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In addition, many parents and educators feel that schools need to be ready for children. Of course, the reality is that a match between your child’s development and the school’s resources and adaptability may not exist.
When you’re deciding when your child should start school, consider your child’s unique abilities and local circumstances. Gather accurate information about your child’s development, especially communication skills, including language development and the ability to listen; social skills and the ability to get along with other children and adults; and physical skills from running and playing to using a crayon or pencil. Talking with your child’s pediatrician, preschool teacher, and/or childcare provider can provide some useful, objective observations and information.
Some schools may conduct their own tests to evaluate your youngster’s abilities. So-called readiness tests tend to concentrate on academic skills, but most usually evaluate other aspects of development.
When you or the school identify some areas of your child’s development that seem to lag behind, use this information to help you and the school plan for the special attention that your child may need.
Parents can encourage their children’s cognitive, physical, and emotional development before they enter school. Kindergarten teachers appreciate having children who are enthusiastic and curious in approaching new activities, can follow directions, are sensitive to other children’s feelings, and can take turns and share. Some specific skills that will make your child’s first year at school go smoothly include her ability to:
- Play well with other children with minimal fighting or crying.
- Remain attentive and quiet when being read a story.
- Use the toilet on her own.
- Successfully use zippers and buttons.
- Say her name, address, and telephone number.
There are great benefits to reading to your child beginning in infancy. Help your child acquire some basic skills, like recognizing and remembering letters, numbers, and colors. Expose her to enriching and learning experiences like trips to the museum, or enroll her in community art or science programs. To promote social-skills development, encourage her to play with other children of both sexes in the neighborhood and to participate in organized community-sponsored activities.
[button color=”grey” size=”medium” link=”https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/preschool/Pages/Is-Your-Child-Ready-for-School.aspx” target=”blank” ]Source[/button]
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Move over Tyrannosaurus rex! National Geographic Explorer Nizar Ibrahim worked with colleagues to digitally reconstruct the Spinosaurus and confirmed that it grew up to 15 meters in length and was 3 meters larger than T. rex.
The first partial skeletons of the Spinosaurus were found by Bavarian paleontologist, Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach in the Egyptian Sahara on an expedition. The fossils were displayed in Munich Germany but were destroyed during WWII.
Ibrahim was inspired by children’s books that featured the Spinosaurus and later learned about Stromer’s discovery while studying in the United Kingdom.
While traveling in Morocco for his studies, Ibrahim bought some fossils not realizing their actual value. The next year, he was shown a partial Spinosaurus skeleton and realized the fossils he owned matched this skeleton.
Using all known information he had collected over the years, he and his colleagues were able to create a computer model and 3D-printed life-size Spinosaurus skeleton. With this information they verified it was not only larger than T. rex but also the only carnivore to walk on four legs.
[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/science/spinosaurus-at-nat-geo/” target=”blank” ]Source[/button]
]]>2. Terminology is useful for describing and explaining sentences, not for writing and reading them. Don’t stress yourself – or the students – by worrying whether they can label a word an “adjective” or an “adverb”. Concern yourself with making sure they can use them successfully in their writing. The terminology will follow, especially if you model and discuss sample sentences of various structures and styles.
3. Guide students through activities in sentence combining, sentence expanding, and sentence manipulating. Research shows these activities are more effective than freewriting in enhancing student writing. These activities can be completed as a class – orally or in writing – and during minilessons or conferences. Use samples from student work (but get permission first) or from books they are reading.
Model Sentence, from Skinnybones:
I jumped out of bed and ran over to the goldfish bowl.
Expanded Sentence:
I quickly jumped out of bed and clumsily ran over to the overflowing goldfish bowl.
This could be a time to integrate the terminology into your discussion. We added the word ‘overflowing’. Why? What does this word do? That’s right. It’s tells us more about the goldfish bowl. It gives us a better description. Adding adjectives, or describing words, is a one way to expand our sentences and make them more interesting. What other adjectives could we have used? What words can we use to help readers get a good picture in their heads. Etc. etc.
4. Give plenty of opportunities for students to write for real audiences and real purposes. Create a postal system within your classroom, grade level, or department. Allow time for students to write letters to each other and have them delivered. Write emails to international pen pals, books reviews for Amazon.com, entries for a class blog, letters to local companies, stories for younger readers, etc. Don’t let yourself, as the teacher, be the only audience your students have for their writing.
5. Read aloud to students and provide time for them to read. Give them access to a variety of literature – stories, newspapers, poems, textbooks, plays, informational text, jokes, comic strips. Try to choose some selections that are more advanced than the students would read by themselves. Research has shown that extensive reading helps students, especially English language learners, acquire grammatical structure.
6. Lead exercises in sentence imitation using model sentences from authentic literature. Let students explore and play with language, considering various ways of expressing an idea.
Model Sentence, from Esperanza Rising:
When she realized she was crying, Esperanza wiped her eyes with a shawl.
Possible Imitation Sentences:
When she realized it was raining, she covered her head with her book.
When he realized it was snowing, he ran to find his sled.
Again, this is a great time to use that tricky terminology in your discussion.
7. Let students become sentence collectors. As they read authentic texts at home and school, encourage them to collect sentences interesting to them in meaning, function, or structure. Display these throughout the classroom for reflection and discussion. Why did they like the sentence? What about the sentence made it interesting? How is it different from other sentences? Why did the author use this sentence? What different parts make up the whole sentence?
8. Study language, as a whole. By studying about how language works – how words enter our language, how they change, why people speak differently, when people speak differently, how meaning can change over time, how nonverbal communication works, etc. – students learn more about how people think and how we communicate, helping them be more conscious of their own language decisions and hopefully making them as passionate about language as their teachers are!
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