High School Reading: Our Teens Are Struggling

I am often asked about helping struggling and reluctant readers. They are tons of them out there in our classrooms.

According to NAEP data, over 60% of our students are not proficient readers by the time that they start high school. These statistics are staggering since much of what we learn about content areas like social studies and science is through reading.

Additionally, the internet has a tremendous impact in our daily lives in the amount of text that we read each day through emails, texts, blogs, and other web based texts.

The bottom line is that students need to read a wide variety of texts that are on the same level as their current reading level. As students’ reading levels improve, the texts that they are reading must also change.

Here’s a list of suggestions to help your struggling teen readers (this list is by no means comprehensive):

Read High School Reading: Our Teens Are Struggling

Student Book Club Guide

Don't let the "summer slide" erode all the reading progress your students have made this year. Encourage students to keep reading over the summer by forming book clubs!

We've created a Student Book Club Guide to share with your students and their parents to help you get the ball rolling. It may help to introduce this in class and send home to parents. To really go above and beyond, gauge interest among students and have them sign up in school. Then, pass it off to one of the most enthused students or parents to take it from there.

This is a great way to ensure that book clubs go beyond cliques and actually help students engage socially. You may also want to specifically encourage those reluctant readers who have the most to lose if "summer slide" takes hold.

The Student Book Club Guide includes a PDF handout to get students (and/or parents) started in creating, organizing and LOVING their book club. It also includes a sign up sheet.

Here's a preview of the Student Book Club Guide contents:

Read Student Book Club Guide

Create Classroom Time Fillers for the End of the School Year

The end of the school year is upon us.  Ask any student (or, heck, any teacher for that matter) and they can tell you exactly how many school days are left. 

The end of the year is exciting; full of activities and fast-paced schedules that change almost daily.  What with assemblies, award ceremonies, meetings, field trips, and presentations, teachers can't depend on their standard time limit for daily lessons. 

With such unpredictable schedules, having 'go to' educational time fillers handy is key.  (Plus, these are also great filler activities when there is a substitute in the room.)

Here are a few of my favorite educational time-filles for the end of the year that students love!

Read Create Classroom Time Fillers for the End of the School Year

Harry Potter Special: Evaluating Hogwarts Teachers

Approaching the summer blockbuster season without a new Harry Potter movie to look forward to makes me sad. Here's an HP-fix for Potterheads with an education twist.

One thing that is rarely noticed about the Harry Potter series is how revealing Rowlings’ work is to the teaching profession. She follows her characters through their school years and shows the readers what does and does NOT make for great teachers.

As a tribute to memory of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, here are 10 teacher evaluations for our favorite magical faculty (in no particular order).

Read Harry Potter Special: Evaluating Hogwarts Teachers

Tips to Use Classroom Design to Teacher Different Lessons

In my recent blog My Classroom Design & Seating Chart Tips, I shared how the end of the school year is a great opportunity to reflect on the current year and make changes in the classroom for the upcoming school year.

While I shared some of my personal classroom preferences, I'd like to also share some of my co-workers brilliant classroom design strategies.

Read Tips to Use Classroom Design to Teacher Different Lessons

4 Tips to Address Late, Missing Homework

As teachers, we’ve all had to deal with late work / homework from students. Whether it is a legitimate illness or a case of chronic truancy, dealing with late / missing work is annoying to say the least.

It is a battle that we deal with on a daily basis, putting both students and teachers at a disadvantage. Unprepared students have difficulty participating in class activities. Teachers may have to scramble to produce an extra copy of an assignment or use class time to get a student up to speed with what he missed. Lack of homework leads to poor test and quiz grades.

Students’ poor grades can also lead to pressure on teachers from administrators or put us at odds with parents.

Students come from such diverse backgrounds and home lives that it is difficult to impose one set of consequences for missing work. There is often no “one size fits all” solution for this problem. Sometimes there are exceptions and circumstances that require a special solution.  Other times, a teacher has to put her foot down and demand accountability. In either situation, dealing with the absence of student work can become especially difficult as the school year comes to an end.

