Learning

Why We Should Encourage Students To Fail contributed by Saga Briggs “The question, ‘Would you go back and undo your errors’ is unanswerable. It’s only useful to ask, what wisdom have you learned from your misjudgments that will help…

When Students Study What They Can Still Change by Terry Heick I was reading the surprisingly enlightening comments section of a YouTube video when I ran across an interesting idea: the energizing effect of making education…

The Definition Of Intrinsic Motivation by TeachThought Staff A decent working definition of intrinsic motivation is "motivation that stems directly from an action rather than a reward." Dr. Richard Ryan and Edward Deci explain in…

The Importance Of Intrinsic Motivation contributed by Iain Lancaster What motivates students? And further, what motivates them to be engaged at school? The answers here vary dramatically and can have a huge impact on each and…

Cellular Senescence: We Age Because Our Cells Stop Reproducing by TeachThought Staff We're all going to get old and die, which is both beautiful in a circle of life kind of way, and a major drag in a every other way kind of way.…

9 Ways To Support A Culture Of Wellness In Your School by Ashley McCann How can you create a culture of wellness in your school or classroom? General wellness is an important concept for leading a healthy life wrapped up in a generic…

25 Simple Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset by Saga Briggs, InformED What if your true learning potential was unknown, even unknowable, at best? What if it were impossible to foresee what you could accomplish with a few years of…

When We Don't Cultivate Our Most Gifted Students by Brad McDonell When I was in primary school it was recognized that I finished my schoolwork quickly. The school was well prepared for high achievers, and once a week a small…

How To Cultivate A Growth Mindset In Your Classroom by Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers As I (Marcus) walked into the classroom and saw the group of 25 students, my eyes were drawn to a student (who I knew had been retained for a…

Documentary: “Decades of fixing schools has not shaken poverty’s hold.” by TeachThought Staff From a press release CHICAGO (Jan. 12, 2017) – The View from Room 205 is a one-hour documentary that takes an unflinching look at the…

5 Strategies For Teaching Students To Use Metacognition by Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers As educational researchers, we have seen that by empowering all students with the metacognitive and cognitive skills they need to achieve…

Why Every Student Should Be A Nerd By Terry Heick As a kid, I never thought of myself as a 'nerd.' For one, 'nerd' isn't something you strived to be in the 1980s and 1990s. (Remember the movie "Revenge of the Nerds?) I did…

The Flow Theory In The Classroom: A Primer by Steve Wheeler, Associate Professor, Plymouth Institute of Education This is number 6 in my blog series on major learning theories. My plan is to work through the alphabet of psychologists…

The Big Picture Of Reading: In Defense Of Absolute Literacy by Terry Heick Literacy, roughly put, is the ability to read and write. Implied in those two skills is the ability to think critically. Otherwise, reading and writing are simply…

Always Separate The Student From The Performance by Terry Heick Once it’s begun, you can’t fully separate the person from the task. When the artist is painting, the painter and the act of painting become a single “thing.” The…

The Thing About Homework by Drew Perkins, Director of TeachThought Professional Development *this post was originally published at TeachThought PD As schools around the United States get restarted for another year so does the…

The Problem Of Non-Transferable Knowledge: When Students Learn Unuseful Things by Terry Heick With so much else to do, and a subsequent loss of academic structure, most research shows children read less in the summer. How much…

32 Research-Based Instructional Strategies by TeachThought Staff You want to teach with what's been proven to work. That makes sense. In the 'data era' of education that's mean research-based instructional strategies to drive…

How Can We Create Credibility For Informal Learning? by Nick Garvin, Founder of Stackup Remember playing when you were younger? If you weren’t in class or doing homework, you were likely playing. So what is “playing?” As I…