Sizzling Summertime Free Art Lessons (Plus Other Interdisciplinary Lessons)
- NEW! Summertime Lesson Planning Newsletter
Here are some of the highlights that refer to art education. This
newsletter has been completely revised and updated and contains seven parts!!
Below, is just a small sampling of what this new issue contains.
Children will discover how to change the color of a flower and how water travels up plants by participating in an activity submitted by Dale Gausman. See http://www.amonco.org/summer6/montessori_summer6.pdf and scroll down until you see Changing a Flowerâs Color.
Rae, from Creative Process, shares a new leaf print activity that combines the study of botany with art. To learn more visit http://www.amonco.org/summer4/montessori_summer4.pdf
Draw Your World offers a free Draw Your World Lesson Plan.
Wenda, from Birdcage Press, provides some excellent vignettes featuring Botticell, Fra Angelico, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael..Click here for to access the information. For additional lesson plans featuring Renaissance artists and musicians please visit http://www.amonco.org/spring2002_1.html and http://www.amonco.org/spring2002_2.html
Rae has also provided the following free activities ], articles, and lesson plans, Calendar Activity, Teacher as Curator : Setting up a School Gallery and Sharing Food, and Food in Art?
MAKE SOME GIFTS and GIFT BOXES
Jaye, from Creative Care, will show you how to make a double frame. See http://www.amonco.org/summer5/montessori_summer5.pdf
Janet, from Chinaberry, will guide you step by step on how to make some beautiful gift boxes. See http://www.amonco.org/summer/montessori_summer1.pdf
To access all of the links, please visit
For the entire Table of Contents, please visit


INSTRUMENTS with KIDS
From Spoons on Balloons to Floating Bowl Bells to Soda Straw Oboes, Making Musical Instrument with Kids is a treasure-trove of musical instrument ideas simple enough for children to make. It’s written primarily for adults who work with children, including teachers, parents, and others involved in the lives of young people. The instruments, presented with easy-to-follow instructions, are both kid-buildable and kid-playable, without need for difficult tools, using readily accessible materials. The book comes with an audio CD presenting the sounds of the instruments in lively solo and ensemble pieces. The simplest projects are suitable for children aged 4-5 years and up; the most advanced are suitable for the adolescent and early high school years.
In the classroom and out, instrument-making is excellent for hands-on learning, and this book can serve as an instructional resource. But most importantly, it is a guide to simple, enjoyable instrument making for its own sake.
120 pp. Comes with CD CM-32
Bart Hopkin was founder and editor of Experimental Musical Instruments, a quarterly journal dedicated to new and unusual musical instruments, since its inception in1985. (EMI is no longer in print.) Mr. Hopkin received a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1974, and later received a B.A. in music education from San Francisco State University. A professional guitarist, he has taught, written, composed, performed and recorded in many places, including Kingston, Jamaica, where for several years he researched and wrote on Jamaican children's songs and revival church music.
Air Columns & Tone Holes
Musical Instrument Design
Making Musical Instruments with Kids
|Price of Book||Ordering Information|


When William, a friendly, outgoing boy, enters second grade, he is struggling to "keep up" with his reading group. William and his mother both report that in first grade he "hated to read" in school and at home. In this video, we follow William's progress throughout the year. As he develops strong reading skills and strategies, his ambivalence about reading changes to genuine enthusiasm. His teacher, Stacey Soto, routinely uses running records to track his progress, to choose appropriate materials for both guided reading and independent reading, and to plan instruction tailored to his strengths and needs. By the end of second grade, William's improved reading strategies for word identification and comprehension, and his new found confidence as a reader, motivate him to set goals for summer reading.
Factors that contribute to William's literacy development:
- Ongoing assessments
- Opportunities to read and write every day
- Guided-reading groups using leveled books
- Independent reading program
- Parent involvement
- Self-confidence and motivation to read
- Reading at home
"His reading is amazing. I can't believe his reading. I mean, the improvement has been huge. Huge. And he likes to read."


DIET means District Institute of Education and Training. National Policy on Education has suggested an overhaul of teacher education as the first step towards national organisation. It has suggested Strengthening of teacher training institutions at the district level and giving them the role of identifying and responding to the teacher training requirements of the area of their coverage.
The DIETs have been opened at district level in all States. The functions of these institutes may be described as under:
(i) To organise pre-service courses for elementary school teachers. They are trained to teach primary and middle classes.
(ii) To organise in-service training for elementary teachers. There are short-term training programmes such as workshops, refresher courses, seminars etc. for elementary teachers.
(iii) To review curriculum and learning materials. One of the wings of the DIET deals with curriculum and learning materials for elementary teachers
(iv) To train teachers in non-formal centres. Non-formal centres have been opened to educate drop-outs in the age group 6- 14 years; the teachers are educated to do their job well.
(v) To look after the material equipment in the elementary schools, Most of the elementary schools are short of needed learning materials.
(vi)To promote literacy programmes. DIETs adopt certain blocks in a district and undertake programmes for adult literacy.
(vii) To organise research programmes to improve the quality of education in elementary schools. (viii) To develop competency in the universalization of elementary education (UEE).
(ix) To work for early childhood care and education (ECCE).
(x) To pay special attention to girls' education in the age group 6-14.
(xi) To improve evaluation procedures for elementary education.


Benefits of Easy Piano For Kids
A lot of information has been written about new methods that are fun and easy piano for kids. The purpose of this article is to give you, the parent, useful information about this subject. Music is a wonderful and rewarding art, but it also provides many other benefits. If you’re considering lessons for your child, you’ll be amazed to learn the many benefits he/she’ll receive by starting music lessons early in life.
The benefits of courses that represent easy piano for kids extend beyond music education. Kids who play musical instruments perform better in school and develop a better work ethic that lasts a lifetime. Piano is a wonderful instrument that can be fun, challenging, and promotes a positive response to your child. Moreover, he/she will carry these benefits through his/her adulthood.
A new study by Frances Rauscher of University of California-Irvine indicates that just a few minutes of piano practice daily will significantly improve your child’s skills in subjects such as math and science. “Music instruction can improve a child’s spatial intelligence for long periods of time—perhaps permanently,” Mrs. Rauscher said.
When your child learns to play an instrument, he/she will be learning both art and math and would better understand concepts behind science and engineering. Playing piano improves his/her motor skills and hand-eye coordination and general dexterity. Also, programs specialized in easy piano for kids enhance their spatial-temporal reasoning abilities, music appreciation and self-esteem.
The piano would be an ideal first musical instrument for your child. The piano keyboard is easier to master at the beginning than other instruments. For instance strings instruments such as the violin, require that your child learns to play the right note, no other strings, and to use the appropriate amount of bow pressure and speed.
A wind instrument such as the flute or saxophone would require that your child learns the right method of blowing through the mouth hole. However on a piano, if your kid hits the right note, a good sound comes out.
Importance of Easy Piano For Kids
Instruction offering easy piano for kids can be a very significant part of their education. As you probably have noticed, the school system keeps cutting down on many musical and artistic educational activities. So it’s up to you, the parent to provide this learning experience for your child.
Music lessons keep getting more expensive, but fortunately for you, today you have many choices available online. You can provide your child with quality piano lessons for a fraction of the cost of private lessons. Best of all, your kid can learn from the comfort of your own home. So find a good course that’s considered easy piano for kids and get your child started on an exciting and rewarding piano music journey!


'Djamu’ is a word from the Gadigal language, meaning ‘here I am’ or ‘here I come’.
This unique Indigenous art education program provides opportunities for Indigenous students in Years 5–6 and 10–12 to learn about the art collections of the Gallery as well as vocational pathways available in the arts and integrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander concepts, perspectives and cultural practices.
The pilot program was held over eight days from 4 August to 22 September 2009. Students worked with professionals from the Gallery and from many different areas of the art world, including educators, curators, conservators, registrars and gallery owners. They met practising artists including Esme Timbery, Daniel Boyd, Jason Wing, Genevieve Grieves and Roy Kennedy.
Students visited places such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Powerhouse Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, artist studios and other galleries, and joined in artist-led art workshops and discussion tours of the Gallery’s collections. They developed skills and talents as artists and gained greater understanding of the art world and their potential to achieve within it, as artists, curators or other arts professionals.
Two Indigenous museum educators based at the Gallery, as well as teachers from participating schools and the Sydney Region Aboriginal Education Unit, led students on this exciting and inspiring journey.


Music games inspiring UK children to learn real instruments
A survey has shown that millions of British youngster have been inspired to learn to play an instrument after playing music console games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
The survey, carried out by the UK's largest music charity Youth Music, said that 2.5 million young people in Britain have progressed into "real" music-making after playing the games.
In fact, 19% of young people surveyed said they now play a musical instrument after being inspired to do so by playing a music-based console game.
The survey also found that out of 12 million youngsters in the UK aged between three and 18, over half of them play music games on consoles.
Andrew Missingham is a music industry expert who carried out the report. He said: "The music games are popular because they are family friendly and inclusive".
"And it is this take-up of the games that is credited with the take up of musical instruments, the development of transferable musical skills and even the development of performance confidence".
"This research for the first time shows conclusively that young people are being inspired to make their own music by games that first piqued their interest".
Christina Coker, chief executive of Youth Music, believes now is the time to capitalise on this wave of potential musicians.
She said: "We have established that there is a huge potential audience of new musicians and music-makers out there playing these games.
"Now, we and others in the music education community, should be capitalising on that interest and encouraging young people to take up real instruments.
"But we should also be thinking about how we can incorporate consoles and games into 'traditional' music education and be more open to embracing these tools in our teaching".


