that settles it

I've always wondered whether there was more autism in Silicon Valley and Redmond.

Just spoke to Carolyn a few minutes ago. She says Microsoft has an "autism benefit." They pay 100% of costs for placement of employees autistic children in ABA programs.

"a minute a day"

by Sheila Compton

She's written One-Minute precision drills for phonics and math one can order (in England, perhaps not the U.S.?)

I love this one (pdf file). I need to figure out how many FOILs one should be able to do per minute...to be fluent.

I've opened a new folder on my hard drive: "One Minute Drills."

Here are her instructions for precision teaching.

Of course, come to think of it, Saxon did this, too. His Fast Facts sheets are all timed.

He probably should have created Fast Facts sheets for his high school books, too.


One Minute addition facts (pdf file)
One Minute multiplication facts (pdf file)

One Minute phonics - Merlin (pdf file)
One Minute phonics - cards (reading fluency) (pdf file)

need for speed, part 2

Precision Teaching Results

Perhaps the most widely cited demonstration of this technology was the Precision Teaching Project in the Great Falls, Montana school district, accepted by the Office of Education Joint Dissemination Review Panel as an exemplary educational model for both regular and special education (Beck, 1979). Teachers engaged elementary school students in 20 to 30 minutes per day of timed practice, charting, and decision-making in a range of basic skills over a period of four years. The results were improvements between 19 and 44 percentile points on subtests of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, as compared with children in control group classrooms elsewhere in the same school district. These are exceptionally large improvements with a comparatively small expenditure of time and effort. In addition, original copies of the materials used for these practice and measurement sessions were available at very low cost from the Precision Teaching Project for unlimited dupilcation by teachers.

One series of classroom studies (Binder, 1985) showed that simply by adding brief, timed practice periods to the class day, teachers can improve students' performance levels and learning rates. Such explicitly timed practice, independent of any other instructional intervention, may be among the most cost-effective educational methods available. Other less formal Precision Teaching results have shown that children can master entire years of curriculum in a few months, and can learn advanced skills far earlier than usually taught in public schools.

We're going to be doing fast drills every day from now on in.

We've already started. Some of the precision teaching websites talk about 10-second drills.

Sounds good to me.

bonus points: you can talk a middle schooler into doing 10 seconds of FOIL problems pretty easily.

what is fluency?

This is the best description of fluency I've seen thus far.

I'm curious about the SAFMEDS idea. I've had such bad luck with flash cards....but obviously SAFMEDS are a different mode of using flash cards than anything I've tried.

I have a scheme afoot to see whether I can incorporate fluency teaching the homework given for C's Earth Science course next year. Earth Science will be his first Regents course; he'll need to pass a Regents exam at the end.

I'm now hearing that kids in the high school hire tutors to help them study for Regents exams; I've also heard that kids who don't hire tutors pass Regents but not with Honors (Honors level is 85% correct, iirc).

I seriously don't want to be hiring tutors for Regents practice - but beyond that, I seriously want C. to be remembering what's been covered in Earth Science as he goes along.

I'm gearing up to try some kind of fluency teaching with me, too - possibly a SAFMEDS arrangment, assuming I can figure out what that is and how it works.

summer school 2007

Algebra 1
Skill Builders
ISBN: 1-932210-10-5

Megawords Book 4
ISBN 0-8388-1826-9
Teacher’s Guide and Answer Key 1
ISBN 0-8388-1825-0

Mixed Skills in Math
I started C. on this book after discovering the precision teaching folks and the concept of fluency. I'm using "Mixed Skills" to provide "slices," which I gather are very short blitz-type practice sets. (I don't know what slices are; I'm guessing from context.)
Basically I'm trying to do a form of fluency teaching with zero training and no materials. So we'll see.
ISBN: 1-56822-861-9

Spanish 1
Skill Builders
ISBN-10: 1932210148
ISBN-13: 978-1932210149

Spectrum Math Grade 7
(an instructivist recommendation, as I recall)
We're doing the entire chapter on decimal and percent; then we'll figure out what to do next.
ISBN-10: 0769636977
ISBN-13: 978-0769636979

Vocabulary Workshop Level A
(you don't need a teacher edition)
ISBN: 0-8215-7606-2

Skill Builders: all series
Spectrum: all series

also:
Saxon Math Algebra 1
We're doing all of the "percent bubbles."
Saxon Math 8/7
all of the fraction bar model problems (Saxon uses bar models for fraction problems in 8/7 & possibly in a couple of the other books)


I located Steps to Good Grammar: 169 Lessons, Exercises, and Tests by Genevieve Walbert Schaefer the other day (ISBN-10: 0825128765 ISBN-13: 978-0825128769), and we may start back with it - although I may decide to have C. do the Instructional Fair diagramming workbooks first (Walberg's book teaches diagramming, too):

Better Sentence Structure Through...Diagramming Book 1
by Mark Dressel & Greg Carnevale
ISBN 1-56822-175-4
ISBN-10: 1568221754
ISBN-13: 978-1568221755
Better Sentence Structure Through...Diagramming Book 2
by Mark Dressel & Greg Carnevale
Instructional Fair
ISBN 1-56822-176-2
ISBN-10: 1568221762
ISBN-13: 978-1568221762


I'm thinking about having C. do an Aleks assessment....

Last but not least, we are now doing sentence recombining and text reconstruction exercises.


update 7-15-2007: I just remembered. Saxon Math 8/7 has Fast Facts sheets.


summer supplement time, part 2 (2005)
summer plans 2006 (Carolyn J.)
summer school 2006

how to find resources on ktm-2

The sidebar lists the various topic categories, so it's fairly easy to find old posts listing book and curriculum recommendations. Some of these categories are getting a little unwieldy; I may need to make them more specific at some point...

Blogger doesn't have a "Search Comments" function, so I've been trying to get recommendations left in Comments put into frontpage posts.

Here's the grammar & writing list.

Joanne Jacobs on how to teach writing

I asked Joanne to send me information on the 3-3-3 method of teaching writing over a year ago after she mentioned it in a post....and it's been sitting on my desktop waiting to get posted every since.

sigh

But better late than never:

In the '60s, Harvard Ed School developed the 3-3-3, which was used by my high school and maybe nobody else. In its full flower, it had one thesis sentence supported by three topic sentences, each of which was supported by three subtopic sentences each of which was supported by a minimum of three "concrete and specific details." Actually, we usually wrote 3-3s with one topic sentence, three subtopics, etc. We did nothing but expository writing all through high school. I never used the 3-3-3- format after high school, but I did learn to back up my assertions.

And feel free to quote me on the 3-3-3. I don't think it's the perfect way to teach writing. We certainly beat it into the ground at Highland Park High. But students do need to learn persuasive writing in addition to all the personal writing they're expected to do these days. My general advice for people who want their children to learn to write well would be . . .

