Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten
Our youngest students learn best in a safe and nurturing environment where curiosity and exploration are cultivated. Guided discovery and unstructured play both inside and outside of the classroom provides children with the freedom to creatively choose much about their learning paths. Partnerships with families are essential, as we know that children flourish in a supportive environment in which the child, the family, and teachers work together.
Our early childhood learning environment exposes children to a rich, meaningful curriculum of skills, attitudes and knowledge through developmentally appropriate activities. The meaningful opportunities and environment come together to encourage the children to be explorers, investigators and problem solvers in:
- Language and Literacy,
- Inquiry and Cognitive Development,
- Social-Emotional Development, and
- Health and Wellbeing.
In Pre-K, the curriculum is based on the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, which believes that children are endowed with “a hundred languages” through which they can express their ideas. The aim of this approach is teaching how to use these symbolic languages (e.g. painting, sculpting, drama) in everyday life. The program is based on exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching self-guided curriculum.


Incorporating technology in classrooms to promote student learning is an ongoing instructional challenge. Teacher professional development (PD) is a central component of teacher education to support student use of technology and can improve student learning, but PD has had mixed results. In this study, researchers investigated a PD program designed to prepare a cohort of middle school social studies teachers to teach with an online resource, the Smithsonian Learning Lab. They examined how an iterative, design-based approach used teacher feedback to develop learning opportunities in the PD. Using the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge framework (TPACK), they found that through four iterations of 1-day PD workshops, PDs afforded teachers increasingly individualized and meaningful opportunities to learn. Teacher feedback emerged as a central component in the changes and development of the PD series. Through the course of the PD, teacher knowledge increased across five of seven TPACK domains.
Research indicates that preservice teachers’ understandings of how to integrate technology into their classrooms are dependent upon experience in their university methods courses and in their field placements. These findings place a new responsibility on teacher educators for modeling effective integration of technology into methods courses. This study focused on teacher educators’ integration of technology using iPads to enhance teaching and learning in an elementary education teacher preparation program. Four faculty members documented their own technology integration journey through collaborative autoethnography identifying the affordances and challenges of 1:1 iPad integration into their science, social studies and literacy methods courses. The researchers discovered that access to technology alone is not sufficient for faculty members to integrate iPad use in their courses. High quality use of iPads and their applications require time for exploration, experimentation, and practice, as well as professional support and development adding another dimension to the work of teacher educators.


NEW YORK, Sept. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- McGraw-Hill Education today announced the launch of McGraw-Hill Reading WonderWorks, a personalized, flexible and intensive intervention program for struggling readers in Grades K-6 that was built from the ground up to address the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. Reading WonderWorks, which supports Reading Wonders, McGraw-Hill Education's comprehensive Common Core reading program, was designed specifically to help students who are reading below grade level develop critical reading, writing and analytical skills required by the rigorous new standards so that they can accelerate through the curriculum and read on grade level by the following year. The program is currently rolling into classrooms across the country.
Available in both print and digital format, Reading WonderWorks was built to support the core instruction that occurs in the Reading Wonders classroom, but provides flexible options and scaffolds specific skills for students with varying intervention needs. For students in younger grades (K-1), the program emphasizes developing and reinforcing foundational skills from the Reading Wonders program (phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, word recognition, fluency, oral vocabulary) that are crucial for developing proficient readers as defined by the Common Core State Standards. For older grades (2-6), the program's focus shifts to addressing higher level skills (practicing close reading, accessing the meaning of complex text, analytical writing) that are level-appropriate but still maintain the complexity that students are required to master. Foundational skills continue to be scaffolded to support students throughout the program as needed.
The program will also include Reading Wonders Adaptive Learning, a system developed in conjunction with Area9 that will continually assess a student's knowledge and skills and provide them with a personalized learning path to help them accelerate their learning.
"We believe that every student deserves a chance to succeed academically. With the arrival of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and a general trend to more rigorous educational standards, students who are reading below grade level will face even greater challenges in meeting them," said Peter Cohen, president of McGraw-Hill School Education. "The goal of Reading WonderWorks is to close the achievement gap among students, help struggling students develop foundational reading and writing skills in a self-paced and flexible environment starting as early as kindergarten, and accelerate them so that they can read on grade level and graduate with the confidence they need to succeed in college and beyond."
The Reading WonderWorks program seamlessly integrates with Reading Wonders through an interconnected digital platform for students and teachers across multiple devices, and the robust teacher platform provides both Reading Wonders and Reading WonderWorks instructors with shared access to built-in and customizable plans and resources to jointly push their students forward, already sequenced in the order of instruction. Also included in the platform are Foundational Skills Kits that teachers can use with students if they are missing key foundational skills that are potentially holding them back, as well as "Level Up" lessons that stretch and accelerate students to read on grade level. Placement and diagnostic assessments as well as the Reading Wonders Adaptive Learning system will help tailor instruction, gauge an individual student's progress and ultimately determine if a student is ready to exit the Reading WonderWorks program.
Reading WonderWorks offers interactive worktexts and e-books that allow students to take notes, utilize built-in prompts to help them identify and mark text evidence and most importantly, collaborate and discuss passages with their peers to help them think more critically and extrapolate the meaning of more challenging texts. The students' dynamic platform also engages them in games, graphics and ample practice to ensure that they become confident and proficient readers who can read on grade level and help students make progress toward satisfying more rigorous educational standards.
For more information about Reading WonderWorks visit: http://mhreadingwonders.com/wonder-works/
About McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill Education is a digital learning company that draws on its more than 100 years of educational expertise to offer solutions that improve learning outcomes around the world. McGraw-Hill Education is the adaptive education technology leader with the vision for creating a highly personalized learning experience that prepares students of all ages for the world that awaits. The Company has offices across North America, India, China, Europe, the Middle East and South America, and makes its learning solutions available in more than 60 languages. For additional information, visit www.mheducation.com.
SOURCE McGraw-Hill Education


The Reality of STEM in the Classroom
Victoria Lovejoy | Teaching
STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math. Educators, legislators, and business leaders have long been concerned with the state of science and mathematics in our schools. In a comparison of international scores for 4th and 8th graders, results show that the American students are still lagging behind our major global competitors including Japan, China, Russia, and Singapore (TIMMS 2007). As these countries outcompete us in academic assessments, they are also outcompeting us in capturing the global markets particularly in the area of information management.
The purpose of STEM initiatives at the national, state, and local levels is to bring together the resources of government in support of improving our educational system, the private sector in making alliances to support authentic learning applicable to what is needed in the workforce, and educational institutions in collaborating on the best pedagogy and curricula to develop students who are prepared to meet the challenges of their futures. This initiative is applicable not only to the disciplines of science and math, but to all other disciplines as teachers continue to develop a 21st century approach through cross-curricular integration. In real world work and interactions, we don’t have clear cut divisions between disciplines. Learning through STEM gives students tools to develop creative and systemic problem solving, collaborative networks, leadership abilities, and long-term strategic outlooks.
This all sounds terrific and on-point, but what is the reality we each experience back in our classroom? At a recent department chair meeting, our assistant head passed on a parent request that we teach more specifically to the SATs so that our students can earn the numbers they need to get into some of the colleges they want. Among the department chairs, we all agreed that our focus in the classroom certainly included foundational skills but our goal was to prepare our students to be the independent thinkers and problem solvers described in current literature and certainly included in the STEM initiatives. By the times students reached our high school classes we all felt that the we did not have extra time to teach to a standardized exam. But we are in many ways also a service industry so that if colleges need a “number” through which to filter applicants and parents expect us to get their children into colleges and those same colleges require a certain score on a standardized test, where do we spend our energies?
Quiz: Test Your Science Savvy
How well do you know science? Take the quiz, created by the National Science Foundation for research purposes, to test your science savvy.
Clearly, this opens up all the old discussions and heated arguments we have about standardized testing and student evaluation. However, the reality when we are in our classrooms is that we are often torn between teaching lifelong skills for the future and teaching the “tricks” a student needs to score well on a test that may determine their future. Certainly there is overlap. We can teach critical reading skills and information filtering while we work on reading comprehension. We can develop foundational math skills in the context of higher order problem solving. We can decode the cues and clues embedded in tests and which can help us select the right answer as well as learn subtleties of communication. But can we really serve two masters – standardized test mastery and 21st century lifelong skills?
The reality in our classrooms as we make our way through another academic year does not always match the vision that many of us continue to carry in our minds for education. The answer, for now, is what it has always been – dedicated teachers doing their best to support the development of those skills that will best support lifelong learning and success and throwing in a few test-taking strategies to help our students jump through the hoops. It is not a perfect system but if we can keep the talk going maybe we’ll get everyone on the walk!
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, 2007. http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table07_1.asp retrieved May 24, 2009
Visit http://podetc.com/ for upcoming courses in STEM strategies, Research and Information Fluency, Building Knowledge Management Systems, and a Survey in Emerging Technologies. Taking registrations now.


