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Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom is designed for families, caregivers, and educators who want to support young readers and writers at home. From early literacy to essay writing, AI tools to choosing great books, we're covering it all for PreK-12 students. Join us each month for a new episode where we'll explore practical strategies grounded in the latest research. Learn more about Teachers College Advancing Literacy at https://advancingliteracy.tc.columbia.edu/ .
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Amanda
Welcome to Advancing Literacy beyond the Classroom. As the new school year begins, we're thrilled to launch a new season, helping families, caregivers, and educators support literacy outside the school day. In our first season, we focused on nurturing, reading, and writing at home through sustainable routines, accessible materials, and purposeful learning. For the year coming, we've designed an exciting new lineup.
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Amanda
Each monthly episode will blend current research, practical strategies, and children's literature recommendations. This year, we're looking forward to exploring topics such as the role of literacy and play, guiding children through research, civics, and STEM outside the classroom. What families should know about brain development and reading, and more.
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Amanda
To kick off the year, we're sharing our learning and recommendations from our personal summer reading and key tips to consider as you all get back to school.
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Amanda
So, Emily, let's start off by talking a little bit about your summer reading.
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Amanda
How did it go and what stood out to you?
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Emily
Thank you. Amanda, it's wonderful to be back in conversation with you. I've missed you.
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Emily
It's been a whirlwind of a summer
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Emily
in which I proudly carved out more time for my personal reading. That's been a struggle for me.
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Amanda
Wonderful.
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Emily
Yeah. And one of the ways that I did it was that I started a family book club.
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Amanda
So fun.
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Emily
Yeah. And it's been a good way for my family. There are about eight of us across three generations to get together regularly and talk about books.
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Emily
it's been just lovely. And I've read more because of it. So it's great.
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Amanda
Reading begets more reading.
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Emily
Yeah, and family connections are pivotal to literacy. Yeah.
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Emily
I'm not going to talk about the adult and YA literature that I read, but I will and do want to talk about a book that I've just finished. It's called Outsmart Your Brain Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy, by Daniel Willingham and I selected this with the aim of supporting my teaching, but also in order to consider the ways it might be useful for my 13 year old, who is starting high school in a few weeks.
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Emily
So I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone interested in learning and supporting learners. I've flagged many spots and am eager to put a number of concrete recommendations to use, both for myself, but also for my daughter and for the students that I work with.
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Amanda
I love that I love a book that sends you right into the practical.
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Emily
Yeah, absolutely. It's had us thinking about our team, too, and the ways that we work. But I would say in many ways, this book is a teenager friendly compilation of research on the science of learning. And there are a few big points that I think are worth talking about today. Okay, so a few things that I would say are big takeaways.
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Emily
One, as we head back into the school year, I think it's helpful for us as families and caregivers to think about the routines that we set up for our kids. And the routines can be things around sleep. Of course, protecting that around
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Emily
finding purposeful places to do work at home. If it's schoolwork that they're needing to do,
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Emily
scheduling and thinking about ways that we really block off meaningful social commitments alongside the work or school related commitments that we have.
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Emily
So I think really, routines is a big thing, and I know we hear that again and again. But to be concrete about using a schedule and bedtime routines and morning routines and after school routines and just really trying to have that consistency for learners
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Emily
is pivotal.
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Emily
I've been thinking about that also for myself. So I think I encourage any family member or caregiver to think how do they establish those routines for themselves and also for the kids in their care?
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Emily
A second thing that I would recommend is to really think about
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Emily
the ways in which we give and support kids and using their attention.
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Emily
So Willingham's
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Emily
text describes again and again the ways in which we are distracted,
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Emily
because we are we are always, you know, tempted to multitask or distracted by social engagement or by.
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Amanda
Only have attention for short things and not for longer sustained periods.
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Emily
Absolutely. So really thinking about purposeful use of our attention and where to put it. And I think for teachers that can often be helping kids understand
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Emily
what the point of your lesson is like, that's part of helping them think about the attention. And if we're,
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Emily
at home or outside of the school day, if kids are working on something for school, we want to think like, how do we help kids know what the purpose of this is?
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Emily
And how do families and caregivers know what the purpose is?
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Amanda
Yeah. And do kids know what the purpose is?
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Amanda
Just even checking in with your child to say, wait, you know, what is this? You know, why is this important?
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Emily
What's the point of this?
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Emily
Yes, we could think about attention as being something like, we get distracted from things or we lose our focus. But I think also attention is how do we know where to put our attention in order to really make learning meaningful and sticky?
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Emily
So I think attention and being strategic about that is important.
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Amanda
Yeah, there's a lot to think about there.
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Emily
Yeah.
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Emily
a third thing is to think about the difference between experiences and practice. And
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Emily
for our students when we're outside of school and we're supporting them as family members and caregivers, we could look at homework or look at activities that they do and just think about the distinction between those things. Are they gaining a new experience by doing this, or are they practicing something in order to get better at it?
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Emily
And if you're practicing something in order to get better at it, you want to have goals in mind to go along with that.
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Emily
If we just think about wanting to get better at something, when we know the thing we need to work on, then we can make that a goal. So for myself this summer, I wanted to read more.
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Emily
I had the help of having a book club that helped me read more.
