Set Induction & Examples

Set Induction

Set is a mental state of readiness

Induction brings it on

Set Induction gets learners thinking and ready for the lesson

Anticipatory Set is another name used

Set induction should:

Contain a statement of the learning

Relate the objective

Involve the learner in the learning

State of Learning

Provides a reference point between what the student knows and the new material, thus creating a link from one lesson or class to the next.

Relate the Objective

Relating the objective to some experience past, present and future helps in retention and transfer at a later time.

Techniques for Involvement of the Learner in the Learning

Covert                         

Overt

Questions

Activity

Pictures

Objects

Cartoons

Stories

Anecdotes

Outlines

Transparencies

Summarizing

Facilitating Sets

Used to summarize information presented in previous lessons

Used to summarize information that will occur

Emphasizes the cognitive aspects of a new lesson by reviewing or summarizing

Motivating Sets

Catch the students attention

Arouses curiosity

Poses interesting questions

Uses dramatic appeal

Creates a need or interest

Induces an affective or emotional response

Summary

It is best to provide both motivating and facilitating sets

Monitor behavior by involving students in overt behavior.

ref : http://www.ualr.edu/crgrable/id99.htm

The 7 Rules Of Handling Difficult Students

If you’re like most teachers, two or three students take up most of your time.

On the days when they’re absent, or pulled from your class, everything goes smoothly. Teaching is more fun. You’re more relaxed. And you can cruise through your lessons without interruption.

Hooray!

But when they’re sitting in class, which seems like all the time, they can make you want to pull your hair out.

Unfortunately, the frustrations you feel dealing with difficult students can cause you to make mistakes.

The following is a list of 7 rules–all don’ts–that will help you avoid the most common pitfalls, and turn your most difficult students into valued members of your classroom.

Rule #1: Don’t question.

It’s normal for teachers to force explanations from difficult students as a form of accountability. Butasking why and demanding a response from them almost always ends in resentment. And angry students who dislike their teacher never improve their classroom behavior.

Rule #2: Don’t argue.

When you argue with difficult students, it puts them on equal footing with you, creating a “your word against theirs” situation. This negates the effects of accountability. It also opens the floodgates: everybody will be arguing with you.

Rule #3: Don’t lecture, scold, or yell.

Lecturing, scolding, and yelling will cause all students to dislike you, but when you direct your diatribe toward one particular student, it can be especially damaging. Creating friction between you and your most challenging students virtually guarantees that their behavior will worsen.

Rule #4: Don’t give false praise.

Teachers often shower difficult students with praise for doing what is minimally expected. But because these students can look around at their fellow classmates and know that it’s a sham, false praise doesn’t work. Instead, give only meaningful, heartfelt praise based on true accomplishment.

Rule #5: Don’t hold a grudge.

“Every day is a new day” should be your mantra with difficult students. They need to know that they have a clean slate to start each day–and so do you. To that end, say hello, smile, and let them know you’re happy to see them first thing every morning.

Rule #6: Don’t lose your cool.

When you let students get under your skin and you lose emotional control, even if it’s just a sigh and an eye roll, you become less effective. Your likeability drops. Classroom tension rises. And when difficult students discover they can push your buttons, they’ll try as often as they can.

Rule #7: Don’t ignore misbehavior.

Given that there is an audience of other students, ignoring misbehavior will not make it go away. It will only make it worse. Instead, follow your classroom management plan as it’s written. If a difficult student breaks a rule, no matter how trivial, enforce it immediately.

It’s About Relationships

What if the two or three (or more) difficult students in your classroom admired you? What if they looked up to you, respected you, trusted you, and liked being in your company?

What if they embraced whatever you had to say to them?

Your success in helping them change their behavior would go through the roof, and you’d have peace in your classroom. The fact is, everything hinges on your ability to build relationships with your students.

Your classroom management plan merely nudges them in the right direction. Done correctly, it gets students to look inward, to self-evaluate, and to feel the weight of their transgressions. But by itself, it can only do so much.

It’s your relationship with your students that makes the greatest difference.

When you build trusting rapport with them, which anyone can do, you then possess a tidal wave of influence that can change their behavior, improve their academic performance, and profoundly impact their lives.

ref : http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2011/04/23/7-rules-of-handling-difficult-students/

Samsung Galaxy S 4 Beats The Best With 5-inch, 1080p Display, 1.9GHz Processor, Gesture Controls And A Q2 2013 Release

As if it could be any other way, the just-announced Samsung Galaxy S 4 is Samsung’s, and perhaps even Android’s, best phone yet. In fact, it very well may be the best smartphone on the market, period.

