I regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see older Best Posts of the Month at Websites Of The Month (more recent lists can be found here).
These posts are different from the ones I list under the monthly“Most Popular Blog Posts.” Those are the posts the largest numbers of readers “clicked-on” to read. I have to admit, I’ve been a bit lax about writing those posts, though.
Here are some of the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written during this past month (not in any order of preference):
I primarily use it on days for standardized tests, and they’re all fairly innocuous (such as asking students to think and write for a minute about a successful ancestor). Also, even though some researchers have said that priming is not going to be successful if people are told in advance what is being done to them, I tell students ahead of time what we’re doing and why in the hope that they can apply these techniques to help them prepare for future high-pressure situations they might be in, like job interviews, and also because I just wouldn’t feel good about this kind of overt manipulation. I write about these ideas in my upcoming book.
Even though some researchers say it might not work if “subjects” are given prior knowledge of priming, more recent research related to placebos in medical treatment have found them to be effective even if patients know they are placebos (see my book for more information on that research), and it doesn’t seem like it’s that much of a stretch to apply those finding to priming. And, interestingly enough, I just learned about a big controversy going on in brain priming research which just may prove that point.
Apparently, though there have been a number of successful replications of famous priming experiments, there have also been failed replications (I’m assuming that’s not that unusual in science). These failures have raised questions about if priming truly does exist (though it still has many believers, including Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman).
In one recently well-publicized failed replication of a famous priming experiment, one groups of people were given words to rearrange like like “bingo” and “Florida,” “knits” and “wrinkles,” “bitter” and “alone.” Another group were given words that had no connection. In the original famous experiment, the first group then walked down the hall slower than the second group.
However, in last year’s failed replication, it didn’t work at all — except in one instance. And that was when the group with the “slow” words was told that they were expected to walk slowly. Then they did.
I, and apparently many others who are far more knowledgeable on the subject than me, still tend to believe that priming works. But if we’re wrong, and clearly the jury is still out on that, telling my students ahead of time about the research seems to not only be the ethical way to go but a way that will also lead to positive results.
(Note: This post was not originally a “The Best…” list, but as more and more information on this topic became available, I decided to turn it into one.)
In my book, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work, I include a chapter on the importance of relationship-building in the classroom — both between teacher and students and between students and other students. One way to reinforce that through literacy development is to have students read both true-life stories (I specifically suggest a piece written about Martin Luther King) and ethnic folktales that reinforce that message.
Two new studies suggest that I might have been on to something….
Harry Potter readers “became” wizards and the Twilight readers “became” vampires. In addition, participants who were more group-oriented in life showed the largest assimilation effects. Finally, “belonging” to these fictional communities delivered the same mood and life satisfaction people get from affiliation with real-life groups.
College students who read a brief screenplay about a moronic soccer hooligan subsequently did worse on a test of knowledge than a control group.
The article quote a researcher as saying:
“The present study is, to our knowledge, the first to show media priming effects of story characters on cognitive performance,”
Here’s another study:
Inspiring Stories Can Lead to Empathy is a report on a study that “found that the participants often would spontaneously reflect on their own lives and express a desire to be better people after hearing stories meant to induce admiration for virtue or compassion for social or psychological pain.”
Changing our Minds discusses a study and other ideas that suggest “fiction helps us understand ourselves and others.”
The Business Case for Reading Novels is from The Harvard Business Review. It reviews research on the role of reading fiction in helping people develop empathy.
I thought readers might find it useful for me to list in one post some useful (at least in mind ) pieces I’ve written about my own teaching practice over the past year. It was certainly a helpful exercise for me to review them.
There are some posts that could have been included here, but, instead, I’ve decided to add them to a future post titled “The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2010.”
Most of the titles are self-explanatory.
You might also be interested in last year’s edition:
Here are my choices for The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2010 (not in any order of preference or, in fact, not in any order at all:
I regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see back issues of those newsletters here and my previous Best Posts of the Month at Websites Of The Month.
These posts are different from the ones I list under the monthly “Most Popular Blog Posts.” Those are the posts the largest numbers of readers “clicked-on” to read. I have to admit, I’ve been a bit lax about writing those posts, though.
This month’s list is longer than usual.
Here are some of the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written during this past month (not in any order of preference):
I also share a list of Post Rank’s analysis of each month’s top posts. Post Rank uses a variety of ways to measure level of “engagement” that readers have with specific blog posts. I have a constantly updated “widget” on my blog’s sidebar that lists these posts, but I thought a monthly post would be helpful/interesting to subscribers who don’t regularly visit the blog itself.
I’ve written several posts about brain “priming” experiments, and how the idea could be useful in helping get students in a positive frame of mind prior to taking a standardized tests. Some of these successful experiments have included having students complete “sentence scrambles” prior to a test that, once unscrambled, have them saying they are smart.
