Dr. Robin Lovrien Schwarz recently presented a wonderful webinar for Reading Horizons titled: “Using Learning Centers to Meet Needs in Multilevel ESL Classrooms.” The webinar discussed three different approaches for differentiating an adult ESL classroom to meet the needs of multilevel students.

During the presentation, Dr. Lovrien Schwarz referenced a discussion from the LINCS (Literacy Information and Communication System) website. There was a lot of interest in following this discussion and it can be found here:

LINCS Discussion on Non-Literate Adult Students >

Here are some of the questions and answers from the Q&A session of the webinar:

Q: How do you split up students who are at different levels but that speak the same language and don’t like to be split up?

A: It’s a difficult situation. Everybody has a comfort zone in their own language and you have to pick your battles. Especially since many cultures are very objectionable and have strong opinions and don’t want to be split up. For reading activities, they are probably at about the same level and I would let them be their own group. It might be good to start off by just adding a few students to their group, rather than trying to change it. Then, when you do activities where they need to pair off in twos, you can try and get them to pair off with someone that isn’t from their “group.”

Q: Strategies on modeling/introducing activities for learning centers to students?

A: I always model the activities and then walk around and make sure everyone knows what to do. Also, if you have a student(s) that already knows what to do then let them explain to the rest of the group what to do. It gives them a level of importance that they don’t often get to feel. And, what I’ve found, is that sometimes the students understand it better when it comes from a peer rather than a teacher.

Q: How do you deal with students that speak in their native language while you are instructing a class?

A: This is hard because I typically have a strict no talking while I’m instructing policy. But in ESL classes this usually happens because someone is translating for another student who doesn’t understand. It drives us ESL teachers crazy. If it’s during instruction you have to be strong about saying I can’t have people talking while I’m teaching. You may need to separate people to prevent this from happening. That’s what’s great about using a learning center approach - it forces the students to use the English language to complete the activities, so even if there are people talking in their native language it doesn’t matter because eventually they have to grapple with the English to complete the task. If you get away from a teacher led class, than you get away from the problem of people talking while you are teaching.

Q: Should the learning centers approach be used for the entire class time, or just for a portion of the class?

A: If you are only using learning centers for reading, than take the entire reading time using learning centers. However, if you are using learning centers to teach every aspect of ESL learning, than it should be used for the entire time - because it answers this problem of how to teach a multilevel class.

Q: What to do if adult ESL students are resistant to using games?

A: Introduce activities and games very carefully and very slowly and let students see for themselves that they are learning effectively. Every adult student from every culture will be resistant to this - until they see that it is working. Also try using games that aren’t obviously games. E.g. having students test each other using index cards. Initially you may want to start with just paper and pencil activities in the learning centers. Be very gradual in moving students into activities that are less and less formal. What my research has found is that when students know they are learning from activities - than they are happy to do them.

Q: How does the learning center approach work with high school students and other age groups?

A: It works with every level. I’ve never seen a level where it didn’t work. The key is to show the students that it is useful and that it’s not just a social hour. You have to take it seriously in order to make it successful. For high school students it may be effective to use activities that involve a lot of self-discovery learning. Make it so each center has tasks that need to be mastered.

Key Points about the Importance of Differentiated Instruction:

• A single lesson, no matter how well designed, led by one teacher in front of a diverse set of students cannot possibly meet the needs of all the students.
• It’s just not good enough to teach to the middle and hope for the best.
• The only way to meet the needs of every student in a classroom is to differentiate instruction.
• If you get away from a teacher led class, than you get away from the problem of people talking while you are teaching.

View the full webinar: “Using Learning Centers to Meet Needs in Multilevel ESL Classrooms” >

As a marketer, this video was one of the most interesting videos I’ve ever seen. It gets right to the core of why people buy what they buy. It gets right to the core of their human nature. It caused an instant mass of marketing ideas to flood my mind:


But as I kept watching this video, instead of simply spurring marketing ideas, it caused me to ask: Why do I do what I do? Why am I working for a small company that promotes literacy? Why have I been doing this for almost three years now?

Well… here is my truest, deepest, unfiltered reasons as to why I work for Reading Horizons:

I started working for Reading Horizons because I was desperate. I was fresh out of college with no experience and I got one single job offer: here. I was in no position to turn it down. Because the company is small and still growing, I took the small hourly wage they offered me and told myself I would take it as a learning experience and look for a new job a year later. I also told myself it would be my service project to the world since literacy is undoubtedly a good cause. A service project I would work on for a year. Service is good, right? That was three years ago.

