Literacy Now

LeVar Burton


Burton as Kunta Kinte
in Roots


Burton as Geordi
LaForge in Star Trek:
The Next Generation

LeVar Burton will deliver the General Session keynote on Sunday, April 21, 2013, at the International Reading Association (IRA) 58th Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas.

Burton is the recipient of 12 Emmy Awards, a Grammy, and 5 NAACP awards. The actor first earned kudos for his work as Kunta Kinte in the award-winning miniseries Roots. He went on to originate the role of Geordi LaForge in the Star Trek: The Next Generation series.

Burton, a long-time literacy advocate, became the host of the popular public television series Reading Rainbow in 1983. The show ran for 21 seasons.

A children’s show that encouraged literacy in fun ways, Reading Rainbow won over 200 broadcast awards including a Peabody Award and twenty-six Emmy Awards during its run. The show featured picture books read by celebrities, scenes that applied books’ lessons to real life, and book reviews from children. Many episodes of the original series can be downloaded from iTunes.

“I come from a family of teachers, and when I was offered the opportunity to host Reading Rainbow in 1983, I recognized immediately the value in using technology to inspire kids to read,” says Burton.

That appreciation for technology led to Burton rebooting the series last summer—as an app for the iPad. On June 20, 2012, the Reading Rainbow App was released; it became the #1 educational app on iTunes within 36 hours. Built from the ground up by Burton and his company, RRKIDZ, the app allows children to read unlimited books, explore video field trips starring Burton, and earn rewards for reading. The company partnered with leading publishers such as Little Brown Books for Young Readers, Abrams Books, Charlesbridge and Sleeping Bear Press, among others, to offer cherished children’s book titles through the app.

"This [app] gives me the opportunity to continue to do what I've done for over 25 years—put technology to use in turning kids on to good books," Burton explains. "In the 1980s, television was the obvious choice when it came to reaching an audience of children, but today's kids are digital natives. Tablet computers are brilliant devices for the medium of storytelling."

“Reading will never go out of style,” he says. “But the tools used for learning are changing.”

To learn more about Burton follow his Twitter feed @levarburton and read the RRKIDZ/Reading Rainbow Twitter feed, Facebook page, and blog. For more information about Burton and other presenters at the IRA Annual Convention, visit www.iraconvention.org.

LeVar Burton, Rick Riordan, and Mo Willems are just a few of the education luminaries speaking at the International Reading Association (IRA) 58th Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas, from April 19 to 22, 2013.

Rick Riordan


LeVar Burton


Mo Willems

The opening general session on Saturday, April 20, features San Antonio’s own Rick Riordan, author of the bestselling Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and experienced English teacher. Riordan will discuss what he’s learned from his students, his readers, and his own sons about turning kids into avid book lovers.

Actor and producer LeVar Burton’s career in entertainment includes roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Roots, but perhaps he is best known as the host and executive producer of the Peabody Award-winning PBS children's series Reading Rainbow. Burton recently launched an interactive Reading Rainbow App for the iPad which became the No. 1 educational app in the iTunes store within the first 36 hours. A staunch advocate for children's literacy, Burton says he's most proud of Reading Rainbow's ability to use the medium of television to help create "human beings who are passionate about literature." Burton gives the general session keynote on Sunday, April 21.

Author Mo Willems, the April 22 closing general session keynote speaker, is the winner of the Caldecott Honor, Geisel Medal, Geisel Honor, and Carnegie Medal. He has written and illustrated a multitude of picture books and early readers to great acclaim. Willems’ latest books include Don't Let the Pigeon Finish This Activity Book! and That Is Not a Good Idea! 

The new annual convention website at www.iraconvention.org offers information on these keynote speakers as well as the popular Teaching Edge series with Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell, Richard Allington, and Ellin Oliver Keene; invited speakers Ruth Culham, Greg Tang, Steven Layne, Danny Brassell, Debbie Diller, Cris Tovani, Lucy Calkins, Stephanie Harvey, and Kelly Gallagher; featured IRA authors Regie Routman, Maureen McLaughlin, Brenda J. Overturf, Linda Kucan, Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar, and Lori D. Oczkus; and luncheon speakers Jane O'Connor, Joan Bauer, and Chris Soentpiet. Details on full-day, preconference institutes on April 19 will be added to the website soon. IRA is still accepting exhibitors and sponsors for this event that draws upwards of 10,000 literacy professionals.

Once more program information is added, the website will allow users to use research presentation topics and develop convention schedules using the online itinerary planner. Online registration will open in early December. The IRA Annual Convention also has its own Twitter hashtag, #IRA2013, as well as its own Facebook page.

