Tag Archives: research
Study Finds that Students Are the Digital Advance Team
If you’ve ever had a technology failure in your classroom, you know that your best resources can be your students. When the DVD player spins and blinks, but doesn’t play, a half dozen students will volunteer to fix it. If your presentation file becomes corrupted, chances are you have a guru sitting in the front row who can open it and save your lesson plan.
Students as technology guides. The latest research proves what you already know: our students are digital experts. Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up National Research Project has interviewed 281,000 K12 students in all 50 states for its latest report “Speak Up 2008 for Students, Teachers, Parents and Administrators.” The researchers call our students the Digital Advance Team. These students are an asset to adults, especially those whose job is to plan these kids’ education and prepare them for 21st century jobs. Continue reading
Teaching Strategies that Work for Students Who Have Emotional and Behavioral Disorders
Teachers know: there’s no magic bullet. What works well with some students doesn’t work well with others. However, the closest we come to the magic are those golden, research-based teaching strategies that work well with most students.
Researchers Vannest, Temple-Harvey, and Mason reviewed 20 studies about teaching strategies that work well with students who have emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). They didn’t find a magic bullet or Shangri-la. They found those rock-solid teaching strategies that work with all students, but work especially well with the EBD population. Continue reading
Instructional Strategies for ELL Students
Claude Goldenberg’s article, “Teaching English Language Learners: What the Research Does and Does Not – Say” is a thorough summary of major research on educating English Language Learners (ELLs). He sites three major findings, one of which is how teaching students to read in their first language promotes higher levels of reading achievement in English. Given the diversity of languages and limited resources of our schools, teaching students in their first language isn’t always possible. However, his two other findings are something teachers can and do everyday. They are: what we know about good instruction and curriculum in general holds true for ELLs and teachers must modify instruction to take into account students’ language limitations. Continue reading
Four Reading Techniques to Improve Student Motivation
In Michigan’s Oakland County Intermediate School District, students are reading at grade level or beyond. With the help of a literacy initiative, those who aren’t reading at grade level are brought up to speed in a semester or less. Once these students are successfully reading at their grade level, motivation follows.
Laura Schiller is the literacy consultant for the Oakland Schools. She offers four techniques that you can use right away to boost student motivation and literacy in your classroom.
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