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 [...]

I read an interesting blog post by Dan Brown, a teacher and author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. He is the also the author of an education blog called Get in the Fracas. Here is an excerpt: “I have a clutch of students who read for pleasure, yet [...]

As we quickly approach the upcoming school year, think about creating a space in your home that is a designated “quiet space” conducive to studying and reading. In these days of pervasive media, it is difficult sometimes to ‘turn it all off’ and focus. Your child should have an area that is dedicated to his/her [...]

I just read an article by Greg Toppo of USA Today. UVA cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham is the author of Why Don’t Students Like School?  Here is a question from an interview with the author: Q: After all we’ve learned about the mind and brain, why is it so difficult to make school enjoyable for students? [...]

I am always amazed when I read these studies that they need to be done at all! But I’m glad someone is out there, proving once again the vast benefits on the brain that exercise conveys, in children and adults. This article, from Edutopia, will provide all the details if you’re interested in more…. Whether [...]

This is an excerpt from an article in Teacher Magazine, written by Mary Tedrow: “My idea of innovation calls for a quieter revolution, one with fewer bells and whistles. It begins by envisioning a quiet but humming classroom, where busy heads bend over pads of paper and hands scribble rapidly with pens or pencils. If [...]

I just finished reading a book by Judy Willis entitled Teaching the Brain to Read: Strategies for Improving Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. I highly recommend it for teachers and parents interested in how reading is learned and how we build meaning and gain comprehension. Find out more at ASCD.org.

I just stumbled upon a learning styles quiz at Edutopia. It is interesting because it classifies intelligence according to the categories naturalistic, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, visual-spatial, logical-mathematical, and verbal-linguistic. I found the results surprising because I have always ‘seen myself’ as a visual learner – and have read that, overwhelmingly, people are visual learners. [...]

Writing can help some struggling students overcome anxiety and perform better in school. In a study published by Science, researchers found students who completed 15 minute writing assignments centered around their values had the effect of maintaining a higher GPA – by .4 - than their peers who did not do these writing exercises. The positive effect had [...]