In-depth Interactive Learning Tools
— Because You Want Results
Top 59 Tips for Teachers to
Differentiate Reading and Writing Instruction
with Software
A Free Report for Teachers
In-depth Interactive Learning Tools
— Because You Want Results
Top 59 Tips for Teachers to
Differentiate Reading and Writing Instruction
with Software
A Free Report for Teachers
Teachers often work with students from a great range of backgrounds, ages, abilities, and skills. They find
themselves instructing mixed-level classes comprised of students with very different needs.
Some students struggle with reading and writing. They have trouble with basic skills and vocabulary. Writing
reports and papers is difficult for them. They quickly fall behind grade level. Other students are advanced. They
require enrichment. If they aren’t challenged, they may start to lose interest in school. Still other students are
in the middle. Since these students may comprise the majority, teachers may feel pressured to ‘teach to the
middle’—that is, to gear both the curriculum and learning process towards this group.
Reading and writing should be taught so that all students understand why these skills matter. All students benefit
from being taught important concepts and skills. They should all receive access to the same core content.
Yet a uniform approach to the learning process cannot work for struggling, middling, and advanced students.
Therefore, students should receive differentiated instruction benefiting their individual readiness level, learning
style, and interest.
Students should be introduced to reading and writing skills in an enjoyable way that not only engages their
attention, but offers instant feedback. Software designed to improve specific reading and writing skills is a great
tool for accomplishing these goals.
Good reading and writing skills software offers clear prompts; step-by-step directions; a step-by step approach;
focus on technique; rehearsal and revisiting of content; context-sensitive feedback, and ways for monitoring
individual student work.
Merit Software writing programs are designed with these features in mind. Hundreds of teachers have reported
Merit’s effectiveness in helping them teach reading and writing skills in classroom and lab settings. They have
used Merit Software programs to fulfill curricular goals, encourage critical thinking, boost state test scores, and
save time.
Based on feedback from educators, here are 59 tips for teaching writing both effectively and efficiently with Merit
Software.
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Top 59 Tips for Teachers to Differentiate Reading and Writing
Instruction with Software
1.
Assess Student Reading Levels: Learn whether individual students are likely to be struggling, middling, or
advanced. Look over recent grades, test scores, and sample assignments. Gauge the range of students’ preexisting skills and knowledge. What are your reading goals for these students? What content are they learning?
What kinds of short- or long-term projects might help them? What are your overall goals for the class?
2.
Talk to Students About Reading: Ask what kinds of reading students do for social studies, science, and language
arts classes. Do they like reading? Why or why not? When is reading easy? Difficult? What do students like
reading about? What don’t they like? What new ideas have they recently learned? What new concepts don’t
they understand?
3. Read to Share Emotion: Ask if students read outside school. Do they use books or read online? Where do they
read? When do they read? Have students bring in and share one paragraph that they really like from a text
they are reading. Ask them to explain what they like about it.
4. Give Reading Time: Help students find books and articles that they can relate to. Make sure that the reading
level for student-selected materials is not too hard for struggling students. Make sure that middling and
advanced students choose something that will challenge them. Give students time to read what they like.
5.
Create Reading Groups: Break students into small reading groups of 4-5, either by level or by thematic interest.
Assign each student a different role, such as director of discussion; chief of connection (with the job of making
connections between the reading and real life); president of plot (with the job of summarizing the story, as
well as explaining main ideas and themes); language leader (with the job of identifying figurative language);
and vocabulary master (with the job of identifying vocabulary that other group members might not know).
Let each group set up its own schedule for discussions and assignments. After reading groups finish each
book, have them regroup and rotate jobs.
6.
Learn to Like Language: Have students work in pairs, grouping each pair by reading choice or level. Ask each
pair to read together through a page that they like. Each pair should write down the six words that seem most
interesting. Any words they have trouble understanding should be looked up. One student could be
responsible for finding the words and the other responsible for writing down a brief definition. Next, put two
different student pairs—of different levels—together. Ask the more beginning pair to teach their new
vocabulary words to the more advanced pair.
7. Dive Into Dictionaries: Give students time to look up vocabulary words from social studies, science, and
language arts class. Make sure struggling students understand what nouns, verbs, and adjectives are. Make
sure struggling and middling students understand abbreviations—such as “n.,” “v.t.,” and “adj.”
