A new study, released by Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institute, says that most eighth graders pushed to do Algebra I shouldn't be in that class. The bottom 10% of students taking the math NAEP are students taking Algebra I, Geometry or Algebra II, all traditionally considered high school courses.
The problem is that students didn't have the foundational skills to build upon successfully. They hadn't completely learned basic skills such as multiplication and computation. In order for students to excel in middle school mathematics courses, they need to have mastered 3rd thru 5th grade math. Middle school math develops higher order thinking skills in students: a requirement to excel in high-level math courses such as trigonometry and calculus.
I recently learned that the Jeffco School District, as one of its Accreditation Indicators for public schools, is measuring how many eighth grades are enrolled in Algebra I or higher. This immediately raises two important questions:
1. How will the district pay for students taking additional math courses in high school? About four years ago the district considered increasing the high school graduation requirements for math from 3 to 4, to match CCHE college entrance requirements, and decided they couldn't afford the estimated $7 million price tag for additional teachers and classrooms.
2. Will high schools adjust their math graduation requirements if a students is advanced a year? There isn't any incentive for students to advance a year if they don't "save" a year as Seniors. This is another example of where "seat time" often supercedes "subject mastery." Related to this is the question of whether the content of these high school math courses are considered essential content. Why is Calculus important for graduating seniors to know?
As the CCHE college entrance requirements increase for students graduating high school in 2010 or beyond, to four years of math, it'll be interesting to see if the graduation rate is affected and how school districts respond to this since the graduation rate is one of the Accreditation Indicators and closely monitored by policy makers.


Teaching Instrumental Music
Bennett Reimer said, “Whenever and wherever humans have existed music has existed also.” Throughout history, cultures have expressed their joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats through the beauties of music. There are wide variety of reasons to teach music, regarding both music itself, and music’s effects on a person. The true reasons to teach music are those that are fundamental to being affected emotionally by it. Music is beautiful. Through sound, we can feel the complete spectrum of human emotion; both the deepest despair to elation beyond which most peoples lives will ever reach. Beyond motor skills, reading notation, and an understanding of theory, a music education allows students to develop themselves as more expressive human beings.
Today in our society, the ease and availability of recorded music allows people to experience a wide variety of music through listening, although this does have its drawbacks. In the past, the only way to experience music was through performing it yourself. Since this is not necessary today, educators need to provide and foster experiences of making music, whether in a concert band, rock band, chorus, orchestra, folk group or simply alone at home for the pleasure of developing your musical skills. This is why public schools need strong music programs; to develop the love of making music in as many students as possible, by using as many musical outlets as possible, to foster lifelong connections with music.
Learning to perform music develops many skills in a student. Joanne Erwin in her book “Prelude to Music Education” outlines five main values of music. Music affects people intellectually, emotionally, physically, personally and socially.
The theory of music is an intellectual skill, governed by physics yet guided by how humans perceive sound. Music theory is more often taught in a classroom setting similar to other school subjects, although its lessons permeate (and assist) musical performance as well.
Emotionally, no subject matches music in its expressive breadth. The organization of sounds in melody, harmony and form allow musicians an expansive palate of ideas and emotions to work with. Music can even be expressively complex yet technically simple, allowing young students insight into these feelings well before they are capable to find this emotion in other subjects, for example reading classic literature in English class.
Music develops complex and precise mind and body connections. Performing on musical instruments develops intricate motor skills that people would not otherwise come by. Music is very effective at developing coordination in even the youngest students.
The emotional aspects of music are closely and personally tied to the performer. Music affects the body to feel, ranging from the thrill of a first kiss to the despair of losing a loved one. Making music can be an escape from the daily grind for anyone, even if it is not your profession. The study of music develops maturity and responsibility. In their practice students will advance their skills in time management, as they will quickly learn how to effectively allocate their attention and problem solving, learning how to work past stumbling blocks in their practice without a teacher’s immediate guidance. Leading students to this point, when they are thinking critically and independently about music is the ultimate goal for any music program.
The social aspect of music is akin to playing on a team. Communication between players is crucial in a one-hundred piece band, a jazz combo and between a soloist with a pianist’s accompaniment. Sharing the emotional experiences of music with the other members of your ensemble has been every one of my most potent musical experiences.
I believe that every student should receive a musical education, and that every student who wishes to perform deserves the opportunity. Hopefully the means are available to allow every interested student to perform with an instrument in band. Disparities in skill may call for a variety of groups that can best develop each student, but I strongly believe no student should be turned down for not being good enough.
Often students who don’t participate in a school ensemble take a general music class, which I believe should work to develop a comprehensive appreciation for music. These students could learn to enjoy more classically or jazz-oriented music through study of the history of the popular music they regularly enjoy. Ultimately, it is my hope that this appreciation will lead to a life-long engagement in music, so that one day these students will buy a ticket to the philharmonic, or perform in a community band.
Music’s uniqueness is contained in the way that it traverses many facets of human life and the world in which we live. A comprehensive music program involving performance, listening, creativity and a deeper understanding of music provides the best insight into this art. For this reason, music education is a necessary part of any complete school curriculum.


Thinking Outside the Book: Summer Reading
Book Links May 2009 (vol. 18, no. 5)
By Jill Castek and Jessica Mangelson
Every teacher and librarian hopes reading makes its way to the top of their students’ summer activity list. As educators, we know that a summer that doesn’t include reading can lead to a drop in literacy scores. In an effort to prevent regression, encourage summer reading by providing literacy-rich activities to keep students motivated. Using online resources is one way to keep literacy activities fresh this summer.
Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson is a captivating book chronicling the experiences of 16-year-old Hattie Brooks. Hattie is an orphan who has been passed around all of her life until she receives a letter from an uncle, who upon his death has left her his land claim in Montana. After moving to Montana, she works to prove up her uncle’s claim.
Larson’s grandmother (also named Hattie) laid claim to land in Montana and worked to prove up her homestead in the early 1900s. The author’s note describes how Larson found the original paperwork her grandmother submitted for her Montana claim and pored over journals from other settlers during the time period. The Hattie Big Sky “Meet the Author” podcast from Montana’s National Public Radio sheds light on both the story and Larson’s writing process.
Becoming an Animal Expert
First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger illustrates the order of things in a fun, interactive way. The simple text, “First the EGG, then the CHICKEN. First the TADPOLE, then the FROG,” combined with creative cutout illustrations, make the book very appealing. Actual Size by Steve Jenkins helps young readers get a sense of the actual size of different animals’ body parts, including an elephant’s foot, a gorilla’s hand, and a great white shark’s teeth.
Reading these books will not only enhance a trip to the zoo, but pairing them with online resources extends learning and interaction with animal content. The World Wildlife Fund’s Web site provides further information as well as games and videos. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park’s site features fun activities and information about animal conservation.
Traveling the Underground Railroad
Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine tells of Henry “Box” Brown, a slave who daringly escaped by mailing himself from Virginia to Philadelphia. The Underground Railroad virtual tour, created by National Geographic, invites students to travel an Underground Railroad route with Harriet Tubman, where they must make life-or-death choices about the passage to freedom.
Enriching Your Summer with Music
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue by Anna Harwell Celenza celebrates a musical favorite. This book provides insight into what Gershwin experienced while writing the piece. The book contains a CD so students can listen to the music as they learn about the composer. When Marian Sang by Pam Muñoz Ryan portrays singer Marian Anderson’s life and culminates with her 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial before an integrated audience of thousands.
The Classics for Kids Web site has a wealth of information about composers, games that enhance music education, listening rooms, and lesson plans, in addition to other resources. Creating Music provides a musical sketchpad that allows students to create their own music. This interactive composition board is an enjoyable way to learn about orchestras, music, tone, and pitch. This site also teaches children about rhythm, melodic intervals, and harmonic progression in a fun, quizlike way. Finally, visit the New York Philharmonic KidZone to meet the musicians, compose music, learn about instruments, and go backstage.
Jill Castek is a postdoctoral scholar with the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading project at the University of California–Berkeley.
Jessica Mangelson has worked as an elementary-school teacher, reading specialist, and professor of reading education.


(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved. Contact us for information about using this image.
The children photographed in front of their South Deerfield, Massachusetts, school were educated very differently than their grandparents. In the early nineteenth century, towns like Deerfield had as many as twelve one- room schools. By 1920, the introduction of grade levels, blackboards, supplying the same textbooks to all students, and larger schools placed in central locations were all part of a new system. The willingness of the community to build this large, modern school building showed their increasing interest in providing the best possible elementary education for their children. The design of the new building also addressed growing concerns about lighting, cleanliness, and proper air circulation for young students.


