Category Archives: School curriculum
You’ve heard of learning Spanish or French, but Mandarin?
Most of us were required to take a foreign language in high school. Many of us chose Spanish, a lot of us chose French, and some of us chose Italian. But did any of you chose Mandarin?
To write in cursive or not to write in cursive?
Do you remember the long, sometimes painful, moments of trying to learn to write in cursive? Most of us experienced this right of passage in third grade, maybe fourth grade. For some of us it was fun and we had that “can’t wait” attitude about FINALLY learning it. For others it was something we had to learn, but not something we looked forward to. No matter what you thought about it, there was no escaping it. Cursive was to be learned, practiced, and used. Well, times are changing!
Should all students be taught like English Language Learners?
English Language Learners (ELL) are a fast growing subset in many elementary schools across the nation. They are students whose first language is not English. Many times the parents speak no or very little English, so English language growth at home is slow at best.
Often these students participate in ELL programs during the school day. In my experience the programs are frequently underfunded resulting in too few teachers which in turn means students who could most benefit from this extra support only meet with an ELL teacher once or twice a week for about 30 minutes. Not nearly enough in my opinion.
New York changes math and literature standards in Kindergarten
The Wall Street Journal reported that New York is going to raise the bar when it comes to what is expected in kindergarten. By the 2011- 2012 school year staff will begin to implement the new standards. “The new kindergarten math standard will build on the instruction of basic math and counting concepts. The new standard will seek to develop understanding of ordinal numbers — first, second, third, etc., recognize and identify coins and use other methods that had been taught in later grades.” The new literature standards will teach students to respond to literature “by employing knowledge of literary language, textual features, and forms to read and comprehend, reflect upon, and interpret literary texts from a variety of genres and a wide spectrum of American and world cultures.”
Mnemonics in math: Good or evil?
We use them all the time. I still find myself saying “I before E except after C” on occasion. What about when trying to remember which months have how many days?
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one
Excepting February alone:
Which has twenty-eight, that’s fine,
Till leap year gives it twenty-nine.
You have Roy G Biv for the colors for the rainbow and Every Good Boy Does Fine for the treble clef lines when learning to play piano…
21st Century Learning: what’s so different?
Through an educational source I was reading I ended up viewing a YouTube video put out by the Pearson Foundation. The video is simply done having a black backdrop as people who work in the field of education all over the world speak candidly about where education could go in the 21st century. They all seem to agree that schools should be a very different type of place than schools of the last century.
Colleges are coming to elementary schools
University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Missouri, or University of California Davis might be some of the signs you see as you walk down the hall of No Excuses University at Los Pen. Formerly known as Los Penasquitos Elementary School, Los Pen in San Diego is part of the No Excuses University model being used in almost 90 schools.
African-American Confederate Soldiers Marching into History Books
Joy Masoff writes that there were African-American Confederate soldiers fighting in the Civil War. She put the information in “Our Virginia: Past and Present,” an elementary textbook used in Virginia and intended for fourth graders. Scholars call it a “misinterpretation of history,” according to the Washington Post. Joy Mastoff defends her inclusion of black soldiers and states her research (all done online) is valid since it comes from the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Where’s the Truth?
