The Crucial Years of 5th-8th Grade

This week’s article summary is The Scientific Case Against Middle Schools.

This article is a further example of why Trinity’s elementary-only school model, specifically having 6^th grade as the culminating year of a child’s elementary experience, is what’s best for kids—and is timely as we have moved full swing into admissions season.

As you’ll see in the article, the advantages to kids are more about optimizing the development of self-confidence/assurance than with immediate test scores, yet in the longer run there is a correlation between a healthy sense of self shaped in elementary school and higher test results in middle and high school.

The article recommends a K-8 school model to best develop preteen self-confidence. I am not sure about this. I’ve spent a significant part of my career teaching 7^th and 8^th graders, and as we all know, their needs are much different from students in younger grades. A K-8 school will be geared to meet the needs of 7^th-8^th graders—from competitive sports, to dances, to hormones, to questioning and testing rules and limits--and inevitably these realities permeate the total school culture and make it much more challenging for younger grades to truly ‘cherish childhood’. Just think how different Trinity’s TTTs would be if we had 7^th and 8^th graders at Trinity.

For me, the optimal school structure is three distinct divisions: K-6^th (including early education grades), 7^th-8^th, and 9^th – 12^th.  What I like about this model is that both 5^th-6^th and 7^th-8^th graders get to be the ‘big kids’ of their division, and, as the article points out, these are the four crucial years where confidence and pride in who you and the individual you are becoming (including needed separation from parents) are formed and upon which success and happiness in high school and beyond are built.

Joe

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Preteens who attend K-8 schools have higher perceptions of their reading skills than those who attend middle schools or junior high schools, according to a new study. Although students did not differ when it came to their test scores, the researchers say that kids with low confidence in their reading skills can suffer academically in the long-term. Put another way, preteens who attended middle schools made a well-informed prediction that they would have worse educational outcomes.

“We find a negative impact of middle and junior high school as compared to K-8 schools,” says coauthor of the study Elise Cappella of New York University. “The most robust effect is the negative impact of middle schools on students’ self-perceptions of their competence in English.”

Until the mid-1900s, virtually all adolescents attended K-8 elementary schools until they moved on to high school for grade nine. Today, 90% of U.S. public school students attend a middle school or junior high school, the theory being that such specialized schools can better meet the unique needs of young teens. In practice, however, this is not necessarily the case—especially regarding academic outcomes.

“Research broadly supports the idea that K-8 is a better choice overall,” Cappella says.

For this new study, Cappella and colleagues examined data that followed a sample of 5,754 kindergarteners from 1,712 U.S. schools until they entered the eighth grade. The data measured each student’s math and reading test scores and his or her psychosocial development, as well as each student’s beliefs about his or her academic abilities.

When the researchers compared outcomes for kids enrolled in K-8 schools to outcomes for kids who left elementary school for junior high school after fifth grade, they found few difference in academic performance. But when it came to students’ beliefs about their own abilities, the differences were staggering. K-8 students were significantly more confident in their reading skills and reported significantly more interest in reading than middle school students. Middle school students were also more likely to assume that their teachers did not think highly of their abilities.  

It’s unclear why that would be the case. “It may be that the educators in middle or junior high school contexts have not received the training and support to work with this age,” Cappella suggests. “In addition, the larger size of the typical middle or junior high school means it may be harder to individualize schooling to young people in ways that might be most beneficial.”

Now, there may still be some advantages to junior high schools, which were “initially designed to better meet the needs of early adolescents,” Cappella says. “Middle schools that provide many opportunities for autonomy, competence, and relatedness may have an advantage over K-8 schools because they can focus exclusively on the strengths and needs of early adolescents.” Some experts suggest that middle school gives adolescents fresh starts, but Cappella is unsure that this is always a good thing. “Most studies have found that a transition to a new school at a time when young people are experiencing other transitions…is not an advantage,” she says.

But that does not mean that parents should boycott junior high schools. Instead, Cappella says, parents should holistically consider whether their children are most likely to flourish in a particular school environment. “I would advise parents to send their children to schools with positive social and instructional climates, regardless of grade span,” she says. “If that school is a middle or junior high school, it is important to support young people through the transition to the new school. But it is even more important to be in a school that provides support—academic, social, and emotional—throughout the years of schooling.”

Dads and Daughters

This week’s article summary is How Dads Treat Their Daughters Differently Than Sons.

At a recent Dialogue with Dads, I shared the findings from this article and asked the dads if they felt they treated their sons and daughters differently.

According to the article, fathers tend to use more analytical, expressive language and share more openly about feelings and emotions with daughters while using more competitive language and communicating via physical activities with their sons.

Subsequent research will shed light on whether this is a conscious decision or more subconscious.

Not surprisingly, the fathers in Dialogue for Dads said they try to treat their kids in similar fashion regardless of gender, and while I believe them, my guess is they probably still succumb to what the research reveals.

My most vivid childhood memories with my dad involve sports—shooting hoops in our driveway, practicing pitching in the backyard, talking about the pro sports teams we rooted for. My dad was supportive of everything I did, yet our bonding experiences revolved around sports. And when I became a dad to two boys, I did the same types of physical, athletic stuff with them as my dad did with me.

Now that I have a granddaughter, I am pledging to be cognizant of avoiding gender stereotyping; I certainly don’t want her or anyone for that matter to feel limited in what they can do based on societal gender standards.  My first gift to her was a mini NY Jets football...but I’m also kind of hoping she will want me to take her to the American Girl store in the not too distant future.

