Kindergarten is Too Late: A Push to Shift the Focus from Remediation to Prevention

What is the Cost of Educating Our Preschoolers? What is the Cost of NOT Educating Our Preschoolers?

By Holly DeLeon
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The Reading Recipe for Success: Plan, Do, Check, Act

By Eugene Narciso, COO Footsteps2Brilliance

Meet Beatriz, a multilingual student in San Mateo-Foster City School District (SMFCSD). She and her family immigrated to California from Brazil in February 2023. She enjoys science and loves to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider with her mom.  Beatriz started school with limited English language skills.  Within only 30 days, she was functioning successfully in her English-only classroom. How?

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Effective Literacy in Preschool

What should literacy instruction look like in a preschool classroom? As high-stakes testing puts more pressure on teachers and students, the spotlight is shifting to evaluate how we are preparing students in the years before kindergarten. Expectations for our early learners are going up. Many districts are struggling with how to help more children enter kindergarten ready and on a path to academic success. While it may be tempting to transform preschool classrooms to look more like kindergarten, the research shows that there are two literacy strategies that are proven to be developmentally appropriate and massively impactful for future reading success.

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Introducing Rapid Readers!

We are excited to announce a new book series to inspire your students’ curiosity about the world around them! The new Rapid Readers series can be found in Footsteps2Brilliance Level 3 and in Footsteps2Brilliance Central™. This series provides short books that answer interesting questions—bringing science to life in English and Spanish.

 

 

The Rapid Readers series offers high-interest books for transitioning readers to develop reading fluency, background knowledge, vocabulary, and critical thinking. Students listen to a model readers, practice reading independently, and record themselves reading to develop oral language and reading fluency. Additional activities guide students through comprehension strategies and critical thinking. Students complete each book unit with a writing prompt. Best of all, the entire experience can be toggled between English and Spanish to support emergent bilingual students.

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Rhyming with Ants, Bats, and Cats

For this week’s Family Friday, enjoy an interactive rhyming card game that can be played with multiple children. Have fun practicing animal names and building rhyming skills using Footsteps2Brilliance Animal Riddles and Rhymes books. Read our step-by-step guide on how you can play this interactive card game with your children at home!

 

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Building Spanish Phonics Skills for Biliteracy

We are excited to announce 27 new books and 161 new games organized into 41 new lessons designed to support Spanish phonics curriculum!

The brand new Fonética: silabas y palabras and Mis libritos fonéticos in Footsteps2Brilliance Central™ offer highly-effective practice for vocales, consonantes, sílabas directas – CV, and sílabas trabadas – CCV. All of the phonics games are automatically scored so that teachers can easily monitor student’s Spanish phonics proficiency.

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Growing Foundational Reading Skills with Decodable Books

We are excited to announce a new book series designed to support your classroom phonics curriculum. The Growing Readers series in Footsteps2Brilliance Level 2 and in Footsteps2Brilliance Central™ offers highly-effective multi-sensory practice with immediate feedback to support students in developing phonics skills. Even better, all of the phonics games are automatically scored so that teachers can easily monitor student growth.

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Ilene the Iguana

This week’s Family Friday is a twist on the classic game Pin the Tail on the Donkey. After reading Ilene the Iguana in our Alphabet Animals series, your children will learn fun facts, like the fact that iguanas can regrow their tails!  After coloring in their iguana, blindfold your children and see if they can pin the iguana’s tail in the right place. Have fun with this interactive animal craft!

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Ilene La Iguana

Para este Viernes en Familia, haremos un juego clásico. Después de leer Ilene the Iguana en nuestra serie Alfabeto de Animales, sus hijos aprenderán que las iguanas pueden volver a crecer. ¡Después de colorear su iguana, vea si su hijo/a puede fijar la cola de la iguana en el lugar correcto!

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