What's in the Current Issue of Practical Homeschooling?
- Colleges & Common Core: we interview college admissions officers to find out if they now (or in the future) will require applicants to have used Common Core-aligned curriculum.
- Here's a new "top trend" you might have missed: the Maker's Movement might be just the way to motivate your academically reluctant, hands-on kid.
- If you can teach your child 5 notes, this article explains how they can now play 5 songs.
- Homeschoolers tackle the Science Olympiad team competition!
- Meet the homeschooler who has become Illinois State's youngest graduate ever.
- Homeschool grad reflects on homeschooling "then" . . . and now.
- Lawyer Antony Kolenc shares the research that PROVES homeschooling is a "fundamental" parental right.
- Bess Wuertz knows Montessori materials are EXPENSIVE. So she explains how to make or purchase yours for much, much less.
- Michele Lee gives us the skinny on phonics apps that are hot . . . and not.
- Melissa Morgan lays down steps for how to get your preschooler ready for classical education.
- Dr. Kuni Beasley explains how to tell if college is the right - or wrong - choice for your child.
- From best-selling author Janice VanCleave: some simple Spring science activities and facts.
- Anne Wegener reminds us that homeschooling is so much more than a "one-room schoolhouse."
- The new SAT: what to expect.
- Massive privacy-invading database for schoolkids faces a setback.
- Are schools literally DRUGGING kids to increase test scores?
- A series of CD-ROMs and DVD-ROM from a prestigious British university explores the influence of Christianity on culture
- A Child's Geography
- How to turn your child's smart phone into a learning tool
- How to teach your homeschooled kids to become more independent
- Art mixed with science
- Music education made fun for little kids
- Contests for subscribers with awesome prizes!
- Envelope Gallery of kids' art
- Ads with special offers
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Sister Eliza Healy was both an educator and noted first African American Mother Superior of a Catholic convent. Healy was born on a plantation near Macon Georgia on December 23, 1846 to a white father, Michael Morris Healy and one of his mulatto slaves, Eliza Smith. Healy spent her childhood on the plantation until her mother died suddenly in the spring of 1850, and her father died that August, leaving Eliza Healy and two of her younger siblings, Amanda and Eugene, orphaned. The executors of Michael Healy’s estate sent the children to New York where they were cared for by their older brother Hugh.
The three children were baptized as Catholics in the Church of St. Francis Xavier in New York on June 13, 1851. That same year Eliza and Amanda were sent to Notre Dame in St. Johns, Quebec. Their older sister Martha had joined the sisterhood earlier that year. Healy finished her elementary education and was enrolled in Villa Maria, a Catholic girls’ secondary school, in Montreal. After Healy graduated, she and Amanda rejoined their family in Boston, Massachusetts and then later the family purchased a home in nearby West Newton. She remained in West Newton for over twelve years.
In 1874, Healy entered as a novice into the Congregation of Notre Dame in Montreal, just as her older sister had done almost a quarter century earlier. She entered the convent at age twenty-eight in order to pursue a career as a religious nun and teacher. She took her first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the church and God in 1876, and completed her final vows six years later. Healy was now called Sister Mary Magdalen.
Over the next few decades Healy would transfer to several different Catholic schools in Ontario and Quebec, taking up both the position of teacher and appointed superior. In 1903, she took up the most important and most vilified position of her career. She became the superior of Villa Barlow at St. Albans, Vermont. The school was well-known and held in high prestige as many of the daughters of wealthy New England families attended the academy. It was her job to help reign in the disarray occurring at the school. There were several outstanding debts, too few teachers for the number of students, and a constantly fluctuating enrollment. As headmistress of the school and superior of the convent, she displayed strength and calm in her ability to solve the problems the school faced. She was also revered among the other nuns for her ability to pray for incredibly long hours during the day, her obedience of gospel discipline and her good manners.
After fifteen years at Villa Barlow, Healy was transferred to the College of Norte Dame on Staten Island, New York where she once again was given the post as superior. It was here that she spent the last year of her life. Eliza Healy (Sister Mary Magdalen) died from cancer in 1918.
Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American
Negro Biography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982); James M. O’Toole,
Passing for White: Race, Religion and the Healy Family 1820-1920
(Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002).
University of Washington, Seattle


and the democratic spirit of the society,
which is attempting to make the gallery
a valuable asset to every citizen and
to inculcate an appreciation of its offerings.
–Samuel O. Buckner, President, Milwaukee Art Institute. “Art Gallery Rapidly Growing in Popularity.” Free Press, Dec 23, 1913
In 2013, the Milwaukee Art Museum will celebrate its 125th anniversary. Since 1888, the Museum has featured over 3,600 exhibitions, acquired 30,000+ objects, and published hundreds of exhibition and Collection catalogues. The Museum has been instrumental in setting national standards for excellence in art education, and has also erected visionary architecture. An exciting 125 years indeed!
Considering that the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 and the Art Institute of Chicago was founded in 1879, the Museum’s beginnings are rooted among some very important company. While other arts organizations across the nation struggled and failed over the past 125 years, the Museum continued to build a long list of forward-thinking accomplishments, including…
In 1913, the Milwaukee Art Society mounted a sale exhibition of 25 paintings by African-American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner.
In 1914, Dudley Crafts Watson, Director of the Milwaukee Art Society, and the artist Manierre Dawson, curated The Modern Spirit: Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture. The exhibition was inspired by the New York Armory Show of 1913, officially known as The International Exhibition of Modern Art. Milwaukee’s was first exhibition of modern art at a museum, just one year after the Armory Show introduced Modernism to America. See the exhibition catalogue here.
In December 1931, the Milwaukee Art Institute exhibited Photographs by Moholy-Nagy.In November 1945, When Democracy Builds, an important Frank Lloyd Wright retrospective organized by Mary Frances “Polly” Coan at the Milwaukee Art Institute, broke all previous attendance records with 11,868 visitors over four weeks.
In September 1954, the First Annual Exhibition of Creative Photography from six states, sponsored by Boston Store and Milwaukee Photo-Pictorialists, was held at the Milwaukee Art Institute. Purchases of works of art from the exhibition inaugurate the permanent collection of photographs at the Institute.
In December 1966, Milwaukee Art Center organizes Fernando Botero’s first major one-person exhibition in the United States.
In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Center organized the first U.S. museum exhibition outside of New York City for the artist Cy Twombly.
While this is only a snapshot of Museum milestones, this handful of events highlights the fact that the Museum’s success would not have been possible without your patronage or participation. So I invite you to tell us your story:
- What was the first exhibit you attended?
- What has been your favorite exhibition?
- What is your favorite object?
- Did you take art classes at the Layton Art School or the Milwaukee Art Museum?
We look forward to a year of excitement and celebration and cheers to the next 125 years!


When people complain about my stance on flash cards they will often say to me ” Well how to you teach them the names of things? ” Well besides simply talking about the things you play with , things you eat and things you see as you go about your day you can play games like this with your littlest learners, but please don’t push that’s not how anyone especially infants learn. This should be fun, when they decide they are done move on to something else. Also this activity is a one on one activity, an adult needs to be able to reach the fruit easily at all times for safety reasons.
- Gather your materials. You will need some light bowls we are using Dandelion Bowls made from corn ( no worries about safety and they are light) , whole pieces of fruit. A knife for cutting some fruit for tasting after ( depending on your child’s ability to eat solids, you could use purees too).
- Start by putting one or two fruits under the bowls, I like that the bowls don’t completely cover the fruit because it teased her into investigating .
- As they turn them over label the fruits for them saying something like ” What have you found? Oh it’s an orange! Oranges are food. ” As they explore narrate their exploration but don’t lead it.
- Another reason to use safe bowls – everything ends up in the mouth at our house.
- After they discover all the fruit cut some up, mash some etc… for them to taste . This picture shows how close I am to her as well.
- The activity might just bring other people to the table too.
. . . .
Books About Fruit
The Very Hungry Caterpillar When I sat down to think which book is my absolute favorite, the one that kept coming back into my mind was this classic. As a child the holes the caterpillar made in the pages fascinated me, the colors enchanted me and I remembering being amazed that the caterpillar turned into that huge colorful butterfly! In university while studying elementary education I chose this book as the literary inspiration for a cross curricular unit study for grade 1. I made math lessons with fruit, science lessons about observing insects and the butterfly life cycle and health lessons about smart food choices. Then teaching preschool I used this awesome book to teach the days of the week, basic counting and more. When I was pregnant I chose this book along with a few other favorites to be my son’s nursery theme. Now that my son is 3 we often pull down the Very Hungry Caterpillar felt board and play with it as we read the story. To me this book is a given, and for every stage of my life, student, student teacher, teacher, mother it has come along for the ride!
Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z
by Lois Ehlert is an alphabet book extraordinaire! Wonderful paintings of fruits and vegetables seem ultra simple and it is but somehow the way the author has pieced this simple book together is brilliant. Maybe it’s that children learn about food at the table multiple times a day and feel proud being able to identify not only some of the letters but some of the pictures too! From a teaching standpoint I love that there are both upper and lower case letters on each page! This book will grow with your child, and beware it will also make you
The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear (Child’s Play Library)
by Audrey and Ron Wood is a fantastic book that children adore! The story not only unique in that the narrator speaks directly to the mouse , it’s illustrations will enchant your child’s imagination and make the most overtired parent smile. The little mouse is trying to keep the strawberry away from the bear, and his adorable attempts to hide it make my son laugh every time! Great book!
…Full Disclosure : I was given the Dandelion bowls free of charge to try out , I was not compensated to make mention of them.


