JESSICA L. HOFFMAN, WILLIAM H. TEALE, AND JUNKO YOKOTA
Virtually all teachers in the early grades value reading aloud as an essential classroom literacy practice. Decades of research document that reading aloud to kindergartners through second-graders promotes development of early literacy skills and establishes a foundation for positive attitudes toward literacy (Van Kleeck, Stahl, & Bauer 2003; Trelease 2013).
Specifically, reading aloud builds oral language and vocabulary (e.g., Hargrave & Sénéchal 2000; Wasik & Bond 2001; Blewitt et al. 2009), listening comprehension—a precursor to reading comprehension (e.g., Brabham & Lynch-Brown 2002; Zucker et al. 2010)—content knowledge (Pappas & Varelas 2004; Hoffman, Collins, & Schickedanz 2015), concepts of print (Piasta et al. 2012), and alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness (Aram 2006; Brabham, Murray, & Bowden 2006). Equally important, reading aloud is one way we enculturate young children into literacy—helping them acquire the language, values, practices, and dispositions of the literate world (Heath 1983).
Interacting with complex texts through read-aloud discussions
Not all read-alouds are created equal, however. Different approaches to reading aloud in early childhood classrooms have recently garnered increased attention in the United States because of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The standards call for all students to engage with complex texts that offer opportunities for higher-level thinking (for a discussion of complex text, see CCSS for English Language Arts, Appendix A [NGA & CCSSO 2010]). Because most children kindergarten through second grade have not yet developed foundational reading skills well enough to independently read complex picture books, read-alouds offer the most robust opportunities for such interactions to occur (IRA 2012) (see “Literacy Instruction With Complex Literature Aligned With Common Core State Standards”).
Read-alouds that engage young children with complex texts rely on interactive discussions focused on interpretations of texts that may vary with the backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of the children listening. In other words, discussing multiple interpretations of texts helps children realize that there are many possible responses to complex literature. Interactive read-aloud discussions focused on interpretations of complex texts promote basic comprehension and have the potential to extend from basic comprehension to analysis of text elements, integration of ideas to make connections, and critical evaluation of the texts themselves and the ideas in them.
Read-aloud discussions that include complex processing of texts by young children have been considered in terms of children’s literary understanding (Sipe 2000, 2007; Pantaleo 2007; Hoffman 2011), and in studies of children’s development of critical literacies (Vasquez 2010) and multiliteracies (Crafton, Brennan, & Silvers 2007). These studies reveal how teachers and 5- to 8-year-old children can work collaboratively to construct multilayered interpretations of texts in read-alouds (see “Why the Book Matters for Literary Discussion in the Early Grades”).
Characteristics of literature that support complex processing in read-aloud discussions
Although how to read is a frequent topic of studies in the read-aloud literature, much less often researched is the issue of what to read—how the quality of literature impacts the quality of the read-aloud discussion (Teale, Yokota, & Martinez 2008). Essentially, some children’s books provide more to think and talk about than others. To help children process complex texts in read-aloud discussions, it is important for teachers to first choose texts that can support complex interpretations. Although this article focuses on choosing high-quality narrative literature or stories, similar principles apply to selecting informational books. Appropriate narratives for young children contain accounts of connected events that typically surround a central problem and lead to a resolution.
The following sections outline characteristics of high-quality narrative children’s literature to guide teachers’ selections of texts. For each characteristic, we begin with a definition and explanation, followed by an exemplar text. The exemplar texts include all of the characteristics of quality narrative literature. In the interest of space, we use each book selection to illustrate a single characteristic. We also present online and print resources to help teachers find and select complex children’s literature (see “Resources for Locating Complex Children’s Literature”).
Thematically rich issues
Theme is a broad, overarching idea in a text that is usually communicated implicitly through multiple features of the narrative, including plot, character, character actions, dialogue, and setting. Theme is considered a central literary element of narrative, and thus discussion of theme is important in building young readers’ capacity to understand narratives as more than sequences of events. In some cases, the theme may be expressed as a moral, but many books appropriate for children kindergarten through second grade express themes in more subtle and multifaceted ways, much like literature for older children and adults. Because theme is abstract and implicit, readers must engage deeply with a book to consider theme and will often interpret different themes within the same text.
One book with rich thematic possibilities implied through character and plot is The Empty Pot, by Demi (1990). In this book, the aging emperor of China announces that the next emperor will be the child who grows a seed in a year’s time. Children from all over China come to receive their seed from the emperor. A year later, they return with their flowering plants—all except Ping, who, despite his best efforts, has been unable to grow anything at all. It turns out the emperor had cooked all the seeds before distributing them. Ping, the only honest child to come before the emperor, is rewarded with an appointment as the next emperor.
The following are examples of themes in this story:
Sense of self. Ping experiences both shame and pride when he goes before the emperor.
Doing one’s best. Though Ping appears to be unsuccessful at fulfilling the emperor’s task, he does not give up.
Honesty. Despite feeling incompetent, Ping brings his empty pot before the emperor amidst a sea of children with beautiful flowering plants.
High-quality narratives include round characters—characters who are dynamic, changing, and malleable. In contrast, flat (stock) characters are stable, fixed, and unresponsive to differences in particular events or characters. In other words, round characters are like real people—they act, think, and speak differently depending on the immediate context.
Kevin Henkes is a master of character development in children’s books. In his book Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse (1996), readers are introduced to a girl-mouse character with a new purse who is quite self-absorbed. Lilly cannot wait to show the other children at school the purple purse, but when she shares it with them at an inopportune time, her teacher takes the purse away and says he will keep it until the end of the day. Lilly grows despondent at having her prized possession confiscated and then becomes increasingly enraged at being put in time-out. By the
end of the day she is furious with her teacher, even drawing a picture depicting him as a monstrous figure. However, when her teacher hands her the purse as she leaves for the day, Lilly finds a note and treats from the teacher inside it and suddenly realizes how “small” she feels. Thus, Lilly is depicted as a round character who exhibits a range of emotions and also grows through her experience. As she becomes less self-centered, she learns to temper her emotions and behavior more appropriately for the social situation.
Engaging, complex illustrations
Narrative picture books are a unique form of narrative literature in that they construct meaning through the interaction between text and illustrations. High-quality narrative picture books involve an artful, synergistic blending of text and illustration in which the meaning from the text and the illustrations are interconnected so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This complex relationship between text and illustration is known as transmediation, and it demands constant construction and reconstruction of meaning from text to image and back (Sipe 1998). Research on children’s use of illustrations to construct meaning in picture books during teacher read-alouds has demonstrated that even young children are quite capable of transmediating text and image, especially when supported by the teacher (Sipe & Bauer 2001; Sipe 2007).
The book April and Esme, Tooth Fairies, by Bob Graham (2010), is a sophisticated example of how an author artfully combines words and illustrations to create a rich, sophisticated narrative. This fantasy book depicts the first time two young tooth fairies exchange a lost tooth for a coin. Graham’s story begins before the title page, as 7-year-old tooth fairy April is shown on her cell phone. The text, which provides her side of the conversation, indicates a request to pay a tooth fairy visit to the caller’s grandson, Daniel. April, thrilled beyond belief to be asked, convinces her (ponytailed) father and her (tattooed) mother that she and her younger sister Esme are up to the task. After a number of tense moments on the mission to collect Daniel’s tooth and deliver the coin, the sisters prevail and return home, travelling across a dangerous highway, to excited and proud parents.
