"Don't Quote Me On That": The Importance of Context

Learning how to use quotes strategically is a skill that takes students years to master. It can take even longer for students to learn how to keep quotes they find in their original context. This means keeping the original author’s meaning intact, and not manipulating it to meet one’s needs. This type of word manipulation is known as “the quoting out of context fallacy.” When writers use quotes with a meaning other than originally intended, this misrepresents the author/speaker being quoted. It also discredits whatever it is the quoter is using the words to support or argue.

This type of misleading quotation is relatively harmless when used in a research paper for middle or high school. However, as students progress through the grades, into college, and eventually into the real world, the stakes become higher for any writing they produce. This is why students should begin to learn early on how to evaluate whether they are using quotations accurately.

It’s All About Perspective

The most common type of out-of-context quotation is when only part of a larger quote is used. When we use quotes this way, it gives them an entirely new meaning. 

Here’s an example: 

“The book is incredibly challenging to read, but worth every second,” said John Smith.

One could easily use this quote for a negative book review. Simply take the first part, “The book is incredibly challenging to read,” and use it to support a negative stance. But John Smith, the original author, meant these words differently, as the prelude to a compliment. While the quotation would not necessarily be wrong, attributing this partial quote to John Smith would be a misrepresentation. It would make it appear as though Smith viewed the book unfavorably, which was not the case. This is one example of why keeping quotes in context is important for credibility.

When Irony Doesn’t Translate

Another example of taking quotes out of context is when they are originally said with irony or sarcasm that doesn’t translate in the quotation. Similar to the example above, these types of quotations need further context in order for the irony or sarcasm to come through. 

Let’s look at another example:

“This book is absolutely perfect…for anyone who wants to immediately be put to sleep,” said John Smith

The irony in this quote is that the seemingly flattering first clause is setting up the harsh criticism that follows. If used alone, the quote “This book is absolutely perfect,” means the opposite of how John Smith originally intended it.

While committing this fallacy in writing may be simply a part of the learning process, it’s important that students are aware of when they are doing it. Because teachers won’t always know when a student has quoted out of context (unless they research every quote students use), we need to teach students explicitly how to avoid this error by showing them examples like the ones above, and giving them opportunities to practice using the given quotes in their own writing. The more they practice the skill, the more likely they are to avoid using quotes improperly in their future writing.

How to Improve Your Memory

We all have moments when memory fails us. The name we're looking for may be on the tip of our tongues. The image might be there, but it’s too fuzzy to really make out. Our brains can only hold on to so much information at once. And when we don’t truly need to remember something, it fades. While this can be frustrating at times, it’s what our brains need to do to make room for new information. Luckily, there are ways to improve the amount that our brains are able to remember. By following some or all of these strategies, you can sharpen your recall, increase the capacity of information your brain can hold, and improve your memory in general, whether you're learning a language or memorizing digits of pi.

We would be remiss not to mention the holy grails of virtually all mental, physical, and cognitive health concerns: the restorative power of sleep, exercise, good nutrition, and stress relief. These are always the best places to start improving memory or any of the body and brain’s many other functions. Aside from these areas, here are some additional strategies for addressing memory specifically:

1. (Try Your Best To) Focus

We understand better than most that this is easier said than done. Especially for people with ADHD, focusing takes tremendous effort and energy. But creating structure to enable this focus can help you maintain attention long enough to commit information to memory. Try setting a timer for five minutes to start, with nothing to interrupt your focus. Turn the cell phone on silent, and remove all possible distractions. Know that a break is coming soon, and try to keep all of your attention on the details of what you are learning. Next time, try to increase your focusing time to six minutes, then seven. 

2. Never Cram

As we have discussed in previous posts, cramming never does anyone any good. Even if you get the grade you want, by next week, you’ll forget all the information you thought you learned. Spread your studying out over the course of days, or even weeks prior to a test, gradually building up your knowledge, and reviewing periodically. Studying in small chunks is always more effective than all at once.