A plurality of U.S. voters, 46 percent, believes that the nation is behind other countries when it comes to providing programs for children to get ahead, according to a recent poll conducted jointly by the Center for the Next Generation and the Center for American Progress.
The partnership also released a report comparing U.S. student achievement with global competition, finding that China and India are among countries investing more into their educational systems.
Part of the report analyzed test scores of 15-year-olds from the Program for International Student Assessment, which placed the U.S. 14th out of 34 for reading and 25th in math literacy.
Filtering the results for reading test scores of students in the richest school districts, the U.S. would score first in the world. Among white students, the U.S. would be third.
“We obviously have a huge problem when it comes to racial and economic disparity issues with regards to the very basic reading skills in the country,” said Ann O’Leary of the Center for the Next Generation, a California-based non-partisan education organization, and a co-author of the report.
The good news, she noted, is that schools in some states are succeeding at educating their students, pointing to Massachusetts and New Jersey.
“We do know how to do this, and we should look at states that are effectively doing it and recognize that there are lessons,” she said.
These issues highlight the importance of a renewed national commitment to education reform, especially as global competition increases.
As China and India more than doubled their world economic inputs between 1980 and 2011, the U.S. share fell from 25 percent to 19 percent, according to the report. The authors argue that the key to strengthening the U.S. economy is to create a strong workforce, which starts with education.
The report suggests an improved U.S. workforce requires setting new ambitious--but realistic--national goals that would
- Better prepare students to meet educational standards
- Invest more in early childhood learning and encourage parental involvement
- Improve teacher quality
Part of the issue is surviving the “in-fighting” that resulted from No Child Left Behind and a lack of federal investment and commitment, O’Leary said.
"I think it’s incredibly important that we not lose sight of what No Child Left Behind was trying to do, that it was trying to ensure that every student in our country can be proficient in reading and math," she said, later adding, "We still have a very long way to go."


The Incredible Mozart Effect - Babies Music and Intellect
Music and Math
If you want to understand how music affects the brain’s ability to do such things as math, picture an orchestra warming up for a rehearsal. The violins are playing the same piece as the flutes and the drums, but they are playing it in their own time and in their own way. The result is chaos. Then the conductor raises her baton. All the musicians begin to play their parts in the correct order. This kind of cooperative behavior, doing the right thing at the right time, is similar to the way in which the brain reacts when it hears music. Music changes the way in which the neurons fire in the brain. Even passively listening to a piano sonata for ten minutes brings a more orderly and efficient pattern to the electrical impulses that pass through the higher-level processing areas. There is more coordination of electrical impulses, or as a neuroscientist would say, more “coherence.” The brain is better prepared to handle the kinds of intellectual skills needed to balance a checkbook or compute algebraic word problems. Of course, your baby is not about to do any banking, but within a few short years, she will be learning to read, write and do arithmetic. Wouldn’t it be great if these tasks could come quickly, easily and thoroughly? Exposure to music has the ability to help set up that kind of success.
Music and Reading
If, instead of just letting kids listen to music, you gave them a chance to learn about music and to explore it – to pick out notes on a keyboard, to clap to the rhythm, to play along with simple percussion instruments and to hear the relationship between notes – what might the effect be? Are there any real-world examples of how active musical training affects areas of academic performance? Yes.
The Kodaly music education system, which was developed in Hungary by Zoltan Kodaly, and has since grown in popularity in the United States, is a prime example of a structured approach to early musical training. In this program young children learn traditional children’s folk songs by engaging in singing games that include physical movement – such as marching and clapping – to reinforce the different aspects of the music. Irving Hurwitz and colleagues, researchers from the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston, looked at first-graders who had received this type of training, and compared them, on academic measures, to children who had not. The impact of formal musical training was dramatic: with all else being equal (IQ level, socioeconomic status, the teacher who taught them reading), children who had received musical training had higher reading scores than children who had not.
“Musical rhythms are mathematical equations, like 4/4 or 2/4 time. You use addition and subtraction skills: how many more beats do you need? How many more ways can you divide it?” ANITA COOPER, PEABODY PREP CONSERVATORY
The Incredible Mozart Effect: In their famous Mozart Effect study, Frances Rauscher and Gordon Shaw of the University of California, Irvine, looked at how exposure to music influences visual-spatial abilities – one of the abilities that enables us to solve mathematical problems. Rauscher and Shaw had university students listen to a Mozart sonata, a relaxation tape or silence. The findings were striking. After listening to the Mozart sonata for only a few minutes, performance increased 62% over a pretest score on a visual-spatial task. This compared to a 14% increase for the silence group and an 11% increase for the relaxation tape group.


This is a very exciting time to work with a speech-language pathologist (SLP) if your child has difficulties with listening, speaking, reading, spelling, and/or writing.
In the past SLPs worked on speech sound development and oral language understanding and use and the special educator or reading teacher worked on reading. This is no longer the case. SLPs' roles and responsibilities have come a long way from the old days of articulation therapy. This is because we now understand the important and critical role that oral language development plays in learning to read and spell. Oral language skills are the foundation for learning to read. The American-Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has outlined the SLP's role in the remediation of literacy disabilities such as dyslexia.
As a parent of someone with dyslexia, you should know that SLPs are experts in oral language development, which as stated above serves as the foundation for learning to read, spell, and write. An SLP can be a great resource to you.
SLPs are trained in the following areas that affect learning to read, spell and write:
- Oral language comprehension and use (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics)
- Phonological processing, including phonemic awareness
- Articulation (speech sound production)
- Letter/sound knowledge
- Word-finding difficulties
- Emergent metalinguistic awareness
- Narrative discourse
- Short-term memory
With this knowledge-base, SLPs can:
- Participate on pre-referral child study teams
- Consult with parents, teachers, and other team members to help determine whether a full diagnostic assessment is warranted
- Evaluate and treat language-based learning disabilities
- Collaborate with other professionals in the design of effective intervention programs, including classroom modifications, accommodations, and supports
- Educate dyslexics, parents, teachers, and other professionals about the role of oral language in literacy development, language development across the lifespan, and ways to identify and treat behaviors.
To find a speech-language pathologist in your area, contact your local school district or go to the ASHA website. Together you can begin to answer your questions and start the process toward success.


All for strings is a comprehensive three-volume method surrounded by a wealth of supplementary materials for teaching and performance.This complete curriculum covers virtually every aspect of beginning through intermediate string study, emphasizing technical skills, rhythmic understanding, and quality musical experiences. Many of the National Standards for Music Education can be easily implemented into the classroom setting with the varied components All for Strings has to offer.
Book 1 provides a well-rounded course of study for all beginning string students. It begins with "Starting by Rote" and "Starting by Note" approaches to music reading. Photos, diagrams, and logos intergrated throughout the book reinforce all new concepts introduced. Carefully selected and composed technical materials and musical selections provide excellent opportunities for learning and growth. Rhythm exercises and theory games are also provided, as well as duets, trios, and ensembles.
Book 2 devotes many exercises and musical selections to the development of major and minor left hand finger patterns for all string players, as well as shifting for cellists and bassists. New bowing styles are introduced, and more advanced rhythm patterns are incorporated. As in Book 1, a great variety of solos, duets, trios. and ensembles are included - perfect for performance!


The Elementary Education Department supervises 18 elementary schools (kindergarten through grade 5). Three of the 18 elementary schools are magnet schools. Enrollment in the elementary schools ranges from approximately 400 to 900 students, with a total elementary enrollment of more than 11,000 students.
Elementary students attend school 169 days each year and teachers work 185 days. The extra teacher days are spent preparing for the opening and closing of school, before school student assessment days, staff training and parent-teacher conferences. The teacher day is eight hours; the student day is six hours and 20 minutes.
Elementary schools are generally organized by grade level in classrooms with one teacher and one group of students. There are a few cases of team teaching and an occasional classroom of combined grades. There is additional support for students as needed through Gifted and Talented programming, Reading Recovery, English language learners (ELL), Basic Skills or Title I, and special education services.
Each elementary school has a site council consisting of parents and staff. The schools also communicate with parents through newsletters, the school website, teacher notes, parent-teacher conferences, SchoolConnects mass notification system and special events. Schools offer email updates through the district’s Backpack Online list services. Most schools also have Parent-Teacher Organizations or booster clubs.
The district has three elementary magnet schools that offer a specialty theme that is integrated with the district’s core curriculum in the areas of science, math, language arts and social studies. The magnet schools provide school choice to district families and are intended to help achieve racial balance within the school district. Transportation is provided to any district family that is accepted to a magnet school.
The three magnet schools are Cedar Park Elementary Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) School, Diamond Path Elementary School of International Studies and Glacier Hills Elementary School of Arts and Science. Students at the magnet schools are exposed to a culture of high expectations through a curriculum that is embedded with the Minnesota Academic Standards. Students are engaged in intensive, focused study that is both rigorous and relevant. The magnet schools offer innovative ways to meet students’ learning goals through a specific theme.


