Category: Teaching Strategies, Tactics, and Methods

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How to Effectively Use Common Planning Time

pass or fail

In schools, common planning time refers to any period scheduled during the school day for several educators, or teams of educators, to work on grading and lesson planning. In most cases, common planning time is considered a form of professional development. Its primary purpose is to bring educators together to learn from one another and collaborate on projects to improve lesson quality and teaching effectiveness and learner achievement.

These improvements result from (1) the improved communication that occurs among educators who meet and talk regularly, (2) the insights and constructive feedback that happen during professional discussions among educators, and (3) the curriculum and resources that are created or improved when educators work on them collaboratively.

While the term suggests that the main activity of common planning time is “planning,” the time may be devoted to a broad variety of activities.

The following are a few examples of what generally takes place during common planning time:

Examining educator work: Teachers may collaboratively review lesson plans or assessments before being used in class and then offer feedback and recommendations for improvement.

Examining learner work: Teachers may look at examples of learner work turned in for a class and then offered recommendations on how lessons may be modified to improve learning and learner work quality.

Examining learner data: Teachers may analyze learner-performance data from a class to find trends—such as which learners are consistently failing or underperforming—and collaboratively develop proactive teaching and support strategies to help learners struggling academically. By discussing the learners they have in common, educators can develop a stronger understanding of certain learners’ specific learning needs and capabilities, helping them coordinate and improve how they are taught.

Examining Education Research: Teachers may select a text to read, such as a research study or an article about a specialized teaching strategy, and then engage in a conversation about the text and how it can help inform their teaching strategies or practices.

Developing curriculum: Teachers may collaboratively work on lesson plans, assignments, projects, and new classes, such as an interdisciplinary class taught by two educators from distinct subject areas (for example, an art-history class taught by an art educator and a history educator). Teachers may also plan or develop other learning experiences, such as capstone projects, demonstrations of learning, learning pathways, personal learning plans, or portfolios, for example.

Benefits and Challenges of Common Planning Time

The common planning time concept is not usually an object of debate. Still, skeptics may question whether the time will positively impact learner learning, whether educators will utilize the time purposefully and productively, or whether learners would be better served if they spent more time teaching.

Since it’s often extremely challenging, from a research perspective, to attribute gains in learner performance to anyone’s influence in a school, the benefits of common planning time may be challenging to measure objectively and reliably.

However, common planning time will be debated when the time is poorly used, when meetings become disorganized and unfocused, when educators have negative experiences during meetings, and when the practice is perceived as a burdensome requirement.

Like any school-improvement strategy or program, the design and execution quality will usually decide the results achieved. If meetings are poorly organized and operated, and conversations lapse into complaints about policies, or if educators fail to turn group learning into changes in teaching strategies, common planning time is less likely to be successful.

Benefits

Advocates of common planning time believe that it can foster and promote a broad variety of professional interactions and practices among educators in a school. For instance:

  • Teachers may volunteer for leadership responsibility or feel a more profound investment in a school-improvement initiative.
  • Teachers may feel more confident and better equipped to address their learners’ learning needs, and they may become more willing to participate in the type of self-reflection that leads to professional growth.
  • The school culture may improve, and collegial relationships can become better and more trusting if the faculty interacts and communicates more productively.
  • Teachers may participate in professional collaborations more often, such as co-creating and co-teaching interdisciplinary classes.
  • More teaching innovation may take hold in classes and educational programs, and educators may begin incorporating efficient teaching strategies that are being used by colleagues.
  • Teachers may begin utilizing more evidence-based approaches to constructing lessons and delivering instruction.

Challenges

When implementing common planning time, administrators and educators may encounter several challenges that could give rise to criticism or debate. For instance:

  • Competing duties and logistical challenges can make the scheduling of regular common planning time challenging. Insufficient meeting time or randomly scheduled time may then undermine the strategy and its potential benefits.
  • A scarcity of school leaders’ support could lead to an inadequate investment of time,  resources, and attention.
  • Poor training for group facilitators could produce ineffective facilitation, disorganized meetings, and an erosion of confidence in the strategy.
  • A scarcity of clear goals for common planning time can lead to unfocused conversations, misspent time, and general confusion about the meeting’s purpose.
  • A negative school or faculty culture can lead to tensions, conflicts, factions, and other issues that undermine the common planning time’s potential benefits.
  • A lack of observable, measurable progress, or learner-achievement gains can erode support, motivation, and enthusiasm for the strategy.
  • Divergent educational philosophies or learning styles can create disagreements that threaten the collegiality and idea of shared purpose usually required to make common planning time successful.
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The Edvocate’s Guide to Learning Outcomes