8. Be Vocal About Vocabulary: Let all students know that building a vocabulary is something that people do their
whole lives. No matter how many words they know, they will always encounter more!
9.
Get to Know Reading Software: Have students use a Merit reading or vocabulary program, going through
Tryouts to see where they need the most reading skills help. Ask students to identify a skill they have used
before, as well as skills they find easy or difficult, on a piece of paper. List the names of different skills on the
board, along with the phrases “I know this,” “I find this easy,” and “I need to work on this” below each skill
name. Ask for a show of hands regarding each skill; jot down the number of students who respond to each
phrase. Collect students’ written responses regarding skills.
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10. Assess What Students Understand: After class, use the Merit Teacher Program Manager (TPM) to see how
students did on Tryouts. Are student self-assessments accurate regarding what they know and what they
find easy or difficult? How much understanding do individual students have about where they are in the
learning process? Can you predict which students will need more practice with certain reading skills, and
which will master new skills faster?
11. Build Student Reading Skills: Have students return to their Merit reading or vocabulary program and go through
the Warmup section. Note that all students—whether struggling, middling, or advanced—will be applying
skills as they learn them.
12. Give Reading Another Voice: Ask students to pause from their Merit Warmup section. Explain how to click
on “Voice,” and choose between “Kate” and “Paul.” Explain options for controlling voice speed. Students who
are struggling or middling should start out by using the “Slow” voice rate, with the goal of resetting the Merit
voice speed to “Normal” during a future software session. Students who are advanced should be encouraged
to start out with “Normal” voice speed, and to use the voice only sparingly.
13. Link Skills to Content: As students reach the Merit Workout section, ask them to think about the software
content. Have students note the topic of a software text that is familiar to them, as well as a software topic
that is unfamiliar. Request that students list new vocabulary words from software texts that they regard as
either interesting or important, along with definitions from the software. Struggling students should list 5-6
words. Middling and advanced students should list 7-10 words.
14. Make Reading Software a Shared Experience: Follow up each software session with class discussion. Ask
students to look over their notes from the software session. Can they describe a reading topic that they had
encountered before? What software reading content was new to students? What new questions do students
have? What reading topics would they like to learn more about?
15. Flash Through Vocabulary: Reinforce Merit reading vocabulary by making sets of flash cards. Break students
into groups of 3 according to reading level. Ask students to write a vocabulary word on one side of the card
and its definition on the other. One group member should pronounce the vocabulary word, the second should
state its definition, and the third should use the word in a sentence. Listen to groups, making sure they are
using vocabulary correctly. Ask group members to trade roles after a while.
16. Troubleshoot Right Away: Review any problem areas for reading or vocabulary in the classroom. Discuss what
skill(s) students found most difficult when answering Merit reading or vocabulary questions. Later, use the
Merit TPM to assess students’ progress on the Workout section.
17. Boost Confidence: Have students print scores after completing a Merit Workout Section. Discuss scores with
students. Are they pleased with their progress? What areas seem easier or more familiar to them? What new
things have they learned? What will be their goal for their next software session?
18. Relate Software to Curriculum: Supplement Merit by giving students time to read material from social studies,
science, and language arts classes, so they may practice reading and vocabulary skills in a variety of areas.
Give struggling, middling, and advanced students reading material/quantity according to their level.
19. Practice Note-Taking: Break students into groups according to their reading level. Give each group a short
sample from a social studies, science, or language arts text that matches their reading level. Ask groups to
decide together what the most important sentence in each paragraph is, and then to underline it. Have
groups circle new vocabulary words. If they are unsure about what a word means, they should circle it, look
it up, and write the meaning of the word in the margin. Next, they should mark brackets around phrases or
facts they do not understand, draw an arrow in the margin, and write a question mark. Check over what
groups are doing, and answer any questions that they have.
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20. Apply Skills to New Content: Break students into groups according to their reading level. Give each group a
short sample from a social studies, science, or language arts text that matches their reading level. Have groups
find the key words that tell the main idea. Can they list 1-2 details? Find a fact or an opinion? Explain text
sequence? What can they infer from their text? Help students understand that they can apply the same
reading and vocabulary skills to all school subjects.
21. Practice Summarizing New Content: Break students into groups according to their reading level. Give each
group a short sample from a social studies, science, or language arts text that matches their reading level.
