Education Articles for Teachers & Educators

STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING PARENT-TEACHER COMMUNICATION WITH A PHONE-CALL PLAN OF ACTION
Imagine This:  You have a student in your classroom that consistently cannot or does not meet classroom expectations.  You have tried implementing the right responses to her misbehaviors in class, and you have worked diligently to correct behavioral concerns so that she can be successful within your class.  You have referred her to an administrator, and you have called her parents a few times.  After your third phone call to her parents, her mother begins to defend her child’s behaviors, and comments that you never have anything nice to say about her child.  Or, maybe her mother is simply exasperated with her child and is communicating her own frustration about her child to you.  This negative response (often cultivated in families by phone calls bearing bad news) don’t do anything to support or help the child.

Have you chosen a passage for your students to read in class but weren’t sure whether the level of complexity was right?  Do you wonder about the real Lexile® level of STAAR passages or other standardized tests?  Or, perhaps you’d like to type up your own sample passages for students, but want to make sure you are writing text at the appropriate level for your students.

This post will review two sources to help you analyze texts more deeply, so that you can provide your students the right level of texts to help move them towards mastery of their grade level standards.

This summer, take a look back at the way you structured your lesson content and analyzed word problems in math and science.  We’ll review a few areas you should consider when selecting problems for your students and determining how to deliver the lesson content in an appropriate way, aligned to the required depth for the standards.   This content corresponds to page one of our math & Science Lesson Analyzer and Lesson Plan.  Continue reading to download the Lesson Analyzer & Lesson Plan.

With the recent changes made to the SAT^®, the ACT and SAT are now quite similar.  Despite this, there are still some major differences to consider.  Students who are getting started with the college admission process may be considering which test makes the most sense for them based on their individual skills and comfort level.  To help these students make this critical decision, we have assembled a list of factors every student should consider when deciding if they should take the ACT, SAT or both.  Use the following criteria to help you decide as you prepare for the college admission process.  Getting started on the right foot by choosing a test that works best for you, may make the difference between getting that scholarship or getting into your top-choice school.

A Comprehensive Set of Graphic Organizers & Reading Comprehension Tools For Educators & Parents

Use these 7 reading comprehension strategy tools and graphic organizers to guide reading lessons and tutoring sessions with your student(s).  Designed for teachers, parents or students, these tools help build reading comprehension by allowing students to more effectively organize information found within reading passages, in books or on exams.  Feel free to download, print, or share!  If you are interested in more free reading tools, please let us know in the comments section below.