Forget Mozart CDs and Baby Einstein videos, Boston’s mayor is urging parents to teach preschool children the old-fashioned way: by talking, reading, and playing with them.

Hoping to turn a new page on early-childhood education in Boston, Mayor Thomas M. Menino declared today as “Talk, Read, Play Day” in conjunction with Boston public schools’ Countdown to Kindergarten program and ReadBoston.

The day is part of a new public awareness campaign focused on the role of parents and their responsibility as their child’s “first teacher,” from birth until age 5.

The program’s three components of interaction meld to give babies and toddlers essential skills. Talking, reading, and playing help young children develop longer attention spans, larger vocabularies, and proper social interactions as well as foster creativity, imagination, and problem-solving skills, Menino said.

“Talk, Read, Play” is part of Thrive in 5, Boston’s new 10-year plan, spearheaded by Menino and the United Way, to ensure Boston children are prepared for educational success.

The program, implemented in March after two years of planning and $3.25 million in funding from the city, the United Way, and area hospitals, highlights the importance of a child’s first five years in five areas of growth: language development, cognition and general knowledge, approaches to learning, social and emotional development, and physical and motor development.

Source: Boston Globe, United States
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/11/12/mayor_to_parents_read_to_children/

And here’s the proof: Use the JUMP program and enjoy the unaccustomed taste of success

Melissa Marsh is a special education co-ordinator at Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw School in Port Hardy, at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Its students include some of the most challenged kids in Canada. Many struggle with learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities and behaviour problems. The community has its share of social issues, and parental involvement is low.

For kids like these, academic failure is depressingly familiar. “The shutdown mode comes extremely quickly,” Ms. Marsh says. But now, kids at this school are experiencing the unaccustomed taste of success in a subject that far more advantaged kids have grown to dread - math.

The JUMP program, pioneered by Toronto mathematician John Mighton, breaks almost every rule of current math pedagogy. It does not depend on the “discovery” method, group work or real-life examples. It is highly structured, relies on a great deal of direct instruction, repetition and reinforcement, and proceeds in small, incremental steps.

It also works.

“Repetition is crucial for many of our students,” says Wayne Peterson, the principal. He adds, “Your regular math texts have too much reading.” JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) is structured so that every kid can solve the problems, one small step at a time. That builds their confidence and self-esteem, and keeps them motivated and engaged. It can get even low achievers excited about math. Teachers say their math skills dramatically improve - and so does their behaviour, their levels of engagement and their attitude.

“The kids aren’t fighting me tooth and nail any more,” says Ms. Marsh. “They know what’s expected. They have the steps set out in front of them and they know they are going to be able to achieve all of those steps. The kids in my special education class go, ‘Whoo-hoo! I did the bonus question and I got it right!’ One Grade 7 student has never been able to sit in math class without completely disrupting it. JUMP has changed that. Today, he participates in class discussion and does the written work by himself.”

The JUMP program is now being used in more than a dozen first nations schools in B.C., as well as in many regular schools in the Vancouver area. “We found that the regular textbook way wasn’t reaching all the kids,” says Christine Hammond, head teacher of N’Kwala School, near Merit. The program is especially effective with her ESL students, because they don’t have to wade through oceans of text. One floundering Innu boy, for example, quickly became a math whiz. The kids at her small band school are now performing at the regional average in math, she says. JUMP is also effective with adult learners, some of whom, after a lifetime of frustration, are getting their GEDs.

Liz Barrett is a South Africa-born educator who travels the province doing outreach and teacher support in first nations schools. For her, proficiency in math is a social justice issue. “These kids are falling by the wayside, and that’s unacceptable. If your students aren’t getting a Grade 12, the door is closed to them.” She discovered the JUMP program four years ago, when she heard Mr. Mighton lecture in B.C., and became a passionate advocate. She’s now helping to launch a JUMP pilot program in South Africa.

