As summer approaches many families are planning how they are going to spend their summer vacation. Among many activities, people from all over the world will be making their way to the Grand Canyon National Park (which gets over 5 million visitors a year!) to take in one of the first and most notable national parks in the United States. But this year will be a little different.

This year will be the first time visitors will be able to look into the famous canyon and know how it was formed, thanks to researchers from Rice University who recently took the first step in solving the geological mystery.

In last 70 million years, the Colorado Plateau of the southwestern United States, which covers Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico — a 130,000-square mile region — used to be flat and reach  1.2 miles high. The plateau was then invaded by magma causing it to erode and create deep valleys and landscapes that tourists now flock to, like the Grand Canyon (LiveScience).

Before recent findings, a popular theory was that the valleys were slowly created over the millennia by the Colorado River. New research shows the magma would have created the Grand Canyon in only the last 6-7 million years, a much shorter amount of time than some theorized.

Researchers will continue solving the mystery of the Grand Canyon by searching for the cause behind the magma rising. The “drips” caused by the magma are increasingly being found all over the world and giving scientists new a perspective on Earth’s formations.

“[The drips are] a new component to our understanding of how continents evolve that we’re just trying to figure out now,” said Seismologist George Zandt in an interview with OurAmazingPlanet.

What are some places you’re going to this summer with your family? Need some ideas on how to fill your summer with learning? On May 10, student success expert Maureen Breeze will be presenting the webinar, Summer Learning: Fostering Analytical, Practical, and Creative Intelligence. Parents, educators, counselors, and administrators who work with grades 5-12 and want learn more about why summer time is a great time for learning are encouraged to attend.

References:

Grand Canyon:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canyon#Grand_Canyon_tourism

Mystery of Grand Canyon’s Formation Revealed: http://www.livescience.com/13903-grand-canyon-age-formation-colorado-plateau-uplift.html

How the Grand Canyon Was Formed: Anomaly Gives New Clues: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/how-the-grand-canyon-was-formed_n_854549.html

Students of all ages can start developing work skills and experience this summer that will help them assess their strengths and challenges and give them the chance to address them early on. Middle school students have many working opportunities that they can get involved in during the summer. They should be encouraged to try a variety of jobs so they can learn what they do well and pick up transferable skills like responsibility, communication, punctuality, and time management.

If a student has a passion for animals, they could potentially become a zookeeper, veterinarian, or wildlife photographer. This summer, have your student volunteer to petsit while neighbors are on vacation, be in charge of feeding and cleaning up after family pets, or walk dogs at the animal shelter.

Whether high school students are required to earn their own money or not, they should have a job during the summer. Volunteering, part-time work, and odds-and-ends jobs like babysitting, housesitting, and household chores all help young adults start creating a work ethic that they will take with them to their independent years in college and their career.

Encourage students to get a head start on developing job skills, getting to know themselves, and maybe even making some money, by getting them involved this summer. Below is a list of common jobs from www.careerkids.com for students of any age.

• Babysitting
• Pet sitting
• Yard workers
• Bicycle repair
• Camp counselor
• Referee and umpires
• Computer tutoring or training (this can be a good resource if you live near a retirement community)
• Garage sales
• House sitting (pick up mail, packages, feed animals, water plants while neighbors are away)
• Car washing/detailing
• DVD rental (if the family has a large collection)
• Recycle pickup (they make their money when they take the recycling to the service center)
• Library pick up and return

On May 10, student success expert Maureen Breeze will be presenting the webinar, Summer Learning: Fostering Analytical, Practical, and Creative Intelligence. Parents, educators, counselors, and administrators who work with grades 5-12 and want learn more about why summer time is a great time for learning are encouraged to attend.

Last week, two 14-year-old girls hung themselves in a suicide pact after being victims of bullying at their middle school. One of the girls, Haylee Fentress, had reached out to her family about being picked on for being overweight and having red hair. She was so self-conscious of her body weight that she wouldn’t eat in public.

The other girl, Paige Moravetz, had recently been expelled after standing up for Haylee in a school fight. It’s believed by their families that the separation caused by the expulsion was hard on the girls, and that she was upset about the consequences of defending herself and her friend.

Statistics show:

• There is noticeably more bullying in middle school than in high school (NCES).
• Emotional bullying is more prevalent than physical bullying (NCES).
• 61.6% of students who are bullied are picked on because of their looks or speech (U.S. News & World Report).

The findings of the first statewide study on bullying was published in the most recent issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Bullies, their victims, and kids who were both bullies and victims were far more likely to have been hurt by a family member or to have seen family violence than peers who weren’t involved in bullying, according to data from Massachusetts that was recently published by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bullies were found to be four times more likely to have been hurt by a family member than those who were neither a bully nor a victim of bullying.

These new findings reinforce the belief that education for anti-bullying begins at home. “These children are learning [violent behavior] in their families and behaving the same way in their relationships with their peers,” said psychologist Elizabeth Englander in a Boston Globe interview.

When the Massachusetts Department of Public Health added questions about bullying to the health survey of students, the researchers concluded: “Bullying is a pervasive public health problem requiring comprehensive solutions. Evidence suggests that classroom prevention programs alone in the United States often are unsuccessful in changing bullying behaviors.”

