Instilling a Love of Reading: What Every Teacher and Parent Should Know

• March 27, 2013 by Jacqueline Egli

As an educator I spend a considerable amount of time providing advice to parents whose children are finding it difficult to be inspired with reading! Parents will describe their child as  “struggling,” “disinterested,” or ”anxious” about reading and are searching for ways to instill the love of reading, when it is such a tedious task for their child.

It’s really quite simple: Children who do not read well will not be inspired to read, or to practice reading more. So, how do we get our reluctant readers to find reading fun?

As the director of a school that specializes in working with students with reading disorders—and a parent of a youngster who was diagnosed with dyslexia in 3^rd grade—I see this issue from both sides.  Some suggestions that I share with our parents (and that I used with my own son) can create a safe haven for reading for the emerging reader, gifted reader, or a student who needs more direct instruction to improve reading skills.

The Practice of Reading Skills

Keep the work of developing reading skills separate from pleasure reading. Students who require reinforcement in their decoding or vocabulary should practice those tasks for a short time (15-20 minutes) several times per week. Use some of these ideas to make the reading fun!

• Play Scrabble using real or nonsense words! Get the real game board! Let students use a dictionary to look up words that they can create with their tiles. Or, play a game with nonsense words, but everyone should be able to read their words! Non-word reading is a good way to practice decoding.
• Word of the day: Have the whole family select a “word of the day” and keep a tally on how many times that word is read, or spoken throughout the day. At dinnertime, share the results of the family “survey” and select a new word for the next day.
• Matching game: Have your child use index cards to write their words for practice on one card and the definition on the other. Play this game like the Memory card game (also known as Concentration), encouraging the student to read the word and the definition for every card turned over. (My son and I both did this when we were studying—he used his 5^th grade spelling words and vocabulary, and I had my “deck of cards” on education law terms and definitions for my Master’s degree coursework).
• Use Unique Materials! Change it up! Have your child practice by writing spelling words on the sidewalk with colored chalk. Put shaving cream on the kitchen counter and let your child write their spelling words in foam! Put a piece of screen material in an open picture frame. Have your child place a piece of paper over it and write their words on the paper with crayon. This approach provides practice and highlights the individual letters with a unique, textured surface. See some examples here:  
• Create your own storybook: Children, by nature, will be more involved and interested in practicing oral reading if they are excited about a topic. Using some of the newest technologies, such as the camera feature on your phone, have the child take photos of a favorite activity that the child or the whole family enjoys doing, or take pictures that match the vocabulary list!  Put those photos into a PowerPoint and have the child tell or type the words, match vocabulary or create a story to go with the photos. With PowerPoint you can add motion, sound, or music—so be creative! You can even print the pages and bind them into a book, and you have some great stories for practicing oral reading. The book can also make a great gift for a relative for a birthday or holiday.

Reading for Pleasure

Children who are behind in their reading abilities, such as decoding, vocabulary, or comprehension, may not always select independent reading material that “matches” their age and grade. In fact, many children who struggle with the mechanics of reading may be interested in topics that are way above their independent reading level. To meet their intellectual interests and instill the “habit” of reading for pleasure, consider these ideas:

