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320 Growth Mindset Resources--Utah Co-Teaching Project ideas in 2023 | growth mindset, teaching, growth mindset resources

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Jun 26, 2023 - This board is dedicated to sharing growth mindset resources with participants of the Utah Co-Teaching Project. See more ideas about growth mindset, teaching, growth mindset resources.

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"If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve," Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: "Do what you love, and don't stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities..." Far from Pollyanna platitude, this advice actually reflects what modern psychology knows about how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) - an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives.

One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality. A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled. A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. Out of these two mindsets, which we manifest from a very early age, springs a great deal of our behavior, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness.

The consequences of believing that intelligence and personality can be developed rather than being immutably engrained traits, Dweck found in her two decades of research with both children and adults, are remarkable. She writes:

For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. How does this happen? How can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and, as a result, your life?

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone - the fixed mindset - creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character - well, then you'd better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn't do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

[...]

I've seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves - in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser? . . .

There's another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you're dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you're secretly worried it's a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you're dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way - in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments - everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

At the heart of what makes the "growth mindset" so winsome, Dweck found, is that it creates a passion for learning rather than a hunger for approval. Its hallmark is the conviction that human qualities like intelligence and creativity, and even relational capacities like love and friendship, can be cultivated through effort and deliberate practice. Not only are people with this mindset not discouraged by failure, but they don't actually see themselves as failing in those situations - they see themselves as learning. Dweck writes:

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

This idea, of course, isn't new - if anything, it's the fodder of self-help books and vacant "You can do anything!" platitudes. What makes Dweck's work different, however, is that it is rooted in rigorous research on how the mind - especially the developing mind - works, identifying not only the core drivers of those mindsets but also how they can be reprogrammed.

Dweck and her team found that people with the fixed mindset see risk and effort as potential giveaways of their inadequacies, revealing that they come up short in some way. But the relationship between mindset and effort is a two-way street:

It's not just that some people happen to recognize the value of challenging themselves and the importance of effort. Our research has shown that this comes directly from the growth mindset. When we teach people the growth mindset, with its focus on development, these ideas about challenge and effort follow. . . .

As you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another-how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road.

[...]

The mindsets change what people strive for and what they see as success. . . they change the definition, significance, and impact of failure. . . they change the deepest meaning of effort.

Dweck cites a poll of 143 creativity researchers, who concurred that the number-one trait underpinning creative achievement is precisely the kind of resilience and fail-forward perseverance attributed to the growth mindset. She writes:

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world - the world of fixed traits - success is about proving you're smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other - the world of changing qualities - it's about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means you're not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not growing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means you're not fulfilling your potential.

In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you're not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn't need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.

But her most remarkable research, which has informed present theories of why presence is more important than praise in teaching children to cultivate a healthy relationship with achievement, explores how these mindsets are born - they form, it turns out, very early in life. In one seminal study, Dweck and her colleagues offered four-year-olds a choice: They could either redo an easy jigsaw puzzle, or try a harder one. Even these young children conformed to the characteristics of one of the two mindsets - those with "fixed" mentality stayed on the safe side, choosing the easier puzzles that would affirm their existing ability, articulating to the researchers their belief that smart kids don't make mistakes; those with the "growth" mindset thought it an odd choice to begin with, perplexed why anyone would want to do the same puzzle over and over if they aren't learning anything new. In other words, the fixed-mindset kids wanted to make sure they succeeded in order to seem smart, whereas the growth-mindset ones wanted to stretch themselves, for their definition of success was about becoming smarter.

Dweck quotes one seventh-grade girl, who captured the difference beautifully:

I think intelligence is something you have to work for ... it isn't just given to you.... Most kids, if they're not sure of an answer, will not raise their hand to answer the question. But what I usually do is raise my hand, because if I'm wrong, then my mistake will be corrected. Or I will raise my hand and say, 'How would this be solved?' or 'I don't get this. Can you help me?' Just by doing that I'm increasing my intelligence.

Things got even more interesting when Dweck brought people into Columbia's brain-wave lab to study how their brains behaved as they answered difficult questions and received feedback. What she found was that those with a fixed mindset were only interested in hearing feedback that reflected directly on their present ability, but tuned out information that could help them learn and improve. They even showed no interest in hearing the right answer when they had gotten a question wrong, because they had already filed it away in the failure category. Those with a growth mindset, on the other hand, were keenly attentive to information that could help them expand their existing knowledge and skill, regardless of whether they'd gotten the question right or wrong - in other words, their priority was learning, not the binary trap of success and failure.

These findings are especially important in education and how we, as a culture, assess intelligence. In another study of hundreds of students, mostly adolescents, Dweck and her colleagues gave each ten fairly challenging problems from a nonverbal IQ test, then praised the student for his or her performance - most had done pretty well. But they offered two types of praise: Some students were told "Wow, you got [X many] right. That's a really good score. You must be smart at this," while others, "Wow, you got [X many] right. That's a really good score. You must have worked really hard." In other words, some were praised for ability and others for effort. The findings, at this point, are unsurprising yet jarring:

The ability praise pushed students right into the fixed mindset, and they showed all the signs of it, too: When we gave them a choice, they rejected a challenging new task that they could learn from. They didn't want to do anything that could expose their flaws and call into question their talent.

[...]

In contrast, when students were praised for effort, 90 percent of them wanted the challenging new task that they could learn from.

The most interesting part, however, is what happened next: Dweck and her colleagues gave the students a subsequent set of harder problems, on which the students didn't do so well. Suddenly, the ability-praised kids thought they weren't so smart or gifted after all. Dweck puts it poignantly:

If success had meant they were intelligent, then less-than-success meant they were deficient.

But for the effort-praised kids, the difficulty was simply an indication that they had to put in more effort, not a sign of failure or a reflection of their poor intellect. Perhaps most importantly, the two mindsets also impacted the kids' level of enjoyment - everyone enjoyed the first round of easier questions, which most kids got right, but as soon as the questions got more challenging, the ability-praised kids no longer had any fun, while the effort-praised ones not only still enjoyed the problems but even said that the more challenging, the more fun. The latter also had significant improvements in their performance as the problems got harder, while the former kept getting worse and worse, as if discouraged by their own success-or-failure mindset.

It gets better - or worse, depending on how we look at it: The most unsettling finding came after the IQ questions were completed, when the researchers asked the kids to write private letters to their peers relaying the experience, including a space for reporting their scores on the problems. To Dweck's devastation, the most toxic byproduct of the fixed mindset turned out to be dishonesty: Forty percent of the ability-praised kids lied about their scores, inflating them to look more successful. She laments:

In the fixed mindset, imperfections are shameful - especially if you're talented - so they lied them away. What's so alarming is that we took ordinary children and made them into liars, simply by telling them they were smart.

This illustrates the key difference between the two mindsets - for those with a growth one, "personal success is when you work your hardest to become your best," whereas for those with a fixed one, "success is about establishing their superiority, pure and simple. Being that somebody who is worthier than the nobodies." For the latter, setbacks are a sentence and a label. For the former, they're motivating, informative input - a wakeup call.

But one of the most profound applications of this insight has to do not with business or education but with love. Dweck found that people exhibited the same dichotomy of dispositions in their personal relationships: Those with a fixed mindset believed their ideal mate would put them on a pedestal and make them feel perfect, like "the god of a one-person religion," whereas those with the growth mindset preferred a partner who would recognize their faults and lovingly help improve them, someone who would encourage them to learn new things and become a better person. The fixed mindset, it turns out, is at the root of many of our most toxic cultural myths about "true love." Dweck writes:

The growth mindset says all of these things can be developed. All - you, your partner, and the relationship - are capable of growth and change.

In the fixed mindset, the ideal is instant, perfect, and perpetual compatibility. Like it was meant to be. Like riding off into the sunset. Like "they lived happily ever after."

[...]

One problem is that people with the fixed mindset expect everything good to happen automatically. It's not that the partners will work to help each other solve their problems or gain skills. It's that this will magically occur through their love, sort of the way it happened to Sleeping Beauty, whose coma was cured by her prince's kiss, or to Cinderella, whose miserable life was suddenly transformed by her prince.

This also applies to the myth of mind-reading, where the fixed mindset believes that an ideal couple should be able to read each other's minds and finish each other's sentences. She cites a study that invited people to talk about their relationships:

Those with the fixed mindset felt threatened and hostile after talking about even minor discrepancies in how they and their partner saw their relationship. Even a minor discrepancy threatened their belief that they shared all of each other's views.

But most destructive of all relationship myths is the belief that if it requires work, something is terribly wrong and that any discrepancy of opinions or preferences is indicative of character flaws on behalf of one's partner. Dweck offers a reality check:

Just as there are no great achievements without setbacks, there are no great relationships without conflicts and problems along the way.

When people with a fixed mindset talk about their conflicts, they assign blame. Sometimes they blame themselves, but often they blame their partner. And they assign blame to a trait - a character flaw.

But it doesn't end there. When people blame their partner's personality for the problem, they feel anger and disgust toward them.

And it barrels on: Since the problem comes from fixed traits, it can't be solved. So once people with the fixed mindset see flaws in their partners, they become contemptuous of them and dissatisfied with the whole relationship.

Those with the growth mindset, on the other hand, can acknowledge their partners' imperfections, without assigning blame, and still feel that they have a fulfilling relationship. They see conflicts as problems of communication, not of personality or character. This dynamic holds true as much in romantic partnerships as in friendship and even in people's relationships with their parents. Dweck summarizes her findings:

When people embark on a relationship, they encounter a partner who is different from them, and they haven't learned how to deal with the differences. In a good relationship, people develop these skills and, as they do, both partners grow and the relationship deepens. But for this to happen, people need to feel they're on the same side. . . . As an atmosphere of trust developed, they [become] vitally interested in each other's development.

What it all comes down to is that a mindset is an interpretative process that tells us what is going on around us. In the fixed mindset, that process is scored by an internal monologue of constant judging and evaluation, using every piece of information as evidence either for or against such assessments as whether you're a good person, whether your partner is selfish, or whether you are better than the person next to you. In a growth mindset, on the other hand, the internal monologue is not one of judgment but one of voracious appetite for learning, constantly seeking out the kind of input that you can metabolize into learning and constructive action.

