Finland follows the basic formula that has been performed by math teachers for centuries: The teachers go over homework, they present a lesson (some of the kids listen and some don’t), and then they assign homework.
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11 Ways Finland's Education System Shows Us that "Less is More". | Filling My Map - 0 views
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What if we didn’t force students who know that their talents reside outside of the world of formal academics to take three years of high school classes that they found boring and useless? What if we allowed them to train in and explore vocations they found fascinating and in which they were gifted?
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This system allows the Finnish teacher more time to plan and think about each lesson. It allows them to create great, thought provoking lessons.
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Finland understands that the ability to teach isn’t something that can be gained from studying. It is usually a gift and passion. Some have it, some don’t.
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Imagine all of the exciting things you could do with your students if there wasn’t a giant state test looming over your head every year. Imagine the freedom you could have if your pay wasn’t connected to your student’s test scores. Imagine how much more fun and engaging your lessons would be!
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teachers take their time. They look deeper into the topic and don’t panic if they are a little behind or don’t cover every topic in the existence of mathematics in a single year.
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Finnish students have the least amount of homework in the world. They average under half an hour of homework a night. Finnish students typically do not have outside tutors or lessons either.
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...why are Finnish students succeeding and ours are failing? The difference is not the instruction. Good teaching is good teaching and it can be found in both Finland and in the US. (The same can be said for bad teaching.) The difference is less tangible and more fundamental. Finland truly believes "Less is More." This national mantra is deeply engrained into the Finnish mindset and is the guiding principal to Finland's educational philosophy.
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The Scientific Case For Teaching Cursive Handwriting to Your Kids Is Weaker Than You Think - 2 views
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here is ample evidence that writing by hand aids cognition in ways that typing does not: It’s well worth teaching. And I confess I’m old-fashioned enough to think that, regardless of proven cognitive benefits, a good handwriting style is an important and valuable skill, not only when your laptop batteries run out but as an expression of personality and character.
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if they have the time and inclination.
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what teachers “know” about how children learn is sometimes more a product of the culture in which they’re immersed than a result of research and data.
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What does research say on these issues? It has consistently failed to find any real advantage of cursive over other forms of handwriting
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our real understanding of how children respond to different writing styles is surprisingly patchy and woefully inadequate
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Evidence supports teaching both formats of handwriting and then letting each student choose which works best for him or her
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So was cursive faster than manuscript? No, it was slower. But fastest of all was a personalized mixture of cursive and manuscript developed spontaneously by pupils around the fourth to fifth grade
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They had apparently imbibed manuscript style from their reading experience (it more closely resembles print), even without being taught it explicitly
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While pupils writing in cursive were slower on average, their handwriting was also typically more legible than that of pupils taught only manuscript. But the mixed style allowed for greater speed with barely any deficit in legibility.
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freeing up cognitive resources that are otherwise devoted to the challenge of simply making the more elaborate cursive forms on paper will leave children more articulate and accurate in what they write
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the difference in appearance between cursive and manuscript could inhibit the acquisition of reading skills, making it harder for children to transfer skills between learning to read and learning to write because they simply don’t see cursive in books.
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There’s good evidence, both behavioral and neurological, that a “haptic” (touch-related) sense of letter shapes can aid early reading skills, indicating a cognitive interaction between motor production and visual recognition of letters. That’s one reason, incidentally, why it’s valuable to train children to write by hand at all, not just to use a keyboard.
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even if being taught both styles might have some advantages, it’s not clear that those cognitive resources and classroom hours couldn’t be better deployed in other ways.
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that cursive is still taught primarily because of parental demand and tradition, rather than because there is any scientific basis for its superiority in learning
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inertia and preconceptions seem to distort perception and policy at the expense of the scientific evidence
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How much else in education is determined by what’s “right,” rather than what’s supported by evidence?
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Beliefs about cursive are something of a hydra: You cut off one head, and another sprouts. These beliefs propagate through both the popular and the scientific literature, in a strange mixture of uncritical reporting and outright invention, which depends on myths often impossible to track to a reliable source.
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the reasons to reject cursive handwriting as a formal part of the curriculum far outweigh the reasons to keep it.
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This must surely lead us to wonder how much else in education is determined by a belief in what is “right,” unsupported by evidence.
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it’s often the case that the very lack of hard, objective evidence about an issue, especially in the social sciences, encourages a reliance on dogma instead
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There needs to be wider examination of the extent to which evidence informs education. Do we heed it enough? Or is what children learn determined more by precedent and cultural or institutional norms?
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Screen Time? How about Creativity Time? - Mitchel Resnick - Medium - 1 views
medium.com/...ut-creativity-time-928528c0214
screen time time kindergarten early childhood screen creativity
shared by Sean McHugh on 22 Jan 18
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Too often, designers of educational materials and activities simply add a thin layer of technology and gaming over antiquated curriculum and pedagogy
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But I’m also sure that some students found it very discouraging and disempowering. And the activity put an emphasis on questions that can be answered quickly with right and wrong answers — certainly not the type of questions that I would prioritize in a classroom.
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In many cases, the skeptics apply very different standards to new technologies than to “old” technologies. They worry about the antisocial impact of a child spending hours working on a computer, while they don’t have any concerns about a child spending the same time reading a book. They worry that children interacting with computers don’t spend enough time outside, but they don’t voice similar concerns about children playing musical instruments. I’m not suggesting that there are no reasons for concern. I’m just asking for more consistency.
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For kids growing up today, laptops and mobile phones aren’t high-tech tools — they’re everyday tools, just like crayons and watercolors.
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Of course there’s a problem if children spend all their time interacting with screens — just as there would be a problem if they spent all their time playing the violin or reading books or playing sports. Spending all your time on any one thing is problematic. But the most important issue with screen time is not quantity but quality. There are many ways of interacting with screens; it doesn’t make sense to treat them all the same
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Rather than trying to minimize screen time, I think parents and teachers should try to maximize creative time. The focus shouldn’t be on which technologies children are using, but rather what children are doing with them
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