Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

Reading Comprehension and Writing Nonfiction

Teachers, here are FREE Leap Year worksheets written by a National Board Certified Teacher. I hope you and your students enjoy them!

The first one is a reading comprehension worksheet about Leap Year.  It’s a good, basic introduction to the concept of Leap Year that is appropriate for third grade and up.

Next is a writing worksheet about how and why Julius Caesar created Leap Year and rearranged the calendar. To shake things up a little, this worksheet challenges students to write a newspaper article about the event. The article gives “notes” our fictitious reporter took at the press conference—in a handy who, what, where, when, why format.

Stay tuned for Free Leap Year Worksheets Part Two: Leap Year trivia reading comprehension and Leap Year math!

An occasional series with sample pages from the Best Multiplication Workbook EVER!

This tip comes straight from my Best Multiplication Workbook EVER!  The section on teaching 2 digit multiplication is very helpful for teachers looking to scaffold learning.  I break long multiplication into 3 sections—multiplying multidigit numbers by 1, 2 or 3 digits.  Within each section, a dozen or more lessons teach the process step by step.

Please use these two FREE sample pages with your class to introduce 2 digit multiplication.  This introductory lesson lets your students learn the Hugs and Kisses method to keep their numbers lined up when they have to put in that place holding O.  (The place holding O is the hug.  You put an X, or kiss, over a number to kiss it goodbye when you are through with it.)

The workbook lets students practice Hugs and Kisses by beginning with multiplying times 11.  This isolates the Hugs and Kisses skill, allowing students to focus on the procedure, not the math.

I wish I’d learned multiplication this way when I was a kid!  I hope this and other lessons from the Best Multiplication Workbook EVER! help your students.

Part four: the Smithsonian helps you teach about the Tuskegee Airmen

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aerial combat unit.  Deployed in Europe during WWII, they painted the tails of their planes red and became known as the Red Tails.  To the Americans, they were the Red Tail Angels.  To the Germans, they were the Red Tail Devils.  To all of us, they are heroes who sought a Double Victory: victory in the war abroad and victory over prejudice, segregation and Jim Crow laws at home.

This is part four of a series about the Tuskegee Airmen to coordinate with the January 20 release of Red Tails, the Lucasfilm action movie.  Go see it!

The Smithsonian’s National Air and SpaceMuseum created a 50 page teacher’s guide about African American Pioneers in Aviation (pdf).  It is every bit as outstanding as you’d expect a Smithsonian publication to be.  You will love the detailed biographies, helpful lesson plans, ready-made worksheets, and primary sources.  

(Remind your students that the Tuskegee Airmen came to the rescue in the movie Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian)

No Tuskegee Airmen lesson could be complete without a lesson about the pilot shown in the photo above: Benjamin O. Davis Jr.  He was the first African-American general in the U.S. Air Force, son of the first African-American general in the U.S. Army. 

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. was the first African American to graduate from West Point in the 20^th century.  During his four years at West Point, he was completely ostracized by his classmates.  He never had a roommate.  He ate by himself.  Fellow cadets only spoke to him when official duty made it necessary.

“It was designed to make me buckle, but I refused to buckle. They didn’t understand that I was going to stay there, and I was going to graduate. I was not missing anything by not associating with them. They were missing a great deal by not knowing me.”—Benjamin O. Davis Jr.

Benjamin O. Davis Jr.’s leadership was invaluable to the Tuskegee Airmen.  When he led the 332^nd Fighter Group in their mission as fighter escort pilots protecting bombers, he insisted that they stay with their bombers at all times, at all costs.  The Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber and won the admiration of American bomber crews and the German pilots who flew against them. Of Davis, a Tuskegee Airman said “it was because of the discipline he exacted that we were able to make the record we did.”

