My colleague Jen Rugani shared this data with me. It’s really important for educators and parents to see. It shows scores from seven rounds of the ACT. When you dis-aggregate the data by the complexity of the text in the passages tested, you can see that students who scored below the ACT reading benchmark were essentially…
Taking notes is a critical but easily overlooked skill that allows students to organize and review materials over the long run: across a unit or a semester or a lifetime. In the short run (that is, in the moment during class when they are actually taking notes) it can cause them to focus and prioritize their…
Happy Holidays, friends. I give you the gift of outstanding video to send you off into your winter break. This clip is of Sadie McCleary’s class. She’s a Chemistry teacher at Western Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina. Generally this clip will inspire you- it’s such a beautiful example of how careful attention to building…
Last week I wrote a post about hands-on learning, and how what seemed like a rich experience–launching rockets–might not be so useful if students didn’t know what they were looking at. On the other hand if students had been primed with knowledge beforehand they could observe relevant things and increase their knowledge by adding detail to…
Recently I wrote a post about Learning Styles and why teachers held fast to their belief in them, even in the face of convincing evidence that they are not only hogwash but counter-productive. Several people responded including Benjamin Keep who works with Ulrich Boser at his organization the Learning Agency which uses the science of learning…