3. Use Mnemonics and Visualization!

Notice how many times we’ve mentioned mnemonics in our posts? That’s because they really do work! Research proves that creating memorable associations helps our brains hold on to new information so much longer than mere repetition. And if the information you are trying to retain doesn’t lend itself as easily to a mnemonic (studying lines for a script or memorizing historical events, for example), then try creating  visualizations. 

4. Talk Out Loud

If you’re studying by yourself, we admit: this might feel strange. But hearing your voice speak the information you’re trying to learn helps your brain process it much more fully than when you say it in your head. And if you are studying with a buddy or in a group, make sure you are reinforcing concepts and information out loud to each other. Teaching others significantly improves our retention of information, even if we aren’t actually “teaching” them, but merely talking to them about our learning.

5. Rephrase

Even more powerful than reading information out loud is speaking that information out loud in your own words. The cognitive process involved in paraphrasing information helps your brain more easily commit it to memory. The more times you put your brain through this process, the more likely the information is to stick!

6. Activate Schema

Finally, make sure whatever it is you are studying feels relevant to you. Relate it to your prior knowledge, think about what you already know about the topic by memory before even attempting to study it, and always ask questions. Even if you don’t bother to answer them, actively engaging in your learning by questioning and wondering is a much more effective method of studying than passive memorization techniques.

Is it Writer's Block, or Something More?

It can be hard to know how to help students who feel “stuck” in their writing. As students progress through the grades, writing demands grow more and more challenging. Many students are able to keep up, whether with or without extra supports, like sentence starters. But sometimes students who have been doing just fine so far suddenly find themselves struggling with writing. So how can we tell if a student is experiencing writer's block or something more concerning? 

Writer’s block can look very different from one student to the next. It can last varying amounts of time, from a few minutes to several weeks. Therefore, it can be difficult to identify the root cause. Plus, writer’s block can sometimes resemble a writing disability in that they both result in the student feeling stuck. And while students with disabilities can be more susceptible to getting writer’s block, the two things have nothing to do with each other. 

What To Write Vs. How To Write

When a student suffers from writer’s block, they are unable to decide what to write. Sometimes they are unable to come up with any ideas at all, and sometimes they just can't choose one. While this can be a very frustrating experience for any author, especially for an amateur writer, there are ways to tell when this type of roadblock is due to a lack of creativity or a lack of understanding.

While true writer’s block comes from being stuck on what to write, difficulty that stems from a writing disability exists because the student may not know how to write what they are supposed to be writing. Sometimes a student is stuck in their writing because something about the task or writing purpose feels too challenging. This is when a teacher will need to intervene with some explicit teaching in whatever it is the student is struggling with.

Signs of a writing disability

When a child experiences writer’s block for one day, then it will be clear very soon that that’s all it was. But if the student is dealing with a long-term struggle, the best way to determine whether it’s just writer’s block or a writing disability is to carefully observe the student’s habits in other areas of writing. How does he perform when writing for other academic purposes? Is his writing more proficient or does he experience more or less the same struggles? How does he appear to feel about writing for other purposes? If he is motivated and confident in other areas but struggles when it comes to informational writing, then it’s probably writer’s block. But if you notice the same struggles across classes or subject areas, and/or the student’s feelings about writing have gotten more negative and stay that way, it might be worth a preliminary evaluation.

How to Teach Kids Time Management

As students progress through the grades, they usually find themselves with more and more unstructured time. On the surface, this seems great. More free time means more time for them to finally do what they want! But once homework starts piling up, it is their responsibility to decide when they complete it, in what order, and how much attention and thought goes into each assignment. Organization can be challenging, and is not always directly taught. They might forget about the paper they have due on Monday when they make plans with friends on Sunday night. With a little support, students can quickly learn effective time management strategies.

Use monthly, weekly, and daily overviews

Use the right tool for the job! Write general and long-term commitments on a monthly calendar. Use a weekly calendar to plan out more specific obligations, and save to-do lists and more detailed assignments for a daily planner.

Color code or use symbols

Keep track of different types of events, assignments, or appointments with different colors or symbols. Use one to track social events, another for family obligations, and a third for school assignments. You can even use different colors or symbols for different school subjects. This makes it really easy to get a quick visual overview of the day or week.

