In-depth Interactive Learning Tools Because You Want Results Top 59 Tips for Teachers to Differentiate Reading and Writing Instruction with Software A Free Report for Teachers
In-depth Interactive Learning Tools Because You Want Results Top 59 Tips for Teachers to Differentiate Reading and Writing Instruction with Software A Free Report for Teachers Teachers often work with students from a great range of backgrounds, ages, abilities, and skills. They find themselves instructing mixed-level classes comprised of students with very different needs. Some students struggle with reading and writing. They have trouble with basic skills and vocabulary. Writing reports and papers is difficult for them. They quickly fall behind grade level. Other students are advanced. They require enrichment. If they aren t challenged, they may start to lose interest in school. Still other students are in the middle. Since these students may comprise the majority, teachers may feel pressured to teach to the middle that is, to gear both the curriculum and learning process towards this group. Reading and writing should be taught so that all students understand why these skills matter. All students benefit from being taught important concepts and skills. They should all receive access to the same core content. Yet a uniform approach to the learning process cannot work for struggling, middling, and advanced students. Therefore, students should receive differentiated instruction benefiting their individual readiness level, learning style, and interest. Students should be introduced to reading and writing skills in an enjoyable way that not only engages their attention, but offers instant feedback. Software designed to improve specific reading and writing skills is a great tool for accomplishing these goals. Good reading and writing skills software offers clear prompts; step-by-step directions; a step-by step approach; focus on technique; rehearsal and revisiting of content; context-sensitive feedback, and ways for monitoring individual student work. Merit Software writing programs are designed with these features in mind. Hundreds of teachers have reported Merit s effectiveness in helping them teach reading and writing skills in classroom and lab settings. They have used Merit Software programs to fulfill curricular goals, encourage critical thinking, boost state test scores, and save time. Based on feedback from educators, here are 59 tips for teaching writing both effectively and efficiently with Merit Software.
Top 59 Tips for Teachers to Differentiate Reading and Writing Instruction with Software 1. Assess Student Reading Levels: Learn whether individual students are likely to be struggling, middling, or advanced. Look over recent grades, test scores, and sample assignments. Gauge the range of students preexisting skills and knowledge. What are your reading goals for these students? What content are they learning? What kinds of short- or long-term projects might help them? What are your overall goals for the class? 2. Talk to Students About Reading: Ask what kinds of reading students do for social studies, science, and language arts classes. Do they like reading? Why or why not? When is reading easy? Difficult? What do students like reading about? What don t they like? What new ideas have they recently learned? What new concepts don t they understand? 3. Read to Share Emotion: Ask if students read outside school. Do they use books or read online? Where do they read? When do they read? Have students bring in and share one paragraph that they really like from a text they are reading. Ask them to explain what they like about it. 4. Give Reading Time: Help students find books and articles that they can relate to. Make sure that the reading level for student-selected materials is not too hard for struggling students. Make sure that middling and advanced students choose something that will challenge them. Give students time to read what they like. 5. Create Reading Groups: Break students into small reading groups of 4-5, either by level or by thematic interest. Assign each student a different role, such as director of discussion; chief of connection (with the job of making connections between the reading and real life); president of plot (with the job of summarizing the story, as well as explaining main ideas and themes); language leader (with the job of identifying figurative language); and vocabulary master (with the job of identifying vocabulary that other group members might not know). Let each group set up its own schedule for discussions and assignments. After reading groups finish each book, have them regroup and rotate jobs. 6. Learn to Like Language: Have students work in pairs, grouping each pair by reading choice or level. Ask each pair to read together through a page that they like. Each pair should write down the six words that seem most interesting. Any words they have trouble understanding should be looked up. One student could be responsible for finding the words and the other responsible for writing down a brief definition. Next, put two different student pairs of different levels together. Ask the more beginning pair to teach their new vocabulary words to the more advanced pair. 7. Dive Into Dictionaries: Give students time to look up vocabulary words from social studies, science, and language arts class. Make sure struggling students understand what nouns, verbs, and adjectives are. Make sure struggling and middling students understand abbreviations such as n., v.t., and adj. 8. Be Vocal About Vocabulary: Let all students know that building a vocabulary is something that people do their whole lives. No matter how many words they know, they will always encounter more! 9. Get to Know Reading Software: Have students use a Merit reading or vocabulary program, going through Tryouts to see where they need the most reading skills help. Ask students to identify a skill they have used before, as well as skills they find easy or difficult, on a piece of paper. List the names of different skills on the board, along with the phrases I know this, I find this easy, and I need to work on this below each skill name. Ask for a show of hands regarding each skill; jot down the number of students who respond to each phrase. Collect students written responses regarding skills.
