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Product Reviews August/September 2003
Each month Teaching Pre K-8 reviews outstanding products for the classroom.
This month's products are:
Colgate-Palmolive Co.
Teacher Created Materials
Atlas Pen and Pencil Corp.
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Teaching and Learning Company
Twin Sisters Productions
Outset Media
Learning Resources
ETA Cuisenaire
Califone
Mary Pope Osborne
Mead
LeapFrog SchoolHouse
Jerry Spinelli
Moughton Mifflin Books
Something FREE
Bright Smiles, Bright Futures kits from Colgate-Palmolive Co. are free to kindergarten teachers everywhere. The kits contain a video highlighting The Adventures of Wiggly Tooth, posters, teacher guides, wall calendar, Read-Together books (eight-pagers, one for each student), toothpaste samples and coupons (one for each student's family).
You must have a pin number to order your kit. To receive your pin number, call 800-334-7734. Before you make the call, you'll need the following information at hand: the total number of students (English- and Spanish-speaking students should be counted separately), the total number of kindergartens in your school participating in the program and your school's mailing information (no P.O. boxes or APO addresses). If you'd rather fax or e-mail (you'll still need your pin number and the information listed above), fax to 800-375-7576 or e-mail to BSBF@aphx.com This offer is too good to pass up.
Mary Englebreit Designs
Don't you just love them? We sure do. And now this talented lady has designed a whole line of teaching aids for Teacher Created Materials. We saw name tags, reading awards, postcards, notepads, borders, birthday decorations record and plan books ("I'm in Charge Here"), a book of Messages From Your Teacher and a lovely collection of Teacher Tips and Inspirations (absolutely outstanding!).
You name it, TCM has it. Do visit TCM's website to see this line – and lots of other goodies.
Teacher Created Materials
www.teachercreated.com
ForTeachersOnly.com
Talk about a goldmine! This Atlas Pen and Pencil Corp. catalog is one. They have wonderful – and reasonably priced – personalized pencils, bookmarks, gel pens, fun and unusual erasers, "in" trays and more, more, more. Got a fundraiser coming up and you really don't want to "push" candy? Check out Atlas. At their website, you'll be mesmerized by all the items that are available to brighten your classroom, and to brighten your kids' lives.
Be sure to visit Atlas Pen & Pencil Corp. today. The Lucky Subscriber will receive a box of special gifts from Atlas. Do visit...
ForTeachersOnly.com
Fun for Middle Schoolers
Anew book from Bobbye Goldstein can be a lot of fun for middle schoolers...and for you. Mother Goose on the Loose takes well-known nursery rhymes and connects them to cartoons from The New Yorker Magazine. It's out-of-the-box thinking and can be used as a model to get kids thinking that way. Have them decide how one of the rhymes can be illustrated in various situations.
This one's definitely worth a look, not only for your classroom, but as a gift for a colleague who has taught the nursery rhymes for many years. $18.95. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers.
At your local bookstore
Teachers Love...
Products from tlc (Teaching and Learning Company). One we particularly like is Research & Writing – Activities That Explore Family History. Designed for grades five through nine, this 144-page book takes students through each type of research in great detail while promoting critical thinking. The plan works on so many levels: there are directions for securing and using oral history, wills, diaries and journals as well as the usual census records, cemeteries, immigration records and so on.
The introduction provides suggestions for working with adopted children as well as blended families.
The visual awareness skills built through activities relating to photographs and recording the students' conclusions are incredible. These skills will help children across the curriculum. Interviewing skills are honed with concrete suggestions and opportunities for composing feature stories from interview notes. This book is worth every penny of its $14.95 (plus s/h) cost.
We also saw copies of The Big All-Year Book of Holidays & Seasonal Celebrations Gr. 1-3, The Complete Welcome Back-to-School Book for PreK-K, and a deck of 60 cards, each highlighting one of the Ways to Praise Your Students. Our suggestion? Go to tlc's website and enjoy!
www.teachinglearning.com
K-1 Music?