1. Teach them to make an assertion and back it up with evidence.

2. Teach them the format for writing a research paper. Don't assume high school teachers will do this.

3. Tell them to write 500 words on a topic. Then, make them cut it to 400 words to see how much, if anything is lost. Then tell them to cut it to 250 words while keeping as much of the content as possible.

4. Encourage them to read widely and to pay attention to the author's choices. Why did the writer use dialogue rather than description? Why the first person and not the third person? Why this particular plot device or character?

5. Encourage them to imitate the writing styles of different authors (Hemingway, Faulkner, Whitman, Twain, etc.) to develop a sense of the possibilities.

6. I'm not a big fan of journal writing because it doesn't force writers to think about their audience. Young people, in particular, need to learn "it's not all about me." The goal is to communicate with other people. Working on a student newspaper or web site is a great way to learn to write for readers and to build fluency.

expert advice on teaching writing from Joanne Jacobs
eureka
more from Joanne Jacobs
doctor pion on writing a precis and critical reading
home writing program in place, for now

ester's recommendations

I had never heard of this series before:

Voyages in English. The Exercises in English workbooks look like they have potential for afterschooling purposes. The entire website looks interesting, actually.

Ester also likes Writing Skills from EPS. (I mentioned earlier that I'm starting with EPS's Paragraph Book, which I ordered yesterday.)

I've just noticed: Ester left two other resources in June, which I haven't had the time to dig into, unfortunately.


wanted: a good writing program
Susan S on her summer writing program

help desk: writing assignments kids can do at home

I've finally gotten intrigued by the question of how to teach writing.....

Here's my question.

For those of us who are aftershooling writing, what kinds of writing assignments can we give??

I can't assign a book report to C., much less a research paper ("can't" meaning don't have the energy, stamina, or will to withstand the storm of protest that would ensue.)

What can I assign at home???

What kind of daily or semi-daily writing practice could I ask C. to do that wouldn't be onerous but would be practice.

I've thought about making him write a blog, and he does have a MySpace thanks to my sister's intervention (I would have kept him out of MySpace FOREVER).

But I don't think he's doing much writing on his MySpace (I better take a look --- ) and he's not interested in writing a blog.

I tend to think he needs to do some paper and pencil writing first in any event, since that's what he needs to learn to do for school, and since Rafe Asquith says students should "duplicate the conditions of the test" (i.e. don't use flashcards to study when you're going to have to use paper and pencil for the test).

My only solid idea so far is that C. should write a set of instructions for me on how to use the 3 remotes we have for our fancy-shmancy big-screen TV set up.

But that would be starting at the top.

Any ideas?

crustiest of the bitter says--

"I think if you got rid of the pissing and moaning this site would be better. "

Anonymous clearly doesn't understand that the pissiest of the moaners (like myself) have flipped the public (and private) schools the bird and are homeschooling. The pissiest of the moaners also don't bother to blog about what we perceive to be a hopeless cause. I live in a district that recently lost its accreditation, and while the district stagnates in its failure the elected board and the appointed board fight over which board gets to control what. Compared to the fur that flies daily in this town on the subject of public education, KTM is a model of civilized, diplomatic discourse.

"We are all waiting for THE answers. I guess teachers and administrators are too stupid to figure it all out, so make sure you use really small words in your detailed plan."

In my district, it is very clear that the teachers and administrators ARE too stupid to figure it all out, and using small words wouldn't help since several of the major players barely speak comprehensible english. And if Anonymous is still waiting for the answers, he just hasn't been paying attention. KTM has been an invaluable resource for me, even (perhaps especially) as a homeschooler. Just because I homeschool doesn't mean I don't care about public education. I consider it one of the most important problems our society faces today, and I appreciate the honest, 'boots on the ground' reporting I find here. I visit every day, have ruthlessly plundered the archives, and daily (shamelessly) implement at my own kitchen table some of those 'nonexistent' posts on the 'nuts and bolts' of teaching not just math, but reading as well. Thanks to KTM, its a lot easier for me to save my child from people like Anonymous, who think I'm too stupid to know when I'm being snowed. Keep up the good work, KTM.

All I can say is: wow.

Ed seconds the emotion. After I gave him Crustiest's comment to read a couple of minutes ago, he said, "This is like a blurb on a book jacket." (Speaking of which....)

CotB describes my own experience writing and reading ktm, though my situation isn't dire (a district that's lost its accreditation) and I haven't been as ambitious as CotB (homeschooling), though in retrospect I wish I had been.

Nevertheless, I owe the fact that C. is still alive in accelerated math (or in any math, for that matter) to the collective wisdom and experience of ktm writers and commenters.

I also owe a portion of my own brand-new knowledge of math (Lesson 93, Saxon Algebra 2) to the folks here.

Beyond math, Ed and I have been able to supplement and enrich C's education in reading, vocabulary, spelling, and grammar thanks to the collective wisdom of ktm.

Lately ktm has helped me start to think seriously (as opposed to musing, that is...) about ways in which U.S. writing instruction might be improved. In this realm, I claim expertise. I began my worklife teaching freshman composition at the University of Iowa which was then - and is perhaps today, I don't know - thought to have one of the best freshman composition programs in the country. That's where I was taught how to teach writing.

I went on to teach freshman composition at Cal State Long Beach; then I taught college composition to science majors at UC Irvine.

My last teaching job was with the Johns Hopkins CTY program where I taught college composition to gifted middle schoolers. I used the workshop model the University of Iowa had developed - quite different from the Calkins model - and I thought, at the time, that it was terrifically successful.

I might still think so today. Not sure. (I do know that if I could enroll C. in a class like the one I taught, I'd do it in a heartbeat.)

My point is: ktm - the whole megillah that is ktm - is now helping me think about the teaching of writing in a way I couldn't - and wouldn't - do on my own. Some of you may remember Carolyn Johnston saying it was hard for her to teach math to her 6th grade son because math, for her, was "a seamless whole." She couldn't break it down for her son.

Carolyn said writing was probably a seamless whole for me, and I've come to realize that she was right. I can write, and I can probably do a good job teaching writing one-on-one by walking a student through the process of simply writing a paper with him. (Is that a good way to teach writing? Should we try to have all students co-write one or two book reports with a mentor? I don't know!)

But I can't disaggregate the global skill of writing into its component parts - not coherently. And I'm pretty sure I'd have a hard time diagnosing which areas of a student's writing beyond the obvious (spelling, grammar, punctuation) need work.

ktm is now helping me do that! (ktm and the precision teaching folks, whose various writings and websites I'll be plundering henceforth.)

Very cool.

So thank you, CotM, for taking the time to think out loud - and thanks everyone else, too.

...............................

