As schools transition to remote learning, or at-home learning, educators might consider ways to foster a sense of school community, even when social distancing means that “school” is spread out across individual homes. Teachers and those familiar with social-emotional learning already know: strong relationships are a key component of successful learning. So how can teachers build a strong sense of community during this period when “distance” has become necessary?
With the passing of another year—and decade—educators have exciting education trends to look forward to in 2020. Here are 5 trends in K-12 education research and policy to keep an eye on this year.
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), schools need to be more transparent than ever about how they use government funds. With higher accountability, administrators and school boards, especially at Title 1 schools, who want to make the most out of their funding should consider what neuroscience research can contribute to their programs. “Wait a minute!,” you say. “What does neuroscience have to do with Title 1?” Below are the top 3 reasons why neuroscience should be part of the Title 1 conversation, along with corresponding action items for educators. What is Title 1? Title 1 (officially Title I) is a federal program that provides funding to K-12 schools with children from vulnerable populations, including those impacted by poverty or homelessness. To close the achievement gap, Title 1 funding can be used for supplementary reading or math instruction and for after-school or summer programs, among other resources. High-poverty schools with 40% or more of the student population receiving reduced or free lunches are designated Title 1 schools and use their funding for school-wide programs. Other qualifying schools support specific students with targeted-assistance programs. Title 1 is the nation’s oldest and largest federally funded program and distributes over $15 billion annually to schools across the country. Why should neuroscience be part of the Title 1 conversation? When we discuss the urgent needs of children from low-socioeconomic (SES) families, we focus on state test scores, social-emotional learning (SEL), and adverse traumatic experiences (ACEs). What we need to talk about more is neuroscience. Scientific research on the brain offers insight into effective strategies for educators teaching vulnerable students. Here are 3 reasons why neuroscience should be at the center of the Title 1 conversation. 1. The most important learning tool is the brain. All learning happens in the brain. So, a better understanding of it allows […]
A little girl wearing too-small sandals and no coat on a freezing January morning. A boy sick from eating nothing but potato chips and Kool-Aid. An eight-year-old raising himself and sleeping at night with 3 younger siblings. These are children of vulnerable populations that Linda Ann H. McCall recalls teaching at a Title 1 school, or federally assisted low-income school, in urban America. In her 2018 article in National Youth-At-Risk Journal, McCall recounts what teachers across the country witness every day: the challenges that students from low-socioeconomic (SES) families bring with them to school. Dr. McCall reflects, “I was reminded over and over of Abraham Maslow’s classic Hierarchy of Needs when I asked myself ‘how could I expect a child to focus on the concepts of long division and sentence structure, for example, if he or she was being abused and/or feeling hungry, afraid, and/or unloved?’ (p. 41-42). What worked? What worked in Dr. McCall’s classroom, and what many other educators at Title 1 schools are increasingly implementing, is brain-based teaching and learning. Dr. McCall argues that brain-based learning is especially important for teaching children impacted by poverty. What do Title 1 educators need to know about the impact of poverty on the brain? More importantly, how should school leaders apply brain-based learning to teaching? Keep reading to learn 4 little-known facts about poverty and the brain. What is brain-based learning? All learning happens in the brain, so isn’t all learning “brain-based learning”? In a way, yes. But “brain-based learning” means the application of brain science to teaching—what happens when neuroscience meets education. As Great Schools Partnership defines brain-based learning, the practice builds on “scientific research about how the brain learns, including… how students learn differently as they age, grow, and mature.” Brain-based learning is crucial for children from low-SES […]
As educators with experience in child development, we understand the essential nature of being responsive to a child. Children who do not receive enough attention do not develop in the same way as those who receive consistent nurturing and feedback. Research has demonstrated how, at a physiological level, their brains simply wire themselves differently as they develop. This deficit in early childhood experiences often manifests itself as developmental delays across a wide spectrum of behaviors. These behavioral delays appear in parallel with delays in brain development. Imagine a child growing up in a home where sensitive, responsive caregiving is rare. Maybe mom and/or dad work more hours and are simply not available. Maybe they come home too tired to read or play or simply snuggle with the child. Or, this is an environment where sensitive, responsive nurturing is not valued very highly. While it is not the case in every situation like this, at its extreme, the parent or parents may be truly neglecting the child’s needs at this early stage. Even moderate differences in these important parent-child interactions have important longer-term consequences for development. Research has shown that in these situations a child’s brain development quickly gets derailed. Children who do not receive enough of what is known as “sensitive-response caregiving” and cognitive stimulation do not develop executive function skills as readily as their counterparts in more caring, stimulating environments. (Lengua et al., 2007; Li-Grining, 2007) In other words, children may not be encouraged to be aware of and interact with the world around them (cognitive stimulation). They also may not be encouraged to engage or develop planning, decision-making or troubleshooting skills (executive function). Executive functions, also known as “domain-general” functions, are those called upon in various types of learning opportunities; these include such functions as working memory, regulation […]
