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Excellent Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Critical Thinking Site
Teachers for great ideas on reading, writing, speaking and critical thinking skill teaching strategies go to: http://www.literacyta.com/teacher-assistant. In order to access information, you have to register which is located on the top right hand corner of the link. It is very simple to do. There are some AVID critical reading strategies that they cover such as Prereading, Marking the text, Charting the text, Writing in the margin and Organizing information. For each strategy, at the bottom of the page it has four categories which will help you implement the strategy into your classroom: Videos, LTA process, School wide, Examples, and Share tap.
Reading Ideas
If you are looking to revamp your teaching strategies in the classroom, here are two interesting articles that can shift your teaching paradigm. The first article, “States Loosening ‘Seat Time’ Requirements” describe what many states are already doing: giving students the opportunity to move on when they are ready. No longer will students be required to stay in school the traditional length of time but instead over thirty six states already ” required high schools to assign credits based on competency, rather than seat time”. What do you think about this? For more information read the article by clicking: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/03/07/23biz-state.h31.html?tkn=MVUFdQuEzReeDoxhOOgIuUIL0XTkVv0uW4fn&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1&intc=EW-BE0312-ENL.
The second article, “Creating a Menu for Reading Instruction” gives some great idea about two teachers reading strategy(CAFE) that helps readers with their reading comprehension by using specific techniques. Read on if you want more information, http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2012/03/01/02cafe.h05.html?cmp=ENL-TU-MOSTPOP.
This CAFE strategy works well with primary grades but for some resource or ELL teachers at our school, this may be useful and worth considering. Check out the videos:
Daily 5 and Cafe at Dodgeland
Reading strategy
Teachers even though the teachers in the videos are elementary teachers, the strategies they are showcasing can be used in your own classrooms.
Interactive Notebook
Teachers, some of you are already doing interactive notebooks in your classes. However, for some of you who are still looking for a great way for students to showcase their understanding of a lesson, an interactive notebook is the answer. For a description and suggestion for an interactive notebook, click: http://upstagereview.org/ClassroomArticles/interactive%20notebook.pdf
Here are some great examples of an Intereactive Notebook from AP U.S. History.
Sample Title Page
Sample Author Page
Sample Output & Input Page
Interview with Dr. Robyn Jackson
AVID interviewed Dr. Robyn Jackson, author of Never Work Harder than Your Students because she is the Keynote speaker for the National AVID Conference. She is the author of the book that was given to us to read. In the book she discusses Seven Key Principles of Education which are:
- Start where your students are
- Know where your students are going
- Expect to get your students to their goal
- Support your students along the way
- Use feedback to help you and your students get better
- Focus on quality rather than quantity
- Never work harder than your students
For those of you who are interested in more resources connected to the book please go to : http://mindstepsinc.com/masterteacher/.
Kofa AVID 