For decades, millions of parents have been told that they are primarily responsible for things gone wrong with their children. Mothers and fathers have internalized this message, producing an unrealistic and damaging sense of guilt, and even betrayal. Parents do affect their children, but how much? Our children are not born as blank slates. They come to us encrypted with their own predilections, biases, strengths, and weaknesses, many of which are as beyond the control of parents as determining their child's gender or eye color.
"Building Bridges" extends the debate on resources in multilingual classrooms in new directions. It focuses on the languages other than English that are most commonly spoken by British school children - Bengali, Chinese, Gujarati, Punjabi and Urdu; and it looks at ways in which decisions about langauge, typography, production and design affect both readability and status. A number of themes run through the book: the value of diversity for all children in all schools; the importance of creating an atmosphere which supports the use of spoken and written resources in other languages; the need to recognize status issues associated with the design and production of resources; the fact that children are more perceptive users of materials than they are generally given credit for; and the potential of multilingual resources for building bridges between monolinguals and bilinguals, between home and school.
Words consist of units of meaning, called morphemes. These morphemes have a striking effect on spelling which has been largely neglected until now. For example, nouns that end in "-ian" are words which refer to people, and so when this ending is attached to "magic" we can tell that the resulting word means someone who produces magic. Knowledge of this rule, therefore, helps us with spelling: it tells us that this word is spelled as "magician" and not as "magicion."
Answering the call for values education, this collection of tales demonstrates how people who are faithful, generous, loving, courageous, smart, honest, and compassionate prevail in solving problems and overcoming obstacles in life. Some of the stories are author originals, others are adaptations of traditional folktales from around the world. Stories that can be read or told to children of various ages are featured in the first part of the book. The remainder of the text is designed to help children become storytellers and includes stories to act out, participatory stories, and puppet tales. Age level and the specific values taught are cited for each of the more than 30 stories. For example, the story "Hideehohee" teaches courage; "The Clever Maid" teaches responsibility; "Bunny Pink" offers a lesson in self-esteem; and "The Dishonest Innkeeper" gives a message about honesty. All Levels.
Alphabetizing - Learn how to alphabetize words with Ellie the Elephant.
Ordinal Numbers - Pick the balloon's ordinal number between first and tenth.
Parts of a Book - From cover to cover!
Secret Phonics - This is just plain fun for everyone! Guess the word by putting together the first letter of each picture. This lesson has a content editor allowing you to enter your own set of mystery words for game play!
Short or Long? - Determine whether the word has a short or long vowel sound.
Smart Dots - count by 2 to10 by connecting the dots to reveal the hidden picture! The lesson editor lets you change the user-level for your child at any time.
Fiction or Nonfiction? - Is this book a fiction book or a non-fiction book? This lesson shows you how to tell easily by sight.