Mr. Mighton, 52, is an unusual man. As well as being a mathematician (currently in residence at Toronto’s Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences), he is one of Canada’s best playwrights. He got interested in math education because he thinks the state of numeracy in Canada is a disaster. Judging by the evidence, he’s right. In Ontario, for example, a third of community college students are in danger of failing first-year math. Mr. Mighton also believes we must reverse the “culture of failure” that permeates math education. “There’s no reason the vast majority of kids can’t learn math.”

Ten years ago, Mr. Mighton began tutoring inner-city Toronto kids in his apartment, with great success. The next task was to determine whether JUMP would scale up. He began working to persuade school boards, a far tougher task than he expected. But the initial results have been good. One British inner-city school district, in London, agreed to try it. At the start, the kids were performing an average of two years below the national level in math. After one year of JUMP, 60 per cent of them passed the national exams.

JUMP works for middle-class kids, too. One Toronto teacher used it with her Grade 5 kids, whose math skills at the start of the year ranged from Grade 3 to Grade 7. By the end of the year, every student signed up for the Pythagoras competition, which is written only by top students. Fifteen out of the 17 achieved distinction.

The JUMP program is founded on observation, evidence, teacher feedback, continuous improvement and rigour, combined with new research findings on how the brain learns. By contrast, most programs taught in school are not. For the past couple of decades, both math and reading instruction have been an ideological battlefield that pits the “progressives” - educators who favour good things such as discovery and creativity - against the traditionalists, who favour bad things such as repetition and direct instruction. The progressives have had the upper hand, which is one reason why JUMP has been regarded in some quarters - especially in progressive-minded Ontario - as positively dangerous. Last May, consultants with the Toronto District School Board dismissed JUMP as a form of “rote, procedural learning.” In Ontario, that’s the kiss of death.

Now the tide is turning, though not fast enough. Last spring, the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel endorsed the seemingly obvious idea that, in order to succeed in math, children need to understand what they’re doing.

But the school system is plagued by other barriers that actively discourage best practices. One is the widespread use of consultants, who often write the very textbooks they then are paid to recommend. Some teachers are heavily discouraged from using instructional methods or materials their school board frowns on, even though they work. Many schools and parents are beaten into submission by claims that certain programs are “evidence-based” even though they’re not. There’s a lot at stake in how curriculum decisions are made - but parents and teachers seldom have a clue, or a voice.

So if you’re interested in JUMP for your kid, you may have to move to Vancouver or Port Hardy. You could also check out the JUMP website (jumpmath.org). And Mr. Mighton has written two books, The Myth of Ability and The End of Ignorance. The program survives on charitable support, and he is a more or less full-time volunteer.

“Teachers get so excited by this,” says Liz Barrett. “Suddenly they’ve got the tools to reach the students, and suddenly they’re all achieving.”

Source: Globe and Mail, Canada
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081108.COWENT08/TPStory/National

On her back in a dark tube, Blair Smith held still as a scanner combed her brain with magnetic waves. Words flashed by her eyes: tack, vase, hope, glow, vague, cade.

The 11-year-old had been told to press the button in her right hand if the word was real, the button in her left if it was nonsense. The answer itself was less important than the map the scanner would make of which areas of Blair’s brain lighted up when she struggled with a word.

The aim of the study, said Laurie Cutting, director of the Education and Brain Research Program at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, is to understand the neurological differences among students who are skilled readers, those who have difficulties and those with diagnosed learning disabilities.

If neuroscientists can pinpoint which parts of the brain are activated when a reader puzzles over an unknown word, they may eventually help teachers tailor reading instruction for individuals.

That is only the beginning. Many educators hunger for scientific data to help them structure their lessons, and neuroscience is beginning to offer them broad guidance about what works best.

One of the most startling recent revelations in neuroscience has been that the brain’s structure is much more flexible (a concept called neuroplasticity) than was previously thought; this understanding may help teachers find ways to train the brain to better solve math problems or understand a book.

“There’s an awful lot that neuroscience can begin to tell us in broad strokes that’s relevant for education and that ultimately 10 or 20 years downstream can provide us with prescriptive information,” said Robert Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education.

“I think we’re looking at a period of five years of very rich territory for investigation here.”

