General Fine Arts sites offer resources and information about everything from sculpture, music, art, drawing, crafts, origami, graphic design and digital art, performing arts and architecture to creative ways of recycling items to create art. Included: Galleries of famous works, curriculum resources and lesson plans, games and fun ways to experience art.
Many parents and teachers want to help their children develop an interest in, and appreciation for, the arts. Unfortunately, not everyone lives in close proximity to a museum or theater. The Internet, however, hosts a variety of fine arts sites that can bring the arts right into any home or classroom. Many of those sites offer a forum for displaying works of art; others contain educational resources that can be used to expand students' knowledge of art. Whether you are a student, teacher, art enthusiast, or an interested observer, these sites are sure to enhance your art experience.
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is the Smithsonian's museum of modern and contemporary art. The online collections focus on the art of the past 25 years and feature more than 4,000 records. Students can visit Art Interactive to learn how artists have used different methods and materials to convey their ideas, or they can try their hand at making their own art online in Create a Sculpture.
The Kennedy Center's ARTSEDGE provides teachers with quality resources and interactive opportunities for "teaching in, through, and about the arts". The Teaching Materials include carefully reviewed and selected, standards based curriculum units, lesson plans, activities, and other ideas for integrating the arts across the curriculum. Resources are arranged by curriculum area and also can be browsed alphabetically or by grade level.
Oriland explores the ancient art of Origami from the most basic to the most complex, including information on how the art helps build motor skills and develop creative and intellectual abilities. The Learning Center contains animations for learning origami basics, along with ten lessons for practicing the folds and tips for folders. Included is a studio of diagrams for folding everything from animals to plants to heroes.
A Lifetime of Color
A Lifetime of Color is an art education site that includes ArtEdventure games, lessons on art and art history, plus teachers' guides and lesson plans. The games are fun and entertaining, and will help students learn about art history and color theory. You'll also find a long list of art lessons, lesson plans, and guides for teaching art in the classroom. The site's learning opportunities vary in complexity, making it useful for all grade levels.
Draw and Color with Uncle Fred
From Fred Laswell, the artist/writer of the Barney Google and Snuffy Smith cartoons, comes this fun and instructive art site for children in grades 1-5. At this site, visitors need just a pencil and paper to follow the simple, step-by-step directions for drawing a series of cartoon characters. The drawing lessons are great to combine with a writing activity that allows students to create stories about their pictures.
ALSO WORTH A LOOK
Learn about more great sites for students, parents, and educators by visiting Education World's Site Reviews Archives.
Article by Linda Starr
Copyright © 2005 Education World


Prentice Hall Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 help students see math like never before. This blended print and digital curriculum provides an environment where teachers can engage students, teach for understanding, and promote mastery-for success today and throughout life. It's a whole new way to look at math.
With online sampling for Prentice Hall Mathematics you can review the program on your schedule and at your pace.
Want to see the entire book? Register Here
Our fully digital programs and ebooks provide cutting-edge online instruction with a seamless transition from the textbook, allowing students to complete assignments, access videos and activities, and take online tests and remediation.
With Pearson’s interactive whiteboard-ready resources, students become more active and collaborative classroom learners and teachers are able to deliver memorable lessons, engage all types of learners, and reduce class preparation time.
Language-acquisition expert, Dr. Jim Cummins, has worked exclusively with Pearson to embed powerful teaching approaches into Pearson programs, ensuring that English language learners receive the same high quality education as their peers. Dr. Cummins’ expertise in literacy development in multilingual school contexts, as well as the role of technology in promoting language and literacy development, have made Pearson programs the most effective resources for today’s ELLs.
RTI is an ongoing instructional process of using assessments to inform instruction that leads to improved student performance. Pearson's Response to Intervention solution provides a continuum of accelerated intervention strategies that assess, instruct, and monitor at every level for the best possible outcome. Unlike other modular solutions, Pearson's combination of continual progress monitoring and instruction ensure long-term, sustained results.


The Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey: Age and Literacy
This report is the fourth in a series of four that investigate the initial results of the ALL survey. It presents an overview of New Zealanders’ skills in relation to age, and any changes since 1996.
Author(s): Paul Satherley and Elliot Lawes, Research Division, Ministry of Education.
Date Published: August 2008
This report is available as a download (please refer to the 'Downloads/Links' inset box, top right).
Please consider the environment before printing the contents of this report.
Age Cohorts continued This section examines these questions:
- Do the differences in the distributions of literacy skill between men and women change with age?
- Are the relationships between skill-level, age and gender the same for different skills?
Prose literacy, age and gender
The distributions of prose literacy skill by age group and gender are shown in Figure 12.
|On average, women have higher prose literacy skills than men over all age groups.|
Figure 12: Prose literacy, age and gender, ALL only
Figure 12 shows that for all age groups (except 55−65-year-olds), women had higher overall prose literacy skills than men (and for 16−24-year-olds and 35−44-year-olds these skills were substantially higher). Among 55−65-year-olds, women and men had approximately the same overall prose literacy skills.
Figure 12 also shows that the differences in overall prose literacy skill between men and women result from, in most age groups, women having larger percentages at level 3 than men, and smaller percentages at level 1.
Document literacy, age and gender
The distributions of document literacy skill by age group and gender are shown in Figure 13.
|On average, men and women have similar document literacy over all ages, with 16−24-year-old women performing slightly better than men, and 45−65-year-old men performing slightly better than women. |
Figure 13: Document literacy, age and gender, ALL only
Figure 13 shows that among 16−24-year-olds, women had substantially higher overall document literacy skills than men; among 25−34 and 35−44-year-olds women and men had approximately the same document literacy skills; and among 45−54 and 55−65 year-olds men had substantially higher document literacy skills than women.
Numeracy, age and gender
The distributions of numeracy skill by age group and gender are shown in Figure 14.
|On average, men perform better than women in numeracy skills over all age groups.|
Figure 14: Numeracy, age and gender, ALL only
Figure 14 shows that for all age groups men had substantially higher overall numeracy skills than women. Across all age groups, this results from men having substantially higher percentages at level 4 or 5, and for 25−65-year-olds lower percentages at level 1. For all age groups (except 55−65-year-olds), men and women had roughly the same percentages at level 3; among 55−65-year-olds the percentage of men at level 3 was substantially higher than that of women.
Problem-solving, age and gender
The distributions of problem-solving skill by age group and gender are shown in Figure 15.
|On average, the performance of men and women is very similar in problem-solving skills over all ages. |
Figure 15: Problem-solving, age and gender, ALL only
Figure 15 shows that in contrast with the other skill domains, only among 55−65-year-olds was there a difference in overall problem-solving skill between the genders (where men had higher skills than women).
Downloads / Links
For more information about this publication please email the:


Practise your numeracy skills with the animated number-crunching heroes as they solve some mathematical problems.
The Numberjacks are superheroes - animated numbers who solve mathematical problems in the real world with input from real children. The series is aimed at 4-5 year olds and will help them develop early maths skills, knowledge and understanding.
The Numberjacks' base is inside a sofa. Each episode focuses on one mathematical concept or idea to encourage learning with numbers.
In each episode, the Numberjacks get a call from an agent (a child) telling them about a problem. After comedy and thrills, the problem is solved and the Numberjacks return to base. The episode ends with a question for the children watching at home. This will encourage children to look for, and discover, shapes and numbers around the home.
The educational value of the show
Numberjacks helps children to:
- Develop early numeracy skills, such as number recognition.
- Search and find shapes and numbers around the home.
Read about the characters
The central characters - 3, 4, 5 and 6
The central characters are Numberjacks 3, 4, 5 and 6.
3 is a bit young to go out on missions, but keen to - full of confidence, energy and noise.
4 has more self doubts but keeps plugging away.
5 is quite cool and assured and a graceful jumper.
6 is very self confident and a great jumper.
The younger Numberjacks - 0, 1 and 2
The problems are sometimes caused by the younger Numberjacks escaping from the sofa and inadvertently making things go wrong. More often though, the source of trouble is one of the five Baddies.
The Baddies tend to be the cause of different sorts of problems!
The Problem Blob is a great lump whose blobs of slime make things go wrong.
The Shape Japer delights in changing the shape of things, doesn't talk much, but laughs a lot.
Spooky Spoon loves stirring things up and mixing things.
The Puzzler is a third rate DJ who loves to set weird puzzles for the Numberjacks to solve.
The Numbertaker is a silent grabber of numbers and uses his various attachments, like the number grabber and the number sucker-upper.


