April 2011 Blog Posts (46)

Are you a new teacher? Are you struggling with discipline and classroom management?

To many teachers, discipline means to punish, but does punishment transform the misbehavior? Does it work?

Discipline means to teach. Rather than detention and missing recess, positive child guidance focuses on both the weaknesses and strengths of each child and then teaches the specific skills necessary to be successful in the classroom. It is time to discard the traditional paradigm…

Are you using one of these education-specific Social Learning applications?

Last week’s article, “Facebook in the Classroom. Seriously”, was the first in a series focused on the use of social networking tools in the classroom. I am writing this series of articles as part of…

Dear all,

The grade 5 students at Hong Kong Academy are undertaking their Exhibition projects. These projects try to solve real world problems that they have selected themselves. The students are trying to collect as much primary research as possible. One way we are doing this is through questionnaires. Below are links to all of the questionnaires. We are looking for as many…

We have finally started the process of Exhibition full steam ahead.  It's only 5 weeks away (plus a week of break)!  The students met their mentors for the second time on Wednesday and it was again a positive meeting.  The mentors were happy to see that the students had acquired much more information on their topics and were now able to discuss what they were researching and even framing their inquiry around key concept questions. 

We all keep emphasizing the central idea and having…

Reading by the end of 3^rd grade is critical for success in school and in life. After 3^rd grade, the focus shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. Research shows that students who haven’t mastered basic reading skills by the end of 3^rd grade—whom we call ‘striving readers’—are less likely to get on track and keep up with their peers’ academic achievement. Research also shows that striving readers after the primary years are more…