Throughout the book Graham creates a subtle interplay between text and illustration. Good examples of this are the three double-page spreads in the book depicting the formidable highway, with its constant string of huge, fast-moving 18-wheelers, contrasted with the tiny tooth fairy cottage and the almost minuscule tooth fairies. In one illustration the parents are shown in the lower left corner of the page while April and Esme hover in the upper right corner, framed by the white moon, “lift(ing) off into the night.” Large trucks loom between these two images. The visual contrast effectively conveys the scale and danger of April and Esme’s mission.
High-quality narrative literature includes rich and mature language—words and phrases that develop complex meaning and imagery for the reader. Such text introduces young readers to words that may be new or somewhat unknown as well as to familiar words used in new ways (e.g., figurative language). Rich language is not flowery or longwinded; rather, it is carefully crafted by the author, who chooses each word and structures each sentence to create an original, artistic, and tightly constructed text.
Jamela’s Dress, by Niki Daly (1999), is the story of a young girl in South Africa who unintentionally destroys fabric that her mother was going to use to make a new dress, when she gets wrapped up (literally) in her own desire to dress up. Daly carefully constructs his language to create imagery for the reader through word meanings and sound quality. For example, in a close reading of the sentence, “Dreamily, Jamela swayed between the folds of material as they flapped and wrapped around her into a dress,” readers feel the breeze blowing through the material, long and slow at first, “swayed between the folds of material,” followed by two short, quick snaps of wind that “flapped and wrapped” the material around Jamela, seemingly through no fault of her own. In other places, Daly fluidly infuses imagery through simile—“Down the road went Jamela, proud as a peacock.” At other times, it is the simplicity of language that contributes to the meaning, such as the dawning dread readers experience when Jamela’s mother calls to check on her but “there was no answer.” Words and language are Daly’s artistic tools to create rich images for his readers.
Engaging, complex plot
Plot is the series of events in a story and the relationships among the events, particularly how they relate to the narrative’s problem and resolution. An engaging, complex plot interests readers and drives their desire to know what happens next, especially in relation to a story’s resolution. Although older, more sophisticated readers can engage with problems far removed from their life experiences, younger children typically engage best with plots that relate to their more limited experiences and perspectives (Schickedanz & Collins 2012).
In Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Max misbehaves and is sent to bed without his supper. His room transforms into a forest, and soon he sails into the land of the Wild Things, who name him King and honor him with a Wild Rumpus. But Max becomes homesick and returns to his house to find his supper waiting for him, still hot.
This plot essentially revolves around disobedience, frustration with parents, thoughts and dreams, and perhaps even real instances of running away—all issues that resonate in young children’s lives. Sendak’s text and illustrations work together in a seamless exploration of plot paralleled with character—Max’s journey is both a dream of a physical journey (the plot) and an instance of an emotional journey (character). Sendak’s plot prompts children to consider issues central to childhood.
In this article, we have provided examples of features of high-quality narrative literature that can support complex processing of texts in read-aloud discussions. The texts are not meant to be used as a short reading list for teachers, but rather as exemplars of the wide body of high quality children’s literature available. Children’s literature that is carefully crafted with the characteristics we discussed can support read-aloud experiences through which teachers apprentice children into complex processing of texts. Frequent opportunities to collaboratively process complex texts in the early grades help children learn how to approach such texts both as emergent readers and, later, as independent ones, thus contributing to their lifelong development as skilled readers.
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Two types of routines that is really predominate and potentially harmful in the classroom is how teachers reward and punish students in the classroom. Too many times teachers use food as a reward or punish and/or use physical activity as a punishment, this creates negative perceptions of food and physical activities.
To help promote child's health food should not be used as a reward and physical activity should not be used as a punishment but it should be used as a reward. One specific way to use physical activity as a reward is having a dance party be a reward; this is slightly mentioned in this article but I have linked at the bottom more details and teachers reactions to dance parties. To help make having dance parties become a routine way of rewarding the class, the teacher can create a point system of how the class can get points and have to work as a class to get a certain number of points. This also helps foster the necessary skills for PBL to happen because this forces students to work as a whole group by collaborating and communicating on how to keep the whole class on track as well as establishing conference when there is a problem with the group efforts (e.g. one student reminding another student to behave so they can get points for the dance party).
This link really addresses all the questions for this project on space, as it shows what kind of spaces to create and materials needed but there are links below that I used to help support my findings and to define the purpose of learning centers. This link shows that a classroom should have separate spaces (centers) for a small group to work with a teacher, computers, literacy, math, science, and writing; also link one adds the need for a whole group area and a listening area, while link two has many more such as an art center. In this original link it shows that students are assigned to a particular activity for the literacy and math center and the other centers are free centers with many activities and games that they can freely pick from. Each activity in the center is put into labeled boxes on shelves with any additional materials needed and students names are on clips that are put on paper plates that are posted on the wall.
Link two gives an amazing detailed descriptions of the purpose of each center and the skills that are gained from each center; this document breaks it down by how centers can help students with sensory, cognitive, emotional, social and physical skills. For example the art center allows student to use sensory skills through seeing and feeling different materials of art, cognitive skills through decision making and problem solving, emotional skills through expressing their feelings through art, social skills through group activity or side by side play, and physical skills though fine motor development by painting and drawing.
My purpose of having such a variety of centers is to help encourage students to do what they like, as well as encouraging the whole child development by the way students always have engaging activities that they can work on at almost any time and they have challenging activities to learn from that have been personalized and supported by the teacher. All the activities in these centers are changed weekly and the literacy and math center activities are personally assigned to help give students appropriately challenging work. This also creates a resilient worker because students know that when they are done with their work early they are to persist their learning and go to a learning center. Students need to be adaptive, empathetic and flexible (resilient dispositions) because they might not be able to go to the center they want (i.e. too many people are at one center or didn't finish their literacy and/or math center work). The centers forces students to practice resilient skills as they problem solve with the math and science centers and are creative in the art center, as well as the whole time students are using reasoning, communication, and decision making skills to be able to choose and work within a center with other people.
General purpose for each center:
1) Small Group Area - teachers need an area to help give about four or five students on the same ability level individual attention to help reenforce learning.
2) Computers - students need to learn 21st centers skills and should have the exposer to computers.
3) Literacy - students need a reading area to encourage independent reading and to give extra practice.
4) Math - for students that like math this is an opportunity for extra math and often students need extra practice with math no matter how proficient they are. Also can help encourage STEAM.
5)Science - encouraging STEAM is now very important even though time for science has be continually minimized. Students need the extra time and encouragement to enjoy and engage in science. The teacher in this original link only had literacy and math centers be centers with required work, but I might include science and writing as well in my classroom.
6)Writing - it is an important practice and this center would encourage creative writing which is becoming more and more rare in schools.
7)Listening Center - fun way to practice reading and comprehension (I would include comprehension questions to the recordings).
8)Art - this is also something becoming rare in schools and I think it is important to try and support any students aspirations to art.
