Hello Book Bums families!
Have you ever used a song to help you study or remember something? From the alphabet song to Schoolhouse Rock, educators have long known that songs can help students learn and remember in a special way. This week in the newsletter we are thinking about the power of music to create a learning environment and help students focus. If you have a favorite work-out playlist or music that gets you in the mood to do a certain job, you already have an idea what we mean. Read on for more great ideas!
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Word of the Week
cogitate (cah-jih-tayt) verb/ action word - to think deeply about something
Playing music helps Dr. Christy focus and cogitate about her teaching ideas.
Literary Calendar
• July 18 is the birthday of Nelson Mandela.
• Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist and the first Black President of South Africa.
• He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
• Nelson Mandela wrote his own inspiring story entitled Long Walk to Freedom.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use
to change the world.”
-Nelson Mandela
From our Bookshelves
From Our Bookshelves
This week Dr. Christy recommends Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. (Now 43% off on Amazon)
Here’s Amazon’s description: One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep, spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.
Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.
Tips for Readers and Writers
Tips for Teaching Readers
As we’re getting into back-to-school mode, consider equipping your kids to use tidy, efficient handwriting. At our Kids First location, we’re hosting some fun-focused handwriting workshops. You can watch for future workshop dates on our Book Bums Facebook if you’re local and you’re interested in signing your kids up for a five-day (Monday-Friday) workshop.
Of course, you can always host a workshop at your own kitchen table! Put on your Deep Work playlist, and use our teaching tools (letter formation guide, lined handwriting paper) to equip your kids to knock their teachers’ socks off with their great handwriting! Best, they won’t mix up b’s and d’s any longer! Just email Dr. Christy, and she’ll email you all that you need to make you Oh so proud when you see your kids’ work displayed in their school hallways.
Pro Tip- Invest in a good pencil sharpener! If we want sharp writers, we need well-sharpened pencils.
Tips for Families
Action research is a form of investigation designed for use by teachers to attempt to solve problems and improve professional practices in their own classrooms. As an educator, I continually experimented with the lessons I learned from experts from a variety of fields—and many of them I met through books.
When I read Deep Work, I immediately began thinking about implications for my classroom. I thought it might be helpful to share one routine I implemented with my students to promote a productive work/study atmosphere. If you plan to do some back-to-school warm up activities, or you are already thinking about building a positive homework routine, you might consider creating a work/study playlist. This playlist could become part of a ritual that signals the brain that it’s time to focus and get to work.
In my classroom, I played Chance the Rapper’s “Wonderful Everyday” (on repeat) for the deep work jam for my students’ writing time. It’s not so intrusive that everyone begins singing along (distracting), but it’s got a joyful, positive message and a good little groove that keeps the writing time energetic. These are important tips when choosing your playlists. Essentially, with repeated plays, just hearing the music efficiently ushered us into a deep work mode that resulted in improved focus. It was almost magical with my seven- and eight-year-old students.
Chance the Rapper-Wonderful Everyday- Arthur Theme Song
For my own writing, I typically go to a coffee shop, pop in my AirPods, and turn on the Jungle album from 2014, also titled Jungle. The whole album or LP (which stands for Long Play) is played on shuffle, and it works perfectly to get me in a state of flow. Again, it’s not intrusive. It’s got a groove that moves me into active engagement with the task at hand. I hear one of those songs, and I am into writing mode.
Here's a sample: Jungle- The Heat
Wordology Workshop
• The Latin root scend means to climb.
• You find it in words like descend and ascension where it refers to literal climbing.
• You can also find it in the musical word crescendo where it points to the climbing volume and intensity.
• When thinking about handwriting, it’s important to notice with children that some letters are ascending (b, d, f, h, k, l, t) and some letters are descending (g, j, p, q, y).
Practical Grammar
This is a picture of dice. If I take one away, I will be left with one die. Die is the singular form of dice.
I want to play the game, but it requires two dice. Unfortunately, I have only one die.
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