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The Toolbox contains a collection of articles with practical advice for school and classroom management.
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“Literacy Lift” for South-Western Teachers
Holt Crossing teachers love to see Curriculum Coordinator Jan Goodwin arrive at their door. Truly an expert in literacy education, Jan makes sure that teachers’ successes and learning needs are heard. Even when she’s not in a school building, help arrives in the form of Literacy Lift, a monthly newsletter with user-friendly content developed by Jan and teacher leaders in literacy.
Here’s a sample of what Literacy Lift offers teachers:
Word Study Wisdom
If we want to help students increase their vocabularies, it’s important to find out what they know and don’t know about words.
Following are two strategies from Words, Words, Words by Janet Allen that will help assess prior knowledge of vocabulary. (36-37)
List—Group—Label
- Have students list all of the words they can think of related to a specific concept or text. (The teacher may generate this list of words.)
- Then ask them to group the words they listed by looking for words that have something in common.
- Once the words have been grouped, have students decide on a label for each group.
Wordstorming (variation of List—Group—List)
- Have students write down all of the words they can think of related to a given concept, theme, or target word.
- When they have listed all the words they can think of, help them extend the lists with specific directions such as “Can you think of words that would show what someone might see, hear, feel, touch, smell, in a situation filled with____?”
- Ask students to group and label their words.
- Introduce any words you think should be included and ask students to put them in the right group.
- When teaching vocabulary words, help students discover connections among words that will be useful when they encounter other new words.
Learn to Read between the Lines
Give students many opportunities to respond in writing to reading. Ask them to write about “What’s Easy and What’s Hard in Reading.”
Have them make journal entries about their reactions to specific passages. Then read between the lines to learn about your students.
Struggling readers will often try to hide the fact that they are having difficulty. The following responses are typical of readers who are having trouble:
- Reading is dumb.
- Reading is useless.
- All books are boring.
- You can’t make me read.
- I’m dropping out in 2 years. Why bother?
- Why do you care? I don’t.
Listen to these students and offer them support.
Learn about Reader Response journals used in two Holt Crossing classrooms.
Website to Check Out
This site is full of resources to help teachers provide effective instruction for their students. The goal is to help teachers integrate technology into instruction.
It features various tools for teachers: one for creating quizzes that students can take online, another for organizing and annotating websites, a third for developing rubrics and more.
A webzine presents brain games, web lessons, and stories about teachers and students using technology.