If your child is a bully or a victim of bullying you can seek help from your child’s school or contact their doctor or psychologist. If you’re an educator consider this statistic: Only 25% of students report that teachers intervene in bullying situations, while 71% of teachers believe they always intervene (www.bullybeware.com). How can you increase awareness in and out of school and become part of the solution in your community?

References:

• http://abcnews.go.com/US/suicide-pact-minnesota-eighth-graders-haylee-fentress-paige/story?

id=13411751

• http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/school-bullying.html
• http://www.highlands.k12.fl.us/~msdp/BullyingStatsResources.htm
• http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/04/22/135608823/many-bullies-get-pushed-around-at-home

The first Earth Day was celebrated 41 years ago, on April 22, 1970. It’s credited with launching the modern environmental movement and paving the way for other groundbreaking environmental laws, like Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act (www.earthday.org).

Today, terms like going green, global warming, and carbon footprint are a part of many students’ vocabulary and may even impact their lifestyle to the point where they’ve organized carpools or become vegetarians.  No matter how involved you or your students are with environmental concerns every other day of the year, Earth Day is great way to raise awareness and show people how easy it is to become even just a little more earth conscious. Below is a list of different ways people will be celebrating Earth Day:

• Earth Day Network is asking you to “Pledge an Act, Save Our Planet.” At act.earthday.org, over 102,000,000 people have already made their pledge to start saving, including “I will use less plastic and plant more trees,” “I pledge to save electricity,” and “I pledge to bike.”
• NASA has many Earth Day plans, with many online activities that show NASA’s “involvement in Earth science and the protection and preservation of our home planet.”
  • Chat online with a team of Arctic explorers in Greenland who are carefully watching changes in the ice landscape.
  • Join the NASA Earth Day video contest by submitting a video to YouTube that shows the real-world benefits that result from NASA’s Earth science program.
• Starbucks invites everyone to bring in a reusable mug or tumbler for a free coffee or tea, and for those who don’t have one, they will be on sale on April 22. Last year, more than 1.2 million people participated in Starbucks’ Earth Day event. Not only that, people continued bringing their reusable cups more than 32 million times throughout the year, which cut 1.45 million pounds of paper from the landfills in 2010 (www.starbucks.com)
• Check your local paper for Earth Day activities you can get involved in right outside your front door.
• Celebrate on your own:
  • Plant a tree.
  • Walk to work.
  • Build a birdhouse.

Let us know what you are doing to celebrate Earth Day this year.

New research finds that, opposed to common belief, font size plays no part in memory. However, font style significantly impacts the amount of material people retain in any subject.

One long understood fact about memory is that people’s perception of how much they’ve learned about a subject is usually pretty off. Experts are paying closer attention to these common memory misperceptions as more people do the majority of their learning unsupervised. “It’s crucial to be able to monitor that learning accurately; that is, to know how well we know what we know, so that we avoid fooling ourselves,” said psychologist Robert A. Bjork.

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In the 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama said, “nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school education.” But in a recent survey, most 18-24 year olds gave their high school a low grade for preparing them for the transition to college. A majority said their school didn’t help them find a field of interest to study, help them find the college or vocational school with the right fit, or assist with financial aid.

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Ed Week writer Sarah Sparks gives the example that if you ask a friend to meet you at a new restaurant they could use a variety of tools to get there, like looking at a map, getting directions, or plugging the address into their GPS. But you wouldn’t expect them to go to every door on the block at random, give up, and then go home.

Research from Carnegie Mellon University found that many students who take online courses will typically do anything before they would consider asking for help with a problem. Online programs pose new questions that are otherwise easily addressed in a physical classroom setting. When students have a question they raise their hand or a teacher recognizes they are struggling. But with online learning, students will sit and struggle with a problem and no one ever intervenes.

Computer programs proved to be helpful in identifying weaknesses in online learning because they are able to record how many times a student tries to solve a problem, use a dictionary, or ask for help. Research shows only twenty-five percent of students will ask for help after getting a question wrong. “Seventy-five percent of them will try again. And the pattern persists after any consecutive number of errors; after five, six, attempts, I am still more likely to try again than ask for help, ” says researcher Ido Roll. Researchers also found the eighty-two percent of students who used the hint tool after struggling for an answer did not stop to read it, but clicked through until the had enough hints to guess the right answer.

But there might be a solution. Research on metacognition suggests that if students take the time to reflect on how they are learning they are more prepared to use effective learning strategies that help them learn the best. In the next experiment conducted by Mr. Roll, researchers added new hint tools to the online program that prompted students to be more reflective about problem solving and included help-windows that popped up when students clicked the hint button without enough time lapsing between hints for them to read it.

Results of the new research shows the hint-windows that encourage students to reflect on problem-solving skills decreased the number of students “gaming the system” to get through the course.

Read the full article, “Computer Tutors Prod Students to Ask for Help” at www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/14/28help.h30.html?tkn=LYMFyXXO3GmPNkgs9dT5NOADWtvR+5MO+aSV&cmp=clp-edweek