Your pre-emergent and emergent readers will develop phonemic, phonological and alphabet awareness by using letter and picture rods to learn sounds, letters and letter-sound relationships. By linking together the rods children learn how to identify initial, medial and final sounds; recognize uppercase and lowercase letters; sequence the letters of the alphabet and build simple words.
• 108 Reading Rods® (vowels, consonants, picture)
• Plastic storage tub
• 24 double-sided activity cards
• 4 activity trays
• Activity guide
Common Core State Standards Alignment: Language, Reading Foundational Skills
Learning Style: Visual, Tactile
Language- Promote foundational skills for language and phonemics teaching students that words are joined together by individual sounds and corresponding letters.
Language- Teach letter-sound correspondence by matching the letter Rods with the picture Rods and repeat the words aloud. Kit teaches everything from alphabetical order to spelling.
Fine Motor- Pincer grasp and cooperative hand and muscle strength are promoted when snapping and unsnapping the rods to create links.


Suggestions For Case Studies and Examples
Integrated Science Courses for Elementary Science Teachers
Earth Systems Science for Educators
Students are introduced to fundamental concepts in the earth sciences and their relationship to the "real world." Specific student outcomes are that they develop scientific process skills, understand and apply basic earth science concepts and collect and interpret information and data about earth systems. Activities relate to K-12 National and Nebraska science education standards (Gosselin and Maklem-Hurst, 2002 ).
Dave Gosselin: University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Integrated Science Courses: "Science Semester" at the University of Delaware
A semester block sequence of earth, life, and physical science content courses and science teaching methods courses for elementary education majors. During this semester, problem-based learning and other inquiry-based approaches to create an integrated science and education methods curriculum.
John Madsen: University of Delaware
Investigative Science Sequence at Winona State University
This three semester sequence of integrated elementary education will focus on building pedagogical content knowledge. The first course will be a content course (Earth - the Water Planet), followed by a modified elementary methods course, and then a second content course (Environmental Science in Your COmmunity). This course sequence follows a learning cycle model, and students will work with K-8 students via an after-school program (Key Kids).
Cathy Summa: Winona State University


Most children begin learning phonics by sounding out letters and learning what items represent that sound and that letter, i.e. A is for apple; A sounds like “aaaaaaaaaaaaaa”. Children begin learning phonics from parents, siblings, videos, and music at a very early age (2-4 years old) even before entering school.
Phonics and phonemic awareness are comingled when teaching children in this manner. Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols, whereas phonemic awareness involves sounds in spoken words. Therefore, phonics instruction focuses on teaching sound-spelling relationships and is associated with print. Most phonemic awareness tasks are oral.
Even though parents are the initial teachers, it will take a professional to instill all of the rules of phonics and to teach students decoding skills as they begin to read. Hiring a tutor with experience teaching early learners will ensure a student’s success as they begin elementary school. A professional tutor can also reinforce phonics for those students that were taught the Whole Language approach to reading and are still struggling in 2nd and 3rd grades. Hiring an Advanced Learners tutor is a guarantee that you will receive a professional tutor that can make a difference in a child’s ability to read.
The basic learning blocks of every child's education are built in elementary school. It is here that a life long love for learning is fostered. The fundamental reading, writing, and math skills are introduced to your child for the first time in elementary school. In order to be successful, elementary students need to master basic listening and study skills. Elementary school should be a positive, nurturing environment where children are introduced to learning.
Miami is the seventh-largest metropolitan area in the United States with over 5.4 million residents. Miami is a Mecca of prestigious private schools and colleges. Miami – Dade is the largest public school district in the state of Florida. Miami residents demand the very best education for their students. As a city with students of all ages, we have cultivated an elite group of tutors to help students with any subject necessary. Our highly customized service means that you determine exactly who your tutor will be, where the tutoring will take place, and for how long. We have been providing tutoring services to Miami students for many, many successful years. Our reputation as a premium service is evident in the hundreds of testimonials we have received from parents, students, and schools in Miami and the surrounding communities.
View Some Of Our Elementary Phonics Tutor Profiles
Our Tutoring Service
We believe that the most effective tutoring occurs when you have the undivided attention of a highly qualified and experienced tutor by your side. Our exceptional tutors are not only experienced and educated, but are experts in their field and passionate about teaching others. We will always provide you with a tutor specifically qualified and experienced in the subject matter you need. And for your peace of mind, we conduct a nation-wide criminal background check, sexual predator check and social security verification on every single tutor we offer you. Before you invest money and time into tutoring sessions, be sure you have selected the right tutor for you.


Teaching License Programs
Most public and private schools in the U.S. require teachers to meet state licensing and certification guidelines. Teaching license programs give individuals the preparation they need to study for their local state licensing exams. While teaching license courses won't directly lead to a license, they can fulfill the education requirement for state licensure.
Teachers for subjects like bilingual education, science and mathematics are in demand across the country, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Opportunities for employment may also be greater in rural communities and urban areas in need of education reform.
Get your teaching license to qualify for classroom jobs
Most teachers start with a four-year bachelor's degree in teaching or a related subject. Some teachers with a bachelor's degree in another field may earn a teaching certificate to meet state requirements. Some school districts require teachers to eventually earn a master's degree. Even where it is not required, many schools offer a higher salary for teachers with a graduate degree.
Teaching license courses vary depending on the grade level and area you want to teach. Elementary school teachers may take courses in child growth and development, child psychology, and literacy development. At the middle school and high school level, many teachers specialize in a particular subject such as social studies, math or music. In addition to subject-specific courses, all teachers generally study teaching methods, testing and assessment techniques and educational philosophy.


Menu of Opportunities
Audience Needs and Challenges
|About Future Teachers|
Considerations are dependent on the grade level that the pre-service educator will teach, their level of science preparation (e.g., education major or science major), and their access to resources and opportunities. The majority of pre-service educators are elementary education majors, who need to be prepared to bring hands-on science activities into the classroom, that meet grade-specific state-mandated science content standards. In general, the curriculum for elementary teacher preparation does not include extended study of science and many elementary teachers lack confidence in science.
Other pre-service teachers may specialize in a particular field of science as they prepare to teach middle school or high school science subjects. Throughout their science coursework, there is a significant chance that all future teachers will not be exposed to teaching models that reflect the best education practices or the standards-related content for which they will be responsible. In short, their own experience with science learning may include little authentic inquiry, broad, shallow coverage of far more content than they need to master, and models of teaching that falsely separate science and education. It is left to the teacher to integrate content and pedagogy, often after they enter the classroom where they are confronted with the realities of classroom management.
It also is important to understand that the majority of pre-service teachers, whether education or science undergraduate majors, do not participate in authentic scientific inquiry; true scientific research traditionally is not experienced until graduate school, even by science majors. Thus, entry-level teachers of science may not have a strong understanding of the process or nature of science. There is a disparity in the opportunities and resources available to pre-service teachers, dependent to some degree on the training institution. While some universities may have a plethora of faculty, classes, resources, and research opportunities (whether or not they are well-leveraged in the preparation of teachers), other institutions, such as minority serving institutions and community colleges, are unable to provide these resources for their students and faculty.
|About Education Faculty Involved in Teacher Preparation|
There is tremendous variability in the depth of understanding of science and the process of science among education faculty responsible for preparing pre-service teachers. Education faculty often include science education faculty who have received strong science content but that content may be restricted to a specific field in science, often biology, and may not include much exposure to Earth and space science. Many faculty have had limited exposure to authentic science experiences, either through coursework, internships, or research. Likewise, there is tremendous variability in the construct of courses about how to teach science. These courses model to different degrees teaching practices informed by educational research and current scientific content.
Many faculty identified a need for continued exposure to current science content, as their research focuses primarily on education issues. Faculty also noted a lack of access to, and funding for, varied professional development experiences. In addition, they often are not aware of current Earth and space science resources, and thus cannot prepare future teachers in the use of these resources to support the content and process skills that K-12 educators will teach in the classroom environment.
|About Science Faculty Involved in Teacher Preparation|
Most science faculty who instruct undergraduate students at 2- and 4-year colleges are helping to prepare future teachers, as many of their students will eventually become teachers. Despite the fact that these courses represent a significant component of a future teacher’s science background and capability to teach science, the traditional content and practices of introductory science courses do not align with content and pedagogy that the future teacher must employ in the classroom. Introductory courses often cover broad content through lecture that does not humanize science; classroom teaching requires standards-aligned content explored through hands-on, inquiry based learning experiences that illustrate science as a human endeavor. For a variety of reasons, science faculty face a variety of obstacles should they choose to seek professional development that focuses on teaching methodology.
Science faculty may need greater access to the broad range and interconnected nature of science to teach introductory courses that may be expected to cover all of physical science, for instance. They may be unaware of their students’ needs and abilities—such as misconceptions, some students’ fears of science, or a belief that science consists of memorizing facts. Some science faculty may have expertise in fields completely unrelated to the topic that they are responsible for covering.
For comments and additional suggestions, please contact firstname.lastname@example.org.


