In Dubai, a cosmopolitan city known for its cultural diversity and economic dynamism, the French language has a distinct but relatively modest presence, overshadowed by the predominance of Arabic and English.
The city’s linguistic landscape is primarily shaped by its status as a melting pot of nationalities, with Arabic as the official language and English serving as the lingua franca, especially in business, education, and among the expatriate community.
However, French finds its niche in various sectors of Dubai’s vibrant society, reflecting the city’s global character and connections with the Francophone world.
The French-speaking community in Dubai, though not as large as other expatriate groups, is significant. It comprises not only expatriates from France but also individuals from various Francophone countries in Africa, Europe, and Canada.
This diverse Francophone population adds to the multilingual tapestry of the city, with French being spoken in social settings, community gatherings, and cultural events. The presence of this community ensures that French culture and language have a foothold in the city, albeit on a smaller scale compared to more dominant languages.
In business and commerce, Dubai’s role as a global business hub facilitates the use of multiple languages, including French. The city’s strategic location and its status as a gateway for international trade make it a meeting point for businesses worldwide, including those from French-speaking countries.
As a result, French is utilized in business dealings, corporate meetings, and trade exhibitions. This usage, though limited compared to English, underscores the importance of French in certain sectors of Dubai’s economy, especially those engaged in trade with Francophone regions.
The educational sector in Dubai reflects the city’s linguistic diversity, with numerous international schools offering curricula in various languages. French is featured prominently in some of these institutions, either as a second language or as the medium of instruction, particularly in schools catering to the French expatriate community.
The Lycée Français International and other French international schools, including afdubai.org
serve not only French nationals but also parents from different nationalities who prefer a French-medium education for their children.
Language institutes and cultural organizations like the Alliance Française also play a crucial role in promoting the French language and culture, offering language classes, and organizing cultural events that attract Francophones and language enthusiasts.
The tourism sector in Dubai, a key component of the city’s economy, also sees the occasional use of French. Given the city’s popularity as a global tourist destination, hospitality staff often encounter guests from French-speaking countries.
In response, many in the hospitality industry, including hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions, are equipped to cater to French-speaking visitors. This capability, though not as widespread as the provision for English and Arabic-speaking tourists, indicates the industry’s efforts to accommodate a diverse clientele.
Culturally, French has a presence in Dubai through various events, film screenings, art exhibitions, and culinary festivals that celebrate ‘Francophone’ cultures.
These events, often organized by diplomatic missions and cultural institutions, attract not only the French-speaking community but also locals and expatriates from other backgrounds, reflecting the city’s cosmopolitan ethos.
In summary, while French is not a dominant language in Dubai, its usage in education, business, the expatriate community, tourism, and cultural sectors highlights the city’s global connectivity and its role as a cultural melting pot.
The French language, in its niche, contributes to the rich linguistic and cultural tapestry of Dubai, fostering international connections, promoting diversity, and enhancing the city’s reputation as a thriving and inclusive city in the heart of the Middle East.
A Basic Framework For Teaching Critical Thinking In School
by Terrell Heick
In What Does Critical Thinking Mean?, we offered that ‘(c)ritical thinking is the suspension of judgment while identifying biases and underlying assumptions to draw accurate conclusions.’
Of course, there are different definitions of critical thinking. The American Philosophical Association defines it as, “Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas. It involves being active (rather than reactive) in your learning process, and it includes open-mindedness, inquisitiveness, and the ability to examine and evaluate ideas, arguments, and points of view.”
But understanding exactly what it is and means is different than teaching critical thinking–that is, consistently integrating it in your units, lessons, and activities. Models and frameworks have always been, to me, helpful in making sense of complex (or confusing–which is generally different than complex) ideas. I also find them to be a wonderful way to communicate any of that sense-making.
Put another way, models and frameworks can help to think about and communicate concepts.
A Framework Integrating Critical Thinking In Your Classroom
Obviously, teaching critical thinking in a classroom is different than ‘teaching’ it outside of one, just as it differs from the active practice and application of critical thinking skills in the ‘real world.’ I have always taught students that critical thinking is something they do seamlessly in their lives.
They analyze plots and characters in movies.
They create making short videos.
They critique relationships and punishments and grades and video games.
They evaluate their favorite athletes’ performance and make judgments about music.
