Part of the naturalization process in the United States involves memorizing 100 facts about the country. These facts cover its government, its history, its geography, and its symbols. (Here’s a PDF of the full list.) They are formatted in a Q&A style. (Example below.) On test day, would-be citizens are asked 10 random questions from […]
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If Your Class Has Tests, You Have to Teach Students How to Study
I’ve heard from plenty of teachers, “Well, in my class, they should already know how to study, so I don’t teach the students how to do it.” This, in my opinion, is unwise. If you want your students to put forth effort, then they need to believe that their effort will pay off. This is […]
The Two Rules of Resilience
The other day, I shared a video with my ninth graders made by a Michigan high school teacher and author, Chase Mielke. Chase had sent the video to me a week or so before, and I thought it connected well with a pair of burning questions my students and I had been pursuing of late: […]
When You’re Speaking to Students, Speak Your Best (Plus a Primer on How We Learn to Read)
In a 2020 study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, researchers from Temple University share an interesting finding: in a group of preschool and kindergarten classes, the complexity of teachers’ language during morning message and small groups had a significant relationship to students’ vocabulary development. “Together,” the researchers write, “the results imply that complex syntax […]
“Reading Level” Mostly Means Knowledge Level
Some years ago, I had the chance to take the Scholastic Reading Inventory test that my students take to determine their Lexile scores, which in turn gives us a rough sense of what their reading “grade level” is. You take the test on a computer, and it’s dynamic — so as you answer questions correctly, […]