Teaching Reading Comprehension and Comprehension Strategies

Tim Shanahan

January 2016

Teacher question:  In terms of teaching comprehension to grade 3-5 students, what is the best way to help the readers transfer the strategies they are taught so they can be independent, self-regulated readers?

Shanahan’s response:  If you want to teach reading comprehension strategies to on-grade level students between the ages of 8-10, we have […]

• Articles
• Comprehension
• Differentiated Instruction and RtI
• Higher Level/Critical Thinking
• Metacognition
• Reading
• Research-Based/Evidence-Based
• Teaching

How Minds Work: The Key To Motivation, Learning, And Thinking

By Alice Thomas

All children are motivated. However, not all children are motivated about that which we want them to be motivated. (The same is true for adults.) How, then, do we keep students in our classrooms motivated and engaged?

The underlying knowledge a teacher must have to orchestrate differentiated instruction day after day, hour after hour, […]

• Articles
• Higher Level/Critical Thinking
• Learning

How To Increase Higher Level Thinking

By Alice Thomas and Glenda Thorne

Most of us don’’t think about thinking – –we just do it. But educators, parents, and legislators have been thinking more about thinking, and thinking about how we want teachers to teach our students to think.

As students move from elementary to middle to high school, they are asked by their […]

• Articles
• Higher Level/Critical Thinking

How To Answer Children’s Questions…In A Way That Promotes Higher Level Thinking

By Alice Thomas 

Parents and teachers can do a lot to encourage higher level thinking, even when they are answering children’s questions. According to Dr. Robert Sternberg, a professor of psychology and education at Yale University, answers to children’s questions can be categorized into seven levels, from low to high, in terms of encouraging higher levels […]

• Articles
• Higher Level/Critical Thinking

Higher Level Thinking–It’s Hot!

By Alice Thomas and Glenda Thorne

Thinking Out Loud Most of us don’t think about thinking – we just do it. But with all the new emphasis on accountability and increased student achievement, educators, parents, and legislators have been thinking more about thinking, and thinking about how we want our teachers to teach our students to […]

• Articles
• Higher Level/Critical Thinking

Teaching For Wisdom In Our Schools

By Robert Sternberg, Ph.D.

The top-level managers who brought down companies such as Enron, Global Crossing, and WorldCom were, for the most part, nothing if they were not smart and well-educated. Yet one cannot help feeling that something fundamental was missing in the way they were educated. Similarly, today’s consummate terrorist defies the stereotype of the […]

• Articles
• Higher Level/Critical Thinking

Teaching For Creativity: Two Dozen Tips

By Robert Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams

What makes a person creative? Why are some people more creative and others less so? We often think that the creative people are the ones who have some rare and unattainable ability, but it is not so. Creative people are ones who make a decision: They decide to buy […]

• Articles
• Higher Level/Critical Thinking