Language Arts

Schools' ESOL program an asset for students There are many different instructional services offered by the Carroll County Public School System, but perhaps one of the most unique is a program called English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Although ESOL is offered throughout the county, many people are unaware of its existence. An ESOL student is defined as someone who is born outside of the United States or whose native language is not English. ... At the present time there are approximately 120 students speaking almost 20 different languages attending 23 schools in Carroll County.

Sister Mary Aurea Kimball, who taught in parochial schools for four decades, died of a stroke April 15 at her order's Villa Maria Health Care Center in Woodbrook. She was 82. Rose Marie Kimball was born in Annapolis and grew up on a farm outside the capital. She attended St. Mary's School and entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame. She received the religious name Mary Aurea and professed her first vows in 1950. She earned a bachelor's degree in education from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and had a master's degree from Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. Sister Aurea's first teaching post was at St. Mark's School in Catonsville, where she taught from 1950 to 1965.

Sun story reported one-sided evaluation Once again, I'm appalled to discover a Sun education reporter relying on the school system to evaluate its own programs, overlooking history and fact in the process. In her article ("Most schools score well on new Md. Test," Aug. 24) on Anne Arundel County's test scores, Lynn Anderson offers assurance that middle schools are "switching from 50-minute class periods in math and language arts to 86-minute periods to ensure that pupils get the help they need."

American households with children have an average of 2.8 televisions. Ninety-seven percent of those households have one or more VCRs or DVD players. Two-thirds have at least one computer. If you think American kids are media-saturated, you're right. But if a new study conducted by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University is to be believed, it's not the quantity that matters; it's where kids are being saturated. "We looked at the way kids use media and how it related to academic achievement," says Dina Borzekowski, lead author of "The Remote, The Mouse, and the No. 2 Pencil," a research paper on the project that was published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine yesterday.

The Friday morning routine in Juliet Iannoli-Catanzaro's seventh-grade language arts class at Lindale Middle School in Linthicum starts with rearranging the room. The desks are swung into a circle and pupils take their seats by their friends. Seventh-grade gossip quiets quickly as "Ms. Iannoli" passes a slim paperback to each pupil in the weekly Touchstones discussion program, which has roots in the Great Books curriculum at St. John's College and is used in dozens of schools throughout Anne Arundel County.

Unrelenting protests by a coalition of parents and intervention by four state senators have delayed the school board's final approval of an ambitious instruction program that would double the time spent on reading in Anne Arundel County's middle schools. The county's senators implored the school board to wait to expand reading instruction long enough to answer their growing list of questions. Though the board did hold off this week on rubber-stamping the plan's final details, school officials said they will forge ahead with their plans for the fall.

Unrelenting protests by a coalition of parents and intervention by four state senators have delayed the school board's final approval of an ambitious instruction program that would double the time spent on reading in Anne Arundel County's middle schools. The county's senators implored the school board to wait to expand reading instruction long enough to answer their growing list of questions. Though the board did hold off this week on rubber-stamping the plan's final details, school system officials said they will forge ahead with their plans for the fall.

When you enter Julie Chang's world languages class at Waverly Elementary School in Ellicott City, you leave English at the door. Then, if you know the answer to a question and are told to " qing ju shou ," you raise your hand. If you're told, " bu shou hua ," then you must keep quiet. And if someone asks about the weather and it's sunny outside, you say, " yin tian . " Chang teaches Chinese, one of two languages offered in the Howard County school system's world languages pilot, which is in its second year at Laurel Woods and Waverly elementary schools.

When three teachers from Clarksville Middle School got together lastsummer to choose a school play for this year, they couldn't find anything they liked.Music teacher Joanne L. Worthington wanted a musical within the range of young adolescents' voices.Gifted and talented resource teacher Annette R. Kuperman wanted an educational play.Language arts teacher Patricia E. Holy wanted to show the interrelationships of subjects such as language arts and social studies.The three teachers got the musical they wanted by writing their own."