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SchoolSpring » Entries tagged with "curriculum"

Kindergarten Red-Shirting.

November 4th, 2010 | Add a Comment

Do you know the guidelines of “Red-Shirting” in Kindergarten? A few words from Mary Beth, SchoolSpring’s Program and Community Manager about her experiences getting children into schools. “I was in the latter position.  My middle son missed the cut-off date by 10 days.  The entrance date up until the year he was to enter kindergarten was January 1st (5 yrs old prior to 1/1), so he had already completed two years of pre-school, with the expectation of entering Kindergarten the next fall.  Mid-way through the school year, we were informed that the entrance date was now to be September 1st beginning the year my son was to enter kindergarten.  That meant, he would not be able to go.  There was no entrance exam and the kindergarten readiness tests that his pre-school had … Read entire article »

Filed under: curriculum, Education Reform, parent teacher conferences, Student Health

STUDENT-LED CONFERENCES – A GROWING TREND

October 22nd, 2010 | Add a Comment

Mary Beth, SchoolSpring’s Program and Community Manager has personal experience as a mother with three children in school and input from teachers around the country as a part of her day-to-day work. For years the process of parent-teacher conferences has been the same; the teacher hurriedly telling a parent about their child’s progress (mostly meaning their grades and participation in class) and not much time, if any, for discussion.   A quote from Education World’s piece on Student-Led conferences,  “But now, many schools are trying something new — student-led conferences that communicate not only how a student’s doing but also why”.(link to article) After personally attending over 60 parent-teacher conferences to date (2 a year for 3 children) I have been in classrooms with teachers who give a 2 minute speech about what … Read entire article »

Filed under: Future of Education, parent teacher conferences, Student Health, teacher evaluation

Technology use and teacher technology assessments

June 21st, 2010 | 2 Comments

Edweek News had a very interesting article directly connected to education, technology and the difference it has not only made within certain school systems, but with education as a whole. Below we have pulled a direct quote from a recent Digital Directions section from the Tech Trends article: “Expect a big jump in cloud computing, an embracing of students using cell phones, better and faster mobile devices for educational use, and so much specialization that you generally can’t keep track, say Tom Greaves and Richard A Milewski, authors of the study and partners at the educational consulting firm The Greaves Group.  A cell phone in every pocket.” Greaves and Milewski expect most of this to occur within the next five years, which if you look back at … Read entire article »

Filed under: Books, Future of Education, Teacher motivation, Teacher skills, technology in education

Appropriate wording & proper evaluation

May 27th, 2010 | 4 Comments

By Sandi Detwiler Teachers know that simply writing Good or Poor on a student’s essay is meaningless feedback. Yet many teachers receive equally meaningless feedback in the form of evaluations that label them average or above without any suggestions to help them improve their skills. These vague, meaningless phrases are called “valentines” by Superintendent Patricia Hopkins who is cited in Morgaen Donaldson’s article in the May 2010 edition of Educational Leadership “No More Valentines”. Donaldson describes several districts which are working to improve teacher evaluations so that better teaching will increase learning. One model I found interesting was in Cincinnati, Ohio where teachers are trained as evaluators and work for a three year term as an evaluator or consulting teacher. Teachers are sorted into different groups for evaluations so that new teachers … Read entire article »

Filed under: curriculum, Future of Education, Sandi Detwiler, teacher evaluation, Teacher motivation, Teacher skills

Cross Country Travel & Realizing the importance of the Outdoors

May 12th, 2010 | Add a Comment

After living in five countries and teaching in international schools for the past twenty one years, Rick and I are delighted to be back in the U.S. A. We are privileged to have explored in cities, ruins, beaches and mountains on five continents, but we realized we had not traveled as much in our home country. So, during the usually muddy months of March and April, we set off in our popup camper to travel to National Parks in the South and Southwest. We discovered that these parks are our nation’s gift to us all. We have returned from a fabulous eight week road trip across the South and into the Southwest.The highlight was the experieince of being in our National Parks. As we hiked and explored, I thought about how important it … Read entire article »

Filed under: curriculum, Environmental Studies, mentoring students, outdoor Education, Rick Detwiler, Sandi Detwiler, Student Health

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