Complex conditions

Brain research already is opening the way to help teachers detect and address complex conditions — such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia and its mathematical cousin, dyscalculia — that defy blood tests and other simple medical diagnostics.

Cognitive scientists are developing a theory of “micro-development” that could turn some lesson plans upside down. Studies have found that, on a minute-to-minute basis, children and adults learn in fits and starts, often going backward. That could indicate that students should be allowed to grope their way to understanding — for instance, by being asked to power up a light bulb using a battery and a strand of wire before having the theory of electricity explained to them.

How the brain functions remains deeply mysterious, with studies seeming to unfold at a glacial pace. One expert noted that it took decades for researchers, examining data from brain and behavioral studies and other sources, to confirm the belief of many educators that focusing on phonics helps youngsters who struggle with reading.

Still, top educational institutions have recently shown new interest in the link between brain activity and education. Harvard University founded its mind, brain and education degree program in 2002. Johns Hopkins University this year briefed the Maryland State Board of Education on a neuro-education initiative that aims to “explore how current findings have application to educational practice.”

Better ways of teaching

A study published in the journal Nature last month reported a link between a primitive, intuitive sense of the size of numbers and performance in math classes, a finding that could lead to ways to identify young students who may have trouble with math and develop better ways of teaching them. Advocates of expanding pre-kindergarten classes point to studies that show the importance of early education in molding young minds.

Pianta, of the Curry School, said neuroscience has also influenced the education of autistic students.

“Twenty years ago, you might have seen an intervention that was far more oriented toward trying to get those kids to be affectionate, let’s say. Or the therapist in that case would be promoting physical contact with kids who didn’t like physical contact,” Pianta said. “Now we would look at that (response) as sort of saying this kid’s behavior is a result of their brain’s ability to process social, emotional information. You would structure your interactions with an autistic child so as not to overwhelm their capacity to process that information.”

Kurt Fischer, director of Harvard’s mind, brain and education master’s degree program, warned that many educational theories claim to be based on science but are not.

“One of the major problems we face is that there are a whole lot of things that claim to be ‘brain-based education’ that are nonsense,” he said. “One of them is the belief that boys and girls have totally different brains and learn totally differently. That’s not what the evidence shows. Not at all. The other is kind of a rigid idea of sensitive periods: that after a certain age you can’t learn a foreign language. You’ve also heard that there are left-brained and right-brained people. Total nonsense, unless they’ve had their left or right hemisphere removed. All of us use all our brains.”

Craving information

Another example Fischer cited is the widely held but dubious notion that listening to Bach in the bassinet will make babies smarter. Still, Fischer said, the popularity of such ideas shows that educators and the public crave scientific backing for classroom innovations.

At Kennedy Krieger, Cutting gave a nifty copy of her brain scan to Blair, her young research subject. The research team prepared Blair’s identical twin sister to go inside the tube for a new round of scans. They are both perfectly good readers, but the data from their studies might help others.

“Creepy but cool at the same time,” said Blair, an aspiring veterinarian. “It’s good because you help other kids.”

Source: Monterey County Herald, CA
http://www.montereyherald.com/health/ci_10913995

Many parents don’t realize how easy and fun it can be to bring the family closer together while improving their children’s literacy skills.

“Spending time together and learning as a family can be a simple, inexpensive and easy activity. It just requires a little time, imagination and creativity,” said Sharon Darling, president and founder of the National Center for Family Literacy.

With this in mind, the center is offering some helpful tips for families to teach their children by using the world around them and maximizing time spent together:

1. Make science come alive at home by checking out science experiment books from the library and then trying simple experiments at home. For example, grow a vegetable with your child, chart the growth and talk about it.

2. Tie reading into an outing. If you’re going to a museum, bring home a book about dinosaurs, so they see reading as an experience.

3. Increase oral language skills by sharing stories of your childhood, suggest the experts at the center. You also can share stories about your child’s life, such as when they were born, their first Christmas, etc.

