Newsday Webinar on "Selecting the Right College"

Susan Yellin, Esq., the Director of Advocacy and Transition Services at The Yellin Center for Mind, Brain, and Education (and frequent contributor to this blog) has been invited to serve as a panelist for a free webinar on "Selecting the Right College."

The Newsday College PrepTalk webinar will take place on Monday, October 22, at 8:00 PM (Eastern).

Topics that will be discussed include: Student Life, Academic Reputation, Campus Size and Faculty, Special Circumstances, and Students with Disabilities.

The free event is sponsored by Hofstra University.

Register for the event here.


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For more information about upcoming Yellin Center events, please visit our Events page.

The Marshmallow Task: A New Perspective

Most, if not all of you, have heard about the ‘marshmallow task’ experiments conducted at Stanford University back in the 1960’s. In the experiments, a group of three-to-five-year-olds were given a choice. They could either eat one marshmallow immediately or wait 15 minutes and eat two marshmallows. In that study, the ability to wait for two marshmallows correlated with long-term success. The implications seemed obvious. Children with self-control early in life tend to succeed. I have heard some educators argue that the marshmallow task should be used in the admission process for competitive private schools. Others have suggested that the study demonstrated that people are poor because they lack self-control.

However, a study just published online in the journal Cognition by Celeste Kidd, a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester provides a new perspective on this classic study. In her study, Kidd points out that the common interpretation of the classic marshmallow study is based on the assumption that waiting is always the best decision. But what if waiting is not the best decision? What if you can’t trust the adult making the promise and you don’t believe that they will actually deliver on their promise? Then, grabbing the marshmallow when you can is actually evidence of rational thought -- not impulsivity!

In the Kidd study, prior to beginning the marshmallow task, the children are provided evidence of the experimenter’s reliability. When children believed that the experimenter was reliable, they waited four times as long as those who thought that she was unreliable. In other words, children’s actions are influenced by their perception of the reliability of others' behaviors. While Kidd’s work does not mean that self-control is not relevant, it does strongly indicate that it is premature to conclude that self-control early in life is the major determinant of long-term success. When children cannot trust the adults in their life, seeking immediate gratification makes sense.

What is the take-home message? Children need the adults in their lives to be trustworthy, caring, and reliable.

Learn more about the Kidd study in the following video by the University of Rochester:

Photo: Markos46 / Creative Commons

Comparing Text-to-Speech Programs

Audiobooks are a great tool for students and adults with reading difficulties because they allow poor readers to access content aurally instead of through print. Almost every book is available in audiobook format if you know where to look. Unfortunately, more and more reading takes place on screens instead of on pages. Students and professionals must read electronic documents and webpages with as much, or more, frequency than books, and these texts aren't available on CD or mp3. Luckily, there is an alternative: text-to-speech programs can read electronic text to weak readers, thus by-stepping the decoding process that can be so taxing.

To help you compare some of the available text-to-speech programs side-by-side, we've compiled a handy chart. Our chart includes both very high quality, expensive programs, and also more basic, less expensive (or even free!) options. Some may find that a very basic program meets their needs, while others will be impressed by the versatility and wide number of features available in some of the more sophisticated packages.

Click-through the chart image to view in large scale, or download the PDF.

Did we miss a good option? Please share your recommendations (or your experiences with any of the programs mentioned above) in the comments.

Primary Sources for History Research

History enthusiasts and frustrated students trying to fill assignment requirements have both no doubt run into the problem of finding primary sources when doing research. Primary sources, materials which provide first-hand testimony about a topic, can take the form of manuscripts, images, audio recordings of speeches or songs, advertisements, and artifacts, to name a few. Far easier to track down are secondary sources; media which consists of someone else’s interpretation of a primary source. Not only is it fascinating to critique a primary source, but this kind of perusal make it less likely that others’ interpretations will cloud one’s own thoughts and opinions. But where can researchers find this kind of information in the first place? Luckily, the internet age has saved students a trip to locations such as Washington, D.C. for the purpose of sifting through stacks of papers and reels. The websites below allow users to view primary sources in a wide array of formats covering countless topics.