There are thousands of clubs, sports teams, schools and other extracurricular groups that are clamoring for your child's undiscovered skills. Should you sign him up for soccer or piano lessons? Take him hunting or to the movies? How many activities can he participate in before he burns out?
It's not an easy decision to make. Each activity has the potential to teach your child valuable skills, and may even turn into a career or hobby later in life.
In my family, we divided our attention between sports and music. I enjoyed both immensely and still play the piano and co-ed softball when I get the chance. It was the music lessons, though, that contributed to who I am the most. If you're debating whether music lessons are worth your child's time and your money, here are five reasons that may help you make your decision.Music educates the whole child
From day one, children learn notes, rhythms, melodies and scales. But, they're actually learning much more than that. They are learning to interact with other people and becoming better acquainted with themselves as well. Music stimulates the vestibular system, which helps all the senses coordinate with one another. According to Howard Gardner, who wrote Frames of the Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, musicmay also be "a privileged organizer of cognitive processes in any subject, especially among young people."
In other words, music education extends beyond music education. It affects a child's social behavior and success in other subjects as well.Music helps children understand culture
According to Kimberly Balls, a junior studying music education at Brigham Young University, "Many of the songs that have stood the test of time are folk songs. They maintain the speech patterns, traditions and more of any given culture. The folk songs of different countries are as different as the countries themselves." Music from countries all over the world can be incorporated into your music education many ways whether you're a singer, dancer or tuba player.Music helps establish group identity
Anyone who has watched a battle scene or sports movie knows this. It's the music that makes the scene. It brings everyone together and makes that stirring speech all the more inspiring. Participating in a choir, band, or piano duet can be a really special experience as well. Working with someone else to create music binds you together in a way that can't really be explained.Music helps you express your feelings
One reason music is so powerful is that it has the ability to say things that you can't say in words. Some people have a difficult time expressing feelings and rely on music to help them sort through their emotions. I do this all the time. Whenever I'm stressed out, angry, sad or trying to make a difficult decision, I sit at my piano and pound on the keys for an hour or so. When I'm finished, I feel much more calm and able to tackle life's problems again.Music is physical
It's not as physical as soccer, true, but it does require you to move around. Children need all the physical stimulation they can get, which is easily accomplished with singing games and practice sessions.
Years ago, before my parents married, my dad told my mom that one of the reasons he wanted to marry her was because she was a musician and he wanted music to be a part of his future home. And, it was. Music blessed our lives when we were a young family and continues to bring us together today.


Environmental Education Workshops
Calvin College students majoring in Early Childhood, Elementary Education, Secondary Education, Biology, Geology/Geography, Recreation and/or International Studies with interests in science education, environmental education, outdoor recreation, and/or interpretation are invited to attend environmental education workshops at the Bunker Interpretive Center.
Two workshops are offered every academic year, one during the fall semester and one in the spring semester. Workshops introduce participants to national, award-winning, environmental curriculum such as Growing Up WILD, Project Learning Tree, and Project Wet. These curriculum guides are used by formal teachers and other educators working with students in pre-K through grade 12. They are designed to be hands-on, instructionally sound, easy-to-use, interdisciplinary and fun.
The workshops will certify you to use the curriculum materials and guides in your future classrooms, recreation programs, environmental education programs, Vacation Bible school classes, etc. These workshops are exciting, engaging and powerful learning experiences, where you will receive the latest materials, learn to teach science education activities both indoors and outdoors, and walk away inspired and more knowledgeable about the natural world around you. Attending these workshops looks great on your resume!
Workshops are offered to Calvin students at reduced rates, thanks to Steve and Kara Vanderpol, alumni donors who have generously underwritten this program. For questions about the workshops, please contact Jeanette Henderson.
Project Learning Tree (PLT) - February 21, 2015
Project Learning Tree is a source of interdisciplinary instructional activities that uses trees and forests as a window on the world. The program is designed for educators working with youth from Pre-Kindergarten to grade 12. PLT's curriculum and activities help to increase students' awareness and knowledge of the world around them, as well as their place within it. Students learn to use critical and creative thinking skills, develop informed decisions on environmental issues, and gain confidence to take responsible action on behalf of the environment. For more information about PLT and the curriculum guides, click here.
When: Saturday, February 21, at 9:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Where: Bunker Interpretive Center
Facilitator: Jeanette Henderson, Program Manager
Cost: $10 (fee includes the $25 curriculum book, certification, instruction, workshop materials, lunch and snacks)
Bring: Enthusiasm, warm clothes/boots (we will go outside!), exact cash
Registration: Pre-registration is required, as space is limited to 16 students.


|dc.description.abstract||This study examined the effects of providing students with explicit instruction in
how to use a repertoire of reading comprehension strategies and test taking skills when
reading and responding to three types of questions (direct, inferential, critical).
Specifically, the study examined whether providing students with a "model" of how to
read and respond to the text and to the comprehension questions improved their reading
comprehension relative to providing them with implicit instruction on reading
comprehension strategies and test taking skills. Students' reading comprehension and
test taking performance scores were compared as a function of instructional condition.
Students from 2 grade 8 classes participated in this study. The reading component
of the Canadian Achievement Tests, Third Edition (CAT/3) was used to identify
students' level of reading comprehension prior to the formal instructional sessions.
Students received either explicit instruction, which involved modelling, or implicit
instruction, which consisted of review and discussion of the strategies to be used.
Comprehension was measured through the administration of formative tests after
each instructional session. The formative tests consisted of reading comprehension
questions pertaining to a specific form of text (narrative, informational, graphic). In
addition, students completed 3 summative tests and a delayed comprehension test which
consisted of the alternative version of the CAT/3 standardized reading assessment. These
data served as a posttest measure to determine whether students had shown an
improvement in their reading comprehension skills as a result of the program delivery.
There were significant differences in students' Canadian Achievement Test
performance scores prior to the onset of the study. Students in the implicit group attained significantly higher comprehension scores than did students in the explicit group. The
results from the program sessions indicated no significant differences in reading
comprehension between the implicit and explicit conditions, with the exception of the 6th
session involving the reading and interpreting of graphic text. Students in the explicit
group performed significantly better when reading and interpreting graphic text than
those in the implicit group. No significant differences were evident between the two
study conditions across the three summative tests.
Upon completion of the study, the results from the Canadian Achievement Test
indicated no significant differences in performance between the two study conditions.
The findings from this study reveal the effectiveness of providing students with explicit
strategy instruction when reading and responding to various forms of text. Modelling the
appropriate reading comprehension strategies and test taking skills enabled students to
apply the same thought processes to their own independent work. This form of
instruction enabled students in the explicit group to improve in their abilities to
comprehend and respond to text and therefore should be incorporated as an effective
form of classroom teaching.||en_US


education...for year after year as population increased and, with the growing industrialization, people crowded into the new towns. At last in 1870 Parliament, after long, acrimonious debates, passed an Elementary Education Act, the foundation upon which the English educational system has been built. Religious teaching and worship were the crucial issues in the debates, and the essentials of the......family and church. The growth of a national education system throughout the 19th century continued without a clear plan or a national decision. The cornerstone of the modern system was laid by the Elementary Education Act of 1870, which accepted the principle that the establishment of a system of elementary schools should be the responsibility of the state. It did not, however, eliminate the...
Elementary Education Act
United Kingdom
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For Immediate Release:
July 2, 2012
Early Childhood Teachers Will Learn How to Integrate Math Into the Curriculum with New NAEYC Book
Spotlight on Young Children: Exploring Math shares ideas to help children develop, use, and reflect on their mathematical understandings
WASHINGTON —The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is pleased to announce the publication of Spotlight on Young Children: Exploring Math, edited by Amy Shillady. In the newest addition to NAEYC’s best-selling Spotlight series, teachers of children from infancy through age 8 will learn how to help children develop, use, and reflect on their mathematical understandings.
Research shows that in order for young children to gain the foundational skills for later success in mathematics, it is important for teachers to incorporate math into the daily curriculum. In this book, a collection of articles from NAEYC’s award-winning journal Young Children, readers will find ways to provide in-depth, engaging learning experiences for young children focusing on key math concept areas: number and operations, geometry, measurement, and data analysis.
Articles cover topics ranging from using music and “math talk” with infants and toddlers to teaching mental computation strategies in the primary grades. The book also provides a comprehensive resource list and a professional development guide with questions and activities to help readers reflect on current practices and incorporate new ones.
“Educators can help young children build the math skills they need to do well in school and in life by providing in-depth experiences in a logical sequence on key math concept areas,” said Shillady. “Given the recent focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education, this is more critical now than ever before. I hope the articles in this book inspire teachers to provide meaningful and engaging mathematics activities for the young children they teach.”
The book is part of NAEYC’s Spotlight series—compilations from Young Children on key topics for early childhood educators. These best-selling books are useful resources for the college classroom and for professional development. Teacher educators and professional development specialists can use the study guides to facilitate learning, while readers can use the study guides individually or in small groups with colleagues or fellow students.
Founded in 1926, the National Association for the Education of Young Children is the largest and most influential advocate for high-quality early care and education in the United States.


