The importance of friendships for only children cannot be overemphasized. 

From Arne Duncan's "How Schools Work":

Our sixth graders are not given any assignments. They are given coloring pages,  scissors, construction paper, and tape. A good day wasn't a day when they mastered fractions, or learned how a bill gets turned into a law. A good day was a day when no one got hurt.
There was no homework. We changed that from the very beginning, giving these kids assignments, to train them everyday after school, putting in long hours to bring the academics up to grade level.

- We found that categories had to slide one slot to the right. The kids who were in "exceeds standards", were actually just meeting the standard.

- we don't need rote knowledge anymore, we have the Internet for that. What we need are kids who can learn anything and continue to be able to learn for the rest of their lives. We need kids who can think, not just recall. We need kids were comfortable solving problems in the group, working together, supporting and challenging each other, and bringing out the best thinking in everyone.

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From "change anything"  - kerry patterson etc

Scientific strategy 1: Identify crucial moments
When it comes to personal change, you don't have to be pushing yourself to the Limit all the time. You need to focus on only a handful of moments when you're most at risk. We call these crucial moments. These are the moments of truth that could the results you want- if you could get yourself to enact the right behaviors.

As you search for your own crucial moments, consider whether they come at certain times, places, around certain people or when you're in certain physical or emotional states.

Scientific strategy 2: Create vital behaviors
Once you identify your crucial moments, your next task is to create the rules you follow when Temptation pays you a visit.
Research shows that if you establish rules in advance of facing a challenge, you are far more likely to change your behavior when the crucial moment hits. Instead of facing each instance as a unique event calling for new choice, you've already decided what you do. And you're far more likely to comply.
When it comes to personal change you want to set specific rules and not vague guidelines.

Human beings are notoriously myopic. By contemplating the pleasure a good habit will eventually yield, we can make the Habit itself more enjoyable. When we take the effort to consider the long-term effects of our actions, we can overcome our hard-wired short-term bias.

Tactic 1: Visit your default future
Your default future is the life you live if you continue behaving as you currently are. Glimpses into worst-case scenarios propel people to change.

Tactic 2: Use value words

at a rehab center, they teach prisoners to link their actions to their values. We talked about showing respect for those who will sit at this place at the table. You're not just setting a table you're working as part of a team. You carrying your fair share of the work. You're not letting people down. You're becoming trustworthy. It's values values values all the time.

Stop obsessing over the unpleasant aspects of what you're required to do. Youre sacrificing so that you'll be mobile and playing with your grandkids.

Tactic 3: Make it a game
A game has three important design elements: Limited time, a small challenge, a score.

By breaking the goal into small wins, setting a limited time frame i'm developing a meaningful way of keeping score you can turn something noxious into something surprisingly motivating.
Love what you hate by turning a tough task into a game.

Summary: Love what you hate
As you work on your change effort, rid yourself of the notion that Success will require a lifetime of self-denial. You can learn to love what you hate.


If you'd like to ask several new friends at once, join associations made up of people who are working on the same problem you're trying to conquer. We were friends, I didn't know he was involved in the same program. We became close friends and bounced things off one another and encouraged each other all the time.

Distance yourself from the unwilling;
Distance yourself from individuals who repeatedly enCourage or enable your bad habits.

Do not underestimate the role fans, coaches and accomplices play in your life.

Cheap good things close and convenient, and bad things distant and difficult.
If you want to exercise more, workout equipment conveniently close in your bedroom or living room. Wear your workout clothes to sleep. Moving a temptation just a few feet away can have a huge impact.

Meet laziness a tool in your change. Humans have a default bias. We would rather not mess with things once they're arranged. Set up positive defaults. You can set things on autopilot and then count on your tendency to go with the flow.

Change cues; are there places you can put up reminders that will help keep you on track.

When baked goods were around Mary would stick to fruit or a granola bar, mary would go to bed at 10 p.m. so She wouldn't be too tired to exercise in the morning.

Human being judge much of the life experience not on the totality of the entire experience, but on the basis of the last few minutes.  Actions that occur less than 2% of the time affect the other 98%.


be the scientist and the subject. Explore your own successes and failures.

From Becoming brilliant

How to level four, communication through writing decreases the readers need to guess the message.

People who are good communicators take the perspective of the listener.

 Sara sees a box of M&M's on the kitchen. Excited, she opens the box only to discover that the box has just paper clips. Her mom Chuckles and ask Sarah what her brother will think when he sees the Box. Sarah says paper clips. She's having a hard time reconciling that she can think one thing but Larry can think something else. When kids no longer say paper clips but say m&ms we have a theory of mind. - just what they need to take the bus spective of the listener

Level 3 requires that we take the mindset of a listener into account.

