Teacher Toms Blog

JUNE 19, 2025

Most learning is not the result of instruction. His best known work, Deschooling Society , published in 1971 is a no holds barred critique of institutionalized, compulsory schooling, arguing that the overall effect is to alienate most children from their own learning. Teaching and learning are very different things.

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Motivation Testing Failure Grades 100

Teach Thought

JULY 17, 2025

How To Use The Gradual Release Of Responsibility Model To Grow More Confident Students by Terry Heick Learning is a culture. Even the practices that promote or undermine the learning process itself come are first and foremost human and cultural artifacts. Further, learning is ongoing, perishable, and alive–just like culture.

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Ask a Tech Teacher

OCTOBER 10, 2017

They all worked for a while and then, maybe when the novelty wore off, I was back to the same Bell curve of successes, failures, and those in between. That includes everything from Common Core to the IB philosophy, from Depth of Knowledge to Project-based Learning. When the learning is visible the teacher knows if it is occurring.

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Learning Failure Evaluation Feedback 193

eSchool News

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

Testing anxiety shows itself in different ways for different students. Some students avoid school on test days, and many suffer from symptoms such as stomachaches or headaches. It’s a common belief that testing anxiety affects only older students, such as those taking high school or college placement exams.

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Edsurge

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

my students informed me, running over after their latest test. “Is Over the last five years, I have worked hard to teach my students that failure is a gift. Setbacks, changes and struggles are an essential part of learning. Setbacks, changes and struggles are an essential part of learning. Is it supposed to go that way?”

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eSchool News

JANUARY 6, 2025

In a TEDx talk titled The Super Mario Effect–Tricking Your Brain into Learning More , Mark Rober highlighted how video games like Super Mario can motivate people to achieve their goals by viewing failures as learning opportunities. This approach especially helps reluctant readers.

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eSchool News

JANUARY 29, 2019

There is a fair amount of research into the impact of classroom design on student learning. Spaces flooded with natural light that allow for a variety of learning methods and activities, and spaces that let students feel a sense of ownership over the classroom, demonstrably affect how well students learn.

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eSchool News

DECEMBER 6, 2018

But younger children can learn and benefit from modified lessons. While older students may pause and analyze success and failure in between solutions, younger children tend to move more quickly from one solution to the next. They get to touch, squish, and test the properties of different items.

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Edsurge

AUGUST 8, 2017

They would do well on timed tests, just acing timed tests. So a few years ago Talbert, a math professor at Grand Valley State University, tried a new approach, known as flipped learning—a method catching on these days in college classrooms. It’s called “ Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty.”

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Failure Lecturing Syllabus Instructors 142

eSchool News

JANUARY 22, 2025

The basic steps of design thinking are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test (Interaction Design Foundation, 2016). The goal is for students to lead with empathy to identify and define a problem, then develop a realistic solution to that problem that can be tested and refined through feedback. link] Dorland, A. 2016, May 25).

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Failure Critical Thinking Essay Feedback 300

Edsurge

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

Earlier this week, LEAP Innovations, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes personalized learning, culturally relevant teaching and innovation, convened hundreds of Chicago teachers for its sixth annual summit. We still do not have a coherent national approach to rapid-results testing. This year, the event was held fully online.

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eSchool News

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

Prioritizing the creation of a healthy environment where students can continue to learn should be paramount. However, as policy makers determine what that flexibility looks like, they should consider the consequences of pausing testing for another year. Now more than ever, states must find a way to assess student learning.

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Failure Hybrid Learning Education Testing 294

eSchool News

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

This isn’t a bad thing–it’s “the sound of learning,” as a coworker of mine once put it! This creates a clear picture of where and how their learning takes place. When listening, they should avoid interruptions, withhold judgment, and learn to take verbal cues. Things are bound to be extra noisy and energetic.

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STEM Failure Communication Classroom Management 315

eSchool News

OCTOBER 2, 2024

Have them create their inventions and test them out. Here’s the kicker: if they aren’t able to create a working prototype in the allotted time, don’t see that as a failure. The learning after each iteration is as important as the final product. They will also learn to manage their emotions, as success doesn’t come right away.

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Science STEM Failure Discussions 319

Catlin Tucker

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

Self-assessment is a powerful strategy that encourages students to become more invested in their learning journeys. Self-assessment shifts the focus from a grade-centric perspective to a learning-centric one. It promotes ownership of learning, motivating students to be more engaged, active participants in their education.

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Evaluation Assignments Failure Discussions 428

eSchool News

MARCH 26, 2025

Key points: Students who feel supported feel empowered to learn and achieve 3 critical areas necessary to boost student motivation Expanded learning can improve student well-being For more on student achievement, visit eSN’s SEL & Well-Being hub Every student should get to feel brilliant at school. But too often, they dont.

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Failure Math Achievement Beliefs 312

eSchool News

OCTOBER 8, 2021

Never before have educators been challenged and tested as they were, beginning in March 2020 and up until today, and never before has their resilience been more apparent. Keep reading to discover how this district keeps learning going in the middle of a global pandemic. Nominated by : Lexia Learning.

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eLearning Elementary School Elementary School Learning 252

eSchool News

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

We can’t test students on their innovation, but we can encourage them to explore new concepts, look at challenges from all sides, and embrace failures as opportunities to try again with more knowledge. Innovation is more than a buzzword today—it’s something educators strive for in their classrooms, schools, and districts.

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Failure Schools Knowledge Testing 279

Edsurge

MAY 10, 2018

Lessons from Forward Failures “Most of today’s schools were designed for a different time and purpose. However, innovating schools and actually putting those calls to practice can get messy, and it appeared that one theme throughout the event was about facing and learning from those failures.

