The Israel Philharmonic is no stranger to embracing causes: it was founded in 1936 as a safe place for Jewish musicians fleeing the perils of the Holocaust.
Now, 95 years later, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is taking a stand on climate change: they are aiming to become the first major orchestra to be carbon-neutral — and expect to do so by the end of 2022 by offsetting all their CO2 emissions, through planting trees that absorb the same amount of gas they emit.
A philharmonic orchestra is hardly the epitome of a polluter. But one of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s biggest carbon footprint liabilities is their use of air travel.
Since the musicians cannot exactly bike from Israel to their concerts abroad while carrying a tuba, their air travel will continue. But to reduce the orchestra’s carbon footprint, the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic committed to a new “Planting Seeds Initiative.”
Part of the Planting Seeds Initiative is a new partnership between the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and financial services company Aspiration, whose main tenet is their environmentally conscious consumer banking programs.
Formed in 2015 in California, Aspiration developed the “Aspiration Impact Measurement” feature on their app, which helps customers scrutinize their own spending and determine whether the places they shop at are engaging in environmentally sustainable business practices. Aspiration rewards that behavior with up to 5 percent cash back on “socially conscious spending.”
“Planting Seeds is all about creating a sustainable future, a value that both American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic and Aspiration share,” said Andrei Cherny, co-founder and CEO of Aspiration in a press release with the philharmonic orchestra. “We are thrilled to be partnering with the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic to offer a new model for sustainability in the world of classical music.”
One aspect of the initiative is that for every account opened from an Israel Philharmonic Orchestra website referral, Aspiration will donate a musical instrument to one of the Orchestra’s music education programs.
But the major part of the philharmonic-Aspiration partnership is reforestation. For everyone who clicks on the Aspiration partner link from the philharmonic’s website, Aspiration will plant a tree through its various reforestation partnerships.
Reforestation can make a difference, according to scientist Sassan Saadchi at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. A single tree can clean and purify around 25 acres (100,000 square meters) of polluted air each year, create 1543 pounds (700 kilograms) of oxygen, and absorb 20 tons of carbon dioxide.
According to Iceland Airlines’ online carbon offset calculator, if the Philharmonic travels to the U.S. to tour, its 100-strong delegation would need to plant one tree for every 600 miles each person travels — a total of 1,886 trees for an 11,320 mile round trip from Tel Aviv to New York’s JFK airport.
As the world begins to return to normalcy following the pandemic, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is planning a limited world tour for the remainder of 2021 and 2022 and are still to announce their destinations.
The orchestra sees going carbon-neutral as building on their heritage of statements on the social purpose for their music.
Composer Leonard Bernstein conducted in twenty-five different seasons with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra around the world from the 1940s until his death in 1990.
Along the way, he was a vocal champion of many social causes.
He conducted a concert at the Berlin Wall on Christmas of 1989 — the first Christmas after it fell — providing a soundtrack to a newly unified Germany.
Violinist Itzhak Perlman toured with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra throughout Eastern Europe in the waning years of the Soviet Union.
“The Israel Philharmonic was founded to save the lives of Europe’s Jewish musicians from the Holocaust. Planting seeds for the future is embedded deep in our DNA,” said American Friends Executive Vice President and CEO Danielle Ames Spivak.
“We’re thrilled to be working with a visionary company like Aspiration to send a message that cultural institutions have an integral role in saving our planet from the effects of climate change.”
(Edited by Hugh Dougherty and Kristen Butler)
The post Israel’s Philharmonic Will Be World’s First Major Carbon-Neutral Orchestra appeared first on Zenger News.


ERIC Number: ED455224
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 2001
The Paraeducator in the Elementary School Classroom. [Workbook].
Page, Diane R.
This training module for inexperienced elementary classroom assistant teachers provides information on what their job consists of, what is occurring in American elementary schools, and possibilities for paraeducators. The 12 chapters are: (1) "Who Are You?"; (2) "Are You Qualified?"; (3) "What Can You Expect?"; (4) "What about Instruction?"; (5) "What Are Professional Relationships? Why Are They Important?"; (6) "Are You Confused about Safety?"; (7) "What Do You Need To Know about Classroom Management and Discipline?"; (8) "What Does the Elementary School Look Like?"; (9) "What Do School Administrators, Principals and Teachers Mean When They Say...? Are You Still Confused?" (whole language, portfolio/portfolio assessment, cooperative learning, learning centers, learning styles, multi-age/multi-level grouping, math standards, hands-on science and social studies, thematic units, and curriculum integration); (10) "Look How Much You Know!"; (11) "Just for the Classroom Teacher!"; and (12) "Reflection Time for You: The Paraeducator in the Elementary School Classroom!" (Contains references.) (SM)
Descriptors: Academic Standards, Classroom Techniques, Cognitive Style, Collegiality, Cooperative Learning, Discipline, Elementary Education, Experiential Learning, Integrated Curriculum, Learning Centers (Classroom), Mixed Age Grouping, Multigraded Classes, Paraprofessional School Personnel, Portfolio Assessment, Principals, School Safety, Staff Development, Teachers, Thematic Approach, Whole Language Approach
Scarecrow Press, Inc., 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706 ($23.50). Tel: 800-462-6420 (Toll Free); Fax: 717-794-3803; Web site: http://www.scarecrowpress.com.
Publication Type: Books; Guides - Classroom - Teacher
Education Level: N/A
Audience: Administrators; Practitioners; Teachers
Authoring Institution: N/A
Note: For the facilitator's manual, see SP 040 153.


Michigan is taking action to turn around the substandard trends in early literacy the state has seen in recent years. This course outlines Essential 9 in the series of research-supported instructional practices designed to positively impact literacy development in K-3. Essential 9 focuses on ongoing observation and assessment of a child’s literacy development. You will also become familiar with the current state of early literacy performance as well as research and methods that uphold this essential. This course is part of the Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy, K-3 series.
In this course, you will:
- Recognize the state of Early Literacy in Michigan and your role in the improvement process,
- Assess your current knowledge of Early Literacy teaching methods, especially this essential practice,
- Practice ongoing observation and assessment of literacy development that can inform your future instruction, and
- View classroom videos that demonstrate the essential in practice.


Are you currently a music teacher that has been dedicated and committed into passionate yet effective teaching to future music specialists? Have you got such passion and heart for teaching music to any or all learners along with the beginners? If so, you need to be informed and updated using the latest music teachers’ sources, trends and methods. Within this page, become familiar with the significance of virtual notation sheet among the innovative and efficient teaching tips.
Written music is understood to be either by hand or digitally printed type of musical notation. Within the creation of internet and technology, use of musical notation might also include installing online sites and presentation on computer screens – modifying the standard medium of notation. Music sheet generally refers back to the print publication of business music in concurrence of recently released films, show, record albums along with other music-related occasions.
As written music could be passed out as individual pieces or collections, it’s being utilized like a record, helpful information, a way to perform or any musical pieces. Understanding written music requires a special type of skill and literacy – the opportunity to read and obtain familiarize with musical notation. That’s the reason you should your own music students to get involved with both modern and traditional written music in addition to get the necessary skills to consider and apply such past the learning process.
As people always settle and choose convenience, it will likewise be relevant to integrate using Internet along with other way of technology into a number of learning and teaching strategies. Written music may certainly be utilized virtually through either downloads, video streaming and many more. This will help you help make your students in music become more motivated to learn their musical pieces in addition to stay more motivated in taking part in their activities within the music classroom or studio. As each written music now is available in different formats, kinds of, each learner will definitely thank you for sources and techniques.
These types of music sheet – modern or classical may also be great for beginners as they are available in categorized and arranged packages: per instrument or by complexity. Music teachers may now explore the internet the most recent written music available along with the corresponding efficient and effective trends and techniques to educate each. Written music is recognized as effective music teachers’ sources and tools that students will certainly expect to and revel in.
Both inspirational and instructional, music teachers’ sources should be made up of fun, entertaining and motivating tools and techniques which are all directed at the betterment of every music student. Nowadays, there has been a multitude of available software and reliable websites that will help most music teachers around the world achieve academic brilliance.
So, what exactly are you awaiting? Click the right path to digital written music and music teachers sources to provide your students just what they deserve – working all of the options for the excellence to music education. Enjoy each musical learning and teaching experience today!