Composition in Music Education (MUED3603)
UNIT OF STUDY
This unit of study will examine the teaching and learning of composition in schools. Through the completion of small-scale composition exercises using recent Australian compositions as a model, students will develop strategies to successfully integrate composition into their teaching and experience ways in which composition can be seen as a site of music learning. Students will survey sampling, sequencing and notation software, develop skills in software evaluation suitable for composition, and discuss how technology can enhance the teaching and learning of composition. Strategies for assessing composition work will be considered.
Our courses that offer this unit of study
Further unit of study information
2 hour workshop/week
Composition (50%), design of composition task (50%).
Faculty/department permission required?
Unit of study rules
Prerequisites and assumed knowledge
MUED1002 or MUED4002
Study this unit outside a degree
If you wish to undertake one or more units of study (subjects) for your own interest but not towards a degree, you may enrol in single units as a non-award student.
If you are from another Australian tertiary institution you may be permitted to underake cross-institutional study in one or more units of study at the University of Sydney.


Developing fine motor skills in 3-year-olds
Explore suggestions to encourage and refine fine motor skill development in 3-year-olds.
At age 3, children are developing fine motor control: they’re more able to move their fingers independently, using them in more complex tasks such as holding writing utensils like an adult, cutting with scissors and making more complex and precise drawings. They have also developed more spatial awareness, allowing them to be more intentional in play. For example, they may be able to stack numerous blocks, unbutton buttons, thread beads and eat with a fork. Using their special awareness along with more developed fine motor skills enables them to complete tasks they weren’t able to a few months ago.
Michigan State University Extension suggests the following activities for children to take part in to develop fine motor skills:
- Dressing and undressing dolls
- Playing with blocks
- Threading beads
- Sand play
- Using different size containers for water play
- Tearing paper for collages
- Manipulating zippers and snaps
For parents who are having difficulty getting their children to engage in activities that are helpful in skill building, try putting away some of the toys laying that don’t encourage skill development, only giving your child access to the toys that promote skills your child may need to work on. Children also tend to play longer if parents are active with their children during their play sessions.
You can check out the American Academy of Pediatrics website for more ideas or see these articles on theMSU Extension website:
- MSU Extension educator Elizabeth Gutierrez suggests that parents and children engage in the four types of play to help them refine motor skills, physical skills, learn to problem-solve and regulate emotions in her article “Playing with Children Encourages a Variety of Skills."
- MSU Extension educator Kittie Butcher explains that every area of development – physical, cognitive, communication and social/emotional – can be enhanced when children engage in pretend play or make believe in her article “Childhood Pretend Play Builds Critical Skills for Late Years."


Introducing your child to music education at a young age offers an incredible array of developmental benefits. more
Labour second stage
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The second stage of labour starts when your cervix is fully dilated. A strong urge to push may be overwhelming - this is because of the pressure that your baby's head is placing on your pelvic area.
Listen to your midwife. This is the time to push your baby out. If it is your first baby, you might expect it to take between one-two hours. Women who have already had babies usually find the second stage happens quicker.
During your antenatal classes, you might have been told about different positions that could help you manage the pain of childbirth. If you have written a birth plan and have it with you, you might want your partner to refer to it, encourage you and help you work through some of the options. Don't worry if you have forgotten it, don't have one or don't feel that anything in it is actually helping. Just try to stay calm and focused and reassure yourself that it will all be over soon. The more relaxed you feel, the more relief from pain you will feel.
The descent of your baby's head will stretch your perineum (the area between your vagina and anus) and may feel like a burning sensation. If you have done any perineal massage during your pregnancy or early labour, you may find it has helped.
Your midwife will advise you on how to manage any discomfort you are feeling and what you need to do.
- Listen to your body and push when you feel a strong urge.
- Try not to hold your breath while you are pushing.
- Usually you will find that, through each contraction, you push several times. By kneeling, squatting or even standing you will be using gravity to help, which can make the process easier.
- If you have had an epidural and can't feel your contractions, your midwife will tell you when to push.
Find more related articles and links
- Find out about first stage of labour
- Follow your labour through the second stage
- Understand your fears of labour
- Learn how to prepare for labour
- Discover how to cope with contractions
- Make a list of what to pack for the hospital
- Find out how to do perineal massage
- Learn how to cope with labour using birth aids
- 1. Heartburn and reflux
- 2. About cord blood banking
- 3. Cord blood: will we need it?
- 4. The rise of cord blood banking
- 5. What is cord blood and cord tissue?
- 6. Australia's 100 top baby names in 2011
- 7. How to choose the perfect maternity bra for you
- 8. The baby gear you really need
- 9. Pelvic pain during pregnancy
- 10. What to pack for your birth


Stephen Wolfram is a well-known figure in the sciences thanks to genius inventions like the math problem-solving software Mathematica. Now he's in the news again for a very different reason: He's trying to reinvent web search by making a smart "fact computer" engine.
It's called Wolfram Alpha, and it's pretty much what you're thinking about right now: A computer program that, like the computers from a science-fiction movie, answers with the right facts when you ask it—think Hal 9000, or even KITT from Knight Rider. Wolfram is calling the technology a "computational knowledge engine" and it's designed to answer questions like "What's the 200th number in Pi?" and "What phase is the moon in right now?"
But apparently the system's not like previous efforts at this technology (ahem, Ask Jeeves), which use natural language parsing to determine your question and then simply present the web-search results. Instead Alpha is supposedly revolutionary since it actually computes the answer for you. Inside it has built-in models of how the world works in terms of science, geography, business, people and so on, and it interprets your question and uses its models to calculate an answer.
In fact what Wolfram and his team have done is, after a lot of research, broken down the problem (answering a fact-based question) into a series of small steps, each of which is reproducible and can be used for interpreting different types of question and finding the corresponding answers. And these steps have been programmed into the Mathematica computing engine, along with a natural language program and the "real world" database.
Google solves the problem in the opposite way, by simply searching (with some nifty algorithms, admittedly) the vast sea of websites and delivering a list of "matches." Alpha tries to understand what you mean, and then calculates the answer.
If that sounds weird, it is—at least a little. We're very used to our current way of interacting with web-based data, even though it's still very novel for us. The idea that a search engine needs to be wired to an electronic brain that tries to understand what you're asking before it goes and calculates the answer is strange. Particularly since Alpha seems like it's mainly designed to perform the missing task at the end of a Google search: taking all the matched web pages and compiling the data into a meaningful single answer.
And that, in fact, is probably the reason Alpha's won't be the "next big thing" in web searching for the average user when it's fully revealed in May. Although we obviously haven't used the service yet, the factual results it's designed to deliver seem like they're fairly easy to find with just a few clicks using current search technology. Unless you're talking about very very specific fact requests like "Is the Moon Io in transit across Jupiter's face when looking from Earth?" and you'd have to be a subject matter expert to have to care about that: Hence Alpha could end up with a following in the math and science fields, if it turns out to be a reliable and authoritative information source that accurately and succinctly returns information from its "curated" data.
The real revolution would be if Wolfram could expand the technology to compute the answers to "fuzzier" questions like "Do people like Robert Mugabe?" or "Is it warm in southern France this month?" But that's a far far trickier problem to solve.


Because autism spectrum disorder is a disability that impacts social skills so dramatically, motor skills deficits tend to get short shrift. But recent research shows that kids with ASD who have better motor skills are also better at communicating.
Parents whose child has been diagnosed as having an autism spectrum disorder are immediately flooded with fears. Will the child be able to communicate with others? Will the child be able to interact with others? Why does the child display an unusual attachment to objects or get upset when routines change?
Parents may immediately think of speech therapy appointments and behavioral training. Perhaps they envision taking their child to physical therapy or doctors’ appointments or filling prescriptions for medication to combat depression or obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
In focusing on social and emotional deficits, parents, and many physicians, inadvertently treat motor skill development as an afterthought. That’s changing.
Focusing On The "Whole" Child
A recent study, published in the journal Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, has found that children with ASD who have better motor skills are more adept at socializing and communicating. Children who tested higher for motor skills were also better at “daily living skills” like talking, playing, walking, and requesting things from their parents.
“Physicians are increasingly recognizing the need to intervene on behalf of the ‘whole’ child with ASD and his or her family,” says Somer L. Bishop, assistant professor of psychology in psychiatry at the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at Weill Cornell Medical College, who is familiar with the study. “For some children with ASD, this includes addressing impairments in motor skills.”
For many, though, focus on social and communication skills takes top billing because it’s those skills that are critical in making sure that the family continues to function in the best possible way. One of the secondary treatment areas may be improving motor skills.
“The good news is that some of the newer comprehensive intervention models, such as the Early Start Denver Model, simultaneously target the child’s skills across multiple areas of functioning, including social, communication, cognitive, and motor,” Bishop says.
Body Awareness Builds Self Confidence
Many who work with children with ASD in the New York metro area have already seen the benefits of focusing on motor skills in combination with other developmental areas. Physical therapist Shirael Pollack, who owns Watch Me Grow, a sensory gym with two locations in Manhattan, understands the value of an integrated approach to treatment. At Watch Me Grow, children work with physical, occupational, and speech therapists.
Helping children with ASD refine their motor skills helps them improve their body awareness, making it easier for them to navigate their environment and appear less clumsy. Children can also work on skills such as running, climbing, or kicking a ball. Improving these skills helps children bolster their self-confidence and build social and communication skills that will help them participate in activities with other children on the playground or in other settings where they may have difficulty interacting and where even the tiniest differences in someone’s behavior can be cause for teasing, says Evan Schermer, president at the Center for Social Enrichment and Educational Development in Stamford, CT.
“Children with difficulties with motor skills may be perceived as less popular by their peers and less likely to develop friendships,” Schermer says. But working on motor skills doesn’t have to be a time-intensive activity. Instead, it’s easy to incorporate many of the skills on a daily basis.
Parents can set up craft tables to ensure that their child with ASD and siblings can work on motor skills together. Coloring, painting, and stringing beads can be fun for any child. Playing with sand art, play dough, pegboards, or assembling small models are also great indoor activities to build fine motor skills, Schermer suggests.
For outdoor activities, Pollack recommends activities such as walking, running, or riding a bike. There are also organized sports like soccer, basketball, baseball or football. During the winter, children who are looking for similar pursuits can try various dance classes, from jazz to ballet, or gymnastics to help the child build his or her gross motor skills.
More research is needed to clarify the link between motor skills and adaptive behavior. “Motor skills are known to be associated with cognitive abilities,” Bishop says. “Thus, this link may be at least partially explained by the fact that children with poor motor skills also had lower cognitive abilities, which, in turn, were related to lower adaptive behavior skills.” Nonetheless, this study—and the daily work of many area experts—firmly suggests that impaired motor skills in many children with ASD may be associated with poorer adaptive behavior in the areas of communication and socialization.


