April 2021
In collaboration with the Michigan Department of Education, REL Midwest created a series of easy-to-use guides designed to help families, afterschool providers, and other caregivers support children in kindergarten through grade 3 with early reading instruction. Districts also may wish to use these guides to enhance summer programming and assist with accelerated learning efforts for young learners, as well as share them with parents and community members to support early literacy skill development.
The following guides are available for download on the Michigan Department of Education website:
- Developing Language
- Linking Sounds to Letters
- Blending Letters, Recognizing, and Reading Words
- Practice Reading for Understanding
REL Midwest also worked with the Michigan Department of Education to create a set of guides to help families, afterschool providers, and other caregivers support children in kindergarten through grade 3 with early math instruction.
In addition, view the following related resources from the REL Midwest Early Childhood Education Research Alliance to support early childhood literacy instruction and development:
- This video shows how to support struggling readers in the primary grades with the multi-tier intervention framework, based on recommendations from a What Works Clearinghouse practice guide.
- Two videos describe how to implement research-based literacy practices through play-based learning. The first video describes classroom strategies for integrating play into literacy instruction, and the second provides an extended interview with literacy expert Tim Shanahan. Both videos draw on What Works Clearinghouse practice guides
- This infographic outlines best practices for teaching beginning readers, as recommended by What Works Clearinghouse practice guides.
- A blog post written by a prekindergarten teacher presents practical tips for supporting early childhood literacy skills in the time of COVID-19.