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Science is a core curricular area of instruction for all students and the federal mandates of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) and No Child Left Behind (2001) require that students with disabilities are educated in the least restrictive environment and have access to general education science content, based upon rigorous standards. While, most students with visual impairments are educated in the general science classroom, few studies have been done to determine whether appropriate accommodations and modifications are being made in those classrooms to meet the specialized needs of these students. A 35 question survey instrument was disseminated to teachers of the visually impaired through a Visual Impairments Listserve and Facebook group to help determine what pedagogical practices, accommodations, modifications, adaptive equipment and instructional practices are being used to educate students with visual impairments in the United States and Canada. This study helped inform how students with visual impairments are being educated in the science classroom.
Koehler, Karen E. and Wild, Tiffany A.
"Students with Visual Impairments' Access and Participation in the Science Curriculum: Views of Teachers of Students with Visual Impairments,"
Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities: Vol. 22
1, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jsesd/vol22/iss1/8
Accessibility Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Elementary and Middle and Secondary Education Administration Commons, Elementary Education and Teaching Commons, Junior High, Intermediate, Middle School Education and Teaching Commons, Science and Mathematics Education Commons, Secondary Education and Teaching Commons, Special Education and Teaching Commons


A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he is in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.
Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.
As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: “Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely.
One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way. ...
Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.
Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.”
The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right."
Click on the "pdf file" link above the quote for the full 25 page document.


Kelly Gagnon is a secondary math teacher at Gorham Middle & High School (GMHS) in Gorham, NH. She has been a teacher for 19 years and is always looking for new ways to teach math, especially through technology. Kelly is a member of both her school’s Steering Committee and the district’s Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment and Data team.
GMHS recently adopted an integrated math curriculum and changed their credit structure. In an integrated curriculum, students are exposed to skills from a combination of curricula (i.e. algebra, geometry, and statistics) in one year.
Under the new credit structure, students move through the integrated math curriculum independently and are awarded credits accordingly. Advanced students who complete Integrated Math 1 and Integrated Math 2 in one year, for example, are eligible to earn credits for both courses as long as they can demonstrate mastery of the curriculum’s core competencies.
In response to these changes, Kelly puts together a list of activities that teach each skill in the integrated curriculum. Recognizing that each student will be at a different place on the list, Kelly sought out a program that could:
Tell us about how Knowre made its way into your classroom.
I worked as a facilitator for the New Teacher Center, an organization that provides new teachers with experienced mentors. They shared Knowre as a resource, and as I am always looking for new tools, I decided to pilot the program with my students.
The pilot, all across the board, was successful. The most important criteria for me was the ability to monitor students’ progress in real time. One often cited disadvantage of technology is that it can distract students. I use Knowre’s Teacher Dashboard to see how students are doing, and my students know that I am watching their progress as they are working. It helps keep them on-task and accountable.
My principal came in to observe during a Knowre session and he observed my students loving the program. He greenlighted the program and we’re now on our second year with Knowre!
How do you use Knowre? Where does it fit in an integrated math curriculum?
For each lesson covered in the integrated curriculum, I create a list of activities for the students to complete during class time.
Knowre is always the first task on the list because I use it to introduce the content. I’m easily able to find the Knowre lessons that correspond to the skills on our curriculum by using the Topics & Skills Guides.
Prior to using Knowre in my classroom, I introduced new concepts by delivering a lecture. Now, students get their introduction through Knowre. Knowre provides a good foundational understanding of the content that students develop further as they move along the list of activities.
I like that Knowre’s instructional videos are short, concise, and pertain directly to the practice question. Students can also use the Walk Me Through feature if they do not know how to approach a problem.
How has Knowre helped you as a teacher?
Knowre allows me to personalize my instruction. By cutting the time that I spend delivering lectures to an entire class who are all at different levels, I can now use that time to help students individually one-on-one and address their needs directly.
The Teacher Dashboard has been a great tool for me to keep a consistent eye on their progress. In an integrated curriculum, students are working across all four of Knowre’s curricula. The dashboard keeps their data intact even as I am constantly moving them between classes, curricula, and school years!
I also appreciate how receptive the Knowre team has been to our needs. The training webinar to start is very helpful and I like receiving the monthly reports that show how much we have used the program.
How has Knowre benefitted your students?
Knowre’s content delivery is consistent and there are no gaps. My students trust that they’ll learn what they need to know from Knowre. On the NWEA Maps test, 77% of students from fall of 9th grade to fall of 10th grade made gains. Knowre does a great job of helping students develop foundational skills, which in a subject like math, builds upon itself.
Kelly Gagnon, Secondary Math Teacher, Gorham Middle & High School
Gorham Middle & High School Quick Facts


By Rebecca Winthrop & Eileen McGivney
The world is facing a significant shift in demographics. In fact, by 2050, Africa will be home to a billion young people. With so many of the world’s youth concentrated in Africa, countries have the advantage of large working-age populations, and could be looking to capitalize on a “demographic dividend.”
But the economic contribution of young people will depend on the skills they possess, placing a premium on education. Unfortunately, many countries in Africa are struggling to educate their current youth, and projections in coming decades predict millions more will be left behind. According to the latest UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, based on current trends, sub-Saharan Africa will not achieve universal secondary school completion until after 2080. On top of the issue of schooling completion, millions of young people who do complete school still lack even basic literacy and numeracy skills. Recent estimates from the Education Commission found that more than half the world’s youth in 2030 will not meet even low levels of proficiency.
By 2030 it is predicted that 2 billion jobs will be automated, half of all those in existence today.
McKinsey predicts this will lead to major skills gaps for the workforce, with far more low-skilled workers than low-skilled jobs and far too few medium and high-skilled workers that employers will seek. Gaps in schooling and academic skills will also be exacerbated by changes in the world of work that demand a workforce with a broader set of skills that include critical thinking, collaborative problem solving, information literacy, and creativity. By 2030 it is predicted that 2 billion jobs will be automated, half of all those in existence today. What is perhaps most surprising is that many of these are not manual labour, but those that require “routine cognitive skills” like accountants and lawyers. Already today, the lack of technical skills and “workplace competencies” like teamwork and communication skills are barriers for employers to fill open positions.
This climate poses major challenges for the African education systems to rapidly expand access to high-quality education. As well as shift the focus of education systems from rote academic learning to a teaching and learning environment that fosters the full breadth of skills needed in a changing world. Already research from Brookings’ Center for Universal Education finds that countries across the continent have articulated a vision for education to fulfil this broad mission, and many have included a breadth of skills in curriculum and policy documents. However, most systems are struggling with how to implement a broader vision of high-quality education—which should be a priority in 2017.
Already today, the lack of technical skills and “workplace competencies” like teamwork and communication skills are barriers for employers to fill open positions.
African education systems need to rapidly accelerate progress in order to capitalize on their increasing share of the world’s youth. This will not be accomplished with a business-as-usual approach, but rather requires innovative approaches to teaching and learning, reaching children and youth in and out of school. African countries have already managed to “leapfrog” progress in other sectors—skipping landline phones in favour of mobiles and jumping to mobile banking before reaching everyone through brick-and-mortar banks.
No region may be more primed to do the same in education as well. In fact, our research shows new innovative approaches are reaching even the most marginalized children with more effective ways of teaching and learning breadth of skills. Such innovations are shifting the teaching and learning environment with a focus on “hands-on, minds-on” learning, altering the ways students are assessed and competencies are recognized, and utilizing new tools and technology to personalize learning and better build partnerships between schools and communities. For example, e-Learning Sudan, now called Can’t-Wait to Learn, has managed to bring math instruction to displaced children with no access to schooling by providing tablets with engaging games and lessons that were designed based on their own drawings. Evaluations have shown children can learn basic numeracy skills aligned to the national curriculum quickly, and the program is a flexible and empowering way for children to learn. Learner Guides, a program run by the NGO Camfed in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Ghana, Zambia, and Malawi, can also help leapfrog educational progress by expanding the education workforce, unburdening teachers, and helping children foster critical life skills like resilience and goal-setting. The program supplements the current schooling system by bringing young women who have completed Camfed’s secondary education program back into their rural communities to facilitate a peer-to-peer learning program.


Apple's iPad” is all the rage now in the education arena. Administrators walk around using their iPads to take notes and take pictures during walkthroughs, spot checks, and staff evaluations. Teachers and districts are looking for ways to incorporate iPads and the large selection of apps into classroom management and the curriculum. The impact of the iPad can be seen from elementary education all the way to college. Open colleges recently released an infographic that shows iPads are being used for a variety of things in the classroom, such as shared digital white boards, digital design, music theory, and keyboarding. Take a look at the infographic below, it provides a detailed look at the growth of the iPad in Education.
An Infographic by Open Colleges


