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Martin Burrett

Montessori preschool boosts academic results and reduces income-based inequalit - 2 views

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    "Not only do Montessori children do better overall than those in conventional preschools, but Montessori preschools help low-income children to perform as well as wealthier children Children in Montessori preschools show improved academic performance and social understanding, while enjoying their school work more, finds the first longitudinal study of Montessori education outcomes. Strikingly, children from low-income families, who typically don't perform as well at school, show similar academic performance as children from high-income families. Children with low executive function similarly benefit from Montessori preschools. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, suggests that well-implemented Montessori education could be a powerful way to help disadvantaged children to achieve their academic potential."
Tony Richards

The Atlantic Online | January/February 2010 | What Makes a Great Teacher? | Amanda Ripley - 14 views

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    "What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo
anonymous

ourlostchildren » home - 0 views

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    Student created wiki. Thomas Cooper is the teacher behind this project. He teachers at the Walker School in Marietta, GA. Many people believe that child labor and abuse is something of the past, but there could not be more of a false statement. Around the world children are being marginalized, and abused, and forced into labor. Children in Africa are being forced to join the military and kill children and adults alike. Other children are living on the streets because their parents' lives were taken by the AIDS virus. And due to India's class system, young children will live in poverty with no possible way of hope in the future. Children are even forced into prostitution and labor. Childhood deformities and disabilities cause affected children to live in isolation and cause pain and suffering for both them and their families. Be sure to check out the teacher resources in the table of contents.
David Warlick

Reggio Emilia approach - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 4 views

  • Children must have some control over the direction of their learning; Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing; Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore and Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.
    • David Warlick
       
      This is all very familiar yet rarely expressed so succinctly.
  • In the Reggio approach, the teacher is considered a co-learner and collaborator with the child and not just an instructor.
  • Teacher autonomy is evident in the absence of teacher manuals, curriculum guides, or achievement tests
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  • integration of each classroom with the rest of the school, and the school with the surrounding community
  • children can best create meaning and make sense of their world through environments which support "complex, varied, sustained, and changing relationships between people, the world of experience, ideas and the many ways of expressing ideas."
  • In each classroom there are studio spaces in the form of a large, centrally located atelier and a smaller mini-atelier, and clearly designated spaces for large- and small-group activities.
    • David Warlick
       
      A workshop or studio especially for an artist, designer or fashion house.
  • Reggio teachers place a high value on their ability to improvise and respond to children's predisposition to enjoy the unexpected.
  • Regardless of their origins, successful projects are those that generate a sufficient amount of interest and uncertainty to provoke children's creative thinking and problem-solving and are open to different avenues of exploration
  • teachers in Reggio Emilia assert the importance of being confused as a contributor to learning; thus a major teaching strategy is purposely to allow mistakes to happen, or to begin a project with no clear sense of where it might end.
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    The Reggio Emilia Approach is an educational philosophy focused on preschool and primary education. It was started by Loris Malaguzzi and the parents of the villages around Reggio Emilia in Italy after World War II. The destruction from the war, parents believed, necessitated a new, quick approach to teaching their children. They felt that it is in the early years of development that children are forming who they are as an individual. This led to creation of a program based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community through exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment based on the interests of the children through a self-guided curriculum.
John Marr

