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Worksheets: Reworking A Homework Ordeal
2007-05-11 18:49:00
Worksheets are a major part of reading homework in the early grades--and even beyond. And multiple choice items are one of the favorite formats used. For example, there may be five sentences where each sentence has a missing word or phrase. The child?s task is to fill in the missing words by selecting from a set of 10-15 words that are presented in a list above, below or next to the sentences. For children who are proficient in reading, this format --like most of the reading tasks--poses no problem. But for children who have reading difficulties, the experience can be a nightmare.
More About: Reading , Homework , King , Working , Ework

Some More Musings from George Carlin
2007-05-06 17:59:00
George Carlin, an endless source of laughs, often provides interesting insights into words. Here are a few: I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is no woman around to hear him-is he still wrong? If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation? Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all?" What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant? Would a fly without wings be called a walk? What was the best thing before sliced bread?
More About: Musings , George , George Carlin , Sing , More

"I do not remember when I could not read"
2007-05-06 16:34:00
Ben Franklin in writing to his son about his early years, commented that he had to have learned to read "very early" because "I do not remember when I could not read." Although he was not focused at the time on the implications of his experience for education, his words are nevertheless highly relevant to the teaching of reading. As Franklin suggests, the early mastery of reading has enormous power. It invariably leads children to feel totally connected to reading, leading it to become a central, comfortable, enjoyable part of their lives. For some children, probably Franklin was among them, all this happens independently. They simply "take to reading" and run with it. The earlier this happens, the more powerful the connection. Fortunately, children who do not independently start to read can experience the same result--but they need to be taught. The reliance on teaching changes everything --because there is a huge difference between spontaneous learning and learning attained...
More About: Thoughts , Read , When

The Link Between Wall St and Pubic Education
2007-05-03 19:14:00
It's hard to imagine two entities that could be further apart than Wall St and public education. But an internet financial newsletter recently showed the link that COULD exist between the two when it stated: "It?s a shame, that much of what is offered here (referring to their newsletter)? at no charge ? is not taught in the public schools. Why is it that you can graduate in the top of your high school class and know next to nothing about credit card debt, adjustable-rate mortgages, or 401(k)s?" Should financial literacy be a core part of everyone education?
More About: Education , Thoughts , Link , Ducati

Even in China!
2007-04-30 21:02:00
A recent report in the Washington Post Foreign Service stated that, in China , despite a 50-year-old campaign to stamp it out and a government declaration in 2000 that it had been nearly eradicated, illiteracy is increasing. For the most part, the reasons rest with the infrastructure--or rather the lack of infrastructure. Although the law says that every child has the right to nine years of schooling, in many rural areas (and that is where most of the population live), schooling remains unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Those who do go to school often do so only for the very early grades. Then, once they leave, they ?forget? what they learn. Given the competition that now exists between the US and China, we may be tempted to embrace these findings and comfort ourselves with the idea that the Chinese after all, are not that great. That would be an unfortunate conclusion. It would be far better to use these findings to re-examine the situation in our nation.

A Bit of Word Play
2007-04-27 06:26:00
For people who love words, puns can be a delight. Here's a sampling that may bring a smile to your lips. I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me. I couldn't quite remember how to throw a boomerang, but eventually it came back to me. Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now. He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out how the Mercedes bends. Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest. To write with a broken pencil is pointless. Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I'll show you A-flat minor. There was a sign on the lawn at a drug re-hab center that said 'Keep off the Grass'. What did the grape say when it got stepped on? Nothing - but it let out a little whine. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.
More About: Word , Play

Every Child Left Behind
2007-04-26 21:58:00
David Helfand, a world renowned astronomer from Columbia University, is an impassioned advocate of science education. In a recent lecture, he was asked to comment on the state of science and math education is our nation?s schools. Turning the well-publicized NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND idea on its head, he said that an appropriate characterization of the current situation is EVERY CHILD LEFT BEHIND. Unfortunately, Helfand?s description is not confined to the math/science scene. It applies equally to the teaching of most basic subject in schools?namely, reading. Ironically, the No Child Left Behind legislation, aimed at pressuring schools to improve their outcomes, has led many to believe that literacy problems are lessening. In fact, they are not. In an effort to attain higher scores, huge amounts of time are now spent in "training children to the test." But for the most part, the training concentrates on simpler skills such as decoding (i.e., word recognition). While these sorts of skil...
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The Reading-Math Connection
2007-04-23 17:07:00
While reading failure dominates the news, math failure comes in as a close second. The recent headline in the Seattle Times "New-age math doesn't add up" is but one of the many examples that appear almost daily, highlighting the weaknesses in the math education offered to our children. Aside from the issue of failure, the two spheres of reading and math are rarely linked. Nevertheless, reading problems are a major contributor to math difficulties.
More About: Reading , Connection , Math , Achievement , Connect

Let's Do the Numbers
2007-04-16 18:08:00
There is a radio broadcast on the stock market that always has a segment titled, "Now let's do the numbers." That sentence kept going round in my head as I listened to a lecture on reading education. It focused on the idea that classroom teachers can, and must, meet the needs of each individual child. How important is this idea? Very! How idealistic is it? Very! How realistic is it? Now the answer changes. Despite being wonderful and desirable, there is no way for this goal to be met in current classroom instruction. Why? Well let's do the numbers. Reading is the area that takes up the largest amount of time in the first three grades. So let's be more than generous and say that three full hours are spent in this critical area. That's 180 minutes. Now let's assume there 25 children in the class (although many classes are larger). Let's assume further that the teacher is a super-human dynamo and has arranged to spend only 30 of those minutes in group instruction (focu...
More About: Numbers , Number

