What is Learning Connect? 

Learning Connect is an online instructional system for raising student achievement. Let's talk about student achievement.  Percentage-wise, think about how many really good learners are in your classroom.  Next, think about how many poor learners are in your classroom.

"Poor learners do not know how to activate all of their learning and processing skills. They can lose up to 50% of what they learn within 20 minutes after being taught."  (Ebbinghaus) (Jaap).

In other words, poor students do not know how to learn and retain content. We have to question as to why this student experience is happening.  Do poor learners just not want to learn?  Do they not want to succeed?  Research is consistently showing us that

85 to 90 percent of the learning difficulties in the classroom are due to poor underlying learning and processing skills.

So, what is it do that good learners do that poor learners do not?  Learning success is when knowledge is comprehended, retained, understood and able to be retrieved long term.  To accomplish success, good learners naturally activate all their learning and processing skills, when they are reading, writing, studying, note taking or building presentations and projects.  In all that they do, learning comes naturally.

Unfortunately, without real learning success and chronic underachievement, many of our students are leaving us.  In the United States, according to the American Youth Policy Forum, every nine seconds in America, a student becomes a dropout.  According to educational experts, just "reading content-area textbooks are presenting problems in our classroom because

60 percent of all high school students do not have the skills to comprehend these instructional materials" (Hock and Deschler).

In summary, that means that many students have less than 50/50 chance of learning success.  Therefore, it is no coincidence that

"90 percent of all the children identified as learning disabled are referred for special education services because of reading problems." (Kavale and Forness) (Hobgood and Ormsby).

The 26th Annual Report to Congress on IDEA reported that approximately ninety-six percent of general education teachers have students in their classroom with learning disabilities.  This is not a surprising statistic, considering there are over six million students with disability classifications in the United States.  Many of these classifications would not be necessary if students were taught using strategies instruction that simultaneously teaches the content using exciting teaching tactics that strengthen listening, reasoning, memory, and attention, while processing visual and auditory information.  Unfortunately, to add to this nationwide challenge, according to the U.S. Department of Education,

"only thirteen percent of these secondary students experience substantial or specialized curriculum for their learning challenge while in the general classroom."

The turn-key instructional strategies provided on the Learning Connect instructional system augments teaching and learning strategies that can enhance learning and processing skills for all students.

The real benefit is that these strategies can be customized or infused immediately and consistently within the classroom with ease and convenience, like never before.  Some of these strategies can be aligned with content and can be implemented in ten minutes or less.  Plus, these strategies are all beneficial and helpful for all students, while increasing focus, concentration, critical thinking, reading comprehension and written language.  These scientifically-research strategies are fun and engaging and are proven to help any student with their skills in reading, writing as well as enhance social, attention and behavior aptitudes.

Many good and poor students are learning passively and they exist on "surface learning".  Now, we are all guilty of surface learning at some point.  Most students use it as a process to get through both high school and college.  Surface learning is the process of where we find the most important items, memorize them verbatim and pass the test without truly understanding or retaining the information.  Across the nation, worksheets and study guides are playing a major role for students participating in surface learning.

Some educational researchers are even taking a stance of claiming that current findings show that "most teachers do not teach the strategies students need to comprehend and learn." (Durkin, Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, Mistretta & Echevarria.)  The reality is, many teachers would use more deep learning techniques, if they had the time.  As teachers, we do not have time.  We do not have the time to research and find researched-based strategies, then copy them, then recreate them and then retype them for student use, before integrating them with content in our classroom.  Learning Connect eliminates these steps for instructional planning and provides teachers and students immediate student-driven learning strategies that can be integrated instantly within today's lesson content.  In many ways, Learning Connect brings about brand-new dimensions to instructional planning and student achievement to the classroom.

Learning Connect is about deep learning, comprehension, and long-term retrieval.  It is a computerized, student-driven instructional system with over 100 different student tools that can be integrated into your current curriculum immediately.  These tools are derived from over over 65 researched-based instructional strategies that have been proven to increase student retention and student achievement.  Learning Connect is not about adding content to your curriculum.  It is about teaching your current curriculum differently.  Learning Connect is about saving time and effort in in instructional planning.

As teachers, we have overwhelming schedules and duties, plus a tremendous pressure to create student success.  For more information, about Learning Connect, please contact Karen Warner at 405-269-6467 or 405-372-4512.  We look forward to introducing Learning Connect as a professional development option for your school.

References:

American Youth Policy Forum, (n,d,) Every Nine Seconds in American a Student Becomes a Dropout, The Drop Problem in Numbers, Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities Are Reconnecting Out-of-School Youth.  - Lehr, C.A. et al. (2004). Essential tools: Increasing rates of school completion. Minneapolis, MN: National Center on Secondary Education and Transition. (Full text available online from Education Commission of the States at: http://www.ecs. org/html/Document.asp?chouseid=6649)

Durkin, (1978-1979); Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, Mistretta, & Echevarria, (1998). Washington Education Association. (2018). Special Education Center, Retrieved 06/12/2018 from http://specialeducationsupportcenter.org/instructional-support/

Heward, W.L. (2010, 12, 08).  Characteristics of Learning Disabilities in Students. Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall.  Retrieved 10/27/2017 from https://www.education.com/reference/article/characteristics-learning-disabilities/

Hobgood, Bobby, Ed.D and Ormsby, Lauren. (2017, 11, 27).  Inclusion in the 21^st Century Classroom:  Differentiating with Technology. Center on Technology and Disability.  Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education.  Retrieved 06/12/2018 from https://www.ctdinstitute.org/library/2017-11-27/inclusion-21st-century-classroom-differentiating-technology

Hock, Michael F. and Donald D. Deshler. "'No Child Leaves Behind Teen Reading Proficiency." The Education Digest69.4 (2003): 27-35.

Jaap, M., Murre'J., & Dros, Joeri. (07, 2015). Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve. PLOS. Published online 2015 Jul 6. doi:  10.1371/journal.pone.0120644.  Retrieved (07, 20, 2016) from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4492928/