school

Three Ss to reduce the stress of “homeschooling” our kids: Simplify, Structure, Support

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With nation­wide school clo­sures in effect, many par­ents are now mon­i­tor­ing home­school­ing while at the same time try­ing to make a liv­ing in the midst of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis. In this envi­ron­ment of bro­ken rou­tine and uncer­tain­ty, chances are your child is show­ing big feel­ings and chal­leng­ing behaviors.

In my work as a school psy­chol­o­gist, I’ve been hear­ing from par­ents that despite their best efforts, their chil­dren are strug­gling with meet­ing home­school expec­ta­tions. Kids who [Read more…] about Three Ss to reduce the stress of “home­school­ing” our kids: Sim­pli­fy, Struc­ture, Support

Study: Neonatal MRI scans of preterm children can help predict cognitive and academic problems, and guide early interventions

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Localized brain regions associated with early mathematics

Pre­dict­ing future cog­ni­tion in preterm chil­dren with MRI (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press blog):

“In the wake of the devel­op­ment of advanced neona­tal inten­sive med­ical care, more and more chil­dren born preterm man­age to beat the pre­vi­ous­ly tough odds…While this is one of the suc­cess sto­ries of mod­ern med­i­cine, long-term fol­low-up of pre­ma­ture-born pedi­atric cohorts show that…Many chil­dren will expe­ri­ence cog­ni­tive prob­lems that will [Read more…] about Study: Neona­tal MRI scans of preterm chil­dren can help pre­dict cog­ni­tive and aca­d­e­m­ic prob­lems, and guide ear­ly interventions

In the Age of Google, Should Schools Teach Memorization Skills?

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As school is about to resume, peo­ple are remind­ed of their strong opin­ions about how to fix schools: more fund­ing, bet­ter teach­ers, less gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence, more gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence, etc. But the one obvi­ous, and nev­er-stat­ed prob­lem, is that stu­dents don’t remem­ber what they are taught. In spite of all the “teach­ing to the test” that par­ents and teach­ers com­plain about, stu­dents still don’t remem­ber the very things they were taught as answers to test questions.

The rea­son they don’t remem­ber is that they are not taught how to mem­o­rize. Why is that? [Read more…] about In the Age of Google, Should Schools Teach Mem­o­riza­tion Skills?

The 2012 SharpBrains Virtual Summit Continues…

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“Third time’s the charm”…this is being our best Sum­mit, con­tent and tech­nol­o­gy-wise, so THANK YOU to all par­tic­i­pants for excel­lent talks, ques­tions and dis­cus­sions last week. We hope you enjoyed the ses­sions as much as we did!

Please remem­ber that the Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit con­tin­ues this week: [Read more…] about The 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit Continues…

Study: Dyslexia not related to intelligence. Implications for discrepancy model?

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NIH-fund­ed study finds dyslex­ia not tied to IQ (NIH press release):

At left, brain areas active in typ­i­cal­ly devel­op­ing read­ers engaged in a rhyming task. Shown at right is the brain area acti­vat­ed in poor read­ers involved in the same task.

- “Regard­less of high or low over­all scores on an IQ test, chil­dren with dyslex­ia show sim­i­lar pat­terns of brain activ­i­ty, accord­ing to researchers sup­port­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health. The results call into ques­tion the dis­crep­an­cy mod­el — the prac­tice of clas­si­fy­ing a child as dyslex­ic on the basis of a lag between read­ing abil­i­ty and over­all IQ scores.”

- “In many school sys­tems, the dis­crep­an­cy mod­el is the cri­te­ri­on for [Read more…] about Study: Dyslex­ia not relat­ed to intel­li­gence. Impli­ca­tions for dis­crep­an­cy model?

Developing self-regulation at school

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Excel­lent arti­cle in the New York Times on learn­ing, self-reg­u­la­tion and exec­u­tive fuunctions:

The School Issue: Preschool: Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Con­trol? (New York Times)

- “Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among schol­ars and sci­en­tists who study ear­ly-child­hood devel­op­ment, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the board­room than the class­room: exec­u­tive func­tion. Orig­i­nal­ly a neu­ro­science term, it refers to the abil­i­ty to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process infor­ma­tion in a coher­ent way, to hold rel­e­vant details in your short-term mem­o­ry, to avoid dis­trac­tions and men­tal traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recent­ly, cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gists have come to believe that exec­u­tive func­tion, and specif­i­cal­ly the skill of self-reg­u­la­tion, might hold the answers to some of the most vex­ing ques­tions in edu­ca­tion today.”

- “The abil­i­ty of young chil­dren to con­trol their emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive impuls­es, it turns out, is a remark­ably strong indi­ca­tor of both short-term and long-term suc­cess, aca­d­e­m­ic and otherwise.”

A tru­ly excel­lent arti­cle, high­ly rec­om­mend­ed read­ing. The only aspect lack­ing is the absence of coverage/ analy­sis of train­ing-based alter­na­tives to devel­op­ing self-reg­u­la­tion, such as med­i­ta­tion and com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing, which can help address some of the issues raised in the arti­cle (lim­it­ed scal­a­bil­i­ty, dif­fi­cul­ty in iso­lat­ing influ­en­tial vari­ables). We cov­ered this in-depth in our book inter­view with Michael Posner.