Blogs turn 10 years old this year. ($)

...............................

Speaking of the Univeristy of Iowa, it looks like they're doing interesting things today, too.

I'm going to check it out.

the long war

The traditional practice was to teach children the alphabetic code--the translation of abstract letters into sounds and words--before turning to actual reading. This approach was challenged in the mid-nineteenth century by Horace Mann, the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. With a vehemence not unlike that of today's whole-language proponents, Mann denounced the letters of the alphabet as "bloodless, ghostly apparitions" that were responsible for "steeping [children's] faculties in lethargy."

The Great Debate Revisited
Atlantic Monthly
December 1994

Horace Mann...... Isn't he the fellow who thought hearing children should be taught to read the same way deaf children were taught to read?

Why, yes. I believe he was. (scroll down)


National Reading Panel Interim Report
National Right to Read Foundation - history of reading wars
same old, same old circa 1995, p1
same old, same old circa 1995, p2
same old, same old 1997

7,000 words on aging

right here

wtf

this is weird

UK writing instruction rejiggered

Here's the one and only passage I've ever seen on British writing instruction:

[Judith] Koren describes how two British women she knows became effective essayists and speakers. “Each week, they’d had homework exercises like this: While preserving every essential point, reduce a 100-word essay to 50 words, then to 20, then to 10. Reduce 500 words to 50, 1,000 words to 100. Week after week, year after year...."

(appeared in American Enterprise Magazine)

I haven't done this with Christopher because it's too much on top of everything else. (Maybe it's not too much, but I haven't worked up the nerve.)

The part that's too much is the 100-word essay. I don't see myself pulling 100-word essays out of C. any time soon.

So now I'm wondering whether I could just hand him a 100-word essay or paragraph someone else has already written, and have him start whittling that down 20 to 50 words a pass.

I think I'll try it.

LOTS of writing...

I keep mentioning that the Brits somehow produce not only the best "workaday" writers in the English language (historians, journalists, etc.) but the most fluent. Their output is extraordinary, and the ability to write very fast and well isn't limited to a few.

Here's the New Yorker profile of Hitchens:

When we returned with our provisions, at about one o’clock, Hitchens, who had been working, was sitting at his desk with a drink. On the walls around him were some color printouts of kittens and puppies sitting in lines. He pointed to a manuscript of “God Is Not Great,” a book that he thinks may have more heft and permanence than anything he has written before, in a career of rapid responses and public lashings. “I have been, in my head, writing it for many years,” he said. “Religion is going to be the big subject until the end of my life. And I wanted to make an intervention.”

Hitchens had already finished the morning period of mail and e-mail he refers to as “telegrams and anger” (a quotation from “Howards End”). He had given his attention that day to the wiretap lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency; in January, he accepted the A.C.L.U.’s invitation to become a named plaintiff, denting his reputation as an Administration cheerleader. He had also begun a review of Ann Coulter’s “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” for an obscure new British journal. He was not doing it for free, but the gesture was still generous; Hitchens, who is unusually lacking in professional competitiveness, makes himself available to younger writers and editors. He also teaches: he is presently a visiting professor at the New School, and he is supervising the Ph.D. thesis, on Orwell, of Thomas Veale, a U.S. Army major, who calls Hitchens the “only nineteen-thirties liberal in existence.”

Hitchens had started writing an hour or so before, planning on leniency: “I was thinking of hammering her for the first half and being a bit gentle the second.” (He shares Coulter’s disregard for Joseph Wilson, the diplomat.) But he had written a thousand words, and he was not through hammering. “I thought I’d do a thousand words by lunchtime—my usual ambition if I’m doing a short piece,” he said. But he now saw that he could get it all done before eating. “If I can’t f*** up Ann Coulter before lunch then I shouldn’t be in this business,” he said. Not long afterward, he came into the kitchen and handed me the finished review.

We had lunch outside. Hitchens ignored the sandwiches and put his fork in the cherry pie, moving outward from the center. He had a postproduction glow. “Writing is mainly recreational,” he said. “I’m not happy when I’m not doing it.” He can entertain himself in other ways—he strained to remember them—such as “playing with the cats and the daughter. But if I take even a day away from it I’m very uneasy.”

In the past few years, Hitchens has published, in addition to his books on Orwell, Jefferson, and Paine, a book of oppositionist advice entitled “Letters to a Young Contrarian”; a collection of his writings on the Iraq war; and a giant miscellany, “Love, Poverty, and War.” He wrote “God Is Not Great” in four months. He has contributed to dozens of publications (including Golf Digest—he plays the game). He almost never uses the backspace, delete, or cut-and-paste keys. He writes a single draft, at a speed that caused his New Statesman colleagues to place bets on how long it would take him to finish an editorial. What emerges is ready for publication, except for one weakness: he’s not an expert punctuator, which reinforces the notion that he is in the business of transcribing a lecture he can hear himself giving.

Earlier, in answer to a question I hadn’t asked, Blue had said to me, “Once in a while, it seems like he might be drunk. Aside from that, even though he’s obviously an alcoholic, he functions at a really high level and he doesn’t act like a drunk, so the only reason it’s a bad thing is it’s taking out his liver, presumably. It would be a drag for Henry Kissinger to live to a hundred and Christopher to keel over next year.”

He Knew He Was Right
By Ian Parker
October 16, 2006
The New Yorker

500 words an hour, no second drafts

fluent

Or take a look at Niall Ferguson's ouevre. He's in his 40s, right?

publications here; journalism here

There's so much of the stuff he can't fit it all on one page.

[pause]

Oh, swell.

Niall Ferguson has teamed up with Muzzy Lane Software to Create Next Generation Video Games (pdf file):

“I’m getting involved with Muzzy Lane because it's a chance for me to bring my life's work – not just the study of history but also the questioning of it – to a much broader audience,” says Prof. Ferguson. “Video games are a cultural phenomenon, fundamentally transforming the way people think about how big things happen. Muzzy Lane’s first game, MAKING HISTORY: The Calm & The Storm, convinced me that they are taking smart games to an entirely new level of historical sophistication.”

That's your World Affairs Icon talking.

Linda Perlstein's book has arrived!

Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade

Inside a turnaround school. Saxon Math, Open Court, talk of "background knowledge."

It's going to be fascinating.

sentence combining research summary

here

the Celts

Read the sentences, decide which comes first, second, third, and fourth, and number them in order.



_____ A crane would take away your courage and your skill—three cranes would leave you with as much fight as a lettuce leaf.



_____ There were signs that told a warrior to fight, or to pack up and go home.



_____ They believed that there were good days for fighting and bad days.



_____ The Celts were fearless fighters yet they could easily be put off a fight.



_____ If he saw a crane bird, for example, he knew that would bring him bad luck.



Horrible Histories: The Cut-Throat Celts
By Terry Deary; Illustrated by Martin Brown
p. 5


Check your numbers with your Dad. Where you disagree, explain to each other why you arranged the sentences as you did.

