Renaissance Blog

Four strategies for teaching talkativeness

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Four strategies for teaching talkativeness

March 3, 2016

Categories: Assessment, Math, Reading

In an earlier post on the interdependent relationship between talkativeness and cognitive development, I shared Vygotsky’s theory on vocabulary acquisition as the defining moment in cognitive development, as well as the classic 1965 Hart & Risley study that validated [...]

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Talkativeness and cognitive development

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Talkativeness and cognitive development

February 4, 2016

Categories: Reading

“Please see if I am grokking this properly.” (Angel, 2016) Admit it, before reading further, you thought about jumping to Google, dictionary.com, or even Wikipedia to see what “grokking” is, and more importantly, to learn what is required to grok [...]

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Welcome to a new era in testing

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Welcome to a new era in testing

January 21, 2016

Categories: Assessment

When I go into schools and talk to teachers, there’s a lot of rich dialogue going on around testing. I’ve only recently come to the Marysville district, but I’ve been in the business for over 15 years and have seen [...]

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Vygotsky and Gita explore the ZPD’s social side

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Vygotsky and Gita explore the ZPD’s social side

December 17, 2015

Categories: Assessment

I want to tell you about a person who has been described in many ways: an “outstanding scientist,” an “eminent scholar,” and even a “genius.” I want to tell you about Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. –Gita Vygodskaya And so begins Gita [...]

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What kids are reading: New insights on the path to college and careers

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What kids are reading: New insights on the path to college and careers

November 10, 2015

Categories: Reading

It all comes down to the first sentence. That’s how I decide. If the writing pulls me in, I’ll buy or borrow the book. If not, it remains on the shelf, whether physical or virtual. No matter how riveting a [...]

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Are your students ready for the Smarter Balanced assessment?

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Are your students ready for the Smarter Balanced assessment?

November 10, 2015

Categories: Assessment

In recent years, we’ve entered a new era of education—one that leverages data, insight, and, yes, testing to understand what learning looks like for every student and to meet new state standards. One of the new exams is the summative [...]

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What educators need to know about measurement error

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What educators need to know about measurement error

October 15, 2015

Categories: Assessment

At my first introduction to measurement error, the word error gave me pause, and I silently wondered what good could possibly come from it. To most of us, an error usually means something is terribly wrong! It doesn’t help either [...]

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Differentiated learning: Closing the gap between theory and practice

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Differentiated learning: Closing the gap between theory and practice

October 1, 2015

Categories: Assessment

Differentiation has been an education buzzword for some time, and yet, in a January 2015 Education Week commentary, James R. Delisle writes that “differentiation doesn’t work.” His commentary was met with a swift response from Carol Ann [...]

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Math is “ruthlessly cumulative”: The truth about fluency and the promise of differentiated practice

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Math is “ruthlessly cumulative”: The truth about fluency and the promise of differentiated practice

September 3, 2015

Categories: Math

MIT Professor Steven Pinker made a statement that has stuck with me. He observed that math is “ruthlessly cumulative” (1997). Phil Daro expanded on this by noting that, when studying history, you can surely learn a great deal about World [...]

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Getting students hooked on investing in their own learning

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Getting students hooked on investing in their own learning

August 20, 2015

Categories: Math, Reading

Over the past few years, an increased focus on educator effectiveness has permeated the literature and dominated conversations. The idea has been to identify the observable and replicable characteristics of teachers who routinely lead students to success. I reviewed these [...]

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