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July 4th is always a good day for me. I love summer, I love festivals, and I love BBQ. I also love my husband, and it’s our anniversary–so even more reason to celebrate. I don’t always take the time to really think about what we are celebrating on July 4th; but this year, I thought about it more than usual. Probably because of this blog and the information I’ve been sharing about helping girls and women around the world, probably because of reading Half the Sky, and probably because of my two experiences building houses in Juarez, Mexico. Well, whatever the reason, here are some thoughts I had on freedom and education.

There’s no point in telling an American child or teen how lucky they are to go to school, to get a free and usually good public education, and to most of the time have a safe way to get to school. I know there are places in the United States where this isn’t necessarily true, and this is a disgrace. But for the most part, our kids are lucky to go to school and get an education. Some kids and teens are even starting to miss it about now if they go to a traditional school with a nine-month calendar. They’re ready for structure, friends, and some brain challenges.

When I was in Juarez, Mexico in a poor, desert community, kids didn’t get to go to school every day. If they did go every day, they went for a couple hours, and that was it. The reason was there was not enough room, supplies, teachers for all the kids in the area to go to school at the same time. So they had to stagger their schedules. As we all know, education is one of the best ways to fight poverty. Without an education, a person has a harder time getting a job and unfortunately, having a child at a too-young age. Kids in Juarez liked the days they went to school and wanted to go more–at least the ones I talked to with my limited (very limited!) Spanish. It’s a freedom they don’t have readily provided for them.

In Half the Sky, there are chapters and stories that discuss how dangerous it is for children to make it to school in some areas. The walk is far and hard, and they have to worry about being attacked by gangs or other tribes or criminals. They have to worry about being kidnapped and sold into the human trafficking system. And so their parent’s don’t let them go. Their parents would rather keep them safe. Many parents have no money to send their children to school, and education is not free or a freedom in these places.

I’m not saying we need to change our kids’ opinions of school, but we can help them see the good points and maybe their opinion will change on their own. We can talk about how happy we were to go to school and get an education, to pursue a career that makes us happy and pays for the things in our houses. If we have older children who can handle some of the heartbreaking stories in Half the Sky, we can share them. And we can do this at any time. We can be thankful for our freedoms at any time–not just at the beginning of July.

I’m reading more and more about modern-day abolitionists. I love this term! Many of them help people out of slavery and poverty and do this by providing an education. I’ll feature one tomorrow. Here are a few children’s books about freedom–most dealing with the past, but you can always apply these concepts to the world today:

In the spirit of my blog’s title: “Margo Dill’s Read These Books and Use Them,” I have read the book Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. And I’m going to use it. I’m going to use it to do something a little different with my blog. So, here’s what I am thinking. . .

Half the Sky is an amazing book that will change your life. It’s an adult book, but I think many older teens could read it, too. The subtitle is Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. This book is not easy to read. It highlights some of the atrocities that are happening to women (many of these are actually girls in their tweens and teens) around the world such as sex trafficking, maternal mortality, extreme poverty, discrimination, and more. The book also gives practical ideas to help these women and highlights programs that are working in the world today. You cannot read this book without doing something whether giving money, telling other people, or well. . .doing something on your blog.

I still want to highlight authors and their books and let parents, teachers, and librarians know how to use these books, so I have decided to do two things with my blog: 1. Stick with my original intentions on Thursdays and Fridays by highlighting books, authors, and activities 2. Do something new with my blog on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays by telling stories of women around the world, giving information about different programs to help women and children, and finding easy and practical ways for ANYONE to help–even if you don’t have any money to give.

Now, there will be a few changes in the new schedule in the next couple weeks because I will be taking part in some blog tours. I love blog tours, and so every once in a while if I can’t schedule a blog tour for a Thursday or Friday, you may find an author and his or her book on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. But hey, all the information is useful!

SO, I will leave you with this: In 2006, ABC News did a story on sex trafficking in the United States. (Yes, it is not just a foreign problem.) Here is a statistic from that story that is just overwhelming to me: “The FBI estimates that there are well over 100,000 children and teens in the United States — most of them young girls — being trafficked in the sex trade.” And that’s almost nothing compared to what is going on in other countries around the globe. However, just one teen involved in sex trafficking is TOO MANY. Education is the first step into fighting this type of abuse. I hope to fight it here.

