Motivating Students: Three Tips You Can Try

Do your students suffer from a lack of motivation? In the midst of holiday parties and on the brink of a break, it’s difficult to focus student attention on learning rather than plans of vacation.

Before you reach your breaking point, try these tips to motivate students and keep them interested in their own learning. Because once they can see their progress, students are more likely to want to progress. Take a look at these tried-and-true ideas teachers across the country are using to motivate their students.

Preparing for 2010

We all want to start out the new year right, so don’t let the winter break get in your way. As excited as your students may be for the time off school, they may not be prepared to fill all that time—at least not productively. We’ve prepared a few projects your students can start before they leave and can share when they come back.

For more ideas, check out last year’s activities, each designed to keep those literacy skills sharp.

New Year's Around the World

I hope all of you are enjoying the holiday season as much as we are at Imagine Learning! I can’t believe how quickly the holidays came this year. In only a few weeks we'll be starting off a brand new decade!

New Year’s traditions are so interesting to me. It’s amazing how one holiday can be celebrated in so many different ways. Every family, country, and culture has unique traditions and customs, and it's a lot of fun to learn about the different ways people ring in the new year.

Beyond Three Cups of Tea Part 2: Female Literacy

In a previous post, I discussed one part of a lecture given at Brigham Young University by Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea.

During the lecture, Mortenson shared his belief that education is the key to promoting peace and should be our top global priority. He explained,

There are 120 million children in the world today who can’t go to school because of slavery, religious extremism, gender discrimination, corrupt governments. Seventy eight million are female…We can drop bombs, we can build roads, we can put in electricity, we can put in computers, but unless girls are educated, a society will never change.

Happy Thanksgiving

At Imagine Learning, we're thankful for:

• Customer support calls (even the ones that come in at 4 AM) because the feedback helps us to continually improve our products and services.
  
• Working extra hours on tight deadlines because it means we can serve more people and reach out to more children.
  
• An office building that's just a little too small because it means we're a growing company.
  
• You and all your dedicated work to help children achieve.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Denver's Turnaround Strategy

Imagine Learning English is now an important part of Denver Public School District's turnaround strategy. At Place Bridge Academy, students come from 40 different countries and need intensive language training. The following news clip shows students using Imagine Learning English to help bolster those skills.

Writing with ELs

Writing may seem like the last step in language and literacy development, but according to Katharine Samway’s book When English Language Learners Write, research shows just the opposite. Young children, whether native English speakers or not, can begin to write before being able to read and even before being orally fluent. Of course, children understand more than they are able to write, but even English learners are fully capable of expressing complex thoughts in writing.

With this in mind, we’ve searched for ways to help your ELs get their thoughts out on paper. Whether your students have never before picked up a pen or they’ve already got the basics down, this list of research-based writing activities has something for everyone.

A Brief History of Emoticons : )

Emoticons. You may think of them as a recent fad-- something invented by the Internet generation or Generation Text. But emoticons have actually been around a lot longer than you may think. How long, exactly? How about the nineteenth century?

Beyond Three Cups of Tea

We often hear that it only takes one individual to make a difference and affect change. But do we really believe that we can be that individual? I have been guilty of thinking, I’m just one person. I can’t change the world.

Or can I? There are plenty of people who have proved that one person can make a world of difference. And on a rainy Tuesday morning in Provo, Utah, Greg Mortenson proved it to me.

Daylight Saving Time Travel

When I was in high school, I, like most seventeen year olds, knew everything. I knew how to drive (very fast), I knew how to iron my clothes (with just a squirt bottle), and you better believe I knew how to get the most out of my "extra hour" when Daylight Saving Time ended each fall.

After School at Imagine Learning Academy

Class is in session. No, we’re not a few months behind in our newsletter topics. Although many schools started regular classes a few months ago, students in Washington, Colorado, and Hawaii are starting something new this month — Imagine Learning Academy. So what is Imagine Learning Academy, and why are we all so excited about it?

What's Your Take on Idioms?

We all want to give our English learners a leg up in life, and teaching academic vocabulary helps them get ahead of the game. But if you really want to go the extra mile, breathe new life into the classroom by teaching idioms. Research shows that many languages share similar, if not identical, idioms, and students often need extra help to connect the dots. Read on for our crash course on idioms, complete with classroom tips, and you'll be good to go.

(If you're not yet convinced your English learners need to learn idioms, take a look at how prevalent they are, and you might change your mind. In this article alone, we've already used nine. At a loss? Make that ten.)

