Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
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Getting control of tests is sometimes a major challenge for students. Michael Geisen offers some ideas about how to take advantage of a test as a vehicle for learning and success. First, cramming does not work. What does work much better is spreading out your study periods for at least a week before the test. This gives you more time to absorb the concepts more deeply and permanently and to ask your teacher questions in the days before the test. The night before the test, do a quick review and get a good night’s rest. Good t...
Sometimes when the research is done and the paper turned in, you have a speech to give about the research. Michael Geisen offers advice about good presentations. Here are his major points. Your speech opening needs to convince the audience that you are worth listening to. Stories, surprising facts and powerful or funny images make great hooks. Once you have them hooked, state your thesis. Yes, even a speech has a thesis. Being thoroughly prepared for your speech is the best strategy for a good presentation. Practice,...
In our last installment, Michael Geisen offered ideas about research. This week, we will examine some of his ideas about writing well about the research you found. Good writing is simply making clear your ideas to someone else. Regardless of your learning style, clear writing is essential. Thus, the words you use have not only literal meanings, but also emotional impact on the reader. Words like “war,” “secret,” “love” “home” and “prickle” evoke moods, memories, and physical sensations. Choosing the right word can increase t...
Michael Geisen offers junior high and high school students some pointers on research work they do in school. It is that time of year when many of you have already begun some research projects and will have more as the school year progresses. Your critical thinking skills, covered in the last how-to article, are crucial in research because you have to sift through the junk to find the gems you are looking for on your given topic. Evaluating the items and using them effectively are key to good research projects. Decide on your...
National Teacher of the Year Michael Geisen has much to say about critical thinking. In fact, what he mentions should be quite familiar to you, as you hear such comments in school as they apply to writing and speaking in many of your classes. First, critical thinking is difficult work, but its use will help you move from a good student to a great student. And it is an essential skill that will help you throughout the rest of your life. It’s not just a school thing. Once you understand that it is not considering just one i...
What has creativity to do with school? Probably everything. Michael Geisen simply defines creativity as the ability to come up with something new (new to you or new to the whole world) that has value or use. It can happen anywhere, in any field, at any time. Including in school. To create something, he says, you have to be willing to change the way you have always done things. At school, one of the easiest ways to do this is to ask the teacher about an alternative assignment, one that gets at the same concept to be learned, b...
As Michael Geisen knows, many students cringe at the thought of homework. However, if you create a good study location and use those strategies that help you learn, you end up ahead of the game. Brain research shows that studying the same concept in different locations actually does help the brain make connections better. So wherever you study, just make sure it is distraction-free. Take periodic breaks and get that blood pumping to provide fuel to the brain. When you take a break, do not get side-tracked by various...
Last week we looked at Michael Geisen’s comments on developing effective habits in the classroom. This week, this National Teacher of the Year in 2008 gives us some real life ideas about working cooperatively in groups. Since you are in school, how do you go about making a group’s effort effective? Good question. Geisen stresses a few points that all of us, teenagers and adults alike, can take to heart. First, since we all come to a team with our weaknesses and strengths, we need to value each person for what he brings to...
If you set a goal for yourself last week, you are on the right track to becoming a superstar student. This week, we will look at some of Michael Geisen’s comments on developing effective habits in the classroom. As National Teacher of the Year in 2008, he has some insights to what makes for student success in school. Throughout your school life, you have been collecting bits and pieces of information that you might put in one big pile called “school stuff.” A great student organizes that information instead of leaving it in...
Since the school year has started, it is perhaps a good time to remind all students that they have what it takes to be a superstar in school. The 2008 Teacher of the Year, Michael Geisen, has a few pointers for them. First, everyone has a blend of the seven types of intelligence as suggested by psychologist Howard Gardner. Those types of smartness are visual, body movement, musical, social, logical/mathematical, verbal, and self. Students need to recognize that there is no one way of being smart. Smartness is a blend of two o...
I don’t know about you, but I tire of hearing how terrible public schools are and how charter schools will solve all public-sector educational problems. Recently, I attended a celebration with family and friends. One of my friends asked if students know less now than in the past, because he had been told by several college professors that this was the case – “Students don’t know anything anymore.” I assured him that was not the case. I had read enough Gerald Bracey to know that the basic trend nationally was upward and had s...
Most people recognize Martin Luther King, Jr., as a civil rights leader who fought for equal rights for black Americans. Many, however, are not as aware of his fight for economic justice for the working poor. When King went to Memphis, TN, on 3 April 1968 – one day before his assassination – he focused on protesting the economic injustices against black garbage collectors, who received significantly lower wages than whites. [To put this in context, the minimum wage was $1.25. I know because during the summer of 1968 I worked...
We hear so often that the schools are failing that we begin to believe such claims. Recently the media reported that 42% of America’s public schools are failing. The newscasters, however, did not look behind the curtain to see the larger picture. Children are more than tests and statistics. When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka No Child Left Behind or NCLB) of 2002 was re-authorized, the aim was to help all pubic school students succeed. Translated, this means that by 2014 ALL public school students – 100% – m...
Just as the number of words a pre-schooler hears before the age of five is important, so too is the amount of reading a student does. In 2009, Kelly Gallagher, English teacher and writing project director in California, noted that “by providing a wide and deep reading experience, we actually help students raise their test scores.” This makes sense. We know that when adults read more, they know more. The same holds true for children, even for test taking. For example, in a reading study of fifth graders conducted in 1998, rese...
When they want to develop a reading habit in their children, parents have a ready tool at their disposal – a “book flood,” a term coined by Warwick Elley in 1991. In other words, children need access to a lot of books. Print of all sorts. A wide range of interesting reading materials. What this “book flood” does for young children is rather clear: It gives them a wealth of words to enhance their reading and thinking. Maryanne Wolf noted in 2007 that by age five the average young middle-class child hears 32 million more spok...
