Interesting education articles this week

As we review many web sites, newspapers and magazines, we often select web sites or articles for the newsletter that we think may be relevant to Scholastic's businesses.  These are the ones we chose for this week.

In the U.K., the Telegraph reports Revealed: new teaching methods that are producing

dramatic results.  New techniques such as “spaced learning” are showing signs of real

success.  The school day consists of “short sharp lessons … interspersed with an entirely

different activity and repeated at regular intervals.” 

The Newark Star-Ledger had an interesting story online, In recession, more parents ‘slowly’

spend quality time with their kids.  “Slow parenting,” a movement that began about five

years ago aims to slow “the pace of family life and scal[e] back on material items.”  A lot

more parents are adopting this concept even though many of them have never heard of it.

Christopher Dawson writes an interesting blog for ZDNet.   He

recently posted Summer reading…the data don’t lie.  Dawson, a teacher in Massachusetts, looked

at the numbers and saw that many students suffered from the “summer slide.” “Summer

break…can be disastrous without reading exposure, especially for the younger kids.” He

offers a couple of suggestions for alleviating the problem.

For some students, raising self-esteem can mean increases in achievement, according to Task

to aid self-esteem lifts grades for some (New York Times).  “Some seventh graders who were

struggling in class did significantly better after performing a series of brief

confidence-building writing exercises, and the improvements continued through eighth grade,”

according to a study from Columbia and Yale Universities.

At the same time, and possibly connected in some way, “More challenging middle-school math

classes and increased access to advanced courses in predominantly black urban high schools

may be the key to closing the racial academic achievement gap,” according to a study from

the University of Illinois (Middle-school math classes are key to closing racial academic

achievement gap – Science Daily).  “Being in a classroom where the expectations are higher,

the course work is more rigorous, and the climate is more academic has huge effects on

student effort.”

And just for fun -- there are several very cool short videos with slow motion images on Vimeo.  The link we’ve provided is to our favorite.   After the dart hitting the dartboard and the pom pom hitting the ground, there’s a spectacular video of a cube of jello.  It’s like a jellyfish.  And you can see every move because the picture is so clear.  Enjoy!