Ethically, I think doing that sort of thing seems okay to me because it’s pretty innocuous, it’s designed for the very short-term, and, even though it might not work, I figure it can’t hurt, either. And it’s surely less ethically questionable than spending a huge amount of class time on test prep.
In the experiment, participants were given one of two groups of words — one related to money (like “wealth” and “price”) and other to time (like “clock” and “day”) In the experiment, which was duplicated with the same results, the people with the money words said they would spend the next twenty-four hours focused on working, while the people with the time words said they would spend it with friends.
If these experiments are indeed true, it could certainly be applied to school — students could be given words related to being successful or doing homework. But that doesn’t set well with me. It just seems like I would be trying to manipulate student behavior outside of the classroom and in their lives. Yes, yes, I know, we all try to do that in other ways. But doing it through brain-priming seems different, and I don’t feel comfortable with it.
At the same time, I think doing it before the standardized tests is okay, and don’t feel like there are the same ethical issues for the reasons I’ve already given.
So, what do you think? Is it a valid concern? Does my distinction make sense? Or do you think brain priming is okay in both situations, or in neither one?
I’ll be asking my IB Theory of Knowledge students these same questions when we begin studying ethics, and I’m very interested in hearing what readers think…
Later this week, I’ll be writing about individual conversations I’ll be having with each of my students leading up to our standardized tests in early May.
Now, though, I thought readers might find it useful to have a summary of key points I share in my post, My Best Posts On How To Prepare For Standardized Tests (And Why They’re Bad). In addition, I’ll share my list of “Important Test Words” that I review with my students during the half-hour of explicit test-prep I do with them a day or two prior to the test. As I’ve said before, our school does not believe in teaching to the test and, instead, feel that what we do during the year will develop life-long learners who will do well on the tests.
Feel free to offer additional suggestions in the comments section of this post.
GENERAL TEST-TAKING STRATEGIES:
Read each question carefully and more than once
Read the questions before you read the longer text
Underline important words in the text as you read
Do easy questions first
Skip the hard questions and come back to them later (put a mark in your test booklet next to the ones you skip)
Eliminate wrong answers and make your best guess
Trust yourself, your first guess is usually the best
If you do want to change an answer, be sure to erase the first one completely
RESEARCH-BASED ACTIONS THAT CAN PUT STUDENTS IN A POSITIVE FRAME OF MIND ON TEST DAY & “BRAIN-PRIMING” STRATEGIES:
* Give Peppermints to students during the test
* Prior to the test, have students write for a minute or two about a time, or times, when they were successful
* Have signs around the room that have the letter “A” very visible — such as an inspirational phrase like “You’re a Great Student!” surrounded by “A”‘s.
* Prior to the test, have students complete “sentence scrambles” that have positive messages
* Prior to the test, have students write for a minute or two about what they think a scientist does.
* Have students drink a glass of water one-half hour prior to taking the test.
It’s approaching the time in many states when our students will have to take annual standardized tests.
I’ve written quite a few posts about how I prepare my students to take them, as well as posts writing about how bad the tests are. I thought I’d bring them all together in one “The Best…” list.
I’ve made it quite clear that our school we intentionally do little explicit “test-prep” work with our students. Instead, we believe the work we do during the entire year prepares them to be lifelong learners and that this will show-up in test results. We also do a number of things to help students feel positive on test days.
Please feel free to offer suggestions for other good resources on how to prepare students for the tests, or pieces that show why the tests are bad.
The Cognitive Benefits of Chewing Gum is by Jonah Lehrer at Wired. He reports on a study that showed test-takers chewing gum scored higher than those who did it — it kept the chewers more alert. I thought this was particularly interesting because the only other similar research I had read was financed by the Wrigley Company, which didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence in its integrity.
Chewing Gum May Improve Test Scores reports on a new study that says chewing gum can improve test performance, but only for fifteen or twenty minutes after chewing stops. It says the gum should only be chewed prior to the test and will actually ultimately hurt test performance if it continues. This contradicts the previous study.
Additional suggestions are welcome. Though many of these posts point to articles written by others, I’m sure I’ve missed some great ones that are out there. I’d love to revise this list and add them.
I regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see back issues of those newsletters here and my previous “Top Ten” picks at Websites Of The Month.
These posts are different from the ones I list under the monthly “Most Popular Blog Posts.” Those are the posts the largest numbers of readers “clicked-on” to read.
This month’s list is longer than usual.