Join me!

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With the almost-bombing scare in Times Square over the weekend, I’ve been watching a lot of news to see if they catch this person who almost caused great havoc in New York City. While listening to a press conference with New York’s mayor, I heard him say that the reason why they were lucky enough to stop this bombing before it became a tragedy is because a vendor in the area noticed something that seemed a little strange to him–smoke coming out of an SUV parked in a strange way on the street. Then the vendor said something to a police officer, and the rest is history–in a good way for once.

So, many times we go through our weeks and see things that we think may be a little bit off or a little bit strange, but we don’t say anything or do anything because we don’t want to be embarrassed or we don’t want to cause anyone trouble. I even have a friend who heard someone trying to get in her back door and didn’t call 911 because the person went away. Thank God the door was locked, and thank God the person wasn’t persistent. Did we learn this not-speaking-up action from teachers and parents when we were young? Did they tell us that we aren’t supposed to cause trouble or doubt people’s genuine goodness?

What’s my point?

My point is that we need to teach kids and teens the exact lesson that this vendor and many tourists and citizens of New York City learned on Saturday night–we need to speak when something seems wrong to us. We should go to the authorities–not try to handle things ourselves. If your child sees someone lurking around the house that’s not supposed to be there–they should call 911. If someone tries to give them a ride home from the bus stop, they should scream and run away. If it’s a good person who was innocently offering a ride, he will understand why the child reacted as he or she did. I used to teach my students this technique when I taught third through fifth graders. I told them to never, ever go anywhere with a stranger; and if a stranger got to close to them, scream, call for help, and run away as fast as they could. If they overhear a friend or classmate say something dangerous, they should tell someone they trust. You want to teach them how they DON’T want to be one of those kids after a suicide or school shooting who knew something and did nothing.

Let’s end the days of worrying so much about being politically correct and hurting people’s feelings. In a world where some people aren’t worried about even their own lives or safety, then we need to arm kids with the tools to notice when something doesn’t seem right and to speak up about it. It could save their lives, their friends’ lives, or even a whole community’s lives–just like our heroic t-shirt vendor in Times Square.

I am so honored to be a part of WOW! Women On Writing’s blog tour for Cindy Hudson, who is the author of a wonderful book for parents titled Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs. Cindy has been in a mother-daughter book club with her own children for several years, and she has written a book that draws on her experiences as well as other parents around the country. This is a guide book for any parent who wants to start a group with her child, or for parents who are already involved in book clubs and want new ideas!

Cindy is here with us today to answer some questions about her book. Best of all, we are giving away a FREE copy to one lucky winner who comments on this post by Thursday, April 29 at 8:00 p.m. CST. You can tell us about your parent-child book club, ask Cindy a question, make a comment about her interview, or simply say, “I would love to win this book.” Please make sure to have included your e-mail address with your comment, so we know how to contact you!

Okay, on to Cindy:

Margo: Welcome, Cindy, to Read These Books and Use Them. I am so in love with your book about mother-daughter book clubs because you are doing exactly what I preach–using books! What do you think is the most important chapter in your book for mothers to read who are just starting out in the mother-daughter book club world?

Cindy: Book by Book is organized in three sections: one to help moms set up their groups, one with ideas for enriching meetings so clubs can thrive for years, and one for troubleshooting issues. The first ten chapters are a step-by-step process that leads moms through the whole process of getting started, and I think each helps them determine a crucial piece of putting together a reading group. With that said, if moms were going to read just one of those first ten chapters, I would recommend the chapter on deciding who to invite. You’ll see the moms and daughters in your group on a regular basis, possibly for years. It’s worth it to spend some time thinking about who you want those people to be.

Margo: That’s something I never really thought about before, but you are so right. It is important to have a good dynamic in your group to keep it thriving! What are two or three books that stand out in your mind that mothers and daughters particularly liked in your mother-daughter book clubs?

