Posts belonging to Category Time to Learn

Lily Heads for Kindergarten

My granddaughter, Lily, loves to swim. Watching her in the water in the summertime is one of the most joyful experiences of this grandfather’s days. In her element, she challenges herself at the leading edge of learning and adventure. She now floats on her back long distances, swims underwater, treads water, and is beginning to [...]

Lily Turns Five

Our granddaughter, Lily, missed the kindergarten entrance cut-off date by ten days and has returned to her small and wonderful preschool where she has stepped up from the Morning Glories to the Fireflies, a fitting transition for her, a bright light of imagination, blinking on and off as she dances from one adventure to another.
Recently [...]

Summer Camp and the Responsive Classroom® approach

I received an email from a reader recently inquiring about the application of Responsive Classroom® practices to summer camp. The reader had found reference in my writing to the fact that some of the foundational ideas for the Responsive Classroom approach were drawn from camping practices and wondered about how Responsive Classroom practices might now [...]

Crisis in the Kindergarten

Good things come in small packages.
A small, new, groundbreaking book called simply Crisis in the Kindergarten—Why Children Need to Play in School is currently available in bookstores and on the web from Alliance for Childhood in College Park, Maryland. Every teacher, parent, and educational policy maker should read and forward a comment about it to [...]

A Most Important Time in the Classroom This New Year

As I promised in my last post, I want to identify for teachers what I consider the most significant time-related strategy to use with children in the classroom in these days of the “hurried curriculum.” We’re so busy doing one thing after another to accomplish all the lessons and assessments that must fit in the academic [...]

Time in Your New Year

As we mark the coming of the new year, our thoughts often turn to the nature of time and the fleeting, transitory nature of the passage of our days. Some of us resolve to use our time differently in the days ahead . . .
In my book, Time to Teach, Time to Learn: Changing the [...]

A Developmental Memory

Recently I received a pleasant, unexpected email from a retired teacher in New York State who had read a blog entry here and wrote to reminisce with me about work we had shared in the mid-1980s. We were helping to implement approaches to kindergarten entrance and early grade placement that involved thorough child development screening [...]

Ah . . . Summer . . . First on My List: Taking Time to Read

A Book About Time
Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule Is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods. Chris Gabrieli and Warren Goldstein (2008, Jossey-Bass.)
As you might guess, this title got my attention, given my interest in the topic and the fact that there’s a book with a similar title over there in [...]

After the Last Days of School

The children have gone home and the classrooms are empty. Many teachers have packed their rooms and are moving to new classrooms or schools this summer. In our district there are schools closing and consolidating. In other districts around the country there will be more new principals and new teachers in place when children return.
The [...]

Expanding the school day and/or year

The idea that children need more time in school to be more productive students and to achieve at a higher level seems intuitively sensible. The value of adding time to teacher’s schedules for teaching, planning, professional development and assessment also makes sense on the surface. The value of adding time to the school day and/or [...]