O’Dowd welcomes report on literacy and numeracy achievement
Education Minister, John O’Dowd, today welcomed the publication of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General which assessed progress in improving literacy and numeracy achievement in schools here.
~ Tuesday, 19 February 2013
The report highlights the recent excellent performance of primary school pupils in international surveys of reading and maths. It points out the importance of literacy and numeracy skills in improving the life chances of our young people and helping them to access further and higher education and fulfilling employment.
The report acknowledges the improvement in the percentage of young people leaving school with at least five good GCSEs or equivalent, including GCSEs at A*-C in English and maths. It also acknowledges, however, the attainment gap that continues to persist among our most and least disadvantaged school leavers.
Speaking, following the report’s publication, the Education Minister said: “This report is an important reminder that, while progress has been made and while we have much to celebrate, there remains considerable work to be done to ensure that all of our young people achieve to their full potential. I welcome the progress but there is no room for complacency. The report confirms that our policies are on the right track and I am determined to ensure that we continue to take action, from the early years through to school leaving age, to support our children and young people on their learning journeys.”
The Minister also pointed to the excellent practice that the report identified in many local schools that serve our most disadvantaged communities. He said: “This report highlights what we already knew from inspection and other evidence: that there is already excellent practice in so many of our schools. Through high quality teaching and learning; effective leadership; and good links with parents and communities they are already making a difference to children’s lives. Our challenge is to become more effective at embedding and sharing this good practice across all schools for the benefit of all our young people.”
The report will now be considered by the Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee.
Notes to editors:
- The Department of Education has launched a new ‘Education Works’ advertising campaign. The campaign encourages families to play, talk, read and count with their child and to ‘Get Involved Because Education Works’. Watch out for the ads on television, radio and outdoor locations. The campaign highlights the vital role families can play in helping children do well at school and improve their life chances. Visit nidirect website for more information or watch the TV ad on the Department’s YouTube channel.
- View photos from the Department of Education in our Flickr collection.
- Media enquiries to the Department of Education’s Communications Team on Tel: 028 9127 9207. Out of office hours, contact the Duty Press Officer via pager number 076 99 715 440, and your call will be returned.


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Native American Language Education in Public Schools
Collaboration among contemporary Native American communities and local public schools is vital for nurturing Native languages. Although public schools cannot bear the entire burden, Native-language education will remain on the margins without their support. Using case studies of school districts on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana,
provides important insights about integrating Native-language learning into public education. Phyllis Ngai argues that carefully designed and inclusive Native-language programs can benefit communities and students regardless of ethnic identity by providing for language-revitalization and promoting intercultural competence.
978-0-7591-2122-5 • Hardback • March 2012 •
978-0-7591-2124-9 • eBook • March 2012 •
Contemporary Native American Communities
Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies
Education / Multicultural Education
For access to these
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then email us at
teaches in the Department of Communication Studies at The University of Montana-Missoula. She co-directed primary-school and middle-school Indian Education for All (IEFA) programs in Missoula, Montana.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. The Context of Native American Language Education in Montana
Chapter 2. How Can Public Schools Help? A Local Inquiry
Chapter 3. Salish Language Education: A Record of Heroic Steps in the Face of Steep Obstacles
Chapter 4. Collaborative Possibilities for Enhancing Native American Language Education: Grassroots Suggestions
Chapter 5. Churchill School District: The Balancing Act
Chapter 6. Elkhorn School District: Leading the Way
Chapter 7. Mountainview School District: Breaking the Barriers
Chapter 8. Building a Bridging Native American Language Curriculum
Chapter 9. Native American Language Learning as Place-based Multicultural Education
About the Author
Phyllis Ngai carefully and thoughtfully captures the voices of stakeholders in Salish language education.
demonstrates how an understanding of the relationships between Native and non-Native communities is needed to establish indigenous languages as a vital part of public education. This text is a 'must read' for those interested in indigenous language advocacy.
Dolores Maria Calderon, University of Utah
From the foreword: In this volume, Phyllis Ngai addresses an important question: have educators, Native American community members, and their non-Native neighbors living on this reservation agreed to accept and nurture Native American–language education programs in the public-school system? Phyllis’s research is groundbreaking in the sense that she seeks out the grassroots voices of both Indian and White stakeholders of public education on the reservation. Her study helps bridge the communication gap among groups of people concerning Native-language education issues. The recommendations emerging from Ngai’s synthesis of diverse perspectives hold promise for Native-language education programs in reservation public schools.
Joyce Silverthorne, director, Office of Indian Education, U.S. Department of Education
When English is chosen as the language of instruction in schools, it invariably replaces home languages within a generation or two.
deals with the political and institutional difficulties public schools face in attempting to teach minority languages. Ngai interviews parents, tribal members, teachers, politicians, and administrators in several Montana schools with mixed populations. The clear, practical advice she offers is crucial to anyone involved in minority language education and, if heeded, could avoid years of frustration and bickering.
Jack Martin, University of Florida
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A Semiotic Reading and Discourse Analysis of Postmodern Street Performance
Lee, Mimi Miyoung, Chung, Sheng Kuan, Studies in Art Education
As prevalence of new-age communication devices such as Internet, mobile phones, Blackberries, iPods, and hand-held televisions affords more diverse and accessible interactions in physical and virtual environments, the young generations today spend more time than previous generations receiving media-related Information, communicating with each other, and playing games online. They glide effortlessly between the virtual and the physical world. Many researchers and educators have begun to address this phenomenon intensively and have started to focus on the social aspect of online gaming and its Implications for education (Brown, 2006; Gee, 2004; Squire, 2002).
Along these lines, art educators have also started paying attention to postmodern conditions and art education with respect to innovative uses of new technologies such as virtual reality (jagodzinski, 2005; Sakatanl, 2005), computer art (Humphries, 2003), Identity formation in relation to popular and visual culture (Gaudelius & Speirs, 2002), interactive hypertext (Carpenter & Taylor, 2006), and digital storytelling (Chung, 2007), as well as other unconventional media in new platforms (I.e., graffiti and street art). Challenging the traditional notion of art as tangible objects Intended mostly for the high culture, these "new" forms of art encourage discussions regarding the philosophy of art, contemporary technovisual culture, and the development of multiliteracy (see Duncum, 2004).
In this era of multimodal representations, it is of crucial importance that we prepare students and teachers to be able to understand and examine the various modes of representation and the processes of their social construction. With the view taken from social semiotics, in which visual arts Is seen as a form of communication (Chaplin, 1 994), we see many recent works of postmodern street art as relevant illustrations of how meaning is not just given but is always socially constructed. Social semiotics offers a new perspective on interpreting postmodern street art. Because of the emphasis of semiotics on codes, signs, and their interactions, art educators have adopted them into their research and classroom practices (jagodzinski, 2004; Smith-Shank, 1 995; Wyrick, 2004).
In the postmodern arena, artists produce conceptual art using unconventional media, Inspired/mediated by computer technologies, and presented through guerrilla communications and street performances. The existing art criticism models such as those proposed by Anderson (1993), Barrett (1994), Broudy (1972), and Feldman (1981) are Inadequate for dealing with non-institutionalized postmodern art, whether circulated in the streets or on the Internet. In this article, we propose employing social semiotics and critical discourse analysis for understanding postmodern street art. We explore the "WOW" Project by Berlinbased media artist Aram Bartholl asan example for this illustration. We conclude by garnering insights from reading and reflecting on Bartholl's work from a semiotic perspective. As part of those efforts, we propose the employment of social semiotics and discourse analysis as more reflexive ways of understanding postmodern street art practices.
We define postmodern street art and, in particular, street performances. We then offer several select educational implications of this form of communication and representation. The section will be followed by discussions on social semiotics and critical discourse analysis and how they can be used to serve as a helpful analytical framework for understanding postmodern street performance. After that, we use Bartholl's works to illustrate an actual application of these methods and present our associated analyses.
Postmodern Street Performance
Postmodern street performance has its roots in the activist and feminist art movement of the 1 960s. Apart from artists In the institutionalized art world, postmodern street artists adopt guerrilla communication and pubic Intervention methods to disseminate their work with an intention of generating public discourse about various social practices. …


Saxon Math 2 Homeschool Kit is integrated with other levels for continuous progress, covering a range of critical concepts such as working with larger numbers, geometric shapes, Venn diagrams, graphs, basic arithmetic calculations, and simple fractions.
Continuing and reinforcing the lessons in Saxon Homeschool Math 1, Saxon Homeschool Math 2 covers a larger range of critical concepts, such as working with larger numbers, geometric shapes, Venn diagrams, graphs, basic arithmetic calculations, and simple fractions. With Saxon Math 2, your child is well on the way to successfully solving multi-step problems and mastering basic concepts.
* Homeschool Teacher's Manual
* Step-by-step instructions and scripts
* Pre-class preparation instructions
* A complete list of materials needed for each lesson
* Spiral-bound to lie flat when open
* 736 pages
* Homeschool Student's Meeting Book
Used for the daily opening exercise
* Provides a colorful way to teach the days, years, and dates
* Homeschool Student Workbooks/Fact Cards
All necessary student materials
* Bound in two workbooks
* Practice pages, masters, and fact cards
Saxon continues to lead as #1 favorite math program in surveys of home educators! Home school families have told me over and over again how much they love Saxon Math. Mary Pride says “Saxon Math is the best. Period.” Saxon's continual and incremental practice provides the child with opportunity to learn and remember the foundational skills and concepts of mathematics.
Saxon has taken their elementary classroom program and adapted it for homeschoolers.
Saxon Homeschool Math K-3 Manipulative Kit should be purchased along with this kit for maximum results.
Saxon Math K - 3 Placement Inventory
Saxon Math K - 3 Product Sampler
Saxon Math Scope & Sequence Introduction
Saxon Math Scope & Sequence K - 3


