Reflecting is a way of learning. As students move into senior school and then college, they will find opportunities to think about their thinking and analyze it to make meaning as well as understand their own self better. Moreover, before we start to understand the behavior of others it is important to first understand oneself……. Continue Reading →
Tags: Learning skill, Reflective Learning, Students
Learning to make effective decisions is a competence and requires practice. The art of decision making is to accept that there will be an opportunity cost attached to it. It is about choices and given the resources we have; we make the choice that is best at the time. Therefore, it is important that we…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, ATL, College Readiness, Learning skill, Students
Plagiarism and copyright infringement are not new in the education world, but they entered my vocabulary somewhere in early 2000. A good four years after I started teaching in schools. Academic honesty till then remained limited to, students not copying from one another in tests. But slowly and strongly the idea of academic honesty broadened…… Continue Reading →
Tags: Students, teaching and learning
In simple terms executive function means, the ability for the brain to take steps to complete a complex task or goal, regulating thoughts, emotions, and actions to support the accomplishment of it. The set of skills that underlie in strengthening executive function of the brain are the capacity to plan ahead to meet goals, display…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, #SchoolLife, College Readiness, Middle School Students, Students, Work Habits
Teachers and students frequently use images to enhance their presentations, academic writing or projects. There are many sites that can be explored for images. In fact the extraordinary quality and thoughtful creation that is available should be considered as a generous gift by the owner of the image to us. Many of these images are available…… Continue Reading →
Tags: ATL, Classroom Teaching, Students
The important thing in learning is connecting concepts with phenomena in daily life. The ability to reflect on your experiences, thinking, mental disposition helps in building metacognitive skill or deeper thinking skills. The change in our environment and its impact on our thinking is worth documenting. This is a historic period we are living through…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, Students
A chance read of a twitter feed led me to think of how this common challenge of COVID 19 that the world is experiencing will go down as one of the defining moments of the 21st century in history. When in July 1942, a thirteen year old Anne Frank and her family went into hiding…… Continue Reading →
Tags: Middle School Students, Students
One of the skills rarely taught in school is, budgeting. Yet all students as they graduate from the comfort of school and their home as they move to college, will need to understand and plan their budget. More so, if you are going to be living away from home. With no real understanding of what…… Continue Reading →
Tags: Budgeting, College Readiness, Financial Literacy, Personal Finance, Students
Was recently hearing a talk show and the guest artist said that, ‘I spent a lot of times worrying about the one thing I did not have and overlooked the twelve other qualities I had’. I thought it was such a simple thing to understand and say. Yet, so many times we struggle with accepting…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, School Life, Students, Work Habits
Competency is to do something successfully or efficiently. The person must have the necessary ability, knowledge, commitment and skills to do the task. These come from learning and regular practice. Whereas the meaning of capability is the condition of having the capacity to do something. What versus How What, is the task at hand. Does…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Reflections, #teachers, Students
Giving and receiving feedback is something that we encourage our students to practice as they engage in peer assessment. In fact, we give feedback to one another all the time informally. Therefore, learning how to feedback can enhance communication skill. Giving or receiving feedback is an art. Good art will always have Balance, Order, and…… Continue Reading →
Tags: Middle School Students, Reflective Learning, Students
All swans are white. But that is because I have never seen a black one. As we have seen hundreds of white swans, we use inductive reasoning to state that, all swans are white. This is an oft cited example of falsifiability. Sir Karl Popper wrote that the nature of scientific thought is that we could…… Continue Reading →
Tags: School Life, Students, Work Habits
While in school, staff rooms, workshops, every where teachers talk about education, there is a growing understanding of active teaching and active learning. But both cannot happen if there is no active listening skill. People may hear but not necessarily listen. Hearing is the receiving of aural stimuli and listening is receiving and interpreting that…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, #teachers, Students
Students get the opportunity to take interviews while in school for school magazine or a newsletter report, but by and large this opportunity is restricted to only a select few, unless or until it is part of an academic assignment. In high school as students prepare for their college admissions, and attend college or career…… Continue Reading →
Tags: College Readiness, School Life, Students
A common question I hear from parents is, ‘how many hours should my child study at home?’ Of course there is a direct correlation between the child’s age and the number of hours so there cannot be a standard response. I once asked this question to two of my most academically bright students. The answer was…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, School Life, Students, Work Habits