In schools, impact, along with Ofsted, is probably one of the most commonly used words. But impact has always been a difficult word when you're trying to show the benefit of reading.
We all know that the more you read the more fluent you become, which in turn leads not only to increased literacy skills but also to improved attainment in all subjects. But, it seems, proof and evidence of this impact has eluded the reading profession for many years. This may be the reason why school libraries have been on the decline, with schools favouring to focus their energies on areas that can display this elusive impact.
At Monk's Walk School, Hertfordshire, we've worked on this area, knowing there must be some way a library can show the impact it has on literacy development. If this value and impact can be seen, not only does this move a library alongside other departments in a school but it may also go some way to holding back the decline of this vital resource.
We decided that for too long the library had been a department doing its own thing and that we needed to learn from other departments and the way they went about collecting and analysing data - to show impact.
We began by collecting KS2 data, SEND (special educational needs and development) info and anything else that would give us a better understanding of our year 7 students. But it wasn't just this hard data that was collected. We realised that with reading there were some really important factors; factors that could only come from soft data of interviews and opinions.
So, we devised a year 7 survey that would give us a better understanding of attitudes, and other factors, that could influence reading attainment. These surveys were completed during a 12-week program in the first term, working with students to instill a love of reading. Students completed raps to music, made book trailers and adverts and took part in other fun activities.
Once we had collated the surveys we looked at these alongside the other data we already have, including CATs (cognitive ability test) scores. From this we could start to judge whether we felt the students were at risk. This could be through weak literacy skills, KS2 or CATs scores but also, importantly, those students that have a poor attitude towards reading.
Being a reading professional, I know that if a student has a poor attitude to reading they will do very little of it. And there will be a point when the student will plateau and their chronological age will catch up and surpass their reading age. So having a negative attitude to reading becomes just as important as having poor CATs or KS2 results.
All the data we acquired appeared on a spreadsheet. For those students that we judged to need the most amount of help, we produced a literacy equivalent of an individual education plan (IEP). We use this with the form tutor, English teacher and parents to highlight certain strategies that can be used to help the student make the required progress.
Types of intervention and ideas range from the use of iPads, Kindles and other electronic devices to the use of blogs, guided reading, literacy leaders and the teaching of specific reading skills.
Using a Kindle, for example, is great for weaker readers who may have trouble reading a book with a double page spread - even if they are not dyslexic. If you watch a weaker reader read their eyes tend to wander off the sentence or even the paragraph. This is the same with a word they have noticed at the bottom of the page which they are worrying about. They either skip it or don't concentrate in anticipation for a word they know they will struggle with. This inhibits fluency as well as comprehension but with the Kindle being able to enlarge the text lowers the chances of this happening and so helps to increase fluency and comprehension and of course, confidence.
To be able to really show the impact these interventions have we need to continually collect data to evidence and track the improvements they have had.
Last year our tracking showed that at the beginning of the year 37% of students had a poor attitude to reading. Through our intervention program all of these students' attitudes had improved, with just under half going on to have an extremely positive attitude.
Our tracking has also produced specific reports for students eligible for free school meals and other important groups meaning not only is the library having a positive impact on these students but other departments are able to use our data in their planning and preparation.
Adam Lancaster is the associate assistant headteacher at Monk's Walk School in Welwyn Garden City. He has worked in school libraries for many years and has recently been announced as the School Library Association School Librarian of 2012.


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When you consider art for kids, wording can be confusing.
Check out many community education catalogs and enrichment camps descriptions, and you’ll often see “arts & crafts” listed as an option for children.
What distinguishes instruction in art vs. crafts?
Process and outcomes tend to separate a visual arts experience from making crafts. While a craft workshop entails following directions to produce a specific product, a visual arts class provides instruction and encourages an exploration of materials and ideas that do not necessarily lead to a particular outcome. Creativity in craft-making tends to be limited to individual choices in terms of using color and embellishments. Creativity in the visual arts is expansive, because children generate ideas and develop them, drawing from their experiences, knowledge and imagination.
What are the benefits of each activity?
In a craft class, children follow directions, which is a valuable skill. They may also become more adept at using tools, such as scissors. Fine motor skills can be enhanced with such activities as beading a necklace. In terms of outcome, most completed projects are similar because they result from following direction and basing their work on a sample or model. Children derive satisfaction from completing a project.
In a visual arts class, children learn about art forms, techniques and styles. A lesson may focus on painting methods in a “Naïve” style using basic shapes and bright colors inspired by an artist, such as Sophie Harding. Students develop their technique, learn an arts vocabulary and benefit from using their imaginations to create original works that reflect the discovery process. The discovery process helps children to understand cause and effect: what happens when I mix orange and green? Working with independent ideas facilitates the development of problem-solving skills. Art students explore abundant creative materials and experiment with color, line and form. Art education nurtures many transferable skills, including creativity, innovation, teamwork, lateral thinking, intuitive reasoning and thinking outside the box. Fine motor skills are enhanced, as well. Children tend to take great pride in creations that reflect their vision, emotions and sense of style.
Dave Coates is an art educator and lives in Frisco, TX. Dave owns two Abrakadoodle Franchises, both based in the North Dallas Suburbs. Abrakadoodle is a national franchise that offers developmentally appropriate art education classes and camps for children 20 months to 14 years old. Dave is married with two young children.


Current coalition Government policies designed to improve adults’ literacy and numeracy skills are overly focused on the world of work rather than family and community life, according to Professor John Bynner and Dr Sam Parsons from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, the Institute of Education at the University of London.
The researchers, who spent 18 years investigating adult literacy and numeracy with the aid of data gathered by two of Britain’s major birth cohort studies, found that the vocabulary scores of three-year-olds whose parents had low levels of basic skills were 20 per cent below those with parents educated to GCSE A* to C level.
They also reported a ‘substantial’ gap between the same two groups in reading and spelling at the age of six and seven.
Professor Bynner and Dr Parsons, whose work informed many of the basic skills policies of the previous Government, added that there is huge demand for literacy and numeracy classes specifically aimed at parents, which is currently going unmet.
‘That's regrettable because this is one of the best ways of motivating adults to attend basic skills classes,’ they said. ‘Almost all parents want to help their children do well at school so such classes can create a virtuous circle of learning achievement for both parents and children.’
The researchers added that poor basic skills can also make ‘everyday functioning’ such as shopping extremely difficult, as well as inhibiting adults’ community involvement, as people with low skills are less likely to join social groups or vote.
‘The Government should therefore bear in mind that its “Big Society” and “One Nation” aspirations, and other core elements of social inclusion and cohesion, would benefit from basic skills investment,’ they said in a statement timed to coincide with Adult Learners’ Week.


What's The Point
There is a wide range of temperatures on earth — from desert hot to arctic cold. What are the temperatures like where you live? Find out by going on a temperature scavenger hunt and discovering the many ways you measure temperatures inside and outside your house.
CROC Hatch! – Estimate the correct egg temperature and you’ll know if the egg will hatch a boy or a girl crocodile.
This Activity Will Help Your Child
- Learn to read a thermometer
- Compare temperatures using basic math skills
- All about Temperature
by Alison Auch
- Hot and Cold
by Angela Royston
- Super Simple Things to Do with Temperature: Fun and Easy Science for Kids
by Kelly Doudna
Paper and pencil
Various thermometers (weather, thermostat, body, etc.)
Weather forecast in newspaper or online
How Do I Do It?
Temperature Scavenger Hunt
- Go to the Wild Kratts online Creaturepedia to learn about the different regions on earth. Ask your child the following questions:
- What do you think the temperatures are like in these different regions?
- How might the animals and people adapt to live there?
- Explore the temperatures around you by going on a temperature scavenger hunt. Talk with your child about the different places in and around the house where temperature is measured, and about the different kinds of thermometers used to measure these temperatures.
- Walk together as you search for these thermometers. Some examples are: a thermostat that shows room temperature, an oven thermometer, a refrigerator thermometer, an outdoor thermometer, and a body thermometer.
- Record the different thermometer readings on a piece of paper.
Compare the temperatures you found. Use comparative vocabulary such as hot, warm, cool, and cold. Ask questions such as:
- Which temperature is the hottest?
- Which temperature is the coldest?
- What is the difference between these two temperatures?
Look at the weekly weather forecast for your neighborhood.
- How does today’s temperature compare to tomorrow’s temperature?
- Calculate the differences between the two temperatures.
- Which two days in the week have the biggest difference? Which have the smallest?
Take It Further
Temperatures affect how we dress and what activities we do. Play a game of “temperature charades.” Take turns acting out an activity for hot, cold, or mild temperatures while the other person guesses the activity.
Do animals wear sweaters? Explore how the animals in your neighborhood adjust to the temperature. Look for clues such as shelter, food, and body covering. Draw pictures or write about your discoveries.