And so on. With that context out of the way, let’s have a look at the framework, shall we?
Levels Of Integration Of Critical Thinking
Preface: This post is necessarily incomplete. A full how-to guide for teaching critical thinking would be done best as a book or course rather a blog post. The idea is to offer a way to think about teaching critical thinking.
Inquiry-based learning is an approach to learning guided by students through questions, research, and/or curiosity.
An inquiry-based learning strategy is simply a way to facilitate inquiry during the learning process. It might be useful to think of ways to suppress inquiry to emphasize the strategies that might be used to promote it.
Years ago in the (tongue very much in cheek) 12 Ways To Kill A Learner’s Curiosity, I said that limiting choice, thinking in black and white, and focusing on answers instead of questions were just a few ways to stifle inquiry and curiosity.
In Strategies For Creating An Inquiry-Driven Classroom, professional development facilitator Irena Nayfeld offered that “children want to understand the world around them, and naturally reveal their interests by asking questions – sometimes even too many questions! As educators, we may feel pressure to keep going with our intended lesson plan or to get to our ‘point.’”
Let’s take a look at how to promote inquiry-based learning in your classroom.
14 Ways To Promote Inquiry-Based Learning In The Classroom
1. Instructional design
One of the most powerful ways to promote inquiry learning in your classroom is to design activities, lessons, and units that benefit from, promote, or require inquiry. Without ‘room’ or a ‘role’ for inquiry in your classroom, it will be difficult to ’cause’ sustainably.
Question-based learning is a TeachThought framework for learning through the formation and revision of questions over the course of a specific period of time. You can read more about Question-Based Learning. This also can be combined with student-led orself-directed learning where students ask their own questions, which, if done in an authentic (to the student) way, should result in more sustainable inquiry as well.
By defining and itemizing individual facets of inquiry and framing what it looks like at different proficiency levels, students can be more clear about exactly what you’re hoping to see them capable of and ‘doing’ as a result of the activity or lesson.
4. Model inquiry
This can be done in many ways, including dialogic conversation, Socratic Seminars, and think-alouds, among others.
5. Use question and statement stems
Sometimes, students don’t know the mechanisms or patterns of inquiry, and question and statement stems can act as training wheels to help get students moving toward sustained, authentic inquiry. You can see some examples of sentence stems for higher-level discussion, for example.
6. Intentional Feedback Loops
Reward ‘Cognitive Stamina’ by encouraging students to ‘dwell’ on a topic or extend inquiry even when hitting dead-ends, the assignment is ‘over,’ or they’re unsure where to ‘go’ next. Consider some kind of ‘inquiry-driven grading’ where you adjust grading processes to accommodate this unique approach to learning.
The brain works through feedback loops. Roughly put, students do something, and something happens in response. The tighter and more intentional the feedback loops are for applying inquiry, the more likely it is to ‘stick.’
Reward points for great questions. Even consider assigning ‘points value’ to great questions–perhaps even higher ‘point values’ than the answers themselves.
You could also provide ‘levels’ for students to progress through (based on points, for example). Reward curiosity with immediate positive feedback. (See #6 above.)
8. Reframe content
Math, science, social studies, language arts, and other traditional content areas overflow with fascinating concepts, topics, histories, legacies, people, etc. ‘Position’ content in a new way that is fresh, provocative, or even controversial (see below). Inquiry is more natural when ideas are interesting.
9. Controversy sells
‘Banned books’ or other (mild to moderate) controversies can go a long way in sustaining student engagement–which sets up the stage for inquiry.
10. Clarify the role of mindset in inquiry
This can be done partly by clarifying the value of mistakes and uncertainty in the learning process.
11. Use ‘smart’ learning spaces
Design physical learning spaces to promote interaction, access to digital and physical media, and spontaneous collaboration. Artfully design spaces with color, light, and furniture, etc.
12. Leverage interdisciplinary learning
Work with teachers across content areas and grade levels to increase interdependence and ‘gravity’ of student work
13. The power of ‘place’
Connect students with experts and local organizations to embed work in places native to that student. This is obviously more complex than can be explained as a line item in a single post but just imagine the role of ‘setting’–how much more at ease and natural and connected students are in places native to them–communities or homes or neighborhoods or streets or cities they care about and have a history with that is inseparable from the student.