10. Assess What Students Understand: After class, use the Merit Teacher Program Manager (TPM) to see how students did on Tryouts. Are student self-assessments accurate regarding what they know and what they find easy or difficult? How much understanding do individual students have about where they are in the learning process? Can you predict which students will need more practice with certain reading skills, and which will master new skills faster? 11. Build Student Reading Skills: Have students return to their Merit reading or vocabulary program and go through the Warmup section. Note that all students whether struggling, middling, or advanced will be applying skills as they learn them. 12. Give Reading Another Voice: Ask students to pause from their Merit Warmup section. Explain how to click on Voice, and choose between Kate and Paul. Explain options for controlling voice speed. Students who are struggling or middling should start out by using the Slow voice rate, with the goal of resetting the Merit voice speed to Normal during a future software session. Students who are advanced should be encouraged to start out with Normal voice speed, and to use the voice only sparingly. 13. Link Skills to Content: As students reach the Merit Workout section, ask them to think about the software content. Have students note the topic of a software text that is familiar to them, as well as a software topic that is unfamiliar. Request that students list new vocabulary words from software texts that they regard as either interesting or important, along with definitions from the software. Struggling students should list 5-6 words. Middling and advanced students should list 7-10 words. 14. Make Reading Software a Shared Experience: Follow up each software session with class discussion. Ask students to look over their notes from the software session. Can they describe a reading topic that they had encountered before? What software reading content was new to students? What new questions do students have? What reading topics would they like to learn more about? 15. Flash Through Vocabulary: Reinforce Merit reading vocabulary by making sets of flash cards. Break students into groups of 3 according to reading level. Ask students to write a vocabulary word on one side of the card and its definition on the other. One group member should pronounce the vocabulary word, the second should state its definition, and the third should use the word in a sentence. Listen to groups, making sure they are using vocabulary correctly. Ask group members to trade roles after a while. 16. Troubleshoot Right Away: Review any problem areas for reading or vocabulary in the classroom. Discuss what skill(s) students found most difficult when answering Merit reading or vocabulary questions. Later, use the Merit TPM to assess students progress on the Workout section. 17. Boost Confidence: Have students print scores after completing a Merit Workout Section. Discuss scores with students. Are they pleased with their progress? What areas seem easier or more familiar to them? What new things have they learned? What will be their goal for their next software session? 18. Relate Software to Curriculum: Supplement Merit by giving students time to read material from social studies, science, and language arts classes, so they may practice reading and vocabulary skills in a variety of areas. Give struggling, middling, and advanced students reading material/quantity according to their level. 19. Practice Note-Taking: Break students into groups according to their reading level. Give each group a short sample from a social studies, science, or language arts text that matches their reading level. Ask groups to decide together what the most important sentence in each paragraph is, and then to underline it. Have groups circle new vocabulary words. If they are unsure about what a word means, they should circle it, look it up, and write the meaning of the word in the margin. Next, they should mark brackets around phrases or facts they do not understand, draw an arrow in the margin, and write a question mark. Check over what groups are doing, and answer any questions that they have.
