Tipping the Balance in Students’ Favor

Kim CarterClassroom Culture, Learning, Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers, Testing

By AKOM Guest Blogger Sally Hunter   I am struck by the reality that schools today require teachers to become skilled performers in an increasingly complex and critical balancing act.  In more and more public classrooms, elementary teachers are asked to spend the bulk of their day following impersonal lesson plans, preparing students for mandated tests, and completing layers of … Read More

All Kinds of Minds Website Gets a Makeover!

Kim CarterLearning, Learning about Learning, Strategies for teachers, Teachers, Uncategorized

All Kinds of Minds is pleased to announce that our website has been updated with a brand new structure and design.  We’ve streamlined the navigation and structured the content to provide you with a better user experience. Your Go-To Source for Learning about Learning While the site has a new look, you’ll still be able to access the same great … Read More

What’s Up with Kate? (Part 2)

Kim CarterAffinities, Differentiated Instruction, Differentiated Learning, Higher Order Thinking, Language, Learning, Learning about Learning, Learning Challenges, Memory, Reading, Strategies for teachers, Student Strengths, Student Weaknesses, Teachers

Last week we told you about Kate, a 6th grade student with some learning challenges.  Kate is earning good grades, but she really has to work hard for everything – seemingly much harder than her peers.  She struggles to retain new vocabulary words, recall information from reading passages, follow multi-step directions, and master math facts. So what’s really going on … Read More

One School’s Faculty-wide Exploration of Schools for All Kinds of Minds

Kim CarterClassroom Culture, Differentiated Instruction, Differentiated Learning, Learning, Learning about Learning, Learning Challenges, Learning Specialists, Private School, School Culture, Strategies for teachers, Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers, Uncategorized

By Mary Mannix, Guest Blogger Last spring, administrators at Indian Creek School, an All Kinds of Minds School of Distinction, searched for a book for summer reading for the faculty that would be meaningful and relevant to teachers across all three divisions of the school, from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. Why Schools for All Kinds of Minds? Administrators chose Schools … Read More

Embrace What’s Going Right to Pave a Better Road to Learning

Kim CarterAffinities, Classroom Culture, Differentiated Instruction, Differentiated Learning, Learning, Learning about Learning, School Culture, Strategies for teachers, Student Strengths, Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers, Uncategorized

By Michele Robinson, Director of Special Projects at All Kinds of Minds and co-author of Schools for All Kinds of Minds Grab a pen or pencil. Off the top of your head, list 3-4 of your strengths – those things you do well with relative ease. Now list 3-4 affinities – those activities or topics you love to do or … Read More

The Boy No One Could See

Kim CarterAffinities, Classroom Culture, Learning, Student Strengths, Student Weaknesses, Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers

By Mary-Dean Barringer, CEO of All Kinds of Minds and co-author of Schools for All Kinds of Minds When writing Schools for All Kinds of Minds, I had multiple insights I wanted to share.  Many of these insights were supported by social science research.  For example, Malcolm Gladwell and Karl Weick show us how “small wins” can be tipping points … Read More

Teachers: What’s Your Framework?

Kim CarterAttention, Classroom Culture, Differentiated Instruction, Differentiated Learning, Higher Order Thinking, Language, Learning, Learning Challenges, Research, School Culture, Strategies for teachers, Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers, Uncategorized

By Craig Pohlman, Ph.D., Co-author of Schools for All Kinds of Minds and Director of MindMatters at Southeast Psych, a learning program in Charlotte, NC In some circles, All Kinds of Minds has become equated with the neurodevelopmental framework it uses, but this framework is only one aspect of their approach to understand learning and learners.  All Kinds of Minds is … Read More

Building Schools for All Kinds of Minds

Kim CarterAffinities, Classroom Culture, Differentiated Instruction, Learning, Learning about Learning, Learning Challenges, Learning Specialists, School Culture, Strategies for teachers, Student Strengths, Student Weaknesses, Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers, Uncategorized

In our recently-published book, Schools for All Kinds of Minds: Boosting Student Success by Embracing Learning Variation, our CEO Mary-Dean Barringer makes the point that “Educators, school leaders and policymakers … talk around learning but not about learning,” and she notes that equipping educators with current knowledge from science about how we are wired to learn is essential to the … Read More

Where are our Learning Experts? (Here’s a clue: They weren’t invited to DC this week)

Kim CarterDifferentiated Learning, Learning, Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers

By Mary-Dean Barringer, CEO, All Kinds of Minds There’s a critical meeting in Washington, D.C this Friday, September 17th, on the “Future of the Profession: New Learning Ecology for Teachers and Students.” Billed as “a discussion about the emerging realities facing the nation—the funding crisis, the teacher shortage, and new technologies—that will reshape learning environments and expectations for the teaching … Read More

Origami and Temporal-Sequential Ordering … An All Kinds of Minds Lesson Plan

Kim CarterClassroom Culture, Demystification, Differentiated Learning, Learning, Learning about Learning, Learning Challenges, Metacognition, Strategies for teachers, Student Strengths, Student Weaknesses, Teachers, Temporal-sequential Ordering

It’s the time of year when lesson planning is, once again, on every teacher’s mind. And we at All Kinds of Minds are thinking about lesson plans, too – that is, “Learning about Learning” lesson plans! We believe that it is critical to empower students to find success. Educators can promote and support this goal in many ways. One way is to help … Read More