Many in the classical music world have heard about El Sistema. Dr. José Antonio Abreu developed this program in 1975 out of his belief that:
“A child’s physical poverty is overcome by the spiritual richness that music provides.”
In “The Art of Possibility” conductor Benjamin Zander shares the story of Eastlea – a failing school in London. Against what seemed impossible odds, he presented a two-hour assemble to eleven hundred students concluding with the students singing “Ode to Joy” in German. (There is much more to this story so I encourage you to read the full story here.) The story ends with this quote;
“THE LIFE FORCE for humankind is, perhaps, nothing more or less than the passionate energy to connect, express, and communicate. Enrollment is that life force at work, lighting sparks from person to person, scattering light in all directions. Sometimes the sparks ignite a blaze; sometimes they pass quietly, magically, almost imperceptibly, from one to another to another.”
There is a growing body of evidence that providing a rich music education environment for children enriches their development. Have you heard about using music to reduce crime?
Many people have at least heard the music of Playing for a Change – an organization “dedicated to creating a positive change through music and arts education.” To date, they have raised funds for 7 programs in 5 countries reaching 600 students and creating 130 jobs.
There are projects such as Teaching Tolerance that are a “place to find thought-provoking news, conversation and support for those who care about diversity, equal opportunity and respect for differences in schools.” Materials include some using music to create awareness.
It doesn’t surprise me to see music being a part of these and other programs. Briefly, here is why:
- Music exists in most (if not all) cultures. Rhythmic activity and vocalizing seem to be universal.
- Music is human behavior. In other words, it is something we do, something we create,
- Music occurs in relation with others. Often that relationship is social. Think of all the events where you experience music – parades, sporting events, and religious events are just a few. Even when we listen to recordings, those recordings were created by others. When we re-create a song we’ve heard, it was created by others. When we create our own music, there is the relationships of your body, your mind and your spirit at work.
- Music can assist us in altering an emotional state. Most of us have songs that make us smile, that make us think of an event or a person, or that makes us angry. Music can be a mirror to emotions we are experiencing. This is true for individuals and can be true for groups.
My training in music therapy has allowed me to witness the power of music in the lives of many people. I have been blessed to witness the transformational process in my daughter as she grows as a musician and in the lives of students my husband has taught. I am able to talk with my father about the latest concerts or opera he has attended – something he had limited time to enjoy prior to retirement.
For all these reasons and more, I believe music can transform lives. This transformative power is not limited to classical music. It is open to all genres. All people deserve access to quality music as listeners and creators.
Have you witnessed or taken part in music being used to address a social issue? If so, please share it in the comments below being sure to complete the CAPTCHA.
- Gustavo Dudamel-backed classical music scheme aims to strike right note in US (guardian.co.uk)
- 6 Keys to Living (with Music) (musicalgems.wordpress.com)


Via Twitter, I'm seeing a lot of anxiety about the part of President Obama's new universal preschool proposal that calls for "comprehensive data and assessment systems" to track student progress and program quality. I know what you're thinking: Standardized tests for 4-year olds? And I agree, it is absurd to imagine toddlers filling in Scantron bubbles. But that isn't at all what the administration has ever meant when it talks about assessing pre-K quality. Instead, a big part of the Obama/Duncan vision is for statewide data systems that link students' early elementary school performance back to the preschool programs they attended, so those programs (not individual teachers or students) can be judged on whether they adequately prepare children for school.
As I reported for Slate in 2011, the potential best part of this Big Data for Little Kids push is that the accepted best practices for early childhood assessment include "testing" not only literacy and numeracy skills, but also the sorts of social, emotional, motor, and creativity skills that have gotten such short shrift since the onset of No Child Left Behind. For the youngest students, those skills include whether a child is confident asking questions, whether she can fasten her Velcro shoes and zip her jacket, whether she can hum a song and draw, and whether she plays cooperatively with peers. One widely-respected model for early-childhood assessment is the Work Sampling System, in which teachers observe students over the course of weeks or months, and then assign them a numeric rating in each of these categories. Again: Unlike assessment systems in use for older kids, these numbers are not meant to punish or reward individual teachers or students. Instead, the idea is to use the data to help teachers identify where students need to grow – and to help schools, districts, and states figure out how to improve teacher training and program management at the system level.
Testing for older students, I think, has a lot to learn from the best practices in early-childhood assessment. One lesson is that we have to look at the whole child over time, not just at his reading and math scores during a specific hour. Another lesson is that, as psychometricians have been warning us, the most accurate use of a test is as a diagnostic tool for the person who is taking it, not as a human resources tool to punish or reward the test-taker's teacher or principal.
Now. I don't want to be too optimistic, because early-childhood assessment can certainly get screwed up. In the Slate piece, I describe how Ohio managed to turn a good idea for longterm holistic assessment into a 10 to 15-minute, one-time, sit-down, scored literacy test for 5-year-olds. Most child development experts laugh at the idea that you can tell very much about any kindergarten student in a specific, short block of time like that, since 5-year olds don't typically have the self-control to put aside immediate concerns like hunger or boredom to focus on a Very Important Task.
A colleague of mine is working on a large paper about early-childhood assessment, so there will be much more to report in the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned.


What if Singing was Like Reading?
I recently came across an article on the BBC website claiming that everyone has the ability to sing, even those who claim to be tone deaf. This surprised me and I wanted to dig deeper, because some statistics claim that up to 70% of the North American population claim that they ‘can’t sing’, ‘can’t hold a tune’, or ‘aren’t a singer’. When I sat down with long time friend and Opera Singer, Brooke Dufton, I posed the question to her. Can everyone learn to sing? “Yes!” was her enthusiastic answer.
Through her Phd research at the University of Toronto and her own experiences teaching ‘non’ singers, she believes that the notion that there are singers and non-singers is cultural. She informed me that current science shows that everyone has the ability to sing. She explained that ‘tone-deaf’ is a misnomer because the matching of pitch is a physical coordination issue. Those who are labeled as tone deaf, can actually hear tone, they just need training to be able to create the sound with their voice.
Indeed, music education researchers Helen Richards and Colin Durant claim in their frequently cited article, To Sing or not to Sing, that, “in the often musically elitist context of Western society, it [singing] is perceived as something that you either can or cannot do.” They also claim that everyone has the ability to learn to sing.
Brooke postulates that if singing were treated as an essential skill that can be learned just as reading is, then there would be far fewer adults who claim to be ‘non’ singers. Lets follow this analogy for a minute and pretend that singing is just like reading, a skill that takes training and a lot of practice, but that is considered by society to be an essential skill that everyone must learn.


The mission of the Cohoes City School District, a partnership of schools, parents and the community, is to prepare its students for success in tomorrow’s world.
The Cohoes City School District is located in the City of Cohoes, which is situated on the banks of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. The district is located about 10 miles north of the city of Albany in Albany County.
About 1,902 students attend the Cohoes City Schools.
The school district has three elementary schools for students in grades K-5: Abram Lansing School, Harmony Hill School and Van Schaick Grade School. Cohoes Middle School serves students in grades 6-8 and secondary students attend Cohoes High School. The district offices are located in Cohoes Middle School at 7 Bevan Street.
Some of the programs that the Cohoes City Schools offer students are: a full-day kindergarten, computer instruction at every grade level, peer tutoring, opportunities to participate in music education, a variety of extra-curricular activities, honors and advanced placement classes, opportunities for college credit through high school courses and several athletic teams.
The City of Cohoes is rich in history. The original Erie Canal came through the city and in the 19th Century several of the world’s largest knitting mills were built here, which ran on hydroelectric power generated from the Cohoes Falls.
Watch a video below to learn more about the Cohoes City School District:


In elementary classrooms all across America, teachers read books aloud to students to build their interest in reading. “Read alouds,” as they are frequently called, also may help students learn vocabulary words and improve text comprehension, but there is surprisingly little scholarship on the impact of read aloud practices when implemented in real classroom settings.
A new study from the Elementary School Journal fills that gap. The experimental study examined the impact of using a systematic approach to reading fiction and nonfiction books to students in first-grade classrooms. The authors of the study compared the comprehension and vocabulary retention of students whose teachers had read texts aloud, following a specific method of instruction, with those teachers who had not.
The systematic approach consisted of the following: Teachers in the “intervention” group were asked to walk students through the thought process of understanding a given text and provide explicit demonstrations and concise summaries of the stories. After showing them how to read and comprehend the text, students were gradually given responsibility for comprehension tasks. Teachers structured their read-aloud lessons with a before-, during-, and after-reading section, to prepare students for the text and then reinforce what they had learned.
On the whole, students in the experimental read-aloud group outperformed students in the control group. Read-aloud intervention had significant effects on students’ narrative retell and vocabulary outcomes, especially for students at risk for language and literacy difficulties.
The authors of the study conclude that read aloud practices can have a positive impact on higher-order skills such as comprehension and vocabulary, and recommend adopting a structured approach to read alouds in elementary education, with before-, during-, and after-reading components. By planning their read alouds ahead of time, teachers will be able to demonstrate the necessary steps to deep understanding of a given text and guide their students to read and comprehend texts on their own.
Baker, Scott, Lana Edwards Santoro, et. al. “An Evaluation of an Explicit Read Aloud Intervention Taught in Whole-Classroom Formats in First Grade.” Elementary School Journal 113:3. March 2013.