4. Use certain reading techniques that have been proven to increase effectiveness in reading time, including making sound effects to capture kids’ attention and changing your voice when different characters speak. You also should talk about the story to reinforce comprehension and memory skills, and read it again because repetition helps children recognize and remember words.

5. Teach math skills by letting your child count the money to pay at the store.

You will quickly be able to see the rewards of these activities, first-hand.

“As the father of three fantastic children, I so clearly and vividly recall many moments curled up with my children reading to them, at all times of day and night; on the kitchen floor, in their forts, on old sofas and beat up bean bags, in bed and in the car,” said David Murphy, president and CEO of Better World Books.

“Few moments in life can compare to the wonders of opening up the new world of language and communication, and wonder and awe to your child.”

Children also need good role models when it comes to literacy. According to the center, if kids don’t see parents reading for pleasure and for purpose, then they are less likely to view reading as a pleasurable experience.

For more recommendations from the center on literacy activities, visit www.famlit.org.

Source: Elmira Star-Gazette, NY
http://www.stargazette.com/article/20081105/LIFE06/811050304

It is a question which worries every parent – what is the best way to prepare your child for their first day at school?
Now a psychologist has devised a checklist of 22 skills she believes children need to learn before beginning their formal education.

According to her findings, nearly half of parents would like more advice and information to prepare children for their first day at school.

Fewer than one in six parents have a clear idea about this, while one in five said they had no idea what skills children should have by the age of four or five. Only 18 per cent said they knew where to go for official advice.

Dr Spencer said: “Ensuring a child is adequately prepared for school is one of the most important things parents have to do.

“But it can be very challenging and daunting if the guidance and information needed is not there.

“A lot of the available material on pre-school development is focused on teaching child carers the skills, but can be difficult for parents with young children to access and understand.”

The list of suggested skills, called the Curricu-mum, was commissioned by the children’s television show Hi-5 which is designed to reflect pre-school learning guidelines.

Cecilia Persson, programme director for the Cartoonito network, which broadcasts Hi-5, said: “We believe the Hi-5 Curricu-mum is exactly what parents of pre-school children have been looking for.”

The list suggests that by the time they start school, children should be able to recite the alphabet, to count and use number and to write their own names. It also suggests children should know how to share, how to play with others and be able to dress and feed themselves.

It also claims children should be able to join in conversations, learn to sing songs, know which foods are healthy and be able to differentiate between past and future events and actions which are right and wrong.

However, Judith Gillespie, development officer for the Scottish Parent Teacher Council said she was concerned the list could create more anxiety and pressure for parents of young children.

“To a parent that is an incredibly daunting list. I think the trouble is it will make some parents feel like failures,” she said.

“Saying these are things children should be able to do is incredibly unhelpful. It would be more helpful to say that these are the kinds of things that many children learn to do before they start school. Children learn differently and develop differently and making it a requirement that they should be able do all these things is very bad news.”

Ms Gillespie said teachers did not expect children to learn the alphabet or to be able to count and use numbers before they started school and the list did not take into account the fact that boys tend to be more boisterous and learn at a different pace.

“In many respects, the most important things on the list are social skills like sharing – it is far more important that children go to school with social skills.”

Alphabet and dressing among 22 target tasks

These are the 22 tasks the report says children should be taught by the time they reach school.

1 Write their own name – a useful skill that helps confidence.

2 Know the alphabet. Being able to recite the letters of the alphabet will be a help when children begin to learn to read and write.

3 Sing/recite songs. Learning simple songs and rhythms helps children develop their learning skills.

4 Take turns and share with other people without a fuss. Learning to get along with other children is crucial.

5 Complete simple activities on their own.

6 Be sensitive to others’ feelings and know the difference between right and wrong.

7 Dress and feed themselves (even if they get it wrong).

8 Join in group activities with other children.

9 Make up stories (even if they make no sense).

10 Join in general conversation at home.

11 Tell the difference between past and future.

12 Be able to focus their attention on one thing for a prolonged period without becoming restless.

13 Count basic numbers and answer number-based questions such as: “How many carrots are on your plate?”

14 Complete simple puzzles such as jigsaws.

15 Ask lots of questions. Curiosity is a great asset in a pre-school child.

16 Know the difference between different groups; eg cats and dogs.

17 Experiment with basic technology, such as typing their name on a computer.

18 Have fun outside and be active.

19 Tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods.

20 Play “make believe” and use imagination.

21 Make things and get messy with paints and crafts.

22 Make music with toy instruments and experiment with different sounds.

Source: Scotsman, United Kingdom
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/The-key-skills-that-make.4652933.jp

Parents, you can keep those flash cards and alphabet books.