Survey Development and Distribution
Back to Earth Day Trash Survey Unit Lesson Plans
- Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School, High School
- Subject Area: Social Studies, Math
Based on the data they gathered during their clean-up activities, students develop a questionnaire to distribute to other schools. Surveys may take the form of an e-mail questionnaire or a set of Web page forms that visitors fill out.
- Collect, organize, analyze, and describe data.
Materials and Resources
In developing our lessons and activities, we made some assumptions about the hardware and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or activities have a computer with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and monitor) as well as a World Wide Web browser. In the section below, we specify any "special" hardware or software requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above) and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.
- Special hardware requirements: None.
- Special software requirements: None.
- Internet access: Any speed connection will be sufficient if you choose to send out the surveys via e-mail. If you would like to do the survey using a Web page then either a medium-speed (28,000 BPS via modem) or high-speed (greater than 1 MBPS via network) is preferable..
- Ask students to reflect on the data that they gathered and the process of gathering it.
- Students brainstorm the types of questions that they would want to ask of other students.
Examples of questions might include:
- Name of school
- Description of community
- Where did you find large concentrations of garbage?
- Go over tally categories from the tally sheet, be sure to see if there are other areas that students think should be included.
- Record students ideas for the questionnaire. Discuss the merits of the questions and reduce the list to a reasonable number.
- Organize a group of several students to work together in a team to draft the final questionnaire.
- Distribute the questionnaire via e-mail or a Web page.
- E-mail: You may choose to e-mail the survey to other teachers and classrooms you already work with. If you are in need of e-mail contacts, consult our lists of Internet Resources below for places that will help you get in touch with other classrooms interested in Internet projects. Be sure to let the classrooms you contact know why the class has started this survey project and what they intend to do with the data.
- Web page: If students are advanced enough in their knowledge of HTML programming you might want to consider conducting the survey thorough the use of HTML forms on a Web page. See our Professional Development module, "Advanced HTML module, HTML Forms and CGI" on developing forms for Web pages for information on how to create forms for Web pages.
- When the pages have been finished and placed on a server, publicize the survey via e-mail and thorough electronic forums. (See our list of Internet Resources below for a list of locations to contact.)
Resources for learning about Netscape forms
- Insert link to PD module "Advanced HTML module, HTML Forms and CGI"
Places to go to publicize your survey
- EdWeb's List of Listservs
A listing of e-mail lists that you can join to publicize your Earth Day Trash Survey. Some of the lists that are appropriate are ELED-L, a list concerning elementary education, INCLASS, a list for people using the Internet in classroom teaching, and SUPERK12, a list for teachers using the Internet and computers in K-12 classrooms.


It is clear from examples that survive from the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, that the crucifix, in the hands of a great artist, achieved the status of a consummate work of art. The Cleveland Museum of Art possesses a beautiful example of a large-scale, painted crucifix made in Pisa during the 1230s. The majestic Cleveland crucifix is one of the few elaborate painted Italian crosses in the United States.
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When most tourists visit island nations in the Caribbean, they pack swimsuits, sunscreen and perhaps a good book. But when Frances “Cookie” Harris went to Haiti in December, she carried a duffel bag jam-packed with 60 pounds of books.
The eight-day visit was the San Antonio native’s second trip to Haiti. It was also the beginning of what the University of Mississippi graduate student hopes will be meaningful education initiatives at two organizations striving to improve the lives of children living in extreme poverty.
With support from UM faculty, Harris has helped teachers at the Haiti Children’s Rescue Ministry, an orphanage and school in the city of Gressier, as well as Respire Haiti, a nonprofit community center and school for more than 500 children, enhance their educational programs. Primarily, she has donated books and classroom materials to both organizations from the UM School of Education’s teaching resource library.
“These books were being phased out and they were just going to be thrown away otherwise,” Harris said. “I thought, ‘What if I could take these books and start an education program at the orphanage?’ There are children there who love to be read to and want to learn, but don’t have the resources.”
In Haiti, only 50 percent of primary school-aged children are enrolled in classes and 60 percent abandon formal education before the sixth grade. Also, nearly 40 percent of adults struggle with literacy, according to data from UNICEF.
Haitians, who speak Creole, learn to read and speak English in schools, many of which struggle with teaching materials and other basic necessities.
“I’m so happy to know we are able to be part of what Cookie is doing in Haiti,” said Sydney Rowland, associate professor of curriculum and instruction and the faculty member who help Harris acquire the materials. “These books are no longer being used by our students because teachers are changing their materials because of Common Core. But they’re books that can mean a lot to people with so little.”
With more than 200 texts and complementary learning materials for students ranging from preschool to eighth grade, Harris delivered organized plans for volunteer teachers who work with children at Haiti Children’s Rescue Ministry to encourage children to learn to read and speak English as a second language.
“Once I had the books and resources, I was able to build lesson plans,” she said. “In schools, the children are taught to speak English, so you have to know a bit of Creole to follow the lessons. You have to connect phrases and words to the pictures. But it’s amazing how well and fast the children learn.”
In previous years, Harris also served on similar missions focused on education in countries in Africa and South America. She recalled the impact of her first visit to Haiti in summer 2013, during a mission trip coordinated through St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio.
“That summer completely changed my view of the world and poverty,” Harris said. “Children are living with virtually nothing. Many are sold into slavery. Girls become prostitutes because there is no other option. How can things get better if we don’t start with education?”
For Harris, Haiti has become more than mission work. In May she plans to return as an ESL teacher at Respire after she completes her master’s degree in elementary education.
“No one should grow up without a voice or someone to love them or the opportunity for an education,” she said. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, they will figure it out eventually,’ but this is my passion, this is my dream. That’s why I’ve got to go.”


|Teaching (IAE - IBE - UNESCO, 34 p.)|
The teacher models and instructs students in learning and self-regulation strategies.
General learning and study skills as well as domain-specific skills (such as constructing meaning from text, solving mathematical problems or reasoning scientifically) are most likely to be learned thoroughly and become accessible for application if they are taught as strategies to be brought to bear purposefully and implemented with metacognitive awareness and self-regulation. This requires comprehensive instruction that includes attention to prepositional knowledge (what to do), procedural knowledge (how to do it) and conditional knowledge (when and why to do it). Strategy teaching is especially important for less able students who otherwise might not come to understand the value of consciously monitoring, self-regulating and reflecting upon their learning processes.
In the classroom
Many students do not develop effective learning and problem-solving strategies on their own but can acquire them through modelling and explicit instruction from their teachers. Poor readers, for example, can be taught reading comprehension strategies such as keeping the purpose of an assignment in mind when reading; activating relevant background knowledge; identifying major points in attending to the outline and flow of content; monitoring understanding by generating and trying to answer questions about the content; or drawing and testing inferences by making interpretations, predictions and conclusions. Instruction should include not only demonstrations of and opportunities to apply the skill itself but also explanations of the purpose of the skill (what it does for the learner) and the occasions on which it would be used.
Strategy teaching is likely to be most effective when it includes cognitive modelling: the teacher thinks out loud while modelling use of the strategy. Cognitive modelling makes overt the otherwise covert thought processes that guide use of the strategy in a variety of contexts. It provides learners with first-person language (self talk) that they can adapt directly when using the strategy themselves. This eliminates the need for translation that is created when instruction is presented in the impersonal third-person language of explanation or even the second-person language of coaching.
In addition to strategies used in particular domains or types of assignments, teachers can model and instruct their students in general study skills and learning strategies such as rehearsal (repeating material to remember it more effectively), elaboration (putting material into ones own words and relating it to prior knowledge), organization (outlining material to highlight its structure and remember it), comprehension monitoring (keeping track of the strategies used to construct understandings and the degree of success achieved with them, and adjusting strategies accordingly), and affect monitoring (maintaining concentration and task focus, and minimizing performance anxiety and fear of failure).
When providing feedback as students work on assignments and when leading subsequent reflection activities, teachers can ask questions or make comments that help students to monitor and reflect on their learning. Such monitoring and reflection should focus not only on the content being learned, but also on the strategies that the students are using to process the content and solve problems. This will help the students to refine their strategies and regulate their learning more systematically.
References: Meichenbaum & Biemiller (1998); Pressley & Beard El-Dinary (1993); Weinstein & Mayer (1986).


The CHILD DEVELOPMENT & GUIDANCE program is designed to offer high school students an opportunity to become childcare workers in a variety of educational settings. Students in CHILD DEVELOPMENT & GUIDANCE will learn to organize individual and group activities with preschool children ages three to five years of age. Curriculum areas include preschool layout and design, child development and growth, art, music, literature, dramatic play, physical education, social studies, math and science in early childhood education. Students will also be given an introduction to child psychology, nutrition
and health, child care laws and career exploration.
How the physical, psychological and social aspects impact the learning processes of young children is emphasized throughout the course. The educational setting for CHILD DEVELOPMENT & GUIDANCE is a fully operational preschool with an adjacent classroom. The preschool is open 3 days per week, October through June. Graduates of the program are employable in a variety of educational and child care settings. Many graduates choose to continue their education by pursuing college degrees in Early Childhood Education or Elementary Education.


