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Zimmerman, S., & Hutchins, C. (2003). 7 keys to comprehension: How to help your kids read it and get it. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press. 7 Keys to Comprehension is a powerful read that I would recommend for both teachers and parents that want to encourage reading for enjoyment and understanding. This book is simply written and well organized making it an easy read for teachers and parents. The book outlines the 7 key strategies that good readers use in order to create meaning. What I really like about this book is that each chapter is designated to one of the key strategies, making it easy to look up and refer back to. Inside each chapter the authors discuss each strategy and why it is important to reading success. The authors also provide examples of how to help children at varying levels (preschool, emerging, and advanced) with each strategy. As a teacher, one of my favorite things about each individual chapter is that a list of picture books and more advance books is given to use when working on the specific strategy. I also like that at the end of each chapter tips are provided to highlight the main idea of the chapter and simple ideas to implement the strategy. When I was teaching first and second grade, this book was always on my bookshelf because it was so easy to pick up and refer back to when I had students that were struggling. This was also a book that I had shared with my coworkers and parents because the strategies are used in every grade on some level and are not geared specifically for classroom use, but also for parents to use at home while reading with their children. Many times parents would ask me how they could help their child with reading and I would often lend them this book or give them strategies from this book to use at home. In lower elementary so much time is spent on decoding skills and learning to read the words, but a huge part of reading is comprehension and although stude

 http://www.amazon.com/Motivation-Breakthrough-Secrets-Turning-Tuned-Out/dp/0743289617/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1328620537&sr=1-2-catcorr The Motivation Breakthrough: 6 Secrets to Turning On the Tuned-Out Child, author Richard Lavoie, is a well written resource guide for teachers who wish to figure out how to motivate their students. Parents can learn from the guide as well, but the author primarily addresses educators who seek to improve relations with their students and figure out how to help them work to potential. Richard Lavoie is a consultant and a lecturer with over thirty years of experience as a teacher and an administrator at special education facilities. He explores strategies and techniques that are proven to inspire children to learn. He outlines strategies that will be most effective in igniting the interest and eagerness of kids, especially given their different needs. He outlines several different ways that children are motivated to do their best work. He teaches of the six Ps to motivate children. Some seek praise; others seek prizes, power, projects, or prestige. Some are people-oriented and are motivated when they work with people. Six different chapters address the various motivating factors and how they can be identified and used in the classroom. Personal accounts from Lavoie's years as a teacher allow us to see how he has put his lessons into practice. I appreciate the way that Lavoie challenges teachers to find out what motivates their students, even those students with special needs or who are classified as difficult. He encourages Parents and teachers to work together to spark any child to reach his/her full potential. He covers learned hel

Wendy, it looks like maybe your review got cut off. You can add to it by adding an additional comment.

This sounds like an interesting book, and strategies for inspiring students to learn is always a good thing. I would like to add this book to my professional library. Even though I will not be a special education teacher per se, I have special education students in my classroom. Anything that I can do to help them will be valuable.

This is a great website for students and teachers of any grade level. It's great for students in a jam and needing help or a more permanent system for helping students progress in multiple areas. Topics include math, science, humanities, finance, and economics ranging from basic to highly complex lessons. Students can track their individual progress; parents and teachers can target and monitor the progress of their children/students. It's free, easily accessible and a great tool for learning. Take a minute if you don't know about this website, it's really quite amazing.

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This site has a lot of good resources pulled together for teachers to use to find high-interest reading pieces for teaching to students such as Aesop's Fables, word-a-day, and comic strips. It seems really useful! Language Arts resources for lesson preparation, for teachers, parents, and students, Internet4Classrooms

This article is all about how the diet of a student impacts their ability to learn. It is a very interesting article. Many people don't understand what kind of an impact nutrition has on learning. This article explains some of the ways that diet impacts learning and ways to make corrections to students' diets to improve performance. This is an article that is just good to read for general knowledge. I would love for many parents to read this article knowing what some of my students are ingesting on a daily basis.