On YouTube we found a wonderful level three conversation. The topic under discussion is a rendezvous at the park. The two children were on an independent phone call. Please stay on topic they also discuss whether they should walk or take the car. They slip out of level 3 when they point for each other to park out of the window. Because they are in different places pointing out the window won't work. Where they feel, pointing out the window offers us a chance to look at how good Converse work

Ever hear of the flipped classroom? It is based on the discovery that Active Learning is much more effective in high school and college than sitting in class and listening to lectures. Flipped classroom, students listen to lectures at home and do homework problems together in class. Everyone gets to talk in class and operate on the material. Student participation is the norm and not the exception. She asked parents to watch a video at home kidz about maps that introduce the vocabulary they needed words like north-south and map key. The next day they made a map of the neighborhood right around their school. The class had a blast using all of the new vocabulary words.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/


For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

My favorite bits from : "You, Your child and school" by Ken Robinson

"Will my children discover their true potential and be guided to a career that they love and are passionate about?"

Children are beautifully designed by nature to direct their own education. Children love questioning, and participating. These educative instincts still work beautifully for children who are provided with conditions that allow them to flourish.

Children are very curious. The first priority in education is to keep their Curiosity alive. When children want to learn, they enjoy education. The more Curious children are as they grow, the more they will learn and the more subtle their abilities and sensibilities will become.  How do parents and teachers keep children curious? By intriguing them questions that interest them and by engaging them in projects that inspire them. Kindling your children's curiosity in the most formative years is a gift that will sustain them in a lifetime of learning.

Communication
Fluency in Reading and Writing are accepted imperatives in education, it's just as important to cultivate clear and confident speech. Communication is not only about words and numbers. The ability to communicate thoughts and feelings in all these ways is fundamental to personal well-being and to social confidence and connection.

 Martin Seligman is one of the founding figures of the positive psychology movement. Happiness can be analyzed into three different elements: Positive emotions, engagement and meaning. Engagement is about flow - the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity. Meaning is belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self.  If you feel what you're doing matters to you or to people around you, you're more likely to enjoy doing it.
Career well-being, social well-being, financial well-being, physical well-being, community well being - your sense of Engagement with the area where you live.

If your career deteriorates, it's easy to see how it can cause deterioration in other areas over time

Well-being is more than a fleeting sense of pleasure. It comes from helping people find their talents, interest and purpose: their Element.
Well-being comes from helping children look outward as well as inward: Mindfulness and service to others more than self-absorption.

Well being is as much about effort as circumstances.

Language arts
Language education should include developing a love of literature in all its forms. It should involve developing the skills of what is sometimes called Oracy - being able to speak clearly and confidently and to listen with patience and attention to others.

Math is the ability to understand and work with numbers. Its foundations in education are  in arithmetic- addition subtraction multiplication and division.

In his book : High performers: The secrets of successful schools, he says" students with the best teachers in the best schools learn at at least three times more each year than students with the worst teachers in the worst schools"

The role of teachers is to create the best conditions for learning to happen.
Great teachers keep the students involved, curious, and excited about learning. They Inspire the students to achieve at the highest levels. They instill a Joy for learning, for seeing class time work that comes with it as something to be anticipated rather than endured. They set off Sparks of curiosity in the classroom , and you never know what these sparks will ignite.  Key to deep engagement in High School classrooms is intellectual playfulness. Teachers who offer assignments that are open-ended and projects with intellectual risk are more likely to have students who were consistently engaged.

Exuberant discovery.

Great teachers cultivate task confidence by  developing students abilities in their own areas of expertise. Acquire Knowledge and Skills they need to become independent learners : To experiment, ask questions, and develop the skills in creative and critical thinking.

Great teachers have high expectations for their students.

Great teachers are constantly Reinventing their classrooms and evaluating their own progress with the students. They are relentless

Homework for young students should be short, lead to success without much struggle, can usually involve parents and when possible, use out of school activities that kids enjoy.

Page 184  read in grade 6 and 7

No homework policy in some schools.
Students daily home assignment

1. Read just-right books every night. And have your parents read to you too.

2. Get outside and play- this does not mean more screen time.

3. Get a good night sleep.


One year on, students have not fallen behind and now have time to be creative thinkers at home and follow their passions. No homework for Kinder through 5th grade doesn't erase learning, but help students tolerate an often long day better and encourages them to pursue their unique interests after school.

Tie homework to real life activities. Get creative particularly with young children.

The first priority in education is to keep children's curiosity alive. The more Curious children are as they grow the more they will learn. how do parents and teachers keep children Curious? by intriguing them with questions. By giving them tasks that challenge them. By engaging them and projects that Inspire them. Kindling your children's curiousity in their most formative years is a gift that will sustain them in a lifetime of learning.

Learning to communicate ideas clearly and coherently is essential to our relationships. It's important to cultivate clear and confident speech.

