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

Type in any two locations in the world, and New Life will almost immediately provide a comparison to how it is living in each place, including economic and “socio-cultural” factors.

It doesn’t quite fit, but I’m adding it to The Best Tools For Comparing Demographics Of Different Countries.

     

What could students infer from this Visual Capitalist infographic?

Could they do research and make predictions about the most common jobs ten years from now?

     

For the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful.  This post first appeared in 2016.

An article in last week’s New Yorker, Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect, is the latest salvo in attempts to debunk the popularized mythology that people can become experts in any field through practice. Of course, as I’ve previously written several times, these attacks are on “straw men” since few people actually take that position. In fact, deliberate practice is not the major factor in developing expertise, but it is the most important element in developing expertise that is within a person’s individual control. (see Deliberate Practice & Red Herrings and Deliberate Practice, The Olympics & Red Herrings).

But all these recent studies pitting genetic talent versus practice are missing a huge elephant in the room — “natural” talent isn’t really that “natural.”

Plenty of research has shown that a person’s environment plays a massive role in determining if that natural genetic talent actually develops. For example, a child living in poverty is less likely to have their genetic benefits realized than a middle-class child with less stress and better nutrition. You can read about these studies at my previous posts:

This Is The Most Accessible Piece Out There On The “Nature/Nurture” Debate

Study Finds That Nurture Equals Nature In The United States

New Studies Highlight Blurry Line Between Nature & Nurture

So, instead of beating up on the position that few people are taking that practice is more important than talent, I wish these researchers would put their energies into supporting getting our students’ natural talent maximized through social and political policy changes.

Why dump on a proven practice (deliberate practice) that has been shown to be an effective individual improvement strategy, and then contrast it with the inaccurate image that you have talent or you don’t?

You might also be interested in:

The Best Resources For Learning About The 10,000 Hour Rule & Deliberate Practice

     

1616977 / Pixabay

It’s very short, and part of a longer clip, but last night’s Saturday Night Live had a scene of Steve (or, really, an actor playing Steve) from Stranger Things as a L.A. teacher (it includes inappropriate classroom language):

 

     

madartzgraphics / Pixabay

Modifying assessment so that English Language Learners don’t get penalized for their language challenges can be tricky for content teachers.

Here are resources offering not-very-difficult ways to do it (you might also be interested in The Best Resources On “Differentiated Grading” For English Language Learners):

Collaboration Through the End: Co-Constructing Assessments is by Tan Huynh.

ADAPTING CLASSROOM ASSESSMENTS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS is from The Mississippi Department of Education.

Making Assessments More Equitable for Multilingual Learners is from Edutopia.

Research-Based Recommendations for the Use of Accommodations in Large-scale Assessments is from The Center on Instruction.

Assessment Strategies for English-Language Learners is the headline of one of my Education Week column.