Student outcomes denote what learners will know or accomplish once they finish a class or program of study. Learning outcomes are descriptions of the capabilities, skills, and knowledge used to assess learner learning. Learning outcomes should outline what learners possess and show upon completing a learning experience or set of experiences. When creating a list of learner learning outcomes for educators to set as curriculum objectives to improve learner learning, contemplate the following recommendations:

How to Build Student Learning Outcomes

Choose between 3-5 learning outcomes: You should select acceptable learning outcomes to ensure learner progress can be measured without becoming complicated for educators to assess. Not all learning experiences will assess all learning outcomes. Each educational activity can assess learners’ development and comprehension, focusing on 1-2 learner learning objectives. Less than three objectives likely means that the learner learning objectives are not robust enough for an entire class.

Learning outcomes should be simple: The outcomes identified in your plan should be concise. They should avoid compound statements that connect more than one statement to communicate efficiently. Each learning outcome should focus on creating one skill or meeting one goal, be straightforward and ensure efficient knowledge acquisition.

Learning outcomes should be written in the future tense: It is essential for the proper implementation of learner learning outcomes to be expressed in the future tense. The statement should express what a personal learner should do in regard to specific instruction or an educational activity. Outcomes should be observable to be quantified for examining crucial learner success metrics through learning assessment. They should create and use information literacy skills.

Learning outcomes should be realistic: to ensure learner learning outcomes are successful, they must be attainable for the learners for whom they are designated. Outcomes need to be designed with learners’ ability, initial skill sets, cognitive development, and the institutional time frame’s length to attain these skill sets in mind. Further, they should also align with the content being taught to learners.

Learning outcomes should align with the school curriculum: The learning outcomes developed should be consistent with the objectives (curriculum) within the program and discipline in which they are taught. This is especially essential when interpreting assessment results to analyze where changes in instruction should be made. Curriculum mapping is one example of an efficient way to ensure that chosen learning outcomes correspond to the designated curriculum. A curriculum map is a visual plan that explains which learning outcomes are plotted against specific program classes. This ensures that learning goals are reached promptly.

What did we miss?

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The Edvocate’s Guide to Developing Learning Objectives

Learning objectives are brief statements that explain what learners will be expected to learn by the end of the school year, class, unit, lesson, project, or class period. Sometimes, learning objectives are the interim educational goals that educators establish for learners who are working toward meeting more comprehensive learning standards.

Defining the learning objective is complicated because educators utilize a broad variety of terms for learning objectives. These words may or may not be used synonymously from place to place. For instance, the terms student learning objective, benchmark, grade-level indicator, learning target, performance indicator, and learning standard may refer to specific learning objectives in educational contexts. Educators also create a broad variety of homegrown terms for learning objectives, which further complicates things.

Learning Objective Functions

While educators utilize learning objectives in distinct ways to achieve various teaching goals, the concept is closely related to learning progressions, or the sequencing of educational expectations across several developmental stages, ages, or grade levels. Learning objectives are a good way for educators to structure and sequence what students are to learn. They plan out learning goals for a specific teaching period, usually to move learners toward achieving bigger, longer-term educational goals such as meeting class learning expectations, passing on a standardized test, or graduating from high school ready for what’s next.

Learning objectives are a key strategy in proficiency-based learning, which refers to systems of instruction, assessment, grading, and educational reporting based on learners demonstrating understanding of the skills they are expected to learn before they move to the next lesson or receive a diploma.

Learning objectives are being used in educators’ job-performance evaluations, and the term learner learning objectives are associated with this practice in many states.

Learning objectives are also a way to create and articulate educational expectations for learners to know precisely what is expected of them. When learning objectives are communicated to learners, the reasoning goes, learners will be more likely to achieve the goals. When learning objectives are absent or unclear, learners may not know what’s expected of them, leading to confusion or other factors that could impede the learning process.

Types of Learning Objectives

While the terminology, structure, and utilization of learning objectives can differ in different school districts and states, the following are a few of the significant forms that learning objectives take:

School-year or grade-level objectives: Learning objectives may be synonymous with learning standards, which are concise, written descriptions of the things that learners should know and do at a specific stage of their education. Grade-level learning objectives explain what learners should achieve academically by the end of a particular grade level or grade span.

Course or program objectives: Teachers may also decide on learning objectives for classes or other educational programs, such as summer-school programs. The objectives may be the same educational goals described in learning standards or explain interim goals.