Write in work time on the calendar

In order to ensure that enough time is left for work, include it on the calendar. Once you’ve taken stock of all of your assignments, estimate how long each will take, and schedule your work time accordingly. Make sure your work time gets scheduled before any social or free time gets added to the calendar. And allow more work time than you expect you’ll need–it’s better to finish early than to run out of time! This is key to successful time management.

Keep work times consistent (when possible)

Establishing a schoolwork routine makes it more likely that students will follow through on their assignments and do everything that needs to get done. When possible, try to schedule work time around the same time each day, and adapt to what works best. On school nights, usually that’s after a quick break and snack or any extracurriculars. Weekends are a bit more flexible, but try to stick to roughly the same time. If a student works more productively first thing in the morning, schedule work time for mornings. If late afternoon works best, try to reserve that time for school assignments.

Schedule breaks

Work can feel much more manageable and less overwhelming when we know a break is coming. Build breaks into the schedule to ensure time for much-needed rest. Breaks should be at least 5 minutes, but no more than 15. If a student isn’t sure what to do during a break, suggest something relaxing yet mindful. Go for a quick walk, do some stretching or yoga, have a snack, play with a pet, doodle while listening to music, read for pleasure, or have a quick chat with a friend.

Reading Resources for Kids of Military Parents

Military kids move often and experience emotional stress that can impact their ability to learn to read. However, books are one of the best ways for these kids to process their emotions and learn to face life with courage. 

As a teacher or tutor, you want your students to succeed, and you recognize that military students face more challenges than many other young kids. Teaching them to read will give them tools for handling the stress of life and succeeding in school. 

Reading stories about other military families can encourage kids that they aren’t alone and spark a life-long love of reading. Here are three types of reading resources for children of military parents that you can use to support the families and students with whom you work.

1. Processing Loneliness

There are many children’s books that have been written to help military families process the loneliness and confusion kids may feel during a parent’s deployment. Although many of these books are geared toward younger children, having access to them can also help older kids and teenagers understand their own emotions. 

You can assign these books as reading material or arrange a reading program where older students can read to younger children. Although it’s unlikely that all your students come from military families, loneliness is a universal emotion, and these stories will teach empathy and compassion toward classmates.

• I Love You Near and Far by Marjorie Blain Parker

This children’s book tells the story of a military family experiencing separation due to deployment. The family is depicted as cats, and the story makes parallels between missing a deployed loved one and missing a grandparent who lives far away. This book is an encouraging reminder that love can be strong even if the person you love is very far away. 

• Night Catch by Brenda Ehrmantraut

Written in rhyme, this story describes a father and son who play catch with a star every night until the father returns from deployment. They blow the north star back and forth as a way to remind each other that the world is smaller than it seems, and they are never far from each other’s thoughts. 

2. Studying the Military 

It may also help your students to spend time learning about the military. That way, they’ll have a better understanding of what their parent is doing overseas and why it’s so important. Of course, it’s important to be sensitive toward students and only discuss age-appropriate topics. 

Teachers can use military stories to supplement their curriculum and help kids understand the purpose, history, and value of the military in the United States. Although they won’t reduce students’ loneliness for deployed parents, these books can help students feel proud to be part of a military family. 

• Hero Mom and Hero Dad by Melinda Hardin 

These basic picture books describe the different jobs military parents may be doing overseas. The pages describe roles like building, flying helicopters, moving trucks, and working in medical settings. In addition to describing roles, this book emphasizes the courage and dedication of military parents. 

• H Is For Honor by Devin Scillian

Based on the alphabet, each page in this book describes the challenges military families face and teaches readers about several military terms, military branches, and military traditions. This book is an excellent read for elementary kids and will give your students context for what their parent’s life is like.  

3. Understanding PTSD

A list of books for military kids wouldn’t be complete without resources for families affected by PTSD. It can be very difficult for kids to understand that their parent is still fighting an internal battle even after they get home. 

These stories are a great way to introduce students to the topic of mental health. They also promote empathy and will help students learn that any anger or stress their military parent is feeling is not their fault. 

