Pregnant women who contract COVID-19 in the third trimester unlikely to pass virus on to baby

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Peter Watt

December 28, 2020Coronavirus, Parenting, Women

Pregnant women who contract COVID-19 in the third trimester unlikely to pass virus on to baby

BETHESDA, Md. — The third and final trimester of pregnancy is a critical time for mother and child. No parent wants anything to happen that could compromise the delivery. So what happens if the mother-to-be contracts COVID-19? Researchers with the National Institutes of Health are putting some concerns to rest, finding that pregnant women are not likely to pass the coronavirus to their babies during this time.

Researchers tested 64 pregnant women who contracted SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, and the results reveal none of them gave birth to a child testing positive for the illness. None of the virus made its way into the patient’s bloodstream or placenta. Researchers did however find the virus in the fluid in the expecting mother’s lungs, nose, and throat.

The research team cautions their results don’t guarantee women can’t transfer COVID to their infants, since the study size only examined 64 women in their third trimesters. Regardless, scientists say the findings are positive when it comes to virus transmission.

“This study provides some reassurance that SARS-CoV-2 infections during the third trimester are unlikely to pass through the placenta to the fetus, but more research needs to be done to confirm this finding,” says Dr. Diana Bianchi, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), in a media release.

Antibody surprises during pregnancy

Among the expecting moms testing positive for COVID-19, 23 were asymptomatic, 22 had mild symptoms, seven had a moderate illness, 10 had a severe infection, and two became critically ill.

Study authors also examined another 63 pregnant women who did not have coronavirus and 11 women with COVID who were not pregnant for comparison. Researchers discovered the risk of reduced blood flow in the placenta is higher for women who suffer the most severe cases of COVID-19.

The team noticed lower than expected levels of protective antibodies in umbilical cord blood, but strangely much higher levels of influenza-specific antibodies. Researchers believe this may come from flu vaccinations, suggesting that COVID antibodies do not pass through the placenta as well as some others. The results also show only a very low level of COVID antibodies made it to the unborn child, raising more questions.

Study authors note it will be important to figure out why these maternal antibodies are less likely to reach the placenta and whether this reduced antibody transfer leaves newborns more vulnerable to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Researchers add it will also be important to determine how lower levels of maternal SARS-CoV-2 antibodies may impact babies born premature. The study finds COVID-19 may increase the risk of preterm labor.

The findings appear in the journal JAMA Network Open.

SWNS writer William Janes contribute to this report.

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Posted in Pregnant Mom unlikely o pass C-19 to her fetus | Tagged Study provides some assurance CoV-2 does no lead to passing on to the baby, Tested: 64 women who had SARS CoV-2 (which causes C-19) did not pass it on to their baby, Yet to study: C-19 may increas risk of preterm labore | Leave a comment

Immunity to COVID-19 lasts up to 8 months after infection, study reveals

Posted on January 19, 2021 by Peter Watt

Coronavirus / COVID-19 Blood sample — (© Rostislav Sedlacek – stock.adobe.com)

Immunity to COVID-19 lasts up to 8 months after infection, study reveals

by Chris Melore

MELBOURNE, Australia — As coronavirus vaccines finally get distributed across the world, the next question is how long will they last. A new study is giving health officials hope that treatments will have a long lifespan after discovering that the human body is already resilient to reinfection. Researchers from Monash University in Australia say people who have contracted COVID-19 have an immune memory that lasts at least eight months.

While previous studies show that patients likely only carry antibodies to coronavirus for a few months, the Australian team says their findings are the strongest evidence that vaccines will provide long-lasting protection. The new report finds specific cells in the immune system, memory B cells, actually “remember” the infection caused by COVID-19. If challenged again by the virus, memory B cells trigger an immune response which rapidly produces new antibodies.

The study examined 36 blood samples from 25 COVID patients. Researchers looked at the immune reactions starting on Day 4 post-infection through Day 242 post-infection.

Although the results show the number of antibodies against coronavirus begin to decrease after 20 days post-infection, patients continue to possess memory B cells that recognize one of two key components of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These are the spike and nucleocapsid proteins. Researchers say memory B cells retain their COVID memory even eight months after the first infection.

