When we invite students to engage with a text through creative writing, we boost the potential for the characters and stories to be embedded in a student's long-term memory.
In 2021, the challenge of returning to school from winter break feels magnified. So what insights from Mind, Brain, and Education Science can I use to help make this critical point of a unique school year go well?
Classic research on belonging suggests that telling students you have high expectations of them and that you believe in their potential to meet those expectations has a positive impact. How do you follow through on that?
Having a classroom built on trusting relationships that accepted that failure could be a part of learning led all of us to be more vulnerable and to take more risks. And this, in turn, led me to feel more comfortable letting go of more control to add more joy into the classroom.
I challenge each educator to remind students that they have the autonomy to voice whatever is on their mind because their perspective is valued and needed.
Motivating students with carrots and sticks—through endless, demoralizing cycles of high-stakes testing and assessment—is not getting us the deep learning and love of learning we desire. Fortunately there is a science of motivation, and we need to design it into the very fiber of our virtual courses.