• Read aloud for evening wind-down: What child doesn’t want to delay bedtime? This is a perfect time to read a chapter or two and discuss the elements of a read-aloud story. Ask questions about the characters and setting and inquire if they can predict what will happen next. Let your child select a book that they have an interest in, regardless of the reading level, and read it to them before bedtime. For those youngsters who are gifted, be sure that the topic is not above their maturity level. You may want to read the selection before you read it together, as some authors do include more mature themes than some of our learners are ready to handle.
• Books on tape in the car: Face it—we are a mobile society! I have parents who report spending many hours in the car for errands, driving kids to practice for sports, and waiting on our busy roads to make it home in the late afternoon hours. Audio books can be a great way for everyone to enjoy a good mystery or listen to a story that will soon be featured in film at the local movie theatres. Use of an audiobook is also a great way to keep a youngster connected to current trends in literary work. Students who are behind in their reading abilities may still have an interest in the latest chapter book that will be featured in an upcoming movie, such as Hunger Games. Although your child may not be able to wade through the actual printed version, listening to the audio series will permit them to understand the content and will encourage their discussions with their peers about the latest chapter of a popular series.
• Model reading activities! In our busy lives we sometimes forget that our children and students need to see us reading! Some schools still include a specific reading time where everyone in the school reads a book or magazine for 15 minutes.  As parents, we should practice what we want our children to do, so they can see our enjoyment of literature! Every summer, I would take a stack of paperback books with me to the beach, and my children would know that I was enjoying my “junk novels”. Now, when we get together for our annual beach week, my young adult children break out their Kindles and read too!
• Don’t get concerned if your child has selected something to read independently that is not at their grade level. Nothing concerns me more than when I hear a parent or teacher indicate that the “child” is selecting a storybook, chapter book or series to read that is “not at their grade level”. Reading for pleasure should be just that, for pleasure. Allow and encourage reading for entertainment value. I often remind my students’ parents that “eyes on print” is a good thing, and not to get concerned over the level of the material that a child reads for pleasure. I don’t look at the back of the book I am purchasing for my annual beach trip to see what grade level it is before I purchase it. I select books that I am interested in reading for fun! I enjoy books that have a mystery and involve law, written by authors such as John Grisham. What I don’t do is determine the Lexile Score, or Independent Reading Level of the text or content. So, allow your child a choice in what they wish to read independently and encourage them to develop the habit of reading!

Above all, BE PATIENT and ENCOURAGING with your child as they develop independent reading habits. The “art” of reading is quite complex. Some children will require more support, individualized instruction, and continued practice, and may benefit from the services of a reading specialist. Your positive influence, patience, and support can make your child feel safe to take the “risk” of reading new words or selecting more challenging material. Celebrate the small steps, and keep positive so your child will become more confident!

Related reading:

18 Ways to Encourage Students to Read This Summer

5 Reasons Why Your Students Should Write Every Day

 

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: child reading development, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, high school learning, how adults learn, improving reading skills, learning to read, literacy, middle school learning, motivating students, reading comprehension, struggling readers, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact, vocabulary

Brain Myths in Education: Making Sense of Fact vs. Fiction

• March 12, 2013 by Norene Wiesen

In the nearly 25 years since Congress designated the 1990s “The Decade of the Brain,” educators have been flooded with information about how the brain learns. Some of the “brain myths” that educators have learned are actually right on target, while others are outright wrong. Some data is still open for debate and other inquiries are just getting under way.

We asked Dr. Bill Jenkins and Dr. Martha Burns for a little help in sorting fact from fiction for those of us with other things to do besides reading through the original research studies and teasing out our own conclusions. They presented a great live webinar on the topic, and here’s what we learned:

Myth #1: The Brain is Hardwired – True or False?

Until the 1990s, neuroscientists believed that the adult brain was indeed hardwired with fixed neural circuits. The Decade of the Brain revealed that this view is false—the adult brain is not hardwired and neither is the child brain. In fact, learning goes hand in hand with the re-wiring of brain circuits on the fly, a re-organizing ability that lasts throughout our lifetime.

Myth #2: There are Multiple Intelligences – True or False?

When I first heard about the idea of multiple intelligences, I responded to it immediately. I’m a visual learner! I thought. Of course. And I know I’m not alone.

The truth is more complicated. The construct of multiple intelligences falls under the category of “still open for debate” and may depend as much on our frame of reference as anything else. Regardless, what’s important for teachers is to understand individual students’ strengths and weaknesses and not evaluate students along one dimension of Smart vs. Not Smart.

Myth #3: There’s a Critical Period for Language Learning – True or False?

The widely held belief that language learning must be mastered early is an example of a fact being taken too far. True, it is typically easier to learn a new language before age 7, but we retain the ability for language learning throughout life.

In fact, intensive language training can produce large gains in oral language and reading skills even in older children who are not yet fluent. This includes in-person training or computer programs such as the Fast ForWord Language and Reading programs. They key is an individualized and intensive approach that influences brain organization through mechanisms of neural plasticity.

Further, learning a new language later in life can be good for the brain—better than, say, Sudoku or crossword puzzles.

Get the Facts About 10 More Brain Myths

Drs. Jenkins and Burns had much more to say about fact vs. fiction in how the brain learns. Watch their on-demand webinar on Brain Myths in Education and get answers about these brain myths and more:

• What role does diet play in learning?
• Are gluten-free and casein-free diets really better for brain health?
• What are the differences between boys and girls when it comes to learning?
• Can all students meet high learning standards?