As teachers, we can create new opportunities for musical learning through technology and in teacher-speak, the TPACK framework helps us to understand how to incorporate this into the classroom environment. In his book Music Technology and Education: Amplifying Musicality (2015), Andrew Brown discusses three metaphors of technology in music education that fall into the TPACK model:- 'technology as a musical tool'; 'technology as a musical medium'; and 'technology as a musical instrument'.
‘Technology as a musical tool’ is easily implemented and already widely used in music classrooms across the world. In my own teaching, I've used programs such as Auralia which mimic and extend traditional aural exercises help to increase a student's musical understanding and musical intelligence. ‘Technology as a musical medium’ refers to the type of technology which enables an activity and sometimes has more capability, depending on the student, to capture and convey musical ideas. An example of this is composition which, in Western music, is traditionally notated on paper, but now can be easily (and some say, easier) notated using software such as Sibelius. I prefer pencil and paper but regularly use Sibelius and find that students can get a result quickly with this software. Both of these metaphors have enhanced music education.
In the video below, Stephen Heppell discusses the creative ways that technology has been incorporated into the classroom. Although these are not music-specific, it does give the feeling that anything is possible.
Of Brown's three metaphors, ‘technology as a musical instrument’ is the most controversial for me, requiring a change in definition as to what makes a musician. Traditional music requires skilled, practised musicians to play on musical instruments of quality, conveying sound that sits within a pre-determined scale system. There is an argument that the same can be achieved using digital technology, even though 'immediate gratification with little effort is possible' (Brown, 2015). Technology can create new opportunities but these opportunities are not necessarily the most artistic or true to the Western music tradition. For me, the issue in re-defining technology as a musical instrument, capable of artistic expression, is that it can remove the idea of the live musician who uses body movement to produce an expressive, accurately-rendered, personally-interpreted performance taken from a rich range of repertoire. Most digital music is created pre-performance not in a live situation and therefore is composed not performed. Easy way outs such as replacing orchestral accompaniment with digital orchestras for theatrical shows lack musical collaboration (and joy) and favours efficiency. In the context of a curriculum, if definitions of music-making are to be broadened to include digital music-making, it must include the experience of a musician as a live performer within the digital music context. In this way, ‘technology as a musical tool’ types of software like Auralia and ‘technology as a musical medium’ types of software like Sibelius also remain relevant, because it develops the necessary musicianship skills needed for live musical performances. In my ideal world, teaching music students to value live performance should then hopefully translate into adults who value the richness of live performance.


It only takes one reading comprehension resource book to help students improve skills at their own reading level.
Guided Reading: Synthesize for third and fourth grades features 36 readers—six sets of two each for below-, on-, and above-level student readers. Filled with charts and photos, it enhances lesson plans with informational text about light, food webs, snow, invertebrates, and more.
Guided Reading: Synthesize provides you with a comprehensive guided reading resource. This reading comprehension resource book series includes:
- discussion guides
- prompts to encourage students to work with the text and text features
- leveled readers with high-interest topics
- graphic organizers and an observation sheet
Separated into three readability levels, the nonfiction readers capture students’ attention with appealing topics, colorful photos, graphic charts, and detailed maps. Students are encouraged to apply guided reading strategies to the text and complete writing prompts to prove comprehension.
The Ready to Go: Guided Reading series for first to sixth grades includes everything you need for guided reading organization. Each 80-page book is essentially a guided reading set, containing 36 total readers, six discussion guides, and three reproducible pages. Each grade span includes 8 books, focusing on the following reading comprehension strategies:
- Determine Importance
Each nonfiction reader contains short nonfiction texts, vocabulary banks, photographs, charts, and maps.


College and Career Readiness Begins in Middle School.
Middle school academic performance is a key predictor of success in ninth grade, where course completion is the most accurate predictor of graduation. The middle school years lay a foundation for success in high school, college, and career. Unfortunately, many students leave middle school underprepared for the rigors of high school work. This lack of readiness, combined with the socio- emotional changes students experience during this time, has a major impact on high school and post-secondary success:
- Ninth graders have the lowest grade point average, the most missed classes, and more behavior referrals compared to other high school grade levels.
- Approximately 22 percent of students repeat a ninth-grade course.
- More students fail ninth grade than any other grade in high school.
- Students who fail ninth grade are at a high risk of dropping out.
- One-third of high school dropouts never made it beyond the ninth grade.
Weak foundational skills and gaps in prerequisite concepts make accessing grade-level learning targets difficult, and often leads to course failure, which places students at risk of dropping out.
Learn how educators can take steps to support struggling students as soon as they are identified and how districts can prepare students for high school.


North Carolina Standard Course of Study
NC.RF. READING: FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS
RF.2.5. Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
RF.2.5.c. Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
L.4. Determine and/or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, word relationships, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.
L.2.4. Determine and/or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 2 reading and content, choosing flexibly from an array of strategies: context clues, word parts, word relationships, and reference materials.


In providing for your children we are guided by the Isle of Man Department of Education and Children's curriculum document “Essentials for Learning”.
At Bunscoill Rhumsaa we think in terms of an ASK Curriculum, where we value and teach Attitudes, Skills and Knowledge.
Our curriculum helps children to develop positive attitudes; we use the PATHS program (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) as foundation for this, and this is supplemented in lots of other ways including circle-time, Philosophy For Children, SEAL (Social & Emotional Aspects of Learning). Additionally, we have a firm behaviour strategy and a caring, kind and welcoming to all ethos.
We use the Cornerstones Curriculum, which is a skills-based curriculum made up of a wide range of exciting, innovative projects. Each project is closely linked to the knowledge and skills outlined in the national curriculum. Key concepts are learnt and built upon across year groups, ensuring subject depth, coherence and progression. Due to the structure of the Cornerstones Curriculum, children are given ample opportunities to embed knowledge and master new skills in a range of contexts.
Our curriculum allows children to build their knowledge; our teachers carefully monitor and evaluate each child's progress, so that they have a thorough understanding of the pupils' individual needs. That means that we know just what each child is capable of, and what they need to do next to continue to improve their knowledge and understanding.
In reception the children follow The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. This covers the following areas:
- Communication and language development
- Physical development
- Personal, social and emotional development
- Literacy development
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design .
The children also have lessons in Sex and Relationship Education. Our aims when teaching SRE (Sex and Relationship Education) are to enable children to develop an increased understanding of their and other people’s physical development and mental well-being. It is taught to help the children to develop good moral values and judgements and to help them to respect differences between people. The children learn about themselves and their body parts, friendships, body awareness and hygiene. As they move up the school they look at differences between male and female and about caring for people and learn more about caring for their bodies. They talk about self esteem, decision making and safety and they are encouraged to challenge gender stereotypes. As they near their final years in school we discuss puberty and changes in their bodies, personal hygiene, changing relationships and building good relationships. Most of this is covered through science and PSHE and is part of the education of every child. However, the part of SRE which deals specifically with reproduction, menstruation etc. needs parental permission, which we will request nearer to the time when these lessons will take place (in years 5 and 6).
In addition, all pupils in Years 4, 5 and 6 may choose to study Manx.


ERIC Number: ED391749
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1996
Elementary Social Studies: A Practical Guide. Third Edition.
Chapin, June R.; Messick, Rosemary G.
This text is based upon three assumptions: (1) the reader has completed a professional sequence of the teacher preparation program with a general background in the acacdemic disciplines such as history, sociology, and anthropology, that serve as a foundation for elementary social studies; (2) the reader is scheduled for only a one-semester, one-to-three-credit course in teaching social studies, or a core methods course in which social studies instruction is integrated; and (3) other courses in the teacher preparation program expose the reader to learning theory, curriculum planning, teaching concepts, generalizations, and instructional technology. The book limits the scope of the work to topics that are basic, specific, and yet critical to teaching the social studies in the elementary years, K-8. Chapters in this edition include: (1) "The Elementary Social Studies Curriculum"; (2) "Planning for Social Studies Instruction"; (3) "Instructional Strategies"; (4) "Social Studies in the Primary Grades"; (5) "Social Studies in the Fourth through Eighth Grades"; (6) "Elementary Citizenship Education"; (7) "Culture Learning"; (8) "Language Learning in the Social Studies"; (9) "Teaching Social Studies Skills: Time, Space, Technologies"; and (10) "Assessing and Evaluating Children's Progress in the Social Studies." (EH)
Descriptors: Cultural Education, Education Courses, Elementary Education, Higher Education, Preservice Teacher Education, Social Sciences, Social Studies, Teacher Education, Teacher Education Curriculum, Teaching Methods, Units of Study
Longman, 10 Bank Street, White Plains, NY 10606.
Publication Type: Books; Guides - Non-Classroom
Education Level: N/A
Audience: Teachers; Practitioners
Authoring Institution: N/A


At the heart of the piano TRACKS project lies our piano curriculum. The curriculum currently runs from beginner level up to approximately grade 5. It has been designed for piano teachers to use primarily as a stand-alone assessment and progress tracking tool. The piano TRACKS project was created for our students, most of whom choose not to follow the traditional route of graded music exams.
Music is a vast and nebulous field, and studying an instrument can sometimes feel overwhelming. As such we have had to omit many features of music from our project in order to keep it as simple as possible whilst still being meaningful. We intend for our curriculum to provide piano teachers with a basic music education framework, that can help learners to make consistent progress in a Western classical style of playing. It does this by providing an outline of the elements of technical skill and music theory knowledge that students are most likely to need to acquire on the road to progress.
The curriculum is separated into eight progressive levels, called Stages A – H.
Stage A = early beginner level
Stage B = advanced beginner level
Stage C = pre-Grade 1 level
Stage D – H = approximately Grade 1 – Grade 5 level
Stages D – H do not exactly match the requirements of any one particular exam board. The content of our syllabus aims to develop a student so that they are able to play to an intermediate standard by the end of Stage H. We have used the grade descriptors above as these are easily understood by most piano teachers.
The curriculum is designed to be flexible so a single student might span a number of stages at the same time.
As well as Stages, piano curriculum is also divided into areas of skill and knowledge, which we call Modules. There are 15 Modules, as follows:
- Notes & The Stave
- Pulse & Metre
- Hand Positions and Coordination
- Scales, Arpeggios, and Other Technical Exercises
- Chords and Harmony
- Forms and Structure
Not all of these Modules appear at each stage there are some items that overlap. In these Modules we have included the basics of what piano students need to learn to reach (in Stage H) an intermediate level of playing, which approximately equates to Grade 5.
Piano teachers can assess a students’ progress through the Stages by using our checklists. There are two lists for each stage: one for knowledge and one for skills. All our checklists are combined in one book. Click the link above for more information.
You can use the checklists with or without the students’s input, to easily identify their strengths and the areas for development. Students enjoy being able to see their progress in a tangible way. Download our free certificates to celebrate achievement, when a student completes a stage.
As a music education professional, you get to decide when a student has securely learned any particular element of learning. You can work with your student to agree concrete aims, and commit to small, achievable goals. Many students are motivated by having this input, and leading their musical learning.