Creative Programming in Python
Teach Your Students How to Use Computing to Explore Powerful and Creative Ideas In the twenty-first century, computers have become indispensable in music making, distribution, performance, and consumption. Making Music with Computers: Creative Programming in Python introduces important concepts...
Published May 19th 2014 by Chapman and Hall/CRC
Computers in Music Education addresses the question of how computer technologies might best assist music education. For current and preservice music teachers and designed as a development tool, reference resource, and basic teaching text, it addresses pedagogical issues and the use of ...
Published January 30th 2007 by Routledge


Teaching and Learning
The Arts - Standards
The Arts - Standards
Standards-based education is the process of basic teaching, learning, and assessment that focuses on national, state, and local educational standards. Academic Content Standards are statements of what students are expected to know and be able to do at specified grade levels.
ODE Standards Resources
Standards by Design
Content standards define what all students should know and be able to do.
REAL News Connection
Most recent Oregon Department of Education newsletters and subject area resources.
Glossary of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment Terms
Primer on Academic Content Standards: Creating Consistency across Oregon
12/28/2010 (436.76 KB)
This document describes the history of Oregon's academic content standards and provides information on the connection between Oregon standards and those developed at the national level.
Standards Revision and Adoption Schedule
05/13/2013 (184.10 KB)
This schedule (by content area) includes the most recent adoption date for standard and the anticipated date for the next standards revision.
Additional Standards Resources
National Standards for Arts Education
The standards outline what every K-12 student should know and be able to do in the arts. The standards were developed by the Consortium of National Arts Education Associations, through a grant administered by The National Association for Music Education (MENC).
McREL Compendium of Standards
McREL's online Compendium is a synthesis of standards documents from professional subject-area organizations and selected state standards.
The Arts - Washington EALRs
Washington State Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs) provide an overview of what students should know and be able to do in grades K-10.
Having problems finding something?
Oregon Department of Education
255 Capitol Street NE Salem, OR 97310-0203
(503) 947-5600 | Fax: (503) 378-5156
General ODE Questions:
(e.g. accessibility, nondiscrimination) |
Copyright © 1998-2014 Oregon Department of Education


We all know there are lots of online resources out there, but often we can’t afford to comb through it. Very useful pages are out there that we never hear about. I know I’ve made some very useful resources on my own site, including online tunelearning pages, and the people who know about and use them are mostly students, because it’s hard to let the right people know about it, and expensive to advertise. Perhaps you’d like to share in the comments below some of the ways you like to get the word out about your offerings?
One ever-changing music site with a lot of useful information, especially at a more basic level, is the about.com website. For ideas related to music education, go to http://musiced.about.com and you will find descriptions of various music methods (such as Kodaly, Orff, Suzuki), quite a few lesson plans for elementary school music ranging from Beethoven to Duke Ellington to folk songs; lesson plans that integrate music into language arts and other subjects; also reading lists, ads, biographies of composers, timelines for different periods of music, ads, discussions on music history, music theory with fairly thorough basic descriptions you can use or refer students to, ads, information on various musical instruments and how to choose and maintain them, ads, info about taking lessons, practicing, camps, schools, ads, online lessons and games for all ages, descriptions of about 40 careers in music, and ads.
Oh, and did I mention there are a lot of ads? Sometimes you have to look carefully to distinguish them from the articles, but many of the ads are actually pretty relevant and useful in themselves. For example they might refer you to music schools, commercial teacher resources, free online worksheets, and so on.
For specifically classical music, you can go to http://classicalmusic.about.com for
basic info about the music, an introduction to well-known performers, styles, lists of the top 5 or 10 selections in each style of music, bios of popular composers…oh yes, and ads.
There’s also a music teachers’ forum, called the Music Teachers Lounge, at this link, in case you’d like to post a thought, help others, or read other teacher comments.
You can also sign up to get a weekly article on music emailed to you.
About.com was owned by the New York Times for about 7 years but recently was sold to IAC, which runs many popular internet sites, such as dictionary.com, thesaurus.com, match.com, tutor.com, ask.com, and yes, usually with lots of ads!


Format: Kobo Edition (eBook)
Published: October 29, 2013
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
The following ISBNs are associated with this title:
ISBN - 10: 1461641616
ISBN - 13: 9781461641612
From the Publisher
Queering Elementary Education is not about teaching kids to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight. ItOs not part of a sinister stratagem in the Ogay agenda.O Instead, these provocative and thoughtful essays advocate the creation of classrooms that challenge categorical thinking, promote interpersonal intelligence, and foster critical consciousness. Queer elementary classrooms are those where parents and educators care enough about their children to trust the human capacity for understanding and their educative abilities to foster insight into the human condition. Those who teach queerly refuse to participate in the great sexual sorting machine called schooling where diminutive GI Joes and Barbies become star quarterbacks and prom queens, while the Linuses and Tinky Winkies become wallflowers or human doormats. Queeering education means bracketing our simplest classroom activities in which we routinely equate sexual identities with sexual acts, privilege the heterosexual condition, and presume sexual destinies. Queer teachers are those who develop curriculum and pedagogy that afford every child dignity rooted in self-worth and esteem for others. In short, queering education happens when we look at schooling upside down and view childhood from the inside out. This groundbreaking volume demands we explore taken-for-granted assumptions about diversity, identities, childhood, and prejudice.


Art education is part of a child’s (or even an adult’s) holistic learning process. Several studies have shown that children who were exposed to any artistic activity – dramatics, music or visual arts – were confident, articulate and more accepting of others. ‘re also more focused on their studies and get good grades as art education boosts their their learning process.
One of the most effective ways of teaching your children about art is to bring them to museums. If you’re traveling this summer, it’s easy to include an hour-long visit to the museum in your itinerary as most of the major tourist areas have their own museums. In the U.S. alone, there are 200 children’s museums in the U.S.
Best of all, a trip to the museum need not be boring or another “required” trip. It can be fun and interesting for you and your children.
1.Do your research
Most of the museums have websites that contain all the information that you need to know – from the price of admission to daily schedule to current exhibits. Show the website to your children and ask them what they want to see. Or you can ask them what they studied in school, what interested them and base your choice from their responses.<
2. Start a family art project
Children will be more keen visiting a museum if they have a first hand experience of creating a work of art. Visual artist and fine arts professor Marika Constantino said her children often watch her while painting in a her studio – which is a spare room located beside their living room. “I try to involve my children in my works. I try to expose them to the various processes I do and the materials that I use. Such an exposure leaves a curiosity in them, “ she said. Constantino said she uses her children’s curiosity as a springboard to discuss artwork and art making.
You don’t need to be a practicing artist to start a family project. For instance, if you are the family’s resident scrapbooker, you can get your children involved by asking them to choose the photos they want to include in the scrapbook or perhaps they can cut color papers to decorate the scrapbook.
3. Enlist the help of tour guides
Join a museum tour. Some museums have guides that conduct a tour , giving mini lectures about a permanent collections and special exhibits. If there are no scheduled tour guides, you can go to the information desk and ask for a recommended exhibits for families.
4. Focus on one exhibit only
Museums have several ongoing exhibits, but it’s difficult for children to absorb everything in one go. So choose just one exhibit, and stay there. Discuss the painting or sculpture with your children. Ask them about the shape and colors that they see, and what they think or feel about the artwork. “One’s engagement with an artwork changes when you see it up close. You see textures, colors and techniques better when you do,” “ Constantino said.<
5. Encourage your children to share their experiences
Discuss the museum visit with your children. Ask them what they liked, what they don’t understand and what they hated. You can also encourage them to write about their museum travels in their journal.
Prime Sarmiento is a journalist and freelance business blogger. She writes on learning and the craft of writing for online tutorial company Ahead Interactive. A passionate traveler, Prime helps other women craft their own journeys via www.solofemaletravel.net.


