Educational Link Round-Up

Educational Link Round-Up 1. What College Admissions Offices Really Want“Elite schools say they’re looking for academic excellence and diversity. But their thirst for tuition revenue means that wealth trumps all.”2. Elementary Reading Strategies That Really Work“We know that learning how to read is essential for success in school. Students need to be able to close read, annotate, and comprehend assignments and texts across all subjects.So we looked through our archives and consulted the research to arrive at a list of strategies that could develop strong reading skills and confidence for all studentsâ€"including struggling readers.”3. The Power of Short Writing Assignments“Some educators avoid assigning writing, believing that they don’t have the time to either incorporate such a project or grade it. Thankfully, writing assignments need not be long in order to be effective. If you don’t wish to assign a potentially time-consuming project, try these short assignments to help students become bet ter writers and thinkers.”4. 6 Teacher-Approved Tips for Faster, More Effective Feedback“Giving students good feedback is crucial, but it can also be incredibly time-consuming. So we went straight to the sourceâ€"experienced teachersâ€"and identified some of the best advice we could find for striking the right balance between effective assessment and a reasonable workload.”5. Why Normalizing Struggle Can Create a Better Math Experience for Kids“It’s not uncommon for students to graduate from high school believing that every math problem can be solved in 30 seconds or less. And if they don’t know the answer, theyre just not a math person. This is a failure of education, Finkel said.6. Why College Became So Expensive“Caitlin Zaloom: College used to be a lot cheaper for families, because there was more funding from the government. If you think about the biggest educational systems, like the University of California system or the City University of New York system, these u niversities were free or practically free for decades. That was in part because of a belief that higher education was essential for the national project of upward mobility, and for having an educated citizenry.” Educational Link Round-Up 1. Debate Arises over Teaching “Growth Mindsets” to Motivate Students“Dweck says she used to think that growth mindset was a simple concept. ‘But then we started becoming aware of all the ways that it might be misunderstood or not implemented in a compelling way. One thing we’ve learned in the past five to 10 years is how the nuances matter.’”2. How Parents Can Help Middle Schoolers Build Confidence and Character“When it comes to how we talk about and interact with middle schoolers, we need a new mindset, says Fagell. ‘Rather than looking at this phase with dread, see it as an opportunity to share your values and solidify your relationship with your children.’”      3. Reading Aloud to Middle School Students“For five minutes of each class period, I read aloud to my middle school students. I’m often asked how I “give up time” each day to read, but the five minutes are a gift to my students. Spending this time each day enriches the classroom community, all ows me to share a love of reading, enhances my language arts instruction, and exposes students to new authors, genres, and themes.”4. Remembering Why Curiosity Should Be Boundless“Watching young children interact with the world can provide an important reminder of science as a process and frame of mind rather than scope of content. Trying the same puzzle piece in every orientation in every slot is part of a systematic approach to problem solving. Modelers trying to represent a new phenomenon have to start out the same way, and geneticists might be reminded of their own shotgun approaches.”5. Build Empathy and Understanding by Pairing Comics With NovelsTo effectively instruct with graphic novels or comics, teachers need to make sure that students understand how the medium functions. Just as every word and aspect of grammar is purposeful in a traditional text, every part of the panel in a comic or graphic novel is used with intention. The placement of words, movement of lines, a nd chosen colors all have a purpose. Examining these details provides accessible channels for students to gain not only literary and artistic comprehension but also social-emotional skills.6. Why Students Plagiarize“Addressing plagiarism requires building students’ confidence in their writing, developing skills to navigate school stress, fostering investment in the assignment, and creating understanding of plagiarism and attribution. As a teacher, I have agency to address these issues. My response to plagiarism addresses four forces that lead a student to plagiarize.”7. Inquiry Into Student Learning Gaps Leads To Better Teaching And Shifts School Culture“Similarly, when teachers are tackling a broad problem like English Language Learners ability to pass an accountability test, it’s easy to list all the things students can’t yet do. Teachers get overwhelmed by all the ways their kids are struggling. And that makes it hard to move from talking about the problem to action. Scharff Panero coaches teachers to look at the test itself, identify a section where students struggle the most, and then look for patterns in why they aren’t scoring well in that section.” Educational Link Round-Up 1. What Does ‘Career Readiness’ Look Like in Middle School?