Nedra Isenberg

• It's the one-third who don't know all the letter names who seem most likely to become struggling readers.
• The bottom line is that most U.S. schools have no plan to provide the sorts of classroom instruction that at-risk kindergartners need.
• For example, no researcher attempted to teach a skill, such as finding the main idea, in a single week; rather, researchers typically scheduled many consecutive weeks of main idea lessons to foster growth of that ability. However, few comprehension skill or strategy lessons in core programs last for more than one week.
• Core reading programs fail for three reasons
• They require little actual reading
• They don't promote high-success reading. "High-success reading" typically refers to independent reading or reading with 98 percent accuracy or better, reading phrases with expression, and reading with 90 percent comprehension
• hey don't offer self-selected reading

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• Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have the opportunity to choose what they read.
• If students initially have trouble choosing texts that match their ability level and interest, teachers can provide limited choices to guide them toward successful reading experiences.
• In fact, research shows that reading at 98 percent or higher accuracy is essential for reading acceleration.
• Sadly, struggling readers typically encounter a steady diet of too-challenging texts throughout the school day as they make their way through classes that present grade-level material hour after hour. In essence, traditional instructional practices widen the gap between readers.
• These studies show that it doesn't take neurosurgery or banging away at basic skills to enable the brain to develop the ability to read: It takes lots of reading and rereading of text that students find engaging and comprehensible.
• skill practice (Allington, 2011). These findings have been consistent for the last 50 years—yet the typical reading intervention used in schools today has struggling readers spending the bulk of their time on tasks other than reading and rereading actual texts.
• Fall, Webb, and Chudowsky (2000) found better outcomes when kids simply talked with a peer about what they read than when they spent the same amount of class time highlighting important information after reading.

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• yahoo

• They like having choices, and there are many ways to offer students choice. The choice can be about which content is to be covered, the timing for covering it, whom they work with, what process they follow, what environment they work in, what product they will produce, what resources they will use, and how they will be assessed.
• change the instructional technology, such as showing video clips or playing audio segments that enhance the content being covered; and create fun, energizing rituals that you can return to when students are falling asleep. When change is balanced with predictable structure, students stay excited about content while feeling safe and secure.
• Building in time for specific and frequent feedback from you, and from other students, helps keeps students engaged. Stopping on a regular basis to check how students are doing provides informal cognitive assessment for you and affective gratification for them (in that they know you care about their learning).
• The second type of relevance in school occurs when we connect new information to prior knowledge, helping students see connections "in context." Because students lose attention frequently during a class period, good teachers constantly remind students of what they have just covered, connecting it to new information
• Students also need abundant opportunities to verbalize. We voice our ideas in order to make sense of the world. Setting up experiences in which students can explain what they think they have learned is a prime form of mental rehearsal that leads to retention.
• If we can't share our love and passion of our content in the classroom, then why are we teaching?
• Brain research shows us that our students have been affected by the multimedia world in which they live. Our students constantly seek novelty and change. We can't compete with this desire, but we can use its attention-getting characteristics to involve them in class activities. When we add choice, contrast or change, challenge, feedback, relevance, and engagement to our instruction, we more readily engage the minds of our students, focusing their attention and igniting their desire to learn.

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• Project progress as of last night. Too tired to work on it tonight. A couple nights ago I wasn't happy with it at all but I left it alone and by last night I tweaked it and was fine with continuing. I keep telling myself my first attempt doesn't have to be perfect. :) Hopefully I'll be able to sleep tonight and be ready to add another piece to the puzzle tomorrow.

• Sock Puppets this app can be used in many different ways-

• You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.
• Stop thinking you’re not ready
• Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you.
• The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
• “Will this matter in one year’s time?  Three years?  Five years?”  If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.

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• Hyperfocal distance is defined as  the closest distance at which a lens can be focused while keeping objects at infinity acceptably sharp.