To learn more about Joint Council’s National Adoption Month Advocacy Campaign-Click Here
Despite the efforts by public interest groups and government entities in Korea and abroad to support and encourage parenting by single-birth mothers, domestic adoption, and birth family preservation, close to 10,000 children continue to be lost, abandoned, left to be found, and relinquished by single and married birthparents every year in South Korea. Last year, only 24% of these children were placed with permanent families (in Korea and internationally). There is a loud outcry by those who oppose inter-country adoption of Korean children as they make the claim that because Korea is a modern, developed nation, Koreans should be taking care of “their own children”, but the reality is that Korean attitudes and emotions towards orphans, homeless children, and domestic adoption are not receptive to this argument. When the birthfamily cannot be preserved as a permanent solution for the child, domestic families are not stepping up, to the degree that is needed, to provide permanent Korean homes for these children. In these cases, international adoption is the path through the child’s basic right to a family can be realized.
Kyoo Bin* was born to a young single woman in August of last year. Unlike the majority of single birthmothers who are ostracized from their schools, families, friends and communities with no financial, emotional or physical resources, Kyoo Bin’s birthmother sought out her own parents (with whom she had been estranged) and received their counsel and support while making a decision as to her child’s future. Based on her own belief that she was emotionally incapable of being responsible for her child, but also due to the lack of financial support available and because of social barriers that exist for single mothers (lack of access to re-enter high school, lack of affordable and available regular daycare, difficulty in securing a safe, stable, single-parent conducive job, strong traditional beliefs against women with children marrying, etc.), the birthmother decided upon adoption for her son. Also very important in the decision for adoption by the birthmother were the real issues that Kyoo Bin would have had to face as a child (and later as an adult) being raised by a single mother in Korea. These challenges include discrimination and social stigma that result in significant (of a much higher degree than anything experienced by adoptees in the US or European countries) denial of access to jobs, education, marriage, and family acceptance/belonging. (The lifelong prejudice and denial of access to basic social and economic rights is even greater for children who grow up in Korea with no permanent families and who have been identified as having “orphan” status.)
Born at nearly full-term and healthy, Kyoo Bin has been in the care of a loving foster family since shortly after he was relinquished on the day of his birth. Kyoo Bin is an active, bright-eyed child who I have had the pleasure to meet with his case worker and foster mother. After having recovered from transient tachypnea at birth, Kyoo Bin has been healthy, but continues to show delayed motor skill development. Cerebral Palsy, Fragile X syndrome, and Prader-Will Syndrome have all been ruled out as any potential cause for Kyoo Bin’s delays. Now, over a year old, Kyoo Bin is not yet walking, but crawls well and pulls himself up. He is positive, easy-going, and quite social while his favorite place to be is on his foster father’s knee. Kyoo Bin enjoys playing with his toys, but has started to exhibit head-banging behaviors one time per day if at all. His aging foster parents are providing him with a loving, but temporary home. The hope of Kyoo Bin’s birthmother and her plan for him was that he would thrive and be able to meet his maximum potential. This will only truly be possible when he is in a permanent family.
*Name of child changed to protect identity and at the request of the Korean adoption agency. If you are interested in adopting Kyoo Bin, please contact Jane Lee at email@example.com
Be The Answer For Kyoo Bin and other children by Watching Joint Council’s Be The Answer Video. Share your thoughts on the video by leaving a comment on YouTube.


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for Kindle Fire, Apple, Android, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, BlackBerry ...
A Handbook for Beginning Choral Educators
"This book comes from a very fine music educator with exceptional experience, who has common sense and a real understanding of what a beginning teacher should know. The book puts into print issues that are widely discussed at conventions and at conferences, and that are common knowledge for the experienced teacher, but that are not covered in a music education class. It is a plain and simple book, written in a language that is easy for anyone going into the profession to understand. It makes valuable suggestions in just about every aspect of the role of a choral music teacher." -- Michael Schwartzkopf, Professor of Music Education, Indiana University School of Music
161 pages; ISBN 9780253110237
, or download in


The 150-year battle to improve Britain’s schools
Chris Bowlby takes a look at changes to the school system in history, in this article first published in BBC History Magazine in October 2012
It is the anniversary of what was called the Revised Code of 1862, which set out how school education was to be funded, with regular tests of how well pupils and teachers were doing. This was introduced following an investigation by the Newcastle Commission, set up, says Howlett, to discover “what was going on in voluntary schools”. Governments had previously adopted a “broadly laissez faire” attitude towards elementary education. But what the commission found was “pretty horrific” – with church and voluntary schooling failing to keep pace with population growth. In some places only 10 per cent of children were being educated.
There were broader reasons too for this new educational agenda. Government realised uneasily that impressive new industrial and military competitors – notably Prussia – were forging ahead with high-quality education. And politically, as Britain moved towards the Reform Act of 1867 and an extension of the franchise, there was a lofty sense among the elite, says Howlett, that new voters should be better educated.
So the Revised Code aimed to create the framework for the extension of effective and affordable elementary education for all social classes. It established a system of payment by results, whereby schools could claim four shillings annually for pupils who attended regularly, and eight shillings if pupils passed specified tests in reading, writing and arithmetic.
Conversely, poor results meant schools lost part of their grants. Such a system, argues Howlett, was seen as the “most efficient way of saving money” as education expanded.
But then, as now, a centrally devised system of testing pupils and teachers, and allocating funding, attracted fierce criticism.
Teachers, says Howlett, “resented that their salaries depended on results” and said the tests were haphazard, failed to allow for variation in how children developed and “did not reflect how well they had been teaching”. Another criticism with a distinctly modern ring was that the system discouraged breadth of education, as teachers felt forced to concentrate on the three Rs to the exclusion of other subjects.
The system of payment by results only lasted until the beginning of the 20th century, when a more decentralised and variable public educational system took hold, run mainly by local education authorities. And a broader curriculum, including subjects such as geography and history, had become more widespread, leaving the narrower focus on core subjects behind.
There was much educational reorganisation in the 20th century, especially of secondary schools as the leaving age rose. But it was not until the 1970s, points out Howlett, that the alarm over educational standards at all levels was sounded again – this time by prime minister James Callaghan. In a famous speech in Oxford in 1976, he raised “the strong case for the so-called ‘core curriculum’ of basic knowledge” and asked, “What is the proper way of monitoring the use of resources in order to maintain a proper national standard of performance?” Successive governments since have followed this agenda and intervened with modern versions of curriculum reform, testing and ranking of pupils and schools, and changes in educational financing.
And so this deep-rooted education debate continues, as does the tension between those stressing competence in the three Rs and vocational skills versus advocates of a broader approach to what and how children are taught. The current education secretary, Michael Gove, is keen both on school reform and more rigorous teaching of national history. He might find the 1862 Revised Code and what followed to be an illuminating special subject.
Chris Bowlby is a presenter on BBC radio, specialising in history
This series is produced with History & Policy. You can find out more about them and read their papers at www.historyandpolicy.org


How do you go to a keyboard and play a melody you never played before, of a standard song you can hum, the kind of a tune everyone knows? Without the music? You learn to pick out melodies well. That's a skill. It's acquired. It's gained very rapidly, by anyone, with proper guidance.
How do you find just the right chords to go with any melody? That's a skill too. It's acquired. In one way, only - by playing lots of tunes whose chords are given to you until the common chord patterns all songs share become learned, in a very familiar way, to your hands.
How do you arrange chords and melody for a rich sounding song and not a simple-minded child's version? By using simple standard
voicing rules that explain which parts of a chord go in the left hand, which in the right, and how to add
color tones to enrich the sound in wonderful ways.
How do you quickly learn to do all of this, in the most efficient, straightforward way? With the least amount of unnecessary education, and the very best advice on how to develop fine song playing skills as quickly as is possible?
There's not a music education program in the world that competes. Two decades of studies on over 25,000 students prove that no program will have you playing songs well in as short a time.
The Sudnow Method is a recorded seminar. There are over 3 hours of recorded material and over 100 pages of downloads and updates - all in an electronic, downloadable format.
You listen to the recorded seminar right away, with illustrative cards in hand. Then you download course materials from the website and go to the piano to use a program that's laid out in perfectly clear detail. Follow it for a careful half-hour a day and you'll be amazing your friends in just months.
You start on a full blown adult version of a song, notated in an easy-to-follow way. And you gain all your skill inthe context of the kind of music you want to play, instead of working on certain drills just because tradition says they
might help. By tackling adult arrangements, the music you want to learn shows you how to play it.
And in the clearest terms you'll find anywhere, you'll know what you need to: about melodies, scales, chords, voicing, harmony, the development of good technique, and the ingredients of rapid learning.
If you'd really like to play standard songs well, don't waste your money anywhere else.