‘Results show definitively that patients infected with COVID-19 virus retain immunity’

Monash Associate Professor Menno van Zelm says the results also explain why there have been so few incidents of COVID reinfection among the millions of people testing positive during the pandemic.

“These results are important because they show, definitively, that patients infected with the COVID-19 virus do in fact retain immunity against the virus and the disease,” van Zelm says in a media release.

“This has been a black cloud hanging over the potential protection that could be provided by any COVID-19 vaccine and gives real hope that, once a vaccine or vaccines are developed, they will provide long-term protection.”

The study appears in the journal Science Immunology.

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EVIDENCE: In-Person School is Safe, as Long as Virus Is Controlled

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Peter Watt

More Evidence Suggests In-Person School is Safe, as Long as Virus Is Controlled

Researchers found no evidence that reopening schools increased COVID-19 hospitalizations in the 75% of counties that had low coronavirus hospitalization rates during the summer.

REOPENING SCHOOLS FOR in-person learning did not result in an increase in coronavirus hospitalizations as long as hospitalization rates in the community were low at the time of reopening, according to the latest study to wade into the controversial K-12 reopening debate.

CDC: Most Virus Cases in Kids Not From School ]

Notably, the study is the first to examine how reopening schools in person has affected COVID-19 health outcomes as opposed to positivity rates.

“It appears that, when hospitalizations rates are low, it is safe to reopen schools in-person,” said Doug Harris, study co-author and director of the research center. “This conclusion is consistent across a wide range of data and research methods. This is important given the side effects of closure for students, such as limiting access to essential services, social isolation, and learning loss.”

Researchers combined data on school district reopening plans with information on coronavirus-related hospitalizations from the company Change Healthcare, which has health care claims for 170 million people, as well as data from the Department of Health and Human Services that includes nearly every hospital in the U.S.

They found no evidence that reopening schools in-person or in a hybrid form increased COVID-19 hospitalizations in the 75% of counties that had low coronavirus hospitalization rates during the summer, prior to reopening schools. Specifically, they conclude that it “seems safe to reopen schools” when there are no more than 36 to 44 total new COVID-19 hospitalizations per 100,000 people per week.

However, for counties that had higher rates of hospitalizations before schools reopening, the study’s results were inconsistent and thus inconclusive.

[MAP: The Spread of Coronavirus]

“Given the spike in hospitalizations in recent months, policymakers should be cautious,” Engy Ziedan, a health care economist at Tulane and co-author of the study, said.

“It may not be safe to reopen schools where the virus is already widespread,” she said, adding that keeping teachers and school staff in high-risk categories out of school also remains important.

That particular finding mirrors findings from other studies that conclude reopening school for in-person learning doesn’t increase positivity rates so long as the community’s infections rates are low to begin with – a monster condition given that infection rates and hospitalization rates are spiking around the country and that many school districts lack the necessary resources to provide masks to staff and students, establish sanitization stations, reconfigure classrooms for social distancing and establish rigorous testing and contact tracing systems.

Lauren Camera, Senior Education Writer

Lauren Camera is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report. She joined the News team as an … READ MORE

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Posted in In-Person School is safe; as long as virus is controlled s | Tagged See MAP on Spread of Coronavirus, Study: Data is from Change Healthcare and US Dept of HHS, Study: Nal Ctr for Research on Ecn Access nd Choice, Study: No increase in cases that had low hospitalization in the summer | Leave a comment

Chicago Schools Chief: Half of Teachers Pressured by Teachers’ Union Didn’t Show up for Work

Posted on January 10, 2021 by Peter Watt

CHICAGO, IL – JULY 2: Teacher Arlene Lebowitz assists a student in her third-grade class during summer school July 2, 2003 in Chicago, Illinois. A record number of students are expected at summer school due to a strong showing for a new voluntary program for mid-tier students and strict application of non-ITBS (Iowa Tests of Basic Skills) test promotion standards. (Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

A teacher instructs a student in third grade during summer school in Chicago, on July 2, 2003. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

US NEWS

Chicago Schools Chief: Half of Teachers Pressured by Teachers’ Union Didn’t Show up for Work

BY GQ PAN

USA TODAY VIA EPOCH TIMES

January 7, 2021 Updated: January 7, 2021

Nearly half of the teachers in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) district didn’t show up when they were ordered to return for in-person instructions after the winter break, a district official said.Teacher Union presPressured by Union

Janice Jackson, the CEO of the public school district serving some 340,000 students, said in a Tuesday press conference that a little more than 60 percent of all school-based staff have returned to classrooms as expected. That accounts for about half of teachers and three-quarters of assistant and support staff.

