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A teaching strategy to help students make connections between the ideas in readings, their own experiences and beliefs, and events in history and the world. Facing History offers teaching strategies that nurture students growth; literacy and critical thinking skills within a respectful classroom climate. By giving a purpose to students' reading (i.e. focusing students on paying close attention to text to find connections), this strategy helps students comprehend and make meaning of the ideas in the text. This strategy can be used when reading any text - historical or literary - and it can also be used with other media as well, including films. It can be used at the beginning, middle or end of the reading process - to get students engaged with a text, to help students understand the text more deeply or to evaluate students' understanding of the text.

In 2015, a sample of students in Year 4 in Australian schools participated in PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study). PIRLS focuses on Year 4 as the point in schooling where most students are moving from 'learning to read' to 'reading to learn'. However, reading is much more than a tool for education or work. It can take the reader out of themselves and their own experiences, engage and develop emotions and provide new perspectives.

"I know many teachers have tried some version of this activity. I want to add my voice to theirs: this is a F.U.N. way to get students talking about what they have read and what they might want to read - both important factors in helping students of all ages develop their identities as readers. A clear explanation of how speed dating with books operates, educational value and a brief video clip of secondary students selling the favourite books.

"I know many teachers have tried some version of this activity. I want to add my voice to theirs: this is a F.U.N. way to get students talking about what they have read and what they might want to read - both important factors in helping students of all ages develop their identities as readers. A clear explanation of how speed dating with books operates, educational value and a brief video clip of secondary students selling the favourite books.

"We all can agree that one of the most rewarding experiences in teaching is helping that one student find their voice and take a commanding role to contribute to the classroom learning experience. Allowing students the opportunity to engage in discourse that involves externalizing, elaborating on their thinking, and receiving feedback will lead to construction of their knowledge and understanding of a topic. However, these discussions require students to have authority and command over their own thinking to reconstruct ideas and concepts based on their previous knowledge and existing schemas."

Even though many of today's students are "digital natives," they need to be taught proper digital skills. A digital citizenship curriculum gives students the opportunity to grow these skills over the years. Ideally, students will be exposed to digital citizenship in kindergarten, and the curriculum will become more advanced as students move up in grade level.

"Margaret Kristin Merga outlines her compelling research into this area. Of particular interest is the role of librarians in schools in supporting struggling readers, as these students may be increasingly disadvantaged as they move through the years of schooling. Teacher librarians provided support by identifying struggling readers, providing them with age and skill-appropriate materials, undertaking skill scaffolding supporting choice, supporting students with special needs, providing one-to-one matching, promoting access to books, enhancing the social position of books and reading, reading aloud to students, facilitating silent reading, and preparing students for high-stakes literacy testing."

"At a boys' secondary school in New South Wales, an annual student reading survey revealed many students say they don't like reading because 'reading is something girls do'. Linda Roden, Head of Library at St Joseph's College in Hunters Hill, knew she needed to come up with some initiatives to change these attitudes and engage students in reading."

"Schools with a strong school library program and a certified school librarian ensure their students have the best chance to succeed. More than 60 education and library research studies have produced clear evidence that school library programs staffed by qualified school librarians have a positive impact on student academic achievement. These studies clearly demonstrate that strong school library programs help all students do better academically, even when other school variables are considered. " A gateway to useful resources and research.

"When taking on the role of a curator for your students, there are a few things you can do to handpick resources that support every student in your class. In my book EdTech Essentials: The Top 10 Technology Strategies for All Learning Environments, one of the 10 strategies examines curation in the classroom and ways to curate resources that support all students."

"Wixie is an educational platform that empowers students voice and boost their self-expression capabilities. It provides students with the tools to showcase their learning using various modalities including text, clip art, video and voice recordings. Students can work individually or in teams and in real-time. They can also easily share their work as a URL, an image, an eBook, or as a PDF. "

"Whether you are guiding students through content yourself or having students read, research, or watch a video, the WICK charting process gives students an easy-to-implement method to deepen their engagement during this portion of your lesson. Instead of being stuck in sit-and-get mode, they will shift into sit-and-get-and-scrutinize-and-discuss mode as they process the lesson."

"Do you have a sufficient number of nonfiction books in your classroom or school library to meet the reading needs of students? There's an increasing amount of evidence that students not only enjoy nonfiction but are actively seeking it. There's also some indication that elementary students in particular may prefer nonfiction material by a wide margin, compared with adults. Yet, classroom collections and school libraries often don't reflect this reality."

"Every student can read a novel, and teaching students to read novels in school helps them develop critical reading skills for texts and the world. Some students appear unwilling to read because of a variety of challenges both inside and outside the classroom."

n-class example of teaching the guided reading strategy of using story structure to help read narrative nonfiction. The teacher is using the Units of Study for Teaching Reading instructional model developed by Lucy Calkins. Watch as the teacher demonstrates guided reading strategies such as looking at the cover and title page to predict what the book will be about. By providing guided reading instruction and coaching before the students read the passage of text, they will be more likely to discover answers for their predictions. After students finish reading the nonfiction passage the teacher meets with them individually to provide additional guided reading support and see if their predictions came true. For more information about teaching guided reading in the reading workshop model visit http://www.unitsofstudy.com

n-class example of teaching the guided reading strategy of using story structure to help read narrative nonfiction. The teacher is using the Units of Study for Teaching Reading instructional model developed by Lucy Calkins. Watch as the teacher demonstrates guided reading strategies such as looking at the cover and title page to predict what the book will be about. By providing guided reading instruction and coaching before the students read the passage of text, they will be more likely to discover answers for their predictions. After students finish reading the nonfiction passage the teacher meets with them individually to provide additional guided reading support and see if their predictions came true. For more information about teaching guided reading in the reading workshop model visit http://www.unitsofstudy.com

When students are routinely assigned books to read without any opportunity to act on their own judgment, many end up dreading the reading and often fail or refuse to complete it. But when we provide students with choices (even within parameters), they make their own decisions and they feel empowered and important. Empowering students to choose in these early experiences sets them up for success as lifelong readers.

"Moving to hybrid classrooms creates an even greater challenge for building community. In hybrid classrooms, some students never see each other in person, and some students never see their teachers in person. Project-based learning provides a powerful vehicle for creating a shared learning space, one that makes it clear that all students' voices are needed and welcome in the classroom."

"Make Instruction Transparent for Students For innovative practices like Authentic Learning Experiences, PBL, Design Thinking, and STEM/STEAM, it's important to bring learners inside the instructional circle. This is the traditional space of teachers. It's like learning the magic tricks of the magicians. This approach may put magicians out of business, whereas the work of teachers improves and elevates in quality because students understand what's behind the wizard's curtain."

"Reading aloud daily to students is one of the best ways to increase reading resilience and motivation, and it also helps build community. Additionally, it allows educators to connect academically, emotionally, and socially with students."

"In some cases using an alternate search engine will give students a different list of results and or may give them the information they're seeking a little faster than Google does. Here's a short list of alternative search engines for students to try: Bing, Wolfram Alpha, DuckDuckGo and GetTheResearch"

The Story Map interactive includes a set of graphic organizers designed to assist teachers and students in prewriting and postreading activities. The organizers are intended to focus on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution development. Students can develop multiple characters, for example, in preparation for writing their own fiction, or they may reflect on and further develop characters from stories they have read. After completing individual sections or the entire organizer, students have the ability to print out their final versions for feedback and assessment. The versatility of this tool allows it to be used in multiple contexts. The quality of this activity is the different foci and purposes under the grade level tabs.