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Amanda
It sounds so simple, but it's important and you put it into place and therefore it helped you to achieve that
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Amanda
specific goal, which is an important one.
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Emily
Right? And I think that's another piece is that oftentimes we make goals. We can make them tiny.
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Amanda
Yeah. Simple, right.
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Emily
A last final thing to think about here is always the the significance of the social that we are social creatures. We learn by being in collaboration and communication with others. Nothing really is happening in isolation. So we want as family members and caregivers to make sure we're connected, of course, to our kids, but also to our school communities,
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Emily
our teachers, administrators,
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Emily
family coordinators, and making sure that we're in communication and collaboration so that we really have a lot of support built in for our kids.
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Amanda
Yeah. So important. Yeah.
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Emily
So so those are my big takeaways.
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Emily
And again, I think this is a
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Emily
friendly compilation of research on the science of learning.
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Emily
I would say 14 year olds could read this. I'm not sure they would. So but certainly any kids going off to college
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Emily
or getting ready for college or, you know, in the in the thick of things in high school, really wanting to think about how to learn
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Emily
this would be useful.
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Emily
And as I said, I found things that I flagged for myself thinking,
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Emily
I need to practice this
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Emily
as a way to maintain my own attention.
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Amanda
Yeah. Well, certainly. And even just thinking about kids who are older, it is helpful to know how you learn, what distracts you, what keeps your attention?
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Amanda
How are you viewing yourself as a learner? And so it sounds like this would really help kids tap into that.
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Emily
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So, Amanda,
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Emily
how about you? How was your summer reading? I know you read a ton, so I'm not worried about your reading volume.
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Amanda
Yeah. No, I,
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Amanda
I did read a lot
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Amanda
this summer, and I decided to do a deep dive into children's literature,
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Amanda
particularly literature that was released this year, 2026
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Emily
I can’t wait.
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Amanda
Yeah, I love exploring new releases, you know, to both help young people find books they really like
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Amanda
and to help educators refresh curriculum
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Amanda
so that it's current
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Amanda
and that it's the most engaging types of titles possible.
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Amanda
I read a lot of new picture books, middle grade novels, and young adult literature, and it just reminded me that this could be a powerful thing for families and caregivers to do with kids outside of school,
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Amanda
especially with young children,
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Amanda
is to think about how to align some of the reading that you're doing outside of school with classroom topics.
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Amanda
So if we build on what our kids know and are already learning in school,
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Amanda
this could be a way to help expand their background knowledge, which we know directly impacts their reading comprehension. So at the start of the school year, it might be helpful to ask your teacher
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Amanda
what themes, topics, even questions that they are investigating during
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Amanda
ELA or during social studies or science.
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Amanda
Many classrooms begin the year with some typical foundational themes, such as things around community or building self-knowledge.
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Amanda
I know some schools do a unit called Welcome Back to School,
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Amanda
or
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Amanda
one about kindness or friendship,
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Amanda
even one about being a good citizen. So I could gather up some texts
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Amanda
around those topics to read outside of school so that when kids go back, they have
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Amanda
even more to to add to that learning.
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Amanda
Some schools start the year with exploring topics and science like the five senses, wild weather, or starting to talk about the seasons. I know a third grade that does the ocean, so once you know the class topic, you could visit your local library, ask your librarian about current and more more recent
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Amanda
releases. You could go to bookstores or
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Amanda
online resources to gather up related texts. Reading and discussing these books together at home helps children bring a richer understanding and also confidence back to the classroom.
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Amanda
This also gives you an opportunity to share about your own experiences with those topics, whether it's
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Amanda
when you started at a school or friendships that you had at that same age, or even what you know about the ocean.
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Amanda
Helping kids to connect with topics and understand their own knowledge and then help to grow their, you know, their curiosity
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Amanda
around that topic supports vocabulary development and reading comprehension.
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Emily
Absolutely. This is so important. And also part of Willingham's research that he unpacks and the importance of kids being prepared for the learning that they're going to do. Some of that is by having the background knowledge, having
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Emily
a sense of confidence that they know things about these topics.
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Amanda
Yeah. And they'll have so much to share when they go back to school and, and really connect. Right. Really feel a part
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Amanda
about how
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Amanda
those topics are relevant to them.
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Emily
Absolutely. Wonderful.
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Amanda
So these are just a few things to consider,
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Amanda
at the beginning of this new school year to support your kids and learning and in literacy development.
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Emily
Great. We want to thank you again for listening to Advancing Literacy Beyond the
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Unknown
Classroom.
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Emily
We hope this podcast sparks curiosity and conversation with your kids and supports literacy, growth and enjoyment. Remember, literacy isn't only about the books kids read in school, it's about the stories we share, the world we explore, and the conversations we have to stay connected with our community.
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Emily
Head over to Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform to catch our new episode once a month. On each podcast episode landing page, you will find a list of our book recommendations, as well as a one page handout of tips based on the content of the episode. If you find value in these conversations, please leave us a five star rating or review and share the show with someone you think would love to join the journey.
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Emily
If you're interested in bringing professional development to your families, school, or district, please email us at AdvancingLiteracy@tc.columbia.edu or visit our website. AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu
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Emily
to see our events and ways to partner with us, please share this information with others in your community. We hope you join us again. Keep advancing literacy. One word, one book, and one conversation at a time.