But there’s another device in your home that can help develop language and visual skills. It’s called - hold on to your remotes - the television set.

Instead of being simply society’s whipping boy and the root of all cultural evil, the so-called “idiot box” might actually boost test scores, especially in disadvantaged homes, a recently published study out of the University of Chicago says.

Even as it baby-sits electronically, the TV can be teaching both modes of learning and facts, other studies suggest, and keeping those who watch it from engaging in more destructive behaviors.

That’s the good news about the boob tube. There’s certainly bad, including the warning that “there’s no two-dimensional screen that can equal a three-dimensional caregiver,” says Dr. Donald Shifrin, the American Academy of Pediatrics spokesman on the impact of media on children. Then there’s the study showing kids who watch more TV do less reading.

But we’ll get to the numerous caveats - especially the one about “Desperate Housewives” being less helpful than “Sesame Street” - later.

For now, let’s deal with what many may find surprising.

The prevailing, almost unquestioning cultural bias against TV, especially among the upper-middle class, is nailed by the humor blog Stuff White People Like, which puts “Not having a TV” at No. 28 on the list.

“The number one reason why white people like not having a TV is so that they can tell you that they don’t have a TV,” the authors write. But there is an academic consensus, if not a popular-culture one, that TV may actually be useful as more than just a means for frazzled parents to buy a few moments of uninterrupted time or wind down mindlessly at day’s end.

“I used to laugh and say, ’I did 25 years of research on children in television, and I can summarize it in one sentence: It’s the content that matters,’” says Aletha Huston, a professor of child development at the University of Texas.

“If used correctly, television can be a wonderful medium for kids. It can be a way of exposing them to the world. It can be a resource for kids to get to places and times they wouldn’t get to,” says Huston.

Yet, “it is a message that doesn’t get out there somehow,” she says, citing the surprisingly intense interest when “we published a study a few years ago showing the positive effects of ’Sesame Street’ on early schoolkids’ performance.”

The Chicago study came out of the Graduate School of Business, where young economists have been looking at media and its effects. Although based on an old data set, it offers new confirmation of the evolving views of television.

Standardized testing of almost 350,000 6th, 9th and 12th-grade students showed that the students who had more exposure to television in early childhood did slightly better on the tests than those with less exposure.

“We find strong evidence against the view that childhood television viewing harms the cognitive or educational development of preschoolers,” write Jesse Shapiro and Matthew Gentzkow in the paper, published this year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

There’s a big caveat: The testing data are from 1965, because those kids had been around when television rolled out from city to city in the U.S., providing what essentially hasn’t been seen in the United States since, a large-scale, clear-cut, before-and-after comparison.

“It’s an open question how the ways in which television is different now than then would affect the data,” says Shapiro, an assistant professor of economics at the GSB.

But even with more recent data, another U. of C. economist reached a similar conclusion to that of Shapiro and Gentzkow.

“Despite the conventional wisdom, watching television apparently does not turn a child’s brain to mush,” wrote Steven Levitt, with co-author Stephen Dubner, in the 2005 hit book Freakonomics.

They looked at a huge early-childhood study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in the 1990s and found “no correlation,” they wrote, “between a child’s test scores and the amount of television he watches.”

One of the big questions for economists is not just examining an activity in isolation but considering what activity it replaces.

Psychological research shows that violence in media increases aggression, for example. But “violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences for violent movies,” another recent study of media effects found. The implication: However aggressive you may feel, you can’t do the crime if you don’t have the time.

