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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles
Sentences Of The Week geralt / Pixabay
I thought readers might, or might not, find this new regular post useful. Each week, I highlight several sentences, with links to their sources, that I find interesting/concerning/useful. And they may, or may not, be directly connected to education. I may also include my own comments or related links. This regular post will join my other regular ones on teaching ELLs, education policy, Artificial Intelligence, infographics, and Pinterest highlights, not to mention sharing of my regular Education Week posts. Here are this week’s sentences: Storytelling is the invisible pedagogy. See A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES ON TELLING STORIES WHEN WE TEACH “The real answer to fixing the reading problems across the country and in Michigan is that we need to address poverty and we need to address housing instability,” said Jennifer Erb-Downward, director of Housing Stability Programs and Policy Initiatives at Poverty Solutions. See The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher (& Outside Factors) Have On Student Achievement Eco, who called lists “the origin of culture,” traced their function to our most basic human desires: “to make infinity comprehensible” and “to create order.” See The Bests Posts & Articles About Why We Like Lists An Economist analysis of New York Times best-selling books from the 1930s to the 2020s found that “sentences in popular books have contracted by almost a third since the 1930s.” Just 44 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 considered themselves to be “thriving” in 2026, down from 64 percent in 2010… When put to a public vote, school vouchers have been unpopular; they’re perennial losers on the ballot. It’s maddening that ideologically motivated billionaires, who likely never sent their own children to public schools, have been able to push this policy through. For the first time since the 1970s, the latest CRDC gathered information about teachers’ race, ethnicity and sex. It found that the workforce is 75% white, 9% Black and 11% Latino — a drastically different makeup than the students they serve. I don’t think it’s fair that teachers get to use AI in lesson planning and grading and that students can’t use it for anything. I don’t think there’s a single human being who remembers being in a K-12 classroom who does not understand that smaller class size is a plus. The census doesn’t just count people. It determines which people count.
     This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom geralt / Pixabay
At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM: Sona will create short podcasts on any topic. App Hive is a collection of…apps that teachers have created with AI. Gemini Explained is from Wonder Tools. I’m adding this next post to THE “BEST” IDEAS FOR USING CHATGPT, BARD, & OTHER FORMS OF AI WITH STUDENTS:
What happens when a course goes from using AI to unplugged and back again? is from The Important Work. I’m adding it to A Beginning List Of Different Types Of Guidance Educators Are Giving Students About AI Use In Their Classes.   This Is The Best Piece I’ve Seen About How School’s Should Respond To This Year’s PISA Results Mohamed_hassan / Pixabay
I’ve been a bit suspicious of all the handwringing about this year’s PISA test results (see PISA Results Are Out Today & They Don’t Necessarily Tell Us What The Headlines About It Say They Do). But that doesn’t mean that I think they should be totally ignored. I’m a believer in being data-informed, just not being data-driven (The Best Resources Showing Why We Need To Be “Data-Informed” & Not “Data-Driven”). And the test results are, indeed, data. Reading researcher Timothy Shanahan has written what I think is the best, and most sensible, analysis of the data. Even more importantly, he offers a good prescription of how schools should respond to it, at least in terms of reading. Check out his post at Reading Achievement and the Long Tail of the Pandemic.  The Best Resources On “Connective Instruction” AbsolutVision / Pixabay
Researchers have identified “connective instruction” as sort of a cross between building relationships and building relevance. I think it has some value in providing a framework for teachers to think and talk about instruction. You might also want to check out: The Best Ideas For Helping Students Connect Lessons To Their Interests & The World The Best Resources On The Importance Of Building Positive Relationships With Students
Here are are resources on Connective Instruction: Engage Kids With 7 Times the Effect is from Edutopia. How to Use Connective Instruction to Get a 7x Boost In Engagement is from AJ Juliani. Eliciting Engagement in the High School Classroom: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Teaching Practices Teacher-Student Relationships: A Key Starting Point for Helping Disengaged Kids  Increased Lighting Is To Improved Public Safety As [Blank] Is To Improved Student Learning DevoKit / Pixabay
The Atlantic recently had an article discussing the research finding that increasing the number of streetlights decreases crime substantially: Darkness is indeed a good cover for crime, so better lighting can make streets safer, not just by deterring misdeeds but also by encouraging others to fill the streets with activity.
That got me wondering if there might be similar “fixes” to school challenges. It was early in the morning, and my mind was not working great. So I asked ChatGPT this question: I just read an article talking about how increasing light on the streets, which is a non-polarizing issue, but that the research shows it has a dramatic reduction in crime. The crime doesn’t move elsewhere, it just disappears, particularly because creates opportunities for other activity to happen. What I’m trying to think about is when it comes to school reform or improvements in instruction quality, what ideas might be similar to the idea of adding street lighting that’s simple, non-polarizing, and solves the problem? Here is its response: There are a few school-improvement ideas that have a similar “street lighting” quality:
A key part of the street-lighting research is that lighting changes the ecosystem: more visibility, more informal supervision, more people out, more normal interaction. In schools, the closest analogues are interventions that increase connection, clarity, and productive participation across the whole environment. Here are some of the strongest candidates: 1. Increasing student talk timeFor ELLs especially, but really for everyone. Simple routines like:
These are not politically polarizing. They don’t require huge curriculum overhauls. But they often produce:
Like street lighting, they increase “visible participation.” More students become socially and cognitively present. This especially fits with your interest in Story Floods, micro-retells, and Critical Thinking Dialogues. 2. Building predictable classroom routinesClear daily structures:
Research on classroom management repeatedly shows that predictability lowers cognitive load and behavior issues. This is very “street lighting”:
It’s also one of the least polarizing reforms imaginable. 3. Improving schoolwide attendance outreachNot punitive truancy systems — relationship-based attendance work:
Attendance improvements cascade into:
Like lighting, it changes whether people feel connected to public space. 4. Expanding access to high-interest readingThis may be one of the strongest analogies. Not a complicated literacy ideology battle — just:
The effects can spread across:
Very low-polarization compared to reading wars debates. Stephen Krashen has argued versions of this point for years. 5. Better physical environmentsThis is the most literal analogy to lighting. Things like:
These sound almost trivial, but they affect:
Schools often underestimate how much cognitive bandwidth is consumed by environmental friction. 6. High-quality tutoring during the school dayEspecially short, embedded tutoring. Not flashy reform. Just:
The evidence base here is extremely strong. Importantly, tutoring often works because it increases:
Again, ecosystem effects. 7. Giving teachers more collaboration timeOne of the least glamorous but potentially highest-leverage reforms. If teachers have:
instruction quality tends to rise gradually and broadly. Like lighting, it changes the environment in which everything else happens. 8. Explicit vocabulary and background knowledge supportEspecially for secondary students and ELLs. Simple practices:
These reduce invisible barriers that otherwise compound every day. This is similar to lighting because it increases “navigability” of the environment. One interesting thing about your question is that it points toward a broader principle:
That’s why some reforms disappoint. They target individuals (“work harder,” “be more rigorous”) instead of redesigning the conditions under which people operate. In education history, some examples that arguably had “street lighting” effects include:
None are magic bullets. But they quietly change the daily ecology of schools.  More Recent Articles
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