So the hoax has been exposed. But the media and others continue to promote the lies. Carbon dioxide is odorless and colorless. It is required by plants for their very survival. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. More carbon dioxide is needed to keep plants healthy, not less. The fresh air you get from a walk in the woods should convince you that the extra oxygen there is a benefit. Every time you exhale you provide carbon dioxide for the plants. So breathe on your plants to keep them healthy. They will return the favor with an output of oxygen to improve your health.

So celebrate earth day by learning the truth, correcting the lies, picking up some trash and make it just a little better than when we came. And don’t forget to thank the Creator for the beautiful earth we have!   (Also see ‘Save the Birds!’ Feb. post.)

Or we could say: “In the eyes and out the mouth”. Does anything happen in between (the ears)? The purpose of reading is the conveyance of information. Reading provides information or may describe a scene. Emphasis is often placed on the words more than the subject matter. Is it then any wonder that students dislike word problems in math later on? They’ve been trained to handle the words rather than the thoughts to be conveyed. In the orient students are taught math with concrete examples – we call them word problems. Even though a student may know all the words he/she may not understand the problem, and hence cannot move forward to devise a solution. That is one reason the CAMIL approach to learning can be so valuable. Carefully devising some Curiosity to gain the child’s Attention induces the Motivation to become Involved with the task so that Learning happens as they resolve the issue. Focus on content may provide better comprehension. For example: Soppuse tehre rmaesne sveearl mspieslled wrdos in a snetnece. Colud you sitll raed the snetnece? Recently sentences have traversed emails and blogs with purposefully misspelled words. The comments with the challenging sentences propose that if the first and last letters are in place and all the correct letters are there, the average person can still read it. This may be a help to dyslexic children who don’t see the letters in the words normally. With a content emphasis initially the correct spelling can come later after confidence in reading is gained. Correct spelling is still important. It provides an ease of understanding and traversing the multitude of words for the learned. Published works (including blogs and facebook) need correct spelling. There’s too much to cover to have to figure out someone’s hieroglyphics. Twitter is a bit of a different matter. How can some people say anything in 140 characters? So they must use code. Before dismissing the above give it some thought. Without comprehension “reading” is mostly a worthless exercise. If the reading scores are not acceptable then it may be time to try something new. The CAMIL approach may just be the tool to use attention getting ideas to get students in ‘comprehension mode’ to satisfy their curiosity…and the teacher’s cognitive goals for the day.

The first book in a series on backyard birds.

More information is avalable at www.TheBirdBooks.com. This is the easy way to get to the Wan Lee Publishing web site where there is information on the books and author Wayne Brillhart who is available for speaking engagements in classrooms, universities, teacher conferences and interviews. Check the website to learn about his CAMIL approach to learning.