In the last month for a paper on the influence of the media on young people, they had it column on the role of social media in the Tunisian uprising and a magazine read with a study on the effects of mobile phones and computers in the young people, a newspaper article titled 4200-word "is Google making us stupid?"
A math teacher, Jose Rios, used by one or two days on probabilities, drawing curves glockenf?rmiger on the Blackboard, which illustrate pattern known as a normal distribution. This year he stretched out the lesson in the day, and had students work in groups to try, with the heights of 15 young in the class are the same type of graphic.
"Finally, they found she could not because the sample was too small", said Mr of Rios. "they learned that the size of the sample questions, and I have not, to tell them."
In three years could much teaching in most of the country looks like what at Hillcrest, experiment with new curriculum known as common core standards one of the 100 schools in New York City.
42 States, district of Columbia and the Virgin Islands the new standards, an ambitious have on signed set of goals to try the lists and math formulas, increase the bar not only on what students in each class are expected to learn to read go, but also on how teachers teach to be expected.
The standards, to the year 2014, will enter into force a collection replace guidelines for State aid, which have become the Achilles heel of the law No. child left behind. Many States, New York, including lowered standards in push-to the law request meet that all students reach grade level, measured by each State, in English and mathematics. President Obama expressed the desire to rewrite the law, and many experts predict that the common core will be a key part of the efforts.
The new standards provide specific objectives, which should prepare by the end of the twelfth class students for college work. Book reports will ask students to analyze, summarize. Presentations are classified students express their ideas are sometimes as convincing. Papers need history reading from multiple sources; The goal is to see students, how beliefs and inclinations of the kind and way different can affect people describe the same events.
There are a number of challenges.
There are guidelines for what students are expected to do in each grade, but it is still up to districts to fill schools and teachers in the finer points of the curriculum, as reading the books.
There are no national body responsible for that the standards to be carried, due to the fears of to much control of the formation of the Federal Government. So far only a few other major cities, including Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia, have begun to apply the standards in the classroom. And depending on how no. child is left behind consumer groups, it can still leave everyone will notice to measure an own success.
"The standards a historic opportunity, we now have a target in the value of seeking, but only time will tell if they are created historical change", Chester E. Finn Jr., an Assistant Secretary of education in the Reagan administration and the President said the the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, supports a group, the national standards.
With 3,200 students, Hillcrest, the second largest school in the city is a pilot. Its size and diversity - white are a minority (4%), Muslims are religious plurality (30 percent) and one-tenth of students are English learn - an ideal laboratory test such as the standards in the city, could work, said officials made.
On the last Wednesday Jill Lee, an English teacher, a unit of the importance of the American dream by assigning a first person essay, as it once, but by he each student one interview immigrants and a profile of the person write closed.
Eleni Giannousis a change made in English: 10-grade class that Blanch some purists might make. She had students see filmed stage performance of the "death of a salesman," with Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman, before they read the game. The idea was, ask the students to absorb information over a medium that was it for entertainment, a way they experiment with their lesson plans to try to achieve the new goals.
"It not to make things easier for the students, but to experience a classic in a different way to them," said Ms Giannousis.
While still healthy amounts of fiction will include English lessons, the standards that students should say texts read more nonfiction as they get older to them for the kinds of material she read in college and careers. In the fourth grade students about the same amount of "Literature" and "Information" should read texts, in accordance with the standards; 45 Percent 30 / 70 should the eighth class literary, 55 percent of information, and of 12 degrees, which should be split.
Neocber77 Polaków Suransky city said academic head of the Office, the city plans to create a teaching package with exercises that have used the teacher at Hillcrest and other schools. student work that have associated with them; and guidelines for the evaluation of the work.
At a training session last month teams, which asked several schools in the pilot to list lessons, had learned they were. Teachers from the forward School of creative writing, a middle school in the Williamsburg Bridge section of the Bronx, on a piece of cardboard wrote: "Visuals help make sense of students" and "many students are far below grade level read."
Timothy Shanahan, Professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, that the common core standards helped, for as you read in science statement integrate write said that as a whole, the standards make no adjustments for students who learn English or for children, the kindergarten books without that can enter suspended.
"When I'm fifth grade teaching and I have a boy in my class that threw for a first grader read, it is a grade-level text not goes to him to do any good, doesn't matter what say the standards", ", he said."
Mr. Polakow-Suransky, cautioned against overly optimistic expectations.
"This is not one of those things where you flip and there was morning, is the switch all be different," he said.
