300: Boys and Ancient History

Last week marked the long awaited (at least at my house) release of the DVD version of 300, the Frank-Miller-based epic about the Greek stand against the Persians at Thermopylae. This is one I previewed before deciding whether Wolfie and Xavier could see it (see my previous post about Movie Mom) because the other Frank-Miller-based movie I saw Sin City gave me nightmares. One look at the naked, writhing and historically inaccurate "Delphic oracle" was enough to make them wait for the DVD. (We just skip the naughty bits.)

Why am I telling you this? Two reasons: first, because the release of 300 on DVD seemed to be kind of underplayed and second, because I think there is some value to using this noninteractive video game to hook middle school boys on ancient history. Victor David Hanson writes in History and the Movie "300":

"Recently, a variety of Hollywood films — from Troy to Alexander the Great — has treated a variety of themes from classical Greek literature and theater. But 300 is unique, a sui generis in both spirit and methodology. The script is not an attempt in typical Hollywood fashion to recreate the past as a costume drama. Instead it is based on Frank Miller’s (of Sin City fame) comic book graphics and captions. Miller’s illustrated novelette of the battle adapts themes loosely from the well-known story of the Greek defense, but with deference made to the tastes of contemporary popular culture.

So the film is indeed inspired by the comic book; and in some sense its muscular warriors, virtual reality sets, and computer-generated landscapes recall the look and feel of Robert Rodriquez’s screen version of Sin City. Yet the collaboration of Director Zack Snyder and screenwriters Kurt Johnstad and Michael Gordon is much more of a hybrid, since the script, dialogue, cinematography, and acting all recall scenes of the battle right from Herodotus’s account."

These swords-and-sandals epics can be useful to bring middle and high school boys into the world of history. The History Channel often has "the real story" documentaries that air about the time the movie debuts, like "The Last Stand of the 300", which will be on again on August 12. There is also a critical analysis component if you read and watch various accounts of these ancient battles. History is a slippery thing, often written by the victors to show a particular point of view, resurrected in times of crisis to reflect ourselves. (In Iraq, are we the Spartans or the Persians?) History and historical epics allow us to identify and wrestle with these ideas.

Just When You Think Your Gifted Child Might Not Be So Gifted

The new list of Davidson Fellows is published. Damn. My kids haven't used traditional Indian medicine to clear Pseudomonas infections or performed at Carnegie Hall or nuthin'. These kids are making the rest of us look bad!

As Xavier would say, "Jealous much?"

Seriously, though. Congratulations to all of the 2007 Davidson Fellows. Your accomplishments take my breath away.

Facts on Fiction

Picking books for young gifted kids can be difficult. Just because a child can read at a high school level doesn't mean he or she is ready for "edgy" young adult books. So gifted parents have to either read everything before giving it to their children (Ha! Try keeping up with them!), or trust someone else--the librarian, the Caldecott committee or some other book reviewer--to determine what is or is not too frightening for your child.

Movie review sites like Movie Mom.com break down questionable movies by counting profanities, incidents of violence (cartoonish or otherwise), nudity/sex, use of alcohol or drugs. When my kids were in 4th and 5th grade and wanted to go to a PG-13 movie, I used Movie Mom frequently to make those decisions. Books did not have a similar resource until now.

Facts on Fiction is a nonprofit book review database that does for chapter books what Movie Mom does for movies. Take Dickens' A Christmas Carol, for instance. If you click here you can find FoF's evaluation of the mature subject matter in the story.

What I like best is that if you click Click Here for More Details at the bottom of the screen, it shows you exactly what the reviewer considered a reference to death, with page number and citation. That's true transparency. This is not an attempt at censorship. It's really a way for parents to search by title or reading level and then honestly evaluate if that reference to "suicide" is going to be too much for Junior or if it's just Tom Sawyer pretending he drowned so Aunt Polly won't punish him.

Fruit Flies Like a Banana

The summer is two-thirds over already. (As Groucho Marx once observed, "Times flies like an arrow, fruit flies..." Well, I already gave that one away in the title, didn't I?) And it's about this time that a young teacher's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of school. Except for those unschoolers and year-round schoolers out there, in which case, Carry on!

But I wanted to offer some support for the public school refugees, myself included, who may be wondering if they did the right thing pulling their child out of school because all he did was lay on the couch and whine. Surely things would be better if they went to school at least part of the day so someone else had to listen to the whining? Take heart, my friends. You are still on the right path.

Here's the thing: there is a concept called "deschooling". Generally it means that you need to get the schoolish thinking out of your head before you can relearn how to learn or how to teach or how to behave. The rule of thumb is that it takes one month for every year of public school to learn the difference between school and learning.

It's kind of like your kids are public school junkies. Deschooling is the withdrawal period and like drug withdrawal it can be painful for the junkie and painful to watch. Your kids lie around and whine because they are used to someone telling them what to do, what to learn and how to behave. Without that constant supervision, they don't know what to do with themselves. You can see this over summer vacation, sometimes, too. Along about August there is much whining about how bored they are. They can't think of anything to do because they're used to being told what to do, but they don't want to do anything you suggest because they resent being told what to do.

So what to do? Plug your ears with cotton balls and wait them out. Seriously. Support any reasonable request for an activity (boy, have I been playing a lot of board games lately!). Do an art or craft project by yourself in full view. Read in full view. Not "Oh hey, look what I'm doing!" manipulative, but because you genuinely want to learn something. The kids will come around.

An example: we signed up for 4H last winter as a way to get out the house, do some service learning and other enrichment kinds of things. The boys refused to sign up for any project other than archery and they refused to participate in the county fair. I thought the prize money might entice Xavier, but he was adamant. So, they didn't submit anything for the fair. Wolfie took part in the dog project training but didn't take Jack the Wonder Dog to the dog show.

I didn't push them to do anything and at this point, Wolfie is really digging on the 4H thing. He's got a number of projects he is thinking about taking next year. And this is the boy who told me last fall that "project" was a four-letter word. Coincidentally, this change in thinking happened about seven months after we started homeschooling. So even though we didn't technically deschool, he still came around. Xavier's still somewhat truculent, but then again, he's a twelve-year-old boy.

So unless your whiny student is twelve, have faith that your homeschooling decision is still the right one and your student will come around (even the 12-year-olds eventually get older). If you're getting a lot of resistance, just lay back and deschool completely for awhile. Whatever you do, don't let the kid con you into creating school at home. Homeschooling is better because it's different than school, remember? So put away the school bell and the ruler and pull out the Mentos and Diet Coke!

Just Where Are Those Wild Things?

There's an interesting essay at Education World called One Teacher's Pitch to Be Emperor of Education. Chemistry teacher Dr. Richard Chempleau's "first two imperial acts would be to fire one-third of American teachers and then to give every parent a one-question quiz."

"Next, every parent of a 2-year old would have a one-question quiz, and they'd all have to take it at the same instant. I know too much about cheating, of course. The question would be "One Fish, Two Fish"? Any parent who didn't write "Red Fish, Blue Fish" would be required to sign a Universal Release of Liability and Parental Promise Not to Whine Statement. Parents who can't spout Dr. Seuss or Mother Goose, but who can name ten movie stars, professional sports players, or rock idols, are ruining their child's future.

They can't give their children the first four years of life in an impoverished educational environment, then expect the schools to fix all of their mistakes. A parent is the first and most important teacher their children will ever know, but most parents never spend that magical time with their child on the sofa. The TV should be off, the book is open, and their child is captured for life by the rhythm of a nursery rhyme. Four years watching reruns or ball games hardwires the future student to expect entertainment, not education, from 12 years of school."

Read to your kids, folks. From the day you bring them home from the hospital to the day they ask you to stop. It doesn't matter if you think they're too young to understand the words. You're building a bond between you that will last a lifetime and starting their education out on the right foot, too.

Chess Programs for Kids

From the Educational Options newsletter:

"Online chess academy for kids:
We have noticed locally there is quite a bit of interest in chess, with clubs, open game nights at bookstores, summer camps and tournaments. Now we have recently found an interesting website, chessKIDS Academy. Webmaster Richard James, of the United Kingdom, has written and co-written several books and magazine columns about the subject, and he has taught children how to play chess since the 1970s.

This website is packed with free online interactive lessons, quizzes and games for kids, computers to play against, and more."

Other options are online: FICS The Free Internet Chess Server and ChessBase
Software: Fritz and Chesster CD

It's Official!

Klaus admitted today that he does want to go to Simon's Rock, so we've sent in his deposit and begun the process of figuring out how we're going to pay for this, cancelling fall classes we'd already signed him up for, scheduling a physical, etc. etc. etc. before August 17th.

Getting college plans finalized in April is much easier than July. Of course, Klaus has a history of drastically changing his schooling plans at the last minute, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I rather feel like we've not only changed horses midstream but changed from a horse to a horseless carriage. Let's hope the engine isn't flooded!

