LANGUAGE ARTS-NEW MEXICO

Outstanding Nonfiction

From NCTE:

The National Council of Teachers of English has awarded the 2007 Annual Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children to Quest for the Tree Kangaroo: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea by Sy Montgomery with photographs by Nic Bishop (Houghton Mifflin).

NCTE, through the Committee on the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children, established the annual award to promote and recognize excellence in the writing of nonfiction for children. Each year, one winner and up to five honorable mention books are awarded as well as a list of recommended nonfiction children’s titles. Books are judged on accuracy, organization, design, and style.

In Quest for the Tree Kangaroo, Montgomery and Bishop continue their outstanding collaboration to introduce readers to scientists at work. They document their participation in an expedition to the rugged and remote cloud forest of Papua New Guinea in search of the elusive and fascinating Matschie's tree kangaroo.

This year’s Honorable Mention books are Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas, by Cheryl Bardoe, illustrated by Jos. A. Smith (Abrams Books for Young Readers); Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Russell Freedman (Holiday House); John Muir: America’s First Environmentalist by Kathryn Lasky, illustrated by Stan Fellows (Candlewick Press); Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium by Carla Killough McClafferty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon by Catherine Thimmesh (Houghton Mifflin).

Not the Usual Story

I've gotten so used to the crisis narrative that usually drives the media's reporting on schools that a piece like this one by Washington Post staff writer Paul Farhi seems deserving of special notice:    

Five Myths About U.S. Kids Outclassed by the Rest of the World

By Paul Farhi    
Sunday, January 21, 2007; Page B02    

The usual hand-wringing accompanied the Department of Education's release late last year of new statistics on how U.S. students performed on international tests. How will the United States compete in the global economy, went the lament, when our students lag behind the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong in math and science? American fourth-graders ranked 12th in the world on one international math test, and eighth-graders were 14th. Is this further evidence of the failure of the nation's schools?     Not exactly. In fact, a closer look at how our kids perform against the international "competition" suggests that this story line may contain more than a few myths:    

Read the rest here.

Have We All Abdicated Yet?

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest,in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings or common words. The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.) appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.) impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.) describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.) to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.) olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.) a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n) a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.) (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

(Thanks to Annie Miller, Jackson Middle School in Albuquerque)