Developing Disciplinary Literacy Skills, K–6
Jennifer L. Altieri
FREE Common Core Connections PD Guide
With so much emphasis on literacy in the elementary grades, how do you give math, science, and social studies the attention they deserve? How do you make content count without sacrificing the precious time spent on nurturing literacy development?
This book's innovative approach to disciplinary literacy shows you the way. Chock-full of fun and engaging hands-on activities to teach essential content material, the chapters will help students
- Meet comprehension demands through the grades
- Communicate content knowledge orally
- Create content connections through writing
- Develop viewing skills for content reading
The activities can be modified for a range of ages, grades, and abilities. Activity extensions and adaptations help you adjust instruction as needed.
Content Counts! is an essential resource for developing the literacy skills and content area knowledge students need to succeed in middle school, high school, and beyond.
© 2011 | 264 pp.
ISBN 13: 978-0-87207-838-3


I am writing in response to the Dec. 2 story "Options sprout from STEM" regarding education in the 21st Century. The current and new acronym as of 2011 is STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math). The scientific community is now embracing and finding the need to include the arts, which propels science, technology, engineering, and math, and allows for motion, movement, and momentum. Without the involvement of the arts, STEM would be at a loss to provide creative ways for drawing technical manuals, illustrations, or to provide connections to creative scientific and technical solutions. Visual thinking improves and enhances science and engineering abilities.
"There is a National movement to add to 'STEM' and give them 'STEAM'!" — Harvey White, Qualcomm founder.
"The creative scientist needs … an artistic imagination." — Max Planck, Nobel Prize in physics and pianist.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." — Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize in physics and violinist.
The National Science Foundation, National Education Association and National Art Education Association are working diligently toward a collaborative model to establish "STEAM."
STEAM propels the education of the fully trained student into the second decade of the 21st century.


Monday, January 04, 2010
Cognition Without Control - ADHD, Gifted IQ, and the Learning-Performance Trade-Off
Interesting article from UPenn / Stanford speculating on the benefits of Cognition without Control:
"Late prefrontal development clearly has some negative consequences for childhood
behavior. Yet despite this, there are many examples of learning tasks (e.g., language acquisition)at which children do better than adults...we propose that these differences may reflect the costs and benefits of an immature frontal cortex (hypofrontality) that arise from the inherent tradeoffs between learning and performance. That is, a system optimized for performance may not be optimal for learning, and vice versa."
Reflecting on this research, from the LA Times reporter Melissa Healy:
"In those crucial four years, a toddler's accumulation of knowledge about her world may be unhampered by the discipline imposed by the prefrontal cortex...her prefrontal cortex doesn't stand in the way and try to keep her "on task." And her underdeveloped powers of attention will keep her from getting bogged down by pesky exceptions to rules of grammar or syntax. So, she'll always apply the most general rules she knows -- say, that adding an "s" makes things plural.
The authors call this period of disorderly learning "cognition without control."
This is a theory, not a finding, note the authors, led by the University of Pennsylvania's Sharon L. Thompson-Schill: that evolution may have favored a delay in the maturation of the brain's "braking system" as a means of allowing rough-but-rapid learning of complex matters such as language and social conventions. But it's a theory that might help clinicians and educators begin to identify the best windows for teaching very young children and for helping kids with developmental differences to learn as well."
The researchers go on to speculate that delay in the maturation of the prefrontal cortex is no accident; it may have an important purpose - to foster flexible and broad thinking in our earliest life experiences. Perhaps as brains mature, explosive early childhood learning recedes, giving way to more established pathways and performance more than new learning. If this is so, though - then maybe we should rethink prefrontal coercion strategies in the early years - whether they be educational or pharmacological.
As it turns out, kids with ADHD or kids with superior IQ (see above) have greater delays in the maturation of their prefrontal cortices than non-ADHD or regular IQ age-matched peers. The trend is the opposite in children with autism, though - young autistic children show an early maturation of prefrontal cortices.
So what would an optimal education look like if this is a purposeful pattern of brain development? Is it a mistake to force prefrontal development too early (with stimulants or other means)? What are the ideal times for stimulants for children with ADHD symptoms? Is it jumping the gun to prescribe to preschoolers, kindergarteners, or first graders?
Perhaps Alfred North Whitehead's ideas about the Aims of Education aren't so far off about all this. Whitehead proposed 3 developmental stages of education - the stages of romance (childhood), precision (adolescence), and generalization (young adulthood).
Superior IQ children have delayed prefrontal cortical thickness pdf


Teaching Tips: Reading in the Content Areas
Explore different reading strategies by visiting these websites. The websites are for students and teachers and explain how students can improve their reading skills. Some websites have tips for teachers on teaching different reading strategies. There are links to eThemes on Reading Skills: Main Idea for Middle School Students, Literature: Young Adult Book Clubs for Struggling Readers, Teaching Tips: Reading Comprehension Strategies and Reading Strategies for Elementary Students.
Tennessee.gov: Content Area Reading
This 78 page PDF packet is focus on content area reading. Skills covered include: previewing and reviewing print and non-print text, activating prior knowledge, processing and acquiring new vocabulary, organizing information, understanding visual representations, self-monitoring, and reflecting.
Content Area Reading Strategies
This five-page PDF includes content area reading strategies, including: semantic/concept mapping, graphic organizers, targeted vocabulary instruction, and context clues.
Reading in the Content Areas: Strategies for Success
This article outlines strategies for success in reading in the content areas; includes specific strategies for before reading strategies, during reading strategies, and after reading strategies.
Effective Instruction for Middle School Students with Reading Difficulties: The Reading Teacher's Sourcebook
This 410 page PDF booklet includes chapters on assessment at the secondary level, selecting and administering assessments, using assessment results to plan instruction, components of effective instruction, delivering effective instruction, comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and word recognition.
Click on the links for all kinds of tips on teaching students to be good readers.
eThemes Resource: Reading Skills: Main Idea for Middle School Students
These sites focus on the reading comprehension skills of identifying the main idea and supporting details of a text and are geared for middle school-aged students. There are lesson plans, online quizzes, and printable worksheets for practicing reading comprehension skills. Includes a link to eThemes Resource: Reading Skills: Main Idea and Supporting Details.
eThemes Resource: Literature: Young Adult Book Clubs for Struggling Readers
Find book lists for reluctant and struggling readers. Tips on organizing book clubs for young adults, author videos, and book trailers are provided. An eThemes link to Literature: Book Clubs for High School Students has additional sites.
eThemes Resource: Teaching Tips: Reading Comprehension Strategies
These sites offer various strategies to improve reading comprehension for students at all grade levels. Includes many online stories and questions to test reading comprehension. There is a reading comprehension inventory and research articles on this topic. Many pages can be printed out and used in the classroom. Some of the tips include KWL charts, story maps, word maps, and story pyramids. There are also links to eThemes Resources on graphic organizers, guided reading, and literature circles.
eThemes Resource: Reading Strategies for Elementary Students
These websites contain reading strategies to help elementary school students become good readers. Some websites simply list strategies and some include activities to help students learn. One website is a PowerPoint presentation on good reading techniques and one website compares good reading with poor reading. Some websites are written for students who are having trouble learning to read.
Request State Standards


