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Topic: Homework

Let’s Not Forget the Forgetting Curve

April 6, 2016

  You are probably familiar with the concept of the learning curve. When it’s steep, learning is a challenge. When the learning curve is shallow, learning comes easily. When we say a student is smart in subject, we often mean they have a shallow learning curve. Most of school focuses on getting students up the learning curve, testing them to be sure they made it, and then moving on to the next topic.   But in reality, learning doesn’t stop with understanding. Deep learning encompasses understanding, storing, and recalling the information as needed for problem solving. If students know their facts or strategies and then forget, they need to struggle right back up the learning curve when they need to use that information again.* Who among us hasn’t had their mind go… Read More

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Empowering Parents: Sibling Surprises

November 13, 2015

Edited by Nancy Weinstein Editor’s Note: As the mother of two daughters who are so different and yet sometimes seem so similar, I am always drawn to sibling stories. In this second post in our Empowering Parents series, Laura, mother of two girls, Julia, 8, and Leah, 9, describes why she chose Mindprint. She explains how her family continues to use Toolbox. To protect the family’s privacy, these are not their real names. When we decided to give our children the test, we didn’t have any specific concerns about their learning abilities. We just thought why not find out if there is anything there, any specific learning strengths or weaknesses that we could work on, foster, and/ or support. Why not do everything you can… Read More

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It’s Creativity, Mom

July 30, 2015

  By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff It doesn’t matter if it’s summer or the middle of February, at some point a parent stands before her child’s messy room and has to make a decision. And 9 times out of 10, the solution is simple: close the door. From the hall, the mess is gone. To clean or not to clean, is not really the question. The question is how the child finds a matching pair of socks, her homework, and earbuds beneath the upper layer of clothes, books, and unidentified objects. I do have one confession, however. My own desk is a mess. My office? Pretty clean, in the sense that a small toddler could be let loose on the… Read More

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Now You See it, Now You Don’t: Cognitive Blindness

October 25, 2014

By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff A few days ago, my six-year-old brought home a book from school that was considered a “right-fit”. Her assignment was to read the book to me out loud. We’ve been doing this since the start of the school year. It was a routine assignment and from what I could tell from the book’s jacket, a routine kind of book for a typical first grader. But this was not routine. A few pages into the story, she lost much of the fluency I would have expected given the book’s vocabulary. And why? Because she was distracted by the pictures. “That man is not wearing a helmet,” she said, looking at a man on a motorcycle depicted… Read More

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This is Interesting…

January 16, 2014

By Sarah Vander Schaaff In the middle of a polar vortex, one should not illustrate the concept of a perimeter by saying to an eight-year old, “Imagine you are walking the perimeter of the dog park.” Cold wind, frozen toes, the threat of stepping in….well, you get the idea. I was getting the look any parent who has helped a kid with homework knows well, the one that says: what good are you if you can’t telepathically understand my teacher’s intentions or remember things you learned when Reagan was president? I had to think quickly. “Forget the dog park,” I said, ready to pander to the aspirations of a soon-to-be tween. “When you paint your room,” I began, “you’ll only… Read More

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