There are things that you have to do. Then there are things that you don’t have to do, yet you do. You do them, not to talk about it or to show it to someone but because you enjoy doing them. It could be doodling, taking photographs of food or sunsets, beat boxing, participating in…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #SchoolLife, Students
A common question that parents ask is, how much play time is good for their children as they approach assessment cycle in schools. It is no surprise that the student and the parent have two different opinions on it. But what is important is to understand that both physical and mental activity helps in thinking…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, Students, Work Habits
Our experiences help us develop our own world view or beliefs. New experiences not only help us strengthen that same world view but also at times help us modify the existing. But seldom so. When an argument, rationale, information, data is given to us as evidence that contradicts our belief, we very often, instead of…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #thinking, Learning skill, Students, Work Habits
A couple of months back, I was conducting a session with students of Grade IX and X in a school on Study Skills and Time Management. In the course of one of the activities, students were asked, ‘reasons that affect their study time at home’. I have tried to group them here for better clarity…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, #Reflections, #SchoolLife, Reflective Learning, Students
One of the challenges that I face with students is to get them to write an essay. While essay writing is taught in school from junior school, somehow students always find it a challenge because they do not understand and implement a ‘writing structure’. Pattern and symmetry do not exist only in math or arts……. Continue Reading →
Tags: #assessment, #Parents, Learning skill, Middle School Students, Students, teaching and learning
As early as 2005, the OECD recommendation advised that “financial education should start at school. People should be educated about financial matters as early as possible in their lives” (OECD, 2005a). It is important to establish early foundation in financial literacy as children today will not only experience complexity in financial products but also bear…… Continue Reading →
Tags: Budgeting, Financial Literacy, Personal Finance, Principals, School Leaders, School Life, Students
The tennis match started dot on time. The two teams start with warm up as the spectators settled down to a match of tennis. Each of the four players have their distinct style and presence on court. They are being observed by every one and they know it. Yet, there is something absolutely honest about…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #Parents, School Life, Students, Work Habits
Some traits or behaviors transcend boundaries of color, caste, creed and age. Procrastination happens to be one of them. Why do we procrastinate? For me what works is to identify all the reasons and then keep them in check. Smash them when they rear their head to bite. I may not always be successful but…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #SchoolLife, #teachers, Students, Work Habits
There is much to learn from observation. I have always liked to give the analogy of a chef to students when it comes to organization, attention to detail, creativity, stamina, patience and quick decision making. Habits that will help us succeed in whatever we wish to do. Organization is a habit that children must learn…… Continue Reading →
Tags: collegeadmission, School Life, Students
Aspirations give us the motivation to do something. Aspirations come from our dreams and unmet drams can lead to frustrations. The question therefore is what are we doing to fulfill our dreams? Research suggests that our aspirations go through a U-phase. As we reach mid twenties our aspiration peak and sometime during our fifties it hits the…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #teachers, Students
Research indicates that cellphones cause distraction leading to stress and frustration as students loose valuable time. Humans tend to calculate or observe small shifts as manageable. Something that can be controlled or rectified when ever we want to. It is when a dramatic, unannounced (really?) gigantic shift occurs and kicks us in the stomach that…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #teachers, Students
The sense of ownership is liberating. It fuels creativity and purpose. This is what we try and build in you as you engage with your research work. But sometimes, the desire to write that perfect lab report or the most earth-shattering extended essay may cloud your judgement of time. Don’t get me wrong, it is…… Continue Reading →
Tags: School Life, Students
Exam time can be stressful no matter what age you are at. It is not uncommon, AND it can be managed. What you can do: Understand yourself and know your limits. Target setting early in the year can give you that clarity. Ensure that you have all the resources you need to prepare for the…… Continue Reading →
Tags: School Life, Students
Being inundated with countless emails daily is in itself a challenge. Coupled with that, what can be most frustrating is, receiving emails that one has nothing to do with or that which requires a couple of reads to understand what it means! A simple checklist that can come handy: State a meaningful subject line. It…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #teachers, Students
I got introduced to ‘sketchnoting’ fairly recently. However, as I investigated and practiced, I realized that I had actually been doing sketch noting from childhood. Writing small notes for myself in the margins of my notebook in school or making a square or a circle around the text that I wanted to highlight, or simply…… Continue Reading →
Tags: #teachers, ATL, Students
When asked, most teachers talk about how they encourage young learners to research for their projects, assignments and home work. But how many of us first teach our students appropriate behavior when using digital media and more specifically the social media.
Tags: #Parents, School Life, StudentsProudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.