GRADE 9 pupils have registered a dismal average score of 12.7% in mathematics and 35% in first additional language in the Department of Basic Education’s second annual national assessments of pupils’ mathematics and literacy abilities.
The outcomes, released on Monday, showed a general improvement in Grades 1 to 6 but poor results for Grade 9 pupils tested for the first time.
The test results will fuel the debate on the quality of South Africa’s mathematics and science education, and whether it is failing to prepare pupils for further study or the workplace.
Last year’s results caused shock in many quarters, with Grade 3 pupils achieving an average score of 35% for literacy and 28% for numeracy, while Grade 6 pupils achieved 28% in language and 30% in mathematics.
This year’s tests — which focused on mathematics and languages, regarded as the key foundational skills in basic education — were conducted among 7.2-million pupils at 24,000 schools.
The differences for Grade 9 mathematics by province were stark, with Limpopo — where 0.5% of pupils achieved more than 50% in the test — ranked last at 8.5%, while top-ranked Western Cape achieved an average score of only 16.7%.
Pupils in Grades 1 to 5 all showed a marginal increase in mathematics ability, while Grade 6 pupils, who achieved an average score of 30% in 2011, managed only 27% this year.
Grade 3 pupils showed the largest improvement in mathematics, increasing their average score from 28% in 2011 to 41% this year. The number of Grade 3 pupils achieving at least 50% increased from 17% last year to 37%.
In languages, all grades except Grade 1 showed marginal improvements. Grade 1 pupils achieved 58% in their home language, slightly down from 59% last year.
In the World Economic Forum’s 2012-13 World Competitiveness Report, released earlier this year, South Africa was ranked 133rd out of 142 countries in terms of the "quality of its educational system". The forum ranked South Africa second last in terms of mathematics and science education, ahead of Yemen.
The Department of Basic Education has presented the results as a diagnostic tool for intervening in the education system.
It said on Monday that the results of last year’s tests led to interventions to improve this year’s outcomes, such as the provision of workbooks, the repackaging of statements on changes in the academic curriculum, and the provision of exemplar questions and tests to schools during the course of the year to expose teachers and learners to the kind of questions they could expect in tests.


(Medical Xpress)—Musicians have sharper minds are able to pick up mistakes and fix them quicker than the rest of us, according to new research.
The study, by researchers at the University of St Andrews, suggests that musical activity could protect against decline in mental abilities through age or illness.
The work, published in the journal Neuropsychologia, extends previous findings that mental abilities are positively related to musical skills. The researchers say that the latest findings demonstrate the potential for 'far reaching benefits' of musical activity on mental and physical well-being.
The study was led by St Andrews psychologist Dr Ines Jentzsch, who compared the cognitive ability of amateur musicians versus non-musicians in performing simple mental tasks.
The most striking difference she found lay in the musicians' ability to recognise and correct mistakes. Not only that, but they responded faster than those with little or no musical training, with no loss in accuracy. This is perhaps not surprising since musicians learn to be constantly aware of their performance, but to not be overly affected by mistakes.
Dr Jentzsch, a Reader in the University's School of Psychology and Neuroscience, commented, "Our study shows that even moderate levels of musical activity can benefit brain functioning.
"Our findings could have important implications as the processes involved are amongst the first to be affected by aging, as well as a number of mental illnesses such as depression. The research suggests that musical activity could be used as an effective intervention to slow, stop or even reverse age- or illness-related decline in mental functioning."
The study compared groups of amateur musicians with varying levels of time they had spent in practicing their instrument to a non-musician control group. They then measured each group's behavioural and brain responses to simple mental tests.
The results showed that playing a musical instrument, even at moderate levels, improves the ability to monitor our behavior for errors and adjust subsequent responses more effectively when needed.
Dr Jentzsch, herself a keen pianist, continued, "Musical activity cannot only immensely enrich our lives but the associated benefits for our physical and mental functioning could be even more far-reaching than proposed in our and previous research.
"Music plays an important role in virtually all societies. Nevertheless, in times of economic hardship, funds for music education are often amongst the first to be cut.
"We strongly encourage political decision makers to reconsider funding cuts for arts education and to increase public spending for music tuition.
"In addition, adults who have never played an instrument or felt too old to learn should be encouraged to take up music - it's never too late."
Explore further: Childhood music lessons may provide lifelong boost in brain functioning
The study is published online at www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393213003217


"How do you explain two-digit multiplication to a Martian?"
This question was posed to students at Woodland Prairie Elementary School last November as part of a small pilot program introducing them to Common Core, the nationwide education initiative that is the future of teaching in the Woodland school district.
And that's a good thing, say district officials charged with implementing the new system.
"I'm very excited about it," said Elodia Lampkin, director of elementary education and English learner services for the Woodland Joint Unified School District. "I think it's a good thing for our families, for our children and our community."
The Common Core program grew out of talks between the National Governors Association and corporate leaders looking to better prepare students for an evolving work environment. The initiative has been adopted by all but four U.S. states, which is sure to lead to a much more standardized education nationwide.
This means employers anywhere can better know what to expect from graduates entering the workforce, said Superintendent Debra LaVoi.
"I see it as much more preparing kids for a real, practical future," LaVoi said.
But according to educators, Common Core is better for the classroom too, as its focus is less on "teaching to the test" and more on comprehension, communication and problem-solving.
"Kids are going to have multiple ways to show that they know something," said Christina Lambie, the district's coordinator of assessments, research and evaluation. "It's just really exciting when you think about kids and how they learn."
Garth Lewis Jr., the district's director of secondary education, said Common Core will mean "a different level of engagement" for Woodland students. Soon, he said, education will become "much richer, much more rewarding."
"The goal is to really put students in a position where the knowledge ... has to be processed and applied."
Classes that have fully implemented Common Core will see more discussion and student presentation, Lewis said, as well as a greater diversity of questions on the tests -- and, it is hoped, more thoughtful answers on them.
Public schools across California are due to have Common Core fully implemented by the 2014-15 school year. Locally, school officials are already working on implementation, and still have plenty of problems of their own to solve -- like where to find the estimated $5 million needed to cover costs such as training teachers and acquiring new textbooks.
On Thursday, several local educators were holed up in a meeting room of the district office, working on ways to slowly transition into Common Core while acclimating teachers, parents, students and anyone else affected by the new initiative.
Already, Lampkin said, Common Core's effects can be seen in schools in New York and other states that adopted it early. Information sharing on the new initiative also can be found online via YouTube and Pinterest, and an app has even been developed for it.
Parents of Woodland students can expect to see more discussion about Common Core in the coming year, with a few more small-scale tests, some teacher training, some meetings called and increasingly frequent mentions in school newsletters.
"Next year," Lampkin said, "they're going to start getting a lot more detail."
The efforts, and expense, are sure to pay off, the educators said.
Rather than just presenting a battery of tests, as No Child Left Behind did, Common Core puts "a very strong focus on the content and instruction," Lewis said. But even as it tightens standards, it gives teachers more flexibility, letting them focus "on the what as opposed to the how," he said.
"It's going to impact education for the foreseeable future."
Follow Don Frances at twitter.com/donjfran


