Understanding and Educating the Minds of Girls April 2011 Kelley King Tim Coble NESA

1. Understanding and Educating the Minds of Girls April 2011 Kelley King Tim Coble NESA Spring Educators’ Conference

2. How do we commonly describe the “ideal student”?

3. Things I most enjoy about the girls in my class… They want to please the teacher Verbal Neat, good penmanship Organized Do their homework Longer attention span

4. Things I most enjoy about the boys in my class… Sense of humor High energy, active Creative Out-of-the-box thinkers Risk takers Challenge the status quo

5. A Snapshot: Girls in School • For every male who graduated from a four-year college and 1.30 females for every male undergraduate (Goldin, Katz, & Kuziemko, 2006). • Girls significantly outperform boys in reading and writing in all countries (NAESP, PISA). • More boys take math and science AP exams and their average score is slightly higher than girls (science, computer science, calculus). • Given the widespread stereotype that girls are bad at math (Cavanagh, 2008), these results along with those of Hyde et al. (2008) indicate that a gap exists between popular belief and empirical reality. It is rather amazing that girls perform similarly to boys despite the widespread stereotype to the contrary. • Female teachers’ math anxiety has a negative effect on female students’ math achievement (U. of Chicago, 2010).

7. State Test Score Trends Through 2007-08, Part 5: Are There Differences in Achievement Between Boys and Girls? (Center on Education Policy, March 2010) Boys Project www.boysproject.net PISA data: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/28/46660259.pdf National Center for Educational Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/equity/Section4.asp

8. Do classrooms nurture the nature of girls?

9. Source: Daniel Amen www.amenclinics.com

10. The Testosterone Factor

11. Bridge Brain http://www.bbc.co.uk Search: Sex ID 1 in 5 females 1 in 7 males

12. The Female Brain:Verbal vs. Spatial

13. How Girls Learn • Girls are sometimes behind in gross motor development and spatial-mechanical development. • Manipulatives help girls exercise their spatial brains and develop more confidence. Hands engaged = brains engaged!

14. Visuals do all this…. • Increase blood flow to spatial cortical areas of the brain (Gurr, 1994) • Improvements in reading and creativity (Eisner, 1998) • Enhance problem-solving (Longo, 1999) • Higher college entrance scores (College Board 2000) • Increase attention/focus (Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999)

15. What Do You See?

17. Draw It!

18. Give girls a spatial assignment but without written instructions. Encourage them to use reasoning/problem-solving skills to produce a product.

21. Visuals for: *Pre-Writing *Assessments

22. Implications for Early Childhood

23. The Female Brain:Sensory

24. Girls’ Writing…… • More adjectives; more words overall • More sensory details • More emotive details • Better handwriting (due to better fine motor control & visual tracking)

25. Implications for girls….. • Tone of Voice • Giving instructions • Seating • Writing instruction

26. The Female Brain:Neural Rest State

27. How does movement help learning? Movement activates most of the brain! (Jensen 2001) Improves attitude and decreases stress (Bazzano 1992) Better balance = better reading (Palmer 1980) Following directions (Mohnaty & Hejmadi 1992) Improved academic learning (Corso 1997)

28. General Movement Ideas • Class set of clipboards • Opportunities to stand • Stretch breaks • Get own supplies • Focus balls • Therapy band on chair, velcro on desk • One-legged stool

29. Content-Integrated Movement Ideas • Rotating Stations • Ball Toss Review • Snowball Fight • Continent Scramble • Phonics Phitness • Flyswatter Review • Acting Out • Killing the Blue • Vote With Your Feet

30. Using music • Relaxing • Energizing • Transitioning • Stimulating sensory detail & emotion

31. www.songsthatteach.com www.songsforteaching.com www.rockhall.com

32. Duhaney Park Primary School, Kingston Jamaica

33. The Female Brain:Hormones & Relationships

34. Aggression Nurturance Involves physical interaction, tough talk, competitive games, and aggressive nonverbal gestures.

35. Empathy Nurturance Understanding how someone else is feeling and really identifying with that person and those feelings.

36. The Female Brain: Stress Response and it’s effect on behavior & learning

37. ANTs

38. Emotional Fragilities… • Females have a higher incidence of… • Eating disorders • Depression • Low self-esteem • Post-traumatic stress

39. The “Girl Code” • Message: “It is your responsibility to make others happy.” • Many (most?) girls are pleasers, which impacts their confidence & self-esteem. • Too often, girls think being nice means being quiet, not showing anger, or not expressing their true feelings. • Don’t overuse the word “nice”! • We need to model/teach girls how to handle conflict and failure.

40. Not always sugar and spice… Like boys, girls vie for the attention and acceptance of their peers. They often use relational aggression in an attempt to secure their place in a social group.

41. Girls raised without substantial father-figures are more at risk for: • Bring abused • Being divorced • Getting lower grades • Being suspended/expelled • Having trouble getting along with peers • Juvenile delinquency • Living in poverty • Teen pregnancy

42. Increasing Girls’ Confidence • Single-sex opportunities • Encourage questioning • Collaboration • Opportunities for healthy competition

43. Resources Baron-Cohen, S. (2003). The essential difference: The truth about the male and female brain. New York: Basic Books. Brizendine, L. (2010). The male brain. New York: Broadway Books. Chudowsky, N., & Chudowsky, V. (2010). State test score trends 2007-08, Part 5: Are there gender differences between boys and girls? Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy. de Munck, J. C., Goncalves, S. I., Faes, T. J., Kuijer, J. P., Pouwels, P. J., Heethaar, R. M., & Lopes de Silva, F. H. (2008). A study of the brain’s resting state based on alpha band power, heart rate and fMRI. Neuroimage, 42(1): 112-121. Gurian, M., Stevens, K., and King, K. (2008). Strategies for Teaching Boys and Girls. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Kleinfeld, Judith. (2009, June). The state of American boyhood. Gender Issues, 26(2): 113-129. Marzano, R., Pickering, D., and Pollock, J. (2001). Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. Alexandria: ASCD. Whitmire, R. (2010). Why boys fail: Saving our sons from an educational system that's leaving them behind. New York: Amazon.

44. Durica, Karen. An Unleveled Playing Field: The Ways in Which School Culture Undermines and Undervalues Boys’ Writing. Colorado Reading Council Journal, Spring 2004. Gurian, Michael and Kathy Stevens. With Boys and Girls in Mind. Educational Leadership, November 2004. Gurian, Michael. Learning and the Brain.American School Board Journal, October 2006. King, Kelley and Michael Gurian. Teaching to the Minds of Boys. Educational Leadership, September 2006. King, K., Gurian, M., and Stevens, K. Gender-Friendly Schools. Educational Leadership, November 2010. Me Read? No Way! A practical guide to improving boys’ literacy skills.www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/brochure/meread/meread.pdf Me Read? And How! Ontario teachers report on how to improve boys’ literacy skills http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/meRead_andHow.pdf

45. Looking at our work throughadifferent lens

46. Thank you! Kelley King kelley@gurianinstitute.com Tim Coble tcoble@asd.edu.qa