TEACHER CREATED TIPS

Kid Tested, Teacher and Parent Approved

June 29th, 2010 by MJ

As a former teacher and as a mother of an energetic preschooler, I am always looking for new learning products that will excite and entertain my son. Some of my favorites are the workbooks from the Ready-Set-Learn series. I really think that these books are must-haves for parents of young children. There are so many titles to choose from that cover several different skills. So far for my 4-year-old, I have bought Preschool Activities, Preschool Fun, Alphabet, and Beginning Math. We skip around and work on pages out of each of them in random order. Jack likes choosing the pages. Each workbook comes with 180 stickers and a reward chart to track progress.

After completing each page, Jack loves to put one sticker on the finished page and one on the racetrack reward chart, and then he can’t wait to start on his next page. He is getting so much practice with academic skills all while loving every minute of it. It makes mommy so happy, too! I always keep one book in the car and one at Grandma’s house. I love taking them with us to restaurants because they keep him seated, quiet, and engaged—and it always impresses those waiting on our table! I also buy them for other kids as birthday presents. They’re only $2.99 each, so I can’t pass up the great deal.

Here are some sample pages from Ready-Set-Learn: Preschool Activities and Ready-Set-Learn: Beginning Math PreK-K

Tags: early childhood, teaching tips
Posted in Teacher Resources, Teaching Tips | 4 Comments »

Party Time! Well, Early Childhood Theme Party Time…

June 10th, 2010 by Mara

My biggest concern as an Early Childhood editor, has always been, “How do I make an educational book a hands-on experience for students and still user-friendly for a busy teacher or parent? Hands-on activities are crucial for young learners—but how do you convey those experiences within a book?

Kim Fields, one of TCR’s fabulous authors, does it in her new book, Year-Round Themes: Going Places (Pre-K). It is filled with engaging activities, interactive minibooks, songs, and stories that will entertain and educate young students.

Kim and her four year-old son, Isaac, presented her book and its materials to friends and family at a festive author party she held in her home.

Kim is our guest blogger. Here is her story.

As a former teacher, I understand the power of thematic units. I researched what type of thematic books existed for the Pre K market and talked with Pre K teachers about their needs and interests.

Then, I developed a book proposal and samples that presented my research and my ideas for the content of a book. I approached a TCR managing editor to submit my idea. It was a go!

It took approximately two months to research and develop a proposal, nine months to write Year-Round Themes: Going Places, and the rest of the time was in the production process. From start to finish, it took about 18 months to create the book.

After Year-Round Themes: Going Places was published, I held a book launch party to celebrate with family and friends. As part of the event, I had each guest fill out a passport—just like the one in the book. When they visited each thematic station, they were given a sticker as a “stamp” declaring they had visited that place. Thematic TCR stickers are the perfect size to fit in the blank box on the passport page!

I supplied a thematic menu, based on the five units in Year-Round Themes: Going Places. You might decide to use some of these yummy ideas as you celebrate the end of each unit with your preschool-aged children!

Farm—Farm-fresh fruit (strawberries, blackberries, cherries)
Pumpkin Patch—pumpkin bread with maple spread
Winter Wonderland—coconut ice (coconut milk with fresh pineapple blended and frozen in small cups)
Pond—frogs on logs (paper frogs on toothpicks inserted into peanut-butter covered celery)
Ocean—fish ‘n’ dips (pretzel and cheese goldfish crackers with an assortment of dips: hummus, sharp cheddar cheese, cream cheese)

My friends (big and little) had a ball testing the interactive rhyming stories, complete with finger puppets, stick puppets that insert into scenes, and characters that “stick” to habitats with help from Velcro!

Adults were amazed by the souvenirs like the 3D barn (made from a cereal box) and animals that the children could create to take home to share with their friends and family, reinforcing what they had learned during their stay at each “destination” station.

Everyone agreed that one of the best features of Year-Round Themes: Going Places is that it comes with a color CD-ROM, which enables you to print out any pattern in the book in color. They oohed and aahed at how this would simplify prep time for the teacher and how each pattern or prop would look professional and fun!”

Thanks for guest blogging, Kim. I hope everyone enjoyed reading this as much as I did! We love your book and everyone at TCR got such a kick out of seeing your party pictures.

We are always open to hear what’s working in other classrooms too! Let us know, we would love to hear from you.

Tags: Creative Classroom Ideas, teacher resources
Posted in Teacher Resources | 4 Comments »

One Size Does Not Fit All (Grade Levels)

May 25th, 2010 by Eric M.