Like many higher education establishments, the University of Liberia holds an annual entrance exam. This year the results came as a bit of a shock – the pass rate was precisely zero. Out of 25,000 people who sat the exam not one made the grade.
For most media outlets around the world this was a perfect ‘and finally...’ news item – but, writing for Businessweek, Charles Kenny gets to the real story, which is the enormous learning gap between the developed and developing world:
- “Analysis by Harvard’s Lant Pritchett suggests that the average eighth-grader in Ghana has test scores on math and science that would place her in the bottom one-five-hundredth of U.S. students. Even richer and more successful countries such as Argentina or Indonesia see scores on international math and science tests that would rank the average test-taker in the bottom 10 percent of the student population of a country like Denmark.”
You might think that students in less developed countries do much worse because they don’t get much schooling. But, in fact, the last few decades have seen rapid progress on access to formal education:
- “Of the world’s population, about 7 out of 10 live in a country where pretty much every child completes primary school. The proportion of secondary-school-aged kids who are in classes has climbed from about half to two-thirds over the past 15 years...
- “The learning gap helps to explain how developing countries can be so poor despite high educational attainment. In 2010 the average Kenyan adult had spent more years in school than the average French adult had as recently as 1985. Sadly, that didn’t convert into a Kenyan income per capita equal to France’s two decades ago—in fact, the gross domestic product per head in Kenya in 2010 was only 7 percent of France’s in 1985.”
Obviously a school in a remote part of Africa or India will only have a fraction of the resources available to a school in the developed world – and yet that doesn’t appear to be the key factor:
- “From 2007 to 2011, India increased its per-student expenditure on elementary education by 80 percent while student learning outcomes were declining.”
Health outcomes are also improving across much of the developing world, with progress on indicators like child mortality out-stripping economic growth.
Charles Kenny argues that the major problem with schooling in poorer countries (including those that aren’t much poorer than the West) is simply the quality of the education provided. While children are spending more time in school they’re not necessarily learning much while they’re there.
Fortunately, experience shows that there's an affordable way of lifting standards:
- “Testing is cheap—reviews of experience across countries suggests that an assessment system rarely costs more than 0.3 percent of the education budget. And countries that have introduced testing as part of a school reform effort have shown real results. Brazil and Chile have both introduced all-student testing regimes alongside accountability and autonomy reforms over the past few years, and both have seen better performance in international student assessments—Chile improved student learning at the fastest rate worldwide from 1995 to 2011.”
In this country we’ve become increasingly sceptical about the imposition of onerous reporting requirements on schools and other frontline public services. To a large extent, we’re right to be so. However, the lesson from elsewhere in the world is that an objective and transparent measure of performance can still make all the difference.
And there’s another lesson we should learn before it’s too late. The under-performance of schools in the developing world shows just how much untapped potential these countries possess. Sooner or later that potential will be released into economies that are already growing fast. We’d better be ready for the competition.


As we stated on our Keys to Success page, phonics instruction must be systematic and sequential. In other words, letters and sounds are taught first. Then letters are combined to make words and finally words are used to construct sentences.
To make things easier for you, we have detailed the process in eight easy to understand steps. The steps are briefly outlined below. To see the details of each step, please use the side bar links. We recommend that you read through the entire process [each detailed step] before you begin working with your child or student. If you have a good overview of the process, it will be much easier for you to select methods of implementing the steps that fit your reader’s learning style.
*NOTE: Although the steps are introduced individually in a specific sequence, they are not taught in isolation. Instead, they are taught in clusters. For example, Cluster 1 includes Steps 1-4. The steps are introduced one at a time, but they are quickly combined to make practice more productive and real. Once you begin reviewing the steps, you will better understand how this works.
For those of you who are working with struggling readers, we recommend that you follow the suggestions above in order to gain a better understanding of the phonic method. Then, you can use your knowledge of each of the Phonics Steps to help you identify the gaps in your student’s phonics foundation. If you need help identifying weak areas, we recommend that you use a basic phonics handbook such as A Handbook for Reading or Noah Webster’s Reading Handbook [see our Links page for publishing information.]
Phonics Steps in Sequence (Brief Outline)
Step 1:Introduce the vowels and their short sounds. [Chart 1]
Step 2:Introduce the consonants and their sounds. [Chart 2]
Step 3:Begin blending short vowels with consonants. [Chart 3]
Step 4:Begin blending and reading one vowel words and short sentences. [Chart 4]
Step 5:Introduce the long vowel sounds. [Chart 5]
Step 6:Practice blending long vowels with consonants. [Chart 6]
Step 7:Begin blending and reading two vowel words and Introduce two special rules. [Charts 7 A, B]
Rule #1: The One Vowel Rule Rule #2: The Two Vowel Rule
Step 8:Introduce the Phonics Charts which include the special sounds that are made when letters “stick”
together. [Charts 8-17]
To begin your phonics adventure, please click on the link for Step 1.


I know there are some of you out there who aren't big on lesson planning and others who are addicted to it. However, even if you aren't big on structure, you can still benefit from incorporating some consistent lesson planning techniques into your homeschool.
Someone once said that 'failure to plan is planning to fail.' Homeschooling is no different. Even though we can march to the beat of our own drummer (and let's face it, that's why many of us enjoy it so much:-), we don't want to get so caught up in that march that we forget that there are certain life-tools that have proven their worth over time. Basic lesson planning - in essence, giving yourself a roadmap - is one such tool.
Still not convinced? Here is a quick list of lesson planning benefits that I have put together for you this fine morning:
You will waste less time finding things. To be organized or not to be organized, that is the question. Regardless of where you stand on the Julie Morgenstern scale, your kids need you to step up and make sure they have the tools they need to learn. Preparation means that you have those beakers for the chemistry experiment on hand when you need them, so you don't spend half the day driving around town to find them.
You won't be sidetracked with rabbit trails (unless you want to be!) We are homeschoolers, right? Do we not love rabbit trails? You know, the times when your son or daughter becomes so fascinated in a subject that it consumes the household? Those rabbit trails are some of the most beautiful moments of homeschooling life. But, it is important to remember that rabbit trails can lead nowhere if they aren't well-managed. They can also overwhelm you and draw you away from more foundational skills. Those foundations (you know... basic grammar, math, and spelling) may not be quite as exciting as a rabbit trail to the land of India, but they are still crucial to your homeschool.
You don't get lost (because you know where you are going.) How do we get anywhere unless we know where we are going? Homeschooling is at least 12 years of numerous subjects, not to mention life skills and character training. Having an outline of your journey helps you stay on track. It also helps you catch any molehills before they become mountains. Lesson planning keeps you going in the right direction. It also gives you the flexibility to take on the afore-mentioned rabbit trails with confidence, knowing everything else is still accounted for.
Your expectations are clear. Good lesson plans give you the opportunity to lay out expectations clearly. I am not talking about lengthy rubrics (unless you like them.) Instead, your lesson plans tell you and your kids what is expected of them. You experience peace in not having to develop and explain an assignment in between blow-drying your hair and your morning coffee (besides, I highly recommend the coffee first;-) It is also more fair to your children. They have expectations that are consistent and well-thought out. No flip-flopping for their mom! Nope, she knows what she expects, and she communicates that clearly. Kids need those boundaries so they can concentrate on the work at hand.
Self-Confidence. I can't tell you how many moms I talk to who are unbelievably unsure of themselves... especially when it comes to homeschooling. They feel unorganized, not worthy for the task, tired, or worn down from 'negotiating' with their kids. Planning your lessons is one small step toward building up that skin you need when you homeschool. Everyone isn't going to support you, we all know that. But, when you are down on yourself, you can sabotage your entire homeschool experience. Who then suffers? That's right, the kids! So, this week, try to work in a little planning. See if you don't feel just a bit stronger.
Planning can't solve all of your problems, create perfect kids, or eliminate world hunger. What it can do is take away some of the noise of life and allow you to focus on the very reasons you are doing this homeschool thing in the first place... your kids.
Thought of the day: When you prepare for life, you glide through a bit easier and a bit saner.


The Role of Women in Music in Nineteenth-Century
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
During the nineteenth century the position of women in music grew throughout
Europe, and Ireland was no exception. In Dublin, women went from participating in
the city's musical culture as performers to participating as teachers, composers,
organisers, performers and writers.
In the first half of the century, private music teachers such as Mrs Allen
represented women's first steps into promoting Irish music. With the re-organisation
of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 1856, women were given a new outlet for
their talents as students and teachers. The employment and fair treatment of Fanny
Robinson, as the Royal Irish Academy of Music‟s first female teacher, set a
precedent for equal treatment of women in the music profession. The Royal Irish
Academy of Music continued to employ women as teachers, such as Mrs Scott-
Ffennell, Margaret O‟Hea and Edith Oldham. The nineteenth century saw Dublin's
first female composers, Fanny Robinson, Elena Norton and Annie Patterson,
publishing and performing their music. Women began writing about music as a
means of improving music education and public understanding. One of the greatest
outcomes of the promotion of music by women was the founding of the Feis Ceoil by
Annie Patterson and its organisation and promotion by Patterson and Oldham. The
musical culture of Dublin was given a means through which it could develop while
reviving native Irish music.
This thesis evaluates the contribution made by women to music in nineteenth
century Dublin and examines the areas they were involved in, how they were
perceived and how their important work has been neglected and often forgotten in
accounts of music from that period. It argues their worthiness of an important place
in Ireland's music history.
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I was reading a book, "the history of glue" - I couldn't put it down.
Winters, Kari-Lynn (2010). “Beyond Words, Using the Arts to Enhance Early Reading Comprehension.” General editor Claudia Pearson. Birmingham, AL: Look Again Press. ISBN10 0980111358; ISBN13 9780980111354.
This text investigates the way in which arts can be effectively integrated with a reading program as a way to teach and evaluate global reading comprehension strategies among less proficient readers. The project was undertaken with twelve less proficient third and fourth grade readers in a West Vancouver suburban public school for a total of seven months.
The study consists of three phases. First the students were nominated, observed and interviewed. Pre-program progress interviews, which included arts-integrated evaluations, were also conducted. In the second phase, students were taught five reading comprehension strategies. Students learned about and practiced these strategies through nine arts-integrated lessons. Additionally, informal interviews with the two teachers and post-program interviews took place during this second phase. The third phase concluded by performing what had been learned throughout the sessions, conducting group delayed-program progress interviews, and completing student reflection sheets.
The research findings revealed that all twelve of the less proficient students in the study generally improved their reading skills. When given opportunities to construct and express their understandings through arts-integration, they seemed to become more fluent decoders and appeared to strengthen their employment of global/interpretive comprehension strategies when reading printed texts. Videos and still photos of the activities described in this text are available.
This book is an expanded version of “Developing an Arts-Integrated Narrative Reading Comprehension Program for Less Proficient Grade 3 and 4 Students,” author’s award-winning Masters Thesis for Department of Language and Literacy in Education, University of British Columbia (2004).
Kari is available to visit schools, libraries, birthday parties, workshops … Please see more about author visits.