It’s difficult to remember every key detail during an interview without writing it down—mainly if you’re conducting many interviews quickly. Which candidate had that impressive portfolio? What did that customer say about our product launch?
That’s why if you’re not already transcribing interviews, you should be. It serves as a written record to go back and reference for qualitative research, job interviews, and quoting subjects for publication. If you’re not sure where to start, keep reading. Using my experience conducting customer research and trying out different kinds of transcription, below is a guide on how to transcribe interviews. Plus, there are some examples of what they look like so you can start your own.
What is an Interview Transcription?
An interview transcription is when you write the spoken words of the interviewer and interviewee. Interviews can occur over the phone, on video, or in person. Usually, it’s recorded and either a transcriptionist or a piece of transcription software turns this into written text.
Transcripts are divided by ‘speaker tags’, so you know who says what. It documents precisely what each person says during the interview with timestamps.
Why Will You Need an Interview Transcription?
Using Interviews in Research
Creating a transcription in qualitative research helps you code specific phrases or keywords and use them as part of your qualitative feedback. You don’t have to listen to every interview all the way through, saving you work hours. Use software or a spreadsheet to collate the information in your findings.
Quoting Subjects
When transcribing interview audio, you don’t have to struggle to scribble down what they say and potentially miss something. It frees up your time to listen to and engage with them—you can go back later on and read the transcript for reference and exact quotes.
Transcribe Exactly What’s Said
Having a written record of the conversation helps you review information you might otherwise forget or revisit parts that seemed unclear at the time.
How to Transcribe an Interview
Step 1: Listen to the Interview Recording
Use your favorite media player to play the interview recording. Familiarize yourself with the conversation, especially if you weren’t present, as it’ll give you an idea of who’s speaking and the context of the conversation.
Step 2: Choose a Transcription Type
There are different ways to convert your interview audio into text:
Transcription services: Human transcriptionists will listen to your audio, and then write it as text. These services are the most accurate but can be costly and slow.
Transcription software: Tools like Notta use language and speech recognition technology to turn audio into the written word accurately. This is much quicker than a transcription service because there’s no human involved. It can be less accurate, mainly if there’s background noise in the audio file.
Manual transcription: A do-it-yourself option where you type out the timestamps, speakers, and speech as text as you listen to the audio. You can use free text editors and media players, but it’s time-consuming.
For speed and accuracy, we recommend transcription software like Notta.
Step 3: Get Transcription Software
With Notta, you can upload any audio or video file and have the speech recognition software turn it into text. For example, it can accurately recognize different speakers and separate them so the conversation is easier to understand.
You can get started free on the Web or with the iOS or Android app. Upload a file, record directly from your microphone, or even have Notta join a video meeting and transcribe in real-time, making it a helpful choice as transcription software for research or job interviews.
Step 4: Upload Your Audio or Video File
Log into Notta and head to your dashboard page.
Click ‘Import Files’ and either drag your audio or video file into the box or paste a Google Drive or Dropbox URL into the ‘Import from link’ field. Your transcription will start immediately.
If you’re interviewing over Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom, Notta Bot can join and transcribe each speaker individually in real-time. You’ll find the transcript on your Notta dashboard when you’re finished.
Step 5: Add Speakers and Proofread
Click your transcript title under ‘Recent recordings’ to view the full text.
Alt text: Find your transcription file on your Notta dashboard
Edit speaker names by clicking the speaker tag, renaming it, and choosing to change a single section of text or all of the text under the current tag.
Correct any mistranscribed words or spellings by editing the text just as you would with any text editor. The built-in audio player will skip to the text highlighted in blue for easy reference.
Support your interview transcript by adding notes and images to sections of the text using the floating menu.
Alt text: Add supporting notes and images to the transcript
Step 6: Generate a Summary
You might want to summarize your interview in a project meeting or email. Notta AI Notes uses language learning to condense your interview transcript into two helpful formats.
Summary: Condenses the most essential information from your transcript
Action items: Provide the next steps you can assign to people or teams based on the conversation.
Alt text: The AI summary for this transcript
Step 7: Format and Export the Transcript
Export your transcript by clicking the ‘Download’ icon. You can choose a variety of formats, but I’d recommend the SRT (SubRip Subtitle) file as this will display your timestamps clearly, with optional speaker tags.
Alt text: Download the SRT file to your device
Download other formats, including TXT, DOCX, PDF, MP3, and Excel.
