Over at Skeptic’s Dictionary Robert Todd Carroll has an extended and detailed analysis of the bologna marketed under the brand name “Brain Gym.” Mr. Carroll, who retired as professor of philosophy in 2007 after teaching taught courses on logic and reasoning, created a Web site (and wrote a book) that covers diverse lunch meats ranging from supernatural, paranormal, and pseudo-scientific. His examination of Brain Gym shows that it falls into the third category of those three…at least, he doesn’t go into any connections between Brain Gym the supernatural or paranormal.
Continue reading ‘Skeptics’ Brain Gym workout’
Author Archive for JohnL
The UK incarnation of the Reading Reform Foundation provides a glimpse into some of the thinking supporting systematic and synthetic phonics. Here’s clip from it’s home page:
You are entering fascinating territory as these are very exciting times regarding the debate on how best to teach beginning reading in English-speaking countries. English is taught in many countries as an additional language and so people across the world are following this debate with great interest.
Yep, with a little help from friends, I’m about to post Bogus Bowl IV. That means that BB III will soon close. Now, in football one doesn’t get to vote for the winner of Super Bowl I, II, IV, XXVII, MCII, or IIIVMC,; those have been decided. But, it’s late in the 4th quarter for Bogus Bown III; you can still get in your votes on BB III over the next few days. Just click on the link to Teach Effectively Polls. (My vote on this one went for an explanation that is running behind right now.)
Michael F. Shaughnessy has published responses by Reid Lyon, one of the architects of Reading First, to questions about the “Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report” by Beth Gamse and colleagues. Here’s a link to his comments. They are wide-ranging and detailed.
Continue reading ‘Lyon on RF impact study’
The US Institute for Education Sciences released an important report about the effects of Reading First program at the end of April. In the report, “Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report,” Beth C. Gamse and colleagues describe the methods and findings of a study mandated by law to examine the effects of the RF program on instruction in classrooms and outcomes for children attending those schools where it it is implemented.
For those of us who think RF methods represent an improvement over garden-variety reading instruction, the results are disappointing. Although teachers were found to be devoting more time to phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, students were not experiencing significant improvements in their reading outcomes.
Here’s the executive summary from the report.
Continue reading ‘Weak impact for RF’
This time the folks at “Weapons of Math Destruction” have raised the spectre of the Follow Through study of early education models. The cartoon characters (has a ring to it, doesn’t it?) are examining a graph showing the results of a comparison of alternative models of instruction.
Continue reading ‘WMD on FT’
One of the folks at the Access Center wrote to me a while ago to promote its Web presence. There are some free resources available, and some readers might find them instructive.
The Access Center: Improving Outcomes for All Students k-8 (www.k8accesscenter.org), [is] a federally funded national technical assistance center. I am taking this time to introduce you to our free resources. Our resources focus on core content areas - language arts, math, and science - as well as on instructional and learning strategies to provide students with disabilities access to rigorous academic content. We have a series of professional development modules and information briefs that are available on our Web site as well as on a CD-ROM, if requested.
Don Hirsch published an editorial in Education Week that tells it true. We need, he argues, to place a greater emphasis on what and how we teach during children’s early school years. Of course, he champions his recommendation for adopting a clear curriculum during the early years, too. But, the big idea is that the primary and elementary grades are very important if students are to be able to excel in high school and college.
Continue reading ‘Hirsch hits homer’
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