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This article is about teacher-student relationships. The student-teacher relationship is one of the most important factors of teaching that can be neglected. The article found that enhancing teacher-student relationships is necessary to raising student achievement because that achievement is linked to adolescent's need of having secure attachments. This is like students attachments to parents, but only with teachers. Thus research has shown that students with secure attachments do better in school. It also offers some ways in which teachers can improve teacher-student relations. Some of these methods include having an increased sensitivity and have positive interactions with students, to be well-prepared for class and hold high expectations for students, be responsive to students and provide choices whenever possible, and help students be kind, helpful and accepting of one another. By understanding the roles in which teachers have in their relationships with students will help educators become more effective.

This article is about teachers developing positive peer relationships in the classroom. Peer relationships and the experiences associated with them are an important aspect of the development of a children and adolescents. These experiences happen on different levels that include general interactions with peers, friendships, and in groups. With friendship it can serve the function of providing self worth, affection, building of relationships. Having supports help with personal problems, parents, being active. Peer groups are intimate groups of peers who interact regularly. Many peers groups according to research have shown to have similar GPA's, college aspirations, time spent on homework, and general engagement in school. Sociometric status is unique because it concerns overall peer acceptance. So if a child or adolescent is popular, average, neglected, rejected, and controversial has a major effect on one's peer relationships. All of these levels one's peer relationships such as the ways they develop, the experiences that come from them, and the types of pressures associated with them.

I really enjoyed this book, and it gave me great insights into how students are wired. How do they take in information and how do students use that information. There are four styles of students. The book goes into different ways of working with students and talks about how students concentrate, remember, and understand information. I liked the book because it provided useful information and tips on how to interact with students. I realize that learning styles have gotten a bad rap by some educators. Now having said that learning styles do present an interesting piece of the puzzle to how students learn. It is important to note that a learning style is a preference rather than an ability to learn. Individuals have a tendency to like information or processing to be done a certain way because there is a familiarity and comfort level. The awareness of a learning style can assist educators in setting students up for success by phrasing information in certain ways or pointing out that this information may be more uncomfortable for individuals to learn because of the way it is presented. The book is organized by learning style category and then by subject areas like concentration, understanding and remembering. The first six chapters focus on learning styles, and the remaining six chapters delve into specific topic areas as each relates to learning styles. The main topics of the book are learning styles, and three central topic areas related to learning. The topic areas are concentration, remembering, and understanding. The overall message of the book is that every person may have a dominant learning style, however each person has a certain amount of each learning styles' characteristics. Moreover as students, parents, and teachers become aware of their learning style it is meant to help them achieve and adapt to others who are not wired that way, not to be used as an excuse for poor performance or I can not do something.

You raise some important points, LeAnn. I think also it is important to help students (and ourselves?) learn to tap into other styles to further develop them.

This is a great site that has tons of information about why reading aloud is important. The site also has some great printable brochures to share with parents about reading with their children.

thanks for sharing Lori. Always looking for information to send home with my students

This is a great website that I use often. 'Read, Write, Think' is excellent because it provides useful resources for grades k-12. This site provides teachers with classroom management resources, professional development, parent and after school resources, and learning objectives. My favorite part of this site is under the classroom resources tab they provide a plethora of lesson plans (great place to get ideas), and terrific interactive lesson plans too! I hope you enjoy because this is one of my favorites :)

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This article was very interesting to me. I teach reading in an urban district so 'Delivering What Urban Readers Need' caught my eye. The article talks about the reading difficulty in schools that are predominately minority and economically disadvantaged. This article contains information on: 'An Acute Problem', 'Strategies for Urban Readers', 'Provide Balanced Reading Instruction', 'Identify Those At Risk', 'Provide Supplemental Instruction', 'Encourage Active Student Responding', 'Teach Within Small Groups', 'Monitor Student Learning', 'Create Peer-Mediated Learning Environments', ' Practice Nonexclusionary Classroom Management', 'Help Parents Reinforce Learning', and 'Offering Learners Their Best Chance'. I found the section on providing a balanced reading instruction to be the most relative and intriguing to me. After reading this article, I feel more confident then ever that all students need repitition! "Good reading instruction is explicit, intensive, and systematic. Such instruction is beneficial for all learners, but it is nonnegotiable for students at risk for reading failure." This article is important for teachers in urban districts or even if you have 'at risk' students...truly worth a look.