Purpose and Goals
UNIT PHILOSOPHY, PURPOSE AND GOALS
The unit is committed to a learning environment that encourages students to reach their academic and professional potential through exposure to a highly qualified faculty, professional learning environments and a supportive atmosphere in a multicultural setting.
The Department of Education’s conceptual framework, the Constructivist Educator, is based on a constructionist philosophy residing in the critical role of the learner’s active involvement during the learning process. The common belief of the unit faculty is that construction of knowledge as an activity is engaged in by teacher and student. This shared philosophy guides the unit focus on the following beliefs:
* That learning must be constructed by the learner. This construction does not take place in isolation. Teachers, peers, parents, and others effectuate the learner’s construction of knowledge through participation in diverse settings.
* That developmentally based learning is both individual in nature, socially influenced, and that various factors contribute to the construction of knowledge.
* That the candidate is a critical player in the purposeful construction of knowledge by the learner. A teacher educated in developmental levels of learners, methodology, technology integration, and content knowledge can best guide in the classroom.
* That for teachers to monitor their effectiveness in the classroom and for the progress of the learners to be guided effectively, systematic evaluation must take place on a regular basis.
* That the teacher must model the pursuit of learning within his or her own life and as part of the community of learners within the classroom.
The unit prepares students to become constructivist educators who are nurturers, communicators, reflective professionals and facilitators. The curriculum in USCB's Early Childhood and Elementary Education programs is designed to promote the development of these qualities, referred to as elements of the conceptual framework. The acquisition of knowledge, through intellectual dispositions and skills, encourage depth of understanding, tolerance of others, and individual accountability. This philosophy forms the underlying belief system that guides the development of the unit’s curriculum, proficiencies, teaching practices and assessments.
The unit’s purpose is to prepare candidates who are nurturers, communicators, reflective professionals and facilitators for work in the classroom. In order to achieve this overall purpose, the unit has identified the following goals:
* Provide candidates with a high quality education that prepares them to work effectively and establish positive relationships with students and their families.
* Provide candidates with a professional and supportive learning environment that encourages them to reach their academic potential.
* Provide candidates with a highly qualified faculty in a multicultural setting.
* Prepare candidates to believe that all students can learn and assume responsibility for their learning.
* Prepare candidates who are able to design and integrate technology rich experiences based on the educational needs of students and to achieve educational goals in the classroom.
* Prepare candidates to work with colleagues, students and communities of varied cultural, ethnic and economic backgrounds.


Smashing Faces: Free Lesson Plan Download
Level: High School Art Education Lesson Plan
Art Elements: Shape and Value
Art Skills: Photo, Drawing
Making Connections: Artist Ana Mendieta
* Get more free lessons like this, on our Lessons Page
Do you have a window? Do you have a camera?
Do you have students and a teacher willing to look incredibly ridiculous, have that look captured forever, and turned into a drawing for everyone to see?
If you answered yes to all of these questions, you’re ready to try the Smashed Face Portrait Project. Kids love this project because it’s a little bit out of the ordinary and a lot of fun. I love this project because it’s simple to teach yet intriguing and motivating for my students. It’s not much more than smashing faces, taking pictures, and turning those pictures into quality drawings; the results, however, can be fantastic.
If you decide to give this a try, it may help to see one of Ana Mendieta’s smashed portraits as well as my students demonstrating a few examples of high-level face smashing techniques.
The Straight Smash
The Side Smash
The Straight Smash with Slide
The Side Smash with Slide


Joint Productive Activity
View the two Joint Productive Activity Videoclips: Goodwill Excursion and Pumpkin Soup
1. What product(s) did the teacher and children work to create in the video clip? What kind of assistance did the teacher provide to the students?
2. How, if at all, did the teacher encourage the children to collaborate?
Language and Literacy Development
1. What was the language-related goal of the activity?
2. How did the teacher assist the children in developing their language expression?
1. How was the lesson connected to what children already knew from prior home, community, culture, or school experiences?
2. How did the teacher help the children make the connection to their personal experiences?


Understanding College and Career Readiness
College and career readiness refers to the content knowledge, skills, and habits that students must possess to be successful in postsecondary education or training that leads to a sustaining career. A student who is ready for college and career can qualify for and succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing college courses without the need for remedial or developmental coursework.
Prerequisite skills and capabilities for college and career readiness include:
- proficiency in reading a wide range of materials and informational texts,
- fluent writing in several modes, most notably expository and descriptive,
- quantitative literacy through algebra and including geometry, combined with the ability to understand and interpret data,
- comprehension of the scientific method and organization of knowledge in the sciences,
- awareness of social systems and the study of these systems,
- basic proficiency in a second language,
- basic awareness of other cultures, and
- experiences in and appreciation of creative and expressive arts.
Not every student needs exactly the same proficiency in each of these areas. A student’s interests influence the precise knowledge and skill profile necessary to be ready for postsecondary studies in their field of interest.
Some states have defined, or are in the midst of establishing, college and career readiness benchmarks based on outcomes in postsecondary institutions. These benchmarks can take the form of assessments or course completion.
Despite noteworthy distinctions, college readiness and career readiness are similar. Analyses of college courses reveal that the learning skills and foundational knowledge associated with college success overlap considerably those necessary for success in training programs that lead to careers. Given this overlap, it serves no useful purpose to separate students into two groups, one bound for college, the other for work. All students aspire to enter the workforce, and, to do so, all will need a comparable set of foundational skills and learning abilities if they are to succeed.


This is an amazing experiment you can do with basically only 3 things. Amaze your friends with this, or get 1st prize at your nearest science fair!
- Basic dough mix, as in modeling clay dough
- Baking soda
- Food coloring (if preferred)
1First of all, know that this project is completely safe. But during the process, you'll have to wear some safety goggles and gloves because you'll be dealing with chemicals.Ad
2Gather the materials. You'll find what to take at the "Ingredients" section above.
3Shape the dough mix into the shape of a volcano. Make steep slopes and edges using a craft knife if you like.
4Bake it in the oven until it looks hard enough. Test by inserting a toothpick into one of the sides.
5Insert a cup at the mouth of your model. This is where the chemical reaction will take place.
6Paint your volcano with acrylic paint.
7Stand back. This is where the exciting part takes place.
8Make the eruption mixture. This works only once, but the volcano model will stay permanent.
9Add 8 tablespoons of water and 2 teaspoons of baking soda and a drop of food coloring into a bowl. Mix thoroughly. Pour into the cup.
10This step is where the volcano will erupt. Add 1 teaspoon of vinegar. Wait for a few moments, Then the volcano will erupt like a real-life volcano to astonish your friends!Ad
Are you an expert on building things?
If so, share what you know about how to build a siren.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
We are a bit smarter today because of you.
- make the volcano on a tray to collect the lava (foam).
- Add a cardboard sign labeling the mountain as one of your favorite hills or so.
- You can make a mini volcano, using, clay, gum and a can soda drink. First, make a volcano shape with the clay around the soda can. Be sure to leave the top open. When you are ready for your volcano to erupt, put the gum in the soda drink, and enjoy the show.
- Make the bottom side of the mountain hollow. Add a secret little voice recorder for better effects.
- Be careful when cleaning your volcano.
- When the "lava" falls, quickly remove the voice recording instrument. You don't want your personal things going bye-bye.
Things You'll Need
- Plastic cup
- Plastic tray to work on
Categories: Science for Kids
Recent edits by: Brandon7015, ELRafón, Lutherus
In other languages:
Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 51,009 times.


Educating For Life
The mission of the General Education Program at the University of the District of Columbia is to provide all students with the knowledge, skills, and abilities that will serve them in their efforts to become lifelong learners, community leaders, and fruitfully engaged professionals in rewarding and evolving careers and endeavors.
General Education Program
UDC’s General Education Program is rooted in both the classical ideals of undergraduate liberal education and UDC’s unique history, mission, and student population. It gives students a solid foundation in the liberal arts and sciences, helping them develop the intellectual tools they need to excel in any endeavor they pursue. It exposes students to the wisdom and perspective of a variety of disciplines, and it builds fundamental skills that they will be able to use no matter what their ultimate major or career. In a rapidly-changing, increasingly complex world in which our graduates may change careers multiple times, a strong general education is needed more than ever.
The GEP is built on three values that are fundamental to UDC:
Freedom is at the heart of the GEP. UDC traces its roots back to the antebellum era, when abolitionist Myrtilla Miner challenged the conventions of her time by founding the “School for Colored Girls.” For Miner and her teachers, education and freedom were inextricably intertwined: education offered hope for the future and provided a solid foundation for a fruitful life of freedom. At UDC today, we embrace the idea that education broadens our world and makes us more free – free to think and act, to analyze and question, to explore and discover. Through interdisciplinary courses that build foundational skills and encourage intellectual inquiry, the GEP helps students appreciate the opportunities and confront the challenges of freedom.
The GEP supports UDC’s mission to serve the city. As the only public university in our nation’s capital, UDC has a special responsibility to the people of the city and to the country. We expect our students not only to excel academically and professionally, but also to become community leaders. With courses that foster ethical awareness, global engagement, and civic responsibility, the GEP challenges students to take responsibility for themselves, participate fully in civic life, and contribute meaningfully to our democracy.
The GEP encourages our students to be lifelong learners who pursue educational opportunities both inside and outside the classroom. UDC students come from a variety of backgrounds and arrive on campus at varying stages in their lives, and their needs and interests change over time. By offering a broad array of interdisciplinary courses that emphasize independent inquiry, the GEP helps students learn to ask relevant questions, find and evaluate answers to those questions, and use the answers to make informed intellectual, social, and ethical decisions about local, national, global, personal, and professional issues throughout their lives.


