June 1

June 1

"Diligence is the mother of good luck."
~Benjamin Franklin

What oddity is shared by these words:
bestow, cordial, designation, golden, hospitable, importune, lambaste, restrain, toward, working?
Answer: Double one letter and two new words are formed. Example: designation = design nation

In the News
Audit: US tutoring is poorly enforced - Schools unable to comply with law: http://tinyurl.com/nrnkx
"Failing US schools required by federal law to provide students with extra tutoring are not making sure the teaching is effective or in line with existing programs, congressional auditors reported."

Back to School/ 7 Trends to Watch: From Reading to Algebra Everything is Starting Earlier:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06239/716712-298.stm
" Parents are taking 3-year-olds to academic tutoring programs, complete with flashcards and homework."

Department of Education - Latest Press Releases: http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/latest/index.html?src=ln

Drop Everything and Read—But How?: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer06/fluency.htm
"For students who are not yet fluent, silent reading is not the best use of classroom time."

Free Tutoring Promise Left Behind: http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/08/27/free_tutoring_promise_left_behind/
"Sandra Senda wanted a free private tutor for her kids, just like the No Child Left Behind law promised. She had no idea the deal came with a big headache."

Kids' English Fluency Flourishes: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20060815-9999-1n15speak.html
School-age children from Spanish-speaking households throughout California are gaining English fluency at record rates.

Kids and Family Reading Report: http://www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/news/reading_survey_press_call_2.pdf
Children's librarians and school librarians take note. There's both discouraging news (the falloff after age 8 in the number of children who enjoy reading) and opportunity here (the top reason given for not reading is being unable to find books that interest them).

The National Association for the Exchange of Industrial Resources
This is a nonprofit organization that accepts donations from companies and redistributes them. Schools and nonprofits can get, for example, classroom supplies, games, toys, art supplies and holiday decorations. Interested school staffer members should call (800)562-0955 or email member@naeir.org for a free membership information kit.

Search Me?: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/12/AR2006081200886.html
"Google Wants to Digitize Every Book. Publishers Say Read the Fine Print First"

States, feds partner on English testing: http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=130627
Twenty-four states are being invited to work with the U.S. Department of Education to develop acceptable math and reading tests for students with limited English proficiency.

Teens rely on TV, games for sleep: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19917867-23289,00.html
Many Belgian children aged 13 or 16 use TV, computer games and music at bedtime, but such devices disrupt sleeping patterns and leave children more tired the next day, a study in an Australian pediatrics medical journal reveals. Books were the only media that helped teens nod off earlier and stay asleep longer, the study found.

Want to Write? Read: http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-op-skube27aug27,1,7786277.story?coll=la-news-learning
"Just in time for the start of school, an interviewer on National Public Radio solicited the counsel of an education expert from Santa Monica. The gentleman had nothing particularly new to say — our schools have too many rules, too little freedom, they stifle creativity — but his words were catnip to the ears of his interviewer. Inspiring, she called them."

New York State Learning Standards
Connected Learning: http://www.title3.org
K-12 lessons/units that utilize technology as well as other subject areas. They were created as part of the Literacy Challenge Grant program in New York. All lessons are geared to state and national standards.

Introduction to the Grades 3-8 Testing Program in English Language Arts and Mathematics: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/3-8/intro2.pdf

New York State Learning Standards: http://www.nysatl.nysed.gov/standards.html

Literacy in the United States and Around the World
A Child Becomes a Reader Birth through Preschool: http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/html/parent_guides/birth_to_pre.html
The Partnership for Reading
When does a child learn to read? Many people might say, "in kindergarten or first grade." But researchers have told us something very important. Learning to read and write can start at home, long before children go to school. Children can start down the road to becoming readers from the day they are born.

A Child Becomes a Reader Kindergarten through Grade 3: http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/html/parent_guides/k-3.html
The Partnership for Reading
The road to becoming a reader begins the day a child is born and continues through the end of third grade. At that point, a child must read with ease and understanding to take advantage of the learning opportunities in fourth grade and beyond--in school and in life.

Children of the Code: http://www.childrenofthecode.org/
A Social-Education Project and a PBS Television Documentary Series By David Boulton
Statistically, more American children suffer long-term life-harm from the process of learning to read then from parental abuse, accidents, and all other childhood diseases and disorders combined. In purely economic terms, reading related difficulties cost our nation more than the war on terrorism, crime, and drugs combined.

Education Commission of the States: http://www.ecs.org/
A Web database by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) provides a real-time "snapshot" of all 50 states' progress in meeting the goals of NCLB (No Child Left Behind). The site's color-coded maps and charts allows policy makers and the public to track how their states are doing on NCLB. Visitors to the site can see the status of the nation as a whole, review individual states or compare two or more states side by side. A nonpartisan national organization, ECS helps governors, legislators, state education officials and others develop policies to improve student learning. The ECS study used to create the database looked at indicators in standards and assessment, annual yearly progress, school improvement, supplemental services, report cards and teacher quality.

Get Ready to Read: http://www.getreadytoread.org/
Get Ready To Read is a comprehensive website for parents and teachers offering activity cards, games, checklists, online games, fact sheets, and links to other resources. It also offers early literacy screening tools to help assess a child?s early reading skills.