Going Away to College

The Universe is trying to tell me something. The same day Klaus got the acceptance to Simon's Rock, the London Guardian ran this story about the disadvantages of living at home during college:

""Young people who live at home with their parents are less likely to undertake optional work placements as part of their degree, less likely to undertake graduate level jobs on graduation, less likely to socialise with their fellow students because they remain in their pre-university social groups, and more likely to feel isolated from their peer group at university," says ERS director Sarah Parkinson."

You can read all the details here. I have to say, it makes sense to me. When I went to Northwestern and lived in the dorms, I made lots of friends, many of whom I'm still in contact with. When I transferred to Michigan and lived off-campus with my fiancee-then-husband, my social ties and university ties became much weaker.

Klaus Has Been Accepted to College!

We found out two days ago that Klaus has been accepted to Simon's Rock College of Bard. Yay Klaus! This acceptance has been a long time coming. He applied in January for their merit scholarship but wasn't eligible because his grades tanked the previous semester, so we rolled over to the regular admissions process. Apparently they were waiting to see his second semester grades. (We're still working on finishing up second semester.)

It turns out that, even though college starts one month from now (ACK!), the timing of the acceptance couldn't have been better. Klaus just got back from three weeks of "college lite" at CTD-Northwestern University, where he took an honors course on Public Speaking and Debate, lived in the dorm, dealt with the roommate from hell, did his own laundry and tasted a little freedom. Surrounded by intellectual peers, he says he "learned how to teach myself," which is fabulous. From what I can tell, Simon's Rock would be a step up from CTD--similar atmosphere but juggling several classes instead of just one.

So, whereas we would have said, "Thanks, but no thanks" to Simon's Rock in April or May, this week, Klaus is actually considering it and seems to be leaning towards going. DH and I are trying not to let our "losing our little boy" feelings influence him to stay home for our sake. Simon's Rock is a thousand miles away, but it's such a great opportunity for him. I hope he decides to go.

Homeschool Co-op Online

Get free and discounted curriculum from the Homeschool Buyers Co-op. Membership is free. Current group buys include CyberEd Plato Science interactive software, which I'm considering for Klaus and Wolfie to use with Chemistry this year. These programs are usually unavailable to individual homeschoolers. The Co-op has offered to sponsor the program for their members. They have links to other deals for homeschoolers and free curriculum as well. Check it out!

Elitism and the Struggling Student

The heterogeneous classroom has been all the rage for the last 10+ years. Mixing children of all abilities into a single class allows social and intellectual benefits, proponents say. Struggling students see those of greater ability as role models and mentors. Gifted children learn to deal with and value those whose abilities don't match theirs. Utopia in the classroom!

Bah! I say. And anyone who has been in a heterogeneous classroom would say the same. Think about it. Remember that one smart kid who always had his hand up before the teacher even finished asking the question? Was he a role model? No, he was Teacher's Pet. Was he a mentor, someone you would turn to if you needed help with homework? Maybe, if it was a group project and he was likely to do the whole thing himself. Otherwise, he was a geek/nerd/egghead, read "outcast."

What about intellectually? We got one kid waving his arm like Arnold Horshack and the teacher repeatedly calls on other kids, sometimes even telling him to "put his arm down and give the other kids a chance." Well, if the teacher says to stop paying attention to the lesson, what's a kid going to do? That's one student out of play. Most teachers in heterogeneous classrooms pitch their lessons slightly below the middle level of ability in her classroom. That means it's too difficult or fast-paced for the kids who are really struggling and too easy for at least half her students. In a classroom of 28, that's nearly 20 students tuned out. This can't be good.

So common sense (and the research) shows that heterogeneous classrooms do not accomplish these grand utopian goals we have for them. Smaller classes, critics say. Yes, smaller classes will lessen the overall numbers of kids who are disengaged. But smaller classes means more teachers and more space needed, therefore more money. Differentiation, critics say. Yes, combined with smaller classes, differentiated curriculum can help keep more students learning. But it requires more teacher-training to effectively implement differentiation, not to mention more money for more teachers and classrooms because no teacher can effectivly differentiate the curriculum for 28 individual students.

There is a less expensive option that can be implemented across the country as soon as next August: ability grouping. Ability grouping is decried as "elitest" when parents and gifted advocates talk about it, but in fact, it works for kids of all abilities. Says 8th-grade math teacher Sam Jow in the Houston Chronicle, "Struggling students are often overshadowed by their more accomplished classmates during the regular school year, he said, but in the summer they are grouped with those of similar ability.

"It's a time they can shine," he said."

Shouldn't all students have that opportunity to shine, all year round?

Mallard Fillmore on Homeschooling

Check out these comic strips, courtesy of the Jewish World Review.

Stanford's Online High School, the First Year

There is a nice, long article in the LA Times about the OHS, Stanford's new ultra-rigorous online high school based on the high school classes they offer through EPGY. You can see the complete course schedule here.

We talked about enrolling Klaus in OHS last year but decided it would be better to invest the $12K tuition for college. Klaus' interest have skewed toward the soft sciences lately (anthropology, psychology) so that was probably the right idea for him. But from the article it sounds like OHS is an excellent program for the primarily math/science inclined.

Drive Defensively!

It's official--Klaus has his driver's license. He's had his temps for more than a year but with the huge mess with school last fall, didn't really start practicing driving until this spring. Although he tells me that 60% of teens fail their first driving test, he passed first time with only two mistakes.

In the last 48 hours, I think he's driven down to the movie store (a whole mile away) 4-5 times on various pretexts. Wolfie and Xavier love it, though, because if they want a snack or a trip to Dairy Queen, Klaus is more than happy to take them, where Mom and Dad would not.

So congratulations to Klaus!! We're very proud of you!

Punished by Curriculum That's Too Broad?

I just read this 1987 Boston Globe article by Alfie Kohn. Professor Kohn is the author of Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes in which he argues that all the praising and rewarding we do as parents and teachers in hopes of positive behavior modification is actually making kids' behavior worse, instead of better.

This Boston Globe article is twenty years old, but parts of it are ringing recognition bells for me. For example, Kohn writes:

"A related series of studies shows that intrinsic interest in a task — the sense that something is worth doing for its own sake — typically declines when someone is rewarded for doing it."

This directly relates to the problem we've had with "turning everything into school." Our virtual school is very forgiving and just about everything we do can be written up and submitted for credit. Great, right? Nope. The more I suggest applying for credit for things the boys are already doing, the more I get sour looks and dragging feet.

Most recently DH has insisted the boys clean their rooms thoroughly before summer starts, including sorting through old books left on bookshelves. Coincidentally, I found a story in the local newspaper about a couple in town who is collecting kids' books to send to English language learners in Congo. "Great!" I thought. "We can clean our bookshelves and do serving learning at the same time." Thinking this would make the onerous cleaning task worthwhile, I broke the good news to the boys. Xavier slumped like I had dropped the weight of the world on his shoulders. And he has stopped room-cleaning altogether.

Ditto Wolfie writing book reports on the books he's been reading this year. He's reading Don Quixote for fun, dangit. Thinking about it in terms of school would ruin it. And heaven forbid we refer to anything as a "project." "Project" = school = all the fun has been sucked right out of it. As Kohn says, "If a reward — money, awards, praise, or winning a contest — comes to be seen as the reason one is engaging in an activity, that activity will be viewed as less enjoyable in its own right." No wonder Xavier refused to participate in the Handwriting Contest as part of his art class!

I fear they may have gotten their contrariness from me. Kohn notes: "The key, then, lies in how a reward is experienced. If we come to view ourselves as working to get something, we will no longer find that activity worth doing in its own right." This plays right into whether or not I'm sticking to my diet. If I'm trying to "be good" because it's just time, I have no problems. If it's for any other reason--I'm trying to keep up with DH or impress the Class of '84 or change myself to fit my clothes--the cravings are unbearable and my general mood is crabby and deprived.

When my sister was 8, she told a school psychologist that she was "so stubborn even I can't make myself do things." I guess it runs in the family, huh? At least, now that I know what the issue is. No more turning things into school for me.

Gifted Education Articles at BellaOnline

A woman I know from the Bright Kids list (sign up through the link at the right) has become the new gifted education editor at BellaOnline, an online community for women (it looks similar to iVillage). Check our her articles here, in particular the one on finding a mentor for your gifted child. They also have a number of homeschooling links.

Free Gifted Education Quarterly

I just received the following email from Maurice Fisher at Gifted Education Press:

"We are offering a complimentary copy of Gifted Education Press Quarterly Online. They would need to email me directly to receive our Twentieth Anniversary SUMMER 2007 Online issue. My email address is: gifted@giftededpress.com"

GEPQ skews toward the scholarly with research results and the like, but I've found it very interesting from a parents' point-of-view. It's delivered to your email box every quarter in pdf format, so it's easy to scroll through and just print out the article of particular interest to you. Take advantage of this great offer!

Party Like It's A.D. 79!

Once again, Pompeii brings ancient Roman life to life. I found this 2005 article on Pompeii on LiveScience: "Researchers have tried to bring back to life the city's food chain by replanting, in the restaurant's garden and in other open spaces throughout the city's ruins, the fruits and vegetables that were part of the Roman diet -- figs and olives, plums and grapes, as well as broom, bramble, poppy and mallow."

