How to Prepare Students for the English Section of the ACT in 5 Minutes a Day!

The best advice I've ever received when it comes to grammar instruction is to: teach it for five minutes a day, follow a cumulative pacing chart and use activities that mirror the ACT.  The pacing chart is roughly as follows:

Capitalization
End Punctuation
Subject/Verb Agreement
Commas
Commas and colons
Dashes and semicolons
Sentence fragments
Run-on sentences
Contractions
Possessives
Verbs and adverbs
Verbs and tenses
Parallel structure
Nouns and pronouns
Sentence structure

Many of the topics above have multiple rules, and are therefore, taught over the course of several weeks.  Every fifth week the rules that weren't mastered are retaught and students are reassessed as needed.  All together, these skills are stretched out over the course of about 35 weeks.

On Mondays students go over the grammar rules for that week and see examples.  On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays they complete short 3-4 question activities like the one pictured below.  These activities have short excerpts from real texts on the left with mechanics mistakes.  On the right are three to four questions with four multiple choice options that correlate to underlined and numbered sections of the passage on the left (just like the English portion of the ACT.  There are  four options and students choose the correct one.  Their work is graded immediately and the rules are reviewed when the class goes over the answers.  On Fridays students are quizzed on the rules for that week.

In addition to review weeks, students are reviewing all the rules they've been taught so far as they appear repeatedly in the weekly ACT-like exercises.  (For example, the first few weeks I have them practice capitalization rules.  The fourth week, I have them practice capitalization and end punctuation.  The fifth week is review.  The sixth week I have them practice capitalization, end punctuation and subject/verb agreement.  And so on and so forth.)  Also, once a rule has been taught, I expect them to apply it when they write.  They must recognize their mistakes and self correct their errors when they edit their papers.

So, why is this the best advice I've ever received?  The first is that you can teach grammar for the first five minutes of class, and it doesn't take over your lessons.  Secondly, students feel successful because it starts with the easy skills and proceeds cumulatively.  Finally, it has been proven to raise students' English ACT scores by several points.

Well, there you have it.  This is one of my best secrets.  I hope that you find it useful too.  If you have any questions, let me know!

Fabulous Freebies: High School Level Interventions

There is so much focus on teaching students the basics at the elementary level.  Sadly, there are so many high school students who have missed some of the basics.  Here are some of the common misunderstandings that I've seen high school students repeatedly struggle with, along with some intervention resources.

#1: Fractions...So many students who struggle with math are not able to visualize or conceptualize what it means that there are wholes and parts of a whole.  Therefore, being able to use fractions--or decimals and percents--to manipulate and calculate is a struggle.  Here are a few resources that I've seen used that do not appear babyish to high schoolers...

Common Core practice worksheets that are leveled and come with answer keys.

Skittles Lab that practices fractions, ratios, percents, and decimals.

Free online lessons and activities that are connected to various math skills

#2: Comprehending nonfiction....One of the skills that students struggle with is pulling the main idea and details out of nonfiction texts.  Unlike fiction, struggling readers often do not realize that nonfiction texts use a variety of structures (spatial, compare & contrast, cause & effect, etc.).  If they did, they would become more strategic readers and successful at comprehension.  Here are a few resources I've used...

Text structure printable worksheets and answer keys

Guides to reading in the content areas

I'll be posting more upper level intervention strategies and lessons as the year goes along.  Let me know if there is something in particular you'd like One Less Headache to address and we'll do our best to help provide ideas and offer resources.

My Favorite Websites for Teaching High School English

I have a pinterest board dedicated to useful teaching websites.  Here is a list of my favorite ones to use with my English classes...

Poem Hunter will provide you with the poems from any number of poets.  I use it all the time.  Whenever I need to find a poem it is the first place I look.  It has short bios on a ton of well known poets along with online texts of their writings.  It is very handy.  The site is super user friendly and comprehensive.  

Prezi.com is a website that allows students to make cooler versions of power points.  It takes them a class period or so to play around with it and figure out how to use all of the tools, but once they know how, they love it.  They can add videos, pictures, objects, colors, themes and pretty much everything else that they can do with powerpoint.  But, the visual effects are unique and fun to play around with.  They can save them online and share them with anyone who has an email address.  It is definitely worth checking out.

Purdue Owl is a great resource with a wide variety of writing tips.  The material is most appropriate for  students in middle school through college age students.  I use it all the time as a reference for how to create bibliographies and citations using MLA formatting rules.  Once my students have shown me they know how to format their bibliographic entries, I let them cheat by using easybib.com.

6 + 1 Writing Traits  is a well known writing, teaching and assessment framework.  The title refers to the traits in writing that we want all of our students to develop over time: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation.  The common language is useful in aligning teachers across contents and grade levels to provide united expectations of students.

Writing Fix and English Companion are websites that have a ton of resources for teaching writing and reading.  They include strategies, graphic organizers, etc.  They have a wealth of information and are worth perusing.

Finally, Grammar Bytes  has a wealth of grammar activities to help reinforce grammar rules with yours students.  The sentences are fun and contemporary.

Tips For Helping Older Students Struggling With Reading

Every year students come to us who are performing below grade level.  We are charged with the task of catching them up; and, the farther behind they are the more ground we are expected to cover.  The stakes are high, and I’m not even talking about the relationship between job security and test sores.  Multiple sources from The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander to the new movie The House I Live In illuminate the link between test scores and incarceration.  So, yes the stakes are very high—especially for our students.  I have spent years working with students who are academically behind.  The needs I saw motivated me to go for special training in literacy. 

So, what have I learned?  I’m not going to offer you a magic wand, but here are a few strategies that I rely on:

1.  Put high interest literature in their hands.  For high school students reading at upper elementary or middle school levels I like the Bluford series.  It is a series of chapter books about a bunch of students all attending them same school.  They sell for just $2.  Also, I've found male students seem to prefer comedy, horror and nonfiction.  They rush to grab up the newspapers and sports magazines.  They need to be reading a lot and the easiest way to do that is to give them something to read that interests them.
2.  Teach word parts.  Students who have phonics skills, but poor vocabulary will struggle to read longer, unfamiliar words.  Teaching them word parts gives them confidence when approaching grade level vocabulary.  They learn patterns in the language and are able to define more words.
3.  Don’t embarrass them by making them read aloud a text that they haven’t rehearsed.  The best way to get them to read is to have them read something that they have written themselves.  That way they will be totally familiar with the vocabulary because it is their own.  This gives them success and improves their much needed self esteem when it comes to reading.
4.  Model, model, model.  Students who struggle do not know what good readers do (visualize, ask questions, predict, summarize, make inferences, etc.).  They need to see and hear what that looks like.  This includes reading aloud to them and modeling your thinking as you read.
5.  Give them something to do when they read.  Many students have a hard time staying focused. Give them a reading they can mark up and a guide for what to mark up.  This will help them keep their mind and body (…well, hands at least) engaged.  If you can't do this, give them a graphic organizer.
6. Don't give them a text to read independently if they can't read it independently.  This is huge.  Watch out for this pitfall.  You can calculate grades levels of text online if you don't know what it is.
7. Teach them the parts of a textbook and have them practice navigating it for information.
8. Let them work in groups to read and discuss.  The strategies I like the most are the jigsaw and reciprocal teaching.  Social engagement helps keep them focused.  Hearing explanations from a peer instead of a teacher also makes concepts more accessible to them.

Again, I don't have all the answers.  Far from it.  But, if this is helpful and you have any other questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section.