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Studies and statistics have clearly demonstrated the link between low achievement and low socioeconomic status or SES. Still, studies have also shown that given the right conditions, every student – including those from less fortunate circumstances – have the opportunity to succeed. Not only that, but the kinds of changes that can increase achievement are available to every household, regardless of SES.
Factors linked to low-SES have been shown to have an effect upon readiness for school and achievement once a child has entered school. Circumstances include a household’s lack of financial wherewithal to devote to learning resources such as books, supplies and computers. Other contributing factors include lack of parental involvement; only 36% of low SES parents read to their kindergartners, compared to 62% in the highest SES students (Coley, 2002). In addition, parents of low SES households tend to be dual-income or single parent families who have limited time and energy at home to devote to meaningful engagement with their children.
That said, many successful students do come from low-SES homes. While some of this success can be attributed to the simple innate resiliency and drive arising from within the student, research has been able to tease out a number of common factors in such homes, where certain practices are clearly contributing to student success.
Factors for Success
In 2006, Allison Milne and Lee Plourde studied this population, selecting six second-grade students from a Central Washington elementary school who came from low-SES homes but were also high achievers. While the number of students in the study was limited, Milne and Plourde outline a number of common factors in their homes that likely contributed to their success:
Even though this study was limited in its sample size, the implications and the opportunities are far reaching. If low-SES children have the support and understanding that we see in these households, financial status does not have to be the ultimate determinant of academic achievement.
For further reading:
Factors of a low-SES household: what aids academic achievement?
Education and Socioeconomic Status, American Psychological Association
Related Reading:
Changing the Culture of Poverty by Doing Whatever it Takes
What Educators Can Do About Poverty in American Schools
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Categories: Education Trends, Family Focus, Reading & Learning
Many children from poverty arrive in schools with a host disadvantages, including low self-esteem, unstable relationships, and brain differences. But with support, encouragement and the right interventions, every child can maximize their ability to learn and succeed.
Learn more about "teaching with poverty in mind" in our on-demand webinar by Eric Jensen, full of actionable ideas for getting the most from learning time with students, building learning capacity, accelerating the learning process, and getting better buy-in from educators and students.
Related Reading:
Changing the Culture of Poverty by Doing Whatever It Takes
Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children
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Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

The ability to ask questions is the genesis – the “big bang” – where learning really starts. It is that moment where information that has entered the brain mixes with other ideas and begins to synthesize new ideas. Questions demonstrate curiosity. Questions represent the beginning of discovery and innovation. The first step of the scientific method itself is the careful formulation of a question.
But how often do we focus on teaching our students how to formulate good, well-considered questions? Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana have focused their work on exactly this skill, developing an approach they call the Question Formulation Technique (QFT). The two are co-directors of The Right Question Institute (RQI), a non-profit organization that focuses on helping people learn to better advocate for themselves and participate more in decision-making processes by teaching them how to ask questions. While the RQI applies their techniques across health care, community service, public agencies and community-based organizations, their ideas represent an excellent tool that we can use in our classrooms every day.
Recently published in the Harvard Education Letter, their article “Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions,” describes the Question Formulation Technique, a way for educators to present material in ways that encourage students to take a more active ownership role in their learning. There are six steps to the technique, as follows:
1. Find a focus - The “QFocus,” as it is called by Rothstein and Santana, is a prompt that serves to focus student questions so they can explore more expansive ideas. The authors offer an example presented by a teacher after covering the causes of the 1804 Haitian revolution: “Once we were slaves. Now we are free,” With a clear, direct thought like this to focus their thinking, the students begin formulating and posing questions around this idea.
2. Brainstorm - Constrained by a few simple rules to help people stay focused, students formulate as many questions as possible. At this point, they are asked not to judge the quality of the questions, nor pursue any answers. This is much like the classic “brainstorming” process, where ideas are generated in a free, uninterrupted flow.
3. Refine - The students work with the questions they have created, reformulating them as open- and closed-ended questions. They categorize them and make them clearer, more focused and more apt to yield the desired answers.
4. Prioritize - Using lesson plans and teaching goals, the teacher helps students select their top three questions and use them to zero in on the most important aspects of the material.
5. Determine next steps - Students and teachers together review the priority questions and make decisions about how best to use them for learning. The questions can be used to drive experimentation, further reading, research and/or discussion.
6. Reflect - The teacher and students review their questions in the context of the six steps they have worked through to produce them. According to Rothstein and Santana, “Making the QFT completely transparent helps students see what they have done and how it contributed to their thinking and learning. They can internalize the process and then apply it in many other settings.”
