Explicit directions about what to seek in a text will help students to tackle difficult assignments. Teachers will have to clarify the meaning behind the mission while helping students master challenging texts and will also have to improve comprehension by explicitly identifying what information students need to absorb from a text.

Results of tests of students' skills and knowledge conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the state accountability tests required by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program should not be compared. The two tests are based on different standards and have different measurement functions and judging the results of one…

Kindergarten teachers explore reading comprehension by using a surprisingly complex array of strategies. Kindergarten can be converted as a workshop of readers and thinkers, who take seriously the work of making meaning from books and also building on their interests helps students make authentic connections.

Although lack of professional support is usually cited as one of the main reasons for the high attrition rate among new teachers, evidence shows that even when such support is available teachers continue to leave the profession. Meanwhile, it is the lack of attention to the personal needs of the novice teachers that leads to frustration and it is…

News analysis and entertainment media is part of a media literacy that helps students access, analyze, evaluate and create messages using media in various forms. Media literacy is a key asset in a democracy as well as a bridge to reading comprehension, as skillful media use and script-reading activities can support the English acquisition skills,…

"Educating School Leaders", an evaluation report on current education administration programs in the US, highlights the inadequate training such programs offer potential school administrators. Problems range from offering irrelevant curriculum to conferring inappropriate degrees and the report offers a nine-point template that would be useful for…

Students can learn how history is made by shifting through facts and fiction. A living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, set up a 1627 Pilgrim village has helped students learn more about other cultures and times that goes deeper than sentimentality or entertainment.

The US people are becoming less concerned with what's good for children and more concerned about compliance with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy. The NCLB is constricting the curricular thinking of education leaders rather than spurring instructional improvements.

A research study has found that literary reading is declining among the US adults. The various factors affecting the decline in literary reading in the US are discussed.

The secondary school teachers can make a difference even if they do not have formal training in teaching reading in the content areas. Teachers can support improved reading comprehension by introducing model approaches that encourage interaction with text, which helps students gain insight into their own reading strategies and also increase their…

The inability to teach anything in high school other than what the curriculum dictates due to lack of time, and the near impossibility of getting to know one's students due to large numbers who are generally indifferent and often ill behaved, are two of the most common refrains sung by teachers of adolescents. A profile of four teachers, who…

Students who believe that the teachers and other adults in their school care about them as individuals are more likely to succeed academically making a case for the concept of school connectedness. A conference convened with a view to identifying the state of research-based knowledge relating to school connectedness formulated a set of core…

Neuroscience and developmental psychology can give useful insight into adolescent behavior that is believed to be the result of the interplay between body chemistry, brain development and cognitive growth. The new findings offer guidance to educators on how to channel adolescent energy into healthy directions.

A glimpse is provided into a normal school day of an adolescent whose activities and responses are governed by the different stages of physical development. How an adolescent goes through constant fatigue, emotional ups and downs, social pressures and low impulse control compounded by poor nutrition, is a lesson in survival.

The authors argue that increased focus and pressure for high academic achievement, particularly among more highly-motivated and successful students, may have serious negative consequences. They present a number of strategies designed to help reduce both causes and consequences associated with academic stress and improve students' mental and…