Japan's early 'everyday' art
'ukiyo-e" - the japanese word for 18th- and 19th-century woodblock prints made for the amusement of ordinary people - have long been recognized as art. But these old prints were actually commercial ventures aimed at wide circulation, rather than fine-art artifacts for wealthy patrons. The rise of printing enabled this production of inexpensive images. In their depictions of everyday life ("ukiyo-e" meaning "images from the floating world"), they were a sort of "pop art" of their day.
Most books and exhibitions of ukiyo-e suggest that the world they depicted was entirely adult: images of beautiful women, of kabuki actors, of wrestlers, and of landscapes populated by travelers, shellfish gatherers, peasants, rice-farmers. Rarely does one see a mother with a baby or a woman catching fireflies with her son.
This evident lack of children depicted in ukiyo-e may be misleading, resulting from the selective interests of collectors. A revision is called for by a traveling exhibition organized by the Japan Foundation and the Kumon Institute of Education in Osaka. "Children Represented in Ukiyo-e: Japanese Children in the 18th-19th Centuries " is now at the Maison de la Culture du Japon a Paris (through March 13). It moves to Edinburgh April 3 to May 16. The show's 164 prints open your eyes not only to the interest of Edo artists in children, but also to the child culture of the period.
Children are shown as infant objects of affection and celebration (they were "one of the gods until the age of 7"); as the protagonists in games and play; as the customers of one kind of printed art, the "toy pictures" or "omocha-e," which they could cut out and paste; and as schoolchildren.
The print shown here amusingly depicts children being taught calligraphy (with varying degrees of success). Reading, writing, and arithmetic were the rudiments of the elementary education available to children of all classes, though not yet compulsory.


Critical Readers, Writers and Thinkers
To equip our students with 21st century literacy skills equal to the challenges of post-secondary education and the workplace, Des Moines Public Schools provides appropriate curricula at all developmental levels.
In the elementary grades, we ensure an integrated approach to building essential foundational skills beginning with our youngest learners.
As our students grow we provide exposure to texts of exceptional craft across a wide range of genres, cultures, and time periods. These works offer insights across the spectrum of the human condition and inspire students to ponder and problem-solve. We value a breadth and depth of literature and non-fiction texts.
Our goal is to steadily increase complexity and sophistication of content and structure in classroom texts and develop students who read, write and think critically.


For today's lesson, we are going to backtrack a bit to define and investigate the functions of various plant parts. Let's learn more about roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruit.
In the book Seed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants Nicholas Harberd talks about some of the early childhood experiences he had that influenced him to become a plant geneticist. For example, he remembered the teacher "forcing" horse chestnut tree branches in the classroom, causing the leaf buds to swell and unfurl into leaves. He also vividly recalled his father digging parsnips and his own realizations about plants having roots underground. Simple activities with plants like these can have lasting impacts.
Activity: Edible Plant Parts.
Discover what are the parts of a plant and how they relate to vegetables we eat. This can be done informally at home during the preparation of a salad, or more formally in a classroom.
• Potted mint plant or other conveniently-sized herb or vegetable, with flowers if possible (optional)
• Plastic bin or tray to catch soil from potted plant (optional)
• Spinach and/or lettuce leaves
• Broccoli and/or cauliflower
• Radish and/or carrot (preferably with tops intact) - Avoid baby carrots
• Green beans and/or peas
Have enough pieces so children may explore the vegetables and have enough left over to make a salad.
1. Explain plants have different parts/structures that do different jobs for the plant.
2. Ask the children to identify the parts of the potted plant. Place the plant in the bin or tray and gently remove the pot to expose the roots.
3. Brainstorm about about what the function of each part might be.
a. roots- take up water and nutrients, anchor the plant so it can stay upright
b. stem- move water and nutrients from roots to leaves and flowers, support leaves so they are exposed to sunlight (What would happen if all the leaves were laying on the ground?)
c. leaves - use the energy from sunlight to make food for the plant
d. flowers- attract pollinators, make pollen, develop into fruit
e. fruit - ripened part of flower (ovary) that holds the developing seeds
f. seeds - contain the stored food and embryo that, given the proper conditions, could become a new plant.
4. Return the potted plant to its pot or plant it in a garden when the lesson is finished. Have the children was their hands.
5. Distribute the vegetables and have the children identify the parts of the plants that are represented.
• Spinach and/or lettuce - leaves
• Broccoli and/or cauliflower -stem and flower bud
• Celery - stem and possibly leaves
• Radish and/or carrot (preferably with tops intact) - roots, those with tops will have stems and leaves as well
• Green beans, peppers, and/or peas - technically fruit with seeds inside. Open the pods to see the seeds inside.
6. If appropriate, wash the vegetables and make a salad for everyone to share.
Extension: Challenge older students with some vegetables that are more difficult to classify.
• Onion (bulb )- each layer of in an onion bulb is a fleshy leaf base, attached to a short stem. Often the roots are visible on the bottom, too.
• Potato - because it grows underground, children may guess a potato is a root, but botanically it is a modified stem.
• Sweet potato - on the other hand, the sweet potato is a tuberous root.
To help explain the difference between the sweet potato and regular potato, ask the children to think about where a new plant would sprout. The sweet potato will only sprout from the top, where the stem was attached. The potato will develop sprouts wherever there are “eyes.” The eyes are buds on a stem.
To see our complete plant science lessons, either visit the plant science category (newest posts to oldest posts) or the plant science section of our experiment archive page (links to posts in order).
For more activities, try our Gardening/Plant Science for Kids Pinterest board.


Interested in other early literacy interventions? Check out our Rapid Results Early Literacy Interventions Pack HERE
- it includes all of our early literacy interventions!
Using our Reading Recovery background and 20+ years of primary level teaching experience, we have created our interventions to reach the needs of our little learners in a time efficient way. All interventions are designed to be 5-10 minutes in length and are aligned with the Common Core standards. The tasks are narrowed and focused on specific skills to maximize learning.
These interventions are ideal for any adult support or volunteer you may have within your classroom. The interventions are clear, contain teacher talk and directives, and also include suggestions to tailor instruction in case there is lack of progress.
We’ve used our interventions in several ways. Interventions can be implemented prior to or alongside your reading instruction (guided reading groups, LLI, Title, strategy-based groups, etc.). In the past we began our year by focusing on the interventions with small groups as the interventions support the pre-reading foundational skills needed before launching our full-blown reading groups. We’ve also used this alongside our reading groups either by providing students the added support of the intervention during group or had adult support/volunteers working with students who need intervention during that time.


For those of you who would like a better understanding of sight words I’m happy to introduce my guest today, Margo Edwards. From the wonderful place called SightWords.com she’s here to help make everything clear.
If you have a child who has reached Kindergarten (maybe even Pre-K), you have probably heard her teacher mention something about “sight words.” And you may have asked yourself why in the world your child needed to memorize these words. Isn’t she (or he) supposed to be learning phonics? Doesn’t that teach children to “de-code” the words so they don’t have to memorize? Isn’t memorization the most boring thing ever?
Don’t worry—the teacher is not shirking her educational duties by having students just memorize stuff. Sight words are a supplement to, not a replacement for, phonics instruction. Sight words are, in the grand scheme of things, a small but vitally important percentage of your child’s vocabulary. These words occur very frequently in the English language, words like it, can, and will. For example, the 315 words in the Dolch sight word list (taught in many American schools) include 80% of the words found in a typical children’s book and 50% of the words in an average newspaper.
Also, some of these high-frequency words are phonetically irregular, meaning they don’t follow the “rules” of phonics—words like buy, talk, and come. So your child has to memorize those anyway. But even this will pay off later when she can apply her knowledge to other similar non-phonetic words, such as guy, walk, or some.
Sight words are memorized so that a child can recognize commonly-used or non-phonetic words at a glance—by sight—without needing to slow down and go letter by letter. If your child has to stop and think every time she encounters one of these high-frequency or phonetically irregular words, she can’t pay proper attention to what the sentence is about. She needs to be able to recognize these words in an instant so she can focus her brainpower on more difficult words and on understanding the meaning of a sentence or paragraph.
This concept is called “Learn to Read, so you can Read to Learn.” These early years of your child’s education will concentrate on teaching her to read fluently. Once she is fluent in written English, she can then focus on the content of what she is reading. Older students don’t have to think about the structure of a paragraph or sentence or how to pronounce all the words; they are instead learning the history or science being explained in the text.
For an analogy, think about driving a car. You have to pay attention to several things—traffic signals, other cars, pedestrians, street signs. Now imagine that you also had to stop every few seconds and think, “Wait, which one is the gas pedal?” It’s incredibly difficult to navigate your way to a new destination if you’re struggling to remember the basics of how to operate the car.
Young drivers need to log lots of practice time behind the wheel, until driving the car becomes second nature. Then they can focus their attention on getting where they are going. Likewise, sight words practice helps young readers become so familiar with high-frequency words that reading them becomes second nature.
What does sight words instruction actually look like? Memorization through repetition sounds pretty boring, but it doesn’t have to be. In just ten minutes of simple lesson time, you can introduce 3-5 new sight words to your child. Then follow that with 20 minutes of playing sight words games. The games reinforce the lesson by incorporating more repetition of the sight words, but it’s disguised in a fun activity.
Hopefully this has answered some of your questions about sight words. You can now take this knowledge and help your child make the most of her early education!
Margo Edwards holds degrees from Rice University and George Washington University and is the Director of Content Development at SightWords.com, a website dedicated to providing free resources—from lessons to flashcards to games—to promote child literacy. SightWords.com is proud to be sponsored by the Georgia Preschool Association.