The really groovy part? They have recipes for a peach and cumin appetizer/dessert, roasted celery dessert (?!), and a sort of Roman Pork Wellington with ricotta side dish. Yum yum! Perfect for unit studies on the Romans or anyone else who is gastronomically adventurous. Buon Appetito!

Then It Rained on Our Parade

Promoting 4-H is part of each individual clubmember's obligation to the club, and each club's obligation to the national organization. As part of fulfulling this obligation, our club decided we would build a float for the Memorial Day parade here in town--throw some candy, pass out some flyers, advertise Kid's Day at the county fair. We decided on the theme: "4-H: It's Not Just for Farmers Anymore," decorated the float with some of the different projects members can do, and each of the kid's dressed up to represent one of their projects. Xavier wore his Dracula costume from the Drama Fest. Wolfie's been participating in the Dog project, so he brought the dog. We had woodworkers, bug hunters, photographers, a chef and one boy dressed up as a beekeeper.

The Memorial day parade was a smashing success so we decided we'd do a second parade today in a nearby small town. Despite the town's size, this parade was a big deal. I've never seen so many beauty queens in my life--at least, not in person. The Shriners were there, of course, and the local high school band, plus local businesses, Brownies, the fire department, all the things that make a small town parade perfect.

You may have guessed from the title what happened next. The parade started at 1:30, so did the rain. The dark clouds on the horizon moved away from us, but the lighter the sky got, the more it rained. We sheltered under a tent until it was our turn to go (we were towards the end) but were still soaked before we even got onto the parade route. Most of the beauty queens sat in their convertibles and waved through the rain, just like they were supposed to, although I'm pretty sure the Cranberry Queen just left. Lots of the spectators were leaving, too.

And 4-H? The show must go on! We rode through the storm while the paper letters on the float crumpled and tore, threw candy in the rain-swollen gutters, waved (goodbye) to the spectators and came up with a bunch of new slogans:
"Join 4-H: I've never been so wet!"
"I think my toes are pruning: Join 4-H!"
"You should see how much fun we have when we're dry!"
"Thank you for sticking around!"

And the kicker? You already know: by the time we had walked the mile and a half back to our car, the rain had stopped. Next time we build a float with a roof!

Hoist the Colours, Me Hearties!

We're flying the Jolly Roger today because Pirates of the Caribbean opens tonight. Granted the second installment, Dead Man's Chest, was a disappointment, but Pirates 3: At World's End is just as epic and just as witty at the first one. Just what you need to tide you over until National Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19).

5000 Darwin letters go online!

From their press release:
"Welcome to the Darwin Correspondence Project’s new web site. The main feature of the site is an Online Database with the complete, searchable, texts of around 5,000 letters written by and to Charles Darwin up to the year 1865. This includes all the surviving letters from the Beagle voyage - online for the first time - and all the letters from the years around the publication of Origin of species in 1859.

The letter texts, and the contextual notes which help make them accessible, are taken from the first thirteen volumes of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Burkhardt et al., Cambridge University Press 1985-). Letters from later volumes will be added on a rolling programme following behind publication of the print edition. Volumes 14 (1866) and 15 (1867) are already published and Volume 16 will be published in 2008.

The database also includes summaries of a further 9,000 letters still to be published. There will be 30 volumes of the print edition in total. Previously unknown letters continue to come to light.

Darwin’s letters are a rich source of information on many aspects of 19th century science and history; they are also very readable, and we hope they will be used and enjoyed by a wide audience."

Find out more about the letters and Darwin's correspondents here.

Parent Survey on Acceleration from the Belin-Blank Center

"A Survey of the Prevalence and Practices of Acceleration in Schools

Conducted by the Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration (IRPA)
Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development
The University of Iowa

We invite you to participate in a research study being conducted by investigators from the University of Iowa.
In 2004, The John Templeton Foundation sponsored a report titled A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students. This report highlighted the disparity between the research on acceleration and educational beliefs and practices that often run contrary to the research.

An outcome of the report A Nation Deceived was the establishment of the Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration (IRPA) at the University of Iowa’s Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education. The purpose of IRPA is to provide educators, parents, and the general public with current information on the many aspects of acceleration. In addition, IRPA conducts research studies on acceleration and provides consultation on policy issues for schools.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the prevalence of acceleration in our nation’s schools and to gather information on the attitudes of parents, policy makers, and educators toward acceleration as a curriculum intervention for gifted students."

The study takes about five minutes. To participate, click here.

Summer Scholarship Opportunity, due June 1

Board of Trustees Scholarships Fund from the National Society for the Gifted and Talented

Program Year 2007

2 Scholarships totaling $1100 ($550 each)


NSGT scholarships are awarded to NSGT members to support their academic, intellectual, and cognitive development. Funds can be used to help pay tuition for various academic programs, such as after-school, weekend, summer, and distance learning. Funds can also be used to support independent projects, paying for equipment, supplies, and mentors. The funds may be used for up to one year.

Students need to complete the one-page application. Call 800-572-6748 to request a form. In addition, students need to submit a detailed description (one page) of how they propose to use the funding. This description should include:

The purpose of the program or project
A description of the program or project
The expected outcome
How the program or project will be evaluated
What resources will be used
A budget

Beside the description, applicants need to submit one letter of recommendation from a teacher or administrator. If the project includes a mentor, that person must also submit a letter of support and agreement to participate in the project.

Students may submit additional materials to support their application, such as school projects or papers, listings of honors or awards won, or any other evidence of their academic creativity and success.

A team of educators in the field of gifted education will review the applications and choose the scholarship winners.

Deadline for applications is June 1st, 2007.

Winners will be notified by June 20th, 2007.

Intelligent Life in the Classroom

A review from Teacher Magazine written by David Lee Carlson:

Intelligent Life in the Classroom: Smart Kids & Their Teachers
by Karen Isaacson and Tamara Fisher
(Great Potential, 213 pages, $16.95)

"As schools scramble to meet the standards associated with No Child Left Behind, it’s good to know there are still individuals who take the time to appreciate the qualities of accomplished students. The authors of Intelligent Life use anecdotes of their own and others’ interactions with gifted children to illustrate these characteristics.

The stories in the book give clear examples of each gifted-child trait. As the pair points out, a student may be intense, creative, and curious in one subject or on one assignment, but not another. Gifted children are not “better” than other students, but they learn differently, (“faster,” according to the authors), and they “like to learn more about things.” They’re caring, curious, intense, persistent, and sensitive, to name a few characteristics—sometimes in ways that can both please and annoy teachers. ..."

Size Does Matter

Many people are contemplating early kindergarten entrance for their gifted and/or late-birthday children. Conventional wisdom seems to be that leaving these kids back a year has no down-side. "Give them another year to just be a kid!" they say. "Boys mature socially/emotionally more slowly than girls, anyway. If he can't sit still, they'll give him Ritalin!" "He'll be bigger and stronger than all the other children, so they'll look up to him!"

Klaus has an early October birthday, so missed the kindergarten cutoff by a couple weeks. We decided to leave him back a year for all of the above reasons, plus the fact that he was in a good preschool situation that would grow with him. But there is a downside to red-shirting kindergarteners.

Size does matter. Yes, your son will be bigger and stronger than all the other children. Remember those older, bigger kids when you were in school? Were they the smart ones? Or the ones called "Moose" who may have been left back a year? Being older and bigger isn't a ticket to popularity. For gifted kids who may already have trouble relating to their agemates, being physically as well as intellectually different only compounds the socialization issue.

I Can Read This, So I Thank My Mother

Normally I'm not a big fan of the Dobsons, but Linda Dobson has a great Mother's Day column in this month's Home Education Magazine:
I Can Read This, So I Thank My Mother

An Oldie but a Goodie

Purely by coincidence, both Wolfie and Xavier are studying plants in science at the moment. (Xavier's still whizzing through 7th grade science but he's at least interested enough to try some of the activities--I hesitate to call them "experiments--which is more than I could say about 6th grade science.)

Anyway, yesterday's activity required an emergency trip to the store for celery, so he could put a stalk in colored water to watch it to "demonstrate how water is transported to the leaves," (read: "To watch it change color"). A classic elementary school project, although we always did it with carnations. Celery is cheaper, I suppose. I now have a stalk of celery that is both green and a disgusting shade of purple.

I ordinarily wouldn't consider this blog-worthy, but the boys got all excited about the purple celery and decided to extend the experiment. We now have three carnations--white, yellow and pink--in three vases of water in the front window. They're trying to see if the already colored carnations will take up the color in the water and whether the color will mix, i.e. will the yellow carnation in the blue water turn green or yellow with blue edges? Will the dyed pink carnation take up the blue water and turn purple?

The second and third experiments are with houseplants. Will watering a plant with colored water make variegated leaves or white flowers turn color? We're using a diffenbachia and a Japanese peace lily for this experiment. Xavier is watering the diffenbachia with purple water and Wolfie is watering the lily with pink/red water. This is clearly a longer term experiment and we may end up testing different strengths of color as well (stronger color = more likely to be taken up into the leaves?) Stay tuned...

