Articles

Communication. It really is hard to be an educator and not consider this to be a vital aspect of what one does professionally. Key targets are parents and students and yet  there should also be examples of  ongoing personal dialogues aimed at honing one's craft. Listed below are some more recent examples of papers and articles that I have written over the years, some of which have been published on my class web site and some of which have not. 

Reflections:

Leadership: More Than A Surface Blush. Initially written  for an administrative course in Group Dynamics, this article talks about leadership and my own style. Summer of 1998

Mathematics-

Set Theory and Multiplication: The Abstract Trap  This is the use of blocks to help teach the abstract concepts of the Associative Property of Multiplication and the Commutative Property of Multiplication. December of 2000

A Math Graph: How Many ASIJ 4th Graders are Going Out of Tokyo for Thanksgiving?  A math activity combining the scientific method and prediction strategies. December of 2000

Science- 

The Weather Parent Guide: From Aristotle to Kelvin, heat transfers over boundaries and so have the students on their test. Use this guide  to understand where they are heading. January of 2003

The Plate Tectonic Teaching Outline was used to guide the students in the formulation of their culminating science project for the Location/Volcano unit in February. Spring of 2000

Social Studies and Language Arts

Parent Poetry Page: It can be either a death knell, or a song, depending on how kids are introduced to it. Hopefully, the latter is what the children are experiencing this year. Poems are a wonderful way in which children can be released from the limiting factors of prose. Thus far this year, the children have been written a variety of poetic types: a prose poem, haiku, ode, diamante, an adverb and adjective poem, and a biography poem. There will be many more to come. To help you, as parents, understand how the children are being taught, I have written an lesson summary for some of the poetic forms. Fall of 2002 

Place and Sacredness: This lengthy, graduate level paper  addresses how the five concepts of the Geographic Themes of Place tie in with the secular and sacred based poems of Jane Yolan from a theoretical, curricular and educational standpoint. Summer 2000.

Tokens from Jerusalem: A longish companion piece to the article above, it takes one of Yolan's poems, and breaks it down into the teaching lesson, which has been taught successfully over a number of years. Summer 2000.

Place with a Small p. This page explains how the geographic concept of place, as the personality of an area, is used in class. There are outtakes of student writing about what makes a place home for the students and the characteristics of the areas they chose. Fall of 2001

Student-

The differences between the developmental and academic levels of third and fourth grade students are highlighted in this paper, Where is the Hoyle's When You Need One?  Grade level expectations are also explained. Fall of 2002

Technology

In tackling computer projects in the fourth grade, technology is not the end in itself but a way to involve higher order thinking in students. This article, Technology is a Seductive Siren, describes how. Fall 2001