Martin Seligman is one of the founding figures of the positive psychology movement. Happiness can be analyzed into three different women's: Emotions, engagement, meaning.
Positive emotions are what we feel.
Engagement is about flow: " being one with the music, time stopping, loss of self-conscious during an absorbing activity".
Meaning:" belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self"

we Spend most of our waking hours during the week doing something that we consider a career, occupation, vocation or job. If your career well-being is low, easy to see how it can cause deterioration over other areas over time. If you have a career that is. Meaningful, you are likely thriving in career well-being.

Expose your children to measured risk. Let them fail.

Via
https://www.edutopia.org/article/why-students-forget-and-what-you-can-do-about-it

Which explains why the following learning strategies, all tied to research conducted within the past five years, are so effective:

1. Peer-to-peer explanations: When students explain what they’ve learned to peers, fading memories are reactivated, strengthened, and consolidated. This strategy not only increases retention but also encourages active learning.
2. The spacing effect: Instead of covering a topic and then moving on, revisit key ideas throughout the school year. Research shows that students perform better academically when given multiple opportunities to review learned material. For example, teachers can quickly incorporate a brief review of what was covered several weeks earlier into ongoing lessons, or use homework to re-expose students to previous concepts.
3. Frequent practice tests: Akin to regularly reviewing material, giving frequent practice tests can boost long-term retention and, as a bonus, help protect against stress, which often impairs memory performance. Practice tests can be low stakes and ungraded, such as a quick pop quiz at the start of a lesson or a trivia quiz on Kahoot, a popular online game-based learning platform. Breaking down one large high-stakes test into smaller tests over several months is an effective approach.
4. Interleave concepts: Instead of grouping similar problems together, mix them up. Solving problems involves identifying the correct strategy to use and then executing the strategy. When similar problems are grouped together, students don’t have to think about what strategies to use—they automatically apply the same solution over and over. Interleaving forces students to think on their feet, and encodes learning more deeply.
5. Combine text with images: It’s often easier to remember information that’s been presented in different ways, especially if visual aids can help organize information. For example, pairing a list of countries occupied by German forces during World War II with a map of German military expansion can reinforce that lesson. It’s easier to remember what’s been read and seen, instead of either one alone.

Best way to study

From : https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/10/whats-the-best-way-to-study/

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-BD427_WORKFA_G_20111025215707.jpg

Test yourself:

Chiefly, testing yourself repeatedly before an exam teaches the brain to retrieve and apply knowledge from memory. The method is more effective than re-reading a textbook. If you are facing a test on the digestive system, practice explaining how it works from start to finish, rather than studying a list of its parts.

Sleep is vital:

Sleep also plays a role in test performance, but in two unexpected ways. Review the toughest material right before going to bed the night before the test. That approach makes it easier to recall the material later. And don’t wake up earlier than usual to study; this could interfere with the rapid-eye-movement sleep that aids memory.

What to eat:

Everybody knows you should eat breakfast the day of a big test. High-carb, high-fiber, slow-digesting foods like oatmeal are best, research shows. But what you eat a week in advance matters, too. When 16 college students were tested on attention and thinking speed, then fed a five-day high-fat, low-carb diet heavy on meat, eggs, cheese and cream and tested again, their performance declined.

You can’t multitask:

While many teens insist they study better while listening to music or texting their friends, research shows the opposite: Information reviewed amid distractions is less likely to be recalled later.

Calm yourself:

If you are still feeling anxious, set aside 10 minutes beforehand to write down your worries. She and a fellow researcher tested 106 ninth-graders for anxiety before their first high-pressure exam, then asked half of them to spend 10 minutes writing down their thoughts right before the test. The anxious kids who did the writing exercise performed as well on the test as the students who had been calm all along. But anxious students who didn’t do the writing performed more poorly. Expressing one’s worries in writing, unburdens the brain

From "The Element" Ken Robinson

• When people are in the zone, they align naturally with a way of thinking that works best for them. There is a level of effortlessness and you simply don't feel time the same way. Everything comes more easily.
• One of the strongest signs of being in the zone is a sense of freedom and authenticity. When we are doing something that we love and are naturally good at, we are much more likely to feel centered in our true sense of self - to be who we truly feel we are.
• Doing the thing you love is no guarantee that you'll be in the zone every time. Sometimes the mood isn't right, the time is wrong and ideas just don't flow. "When its not going well, I put it away and try again tomorrow or the next day. What I don't do is watch other people's work that may make me feel worse".
• My definition of creativity is : "the process of having original ideas that have value". Imagination can be entirely internal. You couldn't be creative unless you actually did something.
• When they are very young, kids aren't particularly worried about being wrong. They'll just have a go at it and see how things turn out. What is true is that if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.