Listly by Ken Peterson
Have I let "instructional weeds" infest my classroom? I went out into my backyard today and was astounded about its condition. The hibernating Bermuda grass was yellow-brown as it should have been, but salt-and-peppered throughout the yard were bright green dandelions with the "I dare you to stop me" fluffy white seed flowers that had not been there in the fall.
Educators have lots of ideas about how to improve education, to better reach learners and to give students the skills they'll need in college and beyond the classroom. But often those conversations remain between adults. The real test of any idea is in the classroom, though students are rarely asked about what they think about their education.
Recently, I showed a group of students in my high school art class a film called Ma Vie En Rose ( My Life in Pink), about a seven-year-old boy named Ludovic who identifies as female. Ludovic has an active imagination, but is bullied by both adults and other kids who are unnerved by his desire to wear dresses and play with dolls.
TED-Ed was thrilled to sit down with a group of educators during a brainstorm on student engagement at TEDActive 2014 in Whistler, British Columbia. Throughout the discussion, one theme was clear: this group of classroom teachers, administrators and learning game designers was passionate about getting students engaged — inside and outside of the classroom.
It was December 18, three days before the end of the semester. I had just been hired as a last-minute replacement at a comprehensive high school with more than 60 percent of students on free or reduced lunch. I was scheduled to start teaching after students returned from winter break—which left me only three days of classroom observation to learn everything I could about my 90 new students.
Ah, listening, the neglected literacy skill. I know when I was a high school English teacher this was not necessarily a primary focus; I was too busy honing the more measurable literacy skills -- reading, writing, and speaking. But when we think about career and college readiness, listening skills are just as important.
Students who have teachers who make them “feel excited about the future” and who attend schools that they see as committed to building their individual strengths are 30 times more likely than other students to show other signs of engagement in the classroom—a key predictor of academic success, according to a report released Wednesday by Gallup Education.
Of course, since we all live in the real world, it's unlikely that we will be successful in getting all our students participating -- particularly in a cognitive way -- all the time. However, there are a number of actions we can take to increase the odds of as many as our students being active learners and co-creators of what is happening in the classroom (what our school's principal ,Ted Appel, and vice-principal, Jim Peterson, call "whole-class engagement.").
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's work on growth mindsets has dominated much of the attention around how students can influence their own learning. But there are other ways to help students tap into their own motivation, too. Here are a few other important mindsets to consider.
"The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious." -- John Scully "Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy." -- Rumi Can you teach students to be visionary? Can visionary thinking even be taught?
I want to talk about the need for modularity in schools but first, I feel like I need to explain why this is such an important issue.
KleenSlate makes communication possible in difficult situations with our NEW Patient Communication Kit. Including a Paddle w/marker and KleenSleeve as well as a Personal Item Tray.
Pundits ranging from academic demographers to New York Times columnists have weighed in recently on the declining prospects for males in the developed world—a situation the journalist Hanna Rosin suggested in an article and 2012 book might herald an "End of Men."
Explore Mattie Walton's hand-picked collection of Pins about Education Inspiration on Pinterest. | See more about touch math, stem activities and brain breaks.
And the time has come to show what my students have thought of as their good qualities. In my previous post about positive thinking I mentioned that they should make a list. Well, I went a little bit beyond that point and I asked them to make a 'selfie' video of their thoughts.
By Jennie Rose In his new book To Sell is Human , author Daniel Pink reports that education is one of the fastest growing job categories in the country.
By Jennie Rose In his new book To Sell is Human , author Daniel Pink reports that education is one of the fastest growing job categories in the country.
Back in 2010, we shared with you 100 awesome search engines and research resources in our post: 100 Time-Saving Search Engines for Serious Scholars. It's been an incredible resource, but now, it's time for an update. Some services have moved on, others have been created, and we've found some new discoveries, too.
In an 11th-grade English class at Pittsfield Middle High School in rural New Hampshire, Jenny Wellington's students were gathered in a circle debating Henry David Thoreau's positions on personal responsibility. "Do you think Thoreau really was about 'every man for himself?'" asked one 16-year-old boy.
Do you believe you have an engaging classroom education? Do your teachers bother to know if you have learnt or not? Is there individual attention being paid to every student in the classroom. School education has grown by leaps and bounds, but the classroom saga remains the same.
Today's students are a uniquely interactive group. Most of the 80 million Americans who are part of the millennial generation-a group that comprises the lion's share of today's student population-can't remember a time when they didn't have instant access to the internet.
"I don't care." Those three words can cause the most experienced of teachers to grow frustrated: how do we reach students who give off the vibe that nothing matters? Use these questions to better understand and reach apathetic students. Is it really apathy?
Larry Ferlazzo I teach English & Social Studies at inner-city high school in Sacramento,CA Editor's Note: This piece was adapted from Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners: Strategies to Help Students Thrive in School and Beyond by Larry Ferlazzo, available March 21, 2015 from Routledge.
Aleta Margolis is the founder and executive director of the Center for Inspired Teaching, a D.C.-based nonprofit organization that works with teachers, principals, and entire school faculties to foster the best teaching practices. In a recent post wrote a post titled " Letting kids move in class isn't a break from learning.