Numeracy: Pupils struggle with sums in Wales says Estyn
- 20 June 2013
- From the section Wales politics
Pupils in half of Wales' secondary schools and 40% of primary schools have weak numeracy skills, according to the schools watchdog.
Estyn says children struggle with basic sums, such as multiplying, and rely on a calculator. As a result, they are unable to do harder calculations.
It said schools should provide more opportunities for pupils to use their skills.
The Welsh government said the report would help to raise numeracy standards.
Ministers have long been concerned about this area. Last year, Wales lagged behind England, Scotland and Northern Ireland in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which looks at literacy and numeracy.
Estyn discovered that some pupils it saw during inspections found it difficult to carry out basic sums, such as fractions, percentages and decimals.
In a report which focused on children in key stage 2 and 3 (ages seven to 14), it also said many could not recall important number facts, such as how to multiply.
It meant young people were unable to apply reasoning to solve more advanced mathematical problems.
It pointed to a number of improvements needed, such as better monitoring of pupils and ensuring that schools have a clear numeracy policy that applies across all classes and departments.
Estyn will now track the progress of a sample of schools over the next two years, reporting on the impact of the Welsh government's new literacy and numeracy framework.
Chief inspector Ann Keane said it was key that children were taught the basic skills so they did not need to rely on calculators.
"Numeracy is still a cause for concern in schools," she said.
"We know that many schools have not given as much attention to numeracy as they have done for literacy, but it is vital that schools have clear plans for developing numeracy skills.
"The plans need to address young people's weak numeracy skills so that they can do mental arithmetic, grasp numerical reasoning and don't have to rely on a calculator.
"Basic numeracy is an essential life skill that is needed in most jobs and in managing personal finances.
"But a majority of pupils struggle to understand how numeracy is relevant to their everyday lives and this needs to be tackled."
Estyn also recommended that local authorities or education consortia should support teachers in improving their knowledge, skills and confidence in teaching numeracy skills.
Angela Burns, Conservative education spokeswoman, said the report was "worrying".
"We are competing in an increasingly global economy and if our young people cannot do simple maths, they will lose out in the jobs market to those from other countries who have the skills employers seek," she added.
Plaid Cymru said the report "confirms the party's concern about numeracy" and called for earlier intervention.
Simon Thomas, the party's education spokesperson, said: "The Welsh government cannot let this continue.
"Good teaching and improved teaching standards will be vital to the success of Wales's literacy and numeracy drive.
"Tracking children's progress throughout their education is simply not good enough - we must intervene at an early stage to give every child the best possible opportunities."
The Welsh government's approach to numeracy is "failing Wales' children", according to the Welsh Liberal Democrats.
Education spokesperson Aled Roberts added: "It is a great shame that after all this time the Welsh Labour Government is still insisting that restructuring is the best way forward to improve children's basic education.
"The real debate needs to be about standards not structures. The Welsh government needs to set out what will be done for those children who will have already lost out before any long term plans to deal with the literacy and numeracy deficit come to fruition.
The Welsh government has brought in regular reading and literacy tests for pupils aged seven to 14, which started in May.
A spokesperson said Education Minister Leighton Andrews had "made clear his commitment to improving standards of numeracy in Wales".
"This report shows where we have been successful in developing numeracy skills in our schools and in teaching numeracy across the curriculum and where performance needs to be strengthened," they said.
"The recommendations will inform the ongoing work of the Welsh government, local authorities and schools to ensure that numeracy levels are improved.
"We welcome the report's findings and congratulate those schools and local authorities highlighted whose effective approaches and collaborative work in helping to raise learners' numeracy skills are leading the way."
Answers to sample numeracy questions: Year 3: 28p; Year 4: 16 tins; Year 5: £1.05; Year 6: 90; Year 7: £34; Year 8: 256.35; Year 9: 2.76


TeachTown Basics is an early intervention program for students developmentally 2 to 7 years old. The curriculum addresses early childhood learning standards and helps educators address commonly used IEP goals and skills measured in standardized assessments. Our On Computer Lessons and Generalization Lessons include over 800 lessons in six key learning domains:
The Adaptive Skills domain teaches your student independent life skills. Lessons in Adaptive Skills focus on teaching your student self-awareness, self-care, self-help skills, and fundamental daily living skills. Lesson subjects include learning about body parts, food types, clothing items, time, money, safety, and the community.
The Cognitive Skills domain teaches your student deductive reasoning, critical thinking, and logical reasoning skills. Lessons in Cognitive Skills focus on teaching your student problem solving, following multiple step directions, and organizing items into categories. Lesson subjects include learning about topics such as shapes, comparisons, matching, sequencing, and associations.
The Language Arts domain teaches your student early reading skills. Lessons in Language Arts focus on teaching your student the foundations of reading comprehension. Lesson subjects include phonics, upper and lower case letter identification, sight words, language comprehension, spelling, and basic narrative structure.
The Language Development domain teaches your student communication skills. Lessons in Language Development focus on teaching your student new vocabulary, enhanced word recognition, listening skills, and other fundamental language skills. Lesson subjects include learning about words, parts of speech, conjunctions, the fundamentals of grammar, and how to answer questions.
The Mathematics domain teaches your student math skills. Lessons in Mathematics focus on teaching your student the basics of number recognition and mathematical principles. Lesson subjects include number awareness, counting, matching quantity to numerals, number patterns, addition, subtraction, fractions, numerical sequences, and comparisons (more and less).
The Social and Emotional Skills domain teaches your student basic social knowledge as a foundation for more complex social interactions. Lessons in Social and Emotional Skills focus on teaching your students how to identify emotions, recognize the causes of emotions in others, and attending to relevant social information. Lesson subjects include recognizing facial expressions, following eye gaze, and identifying good friend habits.


Watch the Video
Watch the video, "Teaching English Language Learners," taking notes as you watch. After you watch, jot down your answers to the questions below. If you prefer to watch the video in segments, pause the video when you see the next chapter heading.
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Where do I start?
In the first video segment, Professor Jiménez explores common views of English language learners, and how teachers can use what they know about literacy instruction and their students to maximize learning.
- How can teachers' expectations of English language learners affect students' learning and performance?
- How can you use what you already know about literacy instruction and your English language learners to enhance their learning?
How can I build on what English language learners bring to the classroom?
In this segment, Professor Jiménez argues that students' language and cultural diversity should be viewed as an asset rather than a liability.
- Think about your English language learners. What ideas from the video might be useful in your classroom?
- How can you ensure that English language learners and their English-speaking peers have equal access to the curriculum?
- How can you support students in maintaining their first language?
How can the classroom context support English language learners?
In this segment, Professor Jiménez stresses the importance of including many cultural materials (books, dictionaries, wall displays) that reflect the backgrounds of the English language learners in the class.
- How can you use multicultural literature to support English language learners in your curriculum?
- How does your classroom reflect the nature of the community itself as well as materials written by the students?
- How can you group students so that they use their native language to support their language and literacy development?
What are some strategies for teaching English language learners?
In the final video segment, Professor Jiménez discusses instructional strategies for working with English language learners in the classroom.
- What aspects of reading development are most critical to address when instructing English language learners?
- How can modeling oral reading support English language learners?
- What strategies can you use to teach students how to figure out and remember unknown words?
- What are some strategies you might use to encourage students' to maintain their native language as they develop literacy in English?
Next > Extend Your Knowledge


The development of the Australian Curriculum
is guided by the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians
, adopted by MCEETYA state and territory Education Ministers in December 2008. July 2012 marked the beginning of a three year implementation phase for Western Australian schools. In 2015 the first phase of implementation was cmplete with schools fully implementing the Australian Curriculum in English, Science, Maths and History. The Australian Curriculum sets out what all young people should be taught through the specification of curriculum content and the learning expected at points in their schooling through the specification of achievement standards. The Western Australian Education Department has selected 60 schools to take on lead roles in supporting the implementation in different learning areas. Waggrakine Primary school was selected as one of these schools and is responsible for leading early childhood and middle childhood literacy development for the department to share out outcomes, plans and strategies with our department schools. Currently schools continue to be guided by the Western Australian Curriculum Framework.
A focus of the Australian Curriculum is the implementation of the Cross Curricula
- Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia
- Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander and Cultures
Western Australian schools are committed under the Curriculum Council Act 1997 to implement the Curriculum Framework. The Curriculum Framework
sets out the 'knowledge, understandings, skills, values and attitudes that students are expected to acquire'. These requirements are described as a series of learning outcomes. The outcomes include overarching outcomes and learning area outcomes. Schools must ensure that the learning and teaching programs provide learning opportunities aimed at achieving the outcomes set out in the Curriculum Framework.
Click on any of the links to find see how we are covering each of these Learning Areas at Waggrakine.
Specialist teachers for 2012 are Visual Arts, Music, Physical Education, Languages other than English in Wajarri or Indonesian and Science.
Waggrakine plays host to a number of workshops to assist in networking teachers across a number of learning areas.
Early Childhood Network meeting in term 2 2011


