text string | id string | dump string | url string | date string | file_path string | offset int64 | token_count int64 | language string | page_average_lid string | page_average_lid_score float64 | full_doc_lid string | full_doc_lid_score float64 | per_page_languages list | is_truncated bool | extractor string | page_ends list | fw_edu_scores list | minhash_cluster_size int64 | duplicate_count int64 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lings Primary School
Behaviour Policy
Date of Last Review: July 2017
Date of Next Review: December 2019
Page
1. Introduction: the Aims
At Lings Primary School we seek to promote behaviour which will encourage:
* consideration and respect for others and for property within the School.
* the development of mutual support, both academic and social.
* the emotional, physical and psychological safety of all the School.
* the development of personal autonomy, tolerance and understanding.
* the truth.
* preservation and enhancement of the School environment.
* high self esteem.
2. The Boundaries
We intend to achieve the Aims by establishing clear and consistent boundaries within a balanced framework.
These are:
* positive, supportive and caring attitudes towards others.
* honesty.
* a pride in Lings Primary School.
* growth in personal autonomy.
* respectful and courteous consideration of others and their individual differences.
* tolerance and understanding of personal limitations.
* regular and punctual attendance.
3. The Rules and Reinforcements
In order for children to achieve their maximum academic potential in school they must feel safe from physical and verbal aggression and disturbance.
Children are involved in reviewing all the rules every year, with regular reminders occurring every term.
We have many positive reinforcements that help steer children away from poor behaviour and towards good behaviour. These also promote self confidence which in turn promotes learning.
They are:
* Public acknowledgement for improved behaviour, an exceptional piece of work etc., through whole School assemblies. Especially achievement assemblies on Fridays.
* "What have we done today to make us feel proud" board at the entrance lets everyone celebrate individual and School achievements.
* 'Star Pupil' awards/certificates are given out every week during Friday assembly, when parents are present.
* Children being encouraged to be a positive reinforcement towards one another.
* Letters and postcards home to parents.
* Class rewards to be decided upon by individual class teachers. This encourages individuality and allows the teacher to decide the best personal approach for their class.
* Receiving good work or good behaviour stickers from the class teacher, LSA or Head Teacher.
* Having responsibilities in the class or School in general.
* The provision of opportunities for children to support one another by working together as a group.
* Class behaviour contracts. All children make up their class rules at the beginning of the school year. They then sign them in the form of a contract to show that they have understood the behaviour expectations in the class. These contracts are displayed and reviewed each term.
* Wearing the correct school uniform and PE kit.
* Representing the School in sports competitions etc.
* Writing (fortnightly) and reviewing of individual targets in key stage 1 and class targets in key stage 2.
Codes of conduct
All codes of conduct are regularly reviewed.
4. When Positive Support is Unsuccessful
* Even though the strategies set out in Section 3 work well with the majority of children there will be those who find it difficult to stay within the boundaries set for class and School. When this occurs we carry out sanctions which we consider appropriate to the behaviour concerned. These sanctions range from missing some to all of playtime.
* Serious incidents will be recorded in the School behaviour book, which is kept in the Head Teacher's office. These incidents will be directly dealt with by the Head Teacher.
* In cases where a child has caused injury to another child or a member of staff, has been verbally aggressive or rude or has made racist, sexist or personal remarks or has been repeatedly disruptive to the education in a class, the School will contact the parents in writing or phone and inform them of the incident and punishment.
* In order to support children with behaviour difficulties we discuss our concerns together as a staff and use each other. We listen, we teach the children temper control techniques, we talk to parents for ideas and support, we give the children responsibilities, we start a home/School behaviour book with targets and rewards or we may ask for advice/assistance from outside agencies.
* If a child is asked to go to the Head Teacher and they refuse, then the Head Teacher must be called to deal with the matter. If the child decides to sit on the floor and is causing themselves and others no harm then they should be left there. If they begin to cause harm to themselves or others then the proper team teach techniques should be employed.
* In extreme cases, children will be excluded for between 1-10 days. After 5 days the Governors have to approve the Head Teacher's decision.
* The very last resort, which occurs when all other sanctions have been attempted or when an incident is so serious it is beyond acceptance, is permanent exclusion. We hope never to have to get this far.
5. Recording of Poor Behaviour
* Behaviour is noted by the class teacher and recorded as necessary. Poor playground behaviour is noted in the 'Playground Book', which is reviewed by all staff on Friday mornings.
* If the behaviour is violent, insulting or disruptive or involves rudeness to staff the teacher must send the child to the Head Teacher (or Deputy in the absence of the Head) who will record the behaviour in an incident book and deal with the situation.
* Playground supervisors must inform the teacher or the Head Teacher if the behaviour warrants it.
* Copies of letters to parents are filed in the child's records and a note is made in the incident book if a letter is sent home. Copies of letters of explanation or apology are also kept on the child's file.
* Any child who is placed on the wall is recorded in the playground book by a year 6 pupil on duty. If a child goes on the wall twice in a week they are sent to the Head Teacher. The reason why they are on the wall and the person who placed them there is also recorded.
6. Areas which can cause conflict
The following areas can cause children to feel resentful if they do not have as much as their classmates. They can also lead to them being tempted to steal or bully children into handing their belongings over. We want to prevent this at all costs and have therefore drawn up specific guidelines to lessen a 'have/have not' community.
MONEY:
Children are not allowed to bring any money to school unless it is for "snack" or a school visit.
SWEETS:
Sweets are not allowed in school. Fruit is provided for some children at early playtime and they also have an opportunity of buying a "snack".
THINGS FROM HOME:
Occasionally a class teacher may ask children to bring in items from home to help with a class discussion or lesson. Children in KS1 may also bring in items for show and tell. Unless a teacher specifically asks, toys, ornaments are not allowed in school. When an item is brought in it must be looked after by the teacher.
MOBILE PHONES:
Mobile phones are not allowed in school and must be handed in at the office.
Only children who are in year 6 and walk home by themselves may bring mobile phones in, but these must be handed straight to the office.
MAKE UP:
Make up is forbidden in school. This includes nail varnish.
JEWELLERY:
Horrible accidents can occur with jewellery. The school accepts no liability for loss or damage to jewellery worn by children.
One small signet ring may be worn, but rings which stick out are not allowed for safety reasons.
Only small stud earrings are allowed in school. This is for safety as well as practical reasons. Necklaces and chains are also forbidden, except for short chains with a small religious symbol, but these will still have to be removed for PE.
HOMETIME:
As the children are so closely monitored during school time they often wait until after school to show their feelings more openly. We ask that all children leave school as soon as they are collected and that children who go home alone do not linger in the playground or outside the gate.
The Head Teacher will be in the playground (when possible) to monitor behaviour as the children leave school.
While children are in school uniform we expect them to behave just as they would in school.
Staff are asked to see their classes to their relevant exits.
7. Assembly
The children should:
* Be silent when they leave the classroom. Assembly starts when they leave the room.
* Hold doors open for one another.
* Walk in an orderly manner into the room.
* Have their hands by their sides and not in their pockets.
* Sit facing the front with their arms folded and their legs crossed.
* Space out without touching each other as/before they sit down.
* Put their hands up to answer questions.
* The children must not talk or shout out. This is very rude and can be upsetting for the person taking the assembly.
ANY TALKING WILL RESULT IN MISSING A WHOLE PLAYTIME.
To help the children staff should:
* Leave enough time to prepare the class for assembly.
*
* Walk in silently without talking to the children.
Be punctual. Assembly begins at various times during the week and these are on the timetables.
* Keep a watchful eye on the children during assembly and if a child is fidgeting or moving catch their attention either by looking at them or moving towards them without disturbing the assembly. To this end it helps if the teacher sits in an appropriate position to see their class.
* whole playtime.
Ensure that any child who has been disruptive misses their
8. Around School in General
Children should:
* Knock on doors and then enter a room.
* Be polite to visitors.
* Hold doors open.
* Say good morning / afternoon when passing an adult.
* Move about quietly.
* Walk, not run.
* Address people politely.
9. The classroom
The children should:
* Come in and out of class quietly and in an orderly manner.
* Sit quietly and listen to the teacher without interrupting.
* Address the teacher by name (no Miss/Sir).
* Put their hands up if they wish to speak.
* Not distract or annoy other children.
* Ask permission when they leave the room so the teacher knows where they are. They will need to take a band off the door when they leave and return it when they get back.
* Hand in money and keys to the class teacher.
* Behave the same way to all the adults and children in the school.
* Not eat in class.
* The staff in school are in the position of parents/guardians. There is no excuse for rudeness, disrespect or insolence towards staff. Any reasonable request from a staff member should be carried out at once without argument.
* Not use the toilet as a way of getting out of work.
10. Staff Obligations
* Be aware of the children as individuals. Know their needs, characters and any clashes of personality between class members.
* Keep an attractive, tidy classroom with up to date displays.
* Give meaningful praise and encouragement in lessons.
* Be happy and positive.
* Present work in an interesting way and make sure the children know what is expected of them.
* Plan work carefully and match it to ability, differentiate when dealing with different abilities.
* Diffuse potential incidents and situations before they occur.
* Not allow difficult situation to disrupt the class.
* Mark work promptly.
* Continually observe and scan the behaviour in the class.
* Never accept insolence from pupils.
* Apply rules fairly, consistently and firmly.
* Always hear both sides of a story before acting on a situation.
* Use punishment sparingly and only to the individuals involved.
* Listen.
* Send for the Head Teacher in an emergency.
ALWAYS DEAL WITH OFFENDERS. TO IGNORE IS TO CONDONE.
11. The Playground
This is the area with the most potential for poor behaviour. For this reason there are many guidelines for staff and children.
Children should:
* Play together and not fight.
* Use the toilets for their proper use and not to play in.
* Walk along covered areas, the courtyard and within the school building.
* Only go to the toilet if given a permission band.
* Not enter the building without permission.
* Play with the equipment appropriately
* Stay within the boundaries of the playground.
* Not climb on the banisters or trees.
* Use the benches for sitting on.
* Stand silently and still when the first whistle goes.
* If a child would like to go in to the building, they will need to ask for a band, only five will be issued.
* Walk silently to their line without pushing or shoving others.
* Listen to any year 6 pupil that may be on duty at the time.
* Go into the classroom in an orderly fashion.
To help the children staff should:
* Be vigilant by watching for potential incidents and defuse them before they start.
* Remind the children to play nicely and carefully with each other.
* Remind the children to walk while in the school building.
* Not turn away upset children. LISTEN TO THEM. What may seem trivial to an adult may be very important to a child.
* Prevent children from going into the hall or office unless it is important.
* Be aware if any child has been on the time out zone more than once in a week. This is monitored by the Head Teacher and the leadership team.
* Come out of the staffroom promptly and note any children on the time out zone.
* Always follow up incidents and don't ignore anything seen that breaks school rules.
* Inform the Head Teacher of any serious incident and if possible lead those involved to the office.
* Always make sure that an adult blows the whistle.
* Support staff must inform class teachers of any incident involving a pupil or pupils in his/her class.
12. The dinner hall
The children are brought into the hall by a midday meals supervisor once they are standing correctly in their lines.
Children should:
* Walk in sensibly and quietly without disturbing or distracting those who are already eating.
* Speak politely to those adults who are serving or supervising in the hall.
* Line up for lunch in an orderly fashion.
* Speak politely to the Year 6 children on duty.
* Put up their hands to show that they have finished their meal and wish to start pudding.
* Talk quietly to the children on their own table. They must not talk to children on other tables.
* Place their cutlery and cups appropriately on their tray to show they have finished.
* Put up their hands and ask to leave the hall.
* Tidy away and leave the hall quietly.
* Scrape their plates into the bins provided.
13. DETAILS WHICH NEED HIGHLIGHTING
The Time Out Wall is a section of the playground where children stand when they have been naughty. They stand against the wall and watch the rest of the school playing. The intention is to give the child an opportunity to think about what they have done and how they can improve their behaviour next time. If a child is consistently on the wall it is obvious that this is not having an effect and other sanctions need to be sought.
❖ The minimum amount of time spent on the Time Out Wall is 5 minutes. Do not stray from this as inconsistency can confuse children.
❖ During very hot or cold weather no child is to stand on the wall for more than 15 minutes, less if they are younger.
❖ If the child's time exceeds the 15 minutes they need to go and see the Head Teacher, Deputy or Key Stage coordinator.
❖ A maximum of 8 children should be on the wall at any one time.
❖ When the wall is full the Head Teacher needs to be informed.
❖ Remind children to collect their coats and sweatshirts before the second whistle.
❖ If a member of staff is already involved in sorting out an incident, other staff do not take over unless asked to do so. This can give messages to children that some staff are not capable of dealing with some situations. This can lead to a loss of respect.
15. Bullying (see also Anti- Bullying Policy)
Bullying of any sort will not be tolerated at Lings Primary School.
Bullying can be:
physical: pushing, kicking, hitting, spitting etc
verbal: name calling, sarcasm, spreading rumours, persistent teasing.
emotional: not letting a child join in a game, hiding a child's
belongings, humiliation.
racist: racial name calling, gestures.
* Emotional bullying seems to be more common than physical violence and can be the most difficult type of bullying to cope with or prove.
* If bullying isn't tackled it also damages the bully who learns that he/she can get away with violence, aggression and threats and that this sort of behaviour gets them what they want.
* Persistent bullying can result in depression, low self esteem, shyness, poor academic achievement and isolation.
* There is also the chance of cyber bullying and this can have the same effect on the child.
Please look at the ICT policy to find further information.
Children who bully
There are many reasons why children become bullies. It may be as a way of coping with a difficult situation, a lack of attention or being utterly spoilt.
They should be given plenty of encouragement to stop bullying but also must not be allowed to get away with it, for their own sake and the sake of their victim.
Bullies are often unhappy and use bullying to achieve popularity and friends. They have to learn that bullying is unacceptable behaviour and that there are severe consequences.
Children who are bullied
Children who are bullied will be different in some way from the bully. This gives the bully an excuse for his/her behaviour. The difference is not the victims fault. Nobody should have to suffer bullying.
Teachers regularly talk to their class about differences and valuing all members of the school community. This is reinforced in assemblies and helps to ward off possible bullying.
In some cases, staff will recognise children who are vulnerable to bullying because they have specific problems, such as speech difficulties, spectacles, different clothes, hair styles, mannerisms etc. In this situation, staff must be extra vigilant when in the classroom or playground.
Bullying – what to look for
Children often give signs that they may be being bullied.
* be frightened of walking to or from school
They may
* not want to come to school
* show a significant deterioration in their work.
* feel sick in the mornings
* become quiet and withdrawn
* lose their appetite
* wet the bed
* ask for money ( to pay the bully)
* become aggressive and unreasonable
What parents should be encouraged to do if they
suspect bullying
Often bullies are very clever at not being seen. Parents are usually the first to notice that their child is behaving differently.
They should be encouraged to write everything down as a written record. A written record makes it easier to check facts.
Parents should stay calm, try to find out what is wrong and make an appointment to come into school and speak with the Head Teacher or class teacher.
What staff should do if they suspect bullying
Ask other staff if they have noticed anything.
Ask the child concerned what is wrong. Often they are just looking for an opportunity to 'open up'.
Inform all staff so they can keep a look out on the playground.
Tell the Head Teacher, who may talk to the child.
Keep a written record of incidents.
Voice your concerns to the Head Teacher and multi agency group.
When facts have been gathered, the Head Teacher will take action. Ask the Year 6 Friendship Buddies if they have seen any incidents.
What children should do if they suspect bullying Children should be encouraged to:
* ask the child being bullied to join in their game.
* tell a teacher.
* not smile or laugh with the bully.
* tell the bully to stop.
* show the bully they don't approve by walking away.
If they are being bullied themselves they should:
* look the bully in the eye and tell them to stop.
* tell an adult straight away.
* get away from the bully as quickly as possible.
* keep on talking until someone listens.
* not blame themselves.
* not put up with it.
15. Sanctions against Poor Behaviour.
These sanctions are guidelines. The individual needs of the child and his or her circumstances are crucial to good behaviour management: staff knowledge of any child and their situation is paramount.
The time out zone should be used in increments of 5, 10, 15 and 20 minutes.
Behaviour Sanction and Person Responsible.
* Persistent chatting in class or distracting others when they are working.
No more than 2 warnings: more than this invalidates the system. They should be given 10 minutes reflection time on the time out zone.
Learning support teacher.
Class teacher.
Playground supervisor.
* Disrespectful behaviour towards teachers, adults or pupils within the class.
15 minutes on the time out zone. There is no warning as disrespectful behaviour towards an adult should never be tolerated.
Learning support teacher.
Class teacher.
Playground supervisor.
* Any behaviour that is aggressive, racist or violent.
Child needs to be sent to the Deputy Head or Head Teacher immediately.
Learning support teacher.
Class teacher.
Playground supervisor.
Head Teacher
Deputy Head
* Any ongoing behaviour that staff consider to be bullying.
Child should be sent to the Deputy Head or Head Teacher immediately.
Class teacher. Learning support teacher. Playground supervisor. Deputy Head Head Teacher
16. Dealing with Behaviour
Where did the behaviour happen? Who deals with it? Who must be informed? How are they informed?
1. In class.
LSA, Teacher
Depending on the severity of behaviour, the Head or Deputy can be made aware or the child can be sent to either of them. The behaviour needs to be noted in a class behaviour book and a record kept. If the child has to spend time on the wall this will be recorded in the Playground book.
2. In the playground.
Lunch time supervisor, LSA, Teacher.
The class teacher also needs to see the book and be told verbally if the incident is severe.
The children can be placed on the wall which will be recorded in the playground book. If the incident is severe, the child should be sent to the Head or Deputy, who will record the incident on a behaviour report in the office.
3.
In the dining hall.
Lunch time supervisor.
The child should be given some time on the wall to think about their actions. This should be recorded in the playground book
and if the incident is severe the Head or Deputy and class teacher need to be made aware.
Confirmatory Signatures
Signed...................................................Head Teacher
Signed...................................................Governor
Approved on........................................................
To be reviewed on.............................................. | <urn:uuid:1b19bd12-0d7d-4b40-baf3-d2cd7737a614> | CC-MAIN-2018-22 | http://www.lings-primary.co.uk/index.php?option=com_dropfiles&format=&task=frontfile.download&catid=79&id=9&Itemid=1000000000000 | 2018-05-23T18:52:23Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-22/segments/1526794865702.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20180523180641-20180523200641-00092.warc.gz | 394,583,168 | 4,635 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.968429 | eng_Latn | 0.999196 | [
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
107,
113,
1039,
2225,
3429,
5025,
6444,
7829,
9005,
10154,
11702,
13052,
14447,
15848,
17344,
18907,
20240,
21265,
22355,
22743
] | [
2.03125,
4.09375
] | 6 | 1 |
10 Tips on Nonverbal Communication
1. Pay Attention to Nonverbal Signals
Pay attention to things like eye contact, gestures, posture, body movements, and tone of voice. All of these signals can convey important information that isn't put into words.
2. Look for Incongruent Behaviors
Research has shown that when words fail to match up with nonverbal signals, people tend to ignore what has been said and focus instead on nonverbal expressions of moods, thoughts, and emotions.
3. Concentrate on Your Tone of Voice When Speaking
Your tone of voice can convey a wealth of information, ranging from enthusiasm to disinterest to anger. Start noticing how your tone of voice affects how others respond to you and try using tone of voice to emphasize ideas that you want to communicate.
4. Use Good Eye Contact
While eye contact is an important part of communication, it's important to remember that good eye contact does not mean staring fixedly into someone's eyes. How can you tell how much eye contact is correct? Some communication experts recommend intervals of eye contact lasting four to five seconds.
5. Ask Questions about Nonverbal Signals
If you are confused about another person's nonverbal signals, don't be afraid to ask questions. A good idea is to repeat back your interpretation of what has been said and ask for clarification.
6. Use Signals to Make Communication More Effective and Meaningful
You can improve your spoken communication by using nonverbal signals and gestures that reinforce and support what you are saying. This can be especially useful when making presentations or when speaking to a large group of people.
7. Look at Signals as a Group
A single gesture can mean any number of things, or maybe even nothing at all. The key to accurately reading nonverbal behavior is to look for groups of signals that reinforce a common point.
8. Consider Context
When you are communicating with others, always consider the situation and the context in which the communication occurs. If you are trying to improve your own nonverbal communication, concentrate on ways to make your signals match the level of formality necessitated by the situation.
9. Be Aware That Signals Can be Misread
Always remember to look for groups of behavior. A person's overall demeanor is far more telling than a single gesture viewed in isolation.
10. Practice, Practice, Practice
Build your ability to "read people" by paying careful attention to nonverbal behavior and practicing different types of nonverbal communication with others. By noticing nonverbal behavior and practicing your own skills, you can dramatically improve your communication abilities. | <urn:uuid:f2569837-743c-4c92-b7eb-998d43c2c601> | CC-MAIN-2018-22 | http://projectacademy.org/Documents/10%20Tips%20on%20Nonverbal%20Communication.pdf | 2018-05-23T18:12:02Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-22/segments/1526794865702.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20180523180641-20180523200641-00093.warc.gz | 226,220,302 | 530 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998354 | eng_Latn | 0.998354 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2675
] | [
3.265625
] | 1 | 3 |
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria at the Well John 4:4-29, 39-42
Prepare to Hear the Word:
Find Samaria on a map. Most Jews would have avoided going through Samaria. Jews did not mix with Samaritans, they considered them unclean.
Jewish men did not speak to women in public and certainly not when they were on their own. There is no evidence to suggest that the woman was an outcast in her village.
As the woman comes to faith she addresses Jesus, first as a „Jew‟ then „Sir‟ and „prophet‟ then finally as the „Messiah‟.
You will need:
10 Puppets: Jesus, woman, disciples and a few villagers.
Bone felt circle.
Well and bucket
Village backdrop.
When children are seated in a semi-circle ready to listen to the story, place the gold box/bag, containing the materials you will need, carefully beside you.
