Facilitate a Questioning Spirit
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

To cultivate a questioning spirit within your classroom, ask questions that allow for a variety of responses. These questions are not about specific details in the reading. Rather, these are bigger questions that make students ponder and think deeply. [read more...]

Writing Simple Summaries and Determining Main Idea
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

Some students struggle to summarize what they've read. They can tell you lots of specific details that were within the reading, but they can't explain the big idea, what the reading was all about. To work on summarization with her students, Kate Bieker has developed two fantastic ideas. [read more...]

Questions Increase Student Reading Comprehension
Thursday, October 14th, 2010

Questions are a window to students' thinking. They lead children through the discovery of their world. You can tell what students are thinking and focusing on by the questions they ask. You can also tell what they are distracted by, based on the questions they ask [read more...]

Applying Principles of Question-Answer Relationship (QAR)
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Teach students to take note of the different types of questions that can be created from a text or graphic. And because the question types are different, determining the answers requires different processes, too. For many students it never occurred to them that there was anything other than an [read more...]

Foster Opportunities for Students to Think While Reading
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

One of the strategies readers need to develop is the ability to think while reading. For some this does not come naturally; this needs to be fostered by the teacher. In order to get students to think about their reading, teachers need to build in deliberate opportunities for them to think [read more...]

Incorporate "Answer of the Day" in Your Morning-Work Routine
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

The questions started out very simplistic and predictable. But as Linda called on students to read their “best and most unique” question of the three, the students began recognizing the sophisticated thinking of their peers. Linda was quick to compliment those that utilized higher-level [read more...]

Write Strong 20-Word Summaries
Monday, March 1st, 2010

Teachers want students to do more than just memorize facts in science and dates in social studies. They want their students to do more than just remember information in health or processes in FACS classes. What content area teachers really want is for students to see the bigger picture [read more...]

Picture-Based Note Taking Helps Students' Comprehension
Friday, February 19th, 2010

When teaching content area topics, students are often expected to take notes. During this note taking time, it is huge for students to have more than just the names, dates, facts, and details written down. More that just memorizing the information, we want students to understand [read more...]

Point of View Letter Writing
Friday, January 15th, 2010

After studying a concept or event for several days/weeks, a fun way to assess students' understanding is to have them write letters from a different perspective. West Vigo Middle School teacher Melanie Beaver had great success with this in her language arts classroom. She loved [read more...]

3-D Study Guides Make Note Taking Fun
Monday, March 23rd, 2009

No matter what age you are teaching, everyone can find a use for a hands-on graphic organizer. After students have been introduced to a concept, the teacher would facilitate the students' construction and application of this three-dimensional organizer. Students can [read more...]

Writing Test Questions that Parallel the State Assessment
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Instead of having an exact answer within the multiple choice possibilities, you might be less definitive. Standardized tests often ask a “most likely” question. For example, Which of these words MOST LIKELY reflects the author’s general attitude toward life on [read more...]

Adding Variety to Test Review
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

At the end of a semester, many secondary classrooms begin reviewing content for tests and final exams. Jeopardy is a common review game. But have you tried Family Feud, Pyramid, or Millionaire? These spin-offs to popular game shows were outlined in Scholastic Instructor magazine. [read more...]

Coding Text to "Slow Down" the Reader
Monday, May 19th, 2008

Students don’t always take content area reading and writing as “seriously” as that of Language Arts. However, to truly comprehend the subject matter, students need to apply strong reader and writer habits in content area reading, too. [read more...]

Pre-Reading Strategies that Motivate
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Teachers frequently ask for ways to motivate kids to want to read. After all, it’s pretty hard to work on students’ reading comprehension if they didn’t do the reading. With that said, here are two of my favorite pre-reading strategies to motivate kids to dive [read more...]