We’ve tallied up the results of your favorite resources of 2017.
Category Archives: Spotlight on Products
New Publisher: Hunter Publishing
We here at TecKnoQuest, LLC are excited to welcome a new publisher, Hunter Publishing.
Hunter Publishing was founded in 1985 and is among the top vendors of travel guides in the world. They are more in-depth than other guides, covering the history and culture of every destination, how to get there, how to get around, the activities in each area, from hiking, shopping, entertainment and river trips to exploring the historic sites. Details on the hotels and restaurants are included as well. From the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, South America and beyond, Hunter Travel Guides are the most in-depth source of travel information available.
Hunter Publishing Travel Guides are available for domestic destinations:
With many international destinations:
These files are available in ePub format, making them useful for use on mobile or desktop devices.
If you are planning to travel soon or wish to take your students on a virtual tour of other destinations, these will be valuable tools!
Be sure to check out all the titles available from Hunter Publishing.
Top Trending Titles -June 2016
These are the top-trending titles for June 2016
1. Mathematics: Drill and Practice, series (Gr 1-6)
Skill and problem solving activities with equal emphasis on skill and concept development. Ideal supplement for any current text. Number sequences, addition, subtraction, problem solving, rounding, place value, money, units of measurement, multiplying, dividing, shapes and more.
Our price: $5.65
2. Improving Comprehension and Reading Fluency (Grades 2-4)
Simple sentences and short, easy-to-read paragraphs are paired with compelling illustrations for a strong picture-text correspondence. Age-appropriate topics and a controlled vocabulary motivate students and help ensure success.
Standard Edition: $12.34 Enhanced Edition: $17.09
3. Mastering the Standards series, (Grades K-12)
Help students do their best on standardized tests in mathematics by familiarizing them with the formats and skills they will need for success. The problems developed for this series are based on standards from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and state standards from across the nation. Each book includes practice pages on Numbers/Operations, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, and Data Analysis/Probability.
Our Price: $5.65
4. Daily Math (US Edition), series (Grades 1-8)
Aligned to Common Core State Standards! “Daily Math Practice” from Chalkboard Publishing is a terrific addition to your classroom. Each eBook contains a wide variety of reproducible activities for each day of the week. Each daily set of activities focuses on a specific math strand, including measurement, data management, algebra, number sense, geometry, number and operations in base ten, operations and algebraic thinking, number and operations in fractions, and measurement and data. Also includes an answer key for teachers. Available for immediate download. Canadian Edition also available
Our Price: $15.19
5. Ralph Masiello’s Drawing Books, series (Grades 1-4)
Fans of Ralph Masiello’s illustrations in many of his alphabet books can finally draw creepy creatures, robots, dinosaurs, fairies and more . Kids will learn from the master in this step-by-step drawing guide made especially for children.
Our price: $6.64
6. Complete Book of Math Reproducibles, series (Grades 1-6)
This activity book of over 110 ready-to-use, reproducible pencil-to-paper worksheets are ideal for enrichment or for use as reinforcement. Perfect for use at school or as homework, they feature basic math skills including fractions, decimals, measurement, time, money, and much more.
Standard Edition: $11.35 Enhanced Edition: $14.20
7. 12 Fabulously Funny Fairy Tale Plays (Grades 2-4)
by Scholastic
Humorous takes on favorite tales that boost reading skills, build fluency and keep your class chuckling with lots of read-aloud fun. Stories such as: Spiderella, The Emperor’s New Hair, Three Little Elephants, Rafunzel, Little Late Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bullfrogs, Slurpy Beauty and more.
Standard Edition: $11.39
Enhanced Edition: $16.14
8. Creating a Google Apps Classroom, (Grades K-12)
Cook up amazing recipes with this engaging, resourceful Google™ cookbook! Great for both the beginning and seasoned Google-using teacher, this resource is the perfect tool to help guide teachers using, or preparing to use, Google Apps for Education™. This resource will help you feel comfortable using Google Apps™ in no time. Helpful icons, easy-to-follow instructions, screen shots, and websites are also provided throughout for ease of use.