Related reading:

What Educators May Not Know about the Neuroscience of Learning

Eric Jensen Links New Brain Research With Teaching in New Webinar

 

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain plasticity, brain training, how adults learn, how children learn, intelligence, intensity, language learning, webinar

How to Re-Wire your Burned-Out Brain

• October 16, 2012 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

So it is only October and the buzz and excitement of starting a new school year has already fizzled. Life is a little boring, the holidays seem too far away, you are more tired than usual, and you are having a little trouble getting enthusiastic about your job or your children’s upcoming book reports and science projects, or whatever. What’s going on? Of course you know, burn-out.

What exactly is burn-out? Does it come from working too hard, not being appreciated?  Perhaps, but from the standpoint of the brain, burn-out occurs when motivation declines.  The human brain is designed to keep motivation levels high for activities we need to survive, those that are very rewarding, and those that involve novelty.  Hence we are usually very motivated to escape a dangerous situation, eat chocolate cake and watch a new movie we just purchased. We tend to associate reward and novelty with play and leisure – video games, a golf or tennis match, watching a new TV show or a sports event, playing a new board game,   or visiting a new vacation spot – even though we might work very hard at those activities.  Rarely do you hear avid golfers complain about golf burnout.  But you also rarely hear CEOs talk about being burned out. They may retire to relieve the stress of their job or spend more time with their family, but rarely do they complain about their workload or burnout.  Why not? Because the excitement of a new round of golf and the reward that might come from winning or achieving a greater profit margin motivates the golfer and the CEO.  However, when your daily life becomes repetitive, unexciting or non-rewarding, motivation decreases. Burn-out is really the symptom of a brain that has lost its motivation. And motivation declines when two important aspects of life are missing – earned reward and novelty.

So, what can you do about burn-out?  The answer actually comes from neuroscience research. Whether your burn-out is associated with a job in or out of the home, the solution is not to work less and play more (because poverty is not very rewarding).  Rather, the solution is to turn work into play.  And the way to do that is to imbue your day with novelty and challenges where there is an expectation of reward.

Reward thyself:  If your work is not very rewarding or your boss is not good at showing appreciation, one important key to avoiding burnout is to build in self rewards for a job well done. Each morning, next to your to-do list, make a “reward when completed list”.

• After I work out I will…buy myself a little treat (a new pen, some fun post-it notes or allow myself a small ice cream cone)
• After I finish my major work project I will…do something nice for myself (set aside time to watch the football game I recorded last week but never had a chance to watch, take a long hot shower with a special soap or set aside an evening with a few close friends)
• After the house is cleaned I will…do something that makes me feel better (take a short walk to the park, check out some of the new houses for sale in my neighborhood, call a high school friend I haven’t talked to for months)

Keep it new: If a job largely involves repetitive routines, try to come up with something new to add.

• Long boring commute – add something  different each week 
  • Try a slightly new route
  • Add a new song or pod-cast to your iPod to listen to
  • Rent audio books from the library
• Hours at a computer – add something new to look forward to
  • Listen to music in the background using headphones
  • Make a contest or start a pool with workmates over your most boring tasks. Guessing the number of junk mail messages each of you has to delete each week – the losers take the winner out to lunch on Friday
  • Start a company softball or volleyball team, a duplicate bridge competition, a  bowling league, a game of cards at lunch
• Change it up – change your routine
  • If you always eat lunch at noon, eat a late breakfast and take a mid-afternoon walk
  • If you always get in at 8:30 and leave at 4:30 pm, try a few days of getting in at 7:45, leave by 3:45 and go for a swim or a late afternoon hike
  • Do it a new way – rotate the pillows on each of the beds you make each morning, move the living room furniture around,  try one new recipe for dinner each week, learn a new technology to make your life a work simpler, take a management course and implement one new idea a week

Delay gratification: Make your work schedule its own reward by scheduling  your most boring task first each day and your favorite task last so all day you are looking forward to the activity you enjoy the most.

Finally, build in healthy brain-building activities to your week. A happy brain is a brain that is thinking, creating, planning, solving, and learning new things. Schedule activities outside of work that make you feel good about yourself and keep your mind sharp:

• Bridge
• Chess
• Sewing
• A musical instrument
• Dancing
• A class at the local junior college
• A new hobby:  furniture upholstering, furniture refinishing, water color painting, crafts
• A new language!