High school students who take music courses score significantly better on math, science and English exams than their non-musical peers, according to a new study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology.
School administrators needing to trim budgets often look first to music courses, because the general belief is that students who devote time to music rather than math, science and English, will underperform in those disciplines.
“Our research proved this belief wrong and found the more the students engage with music, the better they do in those subjects,” said UBC education professor and the study’s principal investigator, Peter Gouzouasis. “The students who learned to play a musical instrument in elementary and continued playing in high school not only score significantly higher, but were about one academic year ahead of their non-music peers with regard to their English, mathematics and science skills, as measured by their exam grades, regardless of their socioeconomic background, ethnicity, prior learning in mathematics and English, and gender.”
Gouzouasis and his team examined data from all students in public schools in British Columbia who finished Grade 12 between 2012 and 2015. The data sample, made up of more than 112,000 students, included those who completed at least one standardized exam for math, science and English, and for whom the researchers had appropriate demographic information—including gender, ethnicity, neighbourhood socioeconomic status, and prior learning in numeracy and literacy skills. Students who studied at least one instrumental music course in the regular curriculum counted as students taking music. Qualifying music courses are courses that require previous instrumental music experience and include concert band, conservatory piano, orchestra, jazz band, concert choir and vocal jazz.
The researchers found the predictive relationships between music education and academic achievement were more pronounced for those who took instrumental music rather than vocal music. The findings suggest skills learned in instrumental music transfer very broadly to the students’ learning in school.
“Learning to play a musical instrument and playing in an ensemble is very demanding,” said the study’s co-investigator Martin Guhn, an assistant professor in UBC’s school of population and public health. “A student has to learn to read music notation, develop eye-hand-mind coordination, develop keen listening skills, develop team skills for playing in an ensemble and develop discipline to practice. All those learning experiences, and more, play a role in enhancing the learner’s cognitive capacities, executive functions, motivation to learn in school, and self-efficacy.”
The researchers hope that their findings are brought to the attention of students, parents, teachers and administrative decision-makers in education, as many school districts over the years have emphasized numeracy and literacy at the cost of other areas of learning, particularly music.
“Often, resources for music education—including the hiring of trained, specialized music educators, and band and stringed instruments—are cut or not available in elementary and secondary schools so that they could focus on math, science and English,” said Gouzouasis. “The irony is that music education—multiple years of high-quality instrumental learning and playing in a band or orchestra or singing in a choir at an advanced level—can be the very thing that improves all-around academic achievement and an ideal way to have students learn more holistically in schools.”


Early Childhood Our Curricula
Torah Prep School of St. Louis
The goal of our Early Childhood Program is to help each and every child gain a sense of self, a sense of being a part of Klal Yisrael, a love for Torah, and the characteristics of a self-initiated lifelong learner. To accomplish this aim, we have developed a unique program called Mentch in the Making that is research based and scaffolded so that children enter Kindergarten with critical skills in all developmental areas, from academic to emotional to social.
We define a mentch as a well-developed person and that is our intention in everything we do — to help each child develop in all areas, thereby blossoming into a mentch. Our program emphasizes five fundamental cognitive and emotional skills that will be the basis of all future learning, and that a child needs to become a self-directed learner who confidently takes on challenges:
Focus and Self Control: Children need these skills to achieve their goals, especially in a world filled with distractions and information overload. It involves paying attention, remembering the rules, thinking flexibly, and exercising self-control.
Perspective Taking: This goes far beyond empathy. It involves figuring out what others think and feel, and forms the basis of a child’s understanding of their parents’, teachers’, and friends’ intentions. Children who can see others’ perspectives are also much less likely to get involved in conflicts.
Conscious Discipline: To effectively teach “perspective taking”, we use the Conscious Discipline approach. It is a comprehensive self-regulation program that integrates social-emotional learning and discipline. The children are first empowered by learning how to be conscious of brain-body states — in other words, to develop emotional intelligence. Then they learn practical skills to manage their thoughts, feelings and actions. This method transforms everyday conflict into an opportunity for children to develop critical life skills. The program stresses “Seven Skills of Discipline”:
Conscious Skill What It Teaches Our Children
1. Composure Anger management, gratification delay
2. Encouragement Pro-social skills (kindness, caring, helpfulness)
3. Assertiveness Bully prevention, healthy boundaries
4. Choices Impulse control, goal achievement
5. Empathy Emotional regulation, perspective taking
6. Positive Intent Cooperation, problem-solving
7. Consequences Learn from your mistakes
Communicating: This is the critical skill of learning how to convey thoughts or feelings, as well as understanding how our communications will be understood by others. It includes the ability to comprehend language that is heard or read. Literacy skills are a key component of communication. Our programming is directed at supported emerging literacy in the following ways:
Reading: The goal for our Early Childhood graduates is that they should seek books out on their own, understand print concepts and the purpose and importance of writing, identify the names of most letters, make connections between many letters and their sounds, retell a story using many details, and make connections between events in a story and events in other stories or their own lives. We focus on vocabulary development starting in Ktonton as the richness of a child’s vocabulary affects all future learning. Our Phonological Awareness curriculum is full of rhyming, singing and sound games because children need to be able to play with sounds to develop into skilled readers.
Writing: Our multi-faceted expressive language program includes the Handwriting Without Tears® curriculum, which draws from years of innovation and research to provide developmentally appropriate, multisensory tools and strategies for the classroom. The program incorporates child-friendly teaching techniques, such as using music and movement to bring lessons to life, and multisensory manipulatives (such as clay) to build fine and gross motor skills. In Ktonton and Nursery, our readiness and writing lessons teach body awareness and strengthening, crayon grip, drawing, and letter and number recognition. With these foundational skills in place, the Pre-K students go on to learn basic strokes (all English letters are formed from big line/small line, big curve/small curve). The students learn to view all objects in their environment as made up of these basic shapes and they learn to draw many objects using the artistic Ed Emberley methods.
Making Connections: At the heart of learning is figuring out what’s the same and what’s different, and sorting these things into categories. Making unusual connections is also at the core of creativity.
Critical Thinking: This is the ongoing search for valid and reliable knowledge to guide beliefs, decisions, and actions.


Partnerships for Music Education
Music programs are constantly in danger of being cut from shrinking school budgets even though they're proven to improve academics. Children who study a musical instrument are more likely to excel in all of their studies, work better in teams, have enhanced critical thinking skills, stay in school, and pursue further education. Finding more experiences that expose children to music education in a free and easy way is one way to ensure that students understand the importance of music in their lives.
LSO Discovery is the London Symphony Orchestra's community and music education program. The LSO is set apart from other international orchestras by the depth of its commitment to music education, reaching over 60,000 people each year. The award-winning program, now in its 24th year, enables the LSO to offer people of all ages, from babies to music students to adults, an opportunity to get involved in music-making, and to enter the extraordinary soundworld of the Orchestra.


"Research shows piano students are better equipped to comprehend mathematical and scientific concepts."
Second graders were divided into three groups: one group received private piano lessons; a second group received private computer lessons; the third group received no training.
Based on this study, the children who received piano lessons performed 34% higher on school tests, measuring spatial-temporal ability better than the others - even those who received computer training.
"Spatial-temporal" is basically proportional reasoning-ratios, fractions, proportions and thinking in space and time. This concept has long been considered a major obstacle in the teaching of elementary math and science."
(Reference: Suburban Parent Magazine January 2012 and Neurological research, February 28th 1997)
We have definitive proof from this study (and others out there) that music education is important for our child's education and intellectual growth.
And while most of us love music, there is an added benefit of actively participating in the practice of it.
For instance, when someone listens to music, their brain is activated to decode each element of the song and combine it again to hear the song as one piece. On the contrary, music players activate their brain in a way that is equivalent to a full body workout. Learn more about the benefits of listening vs. playing music.
Want to Enroll Your Child in Piano Lessons?
Our piano lessons at Creative Soul School of Music are fun and creative. We engage young learners in a way that encourages them to be passionate about music instead of burnt out.
Creative Soul instructors use contemporary techniques to facilitate good development while also playing all styles of music to make music learning fun for kids.
We'll also help your kids learn to perform the music they've learned in their lessons, which helps instill confidence in their skill.
Get started today and help your child develop a new skill and aid in their intellectual development.