Violent movies aren’t the same as children’s afternoon television shows. But Shapiro and Gentzkow also found that much of the impact of the medium they were studying seemed to be related to what activities it might be replacing.

In their findings, even after controlling for parental income and education levels, TV’s “effects are more positive for children from less advantaged families or from families where English isn’t the first language,” Shapiro says.

Put another way, that translates into a whopper of a caveat: “For children with highly educated parents and rich home environments, the cognitive effects of television appear to be smaller and may even be negative,” they write.

In other words: TV as a surrogate parent is not equal to Scrabble with an English-lit-major mom.

The common wisdom is that TV has been in decline for decades, but many critics share the view of another popular book, Everything Bad Is Good for You. In it, author Steven Berlin Johnson contends that TV now is actually much better, “more complex and nuanced,” than it was at the time of Shapiro’s study.

“The most debased forms of mass diversion - video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms - turn out to be nutritional after all,” Johnson writes, largely because the storytelling and complexity of action demands much more of the viewer.

He’s looking at adult TV, comparing the intricate “The Sopranos” to the simple “Starsky & Hutch,” for instance, but the argument can also be made for children’s television, where the straight-ahead action-hero cartoon story has been replaced by the subtle social interactions and multiple layers of meaning in “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Patricia Greenfield has looked at more contemporary data, too, and concluded television is a mixed educational blessing. It’s likely responsible for a rise in verbal IQ scores, while it may be to blame for declines in verbal SAT scores.

“The real strength of television in teaching vocabulary is the visual context for teaching definitions,” says Greenfield, director of the Children’s Digital Media Center at UCLA and California State University at Los Angeles. That applies to IQ tests, which use “everyday vocabulary,” she says. Meanwhile, SATs look for “Latin-based, literary vocabulary,” which TV, by and large, does not offer.

Her 1998 paper, “The Cultural Evolution of IQ,” also makes the case for television’s helping to teach “visual intelligence,” the reading of signs, symbols, images so vital in today’s culture.

With television and DVDs being used widely in schools and by parents, her reading is that anti-TV forces may actually be “in decline,” to the point that “I’m a little bit more concerned about people not understanding the costs, only looking at the benefits.”

That’s certainly a worry of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends no screen time for children under age 2 and a maximum of two well-chosen hours per day for older kids.

The concern is not TV per se so much as what TV, especially relevant with one study showing nearly 40 percent of children age 6 and younger have TVs in their bedrooms.

“Are we viewing ’Elimidate’?” the academy’s Shifrin asks. “Or are we viewing ’Dora the Explorer’?”

The doctors group understands that youngsters are growing up “as digital natives,” he adds. “We want parents to understand it’s up to them to be literate enough to know what’s being taught” on the screens.

He recommends the Web site Common Sense Media (commonsensemedia.org) as a good way for parents to achieve such literacy.

“We are not going to censor television - we’d like to censure it at times - but what we are going to say is, ’Caveat emptor,’” Shifrin says. “It’s about what you watch, how much you watch and where it’s watched.”

—

HOW TO USE IT

1. Don’t be passive. The stereotype is of the viewer numbly flipping through channels, looking for anything of interest. Instead, seek out what you have good reason to believe will be good or interesting and watch then or set your DVR or VCR to record it. You don’t read books or go to films at random, do you? One quick way to find out what the critical consensus is: the Web site Meta critic.com, which sums up what major critics say about a show then provides an average rating. For kids’ TV, try common sensemedia.org.

2. Ignore TV series in their first run. If you don’t need to be part of water-cooler chatter the next morning, the much more efficient, educated way is to get a well-reviewed series from Netflix or your library after it has come out on DVD. Watch at your pace, without commercials.

3. “Documentary” does not equal “medicine.” Many of us have some brain filter that counts nonfiction as castor oil, even when another part of our brain knows better. To take docs out of the equation - the great work of PBS’ “Frontline,” for instance - is to miss some of television’s best work.