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tipo de documento Artes plásticas, imagen y diseño - Secuencia didáctica
Acerca de este recurso...
To know the different elements of musical language in order to read and play simple works.
Knowledge type: declarative, procedural
prerequisite knowledge: Knowledge, abilities and attitudes acquired during the First Cycle of Primary Education in the Area of Art education. Vocabulary pertaining to the Arts area.
Learning outcomes: To recognise the different elements of musical language in order to use them and play simple works.
The use of these contents is universal, free of charge and open, as long as it is for educational, non-commercial purposes. The actions, products and utilities derived from its use may not, as a result, generate any kind of profit. Likewise, it is mandatory to cite the source.
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Fecha publicación: 29.3.2015


Appreciating Caboolture’s natural environment and conserving beautiful Moreton Bay are intrinsic to learning at St Columban’s College, Queensland.
Teacher and Environmental Committee Co-ordinator, Chris Jones, explains, “It is important to educate responsible stewardship and create responsible citizens for the future. Students must be encouraged to develop ethos within and empower with action.”
Think global, act local
First stop was a street drain running alongside the school that feeds into Moreton Bay.
After seeing what goes into the waterway that can be stopped, students took up the responsibility of looking after the area and educating others in the school community about the results of littering. Enviroweek saw the beginning of their drain adoption initiative which included:
- A drain waste audit
- Cleaning up the drain to prevent waste from reaching the Moreton Bay
- Presenting information to 1000 students at a whole school assembly
- Introducing a waste system throughout the school, separating recyclables, compostables and land fill
In one clean up students collected 84 straws, 41 consumer items, 716 items of plastic packaging (519 were chocolate wrappers), 11 fishing items, 65 plastic lids and wrap, 25 foam cups, 1 glass bottle, 1 light globe, 1 dead cow, 1 umbrella, 2 aluminium cans, 12 pieces of aluminium foil.
Greening the school grounds
Trees were needed to create a native habitat in the school grounds, so the Environment Committee linked into a local council program offering free native seedlings to families. In addition, they put a out a call to families who were not using plants to donate to the school.
Amazingly, 90 St Columban’s families generously gave up their trees, and students planted their native habitat.
Members of the Environment Committee now participate in a clean up of the Duncan Street Drain once a term. Each time they complete a waste audit and graph the results to compare the amount of litter to inspire others. They have seen a great reduction of rubbish.
Chris explained, “Cool Australia’s waste audit is an invaluable resource. It is a very powerful tool that allows us to see our impact and analyse the data. We are also part of the Moreton Bay Councils ResourcEd School Waste Minimisation Program which has been of invaluable assistance, guidance and support with College waste resource management goals.”
Use this waste audit lesson plan in your classroom to help with numeracy skills and incorporate real world learning.
A sign detailing the impact of litter in our waterways has been erected near the drain to be viewed by school and community members. The introduction of the colour coded waste system has seen an increase of recycling by students and teachers. Both of these initiatives have been enabled by funding from the Keep Queensland Beautiful campaign.
All new students entering St Columban’s watch a presentation about the importance of sustainability during their induction and are offered the opportunity to join the Environmental Committee as a part of the school’s co-curricular program.
Sustainability for the future
Ongoing education of students and staff is set to raise awareness further. The long term goal of the Environment Committee is to divert all litter from landfill into recycling, reuse or composting.
Students continue to weed and care for the forrest area they planted. They plan to develop more garden areas in the school grounds and create greener spaces for all to enjoy.
Embed waste action into your Maths lessons with the 2-hour online PD course Use Secondary Maths to Measure Waste.


The history of art is peppered with tales of women artists who struggled to gain the same recognition as men.
To shine a light on women’s artistic bounty, the National Museum of Women in the Arts kicked off a social media campaign last March to honor Women’s History Month. They asked, “Can you name five women artists?” More than 400 art museums and 11,000 individuals participated, tagging their posts with #5WomenArtists.
The campaign is back this year. We decided to peruse the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art for five of our favorite works by women artists. You can find all five on view now. (And, if you want to join the conversation on Twitter and Instagram, use the hashtag #5WomenArtists.)
1. Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891–1978), Leaves Fluttering in the Breeze, 1973
Expressionist painter Alma Thomas was the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972 and the first to have one of her artworks enter the permanent collection of the White House (Michelle Obama installed Thomas’s Resurrection in the family dining room).
Leaves Fluttering in the Breeze shows her signature flair for brilliantly hued abstract compositions, a style associated with the Washington Color School. Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, and raised in Washington, D.C. She earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Howard University and a master’s degree in art education from Columbia University. Thomas’s early work was representational. After retiring as a Washington, D.C., public school art teacher, she devoted herself full time to her art and made the shift to abstract expressionism.
2. Harriet Goodhue Hosmer (1830–1908), Zenobia in Chains, 1859
Hosmer’s larger-than-life marble sculpture of Zenobia, the 3rd-century queen of Palmyra (a site near present day Syria) made a splash when it was exhibited at the Great London Exposition in 1862. Such fine sculpting—visible in the queen’s regal bearing, her elaborate court dress, and her leg pressing against her robe—must have been the work of a man, deduced critics. Several male sculptors who had worked with Hosmer in Rome came to her defense, convincing skeptics that the monumental work was indeed her creation.
3. Agnes Pelton (1886–1961), Passion Flower, ca. 1945
Pelton was born in Germany to American parents. She spent her early career in New York, where she studied with Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922), who counted Georgia O’Keeffe among his students. Later, Pelton moved to the desert enclave of Cathedral City, California, where her paintings took on a mystical serenity. The radiance of Passion Flower imbues the simple image of a flower with something more visionary—reflecting her participation in the Transcendental Painting Group and the influence of movements such as Theosophy, Zen Buddhism, and other forms of non-Western thought.
4. Helen Lundeberg (1908–1999), Irises (The Sentinels), 1936
Lundeberg was born in Chicago and raised in Pasadena. The mountain range in Irises may suggest the area around Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco. Two tall, bearded irises tower in scale against the mountains in the distance. Their positions and stature suggest their role as sentinels over the empty desert landscape.
The dreamlike nature of the plants in the arid environment suggests the influence of Georgia O’Keeffe. Lundeberg was interested in the flower as a symbol of life and death. The work’s title may refer to the Greek goddess Iris, who, along with Hermes, was a messenger to the gods, acting as a link between heaven and earth.
5. Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), Breakfast in Bed, 1897
Cassatt was one of the first American women to achieve international recognition as an artist. Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, she spent most of her life in France, where she befriended the French Impressionists, who were using small brushstrokes of unmixed colors to capture the immediate visual impression of a scene. Breakfast in Bed explores a favorite subject of Cassatt’s: the tension between a mother’s focused attention on her child and the child’s desire to explore the world around her. In Breakfast in Bed, the mother gazes at the child wrapped in her arms while the child looks out into the room.
It’s a perfect time to honor the contributions of women artists. Why not take a stroll through The Huntington’s American art galleries?
Diana W. Thompson is senior writer for the office of communications and marketing at The Huntington.


This pack consists of posters, a bookmark, worksheets, an inference card game and Graphic Organizers that can be printed out focusing on the reading strategy ‘Inferring’.
Inferring is one of the key Reading Comprehension Strategies. If students can use the inferring strategies of using Prior Knowledge, making conclusions supported with evidence from the text then that will enable you to see how well the student comprehends the written text. This is an important research strategy as well.
This activity pack is designed to help students to make sense of the inferring strategy through informative posters and interesting activities and worksheets.
The Inferring Reading Strategy Activity pack can be printed out, posters can be laminated, and worksheets printed and shared with students.
As an added bonus, teachers and students who have GAFE (Google Apps for Education) Google accounts can click on the shared links and use the resources in Google Slides.


This essay, written by mathematician Paul Lockhart, was so amazing I just had to write about it here. I’ve quoted only the first few paragraphs of the essay, but it gives you the gist of what it’s all about. The article is available for free download as a PDF from the Mathematical Association of America website, and was discussed in a recent article posted on the NPR website.
A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or
composer. Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious
black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.
As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: “Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely. One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way.”
In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifths. “I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs.”
In the higher grades the pressure is really on. After all, the students must be prepared for the standardized tests and college admissions exams. Students must take courses in Scales and Modes, Meter, Harmony, and Counterpoint. “It’s a lot for them to learn, but later in college when they finally get to hear all this stuff, they’ll really appreciate all the work they did in high school.” Of course, not many students actually go on to concentrate in music, so only a few will ever get to hear the sounds that the black dots represent. Nevertheless, it is important that every member of society be able to recognize a modulation or a fugal passage, regardless of the fact that they will never hear one. “To tell you the truth, most students just aren’t very good at music. They are bored in class, their skills are terrible, and their homework is barely legible. Most of them couldn’t care less about how important music is in today’s world; they just want to take the minimum number of music courses and be done with it. I guess there are just music people and non-music people. I had this one kid, though, man was she sensational! Her sheets were impeccable— every note in the right place, perfect calligraphy, sharps, flats, just beautiful. She’s going to make one hell of a musician someday.”


Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The 3 Rs of Poetry
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Poetry scares me.
How about you?
Poetry is language organized by rhythm. Reading and reciting poems with your child can be a very beneficial activity when it comes to building early literacy skills.
Many people think children will dislike poetry,
but that`s far from the truth...Children get a
real kick out of the bounce and wackiness of
poetry, and poems can often be paths to
literacy for children who have previously
found reading difficult.
- Mem Fox, Reading Magic, p. 88
Rhythm and Rhyme
Poems with good rhythm, the way the words bounce off the tongue, are especially appealing to young children who are mastering language and reading. The best ones should almost seem like you`re singing them.
Being able to rhyme is a very important milestone in early literacy development. Rhyme helps children understand that words that share common sounds often share common letter sequences. Rhyme also helps children break words into smaller parts and recognize smaller parts in words.
Nursery rhymes are a great way to introduce rhyme. They can be spoken, sung or read aloud. Not only are nursery rhymes a pleasure to hear and to share, they provide a building block toward literacy.
Books with Rhythm
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom? by Bill Martin Jr.
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess
I Went Walking by Sue Williams
Books with Rhyme
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle
Down by the Bay by Raffi
Silly Sally by Audrey Wood
Repetition helps children make good guesses about what words will come next when you are reading with them or to them. Notice how your child’s reading confidence builds when the same great line keeps coming around again. This will help your child see himself as a reader.
Repetition helps information “stick” in your child’s memory. Your child will remember what they read long after they have read it.
Repetition makes poems memorable for your child and helps them understand what they are reading (the storyline).
Books with Repetition
The Napping House by Audrey Wood
Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle
Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino
What Else Does Poetry Help With?
vocabulary knowing the names of things
assonance the repetition of vowel sounds that are close together. Example: I made my way to the lake.
consonance the repetition of consonant sounds that are close together. Example: Brown bear, brown bear
syllable counting chunks of sounds in words
patterning word order and sentence structure
learning and remembering
Do not to squirt glue all over the paper :
"A drop, a drop, a drop will do
Any more is too much glue."
"A straight line down makes a one
Writing numbers can be fun!"
pretend play using imagination to make mental images
alliteration two or more words begin with the same letter or sound.
Example: Miss Mary Mack
Favourite Poets for younger children:
Does anyone have any other suggestions for books with great rhythm, rhyme or repetition? How about great poetry books for young children?
What are some creative ways to use poetry with young children?


That's how davidkremers, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Distinguished Conceptual Artist in Biology, describes his work-in-progress. Kremers, who has dropped the use of capital letters to follow the egalitarian 1920s Bauhaus tradition and "smashed" his name together because there are so many Davids, is collaborating with molecular biologists to make transgenic zebrafish sculptures. He expects the "living sculptures" to be ready this spring, in time to be swimming around in a fish bowl at an exhibit entitled "The Art and Landscape of Nature," which will be on view at de Verbeelding in Zeewolde, The Netherlands, from 24 January through September 2001. The goal, says Kremers, speaking by telephone from his studio in Pasadena, is to construct fish that, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, will also contain science that is "good enough to become journal papers."
And Kremers should, by now, have some idea of the kinds of data scientists need to produce publishable papers. Although he describes himself as working full-time as an artist since age 5, Kremers, born in Colorado in 1960, hails from a long line of scientists on his father's side--starting in the 16th century with Gerherd de Kremer, otherwise known as Mercator--and physicians on his mother's side. Add "an 18th-century art education" to get the current mixed bag of influences.
Kremers first started incorporating science into his art when, by accident, he met Air Force operations personnel who were struggling with space station design. Kremers, who was studying architecture at the time, says he became intrigued by what was considered an organic failure of the design: The stations should have been growing like coral reefs in space, but they weren't. Kremers worked on the project between 1983 and 1985, but it all came to a halt, he says, after the Challenger explosion.
Serendipity also led to Kremers's next foray into the realm of art-meets-science when, while out dancing, he met molecular biologists who invited him to visit their laboratory. While looking at protocols for genetic research, Kremers says he recognized "at once" that they could be used to make paintings. In 1992, he created his first living paintings from genetically engineered bacteria.
Kremers's work with basic research scientists led to his association with Caltech's Biology Division in 1992, where he has been officially on staff since 1999. Though based in biology, Kremers collaborates with computer scientists and aeronautical engineers and says he has the freedom to work with anyone at Caltech.
Kremers believes that good art is as rigorous as good science. And, although he says he has been described as "a visitor from the future," he is hard at work on what he calls "the fluid problem," a fundamental conceptual conundrum that he sees as "the biggest problem" currently faced by scientists. The fluid problem arises, says Kremers, when scientists need to analyze "something that is alive and growing," which, as Kremers points out, is as much a qualitative as a quantitative analysis.
He also believes that "art is good at capturing qualities, such as light on an apple," and that traditional techniques used by artists have much to contribute to solving problems at the frontiers of science. As an example, Kremers points to a current collaboration where, using techniques from Impressionist painting, he and his colleagues are inventing new ways to analyze MRI readings in several dimensions. Here, as in many other instances, Kremers--as an outsider--seems to have the facility to see where the puzzle piece fits in, often more quickly than those who have been deeply involved with the problem for a long time.
Kremers's work frequently appears in exhibits of digital art, and it can be found in permanent collections, including those at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, and the Hammer Museum/Greenwald Center for the Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. His own Web site is a work of art in itself.


Support for Children with Autism
Clicker has offered my son (with severe autism, apraxia, limited speech) a whole new world. As well as obvious literacy and numeracy skills, he has developed an obvious desire to communicate and express himself through Clicker. He is now fluently writing sentences and being able to hear those sentences back. It is one of the most useful tools for people with special needs. Clicker has become his voice. - Karenza Cassidy, mother of Eddie (age 13)
Clicker 7 is a powerful tool for supporting many students across the autistic spectrum.
Use Clicker with pictures or symbols to support students who have communication difficulties. Add any pictures to Clicker Sets so that children are able to use completely personalized grids to communicate, and with the speech feedback reading all completed sentences aloud, Clicker becomes a powerful communication tool.
Some students with ASD struggle with motor control in their hands and
find their handwriting suffers, making it difficult and frustrating to
create a neat piece of work. With Clicker’s elementary word processor,
this obstacle is removed. Clicker offers the flexibility for students to
try things out and correct mistakes before presenting a finished piece
of work. Writing productivity is increased, and completed pieces of
writing are easily printed and displayed with pride.
Using technology is often a great motivator for students. With the opportunity to use your own libraries in Clicker, the children’s favorite images, sounds and videos can be easily used as part of their Clicker Sets and in their writing.
Every element of Clicker can be tailored to suit all ages and abilities. It’s simple to tweak features such as the size of the icons and the colors used in Clicker Sets. The content and amount of support is easily personalized too, choose whether to offer sentence starters to prompt those who need help getting going, or a word bank of key vocabulary to use. And for those students who need support to stay on track, why not record the task instructions in a Voice Note so they can independently listen to it at any time?
Many people with an ASD are thought to be visual learners, therefore presenting information on screen can help to support them. Clicker can be used to help students understand their day, with a visual timetable or a learning log. Or provide information about expectations in the form of an on-screen book.
Students with ASD often find mind mapping to be a really useful way to plan their work – they can use the Clicker Board tool to manipulate and link any combination of words, pictures and sounds. This helps children to make sense of their ideas and understand the links between them more clearly.