Unit or project objectives: Teachers may decide learning objectives for teaching units, which usually comprise a series of lessons focused on a topic or common theme, such as a historical period. In the case of project-based learning—a teaching approach that utilizes multifaceted projects as a central organizing strategy for educating learners—educators may decide learning objectives for the end of long-term projects rather than a unit.

Lesson or class-period objectives: Teachers may also articulate learning objectives for specific lessons that compose a unit, project, or class. They may decide learning objectives for each day they train learners (in this case, the term learning target is often used). For instance, educators may write a set of daily learning objectives on the blackboard or post them to an online class management system to know what the learning expectations are for a particular class period. In this case, learning objectives move learners progressively toward meeting more broad learning goals for a unit or class.

Framing Learning Objectives

In practice, educators will commonly express learning objectives to achieve distinct teaching goals or encourage learners to think about the learning process in a specific way.

The following are several ways that learning objectives may be framed or expressed by educators:

Descriptive statements: Objectives may be expressed as terse statements describing what learners should know by the end of a defined teaching period. For instance: State learning standards, which can include various learning objectives, are commonly expressed as descriptive statements.

“I can” statements: Teachers may select to express learning objectives as “I can” statements as a way to conceptualize the objectives from a learner’s perspective. The idea is that “I can” statements encourage learners to connect with the learning goals and experience a greater personal accomplishment idea when the learning objectives are achieved. 

“Learners will be able to” statements: These statements are a common format for learning objectives, and the abbreviation SWBAT may be used in lieu of the entire phrase.

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Implementing the Four Parts of Explicit Instruction

Are you a teacher who is new to explicit instruction and needs help implementing it in your classroom? Then you have come to the right place. This article will tell you how to implement the four parts of explicit instruction into your classroom.

1. Model with clear explanations.

How: Explain or show the skill in the same way learners will practice it. Focus on the critical parts of the content you are teaching.

Why: When expectations are clear, it takes out the guesswork from learning. Plus, some learners may need to see a model several times. To decide if that’s necessary, check for comprehension by asking learners to help you do an example.

Planning Tips

  • Make sure the skill you select to teach matches the learning outcome.
  • Write a clear, concise explanation of the skill in your lesson plan.
  • Double-check that your explanation includes each of the steps.
  • Plan for several examples.
  • Model the examples in the same way learners will practice it.
  • Place a note in your plan to check for learners’ understanding periodically.

2. Express your thinking process.

How: While you are modeling, do a think-aloud of what’s happening in your mind. If you compare fractions, you may discuss how you recognized that the denominators are different. You might say, “I notice these 2 denominators are different. In this fraction, the denominator is a 6, but in this fraction, the denominator is a 5.”

Why: Learners who learn and think differently often don’t know how to begin a task or what to do when they’re stuck. Modeling self-talk can be helpful for these learners.

Planning Tips

  • Script how you will express your thinking. Don’t write out everything, but it’s essential to have your most essential points planned.
  • Think of places where learners might get stuck. Plan how you’ll work through those tricky areas.

3. Provide chances to practice.

How: During guided practice, you may work through many problems as a class and either pre-correct or correct errors as they happen. Guided practice is your chance to ensure that every step is clear to learners so that they are ready to work independently. If learners haven’t grasped the skill, you can model or verbalize it again.

Once learners are successful with guided practice, move forward with independent practice.  Resist the urge to introduce difficult content. Instead, focus on independent practice assignments that align with the skill you modeled. Learners should master the assignments during independent practice about 90 percent of the time.

After independent practice, perform a cumulative review of learned skills. The review will help learners gain and retain automaticity with the skills.

Why: Learners need to practice a skill for it to remain in their long-term memory. Guided and independent practice and cumulative review can help this process.

Planning Tips

  • Plan enough time for several chances to practice.

For guided practice:

  • Plan practice activities that students will be successful with.
  • Script your prompts, and remember that you may need to adjust your script at the moment to meet learners’ needs.

For independent practice:

  • Review expectations and the resources learners will utilize before beginning.
  • Design chances that you feel learners will be able to work on without support.

Use several ways of getting learner responses during practice to check the learner’s understanding. For instance:

  • Plan for verbal responses, such as choral responses.
  • Plan for written responses, such as “stop and jot” or writing a response on dry-erase boards.
  • Plan for physical responses, such as nonverbal signals.

Cumulative review:

  • Identify the set of skills necessary to meet the learning goals.
  • Plan strategies to review previously taught skills that ladder up to the new skills you’re teaching.
  • Plan strategies to review the newly acquired skills or info.
  • Keep the cumulative review brief and focused.

4. Give feedback.

How: As your learners engage in guided and independent practice, give them immediate and actionable feedback.