Definition of the Whole Language Approach
In the simplest terms, the “whole language approach” is a method of teaching children to read by recognizing words as whole pieces of language. Proponents of the whole language philosophy believe that language should not be broken down into letters and combinations of letters and “decoded.” Instead, they believe that language is a complete system of making meaning, with words functioning in relation to each other in context.
The philosophy of whole language is complex and draws from education, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Whole language is a constructivist approach to education; constructivist teachers emphasize that students create (construct) their own knowledge from what they encounter. Using a holistic approach to teaching, constructivist teachers do not believe that students learn effectively by analyzing small chunks of a system, such as learning the letters of the alphabet in order to learn language. Constructivist instructors see learning as a cognitive experience unique to each learner’s own perspective and prior knowledge, which forms the framework for new knowledge.
Making Meaning of Text
The important thing for parents of elementary students to know is that whole language reading instruction focuses on helping children to “make meaning” of what they read and to express meaning in what they write. Some important aspects of the whole language philosophy include an emphasis on high quality literature, a focus on cultural diversity, and integration of literacy instruction across the subject areas. Whole language reading instruction creates many opportunities for children to read, either independently, with other children in small guided reading groups, and being read aloud to by the teacher.
The Role of Writing
Whole language teachers believe that children learn to read by writing, and vice versa. They encourage children to read and write for “real purposes,” with nonfiction texts and interpretation of what they read forming much of the basis of their assignments. The whole language approach to reading also stresses the love of literature and the use of engaging texts to help children develop that love. Teachers who use this approach exclusively do not place heavy emphasis in the early grades on spelling and grammar, which can make some parents uncomfortable. The whole language philosophy emphasizes children’s efforts to make meaning and seek meaning in language; therefore, correcting errors places the focus on technical correctness, which is not where whole language teachers believe it should be. The effective whole language teacher “hears and sees through” the child’s errors, using the information gained for formative assessment, then creates experiences that help the child to acquire the correct structure and form.
Cons of the Whole Language Approach
Aside from overlooking spelling and technical mistakes, the whole language approach can also present problems for students with reading difficulties. Students with dyslexia and other language processing disorders need explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and decoding in order to improve their reading skills. With the high prevelance of processing disorders (15-20% of all students), many reformers believe explicit and systematic phonics instruction should be used to teach every student how to read - in order to prevent these students from falling behind. The whole language approach works for many students, but explicit and systematic phonics instruction works for students of all levels (and greatly decreases spelling and pronunciation errors).
Learn how to teach decoding strategies to your students & earn free PD credit: READING WORKSHOP
What Does the Research Say?
Because of disagreements over the years about which type of reading instruction is best, phonics or whole language, the National Reading Panel began a study in 1997 to settle the debate. In 2000, the Panel resleased its findings, stating that there are five essential components that must be taught in an effective reading program: phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension.1
1. Moats, Louisa. Whole Language High Jinks: How to Tell When "Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction" Isn't. pg. 12


A special report from the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University says more resources are needed to address the growth in the number of Latino students in the state who speak limited English. The report says communities and schools tend to segregate and marginalize non-English speaking students. IU Professor of Education Peter Cowan co-authored the report. He says the public often downplays the need for programs to help bridge gaps.
At the same time that Latino students are often isolated, immigrant families may be distrustful of the school district or local governments. IU Professor Rebecca Martinez says it takes specially trained staff to help build trust between families and school officials.
The CEEP report recommends focusing more time on training for staff and broader literacy development for students. According to the U.S. Department of Education, Indiana saw the third fastest growing populations of English language learners in the country, with a 408 percent growth rate over the past decade.


Learning Ladder Year 5
This disc provides the essential literacy and numeracy skills !
Developed with experienced teachers, this disc provides the essential literacy and numeracy skills to help your child excel.
This is step five of Dorling Kindersley's powerful curriculum-based learning system. There are three easy-to-use steps to mastering each topic:
- One-to-One Lessons
- Practice Activities
- Interactive Exercises
From 9 to 10 years old.
What does this disc teach?
- Sentence Construction
- Vocabulary & Audience
- Understanding Grammar
- Writing for Different Purposes
- Improving your Writing
- Fractions & Decimals
- Mental Calculation
- Volume & Perimeter
- The Properties of Shapes
- The Earth in Space
- Sound & Heat
Learning Ladder Year 5 supports the following:
- National Curriculum in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
- Scottish 5-14 Curriculum Framework
- Irish Primary Curriculum
|Platform||Windows XP, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows 7|
- Windows XP*/Vista/7
- 48MB RAM for Windows (512MB for Vista)
- 640 x 480 screen resolution
- 16-bit colour screen
- Double speed CD-ROM
- 20MB hard drive space
- 16-bit sound card
- Loudspeakers or headphones
To access the online feature in this product, you will need Internet access.
Please Note: This product will not work if you have Windows 2000 and a Creative SoundBlaster Live! sound card.
*For XP, this product must be installed & run using an Administrator account.


Did you Ask Musicnotes? Read about the Melodic Minor
While many of your questions were related to transpositions, music notation and symbols, and learning how to play piano or guitar, there were a few that were quite technical like this question about the melodic minor. We’d like to address this question here today for our advanced music lovers out there.
- I have been teaching piano for over 15 years and have taught the 3 kinds of minor scales, but I have never understood the origin or the purpose of the melodic minor. I have continued to teach it along with the natural and harmonic minor scales so that if my students continue on with their music education they will know it and hopefully find someone to explain it to them later—perhaps in a college theory class?! I have asked many music-minded people over the years and have never received a satisfactory answer as to WHY we even have the melodic minor, let alone an example of a song with it in it. Any ideas??!
Curious in Spokane, WA
Do you know what a melodic minor is? A melodic minor scale is based on a natural minor, but the sixth and seventh tones in the melodic minor scale will be raised by a semi-tone (half step) when the melody is moving upward toward the root note (tonic). The trick is that a melodic minor is the same as a natural minor when you play the descending scale.
Both the harmonic and melodic minor scales are used to increase the “weight” of a desire to resolve to the tonic. In the harmonic minor scale, the 7th is raised to make it a half-step below the tonic where it is referred to as a “leading tone.” If you’re in A minor and play a G sharp, you get a tangible sense that it REALLY wants to resolve upward to A – even more so than a G-natural due to proximity. Plus, the raised 7th gives us the traditional V7-i cadence.
The harmonic minor scale does present a problem, though: it creates an awkward augmented 2nd interval (3 half steps) between the 6th and 7th. Historically, going all the way back to early music and chant, this interval was considered dissonant (both melodically and harmonically) and was to be avoided or resolved immediately. By raising the 6th along with the 7th (melodic minor) this awkward interval could be avoided. The raised 6th also serves to further emphasize the upward motion toward a resolution to the tonic.
However, if you’re descending melodically in the scale – moving AWAY from the tonic, there’s no need to build “upward” motion or tension toward that resolution. The raised 6th and 7th can actually be confused for a major scale if you play them descending, resulting in a sense of tonal ambiguity. That is why the 6th and 7th in the melodic minor scale are usually employed as “raised ascending/natural descending.”
Many songs may employ the melodic minor as a phrase-shaping tool, so it can be challenging to find examples of a song that uses the melodic minor consistently. Typically, the melodic minor is usually used to shape singular phrases or passages when it is convenient for the harmony.
Have a question for our team here at Musicnotes.com? Don’t be afraid to “Ask Musicnotes!”


The Visual Arts program at North Raleigh Christian Academy strives to provide each student with:
- An awareness of their God-given gifts and abilities;
- A sensitivity to God's creation and a means to respond to what they see;
- The opportunity to express ideas visually, by developing skills in drawing, painting, sculpting, designing, and crafting.
- A fundamental knowledge of artistic heritage and how art history relates to the present.
- The opportunity to make qualitative visual judgments as they learn to appreciate diverse expressions of creativity.
Specific guiding is fundamental. Step-by-step guiding that produces satisfactory results is valuable even when the means of accomplishment are not fully understood. A core knowledge of the foundations of art will be taught, encouraging each student with the understanding that these are learnable skills that require diligence, practice, and persistence. Their key to success is practicing one small concept at a time, while they are developing an understanding of the various mediums and techniques.
- The Art program at NRCA promotes creativity throughout Elementary, Middle School and High School. Students begin with the opportunity to learn about the old masters and then apply what they learn to their own masterpieces. Beginning in K-5, art class is a hands-on Art History program with slides, practice sheets, and then replications of the works of Masters like Van Gogh, Picasso, and Pollock. This practice continues throughout the Elementary classes with each study presented at the level of difficulty appropriate to each grade.
- Middle School Art is an elective subject comprised of both seventh and eighth graders. At this level, art students receive more specific instruction concerning the elements and principles of art and how these affect artwork that is pleasing to viewers. This group is now divided into either Drawing/Pen & Ink/Ceramics, or into Painting/Printing/Graphic Design.
- High School students are presented with a more advanced level of instruction in composition and design, with the further offering of advanced studies in Advanced Drawing, Painting, Pen & Ink, Ceramics/Sculpture, and Digital Photography.
- NRCA provides Advanced Placement Studio Art at the High School level for serious art students who are planning on their studies in college to center on Art. Students at this level of study prepare and present a portfolio of college-level assignments to the College Board for assessment and, depending on the grade received, students may be able to enter their college studies at a higher level than Beginning -101. This class offers students the opportunity to develop portfolios in Drawing, Two Dimensional Design, and Three Dimensional Design. In the past three years, students in the AP Studio Art program have consistently received a score of at least 3 and more recently 4’s and 5’s on the AP Studio Art.
- In 2007, the National Art Education Art Honor Society was established at NRCA. Students, who achieve consistently high scores and are community minded individuals, are asked to join the Art Honor Society. The students honored as members have college scholarship opportunities available to them for consistently high grades in Art.
- The 2010-2011 school year brought advances in the Art program at NRCA. Students in Middle School now have the opportunity to choose Art as an elective every day. Students also have the opportunity to continue art studies with the addition of a new elective.
- The Art program has exhibitions twice a year at NRCA. The Art Extravaganza is open to all students. The District ACSI Fine Arts Festival is only for students who have been adjudicated and received a Superior rating. Students also participate in several out of school competitions. Students have entered the North Carolina State Fair Art and Photography Contest, the North Carolina State Senator artwork competition, the Southeast District of the Association of Christian Schools International, and the Jostens Photography contest.
- NRCA art students have regularly received Excellent and Superior ratings at competitions. NRCA hosts the ACSI Southeast District Art Festival annually. Over 300 students participated from 12 schools throughout the Southeast Region of North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
- Broadcast Production/Video Production has expanded to an Honors level class.
- NRCA composes an award winning all-color yearbook. Students learn photography, writing skills and design.
- The Shield is NRCA’s student newspaper/magazine. This year, 26 students will learn journalism writing and graphic design layout and produce three professional issues. The staff is launching a digital internet Shield this year that will be updated on a weekly bases and will reside on the NRCA website. This class also produces special school publications such as the AP Survival Guide and the Senior Memory Book.


