Each and every class provides its students with a balanced curriculum. While we recognise that literacy and numeracy skills are paramount, we also believe that children need to receive a range of learning experiences that enrich and broaden their understanding about the world that we live in.
Our teachers strive to plan and teach units of learning that have strong connections between all curriculum areas. For example, if a class is learning about life cycles, the teacher may integrate other curriculum areas in ways such as:
- Dance and Drama: Using the language of dance and drama to act out various life cycles.
- Science: Biology, looking at the different life cycles of a range of species.
- Literacy: Writing a successful explanation. Creating a labelled diagram.
- Literacy: Reading about a wide range of animals and their life cycles.
- Numeracy: Looking at time eg days, months and years.
- Inquiry: Investigating what may influence an animal’s life cycle.
- Tikanga Maori: Learning animal names in Te Reo Maori. Learning how different animals are valued within Maori culture.
- Critical thinking: Comparing the life cycle between two or more animals.
- Visual arts: Constructing models of animals and their life cycles.


Welcome to the March 2015 edition of the Transum Mathematics Newsletter. This month the focus is on probability and the puzzle for this month is one that all Maths teachers will probably (?) know the answer to. What is the minimum number of pupils there needs to be in a class such that the probability of two or more of them having the same birthday is greater than a half? If you don’t know have a guess (make an estimate).
The answer is at the end of this newsletter but for now let’s look at what was new or updated on the Transum website last month.
The copyright holders of the puzzles Suko and Sujiko granted Transum permission to create versions of the puzzles online. The Transum version allows the user to have up to 5 clues to help find the solution. This allows the puzzles to be used with classes of different abilities as the teacher can decide just how difficult each puzzle should be.
Beat the Clock is great fun no matter how good your numeracy skills are. Race to answer the mental arithmetic questions as a curtain slowly lowers concealing the questions on the screen. There are nine levels of difficulty but you can make the challenge easier by choosing to only answer the questions in the left column.
Assuming your school does not have a policy of using traditional playing cards in the classroom you’ll find they are a versatile resource for mathematical activities. Visit the new Playing Card Maths section of the website to see all the ideas that have been gathered together so far. Please get in tough if you have any other suggestions. If you are a one-to-one Maths Tutor you may want to always have a pack of cards in your bag as a plan ‘B’ just in case the other activities you have planned for the tutorial go horribly wrong.
If you are interested in times table skills I’m sure you are aware of one of the most popular Transum activities called TablesMaster. Now when you claim your trophy for completing an exercise you have the option to view your very own ‘reverse bar chart’, comparing your trophy winning times for each of the times tables. It has proved to be a great motivator for pupils working on their times tables.
Other less newsworthy activities have been added to the site and many updated but you’ll probably come across those when you browse the topic index.
Probability is a unique topic in the school mathematics syllabus. As well as learning the techniques, formulas and procedures pupils should develop a ‘feel’ for what probability means. Most adults have a limited understanding of the concept and would think that if they had tossed a coin nine times and it had landed heads each time that the probability of the tenth toss landing tails is more likely as it hasn’t happened for so long! So does the coin have a memory? Does it know that if it has landed heads many times that it should be time to give tails a chance? No of course not. The probability is still 50% (unless the coin is biased in some way).
There are some nice examples of probability in the real world I have just been listening to on the excellent podcast called ‘No Such Thing As A Fish’. The QI Elves tell of how Spotify changed its random play list because people didn’t think it really was random enough! You can hear that excerpt as part of the Transum Podcast for this month.
The surprising answer to this month's question is that there need only be 23 pupils for the probability of two or more of them to have the same birthday to be greater than a half! The reason is well documented on the web and in particular in an article called ‘The Birthday Problem’ on Wikipedia. If you’d like to try to prove it yourself you may want to consider the question of the birthdays not being on the same day and subtract your result from one. Good Luck.
ps 3.14% of Sailors are PI rates!
Do you have any comments? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make this free resource even more useful for those learning Mathematics anywhere in the world. Click here to enter your comments.


- May 8, 2019
- Posted by: Archana
- Category: Article
Beginning schools are a great, evidence-based approach to early childhood learning and education. Early childhood is one of the most important stages in an individual’s life when it comes to physical, emotional, social and intellectual development. The importance of beginnings school: Where love for learning begins From birth to age six, the phase is very crucial where physical and mental growth at an astounding rate. The importance of beginnings school: Where love for learning begins is the time when a child needs personal attention to come out as the best product. Education starts from the same day when a child takes birth and it will get a new level when he gets admission in a beginnings school, playgroups, and kindergarten. At this stage, a child needs a positive learning environment that helps them in their overall growth and development.
Toddler phase of life
In the first three years, parents have a great influence on a child’s learning and education. Parents are just like the role models of their children’s life, the growth and the overall development of the kids in this age effect by what their parents do. If a child grows in a negative environment it can bring negative results on them.
At first, toddlers make to recognize different objects. With the help of books, they pick up vocabulary soon. The first few words that a toddler learns is the name of familiar persons and objects around them. At this stage, speech development is enhanced in a child that is a lifelong education. With the help of interaction and books, a child does not only become active but also the social skills of a child get enhanced. It allows children to express what they want. It is just a transforming age of a child that can bring lots of positive changes in his/her growth and development.
Let us discuss how you can optimize your child’s first crucial phase of life to come out with the best. Have a look at the advantages offered by beginning schools for a child.
Benefits of beginnings school
In beginnings school, there are rooms full of kid’s toys. The kid can play with these toys as they wish. They are not forced to do any particular thing. While playing, supervisors make them learn a lot of things like when they choose to play with a train then teachers sing songs on the train and make them learn actions. Kids do not only enjoy this playing time but as well as it is very valuable to them for learning.
This helps them in learning lots of new things. They will become used to stay away from their home for a couple of hours and not just that, a school makes them having enhanced social skills. The importance of beginnings school: Where love for learning begins They will become talkative and will interact more socially.
Reduces separation anxiety
Beginning schools prepare children for formal schools. They get used to staying away from their mothers, family and to their homes for a couple of day hours. It’s always traumatic for the child to go to school and especially their first day of school. At their first day of school in the age of three to four clinging to their parents is the common sight in the schools. It is because they have to leave their warm cocoon that is home to enter this strange world. A pre-school prepares your child for formal school as well as learn lots of things before entering formal schools. So, The importance of beginnings school: Where love for learning begins
Learning and education
Along with playing in a safe environment, your child will learn a lot of things that they can’t learn at home. However, parents offer their plenty of time to their children to make them learn lots of things, showering them toys to play and looking after the basic needs o their child. But when it comes to learning and education, a school can do better.
In schools, their play is guided that makes them learn things while enjoying the play. Here, a kid will learn to recognize their own possession like soon they will learn to identify their own pencil, bag, lunch books, and all other things. The importance of beginnings school: Where love for learning begins. He/she learns to fold a napkin, opening his/her school bag and so many other things. This behaviour is like a great achievement for a toddler. Here you know about Tips for Educational blogging in my other post.
This is how a beginnings school can influence your child’s life. It is just the first step to prepare your child for the world.


A vocalist needs to have full command on Swaras before he sings any form of music. This course is designed to develop the ability to develop command over the notes. It also focuses on swarochchar and swar-lagao according to the raga. Training for voice development and usage of gamak, voice modulations, etc. are also part of this course.
Indian classical music is essentially called Raga Sangeet. This course is designed to develop a student as a performing artist in the Khayal genre. Various ragas will be taught as per the repertoire of gharanas, specialising in each aspect (anga) of its development, such as, aalap, bol-aalap, taan, bol-taan, laykari, bol-baant, sargam, etc. It also consists of training of song forms other than khayal, such as Thumri, Tappa, Tarana, Hori, Natyageet, etc.
Music theory will give an in-depth idea of concepts and terminologies in the classical music. It consists of courses such as Gandharva Veda, research methodology, interdisciplinary studies, music education, cultural musicology etc. It gives a firm foundation for competitive exams like NET. Applied Theory focuses on writing notations and laykaris to perfect the practical skills which are required in the field.
As human beings march in their journey towards progress, through newer developments, they need to be guided by a core set of ideals and principles of living. In today’s context, these paradigms of living stem from recent ideas originating from the western world. While we have been making progress, there is also a wide-spread understanding that for every new solution and idea that we discover, newer challenges and problems arise out of them. This potentially raises the need to look for alternative paradigms for the emerging world order.
Indic Knowledge Systems (IKS) can potentially offer ideas for developing these. Knowledge of IKS is the first step in this process. Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth addresses this requirement through a foundation course. IKS constitutes a vast majority of literature spanning across multiple perspectives. This includes ideas on fundamental premises related to one’s living as laid out in the Vedas, components of knowledge that help us develop a correct understanding of Vedic literature, Puraṇas, Darsaṇas, Smṛtis, Upa Vedas and many more. This is typically referred to as Caturdasa-vidyasthanam.
Aimed at diversifying the knowledge of students, electives such as Introduction to Carnatic Music, Music Production and Arrangement, Music Education etc. may be offered to empower students with a holistic approach to music.
A student should complete all the core and foundational courses, along with the chosen minor course(s). In the last semester, students will be required to give a public performance as part of the Mega Project.