In the rest of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck goes on to explore how these fundamental mindsets form, what their defining characteristics are in different contexts of life, and how we can rewire our cognitive habits to adopt the much more fruitful and nourishing growth mindset.
Public domain photographs via Flickr Commons

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Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives

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How to fine-tune the internal monologue that scores every aspect of our lives, from leadership to love.

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Growth Mindset Toolkit

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The Mindset Kit is a free set of online lessons and practices designed to help you teach and foster adaptive beliefs about learning.

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Mindset Kit - Resources for growth and learning mindsets

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A free resource for educators and parents who want to foster learning mindsets such as growth mindset. Follow lessons and practices from experts and members of our community.

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Difference between Dysgraphia and Dyslexia chart

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Difference between Dysgraphia and Dyslexia chart

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About the Author

Kate Kelly has been writing and editing for more than 20 years, with a focus on parenting.

Reviewed by

Mark Griffin, Ph.D., was the founding headmaster of Eagle Hill School, a school for children with specific learning disabilities.

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The Difference Between Dysgraphia and Dyslexia

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About the Author Kate Kelly has been writing and editing for more than 20 years, with a focus on parenting. Reviewed by Mark Griffin, Ph.D., was the founding headmaster of Eagle Hill School, a school for children with specific learning disabilities.

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The Power of Quality Technology in the ESL Classroom

Instructional technology tools can reshape your curriculum, or they can be a way to reinforce concepts and address gaps in language skills. According to Jeff Wiseman's presentation, " English Language Learners as Digital Natives: 21st Century Tools for Sheltered ESL Classrooms," there are many benefits to integrating technology in an ESL setting:

They can individualize and customize curriculum.

They can promote cooperative group work.

They can impart English skills while also providing technology skills essential for 21st century learners.

They can increase the percentage of time students stay on task during independent practice.

When using technology in the classroom, consider that this is the generation of "digital natives," students who have grown up with the Internet and who are familiar with technology for entertainment. An ESL or EFL educator's job is to guide students to use high-quality instructional tools for learning or practicing English skills. In locating such resources, consider:

1. How does this tool engage users?

2. Does this tool provide targeted support in a necessary skill?

3. Does this tool address listening, reading, reasoning, creating, or writing in English?

4. What degree of language proficiency does this tool support?

5. Is there a way to assess skills mastery?

ESL Instructional Tech Tools for Listening Skills and Verbal Interaction

According to Renee Ybarra and Tim Green's " Using Technology to Help ESL/EFL Students Develop Language Skills," published in The Internet TESL Journal, teachers in ELL classrooms can use computers to enhance listening skills and verbal interaction, and to support a variety of language functions. The authors highlight the power of software, apps, and websites that feature interactive stories. These stories have built-in visual and audio aids to support comprehension and often feature activities and assessments that reinforce learning and assess comprehension. Resources for teachers include:

Story Time For Me

A free library of stories featuring animation, narration by professional actors, and word-by-word highlighting. These stories are best suited to children in the primary grades.

Starfall

This site has free resources suitable for individualized development of pre-reading skills, teaching reading, and refining reading skills. The "I'm Reading" section ( https://www.starfall.com/n/level-c/index/load.htm?f) has a diverse library of reading materials, accompanied by illustrations and audio, including fiction, nonfiction, comics, plays, Greek myths, Chinese fables, and other folk tales.

Many Things

Geared toward teenage and adult ELLs at the intermediate and advanced levels, this site features short reports on current events, news items, and social issues. Students listen and read along.

Voxy

Subscribers to this app listen to and read short news stories on various themes. Afterward, they play games to practice skills and complete quizzes to test their comprehension.

ESL Instructional Tech Tools for Practicing Literacy Skills

Ybarra and Green also find that software and online games can promote students' skills in spelling, phonics, grammar, and sight word vocabulary. Here are a few computer literacy games that support ESL instruction:

Building Language for Literacy: Early Reading Activities

Scholastic has developed three online games that teach beginning ESL students in the primary grades with phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary.

ESL Interactive Grammar Games

Short, simple games address skills such as English vocabulary, spelling, and verb tenses.

ESL Instructional Tech Tools for Developing Writing Skills

Ybarra and Green highlight how teachers can use computers to support beginning ELLs in guided writing activities. The graphics, prompts, and templates available from technology-based ESL writing activities keep writing interesting and reduce students' frustration. Some tech-based ESL writing tools available to teachers include:

Interactive Writing Games

Fun English Games presents highly structured activities that guide students to write for different purposes. The interactive lessons and writing templates include formulating an argument for a debate, designing advertising materials, writing newspaper pieces, composing a letter, creating stories in different genres, and writing step-by-step instructions.

Learn English Kids

The British Council's site features quite innovative interactive writing activities. These games ask students to use English to style a superhero, make a comic strip, create finger puppets to act out a fairytale, compose a story, design a monster, and customize a dangerous animal.

Constructing the Paragraph

English Online France has a tutorial and self-test for adult learners on how to write a paragraph. Other writing activities in this series include topic sentence, supporting sentences, using transitions, and ordering principles.

ESL Instructional Tech Tools for Vocabulary Support

As pointed out in the research paper " Integrating Technology: Best-Use Practices for English Language Learners in Content-based Classrooms," by Ruth Ban, Li Jin, Robert Summers, and Kristina Eisenhower, instructional technology allows teachers to customize instruction to match student needs. The authors provide the example of a language arts lesson that requires students to comprehend English text. Beginners might use translation tools or online picture dictionaries to aid comprehension, while more advanced ELLs can use electronic dictionaries without graphic support. Here are some ESL Dictionary and Translation Tools:

Online Picture Dictionary

ESOL Help has created a free picture dictionary with simple images. Words are organized thematically.

Google Translate

One of the most prominent free online translation tools has boxes for plugging in text to translate.

ESL Instructional Tech Tools for Practicing English Communication

Ban, Jin, Summers, and Eisenhower also cover ways ESL teachers can use technology-based communication tools in class. The authors highlight instructional strategies such as:

blending oral and written language with Instant Messenger

sending emails to classmates to practice informal writing

participating in course components on a class discussion board

creating a webquest to address an inquiry or theme

designing a class webpage

Additional Technology Resources for ESL Educators

The English for Everyone blog features a post, " Teaching ESL with Social Media," that reviews research and discusses ways to use Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to create engaging activities for ELLs.

The Texas Computer Education Association ( TCEA) maintains a list of recommended apps for educators, divided by curricular area. Included is a list of ESL apps for iPod and iPad.

The Scripps Research Institute Libraries website highlights ESL apps that address pronunciation, accent reduction, understanding English idioms, conversation skills, and reading skills.

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Instructional Technology Tools in the ESL Classroom

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Instructional technology tools can reshape your curriculum, or they can be a way to reinforce concepts and address gaps in language skills. According to Jeff Wiseman's presentation, " English Language Learners as Digital Natives: 21st Century Tools for Sheltered ESL Classrooms," there are many benefits to integrating technology in an ESL setting: They can individualize and customize curriculum.

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That reality is now here - and while Second Life and Language Lab are meant for the language learner at home on her laptop, what about using digital avatars in classroom environments? Some teachers say that language-learning avatars work well for classroom students, if used in a slightly different way.

English teacher Ana Maria Menezes uses web tool Voki with her high school students in Uberlandia, Brazil, and said she has watched them become more comfortable speaking English when it's not really "them" doing the talking. Voki, a free education web app created by Oddcast, allows students and teachers to create their own talking character - they can be historical figures, animals, or a person that looks just like the user.

[ RELATED READING: Can an Online Game Crack the Code to Language Learning?]

Teachers and students can give their character a voice by using one of three methods: text to speech, recording by microphone, or uploading their own pre-recording audio file. Voki characters can speak in over 25 languages, and 150-plus voices, according to Eric Kiang, Voki's Product and Marketing Manager.

Menezes has students record themselves speaking English, and then has them play it for the class on a computer, using their avatar.

"Most of my students were very embarrassed when asked to record their voices while speaking English; many of them had never actually heard themselves using a foreign language," she said. But students felt more comfortable watching their avatar speak for them. "It has to do with the 'hiding behind the mask' effect: when we speak behind a mask, it's as if you're another character, you're safer and less exposed."

Middle and high school Spanish and German teacher José Picardo doubts that using avatars alone causes dramatic improvements in learning a new language. "But I do think that incorporating tools such as Voki into the teaching and learning that goes on in my classroom, and practices such as regular peer-assessment, has had a very positive influence in attainment." Picardo puts all of his students' avatars on the departmental blog at Nottingham High School in Nottingham, UK, where they can be used by teachers, parents and students both as a showcase of student work as well as for peer review and assessment.

For Menezes, the most important use of digital avatars is the ability to get students doing more speaking outside the classroom. "Years ago, it was unthinkable to assign speaking homework to EFL or ESL students; all we could expect from them at home was to complete written exercises or write texts. Speaking practice was only possible in the classroom, and that meant very little practice for students who have no contact with English outside their school. Using an avatar for both for listening and for speaking purposes, I clearly noticed several improvements in their language use: Students were braver when expressing themselves and were also able to observe their pronunciation for the first time."

One drawback teachers mentioned is the learning curve to use the apps; Second Life's virtual world recommends that students be 16 to use it. Menezes mentioned there is a ramp-up time to using Voki, too, and that students need access to good recording equipment and fast Internet connections to get started. But even with learning curves, the technology is intuitive and tech-savvy students catch on quickly.

"Is there such a thing as a non-techie 13-year-old?" joked Picardo. "It could be argued that using these tools ensure that we are teaching children a range of skills that are necessary for later life, not just foreign languages."

Even for the non-techie school setting, though, there's another option. Wake Forest Latin teacher-scholar Ted Gellar-Goad developed an original pen-and-paper avatar game for his Latin prose composition students. Students role-play and interact in ancient Rome, in the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons, and the game is meant to help students stay engaged and have fun performing the arduous task of writing difficult Latin sentences.

