Educational Book Companies

That first day of school isn’t far away now, is it? My son starts 5^th grade this Fall, which, due to a very crowded elementary school, is the first year of middle school in our town. While he’s pretty excited, I’m of course suffering from, “Ack, my baby’s going to middle school, where has the time gone?” syndrome.

All this talk about middle school got me looking in depth at Kendall Hunt Publishing’s middle school offerings this week. We talk a lot about high school science textbooks and elementary education books, but we don’t talk all that much about middle school. But have you checked out our new Math Innovations program? It’s amazing. It develops mathematical habits of mind, teaching students to think like mathematicians. It improves the reasoning and critical thinking skills that are crucial to success in the 21^st century.

Math Innovations offers textbooks, but is also a robust online math curriculum with an array of technology options to enhance and supplement the text. Three grade levels and five units per grade allows for customized alignment to state and district standards. Check it out when you have a chance!!

In my last post I introduced you to the amazing work the Second and Seven Foundation is doing to promote literacy. We usually talk about high school chemistry textbooks and gifted education books here, but none of that matters if students lack basic literacy skills. That's why 2nd and 7 is Tackling Illiteracy.

Throughout each school year, 2nd and 7 visits schools and gives books to second grade students. In the 2008-2009 school year alone they provided their books to approximately 4,000 students in 53 schools in Central Ohio, as well as nearly 12,000 more children across the country. That's 16,000 second graders who received a brand new book of their own from 2nd and 7!

And it's not just any books they're giving out. 2nd and 7 has developed a series of age appropriate books for second graders. Right now the Foundation has three books available: The Hog Mollies and The Pickle Pie Party, The Hog Mollies and The Rocky Relay Race, and The Hog Mollies and the Zooming Zackle Zoit. Each book focuses on a new adventure of the Hog Mollies, Hoppy, Sprout, Harley and Duke, fun little characters that work together as a team to tackle challenges that they face. With humor, engaging storylines and beautiful, full color illustrations, children are drawn right into the story, never even realizing that they are improving their literacy skills with each word. Each of the three books is available in paperback or hard cover from Kendall Hunt Publishing. Click here to go to Kendall Hunt's Hog Mollies page and order yours today! All proceeds benefit the 2nd and 7 Foundation's efforts in Tackling Illiteracy. Once you see these books for yourself, you'll want to get one for every child in your life!

Don't forget to visit 2nd and 7's website and see how you can support their efforts!

You can also follow 2nd and 7 on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/2nd-7-Foundation/105340035060.
 

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.

Will you be at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Conference beginning tomorrow in San Diego? If so, first, I’m jealous, I love San Diego, but second and more importantly, don’t forget to visit Kendall Hunt Publishing at Booth #523. You’ll be able to check out all of our gifted education books and accelerated learning resources, including Project M3: Mentoring Mathematical Minds, and the brand new Project M2: Mentoring Young Mathematicians.

Project M3 is a math curriculum for high ability learners in grades 3-5, while Project M2 meets needs of gifted math students from Kindergarten through Grade 2.

The following workshops by our authors, will take place during the conference:

Math Innovations, presented by Kathy Gavin, Friday, April 23rd, 10:00a-11:00a, Room 1B in the San Diego Convention Center.

We Discover Math, P-K, presented by Carol Inzerillo, Friday, April 23rd, 11:30a-12:30p, Room 1B in the Sand Diego Convention Center.

Math Innovations, presented by Kathy Gavin, Friday, April 23rd, 1:00p-2:00p, Room 1B in the San Diego Convention Center.

M3 and M2, presented by Kathy Gavin, Friday, April 23rd, 2:30p-3:30p, Room 1B in the San Diego Convention Center.

After the conference, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment and let me know what you think!

I've read several articles this week about online and e-books for the K-12 market. The current Texas governor recently stated that he doesn't see any reason for Texas to have printed books in four years. That's a pretty big statement in support of online learning.

What do you think about taking elementary education books, secondary school textbooks and the like and putting them in the digital world? At Kendall Hunt Publishing, we're big fans of digital learning for PreK-12. Let's face it, many printed textbooks are dated the minute they come off the press. School textbook publishers face this issue all the time. But if your "books" are online, especially if they're in a learning portal that can be continually updated, students can learn about the latest discovery in science without waiting for the next printing of their high school science textbook. That's only one of the many benefits to digital learning.