We’ve been through months of speculation, hype, rumors, and leaks, but the truth is out, and the Galaxy S 4 still has much more up its sleeve than the leaks suggested. More than any other Galaxy before it, the Galaxy S 4 is proof that the company can build a central brand the way Apple has with the iPhone. Both the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S series have been selling in the millions, and the Galaxy S 4 looks like it will hold up that trend.

Even with loads of new software, like an enhanced camera application, hover-style gesture features, and a slew of baked-in apps and services from Samsung, the Galaxy S 4 still brings the heat in the hardware/spec department. Here are the specifics:

The Galaxy S 4 clearly has a small ring of competition in the spec department. The only phones that are on this level are the Xperia Z (1080p 5-inch display, 13mp camera, quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU) and the HTC One (4.7-inch 1080p display, 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU, and an “Ultrapixel” camera) and LG’s Optimus G Pro (1080p 5.5-inch display, quad-core Snapdragon 600, 13-megapixel camera).

Of course, they each have their own pros and cons, but the Galaxy S 4 seems to be the most compact, lightest, and fastest among them. Samsung hasn’t been clear about the exact brand of the processor for the U.S. version, but it did say that it was a quad-core Snapdragon CPU clocked at 1.9GHz, which we believe may be the Snapdragon 600.

However, “processors vary by region,” says Samsung, and the Asian and European version will sport the long-awaited Samsung Exynos 5 Octa eight-core processor.

The Galaxy S 4 design manages to both fit in with the Galaxy S family and stand on its own as a unique breed. For one, Samsung packed a bigger display (5-inches diagonal) into a package that’s actually smaller than before. The GS4 is the same width, slightly shorter, and .7mm thinner than its predecessor.

As such, the bezels on the Galaxy S 4 are slightly thinner on all four sides, which means it’s all screen, all the time. And what a screen it is. The Galaxy S 4 display is 5 inches of unadulterated Super AMOLED 1080p brilliance. Surrounding it, the Galaxy S 4 takes a hybrid shape, something between the straight lines of the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S II with the curved tops, bottoms, and corners of the Galaxy S III. The elongated home button is unmistakably GSIII-style.

The Galaxy S 4 also sticks with familiar materials, and unfortunately that still means a whole lot of plastic. Both the front panel and back panel (which is removable) are made of brushed plastic, but with a textured pattern of tiny circles laid over it. It gives the phone an industrial, textured look, but in reality all you feel is smooth plastic.

Around the edge, you’ll notice a new embellishment to the S series: a metallic bar that runs along the edge of the device. Though it looks a lot like metal, it’s actually polycarbonate and meant to protect the sensitive corners of the device.

It would be nice to see some more premium materials in this generation of the Galaxy S, but the plastic and polycarbonate construction let Samsung fit many components into a very compact, light package, according to Director of Product Planning Drew Blackard.

The Galaxy S 4 uses a new 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, bumped up from the 8-megapixel shooter on the Galaxy S III. It’s still centrally placed on the upper back half of the device, complete with LED flash, autofocus, and 1080p video recording. On the front, the Galaxy S 4 sports a 2-megapixel camera.

The higher megapixel sensor is nice, and will surely make a slight difference, but where the Galaxy S 4 camera really evolves from past generations is in the software.

For one thing, the camera app now uses the same UI as the Galaxy Camera, with a brushed silver finish to the buttons and much simpler navigation. Clicking the mode button along the bottom will bring up a simple scroll wheel full of various modes. When one is highlighted, the menu gives the name as well as a description. More sophisticated users can also see these mode options in a grid view for quick changes.

Along with some of the same modes we’ve seen on both the Galaxy Camera and newer Galaxy smartphones like Beauty Shot, Samsung has added way more modes into the mix. One is called Eraser, and it lets you remove unwanted people from a shot. Samsung says it comes in handy for shots that have been photo-bombed, or tourist shots at busy places. The camera senses any motion that goes through the frame and lets you choose to remove it, as if that person had never walked through your shot of the Eiffel Tower.

The Galaxy S 4 also has a dual-shot mode, which is just a button press away from the main camera interface. This lets you use both the front-facing camera and the rear-facing camera at the same time, for both recording and still captures. There are various filters, such as Oval Blur, Postage Stamp, Cubism, and Split, which give you different options for the theme of your dual-shot creation. You can resize the pop-up picture, and move it around the screen using simple drag and drop tools. It’s pretty amazing.