Here are the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written during this past month (not in any order of preference):
I’ve written several posts about how we consciously do little explicit test-preparation at our school and, instead, feel that focusing every day on helping our students become lifelong learners is the best test prep we can do. In those posts, I do share, however, that we do whatever we can to help make our students feel comfortable and positive on the test days themselves (see Display The Letter “A” On Test Days & Your Students Will Do Better? and Getting Into A “Smart” Frame Of Mind on Test-Days). Earlier this month, several of implemented the ideas reflected in those recent posts during the California State High School Exit Exams.
One of those posts talked about some reporting by Malcolm Gladwell on studies that showed students did better on standardized tests if they either had to do some “sentence scrambles” that had positive messages or if they just wrote what they thought a scientist did in his/her life.
Another study has just come-out with similar findings. In this study, though, test-takers just had to write about a “successful personal experience” before taking the test. Those that did so scored higher than those in the control group.
Another idea that falls into the “can’t hurt” category when state tests come in May….
I regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see back issues of those newsletters here and my previous “Top Ten” picks at Websites Of The Month.
These posts are different from the ones I list under the monthly “Most Popular Blog Posts.” Those are the posts the largest numbers of readers “clicked-on” to read.
This month’s list is longer than usual.
Here are the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written during this past month (not in any order of preference):
I’ve written before about Malcolm Gladwell’s citing a study that showed students who were asked to take five minutes and write everything they knew about a professor (not a particular professor — just the qualities, responsibilities, etc of one) scored higher on a test they then took (see Getting Into A “Smart” Frame Of Mind on Test-Days). He says this is called ‘Brain-Priming.”
Both studies, though, raise the same question in my mind — both “primed” two groups: one to think about a professor, and the other to think about a less academically successful person. I wonder why neither had another group that wasn’t “primed” at all?
As regular readers know, my school is not a big fan (and nor am I) of a lot of specific “test-prep” leading up to our annual state tests.
We spend very little time on direct test-preparation (the day before the tests begins, several of my colleagues and I may spend a half-hour on test-taking strategies and specific test “vocabulary” — see a previous post titled Test-Taking Strategies), but we spend the rest of the year preparing students to become life-long learners.
In addition, our administrators manage the Herculean task of rearranging our class schedules for six days and organizing test booklets so that every student takes every test with their subject teacher, in the classroom where they’ve been studying that subject every year, and with their same classmates. In other words, students will take the English test in their regular English class (which has been expanded to three hours for that day). This, I believe, dramatically reduces test anxiety and enhances motivation on the part of students to do their best.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink,” he describes an intriguing experiment that might have some practical relevance to our students taking tests. Before I share it, though, I should point out that it’s not footnoted, and that though Gladwell is a great storyteller, he is often critiqued for misinterpreting research. So, with those caveats, here’s the excerpt:
“Two Dutch researchers did a study in which they had groups of students answer forty-two fairly demanding questions from the board game Trivial Pursuit. Half were asked to take five minutes beforehand to think about what it would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6 percent of the questions right. The other half of the students were asked to first sit and think about soccer hooligans. They ended up getting 42.6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right. The ‘professor’ group didn’t know more than the ‘soccer hooligan’ group. They weren’t smarter or more focused or more serious. They were simply in a ‘smart’ frame of mind, and, clearly, associating themselves with the idea of something smart, like a professor, made it a lot easier—in that stressful instant after a trivia question was asked—to blurt out the right answer. The difference between 55.6 and 42.6 percent, it should be pointed out, is enormous. That can be the difference between passing and failing.” (p. 56)
In addition to the issues I’ve already raised, it does seem strange that the researchers didn’t have a control group that they just gave the questions to — perhaps they did and Gladwell just didn’t include those results.
But I wonder if doing something like this might be worth a try on testing days? Is anybody aware of similar research results?
I’m wondering if this kind of what Gladwell calls brain-”priming” might have some value? What do you think?
If I get behind updating this page, you can always see the months that are missing by going to the category “Best Posts Of The Month”
I regularly highlight my picks for the ten or twelve best posts for each month. Here you can find a collection of them all. I also use these in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see back issues of those newsletters here.
These posts are different from the ones I list under the monthly “Most Popular Blog Posts.” Those are the posts the largest numbers of readers “clicked-on” to read.
The ones here are the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written. These don’t include my “The Best…” lists
This month, I wrote quite a few “The Best…” lists. Instead of listing all the new ones here, I’d encourage readers to just go to Websites of the Year to find them.
This month includes several of the newest “Best of…” lists I’ve compiled. I won’t bother listing them here, but you can check them all out on my Websites of the Year.
This month includes the five newest “Best of…” lists I’ve compiled. I won’t bother listing them here, but you can check them all out on my Websites of the Year.
) pieces I’ve written about my own teaching practice over the past year. It was certainly a helpful exercise for me to review them.