For the imaginative teacher, there's always a way.

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A New Role for Avatars: Learning Languages

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That reality is now here - and while Second Life and Language Lab are meant for the language learner at home on her laptop, what about using digital avatars in classroom environments? Some teachers say that language-learning avatars work well for classroom students, if used in a slightly different way.

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Math Mistakes--collection of math mistakes students make and explanations about what those mistakes mean 

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Math Mistakes--collection of math mistakes students make and explanations about what those mistakes mean 

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This site is about compiling, analyzing and discussing the mathematical errors that students make.

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icivics--interactive way to learn civics! 

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icivics--interactive way to learn civics! 

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The iCivics games place students in different civic roles and give them agency to address real-world problems and issues. They are rooted in clear learning objectives and integrated with lesson plans and support materials.

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In this new Private i History Detectives unit, Elementary students analyze primary sources to discover how Constitutional Amendments attempted to address slavery's wrongs, how the courts challenged unfair laws, and how individuals and groups fought for civil rights.

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In this new Private i History Detectives unit, Elementary students analyze primary sources to discover how Constitutional Amendments attempted to address slavery's wrongs, how the courts challenged unfair laws, and how individuals and groups fought for civil rights.

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Teacher guide of using Depth of Knowledge levels 2 and 3 in the classroom 

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Teacher guide of using Depth of Knowledge levels 2 and 3 in the classroom 

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Differentiation refers to a wide variety of teaching techniques and lesson adaptations that educators use to instruct a diverse group of students, with diverse learning needs, in the same course, classroom, or learning environment. Differentiation is commonly used in "heterogeneous grouping"-an educational strategy in which students of different abilities, learning needs, and levels of academic achievement are grouped together. In heterogeneously grouped classrooms, for example, teachers vary instructional strategies and use more flexibly designed lessons to engage student interests and address distinct learning needs-all of which may vary from student to student. The basic idea is that the primary educational objectives-making sure all students master essential knowledge, concepts, and skills-remain the same for every student, but teachers may use different instructional methods to help students meet those expectations.

Teachers who employ differentiated instructional strategies will usually adjust the elements of a lesson from one group of students to another, so that those who may need more time or a different teaching approach to grasp a concept get the specialized assistance they need, while those students who have already mastered a concept can be assigned a different learning activity or move on to a new concept or lesson. In more diverse classrooms, teachers will tailor lessons to address the unique needs of special-education students, high-achieving students, and English-language learners, for example. Teachers also use strategies such as formative assessment -periodic, in-process evaluations of what students are learning or not learning-to determine the best instructional approaches or modifications needed for each student.

Also called "differentiated instruction," differentiation typically entails modifications to practice (how teachers deliver instruction to students), process (how the lesson is designed for students), products (the kinds of work products students will be asked to complete), content (the specific readings, research, or materials students will study), assessment (how teachers measure what students have learned), and grouping (how students are arranged in the classroom or paired up with other students). Differentiation techniques may also be based on specific student attributes, including interest (what subjects inspire students to learn), readiness (what students have learned and still need to learn), or learning style (the ways in which students tend to learn material best).

Differentiation vs. Scaffolding

As a general instructional strategy, differentiation shares may similarities with scaffolding, which refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process. Because differentiation and scaffolding techniques are used to achieve similar instructional goals-i.e., moving student learning and understanding from where it is to where it needs to be-the two approaches may be blended together in some classrooms to the point of being indistinguishable. That said, the two approaches are distinct in several ways. When teachers differentiate instruction, they might give some students an entirely different reading (to better match their reading level and ability), give the entire class the option to choose from among several texts (so each student can pick the one that interests them most), or give the class several options for completing a related assignment (for example, the students might be allowed to write a traditional essay, draw an illustrated essay in comic-style form, create a slideshow "essay" with text and images, or deliver an oral presentation). Alternatively, when teachers scaffold instruction, they typically break up a learning experience, concept, or skill into discrete parts, and then give students the assistance they need to learn each part. For example, teachers may give students an excerpt of a longer text to read, engage them in a discussion of the excerpt to improve their understanding of its purpose, and teach them the vocabulary they need to comprehend the text before assigning them the full reading.

The following comparison chart will help illustrate the differentiation concept and its major component strategies:

In English class, students read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and discuss the messages it conveys about race and racism in the United States.

Students choose between The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Invisible Man to discuss different messages about race and racism in the United States. The three groups share their knowledge with each other.

Assessment
In a math class, students take an exam and are given a percentage grade based on how many answers were correct.

Students take an exam and receive feedback on which mathematics standards they have mastered, which standards they are making progress on, and which standards need more attention. The feedback suggests remedies for students with learning gaps and new projects for students who have mastered all the required skills and knowledge.

Students are either grouped as a full class or they work independently most of the time.

Teachers use grouping strategies to address distinct learning needs. Students may be working independently, in small groups, in pairs, or using technology. Some groupings are by choice and some are assigned based on common learning needs. Some groupings or individual students work closely with the teacher and others have more independence.

Debate

Differentiation plays into ongoing debates about and "academic tracking" in public schools. One major criticism of the approach is related to the relative complexities and difficulties entailed in teaching diverse types of students in a single classroom or educational setting. Since effective differentiation requires more sophisticated and highly specialized instructional methods, teachers typically need adequate training, mentoring, and professional development to ensure they are using differentiated instructional techniques appropriately and effectively. Some teachers also argue that the practical realities of using differentiation-especially in larger classes comprising students with a wide range of skill levels, academic preparation, and learning needs-can be prohibitively difficult or even infeasible.

Yet other educators argue that this criticism stems, at least in part, from a fundamental misunderstanding of the strategy. In her book How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms, the educator and writer Carol Ann Tomlinson, who is considered an authority on differentiation, points out a potential source of confusion: "Differentiated instruction is not the "Individualized Instruction" of the 1970s." In other words, differentiation is the practice of varying instructional techniques in a classroom to effectively teach as many students as possible, but it does not entail the creation of distinct courses of study for every student (i.e., individualized instruction). The conflation of "differentiated instruction" and "individualized instruction" has likely contributed to ongoing confusion and debates about differentiation, particularly given that the terms are widely and frequently used interchangeably.

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Differentiation refers to a wide variety of teaching techniques and lesson adaptations that educators use to instruct a diverse group of students, with diverse learning needs, in the same course, classroom, or learning environment. Differentiation is commonly used in "heterogeneous grouping"-an educational strategy in which students of different abilities, learning needs, and levels of academic ...

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Pixar in a Box--lessons that show how much math is used to create animation 

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Pixar in a Box--lessons that show how much math is used to create animation 

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Pixar in a Box is designed to help students answer an age old question: "Why do I need to learn this stuff?" Our answer to this question is found in a series of interactive lessons that demonstrate how the same concepts that you learn in school are used to make movies at Pixar.

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Smithsonian Science Series of Animated Science Video Shorts 

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Smithsonian Science Series of Animated Science Video Shorts 

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Have you ever wished you could see into the minds of your students? We've partnered with FableVision Studios to create a new animated series that helps teachers do just that, with Good Thinking! The Science of Teaching Science.

This original web series is designed to support K-12 science educators through targeted short-format videos that explore common student ideas and misconceptions about a range of science topics such as energy, chemical reactions, and natural selection, as well as pedagogical subjects like student motivation and the myth of left and right-brained people.

Each episode is grounded in findings from peer-reviewed science and education , has been vetted by experts, and was developed with national standards in mind. Whether you're looking to refresh your content knowledge before beginning a new unit, or to pick up tips to refine and enhance your teaching practices, we believe great science education begins with Good Thinking!

This video was funded under the Investing in Innovation (i3) validation grant (U396B100097) awarded to the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) by the U.S. Department of Education. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations contained in this work do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Education or other funders.

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Have you ever wished you could see into the minds of your students? We've partnered with FableVision Studios to create a new animated series that helps teachers do just that, with Good Thinking! The Science of Teaching Science.

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Making the Implicit, Explicit

Thursday nights bring a common ritual at my house: the weekly spelling list practice session with my second grader, Evan. Usually this is a rather brief and pretty painless exercise. Instead, there was a lesson waiting for me in last Thursday's sitting. Unlike most of our practices where Evan has been looking at the words all week and has generally committed them to memory, these new words were especially challenging with all kinds of vowels that couldn't find the right places. We started.

Mom: "Balance."

Evan: "blance."

Mom: "Not quite. It's b-a..."

Evan adamantly interrupts, "No mom. Don't tell me the right answer, I want to figure it out."

At first, I thought, "great, he's showing some tenacity." But I soon realized that each time he misspelled the word, he was committing to memory the incorrect spelling instead of the correct one. The more I suggested that we look at the words in-between attempts or that I spell them correctly out loud, the more firm he became in his resistance to continue aiming at an invisible target; the frustration surely mounting.

Even though I was worried he had worked himself into some chaos of misspellings, I let go. Gave him some space. Put the list of words next to his pillow after our bedtime reading. The next morning he bounded down to breakfast with a big smile on his face, spewing out the vowels in precise harmony with the consonants. He soon pronounced that, "mom, it was actually helpful to look at the words before I tried to spell them!" I sighed with a soft smile of vindication that was quickly replaced with an eye of realization: this happened all the time for my own students.

Every day that I don't make my thinking explicit, that I don't "open my brain" for them to peer into my process, is like Evan who aimlessly worked towards an unknown target. And, frankly, this goes beyond giving students a rubric ahead of time or showing them strong examples of final products. While these effective practices help create vision for students, I know that I must unpack my thinking (with lots of first person pronouns, which is a little awkward at first) for them as often as possible. It's about taking the invisible work that we do naturally, and making it explicit to our learners.

So, this is an invitation for everyone to try a think aloud; to unpack your cognitive work for just a couple of minutes; to make the implicit, explicit; to give your students not only a visible target, but a pathway to get there.

