I just read an article from the Washington Post describing how a middle school in Northern Virginia will be piloting a voluntary program wherein students will attend single sex classes in the core academic areas. I laud this effort. Many students, both boys and girls, will – in my opinion – likely flourish in this [...]

I don’t know when they began calling critical thinking skills “21st Century Skills” – I used them and taught them plenty during the 20th century, but no matter. It seems to be the educational buzzword of the day. And if the trend results in teachers and parents focusing more on communication, collaboration, critical thinking, problem [...]

Engaging the student, utilizing knowledge of various senses, taking advantage of free online tools, my son’s fourth grade social studies teacher did all these things when she showed the kids the following in class today:

I was talking with a parent of a fifth grader who is attending our local “gifted zone center” program. Her daughter was assigned a paper that needed to be two pages, double spaced. Her daughter does not type well, so this assignment was taking a while. At one juncture, the parent noticed that her daughter [...]

“In this lesson, students explore the differences between e-mail and letter writing by contrasting and identifying different forms, and experimenting with their own e-mail and letter compositions.” Check it out at ReadWriteThink*. * ReadWriteThink is a website from the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. It’s purpose is to provide educators [...]

There are two things I like about the recent Washington Post Editorial I read about year-round schooling. Firstly, I like the concept itself, for some pretty simple reasons: Kids learn more and forget less. Parents who work can cope a little better. There is no reason (not educationally, not practically) in today’s world for the [...]

Do you think your state’s standards and standardized testing is bad now? Just you wait…. “Forty-six states and the District of Columbia today will announce an effort to craft a single vision for what children should learn each year from kindergarten through high school graduation, an unprecedented step toward a uniform definition of success in [...]

I love this. It has all the elements of a great learning experience: “Advanced science students at Zionsville High School extracted and analyzed dolphin DNA this month in an ongoing collaboration with the Indianapolis Zoo, the University of Indianapolis and other research facilities.” IndyStar.com  Purpose – check. Relevance – check. Inquiry – check. Intrinsically motivating [...]

I was reading a blog post by Jerry Mintz of the Alternative Education Resource Organization. He had traveled recently to Washington and had the opportunity to ask Education Secretary Arne Duncan whether No Child Left Behind would be scrapped. The answer: ”I don’t know. But the name No Child Left Behind is toxic. We will at least [...]

“Tell me and I forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I understand.” – Chinese Proverb Constructivist learning, experiential learning, whatever you want to call good teaching where the student is intimately involved as meaning-maker is desirable for the development of true understanding. UC Davis has some wonderful resources for teachers, home [...]