The Nation's Report Card: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): http://nces.ed.gov/
The Condition of Education 2005: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005094

NEA (National Education Association): http://www.nea.org/

Reading - Improving Students Preformance: http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/read/edpicks.jhtml?src=fp

*Rethinking Reading and the Brain: http://www.classroomstruggles.org/currentshow.htm
This is a one hour lecture by Gerald Coles and other researchers. You can read an interview with Gerald Coles at: http://www.classroomstruggles.org/docs/coles.pdf

Teaching English in a Mobile and Networked World: http://thelivingclassroom.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=33

Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT): http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/
This online tutorial presents the skills needed to evaluate information in this age of overload.

United Nations Literacy Decade 2003-2012: http://www.unesco.org/education/litdecade

What Education Schools Aren't Teaching and What Elementary Teachers Aren't Learning About Reading: http://www.nctq.org/nctq/images/nctq_reading_study_exec_summ.pdf
"According to the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading is a struggle for more than one-third of the nation's fourth-graders. Tha's the bad news. The good news is that research indicates that the percentage of struggling readers could drop by two-thirds -- and possibly by as much as 95 percent -- by implementing a scientifically based approach to reading instruction. Unfortunately, that messge is only slowly spreading across the country, and apparently has not made its way into most teacher preparation programs. What Education Schools Aren't Teacing and What Elementary Techers Aren't Learning About Reading, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) finds that the key compnents of a scientifically based approach to reading -- phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocablulary and comprehension -- are rarely taught in a way that conveys their solid research foundation. Typically, the scientific approch to reading instruction is portrayed as no more effecive than any other approach. According to NCTQ "How someone will teach reading is repeatedly cast as a personal decision to be decided by the aspiring teacher. All methods are presented as being equally valid, and how one teahers reading is merely a decision of what works best for the individual teacher. These asseretion contradict widespread, compelling evidence ot the contrary." For example, one course set forth the goal that, "Students will explore a variety of philosophies related to early literacy learning and will be able to articulate and defend their own philosophy." Before the science of reading instruction was developed, teachers had no choice but to develop their own approach -- but today, a solid body of research exists. How children learn to read is a matter of cognitive science, not personal philosophy."

Helpful links to use throughout the course
Assign-A-Day!: http://assignaday.4teachers.org/
This is an on-line teacher-managed calendar.

Creating an A+++ Classroom Library: http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/instructor/creatinglibrary.htm
Here are some suggestions from a classroom teacher on how to surround students with books.

Free-Federal Resources for Educational Excellence: http://www.ed.gov/free/index.html
" More than 30 Federal agencies formed a working group in 1997 to make hundreds of Federally supported teaching and learning resources easier to find. The result of that work is the FREE web site."

Furl: http://www.furl.net/index.jsp
This site that manages your favorite Web sites. With Furl, your Favorites (or in Firefox, Bookmarks) are accessible from any computer. You add them with the click of a button. Then share them with friends and get recommendations from Furlmates. What’s a Furlmate? It's someone who likes similar Web sites. You can start by adding my site! You can access Furl from any browser. But you’ll need to download an add-in for one-click Favorites and Bookmarks.

Ikeepbookmarks: http://www.ikeepbookmarks.com/home.asp
"iKeepBookmarks.com allows you to upload, and keep, your bookmarks on the web. You can access them at any time, from any computer... anywhere!"

Scholarpedia: http://www.scholarpedia.org/
"...Scholarpedia, the free peer reviewed encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world.
Scholarpedia feels and looks like Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Indeed, both are powered by the same program - MediaWiki. Both allow visitors to review and modify articles simply
by clicking on the edit this article link.
However, Scholarpedia differs from Wikipedia in some veryimportant ways:
Each article is written by an expert (invited or electedby the public).
Each article is anonymously peer reviewed to ensure accurate and reliable information.
Each article has a curator - typically its author -- who is responsible for its content.
Any modification of the article needs to be approved by the curator before it appears in the final, approved version. Herein also lies the greatest differences between Scholarpedia and traditional print media: while the initial authorship and review processes are similar to a print journal, articles in Scholarpedia are not frozen and outdated, but dynamic, subject to an ongoing process of improvement moderated by their curators. This allows Scholarpedia to be up-to-date, yet maintain the highest quality of content."

Webnote: http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/
Webnote is a simple, easy-to-use tool that enables you to take notes via a Web browser and then access and share those notes from any computer. You create and name a workspace—the name is then integrated into the URL for your notes. Your workspace isn’t password protected, so anyone who knows the name of it can get into it—which is an advantage if your goal is collaboration or sharing and a disadvantage if you’re looking for a place to keep sensitive info (this probably isn’t it). The tool’s main features are basic: Once in your workspace, you create sticky-notes on a screen and then can fill them with text or html links. You can change the size, shape, and color of your notes with just a few clicks.

For Fun
Elementary Presentations: http://www.graves.k12.ky.us/powerpoints/elementary/
This is library of PowerPoint slide shows for many elementary topics.

First Lines: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/jad22/
Information on this site says about the online quizzes: "We have collected here the first lines of books we hope you will recognize as old acquaintances. Your challenge is to name the book given the first line. The books are divided into categories which may help you identify them."

The T. S. Eliot Prufrock Page: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5616/eliot.html

Vantage Books Reading-Group Guides: http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/
A useful tool, this site provides reading lists, discussion questions, even tips on how to form and lead a book club. It's also a virtual crib sheet for those who haven't had a chance to actually read the book, as well as reviews and author questions and answers to keep conversation flowing. The site, however, only features Random House/Vintage titles.

This site began in March 1998 by Janet Luch. This page was last updated on May 5, 2007 .
Email to studyplans@yahoo.com.