Cindy: Before I answer, I’ll say when everyone likes the book it doesn’t always mean you’ll have a great discussion. Often the best discussions come when the feelings are mixed. That’s when you’ll get diverse opinions that may help the moms and daughters in your group see things from a different perspective, which can be a really great function of book club.

It’s wonderful when you find books that are well-liked and give you a lot to talk about. Here are some I can recommend based on my experience:

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen—As the story flips from Bryce’s point of view to Juli’s, readers see how the same events can be seen in totally different ways by different people experiencing them.

Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce—When some of the greatest art in history comes to the dying town of Manod in England, it helps the citizens find new hope and

photo by mrbill www.flickr.com

On Saturday, April 24, I am involved in a very exciting event in St. Peters, Missouri with a writing group I belong to–Saturday Writers. Every year, we sponsor free writing contests for kids and teens; and this Saturday, we hand out the awards. Basically, we have a short story/poetry contest for third and fourth graders in St. Charles, Lincoln, and Warren counties (in Missouri) and a short story contest for teenagers in the same counties. This year, we had 129 entries for the elementary students and close to 100 for the teens. How exciting! But what’s even more exciting is when I get a call or e-mail from parents or teachers, telling me how excited their students or children are to have received first place or honorable mention or even the participation award. These students wrote pieces from their hearts, took them through to their final drafts, entered them for someone else to read, and then felt validation (I am assuming) when they are awarded something for their efforts. And I have to hope that in this bunch of kids and teens, we are creating some life-long writers with Saturday Writers writing contests for kids!

I remember a writing contest I entered in second grade. Is it what led to my love of writing now? The writing contest was to write a cheer for our school mascot–the Dressel Dragons. I wrote one, turned it in at the office, and the student body voted on it. (I can’t ever imagine putting my writing through a vote now–but back then, what did I know?) Do you want to hear my award-winning, first-place cheer? I can still remember it!! Hey kids, listen here./ We’ve got a school that’s hard to beat!/ And we’ve got teachers who are super neat!/ So come on over and stomp your feet./ Yay! Dressel Dragons, yay! So, what do you think? The point is I entered a writing contest for kids, actually won, and today I can’t imagine doing anything else besides writing with my life.

As teachers and parents, we often see or receive notices of writing contests for kids, and we just kind of push them aside. Have you ever thought: We don’t have time for this writing contest. My kids don’t like to write. How will these students ever be able to write 1,000 words? I guess my point is that although you can’t do every writing contest that comes your way and neither can your students, it would be great if we gave them the opportunity to enter a few throughout the year–possibly in different genres. Work them into your language arts curriculum. Look for writing contests in the summer when you want your children/students to practice their skills. We just never know what getting an honorable mention certificate might do for a child’s self-confidence or even future.

Here are some contests to check out. Please read all the guidelines and rules yourself before entering your students or children into these contests:

*Amazing Kids Contests
* Creative Communication: Your Writing Contest Headquarters
*The Betty Award

If you know of any writing contests for kids in your area or nationwide, feel free to leave a link or description in the comments. Thanks!

photo by Jeff Sandquist www.flickr.com

I saw this story about Mrs. Q and her blog: Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project on Good Morning, America a couple weeks ago, and I knew I wanted to talk about this on my blog–since we are talking about education and stuff like that here. You know–important stuff!

So, if you haven’t heard of Mrs. Q and her project yet, then here’s a brief synopsis. Mrs. Q is a teacher in the Midwest. She is eating school lunches this school year and blogging about them. She didn’t start this project because she had some big inspiration. She started because she forgot her own lunch a couple times, and she had to eat what the kids ate. Many of these students are on the free and reduced lunch program, and this school lunch may be their only hot and complete meal of the day.

On her blog, Fed Up With Lunch, Mrs. Q has posts such as: “March recap” (posted on April 4) where she tells readers what she had for lunch in March such as 4 pizza lunches and 7 fruit cups as well as what she is learning during this project: “I am getting sick of eating school lunches. Imagine how the kids feel.” or “I am still nervous about losing my full-time work as an educator. I’m trying to think positive about other opportunities that might open up if I were forced out (I no longer believe I would be fired, but I bet it would be “suggested” that I leave). “

The lunch posts are always interesting because they have pictures of the food she ate that day. Check out these two: salisbury steak and tex-mex, and let me know if you think you would want to eat that! Not looking so appetizing!