Note the key word in that last sentence – internalize. Through this process, students add question formulation to their cognitive toolbox, making it a part of how they address information and problem-solving going forward. The authors note a number of benefits to the QFT, including increased group participation and better classroom management. But more importantly, they found that students were more apt to delve deeply into topics on their own, posing well-considered, critical questions that not only help direct their learning, but allow them to take more effective ownership of that learning as well.
As a “habit of mind,” the Question Formulation Technique demonstrates beautifully how the brain is built for pattern recognition. It also represents research that holds great promise for helping students form thinking patterns early on that will yield lifelong benefits.
Related Reading:
Teaching Creativity in the Classroom
Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn and Grow
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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning
This year’s annual customer conference, Virtual Circle of Learning 2011, took place online last Friday with over 800 registrants. The keynote speakers—Eric Jensen, Dr. Martha Burns, and Andrew Ostarello—addressed opportunities for customers to maximize the impact of their implementations of Scientific Learning products.
Much of the content from these keynotes can be seen in our Twitter stream with the hashtag #VCOL11, as we live-tweeted the keynote sessions and linked to articles relevant to each speaker’s presentation.

The articles provide further reading on increasing student motivation and engagement, maximizing the results of using Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant products, and more:
Customers who missed a keynote or breakout session can watch it on Customer Connect (customer login required). Feel free to share the link with others at your school who were not able to attend.
Also, be sure to complete your survey to let us know what you enjoyed and what we can improve for next year. And, if you have an iPad, be sure to include your iTunes email address so we can give you our new iPad app, Eddy’s Number Party!
And now, off to start planning for Virtual Circle of Learning 2012!
Related Reading:
Building Fluent Readers: How Oral Reading Practice Helps Reading Comprehension
How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant
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Every spring, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, abbreviated CRCT, are administered to students in Georgia. The CRCT is designed to measure how well students acquire the skills and knowledge described in the Georgia Performance Standards.
Students are tested in reading, English/language arts and mathematics. This summary will concentrate on the reading results from the Clarke County School District in Georgia. The CRCT is given every spring to all students in grades 1-8, and the students included in this study were first through eighth graders during the time of the study.
A longitudinal study is a type of study that follows the same subjects over time. Clarke County students who used the Fast ForWord products generally started with the Fast ForWord® Language or Fast ForWord® Literacy series, with students then progressing through the Fast ForWord® Reading series. Students started on the products during different years, with some starting as early as the 2006-2007 school year, and others starting aslate as the 2010-2011 school year.
The first wave of Fast ForWord participants at Clarke County started using the products in the fall of 2006 and made statistically significant improvements on the spring 2007 CRCT with continued improvements in 2008 and the following years. Students in the second wave started using the products in the fall of 2007 and made statistically significant improvements on the spring 2008 CRCT.
After a third group started in 2008 school year, the group’s CRCT scores significantly increased and then continued to go up. Similarly, students who began using the products in 2009 and 2010 also started to show increases in their reading scores after Fast ForWord participation.
Each cohort exhibits a similar pattern in that after Fast ForWord participation started, on average, the group showed a steady increase in their CRCT reading scores with each passing year.
Looking at the students who started using Fast ForWord products in 2010, there was an increase in the percentage of students reaching reading proficiency, with 55% of students who were not proficient in 2010 crossing the proficiency threshold in 2011.
In addition to longitudinal results, data were also analyzed for certain demographic groups, including students who were receiving Special Education services and students with Limited English Proficiency. Both groups achieved statistically significant improvements on the CRCT Reading Test after Fast ForWord participation.
If you have questions on this study or any other Fast ForWord study, please feel free to contact our Customer Service Team.
Related Reading:
Fast ForWord® Language Series Has Greatest Impact of Any Intervention Listed by NCRTI
My Nephew Was a Struggling Learner (Not Anymore!): Carrie’s Story
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Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research, Special Education

Got an iPad yet? School leaders say it’s not just a cool toy, but rather a powerful, versatile tool that is virtually changing the face of education. With more than 15,000 “educational apps” available through Apple’s app store, teachers and students alike are having no trouble finding content and material for all areas of learning.
From kindergarten through college, iPads offer educators more diverse methods for delivering instruction and engaging students for learning in the 21st century. Here are 10 big benefits of using iPads in schools:
Related Reading:
Teaching Creativity in the Classroom
Building Unstructured Play into the Structure of Each Day
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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Sometimes, I feel as if I have been doing homework my entire life. As a child growing up, I moved from worksheets, dioramas and book reports to essays, major projects and term papers. When I began teaching, I had lessons to prepare and my students’ homework became my homework for grading. (And, on occasion, it was quite obvious that I was putting a bit more effort into MY homework than they put into theirs!) As my children reached school age, “Mom’s rules” on homework included: homework comes first, don’t wait until the last minute on a project, etc. But somehow their homework still bled over into my life…
So, how important is this icon of education? Is homework helpful or harmful? Is it something that, as many students claim, just eats up their time and energy for no real purpose? Do we, as educators, need new practices that move away from homework or are we simply afraid to change, stuck on those famous eight words, “But, we’ve never done it that way before…”?