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. knew a thing or two about unit pride and public relations.  He thought of painting the tails of their P-51 Mustangs red so the bomber groups would know who was escorting them. Read Benjamin O. Davis Jr., American : An Autobiography

This past weekend, I was excited to meet Tuskegee Airmen in an event to honor their legacy.  I was thrilled to pose for pictures with three Tuskegee Airmen.  I am posting a picture for each entry in this miniseries.  This photo is Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. Asa Herring and me.  (The photo is a true snapshot—in my mind I was exactly next to Lt. Col. Herring and in the photo I block him.  Sorry.)

Asa Herring graduated from high school at 16 and passed the U.S. Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet written examination at age 17.  He had to wait until he was 18 before he could be inducted and begin flight training.  During his 22 years of military service, Asa served in England, Korea, Germany, Vietnam, and other temporary assignments worldwide. He was the first Black Squadron Commander at Luke Air Force Base*, Arizona, where he trained pilots in the F-104G Advanced Jet Fighter Gunnery Program. He was officially appointed an honorary Command Pilot in the German Luftwaffe.  Click to read a fact sheet about Lt. Col. Herring, provided by Luke AFB.

*Incidentally, Luke AFB is home of the Emerald Knights, one of my dad’s old squadrons and the one I remember most clearly.  They were based at Homestead AFB near Miami when my dad flew with them.  Visit my about the author page and scroll down to see a photo of my dad’s last flight.

Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 2
Tuskegee Airmen, Part 3 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 4

Part three:  A glowing review of Red Tails, the new George Lucas movie

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aerial combat unit. Deployed in Europe during WWII, they painted the tails of their planes red and became known as the Red Tails. To the Americans, they were the Red Tail Angels. To the Germans, they were the Red Tail Devils. To all of us, they are heroes who sought a Double Victory: victory in the war abroad and victory over prejudice, segregation and Jim Crow laws at home.

This is part three of a planned four-part series about the Tuskegee Airmen to coordinate with the January 20 release of Red Tails, the Lucasfilm action movie.  I just got back from the movie and I feel that I MUST write about it.

Red Tails is an awesome movie!  The special effects are amazing—you really feel like you’re in the P-51 Mustangs with the Red Tails.  The dogfighting sequences make you think of Top Gun and Star Wars.  I read that George Lucas spent three years getting the action sequences just right, and it was worth the time and expense.  Red Tails is very, very generous with exciting action sequences.  There are more in this movie than any other aerial combat movie I’ve ever seen, which makes Red Tails the coolest dogfighting movie ever, imho.

 The exploits shown in Red Tails are so amazing that they are hard to believe.  I heard fellow theater goers wondering aloud about whether the Red Tails really sank a destroyer.  Yes, they did!  In 1944,  Lt. Gwynn Pierson, Lt. Windell Pruitt and four other Tuskegee Airmen attacked a German Destroyer in 1944.  Accurate machine gun fire hit the powder magazine and sank the ship, and Pierson and Pruitt are credited with the destruction of an enemy ship using only machine gun fire.  You can read about it here.

I also heard people wondering if the Tuskegee Airmen really shot down German jets.  Yes, they did!  It happened a lot like in the movie, on their longest escort mission all the way to Berlin.  Charles Brantley, Earl Laneand Roscoe Brown shot down German jets over Berlin that day, earning the 332nd Fighter Group a Distinguished Unit Citation. Read about it here.  That mission was led by Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., commander of the Tuskegee Airmen.  Terrence Howard’s character was clearly based on this remarkable man.  I will write more about Benjamin O. Davis Jr. in Post Four, which also includes the last of the pictures I took with Tuskegee Airmen.

 The last thing I heard people wonder about was whether it was realistic for a Tuskegee Airman to strike up a relationship with an Italian woman.  I don’t know much about the personal lives of the Tuskegee Airmen, but I do know that in Lucasfilm’s Double Victory documentary, the pilots explain that Italian people viewed them not as African-Americans, but simply as Americans.  Double Victory has some neat pictures of Tuskegee Airmen clowning with kids and spending time with Italian families. Since I lived in Italy, I found it enriched my movie experience to understand what Lightning’s fiancée said to him, especially when they first met and neither spoke the other’s language.

