Educators from around the country share their favorite educational apps.
Holly Korbey writes about parenting and education for the The New York Times, The Nervous Breakdown, FearLess Revolution, Babble, and Brain,Child magazine. She lives in Nashville with her family. Follower her on Twitter: @HKorbey
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Many teachers have yet to begin assigning harder, Common Core-approved books. According to a recent Thomas B. Fordham Institute report, a survey of teachers shows that, while many are aware of Common Core’s requirement for assigning harder books, few have yet to implement the changes because they are more focused on reading skills.
The new test is slated to be revealed in January, and as of now it’s hard to know specifically what the changes will actually look like, and in what ways the test will be “improved” for test takers.
Over the next few weeks, parents and teachers will sit across from each other in tiny chairs and discuss a child’s progress in a parent-teacher conference. And though parents and teachers alike may experience the anxiety of expectations, conferences represent one of the most enduring and important home-school communication mechanisms used to discuss a child’s growth and progress.
According to math educators, mathematical imagery is what students are missing, and what causes confusion. “Mathematics is a way to read the world of nature and technology around us. If a teacher can convey this, the entire world becomes an exciting textbook.”
How does a person fall in love with math? For too many, math class conjures up anxious worksheets filled with rows of unanswered problems. Students go along, seeming to perform the steps required — plug in the formulas, solve for x — without ever understanding what they’re doing, or why.
Most American high school students aren’t leaning toward careers in math or science — actually, they’re leaning away. While higher education will need to address reasons kids drop out of math and science majors, professionals in the STEM fields are stepping forward hoping to get younger kids excited enough to stay.
How “giftedness” plays out in the classroom for the roughly 3 million students who qualify can be hard to characterize. Some gifted and talented programs emphasize critical thinking and problem solving, others focus on creativity, and still others take what’s going on in standard classrooms and go into greater depth and complexity.