If you are concerned with your child’s nutrition when they are at school or if you are wondering what types of meals your kids eat or if they eat at all, I would check out Mrs. Q’s blog. Her posts are full of all types of information–she has guest bloggers and experts weighing in with their opinions. She answers questions and responds to comments. What I really like and admire is she is in the trenches, and she is eating this stuff herself. She’s not just writing about it. I used to eat school lunch sometimes when I taught full time, and I agree with just about everything Mrs. Q says. I have eaten lunch at my stepson’s school–his lunch ladies are the nicest, and they are doing the best with what they are given–but it’s just not good food (IMHO). It’s just not.

So, check out Mrs. Q’s blog and/or leave some thoughts here about kids, nutrition, and school lunches.

(I love this book series!)

If you are a teacher, librarian, parent, or anyone really, you might be interested in taking some online classes about writing and social networking this spring and summer. I am teaching three classes through WOW! Women on Writing’s classroom and workshop program, and I am super excited!

The first class I am teaching starts on Wednesday, April 21 and is called: Writing For Children: Short Stories, Articles, and Fillers. This is for anyone who has ever thought–hey, I’d like to write for children, but you’re not sure where to start or how to get some publishing credits. Here’s an interview I did with Angela from WOW! about writing for children in these areas and about my class. This class meets for seven weeks–online using a Google group. We do not meet at a certain time online–it’s all done at each student’s own schedule. I am running a special this spring–it usually costs $200, but I’m offering it for $175. Click here to view the syllabus and to sign up for the class. (This is the third time I’m offering this course.)

The next class I am teaching was really popular this winter. It’s called: SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR AUTHORS: TWITTER, FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN AND MORE! This course is actually for anyone who wants to learn how to use these social networks–for personal and business reasons, although we focus mostly on businesses such as freelance writing, authors who want to promote a book, freelance editors, writing coaches, etc. The class starts on Monday, May 24 and lasts for four weeks for $100. We use a Google group, and students don’t have to be online at a certain time–we work around all schedules. I also did an interview with Angela for this class and tips for using social networking as a writer. For more information on the syllabus and how to sign up for the class, click here.

The last class is brand new, and I am super excited to teach it–especially since I love blogging so much. The class is all about blogging and is called: BLOGGING 101 AND MORE: Start a Blog, Make it Unique, and Keep it Going. This course will help new and experienced bloggers start and/or improve a blog in either Wordpress or Blogger. We will use a Google group as our virtual classroom. It starts on Monday, July 12, runs for five weeks, and is $125. We’ll discuss keeping up with your blog, making it unique, driving traffic to it, and even monetizing it. Go here for more information on the syllabus and to sign up. This class can be for anyone who wants to start a blog about anything. Also, please feel free to leave any comments or questions below and pass on the information to your friends and family with the SHARE THIS button.

Thanks for your support as always! If you are interested in all the cl

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Currently, I am reading a very powerful book that is touching my life deeply and calling me to action. The book is called Half the Sky written by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn,and it’s about women’s oppression around the world and how to combat it. I plan to start another blog in late spring or early summer about this subject targeted to teens and college students, but I wanted to tell you about an organization I found out about while reading this book. It was started by a seventh grade student, Zach Hunter, and is geared toward children and teens helping the fight against human trafficking and slavery around the world. It’s perfect for a class service learning project or even a year-long project for a home school group. So, let’s go. . .

Loose Change 2 Loosen Chains has a Facebook Cause page that anyone can join with a Facebook account. This organization is also connected with the International Justice Mission, which is relentless in fighting slavery that still exists in the world today. If you don’t believe me or think–there’s no way slavery exists in the 21st century, I encourage you to find a copy of Half the Sky at a bookstore, library, or online, and start reading.