Joe

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For decades, gender norms have been going through seismic changes, but some traditional tropes are apparently hard to undo.

In the latest study on how parents interact with their daughters and sons, researchers focused on fathers. The researchers coded the types of words and behavior the fathers were having with their toddlers, and they also took brain scans of the dads as they looked at pictures of their children with happy, sad, and neutral facial expressions.

The research found that fathers tended to use more analytical language when speaking with their daughters than when talking to sons. They were more likely to use comparative words, such as "much" and "better," which indicate more complex types of discussions with the girls. With the boys, fathers were more likely to use words related to competition, such as "win" and "top." The fathers also talked about sadness more with the girls than with the boys, and they were more likely to engage in rough physical play with their sons than with their daughters.

That the researchers found gender-based differences wasn't surprising, since previous work, most of it in mothers, found similar differences in how the moms interacted with their daughters and sons. Moms in the study tended to use more emotive language when talking to their daughters compared to their sons, and when they told their girls autobiographical stories, they were richer and fuller of emotional content than the versions they told their sons.

What the latest findings add is that fathers’ brain may also process interactions with their daughters differently than those with their sons. When dads looked at pictures of their children, the brains of fathers with daughters reacted the strongest to their daughters’ happy expressions; the brains of fathers with sons reacted most to their sons’ neutral expressions.

Some hypotheses hold that fathers may choose different ways to educate their daughters and sons about emotions. While they may use language and direct discussions about emotions with their girls, they may chose physical roughhousing as a mode of communication with their boys. Rough play mimics aggressive actions, and requires accurate reading of social cues to determine when the rough and tumble tickling or fighting has gone too far, or if someone is feeling hurt. That requires evaluating other people’s emotional state and determining when the feelings pass the threshold from fun and play to fear and anger.

Future research will also have to address one of the biggest questions to come out of the study: whether the fathers’ different behaviors toward daughters and sons is the result of some biological difference in their reactions about different genders, or whether they are the product of internalized social and cultural norms about how girls and boys should act and behave.

Either way, the results suggest that fathers can perhaps be made more aware of the fact that they are treating their daughters and sons differently. With this knowledge, perhaps they will pay more attention to ways in which their interactions might be more egalitarian. All parents are trying to do the best they can to prepare their kids for the world. Just being aware of the biases we have by virtue of being part of our culture may help us to do a little better in preparing our kids in less biased ways.

Best Strategies for Learning

This week’s article summary is What Every Teacher Should Know About Memory, a follow up to the two previous summaries on learning myths, and its focus is on techniques that maximize learning, i.e., storing information into long-term memory

To me, there are two kinds of people: those who always seem to be early and those who always seem to be late. I put myself in the former category, so not surprisingly when I fly, I get to the airport well before I need to. But that’s okay by me because I enjoy people watching, and airports provide a great opportunity to observe a wide cross section of people and their habits.

Last week at Hartsfield-Jackson waiting for my flight as I was coincidentally reading the article below, I noticed a college student dutifully highlighting a thick, daunting textbook. Unfortunately for the student highlighting, which seems productive on the surface, is an ineffective way to learn material.

It’s not that highlighting is a complete waste of time so long as it is a basic first step in narrowing down what’s salient to learn. Subsequent techniques requiring the learner to actively think, process, and assess over time help store that information in long-term memory.

Highlighting or rereading information aren’t effective strategies because they can allow the brain to be passive. For information to stick, learners need to be much more active in piquing the brain’s interest optimally in a multi-modal manner so the data is worthy of being stored for later retrieval and application.

I hope that college student does well on her upcoming test, but if all she’s doing is highlighting, her brain most likely won’t find the material interesting enough to be stored for long.

Joe

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How do our students really learn?

The ability to retain and recall information is central to improving memory, knowledge, and learning.

Two techniques, supported by research, are very effective for improving long-term memory:

• Practice testing. This is where students have to generate an answer to a question. It can include past papers, multiple choice questions or doing practice essay answers. A key, though, is this has to be “low-stakes”, meaning no stress on students and not a judgment on their abilities.
• Distributed practice. Sometimes referred to as “spacing”, distributed practice involves doing little bits of work often instead of a lot all at once (i. e., cramming). Essentially, students remember more if they spread out their learning; for instance, one hour a day for eight days rather than eight hours in one day. This form of studying is effective because it allows time for students to forget and relearn the material, which cements it into their long-term memory.

Two techniques were found to be fairly effective strategies:

• Elaborative interrogation. Asking “why is this true?” or “why might this be the case?” helps students think about the material and make connections to previously learned information. However, this technique does require students to have a good base knowledge for it to work effectively.
• Interleaved practice. Interleaving is where students mix up either the types of problem or different subjects, so as to avoid “blocking” their time on just one type of question. This helps keep things fresh and makes it easier for students to identify similarities and differences between the materials they are studying.

Finally, these two strategies were found to be ineffective in improving students’ ability to recall information at a later date:

• Highlighting/underlining. Despite being the weapon of choice for many students, highlighting material often fails to lead to long-term learning. This is because it’s often done on autopilot, doesn’t help students make connections from previous learned material and doesn’t help them make inferences on what they are learning. By itself, highlighting is not the worst technique – it’s more a case of how students use it, with many excessively over-highlighting, making it more akin to coloring in.
• Rereading. Although students may feel that they have learned something if they can point to a whole chapter they’ve read, it may not be as beneficial as they think. This is because people sometimes end up skim-reading, which doesn’t require them to think very deeply about what it is they are looking at.