New York, NY (February 13, 2006) -- Recognizing that vocabulary development is crucial to reading success in all content areas for all children, Scholastic Education, a division of Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, media and education company, announced the launch of a new professional development course from Scholastic RED®: Building Vocabulary for Reading Success. Part of Scholastic’s research-based professional development series, the course includes both online instruction and in-person collaboration—providing teachers of grades K-3 with effective strategies for vocabulary instruction.
 
Building Vocabulary for Reading Success offers teachers proven strategies for helping children to increase their reading comprehension in subjects like science, math, and social studies through vocabulary-building, using words specific to the content areas.  The course is supplemented with lesson plans and classroom resources that seamlessly integrate professional development content into a variety of classroom reading programs.
 
“Large vocabularies and a store of strategies for learning new words are proven, essential elements for reading comprehension,” said John Lent, Vice President, Professional Development, Scholastic Education. “Building Vocabulary for Reading Success provides the best and most effective professional development for vocabulary instruction to help all educators become more effective reading teachers.”
 
Scholastic RED’s Building Vocabulary for Reading Success enables teachers to: 
 
- Better understand the strong relationship between vocabulary size
 and reading comprehension. 
- Select and teach essential new words that are critical to students understanding.
- Model the use of rich, complex, and diverse vocabulary—encouraging and influencing students’ lifelong interest   in and use of language.
- Tailor lessons to support English language learners—a growing population in our nation’s classrooms.
 
Scholastic RED provides teachers with access to some of the leading experts in the field by featuring master practitioners and reading experts modeling strategies in real classrooms. Course faculty for Scholastic RED: Building Vocabulary for Reading Success include Dr. Elfrieda Hiebert, University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Maria Carlo, University of Miami, Dr. Shari Frost, and Francie Alexander, Chief Academic Officer, Scholastic.  
 
Building Vocabulary for Reading Success, along with all Scholastic RED courses, is aligned to national and state professional development standards and correlated to all major reading programs.  Teachers complete online lessons and then come together as a group to reflect on their learning, share student work, and practice strategies modeled by course facilitators.  Every Scholastic RED course is accredited by RED’s university partners for three hours of graduate credit.
 
Nationwide, 92% of all teachers who use Scholastic Red complete their courses, 99% would recommend Scholastic Red to other teachers and 100% of the districts that use Scholastic Red continue to offer additional RED courses to their teachers year after year. More than 15,000 teachers in over 150 school districts have participated in Scholastic Red Professional Development. 
For more information visit www.scholasticred.com. 
 
About Scholastic Education
Scholastic Education is a leader in the education marketplace, providing learning solutions for students through research-based technology products and multimedia supplemental instructional materials that support student achievement in grades pre-K through high school.  Grounded in the most current scientific research, Scholastic Education develops technology products and services that include instruction, intervention, assessment, instruction, data management and professional development.
 
About Scholastic
Scholastic Corporation (NASDAQ: SCHL) is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books and a leader in educational technology.  Scholastic creates quality educational and entertaining materials and products for use in school and at home, including children's books, magazines, technology-based products, teacher materials, television programming, film, videos and toys.  The Company distributes its products and services through a variety of channels, including proprietary school-based book clubs, school-based book fairs, and school-based and direct-to-home continuity programs; retail stores, schools, libraries and television networks; and the Company's Internet site, www.scholastic.com.

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