Category: Education

Growth is part of life, emotionally, physically, and academically. Education experts recommend regular measuring of students’ growth and success in the classroom as a way of helping teachers know if their students are growing at the right place and in the right direction. On the student’s part, having a growth mindset is critical to academic and lifelong success.

Besides providing your students with standardized testing after every semester or at the end of every school year, what else can you do as a teacher to aid your learners’ growth in and outside the classroom? That is the question that this article seeks to answer.

Measuring Student Growth

Student growth is when learners can increase their intelligence levels, discover and grow their talents, and learn new skills and abilities consistently. It also means instilling a growth mindset so that they start believing in their abilities, rather than doubting their chances of developing over time. You will know that your students are growing in the right way when they start showing signs of being thirsty for new information. They will also start seeking out opportunities to tackle challenges and grow their skills.

Here are 5 ways through which you can inspire growth in your students:

1. Create Communities

Communities can be within a classroom, across grades, or between students who share common interests, such as a sports lover community. Educators can foster a community of equality that allows students to work together for a purpose bigger than their selfish interests. It gives kids a chance to belong and to have their voices heard. This will allow educators to monitor how students in the same community look after one another, how they appreciate the individual and collective effort, and how they create a conducive environment for sharing ideas. When that happens, the kids get smarter together and grow together and educators can know that they did a good job.

2. Instead of Praising Intelligence, Encourage Effort

Educators should encourage effort made and not the brilliance or intelligence of a student. Of course, some kids are born intelligent and will perform well in the classroom even when they behave badly and keep bad company. Praising them when they outscore everyone else can easily discourage their growth. Educators need to start complimenting students who outperform their previous attempts.

If a kid was struggling with a math concept last semester but has since improved, encourage them to keep pushing. That way, they will learn hard work and resilience, two important skills that will come in handy later in life. Also, remember not to dwell too much on past glory. Teach the learners to focus on their next step because that is the surest way of making progress.

3. Spend Purposeful Time Outside the Classroom

To ensure the physical and cognitive growth of your students, it is important that educators also insist on spending a purposeful time outside the classroom. This can be through fun outdoor activities, such as camping, hiking, going on biking expeditions, or learning how to put together a camping tent. All of these activities can stimulate teamwork, a needed recreational time, and also gives your students the sense that their growth and learning is not tied down to the classroom as a physical object.

4. Encourage Time Management and Organization

Teach your students about the importance of prioritizing tasks and managing time effectively. Kids are easily distracted by peer pressure, TV, among others, but that will not be the case if they have a timetable to follow. Help them to organize their school work, how to spare time for homework or work out, and how to revise their notes. These organizational and time management skills will help them grow into responsible adults and great corporate managers.

4. Inspirational Posters

Anchor charts around the classroom as reminders of the importance of authentic learning and the need for developing a growth mindset. The charts should feature images, words, and phrases that inspire the kids to grow. Think of quotes from successful business leaders, stories of popular athletes, and even former students who overcame the same challenges your students are going through now. Let the kids know that in spite of the initial failures and struggles that many successful people have had to go through, they still made it in life thanks to their growth mindset and determination for a bigger change.

5. Encourage Curiosity

Being curious about something is what drives learners to find clarity and urgency in different aspects of life. Without it, it can never be created. It is through encouraging kids to ask you thought-provoking questions and allowing them to experiment on different hypotheses that they will get the motivation and purpose for designing something. A study suggests that students maintaining their curiosity is how they truly immerse themselves in their studies, and that’s how growth happens.

You can encourage curiosity in the simplest ways possible. For instance, you can introduce the concept of seed germination and growth through a small indoor garnered project. Planting the seeds, taking care of them, and anticipating the moment they bloom can greatly encourage their curiosity. If your classroom doesn’t get enough sunlight, you can ask your school to invest in some grow lights, that will not only compensate for the lack of natural light but will also speed up the entire process. This can make the curiosity-filled learning effective and time-efficient.

Conclusion: Aiding Student Growth

There are tons of inherent benefits of developing a growth mindset, both for kids and adults. As a teacher, you will only succeed in aiding your learners to grow by encouraging them to push through their comfort zones to grasp new concepts regardless of how tough they could be. Patient with them because effective learning is the key to learning and student growth that otherwise doesn’t happen instantaneously.

Technology is changing the dynamics of everything, including education. Although many people still rely on traditional methods of learning, but one cannot deny the importance and benefits of e-learning. Education system is revolutionized and now the online education systems are the platforms for the future.

Use of technology in the education system expands course offerings, experiences and learning materials. Virtual schools have increased the student’s productivity, reduced the cost associated with the undergoing program. For example, now you can learn French just by attending online classes without being physically present in an actual classroom.