Jackson said the number of employees who didn’t return was “significant, considering the fact that they were pressured” by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which has been urging teachers and staff to stay out of classrooms since the early days of the CCP virus pandemic.

CPS has informed those who were expected to return but didn’t that their absence was not excused, Jackson said, noting that the district has an “absent without leave policy,” through which “individuals who are refusing to report to work and who will be considered absent without leave will face progressive discipline.”

“We have sent notices to staff who did not return to ensure that our expectations are clear, and we are optimistic that more staff will report to work in the coming days,” she said. “If staff choose not to attend and support the students who are relying on them, we will handle those on a school-by-school and case-by-case basis.”

Jackson noted that the all-remote learning is failing many students across the city, especially those from black and Latino families.

“We cannot sit back and allow a generation to just falter because of made up reasons around why we can’t do reopening,” she said. “A year from now, there’s going to be a reckoning around what happened to those students that have been sitting at home, not being properly served because many of them have families who have to be essential workers.”

The CTU on Wednesday criticized CPS’s plan of sending public school teachers back for in-person instructions for the first time during the pandemic, arguing that doing so puts teachers’ health in danger.

“We are here this morning to underscore for the public how absolutely callously CPS has treated educators who have requested accommodations or leave,” CTU Deputy General Counsel Thad Goodchild said during a press conference, reported Chicago Sun Times.

Goodchild said that CPS is forcing employees to report to work, even though they have family members with health conditions.

“This is effectively telling employees that they must either go without a paycheck, move out of their homes or risk the lives of their medically fragile relative,” he said.

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Rags to Riches: How She Became ‘The Bun Lady’

Posted on January 9, 2021 by Peter Watt

How She Became ‘The (Very Successful) Bun Lady’

BY TATIANA MORALES

MAY 18, 2005 / 2:14 PM / CBS

Cordia Harrington grew up wearing hand-me-down clothes and watching her parents struggling to pay bills. A trip to a McDonald’s was a big night out for her family. She wanted better for her own kids. But in the end, it was her desire to spend more time with them that was her biggest motivator.

Harrington’s nickname is “The Bun Lady.”

“It’s growing on me,” she says of her nickname with laughter to Early Show correspondent Melinda Murphy. “I didn’t name myself that. I can promise you that.”

Harrington owns the Tennessee Bun Company and claims to make more buns per hour than anybody else on the planet.

“We make over 1,000 buns a minute,” she says, “It’s over 60,000 buns an hour. It’s a lot of buns.”

But Harrington wasn’t always all about buns. In fact, she started out in real estate.

“When I started the real estate business, I did use all my own money, $587,” she chuckles. “I bought my plywood. I bartered for my office space, leased my desk and it grew from there.”

Says Harrington, “My second son was two weeks early. I had him at five in the morning and took him in a basket with me at 9:00 a.m. that same morning to a real estate closing.”The juggling act grew all the more difficult with the arrival of a third son. Then she got divorced.Suddenly, Harrington was a single parent, and wanted to spend more time with her kids. She thought buying a McDonald’s franchise would give her more free time.But the transition was often painful. She had to keep one business running while traveling to start a new one.”I would have a college girl at that time spend the night at my house, so that, when the boys woke up, she would be there,” Harrington recalls. “I would drive, leave at three in the morning, and I would watch the sun rise. And every morning I did that. I would cry, and I’d think, ‘Ooohh, is this worth it? This is so hard.'”

The reward was mostly financial. That first McDonalds in Effingham, Ill., soon grew into three. But finding time for her kids was harder than ever.

“I took them to meetings or took them to work with me, and, you know, Mommy would try to make it fun that we’d all clean the lobby and the McDonald’s restroom,” Harrington says. ‘OK, let’s all get a towel, and let’s see who can clean the most tables!’ or, ‘Let’s put the most meals.’ You know, the toys in the Happy Meal sacks.”

Eventually, Harrington landed on the McDonald’s bun committee, a group that oversees the supply of hamburger buns. It was love at first bite: “I’d go over there for a half-day meeting, come back, and that’s all I could talk about for weeks. Sesame seeds in Guatemala, prices of flour in Russia. I mean, all of a sudden, McDonald’s became global to me.”

So, when McDonald’s decided to open another bakery, Harrington begged for the chance to run it.

“I started calling and sending pictures,” she says. “Finally, four years and about 32 interviews later, I convinced them they couldn’t live without me.”But the good news meant another difficult series of changes.”As I built the bakery, I still had three restaurants, 250 employees, three kids, I was single and driving back and forth. I put over 100,000 miles on my car in a year. I don’t want to make it sound like this was all real easy. I did a lot of crying and yet in my mind, I knew I could do it. I just had to figure out how.”Part of figuring it out meant selling the franchises to concentrate on running the plant. And just as she did with her construction business, Harrington found a better way to do things.

And McDonald’s is no longer her only client.

“We serve 40 states for Pepperidge Farm,” Harrington says. “We also serve the East Coast for Chili’s. We have Ruby Tuesday as a customer. We have KFC. So we work for and bake, really, buns. That’s our focus: buns.”

Harrington has come a long way from hand-me-down clothes. The Tennessee Bun Company expects gross sales in excess of $50 million this year, which enables her family to enjoy life to the fullest, even if they’re as busy as ever.

In fact, Harrington is planning to work even harder. She’s now branched out into English muffins and launched a shipping company to move her products across the country. And she just bought a cold storage company. But she says her ultimate goal is to take her company international.

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School choice boosts HS grad rates, especially for minorities

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Peter Watt

Kennesaw State study: School choice boosts HS grad rates, especially for Black students

An analysis from Kennesaw State University showed that high school graduation and college entrance rates rose by 20 percent under a Georgia school choice program.

The results were even more beneficial for Black, Hispanic, and impoverished students.

BY BENJAMIN ZEISLOFT CAMPUS REFORM

Benjamin Zeisloft | Pennsylvania Senior Campus Correspondent

Monday, December 28, 2020 9:42 AM

An analysis from Kennesaw State University showed that high school graduation rates rose by 20 percent under Georgia’s school choice program.

The analysis by Benjamin Scafidi and Heidi Holmes Erickson of Kennesaw State University studied the effects of Georgia’s Qualified Education Expense (QEE) Tax Credit Scholarship Program. The initiative allows taxpayers to receive a Georgia income tax credit for donating to nonprofit student scholarship organizations.

The funds from these organizations are used for scholarships to Georgia students in order to offset the cost of attending private schools.

The Kennesaw State analysis used data from students who received scholarships from Georgia GOAL, the largest scholarship-providing organization in the QEE program.

Among other findings, the analysis discovered that the “taxpayer cost of tax credit scholarships is significantly less than the taxpayer cost of educating scholarship students in the public schools — saving taxpayers a total of $53.2 million in academic year 2018-19.”

High school graduation rates also rose substantially: students “graduate high school and enter college at higher rates relative to students in Georgia public schools” under the program, according to the analysis.

Likewise, participating students exhibited significantly higher college entrance rates.

High school graduation and college entrance rates rose precipitously for African-American and Hispanic students. African-American graduation rates increased by 18 percent, and college entrance rates rose by 20 percent.

The results were even stronger for Hispanic students, with graduation rates rising by 22 percent and college enrollment rates rising by 29 percent.

Similar effects existed across economic lines: participating students receiving free or reduced lunches experienced significantly higher graduation and matriculation rates than public school students.

Scafidi told Campus Reform that other states should implement similar school choice programs since they “have a great track record at providing benefits to students who exercise choice and even modest benefits for students who remain in public schools.”

However, “highly regulated choice programs, like Louisiana’s scholarship program, do not.”