Have groups once again apply their new reading skills to each subject area. This time, also ask them to write
sentences explaining what they are reading.
22. Share Vocabulary from New Content: Write out 3 short lists of vocabulary from either social studies, science,
or language arts class. Divide students into mixed-level groups of 3. Assign a list to each student. Ask students
to create sentences using vocabulary according to the list they were assigned--so each person in a group will
be working on a different list. Have group members get together to share sentences and teach each other
new vocabulary.
23. Create Weekend Readers: Suggest that struggling and middling students read something they like for an
extra 20-25 minutes a day on weekends. Suggest advanced students read something they like for an extra
25-30 minutes a day on weekends.
24. Create Careful Readers (A): Suggest that students keep a reading journal. Ask them to write down what they
read, when they read it, and who wrote it. If they are starting new language arts reading, they should write
down a list of characters and who they are. If they are starting new social studies or history-of-science reading,
they should write down a list of people mentioned in the text and who they are. Under each reading-journal
entry, students should write their own comments, questions, and new vocabulary words.
25. Create Careful Readers (B): Give students prompts to help them with reading journals. Have them complete
statements such as: “This makes me think of”; “The person I identify most with is”; “I felt upset when”; “I laughed
when”; “The part that makes me think of my own life was”; “I liked the description of.” Look over student
reading journals and offer some encouraging written responses.
26. Create Critical Thinkers: Have students work in mixed-level groups of 3. Give each group a different short text.
Ask groups to imagine they are making up reading/vocabulary questions for the Merit program being used.
Have each group create and write their own skill-related question and answers. Struggling students should
start out by writing a vocabulary question such as “What word can replace this underlined word?” Middling
students should start out by writing a question about reading content such as “What is the main idea?”
Advanced students should write out answers to the questions. Next, distribute copies of all texts being used.
Bring groups together. Ask each group to take turns challenging the rest of the class with their reading/
vocabulary questions.
27. Encourage Enrichment: Divide students into small, mixed-level groups. Have each group imagine they are
creating a crossword puzzle for the Merit reading or vocabulary program being used. Ask them to choose
words from classroom material, and then work together to write, draw, and design their own vocabulary
puzzles.
28. Talk About Test-taking: Have students return to their Merit reading or vocabulary program, going through the
Finals section. Discuss how the skills they are practicing may be applied to standardized tests.
29. Praise Achievement: Encourage students to print out scores from the Merit Finals section. Ask them to look
over all the Merit scores that they have printed out. How do they feel about what they have learned? Have
they learned a lot, or just sharpened their skills? Is reading for class getting any easier? Faster?
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30. Reassess What Students Understand: List the names of different skills on the board, along with the phrases
“I know this,” “I find this easy,” and “I need to work on this” below each skill name. Ask for a show of hands
regarding each skill; jot down the number of students who respond to each phrase. Collect students’ written
responses regarding skills. Compare these responses to students’ very early responses—from when they were
just beginning to use Merit reading software. Have all your students made progress? How much? Can you
predict how well they might do in another class next term?
Top 59 Tips for Teachers to
Differentiate Writing Instruction with Software
31. Listen to Students: Ask what kind of writing students do for social studies, science, and language arts classes.
Do they like writing? Why or why not? When is writing easy? Difficult? What kinds of writing do students like
to read? What do they dislike?
32. Talk with Students About Writing: Ask if students write outside school. Do they only write for homework? Do
they keep a journal? Do they write letters, e-mail, text messages, or web blogs? Create poems, songs, stories,
or comic strips? What kinds of things do they like to read? Can they imagine that there is any kind of relationship
between writing and reading?
33. Assess Student Writing Levels: Learn whether individual students are likely to be struggling, middling, or
advanced. Look over recent grades, test scores, and sample assignments. Gauge the range of students’ pre existing writing skills and knowledge. What are your goals for these students? What forms of writing are they
already familiar with? What are their individual points of difficulty? What kinds of short- or long-term projects
might help them? What are your overall goals for the class?
34. Be Savvy About Sentences: Make sure that struggling students understand what a sentence is before they try
writing paragraphs. Discuss how a sentence always has a subject and a verb; starts with a capital letter; ends
with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Model complete and incomplete sentences for struggling
students.
