Educational Resources & Tech Tools 09/22/2016

• As if being 12-years-old wasn't hard enough, a new study confirms many schools make it even harder because of the theory of top dog, bottom dog — Quartz

  The K-8 model seems to be more supportive of middle school students than the 6-8 model.

  tags: middle school research k-8

  • They found being in a K-8 school, where kids were top dogs for longer created a better learning environment, marked by less bullying, and better academic results.

  • “Top dogs are less likely to report bullying, fights, and gang activity and more likely to report feeling safe and welcome in school than bottom dogs due to their top dog status. In contrast, bottom dogs report higher rates of bullying, fighting, and gang activity and lower rates of safety and belonging than top and middle dogs.”

     

  • According to Guido Schwerdt, from the University of Konstanz and Martin R. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, students moving from elementary to middle school suffer a sharp drop in student achievement in the year they move, which persists through tenth grade (transitions to high school in ninth grade cause a smaller one-time drop in achievement, but the effect does not persist).

• 24 Must-Share Poems for Middle School and High School

  tags: poetry English

• Disseminating Displays by @mrnickhart – UKEdChat.com

  Practical advice on using displays in the classroom.

  tags: empathy displays posters curation room design

  • Displays should serve three functions.  Firstly, they should act as memory prompts for the knowledge, concepts, and ways of communicating and thinking that children are currently learning or have been learning. 
  • displays should set a standard for the extent of knowledge and the quality of work expected of children. 
  • Thirdly, they should make the classroom an inviting place that stimulates interest in the subject content to be learned
  • With the sheer amount of content that children are expected to learn, it can be tempting to plaster every inch of wall space with some sort of display.  This is a mistake.  Children can only attend to so much from the environment around them before working memory is overloaded.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.