• My Daddy Has PTSD by Miranda Watson and James Rosone

This book tells the story of a very small girl who learns that her Daddy is experiencing PTSD. This is a great resource to introduce the concept of trauma to young children. However, it’s important to be sensitive and avoid worrying kids about something that may not happen. 

• Wounded by Eric Walters

Written for older students, this story describes how PTSD can affect every member of a military family. The reading level and quality content make this an incredibly helpful resource for students who have a family member suffering from PTSD. However, because it deals with mature themes, it’s important to screen this book before you assign it. 

Supporting Your Students

Many military students experience prolonged separation from a parent and the emotional stress of frequent moves. As a teacher, you can support military students best by igniting their love of reading with relatable and encouraging stories about military families. 

Use this list to start incorporating military fiction into your curriculum, and be sure to encourage parents to read to their kids. This bonding time can help families process their emotions and give them a sense of security that will translate to their wellbeing, in and out of school.

Strategies for Building Resilience

Resilience is an important skill that no one is born with. Kids who have skills in resilience are able to bounce back from disappointment sooner. They often overcome obstacles more successfully, and are more likely to persevere through challenges. Here are some of the ways we can help children build these important skills in class and at home.

1. Instill a Growth Mindset

Students who have a growth mindset view their ability to learn as evolving. They know that intelligence is not fixed and that they can succeed with hard work and effort. Students with a fixed mindset, on the other hand, might look at a poor grade and see it as a reflection of their capabilities. But a student with a growth mindset might look at that same grade and see it as an opportunity to learn. They might see it as a signal that they did not study hard enough on a test, or work hard enough on a project. Students with a growth mindset face their mistakes and failures head on and attempt to learn from them.

2. Model Positive Self-Talk

Students with more confidence and self-esteem are always more resilient. One of the best ways to build confidence is to model how students should talk to and about themselves. This is called positive self-talk, and students learn it best through example. When the adults around them talk about themselves in positive and encouraging ways, kids learn to do the same.

3. Encourage Healthy Risk-Taking

We don’t often think of “risks” as something we should encourage. But healthy risk-taking doesn’t mean putting oneself in unsafe or perilous situations. Taking healthy risks means embracing those situations that push us outside of our emotional or intellectual comfort zone. This might include trying a brand new activity we’ve never done before, or presenting in front of a group of people when we are scared of public speaking. The more we can encourage students to take these healthy types of risks, the more resilient they’ll become.

4. Help Build Coping Skills and Teach Emotional IQ

In order to become more resilient, students need to develop coping skills for those times when they face challenges and difficulties. This requires the self-awareness to recognize when they are becoming overwhelmed or stressed beyond productivity. When these feelings arise, students need mechanisms for bringing themselves back to a calm state, like a mantra or breathing strategy. This recognition and these tools require developing emotional awareness and intelligence. The best promote this awareness in students is to frequently use language that describes emotions and offer students plenty of structured opportunities to talk about their feelings using relevant vocabulary.

5. Let Kids Learn How to Problem Solve On Their Own

Sometimes our best intentions lead us to try to solve all of our children’s problems for them. When we see our students or our own kids in any kind of unrest or distress, we just want to fix it for them. But that doesn’t teach them how to face these problems on their own, which they will eventually need to learn how to do. We can begin letting kids solve their own problems by modeling the process and by being there to guide and support, but not spoon-feed them the solution every time they encounter conflict.

Strategies for Improving Reading Fluency

Reading fluency refers to a student’s ability to read in a way that sounds natural. It includes students’ reading rate, the expression with which they read, and the accuracy of what they are reading. Fluency is separate from the skills of decoding and comprehension. Students can have strong decoding and comprehension skills and weak fluency or vice versa. Exposure to these three areas certainly helps strengthen each in turn. However, practicing reading with a focus on decoding and comprehension exclusively does not guarantee improved fluency.

Fluency is an important part of becoming a competent reader. When a student struggles with fluency, it is likely that other areas of her reading may suffer. For students who struggle with accuracy, the meaning that they make of their reading becomes skewed. And when students read slowly, often due to a lack of sight word knowledge or labored decoding, they retain less. Finally, when they read without expression, it can have a negative impact on their reading comprehension. 