35. Be Persistent About Paragraphs: Make sure that both struggling and middling students understand what
a paragraph is. Discuss how a paragraph is a block of text; is usually indented; is made up of several related
sentences; focuses on one topic or idea. Model a complete paragraph for struggling and middling students.
36. Teach Specific Writing Skills: Introduce skills such as brainstorming, organizing, expanding ideas, and revising
to the whole class. Review these specific skills often. Ask advanced students to model these skills for the rest
of the class.
37. Get to Know Writing Software: Have students use a Merit writing program, going through Pre-Writing and
inputting sentences for Writing-Body. Break the class into pairs, according to level. Ask each pair to share
sentences with each other.
38. Create Confidence: Follow up each session by asking what students found easiest when using their Merit writing
program. What was familiar? What new things did they learn about brainstorming, outlining, and
organizing?
39. Troubleshoot Right Away: Review any problem areas for writing in the classroom. Ask what students found
most difficult about brainstorming, outlining, and organizing. What questions do they have?
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40. Get Ready for Revising (A): Tell your students that it’s okay to make mistakes—that’s what first drafts are for!
Let students know that it’s fine for their first drafts to be full of spelling mistakes, or need organization. They
should be using first drafts to get their ideas down and to figure out what they’re trying to say.
41. Get Ready for Revising (B): Tell all students that good writers revise a lot. They add, change text, move, and
remove sentences. They create multiple drafts. They continue revising until they are satisfied with what they
have to say. Finally, good writers edit for spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and usage.
42. Make Writing Software a Shared Experience: Have students continue with their Merit writing program until
they reach Editing. Break the class into pairs, according to level. Ask them to work in pairs, helping each other
as they edit. Ask students to print their work.
43. Encourage Student Editors: Ask students to break into mixed-level groups and share their printed writing.
Have each group sit in a circle to share helpful feedback. What do they like about each other’s work? Do they
have suggestions for each other? Did anything in their classmates’ writing confuse them? Is there anything
they would like to hear more about? Give all students the goal of revising their work during the next software
session.
44. Finish Revising: Ask students to add some suggested editing changes, and to revise their work during the next
writing software session. As students finish their writing, help them transfer their completed work to disks or
to a word-processing, e-mail, or HTML program.
45. Build Student Portfolios: Create individual-writing portfolios to help students develop as writers. Have students
publish completed writing from Merit software sessions by printing it. Ask students to arrange their completed
writings chronologically; this can help them assess their own progress, as well as feel accomplishment about
their growing mastery!
46. Assess Student Writing Progress: Use student-writing portfolios for more than a final grade: use them to assess
periodically where students need help. Discuss portfolio content with students individually. For example,
during such a discussion, you might point out how a student uses commas in several assignments.
47. Relate Writing to Curriculum (A): Break the class into small groups according to level. Give students a short text
from class curriculum appropriate to their level. Explain that their text is missing punctuation, such as sentence
breaks, capitals, and commas. Have students work together to fix their text.
48. Relate Writing to Curriculum (B): Break the class into mixed-level groups of 3. Give each group copies of a
different short text from class curriculum. Explain that their text is missing punctuation, such as sentence
breaks, capitals, and commas. Have struggling students edit for missing capitals, middling students edit for
sentence breaks, and advanced students edit for commas and other punctuation. Ask groups to review their
text together, explaining the editing decisions that they made. Next, have them model their editing changes
for the rest of the class.
49. Relate Writing to Curriculum (C): Break the class into small groups according to level. Give groups a short text
from class curriculum appropriate to their level. Explain that their text has sentences in the wrong order. Have
groups work together to fix their text. Finish by having them model their editing changes for another small
group of the same level.
50. Relate Writing to Curriculum (D): If using Essay Punch, break the class into small groups according to level. Give
students a short text from class curriculum appropriate to their level. Explain that their text is missing
paragraph breaks or has paragraphs in the wrong order. Have students fix their text. Finish by having them
model their editing changes for another small group of the same level.
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51. Provide Time to Practice Writing: Ask for written responses to readings during class. Ask students to keep
a reading journal to record their reactions to a reading. They should use their journal to explain what they
understand, keep lists of important characters or people from readings, identify something they find
interesting, identify new vocabulary words, and share questions.
52. Provide Students with an Audience: Look over students’ reading journals; respond to their ideas and questions.
Offer thoughtful feedback in response to written assignments. Praise students for being successful, or for just
trying hard! Let students know what areas still need work. Offer individual teacher-student writing conferences
when possible. Be clear about your expectations with individual students; expectations will vary according to
whether a student is struggling, middling, or advanced.
