In Focus: Tests, College, and Careers

For Middle Schoolers: Activities to Build College-Level Reading Skills

ACT has developed the following list of activities to help middle school students improve their reading ability. Parents and educators can use this information to help ensure that these students are on target for college and career readiness.
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See AdLit's entire section on getting ready for college.

College Awareness Month

October is College Awareness Month! It is the time to focus all students on the knowledge and culture that will allow them to thrive and succeed in college and other post-secondary studies. Double the Numbers, a coalition of community leaders in Washington, D.C., offers a website that students and parents can explore to find out how to apply for admission, how to pay for college, and where to go for help.
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The Exquisite Prompt REDUX

Here's a chance for kids in grades K-12 to flex their writing muscles! This year's writing prompts are inspired by winning student entries from our 2010 contest. Write the ending to a cliffhanger, a review of a magical object purchased from The Fairy Tale Catalog, a poem in the voice of the Whinoceros, or the adventures of two time travelers.
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Books & Authors

Featured Author: Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry is a prolific American author of children's literature. She began her career as a photographer and a freelance journalist during the early 1970s. Her first children's book, A Summer to Die, was published in 1977. Lowry has since written more than 30 books for children and published an autobiography. Two of her works have been awarded the prestigious Newbery Medal: Number the Stars in 1990 and The Giver in 1993.Watch our video interview with Ms. Lowry as she describes her childhood, college experience, and journey to being one of the most beloved authors of books for young readers.
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Featured Resource: Author Study Toolkit

An author study is a lesson that gives students the opportunity to delve deeply into an author's life and body of work. Whether individually, in small groups, or as a class, students can:

• Critically evaluate an author's themes, characters, and writing style
• Make connections between the author's life and work
• Make personal connections between their own experiences and those of the author and his/her characters

Within our toolkit, you'll find directions for doing an author study, learn how to set a purpose and goals, how to choose and author, and more. A free PDF download of the full toolkit is also available.
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In the Classroom

Featured Strategy: Power Notes

Power Notes is a strategy that teaches students an efficient form of organizing information from assigned text. This technique provides students a systematic way to look for relationships within material they are reading. Power Notes helps visually display the differences between main ideas and supportive information in outline form. Main ideas or categories are assigned a power 1 rating. Details and examples are assigned power 2s, 3s, or 4s.
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Glossary Term: Study Strategies

"Study strategies" is a broad term that refers to strategies students use to improve their comprehension. Study strategies help students acquire, process, organize, and remember new information.
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Research & Policy

New Report Offers Evidence That Classroom-Based Assessments Can Improve Writing Skills of American Students

Effective assessments are promising tools to help ensure that students write well enough to meet grade-level demands, according to a new report from Carnegie Corporation of New York, released by the Alliance for Excellent Education on September 15. The report Informing Writing: The Benefits of Formative Assessment offers educators and policymakers evidence-based practices on how assessment can improve the writing skills of American students.

To read the press release, download the report, or watch video from the release event, visit the Alliance for Excellent Education website.

In the Community

Teens' Top Ten List: Coming October 16-22

Teens' Top Ten is a "teen choice" list, where teens nominate and select their favorite books of the previous year. Nominators are members of teen book groups in sixteen school and public libraries around the country. Nominations were posted on Support Teen Literature Day during National Library Week, and teens across the country voted on their favorite titles. The winners will be announced during Teen Read Week, October 16-22.

An annotated list of the 2011 Teens' Top Ten Nominations can be found here.

NCTE Annual Convention

"Reading the Past, Writing the Future"
November 17-20, 2011
Chicago, Illinois

The 2011 NCTE Annual Convention will be held November 17-20, 2011, in Chicago, Illinois, at Chicago Hilton Hotel and the Palmer House. See more about this convention on the NCTE website.

Save the Date!

March 18-22, 2012
Washington, D.C.
The Second Annual BUILDING A GRAD NATION SUMMIT sponsored by America's Promise Alliance.

Featured Partner: America's Promise Alliance

America's Promise Alliance is a cross-sector partnership of more than 300 corporations, nonprofits, and advocacy groups that are passionate about improving lives and changing outcomes for children. They have made a top priority of ensuring that all young people graduate from high school ready for college, work, and life. Their work involves raising awareness, encouraging action, and engaging in advocacy to provide children the key supports known as the Five Promises: Caring Adults, Safe Places, A Healthy Start, An Effective Education, and Opportunities to Help Others.
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Featured Site: iCould.com

For students: Need some ideas for the future? Some inspiration about what kind of career might be right for you? Just want to find out what's out there? iCould can help you discover what you could do and how you could get there. iCould gives you the inside story of how careers work. There are over a thousand easy to search, varied, and unique career videos as well as hundreds of articles. From telecom engineers to police officers, from landscape gardeners to web designers, from engine drivers to zookeepers, they talk about what they do, what it's like, how they came to be where are, and their hopes for the future.

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