Sometimes the mathematics conversation is just as confusing to students as this collection of signs is to a driver in an unfamiliar situation. There appears to be a variety of symbols used to identify the different types of roads in the area, just as we have a variety of concepts, operations, and relations that are conveyed through symbolic notations.

Among the recent trends in education, few are as notable (for the right reasons) as the growth mindset. This belief is, fortunately, very simple to understand. Mental abilities and other talents can be developed through dedication and hard work.

How One Teacher is Working Her Magic to Help Struggling Students Reclaim Their Education, Part 2 of 2

Rather than focusing on text reading this month, let’s turn our attention to one of the critical components of language necessary for comprehension: vocabulary.

“What the what?” as Liz Lemon of TV’s 30 Rock might say. Oral reading FLUENCY doesn’t measure reading FLUENCY? How can that be? Well, the answer is … it’s complicated. To fully explain, we should probably begin by revisiting what the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) measure really is. We have to begin back in the early 1980s, when a team of researchers and doctoral students at the University of Minnesota began to explore the idea that simple measures of academic performance could potentially serve as indicators of the academic competence of a student at a particular point in time—and then, perhaps, also be used to monitor the trajectory of skill development over a period of time (Jenkins & Fuchs, 2012).