Instilling a Love of Reading: What Every Teacher and Parent Should Know

• March 27, 2013 by Jacqueline Egli

As an educator I spend a considerable amount of time providing advice to parents whose children are finding it difficult to be inspired with reading! Parents will describe their child as  “struggling,” “disinterested,” or ”anxious” about reading and are searching for ways to instill the love of reading, when it is such a tedious task for their child.

It’s really quite simple: Children who do not read well will not be inspired to read, or to practice reading more. So, how do we get our reluctant readers to find reading fun?

As the director of a school that specializes in working with students with reading disorders—and a parent of a youngster who was diagnosed with dyslexia in 3^rd grade—I see this issue from both sides.  Some suggestions that I share with our parents (and that I used with my own son) can create a safe haven for reading for the emerging reader, gifted reader, or a student who needs more direct instruction to improve reading skills.

The Practice of Reading Skills

Keep the work of developing reading skills separate from pleasure reading. Students who require reinforcement in their decoding or vocabulary should practice those tasks for a short time (15-20 minutes) several times per week. Use some of these ideas to make the reading fun!

• Play Scrabble using real or nonsense words! Get the real game board! Let students use a dictionary to look up words that they can create with their tiles. Or, play a game with nonsense words, but everyone should be able to read their words! Non-word reading is a good way to practice decoding.
• Word of the day: Have the whole family select a “word of the day” and keep a tally on how many times that word is read, or spoken throughout the day. At dinnertime, share the results of the family “survey” and select a new word for the next day.
• Matching game: Have your child use index cards to write their words for practice on one card and the definition on the other. Play this game like the Memory card game (also known as Concentration), encouraging the student to read the word and the definition for every card turned over. (My son and I both did this when we were studying—he used his 5^th grade spelling words and vocabulary, and I had my “deck of cards” on education law terms and definitions for my Master’s degree coursework).
• Use Unique Materials! Change it up! Have your child practice by writing spelling words on the sidewalk with colored chalk. Put shaving cream on the kitchen counter and let your child write their spelling words in foam! Put a piece of screen material in an open picture frame. Have your child place a piece of paper over it and write their words on the paper with crayon. This approach provides practice and highlights the individual letters with a unique, textured surface. See some examples here:  
• Create your own storybook: Children, by nature, will be more involved and interested in practicing oral reading if they are excited about a topic. Using some of the newest technologies, such as the camera feature on your phone, have the child take photos of a favorite activity that the child or the whole family enjoys doing, or take pictures that match the vocabulary list!  Put those photos into a PowerPoint and have the child tell or type the words, match vocabulary or create a story to go with the photos. With PowerPoint you can add motion, sound, or music—so be creative! You can even print the pages and bind them into a book, and you have some great stories for practicing oral reading. The book can also make a great gift for a relative for a birthday or holiday.

Reading for Pleasure

Children who are behind in their reading abilities, such as decoding, vocabulary, or comprehension, may not always select independent reading material that “matches” their age and grade. In fact, many children who struggle with the mechanics of reading may be interested in topics that are way above their independent reading level. To meet their intellectual interests and instill the “habit” of reading for pleasure, consider these ideas:

• Read aloud for evening wind-down: What child doesn’t want to delay bedtime? This is a perfect time to read a chapter or two and discuss the elements of a read-aloud story. Ask questions about the characters and setting and inquire if they can predict what will happen next. Let your child select a book that they have an interest in, regardless of the reading level, and read it to them before bedtime. For those youngsters who are gifted, be sure that the topic is not above their maturity level. You may want to read the selection before you read it together, as some authors do include more mature themes than some of our learners are ready to handle.
• Books on tape in the car: Face it—we are a mobile society! I have parents who report spending many hours in the car for errands, driving kids to practice for sports, and waiting on our busy roads to make it home in the late afternoon hours. Audio books can be a great way for everyone to enjoy a good mystery or listen to a story that will soon be featured in film at the local movie theatres. Use of an audiobook is also a great way to keep a youngster connected to current trends in literary work. Students who are behind in their reading abilities may still have an interest in the latest chapter book that will be featured in an upcoming movie, such as Hunger Games. Although your child may not be able to wade through the actual printed version, listening to the audio series will permit them to understand the content and will encourage their discussions with their peers about the latest chapter of a popular series.
• Model reading activities! In our busy lives we sometimes forget that our children and students need to see us reading! Some schools still include a specific reading time where everyone in the school reads a book or magazine for 15 minutes.  As parents, we should practice what we want our children to do, so they can see our enjoyment of literature! Every summer, I would take a stack of paperback books with me to the beach, and my children would know that I was enjoying my “junk novels”. Now, when we get together for our annual beach week, my young adult children break out their Kindles and read too!
• Don’t get concerned if your child has selected something to read independently that is not at their grade level. Nothing concerns me more than when I hear a parent or teacher indicate that the “child” is selecting a storybook, chapter book or series to read that is “not at their grade level”. Reading for pleasure should be just that, for pleasure. Allow and encourage reading for entertainment value. I often remind my students’ parents that “eyes on print” is a good thing, and not to get concerned over the level of the material that a child reads for pleasure. I don’t look at the back of the book I am purchasing for my annual beach trip to see what grade level it is before I purchase it. I select books that I am interested in reading for fun! I enjoy books that have a mystery and involve law, written by authors such as John Grisham. What I don’t do is determine the Lexile Score, or Independent Reading Level of the text or content. So, allow your child a choice in what they wish to read independently and encourage them to develop the habit of reading!

Above all, BE PATIENT and ENCOURAGING with your child as they develop independent reading habits. The “art” of reading is quite complex. Some children will require more support, individualized instruction, and continued practice, and may benefit from the services of a reading specialist. Your positive influence, patience, and support can make your child feel safe to take the “risk” of reading new words or selecting more challenging material. Celebrate the small steps, and keep positive so your child will become more confident!

Related reading:

18 Ways to Encourage Students to Read This Summer

5 Reasons Why Your Students Should Write Every Day

 

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: child reading development, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, high school learning, how adults learn, improving reading skills, learning to read, literacy, middle school learning, motivating students, reading comprehension, struggling readers, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact, vocabulary

Adolescent Learning: Why Reading Interventions Aren't Working

• February 26, 2013 by Cara Gipson

It’s exciting when a child learns to read—combining letters and sounds to form words for the first time until they’re stringing those words together to create sentences. But what happens when a child goes from “getting by” in the early grades to struggling in adolescence when cognitive demand increases along with the difficulty of required texts?

How Adolescent Learning is Different

There are important differences between childhood and adolescent brain function, and developmentally appropriate regression in abilities such as impulse control can affect adolescent learning.

Dr. Martha Burns’ webinar “Reading and the Adolescent Brain: What Works?” provides research-based insights for busy educators interested in the science of adolescent learning. Tune in and discover…

• What changes in the adolescent brain can affect academics, attention and other cognitive skills?
• Why does the adolescent learner often plateau and in some cases even decrease in certain skills? 
• Why are so many reading interventions failing to make a difference, and what can be done?

Understanding what’s happening in the adolescent brain can give you the tools to educate your students, support them in their struggles, and provide the help they need to get back on track academically.

Why Reading Interventions Fail

One reason that many reading interventions may not work for the adolescent learner is that they fail to provide the cognitive skills and oral reading practice required for reading fluency. Research shows that using the Fast ForWord program has been correlated with positive neurological changes in the brain corresponding to the cognitive skills that underlie reading.

By incorporating the use of the Fast ForWord program to build cognitive skills and the Reading Assistant program to ensure sufficient reading practice, you can help your adolescent students jumpstart their reading progress instead of remaining stagnant. Dr. Burns takes you on a detailed tour of how these programs strengthen cognitive skills, fluency and comprehension; reinforce learning; and shorten the time it takes to achieve significant milestones in achievement. 

Changing the Future

Advanced literacy skills are needed not only in order to succeed in college but also to obtain and hold future jobs. When a teen is struggling in the present, it becomes more difficult for them to see a bright future, often causing them to erect a protective wall against learning and life. Informed educators can help transform these struggles into victory.

 

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic problems, accelerate learning, brain development, cognitive skills, high school learning, improving reading skills, intervention, literacy, middle school learning, motivating students, reading comprehension, reading intervention, struggling readers, struggling students, technology in education

Behavior Problems in School: Empowering Students to Self Discipline

• September 11, 2012 by Scott Sterling

In my five years in the classroom, I was often the teacher who wrote the least amount of discipline referrals in the school. Some of my colleagues would say it was because of the students I taught (mostly advanced classes, with roughly half of the students being classified as gifted), to which I responded that talented kids are just as capable at problem behavior as traditional students. They just tend to misbehave in more creative ways.