While there is no magic answer or easy solution, consider the following ideas as you decide how to deal with students’ deficient work habits:

Read 4 Tips to Address Late, Missing Homework

Connecting Literacy Skill Development to the 21st Century

When we were in high school and college, we learned how to use the Dewey decimal system, note cards, microfiche, and setting the margins in an electric typewriter. We were the last generation of students that actually pounded out papers and research on an electric typewriter and actually memorized the abbreviated guide in the Periodic Guide of Literature as a means to save time. 

The embodiment of a “good” student in our generation was the ability to ferret out morsels of information that were buried in the library shelves and microfiche drawers. This took an exceptional amount of time. Some fellow educators argue that this is actually rigor and teaches academic discipline. Perhaps it did, or at least we’d like to think so.

As literacy educators, we know that school is very different than our experience as teenage students in the 1980s.

Today, what took us hours to accomplish in the library, our students can accomplish in minutes. A Google search will produce millions of informational pieces that students need to quickly analyze and synthesize.  We would argue that this takes an rigor and academic discipline just as we did in the dusty library stacks.  But there is a very marked difference.  Out students can do this in minutes or even seconds.

Read Connecting Literacy Skill Development to the 21st Century

Top 12 Things You Learned In School That Your Students Won’t

For better or worse, some teaching topics and students lessons are falling out of favor in current curriculum.

Here are the top 12 things you learned in school that may not be taught today:

Cursive

There's a contentious debate among techy teachers who are ready to discard handwriting / cursive and traditional teachers who see the value for reading, writing and fine motor skills that teaching handwriting provides.

Read Top 12 Things You Learned In School That Your Students Won’t

Make Me or Break Me: A Poem for Frustrated Teachers

Feeling frustrated in the classroom and counting down the days unttil your next break?

Take comfort in knowing you're not alone with a poem by Roxanne Elden, author of See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers. She captures the do or die attitude of teachers struggling in their first year.

Read Make Me or Break Me: A Poem for Frustrated Teachers

Blind Painter Helps Children See Hope

She sees little more than shadows and shapes. However, American artist Bojana Coklyat not only pursues her passion for painting, but transmits it to children with impaired sight so that they can see the world in a new way.

Coklyat, 33, lost most of her sight four years ago as a result of diabetes. She had to give up her job at an art gallery and, despairingly, put down her paint brushes.

Today, Coklyat is full of energy, greeting visitors with a big smile at Saint Joseph's School for the Blind in Jersey City.

An accomplished painter, she started as a volunteer, having decided to reexamine her life. At the school, which teaches children through all grades, she found "they did have an art class(room), a beautiful one, but no art teacher. I said, 'can I volunteer?'"

Read Blind Painter Helps Children See Hope

Get Students to Interact with Difficult Texts for Every Subject

Getting some students to read anything (an article, a chapter, a section of your textbook, etc.) just one time can be a challenge.  When you know that the text is one that is going to require multiple readings, finding ways to convince reluctant readers to re-read can seem like an impossible feat.

With that in mind, I was thrilled to discover this simple strategy that “tricks” readers into transacting with a text not once, not twice, but three times in a way that won’t leave them wanting to throw their papers at you.

If you are not an English teacher or reading teacher, don’t worry - this strategy is great for you too!

Our students need to learn that the way a proficient reader approaches an article about a historic event or a chapter from their math book is very different from how they interact with a novel or a poem.  It is up to us as teachers to give our students the tools to read successfully in our subject areas.   

Give this strategy a try this week – I know you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the responses you get back.

Read Get Students to Interact with Difficult Texts for Every Subject

Brain-Based Learning Strategies: Get Students’ Attention With a Radish

Before students can make memories or learn, you must capture their attention.

Based on my background as a neurologist and my experience as a classroom teacher, I’ve created this list of tips for any teacher to integrate brain-based, neuro-logical learning strategies to grab and hold students’ attention.

