What Do We Do with Screen Time? If you lead an elementary school, you have likely heard the concerns: Screens harm children’s eyes. Screens rewire young brains. Young children need books and blocks, not tablets. The media shares research and warnings; parents raise these worries at back-to-school night and parent meetings; teachers raise them in […]
PBL Is Right for the Brain, Gen Z, the Alpha Generation, and You! How will you engage today’s students? Problem-, project-, place-, phenomena-, profession-, and pursuit-based learning . . . you pick one of the 6 Ps of PBL; your students will thank you. Solving real-world, authentic problems is engaging and lends itself to individualized […]
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 […]
If You Give a Kid a Real-World Problem If you want to engage students, offer them a real-world problem to solve! (See my blog: “If You Give a Kid a Real-World Problem.”) A compelling problem will drive them into the curriculum; they’ll have a “felt need” to learn! And in our technologically advanced world, 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 […]