60 years after Brown v. Board, how to stop schools from re-segregating
By Beverly Daniel Tatum Special to CNN | 5/19/2014, 9:42 a.m.
Editor's note: Beverly Daniel Tatum is the president of Spelman College in Atlanta and the author of "Can We Talk About Race?" and Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
I was born in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1954, the year of the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education.
The struggle for integration has shaped my life from the very beginning.
When my father, an art professor at Florida A&M University, sought to pursue his doctorate in art education at Florida State University, the state of Florida chose to pay his transportation to Penn State rather than open its doors to an African-American graduate student.
In 1957, he completed his degree at Penn State, and in 1958 became the first African-American professor at Bridgewater State College, now Bridgewater State University, in Massachusetts, where I grew up. My parents were part of the great migration, moving to the North to escape segregation.
They achieved their goal. My three siblings and I attended predominantly white public schools in our small Massachusetts town without protest or high court drama, and graduated well-prepared for the colleges we all attended.
Forty-four years later, in 2002, my husband and I left Massachusetts and returned to the South -- initiating our family's reverse migration.
Eventually our sons, and even my parents, moved to Atlanta, too. They returned to a region very different than the one they remembered. Fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, their choice of housing and their freedom of movement are unencumbered by race.
But 60 years after racial segregation was outlawed in schools, public education is again segregating along racial lines. And not just in the South, but across the United States.
Schools are more segregated today than in the 1980s, according to a new report released by researchers at UCLA's Civil Rights Project, "Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and Uncertain Future."
This is the result of continued patterns of residential segregation, and a series of Supreme Court decisions that have quietly undermined the implementation of Brown through a shift away from court-ordered busing and other mandated desegregation strategies.
As school districts move back to "neighborhood school" policies, white students will likely have less school contact with people of color than their parents had. Particularly for young white children, interaction with people of color is likely to be a virtual reality rather than an actual one, with media images (often negative ones) most clearly shaping their attitudes and perceived knowledge of communities of color.
For students of color, the return to segregation means the increased likelihood of attending a school with limited resources. Most highly segregated black and Latino schools have high percentages of poor children. At most highly segregated white schools, middle-class students are in the majority.
The negative educational impact of attending high-poverty schools is well-documented.
Whether a student comes from a poor or middle-income family, academic achievement is likely to decline if the student attends a high-poverty school.


Fine Arts Programs in Elementary Schools
Elementary school students experience music by listening, speaking, chanting, singing, moving, playing, reading, writing, and arranging. Leaving out even one element shortchanges student learning. These basic elements provide a foundation for advanced development when students interpret, compose, improvise, and evaluate music and musical performances.
Elementary music students listen, identify, describe, and categorize a myriad of sounds. They listen to short musical selections and distinguish between like and unlike passages. Through a carefully planned sequence of activities, students learn to look at a passage of notes and replicate it with accurate pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and tempo.
Elementary students also learn to listen to a melodic line and identify its visual representation. This exercise enables students to use both ear and eye to identify forms such as AB, ABA, theme, variations of a theme, and rondo. With more experience, children learn to hear the difference between two very similar phrases, for instance those having the same melodic line but different rhythms or vice-versa. From simple learning processes that begin at primary levels, students advance to analyzing longer and more complicated musical works in which harmony and texture also create form.
Music specialists and classroom teachers who are responsible for music instruction have a challenging task. To enable all students to realize their musical potential, elementary schools must implement a solid music program based on scaffolded course content. To build a foundation for musical achievement, activities must be sequenced and TEKS-based. Class musicals do not substitute for the ongoing, well-rounded instruction necessary for the development of content knowledge and skills. Excursions to concerts and performances do not constitute, and should not supplant, quality music instruction.
Districts and campuses make decisions about time allocations, meeting patterns, and class size. In class, time is used to teach music concepts and skills and distribute and collect the materials. In addition to the content taught, the facility and staff availability help determine maximum enrollment in music classes. Final scheduling considerations include the number of class meetings per week, the time of day, the length of the class, and the number of students in the class.
The music specialist should have no more than five to six classes per day and a total of no more than 150 students. Strong music education relies on both group and individualized instruction; large numbers of students reduce both the effectiveness of teaching and the quality of learning.
Elementary specialists have one duty-free planning and preparation period per day and scheduled intervals between classes. Classroom teachers may escort students to and from the classroom, providing security for students and time for the music specialist to set up for the next class. Specialists may require additional assistance when a class contains students with special needs. In small school districts where specialists are assigned to multiple campuses, an additional period is needed for travel, record keeping, materials management, and preparation of multiple music laboratories. An additional benefit of having a music specialist on the faculty is the added flexibility in scheduling teachers’ conference periods.
The range of class activities determines the specific space allocations for elementary music courses. Playing classroom instruments, movement, singing, and games require adequate room for safety and instructional effectiveness. Other space considerations include:
- Secure storage for equipment and materials (e.g., tapes, compact discs, VCR/TV, classroom instruments, computers)
- The number of chairs, risers, and/or desks needed to accommodate the largest class. (If classes scheduled in the room include students from kindergarten through grade five, several desk and chair sizes are needed.)


Welcome to Art
The Loudoun County Public Schools’ Elementary Art Education Program is a sequential curriculum, developing interaction between each student’s creative expressions and their appreciation for art. The Elementary Art Education Program provides maximum opportunity for each student to have hands-on experiences in producing their art, enhanced by the integration of art history, art criticism and aesthetic critiques. Art education classes at the elementary level will encourage critical and creative problem-solving skills, as well as empathy for historical and contemporary art works. The program is designed to encourage perceptual awareness, through the involvement of all of the senses, and allows for the integration of other curriculums, as art readily relates to all educational experiences. The students will establish a continuing portfolio for the purpose of generating ideas, recording visual incidence, review of art vocabulary/concepts, and for assessment of growth.


- About CMS
- Supporting CMS
Middle School (12-14yr)
The vision of the Cambridge Montessori Middle School is to address the needs of young adults and to create a safe community in which they can extend themselves and take risks. The curriculum emphasizes the relevance of its subject matter and provides a framework through which the students will see connections between themselves and the world they will soon enter as adults. The questions we try to help our adolescent students address are: Who am I? Who am I in relation to and where do I fit into human society? How can I serve other members of this society? The CMS Middle School embraces Education for Sustainability as a guiding principle. This logical extension of the Montessori Elementary curriculum excites children to use their imaginations and burgeoning intellect to investigate facets of the universe and to identify their place within it.
In the Middle School program, students are presented with an integrated curriculum, designed to help them make connections across disciplines and find their place in the world. They do this by building an appreciation for the natural world and all it has provided, as well as by expanding their awareness of human progress, resources, economics, and fundamental needs. Due to adolescents’ unique human consciousness, our Middle School students are made aware of their responsibility for life and conditions on the planet, and they are able to directly apply concepts from their Elementary education to real problem-solving scenarios.
Boston Globe: Succeeding at their own pace By Alex Beam
Forbes: Is Montessori the Origin of Google and Amazon?
The Atlantic: Superwoman Was Already Here
Wall Street Journal: Montessori Mafia
Harvard Business Review: Montessori Builds Innovators
American Montessori Society
Montessori Schools of Massachusetts
Building the Pink Tower Blog


Introducing your child to music education at a young age offers an incredible array of developmental benefits. more
Head lice facts
Getting head lice is not a sign of poor hygiene, so don't be embarrassed if your child gets it. In fact, lice prefer clean hair because it allows them to move from hair to hair more easily.
What you need to know about head lice:
- Lice are more a nuisance than a real health problem.
- An infestation of head lice is called pediculosis.
- A sure sign of a lice infestation is a child who is madly itching her head, particularly behind the ears and along the hairline on the neck. But don't fooled into thinking that if your child isn't itching that they must be lice-free - some children are fantastic hosts and seem to tolerate lice without noticeably itching (at least until the infestation has hit plague proportions!).
- While long hair is more tedious to deal with during an infestation, cutting the hair will not solve the problem as the eggs are laid at the base of the hair shaft.
Because live eggs hatch in 7-10 days, the key to success in getting rid of them is to repeat whatever treatment you settle on every three-four days for a couple of weeks. You can only break the cycle if you stop the newly hatched lice from laying eggs.
Find more relevant information and articles on head lice and nits:
- Best head lice products
- What are head lice?
- What are nits?
- Head lice treatments
- Treating head lice
- Lice removal products


