Group items tagged

"What boosts PBL from a fun and engaging exercise to a rigorous and powerful real-world learning experience? Researchers have identified four key components that are critical to teaching successfully with PBL (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2008; Ertmer & Simons, 2005; Mergendoller & Thomas, 2005; Hung, 2008). All of these play a role in the curriculum-design process."

A key new position statement from ACTFL

Regardless of what social and emotional learning (SEL), character development, or any other related program you might use in your school, two things are true: They have a problem-solving component, and generalization is greatly enhanced when what is being taught as SEL/character is also integrated into the rest of the school day. Because of the importance of language arts skills, reading activities provide an ideal way to build students' problem-solving skills by applying them to deepen their insights into the written materials.

Regular readers here will understand with the enthusiasm with which I greet the publication of Tony Wagner's new book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. I've been a fan of Wagner's writing since the Global Achievement Gap was published in 2008, a book which has influenced this blog's educational vision perhaps more than any other single title. "Creating Innovators" has been a theme both of my educational leadership and my blogging since 2009, when the Board of St. Gregory adopted it as a core component of our mission and our slogan/tag line.