Welcome to ElementaryEducationDegree.com. Our website offers information about degree programs that can help you start a career as an elementary educator, in addition to information to the commonly asked questions below. You can also find more information by following our blogger, Holly Kline, as she regularly posts on topics related to elementary education.
- What types of degree programs are offered in elementary education?
- What are relevant teaching fields to elementary education?
- What do I need to know about teacher certification?
- What additional resources are available to learn more about elementary education?
What types of degree programs are offered in elementary education?
The path to becoming an elementary school teacher involves completing a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, earning a teaching certificate, completing student teaching, and passing licensing and competency exams in the state where you wish to teach. If you’re interested in learning more about specific elementary education degree programs, we’ve listed some featured schools below.
Grand Canyon University
University of Southern California
What are relevant teaching fields to elementary education?
You can specialize or earn a degree in relevant areas of study including special education, early childhood education, ESL, and secondary education. Teachers who wish to work at the administrative level such as being a school principal or superintendent often pursue a PhD degree in Education or Doctorate in Education. Below are additional teaching degrees that are available to you.
|Area of Study||Overview|
|Early Childhood Education:||Refers to educational programs and strategies geared toward children from birth to the age of eight with a focus on guiding children to learn through play. The term often refers to preschool or infant/child care programs.|
|K-12 Education:||Secondary education is a major in which students learn to teach middle and high school students in specific subject areas, such as chemistry, history, English, mathematics, physics, or a foreign language.|
|Special Education:||Special education is instruction that is specially designed to meet the unique needs of children who have disabilities and often includes special instruction in the classroom, at home, in hospitals or institutions, or in other settings.|
|English as a Second Language (ESL):||ESL refers to English as a Second Language instruction and curriculum development for non-native speakers of English. ESL instructors are typically trained and licensed elementary or high school teachers with an ESL Endorsement or Bilingual Certification.|
What do I need to know about teacher certification?
Teacher certification is the process by which prospective teachers get licensed to teach within a given area after completing all the required steps. Certification requirements vary by state; however, most states typically require that following steps have been successfully completed:
|Step #1:||Must complete a state approved teacher education program from a regionally accredited college/university in your desired grade level and/or subject area|
|Step #2:||Verify completion of the required student teaching hours or field practicum. Field experiences and student teaching must be in the area of certification candidate is seeking.|
|Step #3:||Pass the required competency examinations for the grade level you wish to teach: early childhood, elementary, middle school, secondary, special education, as well as subject area tests for secondary teaching.|
|Step #4:||Apply for certification in the state in which you wish to teach. Each state has its own specific rules and regulations for teacher certification.|
|Step #5:||Maintain teacher certification in your state through renewal and continuing education requirements as determined by the state in which you teach. Visit teach.org to see what your state requires.|
What additional resources are available to learn more about elementary education?
Below you’ll find a list of just a few of our many useful resources about elementary education in addition to trusted sites with information about teacher certification and answers to common questions:
- Leading Sites for Elementary Educators: From educational videos to interactive games and even e-book publishers, classroom management advice, and teachable moments from teachers who blog, a driven elementary educator can find just about anything he or she needs among these leading sites.
- What You Need to Know About Teacher Certification: Our guide on teacher certification provides the how’s and why’s of acquiring teaching certification, with some helpful links from trusted sources.
- How to Become an Elementary School Teacher – A Career Guide: Our comprehensive career guide offers useful pointers to help you get started on your journey towards a becoming an elementary school teacher.
- Certification Requirements by State: The U.S. Department of Education provide information on teaching job opportunities, specific state licensure regulations, and much more.
You can also learn more what we do by visiting our Facebook page, where we also post links to useful articles, updates in the field, and blog posts.


The algebra workshop reviewed basic concepts that often lead to lack of understanding of in depth algebra. A interesting note was the lack of elementary math that is missing from the students. Time had to be spent reviewing multiplication before reviewing fractions. Be it that the students were in a grade level to learn algebra, they had a hard time understanding 4th grade mathematical concepts.
It was evident that some students were able to move on in a subject category in spite of lack of foundational skills such as multiplication and division. The workshop identified areas of struggle which and addressed them. This is always the goal of any tutoring lesson and it served its purpose.
Below are some activities done at the workshop.
Above the curator of the African American Museum of beginnings in Pomona is giving a tour of the museum.
Here our young scholar is using skittles as visual aides to comprehend fraction word problems.
Above we have a adult who is using the free workshop as a starter point to sharpen his mathematical skills to enter into the field of education. The student is using playing cards to develop PEMDAS equations which were solved by him then taught to the group. Implying the idea that if you teach it then you know it.


TALK, SING, READ, WRITE, AND PLAY
Help prepare young children to be readers with these five simple activities that are fun yet powerful ways to encourage early learning.
Children learn about language by listening and joining in the conversation. Talk as you play and choose books that interest your children to talk about!
Fingerplays, rhymes and songs slow down language so children can hear the different sounds that make up words.
Shared reading gets children ready to read. Kids who are read to are more likely to enjoy reading themselves.
Encourage your children to write or draw. A first step to writing is to stimulate small motor muscle control with toys and art supplies.
Children learn language by interacting with others and also with their physical surroundings.
Follow these links to websites to support early literacy and parenting:
Please check in with Cricket at Story time to get a reading log.
Children and Parents can enjoy reading together OR children can read alone using this interactive database from inside the library. To use Speakaboos from home/outside the library, please call the service desk at 970-479-2187 to obtain a user name and password.
There are over 200 stories that allow parents to read to a child, allow children to read and play interactively, or read a story themselves.
Read Aloud 15 MINUTES is the “pink ribbon” campaign of parent engagement and early childhood learning. We hope to reach 250 million Americans by 2022 with the Campaign. We expect reading aloud 15 minutes every day to be the parenting standard for our nation. Information: http://www.readaloud.org/index.html.


Culturally Relevant Teaching: Preparing Teachers to Include All Learners
This edited volume includes chapters covering multiple areas of literacy education: inclusive education, early childhood education, elementary education, middle grades education, and emergent literacy across groups. The purpose of this edited volume is to provide educators and graduate students/scholars in the field of education with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to facilitate student success.
Rowman & Littlefield
Adams, Megan; Rodriguez, Sanjuana; and Zimmer, Kate, "Culturally Relevant Teaching: Preparing Teachers to Include All Learners" (2017). 2017 Faculty Bookshelf. 2.


The primary purpose of figure painting, or the depiction of any kind of figure in art aims at the communication of human experiences. In various cultures, human forms have been found on objects of everyday use, illustrated in an artistic way. These were mainly used for religious purposes and during rituals. Figure painting accounts for being a form of cultural expression. It is important for you to know about the relevance of figure painting in modern art and education, and whether figure art still indicates cultural, spiritual, and religious symbols.
Interdisciplinary approach to today’s fine art education
In the modern world of art, technical and material innovations privileging ephemeral digitally focused methods have influenced how art courses develop. Nowadays, 4D practices are used in which students are taught digitally based work.
The position of figure painting in Art education today
The relevance of figure painting in modern art education is questionable. However, by looking at the various art courses at renowned institutions it can be concluded that figure painting is still present and is till quite an active form. Modern institutions offer classes on anatomy and anatomical drawing classes. Introductory classes in painting are offered where painting from still life set ups are taught. Summer classes and side projects offer students the opportunity to improve their figure drawing skills. Pencil sketching, study of nudes and still life set ups are also focused on in modern day art education courses.
Value system and parallel worlds
The major art education centers today dictate trends and supports the nature of contemporary art as rule breaking. Modern day figure painting is associated with abstract art. There are many examples which prove how the two approaches have merged into one. Although it was regarded as a skill of the old masters, figure paintings are kind of making a comeback in the world of modern art education. Figure art is like an essential book which you need to return to, once in a while. Many new artists focus on 3D drawing and hyper realistic painting is on a rise today. Many artists are realizing that drawing skills are very important, which is required for working on digital animations and other computer based art. The modern art education system allows its students to have their choices throughout their years of education. Students are introduced to various art disciplines right from the beginning of their art courses. Modern art students are given much more freedom of choice in going for what they love or what appeals to them the most.
The art of figure painting is still quite alive and modern approaches of figure painting are focused on. Figure painting has merged with other styles of modern art, and continues to occupy a special place in the world of art education. Many modern students love figure painting and has a realistic approach towards art. Many new artists are dedicating their art careers for creating amazing realistic figure paintings. As a part of modern art education, figure painting is still considered to be the roots of representational art, which has been evolving over ages rapidly.


emotional behavior disorder, EBD, music, challenging behavior, violence against teachers, preservice, in-service, behavior support
Students with disabilities, some with emotional and behavior disorders, are included in almost all elementary music classes. Students with emotional behavior disorders are one of the greatest challenges for teachers. To be effective, teachers must develop strategies and inclusive practices specifically geared towards intervention. With the quantity of students served and only limited class time with students, the music teacher is often unaware of the unique needs of specific special learners. Music teacher preparation has been inadequate in training teachers for inclusion. Elementary music educators rarely have outside support to deal with classroom challenges as they serve students with disabilities and at-risk students. Music teacher training is focused on content, not behavior management. This study examined the perceptions of randomly selected elementary music educators who were members of MENC: The National Association for Music Education regarding their preparedness to effectively manage five areas of severe behavior often exhibited by students with emotional behavior disorders: withdrawal, impulsivity, argumentative behavior, aggression towards peers, and aggression towards the teacher. The researcher devised a 39 item online survey instrument based on supporting literature. The survey was given to randomly selected participants. Two hundred sixty-nine elementary music educators from across the United States completed the survey providing information on incidence frequency, preparedness, training in behavior management, and the amount of behavior support available. Elementary music teachers felt prepared to handle impulsivity (58.2%), and argumentative behavior (55.7%). They were not prepared for withdrawal (50.8%), aggression towards peers (50.9%), and least prepared to handle aggression towards the teacher (58.1%).Over 94% of the music teachers had adult assistance less than 25% of the time and 45.9% never had adult assistance with included classes. More than 74% of the teachers indicated that they have adult assistance with self-contained special education classes less than 25% of the time and 35.7% never having adult assistance with those classes. Forty-six point two percent of the music teachers had no behavior specialist available or were unaware if one was available. Only 3.7% of the respondents felt they had all the support they needed. Thirty-six point one percent of the music teachers had no crisis plan in case of an eruption of severe behavior in their classes.
If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at STARS@ucf.edu
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)
College of Education
Child, Family and Community Sciences
Curriculum and Instruction
Length of Campus-only Access
Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)
Shirk, Christine, "The Preparedness Of Elementary Music Teachers To Include Students With Challenging Behavior In Their Classrooms" (2008). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3522.


