It’s the Screens! Or Is it? Screen time has become the villain in most conversations about young children’s attention, behavior, and learning. Kids can’t focus? Screens!Kids can’t regulate emotions? Screens!Kids don’t reason the way they used to? Screens! Technology does play a role. But blaming screens alone lets the rest of the system completely off […]
Choice and Voice: A Must-Have! Student choice and voice are widely valued concepts in schools today, but what does voice actually look and sound like in practice? Choice is relatively easy to conceptualize. Students may have choices about when they complete work, with whom they collaborate, where they work in the classroom, or how they […]
Let’s think differently about how schools can serve students. . . . Learning and Schools Children love to learn! They learn all the time! Schools, however, are frustrated by declining test scores that indicate students are not learning from teachers’ lessons. Sadly, the result is a leaning into more whole-class instruction, more explicit (but not necessarily […]
When information lives online, application must live in the mind. That single reality changes everything about school. For centuries, teachers have been seen as repositories of information, passing along the information that students need to know. Teachers deliver lessons, students absorb content, and success often means recall. In the past, without school, you had little […]
Being SDI-Focused In a nutshell: Specially designed instruction (SDI) is a Federal requirement under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for all eligible students with disabilities who have an Individualized Education Program (IEP). It essentially calls for instruction to be designed by a special education professional that includes: It’s More Than a Lesson There […]