Author: TeachThought Staff

contributed by Dr. Kara Stern, SchoolStatus Head of Education Solutions  Recognizing school/home communication’s profound impact on student success and well-being is crucial.  We need to understand school communication as much more than disseminating information—it’s an integral pillar supporting student achievement, as fundamental as curriculum and instruction. Effective school/home communication is essential to an educator’s strategy to nurture student success. Elevating School/Home Communication: A Vital Component of Family Engagement The Impact of School/Home Communication  School/home communication shapes a student’s educational experience and overall well-being. Research consistently demonstrates that students with actively engaged families exhibit higher academic achievement, improved attendance, enhanced social-emotional…

contributed by Barbara R. Blackburn Differentiation is a popular concept in today’s schools. After all, it makes sense. We’d all love to provide instruction tailored to every student’s needs. However, intentionally or accidentally, many teachers simply lower the rigor for struggling students. When we do that regularly, students always stay behind. In some cases, they are never even allowed to work at a higher level, which isn’t fair to those students. From my perspective, rigor is not just ‘harder work.’ In Rigor is Not a Four-Letter Word, I define rigor as creating an environment in which each student is expected to…

Richard Feynman On Knowing Versus Understanding by TeachThought Staff Who is Richard Feynman? Richard Feynman, born in 1918, was a theoretical physicist whose work in quantum mechanics earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. According to nobelprize.org, Feynman obtained his B.Sc. in 1939 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied “at Princeton University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1942. “He was Research Assistant at Princeton (1940-1941), Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cornell University (1945-1950), Visiting Professor and thereafter appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (1950-1959).” Feynman’s legendary intelligence–often mentioned alongside Isaac…

contributed by Michael Mirra Abstract Diversity has been at the forefront of educational discussions over the last few years. When we think about having a diverse classroom we think of ethnicity, race, gender, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation. It is easy for us to forget about socioeconomic status. This paper explores the impact socioeconomic status has on student learning in order for teachers to have a better understanding of their diverse classroom. Keywords: socioeconomic status, informer choice, late-emerging reading development, standardized testings, student attainment, service-learning How Socioeconomic Status Influences Learning At the beginning of the school year, teachers are made…