Why: A quick response will guide learners to success and will reduce the chance that they’ll practice a skill or strategy with errors.

Planning Tips

  • Make a note of times in the lesson when you’ll be able to move about the room to make informal observations of learners.
  • Attach a sheet of paper with your learners’ names to a clipboard.
  • Leave time to deliver specific feedback to each learner.
  • Write a note in your plan to analyze learner data after the lesson. You’ll want to utilize the data to make decisions about what instruction a learner needs next.
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How to Teach Students to Find the Main Idea

The main idea is the central theme of a story. Finding the main idea of writing can be a challenge, but it is an essential reading comprehension skill for our learners to develop. Learners who become skilled in this art will benefit from it far beyond the school gates’ perimeters. From the print of an insurance document to writing a book review, the capacity to filter through a text and identify its central idea is a crucial life skill and an essential literacy-based learning objective.

What is the Main Idea

Whether we are talking about a paragraph, a poem, a chapter, or a longer text, identifying the main idea typically requires the reader to identify the subject of a piece of writing and then locate what the writer wants us to understand about that subject.

It is best to start small. When working with learners on identifying the main idea, begin by having learners locate the main idea in a sentence prior to building up to locating it in a longer paragraph. As learners build their confidence in identifying the main idea in paragraphs, they will soon be ready to move onto longer texts in chapters and, eventually, full-length books.

A Word on Paragraphs

The main idea of a sentence is typically straightforward to identify. It is as easy as identifying the subject of the sentence. On the other hand, whole chapters or books can seldom be easily reduced to expression in the form of a single main idea. For these reasons, the paragraph offers the learner the most suitable format to practice their main idea identification skills.

Typically, if the writer knows what they are doing, we can identify the main idea in every paragraph. Think of this as the crucial point that is expressed in a subject sentence. It is usually found in the paragraph’s first sentence, with subsequent sentences offering the supporting details. However, it can happen in the middle, in the end, or even be split across the paragraph. It may even not be there at each – at least not explicitly.

Writers are a creative bunch; learners will require sophisticated means to accurately identify each case’s main idea. That is what this article will help your learners do.

How is the Main Idea Expressed?

It can appear to be a clear-cut task to define the main idea, so why is it often so problematic for learners to identify it? Typically, the central concept is expressed directly in the text and is as easy to identify as your face in the mirror.

The main idea will not always be stated so explicitly. Learners must learn to identify it, whether expressed directly or merely implied, to fully comprehend what they are reading.

The Statement of the Main Idea

Attention is the key to extracting the main idea from a text, whatever the genre. Learners need to identify the most relevant info from a work and develop a statement expressing its main idea.

We refer to this as The Statement of the Main Idea. This statement should be a sentence or two. The process of composing this statement starts by asking questions about the text. Not every question will apply to every text, but they will provide a good starting point for extracting the main idea from any writing piece.

●     Who – Can the learner identify the person or people the text is about?

●     What – Can the learner identify the subject or underlying theme of the text?

●     When – Can the learner identify a reference to a specific time or period?

●     Where – Can the learner identify a specific place or a setting?

●     Why – Can the learner identify a reason or explanation for what happens in the text?

●     How – Can the learner identify a method or theory?

These questions can help learners draw out what the text is about. The two most essential questions of those above are who and what. These will be sufficient to elicit the info required to identify the main idea. But the litmus test of whether the learner has been able to absorb the text’s main idea is whether they can summarize what they have read in their words.

The Litmus Test: Summarizing and Paraphrasing

We know through our experience in the class that learning-through-teaching is an extremely efficient teaching strategy. It also offers teachers chances to observe and assess their learners’ grasp of the ideas they have been working on. Similarly, when we ask our learners to summarize or paraphrase an extract’s main idea, we create a chance to observe their comprehension of what they have read and their ability to identify the main idea therein.

You can also encourage learners to practice these skills by challenging them to paraphrase and summarize things you have said in class, even during lessons unrelated to literacy.

Strategies for Identifying the Main Idea

Get The Meaning

In this method, give each of your learners a copy of a nonfiction paragraph. If you wish, you can differentiate for learners’ different capabilities by choosing extracts of varying complexities.

Have learners:

1. Ask who the paragraph is about.

2. Ask what the essential info is about the who or what.

3. Restate the main idea in no more than ten words.

You can model this strategy for your learners by walking them through the process. Project the text on the whiteboard for shared reading and, with focused support and prompting, have them answer the initial inquiries.

