How can we design a teen literacy programme that works? As per Helly Nahmad literacy programme aims to raise all students’ reading proficiency levels in a specific educational setting. Effective literacy programmes for middle and high school students include motivation, metacognition, vocabulary training, reading and writing across all subject areas, and programme evaluation, to name just a few.

Teaching literacy to adolescents is a difficult task. Teachers of reading in middle and high school must simultaneously motivate their students to read and assist them in mastering subject material. Teachers of teenagers may also need to work with some kids to have them reading at grade level. The following observations by Helly Nahmad contain some practical advice for educators working with teenagers to enhance their reading abilities in order to accomplish these diverse goals.

You May Also be Interested in: Helly Nahmad | Identifying Literacy Difficulties vs Disabilities

Recognize the Population You Want to Reach by Helly Nahmad

Of course, teaching skills are essential, but so is knowledge of the genres of books that appeal to young adults. Ask your students about their reading preferences and passions. To provide your pupils with works that reflect and broaden their horizons, get to know the new authors in different literature. It enhances the likelihood that students of all ages will continue to enjoy reading and may ignite a fresh passion for the written word if you give them engaging, well-crafted material.

Dividing the enemy

Each kid in a classroom possesses a distinctive mix of interests, reading proficiency, and learning styles. The possibility that all students will succeed increases when children are placed in smaller groups based on their similar interests and reading levels. Students with lower reading levels are more likely to engage constructively when students with higher reading levels do not constantly overwhelm them.

Volunteer to Teach Students Who Struggle with Reading

To truly appreciate literature, one should put in the effort to comprehend what is being read. It’s crucial to identify pupils who struggle with reading so that they can get the assistance they need. Helly Nahmad also emphasises how crucial it is to address pupils’ underlying hearing and vision problems, which are frequently the cause of reading difficulties.

Join in with them

The adolescence and early adult years are a period of significant change. They are only now starting to realise how much control they have over their futures. This encounter can be both interesting and disturbing. Some students develop a strong resistance to all sorts of adult guidance as a result of this new information. By allowing students some latitude, teachers can partially avoid this innate conflict. Give them a choice from a wide range of books rather than assigning them all the same book. Give them some freedom to choose how to demonstrate their expertise as well. Allow them to create a play based on the book they read or a movie trailer highlighting the best parts of the tale.

Give them some tools

Teachers want their pupils to have the tools necessary to carry on learning even after class has ended. The tools that young adults need to become readers and learners for the rest of their life are laid out in Helly Nahmad’s learning center’s Cognitive Strategies Toolkit. As they read, students will gain skills in goal-setting, questioning, making predictions, and applying what they have learned to their own situations. Students who possess these skills can continue learning long after they have graduated.

Adolescent literacy instruction is difficult, but it may also be rewarding if you love reading and want to instil a love of literature in your kids.

Instructional Techniques: Their Value

Numerous tried-and-true teaching techniques are essential for efficient classroom training. Without a plan, teachers blithely impart knowledge that doesn’t appeal to kids or hold their attention.

Strategies energise lessons, build a feeling of community, and stimulate student participation. Some students may even be able to use these techniques independently when they study new material as they become accustomed to the different strategies teachers employ.

Teaching in the Classroom of a Strategy to Improve Adolescent Literacy

The term “instructional strategies” refers to the methods, procedures, and strategies used by teachers to better educate their students. These strategies are employed by teachers to help their lessons meet standards and support the learning objectives of their pupils.

Teachers should be very knowledgeable about various teaching strategies and have access to a wide range of resources. This is advantageous for teachers since it promotes class involvement and maintains students’ interest in the material being covered.

Teaching Students in Innovative Ways

Your students are all unique individuals. They bring different viewpoints, worldviews, and objectives to the group. It should come as no surprise that different students prefer different strategies for learning and remembering knowledge. This emphasises how important category distinctions are. Each learner can gain from specialised teaching techniques through the differentiation process. The optimal method for each student’s particular cognitive style can be used to study the content.

Helly Nahmad acknowledges that you can place children in reading groups with others who have comparable reading abilities. It may also suggest letting pupils engage in tasks designed to suit their preferred learning styles. To illustrate their understanding, some pupils would finish a word search, while others might write a summary, and yet others might decide to draw a picture.

gaining knowledge via doing

Students engage in activities that are both academically and personally significant during project-based learning. Through this form of training, pupils can gradually gain competence and knowledge. A project may take a few days, a few weeks, or an entire semester to complete.

In a project-based learning setting, students take on difficult tasks and look for solutions to real-world problems. In order to demonstrate what they have learnt, they present their work to an audience (such as other students or members of the community). Through project-based learning, students gain information and hone their skills by investigating fascinating, challenging, and real-world problems.