Children in Maharashtra - An Atlas of Social Indicators
This document “Children in Maharashtra - An Atlas of Social Indicators” is an attempt to present a comprehensive picture of the status of children in the state and is being published jointly with the Planning Department of the Government of Maharashtra.
This is a compilation of nformation on childrelated indicators collected from published documents as well as information available on the websites of various Government ministries. We are grateful to all of them for maintaining such vital information and making it available in thepublic domain.
This document has eight sections, namely Population and Demographics, Economic Development, Elementary Education, Maternal and Child health, HIV/AIDS, Nutrition, Water and Sanitation and Child Protection. District wise information is also available on 55 indicators. It is also an attempt to present information in easily readable and understandable ways using maps, raphs and tables with simple descriptions.
Disaggregated data by sex, area, social group, wealth quintile and geographical area has been provided in this document; also provided is a trend analysis and comparison with national data wherever possible. This is a situational analysis of the efforts of Government of Maharashtra and all stakeholders working with children.
This document shows that despite numerous problems the situation of children on many indicators has improved but also evident is the fact that significant disparity exists among social groups, wealth quintile groups and districts.
Download the complete report
Cover & Index
Chapter 1- Population Demographics
Chapter 2- Economic Development
Chapter 3- Elementary Education
Chapter 4- Maternal and Child Health
Chapter 5 - Nutrition
Chapter 6 - HIV-AIDS
Chapter 7 - Water and Sanitation
Chapter 8 -Child Protection
District Level Tables
References and Acronyms


Science for Kids is a brilliant new website, which aims to make science a fun subject for children (as it always should be!).
The site is full of simple, rhyming poems that help to communicate important scientific ideas to children of elementary school/primary school age, in a clear, fun and stress-free way.
Each page also includes a short glossary and facts page to complement the poem and its subject. What’s more, each page is also available in a downloadable pdf format (COMING SOON!) - which is ideal for printing out for use in the classroom or at home with your kids.
So what are you waiting for? Click on one of the subject areas along the top of the page to get started. The individual pages will then be listed in the white border on the left
If you enjoy these fun poems, please come back again, and please spread the word by linking to Science for Kids!


How do children develop fine motor skills? Children’s development is influenced by their physical capabilities, environment and the demands of the activity in which they’re engaging. Children’s ability to grasp objects develops gradually over the first five years of life from grabbing a toy with their whole hand to being able to hold a pencil between several fingers and write the letters of the alphabet. Over this period of time, children’s fingers increase in length, their hands increase in breadth and they move from using all fingers to grab a toy to picking up small pieces with just two fingers. By 2½, children can have a strong desire to put things together and take them apart. They become increasingly able to do quite complex finger plays like Five Little Ducks. These games not only provide opportunities for fine motor skill development, but other learning as well!


This instrument was created in 1938 and used in American elementary music education as a pre-band instrument. This allowed young children to play a simple instrument and learn musical notation. It also allowed the students not only to play simple melodies, either alone or as a group, it allowed groups to perform simple harmonies along with the melodies and begin to experience performing as an ensemble. The Tonette has largely been superceeded, through the efforts of Music Educators, by the much more musically accurate recorder family of instruments. It is also known as a song flute.
A small black plastic whistle-type instrument that is end-blown. It has seven finger holes on the front of the instrument and a thumb hole on the back. The small number of finger holes with a limited range and the fact that is is easy to achieve a good sound makes this instrument ideal for young children.
The Tonette has a very pleasant sound, not unlike a recorder or flute. Overblowing is possible to extend the range, but that sound is not entirely pleasing when performed by a novice and somewhat difficult to control.
Also song flute


Heinz-Hermann Köhler grew up in a country village in Lower Saxony. In 1936 after completing elementary school, he moved in with relatives in nearby Hildesheim, a mid-sized provincial town, so he could attend the Agricultural School. In contrast to… [more]
A piñata is a decorated container of paper or clay that contains sweets, small toys, fruits, and nuts. It is the object of a game played in Mexico at children's birthday parties and at Christmas celebrations, in which blindfolded children take turns… [more]
The photograph, dated 1928, from the well-known ethnographic collection The North American Indian by Edward Edward S. Curtis, is a portrait of a young Piegan girl standing in front of a painted tipi, or conical tent. The label on the photograph by… [more]
The hand-modeled, terracotta, wheeled figurine of a bird with a ram's head was excavated from an archaeological site in the Indus Valley called Mohenjo-daro, a city that flourished between 2600 and 1900 BCE. Museum curators added the wooden axle… [more]
The material culture of early childhood in the 21st century is characterized by an emphasis on biological age and related levels of cognitive and motor skill development. All types of objects, including diapers, toys, food products, and clothing, are… [more]
The photograph shows a boy "driving" an ingeniously simple but functional toy truck made of wire, wood, and what are likely plastic bottlecap wheels. Purchased, often imported toys are very expensive and homemade toys are common in many poorer… [more]
The photographs show children during the mid-Autumn Harvest Festival, or Tet Trung Thu in Vietnam, a children's festival associated with the full moon. Tet Trung Thu follows the harvest in the eighth lunar month, falling usually during September or… [more]
Theodore de Bry included this colorful engraving in his publication of Hariot's, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590). It was based on a watercolor by John White (fig. 2) painted five or six years earlier.
Despite their… [more]
Strongly influencing the invention of Robert J. Clay's mechanized "Creeping Baby Doll" in 1871, were changing notions of childhood that fostered children's development.
Allowing babies to crawl on all fours as did Clay's doll reflected recent… [more]


Over 52 games and activities for the music classroom! This resource is appropriate for all music disciplines at all grade levels with an added section for vocal tone development. Activities are divided into ear training, rhythm reading, pitch reading, dictation, exploration of music, and vocal tone development. Each activity is described in detail including appropriate grade level, materials needed, setup and length of time recommended for each game or project. Over 150 additional variations of the 52 activities and games are included in this collection. If you are looking for something to fill a few minutes at the end of class or ideas for the entire week, this is a great resource for unique and fun ways to enhance your students'' music education.
If You Enjoy "Musical Games for the Musically-Minded: (Over 52 Games and Activities for the Music Classroom) (Paperback)", May We Also Recommend:


We know music can profoundly affect us, whether you're the type who gets weepy at a classical performance or kicks a child at a metal show. But what exactly is going on in our brains when that happens? This cartoony infographic from the University of Florida breaks it down, from the ear to the brain. It also includes some interesting notes about the correlation between brainwaves and emotions. Low beta waves, for example, are associated with concentration and alertness, while alpha waves are associated with relaxation and daydreams.
But maybe take some of this stuff with a grain of salt: Taking a class on music education isn't necessarily going to improve your SAT scores, even if picking up the trombone is correlated with bubbling in the right answers.
What is this getting at? What story is it trying to tell? What agenda is it pushing?
Facts for the sake of facts?
Then why take the time to make it?
To promote the anti-music lobby?
Then it's misleading and dishonest because it doesn't account for non-music related brain affect. Plenty of countries pride themselves on their anti-music laws....but have they really done anything to reduce overall brain affect?
This chart is to incite emotions in people, not promote rational discussion of the issues.
What the heck? I was going to share this until halfway down it turned into an ad for the university of florida.
Very interesting article. That's pretty cool how music affects your amotions.
...So this is just an ad?? Bummer!
+1 to jordan314 and THX-7813. I was hoping that there might be an explanation of what types of music elict the various brain waves, not a an ad...


Here at the Maine Aquarium we value the fun in
education! While our exhibits offer an unbeatable way for
students to learn about aquatic underwater worlds, we believe
students can take even more away from the experience if they
begin their education in the classroom. Below are several Sample Worksheets and links to related Curriculum Resources and that
will help you prepare your students to get the most out of their
visit. Also visit our Calendar
of Events for a listing of special
educational programs being held at the aquarium and our Information Center to find out about valuable field trip discounts. We
look forward to seeing you!
Welcome Teachers and Students
to our Worksheets on life underwater....
Feel free to copy any of the worksheets here!
Caribbean Coral Reef:
- Magical Mystery
Tour-name these animals
- day world mini
- Unscramble the
- night world
The Prize of Maine:
- Maine Lobster
- University of Maine Lobster Quiz
Back to Kids Center
Other Excellent Curriculum Resources
- The Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institutions K-12 Resources--Unsurpassable Resources on
oceanography and marine topics
- Sea Turtle Tracking Education
wonderful interactive program allowing students to track
migrating sea turtles.
- Surf Your Watershed The U.S. EPA's online
educational program allowing students to locate their
local watershed and learn more about it.
- Whales A thematic web unit, encouraging
critical thinking, project galleries, and
multidisciplinary units. Lots of links to other teacher
guides, including the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
for Math and Science Education.
- International Whaling Coalition Lots of current issues and
information on whales and other marine mammals.
- Wet Net Water Resources Education - a
list of links relating to the environment, educators,
- 4-star award winning
website on endangered species .
- National Wildlife Federation curriculum guide on endangered
- Animal Tracks a collection of environmental
education lessons ready for use in the classroom.
- Give Water a Hand an action guide for helping
water resources in your area.
- Links Reviews, summaries and
information about 100 curriculum guides focusing on
- The Jason Project Complete with teacher guides and
- Marine Mammals An internet-based learning
adventure designed to help students study the migrations
of various species including right whales, manatees, gray
whales and humpback whales.
- World Resource Institute's
Teacher Guides Guides
on topics such as Oceans and Coasts, Biodiversity, and
- Science Learning Network
Math/Science Center Server A Must See! Endless resources.
...teacher guides, maps, water quality testing guides,
grants. You name it. Don't miss this site.
- Teacher Guides from SeaWorld
- Marine and nature videos for sale through the National
- Eisenhower National Clearing
Mathematics and Science Education.
- The Globe Program An international environmental
science and educational program that allows schools to
participate in taking measurements and sharing their
- Web Sites and Resources for
hundreds of on-line curriculum links and activities
collected from Professors of Elementary Education at
California State University, Northridge.
- The Kids On the Web hundreds of links to general
- Ocean Planet A Smithsonian Institution
Traveling Interactive Exhibit on oceans. Also teacher
Other Educational Links...