Overview of the Visual and Performing Arts Curriculum
The JCPS Visual and Performing Arts curriculum is based on the Kentucky Academic Standards for Arts (National Core Arts Standards). The standards incorporate the four arts disciplines:
- Visual Arts
Schools are urged to provide their students with rigorous arts programs that emphasize creating, presenting/performing, responding, and connecting to the arts.
At all grade levels, students should have the opportunity to learn about the arts in the context of creating and presenting/performing. As students create and present/perform, they learn that the arts are basic to human communication and that they can use the arts to communicate specific meaning through their choices in the use of various arts elements and principles of design.
- Creating involves conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work.
- Presenting for visual arts students involves interpreting and sharing artistic work. Performing is limited to the performing arts of dance, music, and theatre. Performing involves realizing artistic ideas and work through interpretation and presentation. For dance, music, and theatre students, performing addresses previously created works by a choreographer, composer, or playwright, as well as original, student-created works.
- Responding to the arts involves understanding and evaluating how the arts convey meaning. The arts are a tool for communication and are capable of delivering meaning through literal and emotional content. Responding to the emotional content of artworks involves actually feeling the emotion(s) set forth by the creator. Responding can also involve intellectual analysis of works of art in regard to their design, effectiveness and quality.
- Connecting to the arts involves relating artistic ideas and work with personal meaning and external context.
The visual and performing arts programs in the elementary grades center on an exploration of the arts disciplines: dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. Emphasis should be placed on exposing students to a variety of arts through active experiences in all four arts disciplines. This exploration includes a beginning of literacy development in the arts content areas, simple analysis and critique of the arts, and active creating and presenting/performing in the arts.
The visual and performing arts programs at the middle school level should center on establishing grounding in the arts so that students are able to communicate at a basic level in each of the arts disciplines: dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. Emphasis should be placed on exposing students to a variety of arts through active experiences in all four arts disciplines. Students may have already begun to, or at this level choose to focus on one arts discipline for more in-depth study. This will help students to prepare should they choose specialization in one arts discipline at the high school level. Grounding in the arts involves literacy development in the four arts content areas, analysis and critique of the arts, and active creating and presenting/performing in the arts.
At the high school level, students may choose to specialize in one or more arts disciplines. Specialization will enable students to study an arts discipline in an in-depth manner and work toward achieving proficiency and mastery in creating, presenting/performing, responding, and connecting to their chosen arts discipline. Students who specialize in an arts discipline will participate in performance-based arts courses designed to develop skills and understanding that will enable students to use that arts discipline as a high level communication tool. This is accomplished through the development of creativity and production or performance skills. Performance-based courses also connect the arts with their historical and cultural contexts as students study exemplary works and learn the impact of time, place and personality on the arts. In addition, these courses promote an understanding of the interrelationships among the arts disciplines and connections with other academic content areas.
Students choosing not to specialize in an arts discipline in high school should move beyond the grounding in the arts achieved at the middle school level toward proficiency in the arts. Emphasis for these students should be placed on exposing students to a variety of arts through active experiences in all four arts disciplines, and developing further understanding and appreciation of the historical and cultural significance of dance, music, theatre, and visual arts. A higher emphasis on the process of responding to the arts is a natural outcome of this more general approach to arts education, however creating and presenting/performing the arts remain as critical processes in the general education of all students and promote deep understanding and appreciation of the arts.


By Nancy File, Jennifer J. Mueller, Debora Basler Wisneski
Curriculum in Early formative years schooling: Reexamined, Rediscovered, Renewed presents a serious exam of the assets, goals, and contours of early formative years curricula. offering a theoretical and philosophical origin for interpreting instructing and studying, this booklet will galvanize dialogue and research between all readers. How has thought been used to appreciate, increase, and critique curriculum? Whose views are dominant and whose are overlooked? How is variety addressed? What values are specific and implicit?
The booklet first contextualizes the old and study base of early youth curriculum, after which turns to discussions of varied faculties of thought and philosophy that experience served to help curriculum improvement in early adolescence schooling. An exam of present curriculum frameworks is on the market, either from the U.S. and out of the country, together with dialogue of the undertaking method, inventive Curriculum, Te Whāriki, and Reggio Emilia. ultimately, the e-book closes with chapters that amplify the subject to curriculum-being-enacted via play and that summarize key matters whereas declaring destiny instructions for the sector. providing a vast beginning for studying curriculum in early adolescence, readers will emerge with a much better realizing of the way theories and philosophies intersect with curriculum development.
Read Online or Download Curriculum in Early Childhood Education: Re-examined, Rediscovered, Renewed PDF
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Convey technology to existence with those thirteen action-packed tales approximately well-known scientists. scholars will study uncomplicated abilities and tactics of technology whereas studying approximately such humans as Shirley Jackson, Charles Goodyear, and James Wright. The traditionally actual debts hide assorted facets of actual, organic, and earth sciences.
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Extra info for Curriculum in Early Childhood Education: Re-examined, Rediscovered, Renewed
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Copple, C. & Bredekamp, S. (2009). ). Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children. , et al. (2010). How do pre-kindergarteners spend their time? Gender, ethnicity, and income as predictors of experiences in pre-kindergarten classrooms. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 25, 177–93. Gallas, K. (1995). Talking their way into science: Hearing children’s questions and theories, responding with curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.
Next, in Chapter 5, we present work done from the ﬁeld of curriculum studies and more recent work by curriculum theorists. Jennifer Mueller explores a brief history of this ﬁeld, which has also more recently included an emphasis on the political nature of curriculum. The frame she utilizes is to understand curriculum as a process rather than a product, with theory and practice being mutually constitutive. Finally, Mueller discusses more explicit connections between curriculum studies and early childhood via the work of the reconceptualists and as developed by collaborative work between theorists and teachers.
In the ﬁrst decade of the millennium, preschool curriculum eﬀectiveness was the purpose of the Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research (PCER) initiative. Children’s outcomes were examined across 14 preschool curricula in comparison to local classrooms implementing practice as usual for samples of, predominantly, children living in poverty. Overall, there were few ﬁndings that demonstrated the intervention curricula resulted in signiﬁcantly diﬀerent academic outcomes at either preschool or end-of-kindergarten.


Thanks to the United Way of Northern Arizona, the Flagstaff Y Preschool has received additional funds for Early Literacy Enrichment. These grants are provided to enhance children’s literacy through activities in the focus areas of professional development and/or curriculum development.
The Y preschool teachers will develop language and literacy centers, exposing students to a variety of developmental tools. Looking to spark an interest in language and reading, the additional tools will support not only students, but provide resources for staff and parents. Staff will educate parents about the importance of early literacy development and offer resources to incorporate language activities at home.
Additional materials purchased with the grant will assist staff in documenting letter knowledge, storytelling, vocabulary development and phonological awareness. Staff will highlight a child’s grown in a variety of areas utilizing student portfolios. This information will help improve the parents’ understanding of language and literacy development.
For more information about the Flagstaff YMCA preschool, contact us today.


Menlo Park, CA, August 24, 2010 --(PR.com
)-- Art in Action, a leading nonprofit K-12 art education organization, today announced the completion of its comprehensive, masterpiece-based online visual art program with a series of lessons covering Art and The American Experience. The lessons are aimed at educating students in middle and high school and supplement the recently introduced Renaissance Art and Ancient Art lessons. The 12 new online art lessons bring the total number of Art in Action lessons available online to 108 and completes a project of several years’ duration. View a lesson summary at http://www.artinaction.org/lessongroup/lessons/id/13.
"We are pleased to add Art and The American Experience to our comprehensive online art education program,” says Judy Sleeth, Executive Director of Art in Action. “This represents the completion of our ambitious project of making our entire curriculum available both in print and online versions. We believe that our 108 online lessons and their use of multimedia technology are at the cutting edge of art education."
The online lessons feature animated discussions of the masterpieces; video demonstrations of art techniques; wikis for sharing tips and ideas; links to relevant websites, books, and music; spoken instructions; and much more. View a sample lesson at http://www.artinaction.org/lesson/show/id/12.
In the Art and The American Experience lessons, students encounter America through the eyes of realistic artists such as George Caleb Bingham, Dorothea Lange, Grant Wood, and Thomas Hart Benton, as well as in the work of modern artists Roy Lichtenstein and Frank Stella. Students are exposed to a variety of art genres from realistic landscapes and historical portraits to reflections of conceptual psychological ideas and social commentary. Projects include a mixed media collage based on Robert Rauschenberg's combines, watercolor houses inspired by Edward Hopper, an etched door and foil-sculpted figure modeled after a piece by George Segal, and a mixed-media narrative influenced by living artist Flo Oy Wong’s Baby Jack series.
The Art in Action curriculum is consistently praised for empowering teachers and parents to teach art, by providing detailed, easy-to-follow directions for guiding successful discussions and projects. The lessons appeal to many different learning styles, and they enhance student creativity and innovative thinking. The curriculum meets national and state academic standards and integrates with language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. It has received a 99.6% user satisfaction rating in recent user surveys.
The Art in Action visual arts program inspires K-12 students to get excited about learning when they meet the Great Masters and create their own masterpieces. The program supports creativity and develops problem solving and critical thinking skills. Art in Action was founded in 1982 and is a nonprofit organization, which fosters the educational development and creativity of children across America through innovative visual arts programs and communities. More information at www.artinaction.org.


