Phonics Plus Five Blog

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:20:56 +0000

In a program known as Race to the Top, the federal government is coaxing states to change policies by offering them chances to get a cut of $5 billion in educational grants. One of the major goals is to tie teacher pay to student performance.

As always, money talks. For example, Wisconsin lawmakers are voting this week to lift a ban on using student test scores to judge teachers. Nine other states have taken similar steps, even though states can't apply for the money yet and only a few states may end up getting grants.

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:33:00 +0000

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times had a column this week that gave us a graphic picture of the price that our nation is paying for the current foreign policy. It is summarized in the sentence, "For the cost of an additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for a year, nearly 20 schools could be built."

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:24:45 +0000

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a major publisher, is unveiling the biggest deal in its history. It is a $40 million, multiyear contract with Detroit public schools. But they are not going to be selling many textbooks.

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:42:03 +0000

The New York Times announced today that the Walt Disney Company is offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses. As the paper reports, the videos "may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect."

Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years was understandably pleased, seeing it "as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational."

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:53:38 +0000

When I was a kid, American history was presented in very clear --albeit unrealistic -- terms. There were the good guys and the bad guys. Columbus, at that time, was invariably in the camp of the good guys--though no one bothered to ask any native Americans if they agreed with that interpretation.

Now, things have changed considerably as many teachers aim to present a more balanced perspective of what happened. Not unexpectedly, this has led to a whole new vocabulary for describing what occurred.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:26:55 +0000

Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, recently wrote a piece entitled: Good luck trying to succeed as a kid in America. In it, she covers a report from the ODEC, a Paris-based organization that collects and monitors statistics on 30 industrialized countries.

ODEC often reports test score. But this time, in a report titled “Doing Better for Children” it examines child well-being with the focus on poverty, teen-parenting, environmental quality, and telling measures like whether kids have desks, calculators and other basic tools to do schoolwork at home.

To give you a hint of what is to come, forty-eight percent of U.S. children do not have the basic tools to do their homework. (The ODEC average is 35.) Overall, the statistics are appalling.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:43:13 +0000

When we were children, exhortations to do our work were regularly accompanied by the adage "practice makes perfect." Today, I in a radio interview with Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code, I heard a new and fascinating twist on this idea. Coyle's thesis is that through reinforcement - 'deep practice' as he calls it - particularly when it is accompanied by the opportunity to make mistakes that we can learn from - our brain develops pathways that become more efficient.

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:07:26 +0000

The Associated Press this week had an interesting article on the vanishing skill of cursive writing. It started with a report on a parent who was surprised to find that her eighth-grader did not know how to write her signature. The daughter explained that, aside from a few weeks of cursive writing in third grade, the school never made demands for that skill.

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:54:55 +0000

The Washington Post today has an amazing story today. It starts as follows "Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which "going to college" means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. ...The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive."

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:25:32 +0000

The USA today reported the surprising, but uplifting, finding of a study of higher graduation rates. Many students may fail to complete a bachelor's degree not because the work is too hard — but because they're not challenged enough.

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:14:53 +0000

Years ago, when I was a graduate student, I was introduced to the writings of Korney Chukovsky, a Russian writer from the early 20th century, who explored children's language with love and devotion. His book "From Two to Five" is still an amazing read--if you want to both laugh and marvel at what young children accomplish in learning language. At the time he wrote, he was trying to halt the drive of the Russian leadership to get rid of fairy tales and related fantasy stories on the grounds that they defied the "realism" that the authorities were seeking.

Now it seems unbelievable but our nation is faced with a not dissimilar struggle where the authorities are denying outlets that are vital to children. In this case, it is play.

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:01:39 +0000

Stefan Gatward is a man in England who is known as the Apostrophe Man of Royal Tunbridge Wells. That's because he goes around identifying street signs which have either an apostrophe missing or have one in the wrong place. He even went so far as to paint in a missing apostrophe on a street sign in his town. (It was subsequently removed.)

But his efforts have not gone without effect.

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:12:49 +0000

Because of the critical role it plays in school and life success, reading rightly receives a lot of attention. But, sometimes in all the serious effort, we forget the fun that comes from playing around with words.

For example, here are some interesting facts you might want to get your children to ponder.

What are the longest words that contain only letters that can be played on a musical instrument?
The answer is

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:35:22 +0000

There are many "orphans" in reading instruction--areas that are vital to reading but which are shunted aside in the overwhelming emphasis on phonics. Punctuation is one of these areas. Whatever attention it does receive is a story of "too little, too late." As a result, for many children, the only punctuation you'll see them using is a period at the end of the first sentence. After that, it's all up for grabs.

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:30:11 +0000

Sixty five years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 — better known as the GI Bill. It’s been heralded as one of the most important pieces of legislation to ever come out of Washington. This single measure alone helped build the middle class for which post World War II America was renowned. It did it by puting a college education and home ownership within reach of millions of veterans returning home after the war.