Waseca Reading Program

Reading program with books for early readers

The Waseca Biomes Curriculum Guide maps out how to integrate traditional Montessori lessons and Waseca Biomes lessons and materials. The guide begins with the beginning: the birth of the Universe. It moves through cosmic education and on to the exploration of Earth in the context of our Solar System. It introduces life on our planet and the elements that support it. It highlights how biomes serve as an engaging framework for learning about life on Earth. It outlines a detailed course of study for students to explore continents by biomes and examine the conditions of each biome and how lifeforms have adapted to them.

Tired of his mother's overprotectiveness and intrigued by the life of African American explorer Matthew Henson, twelve-year-old Alvin travels north and spends a season with a trapper near the Arctic Circle.

Updated paperback edition with new Author's Note! How could we leave the only world we had ever known? Parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins-all were holding hands, clinging to one another, as if they'd never let go. A story that is more relevant than ever, as parents in our war-torn world are forced to rip their families apart and send their children away to safety. It's 1938, and twelve-year-old Edith is about to move from the tiny German village she's lived in all her life to a place that seems as foreign as the moon: Chicago, Illinois. And she will be doing it alone. This dramatic and chilling novel about one girl's escape from Hitler's Germany was inspired by the experiences of the author's mother, one of fourteen-hundred children rescued by Americans as part of the One Thousand Children project. * "This book is an exceptional story of survival and devotion to homeland... This is a wonderful study of the Holocaust in a way that young readers will understand. Highly Recommended." -Library Media Connection "Chapman captures a plucky determination in Edith that readers will find endearing. There is no Cinderella ending for Edith, but the hope...and the honesty in her story make this historical fiction well worth reading." -Publishers Weekly - A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year - A YALSA Best Fiction Nominee - A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best - A Junior Library Guild Selection - Booklist's 1000 Best Young Adult Books since 2000 BONUS MATERIALS INSIDE! Features a discussion guide, Q&A with the author, and a special look at the remarkable true story as seen on the Oprah network, OWN.

Explore a lively and rewarding new look at the Hard Winter of 1880-81, weaving the historical record, as revealed through regional newspapers, around and through Laura Ingalls Wilder's fictional The Long Winter.

For the first time, Basic Montessori opens the celebrated philosophy and method to a more general public. David Gettman has devised a clear and modern explanation of Montessori's revolutionary ideas about early intellectual development, and provides a step-by-step guide to the Montessori learning activities most commonly used with under-fives. These include activities for introducing reading and writing, counting and decimal concepts, science, and geography, as well as activities that help develop the child's practical and sensorial skills.

Paula Lillard, director of a Montessori school ranging in age from 18 months to fifteen years, provides a clear and cogent introduction to the Montessori program for the elementary and later years. In detailed accounts, Lillard shows how children acquire the skills to answer their own questions, learn to manage freedom with responsibility, and maintain a high level of intellectual stimulation by using the Montessori method. This is an essential handbook for parents and teachers who have chosen the Montessori alternative for the older child.

Engage students in mathematics using growth mindset techniques The most challenging parts of teaching mathematics are engaging students and helping them understand the connections between mathematics concepts. In this volume, you'll find a collection of low floor, high ceiling tasks that will help you do just that, by looking at the big ideas at the third-grade level through visualization, play, and investigation. During their work with tens of thousands of teachers, authors Jo Boaler, Jen Munson, and Cathy Williams heard the same message—that they want to incorporate more brain science into their math instruction, but they need guidance in the techniques that work best to get across the concepts they needed to teach. So the authors designed Mindset Mathematics around the principle of active student engagement, with tasks that reflect the latest brain science on learning. Open, creative, and visual math tasks have been shown to improve student test scores, and more importantly change their relationship with mathematics and start believing in their own potential. The tasks in Mindset Mathematics reflect the lessons from brain science that: There is no such thing as a math person - anyone can learn mathematics to high levels. Mistakes, struggle and challenge are the most important times for brain growth. Speed is unimportant in mathematics. Mathematics is a visual and beautiful subject, and our brains want to think visually about mathematics. With engaging questions, open-ended tasks, and four-color visuals that will help kids get excited about mathematics, Mindset Mathematics is organized around nine big ideas which emphasize the connections within the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and can be used with any current curriculum.