53. Offer Range in Writing Tasks: Try to offer writing assignments that prompt reflection and inspire students to
use their imagination, rather than merely report on a reading. Struggling, middling, and advanced students
might be given different writing activities based on the same topic. Or, struggling, middling, and advanced
students might receive the same writing activity—with each student keeping in mind your individual
expectations for them. That is, advanced students might be expected to hand in longer, more complex
work.
54. Offer Range in Writing Models: Provide students with models, voices, and material appropriate to their skill
level. Ask them to identify “cool sentences” or “cool phrases.” What language intrigues them? Can they describe
what they like about a particular voice? Ask students to try imitating a voice or style that they admire.
55. Get Ready to Write Anywhere: Ask students to do pre-writing for language arts, social studies, or history-of science assignments. Make sure that struggling and middling students understand that the skills they are
learning can be applied to all kinds of written work.
56. Get Ready to Edit Anywhere: Request that students edit their writing for language arts, social studies, and
science classes. Remind struggling and middling students about common mistakes that they need to check
for, such as sentence breaks, capitals, commas, as well as common errors in spelling or usage. Ask advanced
students to design an editing checklist to share with the rest of the class.
57. Talk About Writing and Test-Taking: Discuss how skills students are practicing may be applied to class or
standardized tests. Explain why even during a test it is worth taking time to brainstorm and organize ideas
before writing. Explain why taking time to edit, revise, and proofread will help improve test grades/scores.
Give suggestions for how students might choose to pace themselves through these activities when they are
under specific time pressure.
58. Create a Class Publication: Offer students the goal of sharing writing via a class publication, bulletin board,
or collaborative web site. Ask students to choose their favorite piece of writing done with a Merit writing-skills
program. Publish or post students’ work; include one piece of writing from each member of the class.
59. Hold a Formal Reading: At the end of the semester, ask students to stand up and read their published or
posted work for the rest of the class. Congratulate each reader with applause. Praise all readers for progressing
as writers. Celebrate student writing with a class party.
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Merit Reading/Writing Programs to
Differentiate Instruction
Merit reading and writing programs are self-paced improvement and management tools that help students
learn and apply proven strategies. Struggling, middling and advanced students receive personalized and targeted
instruction. Key skills are taught in an easy-to-learn fashion. Students are given contextual help and feedback
throughout. Using the Merit Text Talker, students can hear questions, answers, tips, and explanations spoken
aloud. A record management system automatically records student progress, allowing teachers and tutors to
create reports.
Basic Skills Pack
Basic Skills software that works!
Intermediate Skills Pack
Software that covers the basic skills students need to know.
“Excellent software! Provides
step-by-step instruction. Students
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bolsters a student’s desire to do well.
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ABOUT MERIT SOFTWARE:
Since 1983, Merit Software has been improving students’ basic reading, writing and math skills.
All Merit programs are self-paced, skill-building programs that increase student achievement while
providing measurable results.
Merit Software gives everyone involved -- teachers, tutors, parents and students -- the tools and opportunities
to improve learning and to attain positive, measurable results.
The programs provide detailed coverage of the core competencies students require to succeed. Concepts in
reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary and math are covered from the basics to higher levels.
Troublesome points are identified and broken down into understandable parts. Personalized explanations and
tips are tailored to each student’s responses.
A multi-sensory approach, made possible by including text-to-speech functionality in many of the English
language programs, reaches out to students in ways not achieved by simply reading text on a screen.
Built-in tracking permits teachers and tutors to quickly discover individual areas of concern and to plan lessons
in response to specific student needs.
Instructors receive a clear and current measure of student achievement. Options for meaningful communication
with students, parents and administrators are increased.
Merit customers get the support they need to achieve success with free technical help, which is available by
email and telephone.
For information, pricing, full-working demos, and a FREE evaluation CD-Rom
contact us direct at:
MERIT SOFTWARE
121 West 27th Street, Suite 603
New York, NY 10001
T: 212-675-8567 | 800-753-6488 | F: 212-675-8607
www.meritsoftware.com
MERIT SOFTWARE | Have a question? Call us toll free: (800) 753-6488 | www.meritsoftware.com