On the bone felt circle place the 'well in the centre of the story circle in front of the village backdrop. Place Jesus and his disciples near the well.
Indicate with your hand Jesus and the disciples, and say:
Jesus was returning to Galilee from Judea with his disciples.
He passed through Samaria, by the village of Sychar
Move Jesus to the well and move the disciples behind the backdrop and say:
It was noon, Jesus decided to rest at Jacob's well. The disciples went into the village for food
Move the woman and bucket close to the well, say:
A Samaritan woman came to draw water from the well, Jesus asked her for a drink.
Indicate with your hand that the woman is speaking, say:
She was surprised and said, "You, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman for a drink."
Indicate with your hand that Jesus is speaking, say:
Jesus said, "If you knew who was asking, you would have asked me, the water that I give is Living Water."
Indicate with your hand that the woman is speaking, say:
Sir, how were you going to do this? You have no bucket and the well is deep, are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well?
Indicate with your hand that Jesus is speaking, say:
Jesus answered "everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty, but if you drink the water that I give, you will never be thirsty.
Move the woman slightly and indicate with your hand that the woman is speaking:
Sir, give me this water so that I will never be thirsty
Indicate with your hand that Jesus is speaking, say:
Jesus said, "Go and call your husband and come back to me"
"Sir I have no husband" she answered.
Indicate with your hand that Jesus is speaking, say:
"You are right, you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband"
Indicate with your hand that the woman is speaking, say:
"Sir I can see that you are a prophet but I know the Messiah is coming and that he will tell us everything"
Indicate with your hand that Jesus is speaking, say:
Jesus said, "I am he, the one who is speaking with you."
Move the disciples back to near the well:
At that moment the disciples returned, but they asked no questions.
Move the woman behind the backdrop, leaving the bucket:
The woman left her bucket, went into the town and told the people to come and listen to Jesus.
Move the woman and the villagers out near Jesus and say:
Many people in the town believed because of what the woman had said Jesus stayed in the village for two days. And many more believed in Jesus because of his word.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Response: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.
I Wonder :
I wonder why Jesus walked through Samaria
I wonder why the unnamed woman was at the well at midday, on her own.
I wonder why Jesus did not go into the town with the disciples
I wonder why the disciples asked no questions when they returned
I wonder why the villagers listened to the woman and came to Jesus
I wonder why John told his community this story
The Samaritan woman is part of a marginalised community. She is surprised when Jesus speaks to her, asking her for water to drink. He talks freely with her, listens to her and treats her with dignity. Jesus challenges the rules and social structures of his time. He reveals – to a Samaritan woman and her community – that he is the Messiah, the gift of God that they have waited for. This knowledge empowers them and helps them to live differently. John often portrays Jesus as a „bridegroom‟ in his Gospel. He tells the Samaritan woman that she has 5 husbands plus the partner she has now (6) which leaves Jesus as the seventh, and therefore, the perfect one.
John 4:4-29, 39-42
4But he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob‟s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, „Give me a drink‟. 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, „How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?‟ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)* 10Jesus answered her, „If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, "Give me a drink", you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.‟ 11The woman said to him, „Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?‟ 13Jesus said to her, „Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.‟ 15The woman said to him, „Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.‟
16 Jesus said to her, „Go, call your husband, and come back.‟ 17The woman answered him, „I have no husband.‟ Jesus said to her, „You are right in saying, "I have no husband"; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!‟ 19The woman said to him, „Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.‟ 21Jesus said to her, „Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.‟ 25The woman said to him, „I know that Messiah is coming‟ (who is called Christ). „When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.‟ 26Jesus said to her, „I am he,* the one who is speaking to you.‟
27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, „What do you want?‟ or, „Why are you speaking with her?‟ 28Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29„Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?‟ 39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman‟s testimony, „He told me everything I have ever done.‟ 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, „It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.‟ | <urn:uuid:352ca11c-09c2-4625-b1bc-1bd9feda847c> | CC-MAIN-2018-22 | http://ceoballarat.catholic.edu.au/media/uploads/rec_godlyplay_scripts/JesusandtheWomanofSamariaattheWell.pdf | 2018-05-23T18:29:13Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-22/segments/1526794865702.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20180523180641-20180523200641-00094.warc.gz | 55,871,220 | 1,895 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998932 | eng_Latn | 0.999299 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2210,
3770,
7712
] | [
3.40625
] | 1 | 0 |
Sentence Types
As you know, in order to form a sentence in English, you must have two components, a subject and a verb. Needless to say, however, almost all English sentences consist of more than a subject and a verb, and often you will find multiple subjects and verbs in a single sentence. This lesson will help you learn the four basic sentence types in English. We'll start with the simplest and move through the most complicated.
Sentence type 1: SIMPLE SENTENCE
In English, the most basic sentence will have both a subject and a verb and will express a complete thought. Of course, we often add elements to a sentence in order to provide more detail. For instance, we might add adjectives or adverbs or different types of phrases. Below you will see a very simple sentence, just a subject and verb. Then I'll show you how it looks with some added elements.
The boy runs. (boy = subject and runs = verb)
The boy runs for the high school track team. (same sentence, but I've added a prepositional phrase, "for the high school track team")
The boy runs very slowly. (same sentence, but now I've added two adverbs, "very" and "slowly")
The tall boy runs. (same sentence, but now I've added the adjective, "tall"
Wanting to join a sport's team, the boy runs for the high school track team.
(same sentence, but now I've added the participial phrase, "wanting to join a sport's team" and the prepositional phrase, "for the high school track team)
Despite adding the different phrases or modifiers, you still have the basic sentence, "The boy runs." This is called a simple sentence. It is a sentence with a subject and verb that can stand on its own as a complete thought.
When you have a subject and verb that can stand alone as a complete thought, this is called an independent clause. A clause means that a group of words has a subject and a verb. Independent means that the clause has the ability to stand alone, meaning it is a complete sentence. Each simple sentence has one independent clause.
PRACTICE
Below are ten sentences. Circle the subject and underline the verb in each "sentence." On the line in front of each, write SS if the sentence is a simple sentence (subject and verb and a complete thought) or NSS for not a simple sentence. You will know that you do not have a simple sentence if you cannot find both a subject and a verb to go with it. Remember, when you say the subject and the verb together, they must make sense (ex.: boy runs).
________1. The beach house blew away during the hurricane.
________2. My brother cut the grass on Saturday.
________3. Finding the book extremely boring, I took it back to the library.
________4. The flag waving in the breeze.
________5. In the distance I could hear thunder.
________6. To open a can of tuna for lunch.
________7. Shorts hanging on the line.
________8. I raised my hand for the question.
________9. Since last year I have not gotten an F on my report card.
________10. Steven, finding the quarter on the sidewalk.
Perhaps you've been wondering if simple sentences can have more than one subject and one verb. The answer to that question is a qualified yes. If this occurs, the subjects and verbs must be joined by a conjunction and still express only one thought. Here are some examples.
Margaret and Michele had a huge fight last week.
There are two subjects in this sentence, "Margaret" and "Michele." They are joined by the conjunction "and." Despite using the word "and," you cannot split the sentence into two parts. You need both "Margaret" and "Michele" to have a complete thought.
Margaret laughed and hung up the phone.
There are two verbs in this sentence, "laughed" and "hung." The subject, "Margaret," is performing two actions ("laughed" and "hung"). Again, you cannot split the sentence where the "and" is. You need both parts to make a complete thought.
Sentence Type 2: COMPOUND SENTENCE
The second type of English sentence is called a compound sentence. In this type of sentence, you will find two complete thoughts joined by a conjunction such as and, but, or, nor. An easy way to tell if you have a compound sentence is to cross out the conjunction and see if you have a complete thought on both sides of the conjunction. Here is an example:
Michael washed the dishes, and Susan vacuumed the house.
If you were to cross out "and," would you have two complete thoughts? Yes, you have, in effect, two sentences: Michael washed the dishes. Susan vacuumed the house. The sentence above, then, is a compound sentence.
You are correct if you noticed that a compound sentence consists of two (or possibly more) independent clauses. Remember, an independent clause means you have a group of words with a subject and a verb, and that group of words can stand alone as a complete thought. In the sentence above, you have two independent clauses: Michael washed the dishes/Susan vacuumed the house.
Is it possible to have more than two independent clauses? Yes. Here is an example:
Michael washed the dishes, Susan vacuumed the house, and Thomas did the laundry.
It is easy to see that there are three independent clauses in this sentence: Michael washed the dishes/Sudan vacuumed the house/Thomas did the laundry. Each of these clauses could stand alone as a complete thought.
Let's look at punctuation with compound sentences. If you use a conjunction (and, but, or, nor), the comma is place in front of the conjunction. It is also possible to join to closely related independent clauses with a semicolon. Here is an example:
Michael washed the dishes; Susan dried them.
PRACTICE
Below are ten compound sentences. In each, underline the conjunction joining the two independent clauses and then place each independent clause in parentheses. Finally, mark the subject in each independent clause with an S and the verb in each independent clause with a V. An example is done for you.
S V S V (Michael washed the dishes), and (Susan dried them).
1. I wanted to watch a movie, but Bill wanted to skateboard.
2. After lunch we walked to Spanish, but Jim skipped the class.
3. I like Gmail, but my best friend uses Yahoo.
4. Lying in the sun for three hours, I got a terrible sunburn, but Marie did not burn at all.
5. I might do my homework tonight, or I may decide to do it in the morning.
6. Use an encyclopedia, or find the information online. (hint: don't forget that "you" is sometimes the understood subject of a clause)
7. At batting practice I hit an amazing number of pitches, but Mark struck out every time.
8. You can lie on the couch all day, or you can do something productive.
9. I have not read any of the Harry Potter books, nor have I read any of the Twilight series.
10. Tom cleaned the scallops; I wrapped them in bacon.
PRACTICE
Beside each sentence below, write S if the sentence is a simple sentence (one independent clause) or C if the sentence is a compound sentence (two or more independent clauses). You may find it helpful to mark the subjects and verbs before you decide on the sentence type.
______1. Did you find your wallet?
______2. I like pretzels, but George prefers popcorn.
______3. My dad drives a cool Fiat Abarth, but my mom drives a boring Subaru Forester.
______4. My sister is leaving for college in a week.
______5. Someone broke into our house last night.
______6. I did the experiments; Tim recorded the results.
______7. My grandmother makes a great apple pie, but my aunt makes the best chocolate cake.
______8. After the last class of the day, I went home and slept for three hours.
______9. No one in my class has read War and Peace.
______10. My brother snowboards, and my sister skis.
Sentence type 3: COMPLEX SENTENCE
The third type of English sentence is the complex sentence. Recall that an independent clause is a group of words with a subject and verb that can stand alone and express a complete thought (a sentence). We also have a clause in English called a dependent clause. This type of clause is a group of words with a subject and verb, but this group cannot stand on its own and does not express a complete thought. This type of clause is called a dependent or subordinate clause. You can recognize such a clause by the introductory word that begins this type of clause. These introductory words are words such as when, why, because, whenever, though, although, if, until, how, while, unless, after, before, as, as if, unless, so that, since, where, who, whose, whom, which, that, etc. All of these introductory words make it impossible for the clause that follows it to stand on its on. Here are some examples of dependent clauses:
o when you find the answer
o why he ran away
o if you need more time
o because you lost the money
o whenever you are ready
o though you know the answer
o although he agrees with me
o until time is called
o how he found out
o while you work on the cake
o unless you can tell me
o after I find the solution
o before time is called
o as the clock struck midnight
o unless you can raise the money
o so that we can open the bidding
o since you already have the answer
o where the wild things are free
o who can run the fastest
o whose name has the most syllables
o whom we know to be reliable
o which made him ill
o that belongs to our neighbors
As you can easily see, each group of words above has a subject and verb. Sometimes the subject is the introductory word ("who" in "who can run the fastest" or "which" in "which makes no difference"). None of these dependent clauses can stand alone, however. Each dependent clause "depends" on an independent clause to make it a complete thought. Once we add an independent clause to each of the dependent clauses above, we can form a complete sentence. The dependent clause can be either at the beginning of the sentence or at the end. You can also have several dependent clauses in a sentence as long as you have an independent clause in the sentence.
A complex sentence is one independent clause plus one or more dependent clauses. Here are the dependent clauses added to an independent clause. The result is a sentence:
o When you find the answer, let me know.
o I know why he ran away.
o If you need more time, I can give you more time.
o I can't reimburse you because you lost the money.
o We can go whenever you are ready.
o Though you know the answer, you shouldn't raise your hand.
o Although he agrees with me, he won't tell anyone.
o You can't stop until time is called.
o I really don't know how he found out.
o While you work on the cake, I will make the icing.
o Unless you can tell me, I won't know when to stop.
o I will call you after I find the solution.
o You cannot stop before time is called.
o As the clock struck midnight, the coach turned into a pumpkin.
o Unless you can raise the money, you will lose your house.
o Raise your hand so that we can open the bidding.
o Since you already have the answer, please write it on the board.
o I want to go where the wild things are free.
o We will never know who can run the fastest.
o Take the people whose name has the most syllables.
o I hired Bill Smith, whom we know to be reliable.
o He ate the spoiled mushrooms, which made him ill.
o We found the dog that belongs to our neighbors.
As you can see from the sentences above, once you add an independent clause to a dependent clause, you can form a complete sentence. This type of sentence is called a complex sentence. A complex sentence has one independent and one or more dependent clauses.
PRACTICE
Below are some dependent clauses. They cannot stand alone as sentences. Add an independent clause to each of the following dependent clauses to create a complex sentence. You may add the independent clause either before or after the dependent clause. An example is done for you.
Example: after the rain stopped
Answer: We went swimming after the rain stopped.
1. if you find my CD
2. that makes no sense
3. so that the project is completed on time
4. since everyone agrees
5. because you don't understand me
8. I have made the honor roll since I was in seventh grade.
9. Unless you know the answer, do not raise your hand.
3. I hate writing essays, and I hate writing poetry, though I love giving speeches.
6. while he tried to sleep
7. although he gave it his best shot
8. whenever the bell rings
9. after the party was over
10. before class begins
Practice
Below are ten complex sentences. In each sentence underline the independent clause once and the dependent clause twice. Two sentences have two dependent clauses, so watch for those!
1. He is sitting in the chair that is falling apart.
2. Although he hasn't read the book, he has decided to write a book report on it.
3. While you cook dinner, I will set the table.
4. After he left the dance, Bill drove home in the car that his parents gave him for his birthday.
5. I don't understand the problem even though I got the right answer.
6. When you find him, you should give him the money that you owe him.
7. I saved my money so that I could buy an iPad.
9. I will buy you a ticket if you give me the money for it.
10. Whenever he plays quarterback, the football team always wins.
Sentence Type 4: OOMPOUND-COMPLEX SENTENCE
Though this sentence type seems to be the most difficult of the four sentence types, you already understand the components of the complex-compound sentence because it is a combination of the compound sentence and the complex sentence. The compound-complex sentence must have two or more independent clauses (making it compound) and one or more dependent clauses (making it complex). So, in order to have a compound-complex sentence, you must have at least three clauses, two of which are independent. Here is an example:
S V S V
S V
(I ate tuna for lunch), but (Steve ate a BLT) (that his mom made for him).
independent clause independ. clause dependent clause
As you can see, the sentence above has two independent clauses that can stand alone, making it a compound sentence. Additionally, it has a dependent clause, which makes the sentence complex. Together, these three clauses form a compound-complex sentence.
PRACTICE
Below are ten compound-complex sentences. First, label the subject and verb in each clause. Then, in each sentence, put parentheses around each clause and then label each clause with an I for "independent" or a D for "dependent."
S V
S V
S V
SAMPLE: (Tom knew my name), but (he forgot it) (when the teacher asked him for it).
I
I
D
1. I love eating turkey at Thanksgiving, but my friend's family eats lasagna because his cousin is allergic to poultry.
2. After I swept the garage, I asked my dad for my allowance, but he only laughed at my request.
4. After Bob got his license, he drove to school every day, and he picked me up.
5. Because my mother grew up without much money, she is really kind, and she give my sister and me $20 each week for an allowance.
6. If you find a job, you should work during the summer, but you should cut back on your hours during the school year.
7. I can never remember the batting order, but I can always remember the position that each person plays.
8. Ron is running for student council president, but he will not win if he does not get the seniors' vote.
9. While my parents were at dinner, I cleaned the house, and my sister did the ironing.
10. The local newspaper will not fund our team unless we can find a co-sponsor, but I have no ideas for possible co-sponsors.
CUMULATIVE PRACTICE
Label each sentence below as simple (S), compound (CP), complex (CX), or compoundcomplex (CPX). You may find it necessary to place parentheses around the clauses and to label each as independent or dependent before deciding on the type of sentence.
________1. You can enter the data, or you can interview the candidates.
________2. No one knew the man, and no one asked his name.
________3. After the officer pulled Tim over, Tim began to cry, and the officer took pity on him.
________4. Mrs. Smith assigned twenty pages of the novel for homework.
________5. Running after the car, the dog barked until the car was out of sight.
________6. You should read the assigned novel; do not read Spark Notes!
________7. I love skiing, my brother loves snowboarding, and my sister likes snow tubing.
________8. If you do not want to join marching band, you should find another extracurricular activity.
________9. Do your homework!
________10. Whenever I hear classical music, I immediately get sleepy.
________11. In the middle of the night, my little sister screamed at the top of her lungs because she had a nightmare, and I ran to comfort her.
________12. I washed and vacuumed the car.
________13. We ordered pork tenderloin for our entrée and scalloped potatoes for our side dish.
________14. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
________15. I now understand simple, compound, and compound-complex sentences. | <urn:uuid:14e40839-811a-4dad-a238-94cca541b678> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://www.syracusecityschools.com/tfiles/folder719/SentenceTypesSimpleCompoundComplexCompoundComplex.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:05:11Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00523.warc.gz | 547,359,177 | 3,886 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997449 | eng_Latn | 0.999339 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2544,
3892,
6811,
7720,
11290,
12280,
15617,
17066
] | [
4.75
] | 1 | 0 |
Vehicle Survival Kit
Tools and Supplies
Food
❑ Battery-operated radio and extra batteries
❑ Flashlight and extra batteries
❑ Fire extinguisher
❑ Duct tape
❑ Compass
❑ Cigarette Lighter/Matches in waterproof container
❑ Signal flare
❑ Paper, pencil
❑ Cell phone w/power cord
❑ Knife or multi-purpose tool
❑ Needles, thread
❑ Whistle
❑ Plastic sheeting or tarps
❑ Map of the area (for locating shelters)
❑ Toilet paper, towelettes
❑ Plastic garbage bags, ties
❑ Plastic bucket with tight lid
❑ Can and candles or chemical hand warmers
First Aid Kit
❑ Sterile adhesive bandages in assorted sizes
❑ 2-inch sterile gauze pads (4-6)
❑ 4-inch sterile gauze pads (4-6)
❑ Hypoallergenic adhesive tape
❑ Triangular bandages (3)
❑ 2-inch sterile roller bandages (3 rolls)
❑ 3-inch sterile roller bandages (3 rolls)
❑ Scissors
❑ Tweezers
❑ Needle
❑ Moistened towelettes
❑ Antiseptic
❑ Thermometer
❑ Tongue blades (2)
❑ Tube of petroleum jelly or other lubricant
❑ Assorted sizes of safety pins
❑ Cleansing agent/soap
❑ Latex gloves (2 pair)
❑ Sunscreen
❑ Aspirin or nonaspirin pain reliever
❑ Anti-diarrhea medication
❑ Antacid
❑ Syrup of Ipecac
❑ Laxative
❑ High energy foods (peanut butter, jelly, crackers, granola bars, trail mix)
❑ Comfort/stress foods (cookies, hard candy, sweetened cereals, lollipops, instant coffee, tea bags)
❑ Bottled water
Clothing and Bedding
❑ Sturdy shoes or work boots
❑ Rain gear
❑ Blankets, sleeping bags or 2 emergency space blankets
❑ Hat and gloves
❑ Thermal underwear
❑ Sunglasses
Special Items
Remember family members with special needs, such as infants and elderly or disabled persons.
For Baby
❑ Formula
❑ Diapers
❑ Bottles
❑ Powdered milk
For Adults
❑ Medications
❑ Heart and high blood pressure medications
❑ Insulin
❑ Prescription drugs
❑ Denture needs
❑ Contact lenses and supplies
❑ Extra eyeglasses
Stay with the Car
Run the car engine 15 minutes every hour. Check the exhaust pipe to be sure it isn't plugged with snow. (Always keep your oil and fluid levels filled, and your gas tank half full during winter months) .
Keep your feet off the floor when possible.
Never go to sleep with the engine running. Take turns sleeping. One person in the vehicle should remain awake.
Protect yourself from carbon monoxide poisoning by opening a window enough for ventilation.
Carry reading material for adults, games or toys for children to occupy time. | <urn:uuid:8c40bc3d-44c2-4196-b686-a11015d839e8> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://dot.nebraska.gov/media/3470/vehicle-survival-kit.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:14:07Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00523.warc.gz | 637,578,497 | 674 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.97612 | eng_Latn | 0.97612 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2456
] | [
2.953125
] | 1 | 0 |
Number AS91253
Version 1
Achievement Standard
Subject Reference
Media Studies 2.6
Title
Complete a developed media product from a design and plan using a range of conventions
Level 2
Credits 6
Assessment Internal
Subfield Social Science Studies
Domain Media Studies
Status
Registered
Status date
17 November 2011
Planned review date 31 December 2014
Date version published
17 November 2011
This achievement standard involves completing a developed media product from a design and plan using a range of conventions.
Achievement Criteria
Explanatory Notes
1 This achievement standard is derived from the Level 7 achievement objectives in the Social Sciences Learning Area of The New Zealand Curriculum, Learning Media, Ministry of Education, 2007; and is related to the three strands in the Teaching and Learning Guide for Media Studies, Ministry of Education, 2010 at http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz.