I've included a link to a think aloud I did upon my own realization. As part of my own growth process this year, I've started to film all of my classes every day. Therefore, this footage is not professional; rather, it's a small camera on a cute tripod in the back of the room. I wish you well as you start thinking aloud!
Sarah Brown Wessling is a high school English teacher in Johnston, Iowa. She is the 2010 National Teacher of the Year and is the Teacher Laureate for Teaching Channel. She also hosts "Teaching Channel Presents" on public television stations around the country. Connect with Sarah on Twitter - @SarahWessling.

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Thursday nights bring a common ritual at my house: the weekly spelling list practice session with my second grader, Evan. Usually this is a rather brief and pretty painless exercise. Instead, there was a lesson waiting for me in last Thursday's sitting.

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I'm in Bali and for the last two weeks have been observing how Balinese children learn music, dance, and other arts. I've never been to a place where the arts were more integrated into daily life. In Ubud, the "cultural center of Bali," it's hard to walk down a street or spend a day without hearing or seeing some kind of artistic expression.

Much of this is connected to religious practices and takes place at the many temples on the island. This I expected. What surprises me is how children throw themselves onto every stage, into the laps of musicians, into the workshops of the carvers and painters and weavers. But perhaps "throws" is the wrong word -- I start to notice that they are pulled onto stages and laps and workshops.

Real-World Application

Early in our trip we wanted to learn something about Balinese gamelan and signed up for a day-long course. Our instructors spoke very little English. They taught by demonstrating, and motioning to us to copy them, and then by holding our hands and moving the hammer-like gavels over the xylophone. We didn't need much language and without it, I paid closer attention to the rhythms, the beats, and the sequences of notes.

Throughout our class other Balinese played along, helping to create the beautiful sounds of a Gamelan ensemble. Amongst these players was a boy of three or four who wandered up and plunked himself down first at an instrument that was full of symbols and then at a small, gong. He played, and then danced, and then pulled out a flute, played that, and then sat next to my son and tried to teach him percussive rhythms.

I wondered whose child he was as he moved from lap to lap, each Balinese adult laughing with him, encouraging him, clapping for him after he danced, and giving him instruction on his music as well.

I was captivated watching this little boy and my own son who was learning by doing -- and for a purpose and authentic application. I want this kind of learning to be a daily reality for the students in the schools where I work.

In the Classroom

Let me take a big leap now into what this reflection might mean for those who are still working within the 55-minute period. While this is far from what I envision schools to be, I know we can start taking steps towards integrating this concept, starting with a strategy as simple as the "think-aloud."

When I first started teaching English Language Arts to middle school students, a wise mentor encouraged me to share my writing practice with my students. "ELA teachers must be readers and writers themselves," she said, "so that they can make their process transparent to their students." She explained how to use the strategy think-aloud as students wrote first drafts.

I began to do them regularly in class as a way to determine a focus for my writing, how I revised it, and how I organized my thoughts. I did the same for reading, narrating the metacognitive processes I used to make sense of texts. I was surprised by how captivated my students were with these mini-lessons; those of us who teach middle-schoolers know that it's hard to captivate this audience! Then I saw the evidence show up in their writing; when we had a conference about a piece they were working on, they'd narrate their thoughts and use phrases I'd used, such as, "here, I want my audience to feel... ."

Why It Works

Now I recognize this strategy as one that parallels what I have been seeing in Bali. It's the old apprentice model, of course, but it can be adapted to our educational context today. This strategy can be applied to any content. It's about making our thinking transparent for kids, the steps we take to figure something out, and the ways in which our actions flow from this thinking. In this way, we are modeling what children need to do, not just telling them what to do.

Using a think-aloud strategy in all content areas, for all ages, is one step towards recovering an apprenticeship style of learning, something that has a legacy of great success and efficacy. Have you used a think-aloud lately? Please share with us in the comment section below.

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The Think-Aloud Strategy: An Oldie But Goodie | Edutopia

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I'm in Bali and for the last two weeks have been observing how Balinese children learn music, dance, and other arts. I've never been to a place where the arts were more integrated into daily life. In Ubud, the "cultural center of Bali," it's hard to walk down a street or spend a day without hearing or seeing some kind of artistic expression.

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Think-Pair-Share Info graph and podcast 

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Think-Pair-Share Info graph and podcast 

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Listen to this post as a podcast:

Think-pair-share has gotten a bad rap. In July of 2013, just as I was starting this blog, I read a snarky piece where the author slammed administrators' use of the strategy in faculty meetings. The piece got a lot of attention, lots of thumbs-up, but I felt kind of indignant.

Because I LOVE think-pair-share. It's as flexible and at-the-ready as a 16-year-old gymnast on Red Bull. It's the first strategy I explain to people who have no teacher training but have found themselves in a position to teach.

I do, however, think there's a right way and a wrong way to use it. So for the sake of celebrating think-pair-share, the Little Strategy That Could, and to share some best practices with this strategy, I made it the focus of my latest podcast. You can listen, read the transcript, or read the infographic that summarizes it all

If you thought this was helpful, stick around.
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Listen to this post as a podcast: Think-pair-share has gotten a bad rap. In July of 2013, just as I was starting this blog, I read a snarky piece where the author slammed administrators' use of the strategy in faculty meetings. The piece got a lot of attention, lots of thumbs-up, but I felt kind of indignant.

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Variations: 1. Create a "Tapestry of Thoughts" using all the words chosen by the class. 2. Graph the words students in the class chose. Analyze the graph's data: Which words were selected the most? Why do you think more students chose those particular words? Why do you think (specific words) were chosen?

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How to use Venn Diagrams with some sample lessons to get started 

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How to use Venn Diagrams with some sample lessons to get started 

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Most of the LEARN NC Content has been archived using the Wayback Machine. Instructions for how to access that content is below, including links to frequently requested materials.

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Blog post on the best ways to use pictures/photos in the classroom 

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Blog post on the best ways to use pictures/photos in the classroom 

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Edutopia has published Using Photos With English Language Learners, an excerpt from the recent book on teaching ELL's that Katie Hull Sypnieski and I have written. Check out my New York Times post for English Language Learners is on protest movements and using historical photos for language development. It includes a student interactive I Explain The Picture Word Inductive Model In My Latest British Council Post
There are obviously plenty of ways to use photos effectively with English Language Learners and other students.

I'm going to share some ideas here, and hope that others will chime in with comments.

Of course, photos from the Web can have some use restrictions. Fortunately, there are millions that have few or none. You can find information and resources on how to find them at The Best Online Sources For Images.

Online "virtual" corkboards are great tools to use with online images. See The Best Online Virtual "Corkboards" (or "Bulletin Boards").

And check out The Best Online Tools For Using Photos In Lessons.
Using Freire & Fotobabble With English Language Learners
Also, The Best Ways To Modify The Picture Word Inductive Model For ELLs.

Here are my choices for The Best Ways To Use Photos In Lessons:

My personal favorite is using photos using the Picture Word Inductive Model. As I described briefly in my recent New York Times guest post, and in my book, it's an "inductive learning process where students first brainstorm twenty words related to a picture, then put those words into categories and add new ones that fit those categories. Next they complete a "cloze" (or fill-in-the-blank) activity with sentences about the picture which are then put into categories of their own. They convert those sentence categories into paragraphs, and, finally, arrange the paragraphs into essays."

A related lesson is using Picture Data Sets. For example, students can identifying images that fit a specific criteria (one week my ninth graders compiled images of Jamaican music, Jamaican history, and Jamaican nature attractions and then wrote about each one). These can also include students putting images into different categories and then having other students try to identify which ones they had in mind. Sites on The Best Online Virtual "Corkboards" (or "Bulletin Boards") list work very well for these kinds of activities.

Picture This! Building Photo-Based Writing Skills is a post from The New York Times. It describes in detail a somewhat similar process, though with some major differences, that would be suitable for all students. It's a good exercise.

Image Detective is an online media literacy activity. It's a nice web exercise, but its process can be adapted any photo. First, the teacher or student poses a question about the photo. Next, the student identifies clues in the photo that help them answer the question. Then, the student investigates background information on the picture and/or topic it represents. Finally, the student makes his/her conclusion. The final project looks like this:
My Question Is:
Clues I've Identified:

I am fairly confident that:

My best reasons for thinking this are:

A question this raised for me is:

Through Holly, I've learned about a neat Ning group called Images 4 Education:Exploring Images In The 21st Century Classroom. It's chock-full of ideas on how to use photos in lessons, and definitely worth a visit (or two or three).

The New York Times Learning Network also suggests another good way to use photos - by students adding "thought bubbles" to people in photographs. You can read more it in the "warm-up" section of this post.

Picturing America is a site sponsored by the National Endowment For The Humanities, and it's quite impressive. It has an interactive gallery of historical images, and provides lesson plans that include some pretty good ideas on how to use them.

I've recorded a five-and-a-half minute podcast on "Using Visuals to Teach Text" for Linworth Publishers, who have published my first two books, English Language Learners:Teaching Strategies That Work and Building Parent Engagement In Schools.

On the same page where you find the podcast, you'll also find a link to a short article I wrote for the Library Media Connection titled Freire's Learning Sequence. Or you can just go directly to it here.

A picture is worth a thousand thoughts: inquiry with Bloom's taxonomy is the title of a very useful resource from Learn NC. It shows a photo, along with the original Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid. By clicking on each thinking level, you are shown questions about the photo reflecting the level. It's a very simple and visual way to teach Bloom's Taxonomy, and can easily be replicated as a student assignment in any classroom. I like this interactive A LOT.

Regular readers are familiar with Tom Barrett's "Interesting Ways" series, where he shares countless ways to use different web tools and teaching/learning strategies (you can see all of them at that link). They are on several "The Best..." lists. He's just published another great one called "20 Interesting Images to use in the Classroom."

I've written about another photo less at "Blog challenge: compare and contrast photo".

I've written quite a bit about the Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) as a wildly effective instructional strategy. The PWIM is most well-known for being used in teaching English, but it can also be used very effectively in the content areas. I wanted to share an absolutely phenomenal Science lesson and a fairly decent Social Studies one.

If anyone has suggestions of other good content lessons using the PWIM, please let me know.