Related reading:

Lifelong Learning and the Plastic Brain

Creating the Optimal "Internal" Learning Environment

 

To learn more about the brain, view our free recorded webinar!

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, brain development, brain plasticity, creativity, how adults learn, how children learn, motivating students, play

Using Stories to Teach: How Narrative Structure Helps Students Learn

• June 14, 2012 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

Ever since the letter K was a baby, she loved to make her signature sound: ka, ka, ka. K knew that the only other letters in the alphabet that could make her “ka” sound were the letter C (when he didn’t sound like an S) and the letter Q. K enjoyed making her “ka” sound as often as possible in as many words as she could. Soon, however, K also learned that whenever she stood in front of the letter N at the beginning of a word, it was impossible to make her signature sound. At first, K was very sad about this, but after working with N and other letters to make fun words like knot, knob, kneel, and know—words that the other letters could only make with her help—K learned that staying silent sometimes was an important job for a letter, and that many of her alphabet friends also had to be silent from time to time. After a while, K was just as comfortable being silent as she was making her signature “ka” sound.

Scientists have long known that human beings are storytelling creatures. For centuries, we have told stories to transmit information, share histories, and teach important lessons. While stories often have a profound effect on us due to emotional content, recent research also shows that our brains are actually hard-wired to seek out a coherent narrative structure in the stories we hear and tell. This structure helps us absorb the information in a story, and connect it with our own experiences in the world.

Educators can create memorable learning experiences for their students by harnessing the power of storytelling in the classroom. A 2010 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed an intimate connection between the brain activity of speakers and listeners in conversation, demonstrating how the brain of an engaged listener “syncs up” with a speaker. By engaging students with compelling stories that impart important material, teachers reach students both emotionally and biochemically, increasing the potential for rich learning experiences.

Creating a compelling story with a coherent narrative structure requires attention to detail, descriptive language, and a beginning, middle, and end of some sort. Different kinds of stories produce different kinds of reactions:  personal stories from the teacher’s own experience can help create and solidify strong bonds between educator and student, while stories of pure fiction may stimulate imagination.

Spending a little extra time on storytelling during lesson planning and actual classroom time keeps the learning experience highly engaging, creative, and truly, dynamically human. A story-filled classroom also encourages students to relate their own stories (whether factual or fictional), which helps grow their critical thinking, memory, and vocabulary skills.

 

 

Further reading:

Melanie C. Green. Storytelling in teaching. Association for Psychological Science. April 2004.

Related Reading:

5 Reasons Why Your Students Should Write Every Day

The Question Formulation Technique: 6 Steps to Help Students Ask Better Questions

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, arts, creativity, emotions in learning, how adults learn, how children learn, learning environment, memory, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact, vocabulary

So You Think You Know Something About the Brain?

• June 7, 2012 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

According to a recent EdWeek article, it’s time for educators to step up their understanding of the science of learning.  While educators are increasingly interested in how the brain learns, very few programs certify teachers and administrators in educational neuroscience.  The result is that educators get their knowledge piecemeal from a variety of sources, say the experts—and that approach, though well-intentioned, leads to a fair amount of misinformation.

“In a study of 158 preservice secondary school teachers in the United Kingdom, Mr. Howard-Jones found that more than 80 percent believed incorrectly that students should be taught based on their brains' ‘learning styles,’ and another one in five mistakenly thought a student's brain would shrink if he or she drank fewer than six glasses of water a day.”

How well are you sorting fact from fiction?   Test your knowledge of the brain and learning here.

 

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: how adults learn, how children learn, innovation, school leader effectiveness, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact

Deliberate Practice: How to Develop Expertise

• April 12, 2012 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

Anyone who has ever conscientiously taken on the challenge of learning a skill – from playing a musical instrument to speaking a foreign language to simply improving one’s penmanship – understands the importance of practice.

As a neuroscientist, practice fascinates me because it is all about establishing pathways in the brain. The ability of the brain to form and re-form routes for specific thought patterns, and for those routes to become more deeply ingrained the more we exercise those thought patterns, makes it possible for us to learn and refine a multitude of wonderful skills throughout our lives.