Also another mention from this original link is that the seats are in grouped in pods which will help PBL because they are constantly working in groups. I found another link on seating arrangement that I did not link but it suggested using zip-ties to hold desks together. I thought that was a good idea because these pods have a lot of group baskets that can fall through the cracks or as the link says desks can become a mess by being all moved around with the group work. Zip-ties are a ways to create a table to help assist PBL but each student will have their own learning space.
So I feel that routines is hardest group of this project to sum up because there are so many routines that go on in the classroom. This is quite a long list of mostly "must have routines" in the classroom, the list is long but limiting! Having all of these routines, plus a few other necessary ones, are all extremely imperative for supporting a classroom that uses a lot of PBL because it is necessary for students to be able to walk around the class and know how to get their materials. With set routines, students know how to move around in the classroom without creating conflicts and will have the access the things they need to anything. This link did not provide steps on how to implement these routines so I found a video page (link one, at bottom) that talks about many of these routines and some additional routines. Also my link on space (link two here) has a lot of pictures that imply how I would implement a lot of these routines on this original link.
Link one has four videos; one about morning routines and the others about attendance and schedules, through out the day routines, and ending the day. The video on morning routines says that the teacher posts the morning routine outside of the classroom so students always know what to do as they walk in. As the student walk in they are to unpack their backpacks (put lunches in a lunch bin, turn in homework and hand in any notes from home), put away backpack and jacket, move their attendance pin (or person) to "present," make sure they have two sharpened pencils, and check the front board for further instruction. The front board will then have instructions about the morning work; I would have morning work already at their desk waiting for them (in my experience this has worked the best). The attendance video says that as students walk in they should mark themselves into the classroom because then it is quick to see who is missing and then the teachers don't have to take the time to check in students individually (in addition to this, for spacial reasoning the markers should be away from the backpacks to avoid major over crowding in the class).
For routines through out the day video, most of the video talked about how students leave to and from the class room and how to walk in the halls. When students need to go to the bathroom they are to see if there is a boy bathroom pass or a girl bathroom pass and they are allowed to go to bathroom as long as there is a pass for them and the teacher has not otherwise said no bathrooms; also students are to sign out when they go to the bathroom so they can be thinking about time management and for the teacher to be overseeing their time management. Also when students with special services have to leave the classroom for those services they are to sign themselves out as well. As for when students line up, there should be a specific order to the line that the teacher has created. The front and back of the line should have the students that have not had any behavioral problems because they can help move by the line and don't create problems with holding the door. To help students remember the order the teachers can assign students a number and put a number on a tile on the floor so they know their space in line.
The end of the day video is when they gave a description of all the jobs that students should do because most of the jobs should be done at the end of the day so everyone comes to the class the next morning totally fresh because they have all just helped clean up the classroom. So at the end of the day there will be time for students to do their jobs which can be jobs like pencil monitor, floor monitor, board cleaner, librarian and so on. Then they will grab their homework folders and check their mailbox for any notices that need to go home. Then they will pack up all their belongings and wait in their space in line.
The link two shows how some more specific routines that would be carried out. For example with pencil sharpening, students are to not bother sharpening their pencil and should just get a new sharp pencil from the pencil box and return unsharpened pencils in the unsharpened pencil box. Also when students miss work they can use the morning time to go over to the baskets (individual baskets for each day of the week) that have all the work that students did that day; I would ask the students to go get their work themselves and then come to me for further instructions. This tactic is also beneficial if someone has to leave early for the day without notice or if someone is going to be out for the next few days because then students can still grab all the work they need and can just ask the teacher for the extra details. I think that they most important routine that link two had was the mailboxes. Students need mailboxes to get their work back and teachers need a mailboxes to receive homework and letters from home. Students will know to turn in their mail to their teacher and to go pick up mail from their mailbox as part of the morning routine; part of the end of the day routines will include someone being a mailman and putting students work into their mailboxes so they can be collected the next morning.
All of this helps the class be more functional for PBL because students will know all the routines of when it is okay to get out of their desks and will know where recourses are. When students feel what they need to do is outside of all the normal routines and expectations then they can signal to the teacher that they are in need of assistance.
By setting clear expectations on day 1, students understand what you're looking for from the start. Allowing them to help set expectations increases their engagement and gives them sense of ownership over classroom rules.
Michaela Vila's insight:
Trying to look for ways to establish these dispositions in the class room, I found this video on how the teacher sets expectations in the classroom with the students on day one. First the teacher tells the students about a classroom management device he uses called "give me five." When the teacher says "give me five" students are expected to keep hands to themselves, keep their feet still, be silent, have their eyes on the speaker, and have a ready mind. I thought this was useful because this is a really basic expectation of the students to help keep the class calm before they have begun to do any work; it is simple, easy to learn, and has a catchy phrase to help students remember the five things, so even though this isn't talking about dispositions I would like to use this idea to just create the initial classroom management tactic and then focus on generating the dispositions that are important for our class.
After the teacher taught them "give me five," he had the students work in groups to come up with rules that they think are important in the classroom. With the group's work, they had a whole class discussion about what are the most important rules that they came up with. To tailor this so it focuses on dispositions rather than rules, I would have the class discussion talk about what those rules means and what dispositions they are connected to. I would let this conversation help raise all the dispositions that I want to have in the classroom. The rules that they create are usefully examples of what this dispositions mean and if they come up with rules that support more dispositions than I had originally in mind, I will still add that those dispositions to the list that year because it is important that children feel that they are creating the rules (allows them to be more engaged and feel safe) but I will make sure that they still are mentioning all the dispositions that I want to have in the classroom.
I found this article as following up to the class management article on inclusive classrooms, because this is all new to me. This article makes it more clear to me how to do this peer mediators. Now only does there need to peer relations but everyone in the classroom must be apart of the "peacemaker program" and it starts with all students learning how to negotiate conflict which is a very important life skill. I think that this a great way to create a classroom climate for inclusive classrooms and regular classrooms. My insight major from this is that maybe all classrooms should have these peer mediators because it seems to stimulate many important life skills!
Today's guest blogger is Thom Markham, a psychologist, educator, and president of Global Redesigns, an international consulting organization focused on project-based learning, social-emotional learnin
Michaela Vila's insight:
Before reading this article most of the time when I thought about or visualized social-emotional education, I saw it as something totally separate from normal classroom instructions and mostly revolving around a class meeting, where students work out their own problems. After reading this article I realized that social-emotional learning can very easily be apart of the normal classroom instruction, as it parallels with PBL very nicely and it does not have to be the students working out their own problems because social-emotional education can also be about teaching social-emotional issue from around the world that do not have to directly effect the student. Using PBL can facilitate social-emotional learning into the classroom because teachers can provide students with projects that moves them emotionally to want to learn more or be active about a topic and it can teach them how to live amongst this highly globally socialized world. I learned how these type of projects can establish a "drive and thrive" culture where students feel emotionally driven to thrive in this social world by using PBL and because of this social-emotional education does not have to be limited to class meetings and helping students through their own problems.
