Curriculum Resource: Online Lessons for Middle School Literacy

When it as hot as it has been in the Southeast lately, reading is a great activity.  If you want to add some educational lessons to your middle schooler's summer reading, the Boston public television station, WGBH, has some useful online lessons to teach literacy schools.  Entitled Inspiring Middle School Literacy, and funded by Walmart, these self-paced digital lessons combine video, interactive exercises, and writing to hone such skills as constructing summaries, distinguishing fact from opinion, categorization, comparing and contrasting items, etc.   They are designed for students in grades 5-8, and  are also arranged by content areas:  English Language Arts, Science and Health Topics, and Social Studies Topics.

Check them out on the WGBH website.

Special Pi Day Webinar by Author of Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci

In yesterday's blog post, I announced our March Giveaway of an autographed copy of the book, Blockhead:  The Life of Fibonacci by Joseph D'Agnese, in honor of the celebration of Pi Day on Monday, March 14.  However, this month we have an extra treat.  The author of the book, Joseph D'Agnese, has agreed to do a special webinar about this book on the evening of Pi Day itself (although, just to be clear, he will not be speaking about math that relates specifically to Pi or Pi Day activities).


Therefore, at 8:00 PM US Eastern Time (GMT -5.0), Mr. D'Agnese will give us some insight into his book and how to use it to teach match concepts to our students.  Joe will go beyond merely talking about the sequence and pattern of Fibonacci numbers to illustrate other ways to use the book to talk about such mathematical concepts as different numeral systems (Roman, Arabic, etc.), the value of place values, what is a number, numbers in nature, using an abacus, and many other related topics.  For the book lovers in the audience, he will also describe some of his inspiration and research for the book, and display the wonderful pictures in the book that convey these mathematical concepts, sometimes subtly, sometime more directly.


To participate in this seminar, which is being offered as part of Maria Droujkova's Math 2.0 series of math-related computer-based discussions, all you need is a computer and an internet connection, although it is helpful to have a built-in computer microphone so you will be are able to speak.   For the details on how to join in the webinar, please visit the event webpage on the Math 2.0 wiki.


UPDATE:  In response to a question, let me add that we will be recording this webinar for people who can't participate at the designated time.  I will have a link to the recording on my March 15 blog post.

Preparing Middle Schoolers for College

I've said before that Jay Mathews of the Washington Post is one of my favorite education journalists.  He has been their education reporter for decades, so he has a deep background in personalities, policies, programs, and research in the field.

This week he wrote an article right up our alley that was called "8 Subtle Ways to Prepare Middle Schoolers for College."  He has long been an advocate that their are great educations to be had at all sorts of different colleges, and generally works to relieve the pressure students and parents put on themselves in terms of having to get into ONE particular college.  So his is not going to be a "Tiger Mom" type of list of intense academic achievements.  In fact, much of his list, which he compiled from talking to college admissions experts, he says is really more geared to making middle schoolers into better people, which will help them in college along with the rest of their life.

The Mathews/Educational Experts list is:
1.  Notice what they enjoy, and help them do more of it.
(Colleges like students with depth, and students should spend time doing what is important to them, not racking up achievements to look good.)
2.  Make sure your child knows that B's are fine in middle school and that fun is important.
(Don't start the pressure too soon, especially for overachievers.)
3.  Enroll them in Algebra 1 in eighth grade.
(This prepares them for high school level work.)
4.  Insist they develop some practical housework skills.
(They are going to have to balance taking care of themselves with their college workload.)
5.  Flavor family trips with a bit of college atmosphere.
(My husband makes fun of me about this, but my family's vacations always included stopping by a local campus or two.)
6.  Encourage children who are curious about the world to take a foreign language.
(My son and I just participated in an online class this afternoon with students from three different continents.  It truly is a global world.)
7.  Character counts.  Encourage its development.
(Mathews admits this can be hard with emotional early adolescents, but suggests we start by being good role models ourselves.)
8.  Do everything you can to encourage reading.
(One of his experts says the highest correlation among the very best test-takers is a strong background in reading.)

That's a pretty good list, I think.  But some of his readers added a few others:

--More sleep for teens/preteens
--Teach listening skills
--Raise career awareness and preparation requirements(in both college-required and non-college fields)
--Have them write
--Make sure they spend time outdoors in nature

Any other suggestions you have for low-key ways to help prepare 10-14 year olds for their college experience (if they choose to have one)?

