Reading Summer School

if your lexile level is below 950 or if your teacher has told asked you to work on a fluency goal.

Directions: Click on the link to listen to a "Think aloud" for two unknown words. Pay attention to how both inside word strategies (deconstruction) and outside word strategies (context clues) are used to make a guess as to what the word means.

Talent is often overrated and frequently misunderstood. French poet and dramatist Edouard Pailleron pointed out, “Have success and there will always be fools to say that you have talent.” When people achieve great things, others often explain their accomplishments by simply attributing everything to talent. But that is a false and way of looking at success. If talent alone is enough, then why do you and I know highly talented people who are not highly successful?

Talent is never enough. Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, said, “There seems to be little between a man’s effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination, or his knowledge….Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be contained.”

If talent were enough, then the most effective and influential people would always be the most talented ones. But that is often not the case. Consider this:

• More than 50 percent of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had C or C- averages in college.
• Sixty-five percent of all U.S. senators came from the bottom half of the school classes.
• Seventy-five percent of U.S. presidents were in the Lower-Half Club in school.
  
• More than 50 percent of millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college!