Mr. Del Muro’s Classes

Beginning today, I’ll send homework updates on the Twitter network.

To get updates, you need to do the following:

1. Sign up for Twitter. Be sure to use an appropriate screen name.
2. Click the following: My Twitter account
3. Underneath my picture will be the word, “Follow.” Click on that and you’ll get all my updates.
4. Don’t worry, I will not follow any of your updates.

To get the updates on your phone:

1. Go to settings in the upper, right-hand corner on Twitter.
2. Click “Devices.”
3. Enter your cell phone number
4. Select, “It’s okay for Twitter to send txt messages to my phone. Standard rates apply.” (Be sure to get your parents’ permission first!)

Make it private!

1. Go to settings
2. Scroll to the bottom
3. Click on the button that says, “Protect my updates.”

The Department of Labor recently published a study that showed that 15-to-24-year-olds read less than 10 minutes a day, but watch TV 2.5 hours per day and play video games 40 minutes per day.

Although only 55 percent of students like reading, 90 percent of them think it’s important for their future.

This isn’t the case only in the United States. A Scottish study of 15 year olds from 28 countries found that 40 percent of the students read only because they have to. Only 33 percent of teens read for pleasure.

A National Endowment of the Arts study linked a drop in standardized test scores to a decline in time spent reading:

In seeking to detail the consequences of a decline in reading, the study showed that reading appeared to correlate with other academic achievement. In examining the average 2005 math scores of 12th graders who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books, an analysis of federal Education Department statistics found that those students scored much lower than those who lived in homes with more than 100 books. Although some of those results could be attributed to income gaps, Mr. Iyengar noted that students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees (and were therefore likely to earn higher incomes) but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books.

In addition to raised test scores, reading also improves brain power:

“A sentence is shorthand for a lot of information that must be inferred by the brain.” In general, your intelligence is called to action, as is greater concentration. “We are forced to construct, to produce narrative, to imagine,” says Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “Typically, when you read, you have more time to think. Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight. By and large, with oral language—when you watch a film or listen to a tape—you don’t press pause.”

Studies like these have made me turn to sustained silent reading.

I am only doing 10 minutes per class, which isn’t enough. The best way you can help improve your grades (or your student’s grades) is to get them to read nightly at home.