Moving ahead with technology and staying on par with the pace of the racing world around, Litera Valley Zee School offers Tablet Based Learning opportunities for all the students right from Kindergarten till grade VIII.
Tablets are used as a tool to tap the inborn liking the children naturally have for latest gadgets and making the best use of this for introducing learning through tabs in classroom.
Latest and updated versions of Learning Apps are provided to the students based on their theme for the week in order to provide them with a 360-degree learning experience.
Connecting with the inner-self is essential for the well-being of any child right from their childhood. We, at Litera Valley Zee School use Art and Craft as a tool to help our students in bringing out their hidden talents with respect to art.
By involving and engaging students in art and craft activities, the students not only learn and acquire a new skill but also have their perspective towards life modified. It not only adds colours and figures but also pumps in them a sense of adapting an aesthetic approach to anything they do.
Art education in our school teaches students how to interpret, criticize, and use visual information, and how to make choices based on it.
The benefits of including art and craft for kids help them in,
The researchers suggest that children exposed to arts and crafts are able to think “out of the box”; since a lot of working with hands involve figuring out how to solve problems creatively. Like any other subjects, art is also a subject in which a child can see his/her reflection and WE make it possible.
The students are exposed to different styles of music as well. Exclusive experts in music (both Classical and Western) train our students to inculcate a liking and feel for music right from a very young age. Students are also trained in handling different instruments. We have a school musical band led by professional trainer.
Soilless Agriculture or Hydroponics is a revolution in the field of farming wherein produce of excellent quality can be harvested without using soil. We take great pride and pleasure in presenting Soilless Agriculture or Hydroponics to our students as it not only demonstrates how agriculture is possible with only water rich in nutrients, not relying on a soil base but also educates them that any given situation can be handled in a very effective way with a varied and innovative approach.
Being the First School in the country to demonstrate Soilless Agriculture in school, we have a complete setup of Hydroponics in place that demonstrates the overall functionality of the system and how it can be effectively used in large scale farming as well.


Chess remains one of the world’s most popular board games. A viable opportunity exists for anyone who can vertically integrate within the chess community. Chess is played at the following tournaments: the Chess Olympiad, Continental Championship, World Championship, National Tournaments, Regional Tournaments, Chess Club Tournaments, School Tournaments, and Other Tournaments.
Chess Federations serve the chess community by promoting chess and organizing chess tournaments worldwide. There are hundreds of chess tournaments each year globally: open, closed, men, women and youth events.
There are more than 100 chess federations globally. While there are millions of chess fans who understand and enjoy chess, based on Internet publications, there are up to 5 million chess players worldwide who are members of federations. Tournament participation statistics demonstrate that interest in chess in growing. In 1924 less than 20 countries participated, while in 2006, 147 countries participated in the Chess Olympiad.
Chess market is growing due to the education value of chess in schools. The American Chess Foundation (ACF) founded the Chess in Schools Program, which was focused on improving math skills for adolescents through improved critical thinking and problem solving skills. Remarkably "test scores improved by 17.3% for students regularly engaged in chess classes, compared with only 4.56% for children participating in other forms of enriched activities."
Recognizing the value of chess as a fun way to help children develop these skills, educators around the world gradually began to introduce the game in their classrooms. Today, the chess market continues to grow due primarily to scholastic chess. The game is now part of the regular primary school curriculum of over 30 countries around the world.
develops decision-making, planning, and problem solving skills
develops critical, analytical, and logical thinking and perseverance
improves concentration, memory, intuition and self-control
improves independence, imagination and creativity
inspires self-motivation, self-esteem and confidence


In this lesson you will
- Review a fingerplay about a turtle
- Learn about Smooth and Separated sounds in music
- hear a story and learn a song for Letter L
- I can do a fingerplay
- I can sing a song about the letter L
- I can hear smooth and separated sounds in music
1 Sing the Time for Music Song
Sing Time for Music with the lyrics video.
Count the beats at the end of each verse.
Count the beats out loud.
Think up new ways that you could keep a beat, and sing your new verses.
Numeracy: Counting is numeracy! Cut out 8 hearts and have children tap on the hearts as they count. Take 2 away. Have them count the hearts now - 1-2-3-4-5-6.
2 Review the poem, "There was a Little Turtle"
Listen to the poem, "There was a Little Turtle"
Listen to it again and say some of the words.
Listen again and say the words quietly.
Listen again and say the words LOUDLY.
3 Listen to the Song and Use Your Imagination
Listen to the song and imagine a turtle moving to the music.
When the turtle is on the rocks, he is climbing and its hard for him!
When the turtle is swimming, he swims smooth and easy through the water.
In this music, listen for when the turtle is climbing on the rocks. The music is short and separated.
Listen for when the turtle is swimming, the music is smooth and flowing.
4 Sing the "Letter L" song
Sing the "Letter L" song
5 Sing a Song about Leo the Lion
Listen to "Leo the Lion"
Sing about Leo the Lion
6 Listen to "Trot Old Joe"
Listen to "Trot Old Joe" then play the video again and sing along!
7 Trot On Your Pretend Hobby Horse with the Kids Demo
Move with a pretend Hobby Horse like the kids in the Kids Demo video.
8 Create Movement With your Pretend Hobby Horse!
Watch "Wild Horseman"
Create and move with your hobby horse to the music.
9 Review last week's module, or any of the songs you like!
Review last week's module, or any of the songs you like!
Repetition is one of the ways that we learn something well.
Children improve singing on pitch, learn the lyrics and melody better with each repetition.
Children will develop their musicality if you sing, move, play more often!
Keep a list of the songs and activities that you like.
You can easily find any song by using the search engine on the website.
10 Sing our Goodbye Song, "Skinnamarink"
Sing our Goodbye Song, "Skinnamarink"
11 Sing and do Actions to our Goodbye Song, "Skinnamarink"
Sing and do Actions to our Goodbye Song, "Skinnamarink"
12 Music IS Literacy!
Parents, Teachers and Administration:
Music education is important for children.
Whether in class or at home, keep our children singing, playing, moving, listening and creating music!
Online Resources for Elementary Music Teachers


Classical Education for the Pre-Kindergarten/Kindergarten Stage
Intermediary Stage (roughly four through six year olds) Motto: “Our language and our play are our wisdom”
Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten are the years that continue the laying up of the child’s classical education foundation, begun in the Early Stage.
Intermediary Stage Content: classical stories, beautifully and artfully illustrated; poetry and rhymes; church hymns and prayers; age-oriented classical art; traditional games and plays; lives of the children saints and of all saints; legends of virtue; role play; maps, along with traveling, history and geography stories.
Intermediary Stage Method: language and hands-on play; dialogue; memorization; mimicking the master.
Intermediary Stage Goal: Within the larger goal of acquiring a life-long self-learning ability and independent thinking, this stage focuses on the following three goal subsets:
Intermediary Stage Virtues: love, obedience, honesty, kindness, beginning of responsibility, patience, diligence.
At this stage, our teachers seek to harmoniously integrate reading, handwriting, and math with the exploration of history, geography, science, nutrition, physical education, fine arts, music, and foreign languages (Greek and Spanish).
What our days look like in the PK/K class (please keep in mind the above described, age-appropriate, method):
A classical curriculum for reading is phonics-based. We embrace the systematic synthetic phonics instruction. This method starts by teaching young children all the possible sounds made by the consonants and vowels, and building a phonemic awareness. Then students’ progress to letter combinations like ch, th, and sh and vowel combinations like ea, ei, and ou. After this step, students are taught to blend the sounds to form recognizable words, and finally, are introduced to short words and sentences, with an increased complexity.
Handwriting / Building fine motor skills
A classical PK/K curriculum also includes handwriting practice. Students learn to hold a pencil correctly and form their letters carefully. Handwriting curriculum includes daily practice with manuscript (print) handwriting. By the end of the kindergarten year, students should be able to copy whole sentences with proper punctuation and capitalization. PK/Kindergarten students should also spend time coloring daily, as this develops the fine motor skills needed for writing. Students learn scissor safety, proper grip, as well as straight, curved, and zig-zag cutting. Students also learn to use a glue bottle, practicing how to squeeze bottles and use the correct amount of glue.
Classical education math curriculum teaches young students to connect mathematical concepts with the students’ everyday life. This means the focus at this age is on the importance of building the right vocabulary, and associating it with the right representation. It also means that all math concepts will be primarily taught using simple manipulatives, and in relation with the students’ daily surroundings, and only secondarily by using worksheets. Students learn to count, add, subtract, use the calendar, solve simple word problems, measure, use different tools, sort, assess, categorize using simple household or nature-found objects.
At this stage, there’s a writing component to our the math curriculum, aimed to teach students to write the numbers 1–20, signs, along with beginning geometry elements, and associate signs with concepts.
History and geography
Our approach focuses at this stage at building an emerging world and time awareness, by exposing students to our country’s main historical moments, and to the geography of the states.
Our classical approach is to teach children concepts (using a combination of inquiry and socratic approach), and then help them discover their applicability and truthfulness in their lives. We focus on simple concepts from botany, biology, geology, weather, with a touch of mechanics.
The PK/K stage is a stage where language meets play, connecting abstract to concrete; where the body is beginning to be trained for resilience and accuracy, where good habits are beginning to be formed by cultivation of virtues, following the saints, and preparing children for the amazing entrance into the adventure of the primary stage years.