Three great plays from Twin Sisters Productions will help fill the great need for music at this critical level. There are super preproduction notes included, along with a production schedule that begins eight weeks before the scheduled date of your performance and lists everything you need to do. There are two CD's in the kit: one is for rehearsals and the second CD is for your final performance. Patterns for scenery backdrops are also included.
The name of the kit is Play in the Box™ (Grades K-1) and the three plays included are A Caterpillar's Voice, The Oversized, Overripe Turnip and The Lost Kitten. They will all enchant your audiences. The kit is $49.99 plus s/h or buy from your local school supply dealer.
This good company also has Play in the Box for grades 1-2, 2-3 and 3-4. Visit their website for all the information you'll need.
www.twinsisters.com
From the Outset...
Outset Media, that is, we received 12 terrific card games from their Professor Noggin series. The subjects of the games vary and range from Wildlife of North America and Famous Inventions, to Birds of North America, Wonders of Science, Dinosaur, Life on the Farm, Ancient Civilizations, First Peoples of North America, Countries of the World, Outer Space, Life in the Ocean and Insects and Spiders.
Each game contains 30 illustrated cards with two questions on the reverse that ask for more information about the subject pictured on the front of the card. The youngest child has the first turn, so you can see it's lots of fun for everyone. The games are suggested for ages seven and up and for two to eight players.
These game are super for learning centers or for alternative work for those kids who finish assignments early.
Each game is $9.95 plus s/h.
Outset Media
www.professornoggin.com
Learning to Read is a Snap!
Especially with Reading Rods® from Learning Resources. These products are so very clever.
First, let's take a look at the wonderful Reading Rods Prefixes and Suffixes. This kit contains 99 interlocking plastic Rods: 13 yellow prefix Rods, 11 orange suffix Rods, 11 light green Latin/Greek root word Rods, three red vowel Rods and nine blue consonant Rods. The Rods can be linked together to develop the concepts of prefix and suffix, base words, root words, vocabulary development, word building, word relationships and meanings and parts of speech. Each topic is presented sequentially.
There are 14 lessons presented in the accompanying 48-page 8 1/2 x 11 Instruction and Activity book as well as 14 blackline masters and more than 100 demonstration cards. The 2 x 3 cards are color coded to match the rods. There's also a large plastic bin to store the Rods between uses. This is one beautiful package.
We can see these Rods not only used for direct instruction but also for independent center work, or small group work. Although the publisher lists grade two and up, we can see many uses way up...especially with ESL students.
But this is only one product in this Reading Rods series of products. We also saw Word For Word®, a phonics word-building game in which kids compete with themselves and with each other. This product features 112 color-coded Rods and a timer, as well as a score pad and instructions. The price is $29.95 plus s/h.
The third product we received for review in this series is a Student Center game based on Word Families. This one features a blackline activity book and six removable pouches with 50 rods each for a total of 300 Rods. It's a great way for kids to practice recognizing long and short vowels, grouping rhyming words, spelling words using patterns and identifying initial consonant sounds and initial blends. This item sells for $79.95 plus s/h. All these items are available at your local school supply dealer, too.
Our Lucky Subscriber will be really lucky and will receive all three of these products.
Learning Resources has lots of other items in this Reading Rods line, plus more good stuff. Be sure to check out their website.
Learning Resources
www.learningresources.com
MeasureWorks™ is new!
This is a complete hands-on measurement curriculum for grades 1-5, and how nice it is to have a complete program devoted just to measuring skills.
Each unit of measurement (time, length, volume and capacity, weight, temperature, and angles) is introduced with a list of student objectives, KWL, a Focus on Vocabulary, Games for Practice and Review, Assessment, a Book Nook (providing a suggested children's trade book to reinforce the measurement area being addressed). There's also a Heads Up! which highlights areas of confusion common to many learners.
