By building a memorial to Edwin Pratt, a slain civil rights leader, Seattle sixth-graders learned valuable lessons in grantsmanship, public speaking, and public art. They also grew to understand the meaning of civil rights, commemoration, and community giving. Next year's class will work with the Shoreline Historical Museum to create an exhibit on…

Controversy rages over whole-language/phonics approaches to reading instruction, giving critics great school-bashing opportunities. Districts that have successfully incorporated whole language generally have planned for change, involved parents, proceeded slowly, built in ongoing professional development, provided adequate resources, reassured…

Recent primate studies suggest that fluctuations in the neurotransmitter serotonin help regulate our level of self-esteem and place within the social hierarchy. The serotonin system helps us cope psychologically in a bad social situation. The best support for a serotonin deficiency is probably the natural system of positive social feedback evolved…

Three major issues shape delivery of education in the Caribbean island of Curacao: the Dutch and Papiamentu languages of instruction, the two governmental layers, and scarcity of resources. Despite funding limitations, education is changing. The five-year general secondary education model and the six-year college preparatory program are being…

Archaeology and cultural anthropology show that humans developed many discrete skills (social, technological, natural history, and language intelligence) over the past million years, but only recently have combined these into "broad" intelligence. Understanding learning is a key issue. Metacognition, the ability to consider one's thinking, is…

When children feel threatened by environmental factors (abuse, poverty, malnourishment, family violence, or the traditional schooling system), they downshift their thinking and limit their behavior choices. To think critically, children must feel safe to take risks. They learn best when immersed in complex experiences and when allowed to process…

Today, researchers can learn about blood flow, electromagnetic fields, and chemical composition of the brain by using functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). As biologists, medical researchers, and cognitive scientists learn more about brain functions, educators must keep informed, study, and apply what they have learned in the classroom.…

Educators must teach and assess in ways that allow students to use their memorization, analytical, creative, and practical abilities. A Yale study of 199 high schoolers found that students whose instruction matched their abilities pattern performed significantly better than the others. Expanding the range of abilities tested expands the range of…

Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences ignores certain assumptions about the nature, display, and development of intelligence. Instead of determining how many intelligences a child displays, educators must observe the kinds of activities and roles in which the child shows strength. Teachers should organize curricula around the child,…

In productive constructionism, a teacher's job is to fuse students' knowledge with what experts know, not to favor one over the other. Teachers do not promote understanding by permitting students' constructions to stand even though they clash with experts' constructions. Student engagement in problem-solving tasks is crucial, but so is…

Teaching strategies that overcome the brain's natural tendency to limit information can open students' minds to new ideas and creative mental habits. Seven strategies to provoke divergent thinking and deepen understanding are hypothetical thinking, reversal, application of different symbol systems, analogy, viewpoint analysis, completion, and web…

By capitalizing on students' strengths and interests, reading styles instruction can help most youngsters become proficient readers. It is natural for children to enjoy reading. They should be challenged with high-level reading materials. Every student has a special reading style that develops at different times and rates. Successful programs are…

Basing their classroom instruction on the Dunn Learning Styles Model, two third-grade teachers modified certain classroom-design features, including noise, light, temperature, spatial design, sociological stimuli, perception centers, mobility, and intake. Accommodating students' reading styles has yielded superior results on the Texas Assessment…

The 4MAT System honors the distinctive style that each student brings to the classroom, while helping all students grow by mastering the entire cycle of learning styles. The learner makes meaning by moving through a natural cycle--from feeling to reflecting to thinking and, finally, to acting. Teachers need not label learners by style; instead,…

A curricular anchor is a complex problem that students acknowledge as worth solving and that validates learning a set of relevant skills and concepts. To motivate students, anchors must capture the imagination, be perceived as important by learners, legitimize the disciplinary content they integrate, and accommodate a variety of learning…