As the demand for innovation increases and the number of innovators drop, making students proficient in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects has become a hot topic. Now that STEM has become a household acronym for many concerned parents and educators, more attention is being paid to the unbalanced ratio of boys to girls interested in STEM subjects and careers.
What does it look like when students are learning? Are they sitting quietly at their desks, listening to the teacher lecture, and scribbling notes? According to a recent article in the Washington Post, those are three of seven misconceptions people have about how students learn.
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In recent years, closing the achievement gap has been high on the priority list. Among many signs, the achievement gap is evident in things like poor test scores and grades, higher dropout rates, and limited class participation. As legislation, educators, and parents look for ways to close the gap, improving literacy has proven to be a popular choice to tackle these problems.
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With technology, students don’t need to leave the classroom in order to take a trip around the world. In November 2011, Edmodo, a social networking site, teamed up with Polar Bears International to send five people to the Tundra to film polar bears and stream webcasts straight to 1,700 classrooms around the world. Websites like Khan Academy, YouTube, and Stanford’s free online classes, have become highly accessible databases of knowledge available to people around the world. Social networking is being used in and outside of the classroom to extend the learning community for students after they leave school and for educators to connect with other teachers around the nation and world.
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It’s almost time to go back to school and college freshmen might be getting a surprise when they realize the cost of college doesn’t end with the tuition bill. Whether students are living in the dorms, at home, or renting, they are all transitioning into a new environment with a new lifestyle and new expenses.
Carol’s Summary:
When I was young, I was blessed to grow up on four acres of random desert in Tucson, Arizona. My Mom would have us go outside after breakfast and at 5:00 she would ring an enormous bell and we knew that we had fifteen minutes to make our way back to the house to get cleaned up for dinner. During the day, we would spend hours hunting for materials with which to build forts in the desert. We would also play in an old log cabin and sometimes in my Mom’s old 1956 car which sat in our driveway unused. We would spend hours observing lizards, hoping to find snakes and chasing quail and roadrunners. Little did I know that the ingenuity the five of us had in these endeavors with our friends would be the foundation of our lives—personally and professionally. Time away from school in the great outdoors, parks or places of recreation are invaluable assets to developing healthy, creative, capable and strong-minded thinkers.
Today, as the article below indicates, many kids are programmed with little time to spend outside alone or with their friends exploring and creating. When kids have to think of things themselves—instead of having all decisions made for them—they learn to see choices, trade-offs and consequences. These critical thinking skills are crucial to success in college, career and life. The experience that students get while recreating not only helps many students burn-off excess energy, it helps them to develop a healthy, holistic outlook to life. In LifeBound’s books, we emphasize academic, emotional and social development and we don’t think one is better than the others. They are all needed for life success.
Article: Play time: Kids need invaluable, old-style, free-form fun
All work and no play makes very dull kids, and a tight schedule of organized activities — soccer, art classes, music lessons — is no help.
Read the full article at: denverpost.com
Carol’s Summary:
Healthy Lifestyle Choices is a program dedicated to empowering children in grades kindergarten to eighth grade, through teaching lifelong skills in the areas of nutrition, safety, fitness, conflict resolution and violence prevention and substance abuse prevention. The program is currently in 40 states and is part of a nationwide initiative to improve youth health.
The HLC program realizes the power they can have in fighting the epidemic of childhood obesity, but the program aims to look at the bigger picture. HLC hopes healthy changes in children’s lives will not only give them a chance to turn their lives around before they reach adolescence, but also help HLC answer the question: “Do healthier students perform better academically and have less behavior problems at school?”
Article: Students take healthy lifestyle pledge
Students at Krotz Springs Elementary School, like fourth-grader Jaidyn Robinson, lined up Tuesday to take a healthy lifestyle pledge.
Read the entire article at: www.dailyworld.com
Carol’s Summary
Freedom School’s are growing around the country in efforts to close the achievement gap between white students and black and Latino students, by improving literacy with a six-week summer program. The initiative was developed by the Children’s Defense Fund, a nonprofit child advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. that “is modeled after efforts in Mississippi and other Southern states in the 1960s to educate African Americans still encumbered by separate and unequal school systems.”