In a recent blog, I wrote about my wife (“Mrs. M”), a substitute teacher who needed to be always prepared for the mysteries and challenges her day might present. For Mrs. M., knowing the grade level and age range of the students she is about to teach is probably the most essential piece of the puzzle. Which resources to use, which strategies to employ, even which clothes to wear—these are all influenced by the expectations she has of what a kindergarten-classroom experience will be versus what a day in sixth grade might bring. (For example, Mrs. M. brings plenty of stickers and picture books for younger students, while she likes to assign writing prompts and read Louis Sachar’s Sideways Stories books to grades 3 and up.) Sure, there is some commonality to the two experiences, but if you were to create a Venn diagram with “Teaching Kindergarteners” and “Teaching 6th Graders” as your labels, the center-circle overlap would not need to be nearly as large as the outer areas.

This is not so different from how we approach our work in the world of educational publishing. One of the first questions to ask when reading a manuscript or beginning the editing process is, “What grade level is this for?” Once this question is answered, several other answers fall into place:

• Which point size to use: 12 pt. vs. 14 pt. (The younger the audience, the bigger the letters should be.)

• Which font style to use: serif vs. sans serif. (The younger the audience, the fewer frills and flourishes those letters should have. And it even goes further than that: a font may seem perfectly suitable but then have a strangely-shaped lowercase “a” or capital “Q,” for instance. Young students have just learned their letters a certain way, so it wouldn’t be fair to ask them to recognize alternate versions.)

• Which write-on lines to use: regular vs. primary (Primary write-on lines are those big, wide ones that have a dashed guide line going across the horizontal middle. They take up a lot of space on the page, and many are needed for each question. Young learners write with such large letters that they can only fit a few words on each of line.)

• Which art style to use: cartoon vs. realistic. (A smiling, whimsical walrus would most likely be inappropriate for an upper-level science book.)

These are just a few of the cosmetic things we try to keep in mind when we design the layout of our pages. Content, of course, must also be considered and tailored to the specific learning level we are aiming to reach. In the end, we are hoping to create the perfect balance between what best helps teachers teach and students learn.

We do get occasional feedback about some of the finer points of page layout, and we would love to hear from as many teachers as possible. Do you have any suggestions for ways we can make our books easier and more practical to use for the grade level that you teach? Here’s a topic to get you started: name lines. Would you prefer to have a designated space on the page that says “Name: __________,” or would you rather that space used for an extra question?

Tags: substitute teachers, teacher created resources
Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »

Summer Smackdown! How to Kick Summer Gap to the Curb

May 10th, 2010 by Erica R.

If you were to ask your children what their favorite part of the school year is, I bet they’d say summer. And why wouldn’t they? To them, it’s a time to sleep in, catch up on TV and movies, hang out with friends, and send even more text messages. It’s two months of freedom from homework, written reports, and classroom speeches.

Unarguably, my summer breaks used to be my favorite part of the school year, too. In fact, I still remember my middle school summer routine as if I had just practiced it. Each day, my head was consumed by one “major” thought: at which friend’s house was I going to sleepover that night. (Sibling torture was a definite consideration.) And the only studying I did was of reading about Kristy in The Babysitter’s Club, scanning the pages of Tiger Beat, or watching Dylan McKay on 90210.

My middle school summers, as well as many modern summer routines, don’t sound too terrible. On the contrary, they sound fun and even stimulating. But are they educational? Not quite. And, unfortunately, a couple months of this behavior is like a minor car accident to your children’s education—they’ll recover, but it may take a while.

Think about it this way: Students solve math equations, write paragraphs, and learn about historical events for ten months; then they get two months off. In this time, they seldom solve, write, or learn anything of an academic nature. When they return to school, their brains, much like unpracticed athletes’ bodies, are out of shape and require retraining. In some cases, they have to relearn what they have already been taught.

Researchers call this the Summer Gap because, simply put, during the summer, a gap in learning is formed. Fortunately, there are ways to combat this gap. Aside from going to the public library and checking out its recommended (and age-appropriate) reading selections, you can also buy materials that will support your children’s education. We’ve just finished a new Summertime Learning series, which centers on summertime activities and resources that will engage your children. Each book contains eight weeks of language arts and math activities. You’ll also find a recommended summer reading list, journal topics, educational and free Web sites, and stickers.

So let your children sleep in for a while. They can even catch up on some TV and movies. But be sure to give Summer Gap the smackdown and prove to your children that summertime learning can be entertaining, easy-going, and, much like Dylan’s McKay’s Porsche, a fun ride.