Designed by experts in elementary education, Complete Math is thorough and comprehensive. This step-by-step guide helps first-grade Canadian students develop essential mathematics concepts and strategies. Students will also develop skills in addition and subtraction practice, place value of numbers, classifying, and test practice. Complete Math is the most comprehensive workbook that offers:
- Activities designed for Canadian school children.
- Challenging, motivating lessons in addition, subtraction, shapes, fractions, money, time, graphs, and other grade-appropriate math skills.
- Drill and practice in basic math concepts, skills, and strategies.
- Word problems that encourage critical thinking.
- Test practice section with tips and example tests.
- A glossary of math terms for easy reference and understanding.
Complete Math for grade 2 also features step-by-step instructions and straightforward, easy-to-understand, directions to support independent learning and thinking. 352 full-colour perforated pages and an answer key.


My students can’t make sense of their textbooks.
I sort of clued in to that last year, but the full weight of it is finally hitting me. Part of the problem is that I’ve never met an electronics textbook I liked — topics are always organized for memorizing rules, which means they’re backward for conceptual understanding. Also, they assume that students in an electronics course have mastered high school physics. It’s an entrance requirement, after all. Yes, they all passed that course, but to assume that they understood it is patent nonsense. So my displeasure with the textbook was obvious to last year’s students, who blamed their lack of comprehension on it being a “bad textbook,” and I ended up having to do damage control all year.
This year, I kept my complaints to myself. I realized that students needed some coaching on how a textbook is different from a novel or a newspaper, so I had a class on identifying structural elements, finding things in the glossary, knowing when to use the index vs. when to use the table of contents (most didn’t know the difference), etc. And that was helpful. We’re doing better at using the textbook like a dictionary, not a bedtime story. And once we got those obstacles out of the way, I started noticing a bunch of other things that had been hidden under them.
Most of my students can’t tell where specifically they got lost. Q: What did you find confusing about last night’s reading? A: All of it!
Most of my students have reading comprehension strategies. If they get lost while reading text that is about a familiar topic, they have ways to get unlost. I know this because I see them stopping, rereading, marking their books, etc. But they are unaware of their strategies, or don’t realize that those things help with comprehension. They do them sort of intuitively, without thinking about them, and can’t name them when asked. That means that when they read text that is about an unfamiliar topic, they can’t call on those strategies consciously, and so the whole text seems hopeless. Q: What can you do to help yourself figure out the meaning? A: Nothing!
Other broad issues are at play here: their unfamiliarity with self-assessment, the common assumption that learning is something that happens effortlessly to “smart” people, their shame at not knowing and tendency to hide the evidence. I’m slowly starting to learn how to deal with those too. But the reading baffled me.
This reading process by Chris Hill helped. I really like Mortimer Adler’s book How To Read A Book, and maybe I’ll adapt some of that material. I also learned a bunch from reading Cris Tovani’s book I Read It But I Don’t Get It. Readable, well-organized, persuasive, concrete… I loved this book. Unfortunately it is a giant catalogue of things I now realize I should be doing in my classroom, but was oblivious to. On practically every page I had a face-palm moment, recognizing my own students’ complaints in her anecdotes, and realizing, “oh, THAT’s what they’re doing.” Tovani got me thinking about great questions, and provided lots of example exercises or lesson plans that made sense to me:
- How to find your confusion
- How to deal with confusion when you find it
- How to mark text
- How to find a purpose when it seems like there’s no point
- How to make predictions that are not outlandish
And these ideas are not just about reading comprehension. I get the feeling they’re about comprehension in general; in other words, some of this material is about teaching critical thinking and intentional learning. Wrangling this stuff into a format I can use in class goes in the file of “summer projects”…


AP DEECET Syllabus 2021: Exam Pattern, Check Subject-wise Syllabus Here
Updated On - April 19 2021 by Swagota Nandi
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus is released by the Department of School Education of Andhra Pradesh. AP DEECET is conducted every year to grant the admission into Diploma in Elementary Education (D. El. Ed) course. The aspirants have to qualify for the exam to get admission. The DSE itself specifies the syllabus of the AP DEECET 2021. The syllabus is based upon the curriculum of Class VI to X of the AP Board for Part A, whereas, Part B comprises of the topics studied in 2 years of Intermediate education of AP Board. Here on this page, we have provided the detailed syllabus of AP DEECET 2021 and exam pattern.
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus
There are two parts in AP DEECET 2021. Part A is the same for all the candidates, Part B is an elective where the candidate has to select one of the main subjects which he/she has studied in intermediate level (11, 12th class).
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus of General Knowledge
In this section, the candidates have to answer 5 questions. The question will be asked from the below topics.
Countries and Capitals
National Current Affairs
International Current Affairs
Knowledge of Current Events
Science- Inventions and Discoveries
India and Its Neighboring Countries
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus of General English
A total of 5 questions will be asked in AP DEECET, the candidates have to focus on the following topics.
Spotting the Errors
Idioms & phrases
Re-arrangement of sentences
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus of Social Studies
In the social studies section, the candidates have to answer 10 questions. The following topics will be asked in AP DEECET 2021.
Political life & Social life
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus of Biological Sciences
From this section the candidates have to answer 10 questions. The following topics will be asked in this section.
Classification of Chordata
Community health services and measures
Conquest of land
Domestication of animals
Domestication of plants
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus of Physical Sciences
Physical Science will appear only for those candidates who will select for this subject in part B. A total of 40 questions will be asked from the following topics.
Kinetic Theory of Gases
Simple Harmonic Motion
Atom Molecules and Nucleic
Properties of Fluids
Electrons and photons
Theory of Light
Magnetic effect of electric current
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus of Mathematics
As Mathematics is one of the elective subjects, the candidates who will opt for Mathematics will have to answer 40 questions. The questions will be asked from the following topics.
Basic geometrical ideas (2-D)
Introduction to Algebra
Cube root Profit & Loss
Understanding Elementary Shapes
Negative Numbers and Integers
Ratio and Proportion
Compound Interest Discount
Data handling, statistics also
AP DEECET 2021 Syllabus of Telugu / Urdu / Tamil
This section comes under part A, and have a weightage of 10 marks. The candidates have to select a language, and the following topics of that language will be asked in the exam.
Match the words and phrases
Select the correct question tags
Recognize correct tense
Select the correct voice
AP DEECET 2021 Exam Pattern
Check the exam pattern of AP DEECET 2021 from below.
Mode of Exam: Online mode in different shifts
Type of Exam: Objective type
Total number of question: 100
Maximum Marks: 100
DEECET has two parts, Part A, B. Part A is the same for everyone, and all the candidates have to attain all questions. Part B is an elective where the question of selected subjects will be asked to the candidates.
PART A Syllabus
No. of Questions
Opted Language ( Telugu /Tamil / Urdu / English)
Part B Syllabus
No. of Questions
Physical Science Physics (20) Chemistry(20)
BioSciencea) Botany (20)b) Zoology (20)
Social Studiesa) History (13)b) Economics (13)c) Civics (13)d) History/Economics/ Civics
Frequently Asked Questions
Ques 1: Is the syllabus of AP DEECET officially released?
Ques 2: What is the syllabus of Part A in AP DEECET?
Ques 3: What is the syllabus of Part B in AP DEECET?


