Busman's Holiday? What does an
ex-columnist do in his free time, but write another
column!
-
May 24, 1999
Near the end of the school year, many parents
ask, "What about summer school?" It's true that summer is a real
opportunity for kids to lose or make up ground academically. There
unfortunately is a two-edged sword at work here as well.
A child that is just worn out with school,
typically the case of the child who is lagging academically, isn't the
best candidate to make up much ground in summer school. On the other
hand (I feel like Tevya in Fiddler
on the Roof here), that same child probably won't read or compute
much during the summer without some strong encouragement.
I can't evaluate your summer school programs from afar, nor will I
try to resolve the issue of "whither summer school." Some schools, mine
included a few years back, don't offer any summer programs at all, even
remedial summer school. Many states now have competency exams at
various grades that mandate summer school for those who don't pass the
tests.
I've been fortunate enough to work in summer school programs off and
on through the years that are high interest and had relatively low
pupil-teacher ratios. A good, high interest program can cure a lot of
summer school blues. One program years ago was billed as a
"nonacademic" program for hard cases from the district. Summer school
consisted of many field trips, activities such as rocket and telescope
building (Yes, they can follow written directions with enough faculty
support!), and a lot of high movement, high interest classroom
activities. One of our best "cons" in recent years is a summer school
program that features two hours of high interest learning followed by
an hour or so of swimming at the local state park. The catch to it is,
you may only swim if you worked hard!
If you're considering formal summer school, find a time when that
harried, overworked teacher has a few moments and ask them about summer
school opportunities in your school district. (Don't just pop in
sometime during the school day and expect them to be delighted to see
you and ignore their class!) Heck, offer to buy them a beer and a
sandwich after work and maybe they'll give you the lowdown on it!
If formal summer school is a no-go in your district or for your
child, learning doesn't have to end with the last day of school. A
great answer in many areas is the summer reading programs often offered
by local libraries. The trick to this one is finding something of
interest for the child to read at their level. For some kids, that's
almost anything with ink on a page. For others, it takes a bit of
doing. The local librarian is likely to be enthusiastic about helping
your kid find something to read! Really!
The old "rule of thumb" on selection of books is a pretty good
predictor as to a child's ability to read a particular book. Have the
child turn to a random page and read. For each word they miss or don't
know on the page, raise a finger, starting with the little finger. If
you get to the thumb, the book is probably too difficult for the child
to read independently.
Some of my parents in our special education program do a wonderful
job of reading support during the summer by reading with their children
regularly. Some of their children cannot read any book independently.
The parent often reads simultaneously with their child, which helps
with phrasing and unknown words. Those folks probably deserve a chunk
of my paycheck, but...:-). The key to their efforts is that they invest
some of themselves into the learning project. It's really easy to hand
a kid a book and say, "read this," as you head to the kitchen to fix
lunch. It will also turn off a reluctant reader unless the material is
absolutely fabulous.
Getting further away from the school building type of summer school
and closer to the subject at hand, a parent with adequate bucks can
install a computer (Spelled M-a-c-i-n-t-o-s-h. Is there any other way?)
and equip it with a variety of educational software. With all of the
multimedia offerings out there today, a little judicious software
shopping can provide children with hours of entertaining learning.
Don't be disappointed if you select a dud. I recently purchased the
favorably reviewed "My Amazing Human
Body" and my class went nuts over it. When I took it home over the
weekend for my sixth grader, she thought it was dumb!
Before you think I'm shilling for my ed sharewares, let me add that
they are definitely not what I'm talking about. My stuff is intended to
be teacher directed (home school parent directed). It's really good for
what it's supposed to do, but it's certainly not high interest, 3-D,
action-adventure learning.
There's now so much software out there that it is nearly impossible
to rate and review it all, but I'm going to give a short list of what
works well with the elementary students I teach. Remember that I do
teach a special education class (learning disabilities, emotionally
handicapped, physically handicapped, and so on), but these materials
also work very well with regular ed kids that I see in summer school.
Also remember that we work on a mix of aging Macs from a 250 MHz
7500/G3 to 8 MHz SE's! Most of the listings have been mentioned on my
site or in previous columns for MacTimes or MacInSchool. Many require a
CD-ROM.
Hard Drive Stuff: These are programs you can install and tuck the
disks or CD away until you need to reinstall it sometime.
  If you're a regular reader of my columns,
you've already heard me rave about
PhrazeCrazePlus (117K) by Brad Petit. Some time ago Brad asked me
not to call it a "blank-of-blank" game, so I'll just say that you spin
a big wheel and fill in consonant letters (or buy vowels) leading to
guessing the phrase. PhrazeCraze comes with a stock set of puzzles, or
you can build your own from text files, but only if you have a Mac
running something earlier than System 7.5! Also, the sound doesn't work
with newer systems, but the program still runs well. Peter Carbonetto maintains the
PhrazeCraze Unofficial Home Page.