The Purpose of Finance
What is the purpose of finance?
Here is an answer: the purpose of finance is to help people save, manage, and raise money.
The answer is simple enough, but hardly ever spoken or acknowledged, which is a pity because purpose is the end towards which actions are directed. Purpose guides actions. Aristotle asked about the purpose of everything from medicine to generalship. (In case you are curious, for Aristotle, the end of medicine is health and the end of generalship is victory.) Every action and decision is done for the sake of an end, a purpose. The ancient Greeks, the Stoics, and the Scholastics knew and lived by this idea and even in a postmodern period modern humans still seek purpose. Why else is The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren the second most translated book in the world and the best selling hardback non-fiction book in history?
Just as many seek purpose to life, professionals in the broad sense, seek purpose in their work. A profession’s purpose is:
- A goal
- A reason for the work we do
- A guide to decision and action
A noble purpose is probably more likely to engender good acts, although it does not guarantee every act will be good. Most professions have well articulated purposes. For example, as Aristotle will agree, the medical profession’s purpose is to help people be healthy. The legal profession’s purpose is to help people obtain justice. The teaching profession’s purpose is to help people learn. It is therefore, not in the least odd for the finance profession to profess a purpose.
The purpose of finance is to help people save, manage, and raise money.
Finance needs to have its purpose enunciated and accepted. Students in finance should learn it in their business education. Perhaps the purpose should be taught even earlier at the elementary education level. Practitioners should be comfortable with the purpose of finance, knowing it implicitly and speaking it unabashedly. This acceptance and acknowledgement is a first step towards improving the culture of finance.
The improvement comes about through the crucial bit of the statement of purpose that is ethically charged: “To help people”. This phrase instills the notion of the “other” in finance. The idea of the other is where altruism and ethics begins. Secular moral philosophy from theories of justice to utilitarianism, concerns the other. The idea of helping the other also is widespread in religions from the Mosaic to the Eastern traditions. It is a basis of religious ethics. Christians are asked to love their neighbors, Muslims to show mercy to the less fortunate, and Buddhists to have compassion for sentient beings.
Where finance has fallen over the past half century is its gradual abandonment of an acknowledged purpose that entails the notion of helping people. Finance has been quantified for efficiency, made positivistic to escape the perceived quagmire of relativism, but quantification has led to the collective unconscious equating finance almost exclusively with money, neglecting the connecting link, people. So much so, spiritual leaders such as Pope Benedict and the Dalai Lama, feel the need to remind those who are inclined to listen, money (finance) is meant to serve people and people are not meant to serve money (finance).
Articulating the purpose of finance clarifies, for everyone, the role and work of finance professionals.
So instead of having this fuzzy connection in our minds:
Which leads to this mistaken belief:
We should have this much less fuzzy and more correct connection in our minds:
The statement and acceptance of a purpose is not the silver bullet that slays all unethical acts in finance. There is no silver bullet. Ethical progress is incremental more resembling an asymptotic curve. The quest of this Institute is to develop a new theory of finance in which ethics plays an integral role. The first step towards this new theory may be to propose a purpose for finance that is true, acceptable, and yes, noble.
Dr. Kara Tan Bhala


North Carolina Head Start:
What is Head Start?
Head Start is a federally funded, comprehensive preschool program designed to meet emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs of three and four year olds and their families. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated Project Head Start on May 18, 1965. Overall, the program is trying to the meet the goal of helping low-income children to be better prepared for school.
What is Early Head Start?
Early Head Start serves families with children ages birth through three and low-income pregnant women. Created by the 1994 Head Start Reauthorization Act, it is also a federally funded, comprehensive preschool program designed to meet emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs.
How can I find a list of Head Start and Early Head Start Programs in my area?
To find programs in your area, click here.
Does North Carolina have a Head Start -State Collaboration Office?
Yes, in 1992, North Carolina was awarded a Head Start-State Collaboration grant from the US Administration for Children and Families. Although Head Start has a federal-to-local program structure, Head Start understands that the states play a key role in creating and implementing policies that affect the lives of low-income families with children. The NC HSSCO is housed in the Office of School Readiness with the other state- or federally-funded Pre-K programs administered in North Carolina including More At Four, Title I, Even Start Family Literacy, and Preschool Exceptional Children. Contact Khari Garvin, the NC Head Start State Collaboration Director, for additional information.
North Carolina Head Start Facts (2008-2009)
National Head Start Association (NHSA)
NHSA is a private, not-for-profit membership organization that provides a forum to continue to enhance and advance Head Start services for low-income children and families ages birth through five.
Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center
The Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center is offered by the Administration for Children and Families to provide information and publications about the Head Start program.
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Bastille Day is right around the corner, and why not celebrate by inviting your child to create some French crepes! Crepes are considered the national food of France, and they are easier to make than you might think!
What You Do:
- Invite your child to measure and add the flour, salt, and sugar to the mixing bowl.
- Traditional French crepes include melted butter as one of the ingredients for creating this thin pancake. Your child can melt the butter in the microwave or a small saucepan.
- Now she can add the melted butter, milk, water, and eggs to the flour mixture and stir things together.
- Invite your child to heat a large nonstick skillet coated with 1 teaspoon of oil over medium heat.
- Once things have warmed up, your child can carefully ladle a scoop of the batter onto the hot pan and then let cook for about 1 minute.
- Invite your child to flip her crepe using the spatula, and then cook an additional minute or two on the other side, revealing a nicely browned crepe.
- Encourage your child can place the warm crepe on a paper towel and continue pouring, flipping, and browning her crepes until all her batter is gone.
- Invite your child can create the sweet filling for the crepes by placing a spoonful of whipped cream in the center of the crepe along with some fresh sliced strawberries. Invite her to roll up the crepe and then sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Did You Know:
Crepes can be filled with just about anything, from ice cream to grilled chicken!
Sarah Lipoff has a K-12 Art Education degree and enjoys working with kids of all ages.


By Emily Gold Boutilier
For a half century, the Mead Art Museum needed a good detective.
In the 1950s and 1960s the museum received, from separate donors, two pages from manuscripts containing
mysterious, archaic musical notation and Latin text so hard to read that it seemed to be in code.
“We couldn’t decipher them,” says Elizabeth Barker, director and chief curator of the museum. Decorations
on the manuscripts led the curators to believe that they were from 14th-century Italy, but the museum knew
virtually nothing else about them, Barker says. The musical notation barely resembled modern-day sheet music. “We only knew what we could see on the surface.”
Enter the students in “Music 21: Music and Culture.” Last semester, these 14 men and women became sleuths, unraveling the mystery of the musical manuscripts.
Their professor, Klára Móricz, presented the cold case early in the semester. Working in groups, the students set out to transpose two manuscript pages into modern musical notation, to decode and translate the Latin and to learn when the music might have been performed.
The case was an opportunity to apply a classroom lesson to a real-world problem. The students recognized the archaic music as quadratic notation, which they’d learned to read in class. In groups, they set about transposing the music into a form that today’s performers could understand. They identified the music as chants.
“More difficult,” says Music 21 student Jeremy Koo ’12, “was trying to decipher the Latin.” But they had more than just music education on their side: “Lo and behold,” says Hilary Budwey ’13, “there were a few kids in the class who’d taken Latin.” She was one of them.
The text, however, was a hostile witness. “A lot of the letters were faded,” says Budwey. “That was the first problem.” Posing another challenge, the unusual calligraphy made it “difficult to tell what letters were really what,” she says. To make matters worse, the manuscripts featured strange Latin abbreviations that Budwey and her classmates had never before encountered.
But never underestimate a liberal arts student. After deciphering several abbreviations and phrases, the students used computer databases to identify the type of liturgical books that would have contained such chants and the services during which such chants were sung. As it turned out, one chant was sung at the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel—which happened to be the date that the projects were due—while the other was from the fourth Sunday of Advent. The students deduced that the pages are from manuscripts for Gregorian chants.
The Mead was thrilled—not only that the mystery was solved but also that Móricz had used the museum’s collection “not as a garnish” to coursework, Barker says, but as the “main dish, letting students sink their intellectual forks into it.”
The detectives met at the Mead in December to perform a concert of the chants. As one Music 21 student put it, they’d breathed new life into dead music.
Listen to an audio clip of students chanting “Princeps.” Play below, or download the MP4.
Listen to an audio clip of students chanting “Angeli, Archangeli.” Play below, or download the MP4.
Manuscript image courtesy of Mead Art Museum. Other photos by Jessica Mestre ’10.