Scafidi added that “employees and leaders of public schools are powerful opponents of giving parents more choice in education.” He explained that they are organized through unions, they have access to funding, and they are able to influence the vote.

“For at least 70 years, public schools have had a massive staffing surge — hiring more and more employees than needed to keep up with enrollment growth — which gives them even more power to oppose reforms to the current K-12 education system,” said Scafidi.

Corey DeAngelis, Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation, told Campus Reform that “private schools are directly accountable to families,” and “private schools that underperform shape up or shut down.”

“District schools that underperform get more money,” he added.

DeAngelis remarked that “so many people that support funding students directly when it comes to Pell Grants for higher education and taxpayer-funded pre-K programs oppose it when it comes to K-12 education. Why would anyone support funding students directly when it comes to higher education and pre-K but not K-12? The answer is simple: the power dynamics differ.”

He explained that “the norm when it comes to higher education and preschool is that

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families already have a high degree of choice. The norm when it comes to K-12 education is that an entrenched special interest profits from getting your children’s education dollars regardless of your choice.”

“The public school monopoly fights really hard to prevent families from having the choice to take their children’s education dollars elsewhere,” he added. “The reality, however, is that there aren’t any good reasons to fund institutions when we can fund students directly instead. After all, education funding is supposed to be meant for educating students — not for protecting a government monopoly.”

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft

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STUDY: New coronavirus variant doesn’t cause worse infections or lead to more deaths

Posted on January 4, 2021 by Peter Watt

January 1, 2021Coronavirus STUDY FINDS JAN 1, 2021

New coronavirus variant doesn’t cause worse infections or lead to more deaths, study says

by Chris Melore

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LONDON — As millions prepare to receive their coronavirus vaccine, fears are growing of a new variant strain of SARS-CoV-2 detected in the United States and England. This new variant, dubbed B.1.1.7, could be more contagious than previous strains of the coronavirus, but a new report is at least bringing some positivity into 2021. Researchers from Public Health England (PHE) find the variant is not likely to put more patients in the hospital or cause more deaths than other COVID strains.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, B.1.1.7 is responsible for 60 percent of the new infections in London since November. The origin of this variant remains a mystery, but the CDC says B.1.1.7 has several mutations, including one in the receptor binding domain of its spike protein. This is the part of the virus which attaches to cells and cuts its way into them to reproduce.

A recent study by the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases also finds that the new coronavirus variant, which researchers call VOC 202012/01, is 56 percent more contagious than other COVID strains. Despite this, the team from PHE concludes it is not anymore dangerous to patients during the pandemic.

“Preliminary results from the cohort study found no statistically significant difference in hospitalization and 28-day case fatality between cases with the variant (VOC 201212/01) and wild-type comparator cases,” study authors write in the report, Investigation of novel SARS-CoV-2 variant.

No serious differences in the new coronavirus variant

The British study examined 1,769 patients with “wild-type” or common strains of SARS-CoV-2 and 1,769 people with the B.1.1.7 variant. The results reveal no major differences in the age of patients, their ethnicities, and living situations.

Researchers discovered 16 COVID patients (0.9%) with the B.1.1.7 strain had to go to the hospital due to their illness. In comparison, 26 patients (1.5%) with a wild-type strain were hospitalized during the study. Although scientists did not have complete records on patient deaths, the report finds 12 of 1,340 patients with the new variant died — just under one percent. Only 10 patients out of 1,360 died of a wild-type of COVID-19 (0.73%).

Study authors also report that the new coronavirus strain does not seem to raise the risk of contracting the illness a second time.

“There was also no significant difference in the likelihood of reinfection between variant cases and the comparator group,” the report notes.

Only two people who had the B.1.1.7 strain ended up getting sick again within 90 days of their illness. The odds are just as rare among common forms of coronavirus, with only three people getting sick a second time.

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Virtual Games to Play in Your Elementary Classroom

Posted on December 28, 2020 by Peter Watt

erkut_34 / istock

ONLINE LEARNING EDUTPOIA

Virtual Games to Play in Your Elementary Classroom

From scavenger hunts to Pictionary, we’ve gathered a batch of virtual games to get students talking, laughing, and engaging with peers.