IRA Annual Convention Schedule at a Glance

Annual Convention Housing and Travel

The International Reading Association (IRA) will hold two workshops—one for program report writers and one for program report reviewers—at the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) Conference on Saturday, November 3, 2012, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The conference will be held from November 1 to November 4. This year’s theme will be “Literacy is Transformative.” Speakers for the event include Dr. Taffy E. Raphael and Dr. Nell Duke, along with children’s author and illustrator Lynne Rae Perkins.

The NCATE sessions will focus on the online submission process, creating reliable assessments that meet IRA standards, and specific instructions for properly submitting a report to the IRA. The workshops will also review model assessments, rubrics, and scoring guides and update participants on any developments from NCATE. Finally, the workshops will explore the national recognition process and address any specific concerns of participants.

Since these workshops are held in conjunction with the program reviewers, attendance greatly improves the chances of accreditation with the first submission. Talking with reviewers at IRA workshops allows program writers a unique chance to gain further clarity regarding program expectations and the submission process.

The IRA believes that only high-quality teachers can deliver high-quality instruction. As an NCATE specialized professional association, IRA reviews advanced programs for candidates preparing to serve as reading specialists/literacy coaches.

The IRA will hold a day-long institute on program report preparation and review in April at their 2013 convention in San Antonio, Texas. More information about the convention can be found on the International Reading Association’s annual convention website.

To register for the ALER conference visit www.aleronline.org. Contact research@/ for more information or to learn how you can become an IRA/NCATE reviewer.

Elizabeth Bleacher is the strategic communications intern at the International Reading Association.

by Carrice Cummins

International Literacy Day is being celebrated around the globe as we continue to work towards the universal principle of everyone being able to read. There are currently more than 750 million adults who do not possess appropriate literacy skills and over 100 million children without regular access to education; however, there are also more than 4 billion literate people in the world which is still reason to celebrate. We have come a long way; yet, we have a long way to go.

Though we sometimes think that illiteracy is only an issue of the developing world, literacy is a global issue and we all must recognize the situation and strive to promote and celebrate literacy efforts worldwide as we continuously seek ways to improve literacy rates in every country. So though we understand the need to think globally we must also look closely at what is being done in our own society to improve literacy so that as we grow within, our outreach can also be expanded.

In the United States one of the central elements of our current school-reform movement is the use of college and career-ready standards aka Common Core. These standards play an extremely influential role in what is taught in our schools and in order for these to truly make a difference in the levels of literacy among our students, teachers must understand how to interpret them appropriately to meet the needs of all students – even our neediest children.

Momentarily our panel will share insights on the Common Core and teacher effectiveness – how teachers must strive to strengthen the floor (establish a solid foundation) while raising the ceiling (the levels of literacy required in today’s information age) and doing this not only for the vast majority of our students but all students regardless of background. However, to get us started I would like to point out only a few of the deliberate areas of the standards that we must truly focus on in order to make this happen – those elements most often touched on when teachers talk about common core but in light of our high need student population:

1. Reading more challenging and complex text. An excellent idea but it doesn’t mean that we are going to ask all students to always read more difficult text.  It is a standard that must be addressed with a nuanced and thoughtful approach. Although the standards raise the levels of text complexity only for grades 2-12, reading aloud difficult text at lower grades initiates the development of oral language and comprehension skills so we should not back off from presenting this to our younger students or our high need students. Teachers must provide instructional scaffolding that allows all students to enjoy and benefit from exposure to a wide range of rich texts of varied levels of challenge.
2. Comprehension focused on reading for meaning and purpose - using real texts- both literature and informational text. This involves teachers recognizing that the same logic exists for teaching both types of text – helping students understand what the text says (meaning), as well as, how it was said (structure). Teachers must provide explicit instruction utilizing metacognitive strategies and high levels of student engagement to help students reach this high level of critical reading, especially for students struggling with reading.
3. Emphasis on vocabulary development as a critical component to comprehension and student achievement.  All students need instruction in words and their relationship to other words as well as word-solving strategies; however, teachers of children living in poverty must provide aggressive assistance in order to help them build their vocabularies throughout the day and in all disciplines.
4. Students writing more and for more purposes is an important change from current practice.  Writing is finally considered to be an equal partner to reading; however, the problem is that traditionally teachers have focused on reading achievement as a measure of success and therefore many are now not comfortable teaching writing at this level of intensity. Teachers must begin making the shift to using writing as a means of students clarifying their thinking, digging deeper into text, and responding to text in a variety of formats and for different purposes.

There are of course many other elements of the standards that teachers need to understand and the International Reading Association has commissioned a CCSS committee to develop a set of basic principles to help teachers and school leaders better interpret and ultimately turn the standards into effective instruction. We hope to have these principles ready for dissemination soon but a draft list of the principles to be addressed can be found on the back of your program.