- Wisconsin School Music Association
WSMA is proud to be a partner with more than 3,500 music teachers and school administrators in the education of more than 200,000 students who annually participate in our activities. The Association, including more than 1,000 member schools, is governed by a Board of Directors consisting of school administrators elected from ten geographic districts, three elected officers from the Wisconsin Music Educators Association, the State Music Consultant, a community representative, and a representative from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. Under their leadership, WSMA has created a Strategic Plan to guide us as we challenge our youth to achieve excellence through music.
In Wisconsin schools and communities, all have access to enriching musical opportunities that assure a lifetime of involvement and enjoyment.
To ensure that all students have opportunities which encourage lifelong involvement in music, the Wisconsin School Music Association will provide statewide music programming activities, offer leadership and support for school music programs, and advance music as an integral part of the school curriculum and community life.
- We believe music is a basic human need.
- We believe the study of music develops life skills.
- We believe the study of music is a vital part of every student's education.
- We believe a high-quality, comprehensive, inclusive music curriculum should be offered to all students at all levels.
- We believe a comprehensive study of music involves performing, creating, reading, listening and responding to music and should be available for all students at all levels.
- We believe a music program is most effective when there is sensitivity to scope and sequence of musical knowledge for all students at all levels.
- We believe the study of music develops creativity, self-expression, discipline and teamwork.
- We believe music education positively influences other disciplines and professions.
- We believe a quality music program has a positive impact on school climate and community life.
- We believe participation in school music encourages lifelong learning, involvement and appreciation of music.


Dr. Dale Misenhelter, associate professor of music and coordinator of the music education program is hosting educators from fives states for a two-week Orff Training Workshop.
What is Orff? Orff’s approach, developed for children but latterly used also with adults, was based on his belief that the easiest method of teaching music is to draw out the student’s inherent affinities for rhythm and melody and allow these to develop in natural ways,leading the child by his or her intuition from primitive to more sophisticated expression through stages parallel to western music’s evolution. Orff accomplishes this by means of a carefully planned program, beginning with speech patterns, rhythmic movement, and two-note tunes, then moving logically into pentatonic melody. Adult pressure and mechanical drill are discouraged. Improvisation is encouraged. Major and minor melody are introduced as the final stage of the program.
Orff designed a special group of instruments, including glockenspiels, xylophones, metallophones, drums, and other percussion instruments to fulfill the requirements of the Schulwerk courses.


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The Reading Game was created by Kenneth Hodkinson, author of the “Wordly Wise” series. It is a fast-action memory card game that will get your kids reading.
The Reading Game is a supplemental learn-to-read program that correlates with most standard curriculums. It also meets the criteria of the Common Core State Standards for Language Arts, Foundational skills, and Reading skills needed for both kindergarten and first graders. The Reading Game consists of six illustrated storybooks: Skunk, Snake, Bear, Penguins, Unicorn, and Zebra. Each book comes with a color coded word matching card game. The memory games are played in six stages for each book, learning five words in each stage. By the end of your first book your student will be able to read 30 words.
Frequent exposure through play hard-wires these words into long-term memory. The card game requires two players, the student and a tutor. By transforming rote learning into a fast paced game where there is a winner every few seconds, learning to read becomes fun.
The first story is told using just those thirty words. It tells of a skunk without a stripe who is rejected for being different but finds acceptance among a group of cats and becomes their defender. Each subsequent game in the series adds a further thirty words for a reading vocabulary of 180 words by the time the complete series is finished. Of the twenty-five most commonly used English words, twenty-two are on that list; of the forty most commonly used English words –thirty. The multi-sensory teaching approach – through the card game play and the storybooks – works well for retention and student enjoyment. ~ from the website
The Crewmembers received a copy of The Reading Game which retails for $24.95.
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Special thanks to Jacquelin from A Stable Beginning for writing this post.


CAUSE: Nina Church and her family started Nika Water, an environmentally responsible water bottle company that donates 100 percent of its profits to support clean water projects in impoverished countries. An estimated 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe, drinkable water. Water-related diseases caused by contaminated water result in thousands of deaths a day in the developing world. The lack of available clean water also has social consequences: Many women and children spend their days trekking to remote water sources, leaving no time for them to earn an elementary education. Eighteen-year-old Nina is working to break this cycle of poverty.
EFFECT: Nika Water has committed more than $400,000 to bring clean water to over 7,000 people worldwide. Since its launch in 2009, Nika has completed projects in Sri Lanka, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Nicaragua. It is the first CarbonFree-certified water bottle company (Nika offsets its carbon footprint by funding the planting of trees in Nicaragua), and it also participates in the One-for-One Recycling Program.
GET INVOLVED: Nika Water is currently on sale in California and Nevada. If you live in the California area, you can volunteer and sell Nika Water at street fares and on the beach. Nika Water is hoping to expand to other states, and you can help spread the word about Nika and the world water crisis over social media platforms.


Through our courses and field experiences, we utilize a constructivist way of thinking which begins with the prior knowledge of the learner and proceeds to guide students to link their already existing knowledge, skills, and attitudes with new learning. As a result, instead of teachers telling students what they need to know, students construct new meaning in every class by connecting already existing knowledge to new information.
By developing a number of collaborative relationships with other departments on campus, we are able to offer outstanding coursework outside the major. For example, Elementary Education majors and Secondary Education minors are encouraged to enroll in MAT 107, Math for Teachers. This course meets a state-wide math requirement and is focused on preparing students to teach math with more confidence as educators. We also have collaborative relationships with other departments, including biology, physics, psychology, and music. Our program provides teacher preparation in a liberal arts context.


Information by Country
Podcast: 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report calls for investment in developing young people's skills
NEW YORK, United States of America, 30 November 2012 – One in five young people aged 15 to 24 in 123 low- and middle-income countries has been left out of primary education and lacks skills for work. Of these people, the majority are young women.
The 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report Youth and skills: Putting education to work examines how skills-development programmes can be improved to boost young people’s opportunities for decent jobs and better lives.
Podcast moderator Femi Oke discussed the report’s findings and the dynamics around gender and skills development with Director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report Pauline Rose.
Unemployment, poverty – and inequality
The number of young people in the world has never been higher. In 2010, the population of those between the ages of 15 and 24 reached one billion. Many of these youth are not learning the necessary skills to become functional adults in their societies.
According to Ms. Rose, one in eight young people is without work. “Perhaps of even greater concern is that there are around one in four young people who are working for wages below the poverty line. And we identify that young women are much more likely to be in this situation, and that includes young women who have actually had some education,” she said.
Ms. Rose said that, while programmes such as BRAC in Bangladesh and Camfed in parts of Africa are addressing the needs of young women in the direst circumstances by providing basic skills training and assistance in setting up profitable businesses, these efforts are not enough. “These programmes are very important, but they are reaching too few young women and men who need the support of these programmes. They need to be radically scaled up by governments with the support of aid donors.”
Developing skills, and economic growth
Evidence shows that investing in young people’s skills development leads to economic growth and brings positive transformation. Ms. Rose highlighted two cases: “The Republic of Korea is a striking example of a country that invested in skills development and linked that with the country’s overall macroeconomic policy and strategy to make sure that young people were being provided with the skills that they need for the work place…[I]t went from being a low-income country 30 years ago to now being a high-income country, with a massive increase in economic growth…”
“…We contrast this with Ghana, which started out 30 years ago with a similar level of education and a similar level of economic growth to actually being stagnating both in education and growth.”
The report calls on governments to address the need to give young people who lack basic literacy and numeracy skills a second chance in education. It also calls on donors to allocate their funds to reach those who are most in need.
“We’re also working with young people to make sure that they are also able to put the word out there, to the ministries of education. Because, at the end of the day, it’s experiences of the young people who really matter and who actually can express the need and the importance of these issues far better than we can,” concluded Ms. Rose.


Lesson plans should be the same for students of different types of families. In schools, there is great discrimination against students having gay parents. They are subjected to humiliation and embarrassment by their fellow students in classrooms or by the education authority. The basic need for any school-going child is to receive love from his/her parents irrespective of whether they are two moms or two dads. Keeping this in mind and thinking rationally, active steps are now being taken to ensure that all students can demand equal educational rights, irrespective of having gay parents.
Determining the educational needs of students having gay parents
Elementary education is the basic right every child should have. Being an educator or teacher, your objective should be to impart good teaching to their innocent minds, to help them thrive in elementary education. No school or state legislature can decline free education to students having gay parents in any legal manner. Students are not responsible for their parents’ decisions and adults of the same sex living together also affirm the meaning of love and care in their own way. Therefore, children having gay parents have as much right to education as any other student.
Schools have no right to discriminate against such children because they are innocent and in no way responsible for having gay parents and too young to exercise any choice in the matter. They are fresh, young minds and they need love. If they get that love from parents who are of the same sex or from opposite sexes, the significance is the same for them.
Elementary education should help in establishing the equality of all students irrespective of family diversities. From an early stage, teachers and school officials should educate all students and their families about same-sex parents and related issues. At school, students having gay parents feel intimidated and mortified and this leads to considerable emotional stress. The responsibility of such schools should be to educate students about family values and tolerance. A bias free atmosphere alone can help students from traditional as well as unorthodox families thrive in the educational sphere.