The Library of Congress 

Unfortunately, many of the tantalizing primary resources housed within the Library of Congress are either unavailable online, or else available in a format which makes them difficult to use; for example, most photographs and drawings are displayed only as thumbnails which cannot be enlarged. For this reason, using the search function on the homepage will likely be a less rewarding experience than using the wonderful teachers’ page for access to helpful starting points for research. From here, users can browse collections of fully accessible resources, organized by commonly studied themes (e.g. advertising, civil rights, wars and the home front), topics (e.g. maps and geography, religion and philosophy), or U.S. state or source sets (e.g. the Dust Bowl, baseball, immigration). Types of resources include photographs, original documents, video clips, sheet music, and audio files.


The National Archives

Drawings, artifacts, manuscripts, and more are available through the National Archives’ Online Public Access function. Users can take advantage of the sophisticated Advanced Search options to narrow down their results, and it’s easy to zoom in on most images and documents for close scrutiny. The National Archives features a more productive search engine than the one used by the Library of Congress,although it lacks the insight of the thoughtfully grouped collections available through the library.

Famous Speeches

If it’s American oratory you seek, look no further than the American Rhetoric website. Transcripts of nearly all of the famous and influential speeches that have shaped US history can be found here, and some audio recordings are even available.




Repositories of Primary Sources

A repository of primary sources, hosted by the University of Idaho, lists over 5,000 links through which researchers can access holdings of millions of primary resources in all kinds of formats. It includes repositories throughout the world and therefore contains more information than most American collections, but the foreign links to which it points are often not written in English. This is not true of all foreign links, however; and, of course, English-speaking users may find the resources focusing on the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand to be useful, as well.


Primary Sources on the Web

Primary Sources on the Web lists resources divided into two categories: US History and World History. Users can navigate through topics pertaining to many chapters in world history in English, and there are wonderful collections of images and documents available.

National Metric Week

This week, October 7-12, is National Metric Week, a time to recognize and better understand the system of measurement that is in regular use in every country on earth -- except the United States. Designed to fall each year during the week which contains October 10th -- the tenth day of the tenth month -- this event was created by The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 1976, a year after the signing of the Metric Conversion Act signaling a renewed (and not yet successful) effort to bring the regular use of the metric system of weights and measures to U.S. trade and commerce.

The metric system is generally accepted to have been first created by Gabriel Mouton, a vicar in Lyons, France in 1670. Mouton proposed a decimal system of measurement based on the length of one minute of  the arc of a great circle of the Earth (now called a nautical mile, 1852 meters). The metric system has gone through numerous revisions, including work by the French Academy of Sciences beginning in 1790 to create measures of volume as well as larger and smaller units of volume and length by multiplying or dividing by ten. Scientific surveys and international conferences continued to refine the system, the most recent being a simplification adopted in 1960 by  the General Conference on Weights and Measures, an international consortium. 

There have also been -- and continue to be -- political considerations in the use of the metric system. In its early years in France, the system fell into and out of favor during different points in history, until it was finally adopted once and for all in 1840. Here in the U.S., Congress has been reluctant to require its use because of the preference of most American for the inch-pound system. However, as trade has become more global in nature, U.S. companies have needed to adopt the metric system to remain relevant in international commerce. 

There is a detailed account of the history of the metric system on the website of the U.S. Metric Association, which also has puzzles that can help familiarize students with metric measurements. 

Tools for Writing and Proofreading

Of the different reasons students come to us for help here at The Yellin Center, writing remains one of the most common. Many of our students are able to come up with wonderful ideas but getting them onto paper can be challenging for a variety of reasons, causing great frustration to the students themselves, as well as their parents and teachers. In our work with struggling writers, we've come across several helpful programs to improve the quality of their written work. For those who have difficulty thinking of the right words to use during the drafting process, WriteOnline and wordQ are excellent options. During editing, students who have difficulty seeing errors in their own work might benefit from practicing with Daily Oral Language books. Both resources can be enormously helpful toward helping a student’s ideas sound as good on paper as they did in his/her head.

Helping Writers Find Words

Writers everywhere are familiar with the scenario: They know the perfect word to use in a sentence, they can practically hear it, practically see it, they know it starts with an e, but what is it?? For young students who are new to writing or anyone who faces writing or language challenges, this experience is more than an occasional annoyance. Stopping mid-sentence to check a thesaurus can interrupt the flow of writing and students may  lose track of what they were saying when they are forced to backtrack.