The Best Practices

In her recent article “The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect,’” Annie Murphy Paul reviews a book by Gary Marcus, a cognitive psychologist at New York University who studies how the brain acquires language. Marcus’ book, Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning, discusses how learning a new skill, such as playing the guitar, requires practice—but the right kind of practice.

Certainly practice requires a commitment of time. But more importantly, to be truly effective it requires a commitment of the mind – a deliberate intent – for optimal learning to occur.

According to Marcus, “Studies show that practice aimed at remedying weaknesses is a better predictor of expertise than raw number of hours; playing for fun and repeating what you already know is not necessarily the same as efficiently reaching a new level. Most of the practice that most people do, most of the time, be it in the pursuit of learning the guitar or improving their golf game, yields almost no effect” (2012).

In other words, the best practice demands that the learner be attentive to his or her errors, weaknesses and deficiencies, and consciously work to remedy them.

From a neuroscience perspective, this observation points to a natural conclusion. Research has shown us time and again that the more we utilize certain neural pathways for building skills – such as throwing a ball or multiplying by fives or recalling all fifty state capitals – the more effectively we ingrain those patterns in our brains and the more automatic the correct skills become.

The Hardest Work

Imagine the budding guitarist bent over her instrument. At 11 years old, she focuses on learning three more chords beyond the three she learned last week. She’s having great trouble with that F, but she’s well in control of the other five. Should she spend her hour of practice playing the music she truly enjoys and save that F for another day, preserving her positive attitude? Or should she feel her frustration, work through it and spend her time on ironing out that problematic F, again and again and again?

Which is the better practice?

Researcher Anders Ericsson of Florida State University wrote that “deliberate practice requires effort and is inherently not enjoyable” (1993). Long hours spent repeating the easy or already-mastered work is simply not enough and not as effective. The best practice requires us to dig deep and uncover our weaknesses. With a greater focus on our faults, we become better able to find them and develop solutions to remedy them.

Robert Duke of the University of Texas-Austin demonstrated this effect when he and his team videotaped piano students as they practiced a challenging concerto, and then ranked the quality of their final performance. In the end, it was not the repetitions nor the hours of practice put in. The best performers zeroed in on their errors and strove to fix them before moving on. (2009)

Behaviors for Success

The students in our everyday classrooms have an advantage over the guitar student practicing at home. She has to work independently the majority of the time, interacting with her music instructor only once or twice a week; the lion’s share of reinforcing her learning and practicing behavior is her personal responsibility.

In our day-to-day classrooms, we get – relatively speaking – much more time to help our students devise strategies and establish behaviors for success. Through helping them learn how to face the hard work, to focus on what’s difficult or wrong and make it easier or right, we can help them to establish those all-important neural pathways that will lead to success.

For further reading:

It’s Not How Much; It’s How: Characteristics of Practice Behavior and Retention of Performance Skills by Robert A. Duke, Amy L. Simmons and Carla Davis Cash

Related Reading:

The Brain Gets Better at What it Does: Dr. Martha Burns on Brain Plasticity

Musical Training and Cognitive Abilities

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: accelerate learning, attention, brain plasticity, brain training, cognitive skills, how adults learn, how children learn, language learning, memory, musical training

AMPing Up Our Teaching to Increase Intrinsic Student Motivation

• May 24, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

Think about this discussion on motivation presented in 2009 by Daniel Pink, career analyst, ex-speech writer for Al Gore, and author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  He described how modern business management styles once motivated employees—the old “carrot and stick” or reward and punishment approach—actually works in direct conflict with what science has shown about human motivation.

When it comes to optimizing performance on creative tasks, Pink, drawing from the conclusions of numbers psychological studies, tells us that it comes down to three elements:

1)     Autonomy: people have the urge to direct their own lives.

2)     Mastery: people have an innate desire to improve in skills that matter.

3)     Purpose: people want to contribute to something larger than themselves.

Environments that cultivated these three conditions led to faster, better, more creative work.

Now, consider this idea applied to the classroom. We have a great opportunity to make our classrooms into places where students can experience learning based on the three principles above, autonomy, mastery and purpose (AMP). I would argue that we need to “AMP up” our teaching.

When I consider instilling self-motivation in students, Pink’s three elements give us a great framework upon which we can begin to construct our teaching strategies.

