He knows that if parents place good video games into a learning system in their homes they can reap major benefits for their children and themselves. They can accelerate their children's language and cognitive growth." —James Paul Gee, Tashia Mogridge Professor of Reading, University of Wisconsin-MadisonMarc Prensky presents the case—profoundly counter-cultural but true nevertheless—that video and computer game playing, within limits, is actually very beneficial to today's "Digital Native" kids, who are using them to prepare themselves for life in the 21st century. The reason kids are so attracted to these games, Prensky says, is that they are learning about important "future" things, from collaboration, to prudent risk taking, to strategy formulation and execution, to complex moral and ethical decisions. Prensky's arguments are backed up by university PhD's studying not just violence, but games in their totality, as well as studies of gamers who have become successful corporate workers, entrepreneurs, leaders, doctors, lawyers, scientists and other professionals.Because most adults (including the critics) can't play the modern complex games themselves (and discount the opinions of the kids who do play them) they rely on secondhand sources of information, most of whom are sadly misinformed about both the putative harm and the true benefits of game-playing. This book is the antidote to those misinformed, bombastic sources, in the press and elsewhere. Full of common sense and practical information, it provides parents with a large number of techniques approaches they can use—both over time and right away—to improve both their understanding of games and their relationships with their kids. What You Will Learn The aim of this book is to give you a peek into the hidden world into which your kids disappear when they are playing games, and to help you as an adult—especially if you are a concerned parent or teacher—understand and appreciate just how much your kids are learning that is POSITIVE from their video and computer games.In the few short hours it takes to read this book, you will learn: What it feels like to be in the world of computer and video games; How to appreciate the breadth and depth of modern computer and video games and the ways they make your kids learn; How to understand the various USEFUL skills your game-playing your kids are acquiring; How to understand your own kids better and build better relationships using games as a base; And, most importantly, How to augment and improve what your kids are learning by HAVING CONVERSATIONS THAT THEY WANT TO HAVE about their games.

    But what if school were fun - for you and your students? What would life be like if you felt excited about your lessons? Better yet, what if your students actually looked forward to your class every day? Yes! School can be simultaneously fun and educational. In fact, as Quinn Rollins explains in Play Like a PIRATE, when your class is engaging and entertaining, students are more likely to remember what they've learned. Invite kids to use their imaginations and help them create meaningful connections with your content by making play part of the learning experience. Play Like a Pirate shows you how! You'll learn: Why bringing passion to the classroom works - even if it isn't related to your subject. Why action figures, Hot Wheels, LEGO, and other toys belong in your classroom. Why comic books and graphic novels aren't "just for fun" How to use or create games that make content memorable all year long. In addition to insights that will help you remember why you became an educator in the first place, Play Like a Pirate includes practical strategies and QR code links to resources and templates that make it easy to integrate fun into your curriculum. Regardless of the grade level you teach, you'll find inspiration and ideas that will help you engage your students in unforgettable ways.

    In the fifth edition of this renowned advanced grammar textbook, the new author Dallin D. Oaks of Brigham Young University has preserved Stageberg's clear and concise linguistic approach to grammar instruction while updating the text for the 1990s advanced grammar student. Updated chapter material includes revised examples of an exercises for the material studied and the use of tree diagrams. In addition, the fifth edition emphasizes the significance of English grammar in speech and composition in two new chapters: Usage and Language Variation: Historical, Regional, and Social. Two new appendices--A Basic Introduction to Tree Diagramming and An Introduction to Transformational Grammar--provide further instruction regarding the use of tree diagrams and an overview of Transformational Generative-Grammar. As in previous editions, AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH GRAMMAR, Fifth Edition, provides a linguistic approach to grammar instruction that can be used to teach both advanced grammar and composition as well as non-major introductory linguistics courses.

    This book has been replaced by Close Reading of Informational Sources, Second Edition, ISBN 978-1-4625-3945-1.

     This companion volume focuses on spelling and vocabulary knowledge that grow primarily through processes of derivation. Designed for elementary educators' use as part of a reading curriculum where derivational relations is covered.

    Expert text includes coverage of various areas, from acid rain and atomic energy, to waste disposal and wetlands. Touches upon the many statutory and common-law regulations shaping the world in which we live.

