Tag Archives: Middle School

An ‘A’ for Job Readiness?

From Melissa Korn, At Work Blog, WSJ.com:

“Nearly 80% of current college students say they’re “very” or “completely” prepared to put their organization skills to work, while just 54% of hiring managers who’ve interviewed recent grads would agree, according to a survey of 2,000 U.S. college students and 1,000 hiring managers, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of education company Chegg.

Students overestimate their abilities by at least 10 percentage points on each of the 11 criteria measured in the survey, according to the findings.”

From the study:

Assessment characteristic

Students view

Recruiters’ view

Making decisions without all the facts

47%

37%

Ability to communicate with bosses and clients

70%

44%

The study also found that collaboration, managing up (i.e., managing your manager(s)), making persuasive arguments, and critical thinking in general, were unprepared for. The feeling that more hands-on and applied learning would be supportive to both students and employers.

Methinks starting more ‘hands-on and applied learning’ in middle- and high-school would also be supportive.

Do You Know About ShareMyLesson.com?

If You Happen To Know Any Teachers, Here’s Something That Will Make Their Day

The last few years have been tough on schools. With deep budget cuts, many have had to scramble to teach the same number of kids (and sometimes more!) with less. Here’s one truly amazing idea that aims to equalize the playing field and give all students the kind of engaging classroom time they deserve.

It’s called “ShareMyLesson.com” and it’s free!

  • Free back-to-school teaching resources
  • The fastest-growing network of teachers in the U.S.

Sounds pretty cool!

 

Flipboard for Educators – cool!

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As students and teachers head back to school all over the country, we wanted to share some ideas on how Flipboard can be helpful this school year. Since the launch of Flipboard 2.0 this past spring, our readers can collect articles and turn them into shareable magazines. We’ve found that educators are doing this a lot—for class reading assignments, student projects and their own enlightenment.

Here’s how you can use Flipboard in teaching and learning:

1. Keep up on current events: Flipboard has more than 125 publishing partners, including the BBC, New York Times, TechCrunch, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as sections curated around topics such as News, Tech, Travel and Design—”one-stop shops” for authoritative news on a subject. Tap on the red ribbon to explore great magazines, newspapers and blogs in the Content Guide.

2. Create a class syllabus: Plan out the semester for your students by making your syllabus available in a magazine. Include articles and editorial content that your students need to read throughout the semester to ensure success in your class. You can supplement it with your own notes by using a blogging platform such as WordPress, and flipping your posts into your magazine. Encourage students to comment on articles to track engagement.

Things AP Econ Students Should Know: by Michael Brody

3. Class projects: Task your students with creating a class-project magazine. Have them compile editorial, images and YouTube videos around specific subject matter they’re studying in your class. They can do this individually, or in groups (tap “Invite Contributors” from the magazine’s front page.)

Government Class: by kimberleyscox

Mike McCue: by Brian Pinkston

4. Educational Resource Guides: The education process is never ending. Create a resource guide by compiling articles and educational materials on a single topic or general areas of inquiry and share that with your colleagues.

Science class: by Zach Morrow

EducAtion: by Brendan Gilligan

Early Childhood Education: by Jacqueline Mezquita

5. Collaboration: Teaching is all about teamwork. Invite other educators to collaborate on a resource guide or have your students collaborate on a magazine for class. Compile articles, teaching resources or how to videos related to the subject you teach or education in general and share that magazine with other educators in your school or district.

Student Blogging Challenge Sept 2013: by suewaters

Education & Educapability: by Joshua Hostetter

6. Keep parents informed: Stay in touch with your classroom parents by creating a magazine with curriculum examples, class readings, suggested at home projects, images from class and classroom updates flipped in from a personal blog. Encourage your parents to subscribe to the magazine to stay up to date on everything going on in your classroom.

7. Your school, on the go: For administrators—Flipboard is a great way for your school to stay in touch with students, parents and the community. As long as your school paper, newsletter or event images are available as an RSS feed or via social media, you can search for it on Flipboard. You can also use our Web tools to flip your school’s posts into new magazines—into which you can even mix in other content—around any topic you like.

The Paly Voice: by Callie Walker

Flipboard has previously teamed up with both TeachThought and EdReach, two great educational organizations, to teach their networks how educators and students can best use Flipboard. Check out both of these resources for some additional tips and tricks.

And to learn more about how educators are using Flipboard, from educators, check out these blog posts:

Happy school year to everyone!

~CarolynG
/flipboard
@flipboard
+flipboard

 

Preschoolers who stutter do just fine socially, new study shows

Preschoolers who stutter do just fine socially, new study shows

Melissa DahlTODAY

When parents hear their 3- or 4-year-old struggle with stuttering, many can’t help imagining all the ways it will cause them anxiety, especially when they enter preschool: they’ll be teased, have trouble making friends or be afraid to speak up.

But a new Australian study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, suggests that it’s fairly common for preschool-age children to stutter – and those that do tend to do just fine, both emotionally and socially.

The researchers have been following more than 1,600 children from Melbourne, Australia, since they were eight months old. In this new report, they found 11 percent of those children had started stuttering by age 4, suggesting that a stutter isn’t abnormal for this age group.