Work Created in Reading and Writing 1
Effective writing requires innovative thinking and creative engagement. Students in this course focus on building a writing portfolio by developing college-level writing skills and using these skills to produce a variety of assignments. Regular writing workshops allow students to concentrate on experiential and practical approaches to writing. Students explore a variety of texts and objects through class assignments. By the end of the course students have the foundational skills to be reflective and eloquent writers. Class sessions are composed of seminar discussions, group work, and writing workshops. Course requirements include participation, presentations, directed group work and research assignments, and a portfolio of seven essays.


Via Scoop.it – Student Learning through School Libraries
Research has shown that more access to books results in more reading and more reading leads to better literacy development. A new study on the impact of libraries on reading achievement by Stephen Krashen and colleagues using NAEP reading scores and PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) data. Three multivariate analyses, all controlling for the effects of poverty, confirm the importance of the library.
The researchers conclude:
“In all of the multivariate studies considered here the library emerges as a consistent predictor of reading scores… Of course, providing access is only the first step: Even with access, some children (but surprisingly few) will not read. The research literature consistently indicates that rewards for reading are not effective (McQuillan, 1997; Krashen, 2003; 2004), but that read-alouds and conferencing do help. But in order for these approaches to work, the books need to be there.
But what is clear is that libraries definitely matter and they matter a lot.
Inspection of the betas in the tables reveals that access to books in some cases had a larger impact on reading achievement test scores than poverty (tables 1,3, 4), and in other cases had nearly as strong an impact (tables 2,5). This suggests that providing more access to books can mitigate the effect of poverty on reading achievement, a conclusion consistent with other recent results (Achterman, 2008; Evans, Kelley, Sikora, and Treiman, 2010; Schubert and Becker, 2010). This result is of enormous practical importance: Children of poverty typically have little access to books (Krashen, 2004). It seems that libraries can provide this access.”
Here’s the link to a copy of the pdf version of this research paper Is The Library Important? Multivariate Studies at the National and International Level.
You might also want to keep an eye on Jeff McQuillan’s new blog The Backseat Linguist. Jeff is a former university professor of applied linguistics and education, and now a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Educational Development in Los Angeles, California.


Using Greens (2002) book: How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education as a conceptual framework, this paper investigates teachers attitudes towards the use of popular music in formal music education. The main research question: What are the views of selected secondary school music teachers regarding the incorporation of popular music into formal music education? was examined through semi-structured interviews with four secondary school music teachers. Three central themes emerged from the data analysis: the justification of popular music in formal music education; elements of teaching practice affected by this inclusion; and the idea of tradition and authenticity in different styles of music. This paper summarizes the conceptual framework, methodology, analysis, and results used to produces these three themes.


Day of the Dead Skulls: Free Lesson Plan Download
Grade Level: 3-5 Art Education Lesson Plan
Art Elements: Line, Shape, Form
Art Skills: Drawing, Clay Construction
Making Connections: Day of the Dead, Social Studies, Spanish
* Get more free lessons like this, on our Lessons Page
The colorful nature of Day of the Dead makes it a great holiday to learn about in the art room. If you have students that study Mexico in Social Studies or in Spanish Class, this lesson is a natural cross-curricular fit. I like that the silly and beautiful skulls seen during Day of the Dead immediately engage students and that because of their interest, they work extremely hard to create their own unique designs. You can create skull tracers to complete this project in a scale that works for you. I generally use a skull shape about eight inches tall.


NCTQ Standard 6 - Common Core Elementary Content
The program ensures that teacher candidates have the broad content preparation necessary to successfully teach to the Common Core State Standards.
Standard applies to: Elementary Education.
Indicators that the program meets the standard:
6.1 At the undergraduate level, the institution:
Requires candidates to take at least one course in each topic from each of the subject areas listed below.
- All coursework except children's literature should only be taught in liberal arts departments.
- Course content must be broad enough to give candidates the knowledge base to teach the elementary curriculum.
Exempts candidates from specific course requirements on the basis of standardized assessments commonly recognized as demonstrating content mastery at the level provided by post-secondary or rigorous secondary instruction.
Subject A: Literature and Composition
- Topic (1): World literature ENG 211, ENG 212
- Topic (2): American literature ENG 303
- Topic (3): Writing, grammar and composition ENG 101, ENG 102. ENG 308, ENG 300, ENG 409
- Topic (4): Children's literature EDR 344
Subject B: History and geography
- Topic (1): Early American history HIS 201
- Topic (2): Modern American history/government HIS 202, PSC 201
- Topic (3): World history - modern HIS 102
- Topic (4): World history - ancient HIS 101
- Topic (5): Geography - HIS 369
Subject C: Science (at least one course with lab)
- Topic (1): Biology BIO 101
- Topic (2): Chemistry CHE 101
- Topic (3): Physics/physical science PHY 101, PHS 151, PHS 201
Subject D: Fine Arts
- Topic (1): Music history MHL 101
- Topic (2): Art history ART 200
Elementary Mathematics (See Standard Five)
- Topic (1): Algebra MAT 131
- Topic (2): Numbers and Operations MAT 116
- Topic (3): Geometry MAT
- Topic (4): Data Analysis
6.2 For undergraduate programs, the teacher candidate completes an 18 credit hour concentration in a subject area relevant to the elementary curriculum:
- Social Studies
6.4 STRONG DESIGN
A program will earn a "strong design" designation if coursework:
- fulfills two or four topic requirements in Literature and Composition,
- three to five in History and Geography,
- two to three (with at least one lab) in Science,
- one to two in Fine Arts