Some other modes include Drama Shot, which lets you take a succession of photos of some action (like someone skiing down a mountain) and turn them into a composite of the entire sequence, and Sound and Shot, which lets you record up to 9 seconds of audio to pair along with a picture.

Samsung even jumped on the GIF train with the likes of Cinemagraph and Vine to create a gif-making mode, called Cinema Shot. It lets you take a short recording, and then determine which parts of the shot stay still and which parts remain animated. In fact, it’s almost exactly like Cinemagraph.

But Samsung took one step past capture and even built an app called Story Album which lets you create photo albums of special events or trips through templates, and use TripAdvisor to add extra location data to your story. You can even print your album through a partnership with Blurb’s print distribution network.

There’s a lot going on here, so try to keep up. We had recently heard that the GS4′s “wow” factor would be all in the software, and that’s exactly right. Most of TouchWiz is the same, though it seems to get lighter and lighter as the phones get faster. The one very noticeable edition was a set of extra toggle buttons available in the pull-down notifications menu.

Other than those particulars, let’s start with the gesture-based head-tracking stuff.

The most useful new feature of the Galaxy S 4 is Air View. It lets you hover over something on the screen to get an extended pop-up view of what’s inside. For example, if you hover over an email in your inbox, Air View will bring up the first few sentences of that email’s contents. If you hover over an album within the photo gallery, you’ll see nine thumbnails of the contents of that gallery. In fact, if you hover over an image while inside the folder, that particular thumbnail will expand to give you a better view of the particular picture. It’s all very reminiscent of what can be done with recent entries in the Galaxy Note line, except without requiring users to keep track of an S-Pen.

Air View is embedded in the email client, photo gallery, calendar, and a Galaxy S 4-edition of Flipboard, which lets you view and select headlines by hovering over a single tile.

Samsung also added an Air Gesture feature, which lets you control the phone without having to hold it — I could see this being used while driving. You can swipe left and right to switch between web pages, songs, photos in the gallery, etc. and swipe up and down to scroll. You can even accept calls by waving at the phone.

Rumors suggested that Samsung had developed some sort of magic-scroll eye-tracking technology, when in reality the Galaxy S 4 can actually only track your head, very much like the Galaxy S III’s Smart stay feature. The front-facing camera can detect that your head is facing the phone directly, which stops the display from dimming.

In the Galaxy S 4, that technology evolves to automatically pause videos when you turn away from the phone with Smart Pause. As far as scrolling is concerned, if you’re on a page that requires reading or scrolling, the Galaxy S 4 will let you tip the phone forward or backward to scroll (as long as the ff-camera senses that you’re paying attention).

Samsung said that using tilt-gestures as well as “head-tracking” technology to streamline browsing a page was “the most intuitive and natural to the end-consumer.”

As far as NFC is concerned, the GS4 includes S Beam and TecTile integration, but Samsung also lets you pair with up to eight other NFC-devices to run a feature called GroupPlay, which lets you play the same song across eight different devices… to create a party on the go.

Samsung also included an IR blaster on the Galaxy S 4 so that you can use it as a remote for just about any modern television. Called WatchON, it also includes rich information proved by an electronic programming guide.

Along with an updated camera and Story Album, the Galaxy S 4 brings a handful of brand new applications to the Galaxy S family. The first, and possibly most important, is S Translator. S Translator is available in nine languages at launch, including Chinese, English U.S., English British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese.

It is a standalone app that automatically translates information that is typed or copy/pasted into it. S Translator is also embedded in ChatOn, Messaging, and email.

The Galaxy S 4 also has an optical reader which turns analog information into digital, by reading business cards and turning them into address book contacts. S Translator is also embedded into the optical reader, which scans QR codes as well.

ChatOn, Samsung’s own-branded VoIP application, has been updated to include three-way video calls, screen share, and annotations. You can even use the new dual-camera mode to enjoy ChatOn calls.

Samsung has been making a big push in the health department with the new Galaxy S 4, and has thus preloaded the S Health app on the device. The app originally made its debut last July and seemed to focus mainly on linking up with existing health gadgets like fancy scales and blood glucose monitors. This time around, using the Galaxy S 4′s built-in pedometer, S Health tracks your activity throughout the day and knows when you’re running, walking or climbing stairs. The S Health app also lets you input your consumption activities to track caloric intake and get suggestions.

