"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles

Why some kids struggle with math even when they try hard is from Science Daily, and summarizes an intriguing new study – one whose conclusions seem a bit too sweeping for me.

As the article says:

Children who struggled with math were less likely to change their strategy after getting a problem wrong. Even when they made different kinds of errors, they did not seem to update their thinking in response. This difficulty in adjusting behavior over time was a key difference between children with typical math abilities and those with math learning challenges.

The researchers also suggest that this may be the key challenge in other subjects, too, and they plan to investigate further.

Whether this is truly the problem or not, it certainly can’t hurt for math teachers – and teachers in all subjects – to help students understand the importance of metacognition and monitoring and adapting their learning strategies.

I’m adding this info to:

Best Posts On Metacognition

The Best Posts, Articles & Videos About Learning From Mistakes & Failures

     

Our two youngest granddaughters live in different parts of the country far away from us.

As I’ve previously mentioned, we use the online Readeo tool to have a video conference with them where we read stories, play Pictionary with mini-whiteboards, and do “show-and-tell.”  It works very well.

I recently learned about a new AI-powered site called My Story Steps that I’m considering trying out with them.

AI-powered tools to create stories for kids are actually a dime-a-dozen.  In fact, they’re so numerous, I’ve stopped making additions to The Best Online Tools Using Artificial Intelligence For Creating Stories For Children.

My Story Steps, however, offers a bit of a twist on the idea by using AI to create age appropriate illustrated choose-your-own adventure stories.

You can create at least some stories for free, as well as access others on their site at no-charge, but I believe you have to pay if you want to create multiple stories or access many others.

But I think I’m going to try it with the grandkids by screensharing with Zoom.  They can take turns creating stories (it asks you questions about it) and making choices as the story goes along.

I’m actually not a big fan of these AI sites creating stories for kids – I personally spend a lot of time telling the grandkids stories I make-up and actually write storybooks for them using Bookbldr.

But I’m intrigued by My Story Steps and think it might be an engaging tool to use now-and-then.

I’m adding this info to The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories.

     

For the next month or so, I’ll be republishing my best posts from the last half of 2025.

For the past few years, I’ve voiced a lot of skepticism about the idea that bringing in a bunch of tutor was going to be effective in supporting students.  As I said many times,  I just didn’t see where schools were going to find people to hire and adequately supervise them.

New studies suggest that my criticisms have been well-founded.  Check out The Hechinger Report’s new article, Tutoring was supposed to save American kids after the pandemic. The results? ‘Sobering.’

Because of my community organizing background, I always keep in mind Saul Alinsky’s advice: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” So, I’ve paired my criticism of starting tutoring programs with suggesting that, instead, schools start peer tutoring programs. You can read all about them, and how I used them in my classes, at THE BEST RESOURCES ON PEER TUTORS.

However, I’m not holding my breath….

     

ErikaWittlieb / Pixabay

Here are new additions to The Best Resources For Helping Teach About The 250th Anniversary Of The American Revolution:

The National Museum Of The American Indian has several new teaching resources.

The Museum Of The American Revolution has several online exhibitions:

Finding Freedom: Explore the stories of African American men and women in war-torn Virginia.

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story, 1776 – 1807

Historical Analysis: Objects Tell Stories (I’m also adding this to The Best Resources For Using “Object Lessons” In History.

     

For the next month or so, I’ll be republishing my best posts from the last half of 2025.

During my nineteen year community organizing career, we (and most other organizing groups) typically had two types of campaigns.

In one, the community issues were identified through scores, if not hundreds, of house meetings and individual meetings. Leaders of those efforts would meet with organizers to develop strategies to work on those issues. We’d start with small actions, leading to large-scale negotiations. We’d generally win, and the organization was much stronger afterwards. Though our member institutions paid dues, foundations who truly understood organizing and had a long-term vision for what was possible supported us doing this kind of work.

In the other, we either ran after foundation money or the foundation money ran after us. Funders would identify their priority issue or issues, and we’d sort of figure out a way to do a “shotgun marriage” between those issues and the issues identified by our constituents. We’d carve out some time paid for by these funds to do some of the first kind of organizing, but had to spend more time on this second kind, which sometimes led to concrete wins for our leaders and members, but more often than not did not lead to stronger organizations.

The American Federation of Teachers today announced they’re starting an AI training center for teachers and the real question is which one of those two examples is their origin story:

OpenAI and Microsoft Bankroll New A.I. Training for Teachers www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/t… gift link

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) July 8, 2025 at 4:47 AM

Did AFT members and leaders spend the past year recognizing that districts were dropping the ball on providing guidance to teachers, and explore ways they fill that vacuum? And, then, did they spend time inviting members to reflect on what their AI priorities might be – how to teach the ethics of AI to students? Are there some areas, like with ELLs, that AI could be helpful and others where it was not? What could be gained and lost in having AI develop lesson plans and assess student work?

And, then, after identifying these issues through an extensive listening effort among their members, did AFT leadership then develop a plan for how the union could systematically experiment and offer guidance?

Finally, after all that was done, did the AFT go to the big AI companies and say, “This is our plan. Do you want to give us money to implement it?”

Or, did AFT just run after the money?

I have a lot of respect for AFT president Randi Weingarten and don’t believe she would, but I have no inside knowledge – just what’s in The NY Times article.

Certainly the Times article tells an origin story of the second way.  But that definitely doesn’t mean it’s accurate.

But we’ll all know the true origin story of this effort by its results, or lack of results, a year or so from now.