Here is a clip showing a special screening of Red Tails for cadets at the U. S. Air Force Academy.  The cadets loved it!  (By the way, my dad is a USAF Academy graduate—the Air Force calls them Zoomies.  My dad is also a retired fighter pilot, and he said Red Tails did a great job of showing dogfights.)

Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 2
Tuskegee Airmen, Part 3 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 4

Part two: Double Victory

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aerial combat unit. Deployed in Europe during WWII, they painted the tails of their planes red and became known as the Red Tails. To the Americans, they were the Red Tail Angels. To the Germans, they were the Red Tail Devils. To all of us, they are heroes who sought a Double Victory: victory in the war abroad and victory over prejudice, segregation and Jim Crow laws at home.

This is part two of a series about the Tuskegee Airmen to coordinate with the January 20 release of Red Tails, the Lucasfilm action movie. Go see it opening weekend!

George Lucas wanted to make a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen for over 20 years. He funded Red Tails himself, first with $58 million for production and then $30 million for distribution. Red Tails is an action-packed movie that tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen protecting bombers flying over Germany. Lucas produced a documentary, Double Victory: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen in Their Own Words. The documentary has screened at numerous events honoring Tuskegee Airmen. I hope you get to see it!

The Tuskegee Airmen faced prejudice, discrimination and segregation at every step. Before WWII, African-Americans were barred from flying in the U.S. military. Civil rights organizations and the black press put pressure on Washington, ultimately leading to the formation of an all African-American pursuit squadron based in Tuskegee, Alabama. The fledgling program got a boost from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who visited the site and took a much-publicized flight with African-American chief civilian instructor C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson.

While stationed in Italy, bomber groups that the Red Tails protected did not know the pilots were black until a B-17 had to make an emergency landing at their base. In the Double Victory documentary, veterans describe how some in the bomber crew accepted the Tuskegee Airmen, but a few men chose to sleep in their plane rather than stay with the black pilots and crewmembers. Temperatures dropped so low that those men knocked on the barracks door in the middle of the night and then stayed with the Tuskegee Airmen for days. Censors found a letter home in which a recruit asked his sweetie to “forgive him” for staying with the black airmen for three days.

When the Tuskegee Airmen returned home after the war, they did not receive the hero’s welcome their white counterparts enjoyed. They faced segregation, Jim Crow laws, and discriminatory employment practices. You can trace the impetus for the Civil Rights movement resulting from how African-American veterans were treated after WWII through President Truman’s signing of Executive Order 9981 ending segregation in the military.

Here are some resources you can use for your own learning or in the classroom (depending on the grade level you teach).

PBS Home Video: The Tuskegee Airmen: This is an excellent choice for the classroom. It his educational, entertaining, and the PBS brand is above reproach from parents or administrators.

The Tuskegee Airmen: An Illustrated History: 1939-1949

The Tuskegee Airmen Story

Wind Flyers

Don’t miss the 1995 movie The Tuskegee Airmenstarring Lawrence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Georgia’s Kennesaw State University created an excellent Teacher’s Guide about the Tuskegee Airmen

This past weekend, I was excited to meet Tuskegee Airmen in an event to honor their legacy. I was thrilled to pose for pictures with three Tuskegee Airmen. I am posting a picture for each entry in this miniseries. This is  Tuskegee Airman Charles Cooper with me. Along with Hannibal Cox and Charles McGee, Charles Cooper shares the distinction of having flown combat missions as a fighter pilot in WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam.

Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 2
Tuskegee Airmen, Part 3 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 4

Part one: overview of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Red Tails movie

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aerial combat unit. Deployed in Europe during WWII, they painted the tails of their planes red and became known as the Red Tails. To the Americans, they were the Red Tail Angels. To the Germans, they were the Red Tail Devils. To all of us, they are heroes who sought a Double Victory: victory in the war abroad and victory over prejudice, segregation and Jim Crow laws at home.

