Reviews for Active Learning: A Parent's Guide to Helping Your Teen Make the Grade in School

The average rating for Active Learning: A Parent's Guide to Helping Your Teen Make the Grade in School based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-07-22 00:00:00 John Hayes I bought that students understand the value of education but have erected barriers to learning, and that these are best overcome through support and encouragement. Oddly, it seems to be more about how to develop positive communication with the student and develop an authoritative parenting style. Much of it seemed to come straight from _How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk_ and didn't specifically apply to school. Learning needs to be scaffolded, goals need to be age appropriate. No argument but also nothing interesting here. However, I stopped after two false moves: one, an argument that math requires memorization of algorithms rather than an understanding of math concepts, and two, that students must practice to mastery before moving to the next level. Maybe. See _Make it Stick_ for compelling counterevidence.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-04-27 00:00:00 Christian Mack This starts out in Port Angeles, Washington, where we stand with the narrator to look out onto the Strait of Juan de Fuca with an aunt who knows the shipping habits of various trawlers. Soon enough, the narrative turns to the college town of Lewiston, Idaho, and to recollections of tough ranch life in mid-century, central Montana. For me, the narrative went from what I thought was very clear and lucid, to a bit confusing, then on to clearer and more understandable. I think this was partly to illustrate the process of getting to know the aunt, and to show the process of recollection -- both by a person whose memory is relatively intact but has the failures that memory always has, and by the other person in the narrative, the aunt, who is developing dementia. As is the case with most stories that involve dementia, this can be difficult. But I liked how accurately Blew captures the experience of living with a person who has dementia. Aside from and intertwined with the action of getting to know the aunt and her dementia, there's the narrator's recollections of growing up in central Montana -- and her sympathetic speculations about her aunt's experiences growing up there too. The latter are based partly on terse but character-filled diary entries. It's a book of the West -- but also a book about what happened to a family that emigrated from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to try to cultivate a ranch in Montana. It's fascinating in part because that Pennsylvania family tried so hard to replicate the order and verdant landscape of Bucks County, in the vast spaces of central Montana.