Hmmm. Re the boggling, it's hard to know why your students have made so much progress this year and not in their previous schools without more information about your charter school. How many students are in your class (which sounds like it's supervised by one teacher and you as an aide)? Of those students, how many of them have severe behavorial problems that require the teacher to discipline them on a daily basis? How many of them don't speak English fluently? How many don't have a parent who speaks English? How many don't have a parent who is home and can help/encourage them to do homework? These are all things that slow down a class' learning process; if there are discrepancies between the public schools they were in before and the charter school they're in now, that may be a large part of the difference
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You raise very good points. As it happens, it's possible to obtain information on most of the variables you pointed out. If you ever want to try your hand at comparing schools demographic data and test scores hop over to to the Educational Data partnership ... http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/welcome.asp... )
I hadn't really made this connection before, but I guess it makes sense that a problem-solving environment would probably enable kids make up lost ground. If you take a step back and teach kids how to be active learners and thinkers, the the tasks they undertake are much more interesting and the reason for mastering skills becomes more obvious. That makes the task of teaching all the easier.
That really makes sense to me. It almost seems as though our brains are so hard-wired to learn by experience that when you actively try to learn something, you do a worse job than if you are just thrown into a situation where you already have to know it. It reminds me of one of my favorite Mr. Klier expressions: "Nothing teaches you algebra like calculus
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That really makes sense to me. It almost seems as though our brains are so hard-wired to learn by experience that when you actively try to learn something, you do a worse job than if you are just thrown into a situation where you already have to know it. It reminds me of one of my favorite Mr. Klier expressions: "Nothing teaches you algebra like calculus ( ... )
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