By Emelina Minero

December 22, 2020

Checkmate!

While most educators feel too worn out to take on anything else this year, classroom games—old and new—can provide a much-needed respite for students and teachers who are burned out on video lessons and miss social connection.

We found some easy-to-use virtual games that elementary teachers are playing with their students this year, along with tips on how to incorporate them into the classroom.

GAMING WITH GOOGLE SLIDES

After noticing how much her students missed informal socializing during hybrid learning, Liz Henneberry, a third-grade teacher in Franklin, Massachusetts, transformed Connect Four, Trouble, Chess, and Checkers to Google Slides—all of which can be downloaded and immediately used in your virtual classroom. During recess breaks, students click a board game shelved in a virtual recess room, which creates their own copy of the game. Students can then share the game with their friend using Google Drive so that the two can play a round together. If students are new to sharing Google Slides, Henneberry recommends modeling the step-by-step process first.

Similarly, Robin Nahhas says her third-grade students have loved playing Multiplication Tic-Tac-Toe, a downloadable game she created on Google Slides so that they could practice their multiplication facts. Before playing, Nahhas goes over directions and the code of conduct with students, reminding them of protocols such as not interfering with classmates’ games or else having their gaming privileges revoked.

A multiplication Google Slides version of Tic Tac Toe to play virtually

Courtesy of Robin Nahhas

Nahhas tells students that she can see the revision history for each slide, which deters them from disturbing others’ gameplay knowing that their game privileges can be revoked.

Then, she pairs up students and places them in breakout rooms on Zoom. Each student in the pair selects a set of color pieces, and when it’s their turn, they roll two digital dice, multiply the numbers shown, and place a piece onto the virtual board with the corresponding number. To play again, they move their pieces back to the side of the board. If students need help solving a problem, they can rely on their partner or click the “Ask for Help” button after trying one of the strategies they learned in class with pencil and paper first.

GAMES TO BOOST CREATIVE THINKING

During morning meetings, fifth-grade teacher Sarah Wood says she incorporates games like scavenger hunts that the whole class can play together while learning from home. When it’s time to play, Wood projects a word like blanket and a matching image on a slideshow, and then students run to find the item in their homes. When they find the object, they can share it on video or by typing in the chat box.

Wood has even focused the game around particular learning goals, like having students find objects that reinforce vocabulary or putting together a project with the items. Once, they were asked to find a broom, a blanket, and a few heavy objects, and then they had 10 minutes to build a reading fort. During asynchronous time, they used Flipgrid to give a tour of their forts.

She says her students have also enjoyed directed drawing exercises—when students are directed to draw something without seeing it. Wood gives directions like “Draw a large oval with a smaller oval inside; on the left side, attach a triangle,” based on images from a drawing book or a directed drawing YouTube channel. When her students are done drawing, they turn on their cameras, put their artwork up to the screen, and guess what they drew. Wood then reveals the actual drawing and it tends to bring out a lot of laughter, she says.

Wood’s students also love games where they take a more active role. Using Blackboard Collaborate for Pictionary, students take turns drawing on a whiteboard—prompted by a word generator—while students call out their guesses. The next time Wood plays, she’ll use Whiteboard.fi instead of Blackboard Collaborate, a free virtual whiteboard. When playing Taboo, her students take turns trying to describe a word like crack, for example, while being prohibited from using related words like drop or glass while the rest of the class guesses. And her students are obsessed with competing against their peers by being the first to name Disney movies, for example, in the ever-popular quiz platform Kahoot.

VIRAL SENSATIONS

Initially, during remote learning, it was hard getting students comfortable with face-to-face interactions over Zoom, but the viral video game Among Us—a kid-friendly murder mystery—has stimulated engagement and conversation in Vickiela Wright’s fifth-grade class, she says.

In the game, each student is a crew member on a spaceship and is given a task to keep it running. One or more students are impostors, and their mission is to kill the crew members without getting caught. In between each round, students use Google meets to try to guess the impostors and form alliances to identify the killer.

“The conversations, problem-solving, engagement, and teamwork were robust and surprising. One student said it was the best part of her life,” says Wright.