Thank You, Mrs. Ghessi

I still remember my first day of the second grade. I had just moved from California to Pennsylvania and didn’t know any of the other kids at school. The school was being remodeled and looked terrifying—all torn apart and covered in plastic sheeting like something out of a movie. It smelled like cement and new carpet, and I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. My mom held my hand as she walked me to the classroom, and I remember the surge of panic I felt when she let go. I also remember that as soon as her hand slipped away, another hand took its place. The hand belonged to a pretty, blond woman named Mrs. Ghessi– my second grade teacher.

I think we all have a teacher who is particularly special to us, and who had a huge impact on our lives. Mrs. Ghessi was one of mine.

Celebrating Halloween in Schools

Crisp apples and fat pumpkins, brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges waving from the trees, and cool, sharp breezes signal one thing: Fall is here. And that means costumes, candy, and more candy. Halloween is coming. Children across the country are drawing pumpkins and ghouls in their notebooks, planning their maximum-amount-of-candy routes, and creating their version of the coolest costumes ever. My daughter is no exception.

Yet for many school administrators and teachers, Halloween isn’t as much about enjoying the festivities as it is about surviving the battle. Charles Haynes, Senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, explains it well: “They’re caught in the crossfire between parents who support and parents who oppose Halloween observances in the classroom.”

Obama's School Year Expansion

When President Obama announced his plan to expand the number of hours students spend in school, he was met with mixed reactions. "I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president admitted. "But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan fully supports the idea. "Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Arne told the Associated Press. "I just want to level the playing field."

Tell Me an ExposiStory: Transitioning from Narrative to Expository Texts

Nothing captures a child’s attention like a good story—if only expository texts could hold the same attention. Starting in the fourth grade, and continuing into adulthood, informational texts are the most prevalent texts your students will encounter. How can you prepare them to comprehend exposition and enjoy the experience?

In the Wake of Katrina: An Unlikely Success

In 2005 Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest to ever hit the Gulf Coast, left thousands of people without homes, jobs, and a sense of security. Eighty-five percent of homes and 90 percent of schools in Pascagoula School District of Mississippi were flooded.

Says Glynda Smith, ELL Specialist at Jackson Elementary, "people were living in tents in their yards. Parents were tearing out their walls, and we knew we had to get the kids back in school. They needed to be safe, have something to do, and be out of their parents' way." Twenty-seven days after the storm hit, schools reopened their doors to some new challenges.

What's New 2009

While summer slowly closes its doors, schools across the country open theirs to a new year. Because we want this year to be your best yet, we've worked hard to make Imagine Learning English even better with new activities for students and functionality for teachers and administrators. Take a look at this sampling of new features below, click here for more information on these features, or click here to view an online demo.

Pick It Apart: How to Teach Word Parts and Why

Un. Re. In. Dis. Learn the meaning of these four prefixes, and you've just unlocked the meaning to over 1500 new words. It's no wonder vocabulary development experts, including Patricia M. Cunningham of the What Really Matters series, stress the importance of learning your prefixes and suffixes.

Teach and Enchant: Using Chants with English Language Learners

They’re jazzy. They’re catchy. And most importantly, they’re memorable. Jazz chants were developed by Carolyn Graham, an ESL expert from the American Language Institute at NYU, in order to reinforce language conventions and the proper intonation of English. Students learn lyrics quickly by connecting English's natural rhythm to a catchy jazz beat. And the lyrics stick.

Word Journals

Just like you never see SpongeBob without his SquarePants, your students should never be found without their word journals.

At the beginning of the term, each student should make their own book, using folded sheets of paper and a few staples. Then, every time students hear an unfamiliar word throughout the day, they should write it in their journal. At the end of the day, set aside one half hour for students to define, draw, or paste a magazine picture next to each word to help describe its meaning.

By using word journals, students will not only paste pictures into their books but also cement the meanings into their minds.

Letter Card Competition

This card game tests teamwork, tempo, and intellect. It’s where speed meets Scrabble, and it’s a whole lot of fun.

Divide students into teams of three. Give each team a deck of 26 index cards—each card has one letter of the alphabet on it. Start Round 1 by reading a vocabulary word. Teams must sort through their cards to find the letters they need to spell the word and place the cards in the correct order in front of them. If a word uses the same letter more than once, students can use the blank side of an unused card to represent the second or third instance of that letter.

The first team to correctly spell the word and raise their hands wins one point. Play as many rounds as you have vocabulary words.

Category Scramble

You can’t go wrong with this familiar favorite, a game that will leave your students chattering for more.