If you are interested in finding out more about how you can do a service learning project with Loose Change 2 Loosen Chains, then you can email [email protected] with your snail mail address and get a tool kit. You can also visit Free the Slaves website for information on what slavery looks like around the world today. You can share some of these stories with students–depending on the age of your students or your children, you can decide how much detail to go into. However, in my opinion, even the youngest child can understand that taking away someone’s freedom based on religion, race, or sex is wrong; and they don’t need all the gory details but can still understand that some 10-year-old girl living her life in a brothel without being able to go outside and play or even go to school is not right.

On the Loose Change 2 Loosen Chains Facebook Cause Page, Zach Hunter has written that: “27 million people are still in slavery today. It’s estimated that 50 % are children. They may be tricked with the promise of a good job, deceived or sold, working in brothels, brick kilns, on plantations and in many industries.”

On the International Justice Mission website, it is written: “According to Real Simple magazine there is $10.5 billion in loose change lying around American households. Imagine what you could do if you were to collect even just a fraction of this amount and use it for a good cause!”

So contact Loose Change to Loosen Chains either through [email protected] or at [email protected] and get your starter kit today. Your life and your children’s or students’ lives may be changed forever with this service learning project.

Finally, I would like to announce that Cinda B. won the Aries Rising book by Bonnie Hearn Hill from last week’s giveaway contest. Thank you to everyone who left a comment and even came back once the technical difficulties were fixed!

You might have noticed this new widget I have on my sidebar, courtesy of JacketFlap and the Children’s Book Council. It is announcing several nominees for the Children’s Choice Book Awards. In case you didn’t know, the Children’s Choice Book Award nominees have been announced in each category: Kindergarten to second grade, third to fourth grade, fifth to sixth grade, teen choice, author of the year, and illustrator of the year. There are five books or people nominated in each category.

Here’s a little blurb about the contest from the CBC website: “The favorite book finalists were determined by close to 15,000 children and teens. Thousands more will be able to cast their votes for their favorite book, author, and illustrator at bookstores, schools, libraries, and at BookWeekOnline.com from March 15 to May 3.

The Children’s Choice Book Awards winners will be announced live at the Children’s Choice Book Awards gala on May 11 in New York City as part of Children’s Book Week (May 10-16, 2010), the oldest national literacy event in the United States.”

When looking at the list, I am just thrilled. Here are some of my favorites from the list of nominees:

*Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
*City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
*Carl Hiassen for Scat
*Rick Riordan for The Last Olympian
*James Patterson for Max
*Victoria Kann for Goldilicious (Illustrator)

To see the full list of nominees, you can go here.

So, mark your calendars to let your children or your students vote on their favorites. If you haven’t read these books, then go to the library or bookstore and check them out! You have until May 3 to vote, so that’s plenty of time to devour these titles. If you have a favorite from the list, let us know here. You can find some of these authors and their books on this site. Go to the second sidebar on the right-hand side of this page, go to the category they write (such as YA), and click on their name. I have reviewed and provided activities for Suzanne Collins, James Patterson, Cassandra Clare, and Carl Hiassen.

Happy reading!

photo by librarianjill www.flickr.com

Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and children across the United States will be involved in Read Across America activities. But before I get into this, I want to announce the winner of the book giveaway contest I held on this blog last week. The winner is. . .Clara Gillow Clark. Thank you to everyone who left comments! I will be hosting another contest next week for a YA book as part of a WOW! blog tour, so stay tuned.

I love Read Across America day. When I taught remedial reading at David Barton Elementary School in Boonville, MO, we had a great celebration for Dr. Seuss. We all had these really cute t-shirts from NEA (and I swear to you that I am wearing mine as I type this post). Some teachers went a step farther and dressed up as Dr. Seuss’s characters such as the Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2–even making their own blue wigs out of blue Easter grass. (Some people are just so creative–it makes you sick! ) We read Dr. Seuss books to kids that day, talked about his funny rhymes, voted on our favorite books in our classrooms, did Dr. Seuss activity sheets, and just celebrated reading. What a great day and a great message–celebrate reading!