Learning Collectively

The utilisation of student-led, collaborative projects is another excellent educational strategy that has been demonstrated to reach and maintain the attention of a wide spectrum of students. Instead of focusing on each student’s success individually, you should plan your lessons so that each small group succeeds in its objectives. This teaching method is popular with pupils because it enables them to make up for their weaknesses while enhancing their strengths.

While some students may have a more aesthetic viewpoint, others might be more outgoing or intellectually inclined. The combined efforts of multiple students are typically greater than the combined efforts of any one student.

Conclusion

Reading is described as a complex process that requires readers to use their past linguistic, topic, and cultural knowledge to interpret and make sense of a text. Reading instruction does not end with primary school but rather continues throughout a reader’s life. A reader’s proficiency develops over the course of a lifetime through engagement with texts in a wide range of genres and extensive reading for a variety of purposes.

Just as teachers must think about their philosophical foundations for instruction, including their values and concepts that impact judgements, students must master literacy skills appropriate to each scenario. A commensurate change in the literacy assistance offered outside of school is required to accommodate student development. Many students squish through the gaps of a broken educational system. The main argument of this book is that equipping students with knowledge of and practise in good learning strategies is a critical component of the solution. Improving educational results will require work on many fronts. Cognitive and educational psychologists have recently focused on learning methods that are efficient and easy to apply.

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They see families as a critical part of every child’s education. Even better, they help families become hotspots for learning. From the classroom to the dinner table, NCFL’s programs help parents and children move from where they are to where they want to be. I love this approach because I know that while my kid’s schools play an important part, what we do at home to continue their learning is equally important.

When I was asked to be an advisor to NCFL, I instantly said yes. That is why I want to tell you more about who they are and what they do.

NCFL views education as a family affair. Every parent is an asset; every family is a resource. Whether it’s reading on grade level or pursuing higher education, the results propel families towards achieving their dreams and our country towards success. It may not get talked about in the press much, but it is more important than ever.

Sometimes changing is necessary to stay true to your vision. Noting shifts in our ever-changing world, and even the language families use everyday (learning not literacy), NCFL changed their name to the National Center for Families Learning last week. While “Literacy” is an important term, it always felt too academic to me and not a word that gets used around the dinner table very often. Changing the last word in their name to “learning” leaves it much more open ended and I think will allow them to break through to more families. Plus, their name is now large enough to hold their dreams and full mission.

NCFL focuses on maximizing real-world situations as opportunities for learning. Our lives are demanding and our time is limited, but families can create their very own hotspots for learning in their everyday lives. We spend time in the car, at the grocery store and around the dinner table. Why not add a little fun, learning and wondering to all of them?

Earlier this year, I spoke with beneficiaries of NCFL’s work. They told me of the transformation NCFL made possible. From struggling to complete day to day to now excelling in higher education and careers, their stories have a common denominator: families learning together. NCFL has a wide network of educators supporting their efforts, too. From classroom teachers to librarians to pioneering thought leaders across settings, they all unify to meet families where they are and improve education together.

In honor of their new name and National Family Literacy Month®, NCFL is raising money to support literacy and learning in communities nationwide.

They’ve launched the Big Give for Families Learning, an online fundraising challenge. I’m thrilled to support an organization that’s not afraid to try new tactics, so I’ve joined the #NCFLBigGive. For this #GivingTuesday, please consider donating to help families learn together by clicking here.

I couldn’t write about NCFL without mentioning my personal favorite thing they do and that is Wonderopolis.

Every day, this website provides a different Wonder of the Day® — available to you and children you love free of charge. The Wonder of the Day focuses around high-interest subjects in the form of a question (such as “Do Your Taste Buds Change?” and “Why Is the Sky Blue?”), with a written passage that even reads to you, a related video, vocabulary words and more.

My kids and I have enjoyed many of these and I’ve learned that many teachers will use these in their classroom to spark wonder among the students, which of course leads to increased learning.

While I’m betting most of you have never heard of NCFL, I hope you can appreciate the work they do. With all the distractions our children have surrounding them, it is crucial that parents and teachers instill in our kids a sense of wonder and a desire to learn about the world around them. This is what NCFL is trying to do and I hope you will consider learning more about them, donating or simple sharing the great things they do!

Thank you and happy November.

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Being a good baseball scorekeeper is something of a bit of pride for me. I never made it as an athlete, but I was one of the 4-5 official scorekeepers for the Birmingham Barons AA baseball team for four years. Being a baseball fan and enthusiast, I firmly believe that I’d be a horrible parent if I didn’t teach my children — Katie, age 5, is next — to keep score properly.