England's school inspectors - known collectively by the little-loved acronym of Ofsted (www.ofsted.gov.uk- that's the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills, in case you were wondering....) - have just published a report on the state of mathematics in English schools. Like most education reports, it's a tale of positives and negatives and some hug gaps between them.
But the report's bottom line is clear and depressing: too many children leave school without the maths they need for everyday life. Nearly half of schools are - in Ofsted-speak - 'satisfactory' (which more accurately means unsatisfactory) or 'inadequate' in their teaching of maths, rather than 'good' or 'outstanding'.
No surprise there. We know from recent government figures highlighted by National Numeracy at its launch in March that nearly half the working age population in England - 17 million adults - have the numeracy skills expected of a child at primary school.
We know too from personal stories that that sort of under-performance is usually traced back to experiences at school, and we know from a whole host of research that poor numeracy increases your chances of unemployment, a criminal record and mental health problems.
But what's disappointing is that things don't seem to be getting better. Ofsted's overall findings are similar to those it came up with in a previous report on school maths four years ago.
That means there's still too much variation in teaching between schools and even within schools. Those who start school with the least knowledge of maths fall increasingly behind, so that by 16 the gap between top and bottom is vast or, as Ofsted puts it, "low attainment too often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy". At the same time, the most able are not being consistently challenged.
Too much teaching is seen as getting students through tests rather than giving them a real understanding of what maths is about and so preparing them for the next stage of education, work and life. Teachers have become more aware of the need to improve students' problem-solving and investigative skills, but rarely integrate that into the way children learn.
But there is progress in some areas. Overall very young children are doing better in the early years foundation stage (up to five). And more teenagers are passing maths in GCSE and A-level exams.
But Ofsted puts a caveat there, suggesting that the exams have got easier and that even if results look better on papers, students' understanding of maths hasn't risen commensurately. And given that it's still true that fewer young people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland choose to continue with maths after 16 than in most other developed countries, that's a pretty grim caveat. (Scotland does a little better, as I've reported before, because of a different exam system and curriculum.)
But there are reasons to cheer. The report is peppered with examples of what does and doesn't work in the classroom, and how to turn the doesn't into the does.
And there's an appendix-of-honour in Ofsted's press release listing the outstanding schools (11% of the total) where the standard of teaching is consistently higher, the curriculum well organised and mathematically rich, where those needing extra help get it, where students become fluent in maths and learn to tackle unfamiliar as well familiar problems. They stand there as beacons, showing what can be done but what doesn't get done often enough.
This is a summary report card classically in the 'could do better' category. And it comes at a time not just of high concern about standards of numeracy in the UK but also crucially at the beginnings of a new awareness that failure - individually and nationally - is not inevitable. That's what we believe in National Numeracy and we think it's what Ofsted means when it calls on the government to raise the national ambition in numeracy.
There are brilliant teachers out there - and well organised schools who make good use of them and support the less than brilliant - but they're thin on the ground. In fact there simply aren't enough qualified maths teachers, let alone brilliant ones (and recruitment to the profession looks down again this year).
It is of course a vicious circle. If children don't get able and inspiring teachers, they grow up unable - or, more accurately, convinced they are unable - to do maths. Negative attitudes are perpetuated and inherited by the next generation. There are several places where the circle can be broken. But school is the most obvious.
Follow Wendy Jones on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wendyjoneswj


SRU's College of Education going 'green'
SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. - Students in Slippery Rock University's elementary education and early childhood program are going "green" through a newly adopted sustainability initiative.
"It's a program that is returning to its roots," said Robert Snyder, associate professor in the department and a leader in bringing sustainability practices back into teacher education. The goal is get graduates to take "green" learning and teaching skills into their classrooms when they begin their teaching careers.
"We have started the program in the College of Education and have a website for our science methods course. We have added programs and course work that lets our students learn about sustainability and energy issues so they can go out and teach it to elementary-level students," he said. "As a large university there are many ways to make our campus sustainable, and we are taking giant steps to achieve just that."
The SRU program is already expanding to the early childhood program for those who will teach in kindergarten through fourth-grade programs.
"We begin the program in our student's junior year, helping them complete certification through Pennsylvania and the Project WILD program. They will become trained in teaching the activities of sustainability through the Project Wild program," he said.
Project WILD is a wildlife-focused conservation education program for K-12 educators and their students. It is one of the most widely used conservation and environmental education programs among educators of students in kindergarten through high school.
The program is based on the premise that young people and educators have a vital interest in learning about the natural world. A national network of state wildlife agency sponsors ensures that Project WILD is available nationwide and is training educators in the many facets of the program.
The new emphasis will apply to all SRU students enrolled in the elementary education program - approximately 60 to 70 students each semester.
"It's a new emphasis on sustainability," he said.
"We are seeing that young students need more 'Green Education.' Projects like planting a seed, seeing it grow, being able to measure root growth and understanding how much soil and nutrients are required is important in understanding science and nature," he said.
Schools across Pennsylvania are emphasizing science, technology, engineering and mathematics areas - STEM - and the type of high-level thinking and real-world applications fit conveniently into Green Projects. They also fit with the new core curriculum Pennsylvania schools are in the process of adopting.
The program will make use of the Project WILD training and the Growing Up WILD version for younger children, he said.
"We will have pre-service teachers going out to schools with that training under their belts," Snyder said. "They will have gotten some practice by working with the children in our SGA Child Care Center where they will practice their teaching skills. It is a win for the center's children since they will be learning the ideas and concepts behind sustainability."
"The child care students will visit the SRU Science Center to see insects, learn about tree diversity as well as other 'green' topics. The SRU students will have the chance to test run their teaching methods at the same time," he said.
Snyder, who joined the SRU faculty in 2001, said he learned about sustainability as part of his own interest and through Project WILD certification training.
"I have been using the information in my classes for about 10 years, but with support of my dean, we are extending the topic across the department as well as through the Early Childhood Club and a number of planned workshops," Snyder said.
Keith Dils, SRU's College of Education dean, has endorsed the program and said it ties to SRU's overall efforts in sustainability not only on a universitywide basis, but with other programs offered by his college, including work with local Girl Scout Brownie troops, and science student visits to museums and science and technology centers that offer information about sustainability.
"We ran this idea past faculty, and they liked it. We want to use McKay [Education Building] to expand the Green School Initiative program," Dils said.
He said SRU's College of Education initiative could be expanded to a service-learning project in which SRU education students analyze the building both structurally as well as its relationship to sustainability.
"They could collect the rain water, see if solar panels are a possibility or if the windows being used are energy efficient," he said. "We can literally turn our building into a laboratory related to sustainability so that our students better understand the importance. They might later share that learning with schools where they teach."
"They may also learn how to write grants to someday help their school's sustainability projects," he said.


Breaking Bread Together
The Importance of the Family Dinner Table
by Anne K. Fishel, PhD
When a parent gets a cancer diagnosis, regular family dinners can be one of the first things to go. But dinnertime is worth fighting for. It can provide stability and normalcy to everyone. Dinnertime may be the only time when we come together and leave behind our individual pursuits, like texting, playing videogames, and e-mailing. In cooking and eating with your family, you can nourish each other during a difficult time.
Keeping Children at the Table
If dinnertime is fun and free of conflict, children will want to stay in their seats. You may want to set some guidelines for the conversation, like no talking about grades with your teenaged kids, or agreeing to keep talk about illness “off the table.” Children who help stir the soup, crumble the cheese, and cut the vegetables are more likely to be invested in eating the meal.
The Power of Dinner Conversation
Dinner conversation is the richest, most powerful language experience of your child’s life. Researchers from the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development at Harvard found that dinner table conversations are different from any other family conversations. Unlike the kind of talk we have during carpool or while tucking in a child at bedtime, conversation at the dinner table is likely to be cognitively challenging and especially engaging. This happens because families who eat together expect that children will sit and talk for more than a few minutes. Conversation often focuses on a single topic, with input from several members, and is marked by multiple utterances that are often complex. On average, children bring up about six different topics at dinner, so conversation tends to be interesting and varied.
Studies show that dinner conversation is a more potent vocabulary booster than reading, and the stories we tell around the kitchen table allow our children to build resilience and self-esteem. Children who learn a lot about their parents’ own childhood and family histories by hearing them over dinner will become more resilient and have higher self-esteem.
Dinner conversation is the richest, most powerful language experience of your child’s life.
Try these conversation starters for young children:
- What is one thing that happened today that made you feel happy, silly, friendly, smart? (You could try a different adjective each day.)
- Ask your child to guess the ingredients in each dish. Once this gets easy, start adding a secret ingredient (like a dash of cinnamon or a splash of soy sauce).
- Have your child tell a story about something that happened at school and another story that he or she made up about something that happened, and then have everyone else try to guess which is which. Parents can then do the same.
- Play a game at the table – “Close your eyes. Can you remember the color of the walls? What color shirt your father is wearing?” These games lend themselves to turn-taking by each person in the family.
Try these conversation starters for school age or adolescent children:
- Research shows that those who write down five things that make them feel grateful enjoy higher levels of happiness. Tell your kids this, and ask each member of the family to say something about their day that makes them feel thankful.
- Ask “What is your earliest memory? Would you start your autobiography with this memory or with a different story?”
- Have a “Talk Show Jar” with questions written on strips of paper that each family member can pull out. Each strip will have one question on it, the kind of question that Jon Stewart or Oprah asks: What do you do to recharge after a long day? What is the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten?
- Since kids who know more about their family will be more resilient, start offering family stories. For example, “Have I ever told you about my first job? Do you know the story of how your grandparents met, or how Dad and I met?” (If they are teens, don’t sugarcoat it).
Dinnertime is a nourishing ritual that reminds everyone that you are a family with stories and an identity separate from cancer. A shared pot of chicken soup or a platter of pasta with pesto brings the family to the table in a mutual pursuit in real time. Once assembled, the conversation provides the richest nutrients.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Dr. Anne Fishel is director of the Family and Couples Therapy Program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA, and assistant clinical professor of Psychology at the Harvard Medical School.
This article was originally published in Coping® with Cancer magazine, July/August 2009.


