The word ”play” gets batted around a lot in conversations about children’s learning and development needs, but sometimes different people are holding different notions of what the word ”play” actually means. In this two-part blog post, I want to help clarify what I believe true child’s play actually is. In this first post, I want...Read More
I’m in Jakarta, Indonesia right now, having finished a series of presentations for media, physicians, psychologists, and parents on multiple intelligences for Wyeth Nutrition-Indonesia. Yesterday, I was reading The International New York Times and was amused by this recollection from award-winning Irish writer Colm Tóibín: ”I could not read until I was 9, by which time I...Read More
Today we have a guest blog from Chris Santos-Lang who is the founder and president of The Organization for Collaborative Leadership, Inc. Chris has written about evaluativism, which, simply put, is the disregard of people with differing values, including political, social, moral, philosophical, gender-based, sexuality-based, racial, ethnic, and class-based values, among other points of view....Read More
A new report reveals that ADHD drugs like Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta, may cause significant heart difficulties in some children. The study, which appeared in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, followed 714,000 children in Denmark, born from 1990 to 1999, for an average of 9.5 years. Of those, 8,300 were diagnosed with ADHD after...Read More
The Common Core has made the learning of frequently used academic vocabulary words a top priority in their focus on creating standards in the public schools. It follows then that finding just the right instructional strategies to teach these words is an important task for K-12 teachers. Here is an 8-step strategic plan based...Read More
Several years ago, I wrote a book for elementary and middle school students entitled You’re Smarter Than You Think: A Kid’s Guide to Multiple Intelligences(published by Free Spirit Publishing). Since it came out, I have received letters from young readers responding to their experience of reading the book. Just this month, I received a packet...Read More
I’m seriously concerned that the schools aren’t doing enough (change that: aren’t doing anything!) to prepare students on the autism spectrum for a range of careers that are beginning to open up for them in the workplace. So much of recent educational ”reform” has been about preparing our students to be college and career-ready. If this...Read More
Today we have a guest post from educational therapist Diana Kennedy. I connected with her through LinkedIn, and was inspired by her blog post about a student with Fragile X syndrome that she has worked with as first, a special education teacher, and later, as an educational therapist. Diana’s business is Mindspark – Custom Learning...Read More
It is part of federal law that students with special needs should have their strengths identified and described in their IEPs (IDEA 2004 Section 1414(d)(3)(A)). And yet, when I search the special education literature online, I find virtually nothing dedicated to identifying strengths in these students. If a student is having difficulty in school,...Read More
Follow Me On: