SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Measuring Up Conference Update

Our Measuring Up conference link above has been fixed.  If visitors still want to attend on April 26th, (and we hope you do!) please contact our offices directly 416-231-7247 or by email: info (at) societyforqualityeducation.org so that we can add your name to the list.

We will be able to register you at the door. 

For those who have already registered, thank you and we look forward to an exciting event!

Sunday at the Movies (The Real Purpose of Public Schools)

Some of you may remember TDSBNW, an Ontario teacher whose trenchant comments are invariably on the mark. A while back, TDSBNW mentioned that he or she was convinced by much of what was said by former teacher John Taylor Gatto, especially when it comes to his views on the real purpose of public schools. What do you think?

Our April 26 Conference

If you haven’t yet registered for our conference this Tuesday (and we hope you will), clicking on the conference link will lead you to believe that registration for the conference is closed. I am trying to get this fixed but even if I don’t succeed, the truth is that people can always register at the door. So if you happen to find yourself in Toronto next Tuesday, maybe doing a little shopping at the Eaton Centre - come on down to the Eaton Centre Marriott Hotel and say hello. We’d love to see you.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink

More than 20 years ago when I was struggling with the wacky teaching methods at my children’s elementary school, I spent hundreds of hours at the local university pouring through the research in an effort to find evidence in favour of things like direct instruction and drill. In my naïveté, I thought that, if I could find research proof, the school would switch to more sensible methods. But there was precious little research being done on teaching methods at the time.

What a difference 20 years makes! Now there is a mountain of research on teaching methods, almost all of it supporting direct instruction and drill. A case in point is this recent Harvard study which found that grade 8 students learn more math and science when their teachers allocate more time to lecturing and less to group problem-solving activities.

Sadly, however, I was wrong in my belief that education leaders would endorse things like direct instruction and drill if they were presented with research about their merits. Obviously, something more galvanizing is needed.

Joy for JUMP

Today's post is by John Bachmann:

A number of years ago I had the chance to tutor the very bright daughter of a friend in grade 10 algebra.  In a few weeks she went from failing every test to being near the top of her class.  Was I that good? Actually, it wasn’t about me at all.  What it was about is one of the most pervasive and pernicious myths in education: the myth that some people “get” math and some people don’t, i.e. you’ve either got the “math gene” or you don’t.  Once my student realized that her problems with algebra was the result of her impatience (she got flustered when she couldn’t get the answer right away, which happened a lot since she hadn’t been taught her times tables) she slowed down and started getting right answers and in no time flat was not only ripping through her assignments but loving them!

John Mighton has been challenging the myth of the math gene for years and his JUMP program is becoming noticed in some pretty influential circles including, this week, the New York Times.

Particularly noteworthy, are the graphs in the article that not only show that achievement scores go up but that the variation between the lowest and highest goes down dramatically.  Also interesting is the note that researchers from Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education are studying the effectiveness of the JUMP program. If the study comes back as positive as it appears it might, will direct instruction begin to creep back into OISE?

Look Who Can Spell: We would have a challenge with their names alone!

Here are the names of the finalists in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge Spelling Bee Regional Competition. 

Primary Category
1.  Rahul Modi
2.  Anthony Dang
3.  Maithili Shende

Junior Category
1.  Shiv Kathuria
2.  Daniella Kistemaker
3.  Jai Kathuria

Intermediate Category 
1.  Rhiannan Pinnell
2.  Parani Ragu
3.  Jaspreet Sagoo

Canada's poor test scores are often blamed on its large immigrant population. The truth is that our students' test scores would be lower without our immigrants.

The Peg Memory Technique

Human short-term memory is extremely limited, being able to hold only about seven items at a time. However, humans have devised some ingenious ways around this bottleneck, including chunking items (for example, how you remember phone numbers) and linking things you need to remember to locations that you know well. Here's a third way, namely the peg technique, as outlined in a very cool book, Sleights of Mind, which reveals how magicians exploit vulnerabilities hardwired into human brains. As the authors write about the peg technique, "Why aren't children taught this technique to learn their multiplication tables or other lists of facts? If neurologists could harness these techniques, maybe they could teach Alzheimer's patients to remember better the order in which to don their clothing each morning, maybe enable them to live in their own homes for one more year."