I'm excited about this mostly because I hope this means we're beginning to revive their love of learning. Maybe "projects" is no longer a dirty word. I'd been disappointed lately because they had zero interest in developing 4H projects to enter in the county fair. Not that they're not participating in 4H and enjoying it, just that they refuse to compete. And in the meantime, we're looking at scholarships and college apps for Klaus and they all want to know "when have you competed?" and "did you win?" One step at a time.

If anyone else tries these experiments at home, let me know how they go? Maybe we can compare results.

UNO Attack - Chemistry Style

I wrote a year ago about Chemistry Trumps, a set of playing cards from England that allowed you to have fun while learning about the periodic table of elements. My only complaint was that there were only 28 cards.

Never fear, American Science and Surplus has found double decks of Elemental Cards. Like Chemistry Trumps, the cards are printed with boiling point, melting point, atomic number, (approximate) atomic weight, series, standard state and abbreviation. Unlike Chemistry Trumps, they are also printed with the standard suits and numbers of regular playing cards. There are two decks, so 104 elements are represented instead of only 28.

What we did this morning was load the element cards into our UNO Attack card shooter. Oh, so much fun! The rules are still evolving, but we've decided cards can be matched by elemental series (transition metal, lanthanide, halogen, noble gas, etc.) or by suit (hearts, spades, clubs or diamonds). Radioactive elements can also be matched to each other. We tried matching by standard state, but there were too many solids.

If chemistry is not your thing, I'd still recommend UNO Attack as the best way to play UNO. :D

Merlin Science: For the Alchemist in You

Thanks to my friend, Gina, for posting this link! Merlin Science offers distance learning classes in Alchemy (Chemistry), Astronomy, and Genetics. The program consists of a hypertextbook (you read it off the screen) with a notes section, question & answer section and an online quiz at the end of each unit. The really cool part is that the textbook covers high school and beginning college level chemistry in dialogue format, so it's much more interesting to read than your average textbook.

I think this is a terrific resource, mostly because it mimics exactly how I teach. ;-) I prefer to tell stories rather than give lectures. DH teaches science by asking probing, open-ended questions. And we teach for mastery--if the boys don't do so well on the text, we teach them again until they've mastered everything. Merlin does all these things. The Q&A questions are open-ended, requiring critical thought, and answers are fully explained. The quiz questions give you instant feedback (correct or incorrect) and explain the questions you've missed. Once you've gotten a perfect score, you get a certificate of completion for that section.

The Merlin curricula are not accredited, so not eligible for high school credit except through homeschooling, or perhaps through the SAT II subject test. Some schools do use the Merlin program to help prepare for AP tests (genetics for AP Bio, for example. I ran it the introductions section by Xavier this morning and he was suitably impressed, so I guess we're not going to run out of science for him to do when he finished 8th grade sci next year, after all. Yay!

It's the Cheesiest!

Got some time on your hands? So does this cheese. The link takes you to Cheddarvision.tv, where you can watch a cheese wheel ripen in real time! Wow!

Okay, even in America's Dairyland, we don't think this is very exciting. It is an interesting example of guerilla/internet marketing, however. Click on "the red button" and you're taken to an "About us" screen about the cheesemakers and how to buy their products. According to the New York Times (registration required), they've had 900,000 hits so far (presumably more since the NYT article came out). Also check out the time-lapse video on You-Tube, where you can watch the label fall off and be replaced several times.

This cracks me up!

Attn: College-Bound High Schoolers!

According to EdWeek.org, "a study released today highlights the gap between what high schools are teaching in the college-preparatory courses and what colleges want incoming students to know." The survey, by ACT, Inc. (the testing people) "found that college professors generally want incoming students to have a deeper understanding of a selected number of topics and skills, while high school teachers in all content areas tend to rate a far broader array of content and skills as 'important' or 'very important.'"

Specifically, "In writing, postsecondary instructors tended to value the basic mechanics of writing (such as sentence structure and punctuation) more highly than high school teachers did. High school English teachers rated topic and idea development as the most important set of skills.

In mathematics, postsecondary instructors rated being able to understand and rigorously apply fundamental skills and processes as more important than exposure to more advanced math topics. High school math teachers tended to view the latter as important. Postsecondary instructors also placed far more emphasis on being able to understand new material by reading a textbook.

In reading, the survey found a general lack of reading courses in high school and a decline in the teaching of targeted reading strategies after the 9th grade. In contrast, college instructors of remedial courses rated such strategies as very important and reported devoting a large percentage of time to teaching them.

In science, high school teachers consistently rated content as more important to student success than science process or inquiry skills, in direct contrast to both middle school and postsecondary science teachers."

What does this mean for homeschoolers? I believe it gives us an edge over public school students in that we can more easily tailor our kids' education to what the colleges want, without having to overcome institutional bias.

Curriculum notes to myself:

Make sure the boys can write a grammatical sentence, create an outline with a strong thesis and write a persuasive essay following that outline, preferably in less than an hour. (Yes, I know that is a run-on sentence. ;-)

Make sure they can read and understand challenging literature.

Focus on fundamental math skills, no matter how much Wolfie complains. (Learning on their own from a textbook is pretty much standard procedure, isn't it?)

Continue to skip the make-work labs and "activities" in the science texts in favor of cramming more information into their little brains. Only do experiments when we genuinely don't know the results.

The Latest Horrible Book Order

"If you're in for some more Horrible Books from the UK, I'll be doing another Horrible Books Order on 4/29/07.

Enjoy your Horrible Day!

Horrible Ray



New Horrible Titles

Murderous Maths : Codes : How to Make Them and Break Them (2007 New Book)
Horrible Geography : Freaky Peaks & Perishing Poles (2007 New Book)
Horrible Science : Evil Inventions (2007 New Book)
Horrible Science : Fatal Forces & Fight for Flight (2007 New Book)
Horrible Science : Seriously Squishy Science Book (2007 New Book)
Horrible Histories : Barmy British Empire & Blitzed Brits (2007 New Book)
Horrible Histories : Oxford (2007 New Book)
Horrible Histories : Warriors (2007 New Book)
Dead Famous : Pirates and Their Caribbean Capers (2007 New Book)
Terry Deary : Terribly True Detective Stories (2007 New Book)
Terry Deary : Terribly True UFO Stories (2007 New Book)



--
Horrible Books
6574 Edmonton Avenue, San Diego, CA 92122
Tel : 858-202-0235
Fax : 858-202-0265
ray@horriblebooks.com
www.horriblebooks.com

Let's Abolish High School

Interesting commentary in EdWeek questioning the need for high school by Robert Epstein, a former editor in chief of Psychology Today, a contributing editor for Scientific American Mind, a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, and the host of “Psyched!” on Sirius Satellite Radio. His latest book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, was published last week by Quill Driver Books.

He concludes:

"A careful look at these issues yields startling conclusions: The social-emotional turmoil experienced by many young people in the United States is entirely a creation of modern culture. We produce such turmoil by infantilizing our young and isolating them from adults. Modern schooling and restrictions on youth labor are remnants of the Industrial Revolution that are no longer appropriate for today’s world; the exploitative factories are long gone, and we have the ability now to provide mass education on an individual basis.

Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults; to undo the damage we have done, we need to establish competency-based systems that give these young people opportunities and incentives to join the adult world as rapidly as possible."

[EdWeek is having an "open house" until April 15, 2007, so anyone can read this online through that date.]

Thomas G. West Online Conference March 23-25

FYI--The next Gifted Online Conference is taking place this weekend. The guest speaker is Thomas G. West. From the conference announcement:

"Thomas G. West is the author of the award-winning book In the Mind's Eye-- Visual Thinkers, Gifted People with Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity. Now in its 14th printing, the book was awarded a gold seal in 1998 by the Association of College and Research Libraries of the American Library Association as "an outstanding academic title" and, later, in 1999, as one of the "best of the best" for the year (one of only 12 books in their broad psychology and neuroscience category). The book was published in Japanese translation as Geniuses Who Hated School. A Chinese translation was published in 2004. According to one reviewer: "Every once in a while a book comes along that turns one's thinking upside down. In the Mind's Eye is just such a book."

The book covers brain research, computer graphic technologies and profiles of 11 famous people who have shown evidence of great visual and non-visual talents along with dyslexia or other learning difficulties. One of the main arguments of the book is that we need to better understand the great diversity of human brains--including the hidden learning difficulties that often come along with superior talents and capabilities- -as well as the hidden talents that often coexist with various learning problems. The profiles include: Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell. Albert Einstein, Rev. Charles L. Dodgson, Henri Poincaré, Thomas Alva Edison, Nikola Tesla, Leonardo da Vinci, Winston S. Churchill, Gen. George S. Patton and William Butler Yeats. ...

More information can be located here.

Also if you would like to order the book, In The Mind's Eye, before during, or after the conference, if you visit Hoagies and click on the Amazon link you will help support the awesome Hoagies website."