By Doris Bergen
With the variety of babies and little toddlers in workforce care expanding, this paintings goals to supply a well timed contribution to early adolescence studying practises. increasing at the thought of curriculum as a dynamic, responsive event instead of a inflexible studying constitution, the authors pressure the necessity for schooling in addition to nurturing for terribly children. They concentrate on play because the foundation for curriculum and convey how infant/toddler "educarers" can mix idea and perform making an allowance for either the actual and social environments. via case descriptions of tangible little ones, this quantity discusses tips to accommodate kids with varied improvement degrees, backgrounds, personalities, and specific wishes. ultimately, the authors discover how one can increase curriculum caliber.
Read or Download Educating and Caring for Very Young Children: The Infant/Toddler Curriculum (Early Childhood Education, 76) PDF
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Extra info for Educating and Caring for Very Young Children: The Infant/Toddler Curriculum (Early Childhood Education, 76)


Kindergarten is optional in South Korea and most parents prefer to keep their little ones at home as long as possible. However, at age 6 their child must move on to 6 years compulsory chodeung-hakgyo
elementary education. There they learn subjects like English, Fine Arts, Korean, Maths, Moral Education, Music, Physical Education, Practical Arts, Science and Social Studies, usually all presented by a single teacher. Some parents send their children to private hagwon
schools after hours, where English may be better taught.
Places in secondary schools are awarded by lottery and everybody gets an equal chance. The transition to 3 years of middle school can be difficult because studies are taken far more seriously. Discipline is stricter too with uniforms, haircuts and punctuality strictly enforced. This time though, specialist teachers move between classrooms teaching core subjects, including English, Korean, Maths, as well Social Science and Pure Science. Optional programs include Art, Ethics, History, Home Economics, Music, Physical Education, Technology, and Hanja
The final 3 years of school education take place at high schools. These may specialize according to subjects taught (e.g. Science versus Languages), or present more general academic curriculae. Some are state owned and some are privately run. The quality of their results is legendary. Standards are high.
Approximately 25% of middle school graduates prefer to go on to vocational schools where they are taught skills in 5 fields including Agriculture, Commerce, Fishery, Home Economics and Technology. The 1st of 3 grades follows a common program, where after students specialize.
The greater majority of Korean high school students write a college scholastic ability test with a view to studying further. Standards are high and some students start preparing as early as in kindergarten years. The 5 sections of the test investigate knowledge of English, Korean and Maths, and also elective subjects such as Social Sciences, Physical Sciences and the Humanities.
At university, students encounter unfamiliar standards of excellence and whole families become involved in helping them to pass. At examination times, businesses even open for shorter hours in recognition of this fact. A student who passes though, has a qualification that meets top international standards, and of which he or she may be justifiably proud. Korea - living proof of the power of a knowledge-based economy.


Connecting Kids with Learning Disabilities to the Arts
(I'm very pleased to make an introduction of my guest blogger, Lilian Brooks. This content is very interesting, I'm inviting you, my reader, to enjoy it. Those of you, who are concerned about this field, I hope this blog post would help you and direct you.)
School is a tough place for children with learning disabilities. When children struggle to learn in traditional classroom settings, they’re often left feeling deficient and inferior to their peers. But the truth is, kids with learning disabilities can be exceptionally bright. However, tapping that brilliance requires a different approach.
Children with difficulties in language, numbers, and attention rarely perform well in classrooms where they’re expected to sit still, read, and listen. Because the arts incorporate different learning styles, including kinesthetic, auditory, and visual learning, it’s one setting where children with learning differences can apply their strengths. Living in Dialogue explains it this way: “The arts can level the playing field, because children with difficulties in academic subjects might excel at drawing, painting, acting or dancing and singing.”
This leveling of the playing field builds confidence and self-esteem in children with learning disabilities and improves aptitude in the classroom. Through the arts, kids with learning differences can discover the modes of learning that resonate with them and apply that knowledge during academic lessons to facilitate learning and retention.
Getting kids with learning disabilities engaged in the arts requires more than sitting them down with a paintbrush and a watercolor set. Teachers and parents should provide direct instruction and break processes down into small steps. Where possible, provide visual examples and modeling rather than relying on written or verbal instruction alone. Allow children to move around; kids with ADD/ADHD may benefit from moving their bodies while learning.
The type of art matters, too. While some children find their passion in drawing and painting, others are drawn to singing, dancing, or acting. The best way to discover which art forms capture a child’s attention is to experiment. Here are four types of art to try with learning - disabled children.
Visual Arts The impulsivity of children with ADD/ADHD may drive teachers crazy in the classroom, but as Scientific American explains, that same trait can be a gift in the visual arts. While other pupils stick to imitating provided examples, children with a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD are more likely to act on the creative twists that pop into their mind. That leads to creative, unique works of art that build a child’s confidence. After modeling techniques and providing visual examples, teachers can let students’ creativity flow.
Textile Arts For strong kinesthetic learners, textile arts and sewing may be a good fit. Textile arts are more than crafts and homemaking; they’re valuable tools for teaching geometry and promoting problem solving and complex thinking. Instructors should start with the basics of using sewing machines before moving onto sewing techniques and introductory sewing projects.
Music Musical training has long been linked to improved executive function and verbal ability. Because these are areas where children with learning disabilities tend to struggle, music education is a wonderful complement to classroom learning. However, children with learning disabilities may be unable to read music. Using repetition to teach by ear and color to highlight concepts and indicate phrase changes compensates for reading difficulties.
Theater For children who love to move, consider theater. Between community theater and school theater programs, there are many opportunities for children to get involved in acting. Acting out scripts is an excellent way to improve a child’s reading fluency, comprehension, and ability to collaborate with others.
When it comes to teaching children with learning disabilities, it’s important to focus on strengths, not weaknesses. By allowing for a diversity of learning styles and creative expression, the arts do just that. Give your learning-disabled child opportunities to explore the arts and you may unleash a wellspring of attention, curiosity, and passion that you didn’t know existed.
Image via Unsplash


Bear cubs are known for their joyful tumbling about. They climb trees, wrestle each other, and run around with seemingly endless energy. May the wearer of these earrings be blessed with such exuberance!
Most bears are masterful climbers, with the exception of polar bears. Polar bear cubs have been observed climbing trees, but adult polar bears are not physically built for it and have little motivation to do so. Black bears are skilled climbers and will climb trees to pursue prey, avoid becoming prey, or even to hibernate in a hollow tree! Grizzly bears will climb trees with proper motivation but are not as adept as black bears.
These earrings celebrate the playful side of bears. Bear cubs are known for their rambunctious play and are a joy to watch. The abundant play among bear cubs is believed to aid in motor skill development, social skills, to strengthen social bonds, and practice every days skills like hunting.
The material for these bears is fossilized mammoth ivory, which is tens of thousands of years old. It has lain buried in the permafrost for thousands of years until brought to light by erosion. Fossilized mammoth ivory is a finite material and prized for its soft cream color that makes it ideal for fine heirloom jewelry.


What is SoTL?
This is the first of a series of posts that will introduce and explore different methods of pedagogical research. Our goal is to encourage more art historians to approach their teaching practice as a topic for scholarly investigation. Over the next few months, members of AHPP’s Advisory Board and others will contribute their perspective and share expertise in different methodologies used in the scholarship of teaching and learning, art education, and museum education research.
AHTR’s 2015 survey found that many art historians are unfamiliar with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This relative new area of research originated in the 1990s, growing out of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the recognition, elegantly expressed in Ernest Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990), that teaching is an essential part of scholarly activity. (Click here for more about the history of SoTL.)
In contrast to much educational research that is conducted at the K-12 level, SoTL focuses on teaching and learning in higher education. Also, because SoTL researchers come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, they employ a broader range of research methodologies than those typical in the learning sciences. For many, this means adapting the methods used in one’s own discipline to examine the impact of their teaching on student learning in the classroom. Below are some resources that provide a good introduction to the history of SoTL, its practice, and suggestions for ways to connect with and share your research with others interested in teaching and learning. You might also contact your university’s teaching center to learn about local support for SoTL projects on campus.
A good place to start is this 12 minute video from a series on SoTL produced by the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) and Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning in conjunction with the 2013 ISSOTL Conference in Raleigh, NC. The series provides a good general overview of SoTL practices, including examples of research projects and recommended readings for those wanting to learn more.
Other recommended sources include:
The SoTL Advocate, a blog maintained by the office of the Cross Chair in SoTL at Illinois State University–take a look at this recent post “Brushing Up on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” for a bibliography for general “How-to” books for conducting SoTL research.
Teaching & Learning Inquiry (open access journal published by ISSOTL)
Know of another great SoTL resource and don’t see it here? Please add it in the comments below or get in touch (info@arthisotryPP.org) with your suggestions.