“Not only are the jobs changing, but the very landscape they will have to navigate will be changing rapidly,” said Baker Wright, the former JFF program manager. “That’s what career training is about today, giving students skills that will make them more flexible and resilient as workers.”2. The Reading Wars: Choice vs. Canon“The day I arrive for the school-wide “Read-In” this past spring, teenagers and books are covering every available surface in Jarred Amato’s English classroom at Maplewood High School in Nashville, Tennesseeâ€"flung across lived-in couches, desks, and chairs. But there’s not a book one might traditionally identify as a “classic” in sight, and that’s by design.”3. Why Normalizing Struggle Can Create a Better Math Experience for Kids“It’s not uncommon for students to graduate from high school believing that every math problem can be solved in 30 seconds or less. And if the y don’t know the answer, theyre just not a math person. This is a failure of education, Finkel said.4. What Doesn’t Work: Literacy Practices We Should Abandon“From Reading Month in March to year-long reading incentive programs, it’s common practice in the U.S. to give students prizes such as stickers, bracelets, and fast food coupons for reading. What’s the problem?Unless these prizes are directly related to reading (e.g., books), this practice actually makes students less likely to choose reading as an activity in the future (Marinak Gambrell, 2008). It undermines reading motivation. Opportunities to interact with peers around books, teacher “book blessings,” special places to read, and many other strategies are much more likely to foster long-term reading motivation (Marinak Gambrell, 2016).”5. Is It Time to Detrack Math?“In the past several years, schools and districts around the country, including ones in Cambridge, San Francisco, and Escondido, California, h ave eliminated math tracking, recognizing that the practice can create inequities between students, with significant ramifications as they progress through school.”6. Concrete Ways To Help Students Self-Regulate And Prioritize Work“There are a lot of skills necessary to succeed in school that arent directly about mastering content, including the ability to recognize, name and control one’s emotions. The school day often comes with lots of emotion, everything from elation to frustration, which makes it the perfect place to practice self-regulation.” Educational Link Round-Up 1. Smartphones in Classrooms: A Blessing or a Curse?“Smartphones are common tools in schools around the country. But are all those screens a good thing?”2. Using Digital Tools to Promote Social and Emotional Learning“There was just one problem: “Kids were playing together, but the game tended to foster controversy and competitionâ€"not the best SEL we were looking for, as it brings out conflict,” Santo said. The solution was to work with the most excited teens to create a Super Smash Bros. tournament that channeled that fun and competitive spirit into a more structured opportunity that pushed participants to collaborate, a component of SEL. They were empowered with tasks outside the game such as youth outreach and recruitment, project planning, timeline planning, and tournament facilitation.”3. 2018 Education Research Highlights“Education research continues to remind us of the powerful impact teachers have on children. This impact is overwhelmingly positiveâ€"the studie s we highlight here demonstrate specific ways in which teachers can or already do help students feel a sense of belonging in school and make gains in learning.”4. How to Develop a Greater Sense of Motivation in Students“Remember that we all have different intrinsic motivators. A child intrinsically motivated to play sports might respond well to constructive criticism from a coach, eager for the internal sense of satisfaction from doing well. But another student might respond more to encouragement and get discouraged by criticism. Be mindful that these different motivation systems may be due to childrens genes and their life experiences, and that they might require different approaches to motivate.”5. How to Help Teenage Girls Reframe Anxiety and Strengthen Resilience“Having conversations with stressed-out teens about this type of downtime redirects the attention away from the stress and toward the recovery. Students can’t always control the stressors in their life, said Da mour, but they can have a say over how they choose to restore themselves.”6. How to Find Balance When Too Much Self-Doubt Gets in the Way“According to social scientists, a self-doubting mindset leads to two common coping mechanisms: “self-handicapping”â€"when students underperform as a way to shield themselves from the psychic consequence of working hard and doing poorlyâ€"and “subjective overachievement,” taking heroic measures to guarantee a successful outcome, and attributing that success solely to effort. The overachieving variant of self-doubt, which afflicts Sophia, is common among high school and college students, said Patrick Carroll, an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University who studies the problem.” Educational Link Round-Up 1. It’s like an Analogy“Creative communication can help, or hurt, our attempts to bridge the divide between technically or emotionally disparate audiences”2. How Parents Can Model Better Screen Time Behavior for Their KidsMost of us feel like were failing, at least at times, to manage the competing bids for attention that come from work, kids, partners and from our digital devices.While she doesnt want to come off as judgy of parents, Radesky and other experts shared four takeaways from the research that can guide