Don't show, don't tell? - MIT News Office - 11 views

  • Don’t show, don’t tell? Cognitive scientists find that when teaching young children, there is a trade-off between direct instruction and independent exploration. Emily Finn, MIT News Office
  • It turns out that there is a “double-edged sword” to pedagogy: Explicit instruction makes children less likely to engage in spontaneous exploration and discovery.
  • The danger is leading children to believe that they’ve learned all there is to know, thereby discouraging independent discovery.
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  • To study this phenomenon, the researchers built an original toy
  • they recruited 85 preschool-age children to interact with the toy under one of four conditions: pedagogical, interrupted, naïve and baseline.
  • In the pedagogical condition, the experimenter said, “Look at my toy! This is how my toy works,” and demonstrated the squeak function twice (but made no mention of the other functions).
  • Many children in the pedagogical condition failed to discover even one function in addition to the squeak, while children in the other three conditions found, on average, one or two functions they had not been taught. What’s more, children in the pedagogical condition spent less time playing with the toy — less than two minutes, on average — than children in the other conditions, whose times ranged from slightly more than two minutes in the naïve condition to longer than three minutes in the baseline condition.
  • “The whole double-edged sword concept is really interesting,” says Susan Gelman, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “In almost any domain and across different cultures, we engage in spontaneous teaching. It doesn’t have to be in the classroom, we just naturally do this with young children — we show them how things are done, point out what’s important. This study shows how sensitive children are to the kind of cues that signal teaching.” Further experiments may want to examine differences in children’s behavior across cultures, she adds.
  • the study underscores the real-world trade-offs between education and exploration, and the importance of acknowledging what is unknown even while imparting what is known. Teachers should, where possible, offer the caveat that there may be more to learn.
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    Recent study found that if you explain "all aspects" of a toy, children are less likely to discover new uses. If you allow them to "play and experiment" they will discover new a creative uses. This should be taken into account in teaching.
Fred Delventhal

SecretBuilders - 0 views

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    via http://freetech4teachers.blogspot.com/2008/12/secret-builders-virtual-world-for-ages.html\n\nSecretBuilders is a virtual world for children 5 to 14 years old powered by a web 2.0 community of children, parents, educators, writers, artists and game developers. On SecretBuilders, children will explore virtual lands, undertake quests, play games, maintain a home, nurture a pet, and interact with their friends. Three features which form the backdrop for SecretBuilders distinguish it from other online worlds:\n\n * Children learn through immersing themselves in the stories, themes, and concepts from the best in literature, arts and humanities. They will interact with famous historical and fictional figures and be introduced to content and characters from world civilization and the great thoughts and ideas of human creativity. \n\n * Children will create this site, not just consume it. They are directly involved in creating this world with their ideas, critiques and contributions on virtually every aspect of the site and many of their ideas will be implemented!\n\n * Children publish their works - writings, art, videos - making SecretBuilders their own personal store of creativity. They can invite friends and family to view their works, and comment upon them. Seeing their works published and enjoyed by others instills tremendous for self-confidence as well as motivation to do more.\n
Martin Burrett

Teachers and other school-based professionals can treat children's mental health problems - 0 views

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    "School-based services delivered by teachers and other school-based professionals can help reduce mental health problems in elementary-aged children, reports a study published in the March 2018 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP). "Given the limited accessibility of traditional mental health services for children-particularly for children from minority and economically disadvantaged backgrounds-school-based mental health services are a tremendous vehicle for overcoming barriers to mental health care and meaningfully expanding the reach of supports and services for so many children in need. Treating children in schools can powerfully overcome issues of cost, transportation, and stigma that typically restrict broad utilization of mental health services" said lead author Amanda Sanchez, MS, of the Center for Children and Families at Florida International University."
C CC

Michael Morpurgo: We are failing too many boys in the enjoyment of reading | Teacher Ne... - 1 views

  • Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children.
  • It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children
  • I believe profoundly that everyone has a story to tell, a song to sing. I'm all for empowering children and young people to have their own words especially when they are young. Encouraging young people to believe in themselves and find their own voice whether it's through writing, drama or art is so important in giving young people a sense of self-worth. There are so many young people who don't believe in themselves and their mentality gets fixed in failure.
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  • 1.Why not have a dedicated half hour at the end of every school day in every primary school devoted to the simple enjoyment of reading and writing.2. Regular visits from storytellers, theatre groups, poets, writers of fiction and non-fiction, and librarians from the local library.3. Inviting fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers into school to tell and read stories, to listen to children reading, one to one. The work of organisations such at Volunteer Reading Help and Reading Matters are already doing great thing to help young people and schools.4. Ensuring that the enjoyment of literature takes precedence, particularly in the early years, over the learning of the rules of literacy, important though they are.  Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.5.  Parents, fathers in particular, and teachers, might be encouraged to attend book groups themselves, in or out of the school, without children, so that they can develop a love of reading for themselves, which they can then pass on to the children.6. Teacher training should always include modules dedicated to developing the teachers' own appreciation of literature, so that when they come to read to the children or to recommend a book, it is meant, and the children know it. To use books simply as a teacher's tool is unlikely to convince many children that books are for them, particularly those that are failing already, many of whom will be boys.7.  The library in any school should have a dedicated librarian or teacher/librarian, be well resourced, and welcoming, the heart of every school.  Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.
Vicki Davis