Here are some ways you can help students strengthen their reading fluency:

Model Fluent Reading

When modeling what fluent reading sounds like, it’s important to include a wide variety of text types. This way, you provide students with exposure to lots of different ways to read expressively. The expression we use when reading dramatic fiction is very different from that which we use when reading a news story. The younger the students, the more often they should be hearing what good, fluent reading sounds like.

Echo Reading

A great way to get kids to practice reading fluently is to let them copy exactly how you do it. This is called Echo Reading. When students are able to hear you model fluent reading and then immediately practice it themselves, they are more likely to use proper expression, rate, and accuracy. Echo reading can be effective in both one-on-one settings as well as in groups.

Reader’s Theater

One of the first ways young children learn how their reading should sound is through stories. This is why using reader’s theater to allow students to practice their reading is an excellent method for improving fluency. Whereas regular stories are told in a narrative format, Reader’s Theater allows students to take on a role in the story as they are reading it. This reading role-play encourages them to speak as their character would speak, which makes reading with expression feel more natural.

Build sight word knowledge

Sometimes a student’s struggle with fluency is related to weak sight word knowledge. When this is the case, it is important to strengthen the students’ ability to recognize sight words, as well as increase the number of sight words. While it used to be thought that sight words needed to be “memorized,” the best way for students to really internalize sight words is through the process of orthographic mapping.

Use visuals in text for breaks, pauses, inflections, etc.

Most of us know that when we come to a period in a text, we need to pause in order to communicate to ourselves or to our listener that we’ve reached the end of a complete thought. Some students have a much harder time remembering what that period means, or even noticing it at all. While real-world texts won’t include any extra visuals beyond punctuation marks and text styles, some students benefit from a little extra coding in their text to help remind them what their reading should sound like. This can include a color-coded set of additional symbols that tell the student when to pause (when there is a period), when to inflect their voice up (when there is a question mark), when to emphasize a word (italics or bold), etc.

Identify natural phrases in text

Another strategy that can help students learn how to group words more naturally as they are reading is to specifically look for natural phrasing in text and circle those phrases. This takes modeling for students to do correctly, but once they are familiar with the process it can go a long way in eventually helping them apply the skill of identifying phrases to their reading naturally.

Closing Learning Gaps

Educators everywhere are feeling the stress of trying to “catch kids up” after the last two years of learning loss. Here’s how some of the best teachers are tackling these learning gaps most effectively.

1. Building Trust and Connection

It’s more true than ever that students need to feel a connection with teachers in order to learn from them. When a student doesn’t trust and feel connected to a teacher, his or her learning suffers. Investing the time and energy into connecting with each and every student, whether they are part of a larger classroom or receive instruction one-on-one, ensures that their learning will be that much more meaningful.

2. Maximizing Downtime

While students definitely need breaks from rigorous academics and time to process new information, that doesn’t mean that their brains have to turn off. The best teachers are using these “break” times to embed academic practice into games, conversations, activities, and low-stakes tasks so that their students’ brains are always on and working productively. In the classroom, this might look like a math game during snack time, or a “morning work challenge” at arrival. These tasks should allow some release from the routine, while reducing transition time back into work mode by keeping kids engaged.

3. Showing the Relevance

Kids are always more likely to learn (and WANT to learn) when they understand why they are learning and how it applies to their lives. While this applies to all subject areas, it is often especially difficult for students to see the relevance of certain math concepts. When a student thinks, ‘I’ll never use this,’ she isn’t going to put much energy into learning it. The best teachers show students how each concept applies to their lives and the real world.

4. Creating Systems of Intervention and Meeting Students Where They Are

In a typical school year, some teachers can get away with teaching a “one-size-fits-all” model.  They have a curriculum to get through, and they have planned out the way in which they will deliver that curriculum to students. This approach to teaching rarely works for all kids, and that’s especially true now. The best instructional design for these times (and all times, for that matter) involves constantly assessing where students are in their skill development and creating structured and systematic routines of intervention for those students who need more targeted resources than the “one-size-fits-all” approach can provide.