In its comprehensive case study report on socially inclusive schools, Special Olympics' Project UNIFY identified the common factors across schools that had created a bridge from social inclusion pro
Michaela Vila's insight:
One thing that I have been particularly interested in this semester in learning about how to effectively handle an inclusive classroom. I thought this article was very interesting because it might suggest that using project-based learning can help inclusive classrooms be more socially oriented. The article says that activities are to be interesting to the student and student centered, which are some of the main attributes of project-based learning. I thought that suggestion #5 was very insightful because it changed my idea that in an inclusive classroom we should focus on having students help other students with disabilities. Now I see that we should find ways to have everyone play an active part in the learning process; if everyone feels like they have their own contributing part in the classroom then there is a more positive social environment created in this inclusive classroom rather than the inclusive students feeling like they have to always be helped. I liked this articles idea on how to use the buddy system. I liked that using the buddy system didn't have to use pairs, it could use trios as well. In my future classroom, if I had a lot of students with disabilities in it I would use this idea of a trio buddy system to help there be more of a positive social dynamic in the class between the students with disabilities and regular students.
See how the skill development and acquisition of core content needed to develop globally competent citizens comes together with the rigorous skills and core content needed for college and careers.
Michaela Vila's insight:
After reading this I was surprised by how closely related Common Core is with global competence. I wish that CCSS made global competence and awareness more explicit, but this article points out how Common Core allows teachers to have many opportunities to use global competence and awareness as a tool to incorporate these standards. As I have been finding readings for content curation, I found a lot of people stating that CCSS allows for global competence but I didn't understand how till now. Common Core's standards require students to perform skills that are needed in each of the four domains of global competence but there is no direct mention of global competence, so I am really left wondering why isn't this more explicit when there is so much connection!
For many of us, Oscar week can serve as the annual reminder of how many great grown-up films we have yet to see, and how many kids' movies we've already seen -- over and over and over. Next time you
Michaela Vila's insight:
I think this is a really great way for teachers to make the best use of the "down time" or extra indoor time in their classrooms. Showing children foreign films lets children analysis culture in a way that is easily understandable for them. I would like to use this in my own future class time because children always get excited over movies but I am left wondering, after the movie how can I get them to want to investigate the new part of the world that is being discovering on their own and get them to take action beyond what we do in the classroom. I think this would be a good outlet to inspire global competency at home because maybe if students are introduced topics at school they can go home to do the investigations on their own.
At the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in Pacoima, a low-income area of Los Angeles, California, we began thinking seriously about all of these issues six years ago. Since then, we have globalized the curriculum for the K-12 students at our five schools. The result is that the 2,700 students from our low-income, mostly Hispanic community have recently become some of the nation's most globally-savvy young people.
We are in a Global Age! This article does a really great job of highlighting why we need to make children globally competent. What I need to do in my classroom is not just raise global awareness, but I need to stress why all countries are so interrelated and then inspire students to take action. In my future class I will use this term a Global Age to help stress the need for global awareness and competence.
In class we talk a lot about how PBL calls for many subject areas to come together. This is a very useful chart that I should be using in my future classrooms when creating a PBL project that facilitate CCSS. This chart is limiting but I think this is a great example of what I should be doing in the future to best combine PBL and CCSS.
Actively engage students with our ELA (English Language Arts) and Math Common Core State Standards (CCSS) kits! Each kit includes a “best-in-class” assortment of CCSS-aligned tools to cover all the domains for kindergarten through grade 4.
Wow this is something new to me. The company Learning Resources created kits for teachers and parents that have games and workbooks to support the CCSS. The company identifies what items go with what CCSS and has example activities. Great resource if you are unsure how to make a CCSS fun.
10 Tips for Raising a Global Child Huffington Post As our children become adults, going off to college or into the workforce, we must help them apply these skills so they can become the global workers that organizations demand whether they're in...
This connects what we have been talking about in class but goes deeper and focuses about the home. A key take away is that children must feel confident in their home in order to help understand other cultures and to feel comfortable in different places around the world. Teachers should understand the importance of home when trying to teach global competency because the home acts as an explore base.
Yoga article: Yoga teachers, parents, and educators team up to bring yoga to elementary schoolchildren.
Michaela Vila's insight:
For another unique activity that I would like to have in the classroom is yoga. With the decrease in physical education, despite younger students need to move around and have physical activity, I thought that yoga was an important activity to put in the classroom. It gets students to do (and be encouraged to do) physical activity which is important for students in elementary education because it is getting students to have a healthier life style through exercise and yoga can do a lot for mental health by learning how to relax and mediate (whole child development). A teacher could chose to use yoga to help build global competence because yoga originated in a foreign country and has a lot of language and references based off of another culture. I thought that this was a really fun and potentially a really culturally fun activity to put into the classroom. The link suggests doing yoga once every other week but I think I would want to do it at least once every week to reinforce the importance to physical activity. For each yoga lesson I would want to do a warm up, introduce or continue working on two poses and then finish with a game and/or an activity talking about its cultural relevance.
With PBL being in the classroom and calling for so much collaboration and communication, I thought that peer mediation was an important unique routine to put into the classroom. Peer mediation allows students to work on the conflict resolution skills and thinking about someone else's perspective (a skill needed for global competency). I thought that was partially useful for PBL because with PBL the teacher is going to be having to do a lot of overseeing projects, making sure students are on the right path, and making interjections and comments about what students should be doing next. Students should take it upon themselves to try and solve the conflict first before they ask for the assistance of the teacher. This link was rather specific and seemed to be for more serious conflict but I would like to adapt a more general approach to peer mediation to serve for both minor and more serious conflicts.
Steps for my peer mediation.
1) Identify there is a problem between two parties and agree for the need of mediation.
2) Call on mediator.
3) Both sides tell the mediator what happened. Mediator asks if there is anything that either party would like to add.
4) Mediator asses the situation and proposes a few alternatives.
5) If no settlement can be made then they can tell the teacher that there is a problem.
6) If the teacher feels the need to address the conflict in that moment they can, otherwise then they can ask all three groups to fill out a mediation sheet (shown in the link) about what has been done for the mediation so far and sign an agreement to "keep cool" until a solution has been agreed to.
Classroom Rules - RESPECT Change the C to Clean Up! Great for Art room
Michaela Vila's insight:
I feel like this is how teachers displayed rules a lot in the classrooms that I had growing up, but I think it is an even better way to display dispositions in the classroom because you can have the one disposition up at the top like "respect" and then spell out the disposition vertically and have rules that are examples of the disposition (I think rules are necessary even when you have a focus on dispositions just because the classroom calls for many specific expectations and having rules with dispositions makes it clear what the overall expectation is). In this example for respect, the R which stands for "respect yourself and others" is an example of what respect is in the classroom. This tactic allows children to have a reminder of what they are striding to perform and learn (e.g. respect) and specific rules of what they need to do to allow for this performance and learning. This allows adults to actively support how children are learning the depositions and students can feel this support with the abundance of visuals of what the expectations are in the classroom (whole child development).