4. Take the TV out of the bedrooms. We’ve all got great kids with great judgment, but they are curious creatures, and left alone with the box, they’ll seek out its most shocking fare - not to mention get one more reason to procrastinate. Take temptation off the dresser.

5. If they must have TVs, use filters. All those ratings that were put in place do actually work. Spend 10 minutes with your TV’s manual (”Ratings”), and you’ll be able to limit the viewing possibilities to appropriate levels, plus be able to set a password strong enough to keep your settings from being overridden by the electronic-media genius you’re raising. (…)

Source: Boston Herald, United States
http://tinyurl.com/5l7cb5

You can help your child develop skills for reading and writing while doing ordinary chores around the house! Supporting your child’s literacy development is one of the most important tasks you have, and it can be done even when you are busy (and isn’t that most of the time?).

Following are some simple ideas that will help you make the most of every opportunity you have with your preschool child:

- As you put away the groceries, ask your child to name the items in the boxes. He may not be able to read the words on the label yet, but he will begin to recognize logos and pictures, which he will later associate with the printed word.

- While you dust the furniture, let your child write his name in the furniture polish.

- Give your child simple jobs to do as you cook; measuring ingredients or rolling dough are examples. Talk about the words in the recipe you are using; explain terms like mix, stir, or sift. This is a great time to also talk about cleanliness and the importance of “clean cooking hands.”

- When making biscuits, give your child a portion of the dough. He can shape the dough into letters and bake his name. What a fun way to learn to spell! You can also use leftover dough and add a little food coloring - instant play-dough (keeps in refrigerator a few days with kneading).

- Let your child place magnetic letters on the refrigerator while you cook. Talk about the letters and sounds he is using.

- Even bath time can be a learning experience! Let your child lather up the side of the tub with soap. Encourage him to write his name or draw pictures in the lather.

- Make a book with your child. Let him draw pictures and scribble (a toddler’s version of writing) a story. Place the pages in plastic storage bags and staple together like a book or punch holes in the sides and tie pages together with yarn.

- Let your child help sort the laundry by color. Talk about the colors. You can also sort into items (linens, clothes, etc.) and in sizes (large, small, medium) to nurture those all-important pre-math skills.

- Look for restaurant signs, toy store signs, etc., as you travel. Most children recognize their favorite fast food place simply by its outdoor sign! This is a child’s first reading experience (recognizing familiar signs and symbols). We call this “environmental literacy.”

Remember, you as a parent are your child’s first and most important teacher! Think about the simple ways you can support your child’s literacy development as you go about your daily activities! In doing so, you are nurturing your child’s natural curiosity and promoting a life-long love of learning. Happy Parenting! (…)

Source: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, MS
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=281094&pub=1&div=News

Dear Dr. Fournier: I just came from a school council meeting where parents were furious because of low achievement test scores. These are the same people that put stickers on their cars saying their child is an A student. How can you love your child’s school one day and hate it the next? When they give our children good grades, they’re great, but when they flunk standardized tests, our schools are bad?

Grades and achievement tests are both important. A law school student might have graduated with top honors and even been the editor of his school’s law review but will not be able to practice law until he passes the state bar exam. The challenge lies in the fact that children must do well from day to day in the classroom yet they must be able to pass tests made by others from outside your child’s school in order to be deemed a success.

Neither of these accomplishments guarantees your child success as an adult because school systems and standardized test makers are operating on the 1940s structure of education in this country, which was designed for the industrial era.

Your children must learn skills that are not being taught in schools.

WHAT TO DO

Harper’s magazine reports in the article “Figuratively Speaking” by John MacIntyre that 77 percent of parents of school-aged youth say they are satisfied with their children’s education. If this many people are happy, why do politicians and international studies indicate that our schools are so far below world standards? Obviously not everyone is happy. The same report says that the number decreases when adults in this country are asked the same question.

Only 44 percent of this group is all right with primary and secondary education. That means 56 percent does not believe our school systems are producing well-educated young adults. Of course these are many of the people that are supposed to employ our kids when they are older, so we have to admit that their opinion counts.