The skills work in pairs. Books not only help you learn a new language. Most languages have thousands of books available to download online — many of them free.
Comment You need to keep working on your communication skills. You are not expressing yourself clearly and you may not be receiving messages correctly, either.
The good news is that, by paying close attention to the way in which you communicate, you can improve your effectiveness at work and enjoy better working relationships with your colleagues!
The rest of this article will direct you to some great tools for improving your communication skills. Read below to start. Take the time to think about your approach to communication, and focus on receiving messages effectively, as much as sending them. This will help to improve your ability to communicate.
You understand your role as a communicator, both when you send messages and when you receive them. You anticipate problems, and you choose the right channel to communicate. People respect you for your ability to communicate clearly and they appreciate your listening skills.
Read below for more. Detailed Interpretation Whenever you communicate with someone else, you each follow the steps of the Communication Process see figure 1, below. The Communication Process During this process, the person who is the source of the communication encodes it into a message, and transmits it through a channel.
The receiver decodes the message, and, in one way or another, feeds back his or her understanding or a lack of understanding to the source.
By understanding the steps in the process, you can become more aware of your role in it, recognize what you need to do to communicate effectively, anticipate problems before they happen, and improve your overall ability to communicate effectively.
The sections below help you do this, and improve the way that you communicate at each stage of the process. The Source — Planning Your Message Questions 2, 11 Your score is 0 out of 0 Before you start communicating, take a moment to figure out what you want to say, and why.
Don't waste time conveying information that isn't necessary — and don't waste the listener or reader's time either. Too often, people just keep talking or writing because they think that by saying more they'll surely cover all the points.
Often, however, all they do is confuse the people that they're talking to.Listening and reading are the receptive skills because learners do not need to produce language, they receive and understand it.
These skills are sometimes known as passive skills. The productive skills are speaking and writing because learners are applying these skills in a need to produce language. Aug 14, · Reading Writing Listening Speaking- The Four Necessities in Language This short essay was written as an article for my students' English Corner and it is not at all considered as an in-depth analysis of the four language skills.
The Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening Tasks Important for Academic Success at the Undergraduate and Graduate Levels Michael Rosenfeld Susan Leung. The four skills of language (also known as the four skills of language learning) are a set of four capabilities that allow an individual to comprehend and produce spoken language for proper and effective interpersonal communication..
These skills are Listening, Speaking, Reading, and ashio-midori.com the context of first-language acquisition, the four skills are most often acquired in the order of. Reading, writing, speaking and listening – the four foundational skills of language learning.
You can’t build a house without a strong foundation (well, that’s if you want the house to . Reading, writing, speaking and listening. Improve each of these basic language skills a little every day, and you’ll learn a new language.


MUE 512 Overview
This course focuses on the relationship between language and literacy development. Students will learn how to plan and provide instruction in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Additionally, course participants will learn how to assess student learning and how assessment practices should be modified for students who receive general education services as well as for those students who have been identified with special education needs and language differences. A variety of contexts to facilitate the development of language and literacy will be explored. Modifications of content for students with learning disabilities and for students with language differences to make progress in the general curriculum will be explored.
- 4.00 Credits


Digital literacies for disciplinary learning explores intersections of digital and disciplinary literacies across learning contexts such as community makerspaces and schools and examines learning across disciplines including the arts, engineering, science, social studies, language arts, and math. Columns will address work with both youth and adults, both in school and out of school. Digital enhancements will encourage interactivity with readers and will provoke questions, comments, and connections.
The ITEST program has enabled creativity, experimentation, and cultural responsiveness in STEM education and workforce development and broadened participation in STEM initiatives to Native American communities, underresourced urban communities, girls, and populations underrepresented in STEM fields. By approaching research and evaluation with flexibility and resourcefulness, the authors provide empirical evidence for the value of innovative approaches to STEM education that promote STEM interest and career-related outcomes and that build the foundational skills of the scientific and engineering workforce of the future.
Access to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields serves as a key entry point to economic mobility and civic enfranchisement. Such access must take seriously the intellectual power of the knowledge and practices of non-dominant youth. In our case, this has meant to shift epistemic authority in mathematics from academic institutions to young people themselves.


A unique and advanced curriculum developed by Canadian pedagogs Dorothy and Sharon Jones with Shin’ichi Suzuki, Suzuki Early Childhood Education is a weekly group music class designed for children age 0 – 3 and up to age 4. Little Music teachers have received training directly with Ms. Jones, and are very proud to lead this special first-music-learning experience in Toronto.
These classes with a maximum of 7 children per group (and their grown-up!) offer an interactive opportunity to play instruments, sing, learn rhythm, and elementary rudiments of music education – lovingly preparing a little one for eventual instrument classes.
Not a franchise nor based on any corporate business model, Little Music Suzuki Early Childhood Education classes allow for individual focus on weekly progress (visible even in the tiniest of learners), careful attention to skill-building, purposeful repetition, and fun fun fun. The repetitive repertoire is not only a wonderfully thrilling thing for little learners but also provides them with an opportunity to master something. And master they do.
Research studies showing the undeniable impact of specific music learning – even in utero – include improved memory skills, advanced cognitive ability and language, ease in social situations, improved emotional self-regulation, parent bonding…the list goes on.
Children in Little Music Suzuki Method Early Childhood Education classes also learn rhythm, timing, leading and waiting their turn, listening, dynamics, diatonic and chromatic, how to play drums and Orff, pattern recognition, ascending and descending, composition, melody and harmony, preparatory instrument positioning, counting, singing, practicing, mastery of repertoire – and how to have a great time in a class situation. These classes are FUN!


For many children and parents, studying an instrument is a part of their lifestyle. Whether they have chosen the instrument themselves or their parents have chosen it for them, it can be an incredible experience. Being a musician offers endless possibilities for the child just starting out or the child who is at an advanced level. It is educational and it is social. It can provide your child with skills that he or she can use every day. It can be a hobby or a career and it can open doors to new experiences and new friendships.
You have probably heard the results of all the research on music education. Specifically, the research on how "training a child on a musical instrument can develop connections in the brain that are necessary for understanding complex math and science concepts." "Music can also improve reading ability, SAT scores, spatial reasoning skills, school attendance, teamwork, self esteem, self discipline, creativity and knowledge." Children that play their instrument in a group setting experience many of the same benefits as participating in a team sport.
Music adds to the quality of life, whether you are playing it or just listening to it. Offering your child music lessons may mean that one day he or she will be a musician or have a successful career in medicine or law. You can be assured that offering a child the opportunity to study a musical instrument is beneficial and positive, any way you look at it.
At the Mike Risko Music School, children are given a strong foundation on their instrument of choice. All students are taught the essential elements needed for the development of a well rounded musician through the use of carefully chosen method books and supplementary material. The entire guitar curriculum was written by Mike Risko and all students in the music school learn from it. Students are also encouraged to play many styles of music including classical, jazz and rock. Students of the Mike Risko Music School are not only educated musicians, but happy and practical musicians because they learn to apply their musical knowledge to all different types of music. Above all, we want to help every student find their inner musician and what making music means to them. We also want to make sure they are enjoying music every step of the way.
If you would like to get more information on the benefits of music education or would like to find out how to get your child started studying an instrument at the Mike Risko Music School, contact us anytime and set up your free consultation. We will walk you through the whole process and even guide you on how to buy or rent your musical instrument in our music store. Our program is non-competitive, individualized, and fun. If you would like to register, please go to register. Registration for private lessons is accepted anytime and we welcome new students througout the year. You can also fill out the form below and someone will contact you right away!
What instruments can I study at Mike Risko Music? We offer private lessons in 30, 45 or 60 minute increments. Students can study guitar, piano, drums, voice, bass guitar, violin, viola, cello, brass or woodwinds.
Yes! I am interested in music lessons! Please fill out the form below and someone will get back to you right away with information.