Next, copy the sentences in the order you numbered them on a separate sheet of paper. Do not copy word-by-word. For each sentence, follow these steps:

1. Read as many words as you believe you can write correctly from memory (five to ten).

2. Write those words from memory, including all capitals and punctuation marks.

3. Check back to the original sentence and correct any errors you made.

4. Read the next group of words and repeat the steps.

Sometimes you may be able to remember an entire simple sentence correctly. But with a large difficult-to-spell word, you may try to write only that one word correctly from memory.

Ben Franklin used this technique to teach himself to write.




The Celts were fearless fighters yet they could easily be put off a fight. They believed that there were good days for fighting and bad days. There were signs that told a warrior to fight, or to pack up and go home. If he saw a crane bird, for example, he knew that would bring him bad luck. A crane would take away your courage and your skill—three cranes would leave you with as much fight as a lettuce leaf.

Horrible Histories: The Cut-Throat Celts
By Terry Deary; Illustrated by Martin Brown
p. 5

man-eating tiger sentence combining exercise

This is a hard one:


I am not competent to give any opinion on the relative quantity of salt in human or animal flesh

a diet of human flesh is far from having an injurious effect on the coat of the man-eaters

I can assert that a diet of human flesh does not have an injurious effect on the coat of the man-eaters

I do assert that a diet of human flesh does not have an injurious effect on the coat of the man-eaters

a diet of human flesh is has quite the opposite effect on the coat of the man-eaters

all the man-eaters I have seen have had remarkably fine coats


source:
Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett, p ix
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1944

...............................

original:

It is a popular fallacy that all man-eaters are old and mangy, the mange being attributed to the excess of salt in human flesh. I am not competent to give any opinion on the relative quantity of salt in human or animal flesh; but I can, and I do, assert that a diet of human flesh, so far from having an injurious effect on the coat of the man-eaters, has quite the opposite effect, for all the man-eaters I have seen have had remarkably fine coats.

The Paragraph Book

We discovered, this school year, that C. can't really write a sound, coherent paragraph.

So today I've ordered The Paragraph Book 1 (thanks to Susan S) & Arthur Whimbey's Analyze, Organize, Write: A Structured Program for Expository Writing (ISBN-10: 0805800824 & ISBN-13: 978-0805800821)

You can take a look at Analyze, Organize, Write on Google Books.

the workshop model

from Vicky S:

For example, they have trouble with expository prose; producing clear, written summaries; or writing on demand.

Oh, yes! This is where my boys are after 3-4 years of "Writer's Workshop" (one time, my younger son had to write and rewrite the same piece for about 10 weeks).

I have so many horror stories about the process. But the end result is this: I have two otherwise academically capable kids who hate to write, who have terrible writer's blocks, and who don't know how to do expository writing at all...

And if reader's workshop had been implemented as enthusiastically as writer's workshop, I'm sure they'd both hate to read, too. Luckily, one of them escaped that fate.

And from Susan:

I have two otherwise academically capable kids who hate to write, who have terrible writer's blocks, and who don't know how to do expository writing at all...

Same thing here, Vicki. After years of mimicing structure points to regurgitate on the state tests, my bright kid is now frozen.

So, along with all of the other stuff I have to finally force him to write, which I have done.

He even forgot cursive since no one has made him use it for years. He writes like a third grader, very labored.

Now, after having him write (and rewrite) several short bios and a couple of essays in cursive, he seems to be getting smoother and faster.

Now that the workshop model has swept the land everyone can come out of school with a roaring case of math phobia and writer's block.


help for the struggling writer

Man-Eaters Tigers of Kumaon - text reconstruction exercise

Sentence combining and text reconstruction are going to be the new regime around here.

This morning Ed looked at the baseball sentence combining exercise I created from a sentence in a Times article. He would have put the sentence together differently, which gave me the idea that I should have both Ed and Christopher do one exercise a day and then compare notes.

I've just typed up this text reconstruction exercise for Day One.

I'm psyched.

................................


Read the sentences, decide which comes first, second, third, and fourth, and number them in order.


_____ Human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been incapacitated through wounds or old age that, in order to live, they are compelled to take a diet of human flesh.


_____ The stress of circumstances is, in nine out of ten cases, wounds, and in the tenth case old age.


_____ The wound that has caused a particular tiger to take to man-eating might be the result of a carelessly fired shot and failure to follow up and recover the wounded animal, or the result of the tiger having lost his temper when killing a porcupine.


_____ A man-eating tiger is a tiger that has been compelled, through stress of circumstances beyond its control, to adopt a diet alien to it.


source:
Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett, p vii
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1944


Check your numbers with your Dad. Where you disagree, explain to each other why you arranged the sentences as you did.

Next, copy the sentences in the order you numbered them on a separate sheet of paper. Do not copy word-by-word. For each sentence, follow these steps:

1. Read as many words as you believe you can write correctly from memory (five to ten).

2. Write those words from memory, including all capitals and punctuation marks.

3. Check back to the original sentence and correct any errors you made.

4. Read the next group of words and repeat the steps.

Sometimes you may be able to remember an entire simple sentence correctly. But with a large difficult-to-spell word, you may try to write only that one word correctly from memory.

Ben Franklin used this technique to teach himself to write.

..............................

original paragraph:

A man-eating tiger is a tiger that has been compelled, through stress of circumstances beyond its control, to adopt a diet alien to it. The stress of circumstances is, in nine out of ten cases, wounds, and in the tenth case old age. The wound that has caused a particular tiger to take to man-eating might be the result of a carelessly fired shot and failure to follow up and recover the wounded animal, or the result of the tiger having lost his temper when killing a porcupine. Human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been incapacitated through wounds or old age that, in order to live, they are compelled to take a diet of human flesh.

Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1944
p vii
Oxford India Paperbacks


help for the struggling writer
sentence combining exercise
we're starting a copybook
man-eaters of Kumaon - text reconstruction

My Summer Reading Program

My children are participating in our local library's summer reading program. Several weeks ago, while I was waiting for them to check out their books, a book titled, "Aristotle's Children" by Richard Rubinstein, caught my eye. The book chronicles the rediscovery of Aristotle's writings in the 12th century, and the impact that had on western thought. What I learned, primarily, was how much I didn't know about world history and religion.

Today, while once again at the library, I decided to check out "Animals in Translation" (Catherine's book with Temple Grandin). My apologies to Catherine for checking the book out instead of purchasing it. Eager to begin (there is nothing like settling in with a book), I managed to read the first few pages before the tasks of the day beckoned. Already, I am hooked. My problem will be resisting the urge to drop everything I am supposed to be doing in order to read the book cover to cover.