Online Learning Resources

There are some learning websites which demand a certain amount of money for subscription but still that amount is less than which you pay for a regular course. On the contrary, open educational resources and distance learning tools are also available.  These learning and research resources that reside in the public domain are freely available to anyone over the web.

For example, now the professors of Harvard are uploading lectures on different platforms. So today, Harvard is accessible to many people in a way no one would even have imagined 50 years ago. This advancement in education system and its accessibility is possible only because of technology.

Within all levels of education, blended learning programs are being used that combine online and face-to-face interaction. Students access online material outside the classroom as their homework and then apply this new knowledge in the classroom by engaging in creative discussions or group work projects. Even in a traditional classroom environment, technology is being used like showing videos or images on a particular topic to understand things better.

Read about the 10 essential tips for succeeding in online courses and degree programs.

“As we continue our research, the best places for education will bring people, technology and space together in innovative ways. If you think of classrooms as places where knowledge gets created instead of consumed, they have similarities to innovation studios where flexibility is built in. More than ever, we are seeing the need for classrooms to become highly flexible spaces that support the new behaviours of learning that are the direct result of new knowledge.” (universitybusiness.co.uk)

Effective learning environments are flexible to meet the needs of the modern student.  Nowadays, kids can take online high school classes that cover everything they might need, and possibly in a more engaging way than a traditional establishment would do. Classroom settings may be beneficial for some students and can greatly depend upon the subject matter.  The same applies to online learning, whether full time, a single course, or a combination of classroom and online settings.

Teachers are well-trained to develop course materials for either setting, but it takes an e-learning designer to create, enhance, or support the online learning platform for optimal results throughout the educational process.

Technology in Education

Technology has made education accessible to everybody. Those who cannot afford proper schooling can learn the same things online. It also increases the productivity by providing the comfort of home; you do not have to go anywhere; you can learn whatever you want and whenever you want. It provides self-paced learning, when you enroll in a traditional college program, you will have to forget about work, hobbies and even family: Studying must be your priority.

This is why many students who have financial responsibilities or are single parents decide to leave their education. A self-paced system enables them to make progress with rhythm that suits them. If you have a day job, you can study at night. That is an advantage that traditional education system cannot beat. Because of this, the literacy rate has increased.

There is one more advantage of self-paced learning and that is, it increases the productivity of the learner. In a traditional classroom, all students are taught at a same pace but in online learning, one can acquire as much information as one wants according to his capabilities. In online learning, you are the master of your own education. As your interaction is with people with people across the globe, it widens your perspective. Being exposed to new ideas from professionals in other countries may spark creativity of your own.

The Online Classroom

This type of education has grown over the last few years and has experienced mainstream acceptance. With an online class, one gets to control learning environment and productivity which helps to develop a deeper understanding. New methods of learning provide them with options that suit them, not the other way round. It makes the education liberating, not limiting.

Globally, over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom. Wang Tao, Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Tencent Education says that he believes that the integration of information technology in education will be further accelerated and that online education will eventually become an integral component of school education.  The future of online education looks promising and opens education opportunities to a larger section of the population than ever before.

It’s never too early to start thinking about your child’s future. While the job market will change to accommodate new coming generations, some things will always stay the same – like the importance of networking.

Today, 88% of professionals consider networking to be crucial to a thriving career. Knowing this, you should never underestimate the power of connections. Sometimes, it’s all about the people you know.

Networking Skills

However, networking does have the potential to pamper you with benefits to reap far outside the professional realm. Professionally connecting can teach you powerful communication and other soft skills that may cushion your social life comfortably. Now is the time to begin instilling the importance of networking into your child’s growth mentality. This way, they can be comfortable enough to siege various networking opportunities productive for their future once entering college.

For example: by teaching your kids to be social now, they may be interested in non-conventional social activities, such as joining Greek life. Unbeknownst to most, Greek life can be an educationally enriching process for many. Having committees, meetings, and executive boards, members of fraternities and sororities take on many responsibilities and tasks teaching them great business.

Outside of this, Greek life organizations also give students the opportunity to improve on how they participate in teamwork, prioritize community service, and communicate. On top of that, students who were members of Greek organizations prove to be happier and more engaged once entering the workforce. In fact, 85% of Fortune 500 Executives are fraternity members.

Career Building

Whether your child plans to go to college or take up a trade, there are many ways to go about networking to connect them to future job opportunities.  Take your child to attend job and career fairs, introducing them to your colleagues needing interns and shadowers, get them a mentor, or even helping them build a LinkedIn profile once of age.

There are also public service jobs in competitive career paths. For example, first responders are high stress positions that take unique skills, such as the police, firefighters, paramedics and 911 dispatchers.  Leaning how to network with people already doing these jobs will greatly assist in the necessary research to determine what each of these careers involve before committing to the challenge.

Regardless of your approach, meeting people is a crucial value of higher education – and education overall. Prepare your children for their future of work while they’re still obtaining an education. This way, they’ll be ready for whatever the job market has to throw at them.