Celebrate this Mothers' Day by helping West African moms secure an education for their children!
We’re starting a seven-week preschool summer camp in rural Mali. By providing teacher training and a classroom curriculum, the project supports aspiring women teachers and boosts essential early childhood education programs.
Our organization, A Place in the Sun Foundation, Inc., works to improve childhood literacy in West Africa. Over the past year and a half, our team has developed a curriculum and a teacher training course, tailored to rural preschool teachers and their students.
This camp will serve as a pilot program for a permanent preschool in Mali. We’ll test out our training programs and curriculum on the ground. Then we’ll evaluate the success of the programs using top-notch metrics. Soon after, we’ll raise the funds to start a year-round school.
Today, only 33% of adults can read and write in Mali. That’s the lowest literacy rate in the world.
Illiteracy stunts opportunity for promising students in West Africa. Entire communities are held back from accessing information and jobs that could lift them out of poverty. As a result, nearly half of Mali still lives on 85 cents a day.
Simply being able to read and write would empower the next generation of Malians to build up their local communities. It’s a cheap and effective solution—and it will serve as an investment in solving an expensive and dangerous problem.
“Preschool” might remind you of naps, picture books and Play-Doh, but there’s some important science to it. Essential brain development happen in preschool, and as President Obama mentioned during his State of the Union address, it’s linked to economic growth decades down the line. By lacking preschool education, Malian kids are behind their global peers—even at age 4—and from there, only fall further behind.
Making matters tougher, kids in Mali are hindered by a language barrier between their first language and the national language of instruction. Instead of receiving instruction in Bambara (the language most commonly spoken at home) students immediately begin learning in French. Without an academic foundation in their first language, many students fail to make the transition to French language and miss out on learning the content they will need to pass national exams and succeed in school.
A Place in the Sun Foundation's curriculum addresses this core problem by teaching children lessons in their local language--Bambara--which is critical first step to literacy development. Children are also given lessons in French, which will help them transition to primary school with greater success.
To begin, we are launching our inaugural pilot project in the village of Touna, in central Mali. Over the course of seven weeks this July and August, we will work with 5 young women who are aspiring women preschool teachers. These women will then work with a classroom of 15-20 preschool students in a training program led by two experienced A Place in the Sun volunteers, Kate Needham and Abdourahamane Doucouré.
Touna, a small village located about 65 km from the regional capital of Segou, has a population of around 2,000 people. From 2010 to 2011, A Place in the Sun Foundation's Curriculum Director, Kate Needham, served as a seventh grade literacy teacher in Touna.
Through testing various training techniques and teaching models, this pilot program will help us to further improve and refine our training courses and curriculum.
About a Place in the Sun Foundation
A Place in the Sun Foundation, Inc. was started by Peace Corps Volunteers Mike and Marisa Conway, who served together in Mali from 2009 to 2011. Our organization seeks to improve the quality of education in rural West African communities so that children can learn to read and succeed in school. Our team of a dozen volunteers has spent the past fifteen months developing an early childhood education curriculum and teacher training model that is designed specifically for Malian children ages 3-6. This pilot is the first step in a strategy to engage with communities throughout Mali to identify challenges to quality education and devise solutions with community leaders. In the next five years, A Place in the Sun Foundation hopes to establish multiple clusters of early learning centers throughout Mali.
Please join us in putting children on the right path to a quality education by making a donation to our campaign.
A Place in the Sun is a 501(c)(3) pending non-profit organization. 100% of your donations go directly toward our pilot preschool program in Touna, Mali.
We've minimized costs by working through our Malian networks so that our total project budget is only $9599 (see below). Thanks to other fundraising initiatives, we will be able to launch the pilot upon reaching our $5100 tipping point.


The 100 Dong Songs Program
From the sound of children’s voices raised in song, to the joy in their steps as they dance, or the pride in their faces as they show their original artwork to family and friends, the power of the arts and the humanities transcends the boundaries of language and geography. For this reason, the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award also highlights the importance of arts and humanities learning across the globe. Each year, we present our International Spotlight Award to one exceptional program from another country. This year, we are proud to recognize The 100 Dong Songs Program, an initiative of the Western China Cultural Ecology Research Workshop. This program is dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of the Dong people of China by teaching hundreds of youth to express themselves through traditional Dong music.
The Dong people are an indigenous ethnic minority group whose population is concentrated in the mountainous village of Dimen, within Guizhou Province, as well as in other villages in southwestern China. Traditionally, the Dong people had no written version of their own language, known as Kam. Instead, they passed down customs and history from generation to generation through songs. The Dong recorded everything—from clan history and legends to societal rites and social duties—in a variety of song types. Even while living in remote villages, the Dong were able to preserve their cultural traditions with remarkable fidelity over extended periods of time: Some of their songs record events that date back 600 years or more.
Like much of rural China, Dimen is succumbing to the effects of globalization and technological change. Television, cell phones, and the Internet are becoming an integral part of village life. While many welcome these advances, such innovations threaten to undermine the unique folk culture and heritage of the Dong people. The 100 Dong Songs Program is helping to preserve these treasures.
We are grateful to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Asia Society for their assistance in selecting and supporting this year’s International Spotlight Award winner.
The nonprofit Western China Cultural Ecology Research Workshop (The Workshop) was established in 2002 to help preserve the unique heritage and invaluable music traditions of the Dong people, the Miao, and several other ethnic minority groups in rural China. More and more Dong youth were leaving their village to seek factory jobs in coastal cities, and an important connection to their past was at risk. The Workshop began recording and filming Dong and Miao music performances in Guizhou Province, and the sessions eventually led to the production of two sets of music CDs.
Because young people are key to perpetuating these cultural traditions, The Workshop places a special emphasis on helping Dong children and youth rediscover their heritage. The Workshop expanded its goals, seeking not only to record these songs, but also to incorporate the cultural preservation of ethnic music traditions into the primary school curriculum. Students would also have the opportunity to form song and opera groups.
The local government accepted this proposal, and in 2005, The Workshop started a pilot version of The 100 Dong Songs Program, first in Dimen Village and, later, in Ladong Village. The Workshop worked with local song masters to select 100 songs—of various styles and forms, for different age groups and occasions—that were popular and that represented rich cultural traditions. The collection of songs is now updated regularly.
In addition, The Workshop helped reintroduce Dong language and cultural studies into the local school curriculum and established a weekend extracurricular program where youth, ages 6 to 16, learn traditional songs and engage in singing competitions.
The Workshop also helped establish the Dimen Dong Cultural Eco-museum and the Community Culture Research Center. Working with Dong elders and university partners, The Workshop documents and preserves the group’s oral tradition and singing culture, folk architecture, agrarian practices, and such crafts as papermaking and other textile arts.
Goals for the future include expanding The 100 Dong Songs Program to the 15 villages covered by the Dimen Dong Cultural Eco-museum and, ultimately, to other Dong and Miao villages.
To expose a wider public to these cultural treasures, the Western China Cultural Ecology Research Workshop has issued several CDs, including Dong Folk Music: People and Nature in Harmony. The Workshop is also working with local governments to help Dimen and other villages generate revenue from cultural tourism.
The Dong people’s music tradition “harkens to a pre-literate society where every aspect of life was expressed in vocal narrative.”


Dyscalculia: A Quick Look
By: National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD)
What you should know about dyscalculia
- Dyscalculia refers to a wide range of learning difficulties involving math skills.
- There is no single form of dyscalculia - difficulties can vary from person to person and can change throughout a lifetime.
- Two major areas of weakness that are responsible for learning disabilities in math are
- Visual-spatial difficulties - which result in a person having trouble processing what the eye sees
- Language processing difficulty - which result in a person having trouble processing and making sense of what the ear hears.
- Like all learning disabilities, dyscalculia is a life-long challenge.
- Using alternate learning methods, people with dyscalculia can learn how to achieve success.
Dyscalculia: Warning signs by age
- Difficulty learning to count
- Trouble recognizing printed numbers
- Difficulty tying together the idea of a number (4) and how it exists in the world (4 horses, 4 cars, 4 children)
- Poor memory for numbers
- Trouble organizing things in a logical way - putting round objects in one place and square ones in another
- Trouble learning math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)
- Difficulty developing math problem-solving skills
- Poor long term memory for math functions
- Not familiar with math vocabulary
- Difficulty measuring things
- Avoiding games that require strategy
Teenagers & adults
- Difficulty estimating costs like groceries bills
- Difficulty learning math concepts beyond the basic math facts
- Poor ability to budget or balance a checkbook
- Trouble with concepts of time, such as sticking to a schedule or approximating time
- Trouble with mental math
- Difficulty finding different approaches to one problem
If a person continues to display difficulty over time the areas outlined above, testing for dyscalculia should be considered.
Copyright 2007 National Center for Learning Disabilities, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.


