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Ook in a photo of a classroom in primary school in the 1990s and you will see the characteristics of the time: air projectors instead of today’s smart tables, televisions and video recorders ride on carts instead of tablets in the hands of individual students, and children carrying broutiers and oversized stet-shirts.
Julie McClellan remembers what these classrooms looked like when she started teaching in the 1990s. Since then, she saw a myriad of changes – not only in the choices of technology and fashion, but also in the methods used to teach key skills, such as reading and writing.
McClellan is a professor of early intervention program for second year students at the fourth year at Camp Creek Elementary in Lilburn, Georgia, and recently obtained his master’s degree in special education and an approval in education of the Dyslexia of the Georgia State University of Education & Human Development (CEHD). And the knowledge and the expertise she has acquired in her diploma program changed the situation in her class – in particular for the literacy lessons she teaches.
“After attending the Georgia State program, I feel like I am a new teacher with a brand new strategies toolbox to help students who have trouble learning to read. I have a basic knowledge of the reason why we have to teach students’ phonetics, ”she says. “When I teach a new sound rule, I have several ways to present information to make sure that students have many opportunities to understand.”
The brightness of quality literacy is vital, especially in the years of early childhood. He laid the foundations for success – not only academically, but also in the personal and professional life of individuals.
Teachers like McClellan play an important role by guiding young children through their first experiences with reading and writing, showing them how these skills are used in daily life. His understanding of effective literacy teaching directly shapes the success of his students. University researchers like Gary Bingham understand that this type of knowledge is essential to help educators like McClellan to implement effective strategies for development and writing of development.
Gary Bingham, the professor of young learners of Hettie Floyd Lee in an urban environment and director of the CEHD urban children’s study center, concentrates his research on what teachers, families and communities can do to ensure that children of birth at the age of 8 become readers and successful writers.
“We read and write to learn and communicate with others – write a note to a friend, share our tastes and aversions, convince others of something or communicate information. We write to inform, to persuade and communicate about our life experiences, “explains Bingham, professor of Hettie Floyd Lee of young learners in urban areas and director of the CEHD Urban Child Studies Center.
Bingham’s research focuses on what teachers, families and communities can make to guarantee that children from birth at the age of 8 become successful readers and writers. He obtained funding from the Institute of Education Sciences of the American Department, the National Science Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the acquisition of the English language office of the American Department of Education to support his research on literacy and the development of the languages of young learners. He was also selected to serve a three -year term as director of the Society for Scientific Study of Reading.
“One thing we teach students is how reading and writing are connected. They rely on similar development processes. How you read or decode a word is based on your understanding of the English written system, ”he explains. “English is considered an opaque language or a semi-transparent language, which means that it has a lot of irregularities. This is why children must be explicitly taught to map the oral language on the written language. Helping teachers understand the best approaches to support young readers and writers and connect the oral language to reading and writing is crucial. ”
In the Last Two Years, Bingham has applied His Years of Research and Experience in Early Childhood Settings to His Work on the Georgia Council on Literacy, A Group of Legislators, School Leaders and Others Appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and speaker Jon Burns to Oversee Implementation of the Georgia Early Literacy Act (HB 538).
The General Assembly of Georgia adopted the legislation in 2023, forcing Georgia schools to have reading screening which can help determine whether a student has trouble reading, to provide training to K-3 teachers in the “science of reading, structured literacy and skills in fundamental literacy” and to direct local school boards to “approve the high quality teaching materials”.
The members of the Georgia Council on Literacy help to establish priorities related to HB 538 and to establish objectives to guide state agencies to respect these priorities. To do this, they have created working groups in different fields – birth to 5, kindergarten in the third year, professional learning and teacher preparation, and community literacy, among others – to bring together individuals in these areas to discuss how the legislation helps schools to make changes, to help identify educational material for schools, to support mandated screening and other tasks described in Legislation.
The work of the advice will take time to implement, but Bingham knows that universities like Georgia State can play a key role in improving literacy in Georgia.
“Higher education is part of the solution not only because we form teachers, but because we are doing research on the functioning of things or does not work for children,” explains Bingham. “This is a difficult and systematic problem and we need a global approach to explain how we support Georgia educators. And we must support all learners, including children with very different needs. ”