I've previously written how I used photos of my students in class to promote their metacognition. It's always gone well. Alison Anderson wrote a guest post in Richard Byrne's blog that I think took that concept a step further and has made it a regular occurrence in her classroom. In the post, titled Look At The Camera and Say "Think," she describes how she takes pictures of students at work and asks them for their homework to describe what was happening and what they were thinking. She describes it more in-depth and shares a lot of other good ideas. It's definitely worth checking out.

Ana Maria Menezes, an English teacher in Brazil, has worked with teachers in other countries to create a neat An Image A Week project. Each week, students share a photo and write about it. You can learn all about it at Ana Maria's blog post, PROJECT: An image a week (with EFL learners).

Photos with Strange or Funny Details Deemed Most Memorable is from Scientific American. It reinforces what most of us know already when we pick photos to use in class.
What Would This Animal Be Saying And/Or Thinking? "Weird Photo Quiz" Could Be Adapted For English Language Learners "Thinglink" Could Be A Great Tool For ELL's "ImageSpike" Seems - Almost - Just Like "Thinglink"
Dave Dodgson comes up with a creative way to use pictures in the classroom.
Very Helpful Research On Using Photos & Videos In Lessons
Analyzing Primary Sources: Learning from Images is from The Barat Educational Foundation.
Wow, MarQueed Could Be One Of The Best New Web 2.0 Tools Of The Year
The Best Sites For Beginning iPhone Users Like Me list includes several tools that let you provide audio descriptions to your photos and then share them.

Shelly Terrell has created an excellent slideshow called "Working With Images" that shares a number of ideas on how to use images with English Language Learners:

This year, it seems like the fashionable web tool to develop is one that will annotate images. I've posted about several of them on this list, and others didn't it make it.

However,the incomparable Richard Byrne discovered what might be the best one of them all. It's called Szoter. You can read about it at Richard's blog and see a video there (however, at the time of this posting, Vimeo appears to be off-line completely).

Using the online version of Szoter doesn't require registration, you can upload or grab images off the web (just insert its url address), and the final product looks just like an image would look like using the Picture Word Inductive Model (see my previously mentioned "The Best" list or my book to learn more about that instructional strategy). You can link to it or embed it, as I have done here (as long as you leave some white space around the image, the labels will still show up when you embed it):

Students are going to love using this!
"Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice" Is An Excellent Resource "The Victorians" Looks Like A Great Site
Wendi Pillars provides a nice step-by-step explanation about how to use the Picture Word Inductive Model with English Language Learners.

What A Neat Lesson Idea For Using Photos!

Front Page News Photos Stimulate Lively Debates in Adult ELL Classes is a useful article from TESOL.

What's Going On In This Picture? is a weekly series from The New York Times Learning Network. It's suitable for ELLs and non-ELLs alike.

Year-End Review: A Recap of Our CCSS for ELLs Posts is from the blog, Common Core and ELLs. I'm adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Common Core Standards & English Language Learners.

Scott Thornbury is ending his A-Z of ELT blog, and has a nice recap of its highlights.

Using Images is a feature from the British Council. Here is how they describe it:
Using images is a complete set of resources for low-level and high-level students which combine photos and audio to help get your students activating their higher level thinking skills, as well as improve their exam-level listening and speaking skills. Each pack contains teacher's notes, student worksheets, audio and images.
Stories waiting to be told is a post from the Close Up blog that also offers some excellent ideas on how to use photos with ELLs.

In Looking For Assets, Not Deficits I talk about a new site and strategy called TimeSlips.

Thinglink for World Language Educators and Learners is a post by Catherine Ousselin.

50 Ways To Use Images In The ELT Classroom is from David Deubelbeiss.

How to use a great resource like eltpics for your teaching #ELTchat Summary shares good ideas on using pictures.

Observing, Describing & Inferring with {Picture of the Day}: Reading Photos "Closely" is from Hello Literacy.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: An ELTPics Introduction is from ELT Experiences.
Having English Language Learners Use Cellphones To Identify High-Interest Vocabulary The Best Ways To Modify The Picture Word Inductive Model For ELLs
"Going To" for prediction - Look at the photos and say what is going to happen is a great slideshow and lesson plan from EFL Smart Blog.

As I've been sharing, there are tons of ways to use photos in lessons with English Language Learners. The Awkward Family Photos site is a great source for them. Some are inappropriate for classroom use or just too mean-spirited to use, but there are tons of excellent ones, and the site has an index to easily search by topic, especially by specific holiday.
"The Image Story" Is A Nice Site & Provides An Even Better Classroom Idea
Picturing U.S. History is a good resource for using photos in lessons. Thanks to Michelle Henry for the tip.

The Image Bank is from The British Council.

Fed up with end-of-year tests? A Digital Scavenger Hunt is the solution! is from Larissa's Languages.

Describing photos (comparing, contrasting and speculating) is from EFL Smart Blog.

David Petrie: A house of mystery and secrets and Katherine Bilsborough: What? Who? When? - Using a photo to practise question forms are both from The British Council.

The Atlantic has just published some great pictures at "A Visual History of Kids Being Unimpressed with President Obama." They'd be perfect to use with English Language Learners to have them talk and write about them.

A picture is worth a thousand words is a good lesson from Take a Photo and...

Teaching English Through Art:Reflection on a MOOC session is from Art Least. Thanks to Michelle Henry for the tip.

Picture Word Inductive Model with Highschool Newcomers by Wendi Pillars is an exceptional step-by-step description of how to use one of my favorite ELL teaching strategies.

Literacy Through Photography for English-Language Learners is from Edutopia.

From Images to Words is a good post by Marisa Constantinides.

Things To Do With Photos is from ESL Resources.

The power of free mobile apps - No 1 PicCollage is from Larissa's Languages

Touchable Memories is a lesson from Film English.

History Matters offers a good suggestion about using photos in Social Studies classes.

38 Hilariously Bad Family Photos That Will Make Yours Look Perfect would be great images for English Language Learners to describe.

10 Intriguing Photographs to Teach Close Reading and Visual Thinking Skills is an excellent post from The New York Times Learning Network.

Analyzing Images with Student Artwork from Poland is from Wendi Pillars.
"Photographer Writer Illustrator" Would Be Unique Way To Use Photos With ELLs
Help Students Close Read Iconic Images is an excellent post by Frank Baker in Middleweb. It includes some excellent links to student hand-outs.

Seven ideas for using mobile phones in the classroom is from tekhnologic.

33 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Will Take Your Breath Away is a useful photo gallery
Another Jimmy Fallon Game Useful For English Language Learners See Think Wonder The Best Resources For Using "If This Animal Or Image Could Talk" Lesson Idea In Class The Best Resources For Teaching/Learning About How To Write Compare/Contrast Essays

Super quick motivating activities: building the story is from Adam Simpson.

Ekuwah Moses writes a great description of the Picture Word Inductive Model instructional strategy.

"WordsEye" Is A New Cool Tool That Could Be A BIG Help With Language-Learning

Behind the Lens: 2015 Year in Photographs is a great set of photos from The White House. They would be great to use with ELLs.
"KnowMe" Has Immediately Become The Most Useful iPhone App In My Classroom
Say what you see - vocabulary and images is from TEFL Geek.

360° Photos for ELT is from TESOL, and Robert Sheppard shares a very create strategy for using photos with ELLs.
Excellent Ideas On Using Photos In Lessons
10 Activities - Using Pictures in Class is from ELT-Connect.

An ELT picture is worth a thousand words -Five ideas for using images in class is from the Cecilia Nobre ELT Blog.

ELT Sparks has a nice lesson idea in Most Influential Images.

I've sometimes shown photos to students, hid the captions, and challenged them to write their own. It's easy hide the captions at The Atlantic Focus photo blog ; the Boston Globe's Big Picture and The Sacramento Bee's photo galleries. These three sites show large images with captions at the bottom of the photos that are easy to cover-up. In addition, Getty Images has the ability to click on an icon and have the captions disappear.

Speaking of captions, The British Council has a special site where ELLs can write captions for photos.

Finally, I've said it before and I'll say it again, ELT Pics is a wonderful site for ELL teachers who want to use photos.

I've written at The New York Times Learning Network how I use collages as a language learning activity. In addition to the already-created collages I link to at that post, it's easy for teachers and students to make their own. Here are a few free sites that let you do just that:
PhotoCollage
I've just discovered a new place to find already-created photo collages - The NY Times has a feature called "Flashback" that shares photos from their archives. If you click on the "grid" icon on the top right, you'll get a great collage to use in class.

Here's a new collage from The New York Times - it's on goats!

The NY Times has published another nice collage that would be useful.

Download a free copy of "The image in English Language Teaching" from @TeachingEnglish website https://t.co/pZP1ZblBNQ @EFLMb #ImageInELT

- Kieran Donaghy (@kierandonaghy) October 29, 2017

The Smithsonian Learning Lab has some nice ideas on how to use images in lessons.

Google Drawings invites #ELLs to engage w/content & authentically use langauge. It's an effective tool for learning throughout #k12 . https://t.co/mlJcco3yfx #eal #esl #ell #eld #esol #tesol #ellchat #edtech. Gracias, #classygraphics pic.twitter.com/jma4J6k2Sk

- Tan Huynh (@TanELLclassroom) January 26, 2018

This man collected 6,000 orphaned Polaroids. See what he's doing to tell their stories. is a Washington Post story. I think his site could be useful for ELLs to write their own stories about his pictures.

Reader Idea | How to Use Interesting Photos to Help Students Become Better Writers is from The New York Times Learning Network.

Feedback, as always, is welcome. Please contribute your own suggestions on using photos in the classroom.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 460 other "The Best..." lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

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Edutopia has published Using Photos With English Language Learners, an excerpt from the recent book on teaching ELL's that Katie Hull Sypnieski and I have written. Check out my New York Times post for English Language Learners is on protest movements and using historical photos for language development.

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Allows students to add words and labels directly onto pictures to tell a story

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ThingLink: Create unique experiences with interactive images, videos & 360° media

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Easily create interactive and immersive visual experiences for online communication and learning. Start a free trial!