While getting ready for my “History of Teaching Art” graduate class tonight, I searched through my book shelves for some books that have been written over the years to help art teachers teach drawing. For instance, I always highlight Kimon Nicolaides’ “The Natural Way to Draw” and Betty Edwards’ “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” as two books I know many art teachers have turned to for guidance, including myself.
I also have a copy of “Jon Gnagy’s New Television Art Instruction Book” (1950) that includes a series of lessons on drawing. Gnagy is an unique figure in the history of art education in this country. He became known in the 1950s to millions as “America’s art teacher.” Each week, he led his television-viewing audience through his step-by-step drawing method. The popularity of the program was due in part of Gnagy’s conviction that “everyone is an artist” and that it was simply a matter of learning how to transfer the images imprinted in your brain to your fingertips and on to paper or canvas.
As a history buff, you can imagine my delight when I found the above video on youTube that shows Gnagy presenting one of his TV art lessons. There is also a nice commemorative site maintained by Gnagy’s daughter, which includes a biography, sample lessons, and a link to a wonderful 1985 article written by Susan Morgan on Gnagy’s beginnings on TV.
According to Morgan, In 1939 Gnagy read about Vladimir Zworykin’s experiments in television and decided television was the “ideal teaching medium.” If he were alive today, l’m sure Gnagy would be presenting his lessons online, perhaps in Second Life.


Brief History :
Mid Day Meal Programmeis Government of India's flagship programme for achievement of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) and is being implemented in partnership with State Government to cover the entire Karnataka.
Mid day meal programme was implemented in 7 educationally and economically backward north-eastern districts of the State during 2001-02. Later, the scheme was extended to other districts of the state in a phased manner. As per the directions of the Supreme Court of India, the scheme of providing hot cooked mid day meal was implemented for all the children of classes 1 to 5 of Government schools. The programme was extended to children of classes 1 to 5 of Government aided primary schools.The scheme also extended to 6 to 7th std children. Now the Government of India is funding the scheme for children of classes 1 to 8. Government of Karnataka is providing hot cooked meals to the children of 9th & 10th standards of government and government aided schools and it is providing milk for 1 to 10th Standard students in weekly three days out of its own resources.
Objectives of Akshara Dasoha :
The main objectives of the programme are:
- To improve enrolment and attendance
- To improve retention rate
- To improve child health by increasing nutrition level
- To improve learning ability levels of children
- To bring about social equity
- To provide MDM to the children of draught affected area during summer vacation


Every now and then I have some time to browse through the numerous links that I have saved in my “play+design” folder. I don’t know how long this resource has been sitting there but I am happy to have become reacquainted with it, today.
“The information on this website is provided free to anyone interested in teaching children and young adults the creative and critical thinking skills they need to cope with any subject or situation.
Written by Dr. Charles Burnette, translated into Korean and edited by Yi Ji Hyun, the information on this website may not be revised or reproduced for sale without the written approval of the author, but may be freely copied and distributed if there is no cost to the recipient.”
In other words, SHARE!
“Design thinking is multidisciplinary and applicable to any subject.
Design thinking may be applied by anyone to problems of any scope or scale, in any context, using any mode of thought, expression or action and any medium or discipline appropriate to the task at hand. Many different points of view are active during design thinking and any subject may be taught through a design project.
Design thinking integrates imagination and analytical thinking.
Design thinking fosters the exploration, and analysis of relevant information and its effective organization to establish ideas of value regarding a particular context. In contrast, rote learning is hard to remember and use because it has no motivating context of application. Design thinking also teaches how to cope with inadequate information, and uncertainty in order to achieve a goal.
Design thinking emphasizes constructive thinking over factual retention.
Because a design problem may have many different solutions, Design thinking requires ongoing definition, representation, and assessment. It is a continuous learning experience arising out of a need to obtain and correctly apply knowledge to achieve goals that may change as knowledge of the problem and its context is acquired.
Design thinking links information to experience and responsible action.
Design thinking organizes thought to empower effective action, and builds self-esteem and competence by requiring responsible performance in actual circumstances. Knowledge arises naturally from experience making it easier to understand, remember and apply.
Design thinking encourages objective assessment and values.
Design achievements are demonstrable and provide an objective basis for acquiring values. Success is understood through continuous evaluation of progress toward recognized goals and self-assessment is structured by the designer’s own efforts to achieve their goals.
Design thinking promotes cooperation, socialization and humanistic understanding.
Design thinking in groups encourages the development of different perspectives and social skills, including the ability to negotiate, communicate, follow, and lead. Children learn ethical and moral values by directly addressing human needs and desires and sharing their thoughts about what is appropriate and effective.
Design thinking promotes the development of knowledge through creative learning experiences that integrate all modes of intelligence and link learning to effective thought and action in the context experienced by the thinker. It involves consideration of people, resources, relationships, contexts, methods, values and knowledge. It calls on the humanities and the arts to express, communicate and situate ideas and to interpret potentials, on technology to implement them and on science to assess their outcomes. Education emphasizing Design thinking can produce an understanding of art, science, technology and the humanities that is integrated, interdisciplinary and humanistically focused. It can bring art education into contact with mainstream subjects, free technology from its obsolete framework in vocational and industrial arts, and put science to work in concert with the humanities.”


Researchers agree that language and literacy derive from the first days of a child’s life. Children become literate members in society by listening and interacting with the people that surround them. This study examines how children develop literacy through play by looking closely at the benefits of uninterrupted play and how it encourages language development. The development of language skills, including reading and writing competence, through social interaction was observed to see how literacy development occurs within a home environment. This study also offers successful strategies to use during play that will enhance reading and writing skills within young children.
Mielonen, Alissa and Paterson, Wendy
"Developing Literacy Through Play,"
Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education:
1, Article 2.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/jiae/vol3/iss1/2


A moving account of the possibilities of fighting racism in our schools
Taking It Personally
Racism in the Classroom from Kindergarten to College
Search the full text of this book
Ann Berlak and Sekani Moyenda
When Sekani Moyenda, an African American elementary school teacher, accepted an invitation to speak at a graduate education class, neither the students nor Ann Berlak, their professor, could guess that her presentation would spark an outpouring of emotion and a reexamination of race from everyone involved.
The "encounter"as it was calledwas an expression of Moyenda's anger at the institutionalized racism of our educational system, a system whose foundations are reinforced and whose assumptions about race are reproduced in the graduate school classroom. Forcing everyone involved to rethink their own race consciousness, Taking it Personally is a chronicle of two teachers and their own educational progress. In processing their own responses to the encounter, along with their students', Berlak and Moyenda meditate not only on their own ideas on teaching and learning, but also redefine the obligation a teacher has to his or her students.
Personal in its approach, yet grounded in significant currents of educational thought, Taking it Personally will be a must-read for any educator or educator-to-be who is committed to teaching in our diverse classrooms.
"For those who contend that racism is all but dead in the United States, this book gives us a laser-focused look at real multiethnic relationships in new millennium classrooms. Through the eyes of two thoughtful, honest, and compellingly articulate educatorsone black, one whitewe learn that there is yet much work to be done."
"This is one of the best, if not the best, book about the microdynamics of racism in the classroom that I have ever read. I think it will become a classic. It is well conceptualizeda cross-racial teachers' dialogue framed by the two authors' race-awareness autobiographies, beautifully written, and absolutely riveting. I truly couldn't put it down."
"A moving chronicle of two teachers' journey confronting racism in education. ...the two authors skillfully dissect racism and its manifestations in today's classroom. ... A great book for teachers and teacher educators alike.
"[T]his book reveals the possibilities for fighting racism in our schools. Berlak and Moyenda meditate not only on their own ideas of teaching and learning, but also redefine the obligation a teacher has to his or her students."
"This book is not just a text, it is an intense reading experience and I would anticipate a similar experience for every reader, regardless of race."
"...an extremely valuable guidebook for those trying to develop classroom management strategies in urban schools.
Part I. Our Racial Autobiographies
Part II. All Right, Who Started It?
Part III. What’s Going on Here?
Ann Berlak is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Elementary Education at San Francisco State University.
Sekani Moyenda teaches reading and is the administrator for computer and network technology at Rosa Parks Elementary School in San Francisco.
In the series
Teaching/Learning Social Justice, edited by Lee Anne Bell.
The series Teaching/Learning Social Justice, edited by Lee Anne Bell, is concerned with educational practices that promote democracy and equality in a diverse society. "Social Justice" is used as an umbrella term for the many topics and concerns connoted by the terms democracy, equality, and diversity, while the term "Teaching/Learning" emphasizes the essential connections between theory and practice that this series examines. Books in the series will look at a broad range of educational arenas to examine the many ways people engage diversity, democracy, and social change in classrooms and communities. The series will draw on the lived experiences of people who struggle to critically analyze and challenge oppressive relationships and institutions, and to imagine and create more just and inclusive alternatives. The series' focus will be on both popular education and education in formal institutions, and its audience is educators and activists who believe in the possibility of social change through education.