Click ‘Export’ to save it to your device.
Choosing Accurate Interview Transcription Software
When you transcribe interviews, you’ll probably want to spend less time transcribing and correcting errors and more time engaging with your interviewee. Thankfully, Notta works automatically with powerful features to help you create quick, accurate transcripts from interview audio and video.
Notta supports up to 104 transcription languages, which you won’t get with a human transcription service. Notta uses advanced speech recognition to achieve up to 98.86% accuracy with high-quality audio, so you spend less time correcting mis-transcribed text. It’s a tool for in-person, online, or phone interviews, as you can record from your microphone, upload an audio or video file, or even invite Notta Bot to transcribe an online meeting in real time.
Notta Key Features
Over 2 million global users
Support for 104 transcription languages
Translate your transcript text into 41 other languages
Notta Bot can auto-join scheduled meetings in Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom
Sync in real-time across web, desktop, and mobile apps
Easily share your transcript text via a shareable link
Major audio and video file formats supported
Integrate with Notion and Salesforce
Example of Interview Transcripts
Job Interview Transcription for a Social Media Manager Position
00:00 – Interviewer (I): Good morning, thank you for coming in today. Can you start by introducing yourself?
00:05 – Interviewee (S): Good morning. Thank you for having me. My name is Sian, and I have been working in social media management for the past five years.
00:15 – I: Great, Sian. Can you tell us about a successful social media campaign you’ve led in the past?
00:22 – S: Certainly. In my previous role at SuperSocialz, I spearheaded a campaign for a new dating app. It involved a combination of organic content and paid advertising.
00:27- I: I see.
00:33 – S: We started with teaser posts two weeks before the launch, creating a sense of anticipation. On the launch day, we, um, mixed Instagram stories, live tweets, and Facebook updates to engage our audience in real-time. The campaign resulted in um, a 30% increase in product awareness and a 15% boost in sales within the first month.
Qualitative Research Interview Transcription For a Tech Company
00:00 – Interviewer: Hey there! Thanks for joining us today. Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself?
00:05 – Derek: Hey! No problem. I’m Derek, just your regular tech enthusiast. I love gadgets and am always on the lookout for cool stuff.
00:12 – Interviewer: Awesome! So, Derek, what kind of products or features do you generally get excited about?
00:20 – Derek: I’m a sucker for anything that makes life easier, you know? Smart home stuff is always interesting. Also, anything that helps me stay organized or saves time, too.
00:30 – Interviewer: Nice. Any specific features that you find super handy or anything you wish your current gadgets had?
00:36 – Derek: Yeah, definitely! I love voice control features. Being able to just tell my tech what to do is a game-changer. Also, battery life is crucial. I hate charging things every few hours.
Interview Transcription FAQs
What is the Easiest Way to Transcribe an Interview?
From my experience, the easiest, quickest way to transcribe an interview is using software- Notta. Notta uses advanced AI speech recognition technology to automatically convert your audio into text. Human transcription is slower than AI transcription software and can be pricey for longer audio files. Doing it yourself is highly time-consuming.
How to Transcribe an Interview
To transcribe an interview, follow these simple steps using a text editor like Notepad and a media player.
Listen to the interview audio.
Write a first draft of everything you hear, excluding timestamps and speakers.
Listen through again and add speaker tags such as (Interviewer) or (interviewee) and timestamps in HH:MM:SS or MM:SS format.
Correct any typos or missed information, then save your file to your device.
How Long Does it Take to Transcribe a 60-Minute Interview?
If you’re transcribing manually, it might take 3 hours or more to convert 60 minutes of audio into text. That’s due to starting and stopping the audio to type everything you hear, then adding speaker tags and timestamps.
With Notta, it’s much faster. Transcribe up to 5 hours of audio or video in around 10 minutes!
How Do I Format Interview Transcripts?
Title your transcript clearly with interviewer and interviewee details, date, and time. This helps identify the interview among others.
Label each speaker and keep it consistent. You can use the occupation (interviewer), name (Jake), or an abbreviation (D).
Break down your text into paragraphs so it’s easy to digest. Every time the speaker changes, start a new paragraph.
Use correct punctuation and spelling to avoid confusion.
Include timestamps in HH:MM:SS or MM:SS format.
How can you Summarize an Interview?