What is reciprocal teaching? This is a reading instruction strategy that teaches the students to monitor their understanding of a text and develop meta-cognition.
The idea of using a reciprocal method of instruction has been floating around for at least 30 years, but the term has really come into mainstream education in the past decade.
Teachers model comprehension strategies in a variety of ways, but they focus on 4 key steps:
These steps encourage children to develop thoughtful reading techniques where they become actively involved with the text.
They also learn how to identify where their understanding is breaking down and what to do about it.
It is actually a very effective strategy in any subject area, although it is mainly used in language arts. With Common Core Standards being implemented, this effective strategy will likely find its way into other subject areas at all grade levels.
It also is an essential part of reading interventions for students who are behind. Students who are at-risk lack the strategies effective readers use to comprehend a text, and this will give them the tools they need for success.
Tip: It is highly recommended that teachers provide direct instruction for each of these strategies before pulling them all together.
The purpose of reciprocal teaching is to structure the dialogue amongst teacher and students in a meaningful way that contributes to literacy development.
It is also simply a lot of fun to be talking with the students and letting them discuss the story with you and each other!
Predictions happen when the students hypothesize about the story. This can occur many times during the story, not just at the beginning. By making predictions about the text before and during reading, you are helping them provide a purpose for reading.
As well, they now have the opportunity to scaffold any previous knowledge they might have to the text to help it make sense to them.
I always do a picture walk before reading a story, as well as looking through the book at the chapters, reading the "hook" on the back, and my class predicts what will happen in the text based on those activities. This is the key to good hypothesizing and predicting: always use clues from the text and/or illustrations for support.
All teachers who have students struggling with comprehension: here is your intervention! Many students who have difficulty comprehending text do not understand that the purpose of reading is to make meaning - they think it is to read words correctly.
By asking students to clarify (or make clear) words or passages in a text, you are bringing it front-and-center that they are not getting it. You are forcing them to make meaning.
Clarifying can be for a word, a phrase, an entire passage...anything the student is struggling to understand. After doing this many times, you will see the children start to clarify naturally with each other and themselves!
The purpose of this is two-fold: when the students ask questions about the text, they are first using information that is significant to their comprehension and then they are answering their own questions using meaningful information.
This is the art of:
Students need to use their own words to tell the main idea of the text. This can happen anywhere in the story, and it should happen often for those students who are at-risk. It can happen first at sentence level, then paragraphs, then to whole text.
This takes time, so do not rush it. Use my summary chart to assist you with teaching summarizing of a fictional story.


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BEHIND THE STORY | How do you quantify arts education?
Recently on TC Daily Planet, I wrote about the disheartening phenomenon of music being dropped from the school-day curriculum at EXPO elementary. Unfortunately, it’s not surprising that this is happening and it’s not entirely new. Arts education historically has been underfunded and valued, particularly in the 13 years since No Child Left Behind, where testing of reading and math have drawn focus away from other subjects.
Perhaps as a way to combat the trend, arts educators have come up with their own assessment models and ways of measuring the value of arts education through various means. The Perpich Center for Arts Education (PCAE) has been leading this charge, particularly in the realm of arts integration, where academic achievement is bolstered by art-making. For example, visual arts might be used as a way to understand geometry, or dance might be used as a way to understand molecular biology.
Metrics are one way to show the value of art in the classroom. You can look at various studies that show direct correlations between, say, music education and academic achievement. Even more directly, when you break art education down into rubrics, the value becomes evident. In a theater class, a young person learns skills that aid them in public speaking, confidence and collaboration. An art class teaches self-expression and communication, not to mention coordination skills. Whatever the arts activity, you can pick out skills that a student gathers along the way, whether its critical thinking, emotional intelligence, abstract thought or physical fitness.
I do believe these measurable skills can all be attributed to arts education, but for me, there’s something missing when you break it down so much. There’s something inherently unquantifiable about art. There’s magic to it, something that you feel physically when you experience it, that you sense in your stomach and at the back of your neck.
About a year ago, this viral video summed up for me what it’s like to experience art. It’s a little baby listening to her mother sing “My Heart Can’t Tell You No.” Throughout the course of the two-minute video, you see the little one go through every emotion imaginable: delight, serenity, love, sadness, despair and redemption. It’s remarkable because of course, a really moving performance of a great song, like a dance or a poem- does bring you along for an emotional ride- and while adults maybe better at keeping those emotions less visible, we do experience them.
I struggle with the question of quantifying art in my writing as well. How do you break down the experience of watching a dance performance, or a piece of sculpture? It’s an impossible task really, and writing about art draws on the skills of a writer which are equally abstract at times as writers try to portray the experience through the altogether unscientific means of words on a page.
Art’s intangible qualities don’t diminish its value, however. Its value indeed lies in its mystery. How you explain that to the gatekeepers of funding in the world and those that dictate what we teach young people in school is another question. Perhaps we just ask the naysayers to simply experience great art themselves every once in a while. Once they have that experience for themselves, perhaps they’ll come to the right side of thinking.
© 2014 Sheila Regan


Nikolopoulos, D.S.; (1999) Cognitive and linguistic predictors of literacy skills in the Greek language: the manifestation of reading and spelling difficulties in a regular orthography. Doctoral thesis, University of London.
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The aim of this thesis was three-fold: firstly, to examine the development of reading and spelling abilities in the Greek language; secondly, to identify the cognitive predictors of reading and spelling skills; and finally, to establish how developmental dyslexia is manifested in the regular Greek orthography. An extensive battery of cognitive, linguistic, and literacy tasks was administered to 132 children: 66 Grade-2 and 66 Grade-4 Greek-speaking children attending four different schools in Athens, Greece. The battery included: tests of reading, spelling, and mathematical attainment; a nonword reading task, various phonological awareness & other phonological processing tests; a non-verbal intelligence test and various syntactic awareness tasks. Evidence on the manifestation of developmental dyslexia in Greek was based on a chronological-age and a reading-level matched-pairs comparison between poor and average readers. Despite a large number of difficult polysyllabic word stimuli, reading accuracy was at ceiling for most subjects. Reading speed proved a more effective measure of individual differences. A high degree of accuracy was also observed on many phonological awareness tests. Rapid naming, phonological awareness and speech rate proved the most important predictors of reading ability in the regular Greek language. The predictive value of many variables/tests, however, appeared to differ between English and Greek. Phonological awareness - the most powerful and stable predictor in English - appeared to be a reliable predictor of reading ability only at the initial stages of literacy development (Grade-2). The most significant predictor at Grade-4 was rapid naming. Speech rate consistently predicted reading skill in all our analyses. Syntactic awareness proved not a reliable predictor. Its contribution was significant only for spelling ability at Grade-4. The matched-pair comparisons supported the above results. Results are discussed in relation to the existing differences in the orthographic structure of the English and Greek languages. It is suggested that the examination of linguistic differences is important, both, from a theoretical and clinical point of view.
|Title:||Cognitive and linguistic predictors of literacy skills in the Greek language: the manifestation of reading and spelling difficulties in a regular orthography|
|Open access status:||An open access version is available from UCL Discovery|
|Additional information:||Thesis digitised by British Library EThOS|
|UCL classification:||UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Psychology and Language Sciences (Division of)|
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In order for Louisiana students to be prepared for college and the workforce, they need strong literacy and math skills. For this reason, Louisiana is transitioning to higher standards, and Louisiana schools are looking to identify, purchase and train teachers on the best instructional resources available. During this time to learn the new expectations for students, the state is providing increased and intensive support. This week, the Department is sharing resources for 2014-15 ELA and math curriculum based on reviews of many of the instructional tools available. These resources should be used at the discretion of districts, principals and teachers across the state and are not mandated to be used. Our review of these materials is based on an in depth study of the alignment of these resources with the new student expectations.
In math, the Department has identified Eureka Mathematics for grades K-12 as a tier one curriculum. This curriculum can be downloaded for free at any point and districts can printed purchase student and teacher materials.
- In ELA, the Department has identified different approaches based on grade band.
- In grades K-3, the Department is suggesting that districts use the Core Knowledge/Amplify Skills Strand to provide students with foundational skills and the LDOE unit plans to ensure students have access to on-grade level texts.
- In grades 4-12, the Department is suggesting that districts use the Department's unit plans. The Department will be publishing 5-6 units per grade level, and an example unit plan can be found here.
The Department will also be publishing ELA and math curriculum guidebooks starting in early March. Examples of what can be found in the guidebooks include:
In addition to these curricular suggestions, the Department will also be offering extensive teacher professional development beginning this summer. This professional development will be open to teachers who are a part of the district's teacher leader cohort. This professional development will include:
- Teacher leader Summit, June 3-4
- ELA and math summer institutes in July
- Ongoing ELA and math training sessions starting in August
- Virtual ELA and math training throughout the school year to prepare teachers for their next units
***A full professional development calendar will be available in March.
In March, the Department will be sharing assessment guides for 2014-15, reviews of benchmarking tools and curriculum guidebooks.


