Reading Develops Minds

Gaithersburg school says no homework — just free reading

By Jay Mathews

Two years ago in a column on how schools could save money, I suggested replacing elementary school homework with free reading.

“Throw away the expensive take-home textbooks, the boring worksheets and the fiendish make-a-log-cabin-out-of-Tootsie-Rolls projects,” I wrote. “Eliminating traditional homework for this age group will save paper, reduce textbook losses and sweeten home life. Students should be asked instead to read something, maybe with their parents -- at least 10 minutes a night for first-graders, 20 minutes for second-graders and so on.”

Many readers liked the idea, but they and I were sure it would go nowhere, particularly in the Washington area. Many children here see homework as a welcome rite of passage, like getting a library card or being allowed to watch the seamier shows on the CW. Many parents equate heavy homework with good teaching.

Nonetheless, to my astonishment, an elementary school principal in Montgomery County—a homework hotbed—has just junked regular after-school assignments in favor of free reading and other unorthodox requirements. Stephanie Brant, principal of Gaithersburg Elementary, is not following my suggestion. This is her idea based on extensive work with students and deep familiarity with the importance of learning to read.

The school’s parents are still getting used to it. Cory Siansky, a technology consultant who is secretary of the Parent-Teacher Association, said he and his wife, a teacher, think Brant is a wonderful principal but want their daughters to develop the habit of doing academic work after school. “The behavior of homework is more important than the content of homework,” he said.

Brant is reassuring her parents that there will be assignments beyond the current 30 minutes of free reading, with parents reading to younger children. She and her teachers are planning homework, like research on animals, to inspire critical thinking and more reading of non-fiction books.

Brant said backpacks full of traditional homework don’t help much. “I know we need to get away from worksheets,” she said. Research shows that although homework in high school, and to a certain extent in middle school, correlates with higher achievement, elementary school students who do homework score about the same on standardized tests as those who don’t.

Brant, 34, grew up in Northern Virginia, attending Robinson Secondary School and James Madison University. She read to her son Aidan, 5, and daughter Isabella, 2, while they were still in the womb. As a beginning first-grade teacher in Northern Virginia, she said, “I had a passion to teach kids how to read.”

She hasn’t lost it. Seventy-five percent of Gaithersburg Elementary students are from low-income families. This summer Brant scheduled stops at several apartment complexes every Tuesday and Thursday to hand out the donated books she carried around in her grey Acura TSX.

Brant sees her new homework policy as one way to enhance the district’s new curriculum emphasizing reading--including more non-fiction and technical material. “This is a really big shift in what kids have to do,” Brant said. The school has a new glog---an internal blog—that allows them to share reviews of what they have read.

She is working with parents to address their concerns. Siansky and his wife, for instance, are worried that 30 minutes of free reading doesn’t mean much to their second-grader Emily and kindergartner Hannah. Like many Montgomery parents, their children already spend much more time than that with books.

Hannah has long anticipated, with great excitement, the new responsibilities of being in school with the big kids. So her parents have arranged a basket, just for her, full of brain-teasers, puzzles and other intriguing exercises.

“We call it homework,” Siansky said. That seems like a fine solution to me. But what matters most is getting children into the habit of picking up a book.

By Jay Mathews | 04:53 PM ET, 09/20/2011


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/school-says-no-homework--just-free-reading/2011/09/16/gIQAD11siK_blog.html

Creating Teaching Momnerts

Learning is a big part of family life. The principal of Deal Middle School, Ms. Kim, sends a weekly "News From..." email. She always includes some sort of article about learning in the email. Below is a copy of what she copied in her April 11, 2010, News From Alice Deal / The Weekly Bulletin. I think it has some good points on conveying information to anyone.



Food for thought...

Twelve Ways To Make Information Stick In Students' Brains

"When information is presented to students, it goes into the working memory of their brain," says teacher/writer Bill Page in this Teachers.Net/Gazette article (featured in Education Digest). The information is likely to evaporate unless something moves it into long-term memory. How can teachers make that happen? Page shares 12 strategies:

· Make it personal. Pairing students, having them work in small groups, and orchestrating interactive activities all help to link new information to each student's prior knowledge and experiences.

· Make it interesting. "Teachers must find another way to teach those who did not learn the lesson the first time," says Page. The best way to do that is to hook students' interest.

· Help students construct meaning. "If new information does not connect or relate to existing knowledge, the brain will not accept it," says Page. Teachers need to listen carefully as students process new information and involve them in constructing their own meaning. "Students learn more by answering their own questions of 'why'," he says, "than by someone giving them reasons for 'why'."

· Make it meaningful. "The why is more important than the what in learning," says Page. New information has to make sense to students.

· Have students apply new knowledge. Students "use it or lose it," says Page. "Pairing and small-group discussions are crucial to learning."

· Engage emotions. "We learn in direct proportion to the strength of our feelings," says Page, "- especially our likes and dislikes... Emotions are why we remember the person who sat behind us in the 7^th grade, but can't remember the name of someone we met yesterday."

· Maximize the use of the senses. The brain's neurons take in information from hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching, says Page: "The more neurons that are affected by stimuli from different sources, the stronger and longer lasting the memory and recall ability will be."

· Make it social. "What we value in learning depends on what those around us are learning," says Page. "We learn from the company we keep."

· Apply the laws of learning. Teachers need to be savvy to predictable patterns of attention, memory, retrieval, and forgetting, says Page. One way is to make connections to children's interests, including sports and holidays.

· Use associations. "The brain works by linking things to other things," says Page. "Memory relies on patterns, concepts, meaningfulness, relevance, and associations." That's why using similes, metaphors, and well-chosen examples is so helpful.

· Teach concepts. Once students grasp a general concept, the facts related to it fall into place and are much easier to remember.

· Climb Bloom's ladder. About 95 percent of teaching and testing is at the lowest Bloom levels - knowledge and comprehension. Disconnected bits of knowledge are the easiest to "teach" (Memorize the 50 state capitals) but the hardest for students to commit to long-term memory. When teachers "put facts in meaningful groups or concepts," says Page, "they're more easily learned." And that means getting students applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating.

"12 Things Teachers Must Know About Learning" by Bill Page in Teachers.Net/Gazette, February 2010, http://teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/bill-page/12-things-teachers-must-know/ (spotted in Education Digest, April 2010, Vol. 75, #8, p. 54-56)