After years of classroom research, Dillon (1988) concluded that teacher interventions during student discussions tend to shut down student thinking and student talk. He found this to be particularly true of positive feedback or praise. The rationale, of course, is that when a teacher communicates agreement with one…
In your planning, consider what you most want students to know and then work backward to develop an opening that promotes sustained interest toward that goal. If possible, represent the unit in several different ways that appeal to different learning strengths and levels of achievable challenge so you can continually…
For some reason that no one really understands, there is a psychological effect upon human listeners in regards to the musical scale. The tonic pitch, or tonal center is not only the mathematical center of the scale, but is the psychological center as well. Human perception of the tonic pitch in relation to the other…
It has the potential to be a great equity equalizer, ensuring that all kids in America have an equal shot at success and a productive life. Because public education involves all kids, it has an opportunity to promote great diversity not only in the composition of its students but also in getting kids exposed to a wide…
She followed him over to the wall, where he settled onto a bench. “Syrio Forel was first sword to the Sealord of Braavos, and are you knowing how that came to pass?” “You were the finest swordsman in the city.” “Just so, but why? Other men were stronger, faster, younger, why was Syrio Forel the best? I will tell you…
If experiments are performed thousands of times at all seasons and in every place without once producing the effects mentioned by your philosophers, poets, and historians, this will mean nothing and we must believe their words rather our own eyes? But what if I find for you a state of the air that has all the…
In the Next Generation episode “Galaxy's Child,” the Enterprise stumbles upon an alien life-form that lives in empty space, feeding on energy. Particularly tasty is radiation with a very specific frequency 1420 million cycles per second, having a wavelength of 21 cm. In the spirit of Pythagoras, if there were a Music…
Starting anew with a clean slate has been one of the most harmful ideas in history. It treats previous knowledge as an impediment and imagines that only present knowledge deployed in theoretical purity can make real the wondrous new vision. Thus the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the…
Why do the speakers of different languages hear and produce sounds so differently? Ears and mouths are the same the world over. What differs is our brains. Exposure to a particular language has altered our brains and shaped our minds, so that we perceive sounds differently. This in turn leads speakers of different…