Twelve characters in spacesuits from the murder mystery game Among Us.

In this social deduction game, students try to figure out who the imposters are before they destroy the crew.

Similar to Among Us, Werewolf is a game of deduction where students take on the role of villager or werewolf. Students collaborate and problem-solve to kill the werewolves before they become werewolves themselves. And the hugely popular Minecraft: Education Edition can serve as a hangout for students’ pixelated avatars to socialize and even partake in English language arts–based station rotations.

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Why Should We Teach Handwriting?

Posted on December 27, 2020 by Peter Watt

LEWIS UNIVERSITY FACULTY FORUM March 7, 2018

This past fall the Illinois General Assembly passed a mandate requiring public elementary schools to provide cursive instruction beginning in the 2018-2019 academic year. Some wonder why handwriting, especially given the trend in many school districts to move towards 1:1 technology, has become such a priority. While the need to become proficient and adaptable technology-users remains, handwriting is more tied to learning and academic achievement than many realize.

Showing What You Know

The primary purpose of handwriting is communication and, more specifically in educational settings, to convey one’s knowledge to teachers. Almost half of a kindergarten student’s day is spent doing writing tasks. As children advance in school, the expectations for writing increase. For example, by third grade, children’s writing is expected to become more complex and they are required to write informative and explanatory texts, narratives, and research reports.

Some children appear to be innate handwriters. When provided with crayons, markers, or pencils, these children hold them correctly and see to know to draw a line from the top of the page down to the bottom and to make a continuous curved line in counterclockwise fashion to produce a circle. Innate or automatic handwriters are able to draw complex shapes and write their names before they head off to preschool. Once they get to school, automatic handwriters are able to copy words and fill up journal pages without much support. However, it can be difficult for parents and early childhood teachers to discern which students will pick up handwriting easily and which ones will need more instruction.

It sounds simplistic, but handwriting needs to be explicitly taught to all children, and particularly to those that aren’t automatic handwriters. Even children who are skilled with drawing shapes and copying their names in preschool benefit from direct handwriting instruction to learn how to properly form letters. Proper letter formation is more efficient than “drawing letters” [Which is called “Ball & Stick” printing] and this skill will help students write quickly in the future. However, not all children will learn handwriting quickly. It’s estimated that approximately 10-30% of elementary school students have difficulty with automatic handwriting. Students that struggle with handwriting often have to choose between producing legible text and getting their ideas on to the page. Handwriting has also been linked to the development of literacy skills, such as spelling and sight word reading. In fact, the physical act of handwriting has been found to light up regions of the brain that are associated with literacy and supports reading skill acquisition, particularly letter naming and recognition.

Teaching Handwriting

Quality handwriting writing instruction is more than providing students with worksheets and asking them to copy letters on a page. Handwriting instruction should begin with the selection of a handwriting curriculum. Systematic instruction of handwriting that follows an intentionally sequenced curriculum has been found to support students in achieving better legibility, faster writing speed, and fluency. Some common elements of effective handwriting curricula include progressing students from imitating and copying letters to writing letters from memory, the use of verbal and visual cues for proper letter formation, and writing on lines to assist with letter sizing and placement.

Some types of Cursive Handwriting are:

Palmer D’ Nealian Parker Pen Co. Calligraphy

Practice Makes Perfect

Some children will need additional assistance to develop automatic handwriting skills. In the past, many interventions focused on developing the child’s fine motor skills, adjusting how the child held his or her pencil, or improving the child’s hand strength. However, there appears to be no evidence that these interventions are effective or consequential in improving a child’s handwriting speed, fluency, or legibility. Rather, a cognitive approach to addressing handwriting that emphasizes practice, is based in the principles of motor learning, and includes self-regulated learning strategies is preferred. Through guided practice, instructor feedback, and the process of self-appraisal and strategy identification, children can develop more automatic handwriting skills and become efficient writers.