It might be too late at your school, in your classroom, or with your home school to plan a big event for tomorrow like this, but you can still celebrate Dr. Seuss’s day and reading with simple activities like taking more time than usual for silent reading, sharing a favorite Dr. Seuss book with your students or children (even if they’re high schoolers), asking students to write a poem or story in Dr. Seuss style with silly made-up words, watching a Dr. Seuss movie and comparing/contrasting it to the book, or even asking children to write about their favorite Dr. Seuss book and why.

The National Education Association has some free resources on their website to use tomorrow. You can find bookmarks, a Read Across America poem, posters, booklists, and even information for parents (if you click on “For Parents” in the sidebar). Here are some Dr. Seuss books to check out, and you can find activities for some of his books on my blog by clicking on his name in the category list on the right-hand side bar. It’s super easy–just look under PICTURE BOOKS and then click on DR. SEUSS!

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss!

photo by zipckr www.flickr.com

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is on everybody’s minds, and it seems like on everybody’s TVs. If you log on to Twitter or Facebook, tweets and status updates about the Winter Olympics are inevitable, and so we know our children and teens are watching and listening, too. As parents and teachers, how can we use these Winter Olympics as part of our sneaky teaching moments (when we are teaching our children something without them knowing it), and what can we teach them? Here’s a list I made:

*The most obvious is hard work and determination will get you far in life–whether you are an athlete or a small business owner. If you reach for the top and support that reach with hard work, you will get somewhere.

*You can’t buy your way to the top. I think Canada might be learning that the hard way. There’s been a lot of press about them spending millions and millions and millions of dollars to buy the podium at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver; and this morning on the news, I saw that the U.S. has 24 medals and Canada has 9. One Canadian reporter wrote an article and asked if the United States would let Canada “rent” a spot on the podium? I think this is the perfect lesson for children, teens, and adults to realize that money alone is not going to buy success, happiness, or gold medals.

*There’s more than just football, soccer, basketball, and baseball out there in the sports arena. Yesterday, I watched the most interesting Winter Olympic sport which basically looked like a huge shuffleboard game on ice and is called curling. Now, this sport takes completely different skills than football; and for some children and teens, it might be right up their alley. Maybe none of these Olympic events are right up their alley, but at least it can show them that there’s a big world out there past their high school community. On a side note, I recently wrote an article about teens and rock climbing and teens and Explorer posts. I had the same ideas about the big, old world out there when I was writing these articles. Make sure we let kids follow whatever interests and dreams they have–there’s probably even a group already out there for them to get involved in.

*Having pride in your country is good and important, but we have to have good sportsmanship and be accepting of everyone. Some athletes who lose don’t always show good sportsmanship. There’s been some smack talk from different athletes and fans surrounding these Olympic games. If your child or teen gets caught up, stop them and show them an example of someone who is positive like U.S. figure skater, Evan Lysacek, who won the gold medal last night and is under fierce criticism from the Russians. He said nothing but positive and nice things about his opponent Evgeni Plushenko on Good Morning, America this morning.

Here are a couple books to check out:

Maybe you’ve thought of some other things the Winter Olympics can teach our children. Please share these sneaky life lessons here!

photo by d3 Dan www.flickr.com

Recently, my stepson who is in third grade completed a unit on rounding and estimating that I thought might get the better of his dad, his mom, me, and Logan, but we made it through! One of the first things I said to my husband when we were working on Logan’s homework and studying for a test was that he had no idea what rounding and estimating actually mean. He knew something about some rules where if one of the numbers was four or lower, he was supposed to go down. . .but down to what? He knew that rounding to the nearest ten meant that he would have a number with a zero in the ones place. But if the number was 42, he was choosing between 40 and 20–the 20 coming from the 2 in the ones place. He was totally confused.

So, having a background as an elementary teacher, I thought, Margo to the rescue–I’ll fix this. Ahh, not so fast. We made a number line, counting by tens, across the top of his page, and I said, “Okay, which two numbers does 42 come in between on this number line?” Yes, he got 40, but then he still pointed to 20, and I knew he had no idea of the basic concept of rounding and estimating. He was just focused on those rules, and he didn’t have the rules right, so this math worksheet was a total disaster. By the end of the week, he was rounding to the nearest hundred with hours of practice with my husband and me, and then more practice with his mom the next week. We used the number line and the rules he learned. And of course, this experience got me thinking as many of them do.

