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A public hearing was held by the Starpoint School Board to tackle the request of home schooling parents to have their kids participate in the district’s ‘intramurals’ and extracurricular activities.

According to one parent, the Cheektowaga, Maryvale and Grand Island school allowed home schooled students to join in their extracurricular activities. By doing so, it will bridge the public school and the home schooling families. If and when families decide to go back to the public school, transferring will be much easier for kids.

Another parent said that home schooled students sometimes feel marginalized. If they are allowed to join the district’s extracurricular activities, it would really make them feel they belong. They generally do well academically because they can easily be provided with the best math, science, writing lessons etc, if they fall short in any subject. He adds that extracurricular activities such as sports can be a little expensive.

The members of the board thanked the parents for participating in the meeting. Members have promised to take this into consideration. They said that they will look into this issue and formulate policies for the program.

For Montgomery County parents, home schooling has become a popular choice to educate their children. According to Montgomery County Public Schools and the Maryland State Department of Education, yearly, almost two thousand five hundred students are home schooled. It has been that way for almost six years. According to a non-profit advocacy group, around two million students are home schooled in the country today.

For many parents the decision to home school differ from family to family, but what can be seen as a general factor is that the kids learn at home rather than in a school setting. Some other reasons include: being able to provide a pace that their child is comfortable with; having the belief that they can do a better job at educating their child, being a able to custom fit the lessons according to the child’s needs, may it need more math, science or writing lessons to improve on a specific subject.

One other benefit that parents feel is very important is self motivation. Children learn to think critically, instead of lessons being spoon fed, home schooled children develop a drive to learn and find answers to problems for themselves.

Records show that home schooling perform well academically. The Fraser Institute records show that home schooled students score in the eighty fifth percentile on tests, compared to public school students score which is in the fiftieth percentile.

A group of bright young home schooled children form Adelaide Hills will be participating in the Little Big Shots Film Festival, their entry is their first film. There are five members in the group aged from ten to fourteen years. Their film is entitled We’re Homeschooled which presents and probes what home schooling is about, along with the misconceptions about it.

Fourteen year old Maisie Fabry of Adelgate, Co director, stated that their short documentary took a month to make. She said that when they went into various places, people would go like ‘Oh you are home schooled? Where do you study?’

They interviewed several people and asked typical questions about home school. Fabry said that most people say they didn’t want to home school their children because it lacked social interaction, but she said the film will show that that’s not the case in home schooling.

That is very true, children can still socialize with kids their own age and even with kids older than them. They can even be provided with more lessons in math, paragraph writing, etc. if the need arises; which is why more home schooled kids are doing good in their studies.

An exceptionally large number of students failed in a writing test. About seventy eight percent of Maine’s fourteen thousand nine hundred eight graders failed on the state’s standardized writing test for 2008’s school year. Officials try to figure out the reason behind the result. Susan Gendron, State Education Commisioner, said that there must be something wrong with the test.

The test consisted of one ‘question’ – Television  may have a negative impact on learning. There is a detailed instruction on how the essay should be scored and a couple of lists that are pro and con statements the kids can use in their essay.

Grendon said that most children did not get the purpose of the test, most disagreed instantly. Instead of demonstrating a logical response, students responded emotionally. She continued that it did not exactly measure the children’s skills in writing.

Generally, the children are doing good in writing. Teachers provide writing lessons that consist of writing samples, scoring guides and a list of writing skills that the kids need to demonstrate. The reason for the failure could be attributed to the test causing inaccurate results

The Arkansas Department of Education’s Home School released a statement that the number of home schooled kids is rising. The record shows that fifteen thousand six hundred sixty students from Arkansas are home schooled, six hundred and forty eight students more from 2007’s school year.

A mother from Arkansas said that she cares more for her children than any teacher, guidance counselor or any person will ever care for her children. She said that she is glad to know that there are more parents shifting to home schooling. It is a method that is criticized but she said that more families welcome the concept.

Melissa Savary of the Education Alliance said that there are children that do well in sports or music, they want to concentrate on what they are good at and a lot of time that needs traveling.

If kids need to concentrate on their writing, parents can provide the best writing lessons around. Same goes for areas that need special attention, parents and their children can concentrate on areas that need improvement.

A 2006 study shows that home schooled kids do well in english and math than kids from public schools. The study shows that home schooled students from Arkansas increased over forty percent from ten years ago.

More black families opt to home school their children. Hubert Rowry remembers his life as a student.  He said that he often felt alone and ignored by all. He said that white teachers normally gave white students more attention. This led to affecting his self esteem and his education. All his children are home schooled. Together with his wife Chelsea, they take turns teaching their children.