20. Apply Skills to New Content: Break students into groups according to their reading level. Give each group a short sample from a social studies, science, or language arts text that matches their reading level. Have groups find the key words that tell the main idea. Can they list 1-2 details? Find a fact or an opinion? Explain text sequence? What can they infer from their text? Help students understand that they can apply the same reading and vocabulary skills to all school subjects. 21. Practice Summarizing New Content: Break students into groups according to their reading level. Give each group a short sample from a social studies, science, or language arts text that matches their reading level. Have groups once again apply their new reading skills to each subject area. This time, also ask them to write sentences explaining what they are reading. 22. Share Vocabulary from New Content: Write out 3 short lists of vocabulary from either social studies, science, or language arts class. Divide students into mixed-level groups of 3. Assign a list to each student. Ask students to create sentences using vocabulary according to the list they were assigned--so each person in a group will be working on a different list. Have group members get together to share sentences and teach each other new vocabulary. 23. Create Weekend Readers: Suggest that struggling and middling students read something they like for an extra 20-25 minutes a day on weekends. Suggest advanced students read something they like for an extra 25-30 minutes a day on weekends. 24. Create Careful Readers (A): Suggest that students keep a reading journal. Ask them to write down what they read, when they read it, and who wrote it. If they are starting new language arts reading, they should write down a list of characters and who they are. If they are starting new social studies or history-of-science reading, they should write down a list of people mentioned in the text and who they are. Under each reading-journal entry, students should write their own comments, questions, and new vocabulary words. 25. Create Careful Readers (B): Give students prompts to help them with reading journals. Have them complete statements such as: This makes me think of ; The person I identify most with is ; I felt upset when ; I laughed when ; The part that makes me think of my own life was ; I liked the description of. Look over student reading journals and offer some encouraging written responses. 26. Create Critical Thinkers: Have students work in mixed-level groups of 3. Give each group a different short text. Ask groups to imagine they are making up reading/vocabulary questions for the Merit program being used. Have each group create and write their own skill-related question and answers. Struggling students should start out by writing a vocabulary question such as What word can replace this underlined word? Middling students should start out by writing a question about reading content such as What is the main idea? Advanced students should write out answers to the questions. Next, distribute copies of all texts being used. Bring groups together. Ask each group to take turns challenging the rest of the class with their reading/ vocabulary questions. 27. Encourage Enrichment: Divide students into small, mixed-level groups. Have each group imagine they are creating a crossword puzzle for the Merit reading or vocabulary program being used. Ask them to choose words from classroom material, and then work together to write, draw, and design their own vocabulary puzzles. 28. Talk About Test-taking: Have students return to their Merit reading or vocabulary program, going through the Finals section. Discuss how the skills they are practicing may be applied to standardized tests. 29. Praise Achievement: Encourage students to print out scores from the Merit Finals section. Ask them to look over all the Merit scores that they have printed out. How do they feel about what they have learned? Have they learned a lot, or just sharpened their skills? Is reading for class getting any easier? Faster?
30. Reassess What Students Understand: List the names of different skills on the board, along with the phrases I know this, I find this easy, and I need to work on this below each skill name. Ask for a show of hands regarding each skill; jot down the number of students who respond to each phrase. Collect students written responses regarding skills. Compare these responses to students very early responses from when they were just beginning to use Merit reading software. Have all your students made progress? How much? Can you predict how well they might do in another class next term? Top 59 Tips for Teachers to Differentiate Writing Instruction with Software 31. Listen to Students: Ask what kind of writing students do for social studies, science, and language arts classes. Do they like writing? Why or why not? When is writing easy? Difficult? What kinds of writing do students like to read? What do they dislike? 32. Talk with Students About Writing: Ask if students write outside school. Do they only write for homework? Do they keep a journal? Do they write letters, e-mail, text messages, or web blogs? Create poems, songs, stories, or comic strips? What kinds of things do they like to read? Can they imagine that there is any kind of relationship between writing and reading? 33. Assess Student Writing Levels: Learn whether individual students are likely to be struggling, middling, or advanced. Look over recent grades, test scores, and sample assignments. Gauge the range of students preexisting writing skills and knowledge. What are your goals for these students? What forms of writing are they already familiar with? What are their individual points of difficulty? What kinds of short- or long-term projects might help them? What are your overall goals for the class? 34. Be Savvy About Sentences: Make sure that struggling students understand what a sentence is before they try writing paragraphs. Discuss how a sentence always has a subject and a verb; starts with a capital letter; ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Model complete and incomplete sentences for struggling students. 35. Be Persistent About Paragraphs: Make sure that both struggling and middling students understand what a paragraph is. Discuss how a paragraph is a block of text; is usually indented; is made up of several related sentences; focuses on one topic or idea. Model a complete paragraph for struggling and middling students. 36. Teach Specific Writing Skills: Introduce skills such as brainstorming, organizing, expanding ideas, and revising to the whole class. Review these specific skills often. Ask advanced students to model these skills for the rest of the class. 37. Get to Know Writing Software: Have students use a Merit writing program, going through Pre-Writing and inputting sentences for Writing-Body. Break the class into pairs, according to level. Ask each pair to share sentences with each other. 38. Create Confidence: Follow up each session by asking what students found easiest when using their Merit writing program. What was familiar? What new things did they learn about brainstorming, outlining, and organizing? 39. Troubleshoot Right Away: Review any problem areas for writing in the classroom. Ask what students found most difficult about brainstorming, outlining, and organizing. What questions do they have?