Federal Ministry of Education and Research
We promote education and research for they are the foundations on which we will build our future in a changing world. Education provides the basis for leading an autonomous, responsible and participatory life within industry and society. Education provides our children with the tools they need to meet the challenges of a changing and increasingly globalized world. Research helps us to discover the new and improve on the known. Thanks to excellent research we are finding solutions to global problems and devising strategies for sustainable growth. Research creates previously unknown opportunities in all domains of life, and it keeps our products and services innovative and competitive.
Our responsibility in the area of education addresses every stage of human life, beginning with early childhood learning through to continuing education and lifelong learning. Whereas school and university education are mainly in the remit of the Länder, the Federal Government also plays a significant role - for example by means of the Higher Education Pact, through award of scholarships, or through the Alliance for Education. One of our priority concerns is the establishment of social equality in education to ensure that a person's background no longer determines his or her chances to get an education and that no talent is wasted. International exchange in education and science is also one of our responsibilities.
Research excellence is a must in a country whose prosperity is built on the innovative strength of its industry. The aim of the High-Tech Strategy is to make Germany a leader in providing scientific and technical solutions to the challenges in the fields of climate/energy, health/nutrition, mobility, security, and communication. Innovative technologies and services create new jobs, and thus every generation will have its chance to develop its potential. The Excellence Initiative and the Pact for Research and Innovation are injecting new life into the research community and promote young research talent.


Reach for Reading is a reading and language arts program built to teach, model, and apply close reading in whole group with print and digital resources. Whole group, small group, and independent practice ensure teachers meet the demands of the Utah Core.
Comprehensive, targeted teaching materials ensure that children develop the necessary decoding and encoding skills to become fluent readers and writers.
Students have multiple opportunities in Reach for Reading fluency and word study lessons to apply word knowledge to reading and writing activities.
The Top Reasons to choose Reach for Reading:
• Authentic Literature and National Geographic Exclusives
• Foundational Skills with Content-Based Decodable Texts
• Integrated ELD
• Rigor-Analyzing Texts and Higher Order Questions
• Rigor-Close Reading of Authentic Text
• Writing to Sources and Opinion, Expository and Narrative Writing
• Vocabulary Development through Content
• Meaningful Collaborative Conversations


Did you know that many children enter kindergarten having never held a pencil correctly or used pair of scissors? A great deal of time in the first year of school is spent developing fine motor skills. If you have a 5 year old piano student, your demands on their fine motor skills are even greater than in a school setting. And while some students have more advanced finger dexterity, others struggle. Regardless of their abilities, young piano students benefit greatly from exercises designed to zero in on fine motor skill development.
Building strength and dexterity in young piano students can be a really enjoyable part of their lesson! Finger warm-ups are a good way to begin the lesson as they can be done while you chat about their day at school and ease them into the piano lesson frame of mind.
Check out our Top 5 Piano Finger Warm Ups below and have some fun developing your piano students’ fine motor control.
1. Icky Sticky Thumb
Spread imaginary glue on your piano student’s thumb. Your student’s job is to then rub off the “glue” using the pad of each of their other fingers in turn starting with the 2 finger. Have your student use a circular motion when rubbing the thumb. I say “icky sticky thumb” while they rub 3 circles in time with the rhythm of the words. Do hands separately until they are good at it and then hands together.
2. Stretchy Spider
Have your student place their hand on a table top with their wrist resting on the surface and their fingers nicely curved. This is the “spider”. He needs to stretch each of his legs. Have your student reach one finger at a time starting with their thumb and reaching in an upward motion while keeping their other fingertips touching the table top and without allowing their knuckles to collapse. You can hold something for the spider legs to reach up to touch, giving them something to aim for.
Once your student has mastered this, this you can give the spider specific exercises for his legs. Write out finger numbers in random order and have the spider’s legs lift accordingly (ie. 1-3-5-2-4).
3. Silly Poems
Use silly poems like the one below to give your students cues as to what to do with their fingers. These also strengthen memory skills if you have your student recite the poem along with you and they help to connect your young piano students with a sense of pulse as they listen to rhythm of the words. Need Finger Poems? Find a free set on wunderkeys.com (click on printables!)
4. Don’t Wake Mr. Pointer!
With their hand in C position, have your piano student press down all 5 keys at once. One at a time each finger lifts to tap their key 3 times while the rest of the fingers remain depressed. Mr. Pointer (their 2 finger) is sleeping so he doesn’t tap! The other fingers need to tap softly so as to not wake him up.
5. Gimme A Pop!
Have your student lay their hand palm up on a flat surface. Their fingers have become sunbathers… and they’re hot! The thumb has nice cool soda pop for each finger. One by one they lift up to meet the thumb who is delivering their refreshments. The fingers meet over their open palm and touch briefly finger pad to finger pad before returning to a flat hand position. The other “sunbathers” are allowed to lift up slightly if necessary. My piano kids love it when I make sound effects each time the fingers touch the thumb like “Glug glug glug… ahhh!” (as though one was enjoying a nice cold drink).
Piano Finger Warm-Ups Are Important
By helping your piano students to focus in on individual finger movements you are not only strengthening their finger muscles and coordination, but also the brain-to-finger connection. They’ll not only be much more adept pianists… but they’ll be the ones in their class at school who hold their pencil correctly and have beautiful printing too! (Score one more for piano teachers! :))
We specialize in little fingers! So much so that we’ve written an entire preschool piano method for preschool-aged children. WunderKeys Piano for Preschoolers is a one-on-one piano program designed to make the first piano lesson experience both enjoyable and valuable. Piano teachers around the world are using this one of a kind program to build their studio. Are you?? Check out www.wunderkeys.com for more information.


Best Pictures of Mercury Video for Kids
Take a couple of moments to view a cool chosen and very simple to understand Pictures of Mercury fun facts for kids video:
Pictures of Mercury Video Information
This short video shares some great pictures of the planet Mercury. Check out some of the new pictures of Mercury that was unveiled by NASA, taken by the Messenger probe. With these pictures, scientists found that Mercury’s surface is a lot less like Earth’s moon than what people previously thought.
This video on Pictures of Mercury provides useful details on Pictures of Mercury for kids video and significantly boost your young children’s interest in Pictures of Mercury.
This Pictures of Mercury video is going to be delightful for young children, from those participating in early learning programs for Kindergarten children, all the way to Fifth graders, undoubtedly encompassing pre-school children and toddlers schooled in the house.
Go on enrich your kid’s understanding with our offered cost-free educational videos for kids, personally selected by our editors. These videos are an enormous catalog of science for kids videos right here on our science kids website. Check out lots more convincing and academic albeit fun easy science facts for young your children on our FREE online science for kids website about numerous more interesting topics, and make good use of our numerous ABSOLUTELY FREE reading and listening comprehension worksheets, ENJOYABLE online science quiz games and free to play games for kids.
Appreciated this Pictures of Mercury video? Read extensive info about Mercury.
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GEMS Camp Makes Learning Math, Science Fun
Developing our country's future mathematicians and scientists begins in school classrooms. The Army also is doing its part in exposing young students to real-world research with hands-on activities designed to show them the joy of scientific discovery in a military setting.
For the third year, the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research is hosting three Gains in the Education of Mathematics and Science (GEMS) camps during June and July for San Antonio middle school students at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The four-day sessions are laboratory-based camps that provide students the opportunity to participate in scientific experiments and learn basic laboratory skills.
USAISR GEMS program coordinators, Stephanie Truss and Kathy Ryan, planned laboratory activities for the students, also known as interns.
"We have the luxury of designing activities associated with actual research being conducted here," said Truss. "Most of the students do not have this type of hands-on exposure, or if they do, the activities are not as extensive in their schools, so it's good for them."
Activities at USAISR introduce interns to subjects such as electricity, cardiology, blood typing, bacteria, DNA, surgical knots and suturing techniques, dentistry, and hair, fiber and fingerprint analysis. Two full-time, licensed teachers, or resource teachers, and four college students, or near-peers, mentor the young interns.
"We present what they know and have learned in school and show them how they can use it in the future as researchers in military labs like this one," said Leigh Anne McIver, USAISR GEMS resource teacher.
"It is a great experience for all of us," said Ashlyn Rathburn, a Texas State University elementary education major and near-peer. "We learn from each other."
GEMS interns Khalil Sample and Natalie McVay both said that the camp was fun and would recommend it to their friends.
"We don't get to do this in our school," said Sample.
Each camp is designed for 24 interns who are divided into two laboratory classrooms. The small groups allow for frequent one-on-one interaction between staff and students. Resource teacher Maria Anzaldua said she enjoys the small classroom atmosphere because it gives her the opportunity to keep the students engaged.
"If we don't [keep them engaged], then it's easy for them to lose interest," she said.
In addition to participating in hands-on activities, the interns hear from USAISR researchers about potential career paths in science, as well as their current research projects. McIver added that this one-of-a-kind experience is invaluable.
"They get to see what research is being conducted here and may someday say that they knew about it before it became known to the public," said McIver.
GEMS is one of several programs developed by the Army Educational Outreach Program to offer summer educational activities for middle and high school students who have an interest in becoming scientists, and may express an interest in working for the Army or Department of Defense in the future. GEMS summer camps are offered at various Army laboratory facilities throughout the United States.


National Youth Art Month A month of celebration, awareness, and advocacy for art in our schools and excellent art education for our youth!
Celebration Each March, the bright colors and eclectic designs of student artwork transform businesses and organizations throughout Chemung, Schuyler, Steuben and the edge of Tioga counties into exhibit spaces! These exhibits ignite curiosity and creativity and spur the celebration of student artists!
Awareness The impact of creative exploration and expression on human beings throughout our lives and development is immeasurable. It is absolutely imperative that basic eduction include opportunities for creative growth and expression. Let National Youth Art Month be a catalyst for you to explore the imperative roll that arts & creativity play throughout our lives – from cognitive development in early childhood to cognitive stimulation in our elder years.
Advocacy Encourage art exploration! Develop strategies for life-long arts learning, and be an advocate of art education in our schools!
The ARTS Council thanks the sponsors of our 2016 National Youth Art Month student art in community venues: Abeel Bovee Community Foundation Trust, and The Community Foundation of Elmira, Corning, and the Finger Lakes!


Peter Miksza is breaking barriers for music educators and researchers through his use of Jetstream.
Jetstream is a user-friendly cloud computing environment funded by $13.7 million from the National Science Foundation. The IU-led system gives researchers and students access to computing and data analysis resources on demand—from their tablets, laptops, or desktop computers.
Miksza, an associate professor of music education at the IU Bloomington Jacobs School of Music and affiliate member and liaison of the IU Cognitive Science Program, uses Jetstream to host a large database of information about secondary school public music education programs. Jetstream’s data capacity gives the public, as well as music education researchers and advocates, access to important data so they can better understand the music education landscape.
He has also created a set of apps that make it easier for students and researchers to study music education.
“Having a virtual machine that I can log into has been essential because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to host the pedagogical demonstrations and visualization apps that I created,” Miksza said.
Jetstream is the most recent incarnation of IU’s eminence in grid and cloud computing. IU ran the operations of the Open Science Grid starting in 2012, which supported research resulting in two recent Nobel prizes (Higgs Boson, gravitational waves), and an experimental computing grid called Futuregrid starting in 2008.


Why is fine motor skill development important? Little hands need to develop control and strength over the years. We, as parents or caregivers, can help this process by encouraging children to play, explore and interact with all sorts of items used in daily life.
Over time these types of “play” activities and manipulation skills will help prepare a child to hold and use a crayon which will lead to colouring, drawing and ultimately writing.
Some children need a little extra help with developing these skills, which is where a Paediatric Occupational Therapist (OT) fits in. Paediatric OT’s can identify tasks your child needs extra attention and practice by using OT assessments and observation. They are then able to develop family goals followed by interventions that target the child’s difficulties. Depending on the complexity, interventions can be in the form of; practising tasks that build on control, strength and coordination and/or prescription of OT equipment.
There are also activities that children can be doing at home to help develop their hand control and strength. It could be as simple as fastening clothes, pegging clothes on the washing line, using safety scissors and moulding playdough. Even doing safe tasks in the kitchen are great ways to help build fine motor skills. Below are some activities from infancy to 3 years of age, that you could help with your child’s fine motor development:
Pushing up, shifting from side to side and swiping at objects in front of them are ways children build on shoulder, neck, back and core muscles. These are essential for sitting. Please only encourage when the baby is awake and being supervised.
Feel free to let your little one finger feed as much as possible. Picking up food with their fingers develops a pincer grasp (thumb and first finger together), which is needed when they want to hold a crayon in future.
Play with Small Items
Encourage your toddler to stack blocks, string beads and use puzzles because it is an opportunity for both their hands to work together. The more they practice, the smoother the movements become, which will help with their participation in games and sports in future. Please supervise when your child is playing with beads as they may be a choking hazard.
Play with Play Dough
One of the common ways to build hand strength is to play with play dough, play foam or a similar nontoxic and squishy substance. Think resistance!
Be sure to encourage finger painting, either with paint, pudding or shaving cream. Practicing this helps the brain tell apart between moving one-finger vs the whole hand. This is important for smooth finger movements needed for writing in future.
Simple puzzles can help children learn about moving objects in their hand through turning, placing and flipping pieces. This also trains the brain, as mentioned above.
Any activity that encourages your child to coordinate both hands together is an excellent tool for development. An example is rolling a ball of playdough into a long “snake” and then cutting it with a plastic knife.
Buttoning and Tying
Practice buttoning, unbuttoning, zippering, hooking fasteners or tying laces helps to build strength and control.
Practice with Clothes Pins
Have your child hang pictures, colouring pages or clothes on a clothesline with spring-loaded clothes pins as this activity builds on their pincer grip strength. As mentioned above, pincer grip strength helps with holding a crayon in future.
Your child might show interest in colouring around 2.5-3 years of age, be sure to provide small crayons that fit their little hands. This practice will lead to their ability to write in future.


Dancing with Digi Tech Workshop – Waihi
Byte size workshop unpacking the building blocks of the DT/HM Technological within NZC Framework
Shoestrings, Everyday Things and the Internet of Things (IoT)
Designed to suit the needs of curious teachers, this workshop will provide opportunities for teachers to immerse themselves in a variety of collaborative, hands on activities which explore some of the big ideas behind Computational Thinking. Unpack the links between Computational Thinking and Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes in our 21st Century Education Landscape.
Demystify the what and how of DT/HM and unpack where Computational thinking converges with Designing and developing digital outcomes and IoT.
Bits and Bytes
- Develop your Digital and computational thinking capabilities through a hands on discovery and exploration session
- Investigate the use of everyday things which can be used to help you integrate computational thinking into your classroom teaching and learning programme
- Build a basis for teaching to support the progress outcomes in CT and DDO for digital technologies
- Explore the 21st Century skill of Real World Problem Solving through prototyping and electronics
- Finish with a Megabyte session. Dive deeper into CT or DDO by backward mapping a PO to understand the building blocks and foundational skills/strategies of a progress outcome.