When I was looking for ways to display rules, I think that this kind of chart was one of the most common ways that I saw teachers displaying rules and I liked it because one thing that I found interesting about my findings was how specific some teachers got. If you look at link one below, you can see an example of a teacher that did one of these charts that was rules just for group work. So instead of writing a disposition vertically you would write the topic that rules apply to (e.g. groups). I like this idea because it highlights the specific expectations for particular situations. Other examples that I saw were charts for when a sub was there or rules for a learning center. I think it is important to have a lot of these expectations written around the room because it acts as a constant reminder for students and is a good point of reference when addressing a conflict in the classroom.
Because I think it is important to build student's autonomy so they can feel safe and engaged in the classroom, I really liked this idea of a class creating a venn diagram of the expectations of the teacher and the expectations of the students with hula hoops, link two; to make this an autonomy building activity I would make sure that the students are generating the expectations of the teacher themselves. It is my belief that in order to create a positive learning environment students must feel that teachers need to follow the rules too so they don't have the attitude that the teacher is only telling them what to do because students are not going to want to respond well to that. If students see that teachers also have expectations to uphold, then they will be more understanding that they are both working together to create this learning environment. From this I liked the idea of it's visual representation, as well as the idea that teachers need to have explicit expectations that students know they are being upheld to.
After our discussion in class, I think that it is important to establish and create a focus on dispositions in the classroom (even when working with the younger elementary students). This article extends on our class discussion by saying if teachers were to teach specific rules and skills (i.e. wait to talk when someone else is talking) important dispositions (i.e. respect) become ignored. The article claims that learning dispositions is what facilitates the motivation to be a life-long learner. This claim shows why dispositions are so important to our mission, creating a life-long learner allows students to be continually expanding their knowledge of the rapidly changing world and thus allowing them to sustain and/or find a place for themselves in the world. Also being a life-long learner supports people being resilient because it creates the persistence of learner and it makes them take initiative and responsibility for their own learning. From this life-long learning, students can also gain important skills of resilience such as problem solving, creativity, and decision making. Also life-long learning can arguably help establish global competence because it can create the desire to investigate the world, recognize perspectives, communicate ideas, and take action as they are aware of the world being in constant change.
This article highlights four of the dispositions that I would like to establish in my classroom, independence, creativity, self-motivation, and resilience, but I would also like to add respect and responsibility in my classroom. These specific dispositions helps assures whole development of children because students learn how to be and feel safe through practicing respect and responsibility, they learn to be engaged though practicing creativity, self-motivation, and resilience and they learn to be challenge themselves through practicing self-motivation and resilience.
Finally creating these dispositions in the classroom will help support PBL because these dispositions are important to put into place in order for PBL to work smoothly by having the class most effectively collaborate, create, communicate, discover, and publish content together. For example, teaching the dispositions of respect and responsibility will teach children to work more constructively with each other because the will be polite and understanding of the people they are working with. Another example is resilience, PBL calls for a lot of resilience because most PBL projects don't give students explicit instructions and forces children create the type of finished products that they chose to design; students will need resilience to get through the problem solving, organizing, reasoning, communication and decision making that is needed for creating a final product in PBL.
I notice several students listening to music while busy at work. I have no good reason to ask that they remove their headphones and turn off their devices. As I walk around the room, I admire the ele
Michaela Vila's insight:
What a controversy that seems to be created over whether listening to music helps study or hinders it (Read comments to this article as well)! I really did not like this article because it was too one sided and it about older students, but I found it on my tweetdeck and I think the idea of music in the classroom is very interesting. The one argument in this article had that is important to keep in mind is that listening to music can decrease memory capacity on other tasks done at the same time; I would have to agree with this on a minor note. In the comments in the article and from my own experience it is also said that music helps to distress the studying process and allows people to keep working when they don't want to, so I wanted find an article that talks about music being a good thing in the classroom. This was a surprising difficult task. I did find this article linked below that says it can be a good way for students to block out other students and it keeps them focused; I would also agree with this and go one further to say that it probably keeps more students quite because they are listening rather than talking.The article focuses on allowing students to use their iPods in a classroom and also mentions that it is a good reward system. Even though I really did not like this first attached article, I am so glad it left me thinking about how to approach using music in the classroom because I think it is a great idea. http://www.centerdigitaled.com/classtech/Music-in-the-Classroom-Distraction-or-Study-Tool.html
"The whole morning meeting not only sets a really good tone for the students, but it sets a tone for me." - Teacher in Louisville, Kentucky
When I first learned about the Morning Meeting model, I wa
Michaela Vila's insight:
Before this article I viewed a morning meeting as a tool for organizing the classroom, to establish a plan, make any clarifications and to start things off on a positive note, but after reading this article I was surprised on how much is can help create a positive classroom climate. I think that this gives students a chance to work out issues at the begin of the day on their own in a constructive environment, maybe before they rise into a bigger conflict later in the day. I use morning meetings at the camp I work at, but again it has been only for organization and a pick-me-up starter activity. From now on I want to use this time to focus on any issues in the classroom to give students a chance to work out their own issues in the morning before they arise into a bigger conflict.
Disruptive behavior continues to be one of the most challenging issues that schools face today. Even one seriously incompliant student can threaten teaching and learning for the rest of the class. An
Michaela Vila's insight:
This is an amazing persuasive article that left me thinking we should never expel or suspend students. After this read, I gained insight on the shocking racial discrepancies between the expulsion and suspensions of African American students and white students. At first African American students doubled white students in expulsions and suspensions, but now it more like three and a half times. The zero tolerance is not working, but creating a positive classroom climate does help (in some cases by over 50%). At the end of this article is nine helpful alternative approaches. I was really interested in number nine, by having peer mediation to resolve classroom conflicts. I want to look more into peer mediation because I think it potentially something I want to use in my classroom.
How you can encourage global perspectives in your students: Teachers from John Stanford International School in Seattle share a few favorite strategies.
Michaela Vila's insight:
This video gives me insight on how to give meaning to raising global competency and awareness, by asking students to reflect on why it is important to examine cultures outside of their own. In my future classroom I would like to foliow this teacher's practice of not always telling the students why they are investigating an essential question, but asking them to reflect and share why they think this investigation is important. Also there is a really interesting "festival of lights" project to help examine religions in this video that I would like to learn more about. I liked that the teacher used this project to focus on global competence and told them to take action by creating presentations. This gave me insight that "taking action" doesn't always have to be big and elaborate, just as long as the child are engaged and teaching others. I liked this video in particular because think that learning religion is a lot an important part of global competence and awareness when often teachers find it a touchy subject and refrain from teaching it.
Have you ever wondered how a student could interact with a classmate who lives on the other side of the world? This video explains just some of the ways in w...
Michaela Vila's insight:
This is a very literal sense of global competence in a classroom because student's peers and teachers can all be from different countries. In this video one of the students highlights how culturally rich her classroom becomes since her classes are online with people in other countries. I feel like the chances of me working in an environment like this is slim, but this video helps me understand that it maybe more of a possibility than I think. One would think after watching these videos that these types of classrooms are effective and might gain popularity, College Park Academy has a model that is very similar to this, so future teachers like me should become familiarized with these kinds of schools. Though some of us like myself might find this classroom a little too futuristic, but lets think the opportunities to build globally competent/aware classrooms is endless. Maybe this is a good thing for our future!