Speaking of S Health, Samsung is selling a few health-related accessories to tackle the ever-growing quantified self products like the Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband, and FitBit. That said, Samsung has introduced the wrist-worn S Band that tracks activity, temperature and humidity.

Samsung is even going so far as to sell a heart-rate monitor which you can strap on for your daily workouts, and a body scale. All of the accessories come with Bluetooth so they can pair back to your device and be recorded by the S Health app.

And since Samsung loves making special cases for its big-name phones, the Galaxy S 4 had to go big even with its case. It’s called the S View cover, and it has a little screen on the front that reads information from the phone. That way, even though the phone is locked, you can still see the time, SMS notifications, battery status, and choose to accept or ignore incoming calls.

Samsung didn’t specify which technology they used for the cover’s display, or whether or not it needs a charge or takes battery from the S 4, but it wouldn’t surprise me to hear they took a page out of the YotaPhone playbook and are using low-power e-ink here.

Samsung didn’t clarify exact pricing, but said it would go for the same price as a “Samsung premium smartphone”. The Galaxy S III launched in the US at $199 with a 2 year contact.

In terms of availability, they didn’t give a specific release date but did say it would be on store shelves in 2013Q2, at AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cricket and U.S. Cellular.

Samsung is riding high on the success of the Galaxy S III and from what I’ve seen, the Galaxy S 4 is a worthy successor with innovative features packed into a familiar housing. It’s a bit of a shame that Samsung announced the phone without giving a price or release date, but at this point, with Samsung the global sales and innovation leader in smartphones, it can do pretty much whatever it wants.

ref : http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/14/samsung-galaxy-s-4-beats-the-best-with-5-inch-1080p-display-1-9ghz-processor-gesture-controls-and-a-q2-2012-release/

21 Tips to Sprint Faster

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How to Sprint Faster

How to Sprint Faster

Sprinting is the foundation of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), and will make your legs big, strong, fast, and powerful. Sprints are great for developing endurance, but also for developing lean muscle mass and speed strength.
Ever seen a skinny sprinter? I didn’t think so.
Sure, squats are the almighty kings of the Gym Exercise Kingdom; but sprints are like the kings of the Functional Exercise Kingdom whose jacked-up, super-lean army of massive wheels is constantly trying to overthrow the squat as the #1 top leg exercise.
You think you can sprint, but can you?
Here are 21 tips you can follow to improve your sprinting:

1. Start on the correct foot. When standing, have someone push you lightly from the back. The foot that moves first should be your rear foot in the starting blocks. It will move first and fastest.
2. Explode out of the starting blocks. Getting a jump on the competition out of the blocks is vital to sprinting faster. Starting strength and starting speed are always important aspects of maximal effort exercise. To get that quick jump, your leg angle should be about 45 degrees, your stride should be short, and your arms should help you gain that initial momentum.
3. Touch the ground only with your toes. Aside from pushing off with your toes, your toes should really be the only part of the foot to come in contact with the ground. Anything else will just slow you down.
4. Push off with your toes. You should be pushing off with the toes of your rear leg to maximize propulsion.
5. Kick your own butt. Once your toes push off at the end of your stride, your legs should follow through by essentially kicking your butt with your heel. Practice butt-kicks while warming up before a sprint.
6. Run with a circle. (No, not IN a circle, WITH a circle.) Your foot movement should be circular, not elliptical. Videotape yourself from the side while sprinting to check this. Your toes should touch down only in the bottom quadrant of the circle in the direction you are running.
7. Use dorsiflexion to increase propulsion. As soon as your toes push off, you should pull your toes and feet up towards your shin. This helps you to sprint faster by causing the calf muscle to contract and propel the body forward.
8. Don’t break your stride. When your toes touch down they should already by moving backwards, thanks in part to a circular foot motion and the dorsiflexion mentioned previously. Stepping straight down breaks your stride.
9. Kick your knees up. At the top of your stride, your thigh should approach a parallel angle to your running surface. Practice high knee kicks while warming up before a sprint.
10. Shorten your stride. Your foot should not land out in front of your body, rather it should land directly under your center of gravity. This is a common misconception when sprinting. By touching your foot down in front of your hips, your foot will actually act more like a break than an accelerant.
11. Increase the speed of your stride. In keeping your strides shorter, you should also be able to quicken them. The more times your toes push off behind you, the faster you will run.
12. Swing those arms. Make an L shape with your arms. Pump your fist as high as your chin and pump your elbow back as far as possible for momentum.
13. Conserve energy. You’ve got your stride and your arm swing. Any other motion just wastes precious energy. That includes unnecessary tension in any other muscle groups. Stretch and shake the tension out of your body before a sprint.
14. Sprint short distances. To maximize speed you want to train only when you are the fastest. That means you should not sprint for longer than 20-30 seconds in one burst. After 30 seconds your effort will naturally decrease to submaximal, and you don’t want this.
15. Eat carbs. You should consume some complex carbs before your sprint session. Consider eating some fruit an hour before training.
16. Look straight ahead. Looking anywhere else will make your body want to run in that direction, which is wasted energy. That includes looking down. Do you want to run down into the ground or in a straight line, straight ahead? Right. So don’t look down. Looking down also impairs your breathing.
17. Harmonize your breathing. Rather than breathing randomly, you should breathe in with your nose and out with your mouth in a steady rhythm with your strides. Find a rhythm that works best for you and stick with it long enough to make it natural.
18. Accelerate at all times. Ideally you should be moving faster at the finish line than at any other time during the sprint. You never want to decelerate during the sprint, as it trains your body to be slower. If necessary during a long sprint, you should pace yourself by sprinting with moderate speed at first and increasing acceleration through the finish line.
19. Lift weights. You might be surprised to know that all of the muscles in your body are required for sprinting, with the possible exception of the biceps which really aren’t good for much except chin ups.
    • Hamstrings are the most important muscle for a fast sprint.
    • Quadriceps are the second most important muscle for a fast sprint.
    • You are going to need strong calves for pushing off with your toes.
    • Your shoulders, chest, and back need to be strong for pumping your arms.
    • The core needs to be strong to keep your body straight and aligned properly.
    • A strong neck will help keep your head from bouncing to and fro while sprinting.
20. Get a little help from your friends. Train with people who are faster than you. Constantly striving to catch someone, will provide the motivation you need to get faster. Training with someone slower than you will not be as challenging.
21. And finally: practice. If you want to be a good sprinter, get out and practice. Run a wide variety of sprint lengths including 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, and 200 meters. You might tend to slow down towards the end of a 200 meter sprint, but always strive for positive acceleration.