40. Get Ready for Revising (A): Tell your students that it s okay to make mistakes that s what first drafts are for! Let students know that it s fine for their first drafts to be full of spelling mistakes, or need organization. They should be using first drafts to get their ideas down and to figure out what they re trying to say. 41. Get Ready for Revising (B): Tell all students that good writers revise a lot. They add, change text, move, and remove sentences. They create multiple drafts. They continue revising until they are satisfied with what they have to say. Finally, good writers edit for spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and usage. 42. Make Writing Software a Shared Experience: Have students continue with their Merit writing program until they reach Editing. Break the class into pairs, according to level. Ask them to work in pairs, helping each other as they edit. Ask students to print their work. 43. Encourage Student Editors: Ask students to break into mixed-level groups and share their printed writing. Have each group sit in a circle to share helpful feedback. What do they like about each other s work? Do they have suggestions for each other? Did anything in their classmates writing confuse them? Is there anything they would like to hear more about? Give all students the goal of revising their work during the next software session. 44. Finish Revising: Ask students to add some suggested editing changes, and to revise their work during the next writing software session. As students finish their writing, help them transfer their completed work to disks or to a word-processing, e-mail, or HTML program. 45. Build Student Portfolios: Create individual-writing portfolios to help students develop as writers. Have students publish completed writing from Merit software sessions by printing it. Ask students to arrange their completed writings chronologically; this can help them assess their own progress, as well as feel accomplishment about their growing mastery! 46. Assess Student Writing Progress: Use student-writing portfolios for more than a final grade: use them to assess periodically where students need help. Discuss portfolio content with students individually. For example, during such a discussion, you might point out how a student uses commas in several assignments. 47. Relate Writing to Curriculum (A): Break the class into small groups according to level. Give students a short text from class curriculum appropriate to their level. Explain that their text is missing punctuation, such as sentence breaks, capitals, and commas. Have students work together to fix their text. 48. Relate Writing to Curriculum (B): Break the class into mixed-level groups of 3. Give each group copies of a different short text from class curriculum. Explain that their text is missing punctuation, such as sentence breaks, capitals, and commas. Have struggling students edit for missing capitals, middling students edit for sentence breaks, and advanced students edit for commas and other punctuation. Ask groups to review their text together, explaining the editing decisions that they made. Next, have them model their editing changes for the rest of the class. 49. Relate Writing to Curriculum (C): Break the class into small groups according to level. Give groups a short text from class curriculum appropriate to their level. Explain that their text has sentences in the wrong order. Have groups work together to fix their text. Finish by having them model their editing changes for another small group of the same level. 50. Relate Writing to Curriculum (D): If using Essay Punch, break the class into small groups according to level. Give students a short text from class curriculum appropriate to their level. Explain that their text is missing paragraph breaks or has paragraphs in the wrong order. Have students fix their text. Finish by having them model their editing changes for another small group of the same level.