Would you believe that Wednesday night’s father-son baseball watching extracurricular is actually a part of our family literacy? No, you don’t need baseball scorekeeping to survive in the world, but it’s the activity of parent and child interacting in the environment of learning that drives family literacy.

Today is National Family Literacy Day and I’m personally trying to raise $10,000 to support the National Center for Family Literacy‘s Big Give. The monies raised today go to supper the NCFL which connects parents with children, parents with grandparents and grandparents with children in ways you probably never thought would drive literacy.

You’ve likely heard me brag on Wonderopolis, a fantastic blog and discovery mechanism for you to sit down and explore with your child. It’s programming is so good, teachers use it for lesson planning in school and drive entire weeks worth of content around its topics. That program is supported by the NCFL.

Perhaps you’ve seen or heard of immigrant older generations or Native American elders learning to read and write with their grandchildren. Those programs are driven by the NCFL.

Perhaps you’d like to see more technology literacy in schools, libraries and education centers around the country. The NCFL fuels programs that do just that.

Yes, I am on the NCFL’s Board of Directors. I am proud to serve because I fundamentally believe that solving literacy is the first domino in solving every other major societal crisis and woe we have. With a more functionally literate society — reading, writing, math, science, technology and more — we have the foundation needed to tackle all the world’s problems.

I’m calling my fundraiser, Books In Hands, Kids In Laps. It tells the story of family literacy to me. Being with and engaged with your children, in the moment, helping them learn and discover the world and its inner workings. This shouldn’t be a privilege of every child or parent. It should be a right.

I need your help to reach my personal goal of $10,000 raised. By my math, if every single Twitter follower I have gives $25, we’ll raise $2,000,000 dollars. If every person I’m connected to in Facebook gives $25, we’ll raise over $42,000.

All I want to raise is $10,000. (But certainly, let’s do more if we can!)

Jump over to my donation page and give what you can. It’s important to help those without, become those with. And it’s the biggest without we can be without: Knowledge.

Thank you for donating.

For more from my network on Family Literacy, I started two interesting Facebook threads worth reading and participating in. Check them out:

Here

and

Here

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And the rest is history.

The conditions of the school were horrible. Worse, the only books they had were cast offs from backpackers, including a Danielle Steele romance novel and a Lonely Planet Guide to Mongolia.

Since 1998, they’ve filled the shelves of thousands of schools and libraries in 10 countries with English books and their innovative Local Language Publishing program that allows local authors and illustrators to be published in their countries giving the children the opportunity to read books in their own languages.

They also have made a push to help girls providing them with the hope of a new life. I love that John and his team blend social good with business savvy in Room to Read by setting up a system that was both helpful for local schools and scalable for expansion. I particularly remember measuring openings along business models like Starbucks’ openings. They also have a rigorous tracking of results.

For the last 15 years, Room to Read has successfully accomplished its twin objectives of literacy and gender equality in education.

Make a donation today

Give to Room to Read at their donation page.

To learn more, on the Room to Read. Or check out this video here:

Tell Social Media Explorer about My Donation for Aggregated Reporting Purposes Here

Read more about Social Media Explorer’s #GivingTuesday program.

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As a fundraising coach, I work with nonprofits around the world. One of the most remarkable I’ve come across is Embracing Hope Ethiopia. It is a remarkable organization that runs two licensed daycares, helps single mothers get jobs and giving micro-grants to entrepreneurs, and helps families get education.

The idea for Embracing Hope Ethiopia began while Jerry and Christy Shannon were adopting a child from Ethiopia. A year after adopting their daughter, they moved their entire family to Addis Ababa to live in the Korah slum, a community founded as a leper colony and home to the largest dump in Addis Ababa.

I have known the Shannons for years and trust them implicitly. One of the most impressive things to me about their work with Embracing Hope Ethiopia is how they tailored their outreach after getting to know the residents of Korah. They didn’t start the daycares and family based resource building or the children’s library. They first lived among people, mostly single mothers making less than $22 per month. They saw that a lack of safe childcare made it impossible for mothers with little kids to get jobs to feed their families.

Rather than just alleviating symptoms of extreme poverty, they are breaking the poverty cycle for generations to come.

Your $10 donation will help prevent orphans by preserving families. It will help children receive food and clothing and mothers learn to read and write.

Or you could shop in their online store for socially conscious gifts that provide women with a living wage.

For more on Embracing Hope Ethiopia watch this short 8 minute video:

Read more about Social Media Explorer’s #GivingTuesday program.

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It is simple question, one that inspires empathy, encourages us to think beyond ourselves, and when answered demonstrates the true power the web holds.

For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way because we were helped by someone. Collectively social media is changing the world for good because it demands and rewards individuals and communities who work feverishly to answer this question.
I want to turn our attention and conversation toward a community that desperately needs our help – bullied students.