Nature preschools and forest kindergartens : the handbook for outdoor learning
Environmental education expert David Sobel joins with a variety of colleagues to share their experiences and steps for creating a successful forest kindergarten program. Nature Preschools and Forest Kindergartens walks you through the European roots of the concept to the recent resurgence of these kinds of programs in North America.
Going well beyond a history lesson, these experts provide the framework to understand the concepts and build a learning community that stimulates curiosity and inquisitiveness in a natural environment. This helpful guide provides the curriculum, ideas, and guidance needed to foster special gifts in children. It also gives you the nuts and bolts of running a successful nature preschool business, such as potential obstacles, staff and curriculum design, best practices for success, site and facility management, and business planning.
St. Paul, MN
education, early childhood education, elementary education, nature study, outdoor education, education curricula, preschool and kindergarten, teaching methods
Early Childhood Education | Education | Elementary Education | Outdoor Education
Sobel, D. (2016). Nature preschools and forest kindergartens : the handbook for outdoor learning. https://aura.antioch.edu/facbooks/40


The Right Brain Initiative
Right Brain Initiative Experiences Continue!
Right Brain Initiative
We are excited to be a part of the Right Brain Initiative once again this year! This is the fifth year that we have received this art grant called "The
Right Brain Initiative." The grant provides money to our school in order for children to have art experiences under the guidance of professional artists in residence.
The purpose of the Right Brain Initiative is to achieve a measurable impact on learning by integrating the community's arts and cultural resources into the education of every K-8 student in the region's school districts. We are fortunate to be one of the thirty plus schools in five different school districts to be a part of this initiative!
There are four main goals for The Right Brain Initiative:
- Integration: Teachers, artists, art specialists and other members of the school community will work together as partners to integrate art education and other curriculum areas.
- Equity: All students will have access to quality experiences in multiple art forms.
- Art Processes: Students will create and perform/exhibit works of art and reflect upon works of art created by themselves and others.
- TheRight Brain Initiativehas expanded our view of literacy to include the four C's: Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking. These are the skills children need to succeed in the 21st Century and we have included the four C's in our work with our artists and children.
Our Right Brain work is sponsored by the Regional Arts & Culture Council and Gresham-Barlow School District. We are excited to be a part of this artistic and literacy rich endeavor.
For more information on the Right Brain Initiative: http://therightbraininitiative.org.


As numerous authors make clear in the book under review, education and specifically art education is in crisis. On the one hand students entering school encounter an education system designed for a relatively stable industrial age that society has long outgrown, which ill-prepares them for the twenty-first century workplace. On the other, the arts and humanities across the western world are being downgraded, starved of funding and seen by politicians and policy makers as irrelevant to our technology-based future. The picture appears bleak.
Responding to this troubling context, the Back to the Sandbox: Art and Radical Pedagogy project brought a transdisciplinary approach to the question ‘What education do we need?’. Initiated by the artist, curator, editor and educator Jaroslav Anděl, the project originated as an exhibition at the Reykjavik Art Museum in 2015. It was then presented in a revised form in 2017 at the Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway, before materialising as an exhibition and extended education programme at the Western Gallery at Western Washington University in 2018. The publication, edited by Anděl and published in conjunction with the third manifestation of the project includes essays by eminent pedagogues, neuroscientists, psychologists, physicists and artists, alongside documentation of the exhibited artists’ work FIG. 1. More than an exhibition catalogue, the accompanying publication reads as a call to action.
In a series of extended essays and shorter texts the reader is given a summary of the urgent concerns about the current state of education, compelling arguments for the importance of maintaining the arts and creativity within schooling and in some of the more encouraging essays, offered practical ways forward. This is where the publication is strongest, not least because Anděl has recognised that solving the crisis in education requires interconnected thinking. In bringing together key theorists from varied fields the book offers an eloquent, well-informed and timely overview of our twenty-first century educational needs.
However, two of the essays also identify tensions that the publication does not entirely address. In his introductory essay Anděl makes a case for art itself as a form of ‘radical pedagogy’ that can ‘inspire mind-changing narratives’. Yet Luis Camnitzer, himself an artist and educator, makes the point in his text that when art as a social practice attempts to address problems in education, it is frequently unsuccessful. As he says, ‘when not used to extol individual authorship, most of artistic social practice is not much more than improved social service’. By documenting individual artists’ work, alongside a few examples of artists’ work in the community, the book risks fulfilling Camnitzer’s prediction. We come away with insights into specific artists’ interests and with some awareness of project-based interventions in the social realm FIG. 2. In this way the book, perhaps inadvertently, draws attention to the limits of what individual artists can do to effect widespread change, reinforcing the need for urgent reform at national policy level.
The gap between the scale of the challenge as outlined by theorists including Henry Giroux and the reality of the practice of artists and researchers working with communities is highlighted in the text by Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman FIG. 3. These two researchers, who work in collaboration with communities on the United States–Mexico border, lament that ‘many academics who care about social equity spend their careers writing and debating about justice and equality and rights and freedom and agency – and policies to address these things – without meaningful contact with the world they care about’. The book undoubtably favours theory FIG. 4 over the exposition of the messy, unpredictable and difficult world of education practice and there is a distinct absence of schoolteachers’ voices. There is no documentation, for example, of the eight-month long collaboration between the Western Gallery and the university’s college of education. Likewise, while young people feature in photographs (most powerfully in Graziela Kunch’s documentation of the 2015 school uprisings in Brazil FIG. 5),1their voices only appear in Pam Kuntz’s text, for which she interviewed thirty young people about bullying. Including more of this content would have grounded the theoretical texts, enabling the reader to visualise change in action.
The saying, ‘back to the sandbox’ implies an original, authentic place from which to rethink and reimagine FIG. 6. In bringing together artists, theorists and educators in this wide-ranging beautifully produced publication, Anděl makes an important and original contribution to the current debates on education. While not comprehensive, this book can act as a useful starting point, provoking further action and positive change.


The Maths department consists of:
- Entry Level Mathematics
- GCSE Mathematics
- Functional Skills Mathematics
- Business Studies Level 1
- Managing Personal Finance Level 1
- Young Enterprise
- Mathematical Awards at Entry Level, Level 1 and Level 2
Bradfields Academy Mathematics Department is committed to raising the standards of numeracy of all its students, so that they develop the ability to use numeracy skills effectively in all areas of the curriculum and to cope confidently with the demands of further education, employment and adult life. We aim to develop the numeracy and mathematical competence of our students through the teaching of number skills, algebraic skills, data analysis skills and knowledge of geometry & measure. We aim to provide challenge to all students, at all levels, to raise achievement at all key stages.
The Math’s team believe that being numerate is essential for students to prepare them for adult life. Numeracy is a proficiency that is developed mainly in mathematics but also in other subjects. It is more than an ability to do basic arithmetic. Numeracy involves developing confidence and competence with numbers and measures. It requires understanding of the number system, a knowledge of mathematical techniques, and an inclination and ability to solve mathematical problems in a wide range of contexts. Numeracy also demands understanding of the ways in which data are gathered by counting and measuring, and presented in graphs, diagrams, charts and tables.
The Maths Department provide a vibrant, positive environment where all students are given the belief and the opportunity to achieve their full potential through high quality learning experiences and outstanding levels of support. A slight gender gap has previously been identified with boys outperforming girls by a small margin. As such, this has become a focus and the gender gap has been significantly closed. The long term aim is for the gap to be completely eradicated.
The curriculum is highly engaging, varied and enjoyable. Assessment of learning happens regularly and consistently throughout the Department. There is a clear shared vision. The team adopt a consistent positive approach and are passionate in their belief in a student’s ability to work with increasing independence.
Numeracy skills can be consolidated and enhanced when students have opportunities to apply them across the curriculum. Thus, improving these skills has become a whole academy initiative.
Provision for developing numeracy through other subjects has been developed and the weekly Numeracy Focus is embedded throughout the academy. The Department also place an emphasis on student’s learning their multiplication tables up to 12 x 12.
Business Studies, Employability and Managing Personal Finance
In addition to the mathematics curriculum the above subjects also fall under the Maths Department umbrella. The skills required to achieve success in Managing Personal Finance are: Understanding sources of income and expenditure, balancing income and expenditure, ways to reduce expenditure, understanding products offered by Banks and Building Societies, advantages and disadvantages of borrowing money. The skills required to achieve success in Business Studies and Young Enterprise are, an understanding of Marketing and Enterprise, Business and People, production, finance and the external business environment. Understanding the skills and requirements of running a successful business and a sound knowledge of good customer service. The skills required to achieve success in the Award in Employability are: learning through work experience, tackling problems at work and working collaboratively with others.
The Department run a Maths Workshop for parents/carers once a fortnight which focuses on demonstrating how maths is taught at Bradfields. The workshop is informal and a resource pack is provided for all who attend. The Department are very aware of the importance of Home/Academy Partnerships and offer an open door policy.
|Maths Edexcel Entry Level|
|Maths Functional Skills|
|EL1||EL2||EL3||Level 1||Level 2||Total|
|Managing Personal Finance|
*No students entered.
*No students entered.
|Ascentis Maths Awards Level 1|
A valuable resource available to students is the IXL Maths Software package. The Department are actively encouraging students to use the package as part of their Home Learning. For students studying courses at KS4 and 5 home learning is set once a week and is based on the topic being covered at the time. Academy Home Learning booklets covering key skills across all areas of the curriculum are provided for all students in order for parents to support their child at home. Home learning is meaningful and should last between 20 to 30 minutes. Elements of functional maths (Maths for Life) are included where possible. Home learning is an important part of the learning process and parents/carers are encouraged to support their children whenever possible.
Basic Skills Quality Mark
As a result of our subject development work in Maths we were accredited by The Basic Skills Agency in July 2018 as providing a high standard of Maths (and English) at Bradfields.
This is the 5th time we have been accredited for our Basic Skills Quality Mark.


