One of my consistent educational mantras is that students have to read independently to get smarter. The stats on this are clear: According to the U.S. Department of Education, of the 8th-grade students who scored in the top one-quarter on a national reading test in 2011, 36 percent read for fun almost every day. Of the… Read more »
Posts Tagged: literacy
The neuroscience of sustained silent reading
Despite all my best efforts as an English teacher, the most important way for my middle schoolers to become stronger readers was probably just for them to sit and read. “Sustained silent reading” was in fact enshrined into the middle school English/Language Arts schedules in my district: it’s what the first 12 minutes out of… Read more »
Grammar Rules
Cross-posted on the TFAnet EdTech 101 blog. Teaching grammar was always a challenge for me. The holy grail of instruction models for many fellow ELA teachers in my DC Region cohort was “multisensory grammar,” a creative approach to teaching how to use the parts of speech that involved visual, kinesthetic, and narrative elements. But it… Read more »
Reading and Scheming: How Schema Theory, Cognitive Frameworks, and Background Knowledge Support Literacy Instruction
As a plucky (read: obnoxious) middle schooler, I got frustrated easily trying to understand why others had such trouble operating technology. Once you’ve used one kind of digital watch, camera, or computer program, I always felt, it wasn’t that hard to get your bearings with a different model and figure out how different buttons, controls,… Read more »
Hi, I'm Andrew Plemmons Pratt. I am the Program Manager for New Classrooms in Washington, DC. (Though opinions expressed on this site are entirely my own.) I taught 7th-grade English in Prince George’s County, Maryland as a member of the 2010 Teach For America corps. I write about literacy & edtech here—along with stuff like industrial archeology and bread baking.