The report by a presidentially appointed committee on arts education makes the case that art education not only helps young people find their voice but also is an effective tool in improving student achievement in all subjects. It even ends up helping the private sector too.
The report, released by Obama’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and called Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools, is the first federal analysis of arts education data in more than a decade and was 18 months in the making.
It makes the following five recommendations that serve as a blueprint for schools to increase arts education in public schools and integrate the arts into an array of other subjects:
1) Build robust collaborations among different approaches to arts education
2) Develop the field of arts integration
3) Expand in-school opportunities for teaching artists
4) Utilize federal and state policies to reinforce the place of arts in K-12 education
5) Widen the focus of evidence gathering about arts education
To see the entire report, click here: http://www.pcah.gov/sites/default/files/photos/PCAH_Reinvesting_4web.pdf


The books in the photo on the left may be selling for only $4 each, but the ability to read them is truly priceless. Poor literacy is often associated with poverty and can create intergenerational cycles furthering the ill effects of poor literacy on families and societies.
To help support literacy, the Institute of Education Sciences awarded $10M to GSU to establish the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy, a national research and development center. The center will investigate ways to improve adult reading and will develop a reading intervention for adult learners.
Daphne Greenberg, principal investigator and associate professor of educational psychology and special education in the GSU College of Education stated here that “There is a need to understand the reading related strengths and weaknesses of adults who have difficulty with reading, and how to best help them increase their reading abilities.” Greenberg also expressed concerns about the intergenerational effects of poor literacy.
The study is a collaborative effort listing the following key personnel:
Maureen Lovett (University of Toronto and The Hospital For Sick Children), Art Graesser (University of Memphis), Jan Frijters (Brock University), Lee Branum-Martin (Georgia State University), Chris Oshima (Georgia State University), Robin Morris (Georgia State University), Xiangen Hu (University of Memphis), Mark Conley (University of Memphis), Andrew Olney (University of Memphis)
Here are a few of the GSU library’s resources related to adult literacy:
Greenberg, D., Levy, S., Rasher, S., Kim, Y., Carter, S., & Berbaum, M. (2010). Testing Adult Basic Education Students for Reading Ability and Progress: How Many Tests to Administer? Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal, 4, 96-103.
Burke, V., & Greenberg, D. (2010). Determining readability: How to select and apply easy-to-use readability formulas to assess the difficulty of adult literacy materials. Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal, 4, 34-42.
Nanda, A. O., Greenberg, D., & Morris, R. (2010). Modeling child-based theoretical reading constructs with struggling adult readers. Journal Of Learning Disabilities, 43(2), 139-153. doi:10.1177/0022219409359344
Greenberg, D., Pae, H., Morris, R. D., Calhoon, M., & Nanda, A. O. (2009). Measuring adult literacy students’ reading skills using the Gray Oral Reading Test. Annals Of Dyslexia, 59(2), 133-149. doi:10.1007/s11881-009-0027-8
Ramdeholl, D. (2011). Adult literacy in a new era: Reflections from the Open Book. Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm Publishers.
Reder, S. M., & Bynner, J. M. (2009). Tracking adult literacy and numeracy skills: Findings from longitudinal research ([1st ed.].). New York: Routledge.
Jacobson, E. (2012). Adult basic education in the age of new literacies. New York: Peter Lang.


It is the most challenging music to master because the excellent jazz musician needs to have an abundance of high-level music technique: an expressive and flexible sound; very solid rhythm and swing; a thorough grasp of harmony and melody; great ears; strong instrumental facility; robust improvisational skills; compositional expertise and proficiency at executing a variety of jazz sub-styles. That said, jazz is great for younger practitioners because it also inspires creativity, teamwork, leadership, cultural awareness, discipline, listening, empathy and emotional expression. Most importantly, it’s really fun to play once the basics are learned. Having mastery of all these elements allows the jazz practitioner to function effectively in pretty much any musical situation, but it also can make him or her a better, stronger, more successful person. That makes jazz the best music to study.
Summer is a great time to learn more about jazz music, especially for young people. All music study requires periods of immersion - several hours per day of focused practice - which is much more possible when school’s out. A wonderful venue for summer jazz music education is the jazz camp. Jazz camps allow immersion in this great music for a week at a time, typically and some programs run for five weeks or more. Campers spend extended time with like-minded fellow musicians and are usually taught by a faculty of professional jazz players.
I attended my first jazz camp (The Jamey Aebersold Jazz Camp) when I was 14 years old and it changed my life...
CONTINUE READING MR. BRADEN'S ARTICLE HERE.
Full article appears in the August 2013 issue of the NYC Jazz Record which you can download here.
Photo of Don Braden performing at Litchfield Jazz Camp this summer (which did not appear in the article) is by Dale Rothenberg.


How structured play readies children for life
Fall, well August or even July in Arizona, begins a new year of learning for children. But how early is too early to begin introducing your child to school? Many experts agree that around 2 years-old, children begin benefitting greatly from structured play with other children, guided by an Early Childhood-educated adult. Here are five necessary life skills very young children gain from structured play:
- Problem-Solving Skills: Children try different activities and work as a team. These abilities are necessary to swing on the new monkey bars and write their college essays.
- Thinking and Reasoning Skills: Children learn to trust their instincts, use materials in creative ways, and be independent. With these strengths, they can run for class president and move out on their own.
- Language Skills: Children learn to vocalize their needs and see their successes when they get what they want. Learning to cooperate and to negotiate in their community advances their language skills giving power where it's needed and keeping children from being bullied.
- Reading and Writing Skills: Walk into a NAEYC-accredited program, and you will see a print-rich environment. The first word that most children learn to recognize and read is their first name. Childrens' names are used to develop letter-sound recognition, letter identity, patterns, left-to-right progression, and one-to-one correspondence.
- Social and Emotional Skills: Through dramatic play, children explore feelings and adult roles and develop their identities. They develop their own positive self-esteem.
Structured play in a classroom allows children to cultivate these skills. Consider an early childhood learning program for your young child to give them a head start.
Pam Morris holds a masterís degree in Early Childhood Education from Binghamton University and has taught preschool for more than 15 years. Her children attended the Early Childhood Learning Center, a NAEYC-accredited preschool, now enrolling at the East Valley JCC. www.evjcc.org/preschool


Here at Children & the Arts, we’re always interested in hearing how art education around the world is making a difference to children’s lives.
So we were particularly fascinated by a new piece of US research that suggests an arts-rich curriculum can boost learning in schools. The idea is that integrating the arts into mainstream pre-school education can help young children from difficult or disadvantaged backgrounds master tricky emotions like sadness, anger and fear.
According to researchers, a heavy focus on arts activities for young pupils produced more ‘positive emotions such as interest, happiness and pride, and greater growth in emotion regulation across the school year.’
In the study, 174 students in Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School preschool were compared with 31 students who attended another preschool nearby. Ninety percent were from low-income families. The arts-enriched programme included daily music, visual arts and physical movement classes as well as standard lessons.
Research assistants observed the children at regular intervals to determine their emotional states, reporting back on whether a child was easily frustrated, displayed wide mood swings, and how they showed empathy or concern for others.
Interestingly, the two groups of children exhibited around the same level of negative emotions. But those in the arts-enriched group ‘showed more interest, happiness and pride’ than their counterparts, according to the research team. Crucially, reports indicated that the arts-group members showed greater improvement in their ability to understand and manage uncomfortable feelings.
“Experiences with the arts elicit a range of emotions,” said researchers Brown and Sax, who carried out the study. “And these may help children to understand connections between events as feelings, as well as practice appropriate strategies to regulate their emotions.”
With many arts programmes in schools being cut back – and possibly under threat altogether by the new EBacc examination which will focus on ‘core’ academic subjects – it’s arguable that any research that highlights the value of early arts education in both the short and the long term is vitally important.
Success in later life
Rather than being an optional extra, this study suggests that the arts, and integrating the arts in education, can help underprivileged children gain the emotional maturity needed for success in school, and in later life.
At Children & the Arts, we think more research into this fascinating area is needed. To that end, we have commissioned the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) to study the effectivenness of our Start programme, which enables schoolchildren to visit their local arts venue – in 2010/2011 alone, it brought together 38 arts organisations and 16,000 schoolchildren from 214 schools nationwide. If we can find out how to improve learning outcomes for young children, boosting their self-confidence and helping them to achieve their full potential, even those who are hardest to reach will be able to enjoy a better equality of opportunity.
Read our CEO Jeremy Newton’s response to the EBacc by clicking here
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