Kathie Nunley's Educator's Newsletter
---Mid-May Edition--- (current subscribers: 17,171)
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News and updates to http://brains.org and Kathie Nunley's
Layered Curriculum (tm) Site for Educators: http://help4teachers.com

~~The NO-MEMBERSHIP-REQUIRED website ~~

Complimentary newsletter subscription available at:
http://help4teachers.com/newsletter.htm
Unsubscribe & email change information link at the bottom of this newsletter
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SECTION ONE: Teaching Tips -
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Teacher Tip # 1: I don't have many bulletin boards so I keep clear page
protector sleeves attached to the wall near my door with labels above them:
calendar, menu, band lesson schedules, week's activities, etc.
Each week or month I just replace each with the updated version, and I don't
need to re-tape the sleeve. Pam Deminksy, Portville Central School, NY.

Teacher Tip #2: Keep the unfinished work out in the open. Children in my
classroom keep their unfinished work in a ziplock bag magnetically clipped
to the side of their desk. Allison Pesch, Coquitlam CANADA

Teacher Tip #3: Keep a "thinking path" for students "with the wiggles". Cut out
feet from old place mats and place on the floor. As long as the student is
pacing or moving within / along the path, it is okay!
Karen Pontti, Cattaraugus - Little Valley, NY.

Send your favorite teaching tip to me at Kathie@brains.org
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SECTION TWO: Hot Topics
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HOT TOPIC #1: Preschool teachers of at-risk children can have a very positive
effect on language and the literacy skills. Researchers at Johns Hopkins and
the University of Michigan taught language and literacy intervention strategies
to 10 Head Start teachers. The focus was on vocabulary and conversation
development. At the end of the year, the children in these language and literacy
classrooms scored significantly higher on tests for Vocabulary and expressive
language. Wasik, B. et al (2006). Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 98(1), 63-74.

HOT TOPIC #2: The size of one's working memory can often be frustrating for
adults and cause learning problems in children. Long considered one of the
things we cannot change, short term, or working memory can generally hold
7 bits, or 4 items of information. A more narrow component of working memory
is focal attention which can only hold one item at a time. Problems in both
working memory and focal attention are blamed for ADHD problems in children.
New research is showing that some of the tests used to measure focal
attention can sometimes be used as practice activities for persons with
ADHD and that these activities can improved those individuals' ability to focus.
Dingfelder, S. (2005). Monitor on Psychology, Vol. 36(8), 48 - 50.

More Hot Topics at the websites!

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SECTION THREE:
Website updates
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***NEW at the Help4Teachers.com****:

NEW LAYERED CURRICULUM UNITS
~~ Business Commerce (10th grade) sent by Sue Taylor, Horsham College, Victoria, Australia
~~ Cinco de Mayo - REVISED unit sent in by Jennifer Hasseld of Elmwood Park, IL.
You can view these and all our LC sample units at:
http://help4teachers.com/samples.htm

NEW DISCUSSION FORUM: Many of you will be glad to know our
discussion forum is back up!!! Due to spammer "web bots" who had
discovered our old forum, we had to shut it down for awhile. Our technology
folks re-launched it today with a new login window. Anyone can login
with the ID and password given to you at:
http://help4teachers.com/forum.htm

Layered Curriculum text, workbook and video training materials
can be found at: http://help4teachers.com/books.htm

More and more colleges and universities are finding that the
Layered Curriculum text makes an excellent main or supplemental
text for undergraduate and graduate secondary ed methods courses.
Recent adopters: UCLA, Ohio State, & the University of Nebraska.
Just have your college bookstores fax their PO to the shop. (208-979-0678)


***NEW at the Brains.org SHOP: ***
SPRING SALE: We've got a special on several titles at the shop:
http://brains.org/store/index.htm

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SECTION FOUR: Kathie's Email
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Kathie, I am a non traditional student who has had one career and is
now working on a Master's degree in teaching. I want to pass along some
of the love I have for Science and enjoy high school students' unencumbered
ways of looking at things. I absolutely love the idea of your Layered Curriculum
and used it for a recent class in which I was required to develop a lesson
plan in my area (high school science-Biology.) While I understand the "A", "B"
and "C" layers and associating a certain number of points in order to achieve
that grade level, I have an important question. If a particular assignment in
any particular layer has a set amount of points how do you make certain that
the assignment is of quality rather than just barely meeting the guidelines of the
assignment? Scarlett W.

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Hello Scarlett,
Thanks for your note. Remember that ALL assignments have grading rubrics (a
descriptive grading criteria) so that you and the students are clear on standards,
expectations and how points are awarded. Obviously not all assignments are awarded
full points. That's the accountability piece. You will find several chapters dedicated
to this in both the text and workbook. There are also sample grading rubrics at the
website. Have fun with it and best of luck in your studies. -Kathie

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Kathie, I'd like to tell you how much I enjoyed the two day conference at Salamanca, NY
this week. I'm having difficulties with my special education students when it comes to test
taking. They do great with the oral defenses, but can't seem to transfer the information
when it comes to a written test. Do you have any ideas or thoughts on why this is happening?
Thanks, Lissa M
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Lissa, You've hit upon one of the great challenges with special ed populations - getting
them to generalize to other situations, or to be able to recognize ideas in another format.
You might try doing the oral defense, then having something written that looks very close
to what you just asked in oral defense, and help them get it written down too immediately
after the oral defense. They need to connect the written to the informal auditory discussions.
It can be challenging, but it also can be done (or at least improved! ) Never give up. -Kathie

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SECTION FIVE: Workshops/calendar schedule/misc
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Greetings from a very wet and flooded New Hampshire! If you've seen the
news you know that we're literally underwater up here in New England today.
The ducks are very happy with it, but the rest of us are finding it a bit
inconvenient. A couple of people in a canoe paddled past my front door
earlier this morning. I must say it was almost a pleasant change from the
trucks who generally pass by my front door in the morning!
We are managing to stay dry and our shop remains open, but if anyone
wants to send a little sunshine our way, we won't complain.

I enjoyed some absolutely wonderful weather earlier this month in western
New York with the teachers in the Cattauragus - Allegany BOCES as we
spent 2 days working on Layered Curriculum units. These teachers were
very generous with teaching tips too so we'll all be enjoying those in the
coming issues of this newsletter.

Next week I'll be visiting administrators in Joliet, Illinois and some elementary
teachers in Las Vegas, Nevada (where I'm sure I'll see some sunshine). New
workshops are always in the making, and I update my calendar whenever details
come available.

Again, I wish everyone well as we start closing out another school year. A bitter-
sweet time for students and teachers, yet also one of the many fringe benefits
of our profession.

As always, my best to you and yours,

Kathie
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- posted by Kathie @ 12:06 PM