Blogs

The goal of bringing any new innovation into the classroom is to improve the quality of learning in that classroom. Innovations can help lessons be more fun, encouraging students to become engaged with the material. Innovations can make lessons memorable, leaving students with a better recollection of the material later. Innovations can also make a teacher’s job a little easier by encouraging active, student-led learning rather than passive learning. The innovation trend we are talking about this week is using iPads and other electronic devices as learning tools in the classroom.

Mobile tablets are one of the most innovative and versatile tech tools to come on the market in recent years, and their application to teaching and learning has made quick inroads in schools. It’s been just over two years since the first generation of iPads became available to consumers, and an entire industry has developed around the technology – much of it focused on education. While still prohibitively expensive for many public schools, other schools have been quick to adopt iPads and integrate them into the curriculum. Aside from being light, portable, and snazzy, just what types of benefits do tablets offer over laptops, desktops, and e-books?

There are plenty of studies showing the importance of physical activity to overall health, regardless of a person’s age. Teachers should consider adding a physical component to their everyday activities, if only for the sake of creating the habit of an active lifestyle. Newer research on the link between the mind and body has found connections between physical activity and brain function, giving teachers even more incentive to find simple, creative ways to include movement each day in school.

Each May, the nation celebrates National Physical Fitness and Sports Month. Across the country, physical education teachers, fitness instructors, coaches, nutritionists, and others concerned with human health and wellness promote the advantages of physical exercise. The benefits of proper exercise and nutrition are well known for both older people as well as for children, and the month-long awareness campaign prompts many people to make healthy lifestyle changes. An offshoot of the campaign is National Physical Education and Sport Week on May 1-7, which focuses on physical education and activity for K-12 students.

The arrival of spring can mean spring fever for both teachers and students. Teachers have the tough job of keeping students interested and engaged in the midst of spring break, standardized testing, and the countdown to the end of the school year. Even as the year is winding down, teachers have plenty of opportunities to bring valuable learning to their students in unexpected ways. This week’s theme on the Gateway is the human body, a topic that can be adapted to many different subjects and grade levels. A study of the human body can include different types of activities including active games, art, writing, and scientific investigations.

Last spring, I volunteered in a third grade class that was learning about the digestive system. The teacher took advantage of a warm, sunny afternoon and took her restless students outside to make chalk outlines of their partners, and draw in as many different types of body systems as they could. Most students nailed the digestive and respiratory systems, while the circulatory systems on most outlines were wildly imaginative affairs, with great swirls and loops throughout the bodies.

Service learning is an essential component of modern education. Schools have a unique opportunity to help students understand that they are capable of changing their communities and the world. I have worked with one charter school that dedicates one Friday each month to service learning. On these service-learning days, students learn about issues or problems in the community and are given a hands-on opportunity to do something about it. Students learn a lot by using what they have studied for an important and real use.

Students have long been taught that, as adults, they must contribute to society in a meaningful way and for the common good. It’s an important sentiment, and one that many students take to heart. It can be difficult, though, for students to truly understand and appreciate such lessons in civic responsibility when they don’t have the opportunity to actually experience these lessons firsthand. As a result, increasing numbers of schools and extracurricular programs have instituted service-learning projects as part of the curriculum.

"It seems that for success in science or art, a dash of autism is essential" - Dr. Hans Asberger

Increased awareness of autism combined with a rising number of people identified on the autism spectrum has brought attention to the benefits and challenges of mainstream education of students with autism. People with Asberger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism (both on the autism spectrum) can be very intelligent and are often outperforming their peers academically. This academic success can be overshadowed by the social problems and “awkwardness” that frequently accompany the disorders. If teachers can help these students overcome social obstacles, these students will be in a much better place to succeed.