Teaching Strategies to Reach Highly Mobile Children

Teachers whose classrooms seem to have revolving doors with students entering, withdrawing, and even re-entering throughout the school year, face a variety of challenges in meeting the needs of such highly mobile students and their more stable peers. These two briefs describe some the challenges and offers recommendations to teachers based on the literature and case studies of award-winning teachers with a variety of students in their classrooms who moved frequently.

Teachers whose classrooms seem to have revolving doors with students entering, withdrawing, and even re-entering throughout the school year, face a variety of challenges in meeting the needs of such highly mobile students and their more stable peers. These two briefs describe some the challenges and offers recommendations to teachers based on the literature and case studies of award-winning teachers with a variety of students in their classrooms who moved frequently.

This study, designed jointly by the National Center for Homeless Education and The College of William and Mary, explores the critical role of the classroom teacher in contributing to the education of at-risk and highly mobile students. The study includes a review of the literature on the effective teaching of at-risk and highly mobile students and an exploration of the beliefs and practices of six teachers who won national and/or state awards for working with students in difficult circumstances.

This NCHE bibliography, updated September 2011, provides a broad list of research studies addressing the issue of mobility and its effects on a child’s or youth’s education.

NYS-TEACHS:
Our Quick Tip Sheets provide detailed information about the rights of students experiencing homelessness in a one-page format. Each guide is targeted to a specific school role.

Reading on the Go! is a two-volume project that explores reading instruction for students experiencing high mobility as a result of high poverty.

This handbook, a joint publication of the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE) and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, provides an overview of research on the education of various groups of students who tend to be highly mobile. The handbook discusses migratory children and youth, children and youth experiencing homelessness, children of military families, and students experiencing mobility on a global scale.

This brief from Project HOPE, Virginia’s Education of Homeless Children and Youth program housed at the College of William and Mary, discusses what schools can do to support the education of highly mobile students.