I promise I didn’t plan on doing this–I just happened upon this post form last year with tips on evaluating your kids’ teachers, and I thought it was a good time to bring it up again since school has just started back. This is one of the few posts I’ve written that I think may add some value to society. If you have young kids in school it is worth a glance.
And while I have your attention on education, the missus is giving away a $20 Abunga gift card over at Reading Coach Online this month. The drawing is open to anyone who subscribes by email. If you haven’t been to her site, it is loaded with information and fun activities to help your kids with their reading. It’s a great resource for both homeschooling parents and parents with kids in school as well.
What about helping kids who are reading way above their grade level? Anything to keep them from being bored– other than yanking them out of the LCD system? (Lowest Common Denominator)
@Victor it’s good that you asked that. We were just talking last night about shifting some of the new posts at Reading Coach to address higher concepts like comprehension.
The cool thing about her site is that the grade levels set up there are just guidelines. You can do 5th grade activities with 3rd graders if they are ready to tackle it, and you can always throw variations into the activities to make them more or less challenging.
I know she’s working on some longer articles that are sort of like study guides for chapter books that introduce topics like discussion of theme and characters.
Stay tuned over there–tons of stuff on the horizon. The big challenge for her is getting a chance to sit down and write.