So why am I still here? Why am I still working for Reading Horizons? With the skills I have gained I could easily find another job and make a lot more money. So, although I do need to make some money and my employment helps in that regard, the money is not the reason I work here – I could make more working somewhere else.

My next thought was because it’s our purpose. I love working for a good purpose. I value learning and I love knowing that what I do is helping others gain what I believe is the chief skill needed for continual learning. But in actuality, there are other companys that work for the very same purpose. There are other companys that produce curriculum for struggling readers. We’re not the sole providers of reading curriculum. If it was a love for literacy that provided the true core as to why I do what I do… I would probably get my teacher certification and start teaching reading. That’s not my chief desire. It’s not literacy in of itself that keeps me working for Reading Horizons. I love working for a good purpose but I could do that elsewhere…

But I think I know what it is. I think I know the reason I can’t leave Reading Horizons… but, in order for you to really get it, some background information is needed. When I was in high school I felt like I was living a joke. I felt like my teachers were doing the bare minimum to keep their jobs. It was a shrine to mediocrity. I felt like I rarely learned anything and that high school was holding me back in my progression as a human being. I knew I had to finish and had to get my diploma, but I actually didn’t even go to my graduation because I didn’t even value the “achievement” of graduating from high school. It didn’t even feel like an achievement. It was too easy. It was too full of pointless information. It was too big of a joke.

I remember feeling embarrassed walking down the halls of my school at the beginning of each day because I was embarrassed that high school was even a part of my life. I would get to school as close to the tardy bell as possible as to minimize my exposure to the institution. Because I got there as late as I could without simultaneously getting a tardy, I was always one of few people walking down the halls at that moment each day. I would hear the laughter coming from the classrooms and I would hear people going along with the joke that was our education and as I walked down that hall each day I remember being shocked that we were all going along with it. We were all playing this stupid game… and I wasn’t even referring to high school drama and pettiness, I was referring to the actual education. If it hadn’t been for my AP classes, I probably would’ve had to become a high school dropout just to avoid the stupidity of what was going on. After experiencing another mindless day in the life of a high school student I was writing in my journal… I was listing all of the things that I wanted to do with my life and one thing wrote down was that I wanted to reform education. I apparently thought it was as simple as writing it down.

Fast forward past the 3 years I spent in college and my first four months working for Reading Horizons. Although I’d thought I would stick it out for a year, I was miserable. My starting tasks included coding vocabulary words onto our website for four hours a day, followed by four hours of looking for people that I thought might be willing to link to our site and then asking them to do so. I hated it. I knew we had a great cause, but I didn’t know if I could stick it out for even the year I had originally committed myself to. I had grown up with teachers and advisors freaking out over my potential every second and there I was with a college degree, doing mind numbingly boring tasks that anyone could do - all day everyday. I hated it. Not only was it boring, but it wasn’t working. Emailing people and asking them to link to our site… not an effective movement. Trendy... yes. Effective… no. So ineffective that I finally had it one day and started ranting in one of our meetings that for four months I had done nothing but contact people to link to our site and for four months of effort there had been ten people that had linked to our site, I could hardly see my work as being valuable.

The next day we had a huge shipment that had to go out and our Company President, Tyson Smith, after hearing my rant about the lack of effectiveness of all of the things I was doing, decided to recruit me to help with the shipment. So there I was, a college graduate, working in a warehouse because that was the most value I could offer my company. It was the most terrible feeling I’d ever had. Shrink wrapping materials? That was where all of my potential had brought me? That was the only thing of value I could do for my place of employment… menial work that high school boys did? A great high school job, yes, a great career, no. But that day changed something for me.

As I copied, packaged, and shrink wrapped materials for eight hours… I held Reading Horizons curriculum in my hands. As I saw everything our program covered and how perfectly it covered that material, all of my memories of my best friend mocking me (with love of course) as a child for saying “library” as “liberry” and “Wendy’s” as “Windy’s” and “breakfast” as “breakfrest” … I remember thinking, if I had learned this way, I probably would’ve pronounced those words correctly. I would’ve understood the components of the English language in a near perfect manner. Not only did I gain respect for our method, but I instantly became jealous of all of the students that got to learn in such a perfect and thorough manner. I placed a bet in my mind that the students that learned with our method probably didn’t have best friends that were mocking their speech. Because they were being thoroughly taught how to blend letters and sound out each word. And at that moment Reading Horizons was no longer just a do-good company that promoted literacy. At that moment Reading Horizons became the best literacy curriculum available on this planet. I wasn’t just working in a warehouse shrink wrapping materials… I was shrink wrapping materials for the company that was the best of the best at teaching the most important skill a person ever learns. I was working for the company with the best method for teaching reading.

