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How can a game help students develop mathematical habits of mind? "Then we talked about the game for a bit, and discussed the "habits of mind" they had employed to figure out the game - noticing and wondering, guessing and checking, persevering, struggling productively, learning from mistakes without worrying about making mistakes (since they knew the only way they were going to make progress was to make mistakes and learn from them), and working together. We talked about how these skills are as important as any content they learn in their school classes, and how they can use those skills to make progress on math problems they're not sure how to solve. In fact, much of the math programming we did the rest of the year employed huge doses of Noticing and Wondering and generating ideas about math situations, or scenarios (a math problem with no stated question). Anecdotal reports suggest that by the end of the year, most of the students felt pretty confident that they could generate ideas about most math situations we handed them. Big win!"

"My students are really great at describing what things look like in their writing. They are not as skilled at putting smells, tastes, sounds and feelings into words. As a result, their narratives often feel flat, one-dimensional, and unreal. In an effort to get my students expanding on their descriptions, I decided to do a sensory walk using Instagram. *Check out my blog on using Instagram for scavenger hunt activities." Seems like a neat idea for English classes to teach various writing skills

"There is a new digital divide on the horizon. It is not based around who has devices and who does not, but instead the new digital divide will be based around students who know how to effectively find and curate information and those who do not."

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I saw this Dan Meyer TED Talk on re imagining Math through problem solving. I like how he takes a problem from the textbook and makes it more rigorous. "Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. In his talk, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think. (Filmed at TEDxNYED.)"

"The Web Literacy Standard is a map of competencies and skills that Mozilla and our community of stakeholders believe are important to pay attention to when getting better at reading, writing and participating on the web. "

""That's why the goal of school has to be automaticity," my dad concluded. The Sunday morning roads were empty, and we'd nearly made it home. "Take learning your times tables. You've got to know them cold so that you can go on to finding common denominators, or reasoning about algebraic functions, or whatever. You need each task to become automatic before you can move onto the next intellectual step."" Humorous, yet enlightening take on math class, which can be applied to school in general. What is more important for us to teach students so that it becomes more automatic? Should we make facts automatic? Or should we instead focus on skills and thought processes that can be quickly applied to many scenarios in a variety of contexts?

My children are feral but I'm working on taking them to the next level. I do wonder if it's less about wilderness per se and more about real experiences. You could probably do many things in the city/suburbs that would engage kids in a similar way.

I agree. "We foster and reward a narrow set of skills."

"....one skill that can help students succeed is selective highlighting. Notice that I said "selective" and not just highlighting."

"Empower your students to think critically about data, ask meaningful questions, and communicate their conclusions."