Wow so many little weird things about this article! It says that charter schools are focus on PBL more than traditional public schools and that elementary school grades are more likely to combined subject areas for PBL projects. I wish this article talked more about how we should challenge this! Not to mention I hate this last line "Together these findings suggest caution in embracing this practice unless the conditions for success are in place." I think we need more of a practice makes perfect attitude here!
Previously in this series on going deeper with project-based learning, we've explored the importance of teacher reflection in teacher reflection in PBL, considered how to plan interdisciplinary proje...
This article addresses how to bring together global competency and PBL. It contains links to on going projects that teachers can get their classes involved in. It make take some time, but pulling all of this together will help create meaningful experiences for children.
Educators from the John Stanford International School, in Seattle, Washington, have provided these resources and tools for teaching global competence.
Michaela Vila's insight:
These are some great example units starting at 3rd grade. These units allow students to learn tolerance of other cultures and religion, compare and contrast cultures, and create arguments. This dealt more with the investigating part of global competency but there was also this attacked article about an example school taking action. http://www.edutopia.org/stw-global-competence-k-5
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April 30 has been designated as International Jazz Day by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
International Jazz Day celebrates the historical, cultural, and educational contribution of this popular genre of music. The day aims to spread international awareness about this unique musical style; and to promote the cultural, and social values that Jazz stands for.
Jazz is a uniquely American musical style that emerged out of the slave experience, primarily in southern United States. It is deeply rooted in the rich musical, and cultural traditions of Africa, and is heavily influenced by European music. New Orleans is generally considered to be the birthplace of this popular musical form, which is now seen as a voice of freedom and empowerment, and a statement against injustice, and oppression all around the world.
Today, Jazz has spread all over the globe, and is constantly evolving, being influenced by, and influencing other musical forms and genres.
The initiative to create an International Day of Jazz came from American Jazz pianist, composer, and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Intercultural Dialogues, Herbie Hancock. The purpose of the initiative was to focus global attention to the role that Jazz has played in breaking down race and gender barriers around the world; and in promoting cooperation; mutual understanding, and communication; peace and freedom.
Several activities mark the celebration of International Jazz Day, including Jazz concerts and performances, film screenings, and conference and panel discussions.
The United Nations (UN) officially observes the Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare on April 29 each year.
What do people do
The Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare gives people the chance to pay tribute to the victims of chemical warfare. It also allows governments and organizations to commit or reaffirm their commitment to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an organization that aims to end the threat of chemical weapons and promote the peace and security worldwide.
The Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare is a UN observance and not a public holiday on April 29.
In November 2005 the UN decided to observe a memorial “Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare” on April 29 each year. The date April 29 was chosen for this observance because it was when the Chemical Weapons Convention came into force.
Organizations such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations (UN) actively promote the World Day for Safety and Health at Work on April 28 every year.
What do people do?
The UN, ILO and other organizations, communities, individuals, and government bodies with an interest in workplace health and safety unite on or around April 28 to promote an international campaign known as World Day for Safety and Health at Work. The UN posts this event in its events calendar each year.
Community leaders and organizational representatives often promote the day by speaking out on issues such as workplace health and safety standards. Various media have promoted the day through news articles and broadcast programs. Different types of events and activities that center on workplace health and safety are held in many countries on or around April 28 each year.
The World Day for Safety and Health at Work is an observance and is not a public holiday.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) started observing the World Day for Safety and Health at Work on April 28, 2003. The ILO is devoted to advancing opportunities for people to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. It aims to promote rights at work, encourage decent employment opportunities, boost social protection, and strengthen dialogue in work-related issues.
World Intellectual Property Day is observed on April 26 each year with a variety of events and activities worldwide. It aims to increase people’s awareness and understanding of intellectual property (IP). World Intellectual Property Day is sometimes referred as World IP Day.
What do people do?
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) works together with various government agencies, non-government organizations, community groups and individuals to hold different events and activities to promote World Intellectual Property Day each year. Activities and events may include (but are not exclusive to):
Stage concerts or other public performances centered around the around the World IP Day theme, with the performers delivering messages which encourage respect for creators and creativity.
Essay competitions for young people on themes relating to intellectual property, innovation, piracy, counterfeiting, and other similar issues.
Seminars or free lectures in universities to build awareness of intellectual property and its benefits among students, faculty and researchers.
Exhibits in museums, art galleries, schools and other educational institutions, with presentations explaining the link between exhibitions, innovation and intellectual property.
Some local intellectual and copyright offices may have an open day on or around April 26 to promote World IP Day. Some educational institutions may choose World IP Day as a time to celebrate the works of a notable inventor, artist, designer, or entrepreneur, and link discussions with the important role of intellectual property.
World Intellectual Property Day, also known as World IP Day, is an observance held in many places around the world. It is not designated as a special public holiday.
WIPO is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It is dedicated to developing a balanced and accessible international intellectual property (IP) system, which rewards creativity, stimulates innovation and contributes to economic development while safeguarding the public interest.
WIPO decided in 2000 to designate an annual World Intellectual Property Day to address the perceived gap between IP as a business/legal concept and its relevance to people’s lives. April 26 was chosen as the date upon which the convention establishing WIPO first entered into force in 1970.
WIPO plays a key role in organizing World IP Day. The activities, events and campaigns that focus on World IP Day seek to increase public understanding of what IP really means, and to demonstrate how the IP system fosters not only music, arts and entertainments, but also all products and technological innovations that help to shape the world.
ELLEN TURNER; OPENED KITCHEN TO FEED THE NEEDY OF KNOXVILLE
By LES NEUHAUS
APRIL 25, 2015
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Ellen Turner, who with her twin sister founded the Love Kitchen, which feeds several hundred people a week and drew national attention, died here on Wednesday. She was 87.
Her death was confirmed by Stanley Cash, her great-nephew.
Ms. Turner and her twin sister, Helen Ashe, worked as nurses before founding the Love Kitchen in 1986 in a church basement here with the mission to serve what they called the five H’s: the hungry, homeless, helpless, hopeless and homebound. The Love Kitchen provides clothing and meals from a building on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and delivers food to people who cannot leave their homes.
Dressed in matching outfits and aprons, Ms. Turner and her sister did the cooking and oversaw the work of dozens of volunteers. They appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Secret Millionaire” in 2011 and were the subject of segments on NBC News and CNN.
Patrick Riggins, president of the Love Kitchen’s board, said the sisters often recounted three lessons their father had taught them: “There is only one father, and that is the Father in heaven. There is only one race, the human race. And never take the last piece of bread. Someone may come by in need of it.”
Ms. Turner, who bragged that she was five minutes older than her sister, was born to sharecropper parents, John Liddell and the former Alice White, on March 8, 1928, in Abbeville, S.C. She and her sister were sent almost daily to what was called the “big house” on the farm property to do chores before school.
“They grew up working,” Mr. Riggins said. “Ellen always said the people who owned the land treated them very well. But then there were others who didn’t.”
Mr. Cash noted that Ms. Turner and her sister had a strict religious upbringing. “They grew up their whole life together,” he said. “Dating at that time wasn’t like it is today. Socializing with young ladies was done through a church, on the up and up, not in a dark movie theater.”
