My college offered Backpacking as a legitimate way to fulfill a Phys. Ed. requirement. One of the most useful things the instructor taught the class was the value of the standing rest. When the going gets tough on a big hill the last thing a hiker wants to do is to lose too much momentum. For many homeschoolers and afterschoolers, this is the time of year when kids (and parents) start to feel somewhat burned out by the school year. For public school kids, state tests may be finished and it can be difficult to keep plugging away after weeks of build-up. Test day itself can feel like som...

Welcome to Ms. Morris' AP Literature Summer Reading Discussion board!!

Here, you will find discussions on the readings over the summer. Please check back frequently for updates!

Considering how many public school teachers express feeling burned by standards-based curricula, I expect that many are feeling understandably resistant to the post-NCLB Common Core Standards. I recently read most of the 66-page document Common Core Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History / Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, and I hope that time-strapped teachers will take the time to read the standards in their original form (beware of cheap imitations!). I found nothing terribly radical in the Standards. They show a logical progression of knowledge bu...

I was happy to see that the official home of Screen-Free Week is the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. I see this organization as fighting the good fight against marketers, such as Scholastic, Inc. and various soft drink and food companies who, as described by Alex Molnar (Ariz. State Univ.) in the documentary Captive Audience, view children as objects whose primary purpose is to be manipulated for some benefit to an adult. My first reaction to stumbling on this years Screen-Free dates, April 30 to May 6, was to make a note on my calendar. I expect that many afterschooling fami...

So many critics of traditional math are quick to condemn an emphasis on procedural fluency in the elementary school years as antithetical to the development of real-world or problem-solving skills, that somehow spending time on practice will undermine students ability to think creatively or critically. Check out the short World Science Festival panel discussion to hear interesting perspectives comparing creative thinking in mathematics to creative thinking in the Art and Humanities. If you disregard the annoying comments of the moderator, youll hear some insights from the participants...

All but five states have adopted the Common Core Standards. If you have a student in one of these states, your children likely will be taught under new curricula in the fall. If you havent explored the documentation at the Common Core website, here is some incentive from Hung-Hsi Wus Statement of Support, How Good are the Common Core math Standards?: CCSS gives precise mathematical guidance on how to develop [the twin pillars that support algebra I, rational numbers and similar triangles] in grades 5-8. The detailed description of the grade-by-grade progressions of both topics is unpr...

This is even better than a Chemistry Set! Well, its at least as good (colored LED lights, wires, and play-dough how cool!). It probably suits a wider age range of kids for the combination of safety and depth of understanding than a chemistry set does too. I think kids as young as kindergartners would be able to get some of it, but its not so baby-ish that it wouldnt interest a middle-schooler. I wrote about Squishy Circuits earlier in the year, intending to gather all the materials and do the activities with my kids over the summer. But as Robert Burns wrote, The best-laid schemes o mice ...

"The important thing is to understand what you're doing rather than to get the right answer."

Tom Lehrers tune, "New Math," sounds far too much for comfort like many public school districts math presentations. But Lehrer was being sardonic. Its amazing were still dealing with defenders of constructivist math after all these years. Tom Lehrer recorded this performance in 1965. Sometimes when one of the kids has brought home a math textbook, I have to revisit New Math to keep my sanity. My dad had the vinyl album of That Was the Year that Was. I think I was about ten years old when I started listening to it in the seventies. The richest line is at the 1:00 mark, though the line j...

Ive been taking a look at the Art of Problem Solving as a possible supplement to middle and high school math. AOPS has an impressive history and has developed a number of different media to support math instruction. I still think Khan Academy is excellent and find Sals video instruction to be clear. Khans Singapore instruction (currently available for Grade 3) corresponds to the textbooks and workbooks available at singaporemath.com. At this time, Khan does not offer online exercises that match the videos directly. Most Khan Academy videos have no corresponding textbooks as Khans point ha...