Returning to the Lighter Side
2007-04-16 17:06:00
Among his other accomplishments, Woody Allen is famous for his one-liners such as the following: -I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia. -If you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans. -The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep. -There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more. -I don't want to achieve immortality through my work?I want to achieve it through not dying. -What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. -Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought - particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things. -94.5% of all statistics are made up. -I failed to make the chess team because of my height. -I was thrown out of college for cheating on the meta...
More About: Light , Return , Side , Turn , Lighter

Learning in Classrooms
2007-04-14 01:35:00
"Opportunities to Learn in America's Elementary Class rooms." That attention-getting title headed an article in the March 30th issue of the prestigious journal Science. Reporting on a study of over 2500 classrooms in 1000 elementary schools, the article reported that children across the grades spent over 90% of their time in whole-group or individual seat work with minimal time spent in small group instruction. Overall, they concluded that "opportunities to learn ... proved highly variable and did not appear congruent with the high performance standards expected for students or for teachers as described in most state teacher certification and licensure documents." How are we to interpret these less than ideal findings? The answer is "It depends."
More About: Achievement , Learning , Room

Help for Older Students
2007-04-06 01:25:00
A teacher recently wrote to me, asking if the techniques in Phonics Plus Five could be adapted for older students--ages 12-17--who have poor reading skills. The answer happily is YES. The issues involve a host of complex factors and it's best if they are dissected into manageable pieces. So for now, I'll cover some of the issues in comprehension.
More About: Reading , Students

The One That Appears in Many Guises
2007-04-01 23:02:00
In a recent interview I gave for a local educational TV program, one of the first questions put to me was, "Why are there so many reading programs? Parents constantly call in, saying that the wide array leaves them confused and unable to determine which program is the right one for them to use?" My immediate reaction was, and continues to be, "Technically, there may be a large number of programs. But the variety is deceptive because all are variations on a single theme. In one form or another, they represent teaching that is based on the "sounding out" ideas and rules of traditional phonics. There would be nothing wrong with this--if the approach was effective. Unfortunately, it is not. It has for generations been responsible for enormously high failure rates--including the current national failure rate which steadily hovers around the 40% level. Given its lack of effectiveness, one might wonder why the approach continues to hold center stage.
More About: Reading , That , Pears , Ears , The O

A Valuable Resource If You Have a Child in Special Education
2007-03-25 01:23:00
For children in special education, there is one resource that far and away outranks all the other help they receive. That resource is their parents. Their commitment and devotion make them, by far, the strongest advocates a child can have. But motivation is not enough. It must be paired with solid information. One of the best places to get that information is Wrightslaw--Special Education Law & Advocacy. If you would like to check out the website, just go to http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/rti.index. htm
More About: Tips , Child , Have

What A Difference A Letter Makes
2007-03-22 11:26:00
Spelling accuracy has nowhere near the clout it had in days of yore. But those who still value correct spelling might enjoy seeing what a change in a letter or two can do to some tried and true concepts. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high. Sarchasm: The gulf between the person who makes a cynical remark and the person who doesn't get it. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late. Karmageddon: When everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes and the Earth explodes. Decafalon: The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you. Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillb...
More About: Letter , Make , Difference , Ferenc , Diff

The Rules of Reading? The Ones that Confuse and the Ones that Matter
2007-03-21 11:25:00
Everyone knows that reading and spelling English words is far from simple. If only our language were as reasonable as a language like Spanish where there is one sound for one letter. But our mother tongue refuses to follow that kind of simple system. Instead, it takes even the simplest of words and makes them inaccessible to ?sounding out.? Take words like done, bread, love, and said and see where you end up when you put a sound to each letter. So classrooms across the nation devote lots of time to helping young children cope with the complexities. The long-held, dominant view is that ?rules? are the way, indeed the only way, for children to get a handle on the system. That ?s why early grades focus on having children memorize rules, lots and lots of rules. In fact, almost 600 are offered just to get through the demands of third grade reading.
More About: Reading , Matter , Rules , Matt

A Sampling of Mark Twain
2007-03-19 11:16:00
Mark Twain, one of the great humorists in our nation, had lots to say about reading, learning, and just about any aspect of life you can think of. Here is a sampling: The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Heroine: Girl in a book who is saved from drowning by a hero and marries him next week, but if it was to be over again ten years later it is likely she would rather have a life-belt and he would rather have her have it. Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it. It takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. It is wiser to find out than to suppose. Between believing a thing and thinki...
More About: Mark Twain , Mark

Math Problems: A Useful Resource
2007-03-16 11:04:00
Dyscalculia (or problems in arithmetic) rarely receive the attention or concern that reading problems evoke. However, math is another key area that children need to master. If you want to get information on this topic, you might want to turn to http://www.k12academics.com/dyscalculia.h tm
More About: Tips , Problems , Math , Problem , Resource

?Yippee, I CAN READ?
2007-03-14 11:13:00
This young child says it all: "It just happened one day and suddenly it felt like 'Yippee, I CAN READ, and it made me feel different inside my tummy. I felt kind of powerful." You can almost feel the joy that this child is feeling at his new found ability. Even in this high tech age, there are few things more exciting than learning to read. For what has seemed endless time, the squiggles on the page are an impenetrable mystery. Then suddenly, the confusion vanishes and it is all so clear. The code has been cracked! It is exactly the way the child puts it??It just happened one day.? Happily, this is an experience many children have. And once they have it, the reading experience is transformed. The stumbling over words, the slow sounding out, the hesitations?all gone. In their place is smooth, accurate reading. Unfortunately, for many children, this is not what happens. And the numbers for whom that is the case are unbelievably large?about 40% of the population. Yes, you read tha...
More About: Reading , Read