Public and private schools vary greatly in quality, and parents ought to take responsibility for ensuring each child is learning what he or she needs to learn at every stage. There's a vast ocean of teaching guides and materials available online. Few parents are professional teachers or education experts, and those without such training or experience will find it difficult to separate wheat from chaff. Those looking to monitor the education of their children or who want to teach or tutor their children at home will need help in their efforts.
For such parents, having access to a reliable curriculum guide is essential. Two that I've found useful are the ones found at
IXL and
World Book.
The IXL platform is used in schools all over the nation, and a paid IXL account may be worth the investment for your family, given the breadth and depth of their PreK-12 course offerings, excellent learning materials, and sterling reputation.
The Core Knowledge Foundation, headed by E. D. Hirsch, author of the acclaimed Core Knowledge book series, provides free curriculum materials for grades 1-8. I'm a big fan of
Core Knowledge Books, and recommend them highly. Based on the excellence of these publications, I'm confident the curriculum materials prepared by the Core Knowledge Foundation will be of similar quality. Interested parents can check them out
here.
An excellent resource for teaching young children to read is the phonics-based
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I used this book to teach my own daughter (eager learner) to read at age four. Each lesson takes about 20 minutes to complete, and can be broken up into two parts for kids without lengthy attention spans. The method of instruction is so simple that any parent with a good high school education can implement it easily.
Nowadays, it's quite important to carefully monitor what's taught (and how it's taught) in school. Gone are the days when parents can safely take these things for granted.
Fortunately, there's a lot parents can do to ensure their children actually receive a high quality education.
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Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.
