Freshman Focus Curriculum 3.0 Ready for Release

We are very excited about the latest release of our Freshman Focus curriculum coming this spring.  Curriculum 3.0 brings a new lesson plan format and many new ideas for effective program implementation.  Curriculum 3.0 makes Freshman Focus implementation even more flexible, paving the way for easier use in block schedules, seminar formats, and after school programs – this is all in addition to the traditional 20-25 minute daily structure that we have always had and will continue to have in 3.0.

Perhaps the most exciting component of Curriculum 3.0 is The Challenge. The Challenge is a product-based learning experience, putting students in the driver’s seat to make a difference for their school, their community, and their futures!  Working collaboratively over a period of 40 Freshman Focus lessons, students must complete four missions to win The Challenge.

Each mission requires purposeful research, planning, and teamwork and can’t be finished without the creation of an authentic product that solves a real problem.  The Challenge makes freshmen the decision makers and the problem solvers in their school — all to ease the transition into high school and make it a great experience!

We all know today’s students need more experiences and practice with skills in collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication to become truly college and career ready.  The research on product-based learning is pretty clear and compelling in how it promotes these key 21^st century skills.  And this is why we know The Challenge will prove to be so purposeful, meaningful, and engaging for students and teachers alike in the Freshman Focus program.

To learn more information about Freshman Focus Curriculum 3.0, please call 888-879-1460 to speak with a Focus director.  The time is now to make a difference for your students!

Putting Students on the Pathway to Learning-The Case for Fully Guided "Instruction

This article hopes to put an end to the debate of whether students learn best when they have to discover/construct knowledge or when they are provided with direct, explicit instruction.  As you will read, the direct, explicit approach to instruction is proven to be more effective, according to the research of authors Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller.  Direct instruction takes many forms, though, including lectures, modeling, demonstrations, practice, feedback, videos, computer based presentations, small group and independent projects.  Sounds a lot like the Fisher Gradual Release Model, doesn't it?  

"Controlled  experiments almost uniformly indicate that when dealing with novel information, students should be explicitly shown what to do, how to do it, and then have an opportunity to practice with corrective feedback.  Curiously, if given a choice, lower performing students prefer discovery learning and higher performing students prefer explicit instruction- in both cases, they're picking the approach that does them the least good."

Constructivism is a theory of how students learn.  It is not a prescription of how to teach students knowledge and skills.  For everyone except those who have demonstrated mastery, partial guidance during instruction is significantly less effective than full guidance.

 

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2012/Clark.pdf

Teacher Quality Widely Diffused, Ratings Indicate

School and teacher effectiveness are in the spotlight both locally and nationally.  Just last month, the controversial ratings of about 18,000 New York City teachers were released.  The results "showed that most and least successful teachers in improving their students' test scores could be found all around- in the poorest corners of the Bronx and in middle class neighbors like Queens".  The teachers' ratings were calculated by measuring how much their test scores reached, fell short, or exceeded expectations.  Demographics and prior performance contributed to the calculation.  

As we know, research reveals that there is more variation within a school building than among schools when examining teacher effectiveness.  The media tends to focus on a school's rating, while, in actuality, the range within a school among the teachers can run from the 12th to 99th percentile in teacher effectiveness.  Hundreds of the highest rated teachers were working with students in classes that were deemed the most difficult.  Again, the data reinforces the power that an individual teacher has to make a difference with students.

We are warned that to make a decision on value added scores alone is inadequate since this score is just one test at one point in time.  A school's/teacher's entire educational program must be considered in obtaining a holistic picture of teacher effectiveness.

Click here to read the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/education/teacher-quality-widely-diffused-nyc-ratings-indicate.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=%E2%80%9CCity%E2%80%99s%20Ratings%20of%2018,000%20Teachers%20Indicate%20That%20Quality%20Is%20Widely%20Diffused%E2%80%9D%20&st=cse

The Difference between a $10,000 Education and a $10 Education

Yong Zhao, international speaker and author of many articles and texts including, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, provides some great food for thought in this blog entry.

"The availability of choices in America is an envy of many countries. Having the option to choose different paths is not cheap or easily available. It is an advantage, a privilege, not a disadvantage or liability. A $10,000 education can and should buy much more than test scores while a $10 education can only buy test scores. Why do we want to turn a $10,000 education into one that can be achieved with $10?"