- Editorial Acknowledgments
- About the Companion Website www.oup.com/us/ohcmc
- About the Contributors
- Giving Voice to Children
- Girls Experiencing Gamelan Education and Cultural Politics in Bali
- Youth Music at the Yakama Nation Tribal School
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- Songs of Japanese Schoolchildren during World War II
- Girlhood Songs, Musical Tales, and Musical Games as Strategies for Socialization into Womanhood among the Baganda of Uganda
- Musical Cultures of Girls in the Brazilian Amazon
- The Musical Socialization of Children and Adolescents in Brazil in Their Everyday Lives
- Georgian (Caucasus) Children’s Polyphonic Conception of Music
- Integration in Mexican Children’s Musical Worlds
- Celticity, Community, and Continuity in the Children’s Musical Cultures of Cornwall
- Miskitu Children’s Singing Games on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua as Intercultural Play and Performance
- Education and Evangelism in a Sierra Leonean Village
- Children’s Urban and Rural Musical Worlds in North India
- Enjoyment and Socialization in Gambian Children’s Music Making
- Children’s Musical Engagement with Trinidad’s Carnival Music
- Musical Childhoods across Three Generations, from Puerto Rico to the USA
- The Musical Worlds of Aboriginal Children at Burrulula and Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia
- Reflexive and Reflective Perspectives of Musical Childhoods in Singapore
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- Children’s and Adolescents’ Musical Needs and Music Education in Germany
- The Interweaving Threads of Music in the Whariki of Early Childhood Cultures in Aotearoa/New Zealand
- Balancing Change and Tradition in the Musical Lives of Children in Hong Kong
- Tradition and Change in the Musical Culture of South Korean Children
- Perspectives on the School Band from Hardcore American Band Kids
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- The Complex Ecologies of Early Childhood Musical Cultures
- The Role of Context and Experience among the Children of the Church of God and Saints of Christ, Cleveland, Ohio
- Music in the Lives of Refugee and Newly Arrived Immigrant Children in Sydney, Australia
- Enculturational Discontinuities in the Musical Experience of the Wagogo Children of Central Tanzania
- Tinkering and Tethering in the Material Culture of Children’s MP3 Players
- Economics, Class, and Musical Apprenticeship in South Asia’s Brass Band Communities
- Constructions and Negotiations of Identity in Children’s Music in Canada
- A Historical Look at Three Recordings of Children’s Musicking in New York City
- Whose Songs in Their Heads?
Abstract and Keywords
This article examines the musical socialization of children and adolescents in Brazil. Children and adolescents were observed and interviewed in environments such as the non-governmental organizations Projeto Villa Lobinhos and Meninos do Morumbi, and at Escola de Porto Alegre, a school that helps homeless children and adolescents. Music education was a positive factor that changed individuals and groups socially.
Magali Kleber teaches at Londrina State University (UEL) in Brazil. She coordinates a research group for music education and social movements at the National Research Council in Brazil and is the president of the Brazilian Association for Music Education. She also chairs the Community Music Activity Commission and is leader of the research group Music Education and Social Movements for the International Society for Music Education.
Jusamara Souza is professor of music education in the Institute of Arts at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Her research interests include formal and informal music education, mass media, and music education.
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An understanding of phonics is one of the core literacy skills kids need to become fluent readers. As such there is a burgeoning resource of lessons, activities and games that teach kids phonics online. But what is phonics exactly?
Phonics is the ability to link letters or combinations of letters to units of sounds, called phonemes. This is otherwise known as the Alphabetic Principle. There are two types of phonics instruction generally used in early education:
Analytic Phonics – is a form of inferential learning that teaches children to analyse a particular set of words and recognise the common phoneme. For example, a student may be asked to discuss how the following words – run, roll, risk, rant – are alike.
Synthetic Phonics – focuses on linking an individual letter, or letter combination, with its appropriate sound. This allows kids to break words down to their individual letters and sounds. This synthetic approach has in recent years largely overtaken the analytic approach as the preferred method of phonics instruction.
Regardless of the approach taken, educators agree that phonics instruction is less effective when removed from a larger framework of literacy instruction. The same goes for instruction of phonics online. Any phonics instruction, whether face-to-face in the classroom or if delivered online, needs to be couched within a larger literacy framework that delivers instruction in all the key literacy areas, phonics being one of them.
ABC Reading Eggs delivers effective instruction in phonics online by using a synthetic phonics approach. The lessons offer explicit instructions by mapping individual letters and letter combinations with appropriate sounds. Each letter of the alphabet is introduced in its own lesson, focusing on the letter-sound relationship and highlighting the alphabetic principle. The focus of the lessons is on developing awareness of letter-sound relationships, not for their own sake, but so that the knowledge can be deployed in the active and fluent reading of meaningful texts.
ABC Reading Eggs includes a comprehensive phonics program that includes lessons on core phonics skills such as working with beginning and end blends, a variety of vowel sounds, dipthongs, consonant letter sounds such as the soft c and g, y, silent letters, double letter sounds, word families, and learning how to attach multi-syllable words.
ABC Reading Eggs offers instruction in phonics online within a complete reading program. The literacy skills developed in each lesson accumulate into a critical mass of literacy, where after Lesson 9 kids read their first book where they can apply their phonics skills.
My children love Reading Eggs. They enjoy learning to read and spell with the lessons. My son struggled with other phonics programs. But he loved Reading Eggs. Opening a new egg after each lesson kept him motivated to finish the program. My daughter loved the skill bank part of the program. She was glad Reading Eggs had a spelling section. L. Taylor
Our students love this site. It is bright, entertaining, engaging and educationally sound. What a fun way to learn to read! They can’t get enough of it and ask regularly ‘is it our turn on Reading Eggs today?’ Katrina Kruger, Elliot Heads State School


In the inaugural edition of the Reading League Journal, Jennifer Buckingham (2020) identifies six benefits of using teaching strategies guided by scientific evidence.
- Earlier and more accurate word reading
The research clearly shows that accurate word reading is achieved successfully and quickly through the systematic and explicit teaching of phonics.
- Better reading fluency
To be a fluent reader you need to be able to accurately decode text with speed and prosody. This requires being able to automatically recognize the sounds represented by different letters and letter combinations and sufficient practice at combining these into a single word which are then stored in long-term memory via a process of orthographic mapping enabling the word (and an ever increasing number of other words) to be easily recognized.
- Vocabulary growth
Vocabulary development occurs as a result of exposure to rich oral language, quantity of reading (the greater the volume of reading the greater a child’s vocabulary), background knowledge of a large range of topics and the explicit teaching of vocabulary.
- Adept reading comprehension
For most typically developing readers, provided with early reading instruction based on science (i.e., proficient decoding skills and the nurturing of a rich vocabulary), reading comprehension is not a problem. Poor decoding skills and a poor vocabulary are the two key reasons children perform poorly on comprehension assessment. There is some evidence that a small number of students will benefit from the explicit teaching of comprehension strategies, but these should be supplementary to developing decoding skills, vocabulary and background knowledge.
- More independent reading and enjoyment of reading
It makes sense that children who find reading easy because they have been taught how to decode are more likely to enjoy reading and, in an upward spiral, read more. Enjoyment of reading is strongly and positively related to academic achievement across the curriculum.
- Fewer children needing intervention
Approximately 80-85% of children will learn to read well if provided with evidence-based reading instruction from a quality teacher. Around 20% of children will require tailored intervention and of these 5% will have a severe reading difficulty and require specialized, individual and on-going intervention from a teacher with specialist knowledge of the reading process.
Interestingly, 19% of Australian students and 17% of US students do not meet the proficiency reading benchmarks in Year 4. This is three times more students than would be expected on the basis of cognitive issues which means that the majority of struggling readers are ‘instructional casualties’.
Do not let your child become an ‘instructional causality’. If you have any concerns at all about your child’s literacy development, the sooner you seek intervention using an explicit phonic-based program (i.e., scientific based instruction), the more likely your child will become a successful reader.
Buckingham, J. (2020). Six reasons to use the science of reading in schools. The Reading League Journal,1(1), 13-17.


What a better way to enjoy Valentines Day than with chocolate covered strawberries??? And even better, use it as a science project to teach kids about phase transformations and melting points. (This was also a great project for gross and fine motor skill development as well as learning to follow instructions.)
- Approximately 1 pound Strawberries (washed and dried) with the leaves
- water (enough to boil in a small pot or double broiler),
- 16 ounces of melting chocolate (I used milk chocolate chips), and
- 4 ounces of white melting chocolate (I also used white chocolate chips).
- 1 Double Broiler (or you can use a metal or glass mixing bowl over a pot of boiling water),
- a mixing spoon to mix the chocolate as it melts,
- wax paper to place the strawberries after they are dipped in chocolate.
Step 1: Washing and drying the strawberries:
I placed my strawberries in my sink to soak with cold water and about a 1/2 cup of white vinegar and 1/2 cup of baking soda for about 15 – 20 minutes. Then I gently scrubbed them with a cloth or scrub brush and rinse well. Next, I lay the strawberries out on a towel to dry completely (about 4 hours).
Step 2: Measuring the ingredients:
We didn’t measure our strawberries, but you could to use a kitchen scale for measuring out the strawberries and the chocolate. For older children, this would be a great a way to introduce conversions of various measurement scales. (We personally relied on the package quantities.)
Step 3: Melting the chocolate:
When we melted the chocolate, we used a double broiler. I showed my daughters what the chips looked like (they are very familiar with them but I stressed that they were hard and cool) and, of course, I allowed them to taste them. I told them that this was the ‘solid’ form for chocolate and it felt cool at room temperature.
My 4 year old then poured them into the double broiler. I let her guess what would happen, “it’s going to melt, Mommy”, she said very confidently.
As we stirred the chocolate chips in the double broiler, she became more and more excited to see the chocolate melting before our eyes. I explained that the chocolate had reached it’s ‘melting point’. It was melting to a soft liquid and that this transition was called a ‘phase transformation’. My daughter easily recognized the liquid was hot when I allowed her to put chocolate on one strawberry and she felt the heat from the pot.
WARNING: The chocolate will be HOT. Be sure that your child is ready to do this on their own without burning themselves.
If you have a cooking thermometer, you may want to consider placing it into the chocolate as it melts and let your child look at or record the temperature of the chocolate as it melts.
We continued to dip the strawberries in the double broiler (until all sides were covered in chocolate), then laid them on wax paper lined pans to cool. I asked my daughter what she thought might happen as they cool. She agreed that the chocolate would harden and become solid around the strawberries (another phase transformation).
Step 4: White Chocolate Drizzle:
I melted the white chocolate in a microwave safe bowl in the microwave. (If you do this, do it gradually and stir it between heating cycles to prevent the chocolate from burning.) I allowed my 4 year old to experiment with the technique on this. We found that dipping the spoon in the chocolate and then quickly drizzling it over top was the best. This activity was excellent in practicing fine and gross motor skills.
Let me know if you try this out! We had a lot of fun with this one. It is a very simple project and more lessons can be added depending on the age of your children. Let me know what you think in the comments below or at MomgineeringtheFuture@gmail.com.