51. Provide Time to Practice Writing: Ask for written responses to readings during class. Ask students to keep a reading journal to record their reactions to a reading. They should use their journal to explain what they understand, keep lists of important characters or people from readings, identify something they find interesting, identify new vocabulary words, and share questions. 52. Provide Students with an Audience: Look over students reading journals; respond to their ideas and questions. Offer thoughtful feedback in response to written assignments. Praise students for being successful, or for just trying hard! Let students know what areas still need work. Offer individual teacher-student writing conferences when possible. Be clear about your expectations with individual students; expectations will vary according to whether a student is struggling, middling, or advanced. 53. Offer Range in Writing Tasks: Try to offer writing assignments that prompt reflection and inspire students to use their imagination, rather than merely report on a reading. Struggling, middling, and advanced students might be given different writing activities based on the same topic. Or, struggling, middling, and advanced students might receive the same writing activity with each student keeping in mind your individual expectations for them. That is, advanced students might be expected to hand in longer, more complex work. 54. Offer Range in Writing Models: Provide students with models, voices, and material appropriate to their skill level. Ask them to identify cool sentences or cool phrases. What language intrigues them? Can they describe what they like about a particular voice? Ask students to try imitating a voice or style that they admire. 55. Get Ready to Write Anywhere: Ask students to do pre-writing for language arts, social studies, or history-ofscience assignments. Make sure that struggling and middling students understand that the skills they are learning can be applied to all kinds of written work. 56. Get Ready to Edit Anywhere: Request that students edit their writing for language arts, social studies, and science classes. Remind struggling and middling students about common mistakes that they need to check for, such as sentence breaks, capitals, commas, as well as common errors in spelling or usage. Ask advanced students to design an editing checklist to share with the rest of the class. 57. Talk About Writing and Test-Taking: Discuss how skills students are practicing may be applied to class or standardized tests. Explain why even during a test it is worth taking time to brainstorm and organize ideas before writing. Explain why taking time to edit, revise, and proofread will help improve test grades/scores. Give suggestions for how students might choose to pace themselves through these activities when they are under specific time pressure. 58. Create a Class Publication: Offer students the goal of sharing writing via a class publication, bulletin board, or collaborative web site. Ask students to choose their favorite piece of writing done with a Merit writing-skills program. Publish or post students work; include one piece of writing from each member of the class. 59. Hold a Formal Reading: At the end of the semester, ask students to stand up and read their published or posted work for the rest of the class. Congratulate each reader with applause. Praise all readers for progressing as writers. Celebrate student writing with a class party.
Merit Reading/Writing Programs to Differentiate Instruction Merit reading and writing programs are self-paced improvement and management tools that help students learn and apply proven strategies. Struggling, middling and advanced students receive personalized and targeted instruction. Key skills are taught in an easy-to-learn fashion. Students are given contextual help and feedback throughout. Using the Merit Text Talker, students can hear questions, answers, tips, and explanations spoken aloud. A record management system automatically records student progress, allowing teachers and tutors to create reports. Basic Skills Pack Basic Skills software that works! Intermediate Skills Pack Software that covers the basic skills students need to know. Excellent software! Provides step-by-step instruction. Students are able to see their work along with suggestions for development. - Great Bridge Middle School, South Chesapeake, VA The immediate response and praise bolsters a student s desire to do well. Thank you for this product. - Shotwell Middle School, Houston, TX SOLUTIONS FOR: Elementary School Middle School High School College Prep Special Ed - Learning Disabilities Workplace Adult Literacy - GED Prep ESL Intermediate ESL Advanced - TOEFL Prep
ABOUT MERIT SOFTWARE: Since 1983, Merit Software has been improving students basic reading, writing and math skills. All Merit programs are self-paced, skill-building programs that increase student achievement while providing measurable results. Merit Software gives everyone involved -- teachers, tutors, parents and students -- the tools and opportunities to improve learning and to attain positive, measurable results. The programs provide detailed coverage of the core competencies students require to succeed. Concepts in reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary and math are covered from the basics to higher levels. Troublesome points are identified and broken down into understandable parts. Personalized explanations and tips are tailored to each student s responses. A multi-sensory approach, made possible by including text-to-speech functionality in many of the English language programs, reaches out to students in ways not achieved by simply reading text on a screen. Built-in tracking permits teachers and tutors to quickly discover individual areas of concern and to plan lessons in response to specific student needs. Instructors receive a clear and current measure of student achievement. Options for meaningful communication with students, parents and administrators are increased. Merit customers get the support they need to achieve success with free technical help, which is available by email and telephone. For information, pricing, full-working demos, and a FREE evaluation CD-Rom contact us direct at: MERIT SOFTWARE 121 West 27th Street, Suite 603 New York, NY 10001 T: 212-675-8567 800-753-6488 F: 212-675-8607 www.meritsoftware.com