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A platform that provides reviews and information about latest ed tech, by teachers for teachers

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Training Course: Teaching Digital Citizenship

Prepare your students for success as digital learners, leaders, and citizens, and create a road map for teaching digital citizenship in your classroom. In this one-hour interactive training, you'll learn the six core concepts of ...

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Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find a free K-12 Digital Citizenship curriculum, reviews of popular EdTech apps, and resources for protecting student privacy.

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Understood--Resources for Parents and Teachers of Students with Disabilities 

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Understood--Resources for Parents and Teachers of Students with Disabilities 

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Understood - For Learning and Thinking Differences

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Understood.org is the resource that helps the 70 million people with learning and thinking differences anticipate the challenges, barriers, or opportunities in life and confidently reach their potential.

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Stages of Secondary Language Acquisition 

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Stages of Secondary Language Acquisition 

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UDL and Danielson Framework Crosswalk

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Sentence Starters for Social situations 

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Sentence Starters for Social situations 

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I'm adding this infographic to The Best Resources For Learning The Advantages To Being Bilingual: Monolingual VS Bilingual infographic

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How the Brain Benefits from Being Bilingual Blog Post and infograph

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How the Brain Benefits from Being Bilingual Blog Post and infograph

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Here's a great infographic I'm adding to The Best Resources For Learning The Advantages To Being Bilingual Or Multilingual.

I learned about it through Katie Lepi at Edudemic, who wrote a nice post sharing additional information on the same topic.

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Infographic: "How the Brain Benefits from Being Bilingual"

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Here's a great infographic I'm adding to The Best Resources For Learning The Advantages To Being Bilingual Or Multilingual. I learned about it through Katie Lepi at Edudemic, who wrote a nice post sharing additional information on the same topic.

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The State of Learning Disabilities Report 

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The State of Learning Disabilities Report 

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Addressing culturally and linguistically divers students in special ed guidelines for parents 

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Addressing culturally and linguistically divers students in special ed guidelines for parents 

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Identifying and supporting English learners with learning disabilities: Key issues in the literature 

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Identifying and supporting English learners with learning disabilities: Key issues in the literature 

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Teacher Blog Site Dedicated to Student Engagement 

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Teacher Blog Site Dedicated to Student Engagement 

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Epic Guide to Student Engagement in the Classroom

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National Library of Virtual Manipulative

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National Library of Virtual Manipulative

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Hanover Research Report Best Practices in College and Career Readiness 

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Hanover Research Report Best Practices in College and Career Readiness 

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A teacher's blog full of great resources and insights

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Jennifer Gonzalez
(The One in Charge)

Crazy-good teaching? The kind that gives you the good butterflies and makes you sing at the top of your lungs the whole drive home? It's an art. It's also a science. We can study and practice it in hundreds of ways, and this is what I obsess about here. When I was full-time in the trenches, I was too busy teaching to fully develop my craft, keep up with research, play around with new tools, or find PD that really hit the spot. Now I have made it my full-time job to do this for you: I dig through all of it, weed out the crap, and show you the best stuff so you can crush it in the classroom.

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Welcome! To get started, take a look at some of what the Cult has to offer: Latest Post [custom_gallery gallery="7″ width="500″ height="300″] Strategies for the Classroom [custom_gallery gallery="9″ width="120″ height="180″ target="no"] Technology [custom_gallery gallery="8″ width="120″ height="180″ target="no"] Teacher Soul [custom_gallery gallery="11″ width="120″ height="180″ target="no"] Books [custom_gallery gallery="10″ width="120″ height="180″ target="no"] Learn More About Us [custom_gallery gallery="5″ width="120″ height="180″ title="never" target="no"] ...

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4 Things You Don't Know About the Jigsaw Method 

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4 Things You Don't Know About the Jigsaw Method 

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This cooperative learning strategy has been around for decades, but how well do you really know it?
Say "Jigsaw" in some teaching circles and no one will bat an eyelash. It's one of those techniques that has been with us so long, it is no longer seen as new. When considering methods to share in my collection of instructional strategies, I ignored it for a long time because I assumed most people already knew how to use it. Still, I figured it was worth including at some point.

When I finally sat down to review the steps of Jigsaw, I came across a few surprises.

Although Jigsaw is typically presented as just one in a number of cooperative learning strategies, its origin story has little to do with academics. The strategy was developed by social psychologist Elliot Aronson in 1971 in response to the racial turmoil caused by recent school desegregation in Austin, Texas. "Long-standing suspicion, fear, and distrust between groups produced an atmosphere of turmoil and hostility," Aronson recalls on his website, The Jigsaw Classroom. "Fist-fights erupted in corridors and schoolyards across the city. The school superintendent called me in to see if we could do anything to help students get along with one another."

Rather than take a crisis management approach to the situation, which they believed would only put a band-aid on the problem, Aronson and his colleagues wanted a solution that was more organic, something built into the structure of students' everyday learning. What they came up with was Jigsaw, an instructional approach that required students to learn from each other, rather than from the teacher. Because students in a Jigsaw classroom could not succeed without one another, they had to learn to get along. "Learning from each other gradually diminishes the need to try to out-perform each other because one student's learning enhances the performance of the other students instead of inhibiting it, as is usually the case in most competitive, teacher-oriented classrooms."

For a more thorough understanding of the strategy and its history, read the Jigsaw Classroom's Jigsaw Basics white paper.

Although cooperative learning in general has been proven to have a strong positive impact on learning (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001), researchers have found that Jigsaw in particular improves students' social-emotional learning. In studies comparing Jigsaw with traditional direct instruction, students taught with the Jigsaw method demonstrated increased feelings of autonomy, competence, and intrinsic motivation (Hänze & Berger, 2007). Another study comparing Jigsaw with cooperative learning that didn't include interdependence (a hallmark of Jigsaw) found that the Jigsaw students demonstrated improved attitudes toward their peers and reduced indicators of racial prejudice (Walker & Crogan, 1998).

Many teachers are looking for ways to help students become more independent learners who also function well in groups. If done correctly, Jigsaw can fulfill all of those needs without ever losing academic rigor.

As a teacher, I never received any formal training in this strategy, and when I tried it, I found it didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped. After studying the steps again, I realized I was organizing my groups the wrong way. Plus, I never bothered to give the quiz at the end.

Anyway, here's a video overview of the steps. If you're new to the strategy, this will show you how to do it. If, like me, you've tried it without success, this may help you fine-tune:

Want these steps written down? Click here to download a free copy (will open in a new window).

I had no clue about this! Since the original Jigsaw strategy was developed, other educators have improved on it with their own variations (Coffey, n.d):

Jigsaw II has all students read all of the material, but then specialize in one area for their expert groups. Then, when quiz time comes, students' individual scores are averaged within each group to arrive at a group score, which is then compared with other groups. This encourages groups to work harder to ensure that all members learn.

Jigsaw III builds in a group review before the final quiz.

Jigsaw IV adds a few extra components to Jigsaw III: The teacher starts by introducing the material, quizzes are given to the expert groups, and a re-teaching period is built in to address material that wasn't taught well in cooperative groups.

I should mention that clear information on these three variations was very challenging to find; with that in mind, I believe there's a need for a well-written set of instructions to help teachers give each variation a try.

So how do you like them apples? Kind of makes you want to get Jiggy with it, no? (Sorry, I couldn't help it. It was sitting right there.) If you have experience with Jigsaw and have insights or tips to add, please comment below. If you have questions about implementation, let's hear those, too.

Jiggy. ♥

References:

Coffey, H. (n.d.). Jigsaw (Educator's guides: North Carolina digital history). Retrieved from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-eg/4584#noteref5

Hänze, M., & Berger, R. (2007). Cooperative learning, motivational effects, and student characteristics: An experimental study comparing cooperative learning and direct instruction in 12th grade physics classes. Learning and Instruction, 17(1), 29-41. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959475206001174

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Silver, H. F., Strong, R. W., & Perini, M. J. (2007). The strategic teacher: Selecting the right research-based strategy for every lesson. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Walker, I. (1998). Academic performance, prejudice, and the jigsaw classroom: New pieces to the puzzle. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 8(6), 381-393. Retrieved from http://uwf.edu/svodanov/AS/Jigsaw.pdf

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4 Things You Don't Know About the Jigsaw Method

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This cooperative learning strategy has been around for decades, but how well do you really know it?

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SEE THE END OF THIS POST FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON DOING THESE ICEBREAKERS REMOTELY.
We're coming up fast on the beginning of another school year. That means a new batch of students to get to know, students who need to be made comfortable in your classroom, and who need to get to know each other. It's essential to start building relationships with your students right from the start.

And how to accomplish this? Icebreakers.

The Trouble with Most Icebreakers

I planned to create a nice big post with dozens of icebreaker ideas you could choose from. I would scour the Internet for the very best activities and games and store links to them here for your reference. The problem is that so many of the ones I've found are problematic for one of these reasons:

They require students to take massive social risks with people they barely know. So many of the icebreakers I found asked students to publicly share some kind of personal information. For the icebreaker to actually work, students would need to share something interesting and different about themselves, something that makes them stand out. But to most kids-especially once they get into the middle and high school range-being different is the worst thing you can be. So what many students ultimately do is share something safe and boring, something like "I like soccer," just so the game moves on to the next person. The result? No one really gets to know anyone.

They don't actually facilitate familiarity. Too many icebreakers consist of questions like this: "If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?" Unless you have a ridiculously deep and creative kid who is going to say something like, "I would be a mongoose, because a mongoose can kill venomous snakes, and I have a way of standing up to bullies even though I'm small," you're mostly going to get a lot of cat-cat-dog-dog-fish, et cetera. Unless of course you force creativity on them by insisting that no animals can be repeated, thereby making the poor kids try to come up with some stinking animal that somehow represents the least embarrassing aspect of their personality and isn't a repeat of anyone else's animal. I'm annoyed just writing about it, and I repeat: No one really gets to know anyone.

