The Teacher S Calendar School Year 2005 2006

A year's worth of ideas and activities to revitalize every teacher's class "I see this as an absolutely necessary tool no matter what your subject area or grade level. The information contained in the index alone is worth the price of this book!" --Alexis Ludewig, Wisconsin Teacher of the Year, 2002 "The kids especially like the Internet links to find special facts about a given day of the year." --Tracy Callard, Kansas Teacher of the Year, 2002 "A wonderful resource to supplement our required curriculum!" --Melinda Day Webster, Tennessee Teacher of the Year, 2002 For more than five years, The Teacher's Calendar has been a fixture in classrooms and school libraries across the country. You will find innovative ideas for lessons, bulletin boards, and school calendars on every page. Sidebars highlight specific dates and provide curriculum ideas, lists of appropriate books, and related websites. 5,000 month-by-month, day-by-day listings, all fully updated and revised 50 new essays on how to use this material in your classroom Appendixes with U.S., Canada, and Mexico at-a-glance facts And more! With its extensive listings and seemingly inexhaustible treasure of classroom ideas, The Teacher's Calendar will take the guesswork out of lesson planning and put fun and creativity back into your classroom.

Features 5,000 month-by-month, day-by-day listings for every day of the school year, including summer school The 2006-2007 edition features information on the 300th founding anniversary of Jamestown, the 200th birth anniversary of Henry Longfellow, the 100th anniversary of the first Mother's Day, and much more

Offers school leaders lessons, case studies, practical tools, advice, vignettes, and step-by-step instructions for developing new schools or converting existing ones, plus guidance for forging partnerships with the community.

Covering events from August 1, 2003, through July 31, 2004, this unique reference helps educators in grades K-8 enhance their lesson plans in ways they never thought of before. Teachers will find a wealth of innovative ideas for lessons, bulletin boards, and school calendars on every page.

As the incomes of affluent and poor families have diverged over the past three decades, so too has the educational performance of their children. But how exactly do the forces of rising inequality affect the educational attainment and life chances of low-income children? In Whither Opportunity? a distinguished team of economists, sociologists, and experts in social and education policy examines the corrosive effects of unequal family resources, disadvantaged neighborhoods, insecure labor markets, and worsening school conditions on K-12 education. This groundbreaking book illuminates the ways rising inequality is undermining one of the most important goals of public education—the ability of schools to provide children with an equal chance at academic and economic success. The most ambitious study of educational inequality to date, Whither Opportunity? analyzes how social and economic conditions surrounding schools affect school performance and children’s educational achievement. The book shows that from earliest childhood, parental investments in children’s learning affect reading, math, and other attainments later in life. Contributor Meredith Phillip finds that between birth and age six, wealthier children will have spent as many as 1,300 more hours than poor children on child enrichment activities such as music lessons, travel, and summer camp. Greg Duncan, George Farkas, and Katherine Magnuson demonstrate that a child from a poor family is two to four times as likely as a child from an affluent family to have classmates with low skills and behavior problems – attributes which have a negative effect on the learning of their fellow students. As a result of such disparities, contributor Sean Reardon finds that the gap between rich and poor children’s math and reading achievement scores is now much larger than it was fifty years ago. And such income-based gaps persist across the school years, as Martha Bailey and Sue Dynarski document in their chapter on the growing income-based gap in college completion. Whither Opportunity? also reveals the profound impact of environmental factors on children’s educational progress and schools’ functioning. Elizabeth Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines, and Christina Gibson-Davis show that local job losses such as those caused by plant closings can lower the test scores of students with low socioeconomic status, even students whose parents have not lost their jobs. They find that community-wide stress is most likely the culprit. Analyzing the math achievement of elementary school children, Stephen Raudenbush, Marshall Jean, and Emily Art find that students learn less if they attend schools with high student turnover during the school year – a common occurrence in poor schools. And David Kirk and Robert Sampson show that teacher commitment, parental involvement, and student achievement in schools in high-crime neighborhoods all tend to be low. For generations of Americans, public education provided the springboard to upward mobility. This pioneering volume casts a stark light on the ways rising inequality may now be compromising schools’ functioning, and with it the promise of equal opportunity in America.

Exploring Childhood in a Comparative Context meets an increasing need for students focusing on early childhood to be familiar with alternative practices in other countries. Providing a ready-made source of information about a wide range of countries including Finland, the Netherlands, the United States, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and many more, the book clearly describes the way each country understands and conceptualises childhood. Each chapter includes contextual information about the country, an introduction to the theory that has shaped practice and describes the curriculum for pre-school and primary education. Including vignettes from practitioners working in each country to illustrate practice, the chapters explore key themes such as: Child development Parental involvement Teaching and learning Professionalism Assessment Pupil experience. Accessibly written and including opportunities for reflection, this timely new book will give students a valuable insight into alternative education systems that is essential if they are to become practitioners with a current and global approach.

These indicators look at who participates in education, what is spent on it, how education systems operate and the results achieved.