One morning, in my middle school classroom, a student reported that there was a shooting on his block. Other students, living on the same block, reported that they heard the shots. A middle school student, struggling with learning difficulties and disruptive behavior, was responsible for security at home. The family was surrounded by active gang…
You’ve done well! Here’s a badge! This kind of reward system is common in games. Feedback and reinforcement can produce learned behavior. This is called operant conditioning. However, sooner or later, extrinsic rewards time out and lose their power. Points for no value actually lower motivation. So what is it that keeps players in the…
Passover is a challenging holiday for most families I know, including mine. Let’s use the “Dayenu” song (It would have been enough!) to list some of the obvious triggers: Remove all food from the house. Dayeinu! Clean the kitchen perfectly and re-kosher the counters, sink, stove, and ovens. Dayeinu! Lock up the year-round dishes and…
What is a game? Although there are different opinions about the definition of a game, here is one which Jonathan Cassie presents in his book Level Up Your Classroom (p. 11): All games are a combination of the four “mother mechanics: Agon, Alea, Mimicry, and Ilinx. The notion of four mother mechanics comes from Roger Caillois,…
‘Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?’ Tom wheeled suddenly and said: ‘Why, it’s you, Ben! I warn’t noticing.’ ‘Say — I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther WORK — wouldn’t you? Course you would!’ Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: ‘What do…
Mike never uses his agenda planner. He says he doesn’t need one. Unfortunately, he has a test today, and he forgets to prepare. Mary has a long-term project for science. She knows she wants to do it, but she doesn’t know how to break it down into parts. Executive function starts with awareness. Executive function answers the…
Jenny’s backpack is stuffed with: three textbooks, several empty bags of snacks, a school supply bag (with pens, markers, and her eraser collection), several fidgets, a rotten apple, two notebooks, and piles of old papers bunched up like trash. She can’t find her agenda planner. Organization is the ability to create and maintain systems to…
Jenny’s history project is due tomorrow. She has ten hours to do it. She stays up all night and has it ready to hand in on time. She realizes that if she had given herself time, she would have revised it. Now it’s too late. Jenny doesn’t have the skills to break down the steps…
https://www.easel.ly/infographic/e9iz2w By mrsdvorakravitz | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon It’s Sunday. Deb is upstairs in her room. She has a little math and history homework, and then she plans to run outside and play with her friends. Before she starts, she goes downstairs to eat breakfast. After breakfast, her sister…
https://www.easel.ly/infographic/ol4dge