|By Eve (Year 1)|
We did this artwork as a fun culminating activity to celebrate the wonderful watercolour painting unit we have been doing this term. The lesson is based on one I found on a great art education blog called Art Projects for Kids: http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2012/03/koi-fish-painting.html
- Watercolour paints (we used tube ones which are nice, but palettes are easier for the kids and less messy for the teacher)
- 1 thin, medium and thick paintbrush per child
- 1 clean water container per pair
- 1 dirty water container per pair
- 1 serviette per person (to wipe wet or dirty brushes on and to "lift out" unwanted watery messes!)
- 1 sheet A3 watercolour paper per child
- 1 black permanent marker per child
- 1 lead pencil per child
- 1 eraser per child
- The "How to Draw" stencil of a koi fish (as mentioned above)
1. We looked at photos and artworks of koi fish. We looked at the way artists represented their movement. in water We also talked about possible ideas for colours, patterns and pond plants that they could include in their artworks.
2. I showed the students the "How to Draw" stencil from Art Projects for Kids.
3. I then modelled how to use it to draw the fish. I also modelled how to draw a basic lotus flower and lily pad.
4. SMy students then drew their own fish artwork. I encouraged them to have as many fish as they wanted travelling in whatever direction they wished. I also told them to think up their own unique colours, patterns and any other added details for their artwork to make them all different and special.
5. After the drawings were completed (up until this point, it had taken us about 25 minutes), I modelled how to use the watercolour paints and brushes to colour in the patterns of each fish (splodges, stripes, spots, etc). We discussed the importance of not painting the rest of the fish so that the colours from the patterns didn't bleed.
6. The students painted their fish patterns, lily pads and flowers.
7. I modelled how to paint around the patterns to fill in the rest of the fish.
8. The students painted the rest of their fish.
9. While their fish were drying, I modelled how to paint the water with a large brush, using smooth even strokes. We discussed the different possiblities of water colours (plain blue, blue/green, blue/purple, etc).
10. The students went back and prepared a big puddle of their water colour. They then painted their backgrounds.
11. The students let their artworks dry. Afterwards, some went back to tidy sections up, use water to smooth out messy strokes, or use a little more fresh paint to brighten up murky sections on their artworks.
12. When completely dry, the students outline all lines and shapes on their artworks.
All up this lesson took approximately 2.5 hours.
|By Dora (Year 2)|
|By Paige (Year 1)|
|By Sebaga (Year 2)|
|By Gabe (Year 2)|
|By Eloise (Year 2)|
|By Charlotte (Year 2)|
|By Joss (Year 1)|
|By Marlo (Year 2)|
|By Liliana (Year 2)|


The World Economic Forum has published a new white paper called New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of Technology; the link for the full report is included at the end of this article. The World Economic Forum is a not-for-profit international institution headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Although the focus of this report is worldwide, the gaps in identified twenty-first century skills are very applicable to schools in the USA. In a powerful statement, the report says: “By the time students enter college and the labour market, deficiencies that have not been addressed earlier can be far more difficult and costly to remedy.” (p 8-9).
The report differentiates 21st century skills among foundational literacies, competencies, and character qualities. It sees foundational skills as what schools and systems traditionally teach and measure: literacy, numeracy, scientific literacy, instructional-communication technology literacy, financial literacy, and cultural and civic literacy. Competencies sited include critical thinking/problem solving, creativity, communication and collaboration. While curiosity, initiative, persistence/grit, adaptability, leadership, and social and cultural awareness are included in a category called character qualities. Appendix 1 includes definitions of 21st century skills.
The instructional cycle is referred to as a “closed loop” in this report. Beginning with clear learning objectives through the development of curriculum and instructional strategies to instructional delivery, ongoing assessment, interventions and the tracking of learning outcomes in a repeating complex system. The report looks at ways that technology can be embedded into each step of the instructional loop to improve student learning outcomes and eliminate the skill gap, providing some resources that might be used at different phases of the cycle.
The report cites differences in the use of technology tools to close the skill gap, looking at different income levels among countries which create different contexts and stating that there are fundamental social and economic problems, such as poverty, that impede learning and underlie the skills gap. Although the deficiencies in many undeveloped countries far surpass those found in the United States, it is my perspective that there are different contexts within the United States itself that must be acknowledged and addressed.
The importance of creativity, problem solving and innovation to the economic well-being of our nation and therefore, the employability of our workforce cannot be stressed enough. The pressure of standardized testing can lead to a standardized curriculum and instruction model that does not allow the classroom time for these skills to develop. Teachers caught in this dilemma are often driven to insure success on state tests at the cost of providing time for experimentation, reflection, and collaborative feedback. The report does suggest using technology for some of the foundational skills in order to free teacher time to provide instruction on competency and character skills.
In two of the examples from low income countries, technology was used to provide scripted lessons that were created centrally to under-trained teachers. My preference would be to more fully train teachers or provide a mentor/coach rather than a “turn the page” curriculum model.
One of the tenants of the article is the need to define and find a metric to assess each of these 21st century skills in order to compare countries skill level. Although I agree with the need to define the skills needed and provide training and resources to teachers so these skills can be embedded into the curriculum and instruction, the idea of an assessment to measure creativity or persistence fills me with dread. Paul Torrance developed a well-used test for creativity used to screen students for school gifted and talented programs. It is not a test that can be administered and interpreted without training. The idea of administering a standardized test which by definition is convergent in thinking to measure a thinking skill that is divergent by definition seems inappropriate and a major shortcoming of this report.


Why music? Why start so young? Viewed by some as simply icing on the cake, music is so much more! Our propensity for making music is universal and it’s one of the uniquely human ways that we express ourselves, throughout every stage or our lives. From our cooing as infants, to the rhythm of our heartbeats, to the childhood chants and songs we create and sing, to the music we use to celebrate special events and recall memorable occasions, we are musical beings. Making music uses every part of who we are – our voice, feet, hands, memory, emotions, imagination, breath, voice, heart and soul. What other learned life skill can make such a claim? Active music-making nurtures cognitive, physical, language, social, and emotional learning. It comforts us when we’re sad, soothes us when we’re upset, energizes us when we’re tired, inspires us when we’re indifferent, and aids us in creating bonds with those we love and we have the playlists to prove it. Every human being has the right and the capacity to be a music maker. Without melody and rhythm, where would we be? The world would be an awfully quiet place. To learn more about why research is the touchstone of the Music Together® program, we invite you to read on.
As part of its ongoing research and development in early childhood music, the national Music Together organization operates a "lab" school in Princeton, NJ. Both Music Together and the Music Together Princeton Lab School are committed to helping families, caregivers, and early childhood professionals rediscover the pleasure and educational value of informal musical experiences. Rather than emphasizing traditional music performances, Music Together encourages family participation in spontaneous musical activity occurring within the context of daily life. Music Together recognizes that all children are musical and that every child needs a stimulating, supportive music environment to achieve basic competence in the wonderful human capacity for music making.
What do we mean when we say that Music Together is a "research-based" program? Music Together does ongoing research through the "lab" school as well as programs implemented around the country. In addition, we look to areas outside the scope of early childhood music such as brain development, play research, and the areas of cognitive, language, physical, and emotional development among others. All of these sources continually inform Music Together's creative work on program content, varied applications of the program, and teacher training.
The Importance of Music in Early Childhood by Lili M. Levinowitz
Early Childhood Music Education in the New Millennium by Ken Guilmartin
Questions about Mixed Age? - Read this interview!
Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills by Alix Spiegel from NPR.org
Babies and Music
Infant Learning and Music by Lyn Ransom, D.M.A. from the Music Together Experts Blog, July 2014
Does Singing to your Baby Really Work? by Kimberly Sena Moore from Psychology Today's Blog "Your Musical Self", July 29, 2011
Is Music for Wooing, Mothering, Bonding - or Is It Just "Auditory Cheesecake"? by Carl Zimmer from Discover Magazine, December 2010
Music for the Very Young - Trenton, NJ from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Blog, July 2011


The project focuses on 1000 children who have dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out of school
Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries with around half its population living below the poverty line (less than $1.25 a day). Only one in three adults can read and write. 15% of the boys and 20% of girls at primary school age never enrol in school, and among those that do enrol more than 15% drop out, leaving more than one-third of all children in Ethiopia without even basic literacy and numeracy skills.
The project focuses on 1000 children of primary school age (6-12) who have dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out of school because of different reasons, mainly socio-economic problems. The aim of the project is to enrol all the 1000 children in school and to retain them in the school system enabling them to finish their primary education.
The project will train the teachers in the primary schools that the out-of-school children will attend. This training will also benefit the children already attending the schools. The parents of the out-of-school children will receive training in how to support their child’s education as well as child care, nutrition and family planning.


