Instructors and students often have different ideas about what grades are supposed to measure. Should they be about how much students have learned? How much work they have completed? How well they have mastered the subject? Arguably, they measure none of these well. Grades can perpetuate bias, inequalities, and injustice; reduce student motivation and willingness to challenge themselves; and add enormous administrative burdens. No wonder many students and faculty dislike grades. Collaborative grading could be…
Schools nationwide are cutting bus service to account for a widespread bus driver shortage—and students are paying the price by missing school more often. Those are the main takeaways from a report published this month from HopSkipDrive, a private school transportation provider. The report includes results from a nationally representative survey of school and district leaders, transportation directors, counselors, and other employees. More than two-thirds of survey respondents said they see a link between driver…
From field trips and retreats to special assemblies and holiday celebrations, children should enjoy an enriching classroom experience, both during the school day and after school. These memorable events and enrichment programs make learning fun and build a sense of community among students. Here are twenty ideas for elementary school clubs, ranging from standard to out of the box. 1. Culture club. This is a multicultural association for students. At meetings, members can share their…
New research from Boston University’s Wheelock Education Policy Center finds that teacher diversity increased in Massachusetts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The racial and ethnic diversity of teachers hired for the 2020-2021 Massachusetts school year increased. This was particularly true in schools serving the state’s highest concentrations of Black and Latinx students, where roughly 41% of newly hired teachers were people of color. These increases combined with lower turnover among Black and Latinx teachers resulted in…
Setting up centers in preschool and kindergarten classrooms can be a pretty daunting task, especially if it’s your first time doing so. Where do you start? Centers are activities located in specific areas around the classroom, and often, each specific area is also referred to as a center. Children typically work in small groups during center time, and they can also work independently. Centers can be done at one time during the school day, with…
A national group that seeks to curb chronic absenteeism is sounding an alarm after finding that the number of chronically absent students continued to surge even as pandemic closings abated. The organization, Attendance Works, believes that the number of students missing at least 18 days of school a year doubled to 16 million in 2021-22 from 8 million students before the pandemic. If correct, this means that one out of every three public school children…
It’s no surprise that loud, unwanted sounds can be disruptive and even damaging to ears. However, even background noise like the air conditioning running, the refrigerator humming and delivery vans idling outside can be cause for concern. According to Nina Kraus, a neurobiology professor at Northwestern University who studies sound, ongoing noises that people claim to “tune out” are unlikely to harm ears, but they can still have a profound effect on the brain. Repeated…
There’s no doubt that grammar can be a challenging topic for kids to get excited about. But with the right tools and techniques, it’s possible to make learning grammar fun and engaging for kids. In this blog post, we’ll share some tips on how to get kids interested in grammar. By following these simple tips, you can help your child develop a strong understanding of the principles and improve their writing skills. 1. Start with…
When teacher Brandon Graves in Louisville, Kentucky, talks with his elementary school students about the attacks of September 11th, 2001, he tells them where he was that day — in Washington, D.C., a freshman at Howard University, where he could smell smoke from the Pentagon. Teaching K-12 students about the attacks on September 11th has always been difficult, but time has brought a new challenge: students today have no memories of that day. So how…
It started with a fourth grade read-aloud book. It ended with a fifth grade class who had become what Bierbaum Elementary School teacher Jennifer Osborn described as a family. What happened in between was an unplanned, student-driven experiment, testing a practice educators call looping, or moving students from one grade to the next with the same teacher. In January 2021, Osborn’s Saint Louis County students had just finished a semester of remote and hybrid learning…
