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Blessed Cloth of Learning

The Blessed Cloth: Weaving the Minds of Today’s Learners

A perennial challenge for teachers has been weaving multiple subjects into a coherent whole for students. ELA is ELA, Math is Math, and Science is Science. Right? The standards have been defined explicitly to demarcate expectations and mastery within independent domains. But those demarcations, as most teachers readily recognize, are arbitrary.

Leveraging Learning Ability

Leveraging the Power of Cognitive Ability

Neuroscience shows us how to impact the efficiency and effectiveness of the learning process by improving each individual’s underlying mental processing – that is, by changing the experience of learning from the inside out.

Kid Superheroes

Students are Education’s Most Under-Utilized Asset

Students possess a wealth of untapped potential that has been, for the most part, overlooked and underutilized.

Math Disability

Cognitive Skills and Math (Dis)Ability: Identifying the Links

Math disabilities, however, are as common as reading disabilities at 5 to 8 percent of the population. Like reading disabilities, math disabilities may have multiple causes and dimensions. Article published on the Learning Counsel.

Report Card

Grading Your School? How Do It Rate in the Science of Learning?

If the question is whether the A-F system of rating schools were helpful and easy for parents to understand, then you’d have to ask why there are millions of students still attending schools with D and F grades.

Science of Learning: Cognitive Principles

Science of Learning: The Cognitive Principles

There is often confusion about the difference between cogni­tive training and brain games. The world is full of games, puz­zles, software and other activities that involve mental processes. But most are intended for entertainment rather than mean­ingful impact on learning capacity. For a cognitive training program to have significant impact, it needs to be designed according to specific neuroscience principles.

Learning to Be Smart

Learning to Be Smart

Based on what we have been hearing in the last few days from therapists working with individuals in their teens and 20s, there is plenty of plasticity to take advantage of.  What they’ve shared with us underscore how pioneering this field is and the amazing plasticity of intelligence.

Having Fun Learning

Building “Muscle Memory” for Learning

There are a lot of things our brains do non-consciously including the mental processes called cognitive skills. Cognitive skills are how we take in, understand, organize, store, retrieve and apply information – in other words, how we learn.

Detour - Road Closed Ahead

Remediation of Cognitive Processes in Special Education Students

Multiple decades of research and practice have resulted in significant shifts in the way students with learning disabilities are supported in schools in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Moon Shot

Can Brain Fitness Be Education’s Moon Shot?

Experts agree that focusing on early childhood development through neuro-supportive, school-based intervention models would maximize an investment in national brain health and fitness.

The Cognitive Age

The Cognitive Age: Building Brains that Learn Better

if we don’t know what the jobs of the future will be, the role of education has to change from preparing students for a knowable future to preparing them for an unknowable future in which they will have to continually learn and adapt.

Hand Reaching Out of the Ocean

Addressing the Learning Crisis Connected to the Current Mental Health Crisis

When students are depressed, every assignment they’re asked to do can seem overwhelming and with reduced mental cognition, it is even worse. 

Building Intelligence Growth Mindset

Building Intelligence: Find Your Growth Mindset and Start Building

People with a growth mindset who have teachers or trainers who provide explicit opportunities for them to develop their intelligence and their abilities will become even more effective learners.

Roulette Wheel

A New Spin on Education: Cognitive Capacity for an Uncertain Future

In an article published on Getting Smart, we explain why the goal is cognitive literacy, that is, learning how to learn.

Learning Light Bulbs

Cognitive Skills Training: What’s That About?

Cognitive training, like physical training, involves “reps” of varied activities, often on a computer in a video-game format. This kind of brain training can benefit just about everyone, and may be particularly helpful for gifted children and children with learning differences such as ADHD.

The Cognitive Age

Building Brains that Learn Better

“If we don’t know what the jobs of the future will be, the role of education has to change from preparing students for a knowable future to preparing them for an unknowable future in which they will have to continually learn and adapt,” according to an article by Betsy Hill and Roger Stark published on GettingSmart.com.

Happier Healthier Here's How

Learners: Happier, Healthier, Here’s How

One often under-appreciated aspect of health outcomes in general and mental health in particular, is the role of cognitive skills.

Newspaper

Letter to the Editor – What Kids Need to Know about Their Working Memory

A Letter to the Editor we wrote has been published by IntrepidEd News.  It starts this way: The article What Kids Need to Know About Their Working Memory | Deborah Farmer Kris gives readers some really important information about how working memory functions. However, it misses one key point. As the article points out, working memory is… Continue reading Letter to the Editor – What Kids Need to Know about Their Working Memory

COVID-19 Learning Loss

Cognitive Approach to Addressing the Impact of Covid-19 on Students

Schools are using cognitive assessment and cognitive training to address the impact Covid-19 continues to have on students.

