THE PRACTICE: Making Connections to Students' Lives
Content Presented By:
Center for Resource Management (CRM)
The Education Alliance at Brown University

Resources related to this practice:

• Basic science concepts: How Stuff Works
  http://science.howstuffworks.com

  The science resources in How Stuff Works include concrete examples and analogies students can understand, while providing clear descriptions, engaging graphics, and easy reading for basic concepts. They also provide real world examples like how refraction makes a rainbow and how animals become resistant to antibiotics.

• ELL Resource: Connecting Students to Culturally Relevant Texts
  http://www.ncte.org/library/files/Free/Journals/tp/TP0152Con
  necting.pdf

  Article from Talking Points where the authors illustrate how connecting readers with culturally relevant books can launch learners on the path to academic success and help them udnerstand who they are. Readers can more easily construct meaning from a text that contains familiar elements because their background knowledge helps them make predictions and inferences about the story. The article includes examples of books that can be used and questions that teachers can ask their students. It ends with an insightful quote by Paulo Freire, "Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world."

• ELL Resource: Twenty-Five Great Ideas for Teaching Current Events
  http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson072.shtml

  Web page with ideas for working news into the classroom and connecting current events to all subjects. Two examples are finding adjectives that start with each letter of the alphabet and listening for details. The suggested activities are interesting and well-suited for ELLs because they are challenging wihtout being overwhelming.

• Lesson: Intoduction to Measurement Vocabulary
  http://knowledgeloom.org/adlit/resources/CollabMathLessonMea
  surement_Burnell.pdf

  In this lesson, fifth grade teacher Melissa Burnell turns a typical textbook preview activity into a game, helping her students to assess and improve their understanding of measurement vocabulary through a word sort. Burnell developed this lesson during her participation in the 2007-2008 Adolescent Literacy Collaboratory, a program of The Education Alliance at Brown University.

• Lesson: Short Story Comprehension and Vocabulary Building
  http://knowledgeloom.org/adlit/resources/CollabELALessonShor
  tStory_Carr.pdf

  In this two-period lesson, ninth grade English teacher Deborah Carr draws on annotation and vocabulary development strategies to help her students improve their comprehension and analysis of literary texts. The focus of the lesson is the setting in Arthur C. Clarke's short story "A Walk in the Dark," but it is easily adapted for other literary texts and focus areas. Carr developed this lesson during her participation in the 2007-2008 Adolescent Literacy Collaboratory, a program of The Education Alliance at Brown University.

• Lesson: The Lorax and Human-Environmental Interaction
  http://knowledgeloom.org/adlit/resources/CollabSSLessonLorax
  HEI_Damato.pdf

  In this lesson, sixth grade social studies teacher Andrea Damato uses the Dr. Seuss children's story The Lorax to help her students deepen their understanding of cause and effect, focusing on the harmful consequences of some types of human interaction with the environment. Damato developed this lesson during her participation in the 2007-2008 Adolescent Literacy Collaboratory, a program of The Education Alliance at Brown University.

• Problem Based Social Studies
  http://www.bie.org/pbss/index.php

  This Web page from the Buck Institute for Education provides a series of free curriculum units to guide problem based learning in social studies. It includes units related to real-world problems in economics and government, many on high-interest topics for students.

• Student Achievement for Teachers: Motivation in Instructional Design
  http://www.ericdigests.org/1998-1/motivation.htm

  This digest describes the ARCS Model (a motivational model that enhances the teaching-learning environment) and outlines some of the ways in which ARCS components may be applied to instructional design.

• Ten Great Activities: Teaching With the Newspaper
  http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson139.shtml

  Web page that contains ten practical suggestions for classroom activities using the newspaper. The page starts with some reasons why newspapers are effective teaching tools and continues with activities that teach skills such as reading and writing for meaning, map reading, media literacy, sequencing, word meaning, and math.

• The Arts/Literacy Project
  http://www.artslit.org

  Project overview, handbook, resources, and contacts for ideas on how to make use of the arts to make connections between students lives and literary classics.

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This resource is developed and maintained by The Education Alliance at Brown University. Seed funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Send comments to: loom@alliance.brown.edu