Susan S on her summer writing program

Well, I'll just tell you what I'm using for my 6th grader this summer. Some stuff may be appropriate for your child, but you would have to make the call.

The first thing I ordered this summer that I really like a lot is The Paragraph Book by Dianne Tucker-LaPlount. I got Book 1. It targets structure, but in a clear way (compared to the writing program he has been subjected to over the last couple of years.)

Another book I have been using is Writing Skills by Diana Hanbury King, book 2. It also does a good, quick job of targeting structural problems, but in a creative way.

Both books lend themselves to the after-schooler better than others. I am thrilled that I've found them.

2 big comprehensive ones that I have are the Shurley Method English Made Easy series (I have level 7.) This is a popular homeschooler text. I like it a lot, but my son is actually quite good at grammar so those sections are too redundant for us right now. What I do like at this point (we're only at the beginning) is the number of little paragraphs that he has to edit. It has that "sheet a day" format that is easier for me to assign as a parent.

Another big comprehensive curriculum is the Hake Grammar and Writing Series. I think it starts at grade 6, but a bright 4th or 5th grader would probably do okay.

These are the Saxon people, so if you're familiar with Saxon you know how to skip things that are mastered. The curriculum (homeschool version) also covers journal writing (in a way that makes sense) paragraph/essay structure, and the preparation a kid needs to write bigger assignments like, gulp, research papers. Typical of Saxon, it makes it all so easy. I love those people. They have saved my life.

I love the Grammar and Writing 7 that I'm using right now. It's clearing up a lot of confusion with my one son.

For stict grammar teaching, you can't beat Steps to Good Grammar by Genevieve Walberg Schaefer. Coherent and to-the-point, this book covers diagramming (as does the Hake) and has the answers on the opposite page. Even though the book is pointed towards middle school or older, I've used it with my grade schooler from the beginning. This book is why he is so good with grammar.

For spelling, I highly recommend Megawords. Catherine uses this series also. Megawords teaches kids the rules that your school won't teach. It's also a great after-school book.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Hope some of it helps.


Catherine here --

I mentioned in a Comment that I'm concerned Educators Publishing Service may be phasing out Megawords, but I was wrong, thank heavens. Megawords is featured on the phonics page, not the spelling page, which tells you something about the series.

I think it's been a lifesaver for us, though I have no way of knowing this. What I do know is that C's spelling before he started the series (he's finishing Book 4 this summer) was psychotic, and has now progressed to not great. To my knowledge he's had no instruction in spelling in 6th or 7th grades. In fact, one of his ELA teachers said she told the kids, "Being able to spell won't do you any good if you can't write," or something like that. (Why? Why? Why would you tell my kid who can't spell that spelling won't do him any good if he can't write? aaauuggghhh!)

This teacher, btw, did a great job; she taught the kids a lot and even managed to go over and beyond the curriculum. I've reported the spelling lapse because it's funny, not because it's a fatal flaw in her teaching. The school doesn't teach spelling past 5th grade & that's that. (I'm noodging the new assistant super, but so far she's not sounding interested.)

This is one of my beefs with public schools, or perhaps just another variant on the beef: the indifference to results.

We don't teach spelling after 5th grade.

So if your child hasn't managed to learn to spell by the end of 5th grade, we'll just assume he doesn't need to learn to spell because what he "really" needs to learn is how to write.


update: wrong again (scroll down)

I'm thinking the middle school would be in better standing with parents if it started talking to us about academics and stopped talking to us about character ed and bomb threats.

Or if somebody put up something in the enormous, soaring, two-story foyer taxpayers just built that wasn't a S.A.D.D. poster or a FOCUS word.

Still and all, it's good to know C. spent last year taking spelling tests.

we're starting a copybook

from: Improving Grammar and Other Writing Skills with Text Reconstruction (TR)
by Myra Linden

A modern version of a proven learning-to-write process, text reconstruction (TR), capitalizes on both language manipulation and "patterns of activity" to teach grammar and other writing skills in the context of connected discourse beyond the single sentence. Thus it is a useful supplement to other methods of teaching grammar. In his autobiography Benjamin Franklin tells how he devised a form of TR to improve his writing skills. As an apprentice in his brother's print shop, he set into print the essays of Addison and Steele. He took notes from the essays by writing several words from each sentence. These he calls "short hints of the sentiment in each sentence." Next he mixed the hints into random order and set them aside.

Several weeks later he tried to arrange the hints into their original order to recreate the logical organization of the essay. He says, "This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts." Then he attempted to write each sentence from just the hints, checking back to the original and noting any deviations, trying to master the vocabulary, sentence structure, and style of the writer (208-209).

A variation of TR is used in the workbook by Arthur Whimbey and Elizabeth Lynn Jenkins, Analyze, Organize, Write. The authors wrote sample papers and then jumbled the sentences within each paragraph. Students number the sentences in what they consider the best order. Then they compare arrangements and discuss differences with other students, pinpointing the information and logic they employ. Finally, they write the sentences in the order numbered.

Here is a short sample TR exercise and the instructions for students:

Instructions: Read all the sentences. Decide which should come first and number it 1. Then decide which should come second and number it 2. Continue numbering the remaining sentences in this way.

_____ Therefore, when nineteen-year-old Michael Grubbs became this year's queen, it shocked no one.

_____ One year its queen was a dog and another year a refrigerator.

_____ Rice University has had some unusual homecoming queens in the past.

_____ So Michael has agreed to give up his title and escort his runner-up, Nancy Jones, to the festivities.

_____ But Cotton Bowl rules prohibit a man from being a princess in the parade.

Check your numbers with a neighbor if possible. Where you disagree, explain to each other why you arranged the sentences as you did.

Next, copy the sentences in the order you numbered them on a separate sheet of paper. Copying sentences can be especially helpful for improving writing skills if done as Ben Franklin did -- from memory. Do not just copy word-by-word. For each sentence, follow these steps:

1. Read as many words as you believe you can write correctly from memory (usually five to ten words).

2. Write those words from memory, including all capitals and punctuation marks.

3. Check back to the original sentence and correct any errors you made.

4. Read the next group of words and repeat the steps.

Generally you will be able to read, memorize, and correctly write between five and ten words. Sometimes you may be able to remember an entire simple sentence correctly. But with a large difficult-to-spell word, you may try to write only that one word correctly from memory.

Writing from memory is a powerful technique for learning the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and word patterns used in standard written English (Linden Analytical 2).

As you can see, TR involves analyzing an author's work and copying his or her language to strengthen one's own writing skills. This method was used at the Handy Colony that produced James Jones and other successful authors. Members of the colony were assigned to read and analyze works and then to copy them in order to get the feel of finishing an extended piece of work, to handle transitions from scene to scene, and to learn conciseness. Jones himself said that one can read until his eyes are red but only by copying word for word can a person see how an author builds up his effects (MacShane 117-118).