'Transportation and Food Miles'
Most food in the United States is shipped an average of 1,500 miles before being sold. These distances substantially increase when considering food imported from other countries. In this session, participants will explore lessons and resources featured in the National Agricultural Curriculum Matrix that have been developed to engage elementary students in an investigation of the food supply chain and the significance of food miles. Attendees will participate in mapping activities and virtual field trips as they follow commodities from the farm to the store.|
Workshop Session (all workshops will be 60 minutes)
Handout is not Available
|Person Type:||Primary Presenter|
|Biosketch:||Lynn Wallin is an Education Specialist for the National Center for Agricultural Literacy (NCAL) at Utah State University. Prior to her work with NCAL, Lynn was an Education Specialist for Utah Agriculture in the Classroom and taught grades 1, 2, 3, and 4 in Utah and Arizona. Lynn received a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary Education from Brigham Young University and a Master of Education degree from Utah State University.|
|Organization/Affiliation:||National Center for Agricultural Literacy|


April 6, 2020Print | PDF
Laurier's Faculty of Education has compiled a variety of Canadian resources for educators and parents related to learning, wellness and physical activity as our communities adjust to the changing social and educational environment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many of the resources below are past and present partners of the Faculty of Education and are based on current research and effective practice.
The Ministry of Education has launched Learn at Home to help elementary and secondary school students continue learning during the closure of publicly funded schools. Learn at Home offers supplementary learning resources in math and literacy.
MediaSmarts develops digital and media literacy programs and resources for Canadian homes, schools and communities. Their work equips adults with information and tools to help children and teens develop critical thinking skills necessary for interacting with the media they love.
Let’s Talk Science supports the development of all youth into creative, critical thinkers and knowledgeable citizens who are prepared to participate and thrive in a complex global environment.
Canada Learning Code aims to empower all Canadians – particularly women, girls, people with disabilities, Indigenous youth and newcomers – by giving them access to the knowledge they need to prosper in a digital world.
InkSmith helps educators build hands-on, experiential learning opportunities to introduce students to STEAM competencies and design-thinking principles.
Did you know? InkSmith, founded by Laurier alumnus Jeremy Hedges, is making personal protective equipment for front-line workers.
Lesson compilations are available on a variety of topics including matter, energy, climate change and physics.
Canadian Innovation Space offers education resources to help teachers guide learners through the four phases of the Innovation Cycle. Students are inspired to inquire, ideate, incubate and implement their innovations to make an Impact. Resources are free and bilingual.
TVO Mathify offers free one-on-one online math tutoring from Ontario-certified teachers for students in grades six through 10 who wish to build their math skills and understanding. Teachers are available for tutoring during the following times:
TVO Mathify also offers resources for educators.
TVO mPower offers more than 65 free online math games for students in kindergarten through grade six. All games are based on the Ontario curriculum and designed to bolster foundational skills and inspire a love of math.
TVO mPower also offers resources for parents and educators.
TVO ILC invites students in grades nine through 12 to join their online open house, where they can keep up with their studies or deepen their understanding through an open preview of all 144 courses. TVO ILC courses adhere to Ontario's Ministry of Education requirements and cover all pathways to graduation.
Courses are offered in English or French, through an independent distance education model.
As part of the Ontario’s Learn at Home initiative, TVOkids has added The Power Hour of Learning to its daily broadcast schedule from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., providing students in kindergarten through grade three with stimulating curated educational content.
TVOkids has also added three new channels to their YouTube account that cover math, science and technology and language.
Educators looking for teaching ideas can find and share in TVO’s TeachOntario online community.
ETFO’s First Nations, Metis and Inuit Education website offers videos, webinars and other learning resources for educators and parents on culture, language and Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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Teach your child decimals
Help support your child's maths learning at home with a practical, targeted eBook. Decimals topics covered include multiplying and dividing decimals, ordering and comparing decimals and their fraction equivalents, solving multi-step problems involving decimals and rounding decimal numbers. As well as parents' notes on the theory your eBook contains lots of practical activities and games to help your child practise what they're learning at home.
Teach your child decimals is a reference guide and home-teaching kit which will help you understand exactly what decimals skills your child is expected to have mastered in each year of the primary school curriculum.
Primary school teacher and parent Alice Hart has compiled information, tips and activities to ensure that you have the right information at your fingertips so you can quickly make sure your child has fully grasped and achieved each and every skill for their correct year group and using the same methods that they are taught (rather than confusing them with the one you were taught at school!). You'll be able to print off highly targeted and child-friendly fun worksheets to help them master each of the essential skills as they progress through school – in fun, five-minute sessions.
In Teach your child decimals, you’ll discover:
- The vocabulary/terminology your child is being taught at school, so you can use the same concepts at home.
- An explanation of the methods they’re taught to use so you don’t end up doing more harm than good by trying to teach them in a different way.
- Why it is so important to talk to your child about their learning so that they understand that feeling nervous or confused about maths is normal and something you can overcome together.
- What children are taught
- Key decimals vocabulary
- Some general tips to help your child
Worksheets and games
- Decimals in Y4
- Decimals in Y5
- Decimals in Y6
- Worksheet answers


Olivia Newton-John is at the forefront of a new major international tree planting campaign; a project she believes will unite environmental organizations and schools all around the world.
Called "One Tree Per Child," the effort is officially launching later this year in the U.K. city of Bristol. The initiative will involve more than 36,000 children under the age of 10 from 130 schools, giving each an opportunity to plant a tree in the city.
“I believe that society benefits when young children get out, get their hands in the earth, and plant trees," Newton-John told the Guardian. "It’s so exciting for us that Bristol will be the first city in the world to roll out the One Tree Per Child project. In years to come, the children who plant a tree will be able to look back and say: ‘That was my tree - I really made a difference!’”
Bristol, which prides itself on its commitment to sustainability (and was recently named the 2015 "European Green Capital), will cover the cost of both the trees and tools necessary to plant them. When completed, the plantings will effectively double the number of trees currently in the city.
Together with Jon Dee, a close friend and founder of the organization Do Something!, Newton-John is seeking to add tree planting to the primary school curriculum in countries all around the world.
"We're hoping millions of children will have the wonderful experience of planting a tree at a young age," she told Green Lifestyle magazine. "As their trees grow, we're hoping that the children's love and respect for the environment will grow."
Related on MNN:


For some people art is just something you put on your refrigerator doors. It is something you have to do for schoolwork, or to while your time away. In truth, there truly is something beneath the surface of art that will tantalize every student and teacher. And this is the truth behind art education.
Q. What Is An Education In The Arts?
A. Art Education is the means by which a student gains an understanding of form and design. An education in the arts is typically divided into three areas – the fine arts, such as music, drama, sculpture or painting, the general arts, programs such as education, criminology, etc, and design, such as graphic design, web design, or interior design.
Q. Why Arts?
A. Art has a great power to influence people. It also has a significant effect on the history of man. Art may seem like it is just something pretty, but under the hood it boasts of a pretty powerful engine. One that has shaped the world, and indeed your very life. You can’t go one day in the span of your life without being exposed to some form of artistic design.
A wise man once said that an education in the arts is the absolute best education one can have because it exposes you to the most general field of studies. Over time, you will know a little about everything. If you chose a more specialized field, you would gradually learn more and more about less and less. And I’d rather know a little about everything than everything about something, don’t you agree?
1. Express Yourself
Art is by far one of the most rewarding careers because, unlike a career in the sciences or a trade, it allows you to express your creativity. And no two days are the same. The power to captivate and inspire is also very rewarding. Hasn’t the Mona Lisa drawn its share of oohs and aahs? And hasn’t many a tear been shed at the beautiful works of art around the world? Man has always expressed his deepest thoughts and desires in a tangible form. This form is Art.
Industries need artists who have had a good education in Art. Creating labels, stickers, and advertisements for their products isn’t easy. These things require plenty of thought and design. Every detail has been considered to make its effect on the consumer optimal. Have you ever been interested in a product simply because of the packaging? This is art at work.
2. Art Is Everywhere
– Design esthetics
– Television & Movies
3. Who Should Study Art?
Almost everyone has gone to art class in grade school or high school. Even those who are not artists can benefit from an Art Education. They will come to appreciate the rich history and significance of Art.
4. I Want to Learn! How do I Sign Up?
Art education is not confined to undergrad studies. It also extends to tutors, art classes, vocational classes and other learning methods. Many schools exist that teach the history, principles and appreciation of Art. These schools carry the tradition of imparting to the next generation the significance of art.
5. The Rewards Of An Art Education
You may be tempted to think you will be able to wing it through a career without any formal training. That is possible, but not likely. Industries are on the lookout for those with professional education. Even with an education from a post-secondary institution, in this field, you never stop learning and keeping up with technology.
An Art Education is clearly important to artists and laymen alike. It may not be the path everyone takes, but it is the path that richly rewards those who take it. The riches here are not only of the material kind but that of a good education and a heightened appreciation of the world around you.