    Kids love him and his poetry...and so do adults, a combination of approbation that is unusual in today's world.

    Now, in response to growing demand, Adele’s daughter, Joanna Faber, along with Julie King, tailor How to Talk’s powerful communication skills to children ages two to seven. Faber and King, each a parenting expert in her own right, share their wisdom accumulated over years of conducting How To Talk workshops with parents and a broad variety of professionals. With a lively combination of storytelling, cartoons, and fly-on-the-wall discussions from their workshops, they provide concrete tools and tips that will transform your relationship with the young kids in your life. What do you do with a little kid who…won’t brush her teeth…screams in his car seat…pinches the baby...refuses to eat vegetables…throws books in the library...runs rampant in the supermarket? Organized according to common challenges and conflicts, this book is an essential emergency first-aid manual of communication strategies, including a chapter that addresses the special needs of children with sensory processing and autism spectrum disorders. This user-friendly guide will empower parents and caregivers of young children to forge rewarding, joyful relationships with terrible two-year-olds, truculent three-year-olds, ferocious four-year-olds, foolhardy five-year-olds, self-centered six-year-olds, and the occasional semi-civilized seven-year-old. And, it will help little kids grow into self-reliant big kids who are cooperative and connected to their parents, teachers, siblings, and peers.

    Arnold, CHOICE"The book provides readers with a clear, sympathetic and unbiased understanding of the four conflicting visions of curriculum that will enable them to more productively interact with educators who might hold different beliefs. The book stimulates readers to better understand their own beliefs and also to provide them with an understanding of alternate ways of thinking about the fundamental goals of education" --SIRREADALOT.ORG"A much needed, insightful view of alternative curriculum orientations. This is an exceptionally written book that will be useful to teachers, curriculum workers, and school administrators."--Marc Mahlios, University of Kansas"Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns is a thought provoking text that invites self-analysis."--Lars J. Helgeson, University of North DakotaCurriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns presents a clear, unbiased, and rigorous description of the major curriculum philosophies that have influenced educators and schooling over the last century. Author Michael Stephen Schiro analyzes four educational visions--Scholar Academic, Social Efficiency, Learner Centered, and Social Reconstruction--to enable readers to reflect on their own educational beliefs and allow them to more productively interact with educators who might hold different beliefs.Key FeaturesProvides a historical perspective on the origins of curriculum ideologies: The book places our current educational debates and issues in a historical context of enduring concerns.Offers a model of how educational movements can be critically analyzed: Using a post-structuralist perspective, this model enables readers to more effectively contribute to the public debate about educational issues.Pays careful attention to the way language is used by educators to give meaning to frequently unspoken assumptions: The text's examination helps readers better understand curricular disagreements that occur in schools.Highlights the complexities of curriculum work in a social context: With an understanding of the ideological pressures exerted on them by society and colleagues, readers can put these pressures in perspective and maintain their own values, beliefs, and practices.Intended AudienceThis book is designed as a supplemental text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Curriculum Theory, Introduction to Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum Philosophy, and Curriculum Theory and Practice in the department of education.Talk to the author! schiro@bc.eduTo visit the author's web site, please visit: http: //www2.bc.edu/ schiro/sage.html.

    It is during this time that the roots of moral character are established. From the foundation that is formed, healthy or not-so-healthy family relationships will be built. During the preteen years, patterns of conduct are firmly established patterns that will impact your parent-child relationship for decades to come. Rightly meeting the small challenges of the middle years significantly reduces the likelihood of big challenges in the teen years. On Becoming Preteenwise is based on the familiar axiom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is much easier to avoid making mistakes than it is to correct them after the fact. This is particularly true of parenting. Just ask any mother or father continually challenged by a contentious or rebellious teen. Given a choice to go back and start over...

    A results-only classroom is rich with individual and cooperative learning activities that help students demonstrate mastery learning on their own terms, without being constrained by standards and pedagogy.By embracing results-only learning, you will be able to transform your classroom into a bustling community of learners in which?* Students collaborate daily on a number of long-term, ongoing projects.* Students receive constant narrative feedback.* Yearlong projects target learning outcomes more meaningfully than worksheets, homework, tests, and quizzes.* Freedom and independence are valued over punitive points, percentages, and letter grades.* Students manage themselves and all but eliminate the need for traditional classroom management.Learn how your students can take charge of their own achievement in an enjoyable, project-based, workshop setting that challenges them with real-world learning scenarios--and helps them attain uncommonly excellent results.

