Move over Potatoes

We hear comments about unhealthy school lunches and snacks, but what is being done about it?  Is it possible to offer vegetables, like broccoli, instead of French fries? The Department of Agriculture wants to do so, but those who produce potatoes aren’t happy about it. Harvard School of Public Health’s Nutrition Source UPDATE says that potatoes don’t count on its Healthy Eating Plate. Some people are worried that offering a wider variety of vegetables would be too costly, but the cost of healthcare for those who aren’t eating properly would be much greater according to Harvard Health.

Preposition Puppy Party

Super Duper Publications’ Party Pups™ is an exciting board game for small groups of students. It tackles twenty-four prepositions with adorable puppies, doggie treats, and clever activities. The game is listed for Grades PK-5; we tried it with a group of third grade students, but think younger students would enjoy it as well. The game comes with 100 dog treat tokens, which students try to win. To play, students choose a game board/dog placemat depicting their favorite type of dog, and identify and use prepositions on the game cards to earn doggie treats. A resource booklet comes with the game. Party Pups would be an excellent learning resource to use in a language arts class in which students are divided into groups based upon their skill level. Teacher guidance when playing the game also helps to expand students’ knowledge of prepositions. If you’d like to see a video that describes the game, you can watch it on Facebook.

Common Core Math Standards: A Limited Vision?

Grant Wiggins of Education Week calls the math standards “a bitter disappointment.” Rather than emphasizing helping students to learn to use math to solve real problems so that they will learn to enjoy and appreciate mathematics, the standards, according to Wiggins, include nothing about “building curricula backward from rich, nonroutine, interesting, and authentic problems.” Test results from the National Assessment of Education Progress, Trends in Inetrnational Mathematics and Science Study, and state tests demonstrate that our students lack the ability to solve problems that require the transfer of classroom learning. We’ve been talking about making math relevent for a long time through the use of problems that make sense to students, but how far have we come in achieving this goal? Wiggins believes that new standards won’t help us move forward with changes in math curricula.

Free White Paper: Facing Down Bullying

Herff Jones Achievement Series offers a pdf white paper, Facing Down Bullying, which features information on helping schools with awareness and the definition of, and strategies for, dealing with bullying behaviors. It focuses on what is called “relationship bullying” rather than bullying that includes physical aggression. Relationship bullies are difficult to detect because they are often popular students, and those who are bullied don’t want to admit to anyone that they are ostracized, teased, targets of rumors, etc. The paper discusses programs and Websites designed to promote an awareness of relationship bullying in its many forms and provides parents, schools, and community organizations ways to deal with it.

Math Phobia

We hear it all the time. “I’m not good at math.” “I just can’t do math.”  Parents often back students up with these beliefs by telling their children, “I was never good in math, either.” Sad. Although some students do have math learning problems, most could do well in math if they believed in themselves and achieved success in basic courses first. As we pass students who haven’t learned all that they need for the next level, they get farther behind at each new level. What we’ve done is to focus on the math and not their anxiety about it. Once they do poorly in beginning courses, the fear accelerates. A brain study reported in the journal Cerebral Cortex (10/11) said that math anxiety may be the biggest hindrance in students’ achievement in mathematics. It points out that we need to find ways to decrease fear of failure in math. Students who are sure of their math abilities don’t freeze on math tests and quizzes. If we help those anxiety-prone students with both their skills and fear, they will be on the road to believing in their math abilities.

How to Get People to Change

Liz B. Davis, Director of Educational Technology at the Belmont Hill School outside Boston, in her The Power of Educational Technology blog (08/28/11) recommends the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath. She says everyone on her faculty read the book this summer. After reading it, she took the authors’ three recommendations: Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant, and Shape the Path and translated them into what schools should be doing with changes related to technologies. Her recommendations for change: add an additional tech project every year, keep up with what other schools are doing with tech, and make it easy for faculty to keep up. Davis meets individually with all faculty members by the end of the first semester to see how they are coming along and how she can help.

Digital Badge Competition Extended

The HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning (DML) Competition is accepting applications from organizations that have excellent learning content for online networks, tutorials, gaming environments, etc., which could be complemented with the distribution of badges as recognition. The first stage of the competition (due November 14, 2011) stresses the identification of badge learning content and programs. This stage would be perfect for districts, schools, and teachers who have developed digital content that works well with their students. Stage 2 (January 2012) is for individuals or groups who are experienced in design. The competition will involve using those programs/content selected in Stage 1 and other content from DML. In Stage 3 (February 2012), finalists from Stage 1 and Stage 2 will form teams to complete badge proposals. Five awards of $5000-$80000 will be given.

Healthy Weight Teams with Discovery Against Childhood Obesity

The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation together with Discovery Education will re-launch Energy Balance 101 and the second Healthy Playground Makeover Sweepstakes. The hope is to encourage the creation of healthy environments for children through healthy eating and physical activity. The Energy Balance site contains lesson plans, resources and videos for Grades K-2 and 3-5 in addition to family resources. Two Grand Prizes of  $30,000 will be awarded to elementary schools: one will go to a Title 1 school and one will go to another school. There will also be three awards of $5000 for a secondary school.

Policies Educators Don’t Like

eSchool News conducted a poll asking educators what education policies they thought should be eliminated. See if you agree with the top ten that were recommended.

Number 10 - “Creating a single, statewide student information system”

Number 9 - “Teacher licensing requirements”

Number 8 - “Not requiring technology application classes”

Number 7 - “Prohibiting the use of personal technologies or web pages”

Number 6 - “Grade levels based on age”

Number 5 - “Seat-time requirements”

Number 4 - “Rules for auctioning off old equipment

Number 3 - “Unfunded mandates”

Number 2 - “Teacher seniority preferences”

Number 1 - “No Child Left Behind”.

You can go to eSchool News and make your own suggestions about what policies you think schools would be better without.

Whole Child Approach to Bullying Prevention

ASCD (Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development) advocates reforms that include classroom rules, procedures, and expectations designed to promote acceptable social interaction. Information on the reforms can be found in the Healthy School Report, 2^nd Edition. The Report looks at school climate in relationship to “attendance, engagement, empowerment, ownership, teaching, and learning”. ASCD includes whole child indicators, which help with assessment, goals and decision-making related to creating healthy school environments.  The Association’s Whole Child Blog targeted bullying during September/October 2011, and as a result, has published the Bullying Roundup, an online page containing some of comments from the blog.