11 Teaching for Understanding: Improving Secondary Education and Transition Services through Research Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 9–12 Professional Commentary: This professional resource by Christine D. Bremer and Catherine Cobb Morocco explains the theories and methods behind the teaching philosophy "teaching for understanding." This strategy promotes in-depth learning, advocates covering a broad range of material, and encourages teachers to provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge to real-world problems, thus deemphasizing performance on short-answer quizzes.... Career Fields: General Career Skills Projects: Writing 6-12, Standards First 12 Complex Human Activities Taking Place in Complex Human Relationships Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–12 Professional Commentary: Ohio State University Professor David Bloome's "Complex Human Activities Taking Place in Complex Human Relationships" is the featured article in this issue (October 2004) of AdLIT's In Perspective. Bloome suggests that, as teachers, "we need to change our approach to teaching reading as if it were an autonomous activity made up of isolated skills." Instead, as he so aptly builds a case for in this professional development article, we need to teach reading "as part of a broad range of activities that are meaningful to students, that position them as people who act upon the worlds in which they live instead of merely being acted upon by others and by various social institustions." Bloome advocates designing our instructional programs "to eschew mock participation, procedural display, text reproduction, passive stances toward reading, and the isolation of reading form the complex human activities and complex human relationships in which it is inherently embedded." He provides classroom models, demonstrating that there are "powerful and exciting ways" to approach and to teach reading.... Projects: Writing 6-12 13 Engaging the Disaffected: Collaborative Writing across the Curriculum Projects Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–12 Professional Commentary: This article describes the effects and results of the collaborative work of twenty high school teachers and university professors, who together over the course of three years, created and initiated writing projects across the high school curriculum. With a focus on teaching students how they could help one another to learn and improve their writing, these... Career Fields: General Career Skills Projects: Writing 6-12, Standards First 14 They Still Can't Spell? Understanding and Supporting Challenged Spellers in Middle and High School [excerpt]: Chapter 8, "Less but Deeper: Teaching Strategies and Rules that Generalize" Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–12 Professional Commentary: This chapter excerpt defines and explains reflective strategies that promote word awareness. The authors show how these strategies provide "deeper" opportunities for students to learn information about words that they can then generalize to other words.... Projects: Writing 6-12 Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 2–12 Professional Commentary: Fluency is a goal for all readers, including those with disabilities. Students who have developed accurate word pronunciation skills may still experience labored or slow reading instead of smooth and automatic reading.... 16 Constructivist Remediation: Correction in Context Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades K–8 Professional Commentary: The great debate regarding constructivism versus instructionism is examined in the context of what makes sense for reading remediation. The constructivist approach is child centered and emphasizes the learning process as opposed to product.... 17 Building on the Best, Learning from What Works: Five Promising Remedial Reading Intervention Programs Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades K–Postsecondary Professional Commentary: The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) published this article describing five remedial reading programs: 1) Direct Instruction, 2) Early Steps, 3) Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI), 4) Lindamond-Bell, and 5) Reading Recovery. The study's categories ("Main Features,"" Results," "Case Study," and "Considerations") each provide a concise, research-supported overview as well as helpful classroom tips based on some schools... 18 Children with Communication Disorders Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades K–12 Professional Commentary: Effective communication is a prerequisite to academic learning. This article discusses communication disorders, the incidence, the learning difficulties, and the educational significance associated with these disorders.... 19 Students with Reading and Behavioral Needs Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 1–9 Professional Commentary: The co-occurance of learning and behavioral difficulties is challenging for educators. It is hard to determine the direction of the relationship between academic and behavioral problems, i.e.... 20 Teaching Strategic Processes in Reading [excerpt]: Chapter 1, "What Does It Mean to Be Strategic?" Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 3–12 Professional Commentary: This chapter, excerpted from Teaching Strategic Processes in Reading, written by Janice F. Almasi, describes strategic processing, why it is important, and how one teaches strategic processes in reading.... |