These conferences take place entirely by email. Consider it the busiest e-list you've ever been on (I recommend daily digest). You can sign up for the conferences by visiting http://www.giftedonlineconferences.com/index.html

What Guys Read in the UK

There's a story on the BBC News site today calling for more reading support, particularly for working class boys.

"Boys like books which depict them in powerful roles, often as sporting, spying or fighting heroes - not just Jane Austen, but a necessary dose of Anthony Horowitz as well," [Education Secretary Alan Johnson] said.

"To help get boys reading we need a boys' bookshelf in every secondary school library in the country, containing positive, modern, relevant role models for working class boys."

I'm the first to agree it's very hard to find novels that boys, particularly in the 10+ age-group, will read. But if you put all the exciting books on the "boys only" bookshelf, what happens to the girls who like adventure stories or the Hardy Boys?

Perhaps a better approach than sorting library books by gender, is to make English/reading lessons more accessible for the underwhelmed by changing the way the subject is taught. Enter English teacher Gary Spina, author of The Mountain Man's Field Guide to Grammar. From the New York Times:

"What few of his teachers realized was that Gary was an avid reader before his teens, making his way through the shelf of Jack London in the local library, digging into copies of Robert Louis Stevenson at home. In seventh grade, he picked up Hemingway and began to realize there might be something manly in writing well.

Then, in high school, he applied for a job writing copy at an advertising agency in Hackensack and was rejected because he spelled the word “advertize.” Learning something about correct language and grammar, he realized, might prove useful in his goal of being self-sufficient.

Decades later, Mr. Spina used these insights to write a most unlikely reference book, “The Mountain Man’s Field Guide to Grammar,” which was released last year. In the crowded field of grammar books, his is probably the only one to include “grifter” and “pemmican” in its glossary and to teach the simple sentence with examples such as “Dirty Doris spit tobacco juice.”

Cool, huh? I've been looking for a grammar resource that won't put the boys to sleep. I'm going to check this one out right away!

Cool Little Resource for Visual Teens

I just picked up a copy of The High School Learning System. It's an interesting package--multimedia presentations on English (with ebook texts), history (US and World), math (pre-algebra through calculus) and science (mostly biology) with Q&A and quizzes assess learning (if you want to do that). The presentation on the French Revolution lasted about 20 minutes of narration with period background music and pictures. They included a good amount of detail, covered the various governments between 1789 and 1799 and offered a 101 question online "quiz" (sounds like a test to me!) at the end.

I was less impressed with the math section. I noticed on their website that they have a stand-alone math learning system product, so that may be why this section is less comprehensive.

I have the 2006 version, which I bought on ebay for $13 (2 DVDs and 1 Spanish-English online dictionary). The 2007 version costs $40 and includes:

"• All core subjects covered
• 86 integrated educational titles
• 54 hours of multimedia presentations & video
• 37 hours of audio books
• 101 Barron’s Book Notes
• Printable tests to monitor progress
• PLUS new educational material for your iPodTM"

I think this would be a great resource for younger gifted kids working at a high school level, for homeschooling teens and/or as a review for regular high school classes.

Wikipedia: Bane or Boon?

Let me first say that we use Wikipedia extensively at our house. "Let's ask Wiki" is a common answer to my boys' uncommon questions. It's not the only source we use, but it's a lot cheaper and more interactive than the Encyclopedia Britannica.

There's been some grumbling in education circles about Wiki's accuracy and whether it should be considered a source for college research. Middlebury College's History Department banned using Wiki as a source for research papers. Then there was some silly scandal about one of Wiki's editor claiming to be a theology professor when he was really a college dropout. Both these "scandals" miss the point, imho. Wikipedia is a collective source of knowledge. What you read there may or may not be entirely accurate, but in the aggregate, it's an excellent overview of some difficult topics or first source for arcane knowledge (Just what does the flag of Somalia look like?).

Maybe Wiki has an even greater part to play in education, simply because of the nebulousness of its information. At the University of East Anglia in the UK, masters degree students are required to write for Wiki. "Nicola Pratt, a lecturer in international relations, said she used to be "one of the disgruntled crown of academics who berate students for using Wikipedia in their essays" but is now convinced it can be a great opportunity for students to see at first hand how knowledge is produced.

Uniquely in the UK, her postgraduate students studying for a masters degree in international relations and development are assessed on editing eight Wikipedia articles to improve the quality and make them more balanced. They must also write one of their own.

They haven't found it easy, according to Dr Pratt, and soon discovered just how much reading around the subject was involved. "I've seen improvement with all the students - I think it's working," she said."

Maybe we should do less blaming Wiki for lazy research methods among undergraduates (citing an encyclopedia? Excuse me?) and do more to improve Wiki and improve our collective wealth of knowledge.

Web Site Launched for Students Keen on Math, Science

BALTIMORE, Feb. 26 (AScribe Newswire) -- Imagine if a teen-age Stephen Hawking could have sparred with Einstein over physics. For gifted teens in the United States and worldwide -- perhaps including future Einsteins and Hawkings -- it's now possible, through Cogito.org ( http://www.cogito.org ).

Cogito.org, developed by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth ( http://www.cty.jhu.edu ), offers a virtual home for the world's brightest students with strong interests and abilities in mathematics and science. The site offers free use to all visitors, who can access most of its resources and learn about everything from global warming to cold fusion.

Cogito's developers want the site to inspire its users to become the innovators, visionaries, and problem-solvers of the future. They also want Cogito.org to play a critical part in upgrading math, science, technology, and engineering education -- known as the STEM subjects -- for the estimated 1.5 million gifted middle and high school students in the United States and greater numbers worldwide.

These four areas are the subject of national efforts defined in President Bush's 2006 American Competitiveness Initiative. Improved education in STEM subjects is seen as critical to maintaining U.S. competitive advantage in science and technology.

The free, public-access section of Cogito.org is packed full of interviews with experts, profiles of young scientists, science news, Web resources and directories of summer programs, competitions and other academic opportunities.

Middle- and high-schoolers, for example, have interviewed a nanotechnologist, a scientist at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, and a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon, to learn about research they would never hear about in science class.

The site also features a section that is open to membership by invitation. It is here that students can participate in online discussion forums with top math and science students worldwide -- where U.S. students can share math problems with their Chinese, Russian or Thai counterparts, for example. Membership is expected to expand rapidly as programs serving gifted students in programs around the world nominate their students for membership.

Early site activity is promising, with students using Cogito.org as developers had hoped. "For some of us, it's the first time we've been in contact with so many other gifted math and science kids in our lives," says Willow Smith, a senior from Palm Bay, Fla. "It's the first time we've been in a community with people who can stand up to our arguments and then return ones of their own that are just as convincing."

Expert participation in discussions is also important Cogito.org's members, according to Andrew Peters, a 14-year-old 10th grader from Rochester, Minn. "I especially liked it when an expert was brought in to discuss the issue of planet status for Pluto," he said. "The chance to hear an expert's opinion on a current event is a rare and excellent opportunity."

To that end, a key goal and need, say CTY's Cogito.org developers, is to attract and retain adult scientists and mathematicians who can serve as discussion leaders and mentors. "Along with the benefits the site holds for young people, we think this is a wonderful opportunity for scientists and others to offer their knowledge to students," said Lea Ybarra, executive director of CTY.

The name Cogito.org, which was chosen with input from gifted students, was taken from the Latin translation of Descartes' famous maxim Cogito, ergo sum or "I think; therefore, I am." The site was developed by CTY in partnership with these other leading centers serving gifted students: the Talent Identification Program at Duke University, the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University, the Rocky Mountain Talent Search at the University of Denver, C-MITES at Carnegie Mellon University, the Belin-Blank Center at the University or Iowa, the Center for Excellence in Education, the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, and Science Service.

A $1.7 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation provided initial funding to develop and launch the site, and additional funds are being sought to sustain and expand it.

- - - -

CONTACT: Amy Lunday, JHU Media Relations, 443-287-9960, acl@jhu.edu

Not on the Test

*Not On The Test *
by John Forster & Tom Chapin
(c) 2007 Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

Go on to sleep now, third grader of mine.
The test is tomorrow but you'll do just fine.
It's reading and math. Forget all the rest.
You don't need to know what is not on the test.

Each box that you mark on each test that you take,
Remember your teachers. Their jobs are at stake.
Your score is their score, but don't get all stressed.
They'd never teach anything not on the test.

The School Board is faced with no child left behind
With rules but no funding, they're caught in a bind.
So music and art and the things you love best
Are not in your school 'cause they're not on the test.
Sleep, sleep, and as you progress
You'll learn there's a lot that is not on the test.

Debate is a skill that is useful to know,
Unless you're in Congress or talk radio,
Where shouting and spouting and spewing are blessed
'Cause rational discourse was not on the test.

Thinking's important. It's good to know how.
And someday you'll learn to, but someday's not now.
Go on to sleep, now. You need your rest.
Don't think about thinking. It's not on the test.