Now, giving up the carrot and the stick will be a tough one for many of us to stomach, especially because our educational system is so rooted in such thinking. Certainly, rewards can serve to get a student to finish his homework, clean up her desk or complete a project. But, incentivizing does not cultivate self-motivation, and as Pink describes, the research shows that it actually decreases creative capabilities.

So, what might an AMPed classroom look like?

• Autonomy: In such a classroom, students have clear goals to reach, but maybe they have the freedom to schedule their own time (within reason) and create their own strategies for how and when they will reach those goals.
• Mastery: Students need to understand why they are learning what they are learning. They need to understand the context around why these skills are so important. In an AMPed classroom, this information is integrated into instruction and students are encouraged to assimilate the “why” of their lessons just as much as the “what.”
• Purpose: In AMPed classrooms, lessons and projects are not hypothetical. They are based in the real-world and allow students to truly affect positive change in our classrooms, schools and communities.

In the end, if we look at these three ways of looking at motivation, we are simply shifting the motivators from external ones to internal ones. We are connecting our lessons directly to what is important to each individual student at a personal level. Through providing a way for the student to insert themselves into the material through the creative process and their own solution development, the learning becomes directly relevant to their lives and priorities.

Edward Deci, a premier researcher on motivation, wrote: “The proper question is not, 'how can people motivate others?' but rather, "how can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves?"^[i] Ultimately, our success as educators must lie in taking the long view of our students’ lives—beyond their lives as students to when they will put their educations to use as professionals. And with that long view, the future adult who is a self-motivated individual will certainly be more successful than the person who stands by waiting for others to move them.

Watch Daniel Pink’s 19-minute TED talk on the surprising science of motivation.

[i] Ferlazzo, Larry. “Helping Students Motivate Themselves.” Education Week Teacher, April 22, 2011. 

For further reading:

Self-Determination Theory: An Approach to Human Motivation and Personality, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan

Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Problems, Larry Ferlazzo, 2011

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Related Reading:

Teaching Creativity in the Classroom

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn, and Grow

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: creativity, how adults learn, how children learn, learning environment, motivating students, school leader effectiveness, student growth, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact

Adult and Family literacy in the US; limitations to our Nation’s success

• February 3, 2011 by Corey Fitzgerald

“Some people there are who, being grown; forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child.” –John Steinbeck

But what about those who fail to become literate through traditional schooling?  Low literacy continues to be a persistent problem among adults in the United States.  Results from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), available through the National Center for Education Statistics, found that 30 million adults have “below basic” literacy skills, with more than half of those scoring at this level not having a high school diploma or GED.  This translates to nearly 1 out of every 6 adults, age 25 and older, across the country.  This crisis has resulted in the following:  (findings from the Report of the National Commission on Adult Literacy)

• U.S. Scores Poorly Internationally. The U.S. is the only country among 30 OECD free-market countries where the current generation is less well educated than the previous one.
• High School Dropout Rates Are Staggering. Every year, one in three young adults—more than 1.2 million people—drop out of high school.
• Low Parent Learning Affects Children. One in four U.S. working families is low-income, and one in five children lives in poverty. Parents and caregivers in many of these households lack the education and skills to earn a family-sustaining wage.
• Low Literacy in Burgeoning Prison Population. One in every 100 U.S. adults 16 and older is in prison or jail in America.  About 43 percent do not have a high school diploma or equivalent, and 56 percent have very low literacy skills.
• Large and Growing English Language and Literacy Need. About 2 million immigrants come to the U.S. each year seeking jobs and better lives—the promise of America. About 50 percent of them have low literacy levels and lack high school education and English language skills, severely limiting their access to jobs and job training, college, and citizenship.

Yet despite the challenges, there is an incentive to overcome these obstructions.  A better educated more literate population will improve our standard of living and offer benefits in the following ways:

• Higher rates of employment and better jobs
• Increases in personal income and individual economic well being
• Increases in voter participation, volunteerism and civic engagement
• Better health and more effective healthcare
• A greater fiscal contribution to our economy at all government levels

And at the very heart of this is you, an influential role model and innovator whose evidence-based approach to education will boost our country back into a position of global leadership; because effective education is the best investment we can make!

