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What’s the ‘Sweet Spot’ of Difficulty For Learning? | MindShift
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Should we be making learning easier for kids—or harder?
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The answer, according to research in cognitive science and psychology, is both.
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the way in which we should make learning easier is to reduce cognitive load, especially when we are introducing new or complicated materials.
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once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her “sweet spot” of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring. This is also the place where learners can practice encountering adversity and challenge and overcoming them, a key experience in the development of grit.
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The second reason to make learning harder is that it makes learning work better.
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Does The Fight For A Cursive Comeback Miss The Point? : NPR
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The question mark at the end of the title says it all. The premise of the gathering, according to the video: “Handwriting instruction is in danger of becoming increasingly marginalized.”
If the claim is to be believed, that’s a bad thing. And lots of reading specialists and academics believe it. It turns out, the real fear among those who study kids and handwriting is not that our schools will stop teaching cursive; it’s what Steve Graham of ASU has noticed in recent years: “We don’t see much writing going on at all across the school day,” Graham says.
What are kids doing instead?
“Filling in blanks on worksheets,” Graham says. “One-sentence responses to questions, maybe in a short response summarizing information.”
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The question mark at the end of the title says it all. The premise of the gathering, according to the video: “Handwriting instruction is in danger of becoming increasingly marginalized.”
If the claim is to be believed, that’s a bad thing. And lots of reading specialists and academics believe it. It turns out, the real fear among those who study kids and handwriting is not that our schools will stop teaching cursive; it’s what Steve Graham of ASU has noticed in recent years: “We don’t see much writing going on at all across the school day,” Graham says.
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“In the 21st century, you teach kids to be multilingual by hand,” Berninger says.
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“If we expect kids to develop mastery in anything and develop fluency in anything, they have to be doing it on a regular basis,” says Scott Beers, who teaches education at Seattle Pacific University.
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Monthly Archives: March 2014
Recently found … 03/20/2014
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How to Teach the Standards Without Becoming Standardized | MindShift
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s it possible for teachers to meet standards without teaching in a standardized way?
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STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING STANDARDS IN AUTHENTIC WAYS
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1. Make the standards fit into student interests.
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2. Teach students to question.
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3. Focus on the skills and language of learning.
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4. Be open to many answers.
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5. Have authentic conversations about motivations.
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6. Emulate effective risk taking.
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7. Use professional learning communities.
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8. Share the many success stories.
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Q&A: A Crash Course On Common Core : NPR
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handy FAQ about Common Core
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Recently found … 03/16/2014
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Just-in-Time Teaching: An Interactive Engagement Pedagogy | Edutopia
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main features
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- Students are presented with a slightly provocative and memorable statement that is open to a considerable amount of interpretation.
- Students rephrase the question in their own words. The responses tell the instructor how students interpreted the assignment.
- Students must take a stand and justify their position. They must examine prior knowledge, consult the course resources, and perhaps discuss the issue with classmates.
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To be actively involved, students must engage in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Within this context, it is proposed that strategies promoting active learning be defined as instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing
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Save Us From the SAT – NYTimes.com
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the College Board announced this week that it was rolling out a complete do-over of the SAT
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All in all, the changes are intended to make SAT scores more accurately mirror the grades a student gets in school.
The thing is, though, there already is something that accurately mirrors the grades a student gets in school. Namely: the grades a student gets in school. A better way of revising the SAT, from what I can see, would be to do away with it once and for all.
The SAT is a mind-numbing, stress-inducing ritual of torture. The College Board can change the test all it likes, but no single exam, given on a single day, should determine anyone’s fate. The fact that we have been using this test to perform exactly this function for generations now is a national scandal.
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I sympathize with college-admissions deans who want a simple, accurate measurement of student potential. But no such measurement exists
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The only way to measure students’ potential is to look at the complex portrait of their lives: what their schools are like; how they’ve done in their courses; what they’ve chosen to study; what progress they’ve made over time; how they’ve reacted to adversity
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Recently found … 03/11/2014
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5 Ideas for Teaching With Comics and 5 Free Online Tools for Creating Them
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1. Character Analysis
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2. Re-telling of historical events
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3. Create alternative book reports
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4. Create digital citizenship lessons
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5. Express feelings
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Comic Master
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Make Beliefs
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Storyboard That
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Marvel Kids
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Witty Comics
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Recently found … 03/06/2014
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7 Steps for Putting Ideas Into Action | Inc.com
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Brainstorming is only a first step to innovation. What matters more are execution and implementation.
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A 7-Step Idea Generation Gameplan
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1. Define the problem and solution space.
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2. Break the problem down.
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3. Make the problem personal.
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4. Seek the perspectives of outsiders.
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5. Diverge before you converge.
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6. Create “idea resumes.”
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7. Create a plan to learn.
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Recently found … 03/01/2014
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74,476 Reasons You Should Always Get The Bigger Pizza : Planet Money : NPR
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The math of why bigger pizzas are such a good deal is simple: A pizza is a circle, and the area of a circle increases with the square of the radius.
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So, for example, a 16-inch pizza is actually four times as big as an 8-inch pizza.
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And when you look at thousands of pizza prices from around the U.S., you see that you almost always get a much, much better deal when you buy a bigger pizza.
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