Today I’m really excited to highlight some information that will make your teaching lives a lot easier! I see a lot of teachers and schools developing very elaborate test prep strategies and plans to get kids ready for tests, and while I believe this comes from the very best place, I also think we’re missing three things that are crucial to students’ success on assessments:
- Can students summarize what they’ve read? Can they figure out the gist of the text?
- Can they read the prompt and understand what the prompt is asking them to do? I can’t tell you how many times I see students write and write in response to a prompt, and it’s not what the prompt asked them to do! We’ve got to fix that.
- Teach kids a very simple technique for how to highlight and pick out the most important information that they’re reading. Check out the books and blog posts below for instructions on how!
For more help and tips on how to help kids to think critically and respond to what they are reading check out these past blog posts and books:
- Blog – How to Teach Kids to Decode a Writing Prompt – the Task
- Blog – How to Teach Kids to Decode a Writing Prompt – the Audience
- Blog – How to Teach Kids to Decode a Writing Prompt – the Purpose
- How to Teach Students to Think Critically about Text
- How to Teach Students to Write Informational Text
Books can be found at amazon.com or at https://jackson-consulting.com/buy-stuff/