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When ELLs Struggle: Recognizing the Signs
When working with struggling English language learners (ELLs), it's important to note that there are similarities among linguistic, cultural, and learning disability explanations for behaviors demonstrated by ELLs. This article can be used as a starting point for conversations regarding diverse learners who are struggling.
Engaging Parents in Literacy Learning
Students whose parents are involved in the academic school experience tend to be good readers and are successful in school. Even for those who struggle and perhaps read below grade level, if their parents are involved in school, then parents provide a support system to ensure achievement. Use the template in this article to generate ideas both from teachers and from parents themselves about how to engage parents with literacy assignments.
Analytical Writing in the Content Areas
Because writing is thinking, the organization of students' writing reflects both the structure of their thinking and the depth of their understanding. Students should be writing in all their classes, explaining what they know and how they know it. Thus, it's essential for content-area teachers to give students meaningful analytical writing assignments. Read An Introduction to Analytical Text Structures for more information and graphic organizers to help with writing instruction.
Engaging Parents to Support Academic Attainment Over Time
Chances for success are improved when adults offer children, starting at a young age, positive expectations and aspirations about what they can do and achieve. Learn ways to help parents support students' long-term success in school, career, and life.
Engaging Parents to Support Academic Achievement
Academic achievement is a strong predictor of high school graduation and is critical to long-term success in college, work, and life. A sixth grader who fails math or English, has unsatisfactory behavior, or poor attendance has a 75% likelihood of dropping out. Freshmen in Chicago public schools who earn a B average or better have an 80% chance of finishing high school with at least a 3.0 GPA.
Engaging Parents to Support Good School Attendance
Poor school attendance is a strong predictor of school dropout. Children can’t learn if they aren’t present in school, so attendance is a must. Parents are best positioned to ensure children attend school and to build the expectation around attendance.
Parent Engagement in Transitions to Middle and High School
Using the 3A framework (Attendance, Achievement, and Attainment) for dropout prevention developed by the America's Promise Alliance and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, this article highlights specific knowledge that parents need to support students' success, as well as ways that schools can engage parents as partners.
Fitting the Response to Intervention Framework with Mathematics Education
While there is a great deal of information on reading and RTI, there is a dearth of research on math with RTI. Thus, the development and implementation of reading and RTI has blazed a path to RTMI (Response to Math Intervention).
Using Technology to Support Struggling Students: Questions, Argumentation and Use of Evidence
Knowing how to engage in signature scientific acts, such as formulating questions and using evidence in arguments is an important part of science learning. This InfoBrief from the National Center for Technology Innovation offers more information about using technology to support struggling students.
Using Technology to Support Struggling Students: Student Engagement and Identity with Science
In an increasingly complex world, all students need to be scientifically literate. While some students may go on to pursue advanced careers in the sciences, basic scientific literacy is critical for all students.
Using Technology to Support Struggling Students: Science Literacy, Vocabulary and Discourse
To be scientifically literate, students must be able to express themselves appropriately. Learn how to help struggling students master specific vocabulary and be able to use it in their science writing activities.
Literacy Coaching in the Middle Grades
From time constraints to a de-emphasis on literacy to a limited research base, coaches in middle schools face challenges that do not exist in the elementary grades.
Captioned Media: Literacy Support for Diverse Learners
Captioned or subtitled media is a great tool for teachers looking to differentiate classroom instruction — research has shown that ELLs, students with learning disabilities, and students who struggle academically may all benefit from following along with captions while watching a classroom video. Learn more about the benefits of captioned media and additional resources for captioned material in this article.
Adolescent Literacy: What's Technology Got to Do With It?
Learn how technology tools can support struggling students and those with learning disabilities to acquire background knowledge and vocabulary, improve their reading comprehension, and increase their motivation for learning.
What Should an Assessment System Look Like?
The developmental nature of reading means that diagnosing the reading comprehension ability of adolescents is more challenging than diagnosing reading comprehension among third graders. In particular, assessments should not only capture the increased sophistication of the reading task in the middle and high school years, but should also capture the specialization of the many tasks that comprise reading comprehension for older readers. Educators must think carefully not only about what the assessments they use consider "grade-level" text, but also how those assessments capture or fail to capture the processes involved in reading in different content-area classes.
Content-Area Literacy: Literature
Reading complex literary texts offers unique opportunities for students to wrestle with some of the core ethical dilemmas that we face as human beings. The growth of ethical reasoning is one of the most compelling reasons for schools to develop students' capacities to read complex works of literature. Students who enter high school as struggling readers are quite capable of engaging with such texts, in part because these same students are often wrestling with complex challenges in their own lives.
