The Learning Success Blog

Too much sugar, especially from soft drinks, may damage your child’s learning ability and memory.

That’s the finding from a study of the diets of more than 1000 pregnant women and their children.  The study included assessments of the children’s cognitive skills at ages 3 and 7.

This research, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggests there may be learning benefits from reducing the sugar intake of women during pregnancy and limiting sugar consumption by their young children.  

Key findings include:

New research shows behaviour in high school is a stronger predictor than IQ or socio-economic background of better jobs and higher income.  

The research has been published by the American Psychological Association based on data collected from 346,660 U.S. high school students in 1960 and follow up research 11 and 50 years later.

The 1960 high school phase measured a variety of student behaviours and attitudes as well as personality traits, cognitive abilities, parental socioeconomic status and demographic factors.

The follow-up surveys measured overall educational attainment, income and occupational prestige.

All 560 students at my granddaughter’s primary school in Sydney signed a massive banner with the pledge: “Standing Together Against Bullying”.

The banner is prominently displayed at the school’s entrance.  The mass signing is part of her school’s participation in the National Day of Action against Bullying & Violence.

Similar activities took place in many schools around Australia on March 16, 2018.

A tiny minority in our community think kids who are bullied should just ‘suck it up” because it “builds character”. 

That’s nonsense.  It’s mid 20^th century thinking. And even then it was a minority belief.

We now know that bullying can have devastating impacts. Students involved in bullying can develop behavioural and emotional problems and have trouble learning, according to many academic studies.

Parents and teachers know this, of course. They don’t need studies to tell them what they see happening to their children and students.

How can schools take a stand against bullying? 

My granddaughter has just done her first school assignment.

Like all the other children in her kindergarten class in her local state primary school she had to make a video about her family and upload it to a password protected website for all to share.

She is not quite five years old. And she’s using technology to communicate with others and express herself. It’s a 21^st century show & tell.

I expect this little girl and her classmates probably didn’t think there was anything remarkable about that project. But it’s a significant example of how technology is becoming such an integral part of our lives.

“Only by changing education can our children compete with machines.”  That’s what Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba believes.  Alibaba is China’s largest e-commerce company. On some measures it is bigger than Amazon.com.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Ma said, “We cannot teach our kids to compete with machines.  Teachers must stop teaching knowledge. We have to teach something unique, so a machine can never catch up with us.”

Don’t teach knowledge based things from the past 200 years

“All the lonely people, where do they all come from?  All the lonely people, where do they all belong?”

 “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles (1966)

The stereotypical lonely old lady or man is what many people think of when confronted with the fact that there are lonely people all around them.

It's easy to understand why some old people may be lonely. They’re living alone. Their children may live far away, or they may not have children. These lonely men and women might have illnesses or physical disabilities that prevent them from easily leaving their homes to make or maintain friendships.

We don’t often think of children being lonely. But many are.

Children who are co-operative, socially responsible and helpful in kindergarten achieve higher scores on reading, writing and numeracy tests in primary school, compared with children with less pro-social behaviour.

This is the finding from a 5-year study of more than 52,000 kindergarten students from nearly 2800 schools.  The study was led by Dr Rebecca Collie at the University of New South Wales School of Education. 

Test scores from the children’s NAPLAN (Australia’s National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) in 2012 and 2014 were compared for four different social and emotional behavioural profiles observed when they were in kindergarten:

Why did the mother of 9 year old autistic boy, Sullivan, choose the Fast ForWord program for him, when she had a multitude of interventions available?

And did this neuroscience–based program help him?

Sullivan’s mum writes a blog, Rethinkinglearning, where she has documented her journey since he was diagnosed with autism at the age of two.

She writes:

A new Canadian study shows people who read aloud are able to remember more.

This finding has implications both for older people and for students.

According to Medical News Today researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada put 95 people into four groups who:

1.  Read silently
2.  Listened to someone else read
3.  Listened to a recording of themselves reading
4.  Read out loud in real time.

The people in the group which read out loud had the best recall.  Those who read silently remembered the least.