Partners in Literacy: Madeleine Glowienka

Since 1992, Madeleine Glowienka has worked as a teacher. Currently, she is a 1st grade teacher at Anna L. Lingelbach School in Philadelphia. CLI asked Madeleine about her experiences and expectations partnering with CLI.  Partners in Literacy Glenda Smiley Andrew Eckhorn Rebecca Eisenman What were your initial expectations about CLI? I had few—basically I was unsure how it could/would really …

African American Boy Reading

2015 NAEP Results: A Red Flag

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) recently released the results of the 2015 Nation’s Report Card for 4th and 8th grade students. In the NAEP reading assessment, students’ reading comprehension is measured by reading grade-appropriate materials and answering questions based on the selection they read. The type of texts students read are literacy (fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry) and …

Uncover Discover Recover

Uncover, Discover, and Recover

Data can be scary but it doesn’t have to be. As a researcher, we are concerned with things like validity, reliability, sample size, and statistical significance among other things, but data needs to be valuable to those who are using it in practice. Data may present frightening findings, but it can be helpful in facilitating discussions on improving practice and student …

Marvelous Cornelius

Closing the Diversity Gap in Children’s Books

Here are the facts: people of color make up 37% of the U.S. population, but only 10% of children’s books published in the past 21 years include multicultural content. That is a disconcerting gap. We know that children benefit from seeing people like themselves in the books they read, which means that for an organization working in urban schools, CLI’s collections …

From the Field: Message Time Plus & Building Reading Skills

This article is the first of an ongoing series entitled From the Field. Short, inspiring and heart-warming classroom anecdotes contributed by our professional developers as they work in classrooms across the country. Names of teachers and students have been changed. In the beginning of the school year, little Julie was a new kindergartner in Ms. Smith’s classroom. Julie was always …

Teacher Family Communication

Three Tech Tools You Should be Using to Improve Family Engagement

For every teacher, a new school year is often accompanied by new goals: to build a positive classroom culture, to introduce new skills and concepts to your class, and to increase student achievement or test scores, to just name a few. With so many pressing goals to juggle, it can be easy to let other important goals fall behind… such …

Computer Adaptive Testing

Computer Adaptive Testing – What is it?

This article is part 1 of 2, in the next article explore the advantages and disadvantages through the lens of students and teachers. All education stakeholders want a return on investment, but the methods used to measure successful learning vary widely. Student assessments are not always streamlined across schools or even classrooms due to a myriad of challenges, which can include …

Camden Student Writing

Camden Teacher Discusses Transformation Through CLI

Gina Post, a bilingual 2nd-grade teacher at Sumner Elementary School in Camden, N.J. talks to the Office of Innovation and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education to discusses her work with the Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI). CLI is a Philadelphia-based organization that supports teachers focused on early literacy. In 2010, CLI won a $21.7 million Investing in Innovation (i3) Validation grant, …

In Praise of Pre-K

The first few years of a child’s life are critical; a child’s brain grows to 90% of its adult size by age five, and from 3 to 4 years of age, children show rapid growth in literacy. Preschool has been shown to give children a head start in their development; children in preschool have vocabulary scores that are 31% higher than children who do not attend.

What is Data Driven Instruction?

“Data driven instruction…” is something we have been hearing for a long time. But what does that really mean in the everyday life of a teacher and his/her classroom? In this age of testing, it is often difficult to keep the notion of using data to make decisions about what is being taught.