Summer is officially here, and many parents–after homeschooling their kids for the last three months–are wondering whether they should keep schooling their kids to make up for a potential ”summer slide” or just let them enjoy the summer.  I come down strongly on the side of enjoying summer, but that doesn’t mean learning need not...Read More

During the past three months, millions of parents have had to become ”experts” in teaching and learning, familiarizing themselves with school subjects, study skills, instructional objectives, distance learning, and a lot more.  However, there’s one teaching component that is central to learning that often gets left out of the mix:  helping a child or teen’s...Read More

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