He added: “So whenever one of the twins went on a date, the other sister was there, playing third wheel, like a chaperone. Sometimes they would mess with their dates, switching each other on their date to see if he could tell the difference.”
They moved to Knoxville after high school to attend nursing school. Mr. Riggins said the idea to start the Love Kitchen, which is staffed solely by volunteers and operates strictly on donations, came from seeing indigent patients coming into the hospital.
“Ellen was warm, genuine and compassionate,” Gov. Bill Haslam, a former Knoxville mayor, said in a statement. “Her smile could turn around a bad day instantly.”
Ms. Turner’s husband, Leon, died in 2002. Besides her sister and Mr. Cash, survivors include several nephews and nieces.
“It’s like a family there,” Jerri Shelley said of the Love Kitchen, where she has volunteered for nearly 25 years. “This is going to affect the Knoxville community tremendously. There’s so many people that these two women have touched over the years.”
Mary Keefe, a 19-year-old Vermont telephone operator whom her neighbor Norman Rockwell immortalized as his model for the heroine of “Rosie the Riveter,” the World War II feminist anthem that empowered women to leave home and pinch-hit in military plants, died on Tuesday at her home in Simsbury, Conn. She was 92.
Her death was confirmed by her daughter Mary Ellen Keefe.
Mrs. Keefe was a redhead, like the Rosie who appeared on the cover of the Memorial Day issue of The Saturday Evening Post magazine in 1943, but she had never wielded a rivet gun (not until an appearance on the “Tonight” show in the 1990s).
And as portrayed in the painting, she was considerably bulked up from her petite 110 pounds to embody muscular American can-do spirit — an image inspired by Michelangelo’s Isaiah on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. (It is often confused with J. Howard Miller’s wartime “We Can Do It” poster for Westinghouse Electric, from February 1943, showing a biceps-flexing uniformed woman in a red-and-white polka-dot bandanna.)
“Except for the red hair I had at the time, and my face, the rest I don’t think is me at all,” Mrs. Keefe said in a 2002 interview for the Norman Rockwell Museum.
Penny Colman, author of the 1995 book “Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II,” said the Rockwell painting “is iconic because it portrays a rarity — an image of a powerful woman with a don’t-mess-with-me attitude.”
To Chris Crosman, the founding curator of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., which bought the painting in 2009 from a Colorado gallery, the work “is emblematic of a sea change in American culture.”
“Importantly,” he said in a statement, “the artist’s depiction celebrates, even helps to invent, due to mass distribution as a War Bond poster and magazine cover, the beginnings of gender equality.”
In the museum interview, Mrs. Keefe recalled that Rockwell “was trying to get people to realize that all the women could help out with the war effort when the men were away.”
When she posed for his photographer, she wore dungarees, changed from saddle shoes into penny loafers and was equipped with both a visor and superfluous goggles. Rockwell added touches to make her look more feminine, she said, tucking a gold-trimmed compact and lace-edged handkerchief in her pocket and having her wear lipstick, rouge and polished nails — to “make you think of it being a feminist woman, but also working for the war effort,” she said.
Mary Louise Doyle was born in Bennington, Vt., on July 30, 1922. Her father, John, was a logger. Her mother, the former Sarah Smith, operated a restaurant in nearby Arlington, took in boarders and ran a telephone exchange from her house, where neighbors, including Rockwell, came to pay their bill.
Mary Doyle graduated from Temple University, became a dental hygienist and married Robert Keefe, who died in 2003. In addition to her daughter Mary Ellen, she is survived by another daughter, Barbara K. Boska; two sons, William and Robert; 11 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. She lived at various times in Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Rockwell, who painted 321 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, was primed to create Rosie by a 1942 song, “Rosie the Riveter,” by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. They had apparently been inspired by a “Cholly Knickerbocker” syndicated newspaper column by Igor Cassini about Rosalind P. Walter, a 19-year-old high school graduate who had done her part for the war effort by going to work as a riveter in an aircraft factory in Stratford, Conn. (She became a noted benefactor of public television.)
The bandleader Kay Kyser, the vocal harmony group the Four Vagabonds and others recorded the hit song, whose lyrics included these:
All the day long, whether rain or shine
She’s a part of the assembly line
She’s making history, working for victory
Rosie [mimicking the rat-a-tat-tat of a riveter] the riveter
Mrs. Keefe posed as Rosie not for Rockwell but for his photographer, Gene Pelham, in two sessions, lasting about two hours in all. She was paid $5 (roughly $144 in today’s dollars) per session.
In the finished 52-by-40-inch painting, Rosie’s red hair, white skin and blue work shirt are superimposed on an American flag. Her head is adorned by a halo, and her right loafer crushes a copy of Hitler’s manifesto, “Mein Kampf.” She is holding a ham sandwich. Her name is painted on her lunchbox.
Promotional placards advertising the May 29, 1943, issue of The Post featured the cover and the title “Rosie the Riveter,” but the Curtis Publishing Company, according to the local Vermont newspaper, withdrew the placards for fear of infringing on the song’s copyright.
The painting was eventually donated to the Treasury Department’s War Loan Drive, which raffled it off. The winner was identified as Mrs. P. R. Eichenberg of Mount Lebanon, Pa. Art dealers said it was later owned by Chicago Pneumatic and Dresser Industries, makers of rivet guns and drills, and S. B. Lewis, a New York arbitrageur, who auctioned it off at Sotheby’s to the Elliott Yeary Gallery of Aspen, Colo., in 2002 for $4.9 million, which was believed to be the highest price fetched for a Rockwell at public auction at that time.
It was bought, presumably for more, in 2007 for the Crystal Bridges Museum, which was founded by Alice Walton, the Walmart heiress. A museum spokeswoman, Beth Bobbitt, would not disclose the sales figure. “When a work of art is acquired, it is chosen for its contribution to telling the American story,” she said. “The focus on price could detract from the importance of the work.”
Mrs. Keefe was not the only neighbor whom Rockwell recruited to pose for paintings. An uncle of hers, for example, was in Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms.”
“He called me one day and he said, ‘Mary, I apologize, but I made you very large,’ ” Mrs. Keefe recalled before the Sotheby’s sale. “Of course, as a young girl, I said, ‘Oh, that’s all right.’ But when I saw it, that was a different story.”
She was mollified a bit in 1967, however, when she received a letter from Rockwell. “The kidding you took was all my fault,” he wrote, “because I really thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”
Richard Corliss, whose well-informed and spirited movie reviews appeared in Time magazine for 35 years, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71.
His wife, Mary, said the cause was complications of a stroke. He had been in a hospice care center.
A prolific contributor to Time who also wrote profiles, essays on popular culture, and television and theater reviews, Mr. Corliss was known for his firm opinions and punchy prose, melding the forthright Time style and its compact format to a joy in deadline invention.
An unabashed movie fan who believed that a couple of hours in a theater was time well spent no matter what the movie was — “Everything is worth seeing,” he often said, as Time’s Richard Zoglin wrote in an obituary on the magazine’s website — he was nonetheless hardly a pushover as a critic and occasionally relished the contrarian view.
