Thomas Education

The NYTimes published a fascinating portrait of the modern writer, and a discussion pertinent to all students of writing, about research, style, and serendipity (open the old newspaper!). Laura Hillebrand has had a surprisingly important effect on recent writers, after the success of Seabiscuit .  Her meticulous research is unusually old-fashioned, relying on paper artifacts rather than google or microfilm simply because of the author's own physical limitations.  This allows her to be more immersed in the time period, and thereby include the small details that then immerse the reader as well.   We also find out that the idea for Unbroken  came from her accidental viewing of an article about Louis Zamperini while she was reading an actual copy of the New York Times with an article about Seabiscuit. Let this  be  a vote for varied research sources!

TypeToLearn is the keyboarding software purchased for use at YISS.  The current version is called TTL4, with category settings for Young (K-2), Intermediate (3-6), and Older(7-12) students.  The TTL4 program should already be pre-loaded onto ES and MS macbooks. E . Kosmack started using TTL4 with her sixth-grade tech classes in September 2014. We have built teacher usernames for all teachers of grades 1-5, and we encourage those teachers to try the software themselves, so see how it could best work for your students. There are student usernames for middle school (6-8), and we are planning to add younger grade levels when requested by the teachers. Notes about usernames and security:  this program provides minimal security -- any teacher can update any other user’s name and password.   It also allows duplicate names, so be careful when selecting Alicia Kim, for example.    We are standardizing on username=first initial lastname;  for ex...