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What are the most popular books at each grade level? Can just 15 minutes of daily reading significantly impact learning outcomes? Get the answers in the world’s largest annual study of K–12 student reading habits.
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Test scores are of much interest to parents and educators. We all want our children to achieve their best—so, we frequently use tests to measure what a student has learned and can do as a result of instruction. Sometimes we [...]
Earlier this month, I attended the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) conference in San Francisco with nearly 9,000 math educators. At a math conference, you would expect the emphasis to be on numbers, but in many ways, [...]
As a teacher, you want your students to achieve great things. Our responsibility as educators is to create an academic ecosystem—a community of “just-right” conditions—where students are able to thrive. If we could create the perfect ecosystem for learning, what [...]
A subtle transition has occurred around our profession’s discussions of reform, so subtle that many of us may not have consciously picked up on it. That transition is from conversations about “school effectiveness” to ones of “educator effectiveness.” In the [...]
A few years ago, one of my colleagues suggested we take advantage of the gym in the basement of our office building and bring in a trainer. While I’d always been active, I found group training intimidating. Somehow I always [...]
In an earlier post on the interdependent relationship between talkativeness and cognitive development, I shared Vygotsky’s theory on vocabulary acquisition as the defining moment in cognitive development, as well as the classic 1965 Hart & Risley study that validated [...]
“Please see if I am grokking this properly.” (Angel, 2016) Admit it, before reading further, you thought about jumping to Google, dictionary.com, or even Wikipedia to see what “grokking” is, and more importantly, to learn what is required to grok [...]
When I go into schools and talk to teachers, there’s a lot of rich dialogue going on around testing. I’ve only recently come to the Marysville district, but I’ve been in the business for over 15 years and have seen [...]
I want to tell you about a person who has been described in many ways: an “outstanding scientist,” an “eminent scholar,” and even a “genius.” I want to tell you about Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. –Gita Vygodskaya And so begins Gita [...]
It all comes down to the first sentence. That’s how I decide. If the writing pulls me in, I’ll buy or borrow the book. If not, it remains on the shelf, whether physical or virtual. No matter how riveting a [...]