ref : http://www.projectswole.com/conditioning/21-tips-to-sprint-faster/#4xhhuBRjcz5v6yld.99 

Interactive Activities for Remedial Reading

Students who struggle with reading may benefit from a variety of interactive activities to help them learn. Find some examples here, both classroom-based as well as online.

• Utilizing multiple senses helps students to grasp language skills. Whether using interactive wall lessons or online activities, students will enjoy participating in these activities.

• Interactive Learning Wall

  There are several ways to use an interactive learning wall with students in remedial reading. The Calendar Wall is most familiar in remedial reading rooms. On this wall, students must identify and post the correct day, month, year and weather, along with other information such as holidays and birthdays. However, interactive learning walls can easily turn into game boards.

  This game can be modified for the various levels of the students in the remedial class.

  Materials needed:

  • Word Cards – color code words by parts of speech (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.).
  • Picture Cards – make sure the pictures are clear and well defined.
  • Sentence Cards – create beginnings of sentences to be built on by the students (i.e., I like to...or, The dog went...).
  • Note books or paper to track word.

  Make one title banner that reads, "The Matching Game" and another that reads, "The Building Game."

  

  The Matching Game

  For low level learners, stick up pictures that students can then match the words to after they have read them with the teacher.

  For remedial readers who are more advanced, display the words. Ask the students to match the pictures, or have duplicate words for them to match.

  Once they match the words/pictures correctly, the students write that word onto their paper or into their notebook. Later, they can read their list back to the teacher.

  Note that the students have listened to, viewed, written (this act is akin to feeling) and spoken the words they are learning.

  The Building Game

  As students advance in remedial reading, they will enjoy the building game where they will learn to build compound words, as well as sentences.

  Under the Building Game banner, place the beginnings of compound words. Have the students read the words on the board. Hand them one new word card, then ask them to "build" a new word by placing it behind one of the words on the wall.

  Once done, they will then write the word in their notebook.

  For sentences, post one sentence on the board. Have students use the words they know to finish the sentence. Allow them to be silly, as long as the sentence is grammatically correct. For instance, "I like to ride stars to the moon," would be correct, but, "I like mashed beans down street home," would not be correct.

• Online Learning

  For older students, Deltora from Scholastic encourages reading while providing students with opportunities to reinforce learning through online games and quizzes. The publisher suggests this site for students ages 9-12.