Using New Resources for Teaching Art History
Erickson, Mary, School Arts
Many art teachers have been committed to teaching art history as long as they've been in the field. For years, a paucity of resources made that commitment difficult to keep. In the last decade or so, this commitment has received support through state recommendations and mandates specifying art history content, and through national initiative advocating broad-based art education goals. Increased commitment has translated into increased market as publishers compete to meet increased demand. Textbooks, poster series, slide programs, laser disks and other resources are competing for our art-history dollar. How can we best use the resources we select?
What's the Big Idea?
Though rich with potential, art history can seem like a complex maze of details through which we must find a comprehensible path for our students. In cutting our way through, I recommend two principles: look for big ideas, and focus on developing inquiry skills. Although small, even trivial, bits of information can motivate students' interest and flesh out rich narratives, teachers and students need to know the big picture that the details embroider. And students need to practice their inquiry skills so they can use them in other contexts.
No elementary art program can address all the important art of all times, across the globe; nor can it address all the interests of our culturally diverse students. Empowered with big ideas and inquiry skills, the art-historical understanding of our students need not be limited to our curricular choices. Students should be encouraged to use big ideas to guide their looking, and inquiry skills to ask their own questions about the art that interests them.
Here are six questions we can ask as we consider our selection and use of art-history resources. The first three focus on big ideas that organize art-historical information. The last three focus on inquiry skills, encompassing questioning, speculation and evidence gathering.
1. Does the resource present basic information about artworks of the past from many cultures?
2. Does the resource explain what artworks mean in the context within which they were produced?
3. Does the resource explain how and why art has changed through time and across cultures?
4. Does the resource teach how to use evidence to help determine basic information about artworks of the past from various cultures?
5. Does the resource show how to propose and support interpretations of what artworks mean in the context within which they were produced?
6. Does the resource teach how to describe and propose explanations of changes in art through time and across cultures?
Space does not permit a full analysis of resources using these six considerations, and other issues come into play in a teacher's, school's or district's choice of resources and their use. Let me at least offer examples of each consideration.
The range of basic information about artworks from many cultures has increased dramatically in recent years. Brommer's Discovering Art History includes cross-cultural time lines at the end of each chapter. Hobbs and Salome's The Visual Experience includes maps throughout its two non-Western and two Western art history chapters. Shorewood publishes a multicultural program with reproductions. Briere's Art Image series organizes information around themes, many of which are cross-cultural. Chapman's Adventures in Art series is packed with artworks from around the globe and throughout time.
Change and Difference
At one time, art-historical resources tended to be organized in one of two ways: chronologically (usually comprehensive surveys of Western art), or virtually without regard for art-historical context (i.e., illustrations of art elements or processes).
Many resources now provide general ideas about how and why art has …
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Using New Resources for Teaching Art History. Contributors: Erickson, Mary - Author. Magazine title: School Arts. Volume: 93. Issue: 8 Publication date: April 1994. Page number: 37+. © 1999 Davis Publications, Inc. COPYRIGHT 1994 Gale Group.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.


So what if students are poor at numeracy?
Wright, Kerri (2008) So what if students are poor at numeracy? In: University of Greenwich Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Shift Happens, 4 June 2008, University of Greenwich, London, UK. . (Unpublished)Full text not available from this repository.
The numeracy skill of student is a continued concern with numeracy highlighted as a key skill in Foundation degrees and other vocational courses such as nursing (DfES 1999, NMC 2007). Numeracy is seen as a requirement to being able to undertake work based skills that require the use of numbers and calculations. However numeracy skills developed in the classroom does not necessarily prepare students for work-based calculations and similarly nor does poor numeracy skills necessarily mean that students cannot perform complex mathematical calculations in their work place. This paper will explore the role of context, the difference between formal and work based mathematics and questions the continued focus on numeracy skills, using examples from my own research with nurses.
|Item Type:||Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)|
|Uncontrolled Keywords:||numeracy skills, nurses|
|Subjects:||R Medicine > RT Nursing|
|School / Department / Research Groups:||School of Health & Social Care|
School of Health & Social Care > Department of Acute & Continuing Care
|Last Modified:||01 Jun 2012 11:09|
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- Music education improves math and reading skills - So many kids struggle with math and reading in school. We all want to do everything we can to boost our children’s productivity in school and help them succeed, and musical education is a great place to start! A lot of studies have shown that musical education creates neural pathways, connecting both sides of the brain, which is why it can help with math and reading skills!
- Improves memory and listening skills – Children work on memorizing songs, and listening for their part in a musical piece, excercising great skills that they will use later in life, regardless of the profession or future interests.
- Develops language skills – Learning to read music, is a lot like learning a new language! This can also improve their ability to learn a second, spoken language later in life.
- Improves hand/eye coordination – The specific movements and gestures that must be done in order to play an instrument correctly greatly assist a child’s coordination and muscle control.
- Focus - Studying music helps a child learn to focus, which can improve their test skills and concentration on future jobs.
- Confidence – Preforming music can boost a child’s confidence and help them to overcome stage fright.
- Creative thinking – Music Education helps a child learn to consider problems creatively and encourages them to discover multiple solutions to problems.
- Discipline – Constantly practicing and scheduling lessons improves a child’s work ethic and teaches them patience as they must work hard to improve. These skills will be invaluable as the child grows into an adult.
So maybe you are thinking: “This is great, but where do I sign my kid up?” I have just the answer for you! TakeLessons.com is a great site that connects families with pre-qualified, safe music teachers, arts instructors and academic tutors throughout the US. You can find your teacher and sign up for lessons at TakeLessons.com or give them a call at 855-684-5482. You can also get 20% off your music or tutoring lessons with the coupon code Music 36! This is a great option for homeschoolers, as you can get a great and personal musical education without needing to participate in public or private schooling!
Did you study music as a child? Do you plan to teach music to your children? Which of these points is the MOST important for your family?


Creativity should not be underestimated. Creativity helps teach cognitive skills such as mathematics and scientific thinking. Creative thinking involves imagination, basic use of the scientific method, communication, physical dexterity and exertion, problem posing, problem solving, making interpretations, and using symbols which help with future literacy skills.
1-Creativity promotes emotional development-Creative expression provides many opportunities for expressing emotions and working through those emotions to gain relief and understanding of them. To help your child do this you could encourage a child who is angry to draw or paint a picture of how they are feeling. You could play varied types of music that invoke different emotions and then ask your child how the music makes them feel.
2-Creativity promotes social development- In young childhood, creativity is often a social act. Singing, dancing, puppetry, and theater all teach the child to pay attention to others as well as develop an understanding of social rules like give and take, and cooperation. Have a dance party with other children or have the child and their friends put on a play or puppet show.
3-Creativity supports physical development-Working with art materials such as crayons, scissors, paint brushes, play dough and paint promote fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination. To promote gross motor skills try dancing, mural painting, theater, or large construction projects like building things with boxes.
4-Creativity supports language and literacy development-By engaging in creative play or projects,
children can learn new vocabulary words as well as learn to associate pictures with words. As mentioned above try playing different kinds of music and creating a conversation with the child about how it makes them feel; this will boost language expression and understanding. Expose your child to plenty of instruments and talk to them about their favorite one and what sound each instrument makes. Ask them open ended questions about their art work such as “how did you feel when you drew this” or “how does this painting make you feel?”
5-Creativity promotes cognitive development- Creative activities help children to develop attention skills and cognitive learning. Their imagination is in full use and it encourages them to come up with new ideas and to think outside of the box since creativity involves exploration and problem solving. Through creative activities such as playing with play dough, children can learn pre-math skills such as the concept of less and more. When children match shapes or colors in their creations they are learning the math skill one to one correspondence. Creative activities can help them learn about grouping and classification, physical properties of objects, and cause and effect. Painting and play dough are all great ways to explore these concepts.
There are four components of creativity as described by Psychologist Ellis P. Torrance: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.
Fluency is the ability to produce a number of different ideas. To promote fluency provide children with plenty of opportunities that stimulate the thought process. Ask open ended questions and questions that ask the child’s opinion. Encourage the child to explore and experiment and this will enhance cognitive growth.
Flexibility is the ability to approach different situations and develop solutions from a number of different perspectives. Foster flexibility by allowing plenty of opportunities to explore and experiment. Allowing children to experiment and make mistakes unleashes their creative thinking and a sense of wonder. They feel free to imagine, invent, create, and try out new ways to do things. Asking questions during an activity or when a problem arises such as “how is another way we could do this or solve it?” encourages children to think outside of the box.
Originality is the ability to have a new or novel idea. To promote originality, provide a variety of supplies and experiences in which children can use their imagination and create. By painting or constructing something out of play dough they are creating something out of nothing.
Elaboration is the ability to extend ideas. Give children new ways of doing old ideas and activities. For instance, providing pipe cleaner and other items to stick into play dough would allow children to elaborate in their play.
What are your child’s favorite creative activities?


