JEFFREY JENSEN ARNETT, a psychology professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., is leading the movement to view the 20s as a distinct life stage, which he calls “emerging adulthood.” He says what is happening now is analogous to what happened a century ago, when social and economic changes helped create adolescence — a stage we take for granted but one that had to be recognized by psychologists, accepted by society and accommodated by institutions that served the young. Similar changes at the turn of the 21st century have laid the groundwork for another new stage, Arnett says, between the age of 18 and the late 20s. Among the cultural changes he points to that have led to “emerging adulthood” are the need for more education to survive in an information-based economy; fewer entry-level jobs even after all that schooling; young people feeling less rush to marry because of the general acceptance of premarital sex, cohabitation and birth control; and young women feeling less rush to have babies given their wide range of career options and their access to assisted reproductive technology if they delay pregnancy beyond their most fertile years.
Judy Brophy on 10 May 10Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with "food for thought" on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed by Lyman and associates to encourage student classroom participation. What is Think, Pair, Share? Think-Pair-Share is a strategy designed to provide students with "food for thought" on a given topics enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with another student. It is a learning strategy developed by Lyman and associates to encourage student classroom participation. Rather than using a basic recitation method in which a teacher poses a question and one student offers a response, Think-Pair-Share encourages a high degree of pupil response and can help keep students on task. What is its purpose? * Providing "think time" increases quality of student responses. * Students become actively involved in thinking about the concepts presented in the lesson. * Research tells us that we need time to mentally "chew over" new ideas in order to store them in memory. When teachers present too much information all at once, much of that information is lost. If we give students time to "think-pair-share" throughout the lesson, more of the critical information is retained. * When students talk over new ideas, they are forced to make sense of those new ideas in terms of their prior knowledge. Their misunderstandings about the topic are often revealed (and resolved) during this discussion stage. * Students are more willing to participate since they don't feel the peer pressure involved in responding in front of the whole class. * Think-Pair-Share is easy to use on the spur of the moment. * Easy to use in large classes. How can I do it? * With students seated in teams of 4, have them number them from 1 to 4. * Announce a discussion topic or problem to solve. (Example: Which room in our school is larg