All learning enters the brain through the senses. The subconscious mind needs to be on automatic pilot to process the enormous amount information from the world available through all the senses. Neuroimaging studies provide support for classroom strategies that operate on the brain’s first sensory filter, a thin strip of brain tissue low down, just above the spinal column that determines what captivates attention. This primitive intake filter, called the reticular activating system (RAS), admits less than one percent of the sensory information available to it every second.

Much like other mammals, the human RAS favors intake of sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that are most critical to survival. The RAS is a virtual editor that grants attention and admission to things that have changed in the environment with priority to changes that signal threat. When threat is perceived, the RAS automatically selects related sensory input and directs it to the lower, reactive brain where the involuntary response is fight, flight, or freeze. If the change is assessed as not threatening, the RAS focuses on sights, sounds, movements, smells, and other changes that provoke curiosity or are recognized as potential sources of pleasure.

Read Brain-Based Learning Strategies: Get Students’ Attention With a Radish

12 Ways to Keep Kids Motivated at the End of the School Year

Keeping kids motivated and on task at the end of the year is challenging at best, especially after state tests are over. In fact, the more we prep kids for tests, the harder it is to keep kids on task after testing ends. Yet keeping kids motivated at this time of year is actually much easier than you might think. Since kids are more chatty and restless at this time of year, it’s just a matter of funneling that energy into something constructive

Here are 12 effective strategies to turn students' end-of-the-year energy into instructional success.

Each of the twelve suggestions below is meant to spark your creativity rather than to provide detailed instructions. If you’re not already familiar with the strategy, you may need to do a little more research before you begin. To save you time, I’ve included links to helpful online resources from my website and around the web.

Read 12 Ways to Keep Kids Motivated at the End of the School Year

Learning Through the Blues: Interview with Kids Like Blues Creator Jon Schwartz

All teachers can relate to the difficulty that often comes with getting students interested and involved in their school work. Many teachers have their own tricks and tips on how they motivate students. Educator Jon Schwartz is no different.

The self proclaimed blues aficionado has turned his passion for blues music into an educational tool to help turn his students into engaged learners. With his educational program entitled Kids Like Blues, John is helping his students thrive in their studies and enjoy the spotlight with their own blues band.

Jon shares his passion for music and learning in this exclusive TeachHUB interview.

Read Learning Through the Blues: Interview with Kids Like Blues Creator Jon Schwartz

Teaching and Donuts: A Sweet Lesson for Our Craft

I learned a valuable lesson about education from the unlikeliest of places: a donut cart.

I had the most unusual experience at a wedding this weekend.  Instead of a cake, the bride and groom rented a "donut trailer" from Carpe Donut.  For several hours, guests were able to have a cup of coffee and enjoy all the sugary freshly made donuts they wanted.  Almost as enjoyable as the donuts was the friendly banter of the "donut chef"/owner Matt Rohdie and the sight of this donut shop on wheels.

For a time in Charlottesville, we had the opportunity to watch the freshly made donuts rolling down the assembly line of the local Krispy Kreme, but something about this outfit is special.  It is surprising and it is novel, but more importantly, the owner appears to be a true craftsman.  The company is committed to organic and local ingredients, the oil used to fry the donuts is converted to bio fuel when it is no longer useful for cooking, and there is complete transparency in the production; you can watch everything being made from start to finish.

Read Teaching and Donuts: A Sweet Lesson for Our Craft

Shoutout to 26 Awesome K-12 Teacher Blogs

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, everyone at TeachHUB wants to show the teacher bloggers some love.

Here is a list of 26 awesome teacher blogs to check out divided by grade, subject or specialty:

2011 Edublog Award Winners

Each year, the Edublog Awards honor and recognize great education bloggers that provide outstanding resources to the education community.