Shirley Chisholm is the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress and the first to campaign for the Presidency. She was an outspoken advocate for women and minorities during the seven terms she served in the House. Her legacy of political and social activism laid the foundation for the rise of women and Blacks in American politics.
Born Shirley Anita St. Hill on November 30, 1924, she was the oldest of four girls of Charles and Ruby St. Hill. Her father was from Guyana (then British Guiana) and her mother from Barbados. Chisholm spent part of her childhood in Barbados with her grandmother and graduated from Brooklyn College in 1946. At Brooklyn College, she majored in sociology and joined the debating society, an experience that would influence her cut-and-thrust oratory style.
Shirley began her career as a teacher and earned a Master’s degree in elementary education from Columbia University. She served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center from 1953 to 1959 as an educational consultant to New York City’s Bureau of Child Welfare from 1959 to 1964. She also served as a volunteer in the Brooklyn chapter of the National Urban League and in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where she debated minority rights.
Shirley was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1964 and in 1968 she won a seat to the House of Representatives and became the first African American woman elected to Congress. In 1969, she became the first black congresswoman and began the first of seven terms. After initially being assigned to the House Forestry Committee, she shocked many by demanding reassignment. She was placed on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, eventually graduating to the Education and Labor Committee. She became one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969.
In 1972, Shirley also ran a campaign to be president of the United States and said she was, “a candidate for the people.” She didn’t get her party’s nomination, but she is still famous for being the first black woman to seek the nation’s highest office. She was also a vocal opponent of the draft. During the 1980s was a critical asset to Jesse Jackson’s campaigns for the Presidency.
After leaving Congress in 1983, Shirley remained active as a political figure, an educator, and a spokesperson for women’s rights. She taught at Mount Holyoke College and was popular on the lecture circuit. Shirley was married to Conrad Chisholm from 1949 to 1977. She wed Arthur Hardwick, Jr. in 1986. She authored two books, Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973).
Throughout her political career Chisholm fought for education opportunities and social justice. She died in 2005.


CID school children have the benefit of all of the non-academic subjects taught in regular schools plus field trips and special learning programs that vary from year to year.
Creativity and self-expression are important to a CID education. Children learn the principles of design, discover the elements of mosaic making, explore clay processes and develop visual ideas reflective of cultural themes. Instruction is provided twice a week on a rotating basis by an art teacher, with CID alumni guest artists sometimes visiting for a project. The youngest children have art in the pre-k discovery room. Children 6 and older have art in a specially designed art room.
Children in CID's nursery and pre-k classes experience music every day, listening, responding and dancing to music, experimenting with instruments and singing a variety of songs. Attention to beat, rhythm and rhyming with music helps them as they develop speech and language skills. Children in the CID primary school receive formal music education once a week. The focus is on listening and on developing an appreciation for all types of music.
Two- to 5-year-old children in our nursery classes and pre-k department take part in lessons emphasizing body coordination and creative movement. Children 5 to 12 have physical education class daily using a curriculum designed for K-5. Activities in our regulation-size gym and outside include developmentally appropriate motor activities, physical games, learning a variety of sports and attention to sportsmanship.
CID has a large screen interactive SMARTBoard in every classroom, along with a teacher who knows how to use it as a tool to help children learn. In our classrooms and in our computer technology center, computer instruction is provided for children 3 and older. Students learn to write and draw on the computer, seek information on the internet, send e-mail, write reports and more. Older students use the computers for class assignments or educational projects with the teachers of their other subjects. Children 3 to 5 years old also have regular access to computer games and educational software.
Recent CID pre-k field trip destinations have included the Butterfly House, Grant's Farm, a pumpkin farm, the Museum of Transportation and a performance of "Sesame Street Live." Special activities have included a yearly "Simple Sensational Science Fair" and a schoolwide literacy fair and circus show.
Primary school activities include monthly speech shows, a science fair, student musical performances and mock trips to foreign countries the children have studied. A variety of special guests visit to give performances and provide instruction, for example in art, tennis, photography and dance. Each year, the students participate in the Spirit of St. Louis Marathon's Read, Right and Run fitness program. Recent destinations for their field trips have included a St. Louis Symphony children's performance, the World Bird Sanctuary, the St. Louis Zoo and a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game.


[Update] Thank you so much to everyone who donated! The Louisiana school project has just been funded, but there is another teacher that urgently needs your help buying music instruments for her students at a high-poverty school in Ohio.
Mrs. Batdorf's middle school students have a passion for music, but are stuck using old, worn-out instruments. While there is much support in the community for music education, funding is not adequate. Students share instruments, most of which are over 20 years old, and the little budget they have is spent on reeds and repairs.
You can purchase a new trombone for her students through DonorsChoose:
In Ms. Tabitha Rojas’ first-grade class, students often come in at the beginning of the school year with worn out shoes and dirty uniforms, missing basics such as pencils and crayons.
Since many families in the high-poverty area cannot afford school supplies, it’s up to Rojas to supply the many pencils, pens, notebooks, school bags and other items her students need during the year. She estimated that $30 to $50 of her paycheck each month goes to school supplies.
With DonorsChoose, you can help her purchase these much-needed writing supplies:
Rojas’ school Hopkins Street Elementary sits in the middle of New Iberia, a small city in Louisiana, where most residents do not attend or graduate from college and the median household income is $35,000.
As the Louisiana teacher explains it, her students have “more challenges on a daily basis than some would care to believe.”
From violence and crime to sickness and family problems, Rojas notices there are issues in her students’ lives that make it far more difficult to concentrate on something like learning your ABCs.
“Many often move from place to place, never really having a true place to call home or even a bed to sleep in,” Rojas says. “Can you imagine having to come to school to learn after having all of this to deal with?”
Rojas is cognizant of the challenges her students face outside the classroom, and she loves being able to watch them grow. During a field trip to a local plantation museum, she saw her students eagerly exploring the plantation and answering the impressed tour guide’s questions.
“I was so proud that they were able to ask questions and have conversations with our guide,” Rojas wrote. “It taught me that my students do not get to experience things like this. It is an important part of my job to expose my students to as much as I can and make everything they learn relevant to them.”
As far back as Rojas can remember, she has wanted to be a teacher. Struggling with math class in high school, Rojas worked with one memorable teacher until she understood the material.
“I wanted to be the teacher that provided support to my struggling students,” Rojas says. “I knew how horrible I felt when I felt like I couldn’t succeed and I never wanted my students to feel this way.”


WHY THE THIRD WORLD SHOULD STRESS THE THREE R's
The rebellion in the poverty-stricken Mexican state of Chiapas has dramatized the inequality in living standards in a country trying to promote rapid economic development. Third World nations that neglect the education, training, and health of the poor perpetuate divisions that may tear apart their social fabric.
At a recent education conference in Brazil, I argued that economic development cannot be sustained when a nation neglects elementary education for a sizable part of its population. Education lets young persons from poor backgrounds acquire the skills to rise in the world, and it reduces the tendency for inequalities in wealth to be perpetuated from one generation to the next. The example of the so-called Asian tigers--Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan--is instructive: Early in their development, they largely eliminated illiteracy and raised the schooling of the bottom stratum to decent levels.
According to statistics compiled by Robert J. Barro of Harvard University, more than two-thirds of Brazilians over the age of 25 have less than four years of schooling, and a further one-fourth have none at all. The situation in Mexico is almost as bad. Education of the poor in both nations has greatly improved over the past two decades, yet even now fewer than one-third of teenage Brazilians are in school. The slums scattered throughout Rio de Janiero are filled with children who spend their time not in school but on the streets, terrorizing residents and visitors with burglaries and robberies.
The social problems from unequal education are often compounded by racial differences: In Brazil, Mexico, and many other nations, wealth, education, and occupation are polarized along racial lines. The poor in Mexico are mainly Indians, while in Brazil they are primarily descendants of slaves brought from Africa.
SQUARE MEALS. Children from homes with poor, illiterate parents need schooling that addresses their special needs. My wife and I spent a day as the guests of Governor Leonel Brizola of the state of Rio de Janiero at one of several hundred schools in the state that were created during the past decade for poor children. Students in these schools get three meals and almost 10 hours of instruction and recreational activity a day, and they do their preparation in the classroom rather than at home. But since such schools are expensive to build--$1 million per school--as well as to operate, they are not the solution for poor
A better way to help poor families in the Third World (as well as elsewhere) would be through a tuition voucher system. Low-income parents would receive vouchers that help pay the tuition at any approved school that accepts their children. Participating schools could be required to provide nutritious meals and health checkups. Such vouchers would stimulate competition among public and private schools to improve the education and health of children who most need to be helped. Middle- and upper-income families have less need for tuition vouchers, for they often manage wherever they are to get decent schooling for their children.
Poor mothers and fathers usually want a better life for their children than they have had themselves, and many of them would choose schools wisely. Even some of those who care very much about their families, however, often force children to leave school early so that they can help contribute toward the meager household resources, even when that violates child-labor and minimum-schooling laws.
WASTE NOT. One way to provide incentives for poor parents to look out for their children's interests is to give them a bonus that offsets the income loss from keeping children out of the labor force. The bonus could be larger when the children attend school regularly, and it could even rise when the children receive good grades.
Apologists for the status quo claim that poor countries do not have the resources to raise the education of all their citizens to decent levels, and they believe international organizations such as the World Bank should finance the education of their poor. But governments in these countries usually spend a quarter or more of gross domestic product on financing deficits in inefficient state enterprises, on excessively expensive universities, and in many other wasteful ways.
The real obstacle to greater government spending by Third World countries on basic education, combating crime, and other important public activities is not their limited resources but the diversion of these governments from what should be their major priorities. They are too busy doing things that either should not be done at all--or that should be left to the private sector.
Countries such as Brazil and Mexico have enormous human energy and economic potential. But they will further delay their entry into the First World if they continue to pay insufficient attention to the schooling and health of their poor.GARY S. BECKER


