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I often find myself being squeezed so tight I used to think that the child wanted to squish the lead out of me. As time went on, though, I realized that the child was in fact concentrating so hard on making me move in just the right ways. It makes me wish I could help a little, just to provide a bit of relief from the stress that the child feels.

When the teacher responds with comforting words and help, the pressure often lessens some, but all too often the well-meaning words don’t provide the help necessary and my point cracks from the pressure.

Another common experience I have is the inevitable tapping from a bored student. Thankfully, the tapping is usually on my eraser side, so I don’t generally lose my point over it, but sometimes it is on my point and I find myself making tiny dots all over a paper, book or the desk. If only the lesson were more interesting…

Speaking of making dots, teachers, please check the pictures that some of the students are drawing! My goodness, some of the things I find myself making are amazing! The talent that these kids have, and inevitably the reward the kid gets is a chastisement for not paying attention. It’s too bad you can’t find a way to use that drawing talent to enhance the lessons somehow.

While I am thinking about it, I wanted to say a quick thanks to those teachers who monitor the pencil sharpener – I hate it when I am wasted by being sharpened down to a tiny nub, and the poor fingers that try to hold me as a tiny nub, oh my.

Well, thank you for taking the time to read this, I will see you soon!

-The Pencil

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I, along with many other educational professionals have preached the importance of meeting students where they are so they learn best – display information, give auditory information and allow students the chance to manipulate objects, so that all three learning styles will be addressed and all students will have the best chance at learning the information. Likewise, I have been a huge proponent of home schooling because the parent can focus instruction in whatever way is best for their child’s learning style.

A group of men have come together to review the literature on learning styles and have determined two things:

First, most studies done on learning styles do not follow a randomized trial methodology and are thus not valid.

Second, those that are valid reveal contradictory results, meaning that studies that support the idea of learning styles are not able to be repeated, thus negating the theory.

An Idea Better than Learning Styles: Research Based Teaching

An NPR report on the issue provides a better idea – follow research based ideas for teaching:

Psychologist Dan Willingham says that studies show that “mixing things up” will help to boost attention and the closer students pay attention, the better they will learn. Additionally, studies show that the human brain retains information better when learned over months as opposed to cramming information into a short period of days or even weeks.

One benefit of mixing things up is this will also help maintain classroom management. The idea of spreading things out over months instead of weeks flies in the face of the modern education system, though. Teachers often complain about the lack of time available to teach any one concept. A commonly agreed upon statement is that teachers have the time to introduce concepts, and the bright students will master these concepts, but there is no time to extend the concepts into the abstract for mastery for all students.

Changes Needed in Curricula and Teaching Methods

I would be willing to bet that this concept of spreading learning out supports the spiral curriculum method, where students are able to return to the same concepts over and over as they learn. That said, I would think that the traditional “grade level” curriculum, specifically for math skills, needs to be revamped in order to avoid teaching skills in isolation. This is something that Shiller Math does a great job of.

It’s time to stop spending what precious few dollars we have in the schools on in-service training that focuses on learning styles and instead focus on how students are similar. Really, the idea is intriguing – do students learn best differently or the same? I would bet that the assembly line method of grouping students together by age might be less an issue than it is a precursor – we grouped students by a similarity and then tried to separate them after the fact by learning style. How does that make sense?

Maybe we need to find more ways that students are similar instead of spending so much time focusing on differences. One similarity I can think of off of the top of my head is the fact that ALL students, without exception, will learn better when interested and excited about learning. Maybe that is a better place to start lesson planning!

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Check out what you can get for a Dollar at Scholastic for the rest of May! Dollar Deals

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The most important part of the celebration of Pi Day is eating pie! Each year on Pi day, people come to the Sa Francisco Exploratorium to eat pie, sing Pi songs and string a bead strung on the Pi string, which has 1600 beads and counting.

To find the value of Pi, divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter. This number is not able to be expressed as a fraction, and the decimal continues ad infinitum. Historically, the value of Pi is always approximated. The symbol for Pi is a Greek letter that began to be used for Pi in the 1700s.

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In fact, ALL children should have opportunity to participate in sensory integration activities according to Sensory Processing Disorders website.

Here are some activities you can use in your classroom. Upper elementary teachers, try to find creative ways to incorporate these ideas into the more advanced lessons for some added fun for your students!

1. Goopy, messy type sensory activities that include things like playdough. Find some recipes for these here.
2. Gross and fine motor skill activities including jumping, moving about the classroom, carrying things, painting, dot-to-dot and more. Here is a great resource for tons of activity ideas.
3. Sand and water table exploration activities.
4. Auditory integration – utilize nature sounds or classical music to help focus, calm or provide white noise for students.

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So understanding that an environment rich in literature and language is important, but how do you accomplish this? Obviously this will look different in different classrooms, but here are some basic ideas to help those preschool and young elementary classrooms begin to transform into the literacy rich environment that will give their students a step up to reading.

• Label objects in the room (eg. door, books shelf, light switch, chair, desk)
• Have a variety of alphabet games available for children to work with (this can include alphabet letters on a magnetic surface, letter matching games and more)
• Include important signs from the children’s environment into the classroom. (This can be a bulletin board display or incorporated into the classroom and include things like a stop sign, street signs etc.)
• Product labels are another great way to introduce language to students. When using glue, show students the word glue on the bottle, for example.
• Books! Have lots of books available for students to look at, read and share with others. Read to students, have students read to you.
• Dictation. Have students draw pictures and dictate to you a caption for the bottom of the picture. You can also have students dictate short stories that can then be read by the whole class or sent home for parents to read.

Use you imagination and take advantage of the variety of literacy in the world around us.

Read more about creating a literacy rich environment in the preschool classroom.

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So… should we raise school standards? Raises a few questions, doesn’t it?

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Oriental Trading carries witch fingers.

Popsicle sticks with google eyes or other items glued on.

Princess wands.

Themed drink stirrers from the dollar store.

Fake nails on the end of Popsicle sticks.

seasonal unshaprened pencils.

Finger puppets.

Ruler or 3×5 card on top of the line the child is reading. (not under the line as this prevents the child’s eyes from learning to look ahead.)

My favorite idea is the last one – this helps children keep their place and yet allows them to learn to keep looking ahead. You can also teach them to look ahead and improve fluency by moving the 3×5 card along the same line they are reading, as they read it. This causes the eyes to jump ahead quicker to stay ahead of the card, but is not appropriate for all students.

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