The following are a few of the most recent winners:

Read Shoutout to 26 Awesome K-12 Teacher Blogs

Dos & Don'ts for Building Positive Student Relationships

Teaching is a unique profession because its success is based heavily on knowledge, craft, and relationships. No matter how strong the craft, imparting knowledge will be nearly impossible if the relationship between you and your student is absent.

The teacher-student relationship should be one of trust; the student should not be afraid to show some vulnerability to their teachers. Students and their families should be able to turn to teachers for advice, and see them as authorities on education.

One real struggle in the teacher/student relationship is creating a positive, caring learning environment without getting overly involved with students. Now, I’m not talking about the media-magnetic stories of teachers becoming inappropriately involved with students. Such incidents, but those types of incidents triggered the need for teachers to be more cautious and clear about boundaries when dealing with students.

For a positive teacher/student dynamic to exist, teachers must be reliable, respectful, and empathetic to students and their families. Teachers should take into account each individual student’s background and family situation, considering the whole child.

Read Dos & Don'ts for Building Positive Student Relationships

99 Reasons Teachers Rock

The education community has been all gloom and doom recently, with Waiting for Superman, protests with bad press, and more standards on top of foolish mandates coming down from every which way.

At TeachHUB, we want to remind all you teachers that we know you rock. Here are 99 reasons to prove it!


Read 99 Reasons Teachers Rock

Sneak Peek: Creating Innovators Excerpt

In a time when teaching to the test seems to be stifling creativity, Tony Wagner reveals how to prepare your students to be the next generation of innovators.

Check out this sneak peek inside Wagner's new book Creating Innovators.

Read Sneak Peek: Creating Innovators Excerpt 

Teacher Tenure Debate: Pros & Cons

Tenure seems to be a topic on the tip of many tongues lately.  Teachers, politicians, your brother-in-law, strangers at the restaurant table next to yours, everyone seems to have an opinion about this controversial subject.  It can be difficult to know what to say when you encounter someone with a strongly held opinion one way or the other.

With that in mind, I’ve prepared a list of pro’s and con’s in the teacher tenure debate.  Hopefully after reading through it you’ll feel a bit more comfortable discussing this complex issue with others.

Read Teacher Tenure Debate: Pros & Cons

Use Graphic Organizers for Effective Learning

My ten year old has several learning and processing disabilities but his greatest learning strength is that he is an incredible visual learner.  When my son can see and organize information, his ability to learn and comprehend it increases significantly.

I am sure that you know kids like my son, Colin, and we have all taught students like him. Using many modalities, especially visualization has been linked to greater comprehension in learning and reading.

Graphic organizers are important and effective pedagogical tools for organizing content and ideas and facilitating learners’ comprehension of newly acquired information. Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences posits that students are better able to learn and internalize information when more than one learning modality is employed in an instructional strategy. Since graphic organizers present material through the visual and spatial modalities (and reinforce what is taught in the classroom), the use of graphic organizers helps students internalize what they are learning.

For today’s classroom, nothing is more essential to successful teaching and learning than strategy-based instruction. It is through the use of specific teaching strategies and learning tools that students can be more successful learners. Graphic organizers are teaching and learning tools; when they’re integrated into classroom experiences, students are better able to understand new material. Creating a strong visual picture, graphic organizers support students by enabling them to literally see connections and relationships between facts, information, and terms.

Read Use Graphic Organizers for Effective Learning

How to Rule (Your Class) with a Rubric

Who says students don’t like, want, or need structure? Pasha!

Your students, no matter their age, need and want structure and organization.  They want to know what the limits are and how to push them.  Furthermore, your students want to know what the expectations are – just like adults – they want to please you (their teacher) and do well and be successful.  This last point is especially true.

By utilizing and implementing rubrics into projects and assignments, you are actually setting yours students up for success!

As a teacher, I consider my students to be just shorter versions of adults.  Obviously maturity is a huge difference, but I feel that if we can take the time to explain concerns, situations, and curriculum to our students – that they will catch on to what we are saying and what we mean.

Read How to Rule (Your Class) with a Rubric