Here more information on ways to network below.

Social Networking

In this day and age, most of us think of social networking as what you do when you log on to your favorite social media app.  That that really has more to do with how we connect with people on social media. Most of the time, it’s for personal use. Platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn are often for business use as well.  However, the idea of social networking for various purposes has been around for as long as humans walked on this earth.

Basically, a social network in the offline world is all of the people we are connected with in the world, whether it be friends, school friends, work colleagues, and organizations we may be part of.  Even without computers, we have a network of those in our physical vicinity that we are all connected with.

As we’ve already explored in this article, if you want to find the right school, college, or job – it’s beneficial to network with people that can help you in those areas.  And the idea of leaning networking skills has more to do with personal interaction with individuals than impersonal connections on social media.

Connecting with others online can be part of teaching social networking skills, but it should not be regarded as being anywhere near as effective as expanding your social network people that you can talk to on the phone or meet with in person.

The days of relying on the rows and rows of public library books for school projects are long gone. Nowadays, the internet is a one-stop shop for gaining any and all resources necessary for learning. While it’s amazing that knowledge is so readily available at our fingertips, it’s increasingly important to differentiate valuable learning resources from spam and other junk.

Whether you’re a student or a parent, here are tips to help you embark on this journey to find the perfect resource.  

What Types of Resources Are Out There?

Whether you’re looking for some extracurricular activities to sharpen your skills in a certain subject like scientific discoveries, a fully inclusive tutoring service, or learning about science, the internet has it all. The key to finding the perfect online program is understanding the area(s) that you wish to improve.

Are you at risk of being held back a year or do you just want to get a jump on highschool algebra? For help with a single subject or opportunities for extra learning, check out your school’s and/or school district’s resources. Often times schools will have a webpage for these types of learning activities. For example, one school in Indiana offers resources on learning to read and learning important math skills.

If you are in need of a full tutoring service, the search process can become a little more complex. Refining your search to be as specific as possible can make a huge difference. Instead of searching “online tutoring services” and getting a massive list of just about every tutoring service on the planet, try searching “5th grade math online tutoring services.” This list should be full of relevant sources. Picking the perfect one will then come down to a little extra research on the specific service.

Make sure to look into customer reviews, as well as prices and scheduling, in order to find the service that fits your needs. Your search will come back with big names that you may recognize, such as Sylvan and Chegg. It may also come back with local tutoring services. Be certain to check the local programs as well—local teachers often teach these programs and can relate them to specific school requirements.

How Do You Discover Your Learning Needs?

Picking whether you want an organized tutoring service or just some additional activities is a conversation that needs to happen between child, parent, and teacher. This is a critical point for students to communicate their needs. Even if you sign your child up for the best tutoring service, they might not show the improvement you hope for if they don’t want to be there and participate.

Maybe it would be better to provide them with fun activities that could capture their imagination while teaching them valuable lessons. This will encourage kids to embrace lifelong learning. Whichever route you choose, just be sure that everyone is on the same page. Communication is so important in this step, for both parents and students.  

Where to Start Searching?

When you first begin looking for information online, the results can be daunting. A simple google search comes back with billions of results in fractions of a second. If you’ve ever searched for something as broad as “learning resources,” then you know how difficult it can be to find what you’re actually searching for. By utilizing Google’s advanced search queries, you can get rid of the non credible sites with one easy trick.

Add site:.edu or site:.gov to your search query and you should end up with only credible sites, such as “5th grade math resources site:.edu”. These .edu and .gov sites are normally some of the most reliable resources on the web, but make sure to double-check the content and sources on the site just to be sure.

A caveat to this strategy is if you are looking for full-service tutoring, then you may want to include .com and .org websites, as these are often private companies that specialize in tutoring. Just be sure to check the website for credibility before you give them any personal information.

If you’re looking for a fun activity on searching for credible sources, you can find lesson plans online to help teach your students.

Picking the Perfect Program and Beyond

Once you’ve discovered the programs or resources that you want to use, set up guidelines for using the new learning program. These guidelines should include expectations on how the student will utilize the program, how they will communicate their learning to their parents or teachers, and how they will stay safe while using the internet. Since the student in this scenario will be spending more time online, it’s crucial to set up a plan for cybersecurity. Spam and other non credible websites could lead to viruses and false learning.

Follow these simple online safety practices and you’re sure to maximize learning while minimizing risk. Stay up-to-date with your child’s learning and always encourage clear paths of communication. This simple step will help the student feel like they have a support system and make you both feel more secure in the digital world.

Author Bio

Chandler Clayton is a freelance writer, specializing in education and safety. He draws upon his years of teaching environmental education to empower learning in children and adults of all backgrounds. He has been featured on sites such as SafeWise and Newsday.

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