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Ad lit.org: 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.
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Ad lit.org: Cell Phone Novels: 140 Characters at a Time
Cell phone novels are short stories designed to be read on cellular telephones. This article examines the Japanese trend and its potential in America.
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Ad lit.org: Creating Podcasts With Your Students
Creating podcasts in the classroom has many educational benefits, including strengthening skills in research, writing, and collaboration - and podcasting is easy to do. This article walks you through the steps of preproduction,...
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Ad lit.org: Teach Vocabulary by Building Background Knowledge
Students need to develop an extensive vocabulary to read with fluency. In turn, fluency in reading leads to increased comprehension. Fluency also comes from the written language of the reader since the student writes words he or she...
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Ad lit.org: Linking the Language: A Cross Disciplinary Vocabulary Approach
A strategy for vocabulary instruction that involves introducing new vocabulary in related clusters. This approach can help diverse learners, including those students learning English, to make important vocabulary connections.
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Ad lit.org: Some Obstacles to Vocabulary Development
A strong vocabulary, both written and spoken, requires more than a dictionary. In fact, it requires an educational commitment to overcoming four obstacles: the size of the task (the number of words students need to learn is exceedingly...
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Ad lit.org: Questions About Vocabulary Instruction
This article answers four common questions teachers have about vocabulary instruction, including what words to teach and how well students should know vocabulary words.
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Ad lit.org: Extended Writing to Learn Strategies
Writing enables students to process, organize, formulate, and extend their thinking about what they have been learning. In addition, teachers can also assign writing to help students evaluate what they know and understand about a topic....
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Ad lit.org: An Introduction to Analytical Text Structures
Many students are used to writing narratives - stories, description, even poetry, but have little experience with analytical writing. This article is an introduction to six analytical text structures, useful across content areas. See...
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Ad lit.org: Teach the Elements of Writing
It's a misconception that writing teachers simply tell students to write and wait to see what happens. Teachers should provide instruction in and exposure to various elements of writing to help students understand what good writing is.
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Ad lit.org: Help Students Generate Ideas Through Prewriting
Learn how to model a range of prewriting techniques and introduce several mnemonics to help students organize their writing.
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Ad lit.org: 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.
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Ad lit.org: A Summary of "Writing Next"
What does research tell us about effective teaching techniques to help adolescents develop their writing skills? This article summarizes Writing Next, a 2007 study of adolescent writing instruction.
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: After by Francine Prose
The shootings at Pleasant Valley were fifty miles away, but at Central High a grief and crisis counselor is hired, security is increased, and privileges are being taken away. If you break the new rules, the punishment is severe. And the...
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Ad lit.org: Discussion Guide: The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School
Candace Fleming writes contemporary stories built around Aesop's fables in The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School. No one wants to teach the fourth graders until the amazing Mr. Jupiter comes along. He undertakes the task...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Black Storm Comin' by Diane Lee Wilson
WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Seventeen-year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; but in a blink, she finds herself watching as her own damaged body is taken from the wreck
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke
In the fall of 1939 the Nazis invaded Irene Gut's beloved Poland, ending her training as a nurse and thrusting the sixteen-year-old Catholic girl into a world of degradation that somehow gave her the strength to accomplish what amounted...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende
In the midst of his mother's struggle with cancer, fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold has the opportunity to take the trip of a lifetime. Accompanying his fearless grandmother, a magazine reporter for International Geographic, Alexander...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Now You See Her by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Hope Shay's life is about acting. Her parents have supported and promoted her talents since she was a little girl. From community theater, dinner theater, and commercials to auditions around the country and finally a place at a...
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Ad lit.org: Discussion Guide: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by James Boyne
Bruno is only nine years old when his father, a commandant in Hitler's army, is transferred from Berlin to Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The house at "Out-With," as Bruno calls it, is small, dark, and strange. He spends long days...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
Stargirl Caraway explores her new neighborhood with an eye for the unusual. She notices the agoraphobic neighbor, the seemingly homeless young boy, and others who do not fit in easily. Stargirl, never one with an inclination to conform,...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
Young Misha Pilsudski lives on the streets of Warsaw, Poland and struggles with his identity. When he enters the Jewish ghetto and sees firsthand the evil acts of Hitler's Nazi soldiers, he realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
One glance and students know that the new girl at Mica High School is not your ordinary high school student. Stargirl Caraway is a free spirit. She has a pet rat named Cinnamon, plays the ukulele in the cafeteria, and refuses to wear the...