Oxford University Press: Bibliophiles' Dream Field Trip

While I have been complaining about the political issues of the Wake County, NC public schools, there are lots of great educational benefits of living in this area.  We have access to all those community benefits of living by three MAJOR universities--NC State, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Duke University--and several other less well known, but well respected, higher education institutions like Peace College, Meredith College, Campbell University, and NC Central University.  They all not only offer camps and educational programs for pre-collegiate students, but they sponsor dozens of plays, concerts, art shows, speeches, guest speakers, and other informal education opportunities in all areas of the curriculum.  We live in close proximity to the state museums of art, history, and natural sciences, all of which offer GREAT classes in addition to their many and varied exhibits.  And for those of us who homeschool, I can't imagine a more interesting, diverse, hard working, and supportive homeschool community than the one we have in this area.

But last week, I discovered yet another great resource we have in my hometown of Cary, NC--one I hadn't know about previously.  Someone from our homeschool support group (thank you, Laura!) organized a field trip for over 40 of us to go visit the North American distribution headquarters of the Oxford University Press.  As I stated in my post title, it was a book lover's dream come true!

The Oxford University Press ships out about 10.5 million books a year from the Customer Service and Order Fulfillment Center here in Cary.  The staff took us into the warehouse, where there are aisles after aisles of cartons of books shelved from floor to ceiling.

We were delighted to see that the book series we are using for our American History studies this year, A History of US by Joy Hakim, could be found on the shelves.

We then learned about how the books for various orders are taken from the shelves, loaded into boxes, and transported by conveyor belt to the packing and/or shipping departments.

We also visited the loading bay, where we actually saw a huge FedEx truck being loaded with boxes of orders heading out to customers (including Amazon, which sells many of the Oxford University Press titles).

We also got to hear about the publishing process (handled in presses across the country), the editorial headquarters in New York City, the company's forays into other technologies besides books, and the joys and challenges of being one of the oldest (it started printing books in 1478) and largest of the academic presses.

Finally, we learned of several specific benefits of having this facility in our community.

1. Oxford University Press has a large library in its offices that is open to the public.  So if you are interested in a book that is published by the Press, you can come and see if it is on display in the library.  That allows you to check it out before investing your money on it.  
2. They actually sell books to the public on the premises.  So if you are in a rush, or just don't want to have to pay the shipping costs, you can order the book and come to the offices to pick it up yourself.
3. Twice a year, the Oxford University Press has a HIGHLY discounted sale of damaged or outdated merchandise where you can get the books for pennies on the dollar.  That, too, is open to the public, and we could sign up to receive notification when the sales are taking place (generally once in the spring and once in the fall).

All in all, a wonderful field trip.  I recommend it highly to those who live in this area.  Contact me if you would like the name of the person who sets up the field trips or who maintains the sale notification email list.

The Gender Gap in Reading: What Should We Do About It?

A recent report by the Center on Educational Policy, based on data collected by the reading component of the National Assessment for Education Statistics, says that while the gender gap in mathematics (where girls typically performed statistically lower than boys) has essential disappeared, whereas boys perform substantially worse on reading tests than do girls--in some states, up to 10% worse.    This has generated a variety of opinions about what we should do about it.

For example, Jon Scieszka, author of such immortal books as The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Math Verse, Science Verse, and the Time Warp Trio series, has started up a program called GUYS READ, which advocates the position that we should introduce boys to books that appeal to boys as a solution to the problem.  On some level, that makes sense, especially because I think books like Scieszka writes should induce ANYONE to read.

But, then, there is the other side.

I read a great rant the other day about this position of "boys need BOYS books" by a contemporary Young Adult (YA) author, Maureen Johnson (whose book, The Bermudez Triangle, was challenged in Oklahoma, which reminds me to remind you that this Friday is "Freedom to Read" day, a day that honors our ability to read 'banned books').  Anyway, she had a great blog asking why, after hundreds of years of schoolgirls having to read books by and about men, suddenly boys are demnding "boys" literature.  Read the whole thing here at her blog post, Sell the Girls.

There was also a great article on this issue in last week's Wall Street Journal.  The author, Thomas Spence, indicts typical "boys" books as focusing on juvenile humor, anti-social behavior, and unpleasant bodily functions.  Encouraging boys to read such books, he argues, will not help raise them into the sort of adults we want them to become.  His theory for the sudden decline in male reading ability?  Well, he points out that the gender gap began to appear right around the time that video games broke onto the scene...  Again, I recommend you read the original at How to Raise Boys Who Read
Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes.

Spence ends with an interesting observation.  He says there is no gender difference in reading among homeschoolers.  While that is certainly true in my own experience--I ran a summer book club for homeschoolers last summer in which boys predominated--I would love to know if he has any statistics to back up that assertion.

Anyway, I think it is an interesting educational issue to ponder.