They are cheesy. The icebreaker I have been subjected to most often is the "Name Game," where you have to add a word to your name that starts with the same letter as your name AND tells something about you. Guh. Because my name starts with a J, I have always hated this game, because jazzy doesn't have anything to do with me. Neither does jelly or jalopy or joyful. Once you've chosen your word, people have to go around the circle repeating the newly enhanced names of the classmates who came before them in line. This means having to listen to Jammin' Jenn over and over, my eyes rolling, my grimace deepening. One year I just rebelled and picked a different letter; I think I called myself something like Indoor Jenn, due to my aversion to the outdoors. That felt better.

So I have scrapped my plan to curate good icebreakers from the Internet. Instead, I'm going to share my three favorites with you.

Three Icebreakers that Don't Suck

In my own classrooms, with middle school, high school, and college students, I have played all three of these games with great success. What I like about all of them is that they get students talking, but require very little social risk. Each activity supplies students with real topics to talk about, topics that actually help students get to know each other, without forcing anyone to reveal anything too personal.

Each of these will likely sound familiar to you, although the names may not be exactly what you've known them as. I should add that I take no credit for inventing these games. I have no idea where I picked them up, but they are not original to me.

Blobs and Lines

In this icebreaker, students are prompted to either line up in some particular order (by birthday, for example) or gather in "blobs" based on something they have in common (similar shoes, for example). What's great about this game is that it helps students quickly discover things they have in common. It's also ridiculously easy: Students don't have to come up with anything clever, and they can respond to every question without thinking too hard about it. This game keeps students moving and talking, and it builds a sense of belonging and community in your classroom.

Here are some sample prompts you can use for this game:

Line up in alphabetical order by your first names.

Line up in alphabetical order by your last names.

Gather with people who have the same favorite video game as you.

Line up in order of your birthdays, from January 1 through December 31.

Line up in order of how many languages you speak.

Gather with people who have the same favorite season as you.

Concentric Circles

This icebreaker has students arrange themselves in an inside circle and an outside circle, the inside facing out, forming pairs. Pairs discuss their answers to a getting-to-know-you question, then rotate for the next question, forming a new partnership. This game gives students the chance to have lots of one-on-one conversations with many of their classmates and helps them quickly feel more at home in your class.

The possibilities for questions in this kind of configuration are endless; be sure to use more open-ended questions that can get students talking, rather than those that simply ask for a yes or no answer. Here are some sample questions:

Do you play any sports? If so, which ones?

Do you consider yourself shy or outgoing? Why?

What was the last movie you saw? Did you like it?

Describe your perfect dinner.

What is one thing you're good at?

This or That

This icebreaker has students informally debate on light topics such as "Which animal makes a better pet...dog or cat?" Students have to choose a position, then physically move to the side of the room that most closely represents their opinion-one side means dogs, the other side means cats-and then talk about why they chose that spot. This game has always been a HUGE hit with any group I've ever taught: It builds student confidence with talking in front of their peers, it helps students quickly find kindred spirits, and it's also just a lot of fun.

Sample questions for This or That:

Would you rather live in the country or the city?

Would you rather be indoors or outdoors?

Which is better: Playing sports or watching sports?

Would you rather travel every single day or never leave home?

Want These Games Ready-Made?

I have created beautiful, animated PowerPoint versions of each of these games, plus a bundle of all three. The files work on Windows, Mac, and Google Slides, and they are all editable, so you can add or change questions anytime you like.

What About Remote Learning?

These instructions outline how to play these games using PowerPoint or Google Slides for the questions and Zoom for videoconferencing. If you are using different software you can probably still adapt the process to your own platforms.

IF YOU ARE TEACHING IN PERSON, students will likely have to be socially distanced and can't play these games as they would pre-COVID. My recommendation is that you create an Avatar Classroom on a Google Slide, then have students "move" around with their Avatars, but still talk from their desks. You could also just follow the remote instructions above and have everyone plugged into devices so they could talk in breakout rooms, etc. It may seem to defeat the purpose of being in school together, but students can still look across the room at each other while participating - I think it would be pretty fun.

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Too many icebreakers require students to take massive social risks with people they barely know. Or they don't really help students get to know each other. Or they are just plain cheesy. Here are three that are actually good.

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Online platform for class discussions and sharing ideas in a new way.

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Review student understanding at the class, individual student, or question-level.

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Do Now is a weekly activity for students to engage and respond to current issues using social media tools like Twitter. Do Now aims to build civic engagement and digital literacy for young folks.

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Try creating a doodle on the Online Doodle Pad. You can select from various brush styles and colors. When you're all done with your masterpiece, click "save" to download it as a picture.

Doodle Pad Keyboard Shortcuts

Decrease brush size - Press the d key on your keyboard

Increase brush size - Press the f key on your keyboard

Free Online Drawing Board

Below is a description of each button in the drawing board menu above. Click/or tap to make a change to the colors and brush styles to achieve the artboard you are looking for.

A - Click the color square next to the pencil

B - Choose the color of the paintbrush

C - Choose a brush style

D - Change the canvas background color

D - Erase your current drawing

How do I save my drawing on my computer or phone?

Take a screenshot of your drawing to save it to your computer. Instructions for Windows and iPhone

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Online Sketch Pad - Free Doodle Pad & Drawing Board ✏️

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Try creating a doodle on the Online Doodle Pad. You can select from various brush styles and colors. Try the online drawing pad now. 👍

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Lessons worth sharing

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TED-Ed celebrates the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Discover hundreds of animated lessons, create customized lessons, and share your big ideas.

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PBS LearningMedia | Teaching Resources For Students And Teachers

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Non-fiction stories to listen to--includes free lesson plans for teachers (more appropriate for secondary students)

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Math resources for middle school

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America's reading comprehension crisis.

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12 year old girl who makes videos showing others how to be makers in the world!

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Students can create interactive infographic sites to demonstrate their knowledge

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Search online to find examples of pre-made think-tac-toes for different grade levels and subject areas!

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Brown Bag Exams: A Creative Way to Assess Learning

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Brown Bag Exams use found objects and images to help students activate prior knowledge and create a framework for students to express what they've learned.

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"I sat through two 45-minute lectures in high school social studies and not only was I super focused because I was doodling, I could also basically give the lecture afterwards," said Paul, who is director of learning design at Woodward Academy. "And if I look at the doodle again today for three to four minutes, I can basically remember it all again."

These experiences convinced Paul and Gough that something powerful happens when auditory learning is transposed into images. It didn't take much to excite students about the idea.

"It really is amazing how much, with just a tiny bit of introduction, most kids will take to it," Paul said.

Teachers were more skeptical at first, but the approach and its results slowly won many of them over. A fifth-grade science teacher at Trinity was convinced when a student left his understanding of how magnets work on her desk -- a sheet of paper covered in drawings.

"What they can produce is beautiful and it makes them better listeners," Gough said.

The practice also makes student learning visible and provides a valuable formative assessment tool. If a student sketches an interesting side note in the lesson, but misses the big themes, that will show up in her drawing. And when students share their drawings with one another, they have the chance to fill in the gaps in their knowledge, and drawings, while discussing the key ideas. Going over the drawings also solidifies the information for students.

"We're using the collective brain to deepen all of our learning," Paul said.
BASED IN NEUROSCIENCE
While doodling has often been seen as frivolous at best and distracting at worst, the idea of sketchnoting has grounding in neuroscience research about how to improve memory. When ideas and related concepts can be encapsulated in an image, the brain remembers the information associated with that image. William Klemm, a professor of neuroscience at Texas A&M University, says the process is akin to a zip file.

"This is a way to get your working memory to carry more," Klemm said at a Learning and the Brain conference in San Francisco.

Klemm advocates thinking in images and stringing them together into what he calls "story chains," to vastly improve how much students can remember. Sketching notes makes these story chains visible and tangible.

"Teachers were amazed at the depth and diversity of what the kids produce, even the first time we tried this," Paul said.

Gough and Paul were originally inspired by Sunni Brown's TED Talk, in which she tries to convince listeners that drawing plays a central role in learning. Later the two educators took Brown's webinar, which helped give them useful tricks and, most importantly, the license to mess up, share their failures and keep practicing.

[ted id=1230]

And, while students take copious notes, they may not be retaining much of what they write down. When a student doodles, on the other hand, he is synthesizing the information, making choices about what's important and encoding the memory in a new way.

"If we draw or sketch, that's activating the visual pathway, so we're using our audio senses to take in information. But our output is visual, so there isn't that traffic jam," Gough said.

It can be hard to sketchnote in real time and keep up with the flow of a lectures. But even that isn't all bad. "Even the things you cut get attached to the things you did choose because you can take yourself back to that choice," Paul said. The two educators have also experimented with using little sketches as ways to take notes in the margins of books.
DOODLING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
It may seem like doodling will become a thing of the past as schools increasingly move towards digital textbooks and notetaking. But Gough and Paul say there are always ways to adapt the practice and new affordances that technology can offer. Since many public school students can't write in their paper textbooks anyway, perhaps they can sketch when they take notes virtually. Sketching with a stylus on a tablet, for example, could also offer some interesting new avenues for color and design that pen and paper don't.

More than anything, Paul and Gough want to offer multiple entry points for students to access learning. While doodling works for some kids, it might not for others and that's fine. What's most important is that teachers allow for variation in learning styles, even when it is unfamiliar to them.

"If we are going to model lifelong learning for and with children and our colleagues, sometimes we have to be uncomfortable and try it," Gough said.

Sketchnoting has become an important learning tool for these two educators, but they say it was just as important to practice public risk-taking.

Both women tweeted out their sketches from the very beginning -- a scary thing to do when the first pictures were mostly stick figures running off the page, but one that immediately helped generate support from other doodlers. Now Paul and Gough regularly share both their own drawings and their students' work and growth.

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Making Learning Visible: Doodling Helps Memories Stick

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"I sat through two 45-minute lectures in high school social studies and not only was I super focused because I was doodling, I could also basically give the lecture afterwards," said Paul, who is director of learning design at Woodward Academy.

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Framework for serving ELs with learning disabilities 

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Framework for serving ELs with learning disabilities 

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Article about colors/fonts that benefit students with dyslexia  

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Article about colors/fonts that benefit students with dyslexia  

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WAI R&D Symposia " Text Customization Home " Proceedings " This paper.

