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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles
Shocking (NOT) Research Result – SEL Can’t Mitigate The Affects Of Poverty On Academic Achievement BlenderTimer / Pixabay
I’ve previously shared how some, most notably David Brooks, have attempted to substitute Social Emotional Learning for adequate and sustained financial support for public education (see The manipulation of Social Emotional Learning and The Best Articles About The Study Showing Social Emotional Learning Isn’t Enough). Those efforts have sort of cratered since, under the Trump administration, many don’t feel any need to show any concern for students, even if it’s fake. But it’s still useful to be aware of new research that shows SEL can’t mitigate the effects of poverty. Here’s an excerpt from Growth mindset and socioeconomic inequality in academic achievement across seventy-three PISA countries: The results show that growth mindset mediates only a small portion of the effect of SES on student achievements, accounting for no more than 2.9% to 3.2% of the total effect, depending on the subject. These findings challenge the influential idea that growth mindset can ‘temper’ the effect of poverty on academic achievement.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that having a growth mindset can’t help students, teachers and everybody else! Plenty of research shows that a growth mindset can be an asset (see The Best Resources On Helping Our Students Develop A “Growth Mindset”) and even this study shows it can have a small positive effect. It’s just not a magic bullet, which few people are saying it is, anyway.      Video: “Fastest Growing Religions 1930 – 2024”This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues
Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in seeing all my “Best” lists related to education policy here):
What worked and what didn’t with a cellphone ban at a Kentucky school is from NPR.
Project 2025 Group Targets Undocumented Students’ Access to Free Education is from Ed Week. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE PLYLER DECISION NOW THAT RIGHT-WINGERS ARE PLANNING A PUSH TO MAKE MIGRANT CHILDREN PAY TO ATTEND SCHOOL.
LAUSD borrowing $250 million to settle sex abuse claims — on top of earlier half billion is from The L.A. Times. I’m adding this post to The Best Resources Sharing The History Of Teens Organizing For Justice:
Schools are adding adults even as they lose students. Is that a problem? is from Chalkbeat.
 “Time Travel App” Is A Cool Tool For Visualizing World History
The Time Travel App lets you use a “slider” to identify the year, then shows you a globe with markers around the world. Click on the markers, and you’ll see what was happening there at that time, with a summary and link to a Wikipedia page. I’m adding it to The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About World History.  Google Just Created A New AI Tool That Is Perfect For Teachers Of ELL Newcomers
Google has been setting some kind of for creating the largest number of absolutely useless Artificial Intelligence tools, and I’ve blogged about a few of their many failures. To be fair, they have also developed two very useful ones – NotebookLM and Google Storybook. (and maybe Google’s New “Learn Your Way” Could Be Very Useful In Making Boring Textbooks More Accessible). Yesterday, they unveiled a new one called ProducerAI for creating music. It didn’t seem to me to be very good at actually producing music, especially compared to other similar AI tools. I asked it to create a song about teaching English to Beginning English Language Learners, and it came up with something completely unrelated to that topic. However, in addition to music, the tool also lets you create what they call “interactive spaces.” I asked it if it was familiar with Jazz Chants, sometimes also called Grammar Chants (see The Best Sites (& Videos) For Learning About Jazz Chants). Here was its answer: I’m definitely familiar with them—Jazz Chants and grammar chants are a classic way to lock in those language patterns through pure rhythm. It turns a sentence into a groove. Let’s build a Grammar Chant Groove Box. We can create an interface where you can type in a phrase (like “I go, he goes, she goes”) and it maps it to a steady, 4/4 hip-hop or house beat so students can chant along in time. Should we start with a simple beat and a way to highlight the words as they hit the “one”? I said “yes” and it immediately produced what you see below (I had to ask it a couple of time to clean up the HTML code so I could embed it here). It would use any kind of beat I wanted to teach any kind of grammar. Obviously, teachers can easily create any kind of chant we want, but this may make the process a little easier – less of a need to make copies and no more having to tap the desk with a ruler to create the beat! I’m adding this info to THE BEST POSTS ABOUT USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH ELLS
Grammar Chant Groove BoxVol
“The rhythm is the hook that holds the grammar.”  More Recent Articles |
