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Ad lit.org: Knowledge in the Classroom
Learning happens when we connect new information to what we already know. When children have limited knowledge about the world, they have a smaller capacity to learn more about it. Here are four ways teachers can build content knowledge...
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Ad lit.org: Direct, Explicit Comprehension Strategy Instruction
Comprehension strategies are routines and procedures that readers use to help them make sense of texts. Struggling adolescent readers need direct, explicit instruction in comprehension strategies to improve their reading comprehension.
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Think Pair Share
Think-Pair-Share (TPS) is a collaborative learning strategy in which students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading. This technique requires students to (1) think individually about a topic or...
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Reciprocal Teaching
Reciprocal Teaching is a strategy that asks students and teachers to share the role of teacher by allowing both to lead the discussion about a given reading. Reciprocal Teaching involves four strategies that guide the discussion:...
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Selective Highlighting
Selective Highlighting/Underlining is used to help students organize what they have read by selecting what is important. This strategy teaches students to highlight/underline ONLY the key words, phrases, vocabulary, and ideas that are...
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Semantic Feature Analysis
The Semantic Feature Analysis strategy engages students in reading assignments by asking them to relate selected vocabulary to key features of the text. This technique uses a matrix to help students discover how one set of things is...
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Story Maps
Story Maps are used for teaching students to work with story structure for better comprehension. This technique uses visual representations to help students organize important elements of a story. Students learn to summarize the main...
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Structured Notetaking
Structured Notetaking is a strategy that helps students become more effective note takers. Using graphic organizers specific to a particular text, structured notes assist students in understanding the content of their reading.
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Sq3 R: Survey Question Read Recite Review
SQ3R is a comprehension strategy that helps students think about the text they are reading while they're reading. Often categorized as a study strategy, SQ3R helps students "get it" the first time they read a text by teaching students...
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Word Hunts
Word Hunts are used to enhance students' vocabulary growth. Teachers ask students to look for words and patterns in reading materials based upon selected features. Word Hunts focus on the structure and meaning of words by turning...
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Question the Author (Qt A)
Question the Author (QtA) is a comprehension strategy that requires students to pose queries while reading the text in order to challenge their understanding and solidify their knowledge (Beck et al., 1997).
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Question Answer Relationship (Qar)
Question-Answer relationship (QAR) is a strategy to be used after students have read. QAR teaches students how to decipher what types of questions they are being asked and where to find the answers to them. Four types of questions are...
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Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Raft Writing
RAFT is a writing strategy that helps students understand their role as a writer, the audience they will address, the varied formats for writing, and the topic they'll be writing about. By using this strategy, teachers encourage students...
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Ad lit.org: Previewing Texts in Content Classrooms
Textbook previewing strategies focus not only on the structure of the text - such as the table of contents, index, chapter introductions, and so forth - but on a content overview, which focuses on the concepts and questions covered in...
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Ad lit.org: Literacy Coaching in the Middle Grades
From time constraints to a de-emphasis on literacy to a limited research base, coaches in middle schools face challenges that do not exist in the elementary grades.
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Ad lit.org: How Can Instruction Help Adolescent Students With Motivation?
Teachers have an important role to play in influencing and supporting students' motivation for learning. This article highlights four classroom strategies that educators can use to engage students with texts.
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Ad lit.org: Intensive, Individualized Interventions for Struggling Readers
Because the cause of adolescents' difficulties in reading vary, interventions may focus on any of the critical elements of knowledge and skill required for the comprehension of complex texts, including fundamental skills such as phonemic...
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Ad lit.org: Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study: Key Findings
An overview of findings from the second year of the Enhanced Reading Opportunities (ERO) study, an evaluation of two supplemental literacy programs - Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy and Xtreme Reading - that aim to improve the...
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Ad lit.org: Expect Students to Activate, Connect and Summarize Daily
The activate, connect, and summarize daily routine can help struggling adolescent readers acquire new content. It consists of asking students to activate (what did we learn yesterday?), connect (draw a connection between your life and...
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Ad lit.org: Enhancing Outcomes for Struggling Adolescent Readers
With so much required of high schools today, there is little time or money to spend on the students who lack basic skills. This article presents important factors leading to success for struggling adolescent readers, taken from...
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Ad lit.org: Integrating Student Progress Monitoring (Spm) Into Your Classroom
Is your school planning to implement student progress monitoring (SPM)? Are you thinking of using it in your classroom? If so, consider a number of factors to make SPM an integral part of classroom activities, rather than a series of...
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Ad lit.org: For Teens, Phonics Isn't Enough
Schools often struggle to find appropriate materials and approaches to support adolescent literacy. Strategies that work for children can ignore teens' existing skills, knowledge, and life experience, and exclude them from the critical...
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Ad lit.org: Multiple Texts: Multiple Opportunities for Teaching and Learning
Engaging all students in a themed study or unit is a challenge that teachers can resolve by using materials that match students' independent or instructional reading levels (Robb 1994, 2000). When students face textbooks that are above...
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Ad lit.org: Demography as Destiny: How America Can Build a Better Future
Barely 50% of minority students graduate from high school on time. If this trend continues and the minority student populations increase as projected, the economic strength of the U.S. will be undermined. But if 78% of all student...