This is a bundle of my Visual Common Core Standards for Common Core for Kindergarten. This set includes the ELA and Math Standards for Common Core, the Next Generation Science Standards, and a set of Social Studies Standards. There are 4 files included in this set: The ELA Standards, the Math Standards, the Science Standards, and Social Studies Standards. There are 4 PDFs included, though they are packaged as a zip file due to the file size. These are intended for use in a Kindergarten classroom. These contain blackline images.
There are 108 ELA "I Can" Statements included in this pack. They cover 6 of the ELA Strands:
Reading Foundational Skills
Speaking and Listening
There are 51 Math Standards included in this bundle as well. They cover all of the Kindergarten Common Core Math Standards.
There are 73 Social Studies Standards. They cover: Economics, Government and Civics, Geography and Map Skills, Communities, and History. These are based off of the Kentucky Core Content Standards for Social Studies, but they could be used with most Social Studies standards.
There are 28 standards for the Next Generation Science Standards that cover the Kindergarten standards.
Each of the standards has a visual example of the standard, and a kid-friendly "I Can" Statement. The standard is listed at the bottom of the poster so it is easy for you to link the "I Can" Statement with the standards you have to teach.
These are 1 8 1/2x11 page for each standard. You could also print these as 2 to a page and use them during guided reading groups, guided math groups, literacy or math centers, etc... as a visual of the standard they are working on during that time.
These can also be purchased separately!
They are also available for First Grade!
Please visit my blog for more teaching ideas and information about my products! Growing Little Minds


ABC Order, Dictionary, Guide Words, Task Cards for a Center
This is a collection of 15 ABC Order worksheets that can be used for practice, homework, assessments, and reteaching. This is the order in which I use the worksheets to build upon each skill:
Finding words in a dictionary and listing their guide words-2 worksheets
Placing words in ABC order- 5 worksheets
Sorting words in ABC order to place on the correct guide word page -4 worksheets
Circling the word that fits between the guide words-4 worksheets
Task Cards and worksheet to use for a center
This is excellent to use throughout the school year!
Thank you for visiting my store!
Other reading products:
Fiction and Nonfiction Reading Response Printables
Bunnicula Unit Activities and Test
Common Core Reading Response Log for Fiction and Nonfiction
Secret Garden Unit
Reading Skills Interactive Review Game
Pink and Say Activities and Test
Cinderella Fairy Tale Unit
Reading Comprehension Strategies Anchor Charts, Notebook Cards, Practice Sheet
Text Evidence Slides, Examples, Practice
Parts of Speech Interactive Games
Book Reports that Motivate!
Are you looking for different products?
BTS (BOOST TEST SCORES) WRITING PROGRAMS FOR GRADES 1-8. ZERO PREP- ALL INCLUSIVE INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS
Social Studies Resources
Greek and Latin Resources
Novel and Book Resources
Holiday and Monthly Resource


By William A. Corsaro
What occurs whilst childrens in inventive, Reggio-like preschools visit a extra conventional basic college? during this booklet, William Corsaro and his Italian co-author, Luisa Molinari, inform an entire and critical tale concerning the lives of youngsters as they develop from younger preschoolers to preadolescents in Modena, Italy. The authors either absolutely discover and perform the wealthy, advanced historical past and improvement of the Italian early schooling approach. This compelling ethnographic examine:
* records how childrens in Italy are ready, or primed, for the transition from preschool to straightforward college.
* Examines how the transition pertains to educational and social improvement, together with information about the children’s institution and peer cultures ahead of, in the course of, and after the transition.
* contains interviews with mom and dad, lecturers, and youngsters, enticing anecdotes, and examples of children’s paintings and literacy tasks.
* indicates dramatically varied methods that faculties and groups can take to help children’s and households’ improvement and studying.
Read or Download I Compagni: Understanding Children's Transition from Preschool to Elementary School (Sociology of Education Series (New York, N.Y.).) PDF
Similar Elementary Education books
Every thing mom and dad have to support their young ones reach social reports the one finished social reports skill-building sequence to be had, the prepare! For Social reviews sequence equips proactive mom and dad with the instruments they should aid their kids strengthen the center talents required to accomplish at grade point in social studies-related matters.
NOTE: Used books, leases, and purchases made outdoors of Pearson If procuring or renting from businesses except Pearson, the entry codes for the improved Pearson eText will not be integrated, should be mistaken, or could be formerly redeemed. seek advice from the vendor ahead of finishing your buy.
Oracy is a topic at present present process exam, as a result of the emphasis positioned upon it by means of the nationwide Curriculum. With an emphasis on perform, yet embracing the key theoretical concerns concerned, this publication comprises various routines, reading the problems surrounding oracy in colleges. It describes the various ways that academics can inspire students to speak, utilizing photo books, media-based discussions and English as a moment language.
During this booklet the authors display how kid's constructing wisdom of the robust unifying principles of arithmetic can deepen their realizing of mathematics
Extra resources for I Compagni: Understanding Children's Transition from Preschool to Elementary School (Sociology of Education Series (New York, N.Y.).)


Teacher support for English
Hamilton has a range of additional reference and advice materials for English.
New Curriculum English Support
Hamilton Grammar Structured Scheme of Work
Older Spelling and Grammar Materials
Grammar for Writing
Support for Spelling
Homework support documents
Hamilton Education sells hard copy teaching resources that support Hamilton plans at very low cost. Group Readers, phonics books, number lines and 'Five Minute Fillers' can help you teach literacy and numeracy skills in your classroom.
Hamilton's Y2/3 English plans cover all of the statutory objectives of the National Curriculum for England for Year 2 and Lower Key Stage 2 objectives appropriate for Year 3. The Coverage Chart lays out where these are met across a two-year rolling programme (Set A & Set B). Medium and Long Term Plans summarise books used and grammar taught. Individual plans include an outcomes table.
For Hamilton's phonics programme and texts to use with children (Oral Stories and Rhymes) appropriate for this age range, see Year 2.
Children explore adventures into the imagination through the works of Satoshi Kitamura & Hiawyn Oram: Angry Arthur; In The Attic & Millie's Marvellous Hat. Children read and discuss stories and illustrations, write their own stories, research an illustrator and invent a marvellous hat. Grammar includes past and present perfect tenses; use of conjunctions and clauses. The unit ends in Kamishibai storytelling: a traditional Japanese entertainment where children can perform their writing to an audience.
Using Otto the Book Bear, The Library Lion and The Cat in the Kitchen children investigate stories with an element of fantasy. Use these texts and a visit to the local library to investigate plot elements and develop your own stories, involving dialogue. Adapt, edit and develop stories and look at common language features, such as alliteration.
Explore the books Report on Unicorns and Tell Me a Dragon and generate some fantastic descriptive vocabulary. Learn how to structure, plan and write non chronological reports about unicorns and dragons inventing your own amazing dragon.
During this sequence the children will learn all about recounts. They will read some stories of amazing animals including The Great Serum Race and Saluki Hound of the Bedouin and write their own recount from the perspective of one of the animals.
Using the very popular Please Mrs Butler poetry collection by Allan Ahlberg, childrenn will learn poems off by heart before writing their own poems based on the original. They will explore how using adjectives and adverbials can enhance their poem as well as how to give a really good performance to an audience.
Children read and enjoy a range of humorous poetry, collected in The Puffin Book of Fantastic First Poems. They learn and perform poems; investigate and discuss poem types and features; explore poetry through drama and write new versions. Grammar and punctuation include: expanded noun phrases, direct speech and sentence punctuation. The unit ends in the compilation of a class anthology of humorous poems, with introductions written by the children.
I don't know my password


By Amy Brennan
On July 27, 2017 #G2Great welcomes guest hosts Lindsey Moses and Meredith Ogden to talk about their book, “What are the Rest of my Kids Doing? Fostering Independence in the K-2 Reading Workshop. The title of their book is a question that is often raised when we start thinking about reading workshop and how we manage what happens after the minilesson and before the share. This is where the magic happens, because when students read independently they are growing as readers. Student independence is a critical piece of a successful reading workshop that must be supported by meaningful work that students are doing independently.
Small group instruction and conferring are essential components of reading workshop, with that in mind we have to ensure that students are engaged in independent work that is meaningful and supportive of literacy learning. In their book, Lindsey and Meredith shared the importance of not only establishing routines, structures, strategies and learning opportunities but also revisiting these in order to extend or deepen the experiences. In reading workshop, Lindsey and Meredith suggest working from a goal of “independence” from the first day and then continuing to build independence while revisiting structures and strategies to extend or deepen children’s experience with independent work.
In planning for meaningful independence during reading workshop Lindsey suggests that teachers look at and review every center, routine, worksheet if any and ask, “ What purpose does this serve in my students’ literacy development?” The answer to this question will help to shed light on how well the independent reading time is utilized. Purposeful Learning Experiences is the term that Lindsey and Meredith use to identify experiences that support literacy development and have real purpose for supporting independence. The chart below shows examples of different experiences from real classrooms and identifies what is a Purposeful Learning Experience and what is not a Purposeful Learning Experience.
During reading workshop it is critical that we ensure the experiences that students have during the independent work time is meaningful. Students must be engaged in reading, this is the time where they are practicing the skills and strategies they have learned or are still learning. If we were to fill this precious time with mindless worksheets or activities that do not have a positive impact on literacy learning we are just wasting time. These experiences fail to cognitively engage our students in the important work of reading and thinking. On the surface, it may appear that students are engaged in the classroom at the moment however when students are not engaged cognitively they will not sustain this engagement over the long run. We have to look honestly at everything we are asking students to do and ask ourselves the question that Lindsey poses, “ What purpose does this serve in my students’ literacy development?” The answers should help us to ensure that students are engaged in Purposeful Learning Experiences during independent reading time.
If you would like to learn and read more from Lindsey and Meredith check out the links below!
What Are the Rest of My Kids Doing? Fostering Independence in the K-2 Reading Workshop (Heinemann)
Lindsey’s website www.lindseymoses.weebly.com
Meridith’s website firstname.lastname@example.org