The small company I worked for wasn’t going to be a small company forever… because we were producing materials that were the most effective at teaching a skill every single person on this planet needs to learn. I was no longer jealous of my friends that had fancy jobs at Goldman Sachs… because I was somewhere that I could truly change the world. My claim as a high school student that I was going to reform education became instantly possible… almost too easily.

I work for Reading Horizons because Reading Horizons is the best way to teach any student, no matter their ability and regardless of learning disabilities, how to read. Anytime my mom tells me (with love of course) to look for a new job that will pay me more, I can’t consider it for long because I know I couldn’t find what Reading Horizons has anywhere else. I don’t think I could end up at another company that is truly the best of all of their competition at doing what they do. There is not a better methodology for teaching students to read English available. And I like working for the best.

I beg and beg all of my friends that teach reading to at least learn Reading Horizons methodology through our free 30-day online workshop… most just resist the opportunity to enlighten their mind to better ways of helping their students… but, you don’t have to resist: start the workshop today! ›

There is a simple 2-minute task you can have your students do each day, that, if repeated for 21 days researchers have found brings the following results:

“Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we've found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain is 31 percent more productive... You're 37 percent better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis. Our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.”

– Psychologist, Shawn Achor (FYI: a few words that revealed the secret were omitted to build curiosity)

What is it that brings about these drastic improvements?

Here’s Shawn Achor with the answer:


So, what’s the thing that can drastically boost the success of your struggling readers: positivity.

When you get a student in a positive mindset, their brain releases dopamine, which does two things for them:

1. They are happier.
2. All of the learning centers of their brain are turned on.

Both of these effects are beneficial for helping struggling readers. These students feel defeated, self-conscious, and demotivated. Getting them to feel happy and positive is crucial for their success. And the second point, positivity turns on all of the learning centers in your brain, is going to help them understand new material at a faster rate, helping boost their self-esteem and maintain a postive attitude. If you can help your struggling readers get in a positive mindset before your instruction, their cognitive abilities can be boosted by an average of 31%.

It’s amazing how much something so unrelated to ability affects your students’ abilities. In fact, according to Achor, ability is rarely the cause of success, “75% of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of a threat.”

This provides so much power and insight as to how to help the struggling readers in your classroom succeed.

The best thing about Achor's research is that it is so easy to implement. Here are six simple suggestions from Achor that will help your students retrain their brains to view the world in a more positive light:

• Spend two minutes a day to write down three new things you are grateful for - for 21 days in a row.
• Journal about one positive experience you’ve had every 24 hours.
• Exercise.
• Meditate to allow your brain to focus on one thing at a time.
• Perform random acts of kindness.
• Write one positive email to someone you know every time you open up your inbox.

So, take two minutes at the start of each class to have your students write down three things they are grateful for, and see how it affects their success at learning to read. (I’d love to hear how it goes!)

And, if you really want to help your students: work on increasing your own level of positivity. It will make you 31% more effective at reaching your students. Your brain will be more creative and adept at solving your students’ problems. Plus, on top of all of that: you will be happier.

Conjure up in your mind that you are a Harvard student. You are sitting in class listening to your professor’s lecture…

What kind of professor are you imagining? One that is boring? One that is engaging?

Whatever you are imagining, I am sure it is an image of competence. You probably have full confidence in your hypothetical Harvard professor’s ability to accurately teach you a new concept. However, one Harvard professor, Eric Mazur, learned that what he thought was an effective teaching strategy was not.

Mazur was sure that by explaining to his class that atoms move away from each other in response to heat they would easily understand what would happen if you had a metal plate with a hole in it and you microwaved it. The hole would… shrink? Get bigger? He expected all of his students to get the right answer. However, most of them did not.

So, what went wrong? That statement seems clear enough. The correct answer seems pretty intuitive… the hole would get bigger. It’s not that Mazur wasn’t clear and it’s not that he didn’t have a thorough understanding of what he was teaching, he most assuredly did. His problem therein lied in the mode of his instruction. 

