Free To Kill a Mockingbird Lesson, Discount Audiobooks, and More Inside!

► Free Lesson from To Kill a Mockingbird
► Why We Need Common Standards
► Prestwick House Takes to the High Seas
► This Month at the Prestwick Café Blog
► Save 10% Off Audio CDs + Teaching Unit

Free Lesson from To Kill a Mockingbird

Click here to download your free lesson or view our complete list of past free lessons.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of one of the world's most beloved novels, this month's free lesson comes from the To Kill a Mockingbird Activity Pack and includes three pre-reading activities: Identifying Allusion I, Identifying Allusions II, and Socio-Historical Forces.

Click here to download your free lesson or view our complete list of past free lessons.

Why We Need Common Standards

by Douglas Grudzina

Well, the big “ed-news” the past couple of weeks is, of course, the release of the final draft Common Core State Standards. These are the product of a year-long cooperative effort of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, for people who like initials) and the National Governors Association (NGA, pretty dull initials by comparison).

They figure pretty prominently in the federal government’s “Race to the Top” initiative. You can see the standards here.

I actually think they’re pretty good standards. Of course, I’m in the camp that wholeheartedly endorses the idea of common, national standards for education. Here’s why.

First of all, despite a lot of the verbiage of those who oppose such standards, national standards are not new. What we now call the College Board was founded in 1900 with the express purpose of codifying college-entrance standards. Their intent was not to inform member colleges what they should look for in their applicants but to inform high schools across the country what they were looking for. (Their efforts, of course, resulted in the development of the SAT.)

Read more of Why We Need Common Standards at the Prestwick Café Blog.

Prestwick House Takes to the High Seas

Each year, the art department comes up with a concept and creates a "class photo" of all current PH employees. In years past, PH staffers have been recast as a group from a retirement home, school children, and even the characters from the Beatles' Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

This year, PH has taken to the high seas in honor of our newly revised Treasure Island cover, so we are going with a pirate theme. Each week, we will be adding more individual class photos and outtakes to our Facebook page leading up to the big reveal of the entire project! Check out some of the photos below or visit Facebook to see the complete album!

This Month at the Prestwick Café Blog

Check out what's happening at the Prestwick Café Blog — and be sure to stop by our Facebook and Twitter pages for more fun and useful information!

Also, if you have something to say about education or literature, and are interested in submitting a guest blog post, email annie@prestwickhouse.com for more details!

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