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No, It’s Not Arbitrary and Does Make Sense: Teaching the English Punctuation System

No, It’s Not Arbitrary and Does Make Sense: Teaching the English Punctuation System
You might also try putting a period at the end of a “thought.” And what about semi-colons and colons? Well…maybe those are for exceptionally long breaths and thoughts? Okay, I guess you can see that these are no official “Strunk and White” rules about usage but rather the kind of myths about standard punctuation that are perpetuated, sometimes by educators, I’m afraid. 1Attack the Old BeliefI’ll stop short of saying telling students “Forget everything you learned before about punctuation,” but I think a good starting place is finding out what students already know.

creative writing prompts . com ideas for writers Ten Takeaway Tips for Teaching Critical Thinking Suggestions from educators at KIPP King Collegiate High School on how to help develop and assess critical-thinking skills in your students. Ideally, teaching kids how to think critically becomes an integral part of your approach, no matter what subject you teach. But if you're just getting started, here are some concrete ways you can begin leveraging your students' critical-thinking skills in the classroom and beyond. 1. Questioning is at the heart of critical thinking, so you want to create an environment where intellectual curiosity is fostered and questions are encouraged. In the beginning stages, you may be doing most of the asking to show your students the types of questions that will lead to higher-level thinking and understanding. 2. Pose a provocative question to build an argument around and help your students break it down. 3. 4. "It all comes back to modeling," says Kellan McNulty, who teaches AP world history and AP U.S. history at KIPP King Collegiate. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Pearson Prentice Hall: eTeach: Strategies for Vocabulary Development by Dr. Kate Kinsella, Dr. Colleen Shea Stump, and Dr. Kevin Feldman A Rationale Directly Addressing Vocabulary Development What Doesn't Work? Teaching word meanings should be a way for students to define their world, to move from light to dark, to a more fine-grained description of the colors that surround us. Successful comprehension is, in some significant part, dependent on the reader's knowledge of word meanings in a given passage. 1 Baker, S. 2 Stahl, S. There are a number of traditional teaching practices related to vocabulary that deserve to be left in the "instructional dustbin." Look them up. The common shortcoming in all of these less effective approaches is the lack of active student involvement in connecting the new concept/meaning to their existing knowledge base. Integration—connecting new vocabulary to prior knowledge Repetition—encountering/using the word/concept many times Meaningful use—multiple opportunities to use new words in reading, writing and soon discussion.

“This Game Sucks”: How to Improve the Gamification of Education (EDUCAUSE Review Sarah "Intellagirl" Smith-Robbins (sabsmith@indiana.edu) is Director of Emerging Technologies and a faculty member at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. With this issue of EDUCAUSE Review, she begins a one-year term as Editor of the New Horizons department. Comments on this article can be posted to the web via the link at the bottom of this page. "Focusing on the ways that entertainment technology engages us can result in methods that we can transfer to any learning situation." Gamification. Education has been a system of status and points since the dawn of the Industrial Age. What Is a Game? The first step is to understand exactly what a game is. A goal: Every game has a win condition: the combination of events and accomplishments that players need to achieve in order to end the game. True gamification requires that all three characteristics be present. Is Higher Education Already a Game? How does the typical higher education system match up to games? Notes 1.

Careful, writers! 10 common words with opposite meanings The English language is full of words with uncommon properties. There are backronyms, metaplasms, and neologisms. My favorite words of unusual properties are contranyms, or words that are spelled the same, but have two opposite meanings. These words are also known as Janus words, named after the Roman god of gates and doorways and of beginnings and endings. Janus words teach us the importance of context and bring a whole new meaning to the phrase “use it in a sentence.” Here are a few examples: Oversight. Cleave. Garnish. Refrain. Root. Sanction. Weather. Bolt. Trim. Resign. Readers, any others to add to the list? Laura Hale Brockway writes about writing and edits about editing at Impertinent Remarks.

25 TED Talks Perfect For Classrooms The 50 Best Sources of Free STEM Education Online 12.05K Views 0 Likes Colleges, universities, and other educational forums in your community can be excellent places to learn more about a variety of STEM topics, but there is also a wealth of educational material available on the web for those who prefer to learn at their own pace or take a more individual approach. Teaching Vocabulary with Francie Alexander Scholastic’s Reading Resources Network is putting the focus on vocabulary. Here, you'll find activities and resources to use in your classroom, a model lesson on video, and an online development session for vocabulary instruction. Plus you’ll discover a plethora — there’s a great vocabulary stretcher — of other resources. Our host is Francie Alexander, Vice President and Chief Academic Officer for Scholastic Education. Francie has taught at all levels, was a district reading consultant for PreK through high school, and has authored professional articles for educators and 25 “books kids can read” for children. Betty Tsang Increasing Vocabulary: Concept Definition Map Observe a model best practice lesson. Motivate and Focus Set Expectations Teach / Model Adapted from Scholastic Red, Improving Reading Comprehension, Grades 3–5 Francie Answers the Tough QuestionsQuestion 1: Why is vocabulary so important? Question 2: What words do I teach? Question 3: How do I teach vocabulary? Listen to more questions

Can Playing Video Games Help With Dyslexia? By Linda Poon, NPR Most parents prefer that their children pick up a book rather than a game controller. But for kids with dyslexia, action video games may be just what the doctor ordered. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities, affecting an estimated 5 to 10 percent of the world’s population. Many approaches to help struggling readers focus on words and phonetics, but researchers at Oxford University say dyslexia is more of an attention issue. So programs should emphasize training the brain’s attention system, they say, something that video games do. When people with dyslexia had to shift their attention between sight and sound, their reaction was delayed. “It’s not just shifting attention from one location to another, but we should also be training shifting attention from sound to visual stimuli and vice versa.” The results showed that the dyslexic group took longer than typical readers to respond when they had to alternate their attention between a sound and a flash.

Aesop's Fables

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