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Essential Questions tied to recurring American issues throughout the program inspire students to go beyond the facts and connect what they are learning to their lives and the larger world around them.
By weaving the Essential Questions throughout the program, students develop a deep understanding through thought-provoking inquiry. Students explore issues, shift their perspective and transfer what they’ve uncovered throughout the lesson and onto the next.
Introduced at the beginning of each chapter, the American Issues Connector gets students to think critically about the enduring issue throughout the lesson. The review at the end of every chapter reinforces the significance of the previous key issues and debates.
Explore more online for yourself! Explore the essential question “What is the proper balance between national security and civil liberties?”
Again and again, students revisit the enduring issues that Americans have wrestled with throughout history. Students use their journal to track key American Issues over time with multiple examples to build their understanding for each question. They engage in exploration activities and write an essay.
These student-generated videos are developed and created in classrooms just like yours and lend a peer perspective to the Essential Questions.
UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN® and UbD™ are trademarks of ASCD, and are used under license.
Pearson encourages 21st century learning by infusing the core subjects and themes throughout our programs—Life and Career Skills, Learning and Innovation Skills, and Information, Media, and Technology Skills. The ultimate goal—to ensure that every child is prepared for the 21st century with skills like critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, innovation and global competence.
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.
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.
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.
At Pearson we continue to focus on your needs and on improving our customers' online experience. We invite you to complete the survey below, and greatly appreciate your input as a valued customer of Pearson.
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The Tuneables is an award-winning children's music education DVD and CD series designed to teach the key building blocks of music at a critical time in a child's development. Sponsored by the Music Intelligence Project, this fun, interactive program engages children in songs and activities that provide a foundation of music understanding and growth in intellectual development. Ages 3-8.
Buy your copy today at: www.thetuneables.com/the-music-shop/
The foundation of a young child's music learning is built on aural (hearing) experiences. These learning experiences progress in three stages: 1. stimulus, 2. recall, and 3. discrimination. Parents and teachers should be aware of these important music learning stages. For any one of them to be missing or partially included reduces the child's learning opportunities and the potential for future musical growth.
1. Aural Stimulus (sensing musical sound in the air)
Music learning begins as early as birth when young children use their aural (auditory) sense to hear and react to musical experiences around them. For young children, this sensory input occurs at a time of very rapid growth in mental functioning and stimulates the formation of the neural structures or pathways eventually needed to process and understand music. Exposure to music listening throughout early childhood enhances this development, and the richness of the young child's musical sound environment influences the strength and amount of neural pathways associated with music learning. Therefore, parents should provide regular and frequent opportunities for quality music listening (see blog: Why Should Young Children Listen to Mozart's Music?). All future music learning depends on this aural stimulus foundation.
2. Aural Recall (sensing musical sound in the mind)
The next stage of music learning is to recall musical sound events. Recall may be either short-term or long-term. For example, short-term recall occurs when a child hears a musical pattern or melody and imitates it immediately. Long-term recall occurs when a child spontaneously performs a musical pattern or melody without an immediate prompt or model. For either type of recall, the musical sound is not physically presented, but it is "heard" (sensed) in the mind. Recall is a learned skill and can be developed through such short-term strategies as parent or teacher demonstration/child imitation, and call-and-response songs, and such long-term strategies as "name-that-tune" game, and asking children to sing their favorite song. Skill in aural recall is the first observable evidence that a child is learning music. Any child not successful engaging in recall activities should continue with aural stimulus activities until readiness is achieved.
3. Aural Discrimination (sensing musical sounds as the same or different)
Memory or recall of musical events makes possible aural discrimination, i.e. knowing when two musical events (e.g. patterns) sound the same or different. For example, children may engage in discrimination learning when listening to the two tonal patterns, Do-Mi-Sol and Do-Re-Mi. A child functioning at an early stage of discrimination learning skill will compare the two patterns by means of aural recall and determine that they are different. Learning activities for aural discrimination include games that children detect or perform pairs of same and different patterns, or children detect that changes have been made in familiar songs. Any child unable to determine sameness or differences in musical sound events could benefit from continued short-term and long-term aural learning activities until a readiness for aural discrimination is achieved. This is a crucial step, because all advanced music learning involves aural discrimination.
A carefully sequenced program of music learning for young children, such as The Tuneables, develops each of these stages of aural sense. This is an important consideration by parents and teachers when choosing a music education program for young children.
For more information about The Tuneables go to: www.thetuneables.com
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1. A few weeks ago there was a guest op-ed piece, “Can students have too much tech?”, in the NY Times arguing among other things that Internet access was undermining programs like One Laptop per Child. I found it surprising that Susan Pinker would cite One Laptop per Child as the principle example of the children using computers to chat and play games on the Internet (which she soundly criticized), since almost none of the children who received laptop computers through OLPC programs have ready access to the Internet (at school or at home). The exception of course being Uruguay, where every child has both a laptop and Internet access. Indeed, as a 2010 survey showed, the children in Uruguay play games – they are children after all – but they also use email, search for information, chat (also known as reading and writing), make music, artwork, and videos, program, and, in general, use the computer as a tool for problem solving. Contrary to the assertion that the program is “drive-by” education, a continuing effort is put into teacher training, community support, and outreach.
That said, some people associated with OLPC — including my former colleague Mr. Negroponte — are outspoken advocates for solutions that mitigate the need for teachers in elementary education. The X Prize for Education is designed around that approach and further requires that any proposed solutions be Android-tablet based. Not to say that it may be possible to engineer such a solution, to constrain the contest to an unproven pedagogical framework seems ill-advised. (Many tablet-based solutions have begun to distribute physical keyboards in acknowledgment that no one serious about writing or programming works exclusively with an on-screen keyboard. And while it is theoretically possible to exercise Software Freedoms on an Android tablet, in practice it is still well beyond most of us.) Meanwhile, here at Sugar Labs, we encourage open collaboration among students, teachers, and our community.
2. Martin Abente, our Sugar Release Manager, is pleased to announce the release of Sugar (sucrose) 0.104.0. This release includes new features and a multitude of bug fixes from Google Code-In and Summer of Code students, deployments and community members.
We are compiling detailed release notes at 0.104/Notes.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release and special thanks to Martin for shepherding the process.
In the community
4. Tony Anderson reports that he has finally has most of the Project Bernie website completed. This website shows what content is available on the School Server. (The School Server is a repository of content and services for Sugar deployments.) Tony reports that there are about 200 Sugar activities available to be installed from the school server; digital textbooks from Siyavula, and courses on Python, Web technology, and the Command Line Interpreter (Terminal activity).
5. Peter Robinson, who has been coordinating the Sugar on a Stick releases (most recently for Fedora 21 [x86_64], [i686]) is looking for help coordinating testing and general community communications and facilitation. Peter is a great mentor, so it would be a nice opportunity for someone(s) to both contribute to the project and to learn more about packaging. Please contact Peter (pbrobinson AT gmail DOT com) if you are interested.
6. Please visit our planet.


Ready, Set, Read! prepares young children to become lifelong readers by training their parents to read to them. Partnering with preschools and kindergartens in underserved Los Angeles communities, we provide workshops filled with easy-to-implement tips and hands-on training. We make home reading easier by distributing age-appropriate books to families and donating lending libraries to classrooms. By involving parents in their children’s literacy development, we pave the way for future reading and educational success.
Throughout many of his messages to America, President Barack Obama has spoken decisively about a topic that is fundamental to our children and the success of future generations: education in the home environment and parent involvement.
As research studies have proven several times over, when young children read more at home and receive more educational involvement from their parents, they become better equipped for school and are much more likely to succeed in life.
President Obama has said, “Responsibility for our children’s success doesn’t start in Washington – it starts in our homes. No education policy can replace who is involved in their child’s education from day one, who makes sure that children are in school on time, who helps them with their homework and attends those parent-teacher conferences. No government program can turn off the TV set or put away the video games or read to your children.”
Watch our Case For Support
- We have taught 40,000 parents to read to their children.
- We have worked with teachers in over 230 schools.
- We have donated 20,000 books to classroom lending libraries putting books in easy reach of children and their parents.
Upcoming Workshops Include:
April 9th: Chase Early Education Center, Panorama City
April 15th: 112th Early Education Center, Los Angeles
April 16th: 97th Early Education Center, Los Angeles
April 23th: Pacoima Early Education Center, Pacoima
April 28th: Roosevelt Elementary, Compton
May 1st: Nora Sterry Elementary, Los Angeles
May 12th: Daisy Child Development Center, Compton
Do you want to learn more about how to read more often and more effectively with your child? Please join us at a workshop! Contact us for additional information or if you are interested in having Ready, Set, Read! come to your school.


One of the arguments I’ve long made in support of Common Core is that properly understood and implemented, it’s a delivery mechanism for the ideas and work of E. D. Hirsch, Jr., and the Core Knowledge curriculum he created.
It’s gratifying—and, alas, too rare—when others connect the dots. But here is Politico, out with its list of fifty “thinkers, doers and dreamers who really matter.” Sharing number eight on the list is Hirsch and David Coleman, the principal author of the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts.
Hirsch’s work and output span decades, but a principal thrust of his ideas can be summarized thusly: reading comprehension is not a “skill” we can teach directly, practice, or master. It is not like riding a bike, where if you learn on one you can ride another with ease. Once you learn to “decode” the words on a page, your ability to read with understanding is largely a reflection of how much knowledge and vocabulary you have and share with the writer.
If schools understood and embraced this well-grounded insight, American education—and elementary education specifically—would look very different. There would be a lot less “question the author” and “find the main idea.” Instead you’d see teachers (especially those who work with our poorest children) restored, in David Coleman’s lovely and apt phrase, “to their rightful place as guides to the universe.” You’d see big chunks of the K-5 school day handed over to science, history, geography, and the...


Inquiry in Music Education
Concepts and Methods for the Beginning Researcher
Contributors: Debbie Rohwer, Marie McCarthy, Darryl Coan
Routledge – 2013 – 352 pages
Inquiry in Music Education: Concepts and Methods for the Beginning Researcher provides an introduction to research and scholarship in music education. This textbook covers topic formulation, information literacy, reading and evaluating research studies, and planning and conducting original studies within accepted guidelines, based on research conventions in music, the other arts, education, and the humanities. Electronic search tools, hands-on assignments, supplementary teaching materials and other resources are included on the companion web site (available January 2013).
Skills in research and scholarship introduce students to the language and protocols by which to succeed in today’s competitive market of grant writing, arts advocacy, and public outreach as a contributing member of the community of music educators.
Following the legacy begun by Rainbow and Froehlich in Research in Music Education, published in 1987, the objectives of this book are:
Part 1. Chapters One through Four: Entering the World of Questioning 1. The Spiral and Modes of Inquiry: Options, Choices, and Initial Decisions 2. Finding and Mapping Sources of Information 3. Reading and Thinking in Conceptual Frames 4. Toward a Rationale and Research Plan: Writing a Contract with Yourself Part 2. Chapters Five through Thirteen: Methods in Modes of Inquiry 5. Approaches in the Philosophical Mode of Inquiry 6. Historical Inquiry: Getting Inside the Process 7. Purposes and Questions in Qualitative Research 8. Selected Procedures for Gathering, Analyzing, and Reflecting on Qualitative Data 9. Quantitative Research in Music Education: Letting Numbers Speak 10. Understanding Descriptive Statistics 11. Interpreting Correlations 12. Designing Ex Post Facto and Experimental Studies 13. Tools for Data Gathering: Basics of Content and Construction 14. "So What?" Interpreting and Sharing your Findings
Hildegard Froehlich is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Texas.
Carol Frierson-Campbell is Associate Professor at William Paterson University.