Books for grades one, two and three don't cover angles. Book one doesn't cover area and perimeter. Other than those exceptions, all areas of measurement are dealt with on an age-appropriate basis in every book. This is so neatly hands-on!
The Teacher's Resource Guide has over 200 pages of lesson plans and reproducible student activity sheets. The student books are consumable (sold separately in sets of 12), and provide an ongoing record of students' measurement experiences throughout the year. The measurement tools vary with the grade level, but the third grade kit we received had a ruler (with both inches and centimeters), student thermometers with both Fahrenheit and Centigrade readings, a tape measure, geared student clocks and a Geo-Tool™ Compass to measure angles and arcs, folding meter stick, color tiles, liquid measuring pitchers, giant measuring jars, a precision school balance, standard mass set, kilogram mass set, dual-dial platform scales, a classroom thermometer and a big classroom clock. The price for the complete program is $395. Student activity books are sold separately in sets of 12.
When we remember how tedious it sometimes gets trying to teach measurement, we say three cheers for ETA Cuisenaire. Visit them at www.etacuisenaire.com
Califone...
Is an old and trusted name in the sound industry. Their quality products include computer peripherals, wireless/wired microphones, media players, headphones and headsets and presentation systems.
The item we'd like to tell you about is the wireless headset mic (single channel). Have you tried using one of these in your classroom? When we visited South Side School in Johnson City, TN, one of the fourth-grade teachers was piloting teaching with a wireless mic and four speakers in the four corners of the room. She loved it! She did a pre- and post-test one month apart, using the headset and scores went up when she used the mic.
This teacher felt that amplifying her voice led to greater student participation and learning. Because of seeing these headset mics in a few different schools during our visits, we were very interested when Califone offered to show us their products in June at the National Education Computing Conference.
The company is working with many schools and they've provided a great set for us to give to one very Lucky Subscriber. It includes a Belt Pack Transmitter with a wireless Headset Mic and a 16-Channel UHF Wireless Receiver. This is a powerhouse unit that's really suitable for a large crowd or several classrooms. They're also providing the wireless transmitter with headset mic we mentioned earlier.
We learned that there are more than one million children in this country with some degree of hearing loss according to ASHA (American Speech and Hearing Association). If you're thinking about what you can do to make your classroom the best that it can be for every child you teach, visit Califone on the Internet to learn more about this amplified way of teaching and how it can help your students.
The price tag for these items is, perhaps, not feasible for the individual teacher. However, if you're a member of a site-based committee or if you want to be sure your principal and school board has the best information on amplified teaching, bring them the information you'll find on Califone's website.
www.Califone.com
Mary Pope Osborne...
Has done it again. Her newest title is Tales From the Odyssey, Book Three: Sirens and Sea Monsters (Hyperion, 2003). The wonderful suspense story of Odysseus will enchant your students either as a read aloud or during independent reading.
This talented author has made the famous hero and the wonderful story of his struggle to sail back to Ithaca accessible without losing any of the richness of the early translations.
At the back of the book, there's a list of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, with a pronunciation guide to their names as well as a pronunciation guide to other classical Greek proper names.
Mary Pope Osborne never disappoints a reader. $9.95.
At your local bookstore
Manuscript or Cursive...
It's your choice. These wonderful writing practice pads for manuscript and cursive are from Mead. What gems they are.
We've all seen handwriting practice pads before, but these are more than a cut above: they have raised lines, which add sensory input to letter formation. They're called See & Feel™ – Learn To Letter and See & Feel™– Learn To Write.
The pads conform to D'Nealian and Zaner-Bloser handwriting methods. There are 40 (10" x 8") sheets in each pad. Your students are just going to love these. We did. And, when we were at Mead's booth at the National Educational Technology Conference, teachers were ecstatic over this technique.
As the child forms each letter, a raised barrier at the top and bottom of the practice lines provides direction. Like all really great ideas, one wonders why no one thought of this before. Way to go, Mead.
