Blog posts for how children learn

Phonics teachers know that knowledge of word families can help students sound out many words such as tall, call, calling, west, crest, tallest, etc. It’s much the same with Latin and Greek morphemes, which not only provide clues to the pronunciation of words, but also help students determine the meaning of words.

When students at ACS Cobham International School (UK) got iPads, Richard Harrold saw an opportunity. As a lower (elementary) school assistant principal at the school, he had been hearing glowing reports from other educators about students using iPads and seeing remarkable gains. Were the gains real? This is what he found out.

You can teach your students 10 vocabulary words the usual way – one at a time – or you can teach them 100 vocabulary words with little extra effort. The second approach seems like the obvious choice, and in Dr. Tim Rasinski’s recent webinar, Comprehension – Going Beyond Fluency, he makes the case for greater adoption of the accelerated approach.

For many teachers, the words “flipped classroom” are nothing more than a synonym for having students watch pre-recorded lesson videos at home and then do related assignments – formerly homework – during class time. There’s no doubt that that is exactly what the flipped classroom typically looks like on the surface. But when flip teaching is done right, what matters is that it uses time differently and more effectively, in ways that can profoundly benefit all learners, including students with learning disabilities.