BP1 Welcome to my Blog

Welcome to my blog. This blog is to share ideas and thoughts about motivating literacy in children in grades pre-K to 12 in all forms. I believe a good foundation in literacy helps create better students, better lifelong learners, and ultimately better citizens.

 Students need a good foundation in music literacy. Kids are depending more and more on playing music by ear, or looking up tablature on the Internet rather than actually taking time to learn to read music. Students are taking a step backwards in reading tablature ( which is much less efficient ) than just learning to read standard music notation.

 Students also need a good foundation in reading and English literacy. Parents are finding less time to read to their children and children are finding more and more time to watch TV, play video games, and listen to their iPods. Parents from an early age need to read to their children, and have the children begin good reading habits from an early age. Parents need to find time to continue good reading habits as their children grow.

 Students with special needs need to be encouraged to find and use different forms of literacy such as PECS  ( Picture Exchange Communication System) to encourage literacy and communication. Children with severe learning disorders sometimes cannot speak and must find different ways to communicate. One of the ways is using a picture to describe a word, then using a series of pictures to create a sentence. This form of communication is limited however in recent years has been combined with technology and has been improved greatly. Children with special needs will eventually grow up and it would be wonderful to help them become a functional part of society rather than the responsibility of a society.