Tips on Starting a Community Service Project
A successful community service project is the result of clear objectives, thoughtful planning and coordination, savvy use of resources, and follow-through.
Developing A Positive School Climate
What is meant by “school climate”, and how can you assess the climate at your school? Read on for helpful definitions, assessment ideas, tools, and resources.
Professional Learning Communities
Professional learning communities (PLC) establish a schoolwide culture that develops teacher leadership explicitly focused on building and sustaining school improvement efforts. Generally, PLCs are composed of teachers, although administrators and support staff routinely participate. Through participation in PLCs, teachers enhance their leadership capacity while they work as members of ongoing, high-performing, collaborative teams that focus on improving student learning.
More students fail ninth grade than any other grade and many of these students ultimately drop out. Can pre-emptive interventions lead to increased graduation rates? Emerging evidence suggests that eight-grade transition programs increase pass rates, boost enthusiasm for learning, improve academic skills, enhance self-esteem, and reduce discipline problems.
Five Phases of Professional Development
Too often, teachers say that the professional development they receive provides limited application to their everyday world of teaching and learning. Here The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory shares a five-phase framework that can help create comprehensive, ongoing, and — most importantly — meaningful professional development.
Components in a Comprehensive Definition of College Readiness
College readiness is a multi-faceted concept that includes factors both internal and external to the school environment. The model presented here emerges from a review of the literature and includes the skills and knowledge that can be most directly influenced by schools.
A Definition of College Readiness
A list of knowledge, skills, and attributes a student should possess to be ready to succeed in entry-level college courses.
What Schools and Students Can Do to Foster College Readiness
If schools and students understand college readiness in a more comprehensive way, they can do more to develop the full range of capabilities and skills needed to succeed in college. At the heart of this definition is the notion that those most interested in college success will change their behaviors based on the greater guidance the definition offers on how to be college ready.
School Profile: J.E.B. Stuart High School
Learn how teachers at this once low-performing school dramatically improved academic performance by focusing on student attendance and literacy.
Putting Assessment in the Driver's Seat
Take the lead to improve literacy for all students at your school. Implement regular school-wide monitoring of assessment results and student progress.
School Literacy Team Planning Guide
Teaching strong literacy skills to the diverse learners in a secondary school requires teamwork, professional development, planning and progress monitoring. Find out what key elements will put your team and students on the path to success.
Teacher-Student Interactions: The Key to Quality Classrooms
The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) describes ten dimensions of teaching that are linked to student achievement and social development. Each dimension falls into one of three board categories: emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support.
Effective Reading Programs for Middle and High Schools: A Best Evidence Synthesis
Many reading programs claim to boost student performance, but how is that measured? Johns Hopkins University examined more than 200 published studies to create this quick guide to programs.
How Can Instruction Help Adolescent Students with Motivation?
Teachers have an important role to play in influencing and supporting students' motivation for learning. This article highlights four classroom strategies that educators can use to engage students with texts.
Key Literacy Component: Writing
Students who don’t write well aren’t able to learn and communicate effectively. This article explains what good writing skills are and how to help struggling young writers gain those skills through proper instruction.
Key Literacy Component: Text Comprehension
Text comprehension allows readers to extract or construct meaning from the written word. Students who misread words or misinterpret their meanings are at a disadvantage. Proper instruction can boost students’ skills in this key area.
Key Literacy Component: Vocabulary
What’s in a word? Mastery of oral and written vocabulary promotes comprehension and communication. Find out how proper instruction can help students who struggle with vocabulary.
Key Literacy Component: Fluency
Fluent readers can read text accurately, smoothly, and with good comprehension. Students who get bogged down in the mechanics of reading have trouble with this skill. With proper instruction, struggling readers can improve their fluency.
Key Literacy Component: Decoding
Decoding is the ability to correctly decipher and identify a word from a string of letters. Students who struggle with decoding are at a disadvantage, but explicit instruction can help them learn this skill.
October is Learning Disabilities Month
October was designated LD Month in 1985 through a proclamation by President Ronald Reagan. Each year the celebration is used to educate the public about learning disabilities.
Intensive, Individualized Interventions for Struggling Readers
Because the cause of adolescents' difficulties in reading vary, interventions may focus on any of the critical elements of knowledge and skill required for the comprehension of complex texts, including fundamental skills such as phonemic awareness, phonemic decoding, text reading fluency, vocabulary-building strategies, and self-regulated use of reading comprehension strategies.
