Pages

Saturday, March 4, 2023

The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle

Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. New York, Bantam, 2009.

page 5:

Myelin's vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out.

pages 14-15:

The conventional way to explain this kind of concentrated talent is to attribute it to a combination of genes and environment, a.k.a. nature and nurture. ... Add up all the factors and--viola!--you have the ideal factory for soccer greatness.

The problem is that "all the factors" encompasses too many things to be useful. We are left mystified and helpless.

page 18:

Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways--operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes--makes you smarter.

We need safe places to fail and learn.

page 24:

Link's trainer permitted pilots to practice more deeply, to stop, struggle, make errors, and learn from them.

page 27:

Futsal players touch the ball far more often than soccer players--six times more often per minute, according to a Liverpool University study.

page 33:

Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals. The story of skill and talent is the story of myelin.
page 104:
When long-term commitment combined with high levels of practice, skills skyrocketed.

page 114, on "ignition":

Losing a parent at a young age was not what gave them talent; rather, it was the primal cue--you are not safe--that, by tripping the ancient self-preserving evolutionary switch, provided energy for their efforts...

page 147, on KIPP students:

"Every single detail matters," Feinberg says. "Everything they do is connected to everything else around them."

page 153:

What's striking in the end, however, is not how hard KIPP students work, but rather how swiftly and completely they take on the KIPP identity that provides the fuel for that hard work.

Climate and culture.

page 188:

Patience is a word we use a lot to describe great teachers at work. But what I saw was not patience, exactly. It was more like probing , strategic impatience.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Pictures for CI: What's Wrong? and What's Different?

Ben Slavic (benslavic.com/blog) describes a procedure, he calls it Look and Discuss (L&D), in which the teacher leads the class through describing a picture that is projected on the board. The goal is to get comprehensible, compelling repetitions on target structures. It works really well.

How about adding these two activities? The inspiration came from my curriculum director. Both involve projecting a picture on the board and leading the class through a discussion in the target language in order to provide comprehensible input. Of course the normal rules apply: The teacher is trying to speak comprehensibly in the target language and is using circling and personalized-question and answer (PQA) throughout the discussion.

1. What's wrong with this picture?
Focus the kids on the wacky stuff in an otherwise normal picture. Here are some good pictures to use: http://pbskids.org/berenstainbears/games/wrong/

2. What are the differences between these pictures?
Say what is in one picture but not in another picture. Some examples: http://www.highlightskids.com/double-check

These ideas need to be tested in the classroom; I have not yet tried either. These are popular "for kids" activities, so they have the potential at least of being on the level of our new language learners.

Some more brainstorming: (for number 2 above) For more discussion, you can ask something like: "Is the girl happier in the first or the second picture? Of course! In the second picture, because in that picture she has two scoops of ice cream!"

Or how about: (for number 1 above) "Would the boy be happier if the fish tank were on the ground? Of course he would! He wants to feed the fish but he can't reach them up on the ceiling!"

Thursday, November 6, 2014

My Rigor Posters

These are hanging in the front of my room. Basically they are classroom rules, but I have tried to phrase them in positive, productive terms. They are based heavily on various sources, mainly from Ben Slavic's wonderful community (benslavic.com/blog).