Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 91

• Everyone who wants to do so should be able to take honors-level courses…right?

  By ljd42 on April 14, 2012

  Yesterday afternoon, one of my students was hanging out in the Math Office after school and started chatting with me and another teacher about a concern of hers: why was it so difficult to override a teacher’s recommendation and take… Read More ›

• Black Diamond

  By ljd42 on April 13, 2012

  Black Diamond, by Martin Walker, is the third novel in a series of deceptively quiet mysteries taking place in the Perigord region of France. The scene is St. Denis, a small town where Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges is actually the only… Read More ›

• Gentleman's Agreement

  By ljd42 on April 11, 2012

  A theme seems to be developing here. This is yet another post about a movie that was produced before I was born (though in this case not actually released until shortly after I was born). Gentleman’s Agreement is an effective but… Read More ›

• Divorce, Italian Style

  By ljd42 on April 9, 2012

  Another old movie here — if a film released 51 years ago counts as “old.” I just saw Divorce, Italian Style for the first time, having missed it back in 1961 (when I would have been too young for it… Read More ›

• From Elvish to Klingon

  By ljd42 on April 8, 2012

  I know what you were thinking as soon as you saw this title. I can read your mind, so I know that you were thinking something like this: This is obviously a fluffy but nerdy book. It must be a tongue-in-cheek,… Read More ›

• "Some of our students objectively can’t learn algebra."

  By ljd42 on April 7, 2012

  No, of course I wasn’t the one who said that. It comes from a  petition signed by 14 of Palo Alto High School’s 20 math teachers, listed by name (!) in a blog post by Dan Meyer, who is always… Read More ›

• Denise Mina

  By ljd42 on April 6, 2012

  So far I have read seven novels by Denise Mina: Garnethill, Deception, Still Midnight, Slip of the Knife, The Dead Hour, Field of Blood, and The End of the Wasp Season. Can you tell that I like the work of… Read More ›

• The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to be a Better Husband

  By ljd42 on April 4, 2012

  In keeping with the current trend of giving books excessively long titles, this memoir by David Finch tries to pack as much as possible into 19 words. But the title still raises more questions than it answers — and that’s… Read More ›

• Swing Time

  By ljd42 on April 3, 2012

  I’m slowly catching up on some movies that were produced before I was born. One of these was Swing Time (1936), a musical starring the inimitable Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with music by Jerome Kern. As is common in early musicals, there’s… Read More ›

• School is a 24/7 Job

  By ljd42 on April 2, 2012

  Normally I don’t repost somebody else’s blog post in its entirety, but in this case… Mrs. Smith bitched to the Principal that little Alfie’s teachers never called when little Alfie wasn’t doing well in their classes.  She didn’t know how… Read More ›

• Just My Type

  By ljd42 on April 1, 2012

  What a cool book! Simon Garfield’s Just My Type, subtitled A Book about Fonts, will tell you all you want to know about fonts, in a readable and mostly non-technical style — all you want to know, but not more… Read More ›

• Proofiness

  By ljd42 on March 30, 2012

  Read this book! Presidential candidates, and anyone who expects to vote for a presidential candidate, should also read this book. Its subtitle explains the Colbertian word of the title…or does it? Oddly enough, the subtitle changed between the first (hardback)… Read More ›

• Predicting answers

  By ljd42 on March 29, 2012

  Before you start solving a problem, predict what the answer will be. Not necessarily the exact answer; an estimate will do. One strategy that I like (but don’t use as often as I should) is to get students to do… Read More ›

• 21 things that will be obsolete by 2020…or will they?

  By ljd42 on March 28, 2012

  Johns Hopkins professor Shelly Blake-Plock recently wrote an essay listing 21 things (in school) that will be obsolete by 2020. Will they really? Of course there were many doubters, including me. But before we get to the doubts, let’s look at… Read More ›

• Strategies, techniques, and tricks

  By ljd42 on March 27, 2012

  Why have I been surprised at the way that many teachers use the word “strategy”? And why does it bother me when teachers refer to “tricks”? Well, I’m glad you asked, so I’ll tell you why I believe that in… Read More ›

• Jane Austen in Scarsdale: or Love, Death, and the SATs

  By ljd42 on March 26, 2012

  This satirical novel is an irresistible book for anyone who lives or works in a town like Weston. (I know, the title says Scarsdale, but they’re close enough.) Paula Marantz Cohen has updated Jane Austen’s Persuasion by moving it 200… Read More ›

• Bay State Model Railroad Museum

  By ljd42 on March 25, 2012

  A few weeks ago I returned to the oddly named Bay State Model Railroad Museum for its excellent Open House. The reason I say it’s oddly named is that it’s not a museum in the conventional sense; it’s really the headquarters… Read More ›

• London Under

  By ljd42 on March 24, 2012

  I first picked up this fascinating book by Peter Ackroyd because I thought it had something to do with the London “Underground,” otherwise known as its subway system. And indeed several parts of the book do concern the Underground. But the… Read More ›

• The Last Samurai

  By ljd42 on March 23, 2012

  Don’t you just hate it when someone writes a book review without having actually read the book? Of course I’m not going to do that…but I do need to give a preliminary comment about Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai (not… Read More ›

• The distance formula

  By ljd42 on March 22, 2012

  What are the pros and cons of teaching the distance formula? I can think of two of each: Pro #1: It’s useful and convenient. Pro #2: Future teachers may expect your students to know it. Con #1: It’s nothing but… Read More ›

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