For everyone at Scientific Learning, developing the New Fast ForWord has been an opportunity to step back and reflect on what we are doing well and where we can improve. Every day we see Fast ForWord users making dramatic gains in language, reading, and learning skills. However, we also see students who struggle with a particular exercise or skill. To better understand where improvements were needed, we spoke with many educators about their implementation struggles, strategies, and successes. What came out of these conversations is an intervention program that is better, faster, and smarter! Better Learning Impact To provide an even better learning impact, we looked at each exercise individually, taking a deep dive into data from hundreds of thousands of exercise sessions. Our analyses revealed who gets stuck, where the sticking points are, and what design factors are helping or hindering student progress. Specific design changes were based on these findings. For example, we learned that many students got stuck at the very beginning of Sky Gym. To address that, the entire introduction was revamped with new instructions, different stimuli and progression rules, and automated interventions for those students who continue to struggle. Faster Student Progression & Improved Student Motivators We looked across all exercises, evaluating the exercise mechanics and user interface. We identified a number of new features and improvements that will help students progress more quickly, while making their progress more visible and rewarding. The Autoplay feature allows students to take trials more quickly, by serving a series of trials after one click of the Go button. If a student gets all trials in an Autoplay series correct, the next series will be one longer. The Current Streak and Highest Streak signs, in conjunction with Autoplay, provide game-like rewards for getting consecutive correct trials, reinforcing the behavior […]
If you’re reading this, you’re probably an accomplished reader. In fact, you’ve most likely forgotten by now how much work it took you to learn to read in the first place. And you probably never think about what is happening in your brain when you’re reading that email from your boss or this month’s book club selection. And yet, there’s nothing that plays a greater role in learning to read than a reading-ready brain. As complex a task as reading is, thanks to developments in neuroscience and technology we are now able to target key learning centers in the brain and identify the areas and neural pathways the brain employs for reading. We not only understand why strong readers read well and struggling readers struggle, but we are also able to assist every kind of reader on the journey from early language acquisition to reading and comprehension—a journey that happens in the brain. We begin to develop the language skills required for reading right from the first gurgles we make as babies. The sounds we encounter in our immediate environment as infants set language acquisition skills in motion, readying the brain for the structure of language-based communication, including reading. Every time a baby hears speech, the brain is learning the rules of language that generalize, later, to reading. Even a simple nursery rhyme can help a baby's brain begin to make sound differentiations and create phonemic awareness, an essential building block for reading readiness. By the time a child is ready to read effectively, the brain has done a lot of work coordinating sounds to language, and is fully prepared to coordinate language to reading, and reading to comprehension. The reading brain can be likened to the real-time collaborative effort of a symphony orchestra, with various parts of the brain […]
Eric Jensen here. If you have struggling readers, lean in and read closely. I am going to give you something worth thousands of dollars for free. Sometimes the things you and I take most for granted are actually among the most valuable. For example, are you a pretty good reader? Even though I used to teach reading, I somehow took it for granted that I read well. But it’s rarely like that for your students. For example, when your students struggle with reading, what are the most likely signals? Obviously, it hurts your school scores, but there’s more. Can you see and feel the discouragement, frustration and even the internalizing of the emotions (“I can’t do this” or “I hate reading”)? When students read poorly, they often generalize it to other subjects (“Maybe I am just dumb”) and most things in school can become overwhelming. That’s painful to watch. I would love to help you with your lowest performing students and there’s a solution that may work for you. As a former reading teacher and science junkie, I’ve been shouting the praises of the Fast ForWord® reading intervention program for over 20 years. Follow the directions, encourage the students and it flat-out works. Fast ForWord has been validated by more than 50 published studies in peer-reviewed journals and over 250 school studies. I personally know the neuroscientists that developed the program and they are “rock star” pioneers in their field. There’s just one drawback. If you ever shop reading programs around by price, Fast ForWord is nowhere near the cheapest of them all. Unfortunately, when comparing programs, learning leaders (instructional coaches, principals, etc.) often fail to price out the real costs of the alternatives (e.g. using instructional aids, having students held back, tutors and intervention specialists, staff who get burned out, […]