• Did you know that nearly 1 in 3 students are involved in bullying?
• Did you know that while school violence as a whole is declining, bullying behaviors have increased by 5%?
• Did you know that kids who are obese, gay or have disabilities are up to 63% more likely to be bullied than other children?
• Did you know that last month alone, there were multiple suicide deaths as a result of bullying?

Bullying is an epidemic. Lots of tormentors. Lots of victims. Each one is somebody’s child.

Like the global recession or the fight to end poverty, cyber crime is now everyone’s problem. It impacts every business and every person in the world who has an Internet connection, owns a computer, or who believes the social Web represents the best not the worst of the human spirit.

The social web is an opportunity to create not just “conversation,” but movements. We need a movement now more than ever. We have the platform and the power to use technology for a higher purpose and a greater good. Our tweets, posts, stories, and lessons can give hope to the hopeless and voice to those silenced by these crimes.

No matter how you have been touched or impacted by bullying, you can make a valuable contribution to changing environments and cultures that are conducive to bullying and promoting the right behaviors for all digital citizens.

Please consider joining the movement or starting your own by:

• Writing a blog post (If you podcast, please record a podcast. If you video, release a video)
• Sending a tweet using the Hashtag  #stopcyberbullying
• Being an advocate for the effective use of technology and the web as there are many who advocate blocking everything
• Being a resource for  your community (Here’s a GREAT list)
• Modeling your own digital citizenship – Describe your “Code of Conduct”
• Sharing your story

However you chose to help, DON’T BE SILENT!  Martin Luther King, Jr. once said “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” We must talk to our children. If you don’t have the right words yet, read this amazing letter from a mom to her daughter.

Be inspired. Then go share your inspiration with someone else. When it comes to bullying, your inspiration and advice can mean, the life of a child.

So, who and how will you help today?

Related articles

• Some see fighting chance for anti-bully laws (chron.com)
• Bully Induced Suicide, Bullicide (socyberty.com)
• Is your kid being cyber bullied? You can check, sort of. (timesunion.com)
• David Nichtern: 3 Levels of Tolerance and What They Mean for Bullying (huffingtonpost.com)

Photo Credit: Google Images by compasscayman.com

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In early 2008, I began working with the National Center for Family Literacy when they became a client of my former agency, Doe-Anderson. We helped formulate their early social media efforts and spearheaded a handful of digital strategies to help the organization move forward. (They’re still a client of Doe-Anderson, who continues to do excellent work.)

When my relationship with Doe ended last summer, my client-partner relationship with NCFL had to as well. But the cause remained close to my heart and I was happy to volunteer some time and energy for NCFL. Two months ago, with contractual obligations to my former employer fulfilled, NCFL Executive Director Sharon Darling asked me to serve on her organization’s Board of Directors. I quickly accepted. NCFL has a cause close to my heart, I love what they do and they take my advice.

And NCFL doesn’t just teach people to read. Family Literacy is about multi-generational issues. It’s about adult literacy, forming strong homes and families to build foundations for literacy in our children. It’s about functional literacy, like being able to read maps, balance one’s check book and use a computer. It’s about immigrant populations learning not just a new language, but a culture and world of opportunity blockaded without the wherewithal to navigate the business world.

What I’ve learned working with NCFL is that literacy, in its broad definition and across generations, is the most important societal woe we’ll ever face. Without literacy, none of our jobs have value. With it, all other societal woes can be attacked, even defeated.

Today, the NCFL, an organization that has helped tackle the issue of family literacy for almost three decades, launches a fresh take on family literacy. With more than 33 percent of all U.S. 4th graders not reading, we needed to step up and do something to reinvigorate parents and children around learning.

Today, parents can help nurture a brighter world for their children through discovery, creativity, learning and imagination. They can take them to a place of wonder.

Today, parents can take their children to Wonderopolis.

Educational success comes from the love of learning. Wonderopolis stokes the fires of learning every day and in ways that relate to everyday life. It’s not just a website, it’s a movement. The learning there is big, for you and your child. See for yourself at Wonderopolis.org.

You can connect to Wonderopolis through Twitter and Facebook as well. There you will receive a Wonder of the Day — a fun learning nugget that will spark your child’s interest in learning … and probably your own, too.

Every day.

This is the beginning of what I hope becomes the ultimate case study. There’s credit to be given, but we’re beginning. Let’s slap each other on the back when it proves out. Suffice to say, I’m excited about NCFL and what Wonderopolis can do for the literacy standard in this country and even the world.

And I wanted to share. Thank you for the indulgence.

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• Comprehensive National Literacy Directory Now Available Online and over the Phone (eon.businesswire.com)

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