In Pakistan, a New Push for Education by Mujib Mashal on Beacon - 0 views

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    Pakistan is pushing to educate more of its children, amidst financial woes and a struggle for more funding. Their goal: 100% enrollment. Of course, there is a great effort also to build a firewall in Pakistan much like the "great firewall of China." That said, there are many lovely educators from Pakistan who contribute and connect increasingly online and I wish this country well as well as the many countries working to increase enrollment. "As schools returned to session in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province this fall, the newly elected provincial government - with the help of the non-profit campaign Alif Ailaan - launched an enrollment drive. In its first month, the drive managed to enroll nearly 245,000 out of school children - about 65% male and 35% female - across 25 districts of the province, according to figures provided by Alif Ailaan. But considering Pakistan's education woes, where more than 25 million children between the ages of 5-16 remain out of school, it is a small step. "In order to provide schooling to all the kids, we need about Rs. 138 billion (roughly $1.2 billion) just in KP - for school infrastructure, classrooms, teachers so on and so forth," Joudat Ayaz, the province's education secretary, told me over dinner. Ayaz estimates the number of out of school children in KP between 2 to 3 million, about 20% to 30% of the school-age children in the province. "You can't do this [reaching 100% enrollment] in one go - you have to do it progressively, over six or seven years.""
Vicki Davis

To Figure Out Unknown, Children Rely Less on Words Than Adults Do - 3 views

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    If you work with younger children under the age of 5, you will want to look deeper into this research that shows that words mean less to children than adults when trying to categorize things. ""In the past, we thought that if we name the things for children, the labels will do the rest: children would infer that the two things that have the same name are alike in some way or that they go together," he said. "We can't assume that anymore. We really need to do more than just label things."
Martin Burrett

Research: Teens who were severely bullied as children at higher risk of suicidal though... - 0 views

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    "Teens who were severely bullied as children by peers are at higher risk of mental health issues, including suicidal thoughts and behaviours, according to new research in CMAJ(Canadian Medical Association Journal). "Our findings showed a general tendency, in about 15% of the children, of being exposed to the most severe levels of victimization from the beginning of their education until the transition to high school," writes Dr. Marie-Claude Geoffroy, McGill Group for Suicide Studies, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, with coauthors. "Those children were at greater risk of debilitating depressive/dysthymic symptoms or anxiety and of suicidality in adolescence than less severely victimised children, even after we accounted for a plethora of confounders assessed throughout childhood.""
Anne Bubnic

How children search the internet with keyword interfaces [PDF] - 0 views

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    Children are among the most frequent users of the Internet, yet searching and browsing the web can present many challenges. Studies over the past two decades on how children search were conducted with finite and pre-determined content found in CD-ROM applications, online digital libraries, and web directories. However, with the current popularity of the open Internet and keyword-based interfaces for searching it, more critical analysis of the challenges children face today is needed. This paper presents the findings of an initial study to understand how children ages 7, 9, and 11 search the Internet using keyword interfaces in the home.
Vicki Davis

Moving at the Speed of Creativity | Redeeming the Family: Blessing Children of Incarcer... - 2 views