     What should I do?" When parents are told that their child is having difficulty in school, they often don’t know where to turn for reliable information and advice. They may be confused by conflicting claims of "cures" or may mistakenly think that, because some learning problems are genetically based, they can do nothing to help. Even the terminology of learning disorders is confusing: dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADD, ADHD, autism, Asperger’s syndrome, NVLD, executive function disorder—what are all these conditions, how do they differ from one another and, most important, what practical steps should parents and teachers take to remedy the situation? This comprehensive, practical guide to children’s learning problems should be the first resource parents and teachers reach for when a child shows signs of difficulty in academic, social, or behavioral learning. Drawing on her decades of experience, educator Jane Healy offers understandable explanations of the various types of learning disorders. She distills the latest scientific research on brains, genes, and learning as she explains how to identify problems—even before they are diagnosed—and how to take appropriate remedial action at home, at school, and in the community. Today’s fast-paced, stressed-out culture is hazardous to growing minds, says Healy, and a growing "epidemic" of children’s disorders is the result. Different Learners offers a complete program not only for treating the child, but also for making more beneficial lifestyle choices at home and improving teaching techniques at school. It shows parents and caregivers how to prevent some learning difficulties from ever happening in the first place. It explains how to have your child evaluated if necessary, and, if a problem is found, how to evaluate various treatments. Different Learners explains how medications for attention and learning work in the brain and why they should not be the first step in most treatment programs. It shows how schools can actually worsen a child’s learning difficulties and how to make sure this doesn’t happen to your child. It even offers a program for "brain-cleaning" that will help any child perform better in school. Jane Healy draws on stories of real children to offer sympathetic as well as practical advice for children—and parents—who are struggling in an overstressed environment. She provides reassurance that parents and teachers can have dramatically positive effects on every child’s ability to learn.

    Here's the cool thing: poetry can get you there. It is inherently turbo-charged. Poets distill a novel's worth of content and emotion in twenty lines. The literary elements and devices you need to teach are all there, powerful and miniature as a Bonsai tree. Paul B. JaneczkoYou'd like to teach poetry with confidence and passion, but let's face it: poetry can be intimidating to both you and your students. Here is the book that takes the fear factor out of poetry and shows you how to use this powerful genre to spark student engagement and meet language arts requirements. Award-winning poet Paul B. Janeczko is the master for creating anthologies for pre-teen and adolescent readers, and here he's chosen 20 contemporary and classic selections with step-by-step, detailed lessons for investigating each poem from the inside out. Kids learn to become active readers of poetry, using graphic organizer worksheets to help them jump over their fear and dive into personal, smart, analytical responses. There's no better genre than poetry for helping students gain perspective on their own identities and their own worlds, and Paul provides a space on each reproducible poem for private thoughts, questions, feelings, and ideas. Your students will discover what each poem means to them.The 20 poems in this collection were chosen for their thought-provoking topics; compelling real-world themes that lead to conversation and collaboration in middle school classrooms. And by showing you how the poems and activities address the common core standards for English Language Arts (complete with a sample chart linking the poems to the standards), Paul provides a clear understanding of how you can get there using poetry.You can cultivate a passion for poetry in your classroom. Take the journey with Paul B. Janeczko and grow in confidence with your students, meeting some standards along the way.

    *Thorough examination of standards-based assessment and standardized testing. * Practical examples illustrate principles. *End-of-chapter exercises and suggested additional readings provide opportunities for further exploration.

    Jim Burke has created a Common Core Companion for you, too. This time positioning the grades 9-10 standards alongside 11-12, it's every bit the roadmap to what each standard says, what each standard means, and how to put that standard into practice across subjects. Jim clearly lays out:Key distinctions across grade levels Different content-area versions of each standard Explanations of each standard, with student prompts Content to cover, lesson ideas, and instructional techniques Glossary and adaptations for ELL students