2 Complete a developed media product involves finishing a product which:
* uses some key conventions of the intended media product
* shows some control of production technology
* reflects the details of the design and plan
* has some appeal to its target audience.
Complete a crafted media product involves finishing a product, using well considered choices and which:
* incorporates key conventions of the intended media product
*
shows consistent, practised control of production technology
* appeals to and/or has some impact on its target audience.
Complete an integrated media product involves finishing a product, using well considered choices and evidence of creativity, which:
* incorporates key conventions of the intended media product to create an effective media product that has a clear, sustained focus
* shows consistent, precise control of production technology
* is effective, appeals to and/or has impact on its target audience (includes capturing and holding the attention of the audience).
3 Media product includes but is not limited to:
* one A3 or two A4 pages for a newspaper or magazine
* radio show (30 minutes)
* website (5 pages)
* narrative film (3 minutes plus)
* news or magazine item (3 minutes plus)
* music video
* school promotional video (3 minutes plus)
* film trailer (1 minute plus).
4 A design and plan includes a concept, treatment and pre-production activities that:
* contain design choices that meet the requirements of a given brief
* incorporate a range of key features of the media product
* identify the practicalities that will enable the completion of a media product
* identify milestone dates and resources required to complete pre-production activities
* demonstrate evidence of reflection and reworking of ideas.
5 Given brief means the set of instructions given to the students outlining the requirements for the production, and includes but is not limited to:
* the intended audience
* length
* conventions of the intended media product
* style requirements
*
format
* practicalities
* copyright considerations.
6 Concept is a detailed, creative idea for a media product that includes reference to target audience, purpose (message, effect on the audience), plot synopsis, characters, content elements, practicalities.
7 Treatment is a detailed description of how the concept is to be realised.
* In moving image production, for example, this may include considered discussion of narrative, genre, characterisation, setting, mood, specific conventions to be used, and technical elements such as lighting, sound, and SFX.
* In print, for example, this may include story structure, genre, angle, tone and technical elements such as font, layout, use of graphics, and language choice.
* In radio, for example, this may include genre, tone, choice of talent, structure and technical elements such as sound effects, music, voice breaks, station IDs, audience participation (phone-ins, outside broadcast), stings.
8 Plan includes but is not limited to:
* permissions (eg copyright, locations, talent, cast, interviewees)
* casting
* wardrobe
* script
* graphics and/or illustrations and/or photographs
* interviewees and/or guests
* milestone dates and resources required to complete pre-production activities
* storyboard and/or clocks and/or edit sheets and/or page dummies.
9 Practicalities include but are not limited to:
* locations
* transport
* equipment
* weather
* costs
* cast and/or crew
* time restrictions.
10 Conditions of Assessment related to this achievement standard can be found at www.tki.org.nz/e/community/ncea/conditions-assessment.php.
Replacement Information
This achievement standard and AS91252 replaced AS90282 and AS90765.
Quality Assurance
1 Providers and Industry Training Organisations must have been granted consent to assess by NZQA before they can register credits from assessment against achievement standards.
2 Organisations with consent to assess and Industry Training Organisations assessing against achievement standards must engage with the moderation system that applies to those achievement standards.
Consent and Moderation Requirements (CMR) reference
0233 | <urn:uuid:8c94966c-935e-4228-bf4a-ea22ac794f48> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/nqfdocs/ncea-resource/achievements/2012/as91253.pdf | 2018-07-21T03:35:59Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00521.warc.gz | 936,301,665 | 1,005 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.983147 | eng_Latn | 0.991508 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
1418,
3891,
5087
] | [
2.03125
] | 5 | 1 |
Oyster Lesson Plan
The lesson plan's primary purpose is to demonstrate the importance of oysters to water quality; however, there are recommendations listed below to accommodate the six disciplines at The Harte Research Institute (e.g., Benthic Ecology, Ocean Health, Biodiversity and Conservation, Marine Policy and Law, Marine and Coastal Geospatial Sciences, and Socioeconomics).
Standards that were considered for the development of this lesson plan were taken from Ocean Literacy: The Essential Principles of Ocean Sciences K-12 (please see attached document). The majority of principles mentioned in the attached document can be applied towards how the lesson is specifically shaped.
Objectives:
Students will understand the ecological importance of oysters and oyster reefs.
Students will learn basic anatomy and physiology of the eastern oyster.
Students will be able to explain how oysters filter feed and cleanse the water.
Students will understand what species biodiversity is and why oyster reefs are important towards species biodiversity.
Students will learn what essential fish habitats are and why they are necessary.
Students will learn what ecosystem services are and how they pertain to oyster reefs.
Materials Needed:
Oyster reef and tank with filter
Water
Glitter (preferably green)
Colors (map pencils or crayons)
Additional/Recommended items
Artificial animals commonly found on oyster reefs (this can be used to show biodiversity on the reef)
Google Maps / Globe / Atlas
1
Introduction
When was the last time you ate seafood? Have you ever tried an oyster? Some people think oysters are not very appealing because of their appearance; however, oysters are actually very good for us. They have very low caloric values and are high in minerals. Oysters have been eaten since the earliest arrival of humans to the North American continent, thousands of years ago. Presently, they can usually be found at your local restaurant granted they are in season. So if humans eat oysters then what do oysters eat?
Oysters are stationary filter feeders. Interlace your fingers with your two palms facing you, bring your mouth to your fingers, and inhale. That is similar to how oysters feed except this is done underwater. Baby oysters do not have a shell, they float in the water column until they find a hard substrate where they will settle and glue themselves down for the rest of their lives. When many oysters get together they form a reef, where they continue to filter feed. An oyster can filter approximately 25 gallons
of water in a single day. Imagine drinking 25 gallons of milk in one day. That's a lot of milk and a lot liquid. Additionally, if there is an entire reef of oysters all filtering together that can add up to a lot of water being filtered. You may be asking though what exactly is being filtered from the water.
http://superfoodmarinephytoplankton.com
http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNA S~10~10~68888~173898:Phytoplankton-Bloom-in-theGulf-ofWell the answer is pictured in Figure 2. These are called marine phytoplankton. They are tiny plants that move around with the currents. The one on the very left side of Figure 2 is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. That seems really small to feed not only all the oysters in the world but also some of the biggest animals in the world (whale sharks, blue whales, etc…), which also eat marine phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are capable of feeding all of these animals because they are very abundant. Figure 3 demonstrates this. The light blue/green streak alongside the bottom of the white cloud is a bloom of marine phytoplankton, and the land is Louisiana and part of Mississippi. Remember, this is only a small part of the world.
This lesson will primarily focus on the oyster's ability to filter food out of the water. Oysters build intertidal reefs that can be found within estuaries and coastal areas that are influenced by tidal fluctuations and watershed outflows (e.g., rivers, creeks, bays, etc…). Oysters are primarily filter feeders, meaning they take in water (rich in marine phytoplankton and algae) through their excurrent siphon and filter it across their gills. The water then is passed to their labial palps where smaller particles get eaten and larger particles pass out their excurrent siphon, as seen in Figure 4 (note this is a figure of a mussel and not an oyster but they feed similarly).
If oysters are stationary and are constantly filtering water, what do you think would happen if someone were to pour something toxic in the water, like a pollutant? Well oysters are capable of filtering other things besides phytoplankton out of the water which can be a good and bad thing. Overtime, oysters can bio-accumulate chemicals (aka pollutants) and bacteria making the oyster inedible. Therefore, if there is pollution such as an oil spill or a toxin such as a harmful algal bloom, the commercial oyster industry will close. This is a large problem because the US harvests approximately 30 million pounds of oyster meat per year (~75% is the eastern oyster). In Rhode Island, oyster harvest has declined since the 1990s (see Figure 5) due to negative impacts on populations located in Narragansett Bay (e.g., effects of disease, environmental conditions, poor sets of new recruits, and heavy fishing pressure).
Figure 5 Graph courtesy of State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Department of Environmental Management 2010 Management Plan for the Shellfish Fishery Sector
Have your instructor set up the oyster demo. While this is running answer the following questions.
In the boxes below let each box represent the demo aquarium. At each time interval draw what your aquarium looks like. This will allow for you to be able to compare at the end of the lesson. Hint: since there are certain features that will not change it might be easier to draw those features in each of the squares before beginning the demonstration.
25 minutes
20 minutes
15 minutes
10 minutes
5 minutes
Beginning
In between intervals answer the following questions
What does the green glitter represent?
What does the filter represent at the top of the tank?
Let's pretend that you have three live oysters in the tank, how many times would the water recycle in your 2 gallon tank in an hour? (Remember one oyster can filter 25 gallons per day or per 24 hours)
How many live oysters would be able to filter 100 gallons/hour?
Also, if your filter represents ___________ oyster power (like horse power for a car) then how many times is the water going to be turned over in your tank? (Meaning how many times will 2 gallons get recycled/filtered/per hour)
40minutes
35 minutes
30 minutes
So let's get know the oyster a little more. Below is a picture of an oyster. Please color and label the anatomy. Hint: continue looking through the lesson to see if there are any clues to help you out labeling anatomical parts.
Eastern Oyster – Crassostrea virginica
Below is a map showing the natural range of the eastern oyster. Areas that are in red illustrate where the eastern oyster has been documented. The yellow portions on the map are where there are undocumented findings of the eastern oyster.
Based on the map below are there eastern oysters where you are located? _________________
(Circle your answer) Is the eastern oyster native to:
Alaska? – YES / NO California? – YES / NO Cuba? – YES / NO Falkland Islands? – YES / NO Yucatan Peninsula? – YES / NO
Figure 8 Photo courtesy of http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/animals/invertebrates/mussel.htm
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the process scientists use to classify organisms. All organisms are classified into taxonomic levels including oysters and yourself. The levels of classification are Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. Below is the taxonomic classification for humans. The taxonomic levels are analogous to identifying and locating someone on planet Earth. With your instructor's assistance complete the diagram below for the eastern oyster.
Example for Humans
Domain Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species
Eukaryota Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primates Hominidae Homo sapiens
If an organism is identified using the taxonomic classification they are then incorporated into a dichotomous key. Scientists use dichotomous keys to identify organisms when they find an unknown specimen. Sometimes it can be very difficult to tell some organisms apart; therefore, scientists will use morphological features (shape and structure) to tell them apart. In this next step we are going to practice using a dichotomous key to identify the animals your instructor placed into the aquarium. Some of you may have used a dichotomous key before while reading an adventure tale. Below is an example of an adventure dichotomous key.
SILVER SHRIMP | <urn:uuid:a620ed33-8dec-4c5d-a72a-12c592d459ef> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://03663e1.netsolhost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Oyster-Lesson-Plan.pdf | 2018-07-21T03:21:17Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00524.warc.gz | 39,839 | 1,957 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.946683 | eng_Latn | 0.996981 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown"
] | false | docling | [
1515,
3037,
5408,
5578,
6105,
6786,
7058,
7566,
7675,
8305,
8946,
8961
] | [
4.21875
] | 2 | 1 |
Moldova and Chisinau
Chisinau- the capital of Moldova is more than 500 years old. The first settlement under this name dates as far back as 1466. But the first mentioning of Chisinau as a city refers to 1666.It is situated on the hills and terraces of the Byck river valley , as the history of the city says, and occupies about 200 sq.kilometers. In spite of its old age it is young and beautiful.I was born in Chisinau . Its my native town and I love it very much. I live in the centre of it. Its one of the most beautiful parts of the city, though there are other nice places in it,too.If I were a guide, I would like to show you my city. Id begin with the so-called Gates of the city. If one arrives in Chisinau by air they would go into the city from the airport, passing by the Gates. There is another starting point of the city tour. It's the railway station-a traditional gateway which one cannot help passing through. It was built in 1948. According to the project the railway station and the adjoining square got its modern appearance in 1958. It has been reconstructed several times since that time.From station, with its endless moving to-and-frotrolley-buses,buses, and taxies, you fall under the spell of many-storeyed, whitestone buildings.A little farther a long you find yourselves before a modern hotel, "Cosmos", where a lot of visitors to Chisinaustay , and a large supermarket " Grand Hall", where you can buy almost everything you wish. From there one can go up Negrutsi Boulevard as far as the building of the Academy of Sciences. There are two more hotels the "National" and the "Chisinau". The city is criss-crossed by many avenues,streets and boulevards. Almost all of them got their new national names after Indepedence day in 1991. The longest of them bears the name of Stefan cel Mare. It stretches from south to north almost five kilometers, dividing the city into two parts. There are some buildings made by architect A.Bernardazzi in it.In the middle of the street, downtown, one can see a wide square named the Great National Assembly with an old arch against the background of a large park to the right. To the left one can see the building which people call just for fun the white house ehere most Ministries of Moldova can be found and visited.0In the middle of the street, to the left, you can see the monument to the Moldovan ruler Stefan III, who ruled over Moldova from 1457 till 1504 . Under his leadership many victories over the Turks and the Tatarshad been won. For this people named him the Great .A.Plamadeala is the sculptor of this monument. The monument is set up against the backgroundof a beautiful park .One can see Alley of Classical authors in it. Not far from the park one can see the building of Parliament of Moldova with a three-colour flag on top of it.Chisinau is a wonderful city because there is a beautiful lake almost in its centre. People from all parts of Moldova like to spend their spare time on the banks of the lake and the place around it ."Valea Morilor" is one of the best and favourite places to have a rest in the capital. The city is the countrys political , cultural, educational, entertainment, and trade centre. There are a lot of foreign embassies and foreign firms, banks and offies in Chisinau. People make the city better and more beautiful day by day and keep its traditions . Tourists coming to Chisinau admire the beauty of the capital and call it "green".Eugen Doga, Moldova"s renowned composter, calls it " my white city" in his song devoted to Chisinau. | <urn:uuid:4c9bf603-d7e2-4b27-b172-c997d72d6fe3> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://referateok.ro/referate/1678_1263392710.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:06:21Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00523.warc.gz | 300,408,795 | 858 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999417 | eng_Latn | 0.999417 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
3570
] | [
2.15625
] | 1 | 0 |
Entering PreCalculus Summer Packet
Name ___________________
This assignment will be graded on completion as well as accuracy and will count as your first TEST grade. All work must be shown to receive full credit. Write your answers in the space provided. These problems are reflective of the knowledge that is prerequisite to the PreCalculus course.
Sketch each subset on the real number line.
1. 5 x
2. ,4
3. 6 0 x
Use interval notation to describe the set.
_____________4. y is no more than 25
_____________5. t is at least 10 and at most 22
_____________6. k is less than 5 but no less than –3
Evaluate the expression for the given value of x.
$$_____________7. x 2 – 3x + 4 ; x = –2$$
$$_____________8. 3 3x ; x = 2$$
$$_____________9. 4 3x ; x = –2$$
Simplify each expression. Each answer should only have positive exponents (no negative exponents).
$$_____________10. 4 3 3z z $$
$$_____________11. 3 2 7 x x$$
$$_____________12. 1 3 3 2 4 2 x x$$
$$_____________13. 3 4 3 5 y x$$
$$_____________14. 3 6 2 3 6 2 5 5 z x z x$$
Evaluate each expression without a calculator.
_____________15.
3
1
27
$$_____________16. 4 3 81 16 $$
Simplify each radical expression. Rationalize the denominator of any fractions. Leave answer in simplified radical form (no decimals).
_____________17.
4
54xy
_____________18.
5
4 8
160 z x
_____________19.
8 12 50 2
$$_____________20. 2 14 5 $$
$$_____________21. 3 2 8$$
Find the product.
Perform the multiplication or division and simplify.
Perform the addition or subtraction and simplify.
Simplify the complex fraction.
Completely factor the expression.
_____________33. 2x
3
– 6x
_____________36. 6x
3
– 2x + 3x
2
– 1
Write the rational expression in simplest form.
Solve the quadratic equation by factoring.
_____________41. x
2
– 12x + 35 = 0
_____________42. 2x
2
= 19x + 33
Solve the quadratic equation by completing the square.
_____________43. x
2
+ 4x – 32 = 0
_____________44. 4x
2
– 4x – 15 = 0
Use the Quadratic Formula to solve the equation.
_____________45. 2 + 2x – x
2
= 0
_____________46. 8t = 5 + 2t
2
Solve using the square root method.
_____________47. 9x
2
= 36
_____________48. (2x – 1)
2
= 18
Find all real solutions of the equation. Check your solutions in the original equation.
_____________49. x
4
– 81 = 0
____________50. x
3
– 3x
2
– x + 3 = 0
____________51.
0 10 2 x
_____________52.
5 1 2 x
Solve the inequality and sketch the solution on the real number line. (some inequalities have no solutions)
_____________53. – 2x > – 3
_____________54.
2
5
3 1 8
2
1
x
x
_____________55.
13 2 3 1 8
x
_____________56.
1 5 x
_____________57.
4
2
3
x
Solve for the indicated variable.
Logarithms and Exponents. Solve for x.
_____________61. log
x
81 = 4
_____________63. 2
x
= 8
_____________64. Write 3
x
= 27 in logarithmic form.
_____________65. Convert log
25
5 = ½ to an exponential equation.
Evaluate the function at each specified value of the independent variable and simplify.
h(t) = t
2
– 2t
_____________66. h(2)
_____________67. h
2
3
_____________68. h(x+2)
Check for symmetry with respect to both axes and the origin. Answer Yes or No.
69. y = 2x
3
x-axis: _________
y-axis: _________ origin: _________
70. x – y 2
= 1 x-axis: _________
y-axis: _________ origin: _________
Plot the points. Find the distance between the two points and the midpoint of the line segment between the two points. Leave answer in simplified radical form (no decimals).
$$71. A 1, 2 1 ,B 3, 2 5$$
$$Distance = ____________ Midpoint = _____________$$
Find the second endpoint of a line segment if the coordinates of the first endpoint and midpoint are, respectively:
$$_____________72. (1,– 2), (4,– 1)$$
Find the domain of the function and write answer in interval notation.
$$_____________73. 3 4 ) ( t t f$$
$$_____________74. 5 3 ) ( y y y s$$
$$_____________75. x x x f 6 6 ) ($$
Find the x and y intercepts.
76. y = 16 – 4x 2
x-intercept(s): __________
y-intercept(s): __________
77. y = x 3 – 4x
x-intercept(s): __________
y-intercept(s): __________
Solve the system of equations.
_____________78. 2r + s = 11
6r – 2s = – 2
_____________79. 4x – 5y = 17
3x + 4y = 5
_____________80. Find the slope of the line passing through points (– 2,0) and (3,1).
_____________81. Find the equation of the line passing through the point (2, – 1) and parallel to the line 2x – 3y = 5. Write in slope-intercept form.
_____________82. Find the equation of the line passing through the point (– 3,2) and perpendicular to the line x + y = 7. Write in slope-intercept form.
_____________83. Find the equation of the line passing through the points (– 4, – 4) and (4,3). Write in slope-intercept form.
For each problem, write an equation and solve.
_____________84. The measure of an angle is 8 degrees less than three times the measure of the angle's supplement. Find the measure of the angle.
_____________85. A rectangle has a perimeter of 26 meters. If the length is 4 meters longer than twice the width, find the length and the width.
_____________86. Find two consecutive odd integers whose product is 195.
_____________87. The Lance Company has 78 female employees, which represents 52% of the total work force of the company. How many employees does the company have?
_____________88. An airplane flies from Naples, Italy in a straight line to Rome, Italy, which is 120 km north and 150 km west of Naples. How far does the plane fly?(round answer to nearest tenth km)
Graph each of the following lines:
91. A line passing through the point (6,– 1) with an undefined slope.
92. y + 3 = 0
Graph each of the following inequalities. Remember to shade. | <urn:uuid:016cd2a9-07f7-4c07-8c48-cae291142d0e> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://tkcs.org/files/math_packets/Precalculus%20Summer%20Packet.pdf | 2018-07-21T03:54:20Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00520.warc.gz | 373,374,691 | 2,058 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.95659 | eng_Latn | 0.986824 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
622,
1099,
1502,
1575,
1658,
1820,
2202,
2534,
2821,
3091,
3531,
4154,
4704,
5773,
5809,
5898,
5961
] | [
3.65625
] | 1 | 0 |
Whole Farm Approach of Soil and Plant Health at Roxbury Farm
Jean-Paul Courtens and Jody Bolluyt Roxbury Farm, Kinderhook, NY
1. Farm Overview
Roxbury Farm consists of 350 acres of land. 200 acres of land is utilized for hay, pasture, 45 acres for soil building crops and another 45 acres for vegetables. The remainder is taken up by forests, wetlands, or is developed.
Agricultural Principles at Roxbury Farm as articulated by Rudolf Steiner in 1924: "A farm is true to its essential nature, in the best sense of the word, if it is conceived as a kind of individual entity in itself — a self-contained individuality. Every farm should approximate to this condition. This ideal cannot be absolutely attained, but it should be observed as far as possible. Whatever you need for agricultural production, you should try to posses it within the farm itself (including in the "farm," needless to say, the due amount of cattle). Properly speaking, any manures or the like which you bring into the farm from outside should be regarded rather as a remedy for a sick farm. That is the ideal. A thoroughly healthy farm should be able to produce within itself all that it needs."
2. Plant and Soil Health
Strategies at Roxbury Farm to support good soil and plant health:
I. Soil Selection
* A high carrying capacity (carry the weight of equipment without creating irreversible compaction)
* Good natural or artificial drainage
* Good access to irrigation water
* A deep A horizon (topsoil) that is free from stones
* Is almost flat with slopes that do not exceed 2%.
* Is located in a long season micro climate
* Good exposure to sunlight
* Good air drainage to avoid late spring frosts.
* Good access to farm roads
* High CEC value (Cation Exchange Capacity)
II. Mineral Balancing and Nutrient Budgeting
Use of fertilizer is based on needs of individual crops and how much nutrients are removed from farm whereby Calcium occupies approximately 65% of the available cations. pH is corrected until it reaches about 6.3. Calcium and magnesium are brought in with lime and gypsum. NPK are brought into the farm by means of composted poultry manure. N and K is brought in from nearby hayfields or from vegetable fields in the form of mulch, and N is brought into the farm by nitrogen fixation by the means of leguminous soil building crops.