Copying is a time-honored, recently rediscovered mode of learning. From its use by Renaissance schoolboys like Shakespeare with their copybooks (to record exercises) and commonplace books (to record passages of possible content for their own essays), copying played an important role in the education of many famous authors including Milton, Thomas Jefferson, Jack London, Malcolm X, and Joan Didion.

Well worth the time to read the entire essay, which includes a set of instructions for creating your own text reconstruction exercises at the end.

We're going to do this.

I'm sure C. will be happy when I tell him.

help for the struggling writer
sentence combining exercise
we're starting a copybook
man-eaters of Kumaon - text reconstruction
expert advice on teaching writing from Joanne Jacobs
eureka
more from Joanne Jacobs
doctor pion on writing a precis and critical reading
first crack at editing exercise
home writing program in place, for now
why kids should do text reconstruction
results of sentence combining exercise

whimbey.com
Arthur Whimbey obit
BGF Performance Systems (carries Whimbey's books)
Tips for Teaching Grammar from the Writing Next Report (pdf file)
Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve the Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools (pdf file)

sentence combining exercise

I mentioned in the comment thread following the post asking for help finding a writing program the fact that I'm now convinced that sentence combining and text reconstruction are important, partly because I'd always thought both techniques sounded good - and mostly because I've just learned that Morningside Academy uses them.

So I'm trying to order the two Whimbey books from ATC Learning, although thus far I haven't been able to roust them by phone or email, so we'll see. (This page at ATC includes a description of both techniques.)

This morning I wrote my first sentence combining exercise using a sentence from a sports story C. read over breakfast:

Combine these sentences into one complete sentence. NOTE: I’ve listed these sentences in the order in which they appear in the original.


But, yes, Brazil does have a national amateur team

the squad has been preparing at its training center here

the squad has been preparing for months

the squad has been preparing for the Pan American Games

the Pan American Games open July 13

the Pan American Games open in Rio de Janeiro

The original sentence:

But, yes, Brazil does have a national amateur team, and at its training center here, the squad has been preparing for months for the Pan American Games, which open July 13 in Rio de Janeiro.
Source:
America’s Pastime Is Only a Blip in Soccer-Crazed Brazil
by LARRY ROHTER Published: July 12, 2007 Page D1

help for the struggling writer
sentence combining exercise
we're starting a copybook
man-eaters of Kumaon - text reconstruction
expert advice on teaching writing from Joanne Jacobs
eureka
more from Joanne Jacobs
doctor pion on writing a precis and critical reading
first crack at editing exercise
home writing program in place, for now
why kids should do text reconstruction
results of sentence combining exercise

whimbey.com
Arthur Whimbey obit
BGF Performance Systems (carries Whimbey's books)
Tips for Teaching Grammar from the Writing Next Report (pdf file)
Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve the Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools (pdf file)

Sam Waterston's sharp elbows

from Sam Waterston's July 4 remarks at a swearing - in ceremony for new citizens at Monticello:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Jefferson's words are so familiar, so potent, so important, so grand and fine, it's hard to believe that any single person actually picked up a pen, dipped it in ink, and, on a blank white sheet, made appear for the first time what had never before existed in the whole history of the world. By scratching away at the page, he called a country into being, knowing as he wrote that it was no more than an idea, that might, at any instant, be erased and destroyed, with the United States of America becoming just another sorry footnote in the history of suppressed rebellions against tyranny. You can't help but be impressed by all which that one person, and the small group of individuals around him, not much larger than your group of new citizens, won for so many.

[snip]

Citizenship isn't just a great privilege and opportunity, though it is all that. It's also a job. But don't worry: it's a great job. Everything that happens within this country politically, and everywhere in the world its influence is felt, falls within its province. You'll never be able to complain about being bored at work. As we multiply our individual voices, we multiply the chances for our country's success.

I hope you won't waste all the time I have in figuring out how a citizen should relate to his government. Talk to it. Tell it what you like. Tell it what you don't like. Vote, of course. Think about what you want our future to look like. Let the government know. Roll up your sleeves, stick out your chin, sharpen your elbows, get in the middle of things, make them different. You are bound to get a lot of things wrong. That's what we do. But the possibility of error is no excuse for being quiet, and I say this on good authority. As Theodore Roosevelt put it, "Man was never intended to become an oyster."

Whether you work within the Democratic or Republican parties, or join in supporting a bi-partisan ticket for 2008, as I have, in an effort to drive the parties to work together and to show them how it's done, don't be discouraged by the odds. It isn't all determinism and the tide of history. An individual can upend what seems determined, and speed or reverse the tide. The man on whose estate we stand, by pushing his pen across a blank page, proved that.

Be Above Average
New York Sun
July 12, 2007

from Steve H: repeated introductions to math

What seems to be a focus on understanding in reform math is really all about going more slowly and providing more (and repeated) introductory explanations. It's not about an abstract mathematical understanding that comes from mastery and application of the basic math identities.

This is something I think about frequently - or, rather, something I (hope I) experience frequently.

It gets back to Saxon's & Neumann's observations about math being different or being something you get used to.

A couple of years ago, I stopped looking for "math for poets"-type books -- books that explain math to the non-mathematical.

I'm not criticizing these books; I'm sure they have value; I'm glad someone's taking the time to write them.

But at some point - and this was when I was still working my way through K-5 arithmetic, I realized I wasn't really learning math from them. At some point, with math (and correct me if I'm wrong...) you have to become airborne.

And "airborne," in math, means you have to start climbing a purely abstract ladder. You've left the world of words behind.

I think.

help for the "struggling" writer

(I guess that would be me....)

This may be the place to mention that the "writing process" -- a philosophical approach to the teaching of writing which burst upon the scene about ten years ago [ed.: Lucy Calkins?]^* and has attracted passionately loyal adherents--isn't the one and only way to teach writing. Junior high and high school teachers, along with college professors, are telling us that students who have been brought up only on the writing process are hooked on "finding their own voices"--spending enormous amounts of time for very small output and having trouble shifting among different kinds of writing. For example, they have trouble with expository prose; producing clear, written summaries; or writing on demand. Students are ill-served by the exclusivity and chauvinism which unfortunately have framed the cultish aspects of a good idea.

source:
Finding Ways to Helpk Your Struggling Writers (pdf file)
by Priscilla L. Vail
Excerpted from Words Fail Me! -- How Language Works & What Happens When It Doesn't

I guess we could pretty much see that one coming, right?