Red Tails is the Lucasfilm movie about the Tuskegee Airmen. It will be released this Friday, January 20. Go see it opening weekend! If your students are old enough, seeing the movie could be an extra credit assignment. (In the interest of fairness, provide a free extra credit opportunity: a report on the Red Tails.)

Red Tails is an action movie. Rather than dramatize how the Tuskegee Airmen began with a civil rights struggle for equality in military service, the movie opens with their most dramatic and successful missions: protecting B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.

Bombers were unwieldy and vulnerable. They were slow and they had to fly steady. They couldn’t avoid the flak and they were shot down at an alarming rate. Fighter pilots charged with protecting them would chase kills to make Ace or simply flee the incoming fire.

Not the Tuskegee Airmen. The Red Tails never left their bombers and consequently never lost a bomber. These courageous pilots flew through the flak and stayed with their charge. The bomber groups requested the Red Tails because of their outstanding track record. Few of the bombers knew the pilots protecting them were black.

Be sure to visit the website for Red Tails. Your students will love the dogfight simulation. You will enjoy showing them the history of the Red Tails at the airfield base section of the site.

This past weekend, I was unbelievably excited to meet Tuskegee Airmen in an event to honor their legacy. I was thrilled to pose for pictures with three Tuskegee Airmen. I will post one picture for each entry in this miniseries.

Here I am with Lt. Col. Robert Ashby, a Tuskegee Airman. After graduating from the cadet program in 1945, he went on to have an illustrious career in the military, serving in the occupation of Japan, the Korean conflict, and finally in England, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1965. Lt. Col. Ashby was the first black captain for Frontier Airlines. He was also the first black pilot to reach mandatory retirement age (60 years) with a major airline. He was the only Tuskegee Airman hired by a scheduled airline. Read a short autobiography here. Read more about Lt. Col. Ashby’s military career on this fact sheet from Luke Air Force Base.

*Incidentally, Luke AFB is home of the Emerald Knights, one of my dad’s old squadrons and the one I remember most clearly. They were based at Homestead AFB near Miami when my dad flew with them. Visit my about the author page and scroll down to see a photo of my dad’s last flight.

Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 2
Tuskegee Airmen, Part 3 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 4

January 18 is A.A. Milne’s birthday.  Celebrate with Winnie the Pooh Day!  You can adjust your activities to suit your students’ interests and reading levels.  Pooh is not just for little kids!  The books are actually quite challenging—AR levels Winnie-the-Pooh at 4.6. 

Disney has a great Winnie the Pooh site where your class can play games, watch episodes, and print pictures to color.  (Veteran teachers know to NEVER let students print without permission!  Print the pictures yourself ahead of time.)

Print Disney’s downloadable Winnie the Pooh activity book.  It’s excellent for students up to grade 3.

Extend your students’ learning by going beyond Disney’s Winnie the Pooh.  Visit the charming UK site for A.A. Milne.  You can teach your students about the author and delve more deeply into his life and books.  He wrote much more than Winnie the Pooh!  He wrote really charming poems, for instance.  They are excellent for your students to study.

I love “Halfway Down,” Milne’s poem about a place of one’s own.  It comes from his book When We Were Very Young.  http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/miscellaneous/mmilne-halfwaydown.htm   Check out this awesome Muppets video of Kermit’s nephew Robin singing the poem as a song.

Click here for the text of several of A.A. Milne’s poems.  You can use them for reading comprehension, reader’s theater, fluency practice, or just to color and decorate.  Whatever suits your class!

Your students would enjoy listening to you read aloud from the original Winnie-the-Pooh book.  Have fun comparing it to Disney’s movie and TV versions of the story.  Just-Pooh.com has a nice gallery that lets you compare original illustrator Ernest Shephard’s illustrations to the Disneyfied Pooh. 

 Happy Winnie the Pooh Day!

Students love to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr., but his achievements seem inaccessible to them. For kids, Dr. King was a fully-formed civil rights leader who always knew just what to do.