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    Wesley Fryer is not only a great educator but a great man. Here he shares how he and other men went into the Cushing Oklahooma correction facility and helped dads record messages to their children for Father's day. What a great thing to do. Part of my own faith is the forgiveness that we can receive and as people we must forgive and encourage those who have made mistakes. If you don't make a mistake ignore this post, if you do, then consider bringing something like this to your area. Great work, Wes. I hope our PLN's share this message far and wide. "This is a 14 minute video reflection by Wesley Fryer, who volunteered with Redeeming the Family on May 15, 2013, at the Cimarron Correctional Facility (prison) in Cushing, Oklahoma. Oklahoma currently has 17 prisons, and Cimarron is one of three which is privately operated. Corrections Corporation of America has owned and operated this prison commercially since 1997. Last week Redeeming the Family volunteers assisted 50 incarcerated dads to record video messages of love for their children, which will be mailed to their children before Father's Day on Sunday, June 16th."
Maggie Verster

Fundamentals of Childhood and Youth Studies (new free course from Alison) - 3 views

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    This free online course was developed in response to the emerging importance of children and youth in international development policy. The course will give the learner a comprehensive understanding and knowledge of development from the early years right through to adolescence. The course will deal with questions such as: What makes young people tick? What shapes and influences a child's development? How can the adults who work with children support them more effectively? After completion of the course, learners will be familiar with the major theories on the development of children. This course will be of great interest to professionals already in health, care or development professions, to learners who are planning a career that centres on youth, and will also be beneficial to parents, carers, and learners who are interested in studying issues related to children and adolescents.
Martin Burrett

Tinkatolli - 8 views

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    This is a fun, cute, social 3D island world designed especially with children in mind. Children make an avatar and follow a quick tutorial and explanation of safety rules. The children can take their characters on quests, play educational games and interact with other users of the site. A fabulous feature of the site is that users are encouraged to 'make and do' offline as well. These activities can be uploaded to a scrapbook and multimedia blog. Offline activities also generate points in the game. The scrapbook is defaulted to private and no photos of children will be approved by moderators if the scrapbook is public. All the usual safety features are in place, including a 'report' and 'block' other users button. The basic account with most features is free, but there are optional 'paid for' extras. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
Ed Webb

What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? - WSJ.com - 19 views

  • Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. A leading theory points to changes in energy balance as children eat more and move less.
  • Recent studies in the neuroscientist B.J. Casey's lab at Cornell University suggest that adolescents aren't reckless because they underestimate risks, but because they overestimate rewards—or, rather, find rewards more rewarding than adults do. The reward centers of the adolescent brain are much more active than those of either children or adults. Think about the incomparable intensity of first love, the never-to-be-recaptured glory of the high-school basketball championship. What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers. In a recent study by the developmental psychologist Laurence Steinberg at Temple University, teenagers did a simulated high-risk driving task while they were lying in an fMRI brain-imaging machine. The reward system of their brains lighted up much more when they thought another teenager was watching what they did—and they took more risks.
  • What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists are starting to explain the foundations of that weirdness.
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  • contemporary children have very little experience with the kinds of tasks that they'll have to perform as grown-ups. Children have increasingly little chance to practice even basic skills like cooking and caregiving. Contemporary adolescents and pre-adolescents often don't do much of anything except go to school. Even the paper route and the baby-sitting job have largely disappeared.
  • first with the industrial revolution and then even more dramatically with the information revolution, children have come to take on adult roles later and later. Five hundred years ago, Shakespeare knew that the emotionally intense combination of teenage sexuality and peer-induced risk could be tragic—witness "Romeo and Juliet." But, on the other hand, if not for fate, 13-year-old Juliet would have become a wife and mother within a year or two.
  • This control system depends much more on learning. It becomes increasingly effective throughout childhood and continues to develop during adolescence and adulthood, as we gain more experience. You come to make better decisions by making not-so-good decisions and then correcting them. You get to be a good planner by making plans, implementing them and seeing the results again and again. Expertise comes with experience.
  • Wide-ranging, flexible and broad learning, the kind we encourage in high-school and college, may actually be in tension with the ability to develop finely-honed, controlled, focused expertise in a particular skill, the kind of learning that once routinely took place in human societies. For most of our history, children have started their internships when they were seven, not 27
  • experience shapes the brain. People often think that if some ability is located in a particular part of the brain, that must mean that it's "hard-wired" and inflexible. But, in fact, the brain is so powerful precisely because it is so sensitive to experience. It's as true to say that our experience of controlling our impulses make the prefrontal cortex develop as it is to say that prefrontal development makes us better at controlling our impulses. Our social and cultural life shapes our biology.
Claude Almansi