III. Reduced Tillage
* Short intervals between Green Manure and Cash Crop
* Use of Less aggressive Tillage Tools
* Use of Plasti-Culture in combination with Mulch
* Avoid working the soil too wet
* Use wide radial tires for field prep
* Lower tire pressure during spring field work (6-15psi)
* Ballast tractor to 10-15% wheel slippage
IV. Increase Biological Activity
Compost
Use sparingly to avid overloading soil with Phosphorus
Soil Building Crops:
* Reduce nutrient leaching
* Reduce soil erosion
* Increase soil structure
* Increase living OM fraction
* Fix nitrogen
* Increase general species diversity
* Reduce weed pressure
* Reduce insect pressure
* Reduce disease pressure
Examples of bell beans with oats, bell beans with peas and oats, oats and peas, rye and vetch, sorghum with forage soybean, buckwheat, sweet clover, mustard and tillage radish.
Crop Rotation: | <urn:uuid:845251d4-b5e5-40ff-9e82-4de59e736df5> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://www.hort.cornell.edu/expo/proceedings/2011/Cover%20Crops%20&%20Soil%20Health/Whole%20Farm%20Approach%20of%20Soil%20and%20Plant%20Health%20at%20Roxbury%20Farm.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:15:49Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00522.warc.gz | 457,473,960 | 738 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.960573 | eng_Latn | 0.995718 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2338,
3225
] | [
2.140625
] | 1 | 0 |
John F. Kennedy Catholic School Lower Campus
Student/Parent Handbook Diocese of Youngstown
2017-2018
These are the policies and procedures for the 2017-2018 school year to ensure the health, safety, and success of all Kennedy families. Please be sure to thoroughly review this document as a family and return the signed portion to the main office. We look forward to a great year.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION/MISSION STATEMENT
DIOCESAN PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION
We believe that each Catholic school, as part of a larger believing community, has the mission to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through excellence in educational programs and service to the Catholic community in particular and in society in general. The foundations of Catholic belief and practice are taught while developing a sense of community, an atmosphere for worship, and a concern for social justice. These themes permeate all aspects of the school organization and curriculum which meets the religious, academic, personal, and social needs of children.
The Office of Catholic Schools provides leadership and support for Catholic schools to be an integral, viable element of the Diocesan Church's mission of education. The Office establishes the climate and framework for fostering excellence in education in the Catholic elementary schools of the Diocese.
SCHOOL MISSION STATEMENT/PHILOSOPHY
John F. Kennedy Lower Campus, A Roman Catholic PK-5 school in the Diocese of Youngstown, is committed to providing a Catholic quality education which promotes spiritual formation and academic excellence whereby students develop to their full potential
We are dedicated to academic excellence. We seek to develop a Catholic Christian identify in each student through the process of Catholic education which is life-centered and through activities which provide education in every dimension: physical, intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, moral, and spiritual.
PARENTAL ROLE
The Catholic Church recognizes parents as the primary educators of their children. The Catholic school exists to assist parents in the Christian formation of their children.
In this Handbook, the term parent refers not only to a student's natural or adopted parent, but to a student's non-parent legal guardian or to any person or agency authorized to act in place of parents.
Parents are expected to display an attitude of respect and support toward the school, the staff, and the educational process by:
* Supporting the school's mission and commitment to Christian principles;
* Supporting the school policies as outlined in the school handbook and regulations. In addition, parents are to ensure their son/daughter has read this handbook;
* Participating fully in school programs that are developed to support the education of their children;
* Remaining informed about and involved in the religious instruction of their children.
NONDISCRIMINATION CLAUSE
Catholic Schools, administered under the authority of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, comply with those constitutional and statutory provisions, as may be specifically applicable to the schools, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, age, marital status, handicap or disability, national origin, or citizenship in the administration of their educational, personnel, admissions, financial aid, athletic and other school administered programs.
This policy does not conflict with the priority given to Catholics for admission as students. This policy also does not preclude the ability of the school to undertake and/or enforce appropriate actions with respect to students who advocate on school property or at school functions any practices or doctrines which are inconsistent with the religious tenets of the Catholic faith.
NON-CATHOLIC STUDENTS
The presence of students from other faiths provides a wonderful diversity to the school. However, the presence of non-Catholic students in the school shall not alter the primacy of Catholic religious formation as an integral component of the educational program in the school. As such:
* Non-Catholic students are expected to participate in the religious formation and education programs of the school.
* Non-Catholic students must participate in liturgies, retreats, other religious functions, and religion classes for credit.
* Non-Catholic students may be exempt from formal co-curricular or extracurricular sacramental preparation programs, but not from the catechesis held during the school day.
* Students are expected, for testing and discussion purposes, to be knowledgeable of the Catholic Church's positions on scripture, revelation and moral practices. While Catholic teaching respects the various faith traditions of the students attending the Catholic school, parents must be aware that it is the Catholic position that will be taught.
GUIDELINES AND IMPLEMENTATIONS
In light of the unique situations which may arise in the educational process, and because it is impossible to foresee all school issues that arise, the faculty and administration reserve the right to address and to take appropriate action for any such situations not specifically referenced in this manual. In addition, in view of the unique and essential religious mission of the School, it is expressly understood that the school may take actions in cases where moral offenses occur which reflect adversely on the school, the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown or the Roman Catholic Church, or which interferes with the ability of the school to perform its religious mission or to effectively maintain the intimate working relationship of the school and the Community of Faith.
This handbook may be modified by the school after reasonable notice to the parents/students of the effective date of any changes. Any section headings are for convenience of use, and shall not affect the interpretation of any provisions. If the school should elect not to take action in a particular situation, this shall not be construed or interpreted as a waiver or preclude the school from acting in a subsequent situation of the same or similar kind.
All parents are required to sign a form stating they have read the rules and regulations outlined in this handbook and they agree to abide by those rules. This signature form will be distributed with a copy of the handbook and the form must be signed and returned as soon as possible, but no later than the Friday of the first week of school. Failure to have a signed form on file will not prevent the School from enforcing its policies, but may result in disciplinary action being taken and/or prevent a student from enrolling (or continuing enrollment) in the school.
II. SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
In addition to the daily religion class, students in all grades are given the opportunity to participate in the liturgy on a weekly basis, Holy Days of Obligation and other special occasions throughout the school year. Various prayer services are also held in accordance with the liturgical season for all grades.
This program is truly effective only to the extent to which it is reinforced by the living example of the family in the home and by the involvement of the family in the sacramental programs.
Parents are urged to exercise their responsibility by seeing that each child attends Sunday Mass and participates in the sacraments. Attendance at parent education is required for those whose children will be receiving a sacrament for the first time.
Reconciliation
Children in 2 nd grade receive instruction and have the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time in late January, or early February. Children in grades 3 through 8 usually have two scheduled opportunities to receive this sacrament during the school year. Children in all grades are encouraged to receive this sacrament regularly with their family.
Eucharist
Children in 2 nd grade receive instruction and have the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Eucharist for the first time at the student's home parish.
Service Opportunities
Mission activities help students realize there are people in the world who live in conditions of want and fear, deprived of the necessities of life which we take for granted. We encourage our students to learn compassion for these people, to pray for them, and to make generous sacrifices so that they might have access to basic human dignity. We encourage parents to foster this attitude in their children. Students are given the opportunities to participate in projects that benefit specific groups.
III. ACADEMICS
CURRICULUM
Curriculum encompasses the sequentially ordered learning experiences which the school provides for its students. The total curriculum includes the development of Catholic values and attitudes, as well as the attainment of knowledge and skills necessary for the student's spiritual, moral, intellectual, social and physical development.
The school follows the diocesan course of study. The basic curriculum for the school (but not necessarily for each grade level) includes the following subjects: Religion, Reading, Language Arts (English, Spelling, Handwriting), Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Fine Arts (Art and Music), Health and Safety, Physical Education, Computer Education and Library.
IMPLEMENTATION OF FAMILY LIFE PROGRAM
The primary responsibility for the education of the children belongs to parents. However, this responsibility is shared with the school as a matter of practical necessity. The greatest single factor in building a child's intellectual, cultural, moral, spiritual attitude is the example the parents provide in their own home.
To enroll a child in a Catholic school is to affirm the Catholic valve system and to recommit oneself to an acceptance of the God-given responsibilities of parenthood. The following is a list of ways in which parents are asked to support the Catholic education of their children who attend John F. Kennedy Catholic School Lower Campus.
v Model and support your child's practice of the Catholic faith. All parish families are expected to attend Mass each week-end and to make regular contributions to parish collection.
v Support school policy and the authority of the administration and teachers.
v Follow the policies and procedures stated in the Parent/Student Handbook, especially those regarding conduct, discipline, and uniforms.
v Discuss difficulties with the person concerned and avoid any criticism of teachers and school policy.
v Insure that your child obeys the regulations and principles of good behavior.
v Encourage your child to complete all assignments supporting the teachers by giving assistance when needed.
v Participate in parent-teacher conferences when requested and be willing to keep the lines of communication open between home and school.
v Meet your financial responsibilities as outlined in the Parent /Student Handbook
TEXTBOOKS/SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS
All textbooks may be taken home to do assignments. All books, textbooks, library books, and supplemental materials are loaned to the students for their use. Therefore, students must take proper care of them. This means they may not fold pages, turn down corners, write in or on them or destroy books I any way. At the end of the school year the books must be returned in good condition. If they are lost or damaged in any way the child will make restitution for the value of those books paid to the school. All books must be covered at all times.
TECHNOLOGY
Proper use of technology, especially the Internet, is an important consideration. The computer and the Internet must be in support of education and research and be consistent with the educational objectives of the Office of Catholic Schools. Using school facilities for Internet and e-mail is a privilege, not a right. Inappropriate use which includes but is not limited to unauthorized transmittal or improper use of copyrighted materials or materials protected as trade secrets; transmission of threatening or obscene materials; vandalism of computer files; and violation of computer security as determined by the school administration can result in a cancellation of those privileges and also subject the student to other disciplinary action. Vandalism is defined to include any malicious attempt to harm or destroy data of another user, the Internet or any agencies or networks connected to the Internet. The creation and/or uploading of "computer viruses" are expressly prohibited.
Additional responsibilities for use of school facilities for the Internet and e-mail are:
1. No student may use the Internet unless the school has on file an Internet Access/Educational Use Agreement which is signed by the student, the student's parent, and the teacher sponsor. This agreement must be completed annually
2. When using networks or computing resources of other organizations, students must observe the rules of that organization regarding such use.
3. Users should not reveal their personal addresses or phone number(s), and shall not reveal the personal address or phone number(s) of others without their authorization/permission.
4. Users are reminded that electronic mail (e-mail) is not guaranteed to be private. Operators of the network/system have access to all mail. Messages relating to or in support of illegal activities may be reported to the authorities.
5. Students shall immediately notify the system administrator/school administration if they suspect that a security problem with the system and/or the Internet exists.
6. Any attempt to log onto the Internet or the school's network/system as a systems administrator will result in a loss of user privileges at the school. Any user identified as a security risk by the school administration/systems administrator due to a history of actual or suspected unauthorized access to other computer(s), network(s) or system(s) may be denied access to the school's computers, networks and/or systems.
7. Users shall abide by generally accepted rules of network etiquette, which include but are not limited to:
a. Messages to others shall be polite and shall not be abusive.
b. Messages shall use appropriate language and shall not use obscenities, vulgarities or other inappropriate language.
c. Use of the network shall not disrupt use of the network by others.
8. There shall be no links from the school home page to a student's personal home page.
9. While the monitoring of a student's home use of the Internet is the responsibility of the parents, there are times when the results of home usage materially disrupts class work or involves substantial disorder. The school will use normal disciplinary procedures to deal with such situations. If the school becomes aware of criminal activity, the administration will report such activity to the appropriate authorities.
TESTING
The school's testing program is intended to assist teachers and administrators in a systematic evaluation of the academic and religion programs, to diagnose students' strengths and weaknesses, and to aid in revision of the curriculum and planning of instruction.
In addition to academic tests for grading purposes, the school will administer standardized religion and achievement tests according to the diocesan testing program. Results of standardized tests will be shared with parents.
TESTING PROGRAMS
Students in grade five will take the Assessment of Catechesis/Religious Education (ACRE).
Students in grades two and four will take the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) and Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT).
Students in grades three, five and six will take the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS).
Students in grades three and five will take the Off-Grade Writing Proficiency Tests.
Ed-Choice Students in grades three to six will take all required state mandated testing in the fall and spring.
HOMEWORK
In order to reinforce daily work and develop good study habits, the school promotes specific homework policies, however, homework is less than 10% of an individual student's grade.
Although homework has different purposes at different grades, homework is required at all grade levels. The amount of homework a child may have on any given day will vary depending upon the nature of the assignment, the amount of work the child completes in school that day, and the speed at which the child completes his/her work at home.
A reasonable amount of homework will be given daily. The assignment will be an outgrowth of class work to supplement learning, review independently what was taught in class, or to provide opportunity to use research skills.
Time allotments for homework depend on the type of assignment and on the age and grade level of the student. The time and length of assignment vary as the child grows older and develops more skills. No definite time limit can be determined for all, since children work at different rates of speed.
While parents should provide the time and place for the homework, the students should learn to assume the responsibility for his/her own work as early as possible. Parents may give appropriate assistance, but the work should reflect the student's understanding and ability.
Neglect of completing assignments usually is reflected in the student's grades. A student may be required to complete missing work during lunch time or after school.
Parents may use their internet school accounts to check their child's progress and for missing or incomplete assignments.
PARENT-TEACHER COMMUNICATION
Teachers are available to parents throughout the school year to keep the lines of communication open in the best interest of the students. Parent-teacher conferences can be scheduled throughout the school year if necessary. Parents should first privately contact a teacher with any concerns about a student or class concerns before seeking intervention by the school administration.
SCHEDULING AND OTHER CONFERENCE INFORMATION
Two scheduled parent teacher conference days during the school year promote a greater understanding of the needs and growth patterns of the students as well as strengthen communication between home and school. Parent conferences are held at the end of the first and beginning of the third academic quarters, usually early November and in February. Participation in the first of these conferences is required of all parents. If additional conferences are needed, an appointment may be made with the teacher for a mutually convenient time.
GRADING/REPORT CARDS
Evaluation of the student is based on teacher judgment and observation, daily work, teacher prepared tests (to include but not be limited to projects, portfolios, and other tools of assessment), class participation and effort.
The purpose of report cards is to alert the parents and present to them an assessment of their child's achievement in his/her academic studies.
An asterisk on the report card indicates an accommodation and/or modification has been made according to documentation outlined in the student's confidential file.
Codes for Religious and Social Development:
O
Outstanding
S Satisfactory
P
Progressing
N Needs Improvement
Study skills needing improvement are indicated for the appropriate subject area(s)
Interim progress reports will be sent to all parents.
Students will receive a report card at the end of each quarter. These report cards are to be signed by the parent/guardian and returned to school. Report cards will be held each quarter if money is due for tuition or fees until financial obligation are fulfilled.
HONOR ROLL
Students in grades 4-5 can achieve Honor Roll status according to the following guidelines:
All students with a 3.2 grade point average or higher. The average is the sum of all the letter grades divided by the number of grades.
th
***Since a letter grade is given for any special (art, band, etc.) once a student begins 4 grade, it will also count towards eligibility for honor roll.
PROMOTION/FAILURE POLICY
A major goal of the school is to assist students to complete each academic year satisfactorily. The repetition of a grade is recommended when it is deemed by the school to be necessary and advantageous to the particular needs of the student.
* The final decision to promote or retain a student is based on the student's academic performance and best interest as determined by the principal.
* Teachers will notify parents if their child is not progressing satisfactorily toward a passing grade in the course.
* If a student does not meet the criteria for promotion, a conference will be held with the parents and appropriate school personnel in attendance. If it is determined that additional educational support may enable a child to be placed in the next grade, a program will be developed and agreed to that provides for the student to participate in various educational interventions, including, but not limited to tutoring, summer school, and/or instruction at a learning center. Satisfactory completion of this program serves as the condition for placement into the next grade.
* Students who have not successfully completed summer school or another program approved by the principal but would not benefit from being retained in the grade may be "placed" in the next grade level; however the school must prepare and implement a Minor Adjustment Plan for the student as a condition of placement.
Speech and Language Therapy
For students identified with speech, language or hearing problems, the speech therapist plans an individualized plan of assistant and maintains ongoing parent and teacher contact.
Remedial Tutoring and Title I Reading
Individuals identified as needing remedial assistance will be provide, by a certified teacher, with either individual or small group instruction on all grade levels when funding is available for these programs.
Learning Disabilities Tutor
Students identified and possessing a valid IEP are provided instruction, by a certified teacher, relative to their special needs on a part time basis when funding is available.
IV. ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES
ADMISSIONS
John F. Kennedy Catholic School Lower Campus reserves the right to refuse admission or readmission, to suspend or to expel any student who does not cooperate with the policies established in this Handbook. Policies in this handbook apply to after school hours as well. If any student refuses to follow these policies, then he or she places his or her privilege to attend John F. Kennedy Catholic School Lower Campus in jeopardy. If any parent refuses to support or follow these policies, the parent places his or her child/children's privilege of attending John F. Kennedy Catholic School Lower Campus in jeopardy.
DIOCESAN INITIAL ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Students who desire an educational experience founded on the Catholic philosophy of education and who fulfill the age, health, academic and behavioral requirements are eligible for admission to the school.
The school sets registration procedures and admission policies. The availability of space and the order of preference for admission is determined by the school according to the following general criteria:
Registrants for school will be accepted in the following order:
a. students of registered participating parishioners whose parish(es) provide the elementary school;
b. students of parishioners whose parish does not provide a Catholic elementary school will be accepted in the nearest Catholic school; and
c. non parishioner students on a space available basis, after a conference regarding the reason for registration in a Catholic school is held with the parents by the pastor and principal.
Catholic elementary students should attend either their own parish school or, if their parish has no school, the Catholic school which is nearest their home or the Catholic school that could best provide individual needs.
AGE FOR ADMISSION TO KINDERGARTEN
Children who reach the age of five years by September 30 may be admitted to a kindergarten program.
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS FOR ADMISSION
Admission is contingent upon receipt of the following:
1. Completion of the application form
2. Presentation of an original birth certificate
3. Baptismal certificate for Catholic students
4. Proof of adequate immunization as required by the Ohio Revised Code
5. Completion of Emergency Authorization Form
6. Proof of custody for students not living with either or both natural parents
7. Social Security number (if U.S. citizen)
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS FOR ADMISSION TO GRADES 1-6
1. Educational and health records from previous school
2. If previously enrolled at a Catholic school in the Diocese of Youngstown, proof of having satisfied tuition obligations at the student's former Diocesan school prior to being enrolled at the new school.
3. An entry interview with child, parents and principal for all students entering after kindergarten. If determined that John F. Kennedy Catholic School Lower Campus is able to meet the educational needs of the student, he/she will be accepted on a probationary basis.
GENERAL CONDITIONS OF ADMISSION
In certain cases, students may be admitted on a probationary basis subject to the student successfully completing one or more subsequent interim evaluations. Students with
academic or other needs (i.e., behavioral), which cannot be reasonably addressed by the school may be denied admission.
School application forms may request disability-related information. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not prohibit a school from asking questions about a student's disabilities provided that information does not discriminate (automatically prohibit a student from applying).
FOREIGN STUDENTS
The Diocese of Youngstown endeavors to remain certified by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to admit F-1 Non-Immigrant students. The school, therefore, adheres to the following policies for enrolling non-U.S. persons.
Since January 30, 2003 all schools in the United States wishing to enroll Nonimmigrant F1 students by the use if an I-20 form have been required to register in the Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS.) Information on whether or not a school has been chosen to register with SEVIS and is qualified to enroll an F-1 student is available through the particular school office.
Also required of the incoming student is:
a. I-20 Form (if applicable)
b. Diocesan Emergency Care Form
c. State Immunization Form
d. Local Admissions Forms
e. VISA
CLASS PLACEMENT
The principal/administration and faculty reserve the right to place students in a class which is consistent with the results of the student's prior academic records and any admission testing.
Teachers will allow invitations to private parties to be given (orally or written) in school only if everyone in the class is receiving an invitation or if all the boys or all the girls are invited to a particular party. The school will not provide student addresses or phone numbers.
ATTENDANCE
DIOCESAN POLICY FOR ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS
In order to achieve the goals and objectives of the curriculum, regular attendance by the student is mandatory.
The school (K-5) is normally in session not less than 178 student attendance days per academic year or the length of time as required by the Ohio Department of Education and the Office of Catholic Schools.
* Once a student is enrolled in the school, the principal/administration and teachers will insist on regular attendance. Neither the Diocese, the Office of Catholic Schools, the school, nor any of its employees are, however, responsible for ensuring actual attendance. This is the responsibility of the student's parent(s)/guardian(s).
ABSENCE/TARDINESS/LEAVING SCHOOL
In order to ensure continuous progress in school, regular attendance and habits of punctuality are essential. The school defines proper procedures as:
1. The parent(s) should phone the school before 9:00 am giving the reason and the approximate length of absence.
2. A written excuse, explaining the reason for absence, signed and dated by the parent, must be presented upon a student's return to school.
3. Persistent absences may cause serious academic problems (including but not limited to course failure.) The administration or the class teacher will normally review the matter with parents before a decision is made by the administration. Persistent absences may also result in the student being subject to appropriate disciplinary action.
4. Except in cases of emergency as determined by the principal/administration and/or a faculty member (as applicable or necessary), a student may only (a) be released early from school with the prior written authorization of the student's parent, or (b) leave the school grounds with the prior authorization from the principal/administration.
Tardiness
The tardy student will normally be subject to appropriate disciplinary action by the school administration.