In support of the view of homework as helpful, many educators stress that specifically aligning homework to the learning task is part of the strategy for building understanding. The website Focus on Effectiveness cites several studies showing that in elementary school, homework helps build learning and study habits (Cooper, 1989; Cooper, Lindsay, Nye, & Greathouse, 1998; Gorges & Elliot, 1999). Also noted is the point that 30 minutes of daily homework in high school can increase a student’s GPA up to half a point (Keith 1992). Many students need time and experience to develop the study habits that support learning, and homework can provide that as well as the ability to cope with mistakes and difficulty (Bempechat, 2004). Those teachers who take the time to add instructive comments to their feedback to homework get the greatest return on their efforts in after-school work. (Walberg, 1999).
But what about the students who are doing it wrong and then have to “unlearn” incorrect information? When considering the view that homework is harmful, author and speaker Alfie Kohn states that there is no real evidence showing homework to be beneficial to elementary students. In an EdWeek article, he writes that he found no correlation between homework and improved standardized assessment scores. Regarding secondary students, Kohn said that there is a slight correlation between homework and improved test scores and grades but there is no evidence that the improvement is because of homework rather than other activities. Stating that there is no proof that homework benefits students in other ways such as good study habits, independence or self discipline, Kohn could find no disadvantage to reducing or even eliminating homework altogether but finds the homework trend continues to grow.
So, what is the answer – is homework helpful or harmful? Do we continue current practices or throw homework out altogether?
A balanced perspective most likely is the best response. Time spent on homework should align with the student’s age – a short time spent in elementary school, up to 90 minutes for middle school or junior high aged students and between 1½ and 2 ½ hours per night (not per subject!) in high school (Harris, 2006). Another suggestion is to multiply the student’s grade by ten to determine the appropriate number of minutes of homework per night (example – a fifth grader should have no more than 50 minutes of homework per night). If we want the best results, we’ll keep homework time within these time ranges with allowances made for individual needs of students and families.
Key takeaways:
Homework and Practice. (n.d.) Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.netc.org/focus/strategies/home.php
Cooper, H. (2006). Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://today.duke.edu/2006/09/homework_oped.html
Kohn, A. (2006). The Truth About Homework: Needless Assignments Persist Because of Widespread Misconceptions About Learning. Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/homework.htm
Related Reading:
Ok, So You Made a Mistake. But Look What You Learned!
Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning
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This study is a randomized controlled trial that investigated the impact of Fast ForWord Language software in 9 elementary schools. The analyses that follow include data from 452 students in grades K through 5.
Students were randomly assigned to be in either the Fast ForWord group or the control group. The randomization was stratified within age and gender.
Students using Fast ForWord trained for 100 minutes per day for an average of 30 school days. Both groups were evaluated using three assessments:
The average gains from pre-test to post-test were larger for Fast ForWord participants than for the control group for both Language Comprehension and Phonological Isolation. Both of these results were statistically significant.
In addition, a large subset of students in this study were English Language Learners. A total of 85 students did not speak English as their primary language – 53 of whom used Fast ForWord, while 32 served as controls. The results for English Language Learners were consistent with those for native English speakers. Both of these results were statistically significant.
In conclusion, Fast ForWord participation led to significantly larger improvements than the control group in a variety of early language skills.
The vast majority of students made learning gains; these students averaged 1.8 years of language improvement in only 30 school days.
These results are consistent for both ELL students and for native English speakers.
Finally, note that this study was conducted on the original version of Fast ForWord Language. Since publication of this study in 2004, a new and enhanced version of Fast ForWord Language has been released (Fast ForWord Language version 2).
Related Reading:
Forecasting ROI from Fast ForWord® and Reading Assistant™ Products
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Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research

The human mind is most engaged to react and perform at optimal capacity when our hearts are pumping and our blood is flowing. Any athlete will tell you that he or she feels most alive and sharp when they are in the midst of the contest, heart beating hard, mind alert and ready. Given the interconnected nature of how our brains and bodies function, how the brain gets more oxygen and works better when the heart is pumping, it’s easy to see that we are designed not only to learn, but to think best “on our feet.”