Part 3 of the process can be undertaken as a shared writing piece to model the correct approach before learners begin to do it independently. Later, when learners have written independent statements of the main idea, they can compare their responses and offer feedback. Feedback sessions can give the learner another chance to redraft and modify their accuracy and brevity statements.

Through these processes, learners will improve their ability to identify the main idea and express it clearly and concisely.

Get the Meaning – Longer Texts

It is harder to reduce a longer extract down to a single central idea – much less a whole book! There will be times, however, where learners will be asked to do just that. They will need a systematic approach to support them in such circumstances. The following process provides for an efficient approach:

1. Look at the title – The title provides a good indication of the text’s subject or helps orient the reader in the main idea’s direction.

2. Look at the first and final sentences/paragraphs of the extract. The main idea will be given and summarized in these sections of the content.

3. Look for repeated words and phrases. The frequency with which they happen will be a strong indicator of their importance and point learners in the direction of that elusive main idea.

4. Instruct learners to ask themselves, “What does the writer want me to know?” – Answering this question successfully will require the learners to uncover the main idea of the text.

As the learners work through each of the above steps, they can highlight, underline, or circle the keywords and phrases and then utilize these to help them form their statement of the main idea.

Locating the Main Idea

Inferring the main idea requires the learner to find patterns in the details. As when the main idea is explicit, the learner must first identify the writing subject before determining what the writer wants the reader to know about that subject. Suppose the main idea is not stated explicitly in a sentence or paragraph. In that case, it is implied, and learners must consciously work to uncover it by analyzing the context to infer the main idea. Focused practice of this strategy will soon make it become second nature. The learner will become skilled in identifying the main idea even when it is not stated explicitly.

Conclusion

To identify the main idea, learners should first decide the text’s subject. They will then need to work out what the writer wants us to understand about that subject. This is the spirit of how to identify the main idea. Learners should understand that the main idea may not always be explicit, and they may need to work hard to uncover what the text conveys. Whether the main idea is implicit or explicit, each paragraph will have a main idea, and learners should understand that it can be found throughout the paragraph.

Through perseverance, learners will utilize various strategies and, at times, a fusion of these strategies to uncover the main idea with accuracy and speed. As time passes, they will apply these strategies to various texts over various lengths and complexities.

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An Overview of Explicit Instruction

Have you ever attempted to follow a new recipe, only to identify that a step is missing or unclear? Or maybe the directions had too much info for your brain to process.  The same thing can happen when your learners learn something new. Some learners can make inferences to figure out the next steps or to work through ambiguity. But for learners who learn and think differently, one unclear direction or having too many things to remember can be a deal-breaker.

That’s why it’s so essential to make sure your instruction is as clear and complete as it can be. One way to accomplish this is to utilize explicit instruction. This is a way to deliver direct, structured instruction to learners—from kindergartners to high-schoolers. It makes lessons crystal clear and shows learners how to start and succeed in a task. You can utilize explicit instruction with your whole class. Or you can utilize it to pre-teach or re-teach a skill to one learner or a group of learners.

Why Use Explicit Instruction?

Explicit instruction is a well-researched, highly efficient teaching strategy. It can be beneficial to both learners and educators.

It makes inquiry-based learning easier. Explicit instruction gives learners who are usually left out of inquiry-based learning the info and skills they need to engage. Explicit instruction can also teach learners the processes needed for inquiry-based learning. Explicit instruction isn’t just for basic educational skills. Learners often need explicit modeling and feedback on higher-order skills like decision making and social skills.

There’s less of a load on working memory. Learners who learn and think differently often have trouble with working memory. For example, they may struggle to understand the idea of a long series of directions. Explicit instruction breaks learning up into smaller chunks, lightening the “cognitive load.”  That frees up learners’ working memory, which is essential because learning skills require a lot of working memory.

Attention issues become less of a barrier. Without explicit instruction, learners who struggle with attention may not attend to the most important ideas in a lesson. With explicit instruction, you cue learners into the essential info.

It helps overcome language barriers. When you utilize consistent and clear language in each step of instruction, students aren’t overwhelmed with managing new language demands. Explicit instruction is correlated with increased achievement gains among ELLs.  

It allows for various degrees of practice. Explicit instruction is also efficient for learners who need intensive intervention. In your school district, you may call this support “Tier 3 intervention.” These learners need to practice a skill 10 to 30  times more than their peers. Explicit instruction can give them those chances. It also provides you with a structure to make sure learners are capable and successful as they practice.

It allows data collection and analysis. Each time learners practice a skill, you have a chance to collect data. After the explicit instruction cycle, you can utilize that data to plan your next lesson, whether re-teaching or moving on to the next skill progression. This info helps you meet the needs of each learner and be nimble in your curriculum development.