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This blog written by Maria Salvadore is very encouraging for adults that have young children or work with young children on a daily basis. This blog points out the facts that when young children are engaged with their reading, they are more likely to always remember the books they read at a young age. Parents and other adults will see what books become the child's favorite ones. These favorite books will be the ones that the child wants to read over and over again without skipping any parts of it. Teaching children the benefits of reading at a young age will most likely make them avid readers when they grow up. Reading Rockets' children's literature expert, Maria Salvadore, brings you into her world as she explores the best ways to use kids' books inside - and outside - of the classroom. Books entertain, educate, inform, engage, and more - more than we may realize. Readers meet others and see themselves in them.

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The ability to read well is the most important skill children can acquire. Reading ability and the desire to read vary significantly among groups of children, however. This article discusses the results of a study taken in 98-99 of kindergarteners. It provides information on how schools and families can improve the reading skills of native English speaking children, particularly poor elementary school level boys of color. It states that boys typically learn to read at an older age than girls, take longer to learn, and comprehend less easily than girls. It talks about reading genres that boys prefer, such as adventure, science fiction and fantasy and books that have characters like themselves. They discuss the value of reading aloud to students and in providing silent reading time along with a wide variety of books for boys to choose from. Lastly, it gives suggestions for parents and communities to provide opportunities for young people to help engage them in regular reading.

Based on reading this article, what strategies might you incorporate in your classroom/school? Have you previously engaged in any practices to increase boys' reading?

I always try to do a survey with students for likes/dislikes, strengths/weaknesses. I use this information to help students find reading material they are interested in and give them a choice when reading. I also purchased books like Guiness Book of World Records, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and MythBusters to put on my informational book shelf. Boys seemed to have liked these books very much.

The article I read was inspirational and made me think about my teaching style/methods in a whole new way. The article was about helping children use literature as a way to grow intellectually and emotionally. This article described that no matter what the medium, we must create educational experiences that strive to make the individual learner the central focus-the star of the lesson. If we do this, then the lessons have an outstanding chance of helping children grow. Throughout the reading, a study of an inner city, African American adolescent named Kevin is depicted. Kevin struggled to succeed in school and in life. He received tutoring from the author of this article (Terrence Hackett). After getting to know Kevin, Hackett realized that he had a difficult life and the fact that Kevin saw himself as a survivor. Kevin's home life was in turmoil in ways that are unfortunately all too common for inner-city single parent families. As his tutor, Hackett decided to have him read the novel, "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen. This book united his world in a meaningful way. Kevin's real life was a survival story. This book matched his lived experience. It was personally relevant to him, and as a result he was interested and engaged.

It's probably not realistic to make every student a star in every lesson. Being aware of different ways to reach different students--and being wiling to try--is important. Thanks for sharing this article.

I believe we need to make learning and reading relevant to all students. It is a challenge to find ways to engage all students, but I think we can come up with common themes with kids in our classrooms as a springboard for doing this. Thanks for the link! :)

just an article I stumbled across...additionally, the page contains a platform for a bevy of opinions on this "hot topic".  Poke around if you get a chance. 

This website allows you to create a "corkboard" page where you can link all your favorite websites for your students to use.

Well done, Jamie! This could also be a way to curate resources for a content unit.

What an interesting idea! I would love to create one for the math classes I teach. I always have parents asking what they can do at home for review. Having a central location for them to go to would be a great educational tool. Thanks for sharing.