Watch how easy it is to teach with Copy, Play & Learn
The Copy Play & Learn Teaching System
This guitar teaching system engages and educates young kids in their first steps of learning guitar while learning note reading, musical literacy, and musicianship.
Why The Copy, Play & Learn Teaching System Works
To teach young children to play guitar and read written music.
Juvenile fine motor and cognitive skills mean young children have trouble with coordination and mentally processing written music signs and symbols.
CPL uses modern, child friendly techniques designed for their stage of physical and cognitive development.
The Educational Benefits Of Using
The Copy, Play & Learn System
Copy, Play and Learn Guitar takes a very kinaesthetic approach to learning the instrument.
Research indicates that learning kinaesthetically can create motivated and engaged learners.
About The Author
Creator of the Copy, Play & Learn Guitar teaching system
Bryce was born and raised in Sydney, Australia where he commenced guitar lessons at the age of nine.
Upon graduating from high school he studied at Newcastle Conservatorium and was awarded a Bachelor of Music Education and Associate Diploma in Music, Australia (AMusA) in Classical Guitar. His interests in the guitar extend to the Jazz, Rock and Country genres where he is also an active participant.
Bryce spent some time as a classroom music teacher but has, since 1988 been teaching guitar as a full-time profession in various Queensland schools.
Always looking for new ways to engage his students, Bryce devised the Copy, Play and Learn method in 2010. Since then, a groundswell of enthusiasm from classroom music teachers and specialist guitar teachers has seen a vast increase in the numbers of young children learning the guitar using the Copy Play and Learn system.


Enjoy this Easy Science for Kids Foxes Quiz – you’ll get your quiz score after completing this FREE online interactive quiz on Foxes. You need to answer all the questions to be able to get your score. You can do this fun quiz about Foxes again, till you get the perfect score and become a quiz champion!
Tip: To get it right the first time, read the page with fun facts about Foxes.
About the Foxes Quiz & FREE Science Quizzes
Our general knowledge quiz for kids are a free quiz resource for teachers and educators of kids in elementary school, grammar school and preschool. This fun Foxes quiz helps your kids learn fun facts about Foxes while enjoying this FREE interactive online quiz.
If your kid is enjoying home-schooling, or is in an after-school enrichment program, then this is a fun yet educational activity, with reading comprehension benefits for first graders all the way to fifth grade kids. Kids will enjoy competing against their classmates and friends, to see who scores the best, doing this fun science quiz for kids on Foxes.
As a reading comprehension training for your kids, you can set a timer to encourage kids to do the reading comprehension faster and better, or you can limit the number of times they can read about the quiz topic, before they do the actual quiz games we offer on our easy science for kids website.
Younger kids who cannot yet read or write, such as Pre-K kids, Kindergarten kids or Preschool kids, will benefit from doing this and our other fun quizzes, as a listening comprehension activity; you read out to them about the topic and then read the quiz question and answers. You will select the Foxes quiz answer they think is correct, and at the end you get the quiz score. Your child can try unlimited times doing the Foxes quiz, till gets the perfect score faster, as he or she learn to listen more carefully and develop a better memory and attention span!


Saxon Phonics and Spelling builds foundational skills with a unique, research-based method. The explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, spelling and fluency can be used alone or to supplement a core reading program. Complete Classroom Kit for 32 Students (Includes: Teacher's Manuals, Teacher Resource Binder with reproducible BLMs of student worksheets, Classroom Materials and consumable Student Materials: Alphabet Strips, black and white decodable readers, and Spelling Dictionary).
- Grade: 3
- Material Type: Resource Materials
- Format: Kit
- ISBN-13/EAN: 9781591411246
- ISBN-10: 1591411246
- Product Code: 1263845
- National/State: National
- Copyright Year: 2003
Please note that all discounts and final pricing will be displayed on the Review Order page before you submit your order.
You must be signed in as an Educator in order to purchase this product. Sign in as an Educator or create an account. Sign in as an Educator or create an account.


By Nicholas Wyman.
Much of America’s production has halted, unemployment queues are growing and many businesses are terminal. Thanks to the COVID-19 crisis, our country is hemorrhaging on many fronts, from output to revenue and wages. It’s a new world order.
Unemployment insurance and business loans are necessary, but in the bigger picture, they’re palliative care. They have no effect on shrinking production of goods and services. For businesses and workers who can’t work remotely, it looks like flatlining territory — or is it?
The remedy, despite the crisis, is that now is an ideal time to invest in skills. America has a serious skills shortage due to insufficient worker training over many years, and there’s a severe mismatch between what workers can do and the job descriptions companies are offering. There aren’t enough qualified workers for job vacancies in occupations like information technology (IT), advanced manufacturing, logistics and parts of health care.
At the heart of the problem is many workers have poor literacy and numeracy levels, as the latest data shows, which is a significant hurdle to their ability to be productive and earn a decent wage. For instance, more than a quarter of jobless people can’t use common decimals and fractions well enough to perform calculations. In addition, more than seven in 10 service sector workers have low numeracy skills — in a sector experiencing harrowing job losses.
The current shutdown is an opportunity to lift literacy and numeracy skills by encouraging workers to take part in continuous learning, benefitting them and the country in the medium to long term. To do so, the U.S. government could spend some of its new economic stimulus funds on such a program. Effectively, it would boost human capital to make workers more productive. The remedy, despite the crisis, is that now is an ideal time to invest in skills.
What are the priority skills this country needs to subsidize, and how can America ensure the greenback investment will improve skills and competencies?
This upskilling initiative could happen in a number of ways. The first is a pledge to support training in basic math, reading and language. This funding would take the form of incentive payments to workers who are on unemployment insurance or unemployment assistance to use to enhance their skills. The investment would also support access to the eLearning tools, educational videos and mentoring needed.
These worker incentives would be performance-based and aimed at replacing a more significant portion of lost earnings than the 50% level unemployment insurance (UI) often provides. State agencies that administer UI would ask recipients to take part in a math, reading, digital skills or language learning program. The incentive? Workers would receive a 30% to 35% bonus on top of their weekly payments, which would be paid every two weeks or every month as long as they demonstrate active participation and progress.
State and/or local education providers would also receive federal funding to kick-start online programs to improve reading and math skills. These programs might pivot off existing free online resources and learning videos. Meanwhile, well-educated unemployed people could be trained as mentors under a similar bonus incentive program.
Another option is to fund virtual apprenticeships and other in-demand occupational skills. Businesses are continuing to hire qualified workers even in today’s shriveling economy. Think of the need for workers in many health care fields; this shortage will only grow. Virtual apprenticeships, which would attract government funding, could help, with jobless UI recipients and low-wage workers filling the roles. Government funding would support intermediaries and/or employer sponsors to set up online learning programs.
Virtual apprenticeships have proven their worth in medical coding, medical transcription, pharmacy technician, cyber technician, software development, insurance sales brokers and many other occupations. Competency-based occupational frameworks could guide program design, and they already exist for several of these fields. They’re also useful to assess whether (and to what extent) participants develop the right skills.
A current urgent need is to train health care workers to operate and monitor ventilators. Meeting this need would help hospitals improve their capacity to care for infected and ill patients, but hospitals couldn’t do that supervision and training now. Ideally, other health facilities would gain funding to train apprentices.
Consider, too, that employers keen to commit to rehiring workers post-crisis would receive help for supporting unemployed workers in learning digital and maintenance skills. That support would skyrocket their value in advanced manufacturing as well as other industries.
No one can be sure how America will recover after the danger of COVID-19 passes, but we do know that skills in numeracy, literacy, manufacturing and health care will always be valued and needed. These two initiatives would pivot off existing approaches to create a way forward.


Click here to see photos of the event.
CORA HELPS KIDS LOVE LEARNING!
Children typically spend grades 1 to 3 learning the alphabet, letter sounds, numbers, and other basic reading and math fundamentals. Once students enter 4th grade, the focus shifts from “learning to read”, to “reading to learn” and without the proper foundational skills, students are often unable to develop on pace and become discouraged.
Seussville at CORA was designed to capture the hearts of children ages 1 to 7, and the attention of caring parents – helping them both to learn to love reading and become more confident learners. Families enjoy celebrating Dr. Seuss’s birthday by interacting with Seussville characters and CORA staff, winning awesome prizes – including books and take-home activities, and participating in arts and crafts.
- Photos with Dr. Seuss Characters
- Interactive Storytime
- Face Painting
- Basket Raffle
- Arts, Crafts & Games
- Early Learning Resources for Parents and Educators
Support early childhood literacy See our Sponsorship Opportunities
Enter CORA’s Art or Writing Contest and showcase your talent!
CORA runs Peer Helper Programs at 6 local Catholic Elementary Schools. These dedicated 8th graders mentor younger students throughout the school year and give up their lunch periods to participate in reading and math tutoring, as well as other activities with their younger “buddies”. CORA Peer Helpers assisted in facilitating the Seussville games. Each game focused on a book and a skill to encourage the love of learning.


