International Reading Association (IRA) Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #1 Exploration

The All About Adolescent Literacy (AdLit) website http://www.adlit.org/ is a national multimedia project offering information and resources to parents and educators of adolescents who struggle in literacy. Writing teacher, researcher, and policy advocate for 20 years, Dr. Rafael Heller expresses his concern for children who don’t learn and master literacy skills in the early years of elementary. Research indicates that many children succeed in reading during their kinder to 3^rd grade years but often experience a “4^th grade slump”. AdLit focuses on bridging this gap by providing free resources, strategies, video modules, newsletters, and much more for both parents and educators to help foster literacy growth in their adolescents.

AdLit provides a webpage on information regarding Common Core State Standards (CCSS). On this page, called Common Core Classroom, parents and educators have access to frequently asked questions regarding common core like what is common core and who created the standards. Links to the actual standards are also on the webpage for quick reference without having to go to the actual common core website. Classroom video modules provide educators with virtual and self-paced professional development for teachers individually or for the use in professional learning communities. These videos provide lesson summaries, alignment to CCSS, teaching materials, classroom strategies, teacher reflection, what experts say, and comments from other teachers. A tab for effective teaching is also on the Common Core page. This page provides educators with links with up to date information on how to be an effective teacher using CCSS.

AdLit.org offers many current articles on their Hot Topics tab. The articles provided are research-based and best-practice information for parents and educators fostering adolescents and their growth in reading and writing.  The page offers over 30 links of “hot topics” of literacy articles from About Teaching Reading to Policy/Legislation/Initiatives, and more.  As an educator and mother of three, one of my favorite tabs on AdLit is the Classroom Strategies tab. This page offers a plethora of strategies for literacy instruction. Not only do they provide a list of strategies, the strategies are categorized for instruction according to when you should use them. For example, there is an organized list of strategies you can use before reading or writing to activate students’ prior knowledge. The other list includes strategies you can use during reading/writing that help students make connections, monitor their understanding, generate questions, and help them stay focused. A list of after reading/writing strategies are also provided to give students the opportunity to summarize, respond to their questions, discuss, and reflect on the text. AdLit.org is an educational initiative of WETA (a flagship public television and radio station in DC) and is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and by the Ann B. and Thomas L. Friedman Family Foundation.  Many parents, educators, and struggling readers can benefit from the resources on AdLit.