The best teachers are also resisting the urge to keep to a specific pace in their instruction. When teachers move forward regardless of how students are doing, many inevitably fall through the cracks. Instead, teachers must meet students where they are and help them advance from there.

Helping Kids Build Social Skills

You won’t necessarily find a social skills lesson on every classroom’s daily schedule. And yet, a vast majority of young students need some level of instruction in how to do things like cooperate, share, play, take turns, and converse. This is especially true for students with ADHD, Social Anxiety and Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder. Interacting positively and productively with others isn’t something that comes naturally to many kids, and for some, it’s extra challenging. That’s why we were so excited to talk to Speech-Language Pathologists Tara Ferrara and Alexandra Spira of Social City. Listen to how they help kids develop these crucial skills through social groups, and read below for some highlights!

Key Takeaways

• From a speech pathologist’s lens, speech and language skills can be split into three main categories:

  • Receptive Language: these are skills that have to do with understanding what others are saying (also includes reading comprehension).

  • Expressive Language: these are skills related to speaking and communicating, writing, retelling a story, and articulating one’s thoughts.

  • Pragmatic Language: these are conversation skills as well as nonverbal communication cues like facial expression, body language, tone of voice, etc.

    • Social skills groups focus on developing pragmatic language skills.

• Why is it so important for students to be able to read social cues and understand nonverbal communication?

  • Students who often feel targeted or frequently bullied by peers are usually misreading social cues.

  • Students who have difficulty with these skills engage in one-sided conversations, don’t notice when others lose interest, and need support in having reciprocal conversations.

• The best way to help students develop social skills: Role Play!

  • Using role play to act out scenarios with different outcomes can help students compare and evaluate these different outcomes in a low-stakes setting.

  • It prepares them to be successful in real-life scenarios when they come up.

• How can you tell if your students need social skill support?

  • They struggle to express themselves emotionally and engage socially

  • They frequently keep to themselves

  • They don’t know how to read social cues, have trouble working in a group, taking turns, managing emotions, etc.

Addressing the "COVID Gap"

You've probably heard of the "Summer Slide." This is what we call the learning loss that typically occurs over the summer months when students don't practice skills. It's very common, it happens every year, and with most students, it's resolved by October or November. The COVID gap refers to learning loss caused by the many interruptions to classroom learning since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Some research has come out on just how significant the learning loss has been. However, the specific depth and breadth of the loss ranges based on things like demographics, grade level, and geography. What the gap is actually measuring is also unclear. It doesn't measure the distance between groups of students, since so many students are experiencing some level of learning loss. The gap is measuring the distance between where students are performing and where teachers think they should be performing. This is based on national and state standards, curricular benchmarks, and sometimes teachers’ own personal beliefs about what students should be able to do.

Supporting Students with Interrupted Learning

For students whose learning has been disrupted by COVID, there are some small ways to limit the negative impact. Aside from missing out on quality academics, another problem with these interruptions is the lack of routine. Any time kids are out of their regular routine, it's hard to get back into it. And yet, a majority of kids thrive with the regularity of a predictable routine. At home, try to maintain a schedule as close to their regular routine as possible.

Parents are often tempted to make up lost academics by supplementing with extra work. We should, however, be mindful about how we go about this. Assigning extra “busy work” or work that students don’t feel motivated to do or invested in could have the opposite effect. It could cause children to resent learning even more. Instead of buying boring workbooks or printing out practice worksheets, try to work with your child to develop some long-term at-home projects they will be enthusiastic about. Here are some great ideas to get you started.

Will the Gap Ever Close?

While we can't close gaps in learning overnight, there's good news: just about everyone is behind. Those few who aren't currently behind grade level expectations were probably already ahead before the pandemic began. So while the COVID gap is real, and while it is alarming, it isn't the end of the world. The focus needs to shift from "catching kids up" to meeting them where they are to ensure they move forward. They'll keep learning and growing as long as educators and parents continue to encourage that learning and growth in gentle, stress-free ways.

If you need some extra help to support your child, our tutors are ready to work with your child to fill the gaps and reignite their spark for learning.