goal as a book is to share neurocentric ways to unplug vocabulary and
spelling instruction so that words are not merely memorized in the
name of the most current curriculum, but rather truly learned and
owned by students. The goal is to have words
actually permeate students speech as well as their writing.
strategies proffered in Vocabulary Unplugged are not bound to a
specific age or grade level, as they draw on accepted knowledge of the
brain, memory and learning, whether the learner is five, fifteen, or
slip inside these pages and unplug the lists, the passivity, and the
overhead. Get out of the dark classroom, and discover the energy that
emerges from the thirty activities and variations herein as we plug in
color, movement, poetry, history, music, and numerous other ways of
exploring words within meaningful contexts. The 30
brain-appropriate activities will revitalize your hope that ALL
students can improve their vocabulary, reminding everyone that
learning doesn't have to be banal, dull or without energy.
will discover information and lessons on:
students remember the words they learn
music to explore words
students success through meaningful instruction
with Words to engage learning
movement to enhance vocabulary
memory and vocabulary acquisition through color
the importance of history in vocabulary development
the power of poetry to build word knowledge
patterns to create dynamic vocabulary lessons
context for assuring success in word study
And much more...
Pinker (1994), cognitive psychologist and leading expert on language,
says we begin using words around twelve months of age. Therefore, high
school graduates, who have been at it for about seventeen years, must
have been learning an average of ten new words a day continuously
since their first birthdays, or about a new word every ninety waking
minutes. He goes on to explain that preliterate children are lexical
vacuum cleaners, learning a new word every two waking hours.
means our student are already plugged in�having learned
numerous words before they ever set foot in our classrooms.
Teachers are saying about Alana Morris:
strategies! Classroom connections are endless! Activities are
brain-based, interactive, and applicable to all levels!
Camey Elementary, Lewisville, Texas
was teaching one of Alana's vocabulary lessons that I called
Vocabulary Charades not only did the students shine, but my
administrator was very impressed with the (activity), which
demonstrated the difficult vocabulary word.
Toner, Grade 5 teacher
a strategy for everyone! All of my kids love doing The Syllable
Squat, and you should have seen the parents giving it a try!
4th grade teacher
Alief ISD, Houston, Texas
consulted in Round Rock I.S.D. several times and energized teachers in
her research-based, hands-on workshops. Her interactive, engaging
strategies have impacted student success in our district!
Curriculum Integration Specialist
Secondary Language Arts
been an educator for 17
years and has taught all levels from elementary through high
school. She received her undergraduate
degree in music from North Texas State University where she
developed an intense interest in the science of learning and
how to best reach the special interests and needs of every
student. Her background in music education
served as the framework for her style and voice as a teacher,
which carried over to her exploration and study of language
arts and literacy. She is currently the
language arts program director in Aldine Independent School
District for grades 5-8. She actively
serves on the state board of the Texas Council of Teachers of
English Language Arts, is the president of the North Harris
County Council of Teachers of English, and is president-elect
of C.R.E.S.T. (Coalition of Reading and English Supervisors of
Texas). Her own energy for learning and
continued growth drives her ability to bring brain appropriate
strategies to classrooms of all levels.


In the PTA room of Monte Vista Elementary, Alon Keller is reviewing concepts he's already taught a group of vivacious second-graders. In the past four sessions, they've build gondolas, walkers and gear cars out of Legos.
"What kind of gear is this?" Keller holds up a wheel-shaped Lego.
"It's a crown gear," a student yells out.
"Crown gear, very good. It looks like a sombrero. And we use it for what project?"
"Helicopters," another student shouts.
"So we made helicopters and we used crown gears. What kind of angle can you make between a crown gear and a spur gear? ... What kind of angle is this?" Keller says, holding his left hand perpendicular to his right arm.
In 90-minute Lego classes, Keller helps the students develop geometry and engineering language as they use critical-thinking skills. On Thursday, they built a train to travel on a monorail, and they had to option to design it for jousting or just for looks. By the time the children start working on their own projects they're so engrossed with their construction bricks, Keller has to stop them repeatedly to command their attention.
"This program addresses a lot of issues," says Romina Sparano, president of Monte Vista's PTA. "Yes, math and language are the foundational skills, but students don't just learn them in math and language classes. The kids really need the support of these other approaches."
The PTA decided to fund music classes for kindergarten and first grade. The school has music instruction for fourth- and fifth-graders.
And now that many districts are in the process of revamping their budgets to accommodate new funding models, Sparano wants administrators to take notice of this type of enrichment program.
"This is what I want to see in schools," she said.
Most districts in California are now in the process of gathering input from stakeholders as they develop their Local Control Accountability Plan, the master document that will guide districts for the next three years as they try to improve academic performance.
In re-drafting their spending plans, schools need to address California's eight priorities, among them student achievement, parental involvement, Common Core Standards and basic school facilities.
Sparano said the PTA decided to fund music classes for kindergarten and first grade to support language learning and auditory skills. The Lego engineering classes, offered through Play Well Teknologies, is aimed at helping the students develop critical thinking skills.
Play Well usually has classes as after school programs, so the Monte Vista lessons in the middle of the day are a first for them, Keller said.
During the classes, Keller tries to make sure students use appropriate engineering language.
"These are not bumps," he tells the students. "They're called teeth."
These are concepts they can apply later in life, he said.
"This is not just for Legos," he said. "This is the real language of engineering that can later be useful as they progress in science."
Monte Vista's principal Phil Menchaca likes the program and how the children are responding to the instruction.
"Now they're writing about their experiences," he said. The instruction "touches on every subject. Anything that gets the kids excited."
The student's enthusiasm is palpable. After a few minutes of being engrossed in their Legos, Keller raises a small locomotive created by Jeffere Lockwood with a red triangle attached to the front.
"Everybody, eyes on me. What kind of simple machine is this part?" he says, pointing at the red scoop. "What would you stick under a door so the door does not move?"
"A mat?" a student asks.
"A mat is for wiping your feet, but I see your logic," Keller said. "But what do you call this shape? If you're on a skateboard, what do you use to jump? A wedge. A ramp. A slope."
Any opportunity to create vocabulary.
The scoop Jeffere has attached to his locomotive could give him an advantage when it comes time to battle against another train. But the time to battle comes and it turns out Ernest Amparano's train gets going faster, and derails Jeffere's train. No matter, Keller tells him. Just keep trying with different techniques, until you derail your opponent.
Claudia Meléndez Salinas can be reached at 753-6755 or firstname.lastname@example.org.


From September 2014 Computing will be a subject in its own right in English schools. Of course at Raspberry Pi Towers we are delighted (and I mean dancing around like a drunk uncle at a wedding reception delighted) that young people will now have the opportunity to study one of the most creative, exciting and challenging subjects in the curriculum. But who will teach them? Computing is effectively a brand new subject and there are relatively few specialist teachers to deliver it. The problem is worse for primary school teachers who have to teach a range of different subjects and who typically have fewer IT resources than secondary schools.
So, of course, we need to train teachers, especially primary teachers. And training works wonders—teachers arrive at my courses full of trepidation and weird rumours (you need to be a maths genius; it’s all about programming; coding gives you hairy palms). They walk out of the end of the day confident and buzzing with excitement and ideas. That’s all it takes. Of course no one will be an expert after one day, but the point is that you don’t have to be. Computing at this level is about problem solving and puzzles and creative fun—things that human beings are naturally drawn to and enjoy. And it’s definitely not just about “coding”. Whatever that is.
So hurrah for training! Let’s all sign up for a course at our local school! Except … there isn’t any to speak of. What there is is typically dispersed and expensive and of variable content. What teachers and schools need is widely available, low-cost, high quality, curriculum-centred training.
Which is what Code Club thought too. So in true Code Club fashion they decided to just do it. We love Code Club! Anyway, I’ll let them fill the rest in. I only meant to write a sentence as an intro but as you can tell it’s something I’m passionate about. Plus, I like showboating. And if you are a school or teacher and would like to get involved, pop over to Code Club Pro’s site for more information.
Code Club, the network of over 1,875 volunteer-led after-school coding clubs, with the support of Google and CAS (Computing at Schools), is launching a nationwide training programme to teach core computing skills to primary school teachers.
The CPD program has been launched in response to widespread teacher demand for training in this area. According to Code Club, which has access to a wide network of schools, the training needs of teachers has so far been overlooked in this process. Its founders said: “Teachers are the key front-line implementers of the curriculum and more needs to be done to support this transition”.
Launching in April, Code Club Pro will enable primary school teachers to quickly understand the requirements of the new computing curriculum. The mission is to deliver training in computing to over 20,000 primary school teachers by 2016, while reaching many more through the provision of online programmes and resources.
Clare Sutcliffe, Co-Founder and CEO of Code Club, said: “The addition of coding to the new primary school curriculum is a great step forward for the UK education sector. However, to date, there has been a lack of focus on how to equip the primary school teachers to actually teach this new subject. We know first hand that teachers are feeling daunted by the prospect of having to teach a syllabus they don’t fully understand themselves. As a result, we decided to create a training programme that would help support them through this period of change.
“As a not-for-profit, Code Club is able to focus on a core objective of supporting as many teachers and children as possible, through the provision of fun, accessible and affordable training, which hands on and experiential. Our goal is to improve access to training, so that teachers can feel confident and excited about delivering the new computing curriculum.”