Luckily, there are several assistive technology options available to help writers find just the right word and WriteOnline and wordQ are two of the best. Both provide predictive text so that appropriate, correctly spelled words will be suggested to students as they write sentences. Both programs also read text aloud, making it easier for students to detect awkward or ungrammatical sentences. WordQ users are given the option to take the predictive text feature a step further, however, with the addition of speakQ. This feature recognizes and enters spoken words, making wordQ a great option for poor spellers or those who have difficulty with keyboards.

At first, programs like WriteOnline and wordQ may seem to be band-aids and not actual cures. With time, however, students will be exposed to a great many useful words in the context of their own writing, which should help make word retrieval more automatic and writing a less daunting process.

Building Proofreading Skills

Students are often encouraged to proofread their writing for mistakes, but without specific instruction and practice, this mandate can be an exercise in futility. The Daily Oral Language (D.O.L.) series provides students with opportunities to practice finding and correcting errors in written mechanics to help them be more careful, thoughtful editors of their own writing.

One D.O.L. book is available for each grade from first through twelfth, and there is an exercise for each day of the week. Students read up to a few sentences containing errors, use proofreading marks to identify them, then rewrite the corrected sentences to reinforce the lesson. Educators can support students who have had less practice by telling them how many errors to look for or giving clues about the nature of some of the errors (capitalization, punctuation, etc.). The books are particularly useful as an informal diagnostic tool for tutors or specialists beginning work with new students – asking them to correct a few carefully chosen D.O.L. exercises can reveal a lot about the skills that are intact and those that need to be reinforced.

D.O.L. books are available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishers in bulk, but parents and tutors can find single copies on Amazon.com.

A note about transfer: Critics of Daily Oral Language have pointed out that the exercises are not sufficient to serve as writing instruction, and they are right. The series is a great supplement to the writing lessons students receive in their language arts classes, but it should be noted that the books are not meant to take the place of instruction. Knowledgeable adults may need to guide students in transferring the skills they build with Daily Oral Language to the editing of their own writing.

Photo: Jimmie / Creative Commons

Girls of Color Star in Three Outstanding Transitional Book Series

The United States is a wonderfully diverse country, populated by people of countless ethnicities and backgrounds. However, many parents say this diversity fades in the transitional books section of bookstores and libraries. Transitional books are intended to bridge the gap between picture books for young children and chapter books for children in the later years of elementary school. Generally appropriate for typically developing readers in second through fourth grade, transitional books have pictures on some pages, short chapters, and simpler language than most chapter books.

A recent article in The Reading Teacher* comments on the paucity of female African American protagonists featured in transitional books, then analyzes and recommends three outstanding series, described below. All books are available in bookstores or through Amazon.com.

The Dyamonde Daniel books by Nikki Grimes (grades 2 and up) feature a “third grader with wild-crazy hair and a zippy attitude” (book jacket description). Dyamonde is a smart, funny, warm girl with a big heart. She is relatively new to her school, and her struggles to fit in, chronicled in the first book in the series Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel, may resonate with some girls. Dyamonde demonstrates a commitment to education and a sensitivity toward the plights of her friends, values which are illustrated throughout the series.

Nikki and Deja (grades 1 and up), a series by Karen English, follows endearing best friends and neighbors Nikki and Deja as they navigate the treacherous waters of middle-grade friendship and work toward realizing their career aspirations. For example, Nikki dreams of being a reporter and always carries a notebook and pencil with her; in one of the books, she plans to start a community newsletter. Their experiences and relationships with each other, their families, and members of the community ring true and provide good lessons that don’t feel preachy.

The Willimena Rules! series by Valerie Wilson Wesley (grades 2 and up) is about a spunky girl whose adventures are both amusing and touching. For example, in the first book in the series, How to Lose Your Class Pet, the class’s pet guinea pig escapes on Willie’s watch. In another, How to Lose Your Cookie Money, Willie learns that two of her friends have don’t have money for lunch at school and buys them food for a week and a half before running out of funds – funds which she earned selling Girl Scout cookies and must now pay back somehow. Quirky cartoons accompany the stories in these charming, clever books.

*McNair, Jonda C. and Brooks, Wanda M. (2012). “Transitional Chapter Books: Representations of African American Girlhood.” The Reading Teacher, 65(8).