In fact, this concept extends far beyond circulation alone; physical activity has been shown to have substantive affects on brain chemistry. In 2003, Sibley and Etnier demonstrated that, for 4-18 year-olds, exercise positively impacts perception skills, IQ, achievement, verbal and math scores, development and academic readiness.[i] Exercise can affect the release of neurotransmitters key to the learning process, such as norepinephrine (which increases blood flow to skeletal muscles as well as to the brain) and acetylcholine (which can slow the heart rate and contribute to sustained attention).
With these concepts in mind, now imagine the modern classroom. The average student sits for hours a day usually sitting still. She shouldn’t stand up and stretch, or worse, walk around the classroom. (For goodness sake, that’s distracting to the other students and disrespectful to the teacher.) Physical education programs are getting cut due to shrinking budgets, and recess time is being cut to create more opportunities for test preparation. Obesity and diabetes are dangerously on the rise. Since the early 1970s, the number of overweight students has quadrupled from four percent to seventeen percent. (American Heart Association)
In general, the classroom becomes a place where we expect students to focus the mind and quiet the body. What we’re learning is that this is just not necessarily the best way to go. A new trend in classroom management is bringing this tradition into question. Through what is becoming known as “physically active learning,” educators are not only experimenting with integrating more physical activity into classroom lessons, but they are generating positive results.
According to Jena Mee, a physical education and school health education consultant for the Department of Education, “Research is showing us very persuasively that if students exercise for sustained periods of time before they do challenging work, they perform cognitive tasks better, they remember things better, they can apply their skills better.”[ii]
In theory, the idea is to break up lessons with short breaks of physical activity that get students up out of their seats and moving around the room. According to eSchool News, “The approach also has been shown to improve attendance and student behavior and reduce discipline referrals.”
As educators under pressure to maximize student academic performance, we often focus on the material and forget that our real goal is to help the whole child. This research is just one more reminder that we need to attend to the body as well as the mind. If we can do both, we will help our students become all that much more successful.
While the research is still developing, you can get the story as reported this past May on eschoolnews.com.
And if you want to explore one idea to bring more physical activity into your classroom, how about using exercise balls instead of chairs?
[i] Sibley B.A. and Etnier J.L. (2003). The relationship between physical activity and cognition in children: a meta- analysis. Pediatric Exercise Science, 15:243-256.
[ii] ‘Physically active learning’ improves test scores, sharpens concentration. eSchool News. May 16, 2011.
Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!
Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Reading is a recent cultural invention. It is not a skill we are naturally programmed to develop like walking or vocalizing. It is a relatively recent development in human history estimated to be only about 6000 years old. The development of oral language in humans is believed to be nearly 300,000 years old. Oral language is thought to have co-developed with the use of tools as both require complex motor control.
To quote from the recent book Reading in the Brain (Dehaene, 2009): "At this very moment, your brain is accomplishing an amazing feat—reading. Four or five times per second, your gaze stops just long enough to recognize one or two words. You are, of course, unaware of this jerky intake of information. Only the sounds and meanings of the words reach your conscious mind. But how can a few black marks projected onto your retina evoke an entire universe?"[i]
In 2010, Stanislas Dehaene, et al. published a study which evaluated whether learning to read improves brain function, and also whether there are tradeoffs for such learning.[ii] In other words, does learning to read “occupy” a space in the brain that could or would be used for something else in our evolutionary past?
Dehaene and his research team have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure how the brain responded to various stimuli, including spoken and written language, visual faces, houses, tools, and checkers in a group of literate and illiterate adults. Ten were illiterate, 22 learned to read as adults, and 31 learned to read as children.
In the end, their studies generated a number of fascinating conclusions. Literacy—no matter at what point in life the skill is acquired, in youth or as an adult—enhances brain response in three ways:
Granted, there is much more detail to understand behind these conclusions, and I certainly invite you to read the entire article. Still, for us as educators, these conclusions hold useful insights.
In being aware of how literacy is related to these other skills, such as speaking and visual processing, we can use this information as yet another tool to help us better understand what we can expect from our students, no matter their ages. If they come into our classroom able to read, we know that we can expect them to have greater capacity for speech. If they come in with fewer or no reading skills, we might want to be aware that they might have challenges in processing visual input.
Given these conclusions, the more we can continue to develop technology solutions that can teach while detecting deficiencies and adapt to student needs “on the fly,” the better we will be able to individualize instruction, fill in gaps in learning and strengthen essential skills.
As these scientists continue their investigations and the research sheds more light on how reading affects brain processing, we as educators will continue to increase our abilities to make better targeted instructional decisions that will help every individual student achieve optimal success.
[i] Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain. Penguin Viking Publishing. November, 2009.
[ii] Dehaene, Stanislas et. al.How Learning to Read Changes the Cortical Networks for Vision and Language. 2010.
Related Reading:
How Learning to Read Improves Brain Function
The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency
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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning