I hate homework!

In article ,
enigma wrote:

if you think Magic Schoolbus is bad, look at a few of the
Magic Treehouse books! not only are they cloyingly cute, the
"facts" they present are frequently *wrong*.

Ah, so that's where Clive Cussler (and presumably his hero, Dirk Pitt) gets
his science from! I read a couple of them years ago and wondered if the bad
science was due to the author's poor education or whether there was some kind
of in-joke going.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

In article ,
Beliavsky wrote:

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.

You said this before. Now -- how do remote families exercise choice in their
use of vouchers? You've said they won't.

And while we're at it, start imagining the effect that a voucher system would
have on children who are disabled, at-risk, or don't have English as a first
language. When you've ironed out *those* problems, the NSW government would
like to hear from you.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

Chookie wrote:

I find this absence of scientific writing for children quite odd in a country
as large as yours -- looks like I've found a second career for you all.

What I found is that there were quite a few encyclopedia-like
science and history and whatnot book available if I looked
for them. However, when the boys got a bit older, it was much
more difficult to find interesting (to them) narratives at their
level, whether those were biographies, historical narratives, or
fiction. It seemed like early chapter books for girls were
a dime a dozen, but if one had a boy with more typical boyish
interests, it was a challenge (particularly if you weren't keen
on things like Captain Underpants).
The other thing I found out belatedly that really
irritated me was that when my eldest was in first grade,
they only allowed his class in the "picture book" section
of the library, which effectively excluded access to any
non-fiction. It wasn't a big problem for us, as I was busily
providing whatever books he wanted, but that certainly seemed
an inappropriate policy.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article ehrebeniuk-5E73B2.21580010042008@news, Chookie says...

In article , Banty
wrote:

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.
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".

No, the publishers I've mentioned are a bit better than that!

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.

That's why you have to TALK to the librarian -- we can't help you if we don't
know what you want! (I take it there was no obvious way to limit to
non-fiction in the catalogue you were using -- there might, however, have been
a way known only to the staff.)

Well, a couple of things on that. One is that they don't have the titles handly
to include (and no I'm not running to all the area bookstores and libraries with
y'alls list - for starters I haven't seen the list.) The other is that the idea
does seem to run deep that the kind of watered down books and mawky
fictionalizations are what kids want to read and should read. "What's WRONG WITH
this wonderful Caldicott winner about children hiding gold from the Nazis??"
"Well, nothing. But that's not the point."


I find this absence of scientific writing for children quite odd in a country
as large as yours -- looks like I've found a second career for you all.


I've actually thought about it.

Banty

"Chookie" wrote in message
news:ehrebeniuk-5720C7.22051610042008@news...
In article ,
enigma wrote:

if you think Magic Schoolbus is bad, look at a few of the
Magic Treehouse books! not only are they cloyingly cute, the
"facts" they present are frequently *wrong*.

Ah, so that's where Clive Cussler (and presumably his hero, Dirk Pitt)
gets
his science from! I read a couple of them years ago and wondered if the
bad
science was due to the author's poor education or whether there was some
kind
of in-joke going.

Well, they're hardly designed for a scientific audience-Magic treehouse is a
fictional series about two kids who find a magic treehouse filled with
books, and discover that they can go into the book and visit that time or
place. They're on an upper 2nd/low 3rd grade reading level, and seem to get
read quite a bit by the kids who reach that reading level early-which, since
most of the other fiction at that reading level is school stories of various
kinds, makes sense (I know a lot of kids on GT boards who read Magic
treehouse before or in Kindergarten-when they have no frame of reference for
a lot of the things happening in other early chapter books, including my
DD).

If they're considered as fiction, and a child who wants to learn more about
something in a book is directed to better books, I think they're fine. The
problem comes if there aren't any books about that given topic available. My
3 yr old was able to point out some of the problems in the dinosaurs Magic
Tree house book, and in many ways, I appreciate the series for encouraging
her to branch out beyond things that are large, scaly, and extinct 65
million+ years. So far, I haven't had problems finding reasonable
non-fiction about mummies, space, or the ice-age (but she's still very happy
with DK eyewitness books in that regard).











--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...

Chookie wrote:

I find this absence of scientific writing for children quite odd in a country
as large as yours -- looks like I've found a second career for you all.

What I found is that there were quite a few encyclopedia-like
science and history and whatnot book available if I looked
for them. However, when the boys got a bit older, it was much
more difficult to find interesting (to them) narratives at their
level, whether those were biographies, historical narratives, or
fiction. It seemed like early chapter books for girls were
a dime a dozen, but if one had a boy with more typical boyish
interests, it was a challenge (particularly if you weren't keen
on things like Captain Underpants).
The other thing I found out belatedly that really
irritated me was that when my eldest was in first grade,
they only allowed his class in the "picture book" section
of the library, which effectively excluded access to any
non-fiction. It wasn't a big problem for us, as I was busily
providing whatever books he wanted, but that certainly seemed
an inappropriate policy.


In fifth grade, one of the books my son brought from home to propose for his
reading list was nixed for bad words. Because it did have some, well,
battlefield words.

Banty

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 08:21:57 -0700 (PDT), Beliavsky
wrote:

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.

I don't know how enigma and Chookie define it, but I liked the fact
that my children's schools had students of many ethnicities in them
*and* offered courses in various philosophies and cultures. In high
school, many of those courses were electives so not everyone took
them, but the Humanities course (English and History combined) covered
the histories and cultures of Asia and Africa as well as Europe and
the US. Note that US history was required so the students also had
to learn about that as well. The emphasis was on all of the
ethnicities who contributed to this country's greatness, btw, not just
white men.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On 9 Apr 2008 04:49:21 -0700, Banty wrote:

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 agree about the Magic Schoolbus books. They irritate me because
reading them is very disjointed. My granddaughter likes the videos
though.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On 9 Apr 2008 10:01:48 -0700, Banty wrote:

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.

Check out Jim Arnosky's *all about....* books for nature.

DK books does have a us website
http://us.dk.com/

Amazon has a non fiction children's book category. They spell
non-fiction with a space rather than a hyphen

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_...iction%2Cn%3A4

Not all of the books are really non-fiction though.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Chookie wrote in
news:ehrebeniuk-7D9FAE.21465110042008@news:


How does Amazon.co.uk look from where you are? I got an
order from them in a reasonable time.

while i dislike Amazon on general principle, i might make
exceptions for Amazon UK if it means i can get books he'll
enjoy
Correct -- my library also says it will take about a week.
Most of that time is taken up by the postal service. Have
you talked to the school librarian about the science books
available?

his school library? hah hah hah. they can't get enough staff,
never mind buy books that is one of the major reasons he'll
be going to a different school next year (they couldn't afford
the second Montessori certified teacher in the lower el, so
they replaced her with a woman working towards an education
degree (to teach high school) who has English as a (distant)
second language, with the result that none of the kids can
understand her. if she was teaching French, i'd be fine with
it, but not as a main elementary teacher.

Ahhhh -- remember the How & Why Wonder Books? :-)

um, no. should i go look those up too?
lee
--
Last night while sitting in my chair
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.