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A Guide to Teaching Phonics

Teachers and parents alike should work together to facilitate a child’s learning, especially during the child’s early development years. In this guide, I will share some vital information on how to effectively teach phonics.

Phonics: What are they?

To put it simply: phonics has to do with teaching students about the alphabet and how it works. After a child memorizes the alphabet, the next step is to learn how to read. Phonics is the method of teaching the awareness and understanding of how letters, when put together, form words.

Reading and writing are milestones that have to be developed through time, and it starts in early childhood. Phonics helps bridge the gap between reading and writing. Mastery of both skills will help children become good readers and writers.

Once students develop phonemic awareness (the awareness of the relationship between letters and the words they form), they will learn how to read faster and more fluently.

How to Teach Phonics: The Three Stages

  1. Pre-phonics Stage: 

Children should master a few skills before being taught phonics. These skills are listening, sound reproduction, and sequencing. Listening skills can be developed by playing games such as Simon Says. Sound reproduction can be developed by having the child mimic a sound you make while paying attention to the shape of the mouth when they make the sound themselves. Sequencing has to do with following the order of letter sounds in each word. Mastering these skills will facilitate their learning.

  • Sounds and Actions

Use actions and sounds that can be associated with letter sounds to help students remember them. For example, when teaching students the sound of the letter “b,” teachers can do the act of dribbling a ball. There are many simple sounds and movements that teachers and parents could use. 

  • Letter and Sounds

At this stage, students have to be taught the difference between letter sounds and names. Some letters can have more than one sound. This can be taught through stories and flashcards that show that the same letter can be used differently. For example, show a flashcard of the word “cat “and “ceiling.” When teaching these to children, teachers should try to speak slowly and sound out the letters 

Teaching Strategies

Teaching phonics is exceptionally detail-oriented and plan-intensive. Children do not have the longest attention span, so it’s best to plan your lessons to maximize the learning opportunity.

  1. Keep phonics lessons under 20 minutes long.
  2. Devote 10-15 minutes to phonics every day. To help children develop the habit and practice of reading, it is better to maintain short but consistent sessions. This will help them build a routine that they can bring with them as they get older.
  3. When teaching a class, maintain a good pace to cover all required topics. To help students who are falling behind, you may opt to revisit lessons. Keep lessons interesting by using various learning materials like games, flashcards, and outdoor activities. There are apps and tools that students can use to learn.
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Issues to Consider While Designing for a Reading Intervention For Elementary Students

A key to maintaining an effective literacy program is making sure that reading interventions reach students who need them. Before the COVID-19 Pandemic, supplementary tutorials targeted learners struggling with reading skills to support their education. However, after the pandemic struck, there was a massive switch to online learning platforms during the first quarter of 2020, which disrupted many in-person reading tutorials.

Researchers predict that as a result of this shift, only about 70% of the reading progress attained in a regular year is achievable by the start of the 2020-2021 school session. To prevent this statistic’s consequence, we will have to make concerted efforts to provide reading interventions, whether in-person or virtually. For teachers intending to set up a reading intervention program, here are five factors to consider.

1. Get the timing right.

Struggling readers will need extra tutoring sessions to catch up with their peers. Though the timeframe will depend on the learner’s age and special needs, it is advisable to plan for an intervention that meets  4-5 days weekly with 20-40 minutes each day. It is also essential that the program recruits seasoned and proficient teachers to guide these kids through this phase.

With the interference of COVID-19, finding intervention time can become intricate, but it’s not impossible. For schools running a hybrid-schedule, they should create a cohort program that meets the reading needs of struggling kids.  If the intervention mode is virtual, reaching out to the pupil’s families is vital because you need to know their schedule and their expectations for the program. You’ll also want to make sure that a guardian will be at home during lesson periods to help the kid through special issues or resolve any technological difficulties.

2. Evaluate the students at the beginning and frequently.

Without knowing the strengths and Achilles heel of the students, it isn’t easy to provide meaningful interventions. Before the intervention program begins, an initial evaluation is vital to recognize students who require reading intervention. After the intervention has already started, monitoring the student and frequent evaluation exercises helps the teachers track progress and adapt their classes to bolster the students’ gains.

In virtual learning settings, instructors will need some creativity to administer these assessments since they can not evaluate everyone in one meeting. They can achieve this by asking a student to stay behind after each group video meeting, arrange person-to-person video calls, and utilizing online test tools. You can educate the guardians and caretakers about these tests’ essence to encourage the pupils to participate genuinely in the evaluation tests.

