MSI Press Blog

🌟   5 Tips for Surviving This Time off of School and in the House!  🌟 To be sure, this is an unprecedented time, and an unusual break from school. Your  kids might feel frustrated they aren’t getting to go to school, see their friends, and engage in their favorite sports and activities right now.   But every time your family chooses to stay home, help your kids see that they are actually being brave and helpful. You can help your kids think of this time not like a punishment, but rather like they are giving their community a great gift. Staying home, as many are, is a true act of solidarity. It’s a sacrifice they can give so that nurses, doctors, and all those for whom it is not possible to stay home and protected (from first responders to grocery store personnel, and many, many others) can continue to do their jobs and keep the rest of us safe and keep our lives as normal as possible. Here are a few ideas from an article I wrote about stopping Summ...

  Today's tip for parents from two talented teachers comes from  365 Teacher Secrets for Parents  by Cindy McKinley Alder and Patti Trombly.   #162 Writing for Information   The more a man writes, the more he can write  ~William Hazlitt   A great way to practice writing skills, you’ve learned, is to have your child write about what she knows, what she has just done, or information she has learned. Have you thought, though, about encouraging her to write for information? You can help her to learn how to compose brief requests for information from a variety of sources. For instance, if your family is about to go on a trip, she could write the Chamber of Commerce in that city for tourist information. She could hand-write or write an e-mail to museums and other places she would like to visit and ask them to send her a brochure. She could even learn to properly address envelopes with this activity. She will surely enjoy the responses she wil...

  Today's tip for parents from two talented teachers comes from  365 Teacher Secrets for Parents  by Cindy McKinley Alder and Patti Trombly.   #161 Writing Topic Sentences   The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.  ~Alvin Toffler               Let’s say your child has a writing assignment on the inventions of Benjamin Franklin. He’s created a mind map (Idea #157) with great ideas on what he wants to write about Ben Franklin, but now what? Soon he will be faced with creating his first body paragraph, and he’s unsure of how to start it. That’s where an understanding of topic sentences comes in handy. Very simply, a topic sentence tells the reader what the paragraph will be about. Beginning writers will find it helpful to have the topic sentence as the first sentence in the paragraph. That way, t...