There is a step-by-step process to summarize interviews manually.
Step 1: Refer to the interview recording or notes.
Step 2: Note down the key takeaways.
Step 3: Prepare summary format.
Step 4: Write in a formal tone.
Step 5: Give the context in the first paragraph.
Step 6: Add the following paragraphs.
Step 7: Add the key takeaways.
To automatically transcribe and summarize meetings quickly and accurately, consider using the Notta transcriber and summarizer.
Step 1: Sign in to Notta and navigate to your dashboard.
Step 2: Select ‘Import Files,’ then either drag your audio or video file into the designated box or paste a Google Drive or Dropbox URL into the ‘Import from link’ field.
Step 4: Make any necessary edits to your transcription or speaker names.
Step 5: Generate an AI summary by clicking on the ‘Magic wand’ icon at the top right of your transcript page.
Conclusion
While there are a few ways to transcribe interviews, we think automatic transcription is the best option for speed and efficiency. A benefit I haven’t already touched on is that with a multilingual tool, you could reach a global audience to conduct research in different countries for insights or to interview for international positions in your company.
You often won’t find that with human transcription—or if you do, it’s very expensive to find multilingual transcriptionists. Plus—even if you’re keeping your interviews local, you’ll save so much time using a tool that does it all for you (and accurately). Get started with Notta today.
Note: The items below have been changed but the graphic itself still needs updating : )
What about the most popular trends in education heading into 2024 specifically? Well, that’s a tricky question.
Deciding what’s ‘trending’ is an important part of digital publishing and social media interaction. Facebook articles, Google News, Apple News, trending hashtags on twitter, and even our own TeachThought website all depend heavily on statistics.
It’s easy to have a problem with this concept philosophically–namely, the most popular isn’t always the most effective or the ‘best.’ So this post isn’t about the most innovative trends, most exciting trends, or most effective trends, but rather the most popular trends in innovative education insofar as we can see from our necessarily limited data and individual perspective.
The requirements?
1. It must be ‘popular.’
2. And it must involve some kind of ‘innovation’ or growth in education.
How We Measured
So how did we measure the ‘most popular trends’ in education?
We basically took four quantifiable data points and combined them with fallible but hopefully useful good old-fashioned human awareness and recognition. The result is four objective measures and on subjective ‘sense of things.’ We then combined them to create a ‘score,’ quantified on a scale of 1 through 10 where 10 is the highest.
5 Data Points To Identify The Most Popular Trends In Education
1. Popular search engine data (e.g., Google, Bing, etc.) [objective]
2. TeachThought search data [objective]
3. Traffic and search trends within and across popular education websites [objective]
4. Social media metrics [objective]
5. TeachThought editorial impression [subjective]
Based on our search database trends, analytics data on content, and a decidedly unscientific but daily skimming of industry chatter, press releases, peer content, internal dialogue, and social media usage, here are–in light of the above–most popular 12 trends in innovative education for 2024.
For each, we’ve also shared one of our top bits of content to get you started reading. Also, feel free to use search to find and share additional resources as well.
This clearly has plenty of inherent bias built-in, is decidedly non-scientific, and is nowhere close to exhaustive. Take it with a grain of salt as one sampling of modern trends in ‘western’ K-12 public education.
30 Of The Most Popular Trends In Education For 2024
Related Topics: Personalized Learning, Game-Based Learning, Adaptive Learning Algorithms
Other popular trends in education: self-directed learning, alternatives to letter grades, artificial intelligence, micro-education, modular education, sociocultural/socioeconomic equity, flipped classroom (see also blended learning), scenario-based learning, adaptive learning algorithms, BYOD/BYOT, social media in the classroom, digital portfolios
Ed note: The following links are affiliate links. You can read more about our affiliate policy here, but the general premise is that we receive a very small % of revenue from anything you buy via clicking. If you want to make sure Amazon, for example, receives 100% of any revenue, you can search for the product without using the link.
We worked hard on this list. Though we’re still updating it (with more info, age recommendations, etc.), we tried to collect various ‘widgets’ that teachers and parents might find useful when shopping for children. To that end, we’ve got everything from horticulture kits to video games to books to microscopes, engineering kits, and more.
If you’re still shopping for Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, or any other holiday or celebration that involves children, we hope this list is useful. We’ll update it regularly so that you can find value in it not just for the holidays, but anytime throughout the year.
