Books for College Students

So, what do you do if you teach a unique higher education course and you can’t find the perfect book to fit your needs? You create your own custom college textbook.

That is what education professors at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa did.  They teach a Human Relations course, which seems basic enough, except they took it one step further for their education students.  They teach their Human Relations course specifically for educators.  Since educators face different human relations situations than persons in other careers, they wrote their book to prepare pre-service teachers for those situations. Congratulations  to Scott Arnett, Susan Burns, and Susie Lubbers on their publication Human Relations for the Educator.

With the opportunities available in custom publishing, you can create a traditional printed textbook, lab manual, digital course pack, college ebook or a combination of any of them.

Discover your Create... Customize ... Adopt solutions at www.kendallhunt.com/highered.

As the days get longer and the weather warms up, I can’t help but think about cold treats. There’s an ice cream store in my hometown of Dubuque, Iowa that is called Cold Stone Creamery.  I’m sure you are probably familiar with this business concept.  The customer walks in, looks at a large sample of ice cream flavors (ranging from vanilla to cookie batter, to banana) and numerous mix-ins (such as Oreo, Snickers, brownie, or Cookie Dough). 

Now the customer can do one of three things when they enter: they can order an existing creation directly from the menu; use the menu as a template and add their own mix-ins; or create their own treat from scratch.

This concept dovetails perfectly to my work at Kendall Hunt Publishing.  As a leading higher education textbook publisher, we allow professors to create, adopt, or customize a variety of our college textbooks and ebooks.

Like my father-in-law orders his ice cream treats directly from the menu, so to can a professor adopt a textbook directly from our online college textbooks catalog.  This serves him well.  He gets a tested and proven ice cream treat – similar to a professor getting a classroom tested textbook.

Or you could be like my wife and use the menu at Cold Stone as a guide.  She looks up a certain ice cream flavor and consults a list of recommendations to meet her palate.   Her favorite is the cake batter ice cream with the cookie dough mix-in.  This is very similar to Kendall Hunt’s customization process.  Professors can meet with one of our educational consultants, discuss their higher education course, and discuss their options.  They can adopt an existing book and add their own content to create a digital course pack; they could consult our digital learning center to see some of our existing material to add, or they could create a new digital coursepack and deliver via our content delivery system.  The possibilities are truly endless!

Finally, the customer can walk into this ice cream store and invent their own ice cream creation.  This is how I like to roll.  Throw a little bit of this, little bit of that, and bam, a new creation!  As always, Kendall Hunt Publishing offers the educator to create their own course content to meet the needs of them and their students.  Professors can create their own college ebooks, college textbooks, or digital coursepacks. This is the principle that Kendall Hunt was based on and has followed for over sixty years…

All this talk about ice cream is making me hungry…..Thank heavens that Kendall Hunt Publishing offers online content delivery so I can work on the run….I’m off to the ice cream store!

As a follow-up to the fun and learning Kendall Hunt Publishing employees were a part of on the inaugural National Lab Day, there’s something I really want to get off my chest. Yes, Kendall Hunt is an educational publishing company, we sell educational materials and solutions. Books for gifted students, high school chemistry textbooks, teacher edition textbooks, online learning solutions, and more…we make it, and yep, we want to sell it.

But as I saw my fellow employees participate in and react to their National Lab Day experiences, it made me feel really good. Because for us, it really is about the kids. It’s about them learning, and growing, and, eventually, making the world a better place. And we know we can influence that, we can help them along the way, we can make a difference for them. We’ll never be a giant monolithic publisher who sells more high school biology books that everyone else combined. But we don’t want to be that. We want to help teachers, real classroom teachers, from kindergarten through college, find the best solution for their students.

I think it’s just that we care about the kids, we believe in what we do, and we hope to make a difference. It’s what keeps each of us going every day. As loyal readers, I just thought you might like to know what drives us.

Getting Ready -- Prepares individuals for the teacher job search by making the most of the student teaching experience.  It includes insider advise on multiple topics, 100 things employers will ask about you, and maintaining a professional web presence.

Getting There -- Teaches the essential tools of the teacher job search including résumés, cover letters, interview portfolios, and tips on where to find jobs.

Getting Hired -- Provides strategic interview responses, knowledge of various interview settings, common interview questions and sure-fire tips to make you stand out above the rest with a knock'em dead interview.