Extended Discussion of Text Meaning and Interpretation
Teachers should provide opportunities for students to engage in high-quality discussions of the meaning and interpretation of texts in various content areas as one important way to improve their reading comprehension.
Recommendations for Improving Adolescent Literacy
In its practice guide Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices, the Dept. of Education offers five recommendations for increasing the reading ability of adolescents. Those recommendations are summarized in this checklist.
Does your school do a good job of reaching out to parents? Use this checklist to evaluate and improve parent-school partnerships.
Dropout Prevention Interventions
This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) topic report evaluates 16 dropout intervention programs that have been found to meet WWC evidence standards of effectiveness.
Learning Disabilities: An Overview
Learning disabilities (LD) come in several forms. Learn more about them, how they're identified, and what types of instruction support students with LD.
What Is This Thing Called RTI?
Response to Intervention (RTI) is a complex subject and states and districts have a lot of discretion with the implementation of this three-step, research-based approach to intervention and placement. Learn about some of the common misconceptions of the RTI process and read about additional RTI web sources.
Stuck in the Middle: Strategies to Engage Middle-Level Learners
Learn about three strategies that can help create a meaningful curriculum to engage middle-level learners. The strategies draw from effective classroom practices across grade levels, as well as from research about the social, emotional, and physical development of middle-level learners.
Successful Parent-Teacher Conferences with Bilingual Families
How can you hold an effective parent-teacher conference with the parents of English language learners if they can't communicate comfortably in English? This article provides a number of tips to help you bridge the language gap, take cultural expectations about education into account, and provide your students' parents with the information they need about their children's progress in school.
Accessing Students' Background Knowledge in the ELL Classroom
As you teach content areas to ELLs of diverse backgrounds, you may find that they struggle to grasp the content, and that they approach the content from very different perspectives. Drawing on your students' background knowledge and experiences can be an effective way to bridge those gaps and make content more accessible. This article offers a number of suggestions to classroom teachers as they find ways to tap into the background knowledge that students bring with them.
Cross-Disciplinary Proficiencies in the American Diploma Project Benchmarks
Students must graduate from high school with not only a firm foundation in mathematics and English, but also with the ability to approach with confidence new and unfamiliar tasks and challenges in college, the workplace and life. Embedded within the American Diploma Project benchmarks are four cross-disciplinary proficiencies — Research and Evidence Gathering, Critical Thinking and Decision Making, Communications and Teamwork, and Media and Technology — that will enable high school graduates to meet these challenges.
An expert shares her observations of a dyslexic student struggling to learn at school. Also included are numerous proven examples of differentiated instruction and accommodations that can help a student to succeed.
Supporting a School-Wide Reading Initiative with Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment
How can school leaders support school-wide reading initiatives? Here are keys to leading the way in the areas of reading curriculum, instruction, assessment, and motivation.
Adolescent Literacy and Older Students with Learning Disabilities
This report describes the adolescent literacy problem (grades 4 to 12), its consequences, and contributing factors. Guiding principles for assessment, instruction, and professional development, as well as recommendations for short-term and future consideration, are also addressed.
The High Cost of High School Dropouts: What the Nation Pays for Inadequate High Schools
The social and economic implications of America's high dropout rate are staggering. In addition to the waste of human potential, the costs of dropouts include lower tax revenues from lower paying jobs, higher crime rates, higher demand for social services, and the loss of global economic competitiveness.
What Does the Research Tell Us About Teacher Leadership?
This research brief from the Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement examines the research on teacher leadership and what it says about drawing on the skills of experienced teachers to facilitate school improvement.
Ensuring Successful Student Transitions from the Middle Grades to High School
The 9th grade year is critical to students' success in high school — the influence of a broader number of peers (both positive and negative); the potential of developing bad habits such as skipping class; and entry into a larger, sometimes seemingly less caring, environment can all impact how students will react.
Position Statement on Student Grade Retention and Social Promotion
In this statement, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) identifies the characteristics of students more likely to be retained and the impact of retention at the secondary school level, late adolescence, and early adulthood. NASP also provides a long list of alternatives to retention and social promotion.
The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study: Early Impact and Implementation Findings
While much has been learned about literacy in the elementary grades, less is known about programmatic approaches that help struggling adolescent readers acquire the skills they need to succeed in high school. The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study tests the effectiveness of two supplemental literacy interventions targeted to ninth-grade readers with reading comprehension skills that are two to four years below grade level. The interventions studied are (1) Reading Apprenticeship for Academic Literacy from WestEd and (2) Xtreme Reading from the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.
