The fastest way to master anything is simple: good teaching and good practice. Good teaching makes clear what needs to be learned, discerns and pursues the most promising means for students to learn it (regardless of whether or not the means align with whatever teaching dogma is presently in vogue), and takes pains to create […]
Is the US Naturalization Test a Standard for Fair, Straightforward Assessments of Knowledge?
Part of the naturalization process in the United States involves memorizing 100 facts about the country. These facts cover its government, its history, its geography, and its symbols. (Here’s a PDF of the full list.) They are formatted in a Q&A style. (Example below.) On test day, would-be citizens are asked 10 random questions from […]
If Your Class Has Tests, You Have to Teach Students How to Study
I’ve heard from plenty of teachers, “Well, in my class, they should already know how to study, so I don’t teach the students how to do it.” This, in my opinion, is unwise. If you want your students to put forth effort, then they need to believe that their effort will pay off. This is […]
The Two Rules of Resilience
The other day, I shared a video with my ninth graders made by a Michigan high school teacher and author, Chase Mielke. Chase had sent the video to me a week or so before, and I thought it connected well with a pair of burning questions my students and I had been pursuing of late: […]
When You’re Speaking to Students, Speak Your Best (Plus a Primer on How We Learn to Read)
In a 2020 study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly, researchers from Temple University share an interesting finding: in a group of preschool and kindergarten classes, the complexity of teachers’ language during morning message and small groups had a significant relationship to students’ vocabulary development. “Together,” the researchers write, “the results imply that complex syntax […]