You can inspire children by teaching them about Dr. King’s school days. Then they will understand that he had to face obstacles, study, and learn. Kids feel so powerless sometimes—it’s good to show them that famous people were once children, and that everyone was a beginner at some point.

You and your class would enjoy taking Valerie Strauss’s MLK Quiz: His unorthodox education. Here are some no-context tidbits to get kids interested:

Did you know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. …

> Was kicked out of school? (Okay, so it was kindergarten, and it was only because he was too young. Got your attention, though!)

> Was called an underachiever by his college professors?

> skipped two grades?

> thought about studying law or medicine?

In my book, Double Switched, the kids in Mr. Hoker’s class pick the subject of  African-American history for a group  project.  Connor and Tyler get their topics switched around when their presentation doesn’t go as planned: Connor talks about his dad’s experiences growing up during the desegregation years in the south, and Tyler talks about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a leader of the civil rights movement.   Their classmates are thoroughly confused about who did what.  I bet you will enjoy the double switch — I certainly could see it happening in a real classroom!

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home.   The Kindle is so wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do the Kindle justice in just one blog post. Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part four: building a classroom Kindle library

1. Browse books by cost: when you browse Kindle children’s books, you can search by age group and cost.  You will find interesting Kindle books for under four dollars.  The Kindle books are offered on special every so often, so you might be able to find a famous title at a super-low price.  Low-cost Kindle books can be a good way to try new and independent authors.
2. Borrow from Amazon:  If you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can borrow many Kindle books for free.  (My books are available to Prime members to borrow for free!)  You join Amazon Prime for $79: the first month is a free trial—it’s an especially good deal because Amazon Prime includes free 2 day delivery and streaming movies and TV shows.  If you just have one or two Kindles in your classroom that you paid for, you can use your account to borrow books for them.
3. Borrow from the library:  Public libraries are now making e-books available for download to your Kindle.  You usually search through your library’s online catalogue, click the link, then follow directions to download to your Kindle.  This is a great way to stock classroom Kindles.
4. Read free books: Kindles let you read public domain books for free.  Through Amazon, you can reach a variety of websites with free classics.  This is excellent for high school students who are required to read these classics.  Many classics are hard for elementary students to read, but Beatrix Potter is accessible.  So are lesser-known books by A. A. Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh.
5. Read series books:  Series pull kids in because they don’t have to get bogged down in the exposition.  Download Kindle books of classic and new series.  I think the Boxcar Children are due for a renaissance.  They are longer (and a little cheaper) than Junie B. Jones or Magic Tree House, so you get more for your money.  Whatever series you research, be sure to sort by price so you buy the bargain installments first.

Bonus Tip: Don’t forget the Corey Green Kindle books!  I wrote them, so I know they’re good.  Check out the first three books in my Buckley School Books series.  The characters are just like kids in your class, and kids will love the action and comedy.

Corey Green Kindle books fit the tips for stocking your Kindle library: they’re good series books, they’re low-cost Kindle choices, and you can borrow them for free using Amazon Prime.

Zapped!
Kyle creates a fake student named Stan to take the blame for a prank gone wrong.  Kyle and his friends learn that inventing Stan was easy, making him behave is impossible.  Stan takes on a life of his own, getting the kids into more trouble than they ever imagined.

Brainstorm
Brian is very smart—so why do his brainstorms backfire?  His homework help website was supposed to help kids and make Brian cool—but when it becomes famous, everyone is jealous.  Brian tries to distract his classmates with a mystery about a heist at the art museum—but then it turns out the heist is real!  Can the kids stop the robbers?

Double Switched
Connor knows he will be a baseball star—if he can just make it through sixth grade.  But life is so switched around!  Switched team position: now Connor’s not the star shortstop.  Switched class at school: how can Connor do the work if he can’t even read the directions?  Switched baseball field: what is that strange odor over where the workers are smoking?  The bases are loaded with problems for Connor.  Can he find a way to make things right?