Visit Mead's website for lots of other classroom management tools for kids. There are Science Journal notebooks, Math Journal notebooks (with handy shape templates in the front), subject specific folders, student files and lots more. We were amazed at the range of materials Mead has available for school use.
When one thinks of Mead, one thinks of elegant, high-quality writing paper. Well, now they've brought that level of quality to school...and we can all be grateful for that.
www.MeadWeb.com
Quantum Leaps...
Are made by students using the new Quantum Pad Learning System from LeapFrog SchoolHouse. As you know, we don't usually review "technology" in this column, but this item seemed to beg to be an exception.
We received the Pad and six books from the Read-It-All™ non-fiction series. Three of the books have a readability level of second grade and an interest level for grades three and up. The interactive aspect of this material makes it ideal for late-blooming kids or ESL kids. The approach used includes word-analysis skills as well as comprehension skills (in context).
The teacher's guide tells us to use the first selection in each article as a screening device. There are so many built-in boosters, students may feel capable of moving ahead to more challenging text quite quickly. We're encouraged to let them try; this system will help them every step of the way. The first books in the series are Mysteries of the Past, Amazing Animals and Faces in Faraway Places. The second group we saw, with a readability level of grade three and an interest level of grade four and up, included American Heroes (Jackie Robinson, Allen Jay, Cesar Chavez, Pamela Melroy), Masters of Survival, and Out-There Scientists.
The articles themselves have been adapted from very strong sources, e.g. Cobblestone magazine, Odyssey magazine, Ranger Rick magazine and so on. The suggestions in the teacher's guide encourage extension of the skills being taught. For instance, there are suggestions on previewing and predicting, integrating reading and language arts, writing exercises and, what really pleases us, a solid bibliography and website listing.
This is a very, very neat package; just $59 for the Pad (classroom pack of six is $330 and includes a/c adapter, headphones, batteries). There's a special $l85 package which provides one copy of each of the six Read-It-All books (plus Teacher's Guide), AND a Quantum Pad! Lobby your PTA or your Principal to secure this package. Whatever it takes, it's worth it. We really like this Quantum Pad a lot and think you will, too. Our Lucky Subscriber will receive a Quantum Pad and all six Read-It-All Books.
www.LeapFrogSchoolHouse.com
Jerry Spinelli does it again...
The title is Milkweed and it's a blockbuster, coming from Knopf this fall.
From this innocuous title, Jerry takes us through World War II in Poland. The orphan hero "believes in bread, mothers and angels. And he's also a boy who wants to be a Nazi someday, with tall, shiny jackboots and a gleaming eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind."
We can't convey the power of this topic in the hands of a master storyteller. At the beginning of the book, in a letter to the reader, Jerry answers the question of why he wrote this book: "Because I cared. And had I not been telling young writers for years: Write what you care about?"
You'll never have to worry about including character education materials in your classroom if you use this book. Trade binding is $15.95. At your local bookstore.
www.JerrySpinelli.com
Mosque...
Is the title of David Macaulay's new book, which will be available in October. It's probably redundant to say it's beautiful. All of David Macaulay's books are beautifully executed. We saw advance proofs, but the final book will have 96 pages, 9 x 12. Selling price is $18.
Macaulay tells the story of a fictional building complex in Turkey in the 16th century. His depiction of the methods and materials used to design and construct a mosque are modeled on existing examples built between 1540 and 1580 in and around Istanbul by Sinan, the most famous architect of the Ottoman empire.
In typical Macaulay fashion, each of the structural elements of the mosque is shown in labeled detail. The text provides the reason that the various elements are structured as they are, both from tradition and from a societal standpoint.
The placement of the dome and the construction problems of it are discussed and are fascinating. This book can be the centerpiece for many weeks of study – and understanding.
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com
August/September 2003, Vol.34, No.1