As an educator, you have probably already heard of phonics. But chances are that no one has ever sat down with you to explain exactly what phonics instruction is. That's where we come in — with the help of phonics expert Wiley Blevins, we have compiled the basic information that you need to know before teaching phonics.
What is phonics?
Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and their spellings. The goal of phonics instruction is to teach students the most common sound-spelling relationships so that they can decode, or sound out, words. This decoding ability is a crucial element in reading success.
Why is phonics instruction important?
Most poor readers tend to rely so heavily on one reading strategy, such as the use of context and picture clues, that they exclude other strategies that might be more appropriate. To become skilled, fluent readers, children need to have a repertoire of strategies to draw on. These strategies include using a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships — in other words, an understanding of phonics. In addition, research has shown that skilled readers attend to almost every word in a sentence and process the letters that compose each of these words.
Therefore, phonics instruction plays a key role in helping students comprehend text. It helps the student map sounds onto spellings, thus enabling them to decode words. Decoding words aids in the development of word recognition, which in turn increases reading fluency. Reading fluency improves reading comprehension because as students are no longer struggling with decoding words, they can concentrate on making meaning from the text.
In addition, phonics instruction improves spelling ability because it emphasizes spelling patterns that become familiar from reading. Studies show that half of all English words can be spelled with phonics rules that relate to one letter to one sound.
How should you structure phonics instruction?
Phonics instruction should be explicit rather than implicit. Implicit instruction relies on readers "discovering" clues about sound-spelling relationships; good readers can do this, but poor readers are not likely to do so. Explicit instruction is the most effective type of phonics instruction, especially for children at risk for reading difficulties.
A good phonics lesson begins with an explicit explanation of the sound-spelling being taught along with guided opportunities for students to blend, or sound out, words using the new sound-spelling. These exercises should be followed by guided and independent reading practice in text that contains words with the new sound-spelling. This portion of phonics instruction is key. Therefore, phonics instruction should focus on applying learned sound-spelling relationships to actual reading, with smaller amounts of time spent on the initial task of learning phonics rules. That way, you can plan phonics lessons that are appropriate for all students, even if some have higher levels of phonics mastery than others.
How is phonics different from phonemic awareness?
Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols, whereas phonemic awareness involves sounds in spoken words. Therefore, phonics instruction focuses on teaching sound-spelling relationships and is associated with print. Most phonemic awareness tasks are oral.
Despite these different focuses, phonics instruction and phonemic awareness instruction are connected. In fact, phonemic awareness is necessary for phonics instruction to be effective. Before students can use a knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to decode written words, they must understand that words (whether written or spoken) are made up of sounds. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that a word is made up of a series of discrete sounds. Without this insight, phonics instruction will not make sense to students.


French painter Henri Eugène Augustin Le Sidaner, who described himself as an intimist painter, was born on August 7, 1862 at Port Louis in Mauritius. He was around 10 years old when his family decided to move to Dunkirk in France. His father was a ship inspector.
It took another 10 years before Le Sidaner was accepted into the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was not a gifted artist and he felt caged in Paris. He cherished the time that he was able to escape in 1885 to Étaples, a leisure and fishing port in Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. In this commune, he was able to create small paintings with peasant girls as his subject. His realist style then was reminiscent of the works of Jules Bastien-Lepage, a popular French painter who was associated with the start of the naturalist movement. He also produced several large canvases for the Salon in the social Realist and Symbolist style that was fashionable during the end of the 19th century.
Most of the art education that Le Sidaner received during his stay at the École des Beaux-Arts was from Alexandre Cabanel, a French academic painter of portraits, religious, classical and historical subjects. But because of artistic differences, Le Sidaner left his teacher.
Style and influences
Henri Le Sidaner was influenced stylistically and artistically by Symbolism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and artists such as Odilon Redon, Theo Van Rysselberghe and Gustave Moreau.
He was best known for his ability to capture light’s atmospheric effect and his intimate landscapes, showing his noble reverence for the beauty of nature. He was most comfortable when he’s out into the French countryside and doing plein air sketching, although he was also capable of painting from memory. When Le Sidaner first started he was a Realistic painter and as his career progressed, he was drawn to Symbolism and Pointillism, injecting a fresh sense of joyfulness and harmony in his work.
In Étaples, he lived at the art colony there together with Eugène Chigot, a childhood friend and an artist who, like him, was interested in atmospheric light. Le Sidaner also traveled extensively around France, many villages in Europe and several cities around the world. He may not be that great but he was a regular exhibitor at the Salon, London’s Goupil Gallery and the Parisian Galeries Georges Petit.
Le Sidaner finished his art education at the art colony in Étaples. Drawn as he was during his stay at the village near Pas-de-Calais by the works of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and due to his isolation, he mainly created Northern landscapes, usually with peasants as his main figures, and used a technique that combined the immediacy of brushwork favored by the Impressionists and the Naturalism of Camille Corot.
After touring many parts of Europe, he returned to Paris and joined the Symbolist circles, finally befriending Ernest Laurent and Henri Martin. He also changed his painting style. He no longer added figures to his landscapes and used warmer tones and diffused light instead. He joined many exhibitions throughout his career and won many prizes as well.
His mature style, without the human figures in his landscapes and mostly twilight scenes, were influenced by Monet, although he often painted from memory instead of en plein air. Just like Monet, Le Sidaner used his house and garden at Oise (Gerberoy) as a constant source of inspiration.
Henri Le Sidaner was a very popular painter during his lifetime. But because he did not belong to any art society or a particular art movement, he became forgotten after his death in 1939. He was as artist whose contemporaries were Post-Impressionists. He was not a Pointillist by he painted in dots. He also favored complimentary colors but was not a member of the Fauvist movement, in the same manner that he was not actually a Symbolist although some of his paintings were veiled in dreams.
Featured and 1st image by Henri Le Sidaner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
2nd image by Henri Le Sidaner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


Each year, we have to raise more than half of our turnover through donations and grants – Donate today to support our activities and help keep our prices affordable.
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When: Full day, 9.15am-3.15pm
Who: All subject staff – EY/FS, Primary KS1/KS2
This course explores active drama strategies to develop and enhance children’s learning in the classroom, with a focus on teaching science (forces, heat and light, sound, electricity, materials, plants and animals and the environment). Includes an opportunity for curriculum planning.
Feedback from teachers at previous Drama and Science CPD sessions:
- I learned lots of great techniques for creating context embedded environments in which children can learn. Good techniques for engaging EAL & LA children. Great enjoyment and learning when making a human digestive system out of people. Dramatising the refraction of light was practical, fun and I learned a lot myself!
Sessions are FREE to staff at schools in Tower Hamlets thanks to funding from Tower Hamlets Arts Music Education Service (THAMES). A limited number of places are also available for staff from schools in other boroughs and educators working in London at a fee of £90+VAT.
Reduced fees are offered to PGCE students or teachers at partner schools of our academic partners (RCSSD, UEL, Queen Mary, IOE, Goldsmiths and LSBU).


Confused about what to teach your fifth grader?
Your fifth grade student is ready for the future. You’re excited about the possibilities! But what do you teach them? Should you continue with a reading comprehension program or start novel studies? What about math and science? Is there a fifth grade curriculum checklist anywhere? Where do you start?
And what if no single curriculum has exactly what suits you?
If you’re like me, you’ve got a family that doesn’t fit into any box. A one-size-fits-all curriculum never suited me or my children. So their charts and checklists didn’t fit either! I had to create my own.
I researched appropriate child development, and sampled many different scopes and sequences from a variety of publishers. Then I distilled these topics and skills into what I felt was a systematic approach to education. For my Grade Five scope and sequence, you’ll get the list of skills and topics suitable for fifth graders (age 9-11).
In the middle elementary grades, the focus switches to the content subjects of learning. We take the foundational skills of early elementary, and use them to explore the world. The arts, sciences, and stories that shape our culture dominate their learning, while their skills of gathering and connecting information are refined.
Fifth grade is all about thinking critically, asking questions and putting together their own thoughts about topics of interest. In fifth grade, kids start to question more rigorously, considering all the options and setting their own goals. Seat work should be no more than 200 minutes (approximately 3 hours 20 min) per day, and I recommend that in 30-35 minute sessions. This is a systematic list that will make it easy to shop for and find the right materials that will suit both you and your student.
What you Find inside
What you won’t get here is how to teach these skills or topics. You are free to find the curriculum, books, experiences or teachers for each skill or topic as suits your child best. You are not locked into any particular method of teaching!
Use your own judgement for finding the appropriate methods for teaching. There’s no one way! This fifth grade curriculum checklist will simply give you a guide, so you aren’t lost in all the various options out there. Now you can be organized and feel like you’ve got a handle on this homeschooling thing.
Using a scope and sequence such as this means that you can take advantage of the beautiful flexibility that homeschooling offers. It’s easy to figure out where there may be gaps in your child’s education. And it’s just as easy to challenge them where they are more advanced. When you have a coherent checklist, there’s no “behind” or “ahead”, there’s just the next step on the path.
This is your map to your child’s education. When you’re starting out, you want to start right. So get ready for Fifth Grade with the Grade Five Scope and Sequence.


The Kindness Empire Gives Art Education Programs to Schools
Thank you for purchasing a gift box from The Kindness Empire. We hope you feel good knowing that your purchase will delight your recipient and also bring a meaningful art education programs to underserved schools.
Knowing the power of art and its importance in education, The Kindness Empire brings year-long, art education programs to schools that have no art. Each month elementary students are given a different art care package, delivered to their homes or school, and every week, students are given lessons in all different art genres from sketching and painting to found object installations to textile art. While the art genres change, the messages in the curriculum remain the same.
The Kindness Empire art curriculum asks children to behave like artists reminding them that in art:
- Everything is "right" because art comes from you and you are "right"
- We respect each other knowing that every artist is different and hearing from different artists gives us a chance to learn and grow.
- We don't always have everything we want, but artists embrace challenges and are creative problem-solvers.
- Artists are brave and speak their truth and respectfully ask questions because they know their voice is important.
- Artists know who they are and are confident in their personal values.