What’s the place of contemporary art in schools? What’s the place of “controversial” contemporary art in schools? And what’s our responsibility as teachers?
The very best contemporary art speaks a language our students can understand. One of the great gifts of Art:21 is that we can introduce our students to artists who LOOK and SOUND like they do, and who are making art that deals with issues that are important to them.
Kids grapple with issues of sex and identity early on. Stereotypes abound: girls are princesses, boys are athletes; girls are good at art and boys are good at math. Beautiful people are tall, light-skinned, with clear complexions and good hair and are very, very thin. What’s a regular every day kid to do?
A few years ago we presented a show called Sugar and Snails. It was created in response to a desire to have open conversations with our students about issues of gender identity and body image. Even at very early ages kids deal with questions like these, and it’s our job to help them make healthy choices.
Samantha Salzinger’s Skin Deep Series provided opportunities for our middle and upper school students to directly confront issues about beauty. For adolescent girls AND boys conversations about eating (or not), complexions, hair, makeup, tanning, tattooing and piercing, exercising and all sorts of other physical issues are every day occurrences. Salzinger’s large format portraits of patients recovering from plastic surgery called into question all of our assumptions, both student and adult, about the price of beauty.
Our students responded with works of their own. Human sexuality teacher Debbie Roffman asked middle school students to create collages that highlighted the stereotypes and subliminal sexual messages in popular culture. Their work showed their understanding that sex sells everything from beauty products to cars to home appliances. In their collages, the students created thoughtful, funny, often startling pieces and raised our awareness about how the media helps reinforce stereotypes.
Photographer Nikki S. Lee’s work really called into question the whole idea of fitting in. In her Projects, Lee identifies a group (tourists, Hispanics, yuppies, elderly people, lesbians, and others) and works to transform herself to be as much like them as possible. That’s Lee herself in the foreground of the skateboarders piece and second from left in the tourist piece. Our students looked at works like these and (almost without fail) took a closer look at how they, too, reinvent themselves to conform to a group norm. It happens very early, doesn’t it, when “everyone” has a particular shoe or backpack or haircut? Nikki S. Lee’s work provides an opportunity to talk to kids about it.
It’s work like this that helps open conversations with kids about issues that make a difference.
Check out more about Nikki S. Lee in this month’s Art Education magazine: Identity in Flux: Exploring the Work of Nikki S. Lee by Amanda Allison. It includes lesson plans for grades 9-12 that explore identity within contemporary subculture groups. January 2009, Volume 62, No.1.


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- SAT Critical Reading: Strategies for Answering Questions with Difficult Vocab | Kaplan Test Prep
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|Idaho Comprehensive Literacy Course #2|
|CLASS CODE:||ELED 380||CREDITS: 2|
|DIVISION:||EDUCATION & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT|
|GENERAL EDUCATION:||This course does not fulfill a General Education requirement.|
|CATALOG DESCRIPTION:||Prepares future teachers in the areas of language acquisition, structure, and development; basic skills of literacy fluency; and strategies for improving reading in all content areas.|
|DESCRIPTION:||This course is designed to prepare future teachers in the areas of language structure and literacy instruction, reading comprehension and best teaching practices, and assessment and intervention. This will include strategies for direct phonics instruction as well as methods for teaching reading across the curriculum in all content areas. Together with a "team teaching" approach, the course will provide practical field experience in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade classrooms-- thus giving the future educator an early exposure to "real-life" experiences and a broader view of the language arts curiculum.|
|OBJECTIVES:||1. To understand the components of language and how language, speech and communication are an integrated system.
2. To conceptualize the basic theories of Language Acquisition, acknowledge their limitations and use the basic framework of these theories to understand the foundational principles of intervention.
3. To map out significant language mile-stones for young children in order to assess language ability/level and understand how they relate to motor, cognitive, and social development.
4. To thoughtfully consider the causes, categories and characteristics of language delays, disorders, and differences (culture and linguistic perspectives) to more effectively refer and/or serve (intervention) children with special needs.
5. Learn and demonstrate competence in language intervention/training theories and techniques to increase language ability with children 0-5 years of age.
6. Understand the relationships of language with emergent reading and writing.
7. To understand how literacy strategies and teaching tools fit with content area teaching and learning.
8. To increase meta-cognitive awareness of literacy strategies.
9. To recognize the diversity of students.
10. To evaluate appropriateness of the texts in your content area.
11. To model and explain literacy strategies in the generating, interacting and refining phases.
12. To select teaching tools including modeling/explaining, student-centered and activitiy-centered tools, direct teaching tools, and appropriate integration of technology to support each of these three phases above.
13. To consider assessment tools that inform future instruction.
14. To incorporate writing to support content learning.
|PREREQUISITES:||Must have completed ElEd 375 - Literacy #1|
|EFFECTIVE DATE:||January 2003|


Two-Way Immersion Publications
CAL has assembled the following package to help teachers and administrators understand the essential components of dual language education and how to implement high-quality, effective programs. This package can also be useful for practitioners looking for ways to evaluate and improve their current two-way programs.
The TWI Package includes the publications described below, which can also be purchased separately.
Elizabeth R. Howard & Julie Sugarman
This book examines the role of program and classroom cultures in the development of bilingualism and biliteracy in two-way immersion students. Effective programs foster cultures of intellectualism, equity, and leadership. Drawing on a decade of research, the authors provide evidence of how these three cultures function as organizing principles for program and classroom practices adopted by four exemplary two-way immersion programs.
Elizabeth R. Howard, Julie Sugarman, Donna Christian,
Grounded in evidence and developed by a national panel of experts, the guiding principles are a tool to help dual language programs with planning and ongoing implementation. Program issues are addressed in seven strands: Assessment and Accountability, Curriculum, Instruction, Staff Quality and Professional Development, Program Structure, Family and Community, and Support and Resources.
Elizabeth R. Howard & Donna Christian
The report provides an overview of key issues and characteristics for implementing a successful two-way immersion program at the elementary level and incorporates advice from practitioners working in existing programs.
Note: The Two-Way Immersion 101 Report is available in Spanish online at CAL's Two-Way Immersion Web site.
Pathways to Multilingualism:
Edited by Tara Williams Fortune and Diane J. Tedick
This publication features a series of articles grounded in research that demonstrate what can be done to make immersion an effective pathway to multilingualism and academic success. Order online at the CAL Store.
Profiles in Two-Way Immersion Education
Donna Christian, Christopher L. Montone, Kathryn J. Lindholm, &
This classic reference publication on two-way immersion documents programs in three schools that are implementing variations of the two-way immersion education model. Order online at the CAL Store.
Elizabeth R. Howard, Natalie Olague, and David Rogers
This guide offers a collection of tools, such as discussion prompts and graphic organizers, for use in planning or implementing a dual language program. Dual language program planning teams are encouraged to work through the guide together to assess levels of support and readiness in the community for a dual language program and to develop a solid plan for moving forward with program implementation. Order online at the CAL Store.
Elizabeth R. Howard, Donna Christian, and Fred Genesee
This report presents findings from the CAL/CREDE study that examined the language and literacy development of both native Spanish speakers and native English speakers participating in two-way immersion programs. The longitudinal study focused on students' progress as they moved from Grade 3 to Grade 6. Order online at the CAL Store.
Christopher L. Montone and Michael I. Loeb
This report offers practical advice for two-way immersion programs considering expansion into middle school and high school. It includes an overview of likely challenges, options for meeting those challenges based on the experiences of established secondary school programs, and portraits of seven articulated programs. Order online at the CAL Store.
Impact of Two-Way Bilingual Elementary Programs on Students' Attitudes Toward School and College
Kathryn J. Lindholm-Leary and Graciela Borsato
This report examines the influence that participation in a two-way bilingual elementary program has had on high school students' attitudes toward school, college, and use of Spanish. Students were surveyed about their attitudes and proficiency in Spanish. Results show that most students had positive attitudes toward school and college, the two-way program, and bilingualism. Learn more on the CAL Store.
Becoming Bilingual in the Amigos Two-Way Immersion Program
Collaborative Practices in Bilingual Cooperative Learning
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Connecting Families to What Is Happening in Schools
NCTE INBOX 9-24-13
In classrooms, faculty lounges, and schools across the country, conversations are taking place about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and what it means to be college- and career-ready. As educators in the midst of these shifts in our own practices, it is also important to think about how these changes are being communicated to families. What is essential to share?
It seems best to keep it simple. Better yet, our challenge is to show not tell as we involve families in the literacy learning happenings within our schools on an ongoing basis.
Here's a group of educators that didn't need to tell families about the importance of reading and writing more complex texts across the disciplines because they are showing it:
- Meet first-grade teacher, Jane Fung. She made notebooking a regular part of her instructional practices. These notebooks will become a treasured part of each child's school career long after first grade.
- Julie Wollman, a ReadWriteThink.org and NCTE author, shows us how to get started with family message journals as a means for students to write to an authentic audience about their learning.
- Because the ways we teach writing are often quite different from the ways most of our students' parents learned to write, it is important to think about productive ways to get families involved as strong allies for excellent writing instruction. The authors of "Inviting Parents In: Expanding Our Community Base to Support Writing" describe workshops and other methods for getting parents productively involved in their children’s literacy development.
- Watch as a parent who is in a Community of Practice with teachers shares what it means to learn, talk, and design activities as a full CoP member with teachers.
When many of our students' families think about supporting children as readers, the images in their minds are limited to books. Again our challenge is to make sure they are seeing a wide variety of texts. Interested in learning from others studying these same topics?
Join us at NCTE's Annual Convention where educators are sharing their work on:
- Consider following the Westminster 50 Family Engagement Partnership Group as they embark with the goal of partnering with families around academic goals.
- Listen to this On Demand recording of a virtual practice exchange among groups interested in strengthening the connection between in-school and out-of-school literacies with families as partners.
Join us over at ReadWriteThink.org on the Parent & Afterschool Resources site for engaging ways to introduce children to reading or to encourage teens to write. Need some age-appropriate book suggestions or rainy day activities? These materials are your answer—all of them created by experts to be fun, educational, and easy to use outside of school.
What role do parents play in your school?
Sign up now for an RSS feed of each week's INBOX Ideas!


