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Texting seems to have become the new “marshmallow test” for older students, and with similar results. In a 2011 study, researchers led by Mr. Rosen, who is a psychology professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills, randomly assigned 185 young college students with A and B grade averages to watch a video lecture, on which they knew they would be tested. During critical sections of the lecture, the researchers texted each student either four or eight times with questions that had nothing to do with the lecture and asked them to respond “promptly,” or did not text them at all.

If spelling words are simply strings of letters to be learnt by heart with no meaning attached and no investigation of how those words are constructed, then we are simply assigning our children a task equivalent to learning ten random seven-digit PINs each week.

Welcome to Connect!As we start up our new initiative, this blog will serve a number of purposes: 1. As a place to share the classroom projects, assignments and assessment practices of the Calgary Science School 2. As a place where CSS teachers and administrators can publicly reflect and engage in dialogue on their practice 3. As a place where CSS can build a learning network outside the walls of our school. We want to collaborate with and learn from other teaching professionals, around the city, province, country and around the world.

For this assignment the secondary 2 students from the Singapore International School (HK) were required to go to an area in Hong Kong and use their 5 senses to describe what they experienced. Their English teachers helped them by taking them on walks around the neighbourhood of our school and getting them to think about what they could see, smell, taste, hear and touch. The students then worked in groups, picked an area they wanted to explore and set off to use their newly heighten senses.

Do American students have too much homework or too little? Neither, I’d say. We ought to be asking a different question altogether. What should matter to parents and educators is this: How effectively do children’s after-school assignments advance learning?