I hate homework!

Banty wrote:
In article , enigma says...
[snip]
*some* DK titles are available in the US. the Horrible
Science & Horrible History books appear to also be UK-centric
on a short search & i've never seen a Kingfisher book in the
US either. (looks like i'm in for some international ordering)

And being UK centric is a problem because... ? :-)

They do have a book on the USA, but I suspect that the American
Revolution from the British prospective might go down too well with
Boo's teachers.

i agree the DK books we can get are great & Boo has several
of their history & science titles, but the others are not
books that are readily available or even *known* here... then
you get into the sticky wicket of schools not having enough
funding to buy books for their libraries, or school boards
that certainly wouldn't approve their purchase for assorted
reasons.
[snip]

We do have things like "Magic Schoolbus". Which irritated my son with their
cutsiness and mainly though - WHY oh why do these series (and frankly from the
titles I get the same impressoin about the books Chookie points to) have to have
the literary gimmick of children running into science facts. And it's kinda
disjoint "looky this, looky that".

I think you've probably got the wrong impression of the Horrible Science
books. I don't think I've read/watched any Magic Schoolbus titles, but
according to Wikipedia they are about a class and their teacher? The
Horrible Science books aren't like that at all.

The Horrible Science books are much more based around facts, rather then
stories. The only 'stories' they have are about the scientists who
discovered the facts/theories, and these are mostly "this chap about
why/how the scientist discovered the facts. (And nothing about the
scientist's childhood :-) )

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

"Beliavsky" wrote in message
...
On Apr 8, 10:59 pm, Chookie wrote:
In article
,

Beliavsky wrote:
I more and more believe that the solution is a lot of different, niche
schools

That's what we would get if we abolished the public school monopoly
and instituted a voucher system. Of course, public school teachers,
through their unions, lobby furiously against changes that would
diminish their privileged positions.

The voucher system has been discussed in Australia quite a bit, but we
ultimately come up against the problem of geography. As a (well-off,
car-owning) resident of Australia's largest city, I can access any kind of
education I wish, really. Vouchers would be fine... and my son would still
be
at our local primary school.

It's a bit of a problem if you live in Woomera or Aurukun or on Lord Howe
Island, though: how do you exercise your choice? We already have students
who travel a couple of hours each way to the nearest school, and I bet the
US
does too. The smallest primary school in NSW has five students -- how many
other schools do you think that town has? And therefore, how much choice
is
there about those five children's education?

Voucher advocates such as myself are not saying the current government
schools should be abolished. But if a government school is currently
getting (for example) $8000 a year per student, parents should instead
get an $8000 voucher which can be used at the school or at another
accredited school. The requirements for accreditation would need to be
debated, but I think they ought to focus on outcomes, including scores
on standardized tests, rather than inputs. If for geographical or
other reasons no private school taking $8K/child could attract
students, the status quo would be preserved. The threat of losing
students and funds to private schools would cause public schools to be
more responsive to parents, which would overall be a good thing IMO.
Maybe Ericka K. would disagree.

Parents are mandated to mandated to feed and clothe their children,
and if they cannot earn enough to do so, the government provides
subsidies. The government does not run textile mills, farms, and
stores, except under communism, which has failed. Government should
ensure that all children are educated, but I don't see why the
government should be *providing* the education.

-----

The only problem here is that 8K is an average. We figured out, at my former
school, that our baseline student funding was actually about 2K-that was
salaries, building maintenance, textbooks, and the like. However, we had
some students who recieved much more funding, ranging from Title I once a
week reading classes to a 1-1 para or a 10-1 ratio special needs class.

Our most expensive school in the district serves less than 100 students.
However, every single child attending is profoundly behaviorally disabled,
mostly severely autistic. These are kids who simply could not be maintained
on regular campuses, and it was either a choice of the district providing
the residential care they needed or the district paying to send them out of
area. It is significantly cheaper to provide the services locally, where
parents can be involved regularly without the district paying travel
expenses, than to ship the students to an appropriate program (and one side
effect is that other districts now send their students to us, which brings
in some funds to support the program).

In article ,
Banty wrote:
In article , enigma says...

Chookie wrote in
news:ehrebeniuk-F69C7B.14083209042008@news:

In article , Banty
wrote:

There is no reason non-fiction books can't be written at a
level for elementary
school students. Including books about science subjects.

Dorling Kindersley had a stack of them, last time I looked.
DS1's favourite book is a DK Science Encyclopedia. Then
there are the Horrible Science books (along with the
Horrible History series, a great way for ghoulish little
boys to learn those subjects). Or Caren Trafford's lovely
books. She has written a social history of sewerage for
children, "Where does the poo go?" (no, I'm not kidding!)
and other books on environmental topics for kids. There's
also Kingfisher books -- I think they have some science
titles.

*some* DK titles are available in the US. the Horrible
Science & Horrible History books appear to also be UK-centric
on a short search & i've never seen a Kingfisher book in the
US either. (looks like i'm in for some international ordering)
i agree the DK books we can get are great & Boo has several
of their history & science titles, but the others are not
books that are readily available or even *known* here... then
you get into the sticky wicket of schools not having enough
funding to buy books for their libraries, or school boards
that certainly wouldn't approve their purchase for assorted
reasons.
while it's *possible* city libraries might have DK books in
their children's section, many (most) small town libraries
don't. they don't have the budget to buy the books *or* the
shelf space to put them. Boo is already known at our town
library for requesting interlibrary loans (which are useless
if you need to research for homework, as it takes a week at
the least to *get* a book)

lee

We do have things like "Magic Schoolbus". Which irritated my son with their
cutsiness and mainly though - WHY oh why do these series (and frankly from the
titles I get the same impressoin about the books Chookie points to) have to have
the literary gimmick of children running into science facts. And it's kinda
disjoint "looky this, looky that".

Pick up any non-fiction written for adults. It doesnt' have these gimmicks.
There are a *few* of these written in an early-grade reading level for children
that we saw. The other problem, though, was the apparent inability for
educators and librarians to understand the interest in non-fiction vs. fiction
with historical settings, and those only dealing with select aspects of those
settings. If you go to a school library or children's section of a bookstore
and put in the search keywords "World War II" or "airplane flight" and see what
you get - a lot of fiction.


The DK Eyewitness series of books is worth the extra effort to try and track
down if you have a child interested in reading non-fiction. Each volume is
slim but packed with great information. We're lucky, in that both the
school and the local library seem to know that the series is one of the
best around and do purchase the books. Would your local libraries be open
to the suggestion of purchasing some? The ones I have around the house
seem to have both CDN and US prices so presumably there must be some
distribution in the US. (I think it is US availability we are discussing
since Chookie has them in AUS, so I'm assuming "elsewhere".)

We also had good luck finding non-fiction through the Scholastic book club
forms that the schools send home, although I don't know how international
that practice is. As Banty says, watch out for the gimmicky ones - I find
they tend to be the ones with cartoon drawings. (They seem to get
routinely ignored by the non-fiction lover in my house, which is a bit odd
as comic books are the only thing other than non-fiction that DS reads.)
Anyhow, the ones with photographs or non-cartoon artwork are usually a
much better choice.

If you have a non-fiction lover, it can be worthwhile to spend some money
on purchasing the books if your household budget allows. Unlike fiction
that tends to get read once, a good non-fiction book on a favourite topic
will be loved for years.

Carol

On Apr 9, 10:20*am, enigma wrote:

snip

Doesn't sound very Montessori to me. *The place where pop
culture isn't the sum total of children's conversations is
to pick a really, really multicultural school IME! *I don't
think DS1 was the *only* instigator of the archaeological
digs in a corner of the playground...

*me either. i've enrolled him in a different Montessori school
for next year. it appears from the visit that they follow the
Montessori philosophy a bit closer, and the class is more
diverse.
*it's hard to find a very multicultural school outside of
Manchester's public schools in this state & those schools have
a LOT of problems because many of the students are ESL (and
very poor), & with 80 some languages represented, it's a
challenge for the teachers to meet the No Child Left Behind
nonsense, nevermind actually teach anything to a brighter kid.

How do you and Chookie define a "multicultural" school? Is it having
students of many ethnicities, a multcultural curriculum, or both? What
does a multicultural curriculum entail? I am very skeptical of
anything labelled "multicultural", because in practice it often
amounts to diminishing the achievements of Whites, especially White
men, and pretending that flaws in Western societies are not present in
non-Western ones.

In article , Donna Metler says...


"Beliavsky" wrote in message
...
On Apr 8, 10:59 pm, Chookie wrote:
In article
,

Beliavsky wrote:
I more and more believe that the solution is a lot of different, niche
schools

That's what we would get if we abolished the public school monopoly
and instituted a voucher system. Of course, public school teachers,
through their unions, lobby furiously against changes that would
diminish their privileged positions.

The voucher system has been discussed in Australia quite a bit, but we
ultimately come up against the problem of geography. As a (well-off,
car-owning) resident of Australia's largest city, I can access any kind of
education I wish, really. Vouchers would be fine... and my son would still
be
at our local primary school.

It's a bit of a problem if you live in Woomera or Aurukun or on Lord Howe
Island, though: how do you exercise your choice? We already have students
who travel a couple of hours each way to the nearest school, and I bet the
US
does too. The smallest primary school in NSW has five students -- how many
other schools do you think that town has? And therefore, how much choice
is
there about those five children's education?

Voucher advocates such as myself are not saying the current government
schools should be abolished. But if a government school is currently
getting (for example) $8000 a year per student, parents should instead
get an $8000 voucher which can be used at the school or at another
accredited school. The requirements for accreditation would need to be
debated, but I think they ought to focus on outcomes, including scores
on standardized tests, rather than inputs. If for geographical or
other reasons no private school taking $8K/child could attract
students, the status quo would be preserved. The threat of losing
students and funds to private schools would cause public schools to be
more responsive to parents, which would overall be a good thing IMO.
Maybe Ericka K. would disagree.

Parents are mandated to mandated to feed and clothe their children,
and if they cannot earn enough to do so, the government provides
subsidies. The government does not run textile mills, farms, and
stores, except under communism, which has failed. Government should
ensure that all children are educated, but I don't see why the
government should be *providing* the education.

-----

The only problem here is that 8K is an average. We figured out, at my former
school, that our baseline student funding was actually about 2K-that was
salaries, building maintenance, textbooks, and the like. However, we had
some students who recieved much more funding, ranging from Title I once a
week reading classes to a 1-1 para or a 10-1 ratio special needs class.

Furthermore, that 8K maintains the transportation system, which in our area
serves the private schools as well. Fleets of busses, employees, garages, fuel,
maintenance. Either private schools set up their own transportation systems
(with great losses in efficiency) or a very large part of the budget needs to be
subtracted from that $8000. Many student services, for example the speech
therapy my son got when he was a preschooler, also serve students in the
district be they eventually private or public school districts. There are
probably other shared services (the transportation one is HUGE, though) in that
$8000 that wouldnt in any equitable system be carried off to a private school.

Then, consider that it is always much less efficient to create or take over, and
maintain, several sets of buildings and related infrastructures, than it is to
maintain one set designed to work over the entire district. (Beliavsky can
consider - what if his household were split in two - the two adults and chidlren
maintaining two households in two homes, as if in divorce.) That $8000 -
whatever for shared services will go even less far.

My main skepticisms about the voucher plans are the "Field of Dreams"
assumptions - that schools will somehow pop up and they would be better. And
that the main beneficiaries will be existing, largely *religious* schools (which
already are enjoying effective government subsidies in their tax free status)
which are serving select groups of students with parents already able to pay.

Banty

In article , (
says...

In article ,
Banty wrote:
In article , enigma says...

Chookie wrote in
news:ehrebeniuk-F69C7B.14083209042008@news:

In article , Banty
wrote:

There is no reason non-fiction books can't be written at a
level for elementary
school students. Including books about science subjects.

Dorling Kindersley had a stack of them, last time I looked.
DS1's favourite book is a DK Science Encyclopedia. Then
there are the Horrible Science books (along with the
Horrible History series, a great way for ghoulish little
boys to learn those subjects). Or Caren Trafford's lovely
books. She has written a social history of sewerage for
children, "Where does the poo go?" (no, I'm not kidding!)
and other books on environmental topics for kids. There's
also Kingfisher books -- I think they have some science
titles.

*some* DK titles are available in the US. the Horrible
Science & Horrible History books appear to also be UK-centric
on a short search & i've never seen a Kingfisher book in the
US either. (looks like i'm in for some international ordering)
i agree the DK books we can get are great & Boo has several
of their history & science titles, but the others are not
books that are readily available or even *known* here... then
you get into the sticky wicket of schools not having enough
funding to buy books for their libraries, or school boards
that certainly wouldn't approve their purchase for assorted
reasons.
while it's *possible* city libraries might have DK books in
their children's section, many (most) small town libraries
don't. they don't have the budget to buy the books *or* the
shelf space to put them. Boo is already known at our town
library for requesting interlibrary loans (which are useless
if you need to research for homework, as it takes a week at
the least to *get* a book)

lee

We do have things like "Magic Schoolbus". Which irritated my son with their
cutsiness and mainly though - WHY oh why do these series (and frankly from the
titles I get the same impressoin about the books Chookie points to) have to have
the literary gimmick of children running into science facts. And it's kinda
disjoint "looky this, looky that".

Pick up any non-fiction written for adults. It doesnt' have these gimmicks.
There are a *few* of these written in an early-grade reading level for children
that we saw. The other problem, though, was the apparent inability for
educators and librarians to understand the interest in non-fiction vs. fiction
with historical settings, and those only dealing with select aspects of those
settings. If you go to a school library or children's section of a bookstore
and put in the search keywords "World War II" or "airplane flight" and see what
you get - a lot of fiction.


The DK Eyewitness series of books is worth the extra effort to try and track
down if you have a child interested in reading non-fiction. Each volume is
slim but packed with great information. We're lucky, in that both the
school and the local library seem to know that the series is one of the
best around and do purchase the books. Would your local libraries be open
to the suggestion of purchasing some? The ones I have around the house
seem to have both CDN and US prices so presumably there must be some
distribution in the US. (I think it is US availability we are discussing
since Chookie has them in AUS, so I'm assuming "elsewhere".)

We also had good luck finding non-fiction through the Scholastic book club
forms that the schools send home, although I don't know how international
that practice is. As Banty says, watch out for the gimmicky ones - I find
they tend to be the ones with cartoon drawings. (They seem to get
routinely ignored by the non-fiction lover in my house, which is a bit odd
as comic books are the only thing other than non-fiction that DS reads.)
Anyhow, the ones with photographs or non-cartoon artwork are usually a
much better choice.

Everytime we discuss this, people come out of the woodwork saying "see if you
can get the library to purchase this, purchase that", some of which I did.

But the *point* is - look at how these things have to be chased down, how
*overwhelmingly* books available to elementary school children (therefore the
ones assigned and required) are not those which appeal to children who are more
factual and quantitative in their bent.


If you have a non-fiction lover, it can be worthwhile to spend some money
on purchasing the books if your household budget allows. Unlike fiction
that tends to get read once, a good non-fiction book on a favourite topic
will be loved for years.

I agree and thats exactly what I did - purchase books. Notably, I did find a
book at my son's level in the summr of 2001 about the attack on Pearl Harbor
which actually described - the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese fleet, the
reason for the surprise, the planes they used, the ones we didn't get off the
ground. (All that can be found in the school about that was a book about the
life of a Japanese American boy in Hawaii and how he *felt*, yadda yadda - my
son did read and report on that in fourth grade.) It put a historical real
context on the attacks of September 11, and he was able to grasp that event
because of the factual background of that book.

But parents running around purchasing books, with a lot of *time* a kid would
read them gobbled up with the homework we're discussing, is not a solution. Its
a mitigation, not a solution.

Banty

wrote:
In article ,
Banty wrote:
In article , enigma says...
Chookie wrote in
news:ehrebeniuk-F69C7B.14083209042008@news:

In article , Banty
wrote:

There is no reason non-fiction books can't be written at a
level for elementary
school students. Including books about science subjects.
Dorling Kindersley had a stack of them, last time I looked.
DS1's favourite book is a DK Science Encyclopedia. Then
there are the Horrible Science books (along with the
Horrible History series, a great way for ghoulish little
boys to learn those subjects). Or Caren Trafford's lovely
books. She has written a social history of sewerage for
children, "Where does the poo go?" (no, I'm not kidding!)
and other books on environmental topics for kids. There's
also Kingfisher books -- I think they have some science
titles.
*some* DK titles are available in the US. the Horrible
Science & Horrible History books appear to also be UK-centric
on a short search & i've never seen a Kingfisher book in the
US either. (looks like i'm in for some international ordering)
i agree the DK books we can get are great & Boo has several
of their history & science titles, but the others are not
books that are readily available or even *known* here... then
you get into the sticky wicket of schools not having enough
funding to buy books for their libraries, or school boards
that certainly wouldn't approve their purchase for assorted
reasons.
while it's *possible* city libraries might have DK books in
their children's section, many (most) small town libraries
don't. they don't have the budget to buy the books *or* the
shelf space to put them. Boo is already known at our town
library for requesting interlibrary loans (which are useless
if you need to research for homework, as it takes a week at
the least to *get* a book)

lee
We do have things like "Magic Schoolbus". Which irritated my son with their
cutsiness and mainly though - WHY oh why do these series (and frankly from the
titles I get the same impressoin about the books Chookie points to) have to have
the literary gimmick of children running into science facts. And it's kinda
disjoint "looky this, looky that".

Pick up any non-fiction written for adults. It doesnt' have these gimmicks.
There are a *few* of these written in an early-grade reading level for children
that we saw. The other problem, though, was the apparent inability for
educators and librarians to understand the interest in non-fiction vs. fiction
with historical settings, and those only dealing with select aspects of those
settings. If you go to a school library or children's section of a bookstore
and put in the search keywords "World War II" or "airplane flight" and see what
you get - a lot of fiction.


The DK Eyewitness series of books is worth the extra effort to try and track
down if you have a child interested in reading non-fiction. Each volume is
slim but packed with great information. We're lucky, in that both the
school and the local library seem to know that the series is one of the
best around and do purchase the books. Would your local libraries be open
to the suggestion of purchasing some? The ones I have around the house
seem to have both CDN and US prices so presumably there must be some
distribution in the US. (I think it is US availability we are discussing
since Chookie has them in AUS, so I'm assuming "elsewhere".)

We also had good luck finding non-fiction through the Scholastic book club
forms that the schools send home, although I don't know how international
that practice is. As Banty says, watch out for the gimmicky ones - I find
they tend to be the ones with cartoon drawings. (They seem to get
routinely ignored by the non-fiction lover in my house, which is a bit odd
as comic books are the only thing other than non-fiction that DS reads.)
Anyhow, the ones with photographs or non-cartoon artwork are usually a
much better choice.

If you have a non-fiction lover, it can be worthwhile to spend some money
on purchasing the books if your household budget allows. Unlike fiction
that tends to get read once, a good non-fiction book on a favourite topic
will be loved for years.


Not disputing the idea of purchasing, but good heavens! I don't buy
fiction books that I don't expect to read over and over. That's what
the library is for. And I have *many, many* fiction books I've read
3-4 times.

Clisby


Carol

wrote in message
...
In article ,
Banty wrote:
In article , enigma says...

Chookie wrote in
news:ehrebeniuk-F69C7B.14083209042008@news:

In article , Banty
wrote:

There is no reason non-fiction books can't be written at a
level for elementary
school students. Including books about science subjects.

Dorling Kindersley had a stack of them, last time I looked.
DS1's favourite book is a DK Science Encyclopedia. Then
there are the Horrible Science books (along with the
Horrible History series, a great way for ghoulish little
boys to learn those subjects). Or Caren Trafford's lovely
books. She has written a social history of sewerage for
children, "Where does the poo go?" (no, I'm not kidding!)
and other books on environmental topics for kids. There's
also Kingfisher books -- I think they have some science
titles.

*some* DK titles are available in the US. the Horrible
Science & Horrible History books appear to also be UK-centric
on a short search & i've never seen a Kingfisher book in the
US either. (looks like i'm in for some international ordering)
i agree the DK books we can get are great & Boo has several
of their history & science titles, but the others are not
books that are readily available or even *known* here... then
you get into the sticky wicket of schools not having enough
funding to buy books for their libraries, or school boards
that certainly wouldn't approve their purchase for assorted
reasons.
while it's *possible* city libraries might have DK books in
their children's section, many (most) small town libraries
don't. they don't have the budget to buy the books *or* the
shelf space to put them. Boo is already known at our town
library for requesting interlibrary loans (which are useless
if you need to research for homework, as it takes a week at
the least to *get* a book)

lee

We do have things like "Magic Schoolbus". Which irritated my son with
their
cutsiness and mainly though - WHY oh why do these series (and frankly from
the
titles I get the same impressoin about the books Chookie points to) have
to have
the literary gimmick of children running into science facts. And it's
kinda
disjoint "looky this, looky that".

Pick up any non-fiction written for adults. It doesnt' have these
gimmicks.
There are a *few* of these written in an early-grade reading level for
children
that we saw. The other problem, though, was the apparent inability for
educators and librarians to understand the interest in non-fiction vs.
fiction
with historical settings, and those only dealing with select aspects of
those
settings. If you go to a school library or children's section of a
bookstore
and put in the search keywords "World War II" or "airplane flight" and see
what
you get - a lot of fiction.


The DK Eyewitness series of books is worth the extra effort to try and
track
down if you have a child interested in reading non-fiction. Each volume
is
slim but packed with great information. We're lucky, in that both the
school and the local library seem to know that the series is one of the
best around and do purchase the books. Would your local libraries be open
to the suggestion of purchasing some? The ones I have around the house
seem to have both CDN and US prices so presumably there must be some
distribution in the US. (I think it is US availability we are discussing
since Chookie has them in AUS, so I'm assuming "elsewhere".)

I've found some similar photographic books by Usborne in the USA. They're a
bit pricey, but pretty well done.

At least in our public library, things like Magic Schoolbus and Magic
Treehouse both are shelved as "juvenile series" not as "nonfiction", so the
non-fiction books tend to be decent, at least at the level my daughter's
into right now (although she also loves the Magic Schoolbus books). It does
seem that there's a jump from non-fiction which is fairly easy and on the
elementary school level to adult non-fiction, with little in between.

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article ,
(
says...

In article ,
Banty wrote:
In article , enigma says...

Chookie wrote in
news:ehrebeniuk-F69C7B.14083209042008@news:

In article , Banty
wrote:

There is no reason non-fiction books can't be written at a
level for elementary
school students. Including books about science subjects.

Dorling Kindersley had a stack of them, last time I looked.
DS1's favourite book is a DK Science Encyclopedia. Then
there are the Horrible Science books (along with the
Horrible History series, a great way for ghoulish little
boys to learn those subjects). Or Caren Trafford's lovely
books. She has written a social history of sewerage for
children, "Where does the poo go?" (no, I'm not kidding!)
and other books on environmental topics for kids. There's
also Kingfisher books -- I think they have some science
titles.

*some* DK titles are available in the US. the Horrible
Science & Horrible History books appear to also be UK-centric
on a short search & i've never seen a Kingfisher book in the
US either. (looks like i'm in for some international ordering)
i agree the DK books we can get are great & Boo has several
of their history & science titles, but the others are not
books that are readily available or even *known* here... then
you get into the sticky wicket of schools not having enough
funding to buy books for their libraries, or school boards
that certainly wouldn't approve their purchase for assorted
reasons.
while it's *possible* city libraries might have DK books in
their children's section, many (most) small town libraries
don't. they don't have the budget to buy the books *or* the
shelf space to put them. Boo is already known at our town
library for requesting interlibrary loans (which are useless
if you need to research for homework, as it takes a week at
the least to *get* a book)

lee

We do have things like "Magic Schoolbus". Which irritated my son with
their
cutsiness and mainly though - WHY oh why do these series (and frankly
from the
titles I get the same impressoin about the books Chookie points to) have
to have
the literary gimmick of children running into science facts. And it's
kinda
disjoint "looky this, looky that".

Pick up any non-fiction written for adults. It doesnt' have these
gimmicks.
There are a *few* of these written in an early-grade reading level for
children
that we saw. The other problem, though, was the apparent inability for
educators and librarians to understand the interest in non-fiction vs.
fiction
with historical settings, and those only dealing with select aspects of
those
settings. If you go to a school library or children's section of a
bookstore
and put in the search keywords "World War II" or "airplane flight" and
see what
you get - a lot of fiction.


The DK Eyewitness series of books is worth the extra effort to try and
track
down if you have a child interested in reading non-fiction. Each volume
is
slim but packed with great information. We're lucky, in that both the
school and the local library seem to know that the series is one of the
best around and do purchase the books. Would your local libraries be open
to the suggestion of purchasing some? The ones I have around the house
seem to have both CDN and US prices so presumably there must be some
distribution in the US. (I think it is US availability we are discussing
since Chookie has them in AUS, so I'm assuming "elsewhere".)

We also had good luck finding non-fiction through the Scholastic book club
forms that the schools send home, although I don't know how international
that practice is. As Banty says, watch out for the gimmicky ones - I find
they tend to be the ones with cartoon drawings. (They seem to get
routinely ignored by the non-fiction lover in my house, which is a bit odd
as comic books are the only thing other than non-fiction that DS reads.)
Anyhow, the ones with photographs or non-cartoon artwork are usually a
much better choice.

Everytime we discuss this, people come out of the woodwork saying "see if
you
can get the library to purchase this, purchase that", some of which I did.

But the *point* is - look at how these things have to be chased down, how
*overwhelmingly* books available to elementary school children (therefore
the
ones assigned and required) are not those which appeal to children who are
more
factual and quantitative in their bent.


If you have a non-fiction lover, it can be worthwhile to spend some money
on purchasing the books if your household budget allows. Unlike fiction
that tends to get read once, a good non-fiction book on a favourite topic
will be loved for years.

I agree and thats exactly what I did - purchase books. Notably, I did
find a
book at my son's level in the summr of 2001 about the attack on Pearl
Harbor
which actually described - the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese
fleet, the
reason for the surprise, the planes they used, the ones we didn't get off
the
ground. (All that can be found in the school about that was a book about
the
life of a Japanese American boy in Hawaii and how he *felt*, yadda yadda -
my
son did read and report on that in fourth grade.) It put a historical
real
context on the attacks of September 11, and he was able to grasp that
event
because of the factual background of that book.

But parents running around purchasing books, with a lot of *time* a kid
would
read them gobbled up with the homework we're discussing, is not a
solution. Its
a mitigation, not a solution.

I still believe the biggest problem is that stupid AR computer program. The
number of tests on non-fiction, non-biography vs fiction is slight, and the
non-fiction tests seem to be very trivial (one I recall on a book about
dinosaurs asks what color a dinosaur was in an illustration. The child is
supposed to take this test without having the book in front of them.). I've
tried to do teacher-made tests on some non-fiction books when I've had
students who were heavy non-fiction readers, and it's hard to come up with a
good test that's book-specific without getting into minutae, and I truly
think that Renaissance Learning just plain doesn't try.

Schools tend to buy books on the AR list, and if you have an AR point goal,
that strongly dictates what the child is allowed to read, just due to time,
and the result is that a kid who prefers non-fiction (I don't know that my
brother has read more than a half dozen fiction books beyond the picture
book stage that weren't assigned for school) is really stuck.

I really, really wish they'd just scrap the program entirely-or, that
schools would be more willing to accept alternative ways for a child to show
that they're reading. A child who is reading non-fiction usually is a pretty
strong reader in general. WHy spoil it for them?




Banty

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In article ,
Banty wrote:
In article , enigma says...


Everytime we discuss this, people come out of the woodwork saying "see if
you
can get the library to purchase this, purchase that", some of which I did.

But the *point* is - look at how these things have to be chased down, how
*overwhelmingly* books available to elementary school children (therefore
the
ones assigned and required) are not those which appeal to children who are
more
factual and quantitative in their bent.


If you have a non-fiction lover, it can be worthwhile to spend some money
on purchasing the books if your household budget allows. Unlike fiction
that tends to get read once, a good non-fiction book on a favourite topic
will be loved for years.

I agree and thats exactly what I did - purchase books. Notably, I did
find a
book at my son's level in the summr of 2001 about the attack on Pearl
Harbor
which actually described - the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese
fleet, the
reason for the surprise, the planes they used, the ones we didn't get off
the
ground. (All that can be found in the school about that was a book about
the
life of a Japanese American boy in Hawaii and how he *felt*, yadda yadda -
my
son did read and report on that in fourth grade.) It put a historical
real
context on the attacks of September 11, and he was able to grasp that
event
because of the factual background of that book.

But parents running around purchasing books, with a lot of *time* a kid
would
read them gobbled up with the homework we're discussing, is not a
solution. Its
a mitigation, not a solution.

I still believe the biggest problem is that stupid AR computer program. The
number of tests on non-fiction, non-biography vs fiction is slight, and the
non-fiction tests seem to be very trivial (one I recall on a book about
dinosaurs asks what color a dinosaur was in an illustration. The child is
supposed to take this test without having the book in front of them.). I've
tried to do teacher-made tests on some non-fiction books when I've had
students who were heavy non-fiction readers, and it's hard to come up with a
good test that's book-specific without getting into minutae, and I truly
think that Renaissance Learning just plain doesn't try.

But I don't think the NYS schools are doing that specific program, else it would
have been discussed with me especially in second grade when the reading issue
came to a head. Indeed my son's second grade teacher proudly pointed to her
*own* collection of books. The special reading teacher and I actually went
through that collection and pulled out a book about volcanoes, a book about
sharks - that was about it.

But even going to the Barnes and Noble came up with slim pickings for a second
to fourth grade reader for non-fiction. There's a historical series or two
(heavy on biographies), some science stuff which is heavy on illustration. And
searches of the B&N database was still overwhelmingly, for example for WWII -
books like the Snow Goose. Its as if adults trying to learn about WWII only
could find Herman Wouk's Winds of War and stuff like that.

So I think its much more pervasive than the AR stuff you're talking about.

Banty