TIME Day: NEW FORM

Nearly 200 teachers submitted TIME Day hours for the first round that ended in November.  For those submitting the remaining 4 hours or all 8 hours for the second round, there is a new form for you to complete.  

TIME Day hours will now be submitted in Laserfiche forms.  This will further improve accuracy and efficiency with payments.

As a reminder, certified teachers may receive up to 8 hours of additional per diem pay for collaborative work completed outside their regular contract time during the 2024-2025 school year. EACH person of your collaborative team will need to submit a form to receive payment. Please review your collaborative plan with your building principal prior to beginning this work. 

Those submitting their remaining 4 hours or their 8 hours will use the new form linked below.  The link has also been updated on the Professional Development site.  For round 2 of payment, all remaining hours must be submitted prior to the end of the day on May 10th. 

For additional information and FAQ's related to TIME, please see the Southeast Polk Professional Development Site.

NEW TIME Day FORM

Research Resolutions

Happy New Year!  As we start 2025 with resolutions and commitments to goals, here are some of the top findings from research studies from the past year.  The topics include:

• The impact of outdoor learning on cognitive and social-emotional growth
• The effectiveness of learning from errors in math
• The importance of keeping English learners with their peers
• The power of peer learning
• A modest turnaround in youth mental health

The Impact of Outdoor Learning on Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth

Key Findings

• Outdoor activities are easily aligned to course standards in subjects such as art, science, social studies, and English.
• These types of activities can help with student's 'estrangement from nature'.
• Outdoor activities can build cognitive and processing skills, and those who participated reported less stress, closer connections to their own emotions, and improved self-esteem.

From Science to Sunshine: Rescuing Children's Outdoor Playtime in the Digital Era, Charan, Kalia, and Khurana, 2024.

The Effectiveness of Learning from Errors in Math

Key Findings

• Teaching efficacy improved when time was focused on students' mathematical errors and engaged in collaborative discussions about common mistakes of logic or computation.
• Groups of students who spent time in teacher-led learning sessions devoted to answers students got wrong scored roughly the same as their peers; however the group in the 'learning from errors' group invested half the time.
• Embracing mistakes supports learning, alters the climate of the classroom, deepens relationships, and improves student motivation.

Learning from Errors, Metcalfe, Xu, and Vuorre, 2024

The Importance of Keeping English Learners with their Peers

Key Findings

• English learners participated with their proficient peers in a 10-week literacy program building around science and social studies.
• The focus was on interactive read-alouds, target vocabulary, peers discussions, and structured writing tasks.
• Those who remained in the classroom with their peers out-performed English learners who were removed for remediation in vocabulary and writing.

Effects of Tier I Content Literacy, Relyea, Kim, Rich, 2024.

The Power of Peer Learning

Key Findings

• Students who taught a classmate reported elevated levels of anxiety and greater levels of brain activity across the social and cognitive processing of the brain.
• They also significantly out-performed the restudy group on tests of recall and transfer, monitored their learning more effectively, and included more elaborate examples in their explanations.
• Researchers hypothesized that the presence of classmates may have attuned students to 'up their game'
• It's best to mix direct instruction with group activities such as turn and talk, teaching classmates, gamifying quizzes, peer review, etc. 

Effects of Explaining a Science Lesson to Others, Zhu, Wang, Mayer, 2024

A Modest Turnaround in Youth Mental Health

Key Findings

• While student mental health has shown a decline in the last decade, the latest CDC data suggest we may finally reaching a turning point. 
• There was a modest decrease in the percentage of students feeling persistently sad or hopeless.
• There is still much work ahead, but with schools providing more services for youth mental health, there is progress we can build on. 

CDC Data Show Improvements in Youth Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control, 2024