Parents are expected to cultivate the habit of punctuality in their children since tardiness interferes with the child's progress in school and disrupts the classroom teaching. Students who arrive in their room after 8:00 am are tardy and must report directly to the office with their parent to sign them in.
Students are allowed 3 tardies per quarter without consequence. After the 3 rd tardy students will have a 5 point deduction from their conduct grade. After the 2 nd 5 point deduction a conference with parents and students will take place.
Absences for Other Reasons
When parents wish to take their student out of school for several days for personal and/or medical reasons, the parents should discuss the student's progress with the teacher. When the student returns, make up work will be given and time limits set. The responsibility for such make up work belongs to the parent(s) and student. The teacher is not responsible for sending home "advance work".
ATTENDANCE/REPORTING PROCEDURES
Absence
According to Ohio State Law, a child is permitted to be absent from school with the permission of a parent/guardian for the following reasons: personal illness, illness in the family (when a child's help is urgently needed), death of a relative, quarantine, observance of religious holidays, and family emergency or set of circumstances which constitute good and just cause.
When a student is absent, parents must call the office before 9:00 am to give the reason for and approximate length of the absence. If a call is not received by 9:00 am, the school will attempt to contact the parent and keep a written record of the phone call. The parent must also send a note to the teacher giving the dates and reason for absence when the student returns to school. Homework requests for an absent child must be made prior to 9:00am. Work may be sent home with a relative, friend, or picked up at the school office between 2:30 and 3:10 pm.
Students are expected to be in attendance except in circumstances where absence is permitted as enumerated above. Unnecessary absence should be avoided. Therefore,
doctor or dentist appointments and vacations should be planned for after school hours or on days when school is not in session. Parents are advised to consult the school calendar which indicates vacation periods and days when school is not in session.
Tardiness
If a student is tardy they must report to the school office with their parent and sign in. If parents know ahead of time that a child will be tardy such as for a Doctor's appointment they must inform the school office no later than 8:00am. A child will not be permitted into class without a admit slip from the office.
Medical excuses
Medical and dental appointments should be arranged for after school hours and during vacation periods whenever possible. If a child must leave school during the school day, a note must be sent to the school office. The note must be signed, dated, and include all the necessary information. Students will come to and remain in the office until the parents come in to sign them out. Upon the students return a note from the doctor or dentist must be presented to the office. An absence of more than 2 hours during the school day will be counted as ½ day absence.
Anticipated absence
When an absence is anticipated either due to medical issues or personal reasons parents must inform the office in writing at least one week before the anticipated dates of the absences. This note must include the date which the absence will start and the date of return to school. The teacher is not responsible for sending work home in advance, especially if the absence is due to personal reasons. When the student returns, make up work will be given and time limits set for work to be turned in to the teacher. The responsibility for such make up work belongs to the student and parent.
Release of students
Parents must send in written permission for the release of the child during the school day. This note should include time of release and reason for the release of the child. It should also include if possible who will be picking the child up from school. Anyone taking the student from school during the day must report to the office to sign the student out when the student leaves and then sign them back in when the students returns. If the person is not the parent or guardian, specific written permission from the parent/guardian is required before the child may be released to another person.
TRANSFERRING TO ANOTHER SCHOOL
The school must be notified in writing by the parent(s) of a student regarding a decision to transfer a student to another school, including the last day the student will attend classes at school. All school-owned materials such as textbooks and library books must be returned to school and all fees paid before leaving. Scholastic information will be sent to the new school upon a "Release of Student Records" from the new school. All Fees and Tuition MUST BE PAID prior to the release of the student's records. In addition, students transferring or withdrawing are required to complete an Exit Form (available through the school office).
Prorated tuition reimbursement will be made for students transferring within a school year only if the family has moved outside of the John F. Kennedy School District. Records will not be forwarded for any student until all financial responsibilities are paid in full.
LUNCH/MILK PROGRAM
Rules for acceptance and participation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture Child Nutrition Programs are the same for all students without regard to race, color, sex, age, handicap or national origin. Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in any USDA related activity should write to the Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, DC, 20250.
ARRIVAL AND DISMISSAL
Students arriving to school before 7:45 am, must wait in Reagan Hall until they are dismissed to walk to their classroom. Students may arrive as early as 7:30 am but no later than 8:00 am. Supervision by staff members begins at 7:30 am. Students are to be picked up at the close of the school day unless they are participating in the Extended Care Program. Please do not drop off your child before 7:30 am as there is no supervision available.
v Change of Transportation
A student going home with another student or by different form of transportation other than his/her usual, must present a written verification of the change, signed
by the parent/guardian, to the homeroom teacher and the teacher will send it to the office at the beginning of the school day. The student them will receive a change of transportation slip signed by the office staff so that he/she will be permitted to leave by the appropriate exit at dismissal. Without this written permission, the student will be sent home by means of his/her usual transportation.
v Bus Riders
Howland, Niles, and Warren City will provide bussing for families residing one mile or more from the school. Please contact your respective bus coordinator for specific information regarding bus stops and times.
Warren City Bus Coordinator
John F. Kennedy Catholic School Lower Campus supports and cooperates with the procedures of the local public school districts regarding behavior on school buses. These procedures include parent notification, suspension for a time from transportation and loss of transportation privileges. The principal also reserves the right to impose additional consequences for lack of cooperation with bus conduct and safety procedures.
V. GENERAL SCHOOL POLICIES
ADMINISTRATIVE
STUDENT CUSTODY AND GUARDIANSHIP
At the time of school entry or at any other time where a change in custody status/arrangements occurs, it is the responsibility of the parent(s) to provide the principal/administration with a certified copy of the legal document for any student for which there is a legal custody agreement or for any student not residing with his/her parent.
ACCESS TO RECORDS
Parents have a right (unless prohibited by the courts in a custody agreement) to the timely inspection of the educational records of their child during school hours. The school shall respond to reasonable requests for explanations and interpretations of the records.
If the education records of a student contain information on more than one student, the parents are limited to the specific information about their child only.
The School administration may elect to provide at cost photocopies of a student's educational records to parents, but documentation is to be stamped "unofficial."
TRANSFER OF RECORDS
Records are released to another school only when the parents provide a written request for such records, or when those individuals to whom the custodial parent has given written permission, have requested the child's records to be released.
Only copies of student records may be released.
Parents may not hand-carry records to another school, except under extraordinary circumstances. If this occurs, the records are to be placed in a sealed envelope and marked "hand carried."
As a general rule, each school, at the discretion of its principal, shall have the right not to certify the student's graduation or provide transcripts of the student's academic record to third parties such as other schools or to issue a Certificate of Diploma to the student if there has been a breach of a material condition of the contract (i.e., failure to meet financial obligations.) However, health records and testing results which have been obtained through state or federally-funded programs will be forwarded.
SCHOOL VISITORS
All persons other than school staff and currently registered students must first report to the school office immediately upon entering school grounds.
Take-Home Communication
All materials prepared by parents for release to the Parish or school community must be approved by the Principal or his/her designee.
A weekly folder will be sent home to each family. This folder will include events, lunch menus, and a signup sheet for lunch and recess help. This folder may also contain special notices, field trip forms, fliers, information from the various school organizations. These folders are to be signed by a parent/guardian and returned to school the following day.
TELEPHONE USE/MESSAGES FOR STUDENTS
In order to help students develop responsibility, phone calls home may be made only in the case of an emergency and require teacher/office consent. All calls are to be made from the office. No cell phones may be used without teacher or principal consent. Remember that all cell phones must remain turned off and in the child's book bag. John F. Kennedy Catholic School Lower Campus is not responsible for cell phones brought to school by a student.
INCLEMENT WEATHER/SCHOOL CLOSINGS
There are a minimum of 178 student attendance days. Within these 178 days, Ohio law provides for five calamity days (inclement weather or other non-weather related emergencies) which a school does not need to make up. A school must make up any days over these five days. The school has built into its calendar three possible make up days to be used if the school exceeds its five calamity days.
On any day in which classes are canceled due to severe weather conditions, all other school-related activities (school-sponsored social events, meetings, extracurricular activities, or athletic events/practices held on or away from school property) shall likewise be canceled on that day and evening. Exception is if the host team is in session.
If school would be closed due to inclement weather a one call will go out to all families.
RELEASE OF DIRECTORY INFORMATION
In compliance with FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), this school considers the following to be FERPA Directory Information: student's name; student's parent(s), guardian (s) name(s), addresses, phone numbers; dates of attendance; honors; organizations and teams to which a student belongs; and pictures taken of the student participating in school activities. This directory information may be released without prior consent of the holder of FERPA rights. Nonetheless, the school will withhold such information upon written request of the parents, except where other state or federal law may require disclosure to legitimate authorities.
Schools are required to use the Waiver/Right to Object form when students are participating in videotaping, audio recording, school pictures, other photography, or Internet. Any student or parental publications are subject to review and approval of the school administration prior to publication.
[Insert additional photo/media information here as needed--optional]
FIELD TRIPS
* Field trips are privileges planned by teachers and approved by the school administration with educational purposes as the primary objective and in light of financial considerations. Students may be denied participation if they fail to meet academic or behavior requirements.
* Field trips are considered an extension of the school day and the code of conduct will apply.
* A student must give to the sponsoring teacher a permission form signed by a student's parent(s) prior to a student participating in each activity.
* If a private passenger vehicle must be used, the principal must approve of this. The following conditions apply for volunteer drivers:
a) The driver must be 21 years of age or older.
b) The driver must have a valid, non-probationary driver's license and no physical disability that may impair the ability to drive safely.
c) The vehicle must have a valid registration.
d) The vehicle must be insured for a minimum limit of $100,000 per person/$300,000 per occurrence. The vehicle owner's insurance must be primary. The diocesan insurance is secondary. The driver must provide a copy of proof of insurance which should be kept on file. (The insurance follows the car.)
e) No driver should take more children than the number of seat belts in a car.
f) Each driver should be given directions to the site and rules and procedures for student behavior in cars.
g) Each driver must follow the schedule and not deviate from it. (i.e., taking a side trip to an ice-cream stand or fast food restaurant.)
The driver needs to complete the Volunteer Driver Information supplied to the driver by the principal.
* Parents/guardians are to be furnished with detailed written information about the field trip, and must be given the opportunity to "opt out" their children from the field trip.
* It should also be understood, in light of world conditions and specifically threats of terrorism against Americans, it may be necessary to cancel school-sponsored trips due to world and national developments at any time.
* Children not enrolled in the school may not attend field trips. This prohibition includes children of parents who drive on the field trips.
PARENT ORGANIZATIONS
The Home and School Association is sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Catholic School System to promote a cooperative effort at meeting certain needs of the student body. The parent organization is subject in all respects to the control of the school, and all parent organization activities and all materials prepared by parents must be submitted to the principal/administration for approval prior to implementation and/or distribution.
The parent organization should strive:
1. to serve in an advisory capacity to support the principal/administration;
2. to provide a means by which parents can respectfully articulate their values and expectations regarding the school so that these can be examined and addressed by the principal/administration;
3. to support and promote quality Catholic education at the school;
4. to encourage Catholic values of family life;
5. to share with teachers the values that parents are attempting to develop with their children at home;
6. to acquaint parents with up-to-date information concerning current developments in educational initiatives as they may affect the School so that they can be in a better position to promote the legitimate rights of their children;
7. to unify parents in an effort to raise funds each year for the school.
VI. FINANCES
Diocese of Youngstown Tuition Assistance Program
Application Process & Requirements
a. All families seeking tuition assistance from the Youngstown Diocesan Catholic School Scholarship Fund must submit an official application from (available in English and Spanish) along with a processing fee payable to the private scholarship/financial aid processing service designated by the school.
b. To become eligible for receiving funds from this program, students must attend or be accepted by a Catholic school of the Diocese of Youngstown.
c. The deadline for submitting applications to the scholarship/assistance service is determined annually. Applications received after the stated due date will be considered for tuition assistance if funds are available.
d. The funds from the Program will be paid directly to the school that the qualifying student attends. Schools will credit the tuition accounts for those families who have been approved to receive aid for that school year.
VII. STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES & BEHAVIOR
CODE OF CONDUCT
In all areas of learning, discipline must be considered in the development of the whole person. The Code of Conduct is based on the Gospel message of Jesus. Growth in self-discipline, a responsibility for Catholic morals values, and a loving respect for the rights of all persons is encouraged and nourished by the Code of Conduct. To achieve these ends, parents, faculty and students work together to create a catholic school environment. These basic components include:
Teachers have the right to teach. No student will stop the teacher from teaching.
Students have the right to learn. No student will stop another student from learning.
The school observes this Code of Conduct because it is built on fundamental Catholic school teachings. The role of the principal/administration, staff and faculty is to work with the students and parents to assist the students in developing a strong Christian attitude toward life.
WEAPONS
Unless otherwise authorized by law, pursuant to the Ohio Revised Code, no person shall knowingly possess, have under the person's control, convey or attempt to convey
a deadly weapon or dangerous ordnance onto these premises. ORC SEC. 2923.1212. A Valid concealed carry permit does not authorize the licensee to carry a weapon onto these premises.
A. A "weapon" is any instrument or device designed primarily for use in inflicting death or injury upon a human being or animal, and which is capable of inflicting death upon a human being when used in the manner for which it was designed. Additionally, any instrument or device of any sort whatsoever which is actually used in such a manner as to indicate that an individual intends to inflict death or serious injury upon the other, and which, when so used, is capable of inflicting death upon a human being, is a weapon. Weapons include, but are not limited to, any pistol, revolver, or other firearm, dagger, razor, stiletto, switchblade knife, or knife having a blade exceeding five inches in length. Facsimiles of weapons used in a threatening fashion are subject to this policy.
B. Possession includes bringing a weapon onto school property, to school-sponsored events either on or off school property, storing a weapon in one's locker or other area of the school property, or having a weapon on one's person.
SUBSTANCE ABUSE
The school makes every effort to make students aware of the dangers and consequences of the unlawful use of substances.
1. For purposes of definition, the Office of Catholic Schools defines drugs as the improper use of legal drugs/substances (to include tobacco and steroids) and/or the use of illegal drugs/substances. Students who unlawfully use, consume, possess, or distribute drugs, or who use, consume, possess or distribute alcohol, and/or possess or threaten to use any weapon (e.g., knife) or firearm (to include firecrackers and/or any explosive device that would bring potential harm to people and/or property) on school property or at school activities or near school property with access to students attending the school or against any member of the school community are subject to appropriate disciplinary action (including but not limited to expulsion). The school may require a professional assessment to determine the appropriate program of rehabilitation, if one is needed.
2. The use or sale of drugs on or within one thousand feet of school property is unlawful under Ohio State law and is in violation of school policies. If a
student is suspected to have violated this policy or is discovered with the unlawful use, sale or possession of drugs or alcohol on or near school property or at school-sponsored events, the student will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including expulsion. In the event school officials believe that a student is under the influence of an illegal substance, the parents will be notified. School officials reserve the right to require that the student be taken for drug testing within 24 hours and that the results of the testing be shared with the appropriate school officials. If, however, a violation of the law has occurred, the proper law enforcement agencies will be contacted.
GANGS
Gangs and gang-related activity are prohibited. A gang is defined as any non-school sponsored group, usually secret and/or exclusive in membership, whose purpose or practices include unlawful or anti-social behavior or any action that threatens the welfare of others.
DISCIPLINE
Because it is impossible to foresee all problems which arise, this handbook empowers the faculty and administration to take disciplinary action for any behavior (within or outside of the school community) which violates the spirit, philosophy and code of conduct of the school, even though not specified.
In justice to the other students, circumstances may dictate that a student be removed temporarily or permanently from the particular school setting.
USE OF DISCIPLINARY ACTION
In cases where a student is continually disruptive of others or in the case of a single serious disciplinary infraction, the teacher will appraise the principal/administration of the situation. They will assist in the development of a course of action to be taken to correct the situation. Corporal punishment is prohibited.
Students who lack self-discipline or who violate the rights of others can expect disciplinary action. Each offense will be dealt with on an individual basis according to the age of the student, the nature of the infraction, and the severity of the case. Repeated infractions can result in more serious consequences, up to and including suspension and/or expulsion, but there is no requirement for progressive discipline.
DISCIPLINARY MEASURES
The following are some approved disciplinary measures:
1. Conference with student and/or parent
2. Appropriate verbal reprimand
3. Temporary removal from the classroom (e.g., time-out room) or isolation from the group with supervision
4. Loss of privileges
5. Supervised after-school detention
6. Referral to office
7. Disciplinary contract
SPECIFIC DISCIPLINARY POLICIES
Conduct Violations
* Attendance
All students are expected to attend and be on time for school.
5 points tardy over 3 times
5 points truancy from class
* Cafeteria/Recess
Eating in the cafeteria will be a pleasant experience if all students display decent table manners, courteous conversation, and cooperate with the cafeteria staff. Recess is a time to develop friendships in a relaxed setting and provide time for socializing.
5 points eating or drinking outside the cafeteria
5 points leaving without permission
10 points disrespect to cafeteria staff
10 points throwing anything in the cafeteria or anything at recess
10 points not being in the approved supervised area for recess
* Christian Social Behavior
Students will conduct themselves according to the standards of Christian social behavior
5 points failure to return signed conduct card
10 points cheating, stealing, lying, or offensive language
10 points any use of physical force or violence anytime anywhere on
school property
10 points harassing students verbally or physically
10 points
disrespect toward staff members, substitutes, volunteers, and visitors
Dress Code
Adherence to the dress code is expected from the first day of school to the last day of school.
1st offense-Warning nd
2
offense- 5 points
Prayer/Liturgy
Students are expected to be reverent during times of prayer or worship.
5 points lack of appropriate participation during times of prayer.
lack of reverence at time of prayer or during liturgy.
10 points
Safety
Students shall be concerned about their own safety and the safety of others. Students shall conduct themselves in a safe and quiet manner at all times.
10 points
50 Points
5 points talking during a safety drill
5 points running in the hallway
leaving the classroom without permission
endangering or threatening the health/safety of others-reason for suspension or expulsion also.
School Property
Textbooks and school facilities are available for student use. Proper care and use of school property is expected. In addition to conduct points, all violations will require restoration or restitution.
10 points
10 points
10 points
20 points
\
Classroom Policies
Each classroom has its own characteristics and expectations. Teachers may establish certain classroom rules in order to provide for a pleasant atmosphere and good classroom management. These specific rules are in addition to those listed in the code of conduct. Consequences resulting from the abuse of classroom rules (no homework, talking out, etc.) are left to the discretion of the individual teacher according to age, circumstance, and severity of the problem.
SUSPENSION
Serious or repeated misconduct may lead to suspension from class or school. It is the authority of the local building administrator to suspend a student from class or school. The diocesan schools shall not suspend a student for more than five (5) consecutive days. If the suspension is for an offense which can only be addressed through counseling in substance abuse or anger control or requires the assistance of an outside agency, the suspension may be of a duration to allow such counseling to occur.
1) Suspend able Offenses are:
a) A serious offense involving the use of violence, force, threat, coercion or other conduct which violates the safety of others. Police should be informed of these incidents.
b) Use/possession of a weapon. Police must be informed.
c) Vandalism, destruction or theft of school property.
d) First offense involving possession, use or being under the influence of drugs, alcohol or other chemical substances (counseling may be required where necessary).
e) Repeated disregard for school rules and regulations.
f) Other offenses serious enough to warrant a student's removal from school.
EXPULSION
Expulsion is the most serious disciplinary action taken by diocesan schools and may be used for serious disciplinary infractions, when public behavior affects school morale, safety and/or when the student remains incorrigible. Only the Superintendent of Schools may expel a student. In diocesan schools, expulsion is the permanent removal of a student from the school community. When a student has been expelled, official school records and withdrawal papers will so indicate that.
Unless directed otherwise by the Superintendent of Diocesan Schools, no principal shall admit to his or her school a student who has been expelled from another Diocesan or Public school.
STUDENT REGULATIONS AND PROCEDURES
Privacy of individual students must be balanced against the need to protect the health, welfare and safety of other members of the school community.
STUDENTS AND STUDENT PROPERTY
Searches
The principal/administration or his/her designee has the right to protect the health, welfare, and safety of school patrons against drugs, weapons, unauthorized publications, and other contraband materials. Search of a student's person and/or personal property on school property (e.g. automobiles, etc.) or at school activities may be conducted by the school principal/administration or other designated officials. It is only necessary that a search be reasonable and related to the school rights in these regards. The failure of a student to voluntarily submit to a search shall be presumptive evidence of the existence of contraband and grounds for appropriate disciplinary action.
Students and Student Property
Students are solely responsible for their own personal property. The school accepts no responsibility for items left unattended in the common areas of the school. It is the responsibility of the student to turn in wallets, watches and other valuables to the physical education teacher/coach when participating in athletic events away from school. [Insert additional information – optional]
School Lockers and Desks
Lockers and desks are school property and are subject to searches by school authorities to protect the safety of all. A student to whom a locker or desk has been assigned has vis a vis other students exclusive use of the locker or desk but has no proprietary rights versus the school.
CARE OF SCHOOL PROPERTY
Students are to care for school property in a respectful manner. Students who deface or damage school property or the property of others will make financial restitution. If library books are not returned, students will be assessed an amount equal to the value of the book or its replacement, whichever is greater, as determined by the principal/administration.
LOST AND FOUND
Lost and found items will remain in the school for one week. After one week all items will be donated to the St. Vincent DePaul society. Lost Valuables will remain in the office till they are claimed.
DRESS CODE
The dress code provides a standard for our students that fosters an environment conducive to learning and respectful behavior.
Final decisions regarding the school uniform rest with the principal/administration.
UNIFORM REQUIREMENTS & OTHER PERTINENT INFORMATION
Preschool students are not required to wear uniforms.
Tops:
Students must wear Kennedy logo red, white, or navy blue 3-button polo shirts long or short sleeve. These are to be purchased through the Eagles Nest.
Kindergarten students will not be required to purchase logo shirts. Kindergarten
students may wear solid red, white, or navy blue polo shirts.