Were just back from vacation and have exactly three weeks until the start of school. I did let the kids slack off on the math. They spent a lot of time playing music, improving their swimming, and reading. Its been a pretty well-rounded summer so far. Now its time to limber up for math. Five days of math each week until school starts. Weve been using Khan Academy and want to use it more regularly this school year. Our schools math program has not provided the kind of practice that supports mastery. I was excited to see that Salman Khan now has a series of lectures for Singapore math o...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Susan Wise Bauers soon-to-be-published program, Writing with Skill. It looks like a superb textbook / curriculum for teaching students how to organize their writing and how to begin to apply style to it. These are essential skills I want my children to have when they begin high school. But Writing with Skill is a writing program, not a grammar one. I had not scrolled down in Ms. Bauers blog, so I completely missed her post about the other program she is publishing soon. Advanced Language Lessons is the set of books that continues the Complete Writer ser...

For the past few years, Ive been using Susan Wise Bauers Writing with Ease to supplement my childrens English Language Arts work. Our school system has embraced such techniques as journaling [sic] and Daily Oral Language (or, as I call it, practicing errors see some interesting points of criticism about that here). Im unimpressed by what the school system plans for middle school, and Ive been somewhat panicked in my search for instructional materials to take my children beyond the fourth grade. I remembered reading that Bauer was working on a writing curriculum for the middle school ...

Summer is going too fast already. Were already in the middle of the second week (public schools around here end late). I let the kids use the first full week of summer afternoons to rest their brains. Theyve been doing a lot of reading, playing with Legos, and enjoying the long 4th of July weekend. Now its time to regain some momentum for doing math work. It will only get harder if I wait any longer. We have only eight full weeks of summer left for developing computational automaticity and number sense. The only way to develop these strengths is through practice. Even though I know ho...

A few months ago, I wrote about the value of teaching cursive. I found an excellent documentary about the role of graphisme in the French primary school curriculum. The documentary was part of a series called How do they do it in . . .? produced by the UK Department for Education. I found the collection just before it was discontinued due to austerity measures and regretted not being able to view more of the 15 to 45 minute films. Fortunately, a number of other websites now are hosting the content on their servers. Ive watched several of the approximately 25 videos via Schoolsworld TV an...

With the end of the year crunch here, Ive been thinking about the whole Tiger Mom thing again. Burn-out is hitting both kids hard, making it difficult to motivate them to do what they see as extra. Theyll need that last week at school (1/2 days, mostly) to really relax before their summer of music camp plus sessions of Khan Academy, Writing with Ease, and foreign language study with me. Its hard for children to work this hard when so many of their classmates dont do anything academic outside of what is required for school. Today I came across Wesley Yangs article "Paper Tigers" in New Yor...

One of the challenges of afterschooling is helping kids understand why they have to learn what they consider to be extra math, writing, or any other subject on top of what theyre learning in school. Ive been truthful with my children, telling them that the way their public school teaches math and writing will not prepare them well enough for high school and beyond. I dont want them to think that school performance is unimportant though. As much as administrators deny that there is tracking, teachers track all the time. It shows in the way they respond to individual students. Teachers of ...

As important as summer is for filling in the gaps in math and writing perpetrated by my childrens school (especially starting in fourth grade), my instinct tells me the most important thing I can do for them this summer is to protect a significant amount of their reading time. My kids generation is the first in our family to have opportunities for organized summer activities. I was lucky to grow up in kid-friendly neighborhoods with sidewalks for skating and safe streets for biking. But with a lot of us to help through college, my parents couldnt afford swim memberships and day camps. W...

Im sad to say I dont expect this cool contraption to show up on a Smartboard at my local elementary school anytime soon. These types of units tend to be outsourced to the PTA-sponsored Cultural Arts assemblies, where maybe five students will get a hands-on experience. Luckily, Professor AnnMarie Thomas at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota has created a Squishy Circuits website with instructions, sources of materials, and videos that will walk me through doing this activity with my kids in my kitchen. I figure well spend one afternoon making the two types of dough and ...

The New York Times weighs in on the question of whether the ability to write in cursive is what educators like to call a twenty-first century skill. One interesting point the article raises is the danger that the rejection of cursive will lead to the loss of connection to archival material. One college student recounts her experience of not being able to read her grandmothers journal. If you can, watch this British short documentary video* about Frances approach to teaching cursive. I find the philosophy of the art teacher particularly inspiring. He talks about the learning of graphis...