PSA - Curriculum - resources for parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP thanks for the recommendation for the Core Knowledge series. I have been using them since you recommended it at the start of the pandemic. Seeing what is in that really underscores what is lacking in the MCPS ES curriculum

I am so glad it is helpful to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I'm curious, how many Discovery titles did your kid(s) read out of 150? I'm questioning the utility of ordering a whole set when I only have 1 kid. (But also wondering how many to order if not the set.)

My youngest is in college now. I am guessing that they read (or I read to them) all the magazines. When we started with Discovery, my eldest was in ES and this was a monthly subscription. (I also used the code after a poster shared it on this thread, to get the entire collection a few years ago for myself because over the years I had given away many of the magazines to family and friends.)

I read and reread the magazines to generally brush up on my general knowledge. These are well written magazines and the content skims on the most interesting and important facts of the subject covered. If you read them, you will realize that they contain interesting and important facts on the subject, many that we either do not know or have forgotten. Also, usually, I get free time in bits and pieces. I find that it is easy to read an article in 10 or 15 minutes at a time and not get immersed in it like I do with books.

My suggestion would be to buy a few titles in subjects that your kid is interested in first, if you do not want to commit to the whole set. Though in my personal opinion, the whole 150 titles would have been the kind of Christmas gift, I would have loved for my kids to get when they were little. With the coupons and with Christmas sales etc, you can really get the full set for a fraction of the price. So it is really well worth it.

Again, my personal opinion is that the value of these magazines is for all ages - from young kids to adults to elderly. My kids had finished them by the middle of MS, but they would flip through them even in HS when they were preparing for clubs (debate, quiz bowl, science bowl, history bowl etc), classes, assignments and projects. It made a profound impact on their ability to understand current events, be well informed, see patterns across disciplines and understand how to make compelling presentations and infographics etc.

The 150 titles can be easily covered in three years even if your kid reads only one magazine in a week or if you read to them a magazine a week. They will come back to these magazines again and again.

My four pillars of supplementing & enriching for my kids were -
- Core Education foundation resources and books. ED Hirsch's books especially "What your student needs to know" series.
- Textbooks. Use 2nd hand textbooks to supplement and enrich. It does not matter if the syllabus/curricullum does not completely align with the school district. You need to understand that MCPS has not added new content in what it teaches in years. In fact, less and less content is covered each year. All the old textbooks actually cover MORE AND BETTER than anything that the school teaches. The textbooks also teach in different ways for students who have different learning styles.
- Discovery magazines
- Great Courses website. (Can't recommend their Math courses enough).

There are other resources too. I am dated in that my kids are out of the school system, even if I keenly follow trends in education. You do not have to spend a lot of money or time in making sure that your kids are getting the best education supplementation and enrichment at home. Do not be under the illusion that private schools are better for education, even if they are excellent for classroom discipline and like ability cohort etc.

[Anonymous]

Newsela and CommonLit have great articles (the former) and literature (the latter), along with follow-up questions. If you don't think your child is being sufficiently challenged or engaged in science, social studies, or ELA, you can definitely turn here. I used these as a teacher and have shared some of the CommonLit stories with my own kids just for fun. It's not dumb stories or poems written for the sole purpose of testing kids, but literature by authors whose names you'd recognize that are digestible for kids.

NewsELA starts at 3rd grade level, I think; Commonlit more like 5th.

[Anonymous]

any tips for materials to support decoding of words? maybe phonics home learning materials?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:any tips for materials to support decoding of words? maybe phonics home learning materials?

I'd also love a recommendation here- I'd like to supplement the Benchmark/RGR combo at my kid's school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are so sick of this too, and our kids are at risk for adhd and dyslexia.

Huh? What do you mean by "at risk" for developmental disabilities? You seem to be suggesting schools could cause them, which, to be is gently, simply isn't the case.