Helping kids write

Beth Rogowsky, assistant professor of early childhood and adolescent education, has written an article for Scientific Learning’s blog about how developing cognitive skills is an important part of any writing program.

 When teachers think of teaching writing, they typically begin with the type of writing they want their students to compose—persuasive pieces, personal narratives, academic essays and the like. They think of following the steps of the writing process—prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing—and conduct mini-lessons during writers’ workshop. Others teachers begin diagraming sentences, discussing subject-verb agreement or distinguishing between nominative and objective case pronouns. All too often, however, little attention is given to the cognitive skills of writing. And that’s a shame, because cognitive skills are the building blocks upon which writing depends. 

 Read the rest of Rogowsky’s article at Scientific Learning: www.scilearn.com/blog/building-better-writers-without-picking-up-a-pen.php

A classroom of their own

Think back to when you were in elementary school. At some point, you had a student teacher. You appreciated her youth and energy and respected her as a teacher-in-training. Perhaps she inspired you to consider a career in education.

Student teaching at Bloomsburg University is the culmination of the undergraduate experience in the College of Education. Student teaching is the equivalent of doing an internship in business or a clinical practice in the medical field. Each year, education majors from Bloomsburg University travel each day to local school districts to obtain a 16-week practical experience in which they ultimately take over a class for a teacher. It is a rigorous experience which students are always excited to complete.

Putting theory they have learned from BU’s dedicated faculty into daily practice with an experienced teacher is a capstone experience. For most education majors in their final semester at BU, it reaffirms their readiness for a classroom of their own.

— Elizabeth K. Mauch, Dean

A strong start to the STEM Magnet Program

It seems that everywhere you turn, you hear about the importance of STEM education — that’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

We have good news about our STEM Magnet Program at Bloomsburg University. The program for high school juniors has been so successful that we have started planning for our second year — the 2014-2015 academic year.  We met over the past week with our current business and school district partners, including Berwick, Bloomsburg and Central Columbia school districts and PPL, Merck, Geisinger and others. I am happy to report that we will have two cohorts of students for the next academic year — one focused upon Engineering and one focused upon the Health Sciences.

Why is this program so important? It gives high-achieving rural high school students academic opportunities that parallel those of students from metropolitan areas. It provides a pipeline to outstanding career opportunities with area employers, who support the program financially and through mentorships. And these students will have 30 college credits by the time they graduate from high school.

We started with 20 students in fall 2014. That’s just the beginning!

— Elizabeth K. Mauch, Dean