Promoting Active Reading Skills

Reading comprehension is an important skill throughout all grade levels, and students who struggle to comprehend texts may disengage from learning. Engaging instructional practices allow students to form a connection with the content. Confident and successful readers engage with the material. A strategy called “Stop and Think” gives teachers across content areas and grade levels a tool to implement in their classes to enhance their reading instruction. When reading is modified with purposeful questioning, students have enhanced comprehension and engagement.

 

New Lessons from Tennessee: Pre-K and What Comes Next

In 2015, a study released by Vanderbilt University inspired a new wave of questions surrounding the long-term impacts of pre-kindergarten programs. The report analyzed the results of Tennessee’s Voluntary Prekindergarten program (TN-VPK), the state-funded pre-K program operating in 138 of the state’s 142 districts. To be eligible, children must come from families earning 185 percent of the federal poverty level or below, be experiencing homelessness, or be in foster care. TN-VPK students were observed to have made significant academic and social-emotional gains in pre-K that continued into kindergarten, as well as decreased grade retention.