Kids and Kindles, an occasional series at the Class Antics blog.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you, or Part 2 about how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home.  The Kindle is so wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do it justice in just one blog post. Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part three: the no-budget Kindle

The Kindle is great for teaching reading, but it’s not cheap.  However, you can download a free Kindle reader to your classroom computer or computer lab workstations.  Then you can let your students use a no-budget Kindle.

Your no-budget Kindle doesn’t have bells and whistles, but it’s enough to get your class started.  You can teach speed reading.  You can motivate reluctant readers to read.  You can get some results and build a case for buying actual Kindles in the classroom.  (Document results, get some students to write testimonials, and submit to administration or charitable organizations that might give you a grant.)

For your no-budget Kindle startup, you’ll mostly stick to free classic books available through Amazon, Internet Archive, Open Library, Project Gutenberg, and other free e-book sites.  (They all have directions on how to download).  If you teach older students, many will be able to read classic stories like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  For younger students, there are still options, like classic Beatrix Potter stories.

If you are lucky enough to have a projector in the classroom, you can teach students about the Kindle app before you turn them loose in the computer lab.  Load a free e-book, then project your screen as you show students how to play with features that enhance readability.

Click on the Aa at the top of your screen to adjust the text display.  You can increase the font size, making any book seem easier.  Adjust the brightness so the background is gray rather than white.

What really helps speed-reading is to decrease the words per line (an option found by clicking the Aa).  This helps because students’ eyes don’t have to travel so far across the screen, so there is less opportunity for the eyes to lose their way, so to speak.  Check out my blog posts on Speed Reading and Kindle Speed Reading for more information.

Click on the blocks to format your Kindle text in columns.  Students will see how the narrow band of text enhances their ability to read quickly—just like in a newspaper.

Click here for Amazon’s free Kindle apps for a multitude of platforms: PC, Mac, iPod, and various smart phones.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you, or Part 2 about how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle, can be a wonderful classroom tool, and it’s something parents can easily make available for their students at home. So wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do the Kindle justice in just one blog post.  Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part two: how to use the Kindle to teach speed reading

For a full lesson on speed reading, read my blog entry on the topic.  Here are the Cliffs Notes:

1.  Speed read by tracking with your finger.  Yes, just like you did back in first grade.  Build up speed by sliding your finger more quickly under the text and challenging your eyes and mind to keep up.
2. This helps because it focuses your eye.  Without imposing focus, your eyes will just wander over the page, re-reading, skipping along, and generally wasting time.
3. It also teaches you not to read in your head.  You know how little kids read aloud?  Well, us older folks enunciate the words in our heads.  As you learn to track your finger faster and read faster, you will read much faster than you could talk.  Once you break the reading-aloud-in-your-head habit, you read much faster.

How does Kindle help kids with speed reading?

1.  It focuses the mind.  With the Kindle, you are looking at a single page at a time, not a double-page spread.  It feels like you are cutting your distractions in half.
2. The eye doesn’t have to slide so far.  With a traditional Kindle—the ones that are about 6” wide, the text is a little narrower than in many books.  Your eye doesn’t have to slide so far, and you take in many words at once, naturally scooping them into phrases.  This makes a huge difference in how quickly you read.  Think about a newspaper, and how those 3” columns are built for speed reading.  Your eye takes in several words at once.
3. Kids get a feeling of accomplishment as they click through the pages.  You know how kids who are just learning to read chapter books stop constantly to brag about how many pages they have read or what chapter they’re on?  Kindle brings back that exhilarating feeling of accomplishment.  For some reason, it really is fun to click through pages.  This encourages kids to read faster—faster—faster!  (My advice to you: allow some time for goof-off clicking through pages to let kids get it out of their systems.)
4. You can enlarge the font size.  This addresses many problems facing kids.  For example, a poor child might wait forever for new glasses while you and the school nurse try to secure a pair.  With a Kindle, you can enlarge the font size so the child can read without headaches.  Enlarging the font size also makes any book seem easier.  This can decrease the intimidation factor for struggling readers.  Click here to read comments about Kindle and kids on Amazon—there are some persuasive testimonials.
5. Kindle is new.  Like any skill, you get better at reading—and speed reading—through practice.  Although it’s been around a while, Kindle is still a novelty.  Kids who don’t like to read will want to use the Kindle.  They’ll practice more than they would have otherwise.

