What is an ampersand and why does it look like that?
By The Cultural Tutor on Twitter What the heck is an ampersand and why does it look like that?! The first thing you need to know is that “&” used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet… But there are three parts to this story. And the first begins over two thousand years ago in Ancient Rome with a…
Scientists capture humour’s earliest emergence
Young children’s ability to laugh and make jokes has been mapped by age for the first time using data from a new study involving nearly 700 children from birth to four years of age, from around the world. The findings, led by University of Bristol researchers and published in Behavior Research Methods, identifies the earliest age humour emerges and how…
Announcing the release of Super Sight Words! ONE WEEK ONLY – 50% OFF INTRODUCTORY OFFER!
Supers Sight Words – Make reading & writing easy!SAVE 50% – ONE WEEK ONLY – INTRODUCTORY OFFER(Free trial available.)For students K-8! USE CODE: Supersight50You can sign up here. What if there were a small group of words that worked like a magic key and opened the door of reading?Well there are … and they’re why we made our new program…
We’re Already Paying for Universal Health Care. Why Don’t We Have It?
“Health insurance is supposed to provide financial protection against the medical costs of poor health. Yet many insured people still face the risk of enormous medical bills for their “covered” care. A team of researchers estimated that as of mid-2020, collections agencies held $140 billion in unpaid medical bills, reflecting care delivered before the Covid-19 pandemic. To put that number…
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming
It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of member’s interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I’m going to tell you that libraries are important. I’m going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is…
How Mississippi gamed its national reading test scores to produce ‘miracle’ gains
by Michael Hiltzik for the Los Angeles Times The term has been shooting around the education field and news reports lately with increasing frequency: “the Mississippi miracle.” The reference is to that benighted state’s surprising success in improving reading scores for its fourth-graders through a focused program of literacy instruction for teachers and pupils alike. It’s now 10 years old,…