Take turns asking students in the class to contribute a category (fruits, animals, jobs, etc.) for the game. Have each student write the decided categories on a sheet of paper. Pick one student to mentally say the alphabet, over and over. When a second student says stop, the first student reveals what letter he or she stopped on. Use a timer and give students two minutes to write down words that start with the chosen letter—one word for each category. For example, if ‘L’ was chosen, and one of the categories is Fruits, you could write “lemon” or “lime.”

At the end of the two minutes, compare student answers. Original answers earn one point each.

Success at Discovery

Students at Discovery Elementary, and throughout all of Utah, are now enjoying the benefits of Imagine Learning English. With support from Utah legislators, the State Office of Education has offered Imagine Learning English free of charge to any English learner in the entire state. As a result of this offer, over 21,000 students in Utah now have access to the program. Click here to read Discovery Elementary's story.

15 Summer Break Strategies

You've worked hard all year to close the achievement gap between your high- and low-income students. Want to make that last? Then it's time to take a closer look at one of student progress's biggest threats: summer break.

A recent study at Johns Hopkins University reveals that any gaps that may exist during the school year are only exacerbated by the very different experiences high- and low-income elementary students have over their summer break.

History Speaks

What do Mount St. Helens's eruption, Lewis and Clark's expedition, and masking tape's invention have in common?

They each had famous beginnings in May. And not only that--we've got just the tools to make these historically significant events come alive in your classroom. Each event can be paired with one of our beautifully illustrated leveled texts and lead to some meaningful classroom discussion. Read on for instructions on accessing the texts and a list of topics worth talking about. Then let history speak for itself.

2009 Telly Award Winner

Imagine Learning's TV show, Imagine Island, has done it again. After last year's Telly Award nomination, Imagine Island came home with a bronze medal. In 2009, the TV show was awarded with two silver medals--the Telly Award's highest honor--in Best Children's programming and Best Educational programming.

This accomplishment is the result of thousands of hours of hard work and creativity. Now broadcast to countries all across Central and South America, Imagine Island can provide a solid foundation in English development for millions of children. Click below for a sneak-peek at some of our award-winning episodes.

Oral Reading Records

In the early 1970s, Dr. Marie Clay introduced the idea of oral reading records: While a child reads to you, take note of any words that are omitted, substituted, self-corrected, or cause hesitation. This information, along with the amount of time it takes for the child to complete the task, helps inform a teacher on what strategies students already use.

Though informative and helpful, these records can be difficult to maintain. You don’t often have the time to sit next to every student in the class as he or she reads an entire book. And with “teacher” by their side, tallying mistakes, some students feel enough anxiety to skew their scores.

Teaching Poetry

Roses are red… and some poetry is stale. Celebrate April, also National Poetry Month, with a return to creativity.

Check out these classroom-friendly ideas on how to teach some of the more fun, lesser-celebrated poetry forms, including free verse, cinquain, and tankas.

Success in New York

"Our students are using Imagine Learning English, and their growth is overwhelming. The things taught are really mastered by the students. Very few are lagging behind. We noticed that the children who are hyperactive, have IEPs, and have emotional issues are very calm with this program.

"The program moves the students along at a pace that they are able to handle and they don't get bored. They are really absorbed by it and are constantly practicing English out loud. It's great to see them singing songs and responding to the machine. We love it! The students love to use Imagine Learning English!"

Teri Zenos
New York Public Schools

Language Mag Meets ILE

Imagine Learning English is making headlines! Language Magazine, the journal of communication and education, featured Imagine Learning English in their TESOL edition.

This four-page spread discusses RTI, its history, downfalls and successes, and how ILE is helping schools nationwide with their struggling readers and English learners. Check out this link and then click "Responding to Intervention" to read the full article.

Getting Familiar with RTI

There's been talk of a new player in the educational ring, and you'd do well to get yourself acquainted. If you haven't already, it's time you met RTI.

RT-what, you ask? RTI, or Response to Intervention, is all the buzz in the education world this year. And that's because it's bringing results. Good ones. The basic mantra of RTI is to monitor student response to the intervention methods you're using and then take action if students aren't responding well. While each school implements RTI in a stylized way, there are four basic components that are key to effective intervention. This month, we'll examine the first three and how Imagine Learning English meets each requirement.

Bring Difficult Narrative to Life

You wouldn’t give your 4th graders Tolstoy or Dostoevsky to tackle. And why not? They’d be left in the wake of complex sentences and compounds. So how can you avoid putting that same burden on your struggling readers and English Learners (ELs)?

