Whether you're investigating the health of your local stream, making beautiful acrylic sunprints with leaves and flowers, running an experiment with your backyard birds, or concocting nature potions, you'll be fostering an important connection with nature. The engaging activities encourage the use of the senses and imagination and are perfect for all ages. Discover more about the natural world waiting just outside your door!

    Written originally for those elementary school teachers who knew little of common plants and animals, and even less about earth beneath their feet and the skies overhead, this book is for the most part as valid and helpful to day as it was when first written in 1911.

     Drawing on her own storyformed childhood and her long study of children's literature, Sarah Clarkson explores and celebrates the soul-forming power of story to help children imagine, and live, a great story of their own.

    Against the backdrop of Archimedes's life and culture, the author discusses the man's work, his discoveries and the knowledge later based upon it. The simple, often humorous, illustrations and diagrams greatly enhance the text. Ages 10 and up.

    In fact, procrastination may even work for you sometimes-creating a sense of urgency that can help you focus. But if procrastination doesn't work for you, it can get in the way of meeting your full potential-in high school, college, your career, and life. So, how can you get things done and be your very best?In A Teen's Guide to Getting Things Done, you'll discover your procrastination type-warrior, pleaser,perfectionist, or rebel-as well as the unique strengths inherent in each type. If you're a warrior, you love a good challenge, but may not be able to complete tasks you find uninteresting. If you're a pleaser, you may be so concerned about disappointing others that you postpone doing something. If you're a perfectionist, you may put things off because you're worried about your work being judged by teachers, parents, or peers. And finally, if you're a rebel, you're driven by a strong sense of independence. By understanding your type and using the practical strategies laid out in each chapter of this book, you'll be able to break the cycle of procrastination once and for all.This isn't a manual on how to please your parents, teachers, professors, or friends. This is a book to help you understand why you procrastinate, whether or not procrastination works for you, and if not, how to improve your work habits and really get things done. By helping you uncover your own unique strengths, this book will help you master your to-do list-and your life!

    So begins this controversial and enlightened book by Roger Schank, Ph.D., a world-renowned expert on teaming, who believes that every day of the school year our children are being failed by an academic system that does nothing to stir a lifelong passion for learning.In this lively, sometimes alarming book, Schank shatters the myths about how children learn and offers candid advice for parents who want to raise kids with gumption, ambition, creativity, inquisitiveness, and analytic and verbal proficiency.

    Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as the source of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages. But how dangerous is pink and pretty, anyway? Being a princess is just make-believe; eventually they grow out of it . . . or do they?In search of answers, Peggy Orenstein visited Disneyland, trolled American Girl Place, and met parents of beauty-pageant preschoolers tricked out like Vegas showgirls. The stakes turn out to be higher than she ever imagined. From premature sexualization to the risk of depression to rising rates of narcissism, the potential negative impact of this new girlie-girl culture is undeniable—yet armed with awareness and recognition, parents can effectively counterbalance its influence in their daughters' lives.

     Basic life skills go mostly untaught in classrooms, so graduates are on their own to figure out how to live successfully in the world. Without any guidance, where do you start? Adulting 101 is a clever, practical, and timely guide to show how to: - Find a job and be wildly successful at work - Buy the items you need as an adult (apartment, car, insurance) - Set goals, prioritize, and get work done - Communicate professionally and effectively - Save and invest wisely - Navigate personal and professional relationships - Avoid the common mistakes of being out on your own - And much, much more This book will give you what you need to succeed and make a real impact, inspiring you to change the world and be the person you were meant to be.

    We’re told that learning is all self-discipline, that we must confine ourselves to designated study areas, turn off the music, and maintain a strict ritual if we want to ace that test, memorize that presentation, or nail that piano recital.   But what if almost everything we were told about learning is wrong? And what if there was a way to achieve more with less effort?   In How We Learn, award-winning science reporter Benedict Carey sifts through decades of education research and landmark studies to uncover the truth about how our brains absorb and retain information. What he discovers is that, from the moment we are born, we are all learning quickly, efficiently, and automatically; but in our zeal to systematize the process we have ignored valuable, naturally enjoyable learning tools like forgetting, sleeping, and daydreaming. Is a dedicated desk in a quiet room really the best way to study? Can altering your routine improve your recall? Are there times when distraction is good? Is repetition necessary? Carey’s search for answers to these questions yields a wealth of strategies that make learning more a part of our everyday lives—and less of a chore.   By road testing many of the counterintuitive techniques described in this book, Carey shows how we can flex the neural muscles that make deep learning possible. Along the way he reveals why teachers should give final exams on the first day of class, why it’s wise to interleave subjects and concepts when learning any new skill, and when it’s smarter to stay up late prepping for that presentation than to rise early for one last cram session. And if this requires some suspension of disbelief, that’s because the research defies what we’ve been told, throughout our lives, about how best to learn.   The brain is not like a muscle, at least not in any straightforward sense. It is something else altogether, sensitive to mood, to timing, to circadian rhythms, as well as to location and environment. It doesn’t take orders well, to put it mildly. If the brain is a learning machine, then it is an eccentric one. In How We Learn, Benedict Carey shows us how to exploit its quirks to our advantage.  Praise for How We Learn“This book is a revelation. I feel as if I’ve owned a brain for fifty-four years and only now discovered the operating manual.”—Mary Roach, bestselling author of Stiff and Gulp“A welcome rejoinder to the faddish notion that learning is all about the hours put in.” —The New York Times Book Review   “A valuable, entertaining tool for educators, students and parents.” —Shelf Awareness   “How We Learn is more than a new approach to learning; it is a guide to making the most out of life. Who wouldn’t be interested in that?” —Scientific American   “I know of no other source that pulls together so much of what we know about the science of memory and couples it with practical, practicable advice.”—Daniel T. Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia

    This book gives students and teachers an excellent guide for handling a bully.

    Full of surprising facts, survey results, step-by-step strategies, inspiring teen quotes, and insightful expert essays, the guide gives readers the tools they need to appreciate their giftedness as an asset and use it to make the most of who they are. The fourth edition has been revised for a new generation of high-end learners and includes information on twice-exceptionality, emotional and social intelligence, creativity, teen brain development, managing life online, testing and standards, homeschooling, International Baccalaureate programs, college alternatives, STEM careers, cyberbullying, and other hot topics.

    Parents wonder if it’s worth the tears, frustration, and nightly arguments. eachers debate whether it’s really helpful or just busywork that consumes their precious time. One thing everyone can agree on is that homework is a contentious topic. In Ditch That Homework, Matt Miller and Alice Keeler discuss the pros and cons of homework, why teachers assign it, and what life could look like without it. As they evaluate the research and share parent and teacher insights, the authors explore some of the benefits for ditching homework: * Better education for all students * Reduced stress for families * More intentionality with lesson planning * Increased love of learning * More time for teachers to focus on learning at school and enjoying their after-school hours And that’s just the beginning. Miller and Keeler offer a convincing case for ditching—or at a minimum greatly reducing—homework. They also provide practical guidance on how to eliminate homework from your lessons. You’ll discover strategies for improving learning through differentiation and student agency and by tapping into the way the brain works best. Are you ready? Read this book and you’ll understand why it’s time to Ditch That Homework!

    Now a world-renowned expert gives us a substantially updated and augmented edition of her classic work: drawing on an additional fifteen years of cutting-edge research, offering new information on all aspects of dyslexia and reading problems, and providing the tools that parents, teachers, and all dyslexic individuals need. This new edition also offers:- New material on the challenges faced by dyslexic individuals across all ages - Rich information on ongoing advances in digital technology that have dramatically increased dyslexics' ability to help themselves - New chapters on diagnosing dyslexia, choosing schools and colleges for dyslexic students, the co-implications of anxiety, ADHD, and dyslexia, and dyslexia in post-menopausal women - Extensively updated information on helping both dyslexic children and adults become better readers, with a detailed home program to enhance reading - Evidence-based universal screening for dyslexia as early as kindergarten and first grade - why and how - New information on how to identify dyslexia in all age ranges - Exercises to help children strengthen the brain areas that control reading - Ways to raise a child's self-esteem and reveal her strengths - Stories of successful men, women, and young adults who are dyslexic

    Written by an educator who observed and worked in the world-famous schools, this groundbreaking resource presents the key tools that will allow American teachers to transform their classrooms, including these:Organization of time and space Documentation of children’s work Observation and questioning Attention to children’s environmentsThis workbook also contains interactive activities for individual or group reflection.Julianne Wurm works as an instructional reform facilitator in the San Francisco Unified School District. She lives in San Francisco, California.

    Some are Harvard bound; others are illiterate. They are the Class of 2000, and through the lives of three of them Class Dismissed brings us inside the nation's most diverse high school-where we glimpse the future of the nation.Autumn was ten when her father abandoned her family; since then she's been helping her mother raise her two little brothers and keep food on the table-while keeping her grades up so she can go to college. Her faith in God gives Autumn strength, but who will give her the money she needs when she's offered the opportunity of a lifetime? From the outside, Jordan's life looks perfect. He hangs out with the "rich white kids"; rows on the crew team, has a cool mom, applied early to an East Coast college. But Jordan's drug-addicted father died last year, leaving Jordan reeling with grief and anger that makes his life feel anything but perfect-and his future suddenly seem uncertain.A third-generation Berkeley High student, Keith is bright and popular, a talented football player who hopes to play college ball and one day, go pro. But Keith has a reading problem that threatens his NFL dream. And the Berkeley police have a problem with Keith that threatens his very freedom.Looking into the lives of these young people, in this American town, at this time in history, we see more than what's true---and what's possible--for Berkeley High. We see what's true and what's possible for America.