Three Doors

Academic Achievement Can Open So Many Doors

In a new article, Roger Stark and Betsy Hill write, “When comprehensive integrated cognitive training is allowed to open up these lines of success, both students and their families tend to experience a much higher degree of emotional wellbeing which is proven to have a long-lasting effect for meaningful social justice.”

Abacus

The New 70/30 Rule: 70% Will Get Us $72 Trillion

The vaue of getting more students to the 70th percentile and learning what they need to without adjustments to the curriculum and instruction: $72 Trillion.

What We Know

Solving the Teacher Shortage Can’t (by Itself) Solve the Learning Shortage

Until each teacher understands how each of their students learns and can facilitate learning experiences designed to optimize learning, and until students get the appropriate comprehensive integrated cognitive training to build their learning capacity, learning outcomes are unlikely to improve in any meaningful way.

Learner Variability

What Teachers and Students Need to Know about Learner Variability

These days, it may seem as if there is more variability in classrooms than ever when it comes to what students know and can do.  However, it is also important to remember that intra-learner variability can be just as great and just as perplexing as inter-learner variability, especially for the learners involved.

Intelligence

Cognitive Skills Account for More than 50% of Math Performance in New Study

In a study conducted by Mindprint Learning and CAST, Inc., cognitive skills accounted for over 50% of math achievement outcomes for the middle school students who were part of the research.

70 30 Rule

The 30/70 Rule or the 70/30 Rule

About 30 percent of students perform at grade level, the same percentage as perform at the 70th percentile plus on cognitive tests.

Workforce Soft skills

EdCircuit: Are We Workforce Ready?

In the second of a two-part article published on EdCircuit, Betsy Hill and Roger Stark discuss the evidence that those entering the workforce lack many of the skills they will need to succeed in today’s workplace.  We then turn to the role of cognitive skills training in helping develop workplace-ready workers.

Executive Functions Rubik's Cube

What You Should Know about Executive Functions

Executive Functions are how our brains organize the interplay of all myriad mental processes toward goal-directed, purposeful behavior. This article published by the Learning Counsel was written by Betsy Hill and Roger Stark.

Cognitive Skill and Academic Performance

The Role of Cognitive Skills in Academic Performance

The negative impact of COVID-19-related disruptions on student learning has fallen disproportionately on students living in economically disadvantaged communities, students with learning disabilities and students who are English Language Learners. In this fifth article in our series on neuroscience and education equity, we explain why it’s time to help all students develop the cognitive skills that will foster greater equity in learning and true social justice.

Peter Kline Comp Book  x

Peter Kline, Mr. Inspiration

Peter Kline was a man who lived what he believed.  He was true to his spirit, true to his soul, true to his intellect, and true to his presence. Roger Stark remembers his friend and mentor.

Neuroscience and Equity

Equity, Neuroscience and Cognitive Capacity

Most educators do not, according to multiple research studies and our own experience, have a solid understanding of the organ that actually learns – the brain. 

Rodin's The Thinker

Comprehensive Integrated Cognitive Training: Sculpting Cognitive Processes

In the third article in this series on Education Equity, published on the Learning Counsel, we examine the role of cognitive training.

Girl Looking into Cracked Mirror

Achieving Equity: Understanding Each Child’s Cognitive Strengths and Weaknesses

The second article in the series on Achieving Equity discusses the importance of and how we can understand each student’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses. 

Neuroplasticity

The Power of Neuroplasticity

While there has been strong scientific consensus for some time about neuroplasticity, the extent to which our brains can change, at any stage of life, is only starting to become clear.

Hill Stark Equity  x

Achieving Equity: Knowing the Right Questions to Ask

Just how much students regressed due to COVID remains a matter of some debate. But perhaps that isn’t the right question. Instead of asking, “How far have we fallen,” we should be asking, “Where were we before the fall?”

Cognitive Capacity x

What Do You Mean by “Cognitive Capacity?”

We started to make the distinction between “cognitive ability” and “cognitive capacity” a few years ago. The distinction is important. Every individual is born with the ability to develop their cognitive skills. Cognitive capacity is different; it refers to how well those cognitive skills have actually been developed.

What Great Teachers and Great Salespeople Have in Common

What Great Teachers and Great Salespeople Have in Common

For some, this comparison will seem obvious. For some, it will seem curious, at first blush. For some, it will seem preposterous, or even insulting. I hope that, like most good analogies, the aptness of the comparison ultimately enlightens.

One-Two Punch

A True Growth Mindset Requires a One-Two Punch

People who have a growth mindset believe they can develop their intelligence and their abilities and that’s what enables them to become much more effective learners, according to the groundbreaking work of Dr. Carol Dweck. That’s the first punch. What’s the second punch?

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