Our Ed Week Blog Topic: Help Students 'Take Ownership of Their Learning'

Donna and I were pleased to take part in the four-part Education Week blog post: "Students 'Take Ownership of Their Learning' Through Goal-Setting," which was featured in the popular Classroom Q&A with Larry Ferlazzo portion of the blog.

In the post, we describe how almost all students who walk through the school door have the potential to live a joyous and successful life as each of them defines it. Of course, teachers' guidance is important in helping students set and reach important learning goals.

In the post, we describe our PEAK model to teach students a practical approach to achiving their goals. First, students must establish their clear intent by formulating a goal that is positive, motivating, ambitious, and achievable.

How a Growth Mindset Can Help Struggling Students: Our Latest Post on Edutopia

In our lastest Edutopia post, Donna and I talk about the importance of helping struggling students build a growth mindset.

Our research aligns with Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset—acting on the belief that abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.

As we explain in the post, a positive mindset focuses on the gains that are possible when students persevere through learning challenges. It’s important to maintain a positive mindset, even when school can be difficult, and for teachers to help students remain motivated to work hard to persevere through those difficulties.

Edutopia Post Describes How to Teach Empathy

Our latest Edutopia post stresses the importance of empathy—the ability to understand and share the feelings of others—and also details strategies on how to teach it.

In the post, entitled "4 Proven Strategies for Teaching Empathy," Donna and I describe shared emotional response, or affective empathy, which occurs when an individual shares another person's emotions. We also define perspective taking, or cognitive empathy, which occurs when we are able to imagine ourselves in the situation of another.

Our Latest Edutopia Post: Incorporating a Growth Mindset

Having a growth mindset is not only essential for students. It also can help teachers increase their impact in the classroom. That's the premise of our latest Edutopia blog post, which explains how the growth mindset as described by Carol Dweck, has implications for learning and improving education.

The growth mindset is a belief that individuals can improve, change, and grow through application and experience, no matter what their initial performance, interests, talents and skills may be. Donna and I wrote the post to focus on the importance of empowering educators with opportunities to develop a growth mindset, which will help build skills and strategies to increase the impact of their instruction in the classroom.

We Respond to EdWeek's Question on the Importance of Self-Control

Donna and I were pleased to share our response to the question: How can we best help students develop self-control? Our response appeared in part four of a four-part Education Week blog post: "Learning Self-Regulation Is Needed on Path to Academic Success," part of a Classroom Q&A with Larry Ferlazzo.

In the post, we describe how young children need to learn self-regulation early in life as it better enables them to access knowledge and practice learning skills. With self-regulation, young children can control their ability to:

• Pay attention
• Resist distractions
• Develop social emotional skills, and
• Begin to develop a clear intent about what they want to achieve.

Our Metacognitive Learning Concepts Featured on Scholastic Blog

Marcus and I would like to thank Dr. Rod Berger for featuring us in "Down The Hall," a column he authors on the Scholastic blog.

In his Nov. 11 blog post, Dr. Berger highlights our book, Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains: Metacognitive Strategies, Activities and Lesson Ideas, and embedded our recent interview from his online interview program, CoffeED.

Dr. Berger's blog describes how the "drive your brain" metaphor captures the importance of students taking ownership of their learning and thus become better discerners of information that ultimately results in higher levels of achievement.

We Talk Our Latest Book on CoffeED with Dr. Rod Berger

Donna and I discussed our latest book, Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains: Metacognitive Strategies, Activities, and Lesson Ideas, on CoffeED, an online interview program focused on education and learning.

CoffeED’s host and global educator correspondent Dr. Rod Berger conducted the interview, during which we explained the concept of metacognition, defined as “thinking about your thinking with the goal of improving learning,” and shared some practical ways to use metacognitive strategies to improve the learning experience.

Among the strategies we described are: being aware of what you already know and what you’re trying to learn, monitoring your progress with such tools as self-testing, and being aware of what results you’ve achieved.