As I sit surrounded by a 4ft homemade postbox, a Scalextric Le Mans 24, an inflatable giraffe, 300 kazoos, a cello and a cup of tea, I am getting excited about restarting the Soundplay project with children aged 3 – 5 from nurseries around Sheffield.
The project, led by Music in the Round in partnership with ESCAL (Every Sheffield Child Articulate and Literate) and Sheffield Music Hub and funded by Youth Music, aims to develop the personal, social and emotional development of young children at higher risk of delay through participation in creative musical activity.
I, joined by the creative team (Vanessa Johnson, Martha Hayward, Kate Thompson and Fraser Wilson), have just filmed the fourth video of songs included in this year-long project. The videos that we post to YouTube are a key tool in spreading lots of creative ideas and methods for engagement to early years staff engaged in the project, wider network early years and Key Stage 1 practitioners, and parents and carers to encourage a generally more musical community. Songs are chosen to improve children’s communication, language and literacy development including question and answer songs, solo, pair and group singing, exploring phonic sounds and using our voices differently, and musical story-telling songs. Our choices include Calele, Who’s got the Drum?, We Can Be Marching Mice as well as It’s a Good Day for Building and I’m a Train by our dear friend, Early Years expert Sue Nicholls (who led a wonderful training day for us all at the start of the project).
Children participating in the project might speak English as an additional language or have special educational needs, and they are from some of the most economically disadvantaged areas in the city. We have developed wonderful techniques for communicating with the children, primarily through musical instructions but also through hand and face signals, traffic-light signs, and phonics and character picture cards.
The project also aims to develop nursery teachers’ confidence and skills in incorporating more music in their everyday learning. At the start of the project the Early Years practitioners said they all think music is important for children but many would run out of songs and methods for developing activities further – they would often stick to the trusty 5 or 6 nursery rhymes! For non-specialist teachers, having videos has helped them absorb the tunes and remember how to lead them with their children and keep referring back to them.
Parents and carers receive a songsheet after each workshop with the video links to encourage more of them to explore the songs at home. We know that if adults can share their children’s enthusiasm for learning, the all-round benefits are great. So we look forward to the video being ready and the sessions in settings starting up again this week, and to a busy and exciting last term of Soundplay!
You can now watch the video at: http://youtu.be/KpUzwVKqD8U


Children are natural scientists. They are constantly observing the world around them, experimenting with anything they can get their hands on, and asking A LOT of questions. These are attributes that can help with higher education and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) related careers later in life. Because you are your child’s first teacher, it is important to inspire, nurture, and support your child’s learning. Here are 5 ways you can support STEM skills at home.
1. Encourage Observation
Observation is one of the most important steps in the scientific process.
Have your child notice things in his or her environment and share your observations, too.
Example: the way raindrops make waves in a puddle, how the wind makes a tree sway, new flowers blooming, etc
2. Encourage STEM Language
Try to integrate STEM language into everyday life.
When watching a movie, ask your child, “What do you predict will happen next?”
Ask your child to describe what he or she sees, feels, or hears.
When a child sees a rock or leaf outside, ask him to describe the color, shape, size, or texture.
Ask your child to describe what she is doing or what she did.
Example: When your child is building with blocks, ask her to describe what she is building, what materials she is using, and how she is using the materials.
3. Encourage Questions and Model Curiosity
Children are naturally curious. Support their curiosity by asking them “what” questions instead of “why” questions.
“Why” questions suggest there is a right answer, which can make young children hesitant because they don’t know the answer.
“What” questions help build confidence and communication skills as you give them questions they can answer.
Example: If you ask, “Why does the paper clip stick to the magnet?” the child may not know the answer. Instead, ask, “What happens to the paper clip when it is near the magnet?” This is a question a child can answer with confidence.
When a child asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, show him that it is okay to not know all the answers. Model ways to research and find the answers.
4. Encourage Your Child to Build Computational Thinking Skills
Computational thinking skills might sound intimidating, but it’s really just a way to solve problems. These STEM-related skills are essential to the fast-growing field of computer programming.
Computational thinking includes recognizing patterns and sequences, creating and using a series of steps (algorithms), and finding ways to deal with complex problems. Incorporate these skills with familiar activities.
Example: Have your child explain the steps to drawing a picture, telling a story, or making a bowl of cereal.
5. Show Interest in STEM
Studies show that when parents are involved in their children’s education, children feel more confident and engaged in their learning.
Adults’ attitudes about STEM education influence children’s own views and beliefs about STEM.
Connect STEM to other interests and hobbies your child has.
Example: If your child likes cars, explore how toy cars travel down different ramp heights. Find ways to make toy cars go fast or slow down the ramp.
Fostering STEM skills at home will not only help your child succeed in education, but also help him or her face everyday problems with confidence.
About The Author Tiffany Rivera graduated from Arizona State University with a B.S. in Family and Human Development and is currently studying for her Master’s degree in Elementary Education. She has over 10 years experience as a preschool teacher and has also taught elementary-high school English in South Korea. Tiffany is currently working for Evan-Moor’s editorial team, where she writes fun and engaging books for young children and classrooms.


Music Prepares Young Learners For Classroom Success
“Music education does not just make children more musical; it unleashes their creative powers.” – Richard Gill OAM, internationally renowned conductor and educator
Young children thrive on music. Parents around the world entertain their babies through music – rocking them to sleep, singing lullabies and making them laugh with nursery rhymes. Both parents and early years educators know instinctively what scientists have now proven: music is one of the best vehicles for learning in early childhood development.
As part of the Australian International School (AIS)’s Inventors and Mentors program, Music Director of the Victorian Opera Richard Gill OAM visited AIS to work with teachers and students to share his philosophies on the impact of music on creativity and learning and the value of music in education.
Why Music Matters
“A truly educated mind has had music as part of its education. Every child…should have an opportunity to have a truly educated mind,” says Mr Gill.
Neuroscientists, psychologists and early childhood experts have demonstrated that music not only brings children joy, but can stimulate development in every area of the brain and benefit children at many levels:
Sharpened memory: Children learn to memorize both physical movements to make music, as well as how to read music, improving their general memory capacity. Mr Gill explains that children can subsequently build a vocabulary of sounds and ideas which they can use in their own compositions.
Early literacy: Creating connections between sounds and notes on paper allows young learners to gain the phonological processing and comprehension skills essential to reading
Motor development: “All [music] learning should be done in conjunction with movement from a very early age,” shares Mr Gill. Children develop gross motor skills by moving and dancing to music, while also developing hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills by using complex finger movements to play instruments.
Focus and discipline: Little ones improve their attention span, focus and discipline as they must set aside time to practice and face the challenge of learning to master playing their instrument.
Logic and reasoning: “[Children] learn how pattern and repetition work in music,” says Mr Gill. Pattern-recognition skills are vital to solving math problems. In addition, the left side of the brain, which is related to reasoning, is better developed with music as songs help to imprint information on young minds.
Creativity: Learning music helps children to think creatively, a vital skill when it comes to problem solving, thinking outside the box and understanding that there can be more than one solution to a problem.
Music education is a vital component of the AIS core and co-curriculum, beginning in the early childhood years to help foster young learners’ imagination and a positive attitude toward learning and curiosity. Children as young as two years old in Nursery enjoy music experience under the care of a music specialist.
AIS music education continues through Elementary and Secondary, with opportunities for students to participate in various choir groups and ensembles, as well as private music tuition through our extensive vocal and instrumental music program.
To find out more about music education at AIS, click here.
Simply register online to secure your child’s place at AIS.


Are you interested in a career in Human Resources (HR)? In this section you can find out what occupations in this sector involve along with advice about how to access a career in Human Resources.
Job Description for Human Resources
Human Resources professionals, often known as Human Resources Officers, advise and put in place policies relating to the effective use of employees within an organisation. They help companies employ the correct balance of personnel in terms of skills and experience. HR Officers also ensure that training and development opportunities are available to employees to enhance their performance. The responsibilities of HR Officers revolve around recruitment, pay, working practices and conditions, equality and diversity.
HR professionals must deal with administration, strategy, planning, and be able to come up with and implement policies to select, develop and keep the employees needed in order to meet company objectives. HR professionals work with different departments, helping to implement policies including health and safety, recruiting staff, promoting equality and diversity, advising and reviewing pay, planning training and inductions, and negotiating with staff regarding issues such as salary and working conditions.
Occupations in Human Resources
- HR Officer
- HR Manager/HR Director
- HR Assistant
- HR Administrator
- HR Consultant
- HR Advisor
- Recruitment Manager
- Equal Opportunities Officer
- Employee Relations Manager
- Compensation and Benefits Manager
Skills needed to work in Human Resources
- Organisational skills
- IT and numeracy skills
- Interpersonal skills/Approachability
- Negotiating skills
- Leadership skills
- Business awareness
- Excellent communication skills
Qualifications needed for a career in Human Resources
A career in Human Resources (HR) is open to candidates with any degree background, but having a degree in business, human resources management or psychology could be useful. For higher level HR roles it's advisable to obtain a qualification from the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development). It is also possible to access entry-level jobs in HR but there is usually a lot of competition for these roles. Graduate training schemes or working your way up through an HR department starting in an administrative role are alternative solutions.
Top universities in the UK for degrees in Human Resources Management
- London School of Economics
- Imperial College London
- University of Manchester
- Lancaster University
- Brunel University
- University of Leeds
- University of Glasgow
- Aston University
- University of Strathclyde
- University of Durham
Employers of Human Resources Graduates / Main Graduate Employers
HR professionals are required in most organisations, from private firms to the public sector and charities. UK employers offering graduate schemes in Human Resources include: Balfour Beatty, Bechtel, Rolls-Royce, BP, KPMG, Barclays, NHS, GlaxoSmithKline, Civil Service, Tesco and Unilever.
Average UK salary for Human Resources
The average UK salary for Human Resources is £32,500 but can range from £23,000 to £47,500. West London is the highest paying location and Sales is the highest paying sector. HR Assistants will usually have a starting salary of £24,000, whereas HR Directors can earn as much as £98,719 per year.
You can find job, internship and work placement opportunities in Human Resources by creating a profile on Wizbii.


