That's absolutely true. Any of the NAEYC books do a great job of that for teachers of children through third grade, as does resources such as the Nebraska-Iowa Primary Program. Also very helpful is Sam Meisels' Work Sampling materials. They're wonderful.
Not to keep beating the same old political drum, but with how things are in many schools today, it would probably be dangerous for teachers to access information like this that show "how schools are spozed to be," and how inappropriate whole group, regimented, linear instruction is for children. Exactly Beverlee, and added to that, I think we need a good course in cognitive, emotional, developmental and behavioral levels of students at each age. Many times teachers are frustrated at behaviors that are very typical of a particular age group and are, in reality, developmentally appropriate behaviors for that age. I'm reading a book right now called, "Yardsticks" which addresses these ideas. Sorry, I don't know the author right now, but I got it at Heinemann. (sp?) Just an example, from my experience, I used to teach a parenting class and I would tell the parents, "Two year olds aren't able to share, they just aren't developmentally ready to do so because children at this age are bound by their perceptions. This means that if a child of two sees another child holding their toy, he thinks that the toy now belongs to the other child and this upsets him. I wanted parents to relax, not think that this was some sort of personality disorder of their young child, and to help the child by redirecting him or the child to another toy. I daycare we often had 2 or 3 of the same toy for this very reason. Does this make sense? Deb It's really not our fault, we should have more than a casual mention of discipline in our courses. Debbie I agree. And actually, often if we do get moe than a casual mention, it's addressing an extrinsic, manipulative, "reward" system of discipline rather than "building a class" positive discipline. So that's also less than helpful. _________________________________________________________________ Need a brain boost? Recharge with a stimulating game. Play now! http://club.live.com/home.aspx?icid=club_hotmailtextlink1 _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. --------------------------------- Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. _________________________________________________________________ http://liveearth.msn.com _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
