Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that helps give all students an equal opportunity to succeed. This approach offers flexibility in the ways students access material, engage with it and show what they know. Developing lesson plans this way helps all kids, but it may be especially helpful for kids with learning and attention issues.
Children’s picture books about autism can be a valuable resource for teachers in inclusive classrooms attempting to teach awareness, empathy, and acceptance among students. This article provides instructional tips for educators and offers suggestions for using children’s picture books about autism to encourage positive, inclusive instruction.
Cognates are words in two languages that share a similar meaning, spelling, and pronunciation. For Spanish-speaking ELLs, cognates are an obvious bridge to the English language.
A veteran teacher describes how she used visualization, Google images, video, and Skype to build background knowledge and enrich her students’ classroom read aloud of a fiction book about ospreys.
Peer tutoring links high achieving students with lower achieving students or those with comparable achievement for structured learning. It promotes academic gains as well as social enhancement. This brief discusses three research-supported peer tutoring strategies: Cross-Age Tutoring; Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS); and Reciprocal Peer Tutoring (RPT).
Explore how to use children’s poetry to encourage kids to read. You might start with poems from celebrated poets like Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein, Judith Viorst, and Eloise Greenfield.
Students need to think while they are reading. By using modeling, coached practice, and reflection, you can teach your students strategies to help them think while they read and build their comprehension.
Educators may find timelines a useful strategy for a variety of educational purposes. They can be used to record events from a story or a history lesson in a sequential format. They can help students keep events in chronological order as they write summaries.
Learn some best practices in helping children with language processing issues learn to read in this Q&A with expert Nanci Bell, director of Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes. Find out what works with children who have weaknesses in concept imagery or symbol imagery.
How does the mind work — and how does it learn? Teachers’ instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such gut knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?
Decodable books play an important role in phonics instruction and building confidence in young readers. Learn more about decodable books, how they differ from predictable texts, and how to select high-quality texts that align with the scope and sequence of your phonics program.
Reading ability is determined by many factors, and requires the development of certain skills through early reading instruction to attain initial success and build on it.
Differentiation means tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction.
In this article, a seasoned ELL teacher synthesizes her own classroom experience and the findings of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth to make recommendations for effective literacy instruction of ELL students.
When some children are learning to read, they catch on so quickly that it appears effortless. It does not seem to matter what reading curriculum or teachers they encounter, for they arrive at school already possessing the important foundational skills. For other children, though, the path to literacy is far more difficult and by no means assured. It matters very much what curriculum their schools use and who their first teachers are.
Effective comprehension instruction is instruction that helps students to become independent, strategic, and metacognitive readers who are able to develop, control, and use a variety of comprehension strategies to ensure that they understand what they read. To achieve this goal, comprehension instruction must begin as soon as students begin to read and it must: be explicit, intensive, and persistent; help students to become aware of text organization; and motivate students to read widely.
In today’s schools, too many children struggle with learning to read. We must become well-versed in science-based reading instruction in order to affect school-wide policy. And for our children, we must be sure they are receiving the best possible instruction in reading.
Guided oral reading is an instructional strategy that can help students improve a variety of reading skills, including fluency. This article explains how to implement it in your classroom.
What do parents need to know about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)? How will they affect teaching and assessing mathematics and English language arts? What are the benefits and what can parents do to prepare for the CCSS?
School administrators have a critical leadership role to play in helping students become good readers. This article suggests seven key action steps on how principals and other administrators can create a school framework for success.
The purpose of reading is comprehension — getting meaning from written text. Find out what else research tells us about the active process of constructing meaning, and how good readers consciously employing comprehension strategies.
Review well-established scientific findings about reading and their practical implications, for children with and without reading disabilities. In addition, consider some broader ways that science may be useful to educators and get suggestions for individual teachers interested in becoming more familiar with scientific research on reading.
Teachers can strengthen instruction and protect their students’ valuable time in school by scientifically evaluating claims about teaching methods and recognizing quality research when they see it. This article provides a brief introduction to understanding and using scientifically based research.
