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Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Revive, Rally and Recover Public Schools

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Ask When Children Should Begin to Read

June 5, 2024 By Nancy Bailey 20 Comments

In 1936, Mabel Vogel Morphett and Carleton Washburne wrote When Should Children Begin to Read? a research paper published in The Elementary School Journal. This is a critical question because if children are pushed to read before they’re ready, they might not get it, then hate it, fail to read later and decide that reading […]

Filed Under: Featured, Uncategorized Tagged With: Age to formally teach reading, child development and reading, chronological age, Learning to Read, Mental age, time to teach reading

How Did We Learn to Read? Is There a Teacher to Thank?

May 8, 2018 By Nancy Bailey 15 Comments

The debate surrounding how to teach children to read is ongoing. What we tend to forget and ignore is how we learned to read ourselves. I think it’s important to address what helped make us the readers we are today, or what problems we encountered. Perhaps we can recall what worked, and what didn’t, by […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: books, dyslexia, Learning to Read, libraries, reading, reading difficulties

Hemingway for 5 Year Olds? Do These 22 Things To Teach Reading Instead!

December 29, 2016 By Nancy Bailey 5 Comments

In “Forget Pat the Bunny: My Kid’s Reading Hemingway,” The New York Times hypes KinderGuides where children read the simplified versions of adult novels converted to picture books–without the X-rated parts. The whole purpose of this is to get 5-12 year old children ready for adult books. I am not one to hold children back […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Book Programs, Children's Books, Children's Literature, Dolly Parton, Joy of Reading, KinderGuides, Learning to Read, Library Story Hours, Pancakes for Breakfast, Pushing Children to read, reading, Richard Scarry, The Best Word Book Ever, Tommie DePaola

The POWER of Picture Books v. High-Stakes Testing & Common Core

November 16, 2015 By Nancy Bailey 10 Comments

In 2010, I read an article in The New York Times that both saddened and infuriated me. In “Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children” by Julie Bosman we learned about a bookstore in Brookline, MA, a beautiful community surrounded by Harvard, MIT, Tufts, etc., where parents were rejecting picture books. They skipped buying […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Close Reading, Common Core, high-stakes testing, Learning to Read, Picture Books, Wordless Picture Books

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An education glossary with an attitude.

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Do we really want an America where we no longer own our public schools?

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This book says “no” to the reforms that fail, and challenges Americans to address the real student needs that will fix public schools and make America strong.

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