The real reason for my lack of paperwork was that I could usually relate to why a particular student was acting out and tried to address the problem at the source. I credit that approach for a lot of the success I experienced in the classroom.

As anyone who has spent more than five minutes with a middle school student would tell you, the cause was usually a lack of self-discipline. I simply did not see how getting a student suspended from school would solve a student’s lack of self-control.

Why the traditional approach no longer works

To me, the traditional approach of working up a discipline ladder that usually ended with a suspension was contrary to what most of these children actually needed. Think about it. A kid lacks the social skills to be successful in a class group, so we’re going to make sure he gets less practice in working within the class by sending him home.

Let’s face it: society is providing us with more and more students that simply are not prepared socially to be successful in the traditional classroom setting. Debating the causes of this situation is outside the scope of this article, except to say that the role of the modern teacher is now equally defined by social as well as academic instruction.

The social skills that these students lack, and which we fail to address through traditional discipline, are skills that will haunt them throughout their lives. They will not “just grow out of it”. The same skill deficiencies that affect their success in school will affect their success in the workplace, if they make it that far.

So what do we do?

Instead of blaming society for forcing us to be parents to these children, we should embrace the role. Because, frankly, we don’t have a choice. It’s easier to change a classroom than change a society. We need to recommit ourselves to empowering students rather than entering in a power struggle with them.

Just as parents would, we should provide more social opportunities for students. The days of “sit down quietly and copy the notes on the board” are over. That approach just invites more anti-social behavior. Give them opportunities to help and be helped. Embrace a classroom culture of ideas and sharing. There are wonderful, restorative practice ideas on how to make this happen in the Further Reading section down below.

My most important tip: just listen. We all have our least-favorite students, and there are hundreds of things we would rather do than talk to them, which is where the majority of referrals come from. But just hearing their perspective on things could yield the largest return on investment of anything you do all year.

 

 

Further Reading:

How to Develop a Welcoming Culture

Study Finds Social-Skills Teaching Boosts Academics

SaferSanerSchools: Transforming School Culture with Restorative Practices

Related Reading:

Beating Bullying for Better Learning

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn and Grow

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: at-risk, behavior, emotions in learning, learning environment, middle school learning, self-esteem, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact

In Independent Study of Fast ForWord, Sixth-Grade Students Exceed Expected Gains

• February 2, 2012 by Melissa Agocs

Hello. This presentation will review achievement gains made at the Bulloch County Schools in Georgia after students used the Fast ForWord^® products. This was an independent study conducted by Dr. Jody Woodrum, an Assistant Superintendent at the district.

The Bulloch County Schools started using the Fast ForWord products at selected schools during the 2007-2008 school year.  The district’s focus was on students close to proficiency in reading or language arts. In the fall of 2009, the Langston Chapel Middle School expanded its implementation to all sixth graders, regardless of ability level. This summary is about these sixth graders.

The students in this study used various Fast ForWord products, including the Fast ForWord Literacy, Fast ForWord Literacy Advanced, Fast ForWord Reading Prep, and Fast ForWord Reading Level 1 – 5 products. The participating school’s Fast ForWord Participation and Attendance were routinely considered “Gold Cap,” which is a high standard to strive for and shows that the school was adhering to the protocol.

Study participants were evaluated using the Measures of Academic Progress, abbreviated as MAP.  Developed by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), the MAP are state-aligned, computerized adaptive tests that accurately reflect the instructional level of each student and measure growth over time.  The MAP are appropriate for students in grades 2 through 10 and are available to evaluate student achievement in a variety of subject areas including reading, language arts, math, and science.

The MAP uses a measure of improvement called the Growth National Percentile Rank, which is a percentile rank of growth relative to “academic peers” – students in similar grades and at similar achievement levels.  On average, Fast ForWord participants made gains on the MAP, and for students who made gains, the gains were very large, corresponding to high Growth National Percentile Ranks. The next two graphs look at the Reading and English Language Arts results more closely.

Overall, 64% of participants from both groups of students – on and above grade level, and below grade level – increased their percentile rank on the Reading portion of the MAP. For the students who made gains, the gains corresponded to the 98^th percentile, which is considered very large and exceeded the expected improvement on the Reading component.

On the English Language Arts component of the MAP, 77% of participants made gains.  Once again, the improvement of both groups of Fast ForWord participants exceeded the expected improvement and the gains that were achieved were substantial – at the 99^th percentile.