Plain navy blue turtlenecks may be worn with the uniform jumper. When a turtle neck is worn with pants or skirts a logo polo is to be worn over the turtleneck.
Navy blue V neck sweaters may be worn during the winter months over the school polo. These will be available through Lands End (Drifter V-neck Sweater)
Polo shirts must be tucked in at all times.
Bottom:
Navy blue or tan/khaki slacks/pants with no extra pockets or metal studs. (hip huggers, low rise, and cargo style is not acceptable.)
Shorts in navy blue or tan/khaki may be worn in August, September, May, and June.
Shorts are to be no shorter than 2" above the knee. (no cargo shorts.)
Girls in grades K-5 may wear jumpers (classic navy plaid) ordered through Lands End
Girls 4-5 may wear uniform skirts (classic navy plaid) ordered through Lands End. Jumpers and skirts are to be no more the 2" above the knee.
Pants and shorts with belt loops are to be worn with a belt in grades 4-5.
Shoes/Socks
Socks are to worn at all times including dress down days. Socks are to cover the ankle. Peds or footie style is unacceptable.
Girls wearing the uniform jumper, skirt, or shorts may wear either red, white, or navy blue knee high socks. Girls have the option to wear either red, white, or navy blue tights under their jumper or skirts. Navy leggings may be worn under the jumper or skirt during the winter months
Shoes are to be solid black, brown, or navy dress-style shoes, or solid color athletic/tennis shoes (one reasonable accent color will be acceptable.) Open toed or backless shoes are not permitted.
During winter months, boots may be worn to school; however, students must change into regular school shoes. Boots of any kind may not be worn during the school day.
Grooming:
Hair should be well groomed and worn in an appropriate style for school. No extreme or fad hairstyles including fades are acceptable. Haircuts are to above the collar at all times.
Watches and thin chains with a cross or religious symbol may be worn. No fad jewelry may be worn.
Girls are permitted two small post earrings. Boys are not permitted earrings at all.
No tattoos permanent or temporary.
Makeup, nail polish and glitter are not permitted.
Coats, jackets, and sweatshirts are outside apparel and may not be worn in the classroom.
INAPPROPRIATE MATERIALS
Students are not permitted to possess any item(s) that would be detrimental to the learning process on school property or at school functions.
PLAYGROUND REGULATIONS
Students are to obey and show proper signs of respect for all lunchtime volunteers.
AT ALL TIMES:
* Remain in designated areas
* Show respect and care not only for their own things but those of others
* Be properly dressed for the weather
* Have an adult's permission to enter the building for any reason
* Play appropriately on playground equipment
* Stop talking and line up as soon as they hear the bell
* Include ANYONE who wants to join a game or activity
AT ALL TIMES STUDENTS MUST REFRAIN FROM:
* Fighting, pushing, shoving, tripping, hitting, knocking others down, kicking, name calling, teasing, etc.
* Using unacceptable language or gestures
* Any unsafe or inconsiderate behavior
* Throwing, kicking, picking up snow, or any other dangerous objects
Indoor Recess in the gym or cafeteria:
* In the gym, students must play in the designated areas for particular activities
* Must line up immediately when recess is over
* Must clean-up when told to do so
* Must be respectful to all adult volunteers
* Must include everyone in activities if they wish to play
* Must be polite and respectful to everyone
* May not leave the gym without permission from an adult
* If in the cafeteria, they must remain in their seats working on something quietly
* May not eat or drink in the gym
LUNCHROOM REGULATIONS
Students are expected to obey all rules, procedures and to show proper courtesy and respect to ALL lunchtime volunteers at ALL times!
Students must:
* Display proper table manners and etiquette while eating
* Speak only in moderate tones to those at their table
* Remain seated until given permission to leave the table with feet off the chairs
* Clean up scraps from the table, chair, and floor before leaving
* Receive permission to leave the cafeteria to use lavatory or for any other reason
* Leave the cafeteria in a quietly and orderly fashion
* Walk, not run, at all times in the cafeteria
VIII. HEALTH AND SAFETY
STUDENT HEALTH & SAFETY
Parents and guardians have the primary responsibility for the health and well being of their children. School health services supplement, rather than substitute, for parental care and concern for the health of the students.
ACCIDENTS AND FIRST AID
The parents of an injured student will be notified of the accident/injury by the principal/administration or the principal/administration's designee as soon as reasonably possible, taking into consideration such factors as the apparent severity of the accident/injury and the priority of providing assistance to the student.
If an incident results in a medical condition or injury which can be reasonably known to the appropriate supervisory faculty/staff member and/or the principal, the school and/or its staff are authorized to render reasonable basic first aid if such direct medical assistance would, in the opinion of the school, serve to minimize the severity of the injured person's condition. As an example, staff should initially resort to using only ice, band aids, soap and water when treating cuts and/or scrapes to avoid any possible known or unknown allergic reactions to salves or creams. In addition, staff may secure professional diagnosis and/or treatment if such action, in the opinion of the school, appears to be reasonably warranted. In the latter situation, the school shall be expressly held harmless from any costs or expenses associated with the professional diagnosis and/or treatment provided (including but not limited to the cost of transportation), such costs or expenses being the responsibility of the injured party or, if a student, the student's parents.
If it is necessary for the student to be taken to a doctor or hospital for emergency treatment, the parents should be informed as quickly as possible. Either a parent, a staff member or those listed on the EMAF (Emergency Medical Authorization Form) is to accompany the child to the doctor or hospital. The Emergency Medical Authorization Form should be taken with the student.
ILLNESS
The school makes accommodations for students who become sick at school by removing them from the rest of the student population until the parent or other authorized person can take the student home. Students with fevers or communicable diseases will be sent home to reduce the risk of infection to the student body.
ADMINISTERING PRESCRIBED MEDICATION TO STUDENTS
When a student is required to take prescription or nonprescription medication during school hours, the following procedures for dispensing medication will apply:
A. Authorization to Administer Medication
1. The physician must sign a form granting the school permission to administer prescription or nonprescription medication.
a. Forms will be supplied by the school
b. The medication and signed permission forms shall be brought to the school by the parent.
c. The physician's signature must be on the original medication permission.
2. In special cases (to be determined by the school nurse, principal or designee), the signed permission form may stipulate that a student is to be allowed to self-administer medication in the presence of the school nurse, the principal or designee.
3. Request forms must be submitted each school year for all medication.
B. Transportation of Medication To and From School
1. The parent assumes the responsibility of getting medication (prescription or nonprescription) to the school and furnishing the school with an adequate supply of medication.
At no time shall a student of any age be permitted to carry medication to school unless authorized in writing by the parent and/or physician.
2. A supply of medication, in its original container, should be delivered on the day on which it is to be given.
a. Unused medication will be returned ONLY to a parent or unless authorized, in writing, by the parent or to another individual authorized in writing, by the parent.
b. It is the responsibility of the parent to claim any unused medication within one week after the school year ends or within one week after the medication is no longer needed. Any unclaimed medication will be destroyed.
c. Empty containers may be returned home with students.
3. If any of the information stated on the permission form (FORM Med-1) changes, the parent agrees to immediately furnish to the school a revised statement signed by the physician who prescribed the medicine.
C. Labels on Medication
1. Prescribed medication containers shall have the affixed label as it was prescribed by the physician and dispensed by a licensed pharmacist. Medicine not in the original container will not be dispensed.
Medication must be clearly labeled and accompanied by the following information:
a. on prescription bottle:
1) full name of the student;
2) name of the medication;
3) dosage and time intervals for administration; and
4)
name of the physician (required for prescription drugs only).
b. on the permission form:
1) possible side effects, any severe reactions; and
2) any special instructions for administering the drug such as storage or sterile conditions.
2. Nonprescription medication should also be in the original container and be accompanied by the completed permission form with the necessary details for storage and administration.
3. The parent is responsible for notifying the school, in writing, if there is to be any change in dosage or time of administration or if the administration of medication is to be terminated.
CHRONIC MEDICAL CONDITIONS OF STUDENTS
The parent of any student on a continuing regimen for a non-episodic condition shall inform the school principal/administration and name in writing the student's supervising physician. If necessary, and with parental written consent, there may be occasions when the school needs to communicate with the physician regarding possible effects on the pupil's behavior at school and special emergency procedures.
INFECTIOUS/COMMUNICABLE DISEASES
DISEASE
The protection and welfare of each individual student is of importance in the schools of the Diocese of Youngstown. In an effort to enhance protection of students:
1. All students must be immunized and/or tested according to the current Ohio Board of Health requirements found in the Ohio Health Guidelines (or modified schedule as approved by the student's physician or local Public Health Department). Parents or guardians of the child who object on the grounds that administration of immunizing agents conflicts with their religious tenets or practices must produce such documentation and complete a Religious Exemption form from the principal. The completed form will be submitted to the superintendent for approval. The school must keep a copy of the documentation on file.
2. The school utilizes the Ohio State Health Department's Communicable Disease Chart to determine the procedures for referral of suspected communicable diseases, notification of parents whose children have come in contact with this disease, and requirements for exclusion from and re-admittance to school for children found having a communicable disease.
LICE
1. Head Lice Procedure
a. All students infested with head lice are excluded until the head is free of lice and nits.
b. A form letter provided by the school office, is sent home with the student being excluded with head lice to:
1) advise parents on obtaining treatment; and
2) inform parents of conditions for readmission to school.
c. Readmission to school is permitted ONLY after examination by school nurse reveals head to be clear of lice and nits.
d. The school nurse (if available) will re-check student two weeks after readmission to school.
FIRE/RAPID DISMISSAL/TORNADO/EMERGENCY DRILLS
Practice drills are held throughout the year. Students must follow the directions posted in each room. Students are not permitted to talk during emergency or practice drills and are to remain in the assigned area until a signal is given to return.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT--STUDENTS
Sexuality affects all aspects of the person, including in a general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. The Catholic Schools of the Diocese of Youngstown endeavors to provide for its students an atmosphere free from sexual harassment.
For the purposes of this policy, sexual harassment includes the following specific instances: verbal sexual abuse; disseminating obscene or sexually explicit material whether in the form of electronic communication, music, written lyrics, pornographic pictures or other literature, or having such material in one's possession in the school, on school grounds or at school-sponsored activities; obscene or sexually explicit graffiti anywhere in the school or on the school/parish grounds, continuing and unwanted written or oral communication directed to another of a sexual nature; spreading sexual rumors/innuendoes; obscene t-shirts, hats or buttons; touching oneself sexually in front of others; obscene and/or sexually explicit gestures; and any other inappropriate behavior of a sexually explicit or obscene nature that demeans or offends the recipient. The above list is not meant to be all-inclusive, but is intended to provide guidance as to what may constitute sexual harassment.
Isolated, trivial incidents are not sufficient to constitute harassment and will be handled according to the student behavior code.
Allegations of sexual harassment (as defined above) are to be reported to the teacher and the principal. Parents of both the offender and the victim will be informed of the allegations. The matter is to be kept confidential by all parties involved and every effort will be made to protect the alleged victim from retaliation. The parents of both the offender and the victim are obligated to cooperate in remedying the situation.
If the allegations are substantiated, disciplinary actions will be taken. These will depend on the nature, frequency and severity of the action, the ages of the offender and victim, the history of similar actions by this individual and the circumstances in which the harassment occurred. Possible disciplinary actions may include but are not limited to any or all the following:
- verbal warning/reprimand and apology to the victim;
- a parent/student/principal conference;
- written warning/reprimand and parent notification entered in the student's file;
- detention or removal from selected school activities and/or extracurricular activities;
- behavior/probation contracts, possibly requiring professional intervention;
- suspension; and/or
- expulsion.
Sexual Violence
Sexual violence is handled separately because of its potentially criminal nature. If an incident of sexual violence occurs, the principal, pastor or other school authority is required, under state law, to report the incident (ORC 2151.421). The Department of Human Services and the police will be contacted immediately if there is any "reason to believe" (ORC 2151.421) that sexual abuse or violence has occurred involving a child less than eighteen years of age. The Office of Catholic Schools will be contacted immediately in these situations.
Generally, sexual harassment should be construed as sexual violence when: the recipient is physically touched without his/her consent in a sexual manner; is expressly threatened or perceives a threat of physical harm for purposes of the offender's sexual gratification; or is the victim of sex offenses under Ohio law, including Gross Sexual Imposition (ORC 2907.05), Sexual Battery (ORC 2907.03), Rape (ORC 2907.02), Importuning (ORC 2907.07), Voyeurism (ORC 2907.08), Public Indecency (ORC 2907.09), or Felonious Sexual Penetration (ORC 2907.12) as examples. In each one of the above examples, the Department of Human Services and the police will be contacted immediately.
IX. STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
The Catholic school recognizes the beauty and potential inherent within each student. In an effort to foster continued growth, the school embraces the challenge to provide assistance and programs to serve students with special needs according to the resources available within/to the school. Parents are considered an integral part of the process.
In order to accommodate a student who has been evaluated for special learning needs, parents are obligated to share educational/psychological testing results and any resulting plan with the school upon application for registration. A student may be admitted on a probationary basis with dates and criteria of evaluation clearly established in writing. Failure to disclose known special educational needs will void the application for registration.
Special educational needs that are identified after a student has been accepted will be addressed in compliance to the rules of IDEA as apply to chartered nonpublic schools in the State of Ohio.
Students with disabilities are expected to follow the school's policies and honor code.
X. EXTENDED DAY
EXTENDED DAY PROGRAM
Our extended care program is offered from 2:30 to 5:30 pm in Reagan Hall. Please refer to the form in the parent packet for details! | <urn:uuid:41e799d7-cb8a-4923-9ccd-d26bd10932a1> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/warrenjfk.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/docs/1718_Lower_Campus_Documents/17LCHandbook.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:05:40Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00521.warc.gz | 611,740,307 | 15,171 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997474 | eng_Latn | 0.998258 | [
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
383,
402,
2366,
4361,
6725,
8606,
10959,
13439,
15404,
17257,
19112,
20303,
22134,
23966,
25362,
27080,
28922,
31169,
33581,
35581,
36669,
38730,
40689,
42704,
44033,
45736,
47498,
49872,
52095,
53490,
54681,
56310,
58360,
59828,
61644,
62805,
64313,
66717,
68273,
69826,
71739,
73725,
76166,
77458
] | [
2.0625,
1
] | 6 | 1 |
What makes the Baltic Sea special also makes this inland sea more sensitive than other sea areas.
The mixture of fresh water and salt water results in fewer species of plants and animals than in the "real" sea. If one species decreases significantly in number or disap pears, it may have a big impact on the ecosystem at large. The same applies when new foreign species become established.
in the deeper parts. This used to happen with some regularity, but is more sporadic nowadays.
The water exchange is slow. This is because fresh water is lighter than salt; the Baltic Sea is stratified at a depth of approximately 60–80 met res, which means that the surface and bottom water not mix in what is known as the Baltic Sea Proper, south of Åland. Very large saltwater inflows through the Danish Straits are required to replace the water
The Baltic is situated in a densely populated area, and sewage from 85 million people is dischar ged into the sea, making our inland sea one of the world's most polluted. Eutrophication, environ mental toxins, oil spills, overfishing and the introduction of foreign species are among the most serious problems – problems that can only be solved jointly by those of us who live around the Baltic Sea.
The Baltic Sea catchment area
Nitrogen and phosphorus fertilise the sea
The basis of life in the sea is the microscopic algae. Some are "real" algae, i.e. plants, simply called phytoplankton. The other type, the blue-green algae are in fact a kind of bacteria, cyanobacteria.
Both types need the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus to grow. The Baltic Sea was originally an oli gotrophic sea, but human discharges have changed this. The algae are able to mass-propagate, and in summer they turn the sea into a yellowishgreen soup. This is how it happens (see graphics).
In winter, the nutrient concentra tions in the sea are at their highest. When the spring light returns, there are therefore plenty of nutrients for many types of phytoplankton, which start to propagate rapidly. Only nitrogen restricts the growth. When the nitrogen begins to run out, the algal bloom decreases and the turbid water clears. The spring bloom is over, and gradually most of the phytoplankton die and fall to the bottom.
All the organic material that falls down to the bottom of the Baltic Sea consumes oxygen when it decompo ses. As there is hardly any mixing of water below the salt water layer, all the oxygen is eventually used up. Large areas of the Baltic Sea proper have had dead, or almost dead, bot toms for a longtime.
Once the bottoms are anoxic, they start to give off phosphorus. The sediments are able to bind phospho rus, but only as long as oxygen is present. Once the oxygen runs out, phosphorus is released instead. The larger the areas with dead bottoms, the more phosphorus is released, and the bottoms of the Baltic Sea have a lot of bound phosphorus.
amounts of phosphorus and warm and still water are ideal conditions for them. It does not matter that the nitrogen is more or less depleted, as they are able to take nitrogen from the air. In the summer, cyanobacteria can therefore grow so rapidly that large areas are transformed into yel lowish-green soup. At the same time, they release enormous quantities of nitrogen into the Baltic Sea, which prepares the way for next year's spring bloom.
This suits the blue-green algae, the cyanobacteria, perfectly. Large
In reality, the interaction between spring and summer bloom is not this direct, and there are other fac tors that also play a part, including overfishing of cod.
The nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus follow the watercourses naturally out into the Baltic Sea. The discharges have increased sharply through human activity.
In Sweden, the discharges of nitrogen come primarily from agriculture, woodland and felling areas, sewage treatment works, single-household sewage systems and industry. Emissions from traffic and incineration also contribute.
The phosphorus emissions come mostly from the same sources, though not from traffic and incineration. In Sweden, the municipal sewage treatment works remove most of the phosphorous. Although rather few Swedes live in rural areas with single-household sewage systems, their contribution to phosphorus load is quite high. It is therefore important to use phosphate-free washing detergents if you are not connected to a sewage treatment works. In Poland, for example, it is estimated that about half of the total emissions of 12,600 tonnes of phosphorus come from washing detergents.
85 million people
Nine coastal countries put emissions into the Baltic Sea: Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Denmark. Some of this wastewater has been treated, to varying degrees, but some is completely untreated. Wastewater from Belarus, the Ukraine and the Czech Republic also even tually flows into the Baltic Sea.
Countries such as Germany, Italy and Norway have already introduced restrictions on the use of phosphates in washing detergents.
Sweden, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Estonia and Norway have jointly written to the EU Commis sion and demanded that the EU act for a joint ban on phosphates. The EU Commission has begun work on the issue.
The goal of the Save the Baltic Sea Cam paign 2007 is for Ministers of Environment from all the countries around the Baltic Sea to jointly make sure this decision is taken! And that countries outside the EU, such as Russia, also join a ban.
All countries must help to save our common Baltic. Everyone has a responsibility. Banning phosphates in washing detergents and washingup liquids is a simple measure that everyone ought to be able to agree on.
Large areas of the Baltic Sea are covered by cyanobacte rial bloom on july 11, 2005. Satellite picture taken by the MODIS AQUA . Data from NASA, processed by SMHI in Sweden.
Eighty-five million people live in the Baltic Sea catch ment area. Every time someone washes or washes up, phosphates follow the wastewater. Phosphates con tain phosphorus that, together with nitrogen, contribu tes to eutrophication in the Baltic Sea.
As much as a quarter of the phosphorus in hous ehold wastewater comes from washing detergents and washing-up liquids. In some countries, sewage treat ment works take care of the phosphates, but in many countries the water runs out untreated into lakes, rivers and – finally - the sea.
Choose phosphate-free washing detergents and washing-up liquids when you shop; if everyone did this it would mean a lot of tonnes less phosphorous into the Baltic Sea. Persuade your EU parliamentarians to work for a ban on phosphates in washing detergents and washing-up liquids in all the countries around the Baltic Sea!
Estonian Green Movement – FoE • VAK, Environmental Protection Club • Ecological Club Zvejone • Polish Ecological Club, PKE • Green Federation GAJA • Friends of the Baltic • Center for Environmental Initiative • Environmental Group FRI • BirdLife Belarus • Ecohome in cooperation with
COVER PHOTO: HASSE SCHRÖDER/JOHNÉR. PRODUCED BY WWW.MILJOINFORMATION.SE 2007. PRINTED IN XXXXXXXXX, 2007. | <urn:uuid:cda6eba5-980d-4999-96ca-3c4d17343189> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://balticgreenbelt.org.pl/uploads/folder-ostersjon-english.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:08:20Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00527.warc.gz | 40,240,915 | 1,569 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.993931 | eng_Latn | 0.997631 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
1274,
4556,
5880,
7138
] | [
3.609375
] | 2 | 0 |
AP LITERATURE SUMMER READING 2018
1. "How to Mark a Book" by Mortimer Adler, Ph.D.
This is where you must BEGIN your summer assignments.
Go to http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/adler.html and read Dr. Adler's essay, "How to Mark a Book." Formally, we call this "annotation," and it is not only recommended, it is REQUIRED. That being said, marking a book (or anything we read) is certainly an activity that is personal and unique to you as an individual. It is important that you create a system that works well for you—consider the possibilities of highlighters, colored pens or pencils, and post-it notes as some of your options. Your personal book marking system will develop over time.
2. How to Read Literature Like A Professor - Thomas C. Foster
ISBN-13: 978-0062301673 (I recommend purchase so you can annotate freely)
Your next assignment is to read How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster. This book is an invaluable resource for students who are interested in doing more than just a cursory reading of any text they encounter. Thomas Foster, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, humorously provides an introduction to literary analysis. In a very informal style (this is not a textbook), Foster focuses on literary basics: major themes and motifs, literary models, and narrative devices…all of which will be helpful as we study texts throughout the school year ahead.
Some of what you read will be familiar to you, and some of it will be new and provide "food for thought" as you read your summer novel. As you read, you should annotate (see the article "How to Mark a Book" by Mortimer Adler, Ph.D.), and might consider taking notes as well.
3. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster will help you to understand the novel better.