What is Taking Off With Numeracy?
Taking Off With Numeracy (TOWN)
Taking Off With Numeracy (TOWN) is a whole-class intervention initiative which focuses on improving numeracy skills of students in the upper primary years identified as not performing at expected stage level. The initiative provides ongoing professional learning over the school year to assist teachers to assess each student’s current numeracy understanding and to monitor student progress against a research-based framework. Beyond this, the program aims to provide explicit guidance in designing whole class teaching programs to further develop each student’s numeracy understanding. Emphasis is given to the teaching sequence related to developing Place Value, as it underpins the four operations and decimals, as well as important concepts in measurement. Focus is also given to the teaching of Multiplication and Division concepts.
Outline of TOWN
- Taking Off With Numeracy uses a phased implementation model.
- School teams will identify some or all of Stage 2 and Stage 3 teachers to participate, one of whom will be team leader and will coordinate the initiative within the school and facilitate local discussion.
- The school TOWN team will participate in an introductory professional learning led by a TOWN Lead Trainer.
- It is anticipated that each teacher may require approximately one day's release to go assess students as part of phase one.
- Phase 2 professional learning sessions will be scheduled after school hours. There are six sessions each of two hours duration. All team members are expected to attend each session and complete between-module tasks.
- Schools will develop an implementation action plan for Phase 1, Phase 2 and for sustaining the program initiative.
TOWN Phase 1
TOWN Phase 1 provides site-based professional learning for participating teachers, coordinated by a school team leader and led by a TOWN Lead Trainer. Resources, including assessment materials (at a cost to the school) are provided to assist schools in conducting self-paced professional learning sessions. The focus for Phase 1 is on teachers developing a strong understanding of the numeracy continuum and on completing an assessment process in order to determine where each student is having difficulties. The duration of Phase 1 is one term.
TOWN Phase 2
Participating schools are supported to implement TOWN Phase 2 through the delivery of six professional learning modules face-to-face, via video conference or other ICT modes. Participating teachers will have access to the TOWN website which provides resources, including classroom teaching materials and presentations, to support the professional learning in each module.


Baba Musah Swallah, By boat. Acrylic on wood. Image courtesy of the artist.
Invariably, when anti-racist content was shared, commenters would criticize or question its value or attack the person who shared it. The same problems repeatedly surfaced, preventing constructive dialogue and sharing of resources.
A New Space
Anti-Racist Art Educators (ARAE) was created on Facebook in 2019 in response to the intolerance and racism of other art education social media groups. It was founded to be a place where the need to address and counter racism in education is inarguable and an exchange of ideas can occur. In 2020, as the world responded to the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery, many arts educators were looking for a brave space like ours and our numbers exponentially increased.
Recurring topics in our group include: decentering whiteness in classroom activities and curriculum, cultural appropriation, and counteracting racist spaces with reflective dialogue. We center those conversations by holding each member responsible to elevate the voices of the global majority, to acknowledge and name white fragility, and to participate in a reciprocal learning exchange.
The collective voices of our group have defined Anti-Racist Art Education through an evergreen manifesto (see below).
Anti-Racist Art Education...
- actively and vocally works to dismantle white supremacy and Eurocentric art history and voices; knows that white people don’t experience racism or have a full grasp of what constitutes anti-racism; centers the listening on the global majority (black, Latinx, indigenous, Asian/Pacific Islander, mixed-race) and marginalized communities.
- understands that art has been used throughout history to support violent racial power dynamics and believes that silence about issues of racial injustice only serve to benefit racist ideology.
- seeks to critically engage with this history while building a space within the art room where students can show up as their authentic selves without fear of persecution.
- forces all educators to be aware of their own race, privilege, intersectionality, and positioning in their society and the specific learning community, prompting them to work towards undoing their own racism, biases, and prejudices.
- acknowledges that we don’t live in a post-racial society and that racism and other -isms such as class, disability, trans and queerphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, etc., intersect to create a matrix of oppression for certain people.
- consistently elevate/integrate global art and cultures outside of compartmentalized, government-appointed themes and heritage months.
- realizes that our concepts of art are rooted in Eurocentric ideas and aesthetics; art should be rooted in liberation, engage in social justice, and confront dominant and submissive narratives inclusive of imagery and resources that ensure representation.
We have developed guidelines for posting on our page and hold our members accountable for their engagement. These guidelines set healthy boundaries and model how art educators should approach anti-racism in their classrooms. As art permeates into various disciplines, we have not limited posting to visual arts only, but are inclusive of cultural heritage, dance, music, theater/drama, literary, and spokenword arts. The group is to elevate the perspectives of the global majority and diversify with intentionality.
ARAE attempt to intersect multicultural, social justice, culturally responsive education, and critical and cultural consciousness pedagogies to provide an improved and disruptive framework of status-quo teaching.
The arts are a bridge for our communities. They can create a platform to uplift marginalized voices and empower the disempowered. It is time to unlearn racist pedagogies that have placed us into a deteriorating and oppressive cycle. Many of us have been indoctrinated throughout our lives with this blindness. Now is the time to use art education as a platform to unapologetically press forward as anti-racist and anti-oppressive educators!
Tara Trinity Villanueva is arts integration and culture program manager at Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School in Washington, DC, and a moderator for ARAE on Facebook. TaraTrinity2@gmail.com; Contributing Editors: Melissa Purtee is an admin and Shawna McLeod is a moderator for ARAE. MCPurtee@gmail.com
Anti-Racist Art Educators: sites.google.com/view/antiracistartteachers/home
View this article in the digital edition.


What you gain from this Training Module.
Playing musical instruments to babies and playing baby-safe instruments together are two different activities that come together in the ‘jam session’. Activities with instruments develop skills in listening, playing and improvising. They are beneficial in at least seven ways. This resource will probably stimulate you to think of even more.
Here’s what the research tells us about the main benefit: typical baby music classes, with their repeated activities, enhance infants’ ability to detect and predict auditory patterns, not only in music but also in speech.
Learn from experts in baby brain research about what happens when you expose infants to six continuous weeks of playing them waltzes and tapping the beat with instruments. In this fascinating research you’ll find out about getting results with the mis-match response (MMR) and how it is measured in a 9 month-old child.
We’ll also delve into the cultural importance of musical instruments, the musical element of timbre and the classification of instruments.
What you get in your purchase
The module package contains 3 items: a training paper, a songbook and 20 music tracks.
1. PDF Download Document – Training Module 3
The training paper has five sections plus references, and suggests trusted places to find out more
- Benefits of singing and playing with musical instruments
- Ways to use a variety of musical instrument games and activities with babies
- Musical culture — instruments are integral
- Learning through play — freedom of musical expression
- Research about tapping instruments to musical beats
- References and Organisations
- Featured Research Institutes
- Featured Manufacturers of Baby-safe Instruments
Musical Instruments Benefits for Babies: Playing musical instruments enhances infants’ neural processing and the detection and prediction of pattern. Self-paced Training for Educators. Written by Carol Biddiss, 2020. Musical Child: Adelaide.
2. PDF Download Document – Songbook: Musical Instrument Games
The songbook contains appealing children’s songs with lyrics, scores, and musical instrument games to suit babies along with suggestions for engaging with other adults in the group. Use this practical resource to devise your own music program.
Songbook: Musical Instrument Games. Written by Carol Biddiss, 2020. Musical Child: Adelaide.
3. MP3s Downloadable Digital Album
Your digital album contains 20 tracks including both vocal and backing track/karoake versions of all the songs in the songbook. Features Australian musicians.
Digital Album ‘Musical Instrument Games.’ Musical arrangements by Carol Biddiss and Janette Porteous. Singers: Michell Bown, Michael Cashen and Carol Biddiss. Published by Musical Child, Early Learning through Music (c) 2020
Listen to one of the songs from the downloadable digital album
Here’s a sample of the vocal track for Shoo Fly:
And here’s a sample of the backing track for Shoo Fly so you can sing to the babies:
100% Money-back Guarantee
Since 2008 our music education products have helped more than 17,000 early childhood educators and music teachers around the world. As a time-tested, proven product, we are pleased to offer you a 100% money back guarantee on all our digital training resources purchased from this website. If after 60 days you are not happy with the results you obtain in your children’s learning from the use of our products, we will happily refund 100% of your purchase price. All we require is that you apply the training in good faith according to the written guidelines at least once a week during the 60 days. This refund offer expires 90 days after you make your purchase.
Take advantage of our one-stop shop for Early Educator’s Lesson Plans and enjoy bringing some fresh new content to your classroom today!