Through a program that starts the day with song, dance, meditation, and sharing of experiences called harambee, a Swahili word meaning “let’s pull together,” to afternoon activities outdoors, students are having fun at school and enjoying experiences, like exploring museums and soaring in a plane, they might not otherwise get. Freedom School teaches students to think critically, have a healthy mind and body, be creative and read multiple books a week. And at Freedom School, parental participation is required.
Article: This summer’s lesson: Learning is fun
It is a hot, energy-sapping morning on a quiet residential street, but inside the Lynwood United Methodist Church, summer school students are raising the roof with inspirational chants, boogie-down dances and affirmations of friendship.
To read this article: www.latimes.com
Carol’s Summary:
Critics say that the test gives certain students an unfair advantage, whereas many others who come from less fortunate backgrounds may not be as well-prepared to take such a test. The cost of prep materials and tutoring gives wealthy students a good chance at being accepted, while students who come from less fortunate families may not be able to pay for the preparation.
Therefore, they may not be as well-prepared to take such a test. They say that the admissions tests should utilize several kinds of evaluations, including portfolios of students’ past work, essays, and interviews.
There are currently 3 million students nationwide who are identified as gifted, and it is believed that there are many more who have not yet been noticed or who have undergone one-sided tests such as the one previously mentioned. It is necessary to employ various strategies to identify gifted students, so that they may receive the education they deserve.
To hold back a student who is gifted may make the student likelier to grow bored with school and possibly even drop out, because their abilities are not being recognized. At LifeBound, we believe it is incredibly important to tailor teaching to individual students, their abilities and their needs. In our curriculum that accompanies each of our books, we have included activities for both gifted and at-risk students, so that no child’s needs are left unattended to. Visit www.lifebound.com or e-mail contact@lifebound.com for more information about our books and curriculum.
Article:
Identifying Gifted Students
By Walt Gardner
The latest chapter in the gifted student saga was on display at Hunter College High School in New York City when a graduating senior delivered a commencement address that called into question the basis for admission to the storied school (“Diversity Debate Convulses Elite High School,” Aug. 5). The school uses a single, teacher-written test that has not changed for decades. Although the test is defended by Hunter College, which oversees the high school, as “very valuable in terms of preserving the kind of specialness and uniqueness that the school has,” it has resulted in a decline in the percentage of black and Hispanic students enrolled.
To read the full article: www.edweek.org
Carol’s Summary:
A report by the Education Testing Service shows that the achievement gap between black and white students, and efforts to narrow the gap have been stagnant for 20 years. The Educational Testing Service has examined the achievement gap and efforts to close it since 1910.
Some experts have developed a theory that standardized testing alone cannot account for the results of the study, and that social and environmental factors must also be taken into account. In order to close the achievement gap any further, it may be necessary to break the cycle of poverty first. However, the cycle of poverty is not only a result of the achievement gap, but also one of its main causes.
In order to further narrow the achievement gap, it will be necessary to provide equal opportunities for academic growth. Textbooks in poverty-stricken areas would need to be of the same quantity and quality as books for children in middle-class areas. Standardized testing results will have to take into account more than the scores alone but also the advantages and disadvantages, and individual needs of the schools and students.
Teachers who work in schools in impoverished areas will also need to be trained in such a way that they can identify and connect better with their students and the issues that students face both in and out of the classroom. LifeBound visits with teachers from schools in both middle-class areas and areas where people are disadvantaged, and we coach them with our books and curriculum so they can collaborate and work with all students, regardless of their background. To learn more, visit www.lifebound.com or e-mail contact@lifebound.com
Report: When/why progress in closing achievement gap stalled
Progress seen over several decades in narrowing the educational achievement gap between black and white students has remained stalled for 20 years, according to data analyzed in a new report.
Called “The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped,” the report by the Educational Testing Service examines periods of progress and stagnation since 1910 in closing the achievement gap.
To read the full article: www.washingtonpost.com