Don’t miss Part 1 about how the Kindle will read any book out loud to you.  Important: you don’t get text-to-speech with the cheapest Kindle, the $79 one.  You have to buy a Kindle with audio features.  If you need text-to-speech, get a Kindle Touch or a Kindle Keyboard.

Kids and Kindles, an occasional series at the Class Antics blog.

Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle can be a wonderful classroom tool.  So wonderful, in fact, that I can’t do it justice in just one blog post.  Hence the Kids and Kindles series.

Part one: harnessing the text-to-speech feature

The short version: the Kindle will read any book out loud to you.

The long version:

Kindle parents taught me this tip.  Over and over, parents say that Kindle has not only encouraged children with learning disabilities to read, it has practically taught them to read.  Click to read about how the text-to-speech feature has helped many Kindle users who have learning disabilities!

Important: you don’t get text-to-speech with the cheapest Kindle, the $79 one.  You have to buy a Kindle with audio features.  If you need text-to-speech, get a Kindle Touch or a Kindle Keyboard.

The text-to-speech feature will read any English language content to you.  This is extremely helpful for kids with dyslexia or a learning disability.  The kids can follow along as Kindle reads aloud—or not.  Either way, they are building their vocabulary though exposure to the richer variety of words found on the printed page compared to everyday conversation.

I think the read-along-while-I-read-aloud aspect of the Kindle is really valuable.  It hearkens back to Teddy Ruxpin and his books on tape I loved as a child.

Audiobooks, while higher quality than Kindle’s text-to-speech because they’re read by actors and not machines, are expensive.  If you want to follow along with an audiobook, you have to own the actual book, too.  That can get really expensive.

With Kindle, you can listen to any book read aloud.  The deal is especially great when you consider how many free books are available.  Kindle has an extensive collection of public domain books you can download for free.  Many classics are written at quite a high reading level, so even kids without learning disabilities might like the text-to-speech feature.  How nice for new technology to expose kids to classics like the Oz books, Beatrix Potter’s collection, or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!

I always thought I was a fast reader—until I met my mentor teacher.  She puts me to shame!   I thought it must be some natural talent of hers, not something that I could learn.  True teacher that she is, my mentor wouldn’t let me off so easily.  Speed reading is a skill you can acquire.  My mentor learned it as a child from a teacher who had a speed reading machine.

It was years before I figured out what a speed reading machine was—more on that later.  But that summer, I took a course in speed reading through my local university.  On the first night, we learned to track our reading with our fingers, just like a first grader.  Then we practiced all summer.

And I consider it $350 well spent.

Yes, sliding your finger under the words like a first grader really will make you a faster reader.  Our eyes wander all over the page, slowing down our reading.  We reread sections and don’t even realize it.  Tracking with your finger combats this human frailty.

People tend to vocalize the words we read.  Little kids actually read everything out loud.  Most older kids (and adults) tend to read silently, but we pronounce the words in our heads.  By tracking with your finger, you can move faster than your mind can pronounce the words.  With a little practice, you’ll get to the point where you feel like you’re reading with lightning speed—because you’re flashing past the words, absorbing their meaning but not pronouncing every phoneme.

In addition to just getting faster, there are unexpected uses for speed reading:

• It keeps you focused (and awake).  Speed reading will help you pull an all-nighter.
• It gets you through boring text.  Focus on the skill of speed reading, not the dull text you are required to read.  College kids and those working on master’s programs, take note!

I found an online speed reading machine that teaches you how to focus your eyes.  You can let your students use it individually in the computer lab.  I like to project the online speed reading machine using our classroom computer-projector hookup.  Then the whole class can practice together.  The strong readers pull everyone else along.