3. Utilize a broad approach and sequence.

Although the initial evaluation of the student’s literacy proficiency should reveal their deficiencies, you should consider taking the broad approach and teaching with a standard syllabus. Expert literacy researchers around the world emphasize the merits of teaching phonetics sequentially. They assert that it improves student retention since the brain stores knowledge based on the relativity of information.

Though phonics is a big part of the picture, executing effective literary intervention entails that teachers should focus on all aspects of literacy; to lay the foundation for advanced instruction in phonological awareness, articulation, lexicon, and comprehension.

4. Make adequate preparations before each intervention session.

Teachers should prepare adequately with the right materials before any learning session. Teachers must not exhibit any signs of fatigue as every minute allocated for literacy education counts. Every lesson should contain direct teaching, guided practice, and independent practice. They must also prepare to clear up any misconceptions the student may have.

For virtually-delivered interventions, explore the possibilities of contemporary and uncontemporary teaching methods. Distribute resources like video clips that illustrate concepts like letter-sound associations so that learning can continue beyond live intervention sessions. In situations where the teacher has to wear masks during in-person classes, video clips that model the production of spoken sounds should be available for learning.

Students’ attention can veer off during online lectures, so it is wise to engage all the kids’ five senses through fun games. You can make arrangements for these students to have their own manipulative sets at home.

5. Connect isolated skills to authentic reading and writing.

You’ll need to use anything helpful for improving your students’ literacy proficiency, even if it means creating a connection with their favorite skills that seem unconnected to reading and writing. These isolated skills will have to contribute to their mastery of reading and writing.

To pull this off, you must model the intervention format to accommodate open learning beyond the curriculum’s confines and then give them the opportunities to apply these skills to their literacy advancement. When giving the learners tasks on reading and writing, illustrate how they can use their skills in the literacy intervention sessions in everyday life.

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Many low-income students use only their phone to get online. What are they missing?

Crystle Martin, University of California, Irvine

For many of us, access to the Internet through a variety of means is a given. I can access the Internet through two laptops, a tablet, a smartphone and even both of my game systems, from the comfort of my living room.

However, this access is unequally distributed. Although nine out of 10 low-income families have Internet access at home, most are underconnected: that is, they have “mobile-only” access – they are able to connect to the Internet only through a smart device, such as a tablet or a smartphone.

A recent report, “Opportunity for all? Technology and learning in low income families,” shows that one-quarter of those earning below the median income and one-third of those living below poverty level accessed the Internet only through their mobile devices.

This leads to limited access: A third of families with mobile-only access quickly hit the data limits on their mobile phone plans and about a quarter have their phone service cut off for lack of payment.

So, what impact does this type of access have on youth learning?

What changes with a computer connection

My research has explored underserved youth’s use of technology to discover and participate in content related to their interests. Having access only through their mobile devices means that low-income families and youth do not have the same access to the Internet as those with other Internet connections.

One-fifth of families who access the Internet only through their mobile devices say too many family members have to share one device. This means that the amount of time each individual has to access the Internet is limited.

This can be a barrier to learning for young people. It can limit their access to resources to complete their homework, as well as create barriers for other learning. Thirty-five percent of youth who have mobile-only access look online for information about things they are interested in. But this goes up to 52 percent when young people have access to an Internet-connected computer.

When young people have access to an Internet-supported computer, it facilitates their learning.
leah, CC BY-NC-ND

When young people have their own access to the Internet, they have an opportunity to engage in connected learning – learning that is based on interest, is supported by peers and has the potential to offer better opportunities for the future.

A 2014 paper on the use of digital media as a learning tool highlights how learning around interests can be supported through online resources.

The paper tells the story of Amy, a participant in an online knitting community, Hogwarts at Ravelry, which combines both interest in knitting and the Harry Potter series. Amy finds inspiration in the vast knitting pattern library of the group and receiving support from others in the community. She begins to develop, design and write patterns of her own. And, as a teenager, she begins selling her patterns online.

Amy’s access to a stable Internet connection and her own dedication allowed her to dive deep into the activities of the community. Over time, it allowed her to become more active and engaged in knitting.

Another example of what youth can accomplish online comes from my 2014 research on a professional wrestling fan community, a set of forums where professional wrestling fans get together virtually to discuss the many facets of professional wrestling.

Maria, a professional wrestling fan, seeks out an online community because she lacks local support for her interest. Through her participation, she realizes her deep enjoyment of writing. She carries this back into her English class and the school newspaper. This eventually leads her to take creative writing as a second degree in college.

