TextProject president and CEO Elfrieda H. (Freddy) Hiebert blogs about important issues in reading research and practice.
Reading Rules for Becoming Proficient with Complex Texts
August 30, 2013
Freddy’s reading rules: Read more. Mostly silent. Focus on knowledge.
Why Becoming a Nation of Readers Is Still Relevant
August 23, 2013
Freddy introduces the first eBook in TextProject’s Reading Essentials Reprint Series.
Summary of Karen Wixson on “Assessment and Instruction in the Era of the CCSS in English Language Arts”
August 2, 2013
Karen Wixson’s session in TextProject’s Virtual Institute on Assessments and the Common Core should be on the top of the list in any teacher education or professional development course for providing pre- and in-service teachers with an overview of the new generation of assessments. Dr. Wixson provides a succinct but comprehensive overview of the key aims, tasks, and implications of the assessments being developed by the two consortium—Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
Summary of David Francis on “CCSS Assessments and Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners”
July 25, 2013
Summary of Dr. Francis’s take on what the new-generation of assessments means for students with disabilities and ELLs.
Summary of Peter Afflerbach on “Formative Assessments and the Common Core: Text Complexity to Task Complexity”
July 16, 2013
Summary of Peter Afflerbach’s take on formative versus summative assessments and the role both play in students’ learning.
Summary of P. David Pearson on Will Our Tests Support or Subvert Our Vision of Deeper Learning of English/Language Arts?
July 9, 2013
Summary of P. David Pearson’s review on the history of assessments and unique features of the next generation of assessments.
Summary of David Coleman on Assessments That Support the Goals of the Common Core State Standards
July 2, 2013
Summary of David Coleman’s vision for the new Common Core Assessments and a few points of tension.
An Inside View of the New Assessments
May 8, 2013
Freddy discusses the computer adaptive assessment portion of the new upcoming assessments.
FYI for Kids: Building Students’ Capacity for Complex Text
April 12, 2013
How does the magazine format help students read more complex texts?
Read-Aloud Favorites: A Source for Enriching Students’ Knowledge of the World and of Language
March 22, 2013
TextProject has relaunched Read-Aloud Favorites. Educators and parents can now search our outstanding collection of trade book recommendations for read-alouds by grade level, genre, topics, and format. Read-Aloud Favorites are an essential componeRead More »Read-Aloud Favorites: A Source for Enriching Students’ Knowledge of the World and of Language
7 Actions That Literacy Leaders Can Take Right Now: Text Complexity
February 27, 2013
Seven actions in which literacy leaders can support teachers in ensuring students’ increased capacity with complex text.
It’s Not Just Informational Text That Supports Knowledge Acquisition: The Critical Role of Narrative Text in the Common Core State Standards
September 12, 2012
Literature allows for examination of the influences of culture and history on individuals, not simply on our personal responses to texts. Guiding students in understanding how culture and history influences individual development and agency is part of the bigger picture.
Scaffolding Complex Text: Volume of Text Matters
July 30, 2012
This eye-opening analysis reveals how shorter texts actually widen the achievement gap by limiting vocabulary exposure. Discover why volume of text—not difficulty level—is the real key to building proficient readers who can tackle complex texts.
Syntax and Text Complexity: A Classic Text Goes from College-Career Level to First Grade
June 26, 2012
Dr. Hiebert shows how the Lexile for a text can change with a few simple edits.
Teaching Complex Text: Why Look at Word Frequency?
June 21, 2012
A webinar version of this content is also available: Teaching Complex Text: Why Look at Word Frequency For the first time in a standards document, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has a standard—Standard 10—devoted solely to ensuring that studentRead More »Teaching Complex Text: Why Look at Word Frequency?
Children’s literacy learning and screen time
January 20, 2012
A question that parents frequently ask these days is: Does screen time count as reading time? With such a wide variety of online reading experiences available, the short answer would be have to be, “Yes, but…”
Is Reading in Kindergarten the Means for Ensuring College and Career Readiness?
August 3, 2011
The inclusion of kindergarten in the CCSS about text difficulty represents an implicit assumption about beginning reading that also requires consideration—that earlier is better. Does beginning reading in kindergarten truly ensure that high school graduates are better at reading the complex texts of careers and college? In this essay, I review research on both the explicit and implicit assumptions within the CCSS regarding formal reading instruction in kindergarten: the dumbing down of kindergarten texts and the pushing down of reading instruction to kindergarten.
The 90-10 Rule of Vocabulary in Increasing Students’ Capacity for Complex Text
June 7, 2011
Elfrieda (Freddy) Hiebert TextProject & University of California, Santa Cruz The English language has an incredibly rich vocabulary, and yet we use only about 2% of it in the bulk of our typical written texts. This core vocabulary accounts for abouRead More »The 90-10 Rule of Vocabulary in Increasing Students’ Capacity for Complex Text
Identifying Principles for the Creation of Texts in A Variety of Languages for Beginning Readers
May 25, 2011
Beginning readers need substantial and consistent data about language they are learning.
What Teachers and Parents Can Do to Stop the Summer Reading Slide
April 11, 2011
Students from high and low socioeconomic homes have been found to make similar gains on reading during the school year (Alexander, Entwistle, & Olson, 2004). It’s what happens in the summer that contributes to a growing gap in low- and high-income students’ reading. During the summer, low-income children either fall or stagnate during the summer, while higher-income children continue to progress or maintain their reading levels. By fourth-grade, the accumulated differences over several summers are reflected in a significant gap between low- and high-income students.