Each book comes with individual access to the Getting Hired Companion Website, which contains a plethora of resources, including: ePlanner Activities: Templates for résumé/letter writing, philosophy statements, common interview questions and topics, and success planning.

Interview Portfolio: Build an Interview Portfolio that can easily become an ePortfolio showcasing standards-based teaching abilities, as well as a tremendous interview preparation tool. The 10 Interview Portfolio templates comprise a powerful self-promotion and interview success tool.

Videos: Watch sample interviews for all levels of instruction, listen in as employers give job seeking advice, and key interview questions and topics.

This book can be used for student teaching courses through college or universities, or to support a job search for an individual in the education field. So if you can't decide what to get your son or daughter who is beginning their student teaching, the student who has helped you create lesson plans for your gifted and talented students for the past three months, or the friend who will be student teaching in the Fall, check out Getting Hired on the Kendall Hunt Publishing website: http://www.kendallhunt.com/gettinghired. 

It thought today I’d talk about inquiry based science AND gifted science – two birds, one stone, if you will. Continuing with the discussion of the curriculum for high ability learners available from Kendall Hunt Publishing and the Center for Gifted Education (CFGE) at The College of William & Mary, there’s also an inquiry based science program available. It has seven problem-based units on such topics as coastal erosion, natural and cultural systems, electricity, nuclear energy, and animal populations. With units for grades 1 through 8, it supports all levels with challenging, hands-on scientific issues.

For instance, in  Where’s the Beach? plans for building a children's camp at the beach are on hold because the town council is worried about beach erosion. Since the camp received a large donation to develop nature-themed experiences designed to teach children how to protect the environment, the camp manager wants to cooperate with the council. The problem is that she must begin construction quickly to be ready for the summer season. Acting as members of the town council, the students must develop scientifically-based regulations that will satisfy the long-term needs of the town and the plans for the new camp.

How great is that? It puts students in a real life situation that they can imagine affecting their lives and helps them use scientific concepts to find solutions. These are no ordinary books for gifted students…
 

…let’s talk about Language Arts. In my last post I highlighted the Social Studies program from the Center for Gifted Education (CFGE) at The College of William & Mary that we at Kendall Hunt Publishing offer. I thought I’d feature another of CFGE’s programs today…their Language Arts Curriculum for High Ability Learners.

This CFGE program includes modules for grades 1-11, nice because it keeps the learning consistent for students all the way through. Among others, it includes these topics: 

• Journeys & Destinations
• Autobiographies
• Persuasion
• The 1940s: A Decade of Change
• Threads of Change in 19^th Century American Literature

Each module includes implementation support, unit vocabulary lists, a glossary of literary terms, and bibliographies of student reading and teacher resources. After reading the literary selections, students engage in literary response and persuasive writing activities. Grammar, vocabulary, reasoning and research are also embedded in the unit activities. It’s so much more than just gifted education books.

One Virginia teacher has been using this curriculum for high ability learners for two years, and emailed us to tell us that, “the units are absolutely wonderful.”

You can find the program, along with samples from each module on the Kendall Hunt Publishing website: http://www.kendallhunt.com/index.cfm?PID=219&PGI=249.

Tell me what you think!

At home the other night we were hard at work on a Social Studies project when I got to thinking about social studies resources for gifted students. I know that these materials can be hard to find and many teachers create their own gifted and talented lesson plans.

But there’s a great social studies curriculum for high ability learners: the Center for Gifted Education (CFGE) at The College of William & Mary. Have you checked it out? You can find it here on the Kendall Hunt Publishing website: http://www.kendallhunt.com/index.cfm?PID=219&PGI=251.

CFGE Social Studies offers great topics, including these, just to name a few:

• Gift of the Nile
• Ancient China
• The Civil War: It’s Causes and Effects
• The Road to the White House: Electing the American President
• Defining Nations: Cultural Identity and Political Tensions

And the program meets the needs of Grades 2 through 12. It even includes implementation support such as guidelines, learning centers and teaching models, along with additional resources. Where else can you find this? As the world gets smaller and smaller, it seems to me at least that our kids really need to learn about these things. Many gifted education books offer science and reading programs, but it seems social studies is a little harder to find.
Do your schools have talented and gifted resources for social studies? Tell me what you’re using and how you use them, I’d be really interested to know.