Bookshelf: Books and Documents

Helen Keller Reading Guide
Betty Yoder's reading guide for Helen Keller by Margaret Davidson includes goals, objectives, instructions, and project ideas for use with second-grade class. Betty also includes helpful vocab definitions and ideas for conducting class reading sessions.

Basic Fluency Pages
"Basic Fluency Pages" is a set of drill sheets I created to add on to the Barton fluency pages. Barton drills include individual letter sounds and three letter combinations, but I found some of my students needed two-letter blending drills. Typical drill: set a timer for 1 minute (or 2, if preferred). The student reads until the timer goes. Count up the number correct and incorrect, and have the student re-read any that were incorrect. Jot the numbers on the appropriate chart (see last spreadsheets). Immediately have the student reread the same page for the same amount of time. Add those scores, and allow the student to graph progress. Practice that page for 1-4 days, depending on level of need, but do not drill-to-kill. Each page that is currently being drilled is done only 2 times per day, but 2 or 3 pages may be "in progress" at the same time, for a total of 4-6 reads in a row. If a page is practiced for about a week and is still very slow, it is best to mix it up by moving on and then coming back to that page later, so the student does not memorize the page. If every page is extremely slow (say, all 2-letter pages), increase intensity of practice with lower-level pages (individual sound pages). Be sure to create individual sound pages for all sound combination, including those that are spelled with 2-3 letters (sh, th, tch, ow, ai, etc.), if needed.

Are The Common Core State Standards for Christian Schools?
A college-level research project on PowerPoint. Matthew Mast begins with defining the Common Core State Standards, telling why and how they were set. He lists pros and cons of using them in our Christian schools. He gives other Christian schools' rationale for using or not using them.
Note that the downloadable file includes an embedded audio narration which is not included in the preview file.

Alberta PowerPoint
A PowerPoint presentation on Alberta.
Presentations in this series were created with the Living History Threads curriculum (Level 43) in mind, but they can also be used more generally. Each presentation covers a single Canadian province or territory, including quality photos of primary geographical features, capital city, and one or two visuals for a key historical event or other item of interest.
