Creative and Critical Projects in Classroom Music is both a celebration and extension of John Paynter and Peter Aston's groundbreaking work on creative classroom music, Sound and Silence, first published in 1970.
Building on the central themes of the original work - the child as artist, the role of musical imagination and creativity, and the process of making music - the authors and contributors provide a contemporary response to the spirit and style of Sound and Silence. They offer reflections on the ideas and convictions underpinning Paynter and Aston's work in light of scholarship developed during the intervening years. This critical work is accompanied by 16 creative classroom projects designed and enacted by contemporary practitioners, raising questions about the nature and function of music in education and society. In summary, this book aims to:
- Celebrate seminal work on musical creativity in the classroom.
- Promote the integration of practical, critical and analytical writing and thinking around this key theme for music education.
- Contribute to initiating the next 50 years of thought in relation to music creativity in the classroom.
Offering a unique combination of critical scholarship and practical application, and published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Sound and Silence, themes from Paynter and Aston's work are here given fresh context that aims to inspire a new generation of innovative classroom practice and to challenge current ways of thinking about the music classroom.
John Finney taught music in secondary schools before teaching at Reading University, Homerton College and the University of Cambridge, where he led the postgraduate secondary course in music education. He has published widely on the interface between public policy and classroom practice in music education.
Chris Philpott is Reader in Music Education at the University of Greenwich, London. He has written and edited books, articles, online texts and resources that are widely used in initial teacher education and academic music education programmes.
Gary Spruce began his career as a secondary school music teacher. He is now subject leader for the pre-service music teacher education course at Birmingham City University. He has published widely on music education, particularly focusing on the relationship between music education and social justice and the professional development of teachers.
Part 1 Introductions
1. Purposes and Parameters
2. John Paynter - Thinker
Part 2 Critical Issues in Creative Music Making
1. Sound and Silence Recontextualised
2. Conceptions of the Creative Process in Music and Arts Education
3. Giving Value to Musical Creativity
Victoria Kinsella and Martin Fautley
4. Creativity as Ideology
5. Being and Becoming Musically Creative: A view from early childhood
6. The Pedagogies of the Creative Classroom: Towards a socially just music education
7. Music and the Making of Meaning
8. The Role of Community in Defining 21st Century Creative Practice: A design-led approach
Part 3 The Projects
1. Shapes into Music, Music into Shapes
2. Rhythms, Rhymes and Beats in Time
Ally Daubney and Ollie Tunmer
3. Propaganda, Protest and Politics
John Finney and Elizabeth MacGregor
4. Making Music for a Space
5. Music and Place
6. Soundscapes of the Self
7. Music Technology and the Loop Sampler
8. Exploring Musical Sketchbooks
9. Repeats and Refrains
10. Concurrent Design
11. Musical Revisionism
12. Layering and Repetition
13. The One-Minute Solo
16. Desh and Dionysus


Dorothy Cotton, a staunch civil rights activist and a top aide to Martin Luther King Jr., passed away on June 10 at age 88 at the Kendal retirement community in Ithaca.
Cotton was the highest-ranking female in King’s close circle of confidantes as well as the Education Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a key organization within the civil rights movement.
Cotton earned her bachelor’s degree in English and library science from Virginia State College in Petersburg in 1955 and earned her master’s in speech therapy from Boston University in 1960.
From 1982 to 1991 Cotton worked as the director of student activities at Cornell University. She gave the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture at Cornell in February 2007, according to a University press release.
“Many people associate the civil rights movement with great suffering and sadness. However from another perspective, that earth-changing movement gave millions a new reason to live,” Cotton said at that event.
Cotton felt very strongly about the racial injustices of the time, and had a strong desire to help change the status quo, according to her close friend Prof. Baruch Whitehead, music education, Ithaca College.
“It was a very dangerous time during the civil rights movement. She was threatened, and she was beaten, but she believed in the power of non-violence and the power to take [non-violent protest] throughout the world to make social change,” Whitehead told The Sun.
Cotton first met King while she was still studying at VSC. She was involved in several demonstrations organized through a local church, where King was invited to give a speech.
Cotton accompanied church leader Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker and King to Atlanta for the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King was the first president of the SCLC, and Cotton spent 12 years there as the conference’s education director.
As the SCLC’s education director, Cotton worked to spread awareness for the movement and helped pen King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
“Through her work as Education Director of the SCLC, and leader of the Citizenship Education Program, she inspired and equipped literally thousands of community organizers and activists throughout the southern states,” wrote Laura Branca, a senior fellow at the Dorothy Cotton Institute, in an email to The Sun.
Cotton was staying in the hotel room next door to Dr. King’s on the day he was assassinated, the New York Times reported. Cotton left the SCLC three years after King’s assassination in 1968, according to the Dorothy Cotton Institute’s website.
In 2007, Cotton and a group of friends and colleagues founded the Dorothy Cotton Institute in Ithaca, to “offer popular education and training to inspire and support people who want to foster and protect human rights and to advance civic participation for social transformation”, according to the Institute’s website.
Branca said that Cotton felt strongly that the principles of nonviolence needed to be a “way of life” rather than a strategy or tactic in a campaign and that she was willing to put herself at “great risk” to take a stand.
Branca, who worked closely with Cotton at the institute, also fondly recalled Cotton’s love of engaging with others through singing and breaking bread together.
“Ms. Cotton had a great curiosity and a lively mind, and was an avid reader and a life-long learner,” Branca said. “She was engaging, charismatic, interested, and enjoyed conversation and an exchange of ideas.”
Whitehead founded a music group almost ten years ago, the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers, to honor Cotton’s love for music and her legacy.
“I wanted to preserve her legacy through song and social justice. Our mission is to be proactive in social changes and use music to bring people together,” Whitehead told The Sun.
“I think she will not be forgotten,” he continued, citing Cotton’s influence on the civil rights movement and the archives in the Smithsonian documenting her efforts. “She will be a person who will be remembered for doing good and helping a lot of people.”
“Dorothy Cotton inspired many at Cornell and in the greater Ithaca area through her tireless work in the civil rights movement and as an advocate for diversity and inclusion,” said President Martha E. Pollack in a University press release. “With her passing, our community has lost a powerful role model and a dear friend, who devoted her life to creating a more just and equitable world.”


Chances are, if you are a musician, you were taught somewhere along the way, the names of the lines and spaces on the musical staff. Chances are also good that the teacher used some kind of mnemonic device, like "every good bird does fly" for the lines of the treble staff, and "face" for the … Continue reading Should We Be Teaching The Names of Lines and Spaces on the Musical Staff?
As originally conceived, solfege was a movable do system. Whatever pitch was the tonic would be assigned the syllable "do" and the other syllables, re, mi, fa, so, la, and ti followed upward by step. In today's usage, these movable do syllables are referred to as tonal syllables. They are called tonal syllables because they … Continue reading Fixed and Movable Do
In my post, Do You Really Know What A Key Signature Is? I made the point that we must not overlook the importance of audiation and teaching keyalities and tonalities aurally before teaching written key signatures. I mentioned singing and playing scales and arpeggios by ear in different keyalities and tonalities. Today, I would like to hone … Continue reading Working Aurally With Key Signatures
Today, I have two things on my mind. One is that while every child is entitled to a music education, no one is entitled to success; that has to be earned. I am a strong believer in the principle that the less one has to work for something, the less it will be valued. The … Continue reading Teaching Music Reading to Very Young Children
For the most part, my students love to sing. This almost always is a good thing, but it is not always so. If I don’t make sure I start them off singing in their head voices, many will practice singing incorrectly, getting better at poor singing and no better at good singing. I like to … Continue reading What’s an Effective Way to Teach A New Song?
When it comes to choosing a system of syllables to sing for teaching ear training and sight singing, there seems to be a consensus that moveable do, sometimes called functional solfege, is needed for teaching chord and tone functions. To be sure, moving do to wherever the tonic is does help a singer remember where … Continue reading Can Tone and Chord Functions Be Taught With Fixed Do?
Music teachers are often concerned with method. If you go to most music education conferences, you’ll find sessions on the Kodaly Method, the Dalcroze Method, Gordon Music Learning Theory, the Orff Method, Feierabend’s Conversational Solfege, the Suzuki Method, to name a few. Music teaching methods are like Protestant denominations: there are many of them, they … Continue reading Is There Madness in the Method?
The popularity and success of the Kodaly approach to teaching music in schools has resulted in a widespread practice of using songs and chants comprised of a minor third when beginning formal music education with young children. There is much to recommend this practice, including the ease with which a small interval can be sung, … Continue reading What Are The Best Pitch Combinations For Teaching Our Youngest Children Singing?
Why do you do anything the way you do? If your answer to this question is “because I’ve always done it that way,” or “because it works,” then you may be missing out on much greater success. Being a New Englander all my life, I have been very happy with the mantra, “If ain’t broke, … Continue reading Is There A Better Way?
We teachers live for the big payoff. The moment when the students connect the dots and finally "get it." This morning, I was able to enjoy moments like that with both of my 5th grade classes. Last week, they received printed music for the round Gaudeamus Hodie and worked independently at sight singing it with … Continue reading The Big Payoff