Getting Help

Some children will continue to struggle with handwriting despite receiving formal instruction and getting extra help. Occupational therapists are able to provide services to children with handwriting difficulties in school and in private clinics. Prior to beginning intervention, an occupational therapist will conduct a comprehensive evaluation to determine the underlying causes of the handwriting difficulty. This evaluation may include an assessment of the following: handwriting speed, letter legibility and formation, perceptual skills, eye-hand coordination skills, volition or motivation to complete handwriting tasks, and the influence of the environment on task performance. Depending on the child’s unique needs, the occupational therapist might also evaluate sensory processing, postural stability and control, and vision. After the comprehensive evaluation, an individualized intervention plan is developed by the occupational therapist and recommendations associated with the frequency and duration of treatment, as well as strategies to try at home and at school will be provided. Because handwriting success is so tied to how children, particularly those in younger elementary grades, learn and feel about school, parents are encouraged to seek help quickly.

About Dr. Susan Cahill

Dr. Susan Cahill is a former Associate Professor and Director of the MSOT Program at Lewis University. She is a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) and a member of the AOTA Commission on Practice. Visit http://www.lewisu.edu/academics/msoccuptherapy to learn more.

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Posted in Cursive handwriting is important for reasons other than writing itselflf | Tagged A cognitive approach to handwriting emphasizes practie, Act of handwriting been found to light up the parts of brain associated with literacy, Handwriting supports acquiring reading skills, some students are almost "automatic" cursive writers but others are not | Leave a comment

American Pipe Dream: Odds Of Adults Out-Earning Parents Drops Sharply, Study Finds

Posted on December 24, 2020 by Peter Watt

April 25, 2017Business, Family & Relationships, Money

Odds Of Adults Out-Earning Parents Drops Sharply, Study Finds

by Daniel Steingold

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YOUR KIDS WILL PROBABLY NOT OUT-EARN YOU

STANFORD, Calif. — If Horatio Alger was still writing stories today, would his characters enjoy successful upward mobility as easily as they did in the 1800s? A new study finds that the odds of individuals born in the 1980s to earn a higher income their parents has dropped notably versus people born in the 1940s.

Academics at Stanford University, led by esteemed economics professor Raj Chetty, looked at the rate of economic mobility in the U.S., which they measured by one’s ability to earn more than their parents through the promise of the “American Dream”— i.e. rising above one’s peers with sufficient effort.

Is the American Dream still feasible? — An infographic conveying results by Chetty et al., which reveal that the probability for children to attain a higher income than their parents has dropped dramatically — from more than 90 percent for children born in 1940 to 50 percent for children born in the 1980s. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the 28 April 2017, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by R. Chetty at Stanford University in Stanford, CA, and colleagues was titled, ‘The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940.’ (Carla Schaffer / AAAS)

Previous researchers had been stymied in analyzing the longitudinal ability for individuals to accomplish upward mobility over their parents, in large part because of the lack of sufficient datasets that could examine the issue.

To accomplish their goals, Chetty et al. took an innovative approach, combining data from the U.S. Census and Current Population Survey with tax records, all while controlling for variables such as inflation.

In the course of their research, the academics found that only half of individuals born in the 1980s earned more than their parents.

This figure is alarming, especially when one takes into consideration how 92 percent of those born in 1940 out-earned their parents.

Region did play a factor in one’s ability to outpace their parents’ earning potential. States in the Midwest— e.g. Indiana and Illinois— saw the greatest declines in upward mobility, while many states in the Northeast, such as Massachusetts and New York, were affected the least.

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While the researchers determined that a slowing GDP growth rate may be somewhat responsible for the decline in upward mobility, the decline in mobility has mostly been due to an economic distribution that increasingly favors the wealthy.

Ultimately, without a change in the current distribution of wealth, a change in any other variable would only have a modest effect upon the ability for individuals to demonstrate upward mobility, the researchers argue.

Governmental initiatives, such as raising minimum wage and creating more tax incentives for those who need them, could assist in narrowing the economic gap.

The study’s findings were published in the journal Science.

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Posted in Is American Dream Gone? Your kids will NOT earn more than you did., Uncategorized | Tagged Born in 1980's earned less than born in 1940's, Current wealth distribution favors the wealthy, study at Stanford University compared tax returns, Study: Your Children will probably earn less in their lives than their parents | Leave a comment

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