You know that you are an upper elementary school teacher if this workbook cover makes you laugh, cry or break out in hives.

 

From On How to Write Good

• Subject and verb always has to agree.
• Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
• No sentence fragments.

Do you write good? How did that happen? Was it because of your early grammar lessons or in spite of them?

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001618.htm

Play as an Emergent System PLAY ... "is not purely entertainment or a luxury to be given up when things get serious ...playfulness is ... not only to be enjoyed but to be accorded high value for its fundamental role in the success of all organisms, including humans." - Paul Grobstein, Serendip's Playground

What is Play?  Play as an emergent process.  The role of play in the development of self-regulation.

Should teachers examine play as a model for instruction? 

 

 Dyslexia

The word dyslexia comes from the Greek root dys, which means difficulty, and lexis, which means word. Oswald Berkhan first identified dyslexia in 1881. Six years later, Rudolf Berlin coined the term “dyslexia” in Stuttgart, Germany.

Dyslexia is a learning disability that results from differences in how the brain processes written and spoken language. Dyslexic individuals experience difficulty reading, spelling, among other things. Although there is no cure for dyslexia, it can be overcome with proper educational support. How can we identify children with dyslexia and support them in the classroom?

 Grobstein writes about the "bipartite brain.”

“The basic idea here is that because of how the brain is organized all the things we experience (including perceptions, understandings, and aspirations) are inevi- tably "stories", ie one of a variety of ways to make sense of the world and our selves that are grounded in unexamined (and hence challengeable) presump- tions of which we are unaware. From this, of course, and the added feature that all brains are somewhat different, follows the notion that one cannot in principle find anything like a complete "neutral standpoint”...no unwobbly pivots or unchal- lengeable starting points.”

 

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