While you may not be giving your ELs War and Peace, the transition from picture books to early readers to chapter books can seem equally daunting. If you’re looking to make difficult narrative more accessible, take a look at these research-based, helpful hints for the whole class.

The Glossary that Talks Back

Fifty years ago, multiple-choice tests were graded by hand, not scanned. Overhead projectors ruled the classroom, and PowerPoint or interactive whiteboards only ruled our dreams. When students didn’t understand a word, they slogged through the monstrous, pedestaled dictionary in the library or lost their place to seek out a glossary in the back. And when they didn’t understand the definition, it most certainly wouldn’t talk back.

Well those days are gone, and glossaries are silent no more! The interactive glossary words in Imagine Learning English give students up to six new pieces of information to help them grasp the meaning and context. To find out exactly how this glossary is talking back (no disrespect here), read on.

5 New Interactions

1. Definition Audio: What good is a definition if you can’t read all the words? Just in case students are unsure of a word, we make sure each definition is read aloud, so students can easily follow along.
2. First-language Translation: For those students who have a wider vocabulary in their first-language, each glossary word is translated and read out loud.
3. Part of Speech: No glossary would be complete without this helpful information. Students become more familiar with how nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs function as they see more examples of each.
4. Illustration: For those visual learners, definitions and translations might not cut it. Just in case the meaning still escapes them, we’ve included illustrations for every glossary word possible.
5. Extra Information: To make sure students get a deeper understanding of each word, we include synonyms and antonyms and identify idioms and compound words.

When students read leveled text, glossary words are bold and clickable. At any time, they may click a glossary word to learn more about it. And the best part? ILE holds their place in the story, so students don’t have to. Going five steps beyond the traditional glossary, the ILE interactive glossary allows students to get past the vocabulary and into some meaning.

Note: You can explore the interactive glossary through the Level 2 Activity Menu. Click "Reading Fluency and Comprehension" on the left and then the "Leveled" Listen and Read icon. Open any book and you'll see glossary words in bold. Click any glossary word to explore its meaning.

Building Friendships in Illinois

"At the beginning of our school year, I had two new girls come from different countries, and I started them on Imagine Learning English. Conveniently, I work in a computer classroom in our building that only has computers set up with the ILE software. Our ELL students (K–5) come every day to do their lessons with me.

"I randomly seated these two students next to each other. One student is from Germany, the other from Korea. A wonderful unexpected friendship has blossomed during their time spent sitting next to each other. They check each other’s computer screen to compete, and they wait for each other to walk back to their main classrooms. They are now speaking English with each other and have whole conversations; I hear them as they are walking out. Wow! I cried tears of joy. Imagine Learning English helped these two girls from completely different countries to have conversations and just express themselves as girls do."

Mary Augustine
ELL Assistant
Naperville, Illinois

Testimonial in Texas

"As the Kindergarten bilingual teacher of 24 wonderful students in an early exit district, life can be a little stressful. Imagine my delight when the time came to begin transitioning my students into learning their letters/sounds in English: Imagine Learning English had already gone before me and done just that!

"Even though I had spent relatively little time focusing on the English alphabet, most of my students knew most of the alphabet (letter and sounds)! In the third six weeks of school, most of my students are very successfully beginning to read in English. They have mastered the mechanics of reading in Spanish and continue making excellent progress in that area.

"What makes it even more wonderful is that they love to "play" Imagine Learning English. They have no idea that they are actually learning. Thank you for your hard work in helping my students to be successful in acquiring and mastering a second language. You are greatly appreciated!"

Marie Lowry
Bilingual Kindergarten
Royse City, Texas

Go Graphic

Literacy all begins with letters and sounds. But after learning to recognize letters, then words, then phrases, sentences, and even paragraphs, a student’s journey is still far from over. It’s time to make some meaning out of it all. Time for connections. Time to go graphic.

Each of our new forty-four leveled texts come with a graphic organizer, found conveniently in your Level 2 Resource Guide. Graphic organizers teach students not only how to organize ideas but how to find ideas and meaning in the first place. And according to the April 2007 Reading in a Foreign Language article by scholars Xiangying Jiang and William Grabe, graphic organizers are especially helpful for English learners, who struggle with meaning more than their native-speaking counterparts. Check out the type of graphic organizers we use and how you can incorporate them into your curriculum.