Demonstration of Kansas Music Teacher Standards
Kansas Music Standard #8: The teacher of music has skills in establishing effective music-learning environments.
- The teacher understands appropriate administrative, financial, management, organizational, and operational aspects of an overall music program.
- The teacher understands planning and implementation skills for music classroom instruction and performance at all developmental levels.
- The teacher understands use and implementation of appropriate technology for the music classroom.
Teaching music is a big part of my job description, but there is so much more. Behind the scenes there are plenty of administrative task that need to be done so that your program can run smoothly and successfully. Before one can teach music there needs to be a plan, or an outline, he/she can pull from to keep the program moving forward. Some of the administrative tasks I mention are items like designing a curriculum, a calendar the displays all important dates of the year, and a handbook which complements the curriculum and calendar, and knowing how to budget. The below links are documents I have created the demonstrates my ability to organize and propel my music program.
- The teacher manages instructional time effectively through appropriately structured learning-activities, efficient transitions and pacing, balanced presentations of music education materials, and music for performance.
- The teacher develops strategies for a balance of auditioned and all-inclusive musical participation.
- The teacher incorporates technology in instruction.
- The teacher applies music assessment strategies that evaluate the program and ensure students’ continual improvement.
- The teacher operates and maintains musical instruments and equipment.
The performance enhancers mentioned are a great ways to create an environment fun, comeptive, and stimulated learning. Below you will find lesson plans I designed during my student teaching incorporates some of the enhancers. You will also find a link to Sony Music website that I use for my history class, which was a create internet resource the students could use to listen and read about during portion of our theory class.
Lesson Plan Novena
Lesson Plan Games
|©2008 Kansas State University Music Education • Contact Us|


How Are Tests Developed?
The Praxis™ tests are developed by educators for educators. Advisory committees of distinguished teachers, teacher educators, key administrators and professional organizations help determine test content and review, revise and approve all questions and exercises. The Praxis Series™ is grounded in current research, including a comprehensive analysis of the most important tasks and skills required of beginning teachers and extensive surveys to confirm test validity.
For each test, a job analysis survey is conducted in order to determine what a representative group of teachers and teacher educators believe a newly licensed/certified teacher of a particular subject/grade level should know in order to perform his or her job competently. Based on the results of the job analysis as well as any national disciplinary standards that may apply, an Advisory Committee of teachers and teacher educators defines the content areas that should be covered on the test. They then create specifications to guide the development effort.
Test development specialists and practicing teachers use this information to develop test questions. Once developed, the questions undergo a series of reviews conducted by the Advisory Committee, content experts and ETS staff to confirm that they cover the content defined in the test specifications. At every step in the test development process, ETS follows well-established industry procedures and standards that are designed to ensure that the test measures what it is intended to measure. This iterative process creates clear links between the skills and knowledge being measured and the content of the test.
What Steps Does ETS Take To Design Tests That Are Valid and Fair?
ETS uses a validation process that is consistent with the technical guidelines in the Standards for Educational and Psychology Testing (AERA, 1999). Central to this process is the connection between the content of a test and the knowledge and skills judged important for entry-level practice.
Committees of educators with ETS's subject experts conduct reviews for the appropriateness and fairness of test content. The process ends with passing-score or standard-setting studies conducted by each state or licensing agency, during which the job relatedness of the test content for that state's entry-level teachers is evaluated.
How Do ETS Tests Stay Up-To-Date With Common Core State Standards?
The Praxis program continues to update tests to better measure what teachers need to know and be able to do in order to implement the Common Core State Standards in their classrooms. The Praxis II® Middle School and Secondary English Language Arts and Mathematics tests were recently regenerated, with new versions scheduled to roll out in the Fall of 2013. Revised and aligned versions of the Praxis I® Academic Skills tests in Reading, Writing and Mathematics are also slated for a Fall 2013 rollout. The Praxis program has created match documents to show how the specifications for current and newly regenerated tests that include ELA and/or Mathematics content correspond to the Common Core State Standards.
Please view the below PDFs for information on how specific Praxis tests in English Language Arts and Mathematics are aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
- Elementary Education: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment (ELA 0011/5011)
- Elementary Education: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment (Math 0011/5011)
- Elementary Education: Content Knowledge (ELA 0014/5014)
- Elementary Education: Content Knowledge (Math 0014/5014)
- Elementary Education: Instructional Practice and Applications (ELA 5015)
- Elementary Education: Instructional Practice and Applications (Math 5015)
- Elementary Education: Multiple Subjects (ELA 5031)
- Elementary Education: Multiple Subjects (Math 5031)
- Middle School English Language Arts (ELA 0049/5049)
- Middle School: Content Knowledge (ELA 0146/5146)
- Middle School: Content Knowledge (Math 0146/5146)
- Middle School: Multiple Subjects (ELA 5141)
- Middle School: Multiple Subjects (Math 5141)
- Middle School Mathematics (5169*)
- English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content Knowledge (0041/5041)
- English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content and Analysis (0044/5044)
- Mathematics: Content Knowledge (5161)


The human brain is composed of two hemispheres, which function like two networked computers. The left hemisphere receives motor and sensory input from the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere receives input from the left side of the body. When we bring the two systems together and begin the task of developing harmony and synchrony, the first step is to achieve an efficient balance between the two sides of the brain.
Because most mental processes involve both sides of the brain, integration problems between the two hemispheres can result in inefficiencies in brain processes. Thus, some children with reading problems, central auditory processing disorder, language delay, and other learning problems may be suffering from a lack of integration between the two sides of their brain.
Lack of integration between the two sides of the brain can become a vicious circle. A child who has a learning problem may suppress one eye. This can be a symptom of lack of integration between the two hemispheres. But because suppressing one eye means that the child reads with one eye only, the brain networks to support the other eye will become further disorganized through lack of use, exacerbating the lack of integration.
Since the left hemisphere of the brain controls movements on the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere of the brain controls movements on the left side of the body, a person can refine the integration between the two sides of the brain through activities involving both sides of his body. These movements bring the two systems into balance.
One of the most significant points on a child's perceptual and motor skill development continuum is the establishment of a synchronized cross pattern creep (crawling). This is the point where both sides of the body and both hemispheres of the brain are operating within the framework and under the control of a consistent timing system, a system in which the standards for measure for both sides of the body are matched perfectly. For the left leg to move forward synchronously with the right arm and for the same pattern to occur when the right leg and left arm move, requires that the time and space increments for both sides of the brain be in phase.
As the child begins to learn to walk, the sensory integration and balance requirements become much greater. In order to achieve synchrony the child must achieve a higher level of integration between his two sides. The most efficient possible walking pattern for a human is the one in which the two arms are swinging as pendulums counterbalancing the movement of the legs and setting the rhythmic pace for the total movement pattern.
Successful integration between the two sides of the brain is necessary for improving all brain processes, including those for reading, writing, academic achievement, motor skill development, and many others. Click here to learn how Balametrics sensory integration products and therapies can improve integration between the two sides of the brain.