22 Nov 2016
If your child has an interest in learning an instrument, let them go there. That's the message from music education expert Linda Lorenza.
"As soon as a child has interest and wants to play with sound sources they find around them and has the dexterity in their fingers, I think it's worth letting them go there," says Lorenza, SSO Director of Learning and Engagement. "If you have a school that has instruments then let them go and discover."
Lorenza trained as an opera singer before moving into arts education. Having taught in schools for more than 20 years, she previously explained to BSN+ that children tend to respond to learning in three main ways: aurally, visually or kinaesthetically. And when it comes to music, kids respond through moving and making sounds.
"They like to mimic, to bang and tap things and are curious as to how sound is made," she explains. "Children may progress very quickly from the saucepan cupboard to an instrument. For children the exploration of making sound is fun, it is 'play'. Listening, pitch recognition and hand-eye coordination combine as they explore an instrument."
When Lorenza was a child she recalls having a big piano in the home. She was always fascinated by sound and as soon as she could say the word 'piano' she was pestering her mother for lessons.
"I didn't start learning properly until I was seven because I had very small hands. But in my own teaching I have taught children as young as three and a half or four."
SSO trumpeter Anthony Heinrichs says his four-year-old son Luca has been interested in discovering sounds since he was born.
"When he was a baby he would sing to himself a little bit – he would also hear sounds and try to copy them," Heinrichs says. "He's always shown an interest in the piano – always wanting to go up and play it. If I play he'll go up and sit with me."
Recently Luca had his first piano lessons.
"We thought Luca might have been a little bit ready because he has great coordination and is tall," Heinrichs says. "Reading notes was still a bit beyond – five or six would be a better age for that."
First Violin Léone Ziegler, whose now adult sons both played instruments at an early age, says finding the right teacher is important, as is the right level of parental support.
"You need to find a teacher who can relate well to little kids," she says. "When you're little you need a parent there to encourage your practise. It then becomes something you share with someone else. If they can read a few letters of the alphabet it can also help them read notes."
Ziegler's eldest son Douglas started piano and cello lessons on Saturday mornings when he was four and a half. He particularly enjoyed the cello – although you could say that music was in his blood given he came from a family of musicians. A positive atmosphere of music in the home was also conductive to learning an instrument.
"When he was very young we used to play beautiful nursery rhymes going to sleep," Ziegler says. "He'd also see us practising at home and music was part of our lives so it wasn't a chore or separate thing."
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra's Family Concert series will return in 2017, with three brilliant concerts for 5-12 year olds to share with their families. All concerts at the Sydney Opera House.


How Can You Help Your Child to Develop Literacy Skills at All Stages?
Early Years Literacy – Phonological Awareness and the Alphabet
The first stages of literacy are hearing and speaking. Words are made up of phonemes, small sounds put together to make meaning. Children need to be able to hear parts of a word and understand the sounds they are hearing, and be able to put them together to make words. We call this the phonological system.
Phonological System – The phonological system is the sound of language. It is what you hear. Phonological awareness means hearing the sounds in words. It is the realization that words are made up of sequences of sounds
Once children can hear the sounds in words, they can begin to associate the sounds with symbols in the alphabet. Start by helping them learn to recognize print in the environment around them, such as familiar signs (McDonald’s, Tim Horton’s, etc). Then help them recognize their own name and the letters in their name. From there, add familiar words like ‘mom’ and ‘dad’.
They will be on their way to developing strong early literacy skills!
Primary Literacy – Decoding and Comprehending Print
We are encouraging the use of strategies to solve literacy difficulties. Bring your child’s attention to his/her success when solving a problem or difficulty. Ask your child what strategy helped him/her to solve the problem. Ask your child what made him/her use that strategy.
Here are some COACHING strategies you can use:
- Good checking! How did you know it wasn’t ____?
- You said_____. Does that make sense?Does that look and sound right?
- What made you stop? What did you notice?
- What can you do to figure out that word?
- I liked the way you worked that out. Which strategy helped you that time?
- What word starts with the letter___ and would make sense?
- Can you sound it out using beginning sound and the picture clue to come up with a word that makes sense?
- You have tried one vowel sound. What is the other sound that this letter(s) make? Try the other sound. See if the word sounds right.
- Is there a chunk or rhyming part you recognize? How can that help you solve the word?
- Skip that word, read to the end of the sentence, then go back to the beginning and see if you can figure out the word that gave you trouble. Remember to think about what you are reading and what sounds right.
- I’ll give you a choice of 2 words. Which word do you think works? Which word makes the most sense?
Junior Literacy – Developing Fluency and Using Reading to Think
We want your child to think about what he/she is reading. We want your child to ask and answer higher level questions before, during and after reading. Your child needs to be actively involved in reading.
Here are some prompts you can use to expand comprehension and stretch your child’s thinking.
- Please interpret or summarize the story in a few sentences.
- Make a connection to your own life. What is something similar that has happened to you?
- If you were the main character what would you have done the same or differently? Tell me about your thinking.
- How did the character change from the beginning to the end of the story?
- What were the 3 main ideas in this story? Give me evidence from the story.
- What were the 3 main ideas in this non-fiction piece? Give me evidence from the text.
Intermediate Literacy – Using Reading Comprehension Strategies Fluently
Reading Comprehension Strategies
- Making Connections to their life, other texts and the world around them
- Inferring (reading between the lines)
Parents can use the Q-chart to develop questioning skills and other reading comprehension strategies in your child.
The questions in the upper left quadrant of the chart are questions requiring simple, fact-based answers.
(e.g., Question: Who is the main character? Answer: The main character is Sam.) There is one answer and the thinking is not complex.
The questions in the lower right quadrant are open-ended and require thought and interpretation.
(e.g., Question: Why might the hero have left home? Answer: Sam may have left home to find a job. In the story it says that the family is poor. They may not have had enough money to feed all their children.)
There could be several answers or interpretations but your child should provide evidence from the text to support his/her answer.


