February 16, 2012

Dear Parents,

Last week, the Cross 7th and 8th grade science teachers, Mr. Briggs, Mr. Williams and I, went to a training focusing on teaching students Critical Thinking skills so that they learn how to think deeply and make connections about the concepts they study while completing labs, discussions and readings in class. It is my opinion, based on evidence collected from students who have participated in this program nationwide, that this program will help your child learn to reason in ways that they can apply to language arts, math, social studies as well as science. The training was led by Dr. Jacque Gamino of the BrainHealth Center at the University of Texas in Dallas. All of my 8th grade students and all of the 7th grade students of Mr. Williams, Mr. Briggs and I will participate in a pre-test, 10 lessons and a post-test while in science class. 

On Tuesday, your child should have brought home a permission slip that grants permission for your child's work to be studied by the researchers at the BrainHealth center. This includes the pre-test, lesson booklet and post-test. We'd really appreciate it if we could help the researchers learn more in order to further the scientific knowledge our society has about adolescent frontal-lobe, brain development. We will be collecting these over the course of the program and will need all of the permission forms by March 29th, the last day of the program.  Individual student data or names won't be used in the research. Data represented will be aggregated by school, district and state.

 

If you have any questions or concerns about what I've explained, please do not hesitate to contact me!

Thanks, as always for your kind support!

Hello Parents!