There are a few topics in art education that seem to pop up no matter what grade level you teach. Color theory is one of those. While you may love color theory, you may not love constantly coming up with new ways to teach it. On one hand, new and interesting ideas keep students engaged and keep you enthusiastic about teaching. On the other, it takes an immense amount of brainpower to continuously come up with new ways to teach the same concepts. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, and even a colorful rut can get boring!
One of the many reasons I enjoy teaching our Studio: Painting – Tempera & Acrylic course is that one of the assignments focuses specifically on color theory. In the assignment, course participants are asked to either create a piece of art, create an instructional tool, or create a game. The range of ideas developed and shared is always spectacular!
Today I’m excited to share a creative idea from course participant Megan LeSage, a Middle School Art Teacher in Brighton, Colorado. Megan decided to go with option one and create a piece of art. The way she saw it, the assignment allowed her to work through a potential lesson for her students while getting in that creation time all art teachers crave.
Megan decided to create a work of art with an advanced color scheme, using a complementary set of analogous colors: blue-violet, violet, red-violet and yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green.
The work is called “Invisible Threads” and is about how our lives are interconnected in unseen ways.
Isn’t it beautiful?
To start, here is Megan’s process board that she created for this assignment. Feel free to download it for inspiration then follow along with the steps below.
First, Megan took a photo of her mom’s hands to use as her reference. “I have often used hands as storytellers in my artwork,” explained Megan on her process board. Perhaps your students could start a color theory project with their own meaningful photos.
Megan then created a contour sketch using graphite from her reference photo. Starting a project with a contour sketch would be a great way to build in an extra layer of art room vocabulary.
Megan’s color scheme was inspired by Marc Chagall’s quote, “All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.” She set up her workspace and began painting. (Don’t you love the squeeze bottles she uses to store and dispense her tempera paint?)
It could be fun to have students choose a color scheme that was inspired by something else. Having them start with a favorite quote or song lyric could really help them connect to a project!
Megan first completed an underpainting in blue-violet, violet, red-violet, and some tints of those colors. You can see what that looked like on the left.
Then, Megan completed the painting with yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green, and some tints of those colors. The way she applied this top layer with lines of paint gives this painting an excitement that I love. The “invisible threads” remind me of electricity flowing between the two hands.
Perhaps your students could also do an underpainting and finishing touches in two separate color schemes. To simplify things for younger students, you might break it into warm and cool colors or primary and secondary colors.
I appreciate Megan allowing us to share her work outside of the AOE Studio: Painting – Tempera & Acrylic course. I knew the moment I saw this piece that it deserved a wider audience. Hopefully, it has sparked some new ideas for your classroom.
If you are looking to dig yourself out of a teaching rut and spend some time being creative with your own artwork, I hope you consider taking one of AOE’s Studio courses. Megan has taken more than one, and I know she will tell you that it is so worth it! You deserve setting aside time to be creative. Plus, you will come out refreshed with new ideas which will directly benefit your students!
Was there a part of Megan’s lesson that sparked an idea for your own lesson?
What part of color theory do you find yourself in a rut with the most?


Highlighting Strategies for Student Success
By Erin Brownfield
November 21, 2014
"A new study links a program that promotes “executive functions” – such as self-control, paying attention and planning – with academic improvements that persist beyond kindergarten."
Students in their first years of school have a lot of new ground to cover, from steps along the road to reading to beginning math concepts. But one of their most important tasks may be learning how to master themselves.
A new study from New York University researchers Clancy Blair and C. Cybele Raver links a kindergarten program that specifically promotes “executive functions” – such as self-control, paying attention and planning – with academic improvements that persist beyond kindergarten.
Authors of the study say that students in high-poverty schools were especially likely to benefit from learning self-regulation skills, suggesting that a focus on those skills in early elementary education “holds promise for closing the achievement gap.”
The study evaluated the impact of a kindergarten-based program called Tools of the Mind. The program is a set of classroom practices designed to help young children master higher-level cognitive skills while also learning literacy, math and science aligned with the Common Core standards.
Tools of the Mind emphasizes classroom practices such as setting goals, working with learning partners, movement games and using dramatic play that is tied to literature and stories.
The two-year study, which compared children in a traditional kindergarten program to students in a Tools of the Mind program, involved 759 children in 29 Massachusetts schools.
Students in the Tools of the Mind program were better able to sustain attention despite distractions, had better working memory and were more engaged than those students in traditional kindergarten classes. In addition, the students in Tools of the Mind had greater improvements in math, reading and vocabulary when compared to the control group.
The study authors emphasize that the program can be put in place without costly resources and support beyond professional development for teachers. That, they suggest, may make the approach especially valuable for schools in high-poverty areas.


ABSTRACT: This paper provides a review of the literature from 2009 to 2014 on student use of technology in early childhood education. Previous efforts to synthesize the literature are somewhat dated, non-specific about age range, and focus almost exclusively on literacy. Thirty peer-reviewed articles from 11 countries, selected from a comprehensive search of the literature, were organized under five main categories: literacy, engagement, social interactions, mathematics, and miscellaneous topics. The overall effect size, based on only 12 studies and 33 measures was moderately high (d= 0.71, SD=0.60). Considerable qualitative and quantitative evidence indicated that technology had a significant impact on literacy development. Fewer studies, mostly qualitative in design and small in sample size, reported that technology had a positive impact on engagement, social interactions, and mathematics skills. A handful of studies provided qualitative evidence that technology had a positive impact on sequencing, visual perception, creative thinking, and fine motor capability. Methodological concerns included limited sample sizes and descriptions, not documenting the consistency and accuracy data of collection tools, the extent of adult intervention, and the limited range of technology tools used.


“It’s 2031, and we are renewing…”
Last week, Teach the Future to introduced a new game called IMAGINE designed to get kids thinking about foresight and the future. We joined The Association of Professional Futurists’ (APF) 12-hour Futures Festival on Friday, September 16, and showed them how it works! They were very excited, and I want to share our experience.
The Festival was an online gathering using Adobe Connect and provided a forum for futurists from around the world to present tools and ideas as well as various projects they are working on. We thought it was a perfect opportunity to test our game with people who understand what futures thinking is all about.
IMAGINE is a card game that Teach the Future designed to help young people create future scenarios grounded in observable change and heightened by imagination. Worth noting is that this game is just one piece of a larger curriculum that Teach the Future is creating to make futures thinking more accessible and fun for both teachers and students (more news on that soon!).
Our experience teaching the future to young people proves that they often have the foundational skills needed to create strong scenarios. They are comfortable spotting trends and signals of change as well as creating wildly imaginative future stories.
But we’ve also found that weaving those two ideas together in one scenario is often a challenge for them.
For the APF event, we created a web version of the game (you can find it here with instructions: teachthefuture.org/imagine) and ran a demo with the group, hoping that we could learn more about the game and receive insight and perspective from experts.
During the demo, we asked participants to create “fill in the blanks” scenarios using inputs from a set of “spinning wheels” that contained various options. They then combined those with their own ideas, using their imagination and understanding of change.
Here are two scenarios from people who attended our session:
It’s 2031, and we are renewing. Our ocean is thriving and our hope is being restored. Back in 2016, we saw growing concern about trash and plastics, and because of that, new technologies began to emerge. Since then, more floating plastic has been removed from our major oceans.
It’s 2031, and we are renewing. Our ocean is out of pH balance and our hope is that we can rebalance its pH. Back in 2016, we saw acidification of the ocean. Because of that, oceanic food supply was threatened. Since then, new technology has created passive alkalinities, which, when deployed in acidic hot spots, will help transform it and renew a pH which supports life.
You will notice a few similarities in these scenarios. We gave participants some structure and inputs to work with, and then they could take it in any direction they wanted. In a classroom or workshop setting, the game would be paired with some research, it would be played for several rounds, and followed up with analysis to identify insights and next steps.
What We Learned
Though the medium for our first dry run with the game was virtual and we are planning to use cards in the classroom, we learned a lot. Plus, we received some very positive feedback from people who work both with students and with adults. They felt that the game would be a great tool for scaffolding scenario creation. Since that was our objective when designing IMAGINE, that was great to hear.
We’ll continue to finesse how we introduce players to the game and how to stage it so it flows well and delivers valuable outputs. Instead of giving the players everything at once, we may need to take a more step-by-step approach. Please play the game online, we’d love to hear your thoughts!
Later this week, we’re playing the game with students in person at Travis High School in Sugar Land TX, so we’ll have more insight to share. Soon we will have the cards downloadable for anyone to play, and we hope to unveil the whole curriculum early next year.
Stay tuned! And thanks for your support. Please share any comments/suggestions/feedback in the Comments section below.