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A collaborative initiative with Yale University Press to distribute The Arts and the Creation of Mind, one aim of the text is "to dispel the idea that the arts are somehow intellectually undemanding, emotive rather than reflective operations done with the hand, unattached to the head." Eisner's straightforward, accessible language takes the reader into chapters such as: What the Arts Teach and How It Shows; Describing Learning in the Visual Arts; The Educational Uses of Assessment and Evaluation in the Arts; What Education Can Learn From the Arts; Agenda for Research in Arts Education, and more.
The arts are a critically important means for developing complex and subtle aspects of the mind. Eisner describes how various forms of thinking are evoked, developed, and refined through the arts. These forms of thinking are more helpful in dealing with the ambiguities and uncertainties of daily life than are the formally structured curricula that are employed today in schools.
288 pgs. Hardbound (2002) ISBN 0-300-09523-6<
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Different Stages of Volcanic Eruptions
A volcano can be defined as an opening in the Earth’s surface through which magma and different gases rise and then eventually result in an eruption. A volcanic eruption is one of the most dangerous natural disasters. The volcanic vent sends out lava, ash and sometimes volcanic bombs. The slowly moving lava can cause a lot of damage to property and human life as well.
An earthquake can result in creating little vents. These vents allow the formation of magma. This magma is pushed up towards the crust of the volcano. When it reaches a certain level at boiling point, the eruption starts. The strength of different volcanic eruptions varies from one to another. Some eruptions are passive and not dangerous but some of them are very much explosive and destructive.
Some of the largest volcanic eruptions of all time include:
- Yellowstone National Park in the United States – Some 640,000 years ago. Known as a Supervolcano.
- Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii Italy – 79 A.D.
- Tambora Stratovolcano in Indonesia – 1815
- Mount St. Helens in the United States – 1980
Not every volcano will erupt from its peak. They can have eruptions at any part. These eruptions happen deep down inside the earth and are mostly caused by shifting in the tectonic plates.
Stages of Volcanic Eruption: –
The entire process of a volcanic eruption can be divided in three major categories: –
- Magmatic eruption: – In this stage, gas is released under decompression.
- Phreatomagmatic eruption: – In this stage of the eruption, thermal contraction comes from water.
- Phreatic eruption: – This is the last stage when steam starts to erupt.
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The following is a short synthesis of projects and activities being created by the center: The CCEGL Board of Directors welcomes the submission of ideas for projects and activities that are compatible with the CCEGL vision. Workshops are scheduled and made available to groups upon request.
- Family Literacy Programs in Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley (this is based on a model that has been carried out by organization members for the past 18 years. It is a well developed program that will be coordinated by the CCEGL Executive Director in a space provided by a community organization or a public school or independent school. Sessions integrate literacy development by focusing on the themes of food and nutrition, diversity and culture, urban sustainability and media literacy. Individual schools may request CEGL assistance in working with faculty and parents to create Family Literacy enter Programs at their sites. All programs include food, music and flowers.
- Journalism and Radio Broadcasting Program (Ruben Salazar Project) for middle school and high school students will be organized and facilitated by local journalists, commentators and engineers and provide young people with radio, writing and broadcasting skills. This will be carried out at a local radio station, KPFA and other community broadcasting sites. KPFA already has a history of apprenticeships in radio. Outreach will be coordinated through principals and teachers in public schools and through community centers and church youth programs.
- After school programs to introduce middle and high school students to “green jobs.” As there becomes a stronger national thrust towards a green economy, young people will need to learn the skills needed to reboot buildings. These skills include weatherizing, installing photo voltaics, solar hot water and wind generators and urban agriculture. Outreach will be done through collaborations with principals and teachers in local schools and through mini-presentations in classrooms.
- After school “Future Teachers Clubs” to introduce interested teens to the field of education. Students will become engaged in interactive teaching strategies and bilingual and other minority students will be encouraged to participate. Outreach will be done through collaborations with principals and teachers in local schools and through mini-presentations in classrooms.
- Music, Singing and Early Literacy: A community early literacy program for Spanish speaking children and families will integrate music and singing and will be housed at a community center in a Spanish speaking community of San Francisco or Oakland. The program will be led by popular Bay Area musicians, performers and educators who have worked with young people and families for many years and outreach will be done to families through local public schools, churches and community centers.


Kids love marching to music, and this Soldiers lesson plan gives them plenty of opportunity for some lively movement with lots of learning too. It’s a great lesson to practice contrasting pitches and tempos tapping rhythms and banging drums. This lesson plan is suitable for children from 2 – 6 years and is 11 pages long, including 6 printables.
The Soldiers digital lesson plan focuses on the following activities:
- Chime bars practice with resonator bells – Do-Re-Mi
- Tapping rhythms, recognising notation, and contrasting dynamics
- Playing a variety of percussion instruments, listening skills, recognising steady beat and the rhythm.
- Singing together, actions and motor skills
- Counting practice and building confidence
These plans are not intended to read as a script, as everyone will have their own teaching style. More, I hope that they will provide you with in-depth guidance for a number of related activities that I have found in my years of teaching to be particularly effective and engaging combinations.
The Soldiers lesson is also available as part of our seasonal bundle of lesson plans for the Autumn/Fall term 12 weeks of music lessons in suggested weekly order to help save time and keep things simple at the discounted price of $49
I have purchased every lesson you have available and LOVE them all!! I lead music classes for toddlers and preschoolers and I love how each of your lessons builds on each other. They are easy to adapt for the different ages. The parents of my students love that their kids are learning early music education while having a blast and that the kids go home and sing and stomp out rhythms. I would highly recommend your plans to everyone. And I look forward to seeing the other lessons.


ICT INSET for Primary Schools (Stockton Heath Primary School, Stockton Heath, Warrington)
Free INSET for primary school teachers on teaching programming to primary school children. The afternoon session looked at practical approaches to develop the teaching of this challenging aspect of the primary school curriculum, an area which many teachers have commented that they need some additional support with. Delivered by our Director of ICT, it provides an invaluable opportunity to consider best practice and share ideas with colleagues. We had a total of 11 primary school colleagues join us for the event from the following schools: Elworth, Tarvin, Whitegate, Leftwich, Warmingham, Wilmslow, Stockton Heath and Charles Darwin primary schools.
The main aim of the INSET session is to share ideas about how Primary teachers can support their students in learning to code without having to be programmers themselves. We begin by looking at developing the skills required by students to become successful coders, such as attention to detail, giving precise instructions and trouble-shooting. We then look at some fun ways of achieving this through various games and activities, none of which require advanced ICT skills. After covering the core skills we investigate some of the excellent resources which already exist online which can be used in the classroom to support students in developing their coding skills using trackable and age-specific resources.
Primary school teachers are usually required to teach across the curriculum. Therefore INSET in areas of the curriculum requiring specialist knowledge can be immensely valuable. Even for primary school teachers who do have specialist knowledge in these areas, the opportunity to gain exposure to new ideas is appreciated. The requirement to teach coding in the Primary curriculum is a relatively new one and many Primary colleagues can feel daunted by this, even if they themselves are confident users of IT. Many feel that learning a programming language and then creating the lesson resources to support their students in learning it can be a very time consuming process which is very difficult for them to achieve. In addition, coding is an area where we tend to see a wide spread of ability in students, so trying to support students who are just beginning to engage with the basics whilst also trying to keep the more advanced students engaged can by a daunting challenge. We began this particular INSET in October 2014, after receiving feedback from our training days in Science that teacher would find ICT a really useful area to have some help with.
The school used one of its ICT suites to host the event, ensuring that all participants had access to the necessary hardware and software. The event was run by our Director of ICT, Mr Alex Masters, who provided a range of different strategies to enable the teaching of programming to primary school children in both key stages 1 and 2. Lunch was also provided before the afternoon training began.
Our Primary colleagues come away from the session with new ideas and resources to use with their class and with a little reassurance that they do not need to be subject experts in order to support their students in developing their own skills.
Our Year 7 students were an excellent welcoming committe, who looked after teachers on their arrival.
This takes place every other year, so far in October 2014 and 2016, and we are lloking to continue this in to the future.


INDG3400 Indigenous People and Global Issues
- 6 points
|Semester 1||UWA (Perth)||Multi-mode|
- Details for undergraduate courses
- Level 3 option in the Indigenous Knowledge, History and Heritage major sequence
- The area of knowledge for this unit is Society and Culture
- Category A broadening unit for Bachelor of Arts students where relevant according to the broadening requirements for each student
- Level 3 elective
- This unit positions Australia's Indigenous people in a global context, highlighting areas of shared world views, knowledge, practices and experience with particular reference to the first nations of America. Students are introduced to the legal and social structures that have been set up to protect and share Indigenous cultural material both tangible and intangible.
- Students are able to (1) understand the differences and similarities between Indigenous people in America and Australia; (2) understand the position Indigenous people occupy in a global world and the current pressures and issues they face; (3) demonstrate an understanding of relevant United Nations instruments that relate to Indigenous people; and (4) research a substantial issue on Indigenous people and the global world and produce this research in writing.
- Indicative assessments in this unit are as follows: (1) participation assessments; (2) tutorial presentation; and (3) essay. Further information is available in the unit outline.
Supplementary assessment is not available in this unit except in the case of a bachelor's pass degree student who has obtained a mark of 45 to 49 overall and is currently enrolled in this unit, and it is the only remaining unit that the student must pass in order to complete their course.
- Unit Coordinator(s)
- Melville Thomas
- Unit rules
- INDG2300 Indigenous Knowledge: Mind, Body and Spirit
INDG2400 Looking South: Noongar Voices
INDG2500 Looking North: The Wild West
INDG2600 Indigenous Representation
INDG2700 Knowing Country: The Dreaming and Darwin
- Contact hours
- seminars/workshops: 1 hr per week; tutorials: 2 hrs per week
- Unit Outline
- Semester 1-2020 [SEM-1-2020]
- The availability of units in Semester 1, 2, etc. was correct at the time of publication but may be subject to change.
- All students are responsible for identifying when they need assistance to improve their academic learning, research, English language and numeracy skills; seeking out the services and resources available to help them; and applying what they learn. Students are encouraged to register for free online support through GETSmart; to help themselves to the extensive range of resources on UWA's STUDYSmarter website; and to participate in WRITESmart and (ma+hs)Smart drop-ins and workshops.
- Books and other material wherever listed may be subject to change. Book lists relating to 'Preliminary reading', 'Recommended reading' and 'Textbooks' are, in most cases, available via the Booktopia Textbook Finder, which has the functionality to search by course code, course, ISBN and title, and may also be posted or available at the appropriate school's administrative offices. Where texts are listed in the unit description above, an asterisk (*) indicates that the book is available in paperback.