Editor’s Choice: 50 Of The Best Educational Toys & Gifts
The upgraded all-metal frame microscope has high-quality optics to make viewing easy for your child and with multiple magnifications, two light sources, and color filters your child can view all types of specimens with this one microscope.
This card game will aid in teaching children how to express their thoughts and feelings with a variety of issues, including changes within the family, trauma, grief, anger, fears etc.
A double deck of regular playing cards that are designed to not only teach them the Periodic Table of Elements but also multiple languages at once. These cards feature the element in English, Spanish, and French, the atomic number, the category, the mass, the boiling and melting points, period and group, natural state and common usages.
8x slow-mo and 5K resolution? This one is a bit pricey, but if you’re buying for a child that will actually use this camera, they can film almost anything, anywhere, for any reason.
Compatible with all GoPro mounts, this high-quality video camera is waterproof, small and lightweight, and is (mostly) user-friendly. Quikcapture mode turns your camera into a one-button camera, too.
Nintendo’s latest gaming console (Nintendo —> Super Nintendo —> Nintendo 64 —> Nintendo GameCub —> Nintendo Wii —> Nintendo WiiU—> Nintendo Switch), the Nintendo Switch is focused on gaming that can happen anywhere—in the living room or on the go. Nintendo’s systems never have the wide range of games enjoyed by Sony PlayStation or Microsoft’s Xbox, but the quality of the games for these systems is generally high—and less violent, aggressive, and ‘competitive’ than other systems.
We’ve linked to the version of the Switch with the uber-popular Animal Crossing but any version of the Switch will work. (Note: there are two versions of the Nintendo Switch–the standard version shown in the image and the ‘Lite’ version, which is less expensive but, among other changes, cannot be played on television and is used as a handheld device only.
You can read more: What’s The Difference Between The Nintendo Switch And Switch Lite?
Miko 3 is an ’emotionally intelligent’ robot that uses playful, conversational learning to educate, engage and entertain kids. It has an adaptive personality, dozens of emotions, and millions of topics and themes to learn from.
This is a great drone for beginners we’ve flown for dozens of hours ourselves. With three batteries, you can fly for around 20 minutes. And with a rugged design, it can withstand a decent amount of abuse before breaking (at least in our experience).
In this extraordinary novel in letters, an Indian immigrant girl in New York City and a Kentucky coal miner’s son find strength and perspective by sharing their true selves across the miles.
Start a mini-farm on a quarter acre or less, provide 85 percent of the food for a family of four, and earn an income. Mini Farming describes a holistic approach to small-area farming that will show you how to produce 85 percent of an average family’s food on just a quarter acre.
Help kids explore the world. Packed with more than 100 colorful photos and activities to get them exploring and thinking, this book is sure to spike curiosity.
A popular choice got young male readers, follow the adventures of Greg Heffley from Kinney’s imagination. This time, Greg goes electronic free and tries the “old school” life.
For a growing child, grade level seems to have very little use.
For a child functioning as or in the role of a ‘student,’ it can be vaguely useful to schools to place students and stratify them in what is expected to be similar ability levels, ages, and in the best case, maturity, and social skills.
The History Of Age-Based Grade Levels In The United States
The history of age-based grade levels in the United States can be traced back to the early 19th century when the American education system was formalized and standardized. Before this, education was often provided in one-room schoolhouses, and students of various ages and abilities were taught together. However, as the country began to urbanize and industrialize, there was a growing need for a more structured and organized education system.
Horace Mann, often called the “father of American public education,” played a significant role in shaping the age-based grade-level system. In the mid-19th century, he advocated for establishing graded schools, where students would be grouped by age and academic ability into specific grade levels.
This system aimed to provide a more uniform and efficient education, ensuring that students progressed through a standardized curriculum at a pace that was deemed appropriate for their age. Over time, this model became the foundation of the modern American education system, with students advancing from kindergarten through 12th grade based on age, typically starting kindergarten around age 5 and completing high school by the age of 18.
Today, the age-based grade level system remains the standard in the United States. However, there has been ongoing debate and reform efforts to address issues of educational equity, individualized learning, and the recognition of diverse student needs and abilities within this framework.
See also The Pros And Cons Of Using Grade Levels In School
Note that the following answer to ‘What are the grade levels in Elementary, Middle, and High School?” depends on where you live. What grade should a 10-year-old be in? How old should a 1st-grader be?
