Here are ten commonly overused words Day-to-day communication can get boring. There are only so many “Sounds good” and “Let me know” emails, texts, and Slack messages you can send and read each day without your eyes glazing over. While there are some communications that have to use plain language to be accurate, there are ways to spice up your texts and emails while...
Revamping A Writing Curriculum Previous blogs on The Writing Revolution highlighted a study conducted a few years ago at New Dorp High School on Staten Island in New York. Nearly 10 years ago, 82% of freshmen entered the school reading below grade level and could not write more than two sentences in essay questions. Once it was determined how to help...
Part Two in this series focuses on identifying the cause of low performing students Although New Dorp (a public high school in Staten Island, New York) teachers had observed students failing for years, they never connected low performing students to specific flaws in their own teaching. They watched passively as Deirdre DeAngelis got rid of the bad apples on the staff;...
A Change In Formal Writing Instruction In 2009, when Monica DiBella entered New Dorp, a public high school near a grimy beach on Staten Island, her academic future was cloudy. Monica had struggled to read in early childhood, and had repeated first grade. At elementary school, she received more than 100 hours of tutoring. By fourth grade, she’d fallen behind her classmates again....
Why schools shouldn’t approach technology like businesses once did While businesses might be excused for initially adopting an efficiency objective when it comes to technology, schools cannot. This objective has already been shown to be ineffective for businesses. More importantly though, efficiencies – unlike for business – should not be the objective of successful teaching. British educationist and author Sir Ken Robinson has famously called...
Mobile device's role in education: what works? Simply using mobile devices in the classroom does not guarantee a rise in comprehension or even the attention of students. So what types of mobile technology use make the most sense for classrooms? E-readers. Part of the issue with traditional textbooks is that they’re so quickly outdated, both regarding subject matter and which formats...
Do mobile devices really improve learning outcomes? Mobile devices as teaching tools are becoming a more and more common part of the American education experience in classrooms, from preschool through graduate school. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 58% of U.S. teachers own smartphones — 10 percentage points higher than the national average for adults. Those teachers are building that tech-savviness into...
Rethinking grade levels & school design for personalized learning A Chicago school’s openness to multiage classrooms gives both students and teachers extra choice and support by TARA GARCÍA MATHEWSON CHICAGO — At the end of the first-floor hallway in the West Belden campus of the Chicago International Charter School network, across two connected rooms that used to be a library, almost 60 children spread...
The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work of De Stijl artists is a major source of reference for this kind of work....
Children's Sense of Being a Writer: Identity Construction in Second Grade Writers Workshop Seban, Demet; Tavsanli, Ömer Faruk International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, March 2015 Journal Excerpt: Writing as a process approach has long been acknowledged and studied in detail in the classroom setting. There are other studies that view writing workshops from a social perspective with a particular focus on identity. Writing as...