Academic Search Premier – Contains indexing for 8,025 publications and marketing, with full text for more than 4,500 of those titles.
ERIC – The Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC), is a national information system supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Library of Education, and the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. It provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index.
GreenFILE – Offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and local/national governments, and what can be done at each level to minimize these effects.
Image Collection – Consists of more than 1 million total images in these categories, broken down as follows:
- Images from Canadian Press, Getty Images, and UPI
- Maps from Antenna Audio
- Photographs from public domain sources
The images consist of a wide array of photos and maps, with an emphasis on world news and events. Other areas of coverage include contemporary and historical photos of people, places, and the natural kingdom.
LISTA – Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) indexes more than 560 core journals, nearly 50 priority journals, and nearly 125 selective journals; plus books, research reports and proceedings. Subject coverage includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more.
Masterfile Elite – Designed specifically for public libraries, this multidisciplinary database provides full text for more than 1,050 general reference publications with coverage dating as far back as 1984. Covering virtually every subject area of general interest, MasterFILE Elite also includes 52 full text reference books and an Image Collection of over 502,000 photos, maps and flags.
Middle Search Plus – Contains full text for more than 150 popular, middle school magazines. In addition to the full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for nearly 200 magazines. All full text articles are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles). Full text is also available for thousands of biographies, historical essays and student pamphlets.
Military & Government Collection – Designed to offer current news pertaining to all branches of the military and government, this database offers a thorough collection of periodicals, academic journals, and other content pertinent to the increasing needs of those sites. It provides cover-to-cover full text for nearly 300 journals and periodicals and indexing and abstracts for more than 400 titles.
Points of View Reference Center – A full-text database designed to provide students with a series of essays that present multiple sides of a current issue. The database provides 200 topics, each with an overview (objective background/description), point (argument) and counterpoint (opposing argument).
Primary Search – Designed specifically for elementary school libraries and public library children’s rooms, contains full text for more than 60 popular, elementary school magazines. All full text articles are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles)
Referencia Latina – A comprehensive Spanish-language database, offers content from a variety of sources including 49,000 encyclopedia entries.
Regional Business News – This database provides comprehensive full text coverage for regional business publications. It incorporates coverage of 75 business journals, newspapers and newswires from all metropolitan and rural areas within the United States. This database is updated on a daily basis.
Teacher Reference Center – Provides indexing and abstracts for hundreds of periodicals. In addition, 96% of journals indexed in TRC are peer-reviewed. Topics include: Assessment, Best Practices, Continuing Education, Current Pedagogical Research, Curriculum Development, Elementary Education, Higher Education, Instructional Media, Language Arts, Literacy Standards, School Administration, Science & Mathematics, and Teacher Education.


Humanities › Literature What Is a Picture Book? New versions are expanding the children's genre Share Flipboard Email Print Getty Images/MoMo Productions Literature Children's Books Children's Book Reviews Top Picks Authors & Illustrators Young Adult Books Best Sellers Classic Literature Plays & Drama Poetry Quotations Shakespeare Short Stories By Elizabeth Kennedy Education and Literature Expert M.S., Instructional Design and Technology, Emporia State University B.A., English Literature, Brown University Elizabeth Kennedy is an educator specializing in early childhood and elementary education who has written about children's literature for over a decade. our editorial process Elizabeth Kennedy Updated July 03, 2019 A picture book is a book, typically for children, in which the illustrations are as important as—or more important than—the words in telling the story. Picture books have traditionally been 32 pages long, although Little Golden Books are 24 pages. In picture books, there are illustrations on every page or on one page of every pair of facing pages. While most picture books still are written for younger children, a number of excellent picture books for upper elementary and middle school readers have been published. The definition of "children's picture book" and the categories of picture books have also enlarged. Impact of Author and Illustrator Brian Selznick The definition of children's picture books was greatly expanded when Brian Selznick won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for picture book illustration for his book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret." The 525-page middle-grade novel told the story not only in words but in a series of sequential illustrations. All told, the book contains more than 280 pictures interspersed throughout the book in sequences of multiple pages. Since then, Selznick has written two more highly regarded middle-grade picture books. "Wonderstruck," which also combines pictures with text, was published in 2011 and became a New York Times bestseller. "The Marvels," published in 2015, contains two stories set 50 years apart that come together at the end of the book. One of the stories is told entirely in pictures. Alternating with this story is another told entirely in words. Common Categories of Children's Picture Books Picture Book Biographies: The picture book format has proved effective for biographies, serving as an introduction to the lives of a variety of accomplished men and women. Picture book biographies such as "Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell," by Tanya Lee Stone with illustrations by Marjorie Priceman and "The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos," by Deborah Heiligman with illustrations by LeUyen Pham, appeal to children in grades one to three. Many more picture book biographies appeal to upper elementary school kids, while still others appeal to both upper elementary and middle school kids. Recommended picture book biographies include "A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin," written by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet, and "The Librarian of Basra: A True Story of Iraq," written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter. Wordless Picture Books: Picture books that tell the story completely through illustrations, with no words at all or a very few embedded in the artwork, are known as wordless picture books. One of the most stunning examples is "The Lion and the Mouse," an Aesop's fable retold in illustrations by Jerry Pinkney, who received the 2010 Randolph Caldecott Medal for picture book illustration for his book. Another wonderful example that is often used in middle school writing classes as a writing prompt is "A Day, a Dog" by Gabrielle Vincent. Classic Picture Books: When you see lists of recommended picture books, you'll often see a separate category of books titled Classic Children's Picture Books. Typically, a classic is a book that has remained popular and accessible for more than one generation. A few of the best-known and best-loved English language picture books include "Harold and the Purple Crayon," written and illustrated by Crockett Johnson, "The Little House" and "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel," both written and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton, and "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown, with illustrations by Clement Hurd. Sharing Picture Books With Your Child It's recommended to begin sharing picture books with your children when they are babies and continue as they get older. Learning to "read pictures" is an important literacy skill, and picture books can play an important part in the process of developing visual literacy.


Stages is a seven-level developmental framework that describes a learner's cognitive and language abilities. Stages helps schools comply with alternate assessment mandates by providing an accessible way to assess learners with special needs. Stages also serves as a selection guide for curriculum activities (including both software and off-computer activities). The sequence of seven Stages is based on the work of Madalaine Pugliese, a nationally recognized authority in the fields of assistive and instructional technologies.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1
Grade Level: birth to preschool, early elementary, intermediate elementary, middle school, secondary, transition
IDEA Disability Category: autism, deaf-blindness, deafness, emotional disturbance, hearing impairment, intellectual disability, major-other health impairment, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairment, specific learning disability, speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury
English Language Arts: Reading: Foundational Skills


Music Commission report: a vision for music education
In 2017, we established The Music Commission, an 18-month inquiry into music education, supported by Arts Council England and led by an independent panel of experts chaired by Sir Nicholas Kenyon. The final Commission report - Retuning Our Ambitions for Music Learning: Every Child Taking Music Further – has now been published and is available on the Music Commission website. The Commission focused on how to create the conditions for every young person to get the support they need to achieve their full musical potential. The report identifies six barriers to achieving these conditions: inconsistency of music provision in schools, cost barriers to families, the inadequate response to young people’s use of technology, not enough support after first access, schools needing more support to deliver a rich music curriculum, and resources and organisations not working together effectively enough. However, the report is not a negative one. In response to these challenges it identifies a ten-year vision for music education accompanied by a framework of positive initiatives and recommendations. This vision is for an environment where:
- Leaders in schools and education are confident and enabled to put music at the heart of their students’ learning.
- Every school is supported to provide an effective music curriculum and the provision of a quality music offer is a key performance measure.
- The development of a diverse and skilled music education workforce is extended through enhanced training of specialist and generalist teachers, and support to enter the profession.
- Financial support is universally available to support all music learners to progress beyond first access.
- More collaborative models of music education are established, involving support for and between schools and relevant partners to help students to progress in music.
- Parental engagement is supported as a priority from the earliest years onwards.
- Young people are informed and engaged in shaping their own learning pathways and involved in the development of music education programmes.
- New, integrated approaches to the teaching and assessment of learning of music in a digital age are developed.
To find out more and read the full report visit www.muisccommission.org.uk.


Did you know that handwriting isn’t taught in some classrooms? In my opinion, some teachers have thought, mistakenly, that students need to learn how to use a computer keyboard rather than teaching them how to write.
More and more classrooms are now adding handwriting back into their language arts curriculum. For students to become better readers, they need to become better at writing, so says the booklet titled, “Handwriting Research.”
In it, Susan Cahill said that “handwriting is closely linked to academic achievement, especially composition and literacy skills.” She went on to say that handwriting instruction is related to improved reading.
Like reading, handwriting is also related to cognitive development, reading acquisition and overall academic success. And while many teachers aren’t skilled in teaching handwriting, educational materials and resources are offered online.
New information, for some, is available that includes proper posture, left handedness, and skills needed to lead effective instruction. “Why Writing?” (Zaner-Bloser) explains more about the background and process, including resources to help teachers and parents. Or should I say parents who recently have become teachers?
One suggestion for an assignment for parents who are wondering how they can help their children with writing is to keep logs or journals during their virus-driven time at home. They can write down their thoughts, activities, feelings, friendships and observations.
Date each entry and help them, if necessary, develop their ideas and get them down on paper, especially if they are young. It might not be a bad idea for parents to also keep diaries.
In our digital age, it’s easy to see why handwriting has become optional. But our test scores in reading show that some things are missing in our reading instruction. Could writing be a missing essential skill for literacy development?
Joyce Rankin is on the state Board of Education, representing the Third Congressional District, which includes Pueblo County. She can be reached at email@example.com