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Tip #118 from 365 Teacher Secrets for Parents (McKinley & Trombly) - Directed Reading Thinking Activity

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  Today's tip for parents from two talented teachers comes from  365 Teacher Secrets for Parents  by Cindy McKinley Alder and Patti Trombly.                                                             #118 DRTA: Directed Reading-Thinking Activity   Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words! ~A Tree Grows in Brooklyn               Directed Reading Thinking Activity is a comprehension strategy that focuses on helping children ask questions about the text and make predictions before reading. This technique encourages students to be active readers and gives them a purpose for reading. It also helps them monitor their understanding of the text as they are reading. In this strategy, the parent is involved. When your child has an informationa...

Schindler's Birthday

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  On this day in 1908, Oskar Schindler was born — a man whose courage didn’t announce itself with speeches, but with choices. He stepped into history not because he was perfect, but because he refused to look away. In a world collapsing into cruelty, he used his position, his privilege, and eventually his entire fortune to save more than a thousand lives. His story reminds us that moral clarity rarely arrives fully formed. Sometimes it grows in the cracks of our failures, our compromises, our unexpected awakenings. Schindler didn’t start as a hero. But he became one when it mattered most. May we all have the courage to choose humanity when the cost is high. image and some verbiage AI-produced post inspired by  Good Blood  by Irit Schaffer, which recently reached #238 on Amazon in theater biographies. Book Description: When she was a child, her father said he had "good blood" and that is why he and his wife survived and healed from the Holocaust. The author searched for...

Life as a Series of Continuous Changes

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  We often talk about life as if it happens in chapters — neat beginnings and endings, milestones that define who we are. But the truth is, life doesn’t move in chapters. It moves in currents. It’s a continuous unfolding, a series of transformations that never really stop. From the moment we exist, we are changing. A fetus becomes an infant, learning to breathe and cry. An infant becomes a child, learning to speak and imagine. A child becomes an adult, learning to choose and carry responsibility. And even then, the transformations continue — through love, loss, illness, discovery, and renewal. We are not static beings. We are processes in motion. Every stage of life carries the residue of the one before it. The way we reach for comfort as adults echoes the way we reached for a parent’s hand. The way we seek meaning mirrors the way we once sought play. The way we adapt to change reflects the way we first learned to crawl, walk, and fall. Growth is not a straight line. It’s a spiral ...