The Story of Spanish
7th July 2023
Cheery Friday Greetings to our Learning How to Learners!
Book of the Month
The Story of Spanish, by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow. This fascinating volume gives a comprehensive overview of the Spanish speaking world and its history by using the unique lens of language. Beginning with how Spanish evolved from the remnants of Vulgar Latin in the then-obscure Kingdom of Castile and León in what is now northern Spain, Nadeau and Barlow take us through a unique tour of the twenty countries that have evolved to share a common, sometimes locally quirky language. This is the book we’ve been waiting for to gain a better understanding of Spanish-speaking world. If you’re learning Spanish, or even just thinking about or admiring the language, this is the book to read. An intriguing companion book is Nadeau and Barlow’s The Story of French. Ever wondered why there are French-language schools in many seemingly unlikely places (e.g. Miami, Florida) around the world, where other major languages, such as Portuguese, don’t have them? This book explains why!
Computer Programming in Ensemble Groups
Barb had a great time recently on the Mob Mentality Show podcast, about computer programming in groups to solve problems better and keep one another on track.
Class Central’s Guides to Great Value in Online Learning
We’re always a fan of Class Central and its ability to guide you to good online learning materials through its encompassing review system. Don’t miss Pat Bowden’s Class Central review of the “5 best neuroscience courses to take in 2023.” (Pat and Barb both comismerated that somehow Idan Segev’s
phenomenal “Synapses, Neurons and Brains” just didn’t pop up in the number crunching to be added to the list–yet it is still one of our favorite courses.) And here is a Class Central report on the best Coursera courses that include thoughtful well-designed peer reviews for a more personal and deeper pathway to mastering the material. multiple-choice questions.
Success Academy: Schools in New York Lead the Way
This important article by Eva Moskowitz, describes the remarkable success of a New York school system approach:[behind a paywall, but key grafs below]
“The school we founded, Success Academy, has blossomed into a network of 49 schools educating 20,000 children. If we were our own school district, we’d be the fifth largest in New York state. Over the past several years, our mainly poor and minority students have done better on average in all subject areas than students in any school district in the Empire State, including affluent suburban districts. Our success is due in no small measure to the Success for All curriculum that Mr. Greenblatt [who initiated and bankrolled the initial charter school approach] championed.
“The city’s education bureaucracy, which for two decades insisted on using an ineffective reading curriculum that doesn’t emphasize phonics, is finally coming around. David Banks, New York City’s schools chancellor since January 2022, recently acknowledged that the old approach was “fundamentally flawed” and offered the following mea culpa to the tens of thousands of public school parents whose children can’t read: “It’s not your fault. It’s not your child’s fault. It was our fault.”
“Mr. Banks’s admission of responsibility is refreshing, but it can’t repair the incredible damage that has been done. In the two decades it took the city to figure out that phonics work, an entire generation of students has been miseducated, with minority students suffering the most. According to the NAEP test, only 12% of black fourth graders and 18% of Hispanic fourth graders in New York are proficient readers.
“How is it that New York City’s massive Education Department, filled with highly trained professional educators, couldn’t see what Mr. Greenblatt saw? The elevation of ideology over evidence is principally to blame. Instead of objectively evaluating what actually works, educators fell in love with the utopian idea that children would naturally learn to read if only teachers made reading fun. In reality, most children need explicit phonics instruction.
“At Success Academy, we have a simple approach: We do what works.”
You can read more about this remarkable story in Moskowitz’s riveting book: The Education of Eva Moskowitz: A Memoir.
Coursera’s exciting plans!
This EdSurge article on online learning provides fascinating insight into Coursera’s new personal learning assistant, “Coach.” As Coursera’s CEO Jeff Maggioncalda observes “Coach is going to be both reactive and proactive for learners. It’s going to be a thinking and writing partner in multiple languages.” Coach is able to provide explanations, summarize lessons, link videos and suggest further courses for the learner to check out.
Two types of muscle memory
This fine article “What you should know about muscle memory to help you stay fit” gives insight into the learning process. Key grafts:
“When you’re initially learning a new movement or skill, you are in the cognitive stage… where your movements are slow and inefficient and there’s high activation in the prefrontal cortex, which is your brain’s thinking region.
“From there you progress to the associative stage, during which your brain is still working hard, but your movements are becoming more fluid and consistent.
“Muscle memory is achieved when you reach the autonomous stage. Your performance is now smooth and accurate, and your brain’s main activity has switched to the basal ganglia, the region involved with automatic functioning.”
[Hat tip Sylvia Gholson, who notes how she finds these ideas useful for her music students.]
A wonderful link for all things “retrieval practice”
Apologies, bad link last month for our favorite book on teaching—Powerful Teaching! Also, we’d like to point you toward Retrievalpractice.org, which houses all sorts of additional practical resources and tips on retrieval practice. For a great list of tons of books on the science of learning, also check out retrievalpractice.org/books.
That’s all for now. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!
Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team
- Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
- The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
- For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!