Analyses by the staff at Bulloch County indicated that high gains were seen regardless of the students’ prior achievement levels, and regardless of the highest Fast ForWord product completed.

Thank you for your time. This video was a brief summary of the rigorous study from Bulloch County. For further detail, please reference Dr. Woodrum’s full report on the Scientific Learning website at www.scientificlearning.com/woodrum.

Related Reading:

60% of Middle and High School Learners Exceed FCAT Annual Learning Gain Expectations

Fifth Graders Make Significantly Greater Gains than a Comparison Group Across Multiple Subjects After Fast ForWord

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Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, improving reading skills, increased test scores, language learning, literacy, MAP, middle school learning, student growth, technology in education, video

2011 Virtual Circle of Learning Wrap-Up

• November 8, 2011 by Pam Combs

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:

• AMPing up our teaching to increase intrinsic student motivation
• Dr. Martha Burns on Brain Plasticity
• Implementation Fidelity: Maximizing Your Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant Investment
• Nevada Department of Education: Fast ForWord is a “High-Gain Program”
• Dr. Donald Aguillard: Improving Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) Scores in St. Mary Parish Schools
• How to improve student motivation
• What are some ways elementary teachers might use Twitter in their classrooms?
• Finding a voice through Twitter
• Retweeting History Brings Those Stories to Life

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

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Categories: Education Trends, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, digital natives, education conference, elementary school learning, high school learning, increased test scores, literacy, memory, middle school learning, reading intervention, Scientific Learning events, student growth, success stories, technology in education, webinar

60% of Middle and High School Learners Exceed FCAT Annual Learning Gain Expectations

• October 18, 2011 by Melissa Agocs

Marion County Public Schools in Ocala, FL, wanted to evaluate the effects of the Fast ForWord^® and Reading Assistant™ products on the academic achievement of their students. Students in Florida are assessed with the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test, abbreviated as the FCAT. The students in this study were initially at FCAT Level 1 or 2, where Level 3 means performing on grade level and Level 5 means the student is successful with the most challenging grade-level content. These study participants attended middle and high schools in the Marion County Public Schools and most of them were eligible for Exceptional Student Education services.

Each spring, all Marion County students in Grades 3-10 take the FCAT. This is a criterion-referenced test. The Reading portion of the FCAT is designed to assess student achievement of the high-order cognitive skills represented in the Sunshine State Standards.

One way for students at FCAT Levels 1 and 2 to meet their Annual Learning Gains (ALG), a component in determining a school’s grade, is for them to improve their scores by more than a state-mandated level that varies depending on grade level. Across the students in this study, in order to meet Annual Learning Gains, the students had to improve at least 115 points.

After using Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant products, 60% of the participants made ALG with the actual improvement of 173 points, on average, exceeding the expected gain of 115 points by a statistically significant amount.

Related Reading:

Longitudinal Study Shows Significant Fast ForWord^® Gains Endure Over Time

Fast ForWord^® Language Series Has Greatest Impact of Any Intervention Listed by NCRTI

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic success, assessments, high school learning, increased test scores, middle school learning, student growth, success stories, technology in education, video

Using Google in the Classroom: Two Simple Tips to Refine Your Search

• October 13, 2011 by Joseph DuLaney

Today is research day.

Your students are excited as they head to the computer lab to begin looking at ideas for their National History Day Projects.

They arrive.  Sit at their computer.  Open Google and begin typing their topic into the search bar.

Just then a bit of panic sets in as you realize Google Search can return all kinds of results, and your students are pouring over literally millions of target locations that possibly have no relevance to the research they are attempting to conduct.  Even worse in your mind is that you have possibly just wasted thirty minutes of valuable time—time that could have been much more productive if you just knew a couple of things about Google Search.

Google Basic Search is how most of us use Google.  It gives you the simple task of typing your search topic in the Google Search Bar and accepting the results it hands back. 

It is valuable to know that Google compiles those results in many different ways, and not always in the specific way in which we are looking. For example, when I search for the Great Divide (or Continental Divide), which was a major factor in United States Westward Expansion, I get these top three results:

1. Great Divide Brewing Co.  This may be a fine microbrewery but definitely wasn’t a hangout for the Westward Explorers.
2. Great Divide Snow Sports.  I do not recall the explorers using snowboards so I believe we can rule this site out as well 
3. The Great Divide Band, of which none of the members were even born during the time period, once again provides nothing in the way of help in research on the topic of the Great Divide. 