Blizzard #2 Update

Snow on the ground from the weekend blizzard: 12" compacted to 10"
Snow forecast last night: 5-6"
Snow that actually fell last night: ~1" :(
Snow Day on Thursday? Early dismissal, probably
Snow predicted from now until Friday 6 pm: 6-12"
Snow actually falling now (11 am CST)
Snow Day tomorrow??? Priceless!

For Music Junkies

Anyone looking for an easily accessible music appreciation course for kids should investigate The Classic Composers series from International Masters Publishers. It's a Time-Life send-you-one-disc-of-our-choosing-every-three-weeks kind of a deal. I got a sample disc (Mozart) in the mail yesterday. I usually just throw those things in the trash, but this had an actual CD in it, so I checked it out. It's pretty cool, actually. Each CD comes with a 24-page booklet detailing the composer's bio, a "turning point" in his life, "life and times," "In [historical Context," a listener's guide, the composer's influences and ends with a 20 question quiz (answers provided).

The CD itself comes with ~60 minutes of the composers "greatest hits." The Mozart CD includes the overture to the Marriage of Figaro, the Clarinet Concerto in B Flat Major, the Piano Concerto No. 21 "Elvira Madigan", "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," the first movement of the "Sinfonia Concertante" (my favorite) and some others, recorded by well-known ensembles. Clearly none of this is in depth information--more of a taste--but from the sample and what I can tell from the promotional literature they sent, it's enough to introduce kids to classical music without overwhelming them.

Yes, they send a junky free gift with your order. "Buy as many as you want, cancel anytime." We decided to get a couple and see if they're all as useful as the Mozart cd is.

The Groundhog Was Wrong!

I feel very sorry for the folks in Northern New York who got 11 feet of snow over the course of a week earlier this month. Here in the Great White North, we got 6.5 inches overnight Friday, another six or so overnight Saturday (with blizzard warnings in the wee hours), about a half inch each on Sunday and Monday nights. Now I hear we're in for another 6-12 inches between Wednesday night and Friday afternoon! UNCLE!

So much snow during the week would be cause for celebration around here, if Klaus' district hadn't used both of its built-in school snow days. If they have to call school again Thursday or Friday, they will have to start adding extra school days at the end of the year. Of course, as homeschoolers, this doesn't matter as much, but we're still following the public school's calendar since Klaus is still taking classes there.

I realize that snow blocking us from opening the screen door in the kitchen does not really compare to snow covering the first floor of a house. All I want to know is, "Where's that early spring you promised us, Punxatawny Phil? Could it be that Quentin the Quahog was right all along?"

What Is Going On In Our Schools?

Apparently, nothing. According to yesterday's New York Times:

"The National Assessment of Educational Progress, an exam commonly known as the nation’s report card, found that the reading skills of 12th graders tested in 2005 were significantly worse than those of students in 1992, when a comparable test was first given, and essentially flat since students previously took the exam in 2002.

The test results also showed that the overwhelming majority of high school seniors have not fully mastered high-school-level math.

At the same time, however, grade-point averages have risen nationwide, according to a separate survey by the National Assessment, of the transcripts of 26,000 students, which compared them with a study of students’ coursework in 1990." [emphasis mine]

"The proportion of high school students completing a solid core curriculum has nearly doubled since 1990, and students are doing better in their classes than their predecessors did," Education Week reported. A solid core curriculum "includes four credits of English and three credits each of social studies, math, and science." EdWeek also mentions that "Two-thirds of the 26,000 graduates who were followed for the transcript study also participated in the 2005 NAEP math and science assessments." So we know we're comparing apples to apples. Now we have data supporting John Stossel's "Stupid in America" 20/20 episode from last fall (click the link to watch it on YouTube.)

What is up with this? In the NYT, "The Education Trust, a nonprofit group representing urban schools, attributed the disparity to a kind of academic false advertising, saying that schools may seem to offer the same courses to all students, but that the content of those courses is sometimes less demanding for poor and minority children.

For example, the group found, a ninth-grade English teacher at one school assigned students a two- to three-page essay comparing the themes of Homer’s “Odyssey” to those in the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” At the same school, assignments in another class covering the same material were considerably less demanding. There, students broke up into three clusters, with one designing a brochure for “Odyssey Cruises,” another drawing pictures and the third making up a crossword using characters from the “Odyssey.”

If the Trust is referring to tracked classes, i.e. the essay writers are in the "Honors" 9th grade English course and the others are in the "regular" course, they're being a bit disingenuous. I would hope kids at different academic levels would have different curriculum. However, if both of these classes are billed as 9th grade English (or worse, Honors 9th grade English), there's definitely a problem. "Just slapping new names on courses with weak curriculum and ill-prepared teachers won’t boost achievement,” Kati Haycock, the Education Trust’s president, said [in the NYT]."

So what to do? Stop worrying about self-esteem and start worrying about rigor, for a start. Stop telling teachers that "best practice" for differentiation is "For example, if you're reading Charlotte's Web in a class, tier one might be working on basic plot facts while tier two might write a story about one of the characters. A gifted child in tier three might be asked to "write your own chapter from one of the character's point of view." (Suggestion is from Imagine Teaching Robin Williams -- Twice-Exceptional Children in Your School on the Council for Exceptional Children's website.

This example is clearly for elementary students, not 9th graders. Regardless, this is not differentiation. This is busywork for everyone except those in tier one. I like writing stories, but writing your own story with someone else's characters isn't encouraging creativity and it certainly isn't deepening understanding of Charlotte's Web, any more than making a crossword puzzle of character's names deepens understanding of The Odyssey. Writing a paragraph about how the story would be different if the animals couldn't understand Fern, or if Charlotte were a goose rather than a spider, that is appropriate differentiation for gifted kids.

The Secret Key to the ACT

Or at least to the English subsection--diagramming sentences! Yes, it's true! Klaus raised his score on the English subsection by 10 whole points (from 59th to 96th percentile) by taking a half hour to learn to diagram sentences. I couldn't believe he'd gotten all the way through the first half of 10th grade Enriched English without learning to identify the subject and predicate of a sentence. No wonder he had so much trouble last year. How would he correctly identify subject-verb agreement problems if he couldn't identify the correct subject and verb?

As you might expect, this method of teaching grammar/parts of speech works particularly well with visual-spatial learners. Plus, it's loads of fun, kind of like cracking a code. With Klaus, I used exercises from the following sites:

From the Student Learning Assistance Center of the Alamo Community College District--very clear, step-by-step instructions for basic diagramming. This is primarily what Klaus used.

AP Language and Composition Resource Page from Southwest High School's Language Arts Department, gets into a little more detail on the complexities.

So when would someone need to know how to do this? Maybe never, unless he or she wanted to rock the house on the college entrance exams or in a college composition class. I used my ability to deconstruct a sentence when I was doing freelance paper-editing in college. It's not being able to draw the diagram in the right way that's important, but rather being able to analyze the structure of a sentence, brick by brick, and see the relationships between the words, phrases and clauses. That's when writing begins to become the tool, rather than the taskmaster.

What's So Great About Long Division?

In my last post, I mentioned that Xavier hates long division. Here are a couple of sites questioning the need for long division in the first place, courtesy of Zany Mom: (And you thought I ignored your email, didn't you! LOL)

Senseless of School Math

"Math learned as a side effect of using it is easy. Kids learn to see the big picture and how things fit together and how numbers work.

When kids are made to do pencil and paper math, they get lost in the details. They have to figure out 11/17 of 87 before they have been casually exposed to hundreds of personally meaningful ways fractions are used around them.

I think one of the most helpful things parents can do is to solve everyday problems in their head out loud. It forces you to see things in simpler terms so that you can do it in your head. If one is faced with 103-56 and does it the way you were taught in school, you'll have to juggle and remember a lot of numbers that don't relate to the problem in your head. But if you can see the problem broken down into understandable pieces, then it's much easier and kids get to see how numbers work. (One of the big problems with pencil and paper math is that the numbers feel fixed. You can't alter the problem into something simpler.)

So for 103-56 you might ask how far 56 was from 100. Well, 4 gets you to 60 and 40 more gets you to 100 and 3 more gets you to 103. So 47." (emphasis mine)

Spoken like a true visual-spatial learner. ;-)
Not that there is anything wrong with that! I would do the same problem in my head the same way. But not all kids work this way. I never had trouble applying algorithms to math problems and I can multiply and divide fractions like a house on fire. LOL

Unschoolers and Mathematics

"People do NOT need to learn math the way it is taught in schools. In fact, they don't need to "learn math" at all. Math is INSEPERABLE from most everything else in life, and if you live a full life, you'll learn all the math you need because you need it. It's there. It's part of everything. You couldn't escape it if you tried really hard."

We're not unschoolers but I mostly agree with both of these sites. The problem comes in when the kids skip the lower difficulty stuff (with Wolfie it's dealing with polynomials) and then run into trouble with the higher level stuff they are interested in. We're having to go back and practice the polynomials and he hates it hates it hates it. The practice, not the math.

High Working Memory = Math Anxiety?