Click here to read Zhao's entire blog entry:

http://zhaolearning.com/2011/12/19/the-difference-between-a-10000-education-and-a-10-education/

Advantacore will feature Yong Zhao at its upcoming event, The iLeader Seminar: Connected Leadership for 21st Century Schools, on June 15th in Columbus, Ohio.  Check out our events page for more information and registration begining the week of March 12th (http://www.advantacore.org/).

How Education Fails Technology (And What to Do About It)

How Education Fails Technology (And What to Do About It)

Dr. Mark Weston, national education strategist for Dell, Inc., wrote this article to show how education has not used technology effectively to “get all children learning at levels beyond their respective aptitudes” and what can be done to make progress with our current circumstances. 

He begins the article with a reference to Benjamin Bloom’s research 30 years ago which identified certain classroom practices such as feedback, cues, explanations, and classroom participation that each have a positive effect on student achievement.  He also cites the research of Marzano and Hattie, which reinforce Bloom’s studies.  Despite the work in this field, we have not been able to impact all students. 

Weston blames “teacher work-load conundrum” for this failure and believes that the only way to maximize results is through the effective use of technology.  Unfortunately, the “technology has exerted little overall effect in educational settings and the teaching and learning in them,” he feels.  The author continues by suggesting what we as educators can do to impact the way that technologies are used.

http://edtechdigest.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/how-education-fails-technology-and-what-to-do-about-it/

We Are Natural Born Multi-Taskers

The debate continues about today's students.  Are they "multi-taskers" or just great "task switchers"?  Most researchers say the brain isn't capable of multi-tasking, but new research is making a different claim.

 ". . . . These are the questions Julio Martinez-Trujillo, a cognitive neurophysiology specialist from McGill University, and his team set out to answer in a new study on multifocal attention. They found that, for the first time, there's evidence that we can pay attention to more than one thing at a time."

This is interesting research, and we can be sure the debate will continue . . . .

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111221140459.htm#.TzGY9E8kSsN.email

What Did You Learn Today?

The Global Search for Education: What Did You Learn Today?

"Children do not always learn what we teach. That is why the most important assessment does not happen at the end of the learning, it happens during the learning."

-- Dylan Wiliam

This piece has some pretty interesting comments from Dylan Wiliam -- comments that serve as important reminders of what feedback and assessment need to look like in the classroom.  Feedback always includes a recipe for future action; assessment is ongoing and informs instruction to ensure learning and prevent failure.  Is this what feedback and assessment look like in the classrooms you're visiting?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/the-global-search-for-edu_12_b_968786.html

 

 

What You (Really) Need to Know

 

Colleges and universities define what secondary schools teach and establish a framework for what it means to be an educated citizen.  We have been particularly conscious of this with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards and the emphasis placed on our graduates being "college and career ready".  While public schooling has been focused on preparing students for future demands, undergraduate education at the college level has changed remarkably little over time.  The lecture is "alive and well" with the professor standing in front of the class, and blue books still being used to assess student understanding.

Lawrence H. Summers, former President of Harvard University, wrote this interesting essay about how our colleges/universities will have to reform so that they can reflect the needs of 21st century learners. 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/the-21st-century-education.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF TEACHERS

THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF TEACHERS:

TEACHER VALUE-ADDED AND STUDENT OUTCOMES IN ADULTHOOD

A recent New York Times article reports on a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research in which the data of one million students were analyzed to determine the impact that teachers have on students’ futures.  Specifically, the study looked at value added data and how effective this data was at evaluating teacher effectiveness and predicting the impact on student success.

The major findings of the study were: (1) some teachers consistently got value-added gains in their students’ test scores; (2) effective teachers had a lasting impact on their students’ futures, including achievement in school, a reduced chance of teen pregnancy, higher college matriculation, living in better neighborhoods, saving more for retirement, and higher lifetime income.

It’s a pretty interesting study – and provides another important insight on just how impactful effective teaching practices are on the lives of students.  Click the link below to get to the study; be sure to read the “executive summary” once you get to the study by clicking the link on the left side of the main page.

http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/value_added.html