularity. "The number one most important thing about board books is the pages' thickness, because babies and toddlers don't have the fine motor skills to turn paper pages," says Caitlin Gallingane, clinical assistant professor in the University of Florida's College of Education. That enables the development of "concepts of print" — how to hold a book, how to turn pages. Babies learn these basics not just by seeing, but by getting their hands on books and mimicking their grown-ups.

Here in Cicero School District 99, students are getting an extra 30 minutes of reading or math instruction every day, which adds up to around three additional weeks of school. School leaders hope that will be enough time to teach students key skills they missed and boost test scores. The district is about a month into the extra academic lessons, and staff say they're still working out the kinks. The initiative has added new instructional challenges for Cicero teachers, who were already busy putting a new reading curriculum in place and helping students cope with the ongoing fallout of the pandemic. Still, Cicero stands out for making a longer school day a reality. While many schools used COVID relief funding to beef up summer school or add optional after-school tutoring, far fewer added extra time to the school day or year.