Six-year-old Timothy likes to stand up and walk around while eating his dinner.  He plays basketball or hockey while watching TV.  When reading with his mother, he moves the book up and down, swings his legs back and forth, and makes it hard for her to focus on the words that they’re reading together. Nine-year-old Caleb...Read More

First, my complaint:  I don’t like the direction that reading instruction has taken in this country, moving as it has toward lock-step teaching of phonemic awareness, incessant teaching of reading comprehension ”skills” (e.g. finding the main idea, making inferences etc.), and ”close reading” strategies (where the child is restricted to just what is in the...Read More

The fact that music even exists is one of the marvelous things about being alive.  And Harvard professor Howard Gardner said that music is actually an intelligence.  However, in school, music is the first program to be cut out of the budget if there’s a financial crush, and many kids get to take music only two...Read More

This is going to sound ridiculously simplistic, but there is one basic way to learn how to write better:  write more.  That’s a little like saying A = A, so I perhaps need to flesh out this little gem in greater detail.  The point I’m trying to make is that you don’t learn to write...Read More

William Shakespeare is generally regarded as the greatest writer of the English language.  All too often, though, he is taught at the secondary school level in a way that does not endear this brilliant man to high school students.  I remember being bored by Shakespeare when I was in school.  What can be done to...Read More