Strong American Schools chaired by former Colorado Governor Roy Romer found in 2004 that 33 percent of this country’s high school graduates needed remedial courses in college. Even though they had the grades to get into college and may have passed the SAT or ACT, they did not have the elementary/high school skills to do college work!

Furthermore, 29 percent of all students in four-year colleges and 43 percent of those in junior colleges needed remedial courses. Every one of those remedial students took courses in high school, passed those courses but learned close to nothing.

Taxpayers are paying billions a year to educate our children while college tuitions are increasing in part because colleges have to provide reeducation services — that is they have to teach high school (and sometimes elementary school) all over again.

The bottom line is that schools in our country are so busy teaching and trying to prove that they have taught by raising achievement scores that no one is watching the store. Schools are for children to learn.

Do not let your child go to bed celebrating an A unless he can prove to you that they still know what was on that test one month after they received the grade.

The system is fighting the wrong battle and losing the war.

Focus your energy on making sure your child has learned and let the bureaucrats and “happy with their school” parents knock themselves out losing the war and their children’s future, as well. (…)

Source: Henderson Gleaner, KY
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2008/oct/28/parents-should-focus-on-learning-more-than-on/

Success in school depends upon both teacher and parental involvement (parents being the most important part of the equation). I am not a professional teacher; however, as a professional librarian, I have spent the last several years teaching parents during storytimes at the public library and also at community outreach classes (in medical clinic waiting rooms, etc.) the importance of their roles in their child’s education and success in life.

Most of a child’s brain development takes place during the first three years of life.Once the brain is “wired” or “not wired” during early childhood, it can be very difficult for a child to catch up in school. Whenever I talk to teachers and ask them their take on the situation, the comment I most often receive is, “If I could only get the parents to get involved, my students could really succeed.”

Ms. Karmacharya said, “There is not a relationship between poverty and poor performance, but there is a relationship between childhood experiences for a child in poverty versus childhood experiences in middle or upper class.”

Her statement is absolutely correct, and there is extensive research to back it up. What this means is that if a child is at a disadvantage in any way, even more time and attention must be given to make those “experiences” available to children.

Experiences, however, don’t require money; they just require time and attention.This can be as easy as reading to your child every night and exposing them to new vocabulary or eating dinner together as a family and letting each of the children tell stories from what happened during the day.

Yes, educators need to be accountable, but parents have the greater responsibility. If a child is not doing well in school, a parent’s love, attention, and involvement is the greatest key to that child’s success.

Source: Hattiesburg American, MS
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20081022/OPINION03/810220333

A lot of parents feel unhappy when seeing their children learning hard in early childhood, while others believe that early childhood is the best time to begin learning.

Most state-owned kindergartens do not teach English to pupils, while the Ministry of Education and Training does not have regulations on teaching foreign languages to small children. However, at people-founded kindergartens, foreign language lessons are a fixture.

Phuong, an expert at a scientific research institute in Hanoi, who has a daughter learning at the Kim Lien state-owned kindergarten, said that teaching English to small children is a kind of maltreatment.

Phuong said that she did not learn much when she was small, but she still became a PhD. She will not force her daughter to study hard. Phuong said that the most important thing now for a child like her daughter is good health.

Meanwhile, Thu, the owner of a limited company in Hanoi, does not share the same view. Thu learned about the syllabuses of many kindergartens before deciding to send her 2-year-old daughter to a kindergarten. There, Thu’s daughter has lessons in literature, music, games, English and many subjects to help children become cleverer.

“I want my daughter to get the most active education. As far as I know, in western countries, children begin learning when they are 2 years old,” Thu said.

Learning at the age of 3: good or bad thing?

According to Associate Prof Dr Nguyen Cong Khanh from the Hanoi Pedagogical University, a lot of parents worry that teaching children at the age of 3 will torment children. The parents believe that children at this age need more playing than learning. However, Khanh said that this is the wrong viewpoint.

Khanh said that if children have a suitable education, i.e. they can learn right in early childhood, they could have many more opportunities in their lives.

Source: VietNamNet Bridge, Vietnam
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/education/2008/10/809340/