10 Ways to imporve student achievements and create learners

Hi,

I reproduce here a portion of the article from Huffington Post, Nov 28, 2010.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pam-lowe/top-10-ways-to-improve-st_b_786205.html

Top 10 Ways to Improve Student Achievement and Create Learners
Disclaimer: This is by no means all that schools should be doing. Note that these are broad actions; there are many more detailed actions that need to be taken.

1. Share a Vision -- Review your school's Mission Statement. Your new vision should be tied to your district's Mission Statement, but build up on it. The vision should describe why it is important to achieve your mission statement while looking to the future. It should portray what will be achieved if the school is successful in achieving its goals. Everyone should be invested in the vision with a total buy-in from the entire school. You have to keep your eye on the prize and never veer from your vision.

2. Your School Should Be a Change Agent -- Change agents are passionate and driven about their vision. They make the tough decisions keeping what's best for the students in focus. When complaints about change and improvement come rolling in, and they will, pay close attention to your leadership and their decisions. If the leaders of a district do not want to upset the teachers or parents by moving forward, then your district's chances of improving are minimal at best. It's then that you find out what your leadership is made of in your school; from your school board on down to the principals.

3. Analyze Data -- Everyone involved must be data analysis; from the administration to the teachers. The secret to data analysis is to do something with the data. Many schools analyze the data and do not do anything with it. Celebrate your strengths, keep the focus on improvement and draw up plans on how you're going to improve on your weaknesses and implement it.

4. Introduce Students to Their Data -- As obvious as this may sound, many times teachers take on the burden of the responsibility and do not allow students to take ownership of their education. Involve students by sharing their data with them from standardized test data to classroom data.

5. Increase Rigor -- Schools are looking for miracles and the cure is right under their noses. Schools can do everything else in this list, including reducing class size, but if a school does not increase the rigor in instruction and learning, they are spitting in the wind. The key is recognizing the difference between hard questions and complex questions. Many teachers will tell you that they have rigorous assignments, when in reality, they do not. This one thing will make the biggest impact in not only learning, but in scores. If schools were to increase the rigor and complexity, the scores would take care of themselves.

6. Teach Students the Levels of Rigor -- Teach students the difference between recall, application, and strategic reasoning. When students learn the difference between how much thinking is required to answer questions at each level, it assists them in not only answering questions, but also in their learning. I've taught the levels to my former students and it was a defining moment in their careers as learners. This strategy paired with the above mentioned increasing rigor in instruction and assignments is a powerful combination.

7. Expectations -- Expectations go hand-in-hand with increasing rigor. Students will rise to expectations. Make sure the expectations are not set too low and demonstrate an expectation that all students can achieve the objectives of courses.

8. Teach Students How to Learn -- Students are taught what to learn. In order for them to be successful as learners, they also have to discover how to learn and to develop an appetite for learning. I'm convinced that one of the reasons some students do not succeed in college is that they sail through high school learning the prescribed curriculum, but never learn how to learn.


Students, at an early age have to be taught how to:
• self-regulate their learning
• set their own academic goals
• develop strategies to meet their goals
• reflect on their academic performance

9. Teachers as Learners Environment -- Teachers are all about instructing their students. Teachers should also invest in themselves. I'm referring to teachers actively pursuing knowledge because they want to know more. The best teachers continue to grow and don't rely solely on school designated professional development hours as their outlet to learn new concepts and ideas about education. This could include reading professional development books, blogs, or articles online. One powerful way to continue to grow as an educator is to join an online personal learning network and/or develop one on Twitter.

10. Teach Smarter and Not Harder -- Incorporate research-based teaching and learning strategies. In order to grow the district and its teachers need to be on top of the latest developments in research-based strategies.

Cheers

The Science of Happiness

Hi,

Most of us have heard of Charles Darwin's "The survival of the fittest". Not many of us have heard of him also saying "Sympathy is our kindest instinct".

Now scientists in UC Berkeley are reporting that compassion and happiness are linked. Compassion strengthens our immune system, makes us more intelligent, helps in our survival as an individual as well as a species.



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300 years of fossil-fueled addiction

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Condensed history of man's affect on the environment.



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The Story of Stuff

Hi,

It is school holidays again. Good time to relax and do things that really matters.



Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to lead in this field. I hope he will bring in renewed interest in everyone taking sustainable resources and environment seriously.

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Living with Asthma

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About managing asthma...



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The animators of life

Hi,
Visualisation of cellular biology at molecular level (Biovison), representation of activities inside a cell as a cinema is jaw-dropping. It looks almost like entertainment and not biology.

Enjoy.



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The Story of Cap and Trade

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Lets learn more about how stuff is produced and sold to you, the conusmer.



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The Story of Cosmetics

Hi,

More stories to raise your awareness level of what you do to the planet when you purchase your favourite cosmetic stuff.



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The Story of Bottled Water

Hi,

We need to realise what we are doing to our environment with our purchase of bottled water which is 1000 times more than the clean safe tap water!



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Happy Hari Raya Haji

Electronics Takeback

Hi,

We throw away our electronics after they breakdown or when newer models are available. What happens to this mountains of e-wastes?


take it back, make it green, recycle responsibly