Logan obviously needed a combination of both–a basic understanding of what it actually means to round a number to the nearest ten and the rules on how to do this. He didn’t understand that taking 42 and rounding it down to 40 means that 42 is actually closer to 40 than 50; and if you have to add two numbers in your head at the grocery store, let’s say, it’s easier to add multiples of 10. However, when I tried to scrap every rule he had learned and just go to the math concept of which multiple of 10 is 42 closest to, he was totally lost. (What do you do with 65 then?) He had no rules or procedures to turn to when he was stuck.

This reminds me a little of the phonics/whole language argument when I was in college, preparing to become a teacher. Some people thought phonics was the way to go; others thought whole language. I thought kids needed both to learn to read. That’s what I think about math, too. Kids have to understand basic math concepts like that a plus sign means to put two groups of objects together and find how many there are all together. But they can also memorize these addition facts, so they can do harder addition problems without struggling over math facts. Children need to understand that 1/4 means you have part of an object that has been divided into four parts, and that 1/4 is less than a whole. Then when students are asked, “Which is greater? 1/10 or 1/4 of the pie?” They can easily choose because they understand what 1/4 means and what 1/10 means. They can also learn the rule that the larger the denominator the smaller the pieces; but if they have the concept in their heads, they can also rely on that to find the correct answer.

In my opinion, we have to teach children the concept behind the rules and procedures first, and then teach the math rules. How about you? What do you think?

Or maybe Mathopolis can help!

photo by Tetsumo www.flickr.com

On today’s Maniac Monday post, I am writing from a prompt I received from JuiceBoxJungle. First I’m going to answer the question as a parent and then as a teacher. Then I’m going to talk about how you could use this same writing journal prompt with your students and/or children to teach money sense and paragraph writing. So, here we go. . .

Kodak and JuiceBoxJungle sponsored me to write this fun post about what I’d do with a surprise extra $100 if someone handed it to me next month.

As a parent: So, next month, March, is parent teacher conferences for my stepson. My husband and I will travel to Missouri for his conference and then spend time with him. I could really use the EXTRA $100 for this trip. My stepson’s grades are improving and improving and improving, which means he is working really hard, and so I would ask him, “Where do you want to go out to eat?” (Of course, he will probably choose McDonald’s, so we’ll have plenty of money to do something else, too.) We could also take him roller skating or bowling–two activities he likes very much that can actually be rather pricey for two adults and one child–depending on how many games you bowl or if you need to rent skates and so on. The extra $100 would also help with the gas for a 5 1/2 hour trip there and back. (Not to mention, the snacks that we just can’t seem to leave at the gas station!)

photo by stacy michelle www.flickr.com

As a teacher: this might be a hard question to answer as a teacher because you never know what you might need any given month (especially with some of the state budget problems in Illinois). But in my experience, you can never have enough books, and I always wanted to buy more and more books. I wanted to buy book sets, 5 or 6 copies of the same book. I also wanted to buy books that went with my units in social studies and science because books are such a great way to open a lesson or provide more information to students in an entertaining way. I also tried to purchase books that fit my students’ interests that year. More than likely, there would be a student interested in the same thing the next year, so the book would get plenty of use.

You can use this writing journal prompt with your students or your children if you home school to meet two different objectives. The first is money sense. Unfortunately as we all realize, one hundred dollars doesn’t buy as much as it used to! So, if you gave this prompt to your students, what would they want to buy with an extra $100? If they write “two Nintendo DS games,” then they understand how much $100 is. If they write down a weekend trip to NYC and you live in California, then you know you need to backtrack and talk to them about how much things cost and how much $100 is. (Of course, this is depending on the age of the child. If you teach preschool, it might be fun to see what those children think $100 can buy. You can also talk about paragraph structure with this prompt. Students have their topic sentence pro