TheApple

I did a writing across the curriculum exercise where students described what their perfect school would be like. Some of the students had really good insights and I thought I would share my student quotes with you. Quote #1 "My perfect school would be a night time school." Next page: Quote #2 [page] Quote #2 "Kids will be given a laptop ...

With standard assessment based practices, it’s not always easy for teachers to monitor the learning and growth of their students. When students are given a “C,” or a comment like “good work” - how is it possible for them to know what they did well versus what they didn’t? How can students improve their work and how can teachers improve their ...

Remember the game of musical chairs? It's the game where children dance around a circle of chairs to music. When the music stops, kids rush to sit in the chairs. There are never enough chairs for everyone, and the slowest children are out of the game once the faster children have found seats. The game is set up so that for ...

Few students have ever gone through school without the experience of laboring on an assignment only to have it returned covered in exasperated red ink. Several years ago the trend was for teachers to forgo red ink-as if those terse comments would somehow be less harsh in purple, green, or orange. Today’s educators, however, know that there are many different ways ...

For those of you who don’t know what a school psychologist does, a big part of our job is to assess children for disabilities. A popular referral question is: “Does my child have Attention Deficit Disorder?” An assessment for ADD is often the most complex of all assessments because there is no “test” for ADD. It is a process where you ...

Pearson recently released My Voice Student Aspirations Survey. The survey focused on eight areas of student aspirations: Belonging, Heroes, Sense of Accomplishment, Fun & Excitement, Curiosity & Creativity, Spirit of Adventure, Leadership & Responsibility, and Confidence to Take Action. The survey questioned more than 400,000 students in grades 6-12, representing 569 different schools and 32 different states. Each student answered 57 ...

Do you remember watching the television show Make a Wish? For a while, it was televised on Saturday, but I mainly remember seeing it if we played hooky from church on Sunday. The star of the show was Tom Chapin. One site reminds my cobwebbed covered mind that Chapin would introduce the topic of the show like this – “I think ...

As a school psychologist, I get many little notes in my mailbox when I enter my school building. They are usually cryptic and anonymous: Check in with Darius. He’s sad Susana wrote in her journal that she wanted to hurt herself. Can you see her? Not signed. No last names. Detective Branstetter is on the case. One I got the a ...

Student achievement, as measured by test scores, is meaningless, writes Karl Wheatley, a Cleveland State education professor in a Plain Dealer op-ed. ". . . most of what matters in life is simply not on the tests. Many key subjects and skills that form the backbone of people’s careers are not being tested. Also, many of the top goals that parents ...

In my district, I am evaluated twice. Is that enough to identify areas of improvement, provide targeted professional development and feedback, and measure its impact on student achievement? Absolutely not. I say don’t wait or hope for administration to tell you how you are doing or what you can improve on. Rather, use the single most important resource in your class: ...

The level of evidence supporting the use of quizzing is strong based on nine experimental studies examining the effects of this practice for improving K-12 students’ performance on academic content or classroom performance, over 30 experimental studies that examined the effect of this strategy for improving college students’ academic performance, and the large number of carefully controlled laboratory experiments that have ...

Today is Progress report day. I hate progress report day. My students hate progress report day. We hate it for different reasons however. To me, it is like a new beginning. Students get a wake-up call as to just how bad an average can be when you only turn in one assignment out of 10 but the chance to turn things ...

Grades are given to document academic progress, right? But there are common pitfalls in grading, according to Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessment and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom by Rick Wormeli. 1. Avoid nonacademic factors (behavior, attendance, etc.) 2. Avoid penalizing for multiple attempts at mastery. 3. Avoid grading homework. 4. Avoid recording zeros for work not done 5. Avoid group ...

In today's education reform era, student achievement is king. We want to see our kids succeeding. We want to see test scores rise. We want to know we can better compete against foreign nations on things like PISA and TIMSS. We want assurances our students are getting a top-notch education measure by results, and not by processes. But what, exactly, is ...