Anoushka Shankar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rated • 0 reviews • music, wikipedia • wikipedia.org
- Stumble >
-
thisismebecca
Last seen: 3 days ago
Rebecca is a 29 year old woman from High Point, North Carolina, USA
I am.....
silly, inquisitive, caring, forgetful, easily distracted, friendly, sensitive, educated, creative, have an eclectic variety of interests, and I like to meet interesting people. So, how are you?
*Note that if you spam me with your personal blogs and articles and nothing else I will delete you from my friends list. It's one thing to help each other out when deserved, it's another to ask someone to thumbs up your articles constantly. Thanks for understanding.
My Book Reviews Site- Lost in Books
100| 500 | 800 | 1000 |
-
-
-
-
-
Standarized Testing - Education - Schools - Test Scores -...
Rated • 1 review • education, law, news, society, children • nytimes.com
When Should a Kid Start Kindergarten?
From the article: Robert Fulghum listed life lessons in his 1986 book, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." Were he to update the book to reflect the experience of today's children, he'd need to call it "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Preschool," as kindergarten has changed.
The half day devoted to fair play and nice manners officially began its demise in 1983, when the National Commission on Excellence in Education published "A Nation at Risk," warning that the country faced a "rising tide of mediocrity" unless we increased school achievement and expectations. No Child Left Behind, in 2002, exacerbated the trend, pushing phonics and pattern-recognition worksheets even further down the learning chain. As a result, many parents, legislatures and teachers find the current curriculum too challenging for many older 4- and young 5-year-olds, which makes sense, because it's largely the same curriculum taught to first graders less than a generation ago. Andersen's kindergartners are supposed to be able to not just read but also write two sentences by the time they graduate from her classroom. It's no wonder that nationwide, teachers now report that 48 percent of incoming kindergartners have difficulty handling the demands of school."
I teach Pre-Kindergarten for the public schools in North Carolina, the same state as Anderson works in, just in a different school system. My children are expected to know how to write using a knowledge of letter sounds and matching letters to write the words independently. They are to know how to make complex patterns, count to 20, relate stories in books to real-life situations, and use simple strategies to solve mathematical problems. Seems like a lot for 4-and 5-year-olds, doesn't it? Now take into account that this is a disadvantaged population. Seems almost impossible. Yet, the majority of these children when taught in DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE WAYS can accomplish these goals. My children from last year are at the top of their classes.
The expectations for these young children, however, can only go so much further. The problem becomes that the children have to be developmentally ready to process the information we give them. Their brains have to reach a certain level of maturity to learn some concepts. Until they do, they will never be able to understand it, through no fault of their own. The trend of 3- and 4-year-old children being killed by their parents in China because they have not mastered counting or spelling is ridiculous. These are just children. We must remember that. Do we want America to reach a point where we find it necessary to murder our children if they cannot read by the age of 3 years? These are the countries we are trying to keep up with, isn't it? Well, it is a trend that I for one have no interest in following.
No Child Left Behind is wonderful in theory. In theory. The execution is flawed beyond repair and the whole thing needs to be scrapped and re-evaluated. Perhaps if they allowed educators to help them design a plan they could find one that actually works.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Somalia.html?_r=...
Rated • 0 reviews • crime, africa, news • nytimes.com
-
http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/TheUnderground-CraigsLi...
Rated • 2 reviews • activism, humanitarianism • notforsalecampaign.org
From the page: "I'm sure most of us are familiar with Craigslist, an online Web community where people post job opportunities, items for sale, and find activity partners. Over the past years, Craigslist has grown by leaps and bounds and now has Web sites representing over 300 U.S. cities. Many of us have used Craigslist to find a garage sale or buy a used couch.
However, despite its millions of users and various social benefits, there's a dark side of Craigslist that most users don't see. In the "Erotic" section, human traffickers have found Craigslist to be one of the most efficient, effective (and free) ways to post children and women for sale."
-
http://truemors.com/?p=2427
Rated • 1 review • environment, politics • truemors.com
From the page: "Did you hear that Bush is pushing 15 nations to set emissions goals? Makes sense, since the U.S. has set such a great example."
-
-