There's an interesting article in Education Week entitled "Math Anxiety" Confuses the Equation for Students I'm not sure the link will work, and Ed Week requires you register before reading the full article, so I'll pull the most interesting bits out here:

..."When he first began examining the impact of anxiety on math performance, Mr. Ashcraft [professor of cognitive psychology at UNLV] assumed that students’ unease or nervousness amounted to “an attitude,” as he recalls it, rather than a phobia with a direct link to the brain’s processes. “I was wrong,” he says now.

A number of researchers, including Mr. Ashcraft, say there is evidence that anxiety disrupts student performance in math by wreaking havoc with “working memory.” Such capacity is a type of short-term memory individuals use to retain a limited amount of information while working on a task—and block out distractions and irrelevant information. Anxiety can sap students’ working memory during tests, but in other problem-solving situations, too."...

..."In a 2001 study, published by Mr. Ashcraft and Elizabeth P. Kirk, now a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the researchers concluded that math-anxious students struggle on problems involving carrying, borrowing, and long division."...

Interestingly, researchers at the University of Chicago and Michigan State University have found that it's students with high working memory who have the most problem with math anxiety.

"Students with a good amount of working memory rely on “really intensive strategies” to solve math problems, such as keeping track of numbers in their heads as they move from step to step, [Sian] Beilock [assistant professor of psychology at U of Chicago] explained in an interview. That approach serves them well on relatively simple math problems, but not more complicated ones, she said.

In higher-pressure situations, such as timed tests, or where researchers put students under additional stress, those high-memory students fare more poorly. Performance pressure sucks the working-memory that has served them so well previously. By contrast, individuals with relatively little working-memory capacity do not seem to suffer as much, Ms. Beilock said."

I find this particularly interesting because this is exactly the case with Xavier. His IQ testing last year showed working memory was a real strength for him. Yet he says he hates math and definitely freezes when in high pressure situations, whether math-related or not. I have noticed in working with him that he tries to do all calculations in his head. The only exception to this is long division, which he's sure he's terrible at.

So, what to do about math anxiety?

..."Still, research has shown that students can learn to overcome anxiety, Ms. Beilock said. One strategy simply involves practice with math problems, which can make it easier to retrieve answers from memory. Another is to train students to become more accustomed to working under pressure by having them take timed practice tests, for example."...

I would add to this being able to move at his own pace through the material. The constant repetition in a scope-and-sequence math curriculum adds frustration, which adds stress. (In fourth grade, Xavier refused to do a math worksheet saying, "She should know I know this by now!") Using lined paper horizontally instead of vertically, so it's easier to line up columns of numbers, has helped tremendously, particularly with long division. After a semester of math at home, he now acknowledges that, although he still doesn't like math, he's pretty good at it. I think that's a good first step toward alleviating his math anxiety.

Jack Bauer Missed the Boat

The new season of 24 is just as engaging and silly as the last one. Loads of nuclear bomb detonation fun! And it turns out that the mastermind who has been trying to get Jack killed since the beginning of the show is his own brother. So Jack got to torture his brother for information last Monday, but he went about it all wrong. He used the usual CTU chemical interrogation tactics and his brother, of course, lied to him.

So the boys (and DH) would like to suggest to Jack some more time-honored and effective brother-torture techniques:

"I'm not touching you"
The Punching Machine
A Wedgie
The Indian Burn
Noogies

And of course, the coup de grace, the Wet Willie!

Output and the Twelve-Year-Old Boy

I've been having a lot of discussions lately about output--essays, worksheets, projects, book reports--those pieces of paper that "prove" your child has learned something. My boys are allergic to output. I'm not entirely sure whether it's an age-thing or if it's a hold-over from public school busywork. I suspect it's a little bit of both.

Xavier is much worse than Wolfie is at this. We do most of his math and vocab work orally because he doesn't want to have to write out the problems (or do workbook pages in the case of vocab). It's fine with me, for the most part, because as a sixth-grader, he's still considered to be in elementary school by the online schools that we work with. He doesn't have a lot of output to produce. Seventh grade, which he is almost ready for, is going to be another matter entirely.

Wolfie, on the other hand, is taking high-school-level classes that are supposed to be pitched for middle schoolers. His EPGY course is excellent--dealing with the tough intellectual issues of literary analysis with output requirements more appropriate for 7th graders. For example, he's asked to write a four page paper that could easily become 8-10 pages in a high school class.

Some of his other classes seem to be even harder than the equivalent high school class would be. His biology book is thicker than the one Klaus used last year for a similar class. The reading assignments are huge. It's not that he can't understand the material, he just doesn't read fast enough to be able to keep up a good pace. I'm sure his algebra class is covering more information more quickly than a 9th grade algebra class would do.

Part of this is just Wolfie's nature. He's slow-moving, always has been. When he was two, he spoke so slowly he had to take a breath in the middle of pronouncing his name. His name has one syllable. I kid you not. When we talked about being able to go at his own pace in virtual school, he thought we meant he could take as much time as he wanted. And he can, if he doesn't mind working through the summer, but somehow I don't think he's going to be down with that.

I've very proud of him for stubbornly sticking with classes that challenge him intellectually even if the workload is tough. As I said, he can understand the material. And he's getting faster (and certainly more independent) about writing essays because of EPGY. But I as parent and teacher would sure like to have some papers to show that he and Xavier are "making progress." And I sure wish I knew if I was requiring too much or not enough.

World of Time Suck

Yes, my boys have been initiated into the World of Warcraft phenomenon. Nearly every morning, I come downstairs to find Xavier playing (apparently he's a Level 49, which means he's good.) Wolfie has several IRL friends who also play, so they get together online and go on quests and stuff. Sometimes one of them, I'll call him Dr. Evil, would come over and sit on the computer in the livingroom playing with Wolfie, who is on the computer in the diningroom. (Not quite as sad as Klaus and his friend sitting not five feet away from each other and talking over AIM.)

Yes, there's lot of fighting, but it's a good game, increasingly difficult/ stimulating, and cooperative, in that you need to recruit other players (actual other people!) to help you achieve most of your quests. With the new expansion pack there's an even larger world to explore. No, I don't play. I couldn't care less about virtual worlds. I'm Stan's mom in the South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft. "Stan's about to be killed online!" his dad yells and mom replies, "So?"

[By the way, that episode of South Park is quite awesome, but the best part was that Xavier was online playing WoW while watching the episode--which makes fun of the gamers--and he wasn't the only one. Ironic, no?]

We've had a couple incidents where we've had to restrict access to this game but for the most part, they're allowed to play as much as they want outside of school hours, so long as turns are shared equitably and they get some exercise during the day. So they play a lot. An irritating amount, actually. And I'm quite sure they don't realize just how much time they're spending online, hence World of Time Suck.

There are some who would insist they're addicted to this game. Bollocks. Yes, they spend an awful lot of time doing it. Yes, it's the first thing they think of to do when they're bored. But they're not addicted. I've not seen one incidence of shakes, obsessive thoughts or any other signs of addiction. If anything they suffer from a lack of good ideas on how to spend their time.

Eventually they'll move on to something else. Wolfie has already expressed interest in something called Age of Mythology, which promises to teach him something about mythology in addition to strategy and killing dwarves.

I Crack Myself Up

I was helping Xavier with fractions yesterday. He had to determine the least common denominator for 5/6 and 2/7.

X: 42

Me: Correct. And 5/6 is how many forty-twoths?

X: You said that wrong.

Me: I did?

X: Yeah, you said 'forty-twoths.'

Me: Oh, I'm sorry--"forty-teeth."

LOL He's so disappointed in me, but I just couldn't help myself.

Being a Good Role Model (or Not!)

All the parenting books and teaching methods books stress the importance of modeling behaviors for kids, i.e. if you want the kids to be kind and gentle, you have to be kind and gentle yourself. If you want the kid to not be such a perfectionist, you need to demonstrate laughing at and/or learning from your mistakes. This is all well and good, until it comes to procrastination.

Klaus's college app is due February 1. That's Thursday. Four days (or less, depending on how we send it). With much nagging and browbeating, he is finished with his essays, the letters of recommendations have been requested, Dad is mostly finished with the financial aid forms, but I have not even started the "parent's recommendation" essay yet. Bad Mommy.

Bad role model! It's not much use for me to give him the "you have to stop waiting 'til the last minute" speech when I'm sitting here blogging about what a procrastinator I am instead of just writing the stupid essay. ;-)

Sure, I have lots of reasons for not having done it yet (we don't even know if we're going to let him go to college in the fall so why bother?) and a long history of avoiding writing college app essays (my mother had to confine me to my room for a week to get me to apply to college.) Plus he's sitting here looking at me and who can be expected to think in such an environment?!?!?!

Sigh.

I guess I'd better start writing now...

Thinking and Sledding

It's been a weird winter. We finally got a good snow last week--the first since November. Klaus had even given up on winter. "It took so long, winter lost it's chance. No do-overs!" Anyway, since we've had about five inches on the ground for more than a week the boys have been doing a lot of sledding and I've been giving them school time to do it, since they hardly get any other exercise during the winter.

