Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education Best practices in teaching

This blog article touches on ditching practices that don't work and mention better practices

http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/ineffective-teaching-methods/

One thing I liked was about the note taking and letting kids decide what works for them (except the author didn't mention that it is an accommodation for those with a disability)

What do you all think? I will go back and listen to the longer pod cast later.

Depending on the age of the student, I think you could definitely let the kids decide what works best for them. In fact, I think learning how they learn best should be a main focus of middle school and early high school so that kids could be more successful in college.
However, in order to get to the point of a kid knowing what works best for them, they have to be exposed to a bunch of different styles of getting the info, for a long enough period of time to know what works for them. In other words, if a teacher introduces 4 different styles of getting the info: partially filled in notes, complete copies of notes, all notes must be written down and no notes required at all, for example with only giving the kids 1 time to use each method before they are required to decide what works best for them, the kids won't actually know and it will completely backfire. It would also require that parents be on board with the idea that students may not come home with notes from a class and still be expected to do well on a test based on the information that would have been in those notes. For most elementary and middle school students, figuring out learning techniques that work well for them is tough because it may vary for each subject, and it takes a while to fine tune that. Even most high school students have only figured out what works for some classes, but not for all.

Of interest "Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. ...a culmination of 15 years of research incorporating more than 50,000 studies and over 800 meta-analyses involving millions of students and represents the largest collection of evidence-based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning."

http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-Achievement/dp/0415476186 http://bookzz.org/book/969257/51d5f6

Thanks thx1138....I'm going to check this out tomorrow.

I agree with the article on its counterproductive takes. Much of those practices are designed to create blind conformity and to teach kids what they will encounter in society (one person abuses his rights then everyone will loose them) as ok regardless of it being wrong or right.


From personal experience, this is the only way to learn:

http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures...hey-can-learn-albert-einstein-282667.jpg

Great article, thanks for sharing. I'm glad the blog author is discontinuing those practices, and appreciate that she shared the reasoning and sources which had informed her view. Hopefully more classrooms may be made free of these and other ineffective and counterproductive practices.

Adding a link to the thread Introduction from Arizona, in which a 6th grade teacher seeks resources and planning.

Regarding peer tutoring... In the current educational climate in US public schools, both school ratings/rankings and teacher evaluation/compensation are increasingly based on achieving equal outcomes for all. Therefore US public schools may be less concerned with helping gifted pupils achieve their potential and more concerned with closing achievement gaps and excellence gaps. Unfortunately, sometimes this is accomplished by capping the growth of the students at the top. Other threads discuss buzzwords for educational experiences and different grading strategies which may be utilized to accomplish this.

Some may state that gifted kids benefit from a requirement that they use their school day tutoring other students rather than learning new material, concepts, and ideas themselves. However many parents of gifted children believe that children who may have already mastered the grade-level standards in a given subject ought to spend their school day learning something new and challenging, rather than being required to tutor others (effectively being treated as free labor, or slaves, doing the work which teachers are paid to do).

This is absolutely my pet hate. DS spent many very frustrating years infuriated by kids who didn't get what he'd already mastered. He's very sarcastic and not at all nurturing so I can't imagine he was doing those kids any good. And now DD has the job of testing the bottom-level kids on their spelling. I really don't get it, apart from freeing up the teacher from the job. It's not benefitting DD in any way, and surely it's just highlighting for the other kid how far behind they are? I hate it did I mention?

To be blunt, my honest opinion is that gifted learners do not even belong in public schools. US public schools are not only unconcerned with advancing gifted students, most educators can not even grapple with the idea of students requiring courses ahead of grade level. Teachers are not trained to recognize advanced learning, thus forming their own opinion of what gifted learners might look like. Thus when most educators hear the word "gifted" they think of a student who does exceptionally well at grade level, not those who have potential well beyond that.

Agreed.