Among the popular films he disdained were Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H,” the basis for the television show about American Army surgeons during the Korean War, about which he wrote in The New York Times (before his tenure at Time began) that the supposedly charming and mischievous protagonists were boorish bullies; “Titanic,” the James Cameron hit whose special effects Mr. Corliss praised but whose dramatic storytelling he panned, and whose economic prospects he got spectacularly wrong (“Dead in the water,” he predicted); “A Chorus Line,” Richard Attenborough’s adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical that Mr. Corliss found, at best, inoffensive; and “The Full Monty,” the British comedy about laid-off steelworkers who concoct a striptease act, which he condemned as a formulaically sentimental audience-pleaser, lumping it with “Ghost,” “Cinema Paradiso” and other, in his phrase, “masterpieces of emotional pornography.”
Even so, Mr. Corliss’s work shone brightest when he could vent his eclectic enthusiasms, from George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino to Ingmar Bergman and François Truffaut, from Chinese kung fu films to Disney animation, from high-minded, ambience-saturated dramas like Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient” to quirky teen tales like John Hughes’s “The Breakfast Club.”
“For most folks, déjà vu may provoke a momentary shudder, the creepy sense of having sidestepped into the twilight zone,” he wrote in 1993. “For Hollywood, though, it is a guiding principle. The industry wants audiences to feel they have seen this thing before but don’t know where or when. Nearly every movie plot is a reprise of a story that has already worked. Recombinant familiarity means box office; originality is an orphan, subversive and suspect. So let’s all cheer the emergence of ‘Groundhog Day,’ a very original comedy about déjà vu.”
Mr. Corliss promoted screenwriters against the headwind of opinion that said movies were made by auteur directors. He expressed adoration of movie stars as different as James Stewart and Cameron Diaz. In a 1985 review of the comedy-thriller “Into the Night,” he described Michelle Pfeiffer as “drop-dead gorgeous,” helping to popularize the phrase.
Richard Nelson Corliss was born in Philadelphia on March 6, 1944. His father, Paul, ran a business that manufactured chain-link fencing. His mother, the former Elizabeth McKluskey, taught first grade. After graduation from St. Joseph’s College (now University) in Philadelphia, Mr. Corliss did graduate work in film studies at Columbia, where he earned a master’s degree, and New York University.
In 1968, he met Mary Yushak, who was running the film stills department at the Museum of Modern Art; they married the next year. In addition to her, he is survived by a brother, Paul.
Mr. Corliss wrote about film for The Times, National Review and other publications in the late 1960s and ’70s. In 1970 he became editor of Film Comment, a journal, founded in the early 1960s, that was devoted largely to so-called art films, then the catchall term for independent films and documentaries.
During Mr. Corliss’s tenure, which lasted until the early 1980s, the magazine went from publishing quarterly to bimonthly and began including more essays and criticism about studio movies and Hollywood history. After the Film Society of Lincoln Center, sponsor of the New York Film Festival, took over the magazine’s publisher, Mr. Corliss served for many years on the festival’s selection committee. He joined Time in 1980 and shared movie critic’s duties there with Richard Schickel.
His books include “Talking Pictures” (1974), a survey, and critical defense, of American screenwriters; a 1994 study of “Lolita,” the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of the Nabokov novel; and an illustrated history, “Mom in the Movies: The Iconic Screen Mothers You Love and a Few You Love to Hate” (2014).
In 1990, exasperated by what he saw as a flourishing crop of glib critics on television and the onset of a thumbs-up/thumbs-down style of reviewing, Mr. Corliss defended his craft in an angry essay in Film Comment.
“The long view of cinema aesthetics is irrelevant to a moviegoer for whom history began with ‘Star Wars’,” he wrote. “A well-turned phrase is so much throat-clearing to a reader who wants the critic to cut to the chase: What movie is worth my two hours and six bucks this weekend? Movie criticism of the elevated sort, as practiced over the past half-century by James Agee and Manny Farber, Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, J. Hoberman and Dave Kehr — in the mainstream press and in magazines like ‘Film Comment’— is an endangered species. Once it flourished; soon it may perish, to be replaced by a consumer service that is no brains and all thumbs.”
Johnny Kemp, a Bahamian R&B singer best known for the 1988 hit song “Just Got Paid,” was found dead on April 16 in Montego Bay, Jamaica. He was 55.
The police said that his body was found floating at a beach and was believed to have drowned but provided no other details.
Reach Media, the parent company of “The Tom Joyner Morning Show,” said that Mr. Kemp had been scheduled to be on a Caribbean cruise sponsored by the Tom Joyner Foundation. He had not yet boarded the ship, the company said. Mr. Kemp was nominated for a Grammy Award for “Just Got Paid,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 10 on the pop chart. He had been performing around the United States in recent years.
He was born in the Bahamas on Aug. 2, 1959, and began singing in nightclubs there at 13. He moved to New York City in 1979, lived in Harlem and worked as a session vocalist and songwriter before landing a solo contract with Columbia Records, according to online biographies.
“Just Got Paid” appeared on his second album for Columbia, “Secrets of Flying.”
He is survived by his wife, Deirdre Fisher-Kemp, and their two sons.
Correction: April 23, 2015
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the year Mr. Kemp’s song “Just Got Paid” was a hit. It was 1988, not 1989.
World Malaria Day gives people the chance to promote or learn about the efforts made to prevent and reduce Malaria around the world. It is observed on April 25 each year.
What do people do?
Organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which is the United Nations’ (UN) directing and coordinating authority for health, actively play a role in promoting and supporting World Malaria Day. The activities and events that take place on or around World Malaria Day are often joint efforts between governments, non-government organizations, communities and individuals. Countries that have been involved in actively participating in World Malaria Day include (but are not exclusive to):
Many people, as well as commercial businesses and not-for-profit organizations, will use the day as an opportunity to donate money towards key malaria interventions. Many fundraising events are held to support the prevention, treatment and control of malaria. Some people may also use the observance to write letters or petitions to political leaders, calling for greater support towards protecting and treating people who are at risk of malaria. Many newspapers, websites, and magazines, as well as television and radio stations, may use World Malaria Day as the chance to promote or publicize awareness campaigns about malaria.
World Malaria Day is a global observance and not a public holiday.
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes. About half of the worlds’ population is at risk of malaria, particularly those in lower-income countries. It infects more than 500 million people each year and kills more than one million people, according to WHO. However, Malaria is preventable and curable.
The World Health Assembly instituted World Malaria Day in May 2007. The purpose of the event is to give countries in affected regions the chance to learn from each other’s experiences and support one another’s efforts. World Malaria Day also enables new donors to join in a global partnership against malaria, and for research and academic institutions to reveal scientific advances to the public. The day also gives international partners, companies and foundations a chance to showcase their efforts and reflect on how to scale up what has worked.
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS · A BLOGSITE FOR THE PRAISING OF ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME IN HONOR OF ALL BLACK WOMEN. "ONLY THE BLACK WOMAN CAN SAY WHEN AND WHERE I ENTER, IN THE QUIET, UNDISPUTED DIGNITY OF MY WOMANHOOD, WITHOUT VIOLENCE AND WITHOUT SUING OR SPECIAL PATRONAGE, THEN AND THERE THE WHOLE. . .RACE ENTERS WITH ME." ANNA JULIA COOPER, 1892