What was once thought to be a method only white families do; the number of black families that home school continued to rise in the last eight years, and this trend is seen to continue in the future.

Basically, more people choose to home school due to dissatisfaction with the quality of education in public schools. The rise of home schooling families also led to increased recognition, pushing more families, especially blacks to take this alternative. A marked ascent of two hundred thousand black students are said to have been home schooled in 2007 from eighty four thousand in 1999. This is according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The reasons for choosing home schooling are typically the same for all families. Basically, parents want their kids to be in a safe environment, provide their kids with a quality education and they want to pass their beliefs and values to their children.

Parents can help hand in hand in teaching their kids. One parent can handle the basic curriculum and the other can do the extra curricular activities with the kids. On weekdays the kids can learn math, science, history, language arts, writing lessons etc. On weekends, they can go outdoors or socialize with other kids to improve their social skills.

Home schooling in Pennsylvania rose until the school year of 2003. During that time, the number of home schooled kids reached almost twenty five thousand, but it has since dropped each school year. In 2007 the total number of home schooled kids dropped to around twenty two thousand, the lowest since 1999.

However, home schooling in the county is rising. It was at its highest in 2004 with four hundred forty students from three hundred twenty a couple of years back. Although the numbers fell after 2004, lowest was three hundred fifty eight, but it rose back to almost three hundred eighty.

The reason for the steady drop in home schooling has not yet been proven, but the decline occurred the same time the cyber charter school enrollments increased dramatically . In Luzerne County, the students that enrolled at cyber charter schools grew from eighty (’04) to about three hundred students (’07).

Kids that enrolled in cyber charters use the curriulum provided by the cyber charter company. Home schooled kids use the curriculum (such as math, science, writing lessons etc.) materials their parents provide.

Ever wondered about the reading level of the average American? Different studies state that the reading level of most Americans is the eight grade. Although this might not sound like it is something to be proud about, still we can use that information to write a text that targets that group . When writing a story or an article it is important to create something that reaches as many readers as possible.

How can you tell if the story that you put out has the eight grade reading level? There are various systems that will approximate the readability level of a story, some are capable of identifying the exact grade level of writing. To mention a few, we have SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook), the Gunning Fog Index, the Automated Readability Index the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.

These systems measure the readability of your text in two ways. First is by measuring how many words there are in a sentence and second is by measuring how many syllables there are in a word.

By measuring the text through counting the number of words and syllables, it is apparent that the systems can be inaccurate. But it is still a good idea to use words with as much syllables and longer sentences before making a formal break.

To be able to create content that will reach as much readers, you need to depend on the foundation of the writing lessons you learned in school. Construct clear sentences and phrasings; and make it a point that you present your ideas coherently.

Jeff Littwin, an English Teacher said that there are three letters that annoys him when he grades papers. He continues that kids will make a personalized comment and will put LOL in an essay. Which most of us know, means laughing out loud. The abbreviation is usually affixed to funny remarks used by people, especially the youth when sending sms through mobile phones and when sending messages through instant messaging applications.

Teachers, including Littwin noted that this texting trend has affected the students’ writing. Students start to get used to this habit and it certainly is not a good thing. The kids forget using capital letters, commas, periods, colons, open and close quotations, etc. Aside from abbreviations they always cut words short which is just terrible, plain and simple.

Writing can be one of the hardest skill to be good at. It is critical to have the best writing lessons taught to students. The text messaging trend does not help the kids to become better at writing. Although we must recognize the advancements in electronic communication, we also must not compromise importance of formal writing.

The annual Laws of Life Essay Contest, now on its seventh year, occurred on June 13 in Ware Middle School. There are a total of 134 entries, 10 went on to be winners.

The first place for the fifth graders was won by  Majel D. Bourdeau; First place for the sixth graders was taken by  Colin E. Fitzgerald; and Heather R. Mansfield took the first place for the seventh graders. All the winners won English reference books along with plaques and cash rewards.

The essay contest unifies character education and writing skills, both being critical parts of the English curriculum. One of the main goals of the contest is to help improve the students writing skills which is very important in taking the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams.

Principal Deborah A. Benoit and Barbara R. Topor(English teacher/one of the coordinators), both said that good character and citizenship are transcendent. The essay writing prompts the personal reflection that taps into those qualities.

The contestants tackled trenchant issues such as personal experiences of being bullied; being adopted; being under foster care. Others include discussion on self-confidence and integrity.