The curriculum of the Lower School (Grades Pre-Kindergarten through Fourth) centers on the student’s understanding and development of the core subjects of language arts, reading, mathematics, science, and social studies.
In addition to these core areas, we engage our students in many co-curricular areas, including physical education, music, art, library skills, technology, Spanish, and Chinese. These courses are taught by specialists in each area.
Lower School students participate in physical education classes daily. Fitness, wellness, a sense of fair play, and a healthy attitude about competition are emphasized in a fun and rewarding atmosphere.
Students engage in Spanish classes four days per week and in Chinese classes one day per week. See more about these areas on the grade level curriculum descriptions.
In our fine arts, studio art and Kodaly/Orff approaches in music education are taught on a rotation basis. Instruction is sequentially planned so students may achieve maximum growth in musical and artistic skills, as well as the understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of fine arts throughout life. Our classroom and grade level musicals, plays, and creative dramatics combine to enhance the fine arts and the core curriculum in each grade.
At Trinity Valley School, we believe that our contributions to the future have a beginning and a deep dependence on what we experience and learn in the earliest grades. By making science come alive for our students and relate to their daily lives, as well as sparking curiosity in the ideas of, “What else is there?” or “What comes next?,” our students excitedly strive to learn more about their surroundings. In our Lower School Exploratorium, we create and experiment, research and develop, and make meaningful connections with our world here and with the world beyond our walls.
Technology is an integral part of learning at TVS. With iPad carts for each grade level and a digital learning lab for this division, Lower School students use technology in meaningful ways to create, collaborate, and demonstrate understanding. From blogging to coding to productivity applications to producing with apps, children are challenged to stretch their thinking as they explore and create. Digital literacy and digital citizenship instruction begins early and is woven throughout the technology lessons.
Our library is an integral part of our Lower School education, through our students’ interest in our extensive collection of books and many engaging opportunities to read and to participate in projects, both individual and group. Library skills are taught in each grade level to enhance the core subjects and to foster the love of reading. Our summer reading program in all grade levels involves our entire school and is an important part of preparing to begin the next grade level each fall. In addition to the inspiration for the summer reading program, our library is central to bringing in guest authors, Seuss Week, and other events throughout the school year.
Trinity Valley School has an extensive program of outdoor education, beginning with TOE (Trojan Outdoor Experience) night in third grade, with activities including a climbing wall, group games, and storytelling. Fourth graders spend one night at a campsite, enjoying team projects and many outdoor experiences, including learning all about camping outdoors.
Extracurricular opportunities add to our well-rounded curriculum and school day with various after-school clubs, including Trojan Tunes Choir, Dance Classes, Chess Club, Chinese Club, Yoga Club, and Bricks4Kidz.
In keeping with the school’s mission to foster spiritual and moral development, teachers incorporate a character value of the month into daily lessons, as well as weekly social skills. The entire Lower School focuses on the same character value of the month and social skill of the week together. Every classroom engages in the Positive Action curriculum for character development. The Lower School participates with TCU in the LiiNK Project – “Let’s Inspire Innovation ‘N Kids.” This is a program based on research in the U.S. and other countries to incorporate more opportunities for students to play throughout the school day. This includes increasing the amount of physical activity daily, adding the character development curriculum, assessing students thoughtfully and more broadly, and restructuring the school day to allow for additional time for play and creativity. This is a highly successful program, in which we find that students are less competitive and more self-reliant because they know they have other opportunities to play during the day.
Trinity Valley Lower School offers a grounded curriculum, with intent to engage the whole child on many widely-varied levels and to infinite degrees. We believe this is the way to prepare our students for the next step and the ones beyond that.
Head of Lower School


Children & Youth Programming: Supporting Child and Family DevelopmentDOWNLOAD FILE
April 24, 2017
With a goal of ensuring every Michigan child is prepared with the knowledge, tools and skills to lead a healthy and productive life, MSU Extension’s children and youth programming uses the experiential learning model through which children learn best. This hands-on, learn-by-doing programming is concentrated in five core areas, one of which is child and family development.
Through this priority area, MSU Extension offers programs and services that support families in a variety of ways. From helping parents and caregivers increase early childhood science, math, preliteracy and social and emotional skills in young children to developing critical life skills and healthy behaviors in youth of all ages, MSU Extension works to ensure Michigan’s families are stronger and children are prepared to excel in school and life.
Delivered through webinars, face-to-face workshops and other mechanisms, MSU Extension offers a variety of training, curricula and materials to support child and family development. These sessions are available for parents, caregivers, childcare professionals, leaders and youth, with certificates for childcare provider training hours typically available upon request. Resources in this priority area focus on:
Preparing for school success in early childhood
Parents and caregivers are the first to have an influence on a child’s development and future academic success. To help ensure children are ready for school, caring adults can do much to develop their early math, science and pre-literacy skills. Through MSU Extension’s early childhood education programs, parents and caregivers are equipped with the tools and knowledge necessary to enhance children’s skills in these important areas and to become their best resources and advocates. Trainings available for parents, caregivers and childcare professionals in this area enhance math, science and literacy development in early childhood.
Social and emotional health in young children
A child’s social and emotional skills, including the regulation of his or her emotions, capacity to solve problems and ability to interact with others have been identified as key factors in long-term academic and life success. With the support of MSU Extension resources and education, parents and caregivers have the opportunity to enhance the social and emotional health of children in a variety of ways. Trainings available for parents, caregivers and childcare professionals cover topics such as positive discipline, mindfulness, play-based learning, and other social and emotional skill development.
Family education and support
To ensure the success of families across Michigan, MSU Extension offers a variety of research-based, parenting education classes and family engagement activities, as well as an array of support materials and resources. These tools provide assistance to military families, instruction about positive discipline, assistance for dealing with children’s anger, strategies for mindfulness, events for family engagement and support for family and school collaboration.
Life skills education for adult volunteers working with youth
MSU Extension works in partnership with adults who serve youth audiences in every content area, helping them to intentionally focus on the development of life skills across all programmatic areas of focus. Through the use of the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Targeting Life Skills and Experiential Learning Models, MSU Extension helps adults deliberately plan life skills into their current programming to help today’s youth develop the skills they need to become successful adults.
Both the internal well-being and physical health of Michigan’s youth are of great importance. MSU Extension works with adults in youth programs to help them increase young people’s capacity to care for their own personal safety and health. Adults learn how to include healthy living topics such as nutrition, physical activity and safety into their current programming efforts.
For more information about MSU Extension’s child and family development programs and resources, contact firstname.lastname@example.org or visit one of the following pages: Early Childhood Development, 4-H Healthy Youth or 4-H Life Skills.


Our “Theory of Change”
Non-profit organisations are often assessed in terms of their “Theory of Change”. They have to answer the question, “How will what you choose to do, make a difference in the world?”.
When looking for wisdom or inspiration, we often turn to the children that visit the Otto Foundation libraries. Learners know that a library will improve their reading skills, and that this will boost their ability to learn and help them understand the world around them. What these learners understand intuitively, is also borne out in research findings.
There is a simple logic to the Otto Foundation’s focus on investing in libraries and in projects that promote reading for joy. We know that South Africa will do better as a country if we could have a more just, and equitable society. We know that to achieve this, we absolutely have to ensure that every South African child, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, receives a quality education. We know that in their education journey, children first learn to read, and then start reading to learn. We know that we are falling behind on this, and that only 1 in 4 South African children can read with comprehension by age 10.
That is the challenge.
The Research is Clear
There is strong research evidence for the following facts about responses to the literacy challenge:
- Reading scores improve when learners also read for enjoyment outside of the classroom environment.
- Kids who have reading role models (like parents that are readers, passionate librarians or teachers who value and recognise good reading habits) will be drawn into reading.
- Learners read for joy, when they have access books. And not just any books. Books that they can select for themselves based on what they are curious about. Books that they can see themselves in. And books that are relevant to their lived experiences.
- Children who are members of a library are twice as likely to read at home.
There are two additional research findings that we continue to find remarkable, and that is foundational to our thinking about libraries:
- Firstly, there is compelling research evidence that access to a school library can offset or balance the effect of poverty on literacy development.
- Secondly, international research consistently shows that reading for enjoyment is more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status.
In a country where we continue to battle to address the inequities in our education system, it therefore makes sense to invest in books and libraries. The Otto Foundation (and apparently the learners we work with!) agree with education expert Stephen Krashen, who has said that
“Free voluntary reading, or ‘reading because you want to’, is the missing link in language education…It is not only the easiest way and the most pleasant way of developing literacy – it is the only way.”
This is why we continue to invest in libraries.
One Library at a time
The Protea Library is the third library created by the Otto Foundation to serve a cluster of schools at the foot of Table Mountain in the District Six/ Zonnebloem area. It is the second library (along with the Liyabona Library at Holy Cross Primary School) that we have developed in partnership with the
The Protea Library was officially opened on 12 November by Western Cape Premier, Alan Winde.
We know that this library will touch the lives of many learners and has the potential to change the trajectory of their education journey.
We hope to continue partnering with the Kamvalethu Foundation to invest in the success of South Africa’s children by investing in children’s libraries.
Photography credit: Nardus Engelbrecht