^* yup, Lucy Calkins: "That educator is Lucy McCormick Calkins, the visionary founding director of Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. Begun in 1981, the think tank and teacher training institute has since trained hundreds of thousands of educators across the country. Calkins is one of the original architects of the “workshop” approach to teaching writing to children, which holds that writing is a process, with distinct phases, and that all children, not just those with innate talent, can learn to write well. She is author of some 20 books, including the best-selling The Art of Teaching Writing (250,000 sold). According to the project web site, books by its leaders are “widely regarded as foundational to language arts education throughout the English-speaking world.”
The Lucy Calkins Project by Barbara Feinberg


help for the struggling writer
sentence combining exercise
we're starting a copybook
man-eaters of Kumaon - text reconstruction

from Mr. Person: parent involvement and the law

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), the parent involvement requirement of NCLB applies only to Title I schools--those schools serving a certain percentage of low-income/minority students (based on census data [10 year? 2 year? I don't know]).

A school can be Title I ELIGIBLE and still not accept Title I funding, which of course exempts it from the requirements.

Of those Title I-eligible schools that accept federal funding in excess of $500,000, no less than 1% (at least $5,000) MUST be spent on parent involvement programs that encourage "the participation of parents in regular, two-way, and meaningful communication involving student academic learning."

Those schools that accept less than $500,000 STILL must spend money on parent involvement and STILL must do so in a way that satisfies the statutory definition of parent involvement, but the percentage that they must spend is not specified (though, presumably, it can't be zero).

From my meeting at the AAP (Association of American Publishers), I learned that the federal government has begun auditing schools with regard to parent involvement requirements.

I have to think that either they're taking the money and spending it on new electronic scoreboards for their basketball courts, or they are spending it on "parent breakfasts" and the like--activities that have more to do with building a rapport with parents (to say it nicely) than they do with addressing the "parent-student vertices of the achievement triangle" (to say it weirdly).

Make no mistake about NCLB's parent involvement requirements, though: (1) They place the ultimate burden of providing for parent involvement entirely on the schools, (2) they require that parent involvement be focused on improving achievement (i.e., anti-cupcake), and (3) parents must be allowed to be decision-makers in that process.

Very interesting - thanks so much for posting.

I should mention, because this is something most of the public seems not to know, that Mr. Person is right: NCLB applies only to Title I schools - and then only to Title I schools accepting Title I funding from the federal government.

At the same time, I've found (I think) that NCLB requirements do put a bit of "moral pressure" on non-Title I schools..... or so it seems to me. I could be wrong.

When you're trying to figure out what the law requires your school to do, you need to look at state law. My school, which is not a Title 1 school, does annual NCLB testing because New York state requires us to do so, not because NCLB requires it.


parent-student vertices of the achievement triangle

That's a good one.

Wanted--A good writing program

I'd like to start my 4th grader on a writing program to give him more practice with all writing skills including creativity, grammar, reasoning, clarity, usage, persuasion and so on. In other words, everything about writing.

He also needs some help with analyzing text, but his other reading skills are good.

I'm happy to consider all recommendations. So far in my research, the one that has jumped out at me is Igniting Your Writing. I'd like not to spend a lot of money.

a child after my own heart

speaking of timers .... (you may have to hit refresh a couple of times)


Scrivener
tea timer for Mac

Scrivener

On the subject of people desperately trying to complete a chapter of their book, Scrivener is great, too.

And then there is my ever-trusty Time Timer.

Time Timer used to work for me.

Unfortunately, I seem to have progressed to the point at which I require an ALARM.

Which Time Timer doesn't have.

Tea Timer for Macs

In case you are desperately trying to finish a chapter of your book, the Tea Timer for Mac computers is a Very Good Thing.

a charter school grows in Brooklyn

A charter middle school that promises a private school mentality in a public school package — read: free — could have Park Slope parents tripping over their strollers to sign up.

Though the application to found the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School has not yet been approved, more than 500 people have already signed an online petition pledging that they would consider applying, with many adding comments such as "We need this school in Brooklyn!" and "Bravo." The school's founders, Luyen Chou and Daniel Kikuji Rubenstein, are both fathers who live in Park Slope, where they said demand is obvious. ....

He and Mr. Rubenstein hatched the idea to build a new middle school, which they hope will eventually extend through high school, during shared car rides to Columbia University's Teachers College [ed.: uh oh] in Upper Manhattan, where both studied independent school administration.

The two administrators said that while most of the city's charter schools are run by people with public school experience, they have different backgrounds. Mr. Rubenstein most recently headed the math department at a K–12 boys school on the Upper West Side [ed.: good], the Collegiate School. Mr. Chou works for a private consulting firm but was first a teacher and then administrator at the East Side's co-ed Dalton School, which is also K–12. Their private school experience makes their application for a charter school special, they said.

One advantage has to do with management. Like private schools, charter schools often operate outside union contracts, giving administrators more freedom over which teachers to hire and fire and how much to pay them. Private school heads are familiar with those decisions, which Mr. Rubenstein calls among the most important in education.

He said private schools also bring advantages to the classroom. Though he praised some of the city's charter school networks for their measurable successes, Mr. Rubenstein said the schools' styles — which he described as regimented, teacher-centered, and test score-driven — are "not the kind of models I would want to be around." [ed.: sigh]

Private schools, Mr. Chou said, are more holistic. "We want to create a school where we absolutely nail the standardized test, [ed.: !! ] but where the mission of the school is really focused on those larger, loftier habits of mind and habits of heart," he said.

source:
2 Park Slope Fathers Dream Big: A Charter Middle School
By ELIZABETH GREEN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 9, 2007

This development ought to strike fear into the hearts of some of these high-performing districts here in Westchester.

Richard Cohen on the Dems

wow

The eight Democratic presidential candidates assembled in Washington last week for another of their debates and talked, among other things, about public education. They all essentially agreed that it was underfunded -- one system "for the wealthy, one for everybody else," as John Edwards put it. Then they all got into cars and drove through a city where teachers are relatively well paid, per-pupil spending is through the roof and -- pay attention here -- the schools are among the very worst in the nation. When it comes to education, Democrats are ineducable.

Here's eduwonk:

First it was Richard Cohen, now Ruth Marcus in today's WaPo calls out the Democratic '08ers. Two thoughts on this. First, these columns and the kinds of things you hear from media-types signal, I think, that the political landscape is shifting and the bar for Democrats on serious education proposals is getting higher. That's good. This issue is right in the groove for the party. Second, what about the Republicans? They are no picnic here and aside from a smattering of governors and No Child Left Behind they haven't had a creative national thought on education policy since Charlottesville. In fact, most of their creativity has been spent figuring out creative ways to try to undercut the federal role in elementary and secondary schools.

(Maybe I'll just spend my summer re-posting items from eduwonk & Jay Mathews....)

I do have the feeling that the climate is changing for the Dems. Hope so, anyway.