Our price: $18.99
9. Westward Expansion and Migration (Grades 5-12)
Designed for middle-school history curriculum, independent study, or tutorial aid, the American History series provides challenging activities that enable students to explore history, geography, and social studies. Activities include critical thinking, writing, technology, and more. Vocabulary words, time lines, maps, and reading lists are also provided. Meets NCSS standards and is correlated to state, national and Canadian provincial standards. From the American History series, be sure to have all look at all the titles in this series.
Our Price: $13.29
10. Readers’ Theater (Enhanced eBook), series (Grades 1-6)
by Evan-Moor Educational Publishers
Readers’ Theater helps students practice reading orally with fluency and expression. Each Readers’ Theater book contains fifteen complete scripts that provide all the fun and interest of full-scale dramatic productions.
This enhanced eBook gives you the freedom to copy and paste the content of each page into the format that fits your needs. You can post lessons on your class website, make student copies, and more.
Our price: $18.04
The Case for Keeping Handwriting Practice in Our Schools
provided by Evan-Moor Educational Publishers
written by: Theresa Wooler
Is handwriting here to stay? With our increased use of technology and day-to-day texting, typing, and tweeting, it’s no surprise that handwriting is suffering and may seem like a “lost art.” I see it in my own deteriorating handwriting and my children’s hybrid mix of print and cursive writing.
However, the scientific and psychological research supporting handwriting provides evidence that handwriting should be an integral part of the curriculum from preschool through high school.
Of the many reasons to keep handwriting instruction, here are two that I find most interesting:
1. Learning to write by hand is connected to reading acquisition–while typing and even tracing are not.
Research shows that teaching young children to write letters activates part of the brain that becomes crucial to reading. The act of shaping and forming letters develops successful phonological processing in early emergent readers and writers:
“The emerging consensus is that the motor experience of manually creating letterforms helps children discriminate the essential properties of each letter, which leads to more accurate representations, bolstering both skilled letter recognition and later reading fluency.” For more information see this article: “Neuroimaging correlates of handwriting quality as children learn to read and write.”
Another study, “The influence of writing practice on letter recognition in preschool children,” compared the differences between handwriting and typing for children 3 to 5 years old. The results showed that handwriting training contributed to the visual recognition of letters more effectively than typing training, among the older children in the test group.
2. Handwriting helps the brain process information.
Taking notes by hand has proven to help students better absorb and retain information in comparison to typing on a keyboard. In a white paper from the educational summit, Handwriting in the 21st Century?, Dr. Virginia Berninger of the University of Washington reported that “after studying students in Grades 2, 4, and 6, those who used handwriting wrote more words, wrote words faster, and expressed more ideas than those who used keyboarding.”
In recent studies by two psychologists, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of UCLA, college students who took notes by hand performed better than those who took notes on a laptop:
“In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.”
How to Keep Handwriting Alive
In her commentary entitled “Educating Students in the Computer Age to Be Multilingual By Hand,” Dr. Virginia Berninger offers this strategy to incorporate handwriting in the busy school day: “One effective, research-supported strategy is to teach handwriting at the beginning of lessons as “warm-up,” just as athletes do warm-up exercises before a game and musicians do warm-up exercises before a concert. The warm-up is then followed by spelling and composing instructional activities. Handwriting instruction does not have to take up valuable time for meeting other Common Core standards.”
If you’re looking to improve your own handwriting (like I am!) or add handwriting instruction to your lesson plan, Evan-Moor’s Daily Handwriting Practice is a solution. Daily exercises in small doses help to practice and improve handwriting skills.
Handwriting, printing, and keyboarding all have their place in school and in preparing students for college and careers in the 21st Century. After all, Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs was a talented calligrapher!
Evan-Moor Educational Publishers has over 200 product specifically geared toward helping your students improve their handwriting skills. Be sure to check out all their resources on this topic.
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Evan-Moor Contributing Writer:
Theresa Wooler has more than 10 years’ experience in K–6 classrooms as a parent volunteer, has taught high school English, and is currently involved in education through Evan-Moor’s marketing communications team.
Special thanks to Evan-Moor and Theresa Wooler for giving us permission to share this educational article with DedicatedTeacher.com. See this article on Evan-Moor’s blog here.