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Identifies four natural thinking styles--penguins (maintainers), dogs (harmonizers), horses (innovators), and lions (prioritizers)--and provides parents with an innovative approach to understanding and encouraging children's individual thinking styles, sensory preferences, gender, and personality tendencies. Original. 15,000 first printing.
Genius is not just about intelligence and aptitude, it's also a word that embodies our inner soul, nature, or character. In this illuminating book, a former principal and father shares heartwarming stories and wise advice that offers a rare insight into children and the process of education. The Genius in Every Child celebrates the moments in the lives of children, their parents, and their teachers. The stories of unique characters in action illustrate some of the principles of education and the disciplines we need to be good stewards of our children’s character and intellect. The vignettes provide both delight and enjoyment in the miracle of it all, and perspective and solace in the difficulty of it all, encouraging parents and teachers to work hand-in-hand. This book urges parents to focus on the long run, entrusting the trials, struggles, and sufferings of the short run to the kids. It proposes a shift in focus from test scores to enthusiasm, from perfect behavior to learning from mistakes, from measuring up to making something of yourself, from independence to interdependence, from goodness to integrity, from fear to love. The value of this experience to hundreds of children, parents, and teachers derives from the depth of Rick Ackerly’s perception and the subtlety of his understanding. He offers perspective and guidance on a wide range of challenges faced by parents of today’s school-aged children, including: self-confidence, discipline, boundary-setting, building character, integrity, taking responsibility, facing challenges, handling disappointment, peer pressure, reading, testing, homework, academic achievement, failure, and success. [Excerpt] Mr. Rick's Words of Wisdom Children need teachers at school and parents at home. Failure is at least as powerful an educator as success. Kids need consequences and they need forgiveness We put our kids at risk by trying to engineer their success. Our children need us to have confidence in them. The core of building character is taking responsibility. If we are open to the surprise, we can let them educate us.
Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.
Oral Story Telling And Teaching Mathematics provides the first serious exploration of the role that oral storytelling can play in helping children learn mathematics. It should be of interest to those concerned with providing children with powerful mathematical and literary experiences and those concerned with multicultural education. An accompanying CD-ROM contains the full text of two epic stories plus addition worksheets and handouts.
Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.
From Michael Gurian, the best-selling author of The Minds of Boys and The Wonder of Girls, comes the next-step book that shows how any parent can tune into a child’s unique core personality, hard wiring, temperament, and genetic predisposition in order to help that child flourish and thrive. Based on the most recent brain research, Nurture the Nature features the Ten Tips for Nurturing the Nature of Your Baby, self-tests, checklists, and many other tools for you to help your kids get exactly the kind of support they need, from infants to adolescents. While offering positive ideas for nurturing your child, Gurian also shows how to avoid the stress, pressures, and excessive competition of what he identifies as social trends parenting. Most parents know instinctively that their child is unique and has special potential, weaknesses, and strengths. No child is a blank slate. Gurian calls on parents to turn away from one-size-fits-all approaches and instead support the individual core nature of a child with effective and customized loving care.
"Now in a second edition, the award-winning The Trouble with Maths offers important insights into the often confusing world of numeracy. By looking at learning difficulties in maths from several perspectives, including the language of mathematics, thinking styles and the demands of individual topics, this book offers a complete overview of the most common problems associated with mathematics teaching and learning. It draws on tried-and-tested methods based on research and the author's many years of classroom experience to provide an authoritative yet highly accessible one-stop classroom resource. Combining advice, guidance and practical activities, this user-friendly guide will enable you to: develop flexible thinking skills; use alternative strategies for pupils to access basic facts; understand the implications of pre-requisite skills, such as working memory, on learning; implement effective preventative measures before disaffection sets in; recognise maths anxiety and tackle self-esteem problems; tackle the difficulties with word problems that many pupils may have; select appropriate materials to enhance understanding. With useful features such as checklists for the evaluation of books, an outline for setting up an inclusive Maths Department policy and a brand new chapter on materials, manipulatives and communication, this book will equip you with the essential skills to tackle your pupils' maths difficulties and improve standards. This book will be useful for all teachers, classroom assistants, learning support assistants and parents who have pupils that underachieve with maths"--
The groundbreaking guide for parents and teachers to identify and understand the different ways children learn. Not all children learn in the same way. So why should they all be taught the same way? Some are verbal gymnasts while others are wandering wonderers; some need to be shown while others need to move. The first step to reaching and teaching each child is to understand his or her innate learning style. Written by two educators, How Your Child is Smart identifies six distinct patterns of learning and teaches parents how to help their children learn and communicate most effectively. Through simple questions, activities, and charts, parents can identify their child's pattern and learn how he or she can best be taught in school.
Mathematics for Dyslexics: Including Dyscalculia, 3rd Edition discusses the factors that contribute to the potential difficulties many dyslexic learners may have with mathematics, and suggests ways of addressing these difficulties. The first chapters consider the theoretical background. The later chapters look at practical methods, which may help dyslexic learners. The book is designed to be comprehensive and to help teachers, support assistants, and parents understand the learner and to learn a range of skills and thus develop confidence and competence in working with dyslexic pupils.