This paper is a contribution to the Text Customization for Readability Online Symposium. It was not developed by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and does not necessarily represent the consensus view of W3C staff, participants, or members.

Luz Rello. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, luzrello@acm.org

Ricardo Baeza-Yates. Yahoo! Research & Universitat Pompeu Fabra, rbaeza@acm.

1. Problem Description

In this study we analyze how an specific aspect of text customization, text and background colors, can improve readability of people with dyslexia. Our user study compares two kinds of data, quantitative (user performance) and qualitative (user preferences), taking into consideration previous recommendations and the color luminosity ratio prescribed by the WCAG 2.0. (W3C, 2008).

2. Background

The role of colors in readability has been extensively discussed in relationship to dyslexia, a reading disability which occurs in around 10-17.5% of the English and 7.5-11.8% of the Spanish speaking population (Rello and Baeza-Yates, 2012). However, when reading the Web, poor colored text is one of the key problems encountered by people with dyslexia (McCarthy and Swierenga, 2010).

Previous user studies showed that specific text and background colors could be beneficial for reading on the screen (Gregor and Newell 2000; Rello, Baeza-Yates and Kanvinde, 2012). Moreover, text customization suggestions broadly agree that people with dyslexia normally prefer lower brightness and color differences among text and background compared to the average reader (Bradford, 2011; Pedley 2006; British Dyslexia Association, 2012). However, the relationship between this preference and the minimum color luminosity ratio prescribed by the W3C has not been studied.

In our study we empirically test previous recommendations and compare them with the W3C algorithm and the standard reading of a control group.

3. Approach

Our approach separates accessibility needs and personal preferences which are frequently mixed in the recommendations regarding colors and readability. Therefore, our tests were composed of two parts: (a) a set of texts to be read using eye-tracking to study the reading performance and (b) a questionnaire to collect the user preferences. Through this methodology we distinguish the aspects of text customization which allows readers with dyslexia to read more effectively and optional suggestions regarding their preferences. Each test was performed by 23 participants with dyslexia (Rello, Baeza-Yates and Kanvinde, 2012) and 92 participants without dyslexia (Rello and Marcos, 2012).

For the selection of the color pairs we took into consideration: (a) the previous literature, (b) the recommendations, (c) their frequency in the Web, and (d) their luminosity contrast ratio. The color pairs studied are given in Table 1.

Text and background color

Color difference

Brightness difference

Table 1: Color and brightness difference for the text and background color pairs. The RGB codes for the colors are presented in parenthesis and used for the cell text and background.

The pairs black & white and blue & white were chosen because they are the most commonly used. We selected off-black & off-white because it is recommended in Web accessibility for people with dyslexia (Bradford, 2011). The pairs brown & dark green and blue & yellow were included in the study because they were chosen by people with dyslexia in previous experiments (Gregor et al., 2003; Gregor and Newell, 2000). We chose black & creme because it is used -and recommended- by the British Dyslexia Association for their website and we selected black & yellow because of its high contrast.

Since the pair brown & dark green has a lower color contrast than the required by the WCAG 2.0, we created a dark brown & light green with the same color hue but following the W3C algorithm to compare both of the color pairs.

Each of the color pairs were presented in random order containing different comparable texts. The texts have the same length (22 syllables), belong to the same genre, and have the same metric and rhythm. They were written in sans serif arial (Al-Wabil, Zaphiris and Wilson, 2006), 20 points size, unjustified text (Pedley, 2006), and same line/word/character spacing.

The texts were presented to the participants to be read them in silence while they were recorded by the eye-tracker. Then, the participant filled a questionnaire regarding their personal preferences about the colors and their readability. The participants were trying to extract meaning from the text because they were expecting comprehension questions although the questionnaires were only about their preferences.

4. Challenges

There are three weaknesses in our methodology which will be addressed in future experiments. First, the color pairs were presented in random order but not in a counter-balanced order. Therefore we cannot be certain if some of the results could be affected by the position of the textual fragment in the screen and if the preference data is biased by order effects. Second, the texts are too small to draw strong conclusions. Third, the texts were presented alone in the screen, thus we cannot predict the color effect in other reading contexts such as Web browsing.

5. Outcomes

In Figure 1 we can see the comparison of the user performance and preferences, among the different color values across people with and without dyslexia. The performance is measured in reading time (mean of the fixation duration in seconds) and the preferences are represented by the percentage of the participants choice. Shorter fixations are preferred to longer ones, because according to previous studies (Just and Carpenter, 1980), readers make longer fixations at points where processing loads are greater.

The greatest difference among groups is on the black & white pair: while the majority of people without dyslexia prefer it (32.67%), only 13.64% of the participants with dyslexia chose black text on white background.

Participants without dyslexia tend to prefer color pairs with a higher color and brightness contrast while people with dyslexia read faster when color pairs have lower contrasts. For instance, the color pair which was the fastest to read by the participants with dyslexia was black & creme (mean of 0.214 for the fixation duration) while black text over yellow background presents the largest fixation duration mean (0.239 seconds). Although the pair off-black & off-white is the one recommended in Web design for dyslexics (Bradford, 2011), none of the users with dyslexia selected it. This pair presents the highest fixation duration mean for the participants without dyslexia (0.193 seconds).

Figure 1: Fixation duration (s) and user preferences (%) for the people with and without dyslexia (detailed description is at the end of paper).

The W3C algorithm suggests to avoid brightness differences less than 125 and color differences less than 500. Our results are consistent with this threshold since the only pair which did not match the W3C algorithm (brown & dark green) presented high fixation durations for both groups (the second and the third highest for people without and with dyslexia, respectively) and were also hardly selected by the participants (4.55% for the participants without dyslexia and 0.99% for the participants with dyslexia). Surprisingly, the pair dark brown & light green which is very similar in terms of color hue but differ from the brown & dark green in term of brightness and color contrast presents the lowest and second lowest fixations duration for people with dyslexia and without dyslexia, respectively.

Our results suggest that text customization preferences needs to be complemented by quantitative data from actual reading performance since we found no correlation between the reading performance and the personal choice of the users. Colors shall be taken into consideration by interface developers. Even if people with dyslexia read faster using lower color contrasts than the control group these are not lower than the W3C algorithm.

6. Future Research

On-going experiments address the challenges presented in Section 4. We are currently carrying out more tests with more participants. These tests include (1) further randomization of the position of the texts, (2) longer texts, and (3) the insertion of the texts in frequent reading contexts in the Web such as the Wikipedia layout.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Shadi Abou-Zahra (W3C) for his valuable comments and feedback about this research. We are also indebted to Mari-Carmen Marcos (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) for her assistance with the eye tracker, to Joaquim Llisterri (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona) for his help distributing our experiments announcement among experts, and to all the volunteers and people with dyslexia who performed the experiments.

References

1. Al-Wabil, A., Zaphiris, P. & Wilson, S. (2007), 'Web navigation for individuals with dyslexia: an exploratory study', Universal Acess in Human Computer Interaction. Coping with Diversity pp. 593-602.

2. Bradford, J. (2012) Designing web pages for dyslexic readers. Available: http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/mag35.html. Last accessed 20 September 2012.

3. British Dyslexia Association. (2012) Dyslexia style guide. Available: http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/. Last accessed 20 September 2012.

4. Gregor, P., Dickinson, A., Macaffer, A. & Andreasen, P. (2003), 'Seeword a personal word processing environment for dyslexic computer users', British Journal of Educational Technology 34(3), 341-355.

5. Gregor, P. & Newell, A. F. (2000), An empirical investigation of ways in which some of the problems encountered by some dyslexics may be alleviated using computer techniques, in Proceedings of the fourth international ACM conference on Assistive technologies, ASSETS 2000, ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 85-91.

6. Just, M. & Carpenter, P. (1980), 'A theory of reading: From eye fixations to comprehension', Psychological review 87, 329-354.

7. McCarthy, J. E. & Swierenga, S. J. (2010), 'What we know about dyslexia and web accessibility: a research review', Universal Access in the Information Society 9, 147-152.

8. Pedley, M. (2006), 'Designing for dyslexics: Part 3 of 3'. Available: http://accessites.org/site/2006/11/designing-for-dyslexics-part-3-of-3. Last accessed 20 September 2012.

9. Rello, L. & Baeza-Yates, R. (2012b), 'The presence of english and spanish dyslexia in the web', New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia pp. 1-28.

10. Rello, L., Kanvinde, G. & Baeza-Yates, R. (2012), Layout guidelines for web text and a web service to improve accessibility for dyslexics, in International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A 2012), ACM Press, Lyon, France.

11. Rello, L. & Marcos, M. (2012), An eye tracking study on text customization for user performance and preference, in 8th edition of the Latin American Web Congress (LA-WEB 2012), IEEE Press, Cartagena, Colombia.

12. World Wide Web Consortium (2008) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. Available from: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/ Last accessed 20 October 2012.

Appendix: Description of Figure 1

Fixation duration values in seconds and percentages of the user preference for the people with a without dyslexia. The mostly prefered color pairs by people with dislexia were (ordered from the most favorited to the less favorited): black & yellow; black & creme; blue & white; black & white; blue & yellow; dark brown & light green; brown & dark green and off-black & off-white. The mostly prefered color pairs by people without dislexia were (ordered from the most favorited to the less favorited): black & white; black & yellow; black & creme; off-black & off-white; blue & white; dark brown & light green; brown & dark green and blue & yellow. In terms of performance, the color pairs read by people with dislexia were (ordered from the fastest to the slowest): black & creme; blue & yellow; dark brown & light green, brown & dark green, black & white; off-black & off-white; blue & white and black & yellow. In terms of performance, the color pairs read by people without dislexia were (ordered from the fastest to the slowest): dark brown & light green; black & creme; black & white; black & yellow; blue & yellow; brown & dark green and off-black & off-white.

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Optimal Colors to Improve Readability for People with Dyslexia

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WAI R&D Symposia " Text Customization Home " Proceedings " This paper. This paper is a contribution to the Text Customization for Readability Online Symposium. It was not developed by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and does not necessarily represent the consensus view of W3C staff, participants, or members.