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News student sites, iTunesU, jobs for grads, test anxiety

Education Roundup

TeenTribune, TweenTribune and TTEspañol are great new daily news sites for teens and tweens (teentribune.com). Each day they post the most compelling, relevant and interesting news for kids aged 8-to-18. Stories are selected by teens and tweens working closely with professional journalists. TeenTribune and TweenTribune are easy to use, are updated daily and, most importantly, these sites encourage teens and tweens to seek out news on a daily basis. For English language learners, I also found a great site – newsinlevels.com – that provides news for students of English. There is a choice of three different reading levels for each current events news story on the site. While you can argue with the merit of much of what you find on the Internet, when I find brilliant free sites like these, I get very excited.

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iTunes U is a depository of free educational courses and content from and for elementary, middle and high schools and colleges. The Beyond Campus section includes lectures and courses from close to a hundred institutions from museums to the San Francisco Symphony to the Lawrence Hall of Science. It is worth a look, even if you have checked it out in the past, as there is vastly more content available now.

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Which college degrees will be in greatest demand by employers hiring 2012 college graduates? A new survey shows that employers in pharmaceutical manufacturing; computer and electronics manufacturing; retail trade; finance, insurance, and real estate; management consulting; and professional services expect the greatest increases in hiring. Employers said that they are most interested in students with business-, engineering-, and computer-related bachelor’s degrees. According to Forbes magazine, the good news for college grads is that the 244 large-corporate survey respondents reported they planned to hire almost 10 percent more college grads this year than last. The next most in-demand majors are the more general sciences, followed by liberal arts, communications, agriculture and natural resources.

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A team of researchers analyzed more than 10,000 teenagers across the United States to gain insight into what factors are most important for insuring a child’s academic success. Not surprisingly, the researchers found that students whose families were supportive and involved in school life performed better academically. But it was interesting to read that children with engaged parents who study at weak schools outperformed children with less engaged parents, studying at high-performing schools.   The paper appeared in the online journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.

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The free music iPad app Chromatik (chromatik.com) is a digital music stand that made its first public appearance on American Idol. It is making news because the average user of the app uses it obsessively and it is really taking hold in the musical community. Musicians can upload, record, annotate, and share music as well as record performance, track progress, and give and receive individual feedback. Musicians can also share playlists and recordings. The potential for the app to replace paper sheet music has music classrooms and musicians of all ages very excited.

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In other music news, I’ve been reading about teachers who are trying a very interesting new approach to encouraging reading fluency using music. They select songs and provide the lyrics to students. For 10 to 15 minutes each day, the students enjoy listening to the music and reading along, increasing their fluency and vocabulary and gaining exposure to different musical genres. Teachers sometimes choose songs with specific words or themes. Checking the song for appropriateness first is important, as is making the lyrics text as large and easy-to-read as possible. Another tip is to use several songs frequently to avoid students' memorizing the words too fast. You want them reading instead of reciting.

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The Sonoma Valley High students who will travel to Nicaragua over spring vacation with the nonprofit Sonoma-based organization Seeds of Learning are having a Mary’s Pizza Dine and Donate night on Wednesday, Jan. 9 (either location). You must bring with you a flier from the school office. For more information, go to seedsoflearning.org.

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UCLA researchers have determined that IQ does not determine math success, instead, it is determined by motivation and the quality of instruction received. The report in the journal Child Development reviewed the math achievement of 3,500 public school students from the fifth grade through the 10th grade who were given a standardized math exam every year. While children with higher IQs did have higher test scores at the beginning of the study, how much new material the kids learned over the years was not related to how smart they were. IQ does not predict growth in math achievement; it only determines the starting point.

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Around 25 percent of all freshmen college students currently do not make it to sophomore year, according to data collected by UCLA. Considering the work that goes into selecting and paying for that freshmen year, that is a high number. Various obstacles students face in their new environment are cited as key factors, including feeling homesick, feeling overwhelmed, feeling isolated, and struggling with time management.  Make sure that if you have a child entering college that you help them locate the many resources available to them on campus to get help riding out these initial obstacles.

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One of the nation’s leading experts on choking under pressure, Sian Bellock, has found that students can combat test anxiety and improve their performance by writing about their worries immediately before taking an important exam. The study, just published in the journal Science, found that students who were prone to text anxiety improved their test scores after they were given 10 minutes to write about what was causing them fear. The writing exercise is thought to free up brainpower needed to complete the test successfully.

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The Presentation School is having an admissions open house on Tuesday, Jan. 15 at 5 p.m. which will include a tour of the campus, classroom visits and an opportunity to meet its new Head of School, Scott Parker, who will replace Nancy Waarich-Fischman who is retiring this summer. Presentation is also hosting a free talk on Thursday, Jan. 10 from 8:30 to 10 a.m. on positive parenting. Katherine Llodra will speak on non-punitive, respectful methods that will incorporate kindness and firmness into parenting, help parents get to the core of their child’s misbehavior, bring more joy into the home and give parents a sense of accomplishment. Llodrá has been an educator and practicing-positive-discipline parent for more than a decade. 

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Under the direction of Nellie Cravens, artistic director of Silver Moon Theater, students ages 10-to-16 are invited to join a Shakespeare class that will explore several plays as well as Shakespeare’s life and work and Renaissance culture. The last class will feature a performance of monologues and short scenes for family and friends. The cost is $120, or $108 for Sonoma Community Center members. The course runs Jan. 30 to March 13. Also at the community center, the Puppet Playhouse series returns with the final of three family friendly puppet shows, "Puppylocks and the Three Bears" on Sunday, Jan. 13 at 1 p.m.

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New research coming out of the University of Georgia and Columbia University suggests that girls get better grades in elementary school … and boys do better on standardized tests … simply because of the girls’ classroom behavior. The study in the current issue of Journal of Human Resources suggests teachers give girls higher grades than their male counterparts because they are better behaved and easier to teach. This is an interesting and plausible theory, but it does not fully account for the larger trend of decreasing numbers of young men heading for college, compared to young women.

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The new free iPad app, “The Fun Way to Learn Algebra: Hands-On Equations,” gives even the youngest students visual and kinesthetic ways to understand abstract algebraic equations. The app is relevant for ages 8 and older, but is also well suited for helping older students who are struggling in traditional algebra classes. Along the same lines, here is a link to more than a dozen terrific new iPad math apps:  http://ht.ly/2tYuiL.

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In support of January being National Mentoring Month, John and Kathleen Sweazey will donate $2, from the sale of each bottle of Anaba wine sold at their tasting room on Bonneau Road during the month of January, to the Mentoring Alliance. This promotion follows their $25,000 donation made to the Alliance in November.

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If you are looking for some winter-time enrichment fun with your children, The Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito is free on the first Wednesday of every month and the Oakland Museum of California is free on the first Sunday each month. Meanwhile, the Exploratorium of San Francisco is now closed as it is moving to new quarters but it will re-open on April 17 at its new home at Pier 15.