The following excerpt (pp. 125-127) shows how a magician named Apollo enhances his memory. His increased ability to remember things allows him to pull off all kinds of stunts, from "mind-reading" to card tricks.

"Apollo explained that by mentally associating mundane numbers and objects (or people, places, things, activities, concepts, and so forth) with imagined wild caricatures of those things, he could retain the memory of a large number of those associations for an incredibly long time. So long that it didn't seem like memory at all, it seemed magical. He demonstrated by asking Susana to write a list of 15 items, in random order and hidden from his view, and to call them out as she proceeded. 'Number 6: wolf; number 11: market; number 2: roulette...' ...

"Apollo listened but did not appear to be concentrating particularly carefully. At the end of the list, Apollo said, 'Okay, now I'll say them back to you in order. Please check them against your list.' Susana ensured that Apollo could not see her written list as he proceeded to read them off from his own mental list as promised: 'Number one: tennis ball; number two: roulette...' He got them all perfectly. He then recited the list backward. Next he asked Susana to cross out seven of the items from the list in random order and to state, out loud, just the number of each entry as it was crossed out. The list remained hidden from Apollo's view as Susana crossed out her selections. Apollo then reported the remaining undeleted items, in numerical order.

"Apollo's performance was a straightforward and extremely impressive display of mnemonic power. We reeled under its implications. 'How did you do that?' Apollo explained that it was an easy trick that served to boost human memory capacity immensely. 'All I did was to associate each number-object pair with an imagined caricature of each object. But the real trick is that I have a list of standard objects that I use to represent each number. It's based on similar-sounding objects, or number homonyms. For example, the number one sounds like 'wand', so when I make the association between the object and the number, I'm really associating a wand with the chosen object. In this case I burned the image of a tennis ball holding a wand into my memory. Then when the time comes to recite the list, I take each number in turn (backward or forward), recall the associated number-homonym that I always use for that number, and then use that to jog my memory as to the associated object from Susana's list. To delete an item from the list, I imagine each object-number pair being destroyed graphically as Susana crosses it from her list. In the case of the wand-wielding tennis ball, I imagined the pair on fire and then the tennis ball exploding from the internal pressure..."

Sunday at the Movies (Charter Schools)

This is SQE's very own video, available free in DVD form, and it shows just how good charter schools can be. Not many parents can watch this without wishing they could send/could have sent their children to one of these schools. 

Everybody is good at something

Congratulations to the University of Western Ontario for making it onto Playboy magazine’s list of the ten top party schools. Ranked fourth, Western is the only Canadian university to make the list. Quite a distinction. Well done!

So this honour (to my alma mater, BTW) has started me thinking about other top ten lists that Ontario elementary and secondary schools might be eligible for. For example, what about the school that showed the most movies in one year? Or had the most popcorn parties? The most hours lost to non-academic pursuits like assemblies, field days, parties, class trips, values courses, and so forth? 

I’m confident that a great many Ontario schools will be able to offer strong competition in these categories. Bring it on!

Reinventing schools

All over Ontario, declining enrolment has led to threats to close dozens of schools, and the natives are restless:  Hamilton, Peterborough, Oakville, and many more communities. Feelings are running high, and there appear to be no easy answers. But there is one possibility that is not being explored.

This option is laid out in our new quick study “Danger - or Opportunity?”. Basically, we are proposing that instead of closing schools with unused space, the school boards find creative ways to keep them open - by, for example, renting out the surplus space to agencies with complementary services or by moving the students to smaller venues like a YMCA or a church. These reinvented schools offer potentially significant benefits - but they would require flexibility and openness to new ideas on the part of their school boards.

Oh well, it seemed like a good idea at the time….....