The Analysis of New Turkish Science and Technology Curriculum in Terms of STS Objectives
National Curricula in Turkey for Science and Technology from 4th to 8th grade have been under revision since 2003. The major goal of the new science and technology curriculum is the development of scientific literacy. One of indispensible dimension of scientific literacy is the understanding of Science, Technology, and Society relationships. This aspect was integrated into the curriculum in three domains: The nature of science and technology, the relationship between science and technology, and the social and environmental connections of science and technology. The aim of this paper is to analyze the weight of each STSE objective in the curriculum. The results indicated that STSE objectives were not distributed homogeneously in the curriculum. Moreover, no objective about the nature of science and technology domain was found among the objectives which are mostly referred. Instead, the mostly cited STSE objectives are generally related with two domains, which are the relationship between science and technology and the social and environmental connections of science and technology. Thus, it can be implied that to achieve the ultimate goal of scientific literacy, all three domains proposed in the foreword of curriculum to be given equal emphasis.
Keywords: Curriculum, Science Education, STS
Research Assistant, Elementary Education Department, Middle East Technical University
Research Assistant, Elementary Education Department, Gaziosmanpasa University


Maths Mcq For Class Vi
|Maths Mcq For Class Vi[Full DOWNLOAD]|
BOOKLIST FOR 2014-2015 S.N PUBLISHER TITLE OF BOOK
22.02.2014 the lucknow public collegiate class nursery s.n publisher english 1 aditya picture dictionary - prem publication house.
SYLLABUS/CURRICULUM MATHEMATICS (041) S.A.-II (2012-13 ...
RECOMMENDED BOOKS 1. Mathematics - Textbook for class IX - NCERT Publication 2. Mathematics - Textbook for class X - NCERT Publication 3. Guidelines for Mathematics ....
Data Handling - XTEC - Inici
Data Handling Student’s Worksheets Maths Escola Bufalà 2 Noemi Navas Arranz Activities available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/schools/ks3bitesize/maths ....
Registration of Students for Academic session 2010-11 in ...
Page 7 of 9 Sl No. Activities for Registration of Class IX Nature of Activity 1 Registration of Schools Online 2 Updation of School Details Online.
Elementary Education: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
Elementary Education: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment 5011 www.ets.org/praxis The Praxis® Study Companion.


What’s Happening This Week
There is much more to explore in our calendar. Find other important events in literary history, authors' birthdays, and a variety of holidays, each with related lessons and resources.
Looking for age-appropriate book recommendations, author interviews, and fun activity ideas? Check out our podcasts.
Celebrate blues legend Robert Johnson's birthday.
|Grades||5 – 12|
|Calendar Activity Type||Historical Figure & Event|
Known as the "King of the Delta Blues," Robert Johnson was born May 8, 1911, in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. His legendary recordings of such blues standards as "Cross Road Blues" and "Sweet Home Chicago" have had an astounding influence on blues singers and rock musicians for generations. His amazing talent and mysterious death in 1938 sparked an old blues folk tale that he sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his ability to play the guitar.
Having students write their own blues lyrics is a great way to teach rhythm, rhyme, and word choice. The most common form of the blues is referred to as the "12-bar blues" because of the twelve measures that are typical of the style. Share a blues song with your students before they begin to write, and distribute copies of the lyrics to a song with this structure. You may want to play a clip from Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues."
After looking at the lyrics, ask students to identify the structure used. They should be able to see that the lyrics of a 12-bar blues song often follow an AAB pattern. "A" refers to the first and second four-bar verses, and "B" is the third four-bar verse. In a 12-bar blues song, the first and second lines are repeated, and the third line is a response to them-often with a twist.
Next, brainstorm a list of subjects with your students about things that might give them "the blues." Then, have students choose a topic and try to write a blues song that follows the pattern they identified. Invite adventurous students to perform their songs!
- The Robert Johnson Notebooks
This thorough University of Virginia resource features a biography, song lyrics, and critical analyses of Johnson's work.
- PBS: The Blues
This site anchors a multi-media celebration that raises awareness of the blues and its contribution to American culture and music worldwide.
- Robert Johnson Blues Foundation
The Robert Johnson Blues Foundation is dedicated to preserving the music and memory of Robert Johnson through the provision of art education, competitions and scholarships.
- Trail of the Hellhound: Delta Blues in the Lower Mississippi Valley
This National Park Service site includes an overview of two styles of blues and extensive biographies of thirty bluesmen and blueswomen who created a rich legacy of American music that forms the foundation of today's popular music.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Students will be singing the blues in this lesson in which they identify themes from "The Gift of the Magi" and write and present blues poetry based on those themes.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Using the structure of a list poem, students combine creative expression with poetic techniques and language exploration in order to write group poems about what really matters in their lives.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Students will whistle while they work on this lesson, creating a photomontage movie of their interpretation of a favorite song’s lyrics that will end everyone’s day on a high note.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Students won’t miss a beat in this reading fluency lesson that combines music and poetry.


In this album we present jaunty songs and learning activities that encourage playfulness and movement to steady rhythms.
From the Musical Child Curriculum for 1-3 year-old children, Part 1 Bounce and Sing: Bouncing All Day Long.
Review: A parent writes: "I really like your work and really believe in what you are doing. I think it's fabulous that you have put all your time into this! " At home Mum, Korea March 2013
Musical Child is a publisher of music education resources to stimulate early learning through music. We provide all you need to teach music to toddlers and preschoolers. Why? Because researchers have proven that 'every child is a musical child' and if you don’t engage them after they turn one they might lose their natural musicality.
Bounce and Sing with 200 songs is a complete curriculum for children aged 1-3. Sing and Play with 170 songs is a complete curriculum for children aged 3-5 or even older.
The best way to teach music to young children is through activities such as playing small instruments, finger plays, bounces, tickles and hand games, mimicry and movement, dance, drama and games. Resources available from our website include full descriptions of proven activities. In addition we provide a rationale and learning outcomes in language development. We also provide lyric charts for screen or wall.
Our songs and activities are used by teachers, childcare professionals and parents who understand that they are their child's first and most important teacher.


Around 30% of students in sixth grade already have trouble with basic reading and writing. These literacy problems affect performance across subject areas, and they often leave teachers wondering how to help. Get the professional development training you need to improve student literacy as an accomplished teacher shares the secrets of turning guided reading strategies into opportunities for teaching writing. The road to literacy is also the road to ingenuity, invention, and imagination, and you'll soon learn how to take your students from groans to grins with creative lesson plans that really work!
We'll start our journey by talking about the reasons reading and writing are so difficult for students. Then we'll meet the total literacy framework and see how it mitigates literacy problems once and for all. Since this framework is based on guided reading lessons that flow naturally into writing challenges, you'll learn the recipe for a successful guided reading into writing lesson.
Once the framework is in place, we'll investigate a number of ways to modify this basic recipe for a variety of K-12 circumstances, wrapping up with a look at good writing habits and the traits of a productive writing conference. If you're looking for the right way to get students excited about the power of literacy, this is the course for you!
About The Instructor
A veteran educator who has taught every grade but third, Marsha Spears has spent 35 years teaching students and training teachers. Spears earned a bachelor's and master's degree in educational administration with a specialty in curriculum and literacy development, training that would prepare her to take on the toughest of classrooms. And tough classrooms are where she made her mark, helping a wide variety of at-risk learners read with renewed confidence. Over the years, thousands of students and teachers have learned how easily they can incorporate Spears' reading techniques and activities into their daily routines.


Document Number: 6773Ladders Of Learning: Fighting Fade-Out By Advancing PK-3 Alignment - This paper outlines the importance of having strong, well-aligned programs beginning in pre-kindergarten (PK) and extending through third grade (PK-3). It reviews the short-term impact of PK and full-day PK programs, then summarizes the evidence that these impacts may "fade out" by the primary grades. To fight fade-out, PK-3 alignment is proffered as one means to enable children to maintain and expand upon the gains they make in early childhood education. PK-3 suggests that PK experiences should be aligned with kindergarten and that kindergarten should be aligned with early elementary education. The paper closes with federal policy recommendations that provide both models and incentives for the nation, states and local school districts to institute and strengthen PK-3 alignment. (Kristie Kauerz, New America Foundation, January 2006)...
Related IssuesP-3 Preschool