CEC | Ask Arne: A Conversation with the Council for Exceptional Children's (CEC) Member... - 0 views

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    "As I have travelled across the country visiting schools and classrooms and talking with teachers and parents, I have heard many questions about our plans at the U.S. Department of Education to support children with disabilities, their families, and the teachers who educate them and fight for them daily. To hear more about the issues affecting students with disabilities and their teachers, I asked CEC to contact members through an e-mail blast. Your response was overwhelming. Though CEC received more questions than we could possibly answer here, I have worked with your leadership to identify some of the central questions for educators of children with disabilities, and I have worked with my staff at the Department so that we can address them in this document. I would like to thank CEC members and all teachers of children with disabilities for their outstanding compassion and commitment and for the range of complex skills and talents you bring to teaching your students every day."
Vicki Davis

Facebook Wants to Welcome Kids Under Age 13 to Social Network - Search Engine Watch (#SEW) - 12 views

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    One of my students turned up this information that Facebook is working on controls to help kids under 13 use the service. It is no surprise that 7.5 million Facebook users are under the age of 13 and that 5 million of THOSE are 10 years old or younger. COPPA, while set up to protect children, is actually keeping them from participating in society as they want to. This infographic and information is worth sharing as you educate your students. If you want until they are 13 to talk safety online, that is too late. "Last June, Consumer Reports magazine said they had unearthed "several disturbing findings" about children and Facebook, including: 20 million minors had used Facebook within the year prior to their study. 7.5 million of those users were under the age of 13 and not permitted to use the site. 5 million of those were 10 years old or younger. 1 million children had been harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying in the year prior."
Vicki Davis

Mexico Education Reform: President Enrique Peña Nieto Faces Teachers' Revolt - 0 views

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    Rebellion from teachers in Mexico who have bought and sold teaching jobs for generations without any national certification. Teachers are striking and bearing crowbars. These are reforms that most agree need to happen, but putting them in place is tough and sadly, it often hurts those we should protect the most... the children. Despite what some say, reforms need to happen in the US as well and this means upheaval here too. It can be challenging to separate the truth from the fabrications but I  hope that wherever the flag of edreform is raised that people will think of children and what is best for them. What is best for teachers is not always the best for children. It might be good in my own eyes to have a job, but if I'm not a good teacher, perhaps it is something that doesn't need to happen. Interesting reading. "The conflict is fueled by the importance of teaching jobs for the poor mountain and coastal villages where the dissident union is strongest. Teaching jobs in Guerrero with lifelong job security, benefits and pension pay about $495 and $1,650 a month, depending on qualifications and tenure, well above average in rural areas, according to teachers and outside experts. They said the price to get such as job can cost as much as $20,000, usually going to the departing teacher, with cuts for union and state officials."
Vicki Davis

NeoPets Parental Consent form - 0 views

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    COPPA is a reason that many schools shy away from having any children under 13 participate in online sites, however, NeoPets is a website that has done this. This is a copy of their COPPA consent form. In here, you can see how they've tracked and worked with this permission. It does require the parents to fill out and fax or mail the form in to NeoPets to allow children to use the communications portion of the website. This would be a website to review if you're looking at creating a portal or service that allows kids under 13 to post and communicate in ways that tracks their data. I am wondering if Facebook would eventually do something like this or if they will continue to create an environment that encourages children to lie to get on their platform. (i.e. under 13 not allowed)
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