Now, take a look at some simple tools that will provide a powerful and impactful search for your students and maximize their time performing research.  These tools are called Google Search Operators, and two common Operators are Site: and Source:.

Site:, when typed after a search topic, allows a searcher to find information on Google from specific sites or domain extensions (.com, .net, .edu) thus narrowing the search only to websites that are considered relevant and appropriate, such as educational institutions, media, government sites, etc.  For educational institutions you would use their domain extension, site:edu, to generate only results that come from the educational community such as universities.  For media or other websites you use their site and extension—some examples include site:cnn.com which would generate searches specifically from CNN.com or site:apple.com which would generate searches only from the Apple website.  Give it a try.  Type in Google Search [Steve Jobs site:CNN.com] or [Steve Jobs site:apple.com]. 

Source: is a very focused search operator that, when placed after a search topic, allows a searcher to find information from a specific news source such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or a local newspaper.  To perform a search with source: you would follow the same steps as you would with site:, instead just typing the source in which you are looking to gain information.  Try this search: [Election source:New York Times], which prioritizes results on the topic of elections that have been published in The New York Times.

There are many other advanced search operators for use with Google, but these two simple operators are a great start to help your students focus their time on performing credible research.  If you would like to learn about these and other options, you can visit Google’s web search support page for more information.

Related Reading:

Opening the Classroom Through Online Collaboration: 21st Century Learning Environments

Why Limit Screen Time? Scientific Research Explains

 

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: digital natives, how children learn, middle school learning, technology in education

Longitudinal Study Shows Significant Fast ForWord^® Gains Endure Over Time

• October 6, 2011 by Melissa Agocs

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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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: English Language Learners, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research, Special Education

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, child reading development, elementary school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, literacy, middle school learning, reading comprehension, reading intervention, technology in education, video

The Great Homework Debate: Is Homework Helpful or Harmful to Students?

• September 13, 2011 by Cory Armes

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:

1. Remember the main purposes of homework:  to build rote memorization and automaticity; to provide time to deepen understanding though elaboration and to increase readiness for new information.
2. Assign homework that includes very few concepts so students can learn them on a deeper level (Healy, 1990).
3. Match homework to the learning goal for a more focused learning experience.
4. Provide appropriate and timely feedback.  Students need to know what was correct, what needs to be changed, etc., and they need this information sooner rather than later.  Waiting several days or even weeks to provide feedback limits or even eliminates the effectiveness of the assignment.
5. Parental involvement should be limited to facilitating the completion of homework – not teaching content or doing the work for a child.   Parents who get too involved in an assignment inhibit rather than enhance learning.

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:

Students who Struggle in the Mainstream: What their Homework Patterns May Tell You

Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children 

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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

Tags: decision making, elementary school learning, how children learn, instructional reform, middle school learning

7 Amazing Discoveries from Brain Research

• June 2, 2011 by Carrie Gajowski

As the webinar coordinator and moderator here at Scientific Learning, I’ve had the privilege of hearing many wonderful speakers on a variety of compelling topics.  Of all of the webinars I’ve presided over, one of my favorites was the one presented by Eric Jensen in September, 2010, titled “7 Amazing Discoveries from Brain Research.” For that webinar, our most highly-attended ever, Eric took complex concepts about the brain and made them more “user friendly” and interesting.  At the end of the session, I was excited to go learn and study more on my own about the brain and how it functions!

Of the seven discoveries presented in this webinar, the one that I found to be most intriguing was the concept that our emotions can influence our minds and bodies.  For years, people have discussed the connection between emotions and the body but now there is research being done that proves that there is indeed a link.  For example, one study cited in this webinar indicates that there are approximately 6 – 8 emotions that are innate and the rest are taught by parents, teachers, friends, technology, etc.  If children aren’t given the opportunity to learn about a wide range of emotions, this gives them not only  less of an ability to handle conflicts and issues that might come up for them but could hinder their learning process.

To learn more about brain research discoveries that can help you in the classroom and beyond, be sure to check out the recorded webinar. 

To learn more about Eric Jensen, visit the Jensen Learning website.

Related Reading:

Brain Plasticity: Using Advances in Technology for Better Living

You Unplugged: Finding Balance with Extended Reading, Writing, and Thinking Time

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Categories: Brain Research, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain training, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, high school learning, how children learn, middle school learning, Scientific Learning events, teacher impact, webinar