  Time
Teacher (32K) by Harry
Wolfson is a program for reading the time from analog clocks. It
presents an analog clock face with four choices of digital times. It
increases in difficulty as students get more and more responses
correct. While it works great on our Mac SE's, 7200, and 7500/G3, this
1993 revision of a 1990 program crashes on all of our 68030 machines
(SE/30, LC III, IIfx)! I've not been able to contact the author, but
the ReadMe file lists a shareware fee of just $5!
 Mr.
Fixitup (2609K) by Richard
MacLemale is a grammar drill program that features text-to-speech
enhanced sentences that students correct. Various levels deal with
capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. My fifth and sixth graders
really seemed to like this one. You can add your own exercises to the
program, or use the ones provided. This is a recent shareware with a
$20 fee.
  Math Flash
Bash (78K) is one of my all time favorite fact drill applications.
It drills any combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and
division facts in a quick, enjoyable way. Flash Bash offers a choice of
operations and has various controls for what facts are presented and
how many facts in a set. Samuel Davidoff is listed as the author of
this "$5" shareware, but my check was returned by the post office as
addressee unknown. It has also dropped off all of the usual software
download sites. If you're out there, Sam, drop me a line!
Phonic Factory (1120K) is an excellent LittleFingers Software freeware
release that is no longer on their web site, but is still posted on
AMUG. It's an excellent alphabet letter drill that includes consonant
sound drills. LittleFingers has also expanded their offering of
sharewares for younger and older kids from their two excellent
geography tools, GeoGenius USA (686K) and
GeoGenius World
(720K), to a host of other newer offerings (that I really haven't
tried, as yet . . . maybe a good project for my Macintosh summer
vacation:-). You might want to browse their site.
When you move into the realm of CD-ROM software, there are now
thousands of titles from which to choose. I'm just going to list the
ones that my kids seem to return to time after time.
  Probably the most used (and most in need
of replacement due to wear) CD-ROM software by my class are Math
Rock and
Grammar Rock from the old ABC-TV Schoolhouse Rock
series. Many educational games have been added to the excellent
"videos" of the TV series, which included such favorites as
"Conjunction Junction" and "Three is a Magic Number." There is also an
America Rock, but the kids don't seem to gravitate to it like the
others. The Learning Company
has rolled several of these titles together in what appears to be a
better bargain than the original release. Also, much of the content
still remains available free online (and legally, too!!!) on a private
site.
When we had a major influx of primary students a few years ago, I
invested in the
Jump Start series, by Knowledge
Adventure. The kindergarten through third grade levels all appear
pretty solid. They present a wide variety of learning activities across
several subjects, including math and reading. We also have Jump Start
Fourth Grade, but set it aside because of what could be viewed as
objectionable content. A new release,
Jump Start Preschool is also receiving high ratings by
reviewers.
 Money
Town has consistently been a favorite of the kids in my classes. It
teaches basic money math, coin recognition, making change, how to save
and spend wisely, simple money management in an engaging environment.
It runs acceptably on our PowerMacs, but really does better on the old
LC III! Here's a more complete review of Money
Town.
Scholastic's The Magic School
Bus series is a big favorite in several classrooms at my school. We
have the Mac version of The Magic School Bus Explores the Ocean
and find the kids really enjoy it. (Review)
The series is distributed on the Microsoft label and many titles are
Windows only.
 A real bargain if
you can still find them are the Muppets Reading Software CD's. I got
mine, 2 for $10, at the local Walmart! Volume 1 includes separate
applications for Sound Patterns, Sorting & Ordering, and Thinking
Skills. Volume 2 also has three titles: Beginning Sounds, Letters, and
Same and Different. All of the applications appear to be HyperCard or
SuperCard-like activities and are quite stable, even with the random
extra mouse clicks younger learners tend to supply to test software.
The printed directions at the top of each frame are read to the user,
making the activities usable with nonreaders. If you can't find this
title locally, it is available for online ordering from Parson's
Technology ($19.95+$5 S&H) or by phone from the Software Clearance
Outlet for just $10.
  What's the Secret? has been a
consistent classroom favorite for several years. It is based on the PBS
series, Newton's Apple, and features interesting science activities.
The glue activity on Volume 2 has students try various glues with
various materials to build a bridge. Elephants then cross the bridge to
test its strength! Another activity is a flight simulator. The kids
love it, but the drone of the engine drives me nuts--definite earphone
country. The volume 2 title runs on '30 chip Macs (LC III, IIfx, etc.)
and better. (Better
Review)
An old favorite with our younger kids is
Kid Phonics, by Davidson. It has some great songs with bouncing
ball lyrics and excellent word and sentence building activities. We've
had various stability problems with it at times, as with most of the
Davidson titles we've tried, but found it worth the hassle to use it!
There's also a
Kid Phonics 2 that we haven't tried but plan to do so next
fall.
While writing this piece, I found a nice compendium site for
educational software that lists multiple sources for online purchase.
SuperKids Educational Software
Review reviews some of the CD-ROM titles above with multiple
purchase sources, and, of course, various prices!
 Finally, probably the best all-around kids' site I've
found also contains the most extensive, best updated educational
software listings. The Kid's
Domain includes many online games and
download
links.
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