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Newsletters are often used in classrooms as a link between school and home. Too often though, newsletters flow only one way—from school to home—to inform parents of events, expectations, and classroom practices. Although this can be an effective and efficient method for keeping parents abreast of the academic life of the classroom, it misses an opportunity to contribute to a home–school partnership. When thoughtfully created, teacher‐initiated newsletters benefit children, parents, and teachers alike. Teachers can actively communicate information to parents, but parents can also have the opportunity to feel connected to their children's lives inside the classroom. When a partnership between the home and school is created, children see a mutual respect develop. This article explains the benefits of using a regular classroom newsletter and provides suggestions for the creation of an effective newsletter.

\"Each struggling reader has a unique combination of strengths and areas that require targeted instruction. Through their work with teachers and children in an after school tutoring program, the authors have identified six types of struggling readers and offer suggestions for assessment and instruction for each type of struggling reader. The book shares lessons learned from the tutoring program that are applicable to the classroom. Suggestions of how teachers can outreach and involve parents, caregivers, and families is included\"-- Provided by publisher.

This paper discusses the shift from a clinic model to a community model for the practicum experience for literacy education graduate students. The traditional program for the remediation of struggling readers followed a deficit model. Therefore, the reading specialist would pull out the child from regular classroom instruction to isolate a reading problem using standardized assessments and then to remediate the problem with programmed instruction. While the shifts in the understanding of reading process which occurred in the 1980s and 1990s influenced instruction and assessment and the role of the reading specialist, researchers have found that instruction of struggling readers still tend to be routinized. This has often resulted in what appears to be a lack of personalization, a disregard of experiences, strengths and vulnerabilities that the child brings to the tutoring situation. Therefore, the process of transitioning from a clinic to a community model described in this article was made based on the belief that today's reading clinic component of literacy specialist program needs to equip its graduate students to face the challenges of the classroom as well as the challenges in transcending their prior understandings and experiences teaching reading.

This study focused on 10 college students' written reflections on their academic experiences as these reveal their self-concept of learning as represented in dialogue journals maintained during the Spring 1987 semester at a metropolitan New York City 4 year college. In reference to research done in the areas of reflection, writing to learn, and social interaction, the dialogue journal becomes a natural vehicle to explore the students' self-concept of learning as they engage in academic experiences. It has been suggested that reflection activities provide the learner opportunity to create associations and attend to the affective aspects of learning. The students participating in the study volunteered their dialogue journals at the end of the semester, having completed a study skills course. Pre/post questionnaires and the dialogue journals provided the data for interpretation, understanding, and description. Review of the data allowed for common patterns, related to the purpose of this study, to be identified. Analysis revealed two major categories: (a) Content, which focused on the message; and (b) Form, which focused on the way in which the message is written. Content manifested from three perspectives: (a) Mental Framework, which focused on the writer's personal structures of learning; (b) Planning Framework, which focused on the writer's preparation for learning; and (c) Implementing Framework, which focused on how a learning technique was employed. This study generated five hypotheses warranted by the findings of the study: (a) students tend to make personal evaluations without presenting references to how the evaluation was made, (b) students tend to share personal history and career goals only at the onset of the dialogue journal, (c) students tend to give general, rather than specific, explanation of planned or implemented strategy usage unless an inquiry was used by the researcher, (d) students had more expectations for themselves than for others, and (e) student inquiries tend to ask for assistance whereas researcher inquiries tend to ask for clarity. The investigation also determined that students made connections describing their own learning, strategy usage and personal evaluation--an interactive relationship between the three content perspectives which developed as a result of dialoguing with the researcher.

Partnerships in Math Education: The Power of University-School Collaboration by Chris Ohana is reviewed.

The identification of a functionally distinct subset of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that is primed for platelet-specific gene expression is described; the cells frequently have long-term myeloid lineage bias, can self-renew and give rise to lymphoid-biased HSCs, and may enable the design of therapies for enhancing platelet reconstitution. A haematopoietic stem-cell hierarchy This study reports the identification and isolation of a molecularly and functionally distinct subset of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that are primed for platelet-specific gene expression. Further analysis showed that the platelet-primed HSCs frequently have a long-term myeloid lineage bias, can self-renew and give rise to lymphoid-biased HSCs, thereby placing them at the apex of the HSC hierarchy. This novel stem-cell population might provide an important therapeutic target for enhancing platelet reconstitution after chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation The blood system is maintained by a small pool of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), which are required and sufficient for replenishing all human blood cell lineages at millions of cells per second throughout life. Megakaryocytes in the bone marrow are responsible for the continuous production of platelets in the blood, crucial for preventing bleeding—a common and life-threatening side effect of many cancer therapies—and major efforts are focused at identifying the most suitable cellular and molecular targets to enhance platelet production after bone marrow transplantation or chemotherapy 1 . Although it has become clear that distinct HSC subsets exist that are stably biased towards the generation of lymphoid or myeloid blood cells 2 , 3 , 4 , we are yet to learn whether other types of lineage-biased HSC exist or understand their inter-relationships and how differently lineage-biased HSCs are generated and maintained. The functional relevance of notable phenotypic and molecular similarities between megakaryocytes and bone marrow cells with an HSC cell-surface phenotype 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 remains unclear. Here we identify and prospectively isolate a molecularly and functionally distinct mouse HSC subset primed for platelet-specific gene expression, with enhanced propensity for short- and long-term reconstitution of platelets. Maintenance of platelet-biased HSCs crucially depends on thrombopoietin, the primary extrinsic regulator of platelet development 9 . Platelet-primed HSCs also frequently have a long-term myeloid lineage bias, can self-renew and give rise to lymphoid-biased HSCs. These findings show that HSC subtypes can be organized into a cellular hierarchy, with platelet-primed HSCs at the apex. They also demonstrate that molecular and functional priming for platelet development initiates already in a distinct HSC population. The identification of a platelet-primed HSC population should enable the rational design of therapies enhancing platelet output.

Background Asthma and obesity are frequent outcomes among individuals born extremely preterm and are associated with decreased lifespan. Neonatal inflammation is associated with chronic neurodevelopmental disorders; however, it is less studied in association with other later childhood chronic disorders in this population. Methods Fourteen hospitals in 5 U.S. states enrolled 1506 infants born before 28 weeks of gestation in the Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborn cohort in 2004–2014. Neonatal blood spots were collected on postnatal days 1, 7, 14, 21, and 28, and used to measure 14 inflammation-related proteins. Associations were evaluated between high (top quartile) levels of proteins and two chronic health disorders at ages 10 and 15 years: physician-diagnosed asthma and obesity (body mass index ≥95th percentile). Results Few associations were found between high levels of 14 inflammation-related proteins, either on a single day or on multiple days, and either asthma or obesity. Similarly, few associations were found in analyses stratified by sex or presence/absence of prenatal inflammation. Conclusions In extremely preterm newborns, systemic elevations of inflammation-related proteins during the neonatal period were not associated with childhood asthma and obesity outcomes at 10 or 15 years of age. Impact In the large multi-center Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborn (ELGAN) cohort, sustained elevation of neonatal levels of inflammation-related proteins was not consistently associated with asthma or obesity outcomes at 10 or 15 years of age. This finding contrasts with reported associations of perinatal inflammation with obesity at 2 years and neurodevelopmental disorders at 2–15 years in the ELGANs, suggesting that unlike neurodevelopment, peripubertal obesity and asthma may be driven by later childhood exposures. Future research on perinatal mechanisms of childhood asthma and obesity should account for both fetal and later exposures and pathways in addition to inflammation at birth.