Entries by Jim McCabe

Use Websites to Build the Habit of Reading-Part 1

Every week as the media reports on the pandemic, you can see students diligently looking at computer screens in their classrooms. But are they reading books or playing computer games? Given that national reading scores have not improved for the last eight years as Chromebooks have poured into classrooms, (See NAEP data for more on […]

More about John Brown

More from the Washington Post: His Truth Goes Marching On By Jonathan Yardley January 28, 1973 “HERE IS A book of surprising breadth, insight, compassion and historical vision—the first of what is to be a two-volume study of John Brown and his times. It recreates the whole fabric of our period of greatest national crisis, […]

Using Free Ebooks Efficiently-Part 1

Can all of your students read the history textbook which you are about to hand out? When I taught in the Cleveland Public Schools fifty years or so ago, this was a major problem. The only advice I received about students and reading was “Don’t call on anyone to read out loud. You don’t want […]

Promote Summer Reading with Free Ebooks

What are the best strategies to encourage summer reading? A gold star for each book read beside my name on the library wall worked for me one summer a long time ago. But mailing out gold stars this summer could get expensive, and the thrill of seeing your name on the wall in the library […]

Can Electives Build Readers?

Background I love electives. They kept me in teaching. For many years in a community college, I taught books like Parallel Time, Walking with the Wind-A Memoir of the Movement, A Hope in the Unseen-An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League, Dead Man Walking, etc. as part of ENG 101 classes. […]