In many countries, the labeling is altogether different. In the UK, for example, ‘grades’ might be called ‘years’ as in Year 1, Year 2, and so on. So, the following list of ages by grade levels is based on the United States but should roughly apply to the formal education system for most countries.
It also depends on what age the student actually enters kindergarten, where their birthday falls in relation to the school calendar, and if they’ve failed a grade or been ‘held back’ or skipped forward in grade levels.
Within that context, here are–in most cases–the ages by grade level.
Resources For The Parents And Teachers Of Gifted And Talented Students
by TeachThought Staff
National Organizations and Advocacy
National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC): Renowned organization offering resources, research, and advocacy for gifted education. They have a website with tip sheets, articles, and information on local chapters.
Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG): Focuses on the social and emotional needs of gifted children, offering guidance and support groups for parents.
Council for Exceptional Children (CEC): Provides resources and professional development for educators of gifted children, which can be helpful for parents to understand the educational landscape.
Traditional teacher professional development depends on external training handed down to teachers after having identified their weaknesses as a professional.
If you’re not so great at teaching writing, or if assessment is becoming a bigger focus in your school or district, you fill out a growth plan of some sort, attend your training, get your certificates, and repeat until you’ve got your hours or your school has run out of money to send you to more training.
Oftentimes, these ‘professional growth plans’ are scribbled out in 15-minute meetings with your principal, then ‘revisited’ at the end of the year as a kind of autopsy. What would happen if we flipped this model on its head? What if, instead, we created a teacher-centered, always-on, and social approach to teacher improvement? One that connected them with dynamic resources and human communities that modeled new thinking and possibility, and that crucially built on their strengths?
The idea here isn’t simply that educators can improve by connecting through social networks- they are already doing that. Rather, that schools can decentralize the teacher training effort by cutting them loose and supporting their self-directed efforts through various resources. The purpose of this post, beyond clarifying how social media-driven and self-directed teacher professional development might work, is to offer some (mostly) concrete ideas for actually getting started designing such a program in your school or district.
Also, note that none of this precludes national-level conferences, on-site PD, and the like. These more central and formal solutions should continue to be powerful PD tools. In fact, a flipped professional development program–one that is self-directed, always-on, and social–could help inform the kinds of conferences and on-site PD most relevant and authentic to your local circumstances.
How To Help Teachers Create Their Own Professional Development
1. Establish a compelling big idea –then stick to it
This can be thought of as a mission or theme, but it’s really more of a tone and purpose. One example could be “To help teachers create always-on development that connects them with networks and builds on their natural strengths and interests.” Then–and this is the critical part–refer back to that constantly as you make decisions that might impact the program. This is your lighthouse.
You can revise this big idea as necessary, but be careful not to drift too far away from it, or you will end up right back where you started: one-size-fits-all, top-down, corporate-driven garbage that almost everyone on your staff despises no matter how much they smile.
2. Set the ground rules
You could probably call this a policy, but it’s the non-policy policy—just some basic rules and a common language to ensure everyone starts and finishes at the same point.
Here you should explain how training will be qualified and quantified–or if it will be qualified or quantified. Also, you’ll emphasize the big idea so it’s crystal-clear—personalizing educator training through self-directed and social media-based professional development. Flexibility and innovation here matter more than uniformity
3. Diversify professional development sources
This is the anti-program program. Less about experts and more about staff capacity. To achieve a self-sustaining, always-on program, the program has to be turned over to the teachers through dozens of sources, from books and district resources to blogging and social media.
And not all teachers will be chomping at the bit to hop on Twitter to beat the bushes—so give them somewhere to start. Maybe a challenge during a staff meeting:
Find five apps for struggling readers, a book, two articles on better literacy, a short video, and a quick webinar–bonus if you can find a literacy framework to make sense of it all. Then find an elegant way to curate and share it all with the school (our district filter does not block that)
4. Create a pilot or template that works for teachers
Pilot it in one department or grade level at first to work out the bugs, the factors you didn’t consider, and to better understand how it might work yourself. You may find this new open approach to PD confuses folks, and that’s okay. Simply go back to steps one and two.
