TPT Freebie: Long Division PowerPoint

Long Division FREE Sample Title

This item is an introductory sample for my new Long Division series. The FREE product is available here:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/FreeDownload/Long-Division-FREE-Sample–2495918

A slide from the lesson…

 

Long Division Slide

Here’s a link to the first installment in the series: 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Long-Division-Set-1-2497931

The product offers 3 interactive PowerPoint lessons and 9 worksheets for the low price of $3.

A “How To” for Multiple Choice Reading Tests

While I’m not an advocate of the modern testing culture, I do believe that children who are subjected by law to having the quality of their minds assessed by state-mandated multiple choice tests should be given the best possible chance to prove that they are valuable commodities.

Multiple Choice Title The following products were designed to help students navigate their way safely through the common snares found in multiple choice reading tests:

Introducing the Common Types of Multiple Choice Reading Questions: 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Introducing-Types-of-Multiple-Choice-Reading-Questions-Practice-2366941

Multiple Choice Reading Practice Set #1:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Multiple-Choice-Reading-Practice-Set-1-2404994

Free Sample:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Multiple-Choice-Reading-Practice-Series-Free-Sample-2384103

What If?

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

January 7, 2016

book-933280_960_720Approximately 2.4 million students who attended American public schools in 2011 were classified as learning disabled.

Approximately 80% of those students (or nearly 2 million) had a reading disability.

Students who are labeled as learning disabled in reading must first demonstrate that their skills are “well below the average range of scores in culturally and linguistically appropriate tests of reading.”

Prior to diagnosing any learning disability, students are screened to ensure that health impairments, such as vision and hearing deficiencies, are not the cause of their reading difficulties.

There is no test to measure the quality of the reading instruction that students receive prior to being diagnosed with a reading disability.

What if some of those nearly 2 million students who were diagnosed with a reading disability failed to receive effective reading instruction prior to being evaluated?

Source: https://www.ncld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-State-of-LD.pdf

A Message of Hope for the New Year

Our world is filled with problems.  Many of them seem so unfixable that millions of Americans have begun to lose hope in a better tomorrow.  Rather than give in to the fearful messages of doom heaped upon us by the media, along with well-meaning Facebook friends, let us take a moment to reflect upon something that we can hold close to our hearts as whatever it is that causes the lengthening of days to happen brings us nearer to the light of spring and a new beginning.

Continue reading A Message of Hope for the New Year

Book Study #1: Best Preface Ever!

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGAOT.COM

November 11, 2015

JohhnyAn eagerly awaited copy of Why Johnny Can’t Read: And What You Can Do About It arrived in the mail today.  If it’s true that you can judge a book by the opening paragraph of its preface, this is going to be a delightful read.

Preface:

This double-purpose book, with its rather awkward double-purpose title, needs a bit of explanation.  Let me put it this way: Just as war is “too serious a matter to be left to the generals,” so, I think, the teaching of reading is too important to be left to the educators.  This book, therefore, is not addressed to teachers and teachers’ college professors but to fathers and mothers.  I tried, to the best of my ability, to write a book they can use to help their children read.

-Rudolph Flesch

To Kill a Mockingbird Is Less Rigorous Than Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever!

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

October 30, 2015Mockingbird

Renaissance Learning, Inc., those folks who brought us the abominable Accelerated Reading program, have published an interesting study detailing a survey of commonly read books among American public school children.  One of the most interesting aspects of this report is that it includes the AR reading levels* of each book.  Here are a few of the revealing highlights:

Of Mice and Men (4.5)

Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets (4.7) Continue reading To Kill a Mockingbird Is Less Rigorous Than Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever!

Just a Quick Thought #7: Postmodernism Is Only the Beginning

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

October 28, 2015

confusion

We tell children to trust their feelings, listen to their hearts, and pursue their passions.  We celebrate their uniqueness and all of the differences that make them special.  We praise their smallest attempts at creative expression.  Then, we pull the rug out from under them right when it really counts.  We stop preaching individualism in matters relating to the mind.  When it comes to thought, we train children to blindly trust experts and we shame them for making any value judgments that fall outside of well-established boundaries.  Once a child is conditioned to accept that the right to speak confidently is a privilege granted by experts, and that there are too many fields of study for one person to “know it all,” a new kind of person has been created, one who believes that self-doubt is the beginning of wisdom.