Our focus for this year’s International Literacy Day celebration deals with high need kids, common core standards, and teacher effectiveness. I emphasized a few areas of the common core standards that should be addressed for all students but that might create even more concern for the instruction of our students with greater needs. So does this mean that the standards just for those who come to school ready to learn what we are ready to teach? No, they are indeed for all students, and this means that for our teachers to be effective they are going to need a clear understanding of the standards – what they mean and don’t mean so they can use this understanding to match instruction to the students in their care.

The standards have been met with much trepidation and there are aspects of the standards that we like and aspects that we do not care for. However, there is one aspect of the standards that I am personally proud of and that is the respect they extend to the professional judgment of classroom teachers. The standards tell us what students should know and be able to do but they do not tell us how teachers should teach. So we must celebrate the fact that the standards acknowledge that it is teachers who will make a difference and effective teachers know they make a difference by knowing their children first and using this knowledge to plan their instruction. And while the common core standards are specific to the United States, the goal of all children and youth achieving and meeting high expectations is held worldwide.

by Clarissa Hardcastle

Join the International Reading Association’s celebration of International Literacy Day on Friday, September 7, 2012, from 10:00 a.m. to noon in the Library of Congress Jefferson Building in Washington, DC. Events will be held in Room 119.

“The impact of illiteracy on our society is sobering," says Marcie Craig Post, Executive Director of the International Reading Association (IRA). "Approximately 50% of the nation’s unemployed youth age 16 to 21 are functionally illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs, 68% of individuals arrested are illiterate, and about three in five of America’s prison inmates are illiterate. The cost of illiteracy to business and the taxpayer is estimated to be $20 billion a year. On International Literacy Day, IRA renews its commitment to raising awareness and addressing the issues that will facilitate reading and increase literacy around the world.”

Events include IRA President Carrice Cummins, an expert panel on the Common Core State Standards, Center for the Book representatives, Benjamin Franklin, and other guests for a day focusing on worldwide literacy needs.

“There are currently more than 780 million illiterate adults and over 100 million children without regular access to education,” Cummins points out. “However, there are also more than four billion literate people in the world which is still reason to celebrate. International Literacy Day provides us with an opportunity to celebrate our successes while also reminding us of the need to continue sharing our stories and combining our efforts to meet the literacy needs of all people, nationally and internationally. Please join IRA on September 7th, and beyond, as we celebrate teachers making a difference worldwide.”

Also at the event, Rotary International, Pearson Foundation, and IRA will award $2,500 to two literacy projects: Reading Rocks in Rockford and Guatemala Bookmaking. Reading Rocks in Rockford is a festival with a book fair, musicians, and a “Storybook Character Sidewalk Parade” in Rockford, Michigan. Guatemala Bookmaking is a project from the Salem Oregon Rotary Club and the Oregon’s Vineyards Valley Reading Council that serves 130 preschool through sixth grade Mayan children, all of whom speak Cozal Ixil as their first language. An honorable mention goes to “Clothe the Body, Feed the Mind” in Ellensburg, Washington, where Morning Rotary partnered with CentralWORD, the IRA affiliate at Central Washington University, to provide clothing, books, and scholarships for orphans in Juba, South Sudan.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) founded International Literacy Day in 1967. Though International Literacy Day is traditionally observed annually on September 8, IRA will be celebrating a day earlier since this year that date falls on a Saturday.

IRA councils, affiliates, and individual members have observed International Literacy Day in the past with themed readings in libraries and local schools, supporting national and international literacy programs, and other independent projects.

IRA’s Engage Teacher to Teacher blog will feature Literacy Day-related content leading up to the event. Teacher and author L.P. Simone shares teaching tips about the need for titles featuring Latino/a children that are not "barrio" or migrant-worker specific on Tuesday, Mrs. Mimi pens her popular “QUIET: Teacher in Progress” column on Wednesday, author Monika Schroeder (Saraswati’s Way) discusses education in India in her “In Other Words” piece on Thursday, and we interview author Nancy Shaw about Elena’s Story (part of Sleeping Bear Press’ “Tales of the World” series) about a Guatemalan girl who is the first in her family to learn to read.

To attend the 2012 International Literacy Day celebration in Washington, DC, or to learn more about this annual event, visit /ILD.

Reading Rocks in Rockford included read-alouds by Local celebrity Maranda of WOTV 8.

Dr. Seuss book characters promote literacy at Reading Rocks in Rockford.

Mayan teachers in Oregon are proud of the books they wrote in the Cozal Ixil language.

Oregon students are excited to read their new Cozal Ixil books.

Clarissa Hardcastle is the strategic communications department intern at the International Reading Association.