27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Tadpole and Fish Fable of Comprehension
Michael Dickmann: Here's what the story is. There was this little tadpole and a fish that grew up in a pond, and they were always intensely curious about life outside the pond. And then, eventually, the tadpole grows into a frog and discovers that, because he's an amphibian, he can go out and see what life is like. So he comes back and tells the fish what he's seen.
He says, "Well, look, one of the things is that there's neat creatures called birds that can actually fly in the air, and they ... 1 
notes
notes20 JUN 2014 by ideonexus
Transcription Fluency
When you write something down, either while taking notes or while trying to write your own original thoughts, you’re dealing with what literacy scholars call “transcription fluency”: How quickly and fluidly you can get down?—?“transcribe”?—?the stuff that’s in your head. One of the reasons we formally teach handwriting to young children is that you don’t want a bottleneck between the ideas they’re forming and the writing. If you struggle with the act of forming letters and words, you’ve got l... 1 notes
notes21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Number
Number is a rich, many-sided domain whose simplest forms are compre-
hended by very young children and whose far reaches are still being explored
by mathematicians. Proficiency with numbers and numerical operations is
an important foundation for further education in mathematics and in fields
that use mathematics. Because much of this report attends to the learning
and teaching of number, it is important to emphasize that our perspective is
considerably broader than just computation. First, nu...Folksonomies: education mathematics
Folksonomies: education mathematics
1 notes
notesMathematics summarized.
13 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
We Teach Kids Mathematics in the Wrong Order
The familiar, hierarchical sequence of math instruction starts with counting, followed by addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division. The computational set expands to include bigger and bigger numbers, and at some point, fractions enter the picture, too. Then in early adolescence, students are introduced to patterns of numbers and letters, in the entirely new subject of algebra. A minority of students then wend their way through geometry, trigonometry and, finally, calculus, w... 1 notes
notesThe slow accumulation of basics turns kids off to the subject.
24 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Television is Not a Passive Medium
Ever since viewing screens entered the home, many observers have worried that they put our brains into a stupor. An early strain of research claimed that when we watch television, our brains mostly exhibit slow alpha waves—indicating a low level of arousal, similar to when we are daydreaming. These findings have been largely discarded by the scientific community, but the myth persists that watching television is the mental equivalent of, as one Web site put it, “staring at a blank wall.” Thes...Folksonomies: parenting television
Folksonomies: parenting television
1 notes
notesOur brains enter a state similar to that of reading a book when watching TV. Children are able to make sense of TV and are actively engaged with it.
31 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Exercise with your Children
This rise in pediatric obesity is painful to hear in the brain science community, especially because we know so much about the relationship between physical activity and mental acuity. Exercise—especially aerobic exercise—is fanastic for the brain, increasing executive function scores anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent. This is true across the life span, from young children to members of the golden-parachute crowd. Strengthening exercises do not give you these numbers (though there ar... 1 notes
notesExercise is so important for improved cognitive function.
24 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Training Memory in Preschool Children
Psychologists have tested memory performance in people all over the world and found that those who have completed at least a few years of formal education score higher than those from the same culture and economic status who did not attend school; and the more years completed, the better the performance. Where formal schooling especially helps is in learning memory strategies, deliberate tricks like verbal rehearsal, information clustering, and note-taking that children use to make it through...
1 Schooling appears to be the most influential factor in training memory in children, but parents can do more by coaching children to remember things and build narratives as a tool for memory.
24 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Myth of the Educated Parent
Remarkably enough, the most obvious influence over children's language development turned out to be the mere amount of parents' talking; children whose parents addressed or responded to them more in early life had larger, faster-growing vocabularies and scored higher on IQ tests than children whose parents spoke fewer words to them overall. Parents who talk more inevitably expose their children to a greater variety of words and sentences, so a correlation also turned up between the diversity ...Controlling for socioeconomic status does show that children whose parents are higher on the education ladder will have better grammar; however, parenting style is a much better predictor of a child's improvement than income.
24 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
How to Provide Language Enrichment to Children
First of all, language stimulation should begin very early: by just three years of age, children are already headed down vastly different paths of verbal achievement as a result of their cumulative experience with language. Ideally, language stimulation should begin at birth, since we know that newborns' brains are already attuned to human speech and immediately start learning the sounds of their mother tongue. In fact. Fowler's group found that babies who entered their program between six a...Begin stimulating the child early, provide as much quantity of language stimulation as possible, and pay attention to the quality of language, making it age-appropriate and clearly enunciated.
20 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Importance of Tactile Experience in Infants
Nonetheless, our early touch experiences determine the extent of possible tactile sensitivity. They also play a surprisingly potent role in the overall quality of brain development. We have already seen in Chapter 2 how rats raised in a highly enriched environment develop a thicker cerebral cortex and are actually cleverer than rats raised in a standard laboratory environment. A good share of this enriching experience involves tactile sensation. When young rats are provided with new toys, the...Rats provided with a variety of constantly changed toys to play with and those touched by their mothers have larger brains and are more cognitively prepared for the world.