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eSchool News

NOVEMBER 8, 2015

note : In partnership with Lesson Planet , we asked their professional development resource arm, PD Learning Network , for the most popular videos on their site. When Todd Nesloney was tapped to become lead learner at Webb Elementary, in Navasota, Texas, it could legitimately be called a true learning experience. ”

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Failure Testing Activities Teachers 279

Edsurge

OCTOBER 31, 2018

One day I had been planning to discuss metacognition—a learning strategy I teach to my middle-school students. Every time I hear this, I am faced with the gut-wrenching realization that the student has internalized failure by age eleven. Students go from “I’m not smart” to “I just haven’t learned that.yet.” Enter research.

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eSchool News

MARCH 20, 2019

I like to keep parents in the loop at all times, so each day I send out updates about upcoming tests, attach study guides, or include a monthly calendar with upcoming events. A successful relationship between educators and parents requires this sort of constant communication, whether via phone call, email, or even an in-person conversation.

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Failure Communication Assignments Study 277

eSchool News

MARCH 9, 2023

Are students allowed to retake tests on which they did not do well? To build a strong, meaningful grading policy, instructors must choose the approach that best fits the course design and student learning outcomes. Grading is time consuming, however, and more grading-related questions are popping up in the news these days.

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Grades Teachers Instructors Exams 265

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 16, 2016

When I saw her speak, I found it easy to get swept up in her vision to democratize blood testing and save lives. Education technology is similarly beset by high-profile failures. We have much to learn from failures, especially in fields where the stakes are high, the regulation heavy and specialized expertise is at a premium.

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Failure Peer Review Learning Science 147

Edsurge

DECEMBER 3, 2019

And for those who have closely followed the international test, which is delivered to 15-year-olds in developed countries every three years, the top-line results won’t offer many surprises. Compared to the previous test in 2015, the scores stayed flat. The latest PISA scores are out.

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Testing Exams Intelligence Failure 134

eSchool News

JUNE 14, 2021

It Helps Schools Identify Children at Risk for Dyslexia and Reading Difficulties — Even Before They Learn to Read. It helps educators identify and support children at risk for dyslexia and other reading difficulties — even before they learn to read. BOSTON — June 14, 2021 — Two-thirds of U.S. For information, visit [link].

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Education Failure Reading Testing 256

eSchool News

APRIL 2, 2025

Unfortunately, this kind of productive struggle is largely absent from K-12 education, leaving students ill-prepared with the mental resilience required to learn and adapt in college and beyond. The issue is not just that K-12 education lacks challenging work; its that the system actively discourages failure.

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Failure Assignments Education Secondary Education 174

eSchool News

JUNE 1, 2018

If I don’t give my students homework in 7th grade, am I setting them up for failure in their future advanced courses? At the beginning of my career in Chicago, I taught 7th- and 8th-grade math in a system where students took a test and applied to get into selective high schools. My homework past.

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Assignments Failure Math Motivation 269

eSchool News

SEPTEMBER 5, 2022

They begin to fulfill their learning potential. . Growing up, an unsteady family life meant that I frequently moved from school to school, and such an upbringing left me with no desire to focus on schoolwork, feeling like a failure because I lacked the foundation a consistent education would have given me.

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eSchool News

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

YES draws on more than three decades of research and development by the Museum’s PreK-12 education division, under the leadership of founding director Dr. Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM Learning at the Museum of Science. Each unit challenges students to address a significant real-world problem.

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Science STEM Failure Ethics 263

Edsurge

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Since the pandemic, more instructors at schools and colleges appear to have embraced “flipped learning ,” the approach of asking students to watch lecture videos before class so that class time can be used for active learning. The study considered 173 studies of flipped learning, as well as 46 previous meta-analyses of the approach.

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EdTech Magazine

MARCH 28, 2023

So, a student who missed all of second and part of third grade, for example, will still be tested at the third-grade level. Without the proper preparation, this sets up students for failure and reflects poorly on school districts when low test scores come back.

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Failure Students Testing Learning 147

Edsurge

DECEMBER 18, 2018

For years, personalities like Sir Ken Robinson have taken education systems to task for actually testing the creativity out of students. It’s a time when kids are asking questions and invited into learning experiences that create curiosity. People most often think of the final summative event where we verify learning.

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Testing Schools Art Feedback 168

eSchool News

AUGUST 12, 2024

Key points: With the right AI tools, teachers can enhance their classroom instruction Tracking AI in education Enhancing learning through AI and human educators For more on AI in education, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub Teaching is an uphill battle that grows harder and more exacting as the years roll by.

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eSchool News

APRIL 3, 2025

While AI itself isnt inherently problematic, its use in cheating can hinder students’ learning and development. The material feels irrelevant or unvaluable to students One of the primary reasons students cheat is that they dont perceive the material being tested as valuable or relevant to their lives.

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Academic Integrity Failure Students Culture 204

Edsurge

AUGUST 10, 2021

Courtesy of Santa Fe Public Schools Everywhere you look, it seems, people are talking about “learning loss,” or how much students haven’t learned during the tumult of the past two years. It’s not about memorizing everything you should have learned, it’s about moving you forward so you pick things up along the way.

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Math Learning Schools Failure 217

eSchool News

MAY 10, 2016

This perception of intellectual “haves” and “have nots” is one that Lang Chen, a postdoctoral fellow in cognitive psychology and neuroscience at Stanford University, recently tested. And we’re already seeing it. In a recent report, 96% of teachers in the U.S. said technology makes a significant impact in their classrooms.

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