Related Reading:

The 30 Million Word Gap in Language Experience Puts Kids At Risk

HABLA Program Helps Disadvantaged Early Learners Lay Foundations for Success

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Education Trends, Family Focus

Tags: academic problems, academic proficiency, academic success, at-risk, high school learning, how adults learn, literacy

Brain Plasticity: A New Frontier For Education and Learning

• November 11, 2010 by Carrie Gajowski

Dr. Norman Doidge is the author of the book The Brain That Changes Itself and in this book, he reveals a fascinating look at how the brain can literally rewire itself throughout the lifespan, even into old age.  He shows how the brain is “plastic” and can change at any age, based on the stimuli it is being given.  The brain is no longer thought of as “fixed” or “unchanging.”  You literally train it in everything you do during your daily life.   This is the concept of “neuroplasticity.”

Dr. Doidge researched this idea of “neuroplasticity” to find that miracles can and do occur as it relates to how the brain can function.  Brains can be “rewired” for success in school.  It has been found that functioning can be restored in brains that have either declined because of old age or because of an injury to the brain.   This is a fascinating new world to explore in the arena of human development and how people function in the world around them. 

Dr. Doidge participated in an interview last spring on the topic of brain plasticity, which you can listen to online.  Here are some of the discussion points from the interview:

• Part One: The concept of brain plasticity, what it means and how it works. 
• Part Two: How our brain learns, how technology plays a role in the learning process and how it affects our brain and brain development. 
• Part Three: An exploration of communication and the roles of computers, text messages and email messages today, including an interesting discussion of how we tend to keep information on technology outside of ourselves, rather than inside our heads. 
• Part Four: Who can benefit from the concept of brain plasticity and how can it help education today?

Brain plasticity is a newer idea and concept.  Whether you are already a fan of Dr. Norman Doidge or just hearing about brain plasticity for the first time, don’t miss this interview – it is wonderfully informative and eye-opening.  As more research continues to be done on the brain, it will be exciting to see what new things are learned about how the brain functions.  More importantly, it will be fascinating to see how brain plasticity can provide hope to people everywhere.

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Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain development, brain training, how adults learn, how children learn

Creating Reading Intention to Improve Reading Comprehension Skills in Students

• October 26, 2010 by Terri Zezula

Most everyone can stand to improve reading comprehension, from early readers to adult professionals. An internet search for reading comprehension strategies to improve this skill yields a multitude of exercises and recommendations, but overall, they all seem to arrive at a singular idea: to improve reading comprehension skills, we must prime the brain through creating a framework that allows the reader to experience a text with intent.

Teaching our students (or just re-training ourselves) to enter into the reading experience with intent allows the reader to extract and retain the key elements of information. This is quite different from simply picking up a book, flipping to page one and jumping right into “Once upon a time...” A number of things can happen before that moment to frame the reader’s mindset and prime the brain to better comprehend the information it is about to delve into.

So, what are some ways of improving reading comprehension by creating that intent and priming the brain? Here are some examples of pre-reading activities and questions that we can offer students young and old to frame their reading for improved comprehension.

Before reading, take a look around. A book is much more than the words on its pages. What is the title? What do we see on the cover? Who is the author and what kinds of stories and books does this person create? When was the book written? By taking a few minutes to focus on these elements, we can set up expectations in our minds—like a loose outline—that we will later fill in with the details.

Get a 30,000 foot view. Delving in a bit deeper, what can we learn about the story by reading the table of contents and flipping quickly through the pages? Tables of contents offer huge amounts of information to help readers further develop expectations and outlines.

Make it personal. Our brains are more likely to absorb information when it is directly applicable or related to our interests and our lives. Thinking about the information we have just accessed by answering the above questions, what aspects of this book grab our interest on a personal level? What features of the book relate directly to our lives?

Write it down. Now that we have a framework of expectations around what we are about to read, write down questions that have arisen about the story and its characters, and make some predictions about how the story might unfold.

All of these pre-reading activities help the reader to create a mental framework that will later hold the details of the text. Readers can then use these notes during and after reading to see where predictions were on target or where they might have gone off course.

Regardless of their simplicity—or maybe because of it—the reading comprehension strategies above help create the reading intention to improve reading comprehension skills. Your own internet search will yield countless additional helpful hints and resources, but don’t underestimate your own creativity. How many ways can you think of to engage students in thinking about a text prior to turning to page one?

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Categories: Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, child reading development, early learning, elementary learning, elementary school learning, high school learning, how adults learn, how children learn, improving reading skills, learning to read, reading comprehension, struggling readers