As for the Republicans..... I dunno. I get the feeling they're planning to sit this one out (on the subject of education, that is).

Not that I know anything about it.

Parent Involvement and the Law

Studies have documented that regardless of the economic, ethnic, or cultural background of the family, parent involvement in a child�s education is a major factor in determining success in school. Recognizing that parents are a child�s first teacher, National PTA has worked with federal legislators to include parent involvement requirements in education laws. Now, numerous laws require meaningful parent involvement, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).National PTA worked with Congress to initiate the PARENT Act, which sought to strengthen the parent participation policies in the ESEA.

In January 2002, the ESEA was signed into law as the No Child Left Behind Act. It authorizes more than 40 programs that provide federal funds to nearly every school district in the nation. This law now includes many of the provisions of the PARENT Act and, for the first time, bases the definition of parent involvement on National PTA�s National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement Programs.

source:
PTA

Interesting.

NCLB also requires schools to develop ways to get parents more involved in their child's education and in improving the school.

today's factoid

86% of the general public believes that support from parents is the most important way to improve the schools.

source:
Rose, Gallup, & Elam, 1997
cited by What Research Says About Parent Involvement in Chidrens Education

This is interesting in light of the fact that only 39% of the general public today says that "lack of parental involvement" is the "biggest problem facing schools" - and only 27% say that increased parent involvement is "one or two [of the] best changes to solve public schools' problems."

I wonder if this is a real change, or an artifact of questionnaire design....

Whatever the case, parent involvement is "hot."


National Network of Partnership Schools (Johns Hopkins)
National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement (PTA)
Project Appleseed

Bake More Cupcakes

Anonymous can't seem to deal with real questions and comparisons of math curricula even though there are lots of threads talking about details.

"Maybe, just maybe, a majority of parents are satisfied with the status quo. There are always a few crusty bitter people who are never happy. I am sure your next target is the health care system, then social security. Endless things to complain about."

"Boo hoo boys, the education system is here to stay. Keep complaining and baking cupcakes!"


There you have it. Everything is fine, so just go away. Marginalized and ignored and still no process or choice. Your tax dollars in action.

Elementary Calculus by Jerome Keisler

here

H. Jerome Keisler's home page

Keys to Quick Writing Skills

The Morningside Academy led me to this book, which is exactly what I've been looking for. Not only does Quick Writing Skills contain sentence combining exercises, it has text reconstruction, too!

Text reconstruction turns out to be the term for the method Ben Franklin used to teach himself to write. (scroll down - you may need to refresh your browser if the page doesn't load at first)

This is going to be fun.

..................................

I also ordered a copy of Why Johnny Can't Write.

Because I've never really liked Peter Elbow.

Or Lucy Calkins.

.....................................

There may be a copy of William Strong's Sentence Combining: A Student Workbook in my future, too.

.....................................

update 8-5-2007:

Keys to Quick Writing Skills hasn't appeared, but Analyze, Organize, Write Revised Edition by Arthur Whimbey & Elizabeth Lynn Jenkins ISBN: 0-8058-0082-4 and Sentence-Combining Workbook by Pam Altman, Mari Caro, Lisa Metge-Egan, Leslie Roberts ISBN 1-4130-1977-3 both have.

Terrific.


page samples at the end of this pdf file
(very) brief summary of research on sentence combining

help for the struggling writer
sentence combining exercise
we're starting a copybook
man-eaters of Kumaon - text reconstruction
expert advice on teaching writing from Joanne Jacobs
eureka
more from Joanne Jacobs
doctor pion on writing a precis and critical reading
first crack at editing exercise
home writing program in place, for now
why kids should do text reconstruction
results of sentence combining exercise

Vlorbik has a blog!

wow!

Vlorbik has a blog!

Plus I see that he's been updating his old blog, which I thought was frozen....

getting used to it

my favorite sayings re: math

'I'm a professional mathematician, and I myself very often use mathematical methods that I understand only imprecisely,'' he said. ''It is while I use them that I begin to understand. After a while, the use and the understanding are mutually supporting.''

source:

The New, Flexible Math Meets Parental Rebellion (scroll down)

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS (NYT)
2403 words

Published: April 27, 2000


In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
John von Neumann
(from Vlorbik)

John Saxon & Carolyn say the same thing....

I looked these lines up again today, because I'm pretty sure they illustrate the fundamental insight of precision teaching.

hobby teaching

at joannejacobs

paying for arithmetic twice

I'm supposed to be working (aack! aack!) but instead I'm posting this factoid:

Families spend $283 million to pay for their children’s remedial courses in community colleges alone!

So Crazy It Just Might Work...

Norm Geras picks up on the story of a Scottish town that, in ten years, has managed to almost entirely eliminate childhood illiteracy:

When the project was launched, West Dunbartonshire had one of the poorest literacy rates in the UK, with 28% of children leaving primary school at 12 functionally illiterate - that is, with a reading age of less than nine years and six months. Last year, that figure had dropped to 6% and, by the end of this year, it is expected to be 0%. In all, 60,000 children have been assessed, and evaluations show that children now entering primary 3 have an average reading age almost six months higher than previous groups. In 1997, 5% of primary school children had "very high" scores on word reading; today the figure is 45%.

How did they do it? The answer is even more shocking than the results:

Synthetic phonics, where children learn to sound out the single and combined sounds of letters, has been at the core of the scheme but it has not been the only factor. A 10-strand intervention was set up, featuring a team of specially trained teachers, focused assessment, extra time for reading in the curriculum, home support for parents and carers, and the fostering of a "literacy environment" in the community [emphasis added]

Let's see - a scientifically-based reading curriculum, frequent assessments, extra time for reading, and support for parents... It's just too bad that there is no bipartisan effort to implement those ideas here in the US.

Naturally, educators are offering their complete support for such an effective program.

Postscript: as a lifelong learner, I'm always glad to learn a new word.

hamster boy!

"OK, hamster boy"

milestone, part 2

Ed says Madonna is starting to look like Michael Jackson.


missing Andrew, and a milestone

how fast to do story problems?

[I]n regular classrooms we learned that students need to be able to write answers to between 70 and 90 simple addition problems per minute in order to be able to successfully and smoothly master arithmetic story problems. However, some students seemed to level off at around 20 or 30 problems per minute, and no amount of reward or encouragement seemed to help. Some of our colleagues (Starlin, 1971; Haughton, 1972) decided to check how many digits those students could read and write per minute—critical components of writing answers to problems. As you might guess, they were very slow, which held down their composite performance. With practice of the components on their own to the point of rapid accurate performance (for example, reading and writing digits at 100 per minute or more), students were able to progress smoothly toward competence on solving the written math problems.

source:
Doesn't Everybody Need Fluency?
Carl Binder