Ms. Kahn’s class was reading an article saying that boys are falling behind girls in school. Research showed that 8th grade girls are almost a full grade ahead of boys in reading and writing. By high school, boys are less likely to take advanced courses and less likely to graduate on time. They are also less likely to attend college, comprising about 40% of college students. Also, teachers who were surveyed said that boys have trouble adapting to the school environment. Teachers said that boys have a harder time sitting still, are less focused in school, and less motivated to succeed.

The article suggested that schools should change their paradigm to help boys succeed, too. It offered different ideas for making schools more boy-friendly. Ms. Khan thought it would be interesting to conduct an experiment with one of these ideas. She picked the idea of adding more breaks for physical activity during class.

Ms. Kahn’s student, Jackson, worked with Ms. Kahn to conduct an experiment to find out whether adding in brief activity breaks would improve boys’ performance in class.

Is Jackson’s hypothesis supported by the data he found?

Jackson only performed this experiment only on the boys in class. What do you think the results would be if he also performed the experiment on the girls in class?

Discussion Question:

Let’s speculate that one gender learns better in single-gender classrooms, and another does not. If this were the case, do you think it would be fair to let students choose?