Geography is one of the few disciplines in the University curriculum that comfortably bridges the social sciences, biophysical sciences and the humanities through its holistic approach to studies. As a result, the Geography program fulfils a vital function in the university’s mission by providing students with a conceptual framework for synthesizing information from several disciplines. As well, geography programs offer international and integrative perspectives on the relations among social, economic, and biophysical processes that affect interconnections between people, environments and places on the earth’s surface. A secondary goal is to provide majors with the knowledge and skills that are necessary to enable them pursue a graduate degree in geography or seek employment in geography-related fields. Geography courses thus form an integral part of the General Education program at Central Connecticut State University.
Consistent with the above goals, the Department has identified the following learning outcomes for students graduating from the undergraduate program in Geography: Students will:
- demonstrate knowledge of the basic concepts of physical and human geography.
- use geographic theories, principles and data to solve spatial problems
- apply basic research skills, including the ability to critically evaluate the research of others
- show competent skills in oral or written expressions regarding the clarity, logic and effectiveness of arguments.
- synthesize and produce graphic displays of spatial data (i.e., maps, graphs and database).
- describe the nature of Geography as an academic discipline, including familiarity with its history and recognition of its major subfields.
- demonstrate knowledge and skills that are sufficient to allow one pursue advanced study in geography and/or find employment in a geography-related field.
Majors and Tracks/Specializations in Geography
Major in Geography-Environmental Track: Curriculum Sheet
Major in Geography-Geographic Information Science Track: Curriculum Sheet
Major in Geography-Tourism Track: Curriculum Sheet
Major in Geography-General/Regional Track: Curriculum Sheet
Major in Geography Planning Specialization: Curriculum Sheet
Major in Geography-Subject matter concentration for certification in Elementary Education: Curriculum Sheet
Major in Social Science with a Minor in Geography-Secondary Education Certification in Social Studies: Curriculum Sheet
(This will take you to the Department of History website. To complete the program with a minor in Geography simply complete the 18 unit Geography minor for your 'social science concentrate'.
See the Department of History for Advising.)
Major in Hospitality/Tourism: Curriculum Sheet
Minors in Geography
Minor in Geography - Eighteen credits in Geography as follows: Geog. 110 or 120; and 15 credits of Geography electives. Six credits must be at the 300-/400-level.
Minor in Environmental Geography - Eighteen credits in Geography as follows; 3 credits in Geog. 110; 3 credits from Geog. 256, 266, 276, 378, or 442; 6 credits from Geog. 270, 272, 275, 374; and 6 credits from Geog. 433, 445, 472, or 473.
Minor in Geography with a Specialization in Planning - Eighteen credits in Geography as follows: Geog. 110, 241, and 441; 6 credits from Geog. 272 or any of the techniques courses; and 3 credits in 400-level planning courses.
Minor in Geographic Information Science - Eighteen credits: Geog. 130, Geog. 378, and twelve credit hours (at least six at the 300 or 400 level) from Geog. 256, 266, 276, 466, 476, 478, 479, ETC 458. If a Geography major, 3 additional credits of electives required. Geography majors in the Geographic Information Sciences track may not choose this minor.
Minor in Tourism - Eighteen credits as follows; Geog. 110 or 120; 3 credits from any regional Geography course and 9 credits from these courses: Geog. 291, 450, 451, 453, 454, 455. Courses used to satisfy the requirements of this minor may not be used to satisfy the requirements of any major in Geography.


The 2011-2012 school year looks like it is going to be an exciting one for the (RTSD) elementary schools. With many new academic programs and handy online tools to help parents, Radnor elementary schools are looking forward to their students returning for another year of learning and fun.
One of the new additions to the academic roster for Fall 2011 is Reading, Writing and Vocabulary Materials. All of the RTSD elementary schools will be using the reading, writing and vocabulary materials published by the Developmental Studies Center.
According to Literacy Coordinator, Maureen A. McQuiggan, Ed.D, these well-rounded, research-based core literacy materials have been piloted in the district over the last few years with great success. Plans to expand the materials uses in all of the elementary schools were reviewed in March and April, 2011 and the Curriculum Committee of the RTSD School Board.
Another class that the elementary schools have added to their curriculum is called Making Meaning. This class helps students to develop a higher level of thinking skills by focusing on nine reading comprehension strategies that can be applied to fiction and non-fiction texts at all reading levels. This class uses Tier 2 words that have high frequencies and multiple meanings. This will help provide students with strategies for deducing word meanings when reading independently. Becoming a Writer will teach and reinforce writing skills and conventions that are aligned with the Pennsylvanian and Common Core national standards for writing. These materials won the 2011 Golden Lamp Award in Curriculum from the Association of Educational Publishers.
According to McQuiggan, the implementation of this program at RTSD’s three elementary schools will ensure that a research-based consecutive writing program will be used in all of the elementary schools from grades K-5.
Also new for the 2011-2012 school-year is the NWEA Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment to all students between grades one through give.
According to Assistant Superintendent Kim Maguire, The MAP test is a computer adaptive assessment that enables the district to chart student progress in reading and mathematics over the course of one year and over consecutive years.
MAP testing has been piloted for more than two years in the district and used to monitor the progress of RTSD’s English Language Learners as well as identify special education and gifted students.
RTSD is also helping parents by providing them with online student attendance records and standard based report cards. A new standard-based report card that aligns with district curriculum to better inform parents of their child’s progress toward meeting state and national standards will also be introduced this year.


Education in Rural India: Perspective from a North Indian Village
Oxford Internet Institute
July 24, 2008
Today, 72.2% of the Indian population lives in rural areas, that is, around 750 millions of people with respect to the 2001 Census. Although it is obvious that the Millennium Development Goals regarding education won’t be achieved in overall India and more especially in the rural segments of this country, we note since more than two decades a strong and increasing willingness of the Indian government to improve the access to its schooling system, especially to its elementary education. This is achieved by a constantly growing mobilization of resources and the succession of important and original initiatives such as the Mid-Day meal Scheme, for instance. However, Indian society and even more rural Indian society are still heavily characterized by specific features such as castes, religion, gender asymmetries, household organization, and so on. The first aim of this paper is then to put in perspective the positive changes that are expected to have occurred in the rural-Indian primary education with respect to the main socio-cultural characteristics governing these rural communities; this over a 25 years period, by taking three ‘snapshots’ of the schooling situation in a North Indian village at three different points in time, 1983, 1993 and 2008. In a second time and following a large and growing literature which tends to show that government education policies are not the primary determinants of enrollment, we are interested in explaining the schooling decision as a household decision, taking again into account the main features that make a rural Indian household.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 53
Keywords: development, economics, india, rural, education, enrolment, palanpur, log likehood
JEL Classification: noneworking papers series
Date posted: May 25, 2010 ; Last revised: August 8, 2012
© 2013 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Many music programs in schools around the country are being eliminated due to budget cuts. March marks Music in Our Schools Month (MIOSM). Use this time to advocate for your child's school music program.
Music is monumental
Music can change your child’s life — literally. Music builds self-confidence and helps children gain social skills to help connect them to other kids and the world in general. Music students score higher on verbal and math portions of SATs, have fewer drug and alcohol problems and fewer altercations with the law. Like the sound of that?
Maintain the music
Elizabeth Lasko, assistant executive director, center for members and constituency relations with the National Association for Music Education (NAFME), says it is much easier to maintain — and build upon — any existing music program your child’s school may already have, than to lose it and have to work to get it back.
She adds, "So it’s worth putting every available resource into protecting a program.”
And don't take your child’s music program for granted.
Get involved however you can
Check in with your child’s homeroom teacher and/or music teacher to find out what needs to be done to support the music program.
Don’t underestimate the importance of arts in schools >>
Lasko says, “There may be an existing booster program or other support system, or one may need to be started.”
If you are going to spearhead one or want to breathe some life into the existing music booster program, reach out to other parents to help with your efforts. Send flyers home in backpacks, organize meetings and brainstorm how you can work together to gain support for the school’s music program.
Make the most of MIOSM
Work with your child’s school’s leaders to organize some fun activities this March geared toward encouraging music education and appreciation in honor of MIOSM.
Lasko suggests using MIOSM to bring visibility to your child’s school music program by organizing community events like putting on a school talent show featuring musical acts or making a video asking for support. Using social media is important too. You can connect with local radio, television and newspapers to help spread the word throughout your community. Also, consider organizing a school or class field trip to see a local musical group perform or invite a local group to come to your child’s school.
Lasko also points to the organization’s secondary school honor society, Tri-M, which spotlights the achievements of music students and their community spirit.
She says, “It’s a great way to show how important music is and how great music kids are — as we say, music education orchestrates success!”
Take your advocacy for music education to local legislature. NAFME offers extensive how-tos on its site regarding gaining support by working with government officials, including how to get resolutions passed, and contacting local media to get the word out to your community.
More on advocating for music and your kids