1. Compare and Contrast
2. Sequence/Timeline
3. Main Idea and Supporting Detail
4. Information Table
5. Story Map
6. Cause and Effect
7. Problem/Solution

Struggling readers are likely to see the same text structures over and over without even realizing it. Says Jiang and Grabe, "the limited variety of discourse structures and their recurrence across texts enable teachers to provide explicit instruction to students in text structure knowledge, and students, once familiarized with the major textual patterns, can transfer their knowledge across texts and content areas." Graphic organizers make these text patterns more accessible, so students find meaning easier.

Download a sample graphic organizer here:

Making Resolutions Reality

Another year has come and gone. And so have last year’s resolutions. That’s not to say you didn’t have some great ideas—even the greatest intentions fail without the right plan of action. But if one of your goals this year is to get your students learning, reading, and loving it all… well, we’ve got just the game plan to make your resolution a reality.

Take a look at yet another study that demonstrates students who use Imagine Learning English test better and learn more than students who don’t. Then renew your resolve to put your ELs on Imagine Learning English everyday. Because if you make time in 2009—Imagine Learning English will make results.

ClearVue Research Independent Assessment Study Research Results for an Illinois School District:

1. Kindergarten students using Imagine Learning English had a median improvement in the pretest to posttest ISEL score of 40%. In comparison, kindergarten students without Imagine Learning English gained less than 20% during the pretest to posttest period.
2. First grade students had a median improvement in their pretest to posttest ISEL composite scores of over 30%; while first grade students without Imagine Learning English gained 15%.
3. An additional measure of year-to-year differences validates the increased benefit of Imagine Learning English: Kindergarten ISEL pretest to posttest scores from the 2005-2006 school year (before Imagine Learning English was implemented) had a median improvement of 22% compared with the 40% growth achieved by Imagine Learning English students the following year (2006-2007).
4. Imagine Learning English has a gap-narrowing effect. Students selected to receive Imagine Learning English were the most needy as evidenced by pre-test scores. However, post-test scores show that this gap is narrowed considerably due to the progress of Imagine Learning English students.

And Illinois isn't the only state seeing these results. English learners across the country are closing the learning gap with Imagine Learning English. So while we can't help you with your other New Year's Resolutions, we can help your students with literacy and comprehension. This year, be sure to put Imagine Learning English on your priority list.

Submit a Story

Teachers spend their lives encouraging, guiding, and mentoring their students. Take this opportunity to share how one special teacher did this for you, and we'll post it in our Teacher Appreciation Section.

E-mail all stories to feedback@imaginelearning.com.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or topics you'd like to see more on this blog, e-mail us at feedback@imaginelearning.com.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Contributors

Lisa Salazar
Lisa loves the English language and all its quirks and idiosyncrasies. She has taught English as a second language in the US and abroad and for a period of time attempted to teach Spanish (a language she used to know well) to a class of Hungarians (in a language she barely knew). Needless to say, she quickly developed a deep respect for all language learners.

After a brief stint as a magazine writer, editor, and freelancer, Lisa joined the team at Imagine Learning. When she’s not scrutinizing sentences for comma splices, she enjoys writing music, watching documentaries, and experimenting with ginger and cilantro.

Read Lisa's articles here.

Shar Petersen
Shar has been a writer her entire life but only started getting paid to do it eight years ago. She documents the Imagine Learning products (the paid part), makes a lot of to-do lists (the unpaid part), and blogs about life with a two-year-old (the paid-but-not-in-$$ part).

Shar loves a lot of things, but best of all children and books and reading. She has worked at Imagine Learning since it began in 2004 and thinks it's the perfect place for combining those three passions. The only things that might rank a little higher on her favorites list are her husband, their two daughters, and ice cream.

Read Shar's articles here.

Brenda Johnson
Brenda comes from a family of bookworms and was bitten by the book bug early, thanks to bedtime stories and family reading sessions. Because of this, her main interests include writing, reading, writing, and reading. She also has a passion for storytelling, cooking, graphic design, and gathering useless trivia.

Brenda has written countless bits of poetry and short stories, which are only "countless" because most have been lost to disorganized hard drives or old notebooks. Her favorite book is Peter Pan, and she's begun a personal crusade to make sure everyone in the world reads it and loves it as much as she does.

Read Brenda's articles here.

Paige Lyman
Paige has loved reading and writing since she was a little girl with a very active imagination. Now she's grown, but her imagination is still active, and she puts it to good use writing, planning, and organizing. Her love for the English language has grown as she studied English linguistics and editing, and she thinks that languages are fascinating.

Paige likes dreaming up exciting stories about adventure and writing down her own life's adventures (which may not be as exciting, but are just as good). She also enjoys taking pictures, trying new foods, drawing, and playing games.

Read Paige's articles here.