Teachers, Make Room for Metacognition

July is here and depending on where you are, you are probably either getting close to finishing up a term before a school break or you are approaching a nice long summer vacation. Either way, the future is just around the corner. This is a perfect time to think back and think forward.

Tackling the Reading Comprehension Conundrum

In my last blog, The Reading Comprehension Conundrum, I wrote about factors, often not identified, that negatively impact comprehension instruction, particularly in developing countries. This blog will focus on one pivotal way to tackle the comprehension conundrum by making an alteration to the trajectory of teacher preparation.

The Reading Comprehension Conundrum

The blogs I will be posting will share teaching practices that have had a high-impact on teachers and their early grade literacy learners in Kenyan and Ethiopian low-resource schools. More specifically, I will focus on the critical space between teacher and student; the space where the magic happens or not. There are issues, however, that call for a lens adjustment – a wider lens for a broader perspective. This blog addresses one of those issues.

4 Questions That Set The Stage For Vital Teaching

Why should teaching the processes of learning be on the front burner this year in your classroom? I think this familiar proverb answers that question best, “If a man is hungry and you give him a fish, he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." The paramount goal of education today is to make students nimble, lifelong, confident learners, capable of acquiring the knowledge they need when they collaborate, problem solve and create. While purposely selected static or declarative knowledge (e.g., facts, principles, concepts) that adds to a student's depth of understanding and sense of context is an essential part of a broad education, procedural or dynamic knowledge (e.g., strategies, metacognition, habits of mind) is the enduring basis of autonomy, creativity and problem solving.