Rappin’ for Respect

With our schools so focused on testing and standards, we have little time for teaching characters, manners or self-respect.  I took the Pillars of Character Building and wrote a rap for each one. They should be done to the rhythm or beat of a rap so the kids will remember th  Take one a month and repeat it many times through the day.  Hopefully,  these reminders will stay with them

RAPS

I’M GOOD, I’M VERY GOOD, AND I CAN DO GOOD THINGS!

WORKING HARD WILL REALLY PAY. WE’LL LEARN MORE AND MORE EACH DAY!

IF YOU’VE GOT A JOB TO DO, JUMP RIGHT IN AND SEE IT THROUGH!

WHETHER AT WORK OR AT PLAY, WE’LL COOPERATE EVERY DAY!

IF YOU TELL A LIE TODAY, TOMORROW YOU’LL HAVE TO PAY, PAY, PAY!

PLEASE AND THANK YOU SHOULD BE THE RULE, WHETHER AT HOME OR HERE AT SCHOOL!

THERE ARE THINGS THAT WE MUST DO, EVEN IF WE DON’T WANT TO. DO THEM WELL AND DO THEM NICE, OR YOU’LL HAVE TO DO THEM TWICE!

I MUST LEARN TO RESPECT ALL OTHERS, PARENTS, TEACHERS, SISTERS BROTHERS.  FOR WHEN I SHOW RESPECT FOR ALL, I WILL FEEL TEN FEET TALL.!

A FUN, QUICK TO INSTILL SOME VIRTUE INTO OUR LITTLE ONES  (k, 1 ,and 2nd grades)

With these unprecedented times, it is important to look at our children’s egos and self-assurance. They have suffered greatly during this pandemic. Fears and feelings of insecurity are prevalent among even the youngest. Take time to reassure them that they are safe and try to allay their fears.

I often did a rap with my first graders to assure them that they were good and could do good things. I’M  GOOD, I’M VERY GOOD, AND I CAN DO GOOD THINGS.  While rapping this tune to a beat, I would have them put their right hand on their left shoulder, left hand on their right shoulder . Then they could give themselves a great big hug.  We would say this at different times during the day when they had done something right.

This little rap is catchy and will give them a sense of well-being. Even when my husband would cook a great meal, and I would compliment him, he would say I’M GOOD, I’M VERY GOOD, AND I  CAN DO GOOD THINGS!

Vision and Computers

With our children spending so much time on computers, it is important to think about how that is affecting their vision.  Even if they are back in school, the use of white boards and computers may be adversely affecting their eyes.

This information is intended for children in the early grades but these problems may affect children throughout their entire school career.

Signs of distress can include: yawning, eyes watering, squirming in the seat, and rubbing the eyes. If these occur, it is important to provide a break.

If these continue for long periods of time, you may want to schedule an appointment with a child optometrist.  Make sure to have these areas checked during that exam: acuity, binocular coordination, convergence, tracking, dominant eye and crossing midline. You can check several of these on your own.  Have your child hold a book up at eye level and read a page.  See if his eyes are moving smoothly across the page.  Do his eyes wander or seem to go back often?  These may be signs of problems with binocular coordination and tracking. Also, hold a pencil in front of his nose and bring it to the nose.  Do the eyes meet at the center or does one stay forward?  This may mean convergence difficulty.  The eyes should converge at the nose.  Convergence is critical to reading.  The eyes converge and then focus.

You may also want to check for dominant eye.  Take an index card and cut a small hole in the center.  Have the child fold his hands in front of him.  Tell him to bring the card to one eye so he can see an object in the room.  Repeat three times. Then note if he uses the same eye as his dominant hand.  Right-eyed, right-handed pupils often having an easier time in school because they have easy access to the left (logic)  hemisphere of the brain.  Many children who are mixed or cross dominant tend to have struggles in  school because of confusion in transcending hemispheres. Children who are left-eyed often display reversals of numbers and letters because they pull to the right.  The brain works on opposite sides, so the left- eyed student will naturally pull to the right therefore seeing was for saw, and 27 for 72. It is important to note that reversals are common up until age 7 or so, but may be a concern if they continue after that.

Pay attention to your child’s vision and get professional help if you feel they are developing problems due to too much screen time.

 

 

Sarasota Herald Tribune Article

 

 

Teacher uses music, movement
Susan Owens, center, with former student Betty Voegler, left, and student Janice DePerna, looks at photos of DePerna’s 4-year-old son, Jack Jacobs, after class at Manatee Community College last week. Owens, a 40-year teacher, leads the class for young teachers. STAFF PHOTO / JENNA ISAACSON

By LIZ BABIARZ
Posted Mar 13, 2007 at 1:55 AM
Updated Mar 13, 2007 at 4:18 AM

Susan Owens has developed unique techniques over a 40-year teaching career to reach at-risk students.

SOUTH VENICE — It’s nearly 8 p.m. on a Monday, and even though she’s been up since dawn teaching first-graders, Susan Owens is standing in front of another class, exuberantly singing about fractions.

“You take a half, now you take a half, put it together and you get a whole,” sings Owens, 62, handing out pie-shaped pieces to her students, teachers themselves.

After the fraction song, Owens moves on to an upbeat rap about the parts of speech, a catchy cheer for commonly misspelled words and then a touch game for math problems.

They are just some of the techniques Owens has developed over a 40-year teaching career to reach at-risk students, including those in her class at Glenallen Elementary School in North Port.