Book empowers parents, optimizes communication skills
Communication is inevitable. But effective communication is critical—it is the foundation of healthy relationships, the competitive advantage needed in an interview and the core of growth and success. According to Dr. Julie Masterson, communication sciences and disorders professor at Missouri State University, communication skills begin to develop immediately after birth and are, in fact, the basis of lifelong language and literacy skills.
“Certainly exposure to oral language in the earliest years of life is crucial, and strong exposure and enhancement of literacy skills in preschool and early elementary is important,” said Masterson. “However, language and literacy skills continue to develop across the lifespan—we just have to recognize it. Students in high school and college are continuing to develop their language skills, as evidenced by increasing professional vocabulary and critical thinking in reading and writing.”
Masterson believes that knowledge is power. In her recently released and fully revised version of “Beyond Baby Talk,” sponsored by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, she suggests that parents who know how to effectively engage in their child’s literacy development can optimize their child’s communication skills. The book offers many practical ideas about the different ways a parent can accomplish this.
“We want to empower parents and caretakers with this information so that they know what to look for so they aren’t unnecessarily worried or anxious,” said Masterson. “At the same time, this information also helps them know if there is something warranting concern and what to do about it.”
Although Masterson believes there is no single, critical, period in language development, she does provide some advice to parents.
“Be thoroughly familiar with the stages of development, so you know what should happen at various ages, and then relax and enjoy,” said Masterson. “Know about all the things you can do to ‘naturally’ enhance language and literacy development. These occur in everyday activities and are fun. Most don’t cost anything, and they don’t require specialized training.”
Her book, “Beyond Baby Talk” addresses the influencers on language and literacy development, and includes two new chapters about reading and spelling, and the myths and trends of communication development. The newly revised book also includes an updated chapter on media.
“Parents are bombarded with questions…and the book provides answers,” she said. “It’s a tremendous journey.”
For more information, contact Masterson at (417) 836-5368.
“Hot Topics – Expert Source” releases are a tool the office of university communications provides to assist media in locating a university source to comment on a particular subject or issue. The opinions expressed by the expert are those of a specific individual and are not necessarily representative of the views of the university.


*American Academy of Pediatrics Literacy Toolkit Handouts for Parents offers printable information in Spanish and English about sharing quality books and reading with young children, as well as links to other literacy resources in a variety of languages.
Building Blocks for Literacy is a free online resource for early childhood educators and parents. Preschool teachers will be interested in the free self-paced professional development workshop, which uses audio and video recordings to demonstrate techniques like shared book reading to promote children’s early literacy.
*Colorín Colorado, a bilingual site for parents and educators of English language learners and the sister site to Reading Rockets, provides activities, information, and advice about teaching reading. The site includes printable tip sheets and guides (available in a variety of languages), webcasts, podcasts, e-newsletters, and other resources.
Good Reads is a social networking site for book lovers that educators can use to keep track of the books they have read, write and read book reviews, find and make book recommendations, access book lists, and discuss books with other users.
*International Children’s Digital Library is an online collection of high-quality children’s books from around the world that can be read online. Books are available in a variety of languages, including Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. Users can search for books by topic, child’s age, or language. Entire site available in Spanish.
International Reading Association serves educators who teach reading to learners of all ages. The website includes podcasts, booklists, articles, a literacy forum, and resources on a variety of topics, including beginning readers.
Just One More Book! is a podcast that celebrates and promotes children’s books. Episodes can be played on the website or downloaded to an audio device. The site also features listener-submitted book reviews and interviews with authors, illustrators, and literacy experts.
Mother Goose Programs offers ideas, reading lists, and book programs to inspire teachers to integrate reading books into explorations of math, science, and other topics.
The Official Eric Carle website includes information about this best-loved children’s author and his books, instructions for creating collage illustrations, and the Caterpillar Exchange Bulletin Board, a place for teachers to share ideas with each other.
*Our Book By Us!/Nuestro Libro ¡Hecho Por Nosotros! Written in English and Spanish, this book can be downloaded for $2.00 from the website of the National Writing Project. Caregivers and families can use it to support preschool children’s literacy development. Includes tips for adults and activity pages for children to express their thoughts about their families and experiences.
PBS Kids Island offers free reading games and activities for preschoolers, along with resources and literacy activities for parents and teachers.
*A Place of Our Own, produced by KCET, is a television series and with this accompanying website for everyone who cares for young children. The show and website share ways to guide children’s cognitive, social, emotional, physical, and language and literacy development. Entire site available in Spanish as Los Niños en Su Casa.
*Reach Out and Read promotes early literacy in pediatric exam rooms nationwide, giving new books to children and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud. The website (and a Spanish-language version) offers book lists for children and educators, reading tips, and early literacy milestones in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese.
*Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) is the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit literacy organization. Resources include information on literacy programs, strategies and advice for educators and parents, interviews with authors and illustrators, and activities and games for children. Also includes resources in Spanish.
Reading Rockets offers information and activities for families and teachers to help young children learn to read. The site offers research-based articles, teaching techniques, and strategies to help children who struggle. Teachers can also download a free template to customize to create their own classroom newsletters. Sister site Colorín Colorado is in Spanish.
WordWorld is the companion website to the PBS series WordWorld, a computer animated show for preschoolers. The website features interactive games for children along with information for parents and teachers.


Earlier this year, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a recommendation in which they strongly urged ob-gyns to begin routinely screening new mothers for depression during and after pregnancy. However, when such screenings do happen, they usually take place in the hospital, shortly after birth, or six weeks later at an after-delivery checkup. But because postpartum depression often shows up in the first week or two after giving birth, many women suffering from depression are still not being diagnosed.
And diagnosing depression in a new mother is important. In addition to mom’s suffering, studies have shown that left untreated, postpartum depression can have a negative impact on a infant’s cognitive, neurologic, and motor skill development. What’s more, depression can interfere with mother-child attachment bonding, which can lead to behavior problems, anxiety and mood disorders through childhood and adolescence.
Recognizing the importance of depression screening in new mothers and aware that many are likely falling through the cracks, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a report in which they urge pediatricians to begin routinely screening new mothers for depression.
The primary care pediatrician, by virtue of having a longitudinal relationship with families, has a unique opportunity to identify maternal depression and help prevent untoward developmental and mental health outcomes for the infant and family.
In addition to screening for depression, which can effect up to 80% of women shortly after giving birth, pediatricians are also being urged to help demystify the condition. In other words, helping the new mom understand that what she’s feeling is common, that it’s not her fault and that things will get better.
If, during routine infancy visits, a mother is found to have minor depression, or “baby blues,” such demystification may be all it takes to get her through. For more serious cases, AAP says referral may be necessary.
In addition to screening mom, the AAP says that dad’s mental health should be considered as well. Paternal depression is estimated to affect about 6% of new dads and can worsen a situation in which mom is also depressed.
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Musical education has evolved well past the days of singing along as a teacher plays the piano. Today, psychologists understand that strong links between the mind’s processing of information and the processing of music exist. As such, it can be possible to boost your memory creation and information retention just by playing music.
Does Music Education Benefit Our Children?
Seventeen out of twenty people believe that a student who participates in a music class will do better in school, while sixteen of twenty say that learning a musical instrument helps a student to achieve; fourteen of twenty say that a student who does learn a musical instrument will be less likely to have disciplinary issues at school. Do these predispositions hold up?
Facts And Stats
The inclination of people polled is accurate in many instances: a high school student in a music class will have a better GPA than one who is not in a music class. The Netherlands, Japan, and Hungary are three nations that excel at education — each country has music training at the earliest levels of education. Even in the United States, some of the schools with the highest levels of achievement spend as much as thirty percent of the school in coursework that emphasizes art and music.
Tech And Music
Teachers can use multimedia displays to help teach music in the classroom. An iPad or tablet allows the teaching of music theory and history as well as tuning, melody, percussion, timing, and even writing music.
To learn more about the the evolving technology in music education, created by Kent State University, take a look below at the infographic below.
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