You have to input your own text into the online speed reading machine.  Use free books from Project Gutenberg or just pull text from online encyclopedias and articles for kids.  My class and I had the best time doing that.  I let the kids suggest topics for study.  In this manner, we learned about everything from sea turtles to Justin Bieber.  The kids had so much fun learning about a variety of topics that they forgot they were improving their reading fluency.

Want to learn more about speed reading?  Click here for an article about speed reading from the Four Hour Workweek Guy.

Once I developed this tip, my students quickly mastered how to read long numbers.

Take the example 165,247,873

I showed my students that within each comma, the numbers follow the standard hundreds-tens-ones protocol. The comma simply indicates whether you are dealing with millions, thousands or plain old units (the name some people give the hundreds-tens-ones group.)

Each three-digit group can be read as if it were just a hundred. Referring to our example number, you first say “One hundred sixty-five.” The comma signifies millions since you are in the third comma group from the right. Thus, you begin reading the number by saying “one hundred sixty-five MILLION.” (Capital letters added for emphasis—they’re very helpful for students.)

Then, you read the next three-digit group as if it were a hundred: “two hundred forty-seven” and then add the THOUSAND. (I point to the comma as I loudly say “THOUSAND.”

Last, read the last three-digit group as a regular number: “eight hundred seventy-three.”

Thus, your number is “one hundred sixty-five MILLION, two hundred forty-seven THOUSAND, eight hundred seventy-three.”

Once I taught my students this, they understood why each place is important. They had less trouble reading and writing numbers with a zero as a placeholder, such as 207,800. After all, you just read each three-digit group as a regular old hundred: “two hundred seven THOUSAND, eight hundred.”

Ironically, our math book teaches place value only to the ten thousands. I think that’s to save children from that horrifying extra place value that would take them to the hundred thousands. But when I taught to the hundred thousands and even hundred millions using this method, the confusion (for the most part) went away.

In honor of The Muppets, released November 23, I offer several applications of Muppets to the classroom.  Some suggestions are actually good ideas.  Others have no basis in sound educational theory…but I’m not saying which are which!

Part One covered the 3Rs: Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic.  Now for the really fun stuff—everything else!

Science: Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker have given us so much.  From elevator shoes to make “short, stubby people like Beaker here” taller to alchemy gone bad (turning gold into cottage cheese), these hapless scientists demonstrate what NOT to do in the lab.  They provide fodder for endless discussion on ethics in scientific experiments.  If Beaker could talk, he might have something to say about subjects’ rights!

Social Studies: only on the Muppets can Sly be your guide to Roman history.  My students love to watch him as a singing gladiator in a Muppet recreation of the Coliseum.  Cross curricular connection: if Sylvester Stallone and the lion can agree to disagree, even going so far as to sing Gershwin’s classic “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” can’t we stop poking our neighbors with erasers?  Click here and watch the whole thing or skip to 5 minute mark for the gladiator number.

Music: Obviously, The Muppet Show is full of music, but I think a special shout-out should go to the Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody that catapulted them back onto the World Wide Web stage.  It’s brilliant!  Beaker’s Ode to Joy and Habanera are fun, too!  Also, don’t miss the Muppet band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, shown here singing Rockin’ Robin in a tree.

Character Education: I just love to use the classic “Why Can’t We Be Friends” number when my class devolves into pointless squabbles.  The number releases tension and students are singing instead of bickering!  (Note: this only works with minor, sibling-type squabbles.  Serious problems need to be taken seriously.)  Cross curricular connection: try to name all the soldiers and battles referenced in this ultimate conflict!

Health: “And now, the continuing stoooory of a quack who’s gone to the dogs,” opened Rowlf’s Veterinarians Hospital, which has many applications to the modern health classroom.  Where else can you encounter so many puns is so short a lesson?  Doctor Bob can help any patient, from a telephone to a train conductor.

We are thankful for the Muppets!