The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is proud to be one of many cultural institutions around the world participating in this fabulous program.
If you went blind tomorrow, would you still visit the art museum? If you couldn’t see art, would you still be able to have a positive art experience? The MFAH develops programming for the visually impaired as a part of Art Beyond Sight, an initiative started by Art Education for the Blind.
So, where do we begin? We usually think of art in terms of the visual: color, composition, texture, technique, etc. But how do you explain the concept of "red" to someone who has never been able to see colors? When choosing which artworks to discuss, Art Beyond Sight instructors go beyond aesthetics alone, delving more deeply into what really makes museum objects important: culture.
Although we tend to think of art in terms of physical characteristics (e.g. “That is beautiful!” or “That looks like my kindergartener could have painted it!”), art largely involves much deeper concepts, narratives, political statements, historical contexts, and cultural significances that supersede the physical. You don’t have to be able to see a painting in order to learn why it is important.
Art Beyond Sight sessions begin with the instructor giving a brief, unbiased explanation of how the work of art looks. The group is encouraged to discuss this artwork, ask questions, have debates, and dig deep into the work to find meaning. This lively, healthy discussion is the marker for success for any museum program because it means that visitors are engaging with the art.
It is heartening to see that with such a minor modification to museum programming—finding a way to describe these museum objects effectively—a whole new group of individuals from the community can enjoy all The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has to offer.
If you know someone who could benefit from this program, or if you would like to attend the program yourself, please click here for a list of upcoming events.


42% of African school children will drop out before the end of primary education
Sub-Saharan African countries are experiencing steady progress in education but children leave school, often without being able to read or write.
The latest edition of the Global Education Digest reveals that Africa has the world’s highest drop-out rate. 42% of African school children will leave school early, with about one in six leaving before Grade 2.
This means that more than two in five children who start school will not reach the last grade of primary education.
“The data in the Digest show that school systems are reaching more children but losing them due to inefficiencies, which lead to grade repetition and early school leaving, says Hendrik van der Pol, Director of UNESCO Institute for Statistics. "It is far more difficult and costly to reach children once they leave school than to address the barriers and bottlenecks in the systems,” he adds.
High repetition rates
Entitled Opportunities Lost: The Impact of Grade Repetition and Early School Leaving, the Digest presents a wide range of new data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).
It shows that in 2010, 11.4 million pupils repeated a primary grade in sub-Saharan Africa, representing more than one-third of the global total.
The regional repetition rate fell slightly, from 11% to 9% between 2000 and 2010, even though school systems have been straining to provide education to a growing school-age population.
This progress is clearly seen at the national level: In 1999, 15 African countries had repetition rates exceeding 20%, compared to only six countries in 2009.
The following countries have reduced their repetition rates by more than 10 percentage points since 1999: Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique and Rwanda.
Repetition rates are 4% or lower in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mauritius, Niger and the United Republic of Tanzania.
However, primary education repetition rates remain very high in Burundi (36%), Togo (23%), Chad (23%), Central African Republic (23%), and Congo (23%).
Households determine success in education
Many of the children repeating grades leave school before completing primary education.
Dropout rates are highest in Chad (72%), Uganda (68%) and Angola (68%), where more than two out of three children starting primary school are expected to leave before reaching the last grade. In contrast, dropout rates are lowest in Mauritius (2%) and Botswana (7%).
In countries such as Burundi or Togo, a child starting school today can expect to spend two or three years repeating a primary grade. In the case of Burundi, if the resources spent on repeating a grade were instead invested in enrolling new pupils, the country’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) could grow by 1.3%, according to the Digest.
Overall, it is estimated that each year of real education a child receives (not repeating a grade) could increase his/her individual earnings by 10% and lift annual GDP globally by 0.37%. Data show that the most important issues shaping educational opportunities are household wealth and location.
In general, poor children living in rural areas are more likely than urban children from rich households to repeat grades and leave school before completing primary education and attaining basic foundational skills.
<- Back to: Education


Motor Development 0-18 Months -- Ainsworth's Phases of Attachment -- The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale -- Drawing Sequence / Evolution of Spontaneous Abilities -- Erick Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Dilemma -- Selman's Role-Taking Levels -- Kohlbergs Stages of Moral Development -- Language Development -- Parten's Play Stages -- Piaget's Cognitive Stages -- Piaget's - Cognitive Operations -- Contrasting Characteristics of Prenatal and Postnatal Life -- Stages of Prenatal Development
- A focus on grades K through 3 for Art Education
FOUNDATIONS - Developmental Characteristics of Children in a Developing Social / Cultural Environment
THE CONCEPT OF CHILDHOOD - Notes From: Zigler, Edward F. and Matia Finn-Stevensen, Yale University. Children, Development and Social Issues, D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, MA & Toronto, 1987.
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD YEARS - Notes From: Zigler, Edward F. and Matia Finn-Stevensen, Yale University. Children, Development and Social Issues, D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, MA & Toronto, 1987.
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT - The following Notes are from: Coon, Dennis [Dept. of Psychology, Santa Barbara City College, California]. Introduction to Psychology, Exploration and Application, Fifth Edition. St. Paul, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco: West Publishing Company. 1989.
FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS:
The Brain, Biology, and Behavior
Sensation & reality
Perceiving the World
States of Consciousness
LEARNING & COGNITION:
Conditioning & Learning
Cognition & Creativity
MOTIVATION, ADJUSTMENT, AND HEALTH:
Health, Stress & Coping
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND PERSONALITY:
Theories of Personality
Dimensions of Personality
From Birth to Death


Every Child Ready to Read® @ your library® is a parent education initiative
Traditionally, early literacy programs at libraries have focused on children. Storytimes and other programs might model strategies that parents can use to develop early literacy skills, but parent education is not typically the primary intent.
The Public Library Association (PLA) and Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) concluded that public libraries could have an even greater impact on early literacy through an approach that focused on educating parents and caregivers. If the primary adults in a child's life can learn more about the importance of early literacy and how to nurture pre-reading skills at home, the effect of library efforts can be multiplied many times.
Teaching parents and other caregivers how to support the early literacy development of their children is the basis of Every Child Ready to Read® @ your library®. When the first edition of ECRR was introduced in 2004, the focus on educating parents and caregivers was a significantly different approach for many libraries; one that certainly has proven its value.
This updated and expanded second edition of Every Child Ready to Read® @ your library® provides a new curriculum and materials to continue the effort, supporting parents and caregivers with the early literacy development of their children birth to age five.


Boys and Girls Learn Differently: Gender and Learning Styles in the Classroom
Instructor: Michelle Kalina
Spring, Summer & Fall (Ongoing)
Instruction Mode: Correspondence
Academic Level: K-12 Professional Development
Partner Course Fee: $150
Partner Class Offered Through Northstar Continuing Education
Educators quickly realize that there are distinct differences in how efficiently boys and girls process and integrate information in the classroom. Supported by the most current brain-based research, educators will learn specific strategies to promote academic excellence in math, science, reading, writing, and behavior management from the preschool setting through high school. Furthermore, in an educational climate where standardized test scores are an important marker of student success, teachers will learn how to teach test-taking skills that are tailored to each student.
As a result of this participation in this course, students should:
1) Explore current brain-based research theories and describe the differences between the male and female brain.
2) Discover a variety of learning styles and how they can determine success or failure in the classroom.
3) Create the optimal preschool, elementary, middle school and high school learning environment and apply innovative teaching strategies to promote learning among girls and boys.
4) Learn how bonding, community building, nutrition, discipline methods and aggression play a role in the school environment.
5) Learn how structural innovations, character education, cooperative and competitive learning can impact the learning potential of girls and boys in the school environment.
The required text and selected articles are:
Bonomo, V. (2010). Gender matters in elementary education: Research-based strategies to meet the distinctive learning needs of boys and girls. Educational Horizons, 88, (4), 257- 264.
This article may be found at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ895692.pdf
Gurian, M. (2011). Boys and Girls Learn Differently: A Guide for Teachers and Parents, 10th Anniversary Edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Sun, Y., Zhange, J. & Scardamalia, M. (2010). Developing deep understanding and literacy while addressing a gender-based literacy gap. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 36 (1), 1-20.
This article may be found at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ910453.pdf
Textbook(s) not included in the cost of the course.


Music Education - Articles and Research Reports
1. Dreaming or awake - Composition in the classroom
by Professor George Odam & David Walters
A major three year music education research project funded by Yamaha and led by Professor George Odam in association with the Music Research Institute, QCA and NCET sought to find evidence of good practice in Composing in the Classroom with a particular focus on the use of keyboards.
2. Swiss Investigation
Worldwide research aiming to prove the intellectual and social benefits of providing more music education has been steadily increasing. At a time when music in UK schools is taking a hammering in local authority and school budget decisions, it's the turn of Switzerland to add further weight to the debate with a superb example of the effects of giving more music lessons at the expense of other subjects.
3. Presenting The Case For Music
Whilst music is under pressure both in state and private education, contemporary science is increasingly discovering the vital educational importance of music in lifelong learning. Here Professor Paul Robertson provides an overview of current research and offers compelling arguments for an increase in music making in the classroom.