Maria spent hours on her computer carefully crafting her narratives while participating on the forum. With a mobile-only access, she would not have had the amount of time online, or the amount of bandwidth, required for this work. This is supported by the fact that only 31 percent of children with mobile-only access go online daily as compared to 51 percent of those with other Internet access.

How low-income youth get left behind

Mobile-only access to the Internet can create serious barriers for youth who want to access content and educational supports.

As part of my research, I have been conducting workshops in libraries located in low-income communities, using an online coding program that is not yet available on mobile devices. In one of the workshops, students needed to work on projects outside of the sessions.

Because of the limited technology access at home, the librarian held additional open hours so the youth participating in the workshop could work on their projects outside of the workshop hours. A few youth had access to their own computers, but the majority had only mobile access.

Young people who have computer access create may better projects.
Jeff Werner, CC BY-NC-SA

The youth with computer access at home created more complex projects. This was partly because they had more time to develop, modify and problem-solve their projects. But it was also because the coding program was available to only those with computer access. These youth also seemed to develop a deeper interest in coding potentially due to this greater level of exposure.

Need for better understanding

What becomes evident from the data from “Opportunity for all? Technology and learning in low income families” and from the examples from research is that having access to the Internet only through a phone can have an impact on young people’s access to learning opportunities.

Designers, educators and researchers need to be aware and continually create more equity through mindful decision-making.

Amanda Ochsner, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California who studies how underrepresented groups of young people engage with games and digital media, argues that when designers and developers take the time to understand young people’s digital lives, they are ultimately able to make better tools. As she said to me:

In offices where the most recent models of laptops, tablets, and iPhones are abundant, it’s far too easy for those of us who develop educational tools and technologies to misjudge the technological realities of the young people the education tools and technologies are designing for.

Just how young people access online, in other words, matters – a lot.

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The Conversation

Crystle Martin, Postdoctoral Researcher , University of California, Irvine

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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The Business of Lesson Plans

Creating and writing lesson plans are activities common to basic teacher education courses. Before entering a classroom, young educators are taught how to meticulously plan their time for the benefit of their students.

Through online collaboration though, many teachers now take a different approach to lesson planning than even a decade ago, and it has stirred up some controversy from both sides of the aisle.

Buying or borrowing lesson plans

The most obvious way that teachers avoid the traditional lesson planning concept is by finding ideas, or even entire plans, online. This shortcut can be as simple as finding an in-class activity idea on Pinterest or as complex as downloading a grading period’s worth of lessons that are grade-appropriate. Critics of this type of planning cite ethical issues, saying that a teachers’ lesson plans should always be original. Creating these plans is simply part of the job and should never be outsourced.
Even if teachers spend just a few hours per week on lesson plans, that is a few hours of time that educators could feasibly be doing something else. The internet has made so many other professions more efficient – shouldn’t teaching benefit too? If sharing lesson plans cuts out some of the non-student interaction time, then maybe that is a cause worth getting behind.

Selling lesson plans

It’s well-known that the teaching profession is not a get-rich-quickly (or ever, really) way to earn a living. Some educators are finding ways to earn some extra income: by writing and selling lesson plans. A teacher who spoke with the New York Times said that she brings in an additional $36,000 annually from selling her original lesson plans on websites like Teachers Pay Teachers. On one hand, if teachers are developing something that is both useful to other professionals and boosts their own bottom line, why not? As long as these lesson plans are carefully vetted and that the teacher on the receiving end does due diligence to check the accuracy, what’s the big deal? In this context, selling lesson plans can be compared to people who knit or sew and sell their patterns online for others to buy and use. The buyer can make customization changes based on preference and knitting or sewing style, but if the end result turns out the way it is supposed to, everyone wins.

It is not that simple though. According to the Copyright Act of 1976, when teachers complete lesson plans for their classrooms, those materials are technically owned by the schools. Along that line of thinking, a lesson plan then sold to other teachers infringes on the inherent copyright of that material. Legalities aside, should a teacher who is already being paid to write a lesson plan for his or her own classroom then “double dip” and make even more revenue on it?

And what about teachers who keep the lesson plans they write for their classrooms and the ones they write on a freelance basis separate? Shouldn’t these teachers be able to do both things, as long as their primary teaching job does not suffer?

This is an area where it seems like teachers are expected to live up to an impossibly higher standard than other professions. By common cultural standards, any lucrative activity outside classroom hours is deemed a distraction to the purpose of teaching children. How, though, is making a little extra cash and therefore being a little more satisfied with a teaching salary really that bad? Why does it bother so many people, inside and outside the teaching industry, when teachers find a way to get ahead?

What is your take? Do you buy or sell lesson plans – or do you find either ethically wrong?

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