On Monday nights, she shares those strategies with a young crop of teachers at Manatee Community College, hoping to inspire and prepare them for their own teaching careers.

Owens doesn’t stop there. She also travels the country hosting workshops and speaking at seminars. And on Saturday, Owens will leave the United States for the first time and fly to England to present her research and teaching strategies to a group of educators at an Oxford University seminar.

“It’s the culmination of my public school career,” Owens said. “I go as an advocate for every at-risk child in the United States.”

 

RESIDENCE: North Port

PROFESSION: First-grade teacher at Glenallen Elementary School in North Port and professor at Manatee Community College, South Venice Campus.

EDUCATION: Master’s degree in elementary education from Slippery Rock State Teachers College in Pennsylvania.

MOTTO: “If children don’t learn the way we teach them, we must teach them the way they learn.”

Owens, with her cropped hair and warm eyes, is a fast talker who oozes compassion. She tears up while talking about how some students aren’t served by the current school system, including some of her former students who years later wound up in prison.

The desire to reach every one of her students is what gives Owens seemingly unending enthusiasm for her job.

 

Owens has dedicated much of her four-decade-long career to developing “multisensory” lessons to ensure students who learn by touching, doing or hearing don’t fall behind visual learners, who can read a fact off a blackboard or worksheet and grasp it.

Students don’t sit still in Owens’ class, but march, dance, sing and play. Owens believes music and movement activate both hemispheres of the brain, helping students retain information. Parents of students in Owens’ class say they see a difference.

“Last year, she was struggling. She would come home from school crying and had to stay back,” said Naomi Vargas of her daughter, Faith Nazario, 7.

“This year, she’s very different. She’s getting all A’s. She’s really happy to read to me. She seems like she should be in second or third grade.”

Although students respond well to different styles of teaching, particularly with movement and music, not many teachers use those techniques, one expert said.

“It takes creativity and time,” said Susan Homan, a literacy professor at the University of South Florida.

“In our high-stakes testing environment, a lot of teachers think singing, dancing and marching are just for fun and can wait until after the FCAT, not realizing for many of these children, this is what will make the difference for them in breaking through and being successful.”

 

A third-generation teacher, Owens says she “never wanted to do anything but teach school.” Since graduating from Slippery Rock State Teacher’s College in Pennsylvania in 1966, Owens has taught a variety of students, from the mentally handicapped to those with limited English to the learning disabled, in Pennsylvania and Florida.

But it was in Sarasota County where her PEARL (Providing for Early At-Risk Learners) program was born. In 1991, the principal of Glenallen asked her to take her unique lessons and develop a program to help the lowest-performing students in grades kindergarten through fifth catch up with their peers.

Students in the PEARL program made significant learning gains, and nearly half of them continued to earn A’s and B’s throughout their elementary school career, Owens said.

Despite its success, the PEARL program was ended at Glenallen Elementary last year because of budget cuts. Today, Owens continues to use the same techniques in her regular first-grade class.

“She doesn’t want to miss anybody,” said Janice DePerna, a teacher who is in Owens’ MCC class this semester. “She changes the way you look at kids individually.”

Much of the PEARL program is based on Owens’ research that the majority of at-risk students struggle, particularly at reading, because of their hand-eye dominance.

Right-handed, right-eyed learners have a direct path to the left hemisphere of the brain, commonly referred to as the logic center, Owens said. The most at-risk children are those that have mixed dominance, meaning they are right-handed and left-eyed learners or vice versa, Owens said.

 

After testing 60 students in first through fifth grade on a reading test, Owens found 83 percent who experience learning and behavioral problems had mixed dominance. She will present this research next week to other educators at the Oxford Round Table, an invitation-only event. Owens will retire from Glenallen Elementary this summer, but she plans to continue training other teachers at MCC for three or four more years.

And Owens says she’ll push for more remedial programs for at-risk early learners.

“If we in America are serious about leaving no child behind, we must give those that need it a jump start,” Owens said. “If we fail to do this, we will see more and more children moving from the school system to the prison system.”

Summer is a great time to improve academic skills without worksheets. Taking your child to the library and having him select a book to enjoy together is a great activity to promote reading skills. After reading the book, you can act out the story as a family. Making simple costumes and getting the whole family involved makes it fun. If your child has difficulty in math, get some music which involves the area in which he struggles. Music is a great way to make math fun and also enhances memory. Play board games which involve reading and math. Go to the craft store and purchase some projects which he will enjoy and involve math and reading as well. That makes reading and math relevant and rewarding. Involve your child in some cooking projects, allowing him to read the recipes and do the measuring of ingredients. Your child may learn much more without the stress of the classroom. Be creative and enjoy!!!

Reading and Vision:

After much research in my forty years plus teaching in the public schools, I am still amazed at how little primary teachers look at vision as an important component of reading.  Vision is critical to reading ability.

If your child is lagging in reading skills, observe and see if he displays any of these things when reading…rubs his eyes, his eyes water or he begins to yawn. All of these may indicate that his vision is not adequate.  It is important to seek professional help if you suspect his reading lags are due to visual problems.

I would suggest that you find a pediatric eye doctor who specializes in children’s visual problems.  Make sure that he examines your child for the following;

Acuity, binocular coordination, dominant eye, convergence, tracking and the ability to cross midline.  You cannot wait until the child is in fifth or sixth grade to find these problems and remediate them.  Early intervention is key to building success with the reading process.  Problems in any of these areas will hamper your child’s reading.