parents who want to improve their relationships both with their kids and with technology.3. Four Research-Based Strategies To Ignite Intrinsic Motivation In Students“‘Research shows students who believe their school work is interesting and important are cognitively engaged in trying to understand the material,’ Laufenberg told the educators gathered. That also means they have intrinsic motivation, a quality many teachers complain students lack. So why aren’t a ll teachers ensuring every lesson plan engages students’ interests? Educators at EduCon were quick with their responses: it’s hard to tailor instruction to a diverse set of learners; it’s hard to convince learners of the long term benefits of their work when short term needs are more present; and of course, many teachers feel bound by curriculum, standards, and testing.”4. Making Things We Know Will Disappear“When kids decide to create something, a kind of magic happens â€" they just start creating it. They build and make and design all at once without hesitation or fear. The things break and fall down, and they just try again. Sometimes they “make” things just in the world of their imagination, creating elaborate landscapes or histories or machines or friends that never leave the world of pretend. They still throw themselves into that process without concern or shame.”5. Using Scientific Pedagogy to Teach History“In the same ways that students in a science class m ake observations about the natural world, history teachers can engage students’ curiosity in the human world through inquiry. Using a contemporary issue pulled from the headlines is a good starting point. Consider events that connect to the content, but also pay attention to the level of difficulty of a piece.”6. What Students Gain From Learning Ethics in School“Though sought after, ethics classes are largely absent from schools. Also, teachers’ freedom to migrate into wide-ranging conversations that might veer into ethics have been curbed by standardized testing and curriculum requirements. This is despite research that shows teenagers’ ability to make ethical decisionsâ€"to see problems from multiple view points, and to consider the potential harm to others that a decision can causeâ€"is underdeveloped.” Educational Link Round-Up 1. College Board Backtracks on ‘Adversity Score’“The College Board abandoned its plan to capture the socioeconomic profile of students with a single score, opting instead to provide admission officers with bulleted information about a students high school and neighborhood and make public the methodology it uses to do so.2. Why Arts Education Is Crucial, and Whos Doing It BestArt does not solve problems, but makes us aware of their existence, sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz has said. Arts education, on the other hand, does solve problems. Years of research show that its closely linked to almost everything that we as a nation say we want for our children and demand from our schools: academic achievement, social and emotional development, civic engagement, and equitable opportunity.3. What’s Lost When We Rush Kids Through Childhood“Being little” is of critical importance because we see the signature of early childhood experience literally in people’s bodies: their life expe ctancies are longer and their social-emotional capabilities are more robust when they have a chance to learn through play and through deep relationships, and when their developing brains are given the chance to grow in a nurturing, language-rich, and relatively unhurried environment. It’s clearer than ever before that young children are not simply mini-adults.”4. How Building in Time for Exam Review Supports Advances in Student Learning“Too often, exams or essays are seen as the end goal of teaching. After a busy period of learning, students sit down, fill in their papers and hand them in. We mark them, grade them and hand them back. But many of us don’t realize that assessment itself provides opportunities for learning and growth.”5. A Simple Practice Yields Big Results in Middle School for Less Than $2“The proposed solution is simple: New middle school students in the study completed two 15-minute writing exercises at the beginning of the year that asked them to reflec t on statements like these from prior students: “Almost all 7th graders said they had worried a lot about taking middle school tests at the beginning of 6th grade, but almost all 7th graders say that they now worry much less about taking tests,” and “Almost all 7th graders said they had worried at first that they did not ‘fit in’ or ‘belong’ at the beginning of 6th grade, but almost all 7th graders say that they now know that they ‘fit in’ and ‘belong.’”6. International Survey: U.S. Teachers Are Overworked, Feel Underappreciated“According to the survey, 90 percent of U.S.teachers are satisfied with their jobs, but only 36 percent believe that American society values the teaching profession â€" a sentiment thats fueled the discontent among teachers thats been on public display since 2018.”7. How to Raise a Kid with a Conscience“Showcase character-rich movies and TV shows. On your next family movie night, choose a film or TV series that promotes the soft skills such as empathy, gratitude, and integrity. After the show, talk about what traits you value and how your family can focus on and strengthen them in your daily lives. Consider having a character day where everyone practices a skill such as gratitude. This helps kids see how they make right-vs.-wrong decisions even in their everyday interactions.”