We’re not shocked to hear that UCL Moodle isn’t the prettiest of websites. Our philosophy may be more about function than form but it would be too expectant for us to presume everyone thinks this way.

It's bad writing.  It's always been bad writing.  With the Common Core Standards designed to shift the way we teach students to think, read, and write, this outdated writing tradition must end.  If you're teaching it--stop it.  If your son, daughter, niece, or nephew (or a young person you care about) is learning it--prepare to engage with the teacher to end  it.

Despite the fact that this project engaged students on many levels and taught them story structure, characterization, use of dialogue, and exposition, it was jettisoned last year because of the national shift to the Common Core. It was replaced with an eight-page (for sixth graders!) research project.

ts taught in schools across the United States with little or no parental or educational oversight. Pearson standardized exams will assess how well teachers implement Pearson instruction modules and Pearson's common core standards, but not what students really learn or whether students are actually learning things that are important to know. Pearson is already creating teacher certification exams for eighteen states including New York, organizing staff development workshops to promote Pearson products, and providing school district Pearson assessment tools. In New York, Pearson Education currently has a five-year, $32 million contract to administer state test and provides other "testing services" to the State Education Department. It also recently received a share of a federal Race to the Top grant to create what the company calls the "next-generation" of online assessments.

I am inspired to construct a customized curriculum unit combining years of teaching experience with research studies based in theories of philosophy of learning, educational psychology, and cognitive psychology that is intended to help students become self-regulated learners. Educational research lends relevant information useful to understanding why our middle school students show such a decline in performance and motivation, and how we can fix it.

This allows us to examine changes in difficulty and identify current strengths and weakness. Most students are pleased to see how well they can perform on both tests, even if their results on the grade-level test were below passing.