In this month's teacher's toolbox (click on each heading to view full article)
	Topic of the Month: Learning Styles Upcoming Events in Professional Development Your JSkyway Community A Better You

Topic of the Month: Learning Styles

Do You know the Learning Styles of Your Students? Research continues to build a strong case for the impact of learning style upon acquiring and mastering knowledge. The underlying thesis is that a student learns more effectively when information is presented in a manner congruent with the student's favored method of acquiring and processing information. http://www.sosu.edu/cidt/briefs/tb1.htm Learning Style Instruments There is a plethora of Learning Style Instruments you can use to determine your students' learning preferences. Three very popular instruments are: The Vark Questionnaire, the Index of Learning Styles and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The Vark Questionnaire aims to reveal something about your students' preferences for the way they work with information. It classifies their preferred learning style including their preference for the intake and output of ideas and information. http://www.vark-learn.com/English/page.asp? p=questionnaire The Index of Learning Styles is an instrument used to assess preferences on four dimensions (active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global) of a learning style model formulated by Richard M. Felder and Linda K. Silverman. http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/ILSpage.html The 126 Item Myers- Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Form G, is the most reliable method for assessing student learning style. The MBTI provides data on four sets of preferences. These preferences result in 16 learning styles, or types. A type is the combination of the four preferences. http://www.gsu.edu/%7Edschjb/wwwmbti.html Brain Dominance Which side of your brain is dominant? Take a test to find out! http://brain.web-us.com/brain/braindominance.htm What exactly does this mean? What does this say about a person? http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/dominance/index.htm What To Do Now Now that you know how to find out what types of learners your new students are, see what the different types of learners respond to most. http://www.glencoe.com/ps/teachingtoday/educationup close.phtml/7

Upcoming Events in Professional Development

PEJE Leadership Assembly October 11-12, 2004 Featured guest: Senator Joseph Lieberman on "Why Education Matters in America Today" Day school professional and volunteer leaders are invited to this national event in Boston featuring expert- led workshops and opportunities for networking throughout the day school movement. Topics include: fundraising, leadership and governance, educational excellence, advocacy and marketing, and admission. Contact Bunny Shuman at bunny@peje.org for more information. JSkyway Registration now open for Fall Semester: October 21 - December 23, 2004 Teaching with Technology: Enhancing and Embracing New Practices Effective Classroom Strategy: From Skills to Success Teaching Jewish Values Using BabagaNewz Assessment Strategies: Beyond Grades and Quizzes Register online at www.jskyway.com JSkyway will be at the Jerome Lippman Jewish Community Day School in Akron, OH on August 24th, and at the Solomon Schechter Day School in Worcester, MA on August 26th, talking about online learning. If you think your school might be interested in a presentation or workshop from JSkyway, please contact Lindsey Fieldman at lfieldman@jflmedia. com

Your JSkyway Community

Learn from Fellow Educators! The beginning of school can be a very daunting time for both students and educators. Rather than wade through the uneasiness slowly, squash it by following the link below for some creative ideas from other educators on how to ease back to school jitters. http://712educators.about.com/cs/icebreakers/a/icebre akers.htm A Resource You Might Want To Explore BABAGANEWZ is a classroom magazine designed to teach Jewish values in Grades 4 through 7. A nonprofit project of The AVI CHAI Foundation and Jewish Family & Life!, this colorful monthly publication is used by more than 35,000 teachers and students in nearly 1,000 day and congregational schools across North America. This year, BABAGANEWZ will produce four special history supplements to commemorate 350 Years of Jewish Life in America. These bonus supplements will reinforce the magazine's monthly values theme and be included free with each subscription. Heshvan's supplement (November 2004) will illustrate manhigut (leadership) by exploring Early Settlement. Tevet (January 2005) will address Religious Expression by studying German-Jewish Immigration, westward expansion and the first break-away shul in America. Adar One (March) will focus on kehillah (community) by tracing the impact of East European Immigration, and Adar Two (April) will recognize hatzalah (the power of rescue) by reflecting on Shoah, Israel, and the quest for Civil Rights among Contemporary Jews. For subscription information, call 1-800-434-3934 or visit http://www.babaganewz.com/orders/

A Better You

Book Review Although the summer is coming to a close, you should still make time to relax and feed your mind with a good book. Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah By Isaac Bashevis Singer Excerpt from a review by Josh Lambert "He was a consistent and lifelong journalist, a New Yorker regular, an inventive fabulist, a sentimental memoirist, a children's author, a believer in the paranormal, a sex fiend, and a sweet old zeyde to his readers. He was a globetrotting lecturer and a devoutly loyal New Yorker. A brief stretch of asphalt on the Upper West Side now bears his name. He is the only Yiddish writer to win the Nobel Prize (probably forever, unless we see a drastic and surprising demographic shift)-and now, to these accolades, he posthumously adds another. His short fiction has been enshrined in the Library of America, a patriotic publishing series that "fosters appreciation and pride in America's literary heritage"-despite the fact that Singer wrote in a language that 99 percent of all Americans who have ever lived neither read nor speak. This new Collected Stories subsumes and surpasses the handful of previous attempts to gather Singer's many tales under a single cover. And, in fact, one cover can't quite do it: three are necessary." To read more of the review go to: http://www.jbooks.com/fiction/index/FI_Lambert_Singer .htm IDEAS??? We would love to hear your feedback on our current E-letter and requests for future issue topics! What do you want to see in the next JSkyway E-letter? Email your ideas to Emily Myerson at: emyerson@jflmedia.com