Lecturing, ineffective? No… couldn’t be! Don’t you sit in a lecture anxiously engaged from start to finish hanging on every word and detail, not wanting it to ever end. Maybe in some cases that is true, but on the whole, thoughts of listening to a lecture evokes the same common feelings in most people: long, boring, and drone. Feelings such as these:

Shocked to discover that many of his students struggled to understand what he thought was a simple concept, Mazur took his question to a group of his fellow Harvard professors’. Did they respond with a higher rate of correct answers? Unfortunately for the art of lecturing… they did not.

So what could Mazur do instead? How could he help people understand a simple concept? Especially since explaining it in what he thought were simple terms didn’t work.

Mazur, determined to find a way to effectively teach what would happen to that hole in the metal plate if microwaved, came up with a new way to illustrate the concept. He explained that atoms move away from each other in response to heat, then he told the students to imagine a group of people standing in a circle (representative of a large plate). He then said that these people want to move further away from each other because they are getting too warm (as the atoms would do in response to heat). After this example lesson he had his students talk amongst themselves and decide what they think would happen to the hole in the metal plate in response to heat.

This time, his class had no problem understanding the correct answer: the hole would get bigger; just as people would move further away from the center of the circle if they were trying to get away from each other.   

Of course, he could’ve made his example even more effective if he had actually had the students get in the circle and act out the visual. Multisensory instruction, or “bundling modalities,” has proven itself to be a very effective type of instruction. By connecting multiple senses to one concept stronger connections are made in the brain.

View our free webinar that discusses the importance of bundling modalities: "Why Johnny Can't Remember What He Read," by Jay Kelly, MA >

What have you found helps your students better understand your instruction?

Since I first learned how to write the alphabet I’ve had a fetish with improving my handwriting. I did not have a notebook, folder, or scratch paper throughout my entire schooling that was not covered with writing in every which way. I was determined to find the perfect way of presenting myself on paper. There was nothing that bothered me more than to feel like one of my peers had a better style of handwriting than me. I will never forget Paige Miller* and how she always seemed to be one step ahead of me on the handwriting front. As soon as I would be satisfied with my style, I would see her latest handwriting innovation and was forced to go back to the drawing board. I had to feel like my handwriting was at least on par with hers.

After years of playing around with different ways of writing my “a’s,” “i’s,” “g’s,” and “y’s” (because those were the letters that were the most fun to experiment with) I finally hit gold. I have now had a consistent style that has held my satisfaction for over 6 years now. It was a long pursuit, but alas, I found the right fit for me (or I just stopped being petty). But, did this fetish in some way reflect what kind of student I was? Is handwriting an important part of English instruction? Or, is it just a silly pursuit for competitive girls (or boys) that care about aesthetics?

Currently there are school districts eliminating handwriting from their curriculum in order to salvage extra class time for other subjects and, with the prevalence of keyboards - they feel handwriting has become irrelevant. However, some are wondering if students will lose out on some sort of intellectual or physical development in response.

Dr. Laura Dinehart of Florida International University School of Education has found that a 4-year-old’s fine motor writing skills are more predictive of later academic achievement than early number skills or early language skills. Dinehart’s team was able to discover this by examining the scores of 1,000 second graders and comparing it to their pre-kindergarten writing skills.

Not only were students with better penmanship in pre-k found to have higher scores in both reading and math later on, but they also had higher grades in general and higher scores on standardized tests. Students with strong handwriting marks in pre-k were found to have an overall “B” average in second grade compared to an overall “C” average for the students that did poorly on writing tasks in pre-K.

The only problem with the study: researchers don’t know why. 

Schools are dropping handwriting from their curriculum and researchers are finding how predictive this skill is to future success, but no one knows why that is. Is handwriting’s benefit in today’s tech-savvy, keyboard oriented society simply that of being diagnostic of future achievement? Do teachers unknowingly perceive children with strong writing ability as being “brighter” students thus encouraging them more and creating a self-fulfilling prophesy for these students? What is it about good penmanship that leads to future success?

Dr. Dinehart did point out in her report that studies have found that children who physically write letters recognize them more readily than students who type them on the keyboard, possibly meaning that handwriting instruction leads to better reading skills. However, more research still needs to be done.

But, although the link is yet to be discovered, there is a link. Schools may be jumping off the handwriting bandwagon too early. As Dr. Dinehart said: “What we do know is that kids with greater experiences in early childhood do better later on, and writing can’t be discounted from that.”

What have you noticed in your classroom? Is there a link between good penmanship and strong performance?

*Name has been changed.