While many students are given credit of some sort for reading books during the school year (or completing a summer reading assignment), they are rarely, if ever, given credit for re-reading material. Yet some of the greatest insights into literature can only come about on a second, third, or fourth read. And, some of the … Continue reading “The Value of Re-reading Books”
Category: Education
Physical Exercise and Learning
When you want to make your body fit, you exercise. When you want to make your brain sharper, you also exercise? And we’re not talking about crossword puzzles or mind games here, but actual, physical aerobic exercise. Why should that be? Let’s take a look at what we know so far about the correlation between … Continue reading “Physical Exercise and Learning”
Teaching Your Child to Love Reading
Reading is an essential part of life, and better readers make better learners, no matter what they’re trying to learn. According to the American Library Association, “Individuals read to live life to its fullest, to earn a living, to understand what is going on in the world, and to benefit from the accumulated knowledge of … Continue reading “Teaching Your Child to Love Reading”
Chunking to Improve Reading Comprehension
Trying to read a large amount of text, whether it be a fourth-grader encountering their first chapter book or a chemistry major working their way through the latest whitepaper, can be a daunting experience. Chunking is the process of dividing up a text into shorter, more manageable segments. This provides the reader with words in … Continue reading “Chunking to Improve Reading Comprehension”
Targeting the Young to Promote Adult Literacy
As part of the Development Lexicon Project study, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin are currently studying how words are read by people ranging from first-graders to seventy-year-olds. The researchers are focusing on three different characteristics of a word: its length, its frequency of use within the language, and its … Continue reading “Targeting the Young to Promote Adult Literacy”
Visualization and its Role in Reading
Visualization is a large part of the learning process. We picture how a word looks or mentally “see” how a character looks as he is described by the author. But what if you weren’t able to visualize? Some people can’t. The condition is called “aphantasia,” and we’re only beginning to understand how this affects the … Continue reading “Visualization and its Role in Reading”
Common Core and Vocabulary Instruction
What is the best way to teach vocabulary to young students? The creators of the United States’ Common Core curriculum indicate that how vocabulary is introduced is the key to students’ success and that using the real world as context for that introduction can be highly beneficial. Nell K. Duke, a professor of literacy, language, … Continue reading “Common Core and Vocabulary Instruction”
Motivating Your Students to Read
One of the big questions in education today, especially in reading, is how do you motivate your students to learn? How do you get them to put in the necessary attention and hours to master the subject? One way is to lead by example. If the students are working on a silent exercise or are … Continue reading “Motivating Your Students to Read”