A. Before you read Frankenstein: Read Chapter 21 from Foster's book paying attention to what he says about Frankenstein.
B. After you read Frankenstein: Apply the following chapters from Foster's book to Frankenstein.
Chapter 1—"Every Trip Is a Quest"
Chapter 6— "…or The Bible"
Chapter 8 — "It's Greek to Me" (think Prometheus)
Chapter 9—"It's More Than Just Rain or Snow"
Chapter 11—"…More Than It's Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence"
Chapter 12—"Is That a Symbol?"
Chapter 19—"Geography Matters…"
Chapter 20—"…So Does Season"
Chapter 24—"Don't Read with Your Eyes"
ASSIGNMENT: Respond to each chapter by writing a well-developed paragraph that explains the main points Foster is making and show how they apply to Frankenstein (150 word minimum). Include at least two specific textual examples (at least one of which is a direct quote from the novel) that show how Mary Shelley is using the technique or idea discussed in Foster's chapter. Use MLA parenthetical citation to indicate where in the novel you found your examples. | <urn:uuid:9dc4e350-bfa6-43f2-b347-99bd0f855062> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://mainlandregional.net/docs/sreading/AP%20LITERATURE%20SUMMER%20READING%20LIST%202018.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:16:56Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00527.warc.gz | 238,315,481 | 644 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997522 | eng_Latn | 0.997522 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2870
] | [
2.078125
] | 2 | 0 |
e- EASTER - Churches reach out via the web
Parishes stream their Masses to reach the housebound and travelers - and perhaps the curious
RICHARD C. DUJARDIN
Publication Date:
April 8,
2012 Page: A1Section: projoRhodeIslandZone: MAINEdition: 1
Too tired to get out of your pajamas to get yourself to church for Easter services?
Some ministers and priests may cringe at the thought, but three Catholic parishes in Rhode Island are giving parishioners the opportunity to go to Easter Mass, or any other service, without actually having to enter the church.
St. Thomas More Parish in Narragansett, Holy Ghost Church in Tiverton and the Ukrainian-rite St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Woonsocket are providing that option by streaming their services over the Internet.
Of course, one question that Catholics may want answered is "does it count?" That is, does it fulfill a Catholic's obligation to attend Mass? Providence's Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin says no. But you may want to consider that when the Vatican ruled several years ago on whether Catholics would be able to receive an apostolic blessing from the Pope by watching him perform the blessing on television, the answer was yes - provided that one was viewing a live broadcast, not something that had been taped earlier.
Similarly, church authorities have ruled that Catholics who go to church but have to watch the service on a Jumbotron or on closed circuit television because of overflow crowds are still fulfilling their obligation.
But except for those kinds of circumstances, Bishop Tobin says he concurs with the view that watching a Mass on television or a computer does not fulfill a Sunday obligation. That's not to say, he says, it can't offer a great deal of consolation for the sick or homebound who, under church rules, would already be excused from a Sunday obligation.
Nonetheless, the Rev. Marcel Taillon, who has been putting his parish's weekend Masses online for the last two years (including Masses at the main church, St. Thomas More, and the parish's St. Veronica Chapel on Boston Neck Road) and the Rev. Jay Finelli, who has been putting liturgies online at Holy Ghost Church for the past seven years, say that they believe their online services are a tool for evangelization, helping to reach people who might otherwise never go to church.
St. Michael Ukrainian-Catholic church, which is not to be confused with the similarly named St. Michael Ukrainian-Orthodox Church just around the corner on Harris Avenue, is the latest of the Rhode Island churches to put their services online, having begun with Christmas Mass last year.
As with the other two parishes, St. Michael put all of its recent Holy Week services online, including a special Saturday afternoon ceremony that showed the pastor, the Rev. Monsignor Roman Golemba, blessing eggs and food baskets that families had made at home.
The number of people who have logged into the Ukrainian parish's website (
www.stmichaelsri.org) may be tiny compared with the 54,000 views that Father Finelli has amassed over the last seven years by setting up webcams at Holy Ghost.
But Monsignor Golemba says he considers the seven to nine viewers that log into the parish's Sunday liturgy to be an asset, considering there are 60 families on the rolls and that the two weekend liturgies each have an average attendance of 30 people. The Internet, he says, boosts the audience by 30 percent.
"It's not like we are taking away from our own attendance," says the pastor. "We're reaching people who can't otherwise attend - the shut-ins and people in nursing homes and people far away," including a man in Colorado who says there are no other Ukrainian churches close to where he lives.
As a Ukrainian rite Catholic parish that holds its Saturday evening services in English and the Sunday liturgies in Ukrainian, St. Michael doesn't answer to Bishop Tobin but to the Catholic Church's Ukrainian Eparch in Stamford, Conn. The office of the eparch says it knows no other Ukrainian parish in New York or New England that has its liturgies on line.
Cornel Osadsa, a parishioner and software engineer who worked with college student Marko Tkach in setting up the system at St. Michael, said the church has received grateful messages and e-mails from people who have viewed the liturgy from Florida, Texas, New York and other states.
"Just the other day we had a family that viewed our liturgy on an iPhone while traveling through Ohio in a minivan."
Father Taillon said putting all of St. Thomas More and St. Veronica Chapel Masses on line (six Masses each weekend for most of the year, more during the summer tourist season) happened almost by accident.
He says he was having a burglar alarm company install cameras for a security system at church when it occurred to him that the same system could be used for Masses to be viewed by parishioners deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq.
"That was the motivation, but I never realized what a blessing it would be," Father Taillon said of the system.
While televised Masses have long been an on-air presence, particularly on such Catholic networks as EWTN, Father Taillon says the podcasts from St. Thomas More Church and St. Veronica Chapel have a special meaning for his homebound parishioners because "they know the priest."
"They can hear the same homily that their relatives in church are hearing in the church," he points out. And even before a Eucharistic minister comes to their house to bring Holy Communion, the shut-in can see the minister being blessed by the priest.
Father Taillon says parishioners on business trips to countries where Christianity is barely tolerated have told him how happy they were to pray in their hotel room with fellow Rhode Islanders via a podcast from St. Thomas More.
He said Jimmy Baron, the son of former University of Rhode Island coach Jim Baron, told him how while playing professional basketball overseas he was able to watch the parish's Christmas Mass in Turkey. But it's the weddings and funerals, the priest says, that draw the biggest response.
Three weeks ago Father Taillon celebrated a funeral at the church for a man who had many friends and relatives in Ireland.
Those in Ireland thought so much of him that 35 of them took a day off from work to watch the funeral on a computer monitor, he says.
As for weddings, relatives living far away are now able to become virtual participants at the events, Father Taillon says. And retired Providence Bishop Robert E. Mulvee was once startled to get a compliment from a man in New Zealand who had watched him speak at a Confirmation Mass at St. Thomas More.
As to whether Internet viewing "counts" toward one's Sunday obligation, Monsignor Golemba says a computer can't replace an actual service because it provides no opportunity for receiving Holy Communion.
Father Finelli says the benefit of the Internet - for those who are healthy enough to go to church but don't - is that people who may be hesitant about attending a church can check out the services and see if they would be comfortable going in person.
Father Taillon says he hasn't counted how many have logged in over the two years, but estimates there are three or four viewers for each of the weekend Masses, with many more viewers for weddings and funerals.
By comparison, Father Finelli, who may be considered the pioneer when it comes to Internet Masses in Rhode Island, may have the biggest online viewership, given that he has a camera in his parish's chapel 24 hours a day Monday through Friday for Eucharistic devotion, and three cameras in the church on weekends.
It's not known how many churches around the country have adopted the Internet as a way to broadcast their services. But Father Finelli, who designed the first website for the diocese in Providence in 1995, says he spoke three years ago at a conference of podcasters in San Antonio, Texas, and encountered strong interest in his talk about streaming parish Masses.
The priest has 4,000 Facebook friends, 2,000 Facebook fans and 5,000 followers on Twitter and thinks the numbers may help to explain how he got 400 people to log in to a weekday Mass at Holy Ghost one morning a couple years ago. The name of his website: iPadre.tv
The three parishes say the cost of setting up for podcasting is relatively inexpensive. Parishioners at St. Michael discovered that all that they needed was a small video camera attached to a small computer in the choir loft.
At St. Thomas More, a camera is mounted just over the Third Station of the Cross on the side of the church. At St. Veronica Chapel the camera looks out toward the sanctuary from the front door. At Holy Ghost, the priest has two webcams aimed at the altar, and one camera trained on the choir.
Both Holy Ghost and St. Michael put their signals out via the Internet server www.ustream.tv, which offers its services for free provided that churches put up a 30-second commercial at the beginning of the service, and every 45 minutes afterward.
Churches that want commercial-free podcasts - which St. Michael's has briefly opted for through the donations of two donors - pay a monthly charge of $99. That fee gives them up to 100 free viewer hours, and costs 50 cents for every viewer hour over that limit.
Father Taillon says his parish uses an Internet server created by the Boston-based security firm Afa Massachusetts Inc., which allows it to put Masses on line free of charge. Viewers can view the services by logging on to the parish website, stthomasmoreri.org
The Rev. Donald Anderson, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, said he does not know of any other churches in Rhode Island that stream their services.
"I'm surprised that more churches don't to it," he said. "As congregations get older and older, and more people become homebound, I think that many people will want something like this. If you approach it with the idea that it's a way to reach out to those who don't go to church, I would give it very serious consideration."
firstname.lastname@example.org (401) 277-7384
RELIGION - A HOUSE DIVIDED - Fault lines among the faithful
Parishioners' loyalties have complicated the merger of St. Leo and St. Cecilia parishes
RICHARD C. DUJARDIN
Publication Date: January 28,
2012 Page: A1Section: projoRhodeIslandZone: MAINEdition: 1
PAWTUCKET
Old rivalries die hard.
Just ask the Rev. Michael A. Sisco, who as pastor of the new Blessed Pope John Paul II parish was given the task last summer of merging the churches of St. Leo the Great and St. Cecilia, just two blocks from each other at 699 Central and 1253 Newport avenues.
It's not that the parishioners of St. Leo and St. Cecilia have ever hated each other, but locals say there were enough real differences to keep their members at a distance.
To locals, St. Cecilia's was "the French" parish, established in 1910 to look after the area's French-speaking immigrants and their descendents.
St. Leo's, dubbed "the Irish" church, was, since 1916, the area's territorial parish, open to all nationalities.
The rivalry had gotten to the point where people rarely crossed the line to go to the other church, even though they were so close.
"It's something people just didn't do," says Bruce Guindon, who remembers a similar situation when he was growing up in the former Sacred Heart parish and was scolded by a nun for once having attended the former Notre Dame Church in Central Falls.
"She thought it was sacrilegious of me to go to another church. Well, it was the same way here. If you were of French descent, which I am, you were to go to St. Cecilia's, and that if you weren't French you'd go to St. Leo's."
While the influx of Portuguese and Hispanics, Italians and Polish would eventually blur the congregations' ethnic differences, the divisions were apparent as late as last month, when John Paul parish held its first bazaar - one bazaar in two locations, since neither group would give ground to the other.
"It makes me sad sometimes when we kind of forget that we are Christians here who are supposed to love one another and get along with one another," Father Sisco remarked the other day. "But on the other note, I realize that, human nature being what it is, change comes difficult for people.
"I try to take it all with good humor."
As soon as Father Sisco was given the assignment, he says, he knew he had a tough task ahead.
"The church isn't like McDonald's, which can decide to open one restaurant and close another," he says. "People's family histories are here.
"These are the buildings where their parents got married and where they were baptized, and where they got married and buried their parents from. There are a lot of emotions attached to these buildings."
So he followed Bishop Thomas J. Tobin's advice and told parishioners he has no immediate plan to close either of their beloved churches - now known as the "tan" church (the old St. Cecilia's) and the "red" church (the old St. Leo's).
"Closing either of these buildings is not a foregone conclusion," he said. "Plan A is to try to fill them, and keep them so we can operate them in the black.
"If this doesn't happen after five to seven years, then we'll have to look at some other alternatives. But for the moment, we seem to be holding our own. I'll have a better picture when we get through our first fiscal year in July."
And how do parishioners see it? It depends on whom you talk to.
Guindon, who had been attending St. Leo's and was on the committee that recommended the merger, said he'd be lying if he said everything has gone as he and others had hoped. "Unfortunately, there's resistance on both sides. People don't want to let go."
Even now, seven months after the merger and three months after Father Sisco's installation, all but one of the lectors and Eucharistic ministers from the old St. Leo's won't take any assignments at the old St. Cecilia's. And those at the old St. Cecilia's say the same about the old St. Leo's. The only ones who appear to have no problem going back and forth are the altar servers.
Because of the continued divisions, the parish also has two music directors, one for each building, with separate choirs for each.
The question is, of course, why force people into a marriage they don't want?
Father Sisco says the merger was a financial necessity. St. Leo's had piled up $630,000 in debts to the diocese trying to keep its school operating before deciding to close in 2008, and those debts have to be repaid. St. Cecilia's has a bell tower and a set of stairs the diocese says could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair.
"Both parishes were having trouble surviving on their own," he says.
While some parishioners say they are puzzled how there are going to be any cost savings without closing either of the churches, Father Sisco says there are ways. Already, he says, they've successfully merged the staffs without anyone losing a job, with some voluntarily reducing their hours. He's looking to realize big savings by cutting back on outside vendors, remarking that one of the maintenance men, a "computer tech guy," has helped the school achieve savings by doing work previously outsourced.
"I also have a few friends who say they can do the repairs on those steps at St. Cecilia's for much less than what the diocese estimates, without removing the steps," he says. As for the bell tower, "I bet there is a cell-phone company that would love to put a tower there. It's the highest point in the city."
The priest says he can also raise money by selling St. Cecilia's rectory and convent, though he draws the line at selling St. Leo's School, saying he doesn't want it scooped up by a charter school that would compete directly with his St. Cecilia's School.
When churches merge, the turmoil often causes attendance to nosedive.
At the new Pope John Paul parish, the number of Masses has been reduced, to a 4:30 p.m. Saturday Mass at the old St. Cecilia's, and Sunday Masses at the old St. Leo's at 8 a.m. and noon, and at the old St. Cecilia's at 10 a.m. But parishioners say they have seen no decline in attendance. The parish has about 1,200 families.
Adam Scott, who joined St. Cecilia's when he and his wife moved from St. Mary's parish four years ago, credits Father Sisco with doing a "phenomenal job" in drawing people to church and bringing the groups together.
"When he says his homily," Scott said, "you have a feeling he is talking directly to you."
(Until now, the parish life was being helped, too, some say, by Msgr. Jacques Plante, who heads the diocesan Office of Evangelization and was filling in at some of the Masses as a priest-in-residence. He'll soon be leaving to replace the Franciscans as the new administrator of St. Mary Church in Providence.)
Scott said that when he and his wife attended Mass at the "tan" church on Christmas Eve, which ended with the French carol "Il Est Né Le Divin Enfant," "I don't think there was an empty pew in the building."
"I think it's a very good thing," he said of the merger. "I think it has strengthened our community here by bringing us all together."
Matt Turner, 39, and his wife, Amanda, 36, said they also see positives in the merger. A technical writer for a software company, Taylor said he and his wife joined the parish in 1997 after they got married at St. Cecilia's two years earlier.
Turner said the first encouraging sign he saw was when more than 450 people filled St. Cecilia's parish hall after Father Sisco's installation Mass in October.
But while the parishioner says the majority of people are "on board," Father Sisco acknowledges the difficulties.
One tough decision was formulating a Christmas Mass schedule that would satisfy those on both sides of Newport Avenue. He figured he had come upon a sensible compromise between St. Leo's traditional midnight Mass and St. Cecilia's 10 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass by having the late-evening Mass at St. Leo's at 11 p.m. and the morning Masses at St. Leo's at 8 and St. Cecilia's at 10.
But the priest soon learned it was unacceptable to some. One woman told the priest that the schedule had effectively shut out her 92-year-old mother, who, as a matter of principle, never sets foot in the old St. Cecilia's. Since the only Christmas Day Mass at St. Leo's was at 8 a.m. - too early, she said, for an elderly person - she said her mother ended up going to another church miles away.
Hearing the story, Father Sisco promised to make an adjustment, saying that on Easter Sunday, he would move the 8 a.m. Mass at St. Leo's to 9.
"I don't want to force anything down people's throats," he said. "I think in 10 years it's all going to be fine.
"I think we can find a way to keep both churches operating, and that if we did have to close, it will be up to the people."
email@example.com (401) 277-7384
Remembering that night
The holocaust preserving history | On 74th anniversary of Kristallnacht,
Holocaust survivors make sure story is never forgotten
RICHARD C. DUJARDIN
Publication Date:
November 9,
2012 Page: MAIN_01Section: NewsZone: MAINEdition: 1
Alice Dreifuss Goldstein was a 7-year-old girl, one of only a handful of Jews in a private school in Freiburg, Germany, when the one Jewish store in the village of Kenzingen, 24 miles away, was attacked by a mob.
Being so young and staying with her maternal grandparents, Alice says it would be many years before she got the full story of what happened on that dreadful night 74 years ago - Nov. 9-10, 1938 - known today as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass.
It had been a night of violence across Germany that left more than 1,000 synagogues burned and 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses nearly destroyed. Nazi leaders immediately insisted it was a spontaneous reaction by people in the street to news that a young Nazi military attaché had been gunned down in Paris two days earlier by a Polish Jew.
But Goldstein, now retired from her role as researcher for Brown University's Population Studies and Training Center, says the evidence shows the Nazis had been planning the attacks and even distributed handbooks on how they were to be conducted.
In any case, this has always been a personal issue for Goldstein. The one store in Kenzingen attacked that night was her father's fabric and household goods store, in the family for three generations.
Her first inkling of anything untoward was when her mother brought her home and she saw the store boarded up. Worse, her father and Opa, her paternal grandfather, were missing.
Only later did she learn that the mob, after going inside and tossing the contents out on the street, went upstairs to her parents' apartment and threw books and her mother's sheet music out the window so they, too, could be burned.
The next day, a truck rounded up all Jewish males older than 16 to be taken by train to a camp in Dachau, her father and grandfather among them.
In her case there was a happy ending. The "Final Solution" had not begun yet, and the Germans released her grandfather under a policy of not retaining anyone over age 60. And her father was let go under a policy allowing the release of anyone who could prove he had applied to leave he country.
Almost a year later, on Aug. 28, 1939, the Dreifuss family sailed into New York Harbor on the last passenger liner to leave Germany on schedule, three days before Germany invaded Poland.
Now 81, the Warwick mother of three is one of a dwindling number of firstgeneration Holocaust survivors who for years now have been telling their stories in
Rhode Island classrooms, under the auspices of the Rhode Island Holocaust Education and Resource Center.
In the basement of the Jewish Community Center at 401 Elmgrove Ave. in Providence, the Holocaust center has its roots in a move by a group of survivors in the 1980s to establish a museum and memorial garden to make sure that the brutality of those years would not be forgotten.
The outreach has since taken many forms, ranging from an annual arts and writing contest, to workshops for teachers to help them find the best ways of bringing the lessons of the Holocaust to the students.
May-Ronny Zeidman, the center's executive director, says the programs reach 6,000 to 8,000 students each year.
"We try to make the point to teachers that some of the Hollywood movies that are out there may not be appropriate for teaching because they're factually inaccurate," Zeidman said. "Many films give a false or sanitized version of what really went on. 'Life is Beautiful,' and the 'Boy in the Striped Pajamas' come to mind."
Do the lessons have an impact?
Melissa Kusinitz, 31, who was the center's Holocaust Teacher of the Year in 2012, has incorporated a section about the Holocaust into her ninth-grade English class at Cumberland High School.
"Without fail, this is the one part of the curriculum that they remember even years later," she says. "I can see changes in the way they react to one another even while taking the course."
Like Kusinitz, Barbara Wahlberg has been using Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel's book 'Night' in her 10{+t}{+h} grade English class at Cranston High School East since the 1990s. In Pawtucket, Steve Flynn, has put together a racism and diversity elective at Tollman High School that he has taught for seven years.
All try to have Holocaust survivors speak to their students.
"In this day and age, students need the immediacy of tangible evidence, because for their generation the Holocaust was a long time ago," said Flynn. "To be engaged, they need to see it, hear it and smell it. That's why I've been so fortunate to have survivors speak to my classes. The survivors give them a bird's-eye view as to what true oppression is."
Wahlberg, the first Rhode Islander to receive a fellowship to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, says she's grateful that survivor Lea Eliash spoke to her classes several times before she died.
"The children are so fascinated. And they ask the right questions," she said. "They want to know how it could have happened."
Among the many stories, sometimes provided by the survivors' children or by friends, are stories of escape.
Family Court Magistrate Edward Newman, whose parents would later travel to Rhode Island and start a successful egg farm in Richmond, talks about how his mother escaped from what could have been her final death march after the Germans learned that the Russian Army was advancing.
Ruth Goldstein, no relation to Alice, tells of how Rose Berkovic, from Antwerp, Belgium, slipped out of a deportation camp in France long enough to take her daughters, Marie, 9, and Jeannette, 5, to an underground that brought them to a Christian boarding school. The girls ultimately made it to the United States, taken in by families in Providence and Pawtucket. Their mother would join them later and the sisters, with their husbands now live in Clearwater, Fla.
Zeidman says she doesn't know how many Holocaust survivors are left in Rhode Island, since many have never came forward to talk about their experience. But her speakers list has nine first-generation survivors and three "second-generation" survivors.
Flynn says that once there are no more, he figures he will have to go recordings and tapes to make the stories alive for his students.
But until that time comes, Alice Goldstein says she will continue to tell her story to students, bringing along the six-pointed yellow star that the Nazis gave her father while he was temporarily a prisoner at Dachau.
"Dachau was the first place where the Germans experimented with having the prisoners wear the star. They originally made it with metal backing, but stopped when they needed the metal for the war. My father called it his souvenir."
Film lineup
Roger Williams University in Bristol is partnering with Flickers: the Rhode Island International Film Festival to host a series of films on the Jewish experience, including the Holocaust, from Tuesday, Nov. 13, to Sunday, Nov. 18, in the university's Global Heritage Hall.