Do your schools use all printed material? Or a combination of print and digital?

…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.
 

My son was recently invited to participate in an area Eco-Meet. They chose three fourth grade gifted students and two fifth grade students from each of the participating districts to make up that district’s team. This is quite the inquiry based science event, it seems! Each team member received a packet about an inch thick of materials they need to study to prepare. Additionally, they will be working with the gifted and talented teacher, who is the coach, each week leading up to the event in mid-May.

The Eco-Meet is a day long event held at a local park high above the Mississippi River. The park rangers and Army Corps of Engineers will involve the students in activities and presentations on different subjects, including Fish of the Mississippi. After each event, the teams will take a test. The tests will be graded and winners announced.

Your erstwhile blogger has returned from the land of vacationers, fully refreshed and ready to blog. I don’t know if it was the time of year, or what, but while I was off I started wondering about the question in the headline of this post. How did we end up with “talented & gifted” resources, gifted education books, accelerated learning resources? Where did the terms come from?

So out of curiosity, I did a little research while I was off. It turns out there’s no general consensus as to the origin of the term “gifted.” And, in fact, as we’ve all known for years, there is quite a bit of controversy surrounding the use of the term. But that wasn’t the interesting part. Along the way I learned that what we call gifted education and curriculum for accelerated learners, etc. has been around, literally, for thousands of years. In the sixth and seventh centuries, under China’s Tang Dynasty, children identified as prodigies were summoned to the imperial court for advanced education. Also, Plato was a leading advocate of specialized education for those who were intellectually gifted.

Now, I knew that the Marland Report, A Nation at Risk, and the Jacob Javits Act more recently had memorable impacts on talented and gifted education, but I certainly had no idea how far back the origins went. See what happens when I have extra time on my hands!

Here’s my question…as a teacher, what do your gifted students do during RTI time? It used to be that the students who struggled or had behavioral issues were the ones who “fell through the cracks.” More and more I feel like it’s now the gifted or advanced students who fall through. Of course, in a perfect world, no one would fall through the cracks. And I give all the credit in the world to the classroom teacher who is trying to balance the needs of 20-30 students with vastly differing needs, levels and abilities. 

I know that in my son’s school, everyday they have a half hour of RTI time. During this time, the other students are engaged in group reading. For some students, that group reading is beneficial, for the more advanced students, they are bored. As I’ve indicated here before, his school doesn’t have a lot of accelerated learning resources or books for gifted students - they don’t even have a curriculum for high ability learners. And they only go to their gifted class twice a week. So what’s the answer for these students?

I did give the principal one suggestion when I spoke with him earlier today (first time in five years that I’ve actually felt the need to call him, and I didn’t want to just call and complain without offering at least one solution). I said the teacher create a couple groups of the other students, give them a research topic or question, and tell them that they must make a presentation, complete with visual aids, in two weeks. It would at least put that RTI time to good use for them.

 I’d love to hear from teachers who have this same dilemma. I know many schools don’t have gifted education books in class, and some lack even the basic talented and gifted resources. So what do you do?

Okay, so that’s pretty bad paraphrasing of The Bard, but my point is, what do you think of e-books anyway? Certainly the electronic book reader a certain online book vendor has taken off, but that’s more in the trade book market. I like the idea of going on vacation and taking one little rectangular, electronic thing instead of a stack of books. But what about when it comes to textbooks for elementary school, or high school science textbooks?

My son’s fourth grade math book is available online. They sent home the access instructions this week. Kind of a cool idea, especially with a fourth grader who forgets to close the freezer, feed the dog, and take his shoes upstairs (and that’s just the first five minutes after dinner!). He can forget his book at school, but still get his homework done.

I can see where having your high school chemistry textbook online would be a great option to lugging it home. Is there a certain level for which it works best? Maybe education textbook publishers should be making all elementary education books available in e-book format. Or perhaps it’s more appropriate for high school science textbooks, and middle school math. I don’t know. What do you think?
 

I know that this blog is generally about the topics of gifted education books and inquiry based science, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that we also have a great depth of resources in the reading area. Our new Reading Resources catalog is now available and offers many products to improve reading, for intervention, for assessment & reading inventory, etc. 

Jerry Johns, a renowned expert in the reading field, has been a Kendall Hunt Publishing author for many years. His Basic Reading Inventory is used nationwide and Canada. Check out the catalog when you have a chance!