Meanwhile, Wolfie had a lot of writing for his EPGY class this week, something he would normally stew about. This week's assignment was three to five paragraphs each, on a character with an internal conflict, one with an external conflict and the relationship between the two conflicts, if any. He stared at the blank page/screen for about 45 minutes before I took pity on him and let him sled with Xavier for a half-hour. Wonder of wonders, when he came back in, he'd figured out what he wanted to write about!

Whether you call it kinesthetic learning or simply the fact that exercise sends more oxygen to your brain, this situation is one that homeschooling is made for. Had he been at school, he would have stared at a blank page for an entire class period, then gone on to a completely different subject with a whole new set of problems to consider. Then, at homework time, he would have had to start the process all over again. What does that teach him? Writing is hard and he hates it.

This week, not so much. He wrote what he could, then took a break. Wrote some more, got stuck, went sledding, had another idea and wrote yet more. Yesterday, he told me that even though he doesn't like the class, he recognized that he was a better, faster writer now than in September when he started. Granted, the EPGY program does an excellent job of teaching writing. But the workload is huge and I think if it were taught the same way in the schools, it would be overwhelming. It's the flexibility of homeschooling that makes it possible for him to produce the quantity and quality work that he is producing.

The class lasts until the middle of March. I hope the snow hasn't melted by then.

I Don't Like 12-Year-Old Boys

Xavier (ds11.75) has really been feeling his oats lately. I knew I was in trouble when he grew a full inch in less than two weeks. Now my sweet, compliant, hard-working, might-as-well-get-it-over-with boy has turned into a whiny, demanding, foot-dragging grumbler who thinks he's funny when he annoying other people--specifically his mother. Oy! At lunch today I had to threaten to send him to his room if he said, "Did the dingo eat your baby?" one more time, despite his excellent approximation of a British accent. (I managed the first 450 times quite gracefully, I thought.)

Tonight he wanted me to stand in his room for an indeterminant amount of time while he leaned on me. Then he complained about the order in which I put the blankets on his bed, how I tucked him in and whether his arms were in or out of the blankets. I don't like to be rude to my children, but I finally had to just close the door and walk away. I know he was just playing, but mein Gott!

The good news is that Wolfie (ds12.75) has really grown up in the last few months, so I know there's hope for Xavier. If he lives that long.

No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Die

Klaus just showed me this web comic he's been following called XKCD. Velociraptors and Vanilla Ice are recurrent themes. Just thought I'd share. LOL

It's Crunch Time!

Klaus's application to Simon's Rock is due February 1 and, after six weeks of intensive work, it looks like he will have it done in time. Whether he'll be ready to go to college in the fall, he's not so sure. I don't blame him. It's a huge life transition and he's never done well with transitions.

He's also terrified of rejection. Been there, done that. Applying to college, particularly a competitive college like Simon's Rock, is horrible for a sensitive perfectionist. My mother had to lock me in my room (okay, the door wasn't literally locked) so I would apply to Northwestern, and even after I'd been accepted, I wasn't sure I wanted to go. I remember waking her up in the middle of the night a month before I left to get permission to put college off a year so I could backpack around Europe. At least Klaus comes by it honestly. ;-)

College isn't the be-all and end-all, particularly since some of the state schools are little more than very expensive, glorified high schools. Klaus' career plans require a PhD in psychology, which does require college, though. And I couldn't help thinking, while watching The Pursuit of Happyness that while Chris Gardner is clearly intelligent and driven to succeed, he'd have been in much better shape if he'd left the Navy with more than a high school diploma and radar certification. I don't know if Dean Witter would even accept a non-college-graduate these days.

I'm sure Klaus can handle college-level work. If I had him home for the next semester, I could guarantee he'd do well on his AP tests and know how to write a college-level paper. I know a college-type schedule suits him better than the more regimented high school schedule does. I believe he will find some true peers there. Now if I can only convince him of all that.

If Only Learning Wasn't So Loud

So I'm trying to watch the second half of the premiere of the new season on 24 last Monday night, when Wolfie comes down with the Van de Graff generator he made as part of his science fair project last year. Which would have be fine except it's really loud, he set it up in the same room where I was watching tv and he keeps saying,"Mom, look! Watch this! Come here and pick up the salt for me."

Okay, that last sounded like a non sequitur. Turns out he had figured out that if he put the salt-substitute canister (cardboard with a metal bottom) at a certain distance from the generator and waited a bit for the charge to build up, he could generate a shock from the cardboard--suprising, no? Definitely not what I would have predicted. "I made iodized salt into ionized salt!" he says. A two-fer--a science experiment and a pun at the same time. LOL

And right in the middle of 24, of course. Thank goodness for our DVR.

[Speaking of loud, as I write this, Wolfie and Xavier at sitting at the table with me, meowing the "Ode to Joy" in two different keys. Yes, I said "meowing." Sigh.]

70% Gifted at Bannockburn Elementary!

From the Jan. 3 Washington Post article Schools Seek and Find 'Gifted' Students:

"Most of Alexis Peterson's students are third-graders in name only. A recent morning found Dorothy Neher, 8, reading "Charlotte's Web," a book most teachers save for fifth grade, in breathless preparation to see the new movie at the megaplex. A group at the back of the class discussed the back-cover blurb of a fifth-grade tome they were about to read. Jack Herscovitz, also 8, sat at his desk, attempting to draw a picture illustrating the idiom "catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

Bannockburn Elementary School in Bethesda is suburban Washington's Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor's fictional hamlet where every child is above average.

Not every student at Bannockburn is above average. But 70 percent of the third-grade class has been identified as gifted, based on tests and other academic indicators."

Call me reactionary, but this does not indicate to me that Bannockburn has an unusually high number of gifted kids. I think the issue here is more one of "what is grade level"? In our local school, Charlotte's Web is a third grade book, not a fifth grade book. So according to Wisconsin, these gifted kids are working right at grade level, not two grades ahead. But I digress...

"Program officials contend that the gifted label buys virtually nothing, on its own, in terms of additional goods or services to the student. It serves mostly as a flag to teachers, parents and students that children should be considered for advanced study at various points in their academic careers. Being gifted does not qualify a student for admission to a highly gifted magnet program or to an AP class, but students so labeled might be more apt to apply."

So what's the point, exactly? Helping kids feel good about themselves by being positively labeled? Yippee! Not all kids are gifted but more than 2/3rds of them are--we must have really good schools! Bravo to us!

And in the meantime, the expectations creep lower and lower, so more and more kids can be "gifted" and more and more kids with few, if any, academic skills can still come out "at grade level" on NCLB. And that's the more insidious result. The story quotes parents indignant at the underrepresentation of gifted minority students. They should be indignant, not that their child does or does not get a label, but that the expectations of academic rigor as early as fifth grade are equivalent to that of third graders elsewhere in the country. These kids are starting out two years behind. And when they accomplish something an 8 year old should be able to do, the school calls them gifted and then does "virtually nothing" about continuing to challenge them. I see no cause for celebration here.

Have a Horrible New Year!

It's Horrible Books time again. Ray at Del Sol Books is readying another bulk order from the UK of Horrible Histories/Science/The Knowledge and the other Terry Deary books. For those who don't know, these books are short chapterish books that cover lots of "educational" topics in all their gory (and don't stint on the human sacrifice) details. These books aren't available in the US and they can run $20 a piece on ebay, but Ray gets them for ~$7.50 a piece with a flat rate for shipping ($7).

These books are appropriate for gifted elementary aged kids and particularly appeal to 9-12 year old boys, who are terribly difficult to find books for. Last day to order for this round in January 28, for delivery in mid-February. For all the horrible details, see horriblebooks.com.

And so it begins...

Or maybe ends would be a better word. We were a little concerned at Christmas because Xavier seemed to have fallen off his growth curve. But we just measured him and he's grown an inch in the last two weeks. Way! Along with the sudden burst of cleverness and the fact that I had to play full out to beat him at Khet over the weekend (and even then I got lucky), I guess he's officially having his growth spurt. I'm the only one who is sad that he's not a little boy, though. He's been feeling left out of the puberty pool, I know. (We had the same problem with potty-training--sharp demarcation between the big boys and the little boys.)

So good for you, Xavier! We're very proud of you!

Feelin' Pargly

We all went out for dinner the other night and Klaus came up with a new word game. Take the obligatory word search on the kids' menu and take turns circling words--any words except the ones you're supposed to circle. Preferably words that you've just made up. Then, as in Scrabble, you have to define the word. This is how we found out about "Tukh," the Egyptian basilisk god of tubas; the "sloa," a snakelike creature who fed on giant sloths; and "lolic," that state of annoyance with your little brother so extreme that you are moved to violence. My best one was "pargly," which is how you feel when you're trying to think of something clever and your mind goes completely blank. Lame attempts at cleverness have since been greeted with, "That was very pargly of you."

So, the reason I haven't posted in awhile is because I've been feeling pargly. ;-)