Can We Play in School?

Spring has arrived in full bloom here in Texas, and with the beautiful weather, I am gratefully reminded of how enjoyable it is to see our kids play. Here at Shady Oak Learning, we take play seriously. It is embedded in our school day. Children who come here have about an hour and a half of free play time outdoors throughout the day. Why? Because research supports that play is an essential part of brain growth and behavior development. Children who move and play show significant increase in IQ. According to David Elkind, professor emeritus of child development at Tufts…

From Real to Ideal: A Classroom Transformation

AN IDEAL CLASSROOM Imagine a classroom of 20-30 students – all with the following characteristics: Good visual acuity Good auditory acuity Good body control and spatial awareness Good attention span Good visual processing – all of the processing skills for reading Good auditory processing –processes extended verbal information Good sensory integration – coordinates simultaneous stimuli Good mental, physical, and visual stamina – alert the entire school day Good social behavior – understands and follows the norms for participation Good intellectual processing abilities – meets the needs of the grade level Good conceptual repertoire – has the concepts expected for the…

Labels Work Well On Pickle Jars, Not Students

SOI is successful when students internally own the abilities to learn! What a shock it would be to buy dill pickles only to bite into a very sweet pickle! Proper labeling is important for many reasons. Medicine is tasked with making accurate diagnosis that leads to the care, procedures, and medicine to treat patients. Efficiency in life, play, work, travel, and making purchases are in large part due to correct labeling. Even very young children know what a product is by the picture on the label. However, I’m not writing this to expound on the many positive aspects regarding labels.…

Building a Real Student Support Team

YOUR SCHOOL CAN DEVELOP A VERY PROVEN WAY OF ADDRESSING RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION (RTI) THROUGH YOUR STUDENT SUPPORT TEAM AND HAVE STRATEGICALLY TAILORED INTERVENTIONS TO MEET INDIVIDUAL STUDENT NEEDS. What if you were able to... anticipate, identify, and intervene with ninety percent of your “at-risk” students in kindergarten or first grade help eliminate students’ self-esteem issues related to failure in school bypass reliance on the observations of overextended classroom teachers for most intervention referrals develop an individual and developmentally appropriate plan to effectively intervene with students by the first semester of kindergarten develop an efficient, systematic, easily documentable Student Support…

How to Take Education Out of the Land of Oz

Step 1: Find Some Courage Become a lion! Education needs a paradigm shift and it takes courage to initiate improved methods when the present system is an ineffective one for students. Step 2: Find Some Patience It takes lots of patience to wait for the results of this investment. Use the courage and patience you have today to learn the SOI way of teaching those intellectual abilities that underlie learning curriculum. Though they may not pay off as a return on your investment until students have left the school, you will see improved academics within six months. Step 3: Get…

The Importance of Immediate Feedback

Last week, I chuckled as I monitored one of our students, Deacon, doing the Certified Learning module called "Look and Learn Words." Deacon is in kindergarten, and I have noticed all throughout the school year that Deacon ducks his head right before the little green square lights up either red or green to let him know if his answer was correct or incorrect. Deacon really wants to be correct and he can’t stand the thought that he might be wrong! We have worked with him to keep practicing on those modules that are more difficult so that he can gain…

The Two Most Important Variables in Education

The entire movement toward teaching-to-the-test can be boiled down to two achievement variables: comprehension and time – how much is learned and how long it took. In almost every achievement metric, one of these variables is held constant – and the other is the variable of measure. So, the prevailing paradigm in almost all formal education is to hold time constant and have comprehension be the variable. An important corollary to the achievement axiom often goes unnoticed; namely, if the established education has opted for lock-step instruction, then it has already opted for the paradigm of holding time constant and…

Figuring Out Figural Learners

One of the most enlightening aspects of my training with SOI was learning about figural learners. When my youngest son, Christian, was 6 years old, I discovered through SOI testing that he had sensory integration issues and was a figural learner. What is a figural learner? A learner who has high figural-spatial skills, but is lower in semantic and symbolic learning and learns best by using concrete, hands-on, three dimensional information. They see pictures in their mind and excel when they are able to learn by seeing, touching, and doing. Most young children start out as figural learners. My son…

Opening the Venetian Blinds

I read with dismay an article in the Washington Post about the Obama administration’s new plans to tighten oversight of states’ special education programs by applying “more stringent criteria” for outcomes. Unfortunately, this means the standards will be based on standardized tests. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that for the first time his department will also consider outcomes such as: how well special-education students score on standardized tests, the gap in test scores between students with and without disabilities, the high school graduation rate for disabled students, and other measures of achievement. “Every child, regardless of income, race, background,…

If Teaching Were the Problem

If teaching was the problem, tutoring would be the answer. When school starts, it is a positive thing for many children. With new shoes, colorful backpacks, high hopes and aspirations, they climb onto buses, exit automobiles, and walk expectantly into schools to begin learning! For other students, it is a dreaded event. For them, little positivity is associated with this yearly ritual. The above expectation seems to not be available to them. Year after year they are held in, held over, and held back because they are not successful, despite the best and most extensive efforts and expenditures of teacher…

Can We Play in School?

From Real to Ideal: A Classroom Transformation

Labels Work Well On Pickle Jars, Not Students

Building a Real Student Support Team

How to Take Education Out of the Land of Oz

The Importance of Immediate Feedback

The Two Most Important Variables in Education

Figuring Out Figural Learners

Opening the Venetian Blinds

If Teaching Were the Problem

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