  Students of any age will enjoy finding the meaning to words with the Simple Photographic Dictionary. Tailored to children, this dictionary provides word searches alphabetically, as well as for rhyme and by the ending consonant.

  Word Bubbles helps scaffold learning by challenging students to build words from the first three letters given. Students accrue points for each correct word they spell. This is an excellent game for older remedial readers.

• Other Resources

  Word games such as Rory's Story Cubes are another way to encourage interactive learning. Each of the story cubes has simple pictures printed on all sides. There are endless ways to use these cubes in the classroom to encourage language development. For remedial reading classes, students first identify the picture, and then write the name of the picture. Later, after they have mastered the pictures, they could use the cubes to tell stories.

  
  

  ref : http://www.brighthubeducation.com/teaching-elementary-school/110442-interactive-activities-for-remedial-readers/

7 Keys to Comprehension in Reading


• Connecting reading to their background knowledge
• Creating sensory images
• Asking questions
• Drawing inferences
• Determining what's important
• Synthesizing ideas
• Solving problems

Teaching Ideas for Remedial Reading

Teaching remedial reading can be a repetitive process, which can be frustrating for both the student and the teacher. Luckily, there are many resources such as free remedial reading activities out that are both effective and provide variety.

• Show That Everything Has a Name

  Make sure that children understand that everything in the classroom has a name, and that they understand what these things do. A good activity is to create labels for everything in the classroom. This will help students to associate the written word with an object, and encourage them to vocalize what it is they are wanting. If you avoid referring to things as "this" or "that," then the students will begin to as well. This can lead to different activities for different age groups and reading levels.

  Younger students will appreciate the alphabet in their classroom, as it increases familiarity and can also be used as a teaching tool. Capital letters work best, as they are easier for students to recognize. Pictures that students create can also be labeled, or students can work on a scrapbook activity. This can also lead to small field trips where any written words are pointed out. For example, the word stop across a stop sign.

  Older students can incorporate this into other activities. For example, in planning to prepare something in the kitchen, students can work to create a grocery list and then read the products to find what they are looking for at the grocery store.

• Encourage Daily Reading

  It's very important for children to be interested in reading, but this is often difficult when children's reading levels and interest levels differ. A high-low reading list is a very good resource to help find books that students will be interested in. Reading magazines and newspapers are also great as they have many short articles, but make students feel grown-up. Reading aloud is a great thing to do, though students will usually come across words they don't know. A few tips for dealing with this are:

  • Encourage them to sound the word out completely, rather than guessing after the first letter or syllable.
  • Have them read the entire sentence with the unknown word omitted. Then ask them what word would fit in the blank.
  • Once they have figured out the correct word, have them read the entire sentence again so they finish without struggling.

  If students have particular trouble with sounding words out and resort to guessing, a good activity is to write a list of nonsense words, and have them sound them out. This teaches students to sound the entire word out, without guessing.

• Focus on Comprehension

  Comprehension is a major part of reading, and is an important thing to develop in remedial readers. It is usually easier to start with a TV show or sports program before introducing comprehension exercises to short stories. Comprehension should include how to summarize, predict, context and monitor. Summarizing can be done by asking students to retell a story in just a few sentences, predicting can be started by asking the student what they think might happen next. Context is especially useful for students who often find words they don't know. Teaching students how to use context clues (words and pictures) is a great skill. Monitoring stops the problem of reading a whole story and not knowing what happened. Students can learn to stop reading and check to make sure they understand what they just read. If not, it is a good time to re-read the sentence or passage.

• Fun and Games

  There are quite a few good websites that have free remedial reading activities. The only caution is that some of these games are designed for younger children, so it is important to encourage students who won't feel offended to use these resources.

  Starfall is an excellent website. Their games progress from pre-reading, learning to read, enjoying to read, and becoming confident in reading ability. There is also a teacher's section which includes supplementary printable materials.

  Scholastic has an incredibly comprehensive game section, and even has games extending further into language arts, math, science and social studies. They have games for all age levels, include pre-k to grade 12. I found that these games were designed for a wide range of abilities and ages, which is great!

  PBS Kids has some great games for younger children. Their games progress from learning about letters, to learning about synonyms. All directions are spoken out loud.

  FreeReading.net is a great resource for reading intervention for pre k to grade 6. The website has a number activities, as well as resources for teachers. A further review of freereading.net is also available.

Ref : http://www.orl.bc.ca/assets/files/Booklists/Hi_Interest_Low_Vocabulary.pdf