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Welcome to our February edition. We would first of all like to say a huge thank you to everybody who helped make our Annual Fund Appeal of 2008 such a success - we actually exceeded our goal! Please check out the latest information about our annual conference, now known as EdRev 2009, and the events coming up in the next month: an evening Speaker Series event and another TEN teacher-training workshop . You can read a report on the recent teacher training with Judy Willis in the TEN section. We also provide descriptions of a few of Judy's books, which you can support PEN by buying at Amazon. Also here are a review of an exciting new piece of assistive technology for spellchecking, and another excerpt from the SAFE Voices book, Read This When You Can, which is still available through our website.
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Download this flyer (PDF) and help us promote EdRev 2009! Distribute it to schools, colleagues, friends and family! And don't forget to register!
We raised 104% of our total goal of $45,000! THANK YOU! For their generous support, we would like to acknowledge:
If there is a donor we have failed to acknowledge, please let us know. Thursday February 26, 2009 SPEAKER SERIES - Evening Event! Living with a Learning Disability – How Does this Affect Families and How Can Families Cope? Michele Saloner, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist, and Susan Schmidt, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist, will discuss the impact on families when a child has been diagnosed with a learning disability. How does this affect family members and how best can families cope? Their discussion will draw from both research findings and from clinical experience. 7pm - 9pm, Presidio Hill School, San Francisco. Friday March 6, 2009 TEN Teacher Training: Connecting Brain Research with Effective Teaching: The Brain Targeted-Teaching Model. Presenter: Dr. Mariale M. Hardiman. New findings in brain research offer promising possibilities for teachers to improve classroom instruction and for administrators to reform their schools. Translating this research to practice becomes the challenge for educational practitioners. This presentation will offer educators practical application of brain research by linking it with the Brain-Targeted Teaching Model—an instructional model based on the tenets of research-based effective instruction. We will examine ways in which the Brain-Targeted Teaching Model supports the integration of the arts into daily instruction. 9:15am - 3pm, Star Academy, San Rafael.
In January, TEN and PEN once again joined forces to offer Bay Area
educators an unparalleled professional development opportunity -- an
all-day workshop with internationally-known educator and neuroscientist
Judy Willis. The workshop, Neuro-Logical Strategies to Increase Student
Engagement, Motivation, and Memory which took place on Friday, January
23 at Star Academy's beautiful new campus in San Rafael, was attended by
nearly 200 teachers, administrators, and educators in private practice
from all over the Bay Area. Links: There is a great, chaptered video interview with Judy online here, and you can download two articles she sent us here: How Your Child Learns Best (PDF), and Top 10 Memory Tips (PDF). This issue we are providing short descriptions of a number of books by Judy Willis You can support PEN by following these links and purchasing from Amazon. Thank you! How Your Child Learns Best is a groundbreaking guide for parents that combines the latest brain research with the best classroom practices to reveal scientifically savvy ways to improve your child's success in school. By using everyday household items and enjoyable activities, parents of children ages three to twelve can apply targeted strategies in key academic areas. Discover how to help your child increase academic focus and success, lower test stress while increasing test scores, increase class participation, foster creativity, and improve attention span, memory, and higher-level thinking. How Your Child Learns Best shows how to maximize your child's brain potential and offers something for every parent who wants the best for his or her child.
Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning is the first book for educators written by an author who is both a neurologist and a classroom teacher. Dr. Willis used her neurology expertise to examine the past two decades of learning-centered brain research and employed her training and experience as a classroom teacher to provide strategies for implementing the best of this research in the classroom. She brings this knowledge to life in a comprehensive and accessible style. Teachers will be introduced to strategies that will work in their own classrooms. These strategies will help teachers improve student memory, learning, and test-taking success. Teachers will also learn how to captivate and hold students' attention.
Many teachers in regular classrooms feel unprepared to teach students with learning disabilities. Fortunately, brain research has confirmed that strategies benefiting learners with special challenges are suited for engaging and stimulating all learners. In this book, neurologist and classroom teacher Judy Willis explains that we can best help students by putting in place strategies, accommodations, and interventions that provide developmentally and academically appropriate challenges to suit the needs, gifts, and goals of each student. Using strategies that align with research on how people's brains function, teachers can engage all students as individuals and help them reach their maximum potential with joy and confidence.
Spelling Help for Dyslexics! Current spell check software detects misspellings, but not contextual spelling errors. For example, a common error for dyslexic learners is the use of “witch” for “which” in written text. A new software solution addresses this challenge. Ginger Software has launched a free Beta version of Ginger Spell, designed to empower struggling writers of all ages. Ginger Spell automatically corrects spelling mistakes and misused words in a familiar Microsoft Word-based environment. Unlike existing spell checkers that require users to address each error, Ginger Spell corrects multiple mistakes within a sentence simultaneously. If the context is ambiguous, Ginger Spell provides the user with alternatives, with a sample expression for each one so the user can consider the differences and make an informed choice. Ginger Spell also analyzes the context of each sentence to remedy mistakes that existing spell checkers often miss, including correctly spelled words that are used improperly. The developers’ plans for future releases of Ginger Spell include evaluating grammar and commonly split and merged words, such as “bedroom” or “a lot.” Also in the pipeline is a text-to-speech feature, which will enable users to hear sentences before and after correction. It will furnish progress reports that allow writers to analyze their progress and concentrate on the areas where help and practice are needed most. Ginger Spell runs within Microsoft Word for Windows, and requires an Internet connection. The current beta version of Ginger Spell is compatible with MS Word 2003 and 2007, and Microsoft Windows. Once the program is downloaded, it is installed as an extension to MS Word, providing an integrated interface that connects to the Ginger Software server over the Internet (the database is too large to store on a home computer!). We believe this will be an excellent tool for students with language-based learning difficulties and we hope it represents the beginning of a new generation of assistive technology for them. You can find out more or download the free beta version of Ginger Spell at the Ginger Software website.
This month, we have excerpted the foreword to the book by Jonathan Mooney, who will be the keynote speaker at EdRev 2009. Previously we excerpted:
PEN e-Newsletter Febuary 2009 |
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Date: Saturday, April 25th 2009
Review: TEN Workshop with Judy Willis 
The SAFE Voices book, Read This When You Can, is still