5. Connect teachers
Connect teachers from different schools or districts—even in different states or countries—to not only improve the diversity of resources but naturally expand professional learning networks in the process. These connections will catalyze the effort as you move on. Relationships and curiosity will take a teacher beyond a policy or minimal requirement.
The point of this whole thing is staff capacity, not corrective training.
When evaluating efforts, offering training, or discussing the process one-on-one, focus on the effects of the content rather than the medium or the source. The idea here hasn’t changed—improved student learning via improved teacher efficacy. The whole point is the ‘stuff’–strategies, tools, and thinking–that ends up in instructional design, curriculum, assessment, classrooms, teacher-student interactions, and ultimately ‘student achievement.’
This, then, should be the program’s focus, not social media or meeting minimum requirements.
7. Celebrate teacher strengths & interests
Teachers need to see themselves as craftspersons–skilled and passionate professionals who are all exceptional somewhere. Strengths could be collaborating with colleagues, assessment design, classroom management, curriculum development, or other traditional educational pillars. But they also might be character-driven artifacts as well–flexibility, creativity, service attitude, and so on.
How? Have them describe one another. Use team-building games that make it okay to brag. Promote reflection and metacognition. Provide a template they can ‘fill in’ that helps them see what they do when they do it, and why. Then, highlight any talents, share them out, and celebrate them.
This maybe should come a bit earlier–or be visible at every step. Traditional PD focuses on correcting weaknesses. Certainly, teachers must continue to train themselves to close gaps in their ability to lead students to learning. But building a program around weakness and deficiency doesn’t do much to rally the troops–and isn’t sustainable in an always-on, self-directed approach.
8. Plan to iterate
Whatever you do the first year will be a trainwreck (compared to the nice and tidy sit-and-get PD). So, from the beginning, everyone should know that it’s all a work in progress—just like the profession itself.
Perhaps the greatest potential here is in the chance to personalize professional development for teachers. The above ideas are too vague to be considered an exact guide, but an ‘exact guide’ really isn’t possible without ending up with something as top-heavy and standardized as the process it seeks to replace–or at least supplement. Instead, focus on the big ideas–personalizing educator training through self-directed and social media-based professional development.
Common misspellings often arise due to a variety of linguistic and cognitive factors.
There are, of course, a range of reasons for this. Like other languages, the English language suffers from/has irregularities and exceptions to its spelling rules. Having borrowed words from various sources, the result is nearly countless spelling patterns that can be challenging to master.
English has undergone numerous historical changes in pronunciation that haven’t necessarily been reflected in its spelling, contributing to sometimes confusing inconsistencies. The presence of homophones—words that sound alike but have different meanings and spellings—further complicates matters. Speakers can inadvertently substitute one word for another based on phonetic similarity. This complexity in the English language structure can result in frequent misspellings, even among proficient speakers and writers.
Another factor contributing to common misspellings is the reliance on visual memory and mental shortcuts when recalling words. The brain often processes words as visual patterns, and misspellings can occur when individuals recall a word based on its general appearance rather than a precise recollection of its correct spelling.
Cognitive factors, such as the tendency to focus on the first and last letters of a word, can also lead to errors. Further, the prevalence of autocorrect features in digital communication may contribute to a decreased emphasis on accurate spelling, as individuals may rely on technology to rectify mistakes. Despite these challenges, cultivating awareness of common pitfalls and practicing spelling through reading and writing can significantly enhance one’s ability to avoid frequent misspellings.
40 Of The Most Commonly Misspelled Words
Thus this post. : )
1. Accommodate
2. Believe
3. Calendar
4. Definitely
5. Embarrass
6. Fascinate
7. Guarantee
8. Harass
9. Inoculate
10. Judgment
11. Knowledge
12. Liaison
13. Millennium
14. Necessary
15. Occasion
16. Pavilion
17. Queue
18. Restaurant
19. Separate
20. Tyranny
21. Unforeseen
22. Vaccinate
23. Weird
24. Xylophone
25. Yacht
26. Zucchini
27. A lot
28. Broccoli
29. Caribbean
30. Daiquiri
31. Ecstasy
32. Fahrenheit
33. Gauge
34. Hors d’oeuvre
35. Inoculate
36. Jewelry
37. Kaleidoscope
38. Lose
39. Maneuver
40. Niece
More commonly misspelled words: Rhythm, license, perseverance, entrepreneur, privilege, February, occurrence, and separate
