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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.
Engaged, accountable reading requires students to interpret, and respond, often creatively. This article suggests several personalized ways to hold students accountable for their reading.
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.
Using Technology to Support Struggling Students: Visualization, Representation and Modeling
Science learning often involves creating abstract representations and models of processes that we are unable to observe with the naked eye. Learn more about visualizing, representing, and modeling to aid struggling learners.
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.
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.
NEA’s annual Read Across America celebration is a great opportunity for tweens and teens to both celebrate their literacy and language skills and share them in meaningful ways.
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.
Imbedding Adolescent Literacy in Out-of-School-Time Programs
How can structured out-of-school (OST) time programs provide more support to students and schools in advancing literacy skills? How might these programs incorporate adolescent literacy development activities, while preserving their unique youth development approach?
Content-Area Literacy: History
The ability to read historical documents including contemporary explications about societal, economic and political issues provides a direct link to literacy as preparation for citizenship. As in the other disciplines, schools are unique sites for youth across class and ethnic boundaries to learn to read such documents and to develop the skills to engage in such reading for college and career success.
New Electronics: Turn Them On for Learning
Many computer products have built-in accessibility options such as text-to-speech, screen magnification options, or voice input controls. Learn what some of these optional features are and how to integrate them into instruction and studying.
Writing Disabilities: An Overview
Learn from an expert why some kids with learning disabilities struggle with writing and how some instructional approaches can help.
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.
This article looks at the components of creating a youth/adult partnership and what needs to be in place for a partnership to develop into a sustainable relationship.
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.
A Beach Bag Full of Summer Learning Resources
Learning shouldn't stop just because school is out. Here are some ideas to keep students reading, writing and thinking all summer long.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Serving Recent Immigrant Students Through School-Community Partnerships
How do district and school partnerships with community-based organizations help schools better meet the needs of recent immigrant students? This article provides some examples of promising strategies in which community-based organizations and districts work together to address linguistic and cultural differences, help newcomers gain new language skills and catch up academically with their peers, and provide educational and social support to immigrant families.
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.
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.
Finding a Great Summer Program: A Checklist for Parents
Early and sustained summer learning opportunities lead to higher graduation rates, better preparation for college, and positive effects on children's self-esteem, confidence, and motivation. High-quality summer programs keep students engaged in learning, teach them new skills, allow them to develop previously unseen talents, and foster creativity and innovation.
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.
Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study: Key Findings
An overview of findings from the second year of the Enhanced Reading Opportunities (ERO) study, an evaluation of two supplemental literacy programs — Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy and Xtreme Reading — that aim to improve the reading comprehension skills and school performance of struggling ninth-grade readers.
Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas: Getting to the Core of Middle and High School Improvement
Every content area, from chemistry to history, has unique literacy demands: texts, knowledge, skills. But how are these critical literacies learned, let alone taught?
Professional Development to Improve Adolescent Literacy
Beyond general best practices, what sorts of professional development will help teachers improve the literacy of their older students? This article by the National Council of Teachers of English advocates building professional communities among secondary school teachers, encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration, and consulting literacy coaches.
Best Practices for Adolescent Literacy in Afterschool and Summer Programs
The Center for Summer Learning examines the characteristics of effective summer learning opportunities, gives examples of high-quality programs, and presents an agenda for improving such programs.
Engaging Family and Community in Afterschool and Summer Programs
Informal literacy experiences often serve to shape young people's identity as readers and writers as much as or more than formal schooling.Community and family support can emphasize the importance of reading and writing, build confidence, influence young people's literacy habits, and encourage youth to seek out ways to engage in literate activities. Through a renewed national push for literacy on all levels, both families and community members have diverse opportunities in which to impact students' literacy skills.This article offers strategies to develop community engagement.
Professional Development Helps Out-Of-School-Time Staff Support Adolescent Literacy
Learn about several efforts underway to increase the training and professional development options available to out-of-school-time staff, including seasonal workers.
What Are the Key Components of Dropout Prevention Programs?
Dropout prevention research shows that most programs use more than one type of intervention (family outreach, academic tutoring, personalization and vocational training, for example). While there is no one right way to intervene, research has identified several key components to intervention success.
What Do We Know About Who Drops Out and Why?
Students decide to drop out for many reasons. This overview classifies the reasons as either status (e.g., age, socioeconomic status, geographic region or mobility) or alterable (e.g., grades, disruptive behaviors, school climate, attitude toward school). Recognizing the difference between variables is critical to designing effective interventions.
The Impact of Afterschool Programs that Promote Personal and Social Skills
This meta-analysis of 73 programs finds that afterschool activities can have a positive impact on children’s personal and social skills, including problem-solving, conflict resolution, self-control, leadership, responsible decision-making, and self-esteem. Youth who participate in afterschool programs show significant improvement in their feelings, behavior, and school performance. Research demonstrates that the most effective programs are SAFE (sequential, active, focused and explicit).
Five Areas of Instructional Improvement to Increase Academic Literacy
How can content-area, non-reading-specialist teachers contribute to academic literacy? They can incorporate these five techniques throughout their lessons: (1) provide explicit instruction and supported practice in effective comprehension techniques, (2) increase the amount and quality of reading content discussions, (3) maintain high standards for text, conversation, questions, and vocabulary, (4) increase student motivation and engagement with reading, and (5) provide essential content knowledge to support student mastery of critical concepts. Find out why these strategies and the literacy areas they represent are so important.
Making Writing Instruction a Priority in America's Middle and High Schools
Sometimes writing is seen as the flip side of reading, and it is assumed that students who are proficient readers will naturally be proficient writers. While reading and writing are complementary skills, students do not become skilled writers without explicit instruction. This policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education examines how writing can be taught in secondary schools and how policy can encourage more teachers to undertake writing instruction.
Organizations that Promote Adolescent Literacy
From lesson plans and classroom tools to free books and opportunities to publish students’ work, nonprofit organizations have a lot to offer parents, teachers, and struggling readers themselves. Learn about some nonprofits with a commitment to helping young people become better readers and writers.
Millions of today's adolescents lack the reading skills demanded by today's world. The impending crisis — millions of under-literate young people unable to succeed economically and socially — requires an immediate response. This report outlines 15 key elements of effective adolescent literacy programs and recommends that schools use a mix of these elements, tailoring the combinations to the needs of individual students.
Dropout Risk Factors and Exemplary Programs
Dropout decisions may involve up to 25 significant factors, ranging from parenthood to learning disabilities. The most effective interventions address the various factors and employ multiple strategies, including personal asset building, academic support, and family outreach. A list of 50 exemplary programs is included.