“We will continue to follow the children to learn more about how many recover form stuttering with and without intervention,” says Sheena Reilly, the study’s lead author. Reilly is the director of speech pathology at the University of Melbourne. “We particularly want to be able to predict which children will continue to stutter so that we can target earlier and better intervention at those children. Understanding when anxiety, a feature commonly reported in adolescents and adults who stutter, becomes apparent is another area we will continue to research.”

But in the current study, compared to their non-stuttering peers, the children who stuttered were similar in both temperament and social-emotional development. That’s some encouraging news for parents who may be worried about sending their stuttering child to preschool this fall.

Courtesy of the Campbell family
Xavier Campbell, here shown at 3 in 2009, struggled with a stutter, but with help from a speech therapist, overcame it.

Elizabeth Campbell, the mom of a former tiny stutterer, remembers her similar anxieties well. Her son, Xavier, started to stutter when he was 2 years old. At that young age, the other kids in his day care were too little to notice or bother him about it. But Campbell started to imagine his future with a speech impediment.

“I think a lot of it is, the worry is, what if it doesn’t go away? What if my child becomes school age and they’re 6, 7, 8 – or even 12, 13, 14 — and they’re still stuttering?” says Campbell, who lives with Xavier, her husband and their 3-year-old son in Pennsylvania.

By the time Xavier was 2 1/2 , he’d noticed his own struggles with speaking, and started to become frustrated with it.

“It got to the point where he would be upset by it,” Campbell says. “He would be stuttering and then he would stop and say, ‘HELP, Mommy!’”

For many young children, the stutter may go away on its own. But experts say that when the child starts to be bothered by his or her own stutter, like Xavier did, that’s when it’s time to consider contacting a speech therapist. Xavier started working with one as a very little guy, at 2 1/2 years old. Shortly after his third birthday, he had his last real struggle with stuttering. He’s 7 now, and the stutter is gone, his mom says.

Anywhere from 5 percent to 12 percent of kids will go through a period of stuttering, says Ellen Kelly, Ph.D., an associate professor of hearing and speech sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “But we know from past research that 80 percent of those kids are going to recover,” she says, adding that a small percentage of those kids will have chronic stutters that may persist into their teens, or even adulthood. “Those are the people we want to find, and help early,” she says.

Because preschool-age is the optimal time for speech therapy, says Bridget Walsh, a research scientist at the Purdue Stuttering Project at Purdue University. “The brain is still undergoing a staggering amount of development. It’s malleable. This is a critical window, when connections are being formed,” she says.

Experts name a few things parents can look for that may signal their kid may benefit from speech therapy: The stuttering has been happening for more than six months, and it’s occurring more frequently. Another sign may be if the child is physically straining when speaking, almost forcing the words out. He or she might also avoid talking, or substitute words – something little Xavier would do, his mom noticed. When trying to ask for a balloon, for example, Campbell says, “He would say, ‘Give me that b-b-b-b—gimme dat!”

It’s important for parents to remember that stuttering is a neurological disorder, experts say, and so barking orders at a stuttering child to “slow down!” or “take a breath!” is not ultimately very helpful. Instead of telling them to slow down, for example, slow your own speech down, and the child will follow suit. Also: Don’t bombard the child with questions. Keep your full attention on the child when he or she is speaking, including eye contact. And build their confidence with very descriptive praise.

All this advice, experts point out, isn’t just good for stuttering children – it’s good advice for dealing with any child.

“It’s kind of why Mr. Rogers used that slow, slow pace,” says Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation of America. “The message it sends is, ‘We’re not in a hurry; we have time to listen.’

She adds, “Parents don’t cause stuttering. But there’s a lot you can do to pull the pressure off.”

Fraser and other experts we spoke to for this story suggest that parents who are concerned about their child’s stuttering start studying up about the speech problem the way we research anything else these days: the Internet. Here are a few reputable sources to try first, many of which can help connect you with speech therapy options in your state:

The Stuttering Foundation

The American Speech and Language Foundation

The Association for Young People Who Stutter

National Stuttering Association

Factory Model for Education No Longer Working

Factory Model for Education No Longer Working

Here’s a quick summary of the article. This won’t be surprising if you’ve been reading on the subject, but it is a worthwhile reminder.

  • Industry has been implementing new technologies for 30-40 years
  • Education continues using systems created in the 1900s
  • Teaching the same subjects in the same way at the same pace to a roomful of children
  • In the 1900s, 17% knowledge workers were needed; today it’s 60%
  • Simply techno-cramming is not effective and not efficient without personalizing for individual learning,
  • Utah and Florida performance-based contracting examples are worth looking at:

Read the full article here.

Considering Competency-Based Education

Considering Competency-Based Education

Quick summary:

Integrated student-centered year-round education is the way to go.

Shift emphasis from student endurance  to  student competence.

Shift matriculation from units of time  to  units of learning.

Shift matriculation from birthdays  to  demonstrations of competence.

Read the full article here.

Disarming bullies — from schoolyards to the White House

(Flickr/Thomas Ricker)

There is a strong link between bullying and suicide, which is just one reason why it is an issue to be confronted. (Flickr/Thomas Ricker)

While this article is largely Frida Berrigan’s story, her last four paragraphs provide some good, supportive, solution-oriented thinking.

You can read Frida’s full article here.