Why Kids Need Schools to Change Big Ideas Flickr: Elizabeth Albert The current structure of the school day is obsolete, most would agree. Created during the Industrial Age, the assembly line system we have in place now has little relevance to what we know kids actually need to thrive. Most of us know this, and yet making room for the huge shift in the system that’s necessary has been difficult, if not impossible because of fear of the unknown, says educator Madeline Levine, author of Teach Your Children Well. “People don’t like change, especially in times of great uncertainty,” she said. “I’m astounded at the glacial pace of change in education.” During this time of economic uncertainty, especially, Levine said parents want to make sure their kids won’t fall into the ranks of the unemployed and disenfranchised young people who return home because they’re unable to find jobs. Yet therein lies the paradox. “I’m astounded at the glacial pace of change in education,” she said. PROJECT BASED LEARNING.
La recherche et l'innovation dans l'enseignement Comment apprend-on ? La ... Learning Menus: Textbooks a la Carte Why do it? Elementary and middle school classrooms often require students to read history textbooks. Historical accounts in textbooks, however, can often be dry or difficult to grasp. Learning Menus offer students a variety of active methods to access the textbook, remember pertinent information, and learn to regulate their own learning. This strategy can be adapted for multiple grade levels. What is it? Learning Menus are forms of differentiated learning that give students a choice in how they learn. Learning Menus come in various forms and can include tic-tac-toe boards, restaurant-like menus, matrices, and multiple-choice grids. In the dinner menu example, “Appetizer” activities focus on summarizing the overall content in each section of the textbook reading with activity choices like “Flash Cards,” “Outline,” and “Summary.” Example For an example of a Learning Menu in action, see the video Differentiating with Learning Menus on the Teaching Channel website. Why is this a best practice?
Assessment Tools Below are links to assessment tools and techniques along with specific geoscience examples and resources. Carol Ormand's toolbox, complete with rock hammer. Photo courtesy of Carol Ormand. Concept Maps - A diagramming technique for assessing how well students see the "big picture". ConcepTests - Conceptual multiple-choice questions that are useful in large classes. Topics Of Particular Interest Large Class Assessment Learn more about assessment strategies that are particularly useful for large classes and see examples of how techniques were employed in geoscience classes. Don't Know Which Tool to Use? Assessment and Active Learning Strategies for Introductory Geology Courses (Acrobat (PDF) 390kB Mar8 05), David McConnell, David Steer, Kathie Owens, 2003, Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 51, n. 2, March, 2003, p. 205-216, is a good, concise, introduction to assessment techniques. Browse our collection of Assessment Resources. Search the collection by topic and type of resource.
What’s So Great About Schools in Finland? Big Ideas Culture Teaching Strategies Flickr: Leo-seta The world looks to schools like this in Vantaankosken, Finland, as the model of success. Finland has been hailed for exemplifying the ideal model of a thriving, innovative education system that prioritizes the most important stakeholders: students. International and American media are fascinated by the Scandinavian country’s approach to designing the education system. So what makes the Finland story so compelling? THERE ARE NO PRIVATE SCHOOLS. Clearly, the Finland system can’t simply be picked up and dropped into the U.S. — in fact, Sahlberg himself advised against it: “Don’t try to apply anything,” he said in the Times article. There are too many divergent factors for that to happen. “You know, one big difference in thinking about education and the whole discourse is that in the U.S. it’s based on a belief in competition,” Sahlberg said. Related Explore: assessment, Finland, PISA
La Communication et la Gestion: Revue et Corrigée - Solange Cormier Three Important Distinctions In How We Talk About Test Scores In education discussions and articles, people (myself included) often say “achievement” when referring to test scores, or “student learning” when talking about changes in those scores. These words reflect implicit judgments to some degree (e.g., that the test scores actually measure learning or achievement). Every once in a while, it’s useful to remind ourselves that scores from even the best student assessments are imperfect measures of learning. But this is so widely understood – certainly in the education policy world, and I would say among the public as well – that the euphemisms are generally tolerated. And then there are a few common terms or phrases that, in my personal opinion, are not so harmless. I’d like to quickly discuss three of them (all of which I’ve talked about before). So, here they are, in no particular order. In virtually all public testing data, trends in performance are not “gains” or “progress.” Proficiency rates are not “scores.” - Matt Di Carlo
why you need a whole new mind I know I’ve been hinting at my admiration for A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink, for the last month or so, but I’ve finally managed to write a proper post about it. Because I think you should read this book. mr. t tries on a whole new mind It’s a book about how we’re leaving an era widely known as the Information Age, and entering a new one. The premise here is that many of the jobs held in the Information Age are now carried out by computers, or outsourced to foreign labor. And while the book’s primary audience is the business world, I think New Mind has big implications for parents, and for homeschooling parents in particular. Anyway, what’s interesting about the skills–or “abilities”–that Pink writes about is that they’re nothing like the logical, linear skills that schools have convinced us that we’ll need. Design. Pink devotes a chapter to each ability, followed by a portfolio of ideas for developing those abilities.
Dynamic Assessment: Components of a Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) Modifiability is the way we describe the child's response to a MLE based on our observations during a teaching session. It is important to consider a child's modifiability when applying the MLE. Specifically, we are looking at child responsivity, transfer skills, and examiner effort. Child Responsivity How well does the child respond to the MLE?Does the child attend to the task, and maintain attention? Transfer How well does child apply the target skills from one item to the next? Examiner Effort How much support does the child need? The other thing that we're doing during mediated learning is we're looking at child modifiability, and here we're describing what the child does in response to mediated learning. One is responsivity: How responsive is the child to intervention? The other is watching how they transfer. The third area that we look at is examiner effort. Previous Page | Continue to Example: Using Dynamic Assessment for Vocabulary Testing