The offerings include a film featuring Rabbi Ben Lefkowitz, who teaches a course on the Holocaust, and Rob Cohen, director of Kinderblock66: Return to Buchenwald, to be shown at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15.
Shown immediately afterward will be "Kinderblock 66: Return to Buchenwald," which chronicles the effort to save 900 youths who were imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp and what four of the survivors found when they returned 65 years later.
Set for 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 18, is "Perceptions of the Holocaust Experience in American Media," to be immediately followed by "Living Room Witnesses: The Holocaust on American Television," which explores how the Holocaust was portrayed on TV from the early 1950s to the mid-1990s.
Richard C. Dujardin | <urn:uuid:9fa45b1c-fce0-4aa5-9201-42ec1553524a> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/rna.site-ym.com/resource/collection/DBCF7EDC-A114-4521-8AC9-7078E41548C0/andrea_dujardin_metro.pdf | 2018-07-21T03:51:56Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00524.warc.gz | 624,436,052 | 5,933 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999213 | eng_Latn | 0.999439 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2972,
6095,
9039,
10119,
12598,
15573,
18491,
18921,
21637,
24247,
26884
] | [
1.2890625,
2.4375
] | 2 | 4 |
Malala's Magic Pencil
Written by Malala Yousafzai and illustrated by Kerascoët
Activities:
Research and discuss Nobel Peace Prize winners. Malala was the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize at 16 when she won in 2014, who has won after her? Why were they chosen?
Create a pattern like the one found on the end pages.
Malala liked the show "Shaka Laka Boom Boom" about a boy who could make anything by drawing it with a magic pencil. The boy, Sanju, would get into trouble, but he was also a little hero, protecting people who needed help. Discuss TV shows your students watch now with people who protect others.
What would you draw if you had a magic pencil? This could be writing prompt or art activity.
Malala notices peers sorting trash and fishing for metal in the dump nearby her house. Go around the classroom with a magnet (on a string) and find out what is magnetic.
In the book, Malala threw away potato peels and eggshells. Make potato pancakes with potatoes and eggs. What else could you make with potatoes and eggs?
Write or discuss the pros and cons of school uniforms.
Malala's voice became so powerful that dangerous men tried to silence her. They failed. Talk about why a student would end up going to the hospital.
Malala first started writing for BBC Urdu about life under the Taliban using the pen name Gul Makai. Discuss why authors would want a pen name. If your students wanted to write under a different name, which name would they choose? Discuss other authors with pseudonyms, like Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), J.K. Rowling (Joanne Rowling.)
Malala is passionate about education for girls and shared her story on television. Have students create a video about something they are passionate about.
Find Swat Valley, Pakistan and Birmingham, UK on a map or globe. What continents are they on? (Asia, Europe) What is the capital of these countries? (Islamabad, London)
Compare Pakistan to Vermont. The area of Pakistan is 307,374 mi². The area of Vermont is 9,616 mi². The population of Pakistan is 200,813,818. The population of VT is 623,960. Which is larger?
Visit www.malala.org for pictures of Malala and to see Malala's interview on "The Daily Show." She also blogs about other girls who are making a difference with lots of photos. | <urn:uuid:a01d756c-56d3-4c11-b382-0e0cd6e78e0f> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://www.mothergooseprograms.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Malalas-Magic-Pencil.pdf | 2018-07-21T03:44:25Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00527.warc.gz | 512,759,886 | 537 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998415 | eng_Latn | 0.998415 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2358
] | [
3.546875
] | 1 | 0 |
Web Order Forms with JavaScript
This book offers a self-study guide to using JavaScript for automatically updated order forms on Web pages. There are now many ready-made scripts to do this kind of task on the Web, but the purpose of the book is to give the reader the opportunity to learn some JavaScript along the way.
Mike Thelwall School of Computing and IT University of Wolverhampton Wulfruna Street Wolverhampton WV1 1SB
1.
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................4
Code for examples and answers to selected exercises are available at:
http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/mm2005
Introduction
1.1. Overview
This section will give an introduction to the language JavaScript, explaining where JavaScript programs run and what kind of things they are capable of doing. A brief history of the language will be given and it will be compared to HTML and Java.
1.2. Objectives
In this section you will learn the following.
* Where JavaScript came from.
* How and where it works.
* How it differs from HTML and Java.
* What kind of tasks it can perform.
1.3. What is JavaScript?
JavaScript is a programming language that can be used to enhance web pages. It was created to fill the need to create pages that were not just static, but could interact with the user in some way. It was developed by Netscape and Sun Microsystems and was released in 1995, being first implemented in the Netscape Navigator 2.0 web browser. Today, the vast majority of browsers in use support one version or another of JavaScript. It is used for different types of jobs, one very common one being changing the appearance of a link or image when the mouse pointer is over it, and it is also used to check the data entered in online web forms.
JavaScript was designed to be easy to learn and use so that non-programmers would not be left out. The result is a language that tries to avoid unnecessary complications and allows the writing of short useful sections of code. You do not have to be a programmer to make good use of JavaScript, although programmers will be able to make it really sing. By the end of this course you will be able to write sections of code that will really improve the functionality of your web pages. Once you have learned the basics of the language you will also be able to go to one of the numerous JavaScript web sites and use the free source code to add pre-written applications to your pages.
There are several different versions and variants of JavaScript. The versions currently available are 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, with version 1.3 appearing in Netscape Navigator 4.06, and version 1.4 set to appear in Navigator 5.0. Internet Explorer 5 uses most of version 1.4, but these differences are only important when using the newer features of the language, which are avoided here. JavaScript before 1.0 had a different name, LiveScript, and it is also associated with another name, ECMAScript. Netscape submitted JavaScript to the European Computer Manufacturers' Association in 1996, and the official specification of ECMAScript was the result. This defines the core functionality of the language, whilst allowing later versions to have additional capabilities.
1.4. JavaScript, HTML and Java
JavaScript is sometimes confused with HTML, and often with Java. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the language in which web pages are written. It is a computer language but not a programming language. This means that it can only describe web pages but cannot interact with the user. JavaScript and Java are both
programming languages and can, therefore, perform 'cleverer' tasks than HTML. As an example of this, HTML could create a password box in a web page but Java or JavaScript could also check its contents, for example warning the user if the password was too short. The difference between Java and JavaScript is more subtle, but they have a different set of capabilities and also operate in different ways. Java is a fullscale programming language that can only be used effectively by a trained computer programmer. It is a powerful language that was designed with Internet in mind. The original name of Java was Oak and it was developed by Sun Microsystems as an operating system for electronic devices. It did not succeed in this role, but has made a name for itself as an Internet programming language. JavaScript, in contrast to Java, is not too complicated for non-programmers to use. Another difference is that Java programs need to be translated into a machine-readable form before being sent to a web browser. As a result of this, Java programs cannot be included in the HTML of a web page, although JavaScript programs can. To use a Java program in a web page a link must be created to a separate file containing the machine-readable code. The most important difference between the two languages, however, is that Java is much more powerful, for example allowing access to files on the user's computer. The disadvantage of this extra power is that it is a security risk: a hacker that ran a Java applet on your computer could look at all of your files and perhaps destroy them. JavaScript is not such a security risk and therefore many people who disable Java in their browser will be happy to let JavaScript programs execute.
1.5. What Can JavaScript Do?
JavaScript is very good for adding extra interactivity to web pages. Probably the most common use of JavaScript code is to change an image on a web page in response to the position of the mouse. This is sometimes called an image rollover. Many pieces of software signal to the user that the mouse is over a clickable button by altering the appearance of the clickable part in some way, and JavaScript is needed to do this in a web page. As well as changing the appearance of a web page, JavaScript can also perform spreadsheet-type calculations by processing the contents of web forms. The processing may be a simple check, such as ensuring that the user has not left a key field blank, or it could be applying a mathematical formula to the data entered. JavaScript also has access to some information about the browser, in which it is running and can use this to customise a web page for a browser. All of these jobs do not need many lines of code to accomplish. To summarise the key capabilities, JavaScript can do the following: -
* Respond to user actions such as clicking and moving the mouse.
* Recognise and react to certain attributes of the environment in which it is running for example the name and version of the browser.
* Change images on the screen, and write HTML to include in a web page, and change the contents of form fields.
* Move to a new web page and open and close new customised browser windows.
* Perform calculations with numbers and process strings of text.
1.6. Summary
* JavaScript was developed by Netscape and Sun as a Web Browser 'scripting' language.
* JavaScript programs normally are found in web pages and are run by the browser.
* HTML is not a programming language. Java is, and is more powerful than JavaScript, but has security risks and needs a programmer to program.
* JavaScript can add extra interactivity to a web page.
1.7. Exercises
1. Search the web for a page of general information about Java and JavaScript. Start with Internet encyclopaedia at www.webreference.com.
2. Search the web for sites that have free demonstrations of JavaScript programs and try them out. You might like to start with www.JavaScript.com.
3. Look at the web page for this section.
2. Creating Web Pages with HTML
2.1. Overview
In this section we are going to learn how to create web pages using the raw HTML, in order to be able to edit the HTML later to include a JavaScript program. There are a series of tasks throughout the text, building up to the creation of a personal web page.
2.2. Objectives
In this section you will learn the following.
* How to use a text editor to create web pages.
* The names of some of the main HTML tags for formatting text.
* How images are embedded in web pages.
* How to include a link from one page to another.
2.3. HyperText Markup Language
Web pages are written in HyperText Markup Language, known as HTML. The easiest way to create web pages is by using a special web editor or by using the 'Convert to HTML' function of another application such as a word processor. In either case the program will convert your instructions into HTML and save your web page as a HTML file. If you use the 'view source' command in your web browser when you are viewing a page then you will see the underlying HTML.
An HTML file contains not only the text to be displayed but also extra instructions that tell the browser how to format and position this text, where to put additional resources, such as images, and can also give useful information about the page. These extra instructions are in the form of tags, starting with a less than symbol and ending in a greater than symbol. An example of a tag is <B> which tells the browser to start making the text bold. Tags must follow a standard format to be recognised by a browser and in this chapter a number of the main tags will be explained.
It is possible to write web pages by typing in the text and tags in a text editor program rather than a web editor. This is more difficult and takes longer, but we will need to learn how to do this in order to write JavaScript programs
2.4. Creating a HTML File
In this section you will create your own web page with a text editor. If you are using Windows then your computer should have the basic text editor program Notepad, other computer users should also have a similar program. A text editor is a program that can create and edit a text file without adding special formats such as using a larger font size. First we will have a look at an example of a very simple web page. Here is the HTML source of the page home.htm.
```
<HTML> <HEAD> </HEAD> <BODY> Hello, this is Mike's home page! </BODY>
```
</HTML>
And when the file home.htm is viewed in a web browser, on the screen will appear just the plain text.
Hello, this is Mike's home page!
Notice that the document uses a number of tags. The <HTML> tag indicates the start of the web page and </HTML> indicates the end. Many tags use a similar structure, with a tag name starting with a slash indicating the end of the region. The <HEAD> tag indicates the start of the head of the document, and </HEAD> indicates the end. The head contains information that will not be displayed in the browser – more about this later. At the moment the head is empty. The body of the document, starting with <BODY> and ending with </BODY>, contains the elements that will be displayed in the browser. At the moment this is just a small amount of text.
Activity
Now try using a text editor to create your own simple home page. If you will be using Notepad, this program can normally be found by clicking on the Start button, selecting Programs and then the Accessories program group. Start up Notepad and type in the following simple HTML document.
```
<HTML> <HEAD> </HEAD> <BODY> Hello, this is [your name]'s home page! </BODY> </HTML>
```
Now save it on the floppy disk in the A: drive with the name HOME.HTM by selecting Save As from the File menu.
Minimise Notepad by clicking on the minimise button. Start your browser and when it has loaded type A:\HOME.HTM in the location bar. When you press return the page that you have just typed in should appear in the browser. It should appear as:
Hello, this is [your name]'s home page!
If anything else appears, you have made a mistake with your file. Switch to Notepad and try to find it.
2.5. The Document Title
Documents are expected to have a title. The title does not get displayed in the main area of the browser window, it gets displayed in the title bar of the browser instead. Titles are very important because they are the default description of the page to be used when someone bookmarks it or adds it to the favourites list of their browser. The title goes in the head section because it is not displayed with the rest of the document. A title has its own start and end tags and shown in the following example.
```
<TITLE> Page Title Goes Here </TITLE>
```
Here is a title correctly inserted into the head of a web page, between the start of the header marker <HEAD> and the end of the header marker </HEAD>.
```
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE> Mike's home page </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> Hello, this is Mike's home page! </BODY> </HTML>
```
This will appear on screen exactly as before.
Note that the title bar of the browser now contains the titles alongside the name of the browser.
Activity
Now have a go yourself. Minimise your browser, switch to Notepad and add the title '[your name]'s home page' to the head of your document. Save your document again with the Save menu option from the File menu. Switch to Your browser and look at the title bar at the very top of the screen, noticing what it says. Click on the Reload button and notice the change to the title bar. The title bar is the only thing that has changed. The main body of the document does not show your title.
2.6. Paragraphs and Typesetting
One thing that takes some getting used to with HTML is that browsers will ignore line endings in your document and realign all of the text into one big paragraph unless you tell them otherwise. Here is an example of this.
```
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE> My home page </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> Hello and welcome to my new home page! My name is Mike Thelwall and I am a Lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK. In my spare time I am a member of a local amateur dramatics group. </BODY>
```
```
</HTML>
```
When this page is loaded into a browser, all of the paragraph information is all lost, as is shown below.
Notice that the browser has put all of the text into one big paragraph, fitting the line lengths to the screen width. The same page viewed in a smaller browser window would also be in one paragraph but with shorter lines.
There is a special tag to indicate the start of a new paragraph, which is <P>. Adding this to the start of the three paragraphs in my page will get them correctly displayed as three paragraphs.
```
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE> My home page </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <P>
```
```
Hello and welcome to my new home page! <P> My name is Mike Thelwall and I am a Lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK. <P> In my spare time I am a member of a local amateur dramatics group. </BODY> </HTML>
```
Loaded into a browser, this HTML file will now be split into three paragraphs by the <P> tags.
The reason why HTML allows the browser to decide things like the number of words to fit on each line of a paragraph is to enable people using different size browser windows and computer screens to still see all of the text in the document. It makes sense to just tell the browser where the paragraphs are and leave it to fit them on the screen as well as it can.
Activity
Now try formatting paragraphs with the paragraph tag. Switch back to Notepad and after the line <BODY> type in three paragraphs of information about yourself without using the <P> tags. Now resave the document, switch to your browser and reload it to see your new changes. Now add the <P> tags, save the file and reload in the browser to check that your paragraphs are correct. Try also changing the size of the browser window to see the effect that this has on how your document is displayed.
2.7. Document Structure
A large document usually contains headings and subheadings. You can mark your headings and subheadings with the following HTML tags.
```
<H1> Heading title </H1> - for a level one heading <H2> Heading title </H2> - for a level two heading <H3> Heading title </H3> - for a level three heading
```
These headings will be formatted differently to the rest of the document in order to stand out. They will be on a line of their own and may be bold and in a larger font.
In the example below, the first line of the body of the HTML file has been converted from a standard paragraph into a level one heading.
```
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE> My home page </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <H1>Hello and welcome to my new home page!</H1> <P> My name is Mike Thelwall and I am a Lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK. <P> In my spare time I am a member of a local amateur dramatics group. </BODY> </HTML>
```
In my browser a level one heading is larger than normal text and also bold.
Add a heading to each paragraph in your home page file. The heading should go just above the paragraph. For example one paragraph heading could be:
```
<H1> My Job </H1>
```
View the changes and note how your browser treats headings. Level two and three headings will be less prominent than the main level one heading.
Activity
Expand your home page to several paragraphs and include headings and subheadings. You could include information on your job, your hobbies, your family and any other trivia that you don't mind others seeing. Use paragraph tags as you think appropriate. Make sure that everything that you type goes in the body of the document.
2.8. Text Formatting
If you do not put any formatting commands in a web page then all text, apart from headings, will be in the same font and in left-aligned paragraphs. In order to change these default settings some new tags must be learned. There are two classes of tags, those that apply to whole paragraphs at a time and those that can apply to individual words or letters.
Paragraph Formatting
There are a range of tags that can be used to specify the alignment of paragraphs and headings. The most commonly used is probably the <CENTER> tag, which, when put at the start of a paragraph causes it to be centred on the screen. This is commonly used for a main page title displayed in the browser. An end of centring tag should be put at the end of the heading or paragraph to be centred or all subsequent text may be incorrectly aligned. Here is an example of correct use.
<H1><CENTER>welcome to my home page!</CENTER></H1>
Activity
Your home page does not contain a title in its main body - the title we entered is at the title bar and separated from the rest of the document. We will add a title to the main body of the document now.
In Notepad, just below the tag <BODY> type in a title such as "My Home Page" and enter a paragraph end marker afterwards. Save it and view it in Your browser. It doesn't look right does it? A title should be in the centre of the screen, not at the left-hand side. We can tell Your browser to centre text by enclosing the text to be centred in the markers <CENTER> and </CENTER>. Note the American spelling! Do this to your title and view it to see the difference.
Note that the <CENTER> tag works on whole paragraphs at a time, it does not make sense to centre an individual word in a line, only whole lines or paragraphs. There are other tags that work on individual words or characters.
Character formatting
There are a large number of tags to change the font that is used to display text on the screen. The attributes that can be changed include the font name, its size and colour, but we shall concentrate on the simplest common changes here, bold and italic. To specify that some text is bold or italic, enclosing it in the appropriate markers <B> </B> or <I> </I> respectively.
Here is an example of some HTML employing the bold and italic tags.
I shall <I>quickly</I> become an <B>expert</B> html writer.
When loaded into a browser, this will appear as follows.
I shall quickly become an expert html writer.
Activity
Go through your home page and use the bold and italic tags in a few places. Be warned however that too much use of bold and italic effects looks silly so they may not be appropriate in your document. There are many other character formatting effects such as those for changing colour and font size, but we are not going to try them all out here.
2.9. Adding Clickable Links
The most important property of a web page is its ability to link to other web pages through hyperlinks. A hyperlink in a web page is a picture or section of text that, when clicked, will cause a new page to be loaded. A hyperlink has two elements: the description seen in the browser, either some text or a picture; and the location of the new file to be loaded. The tag for a hyperlink is more complicated than the ones we have used previously because it has to incorporate these two components.
Hyperlinks are created with anchor tags. A text anchor tag has the following general form.
```
<A HREF="internet address">underlined text</A>
```
Here is an example of the HTML for a real link.
```
Here is a link to the <A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/">Microsoft</A> home page.
```
In a browser the link text will be highlighted in some way to show that it is clickable. Many browsers underline clickable links by default.
Here is a link to the Microsoft home page.
When the word Microsoft is clicked on the URL http://www.microsoft.com/ will be loaded in the browser.
Files can be specified in two ways: an absolute address and a relative address. An address starting with http:// is an absolute address and works as you would expect. Other addresses are relative addresses and the browser operates by adding them to the end of the current path. For example a page at http://www.a.com/pages/page1.htm which contained a reference to images/bob.jpg would have this interpreted as http://www.a.com/pages/images/bob.jpg. The path would have been interpreted as http://www.a.com/pages/ and the reference images/bob.jpg added to the end.
Activity
Use your browser to search for some sites that are of interest to you. Copy down their addresses from the Location bar and use these addresses to include a list of links to your favourite home pages using the anchor tag as above.
2.10. Adding Pictures and Images
HTML files are text documents and cannot contain embedded standard image files in the way that word processor documents can. Instead, any pictures to be shown on a web page must be saved to a separate file and referenced in the page using the appropriate tag, the image tag, IMG. This tag has one main argument, SRC = which should take the location of the image file to be inserted.
Here are some examples of uses of the image tag
```
<IMG SRC="filename.gif"> <IMG SRC="filename.jpg"> <IMG SRC="http://www.somewhere.com/dir1/file2.jpg">
```
The actual image does not come in the HTML file, only the name of the file containing it. The filename.gif or filename.jpg must be real existing image files. Use this command to include in your home page some of the images that you have been given.
Here is an example of a web page with an image.
```
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE> Testing embedded images </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <P>Here is a picture showing how I get to work every day. <IMG SRC="glider.jpg"> <P>I wish! </BODY> </HTML>
```
And here is the page in the browser.
An important point to stress again is that the picture itself is not in the file, only a reference to it. In this case the picture is saved in the file glider.jpg which was referenced by the HTML file by relative addressing. It was sitting in the same place as the original file, in this case in the main directory of the floppy disk in the A: drive and therefore only the filename was needed to reference it.
Activity
Add some suitable pictures to your web page. If you do not have any picture files to use then you could search the Internet for an archive of free images that you can borrow. All images on the Internet should be assumed to be copyright protected unless otherwise stated, so please do not take images that you are unsure of. The three common formats for saving files on the Internet are png, jpeg and gif. If you have windows pictures in bitmap format (.bmp) then there you will need to find a program which will convert them to one of the other formats. Most image manipulation programs should do this. The jpeg or jpg format is most suitable for photographic images, whearas gif is better for human created images, particularly icons. The png format can cope equally well with either.
2.11. Summary
* HTML documents are made up of text and tags.
* A HTML page is often split into head and body sections.
* There are special tags such as <TITLE> for the head of the document which are not displayed in the main browser screen.
* There are tags for character formatting as well as paragraph formatting.
* The <IMG SRC=""> tag causes a picture to be inserted into your page.
* The <A HREF="">…</A> tag creates a clickable link.
2.12. Exercises
1. Complete your home page by adding images, links and extra text as you see appropriate.
2. Reorganise your home page into a set of three pages, each containing part of the information from the original page and links to the other two pages. Save all pages into the same directory and use relative links to join them.
3. Use a search engine such as www.yahoo.com or www.altavista.com to search for web pages with libraries of free images. Bookmark them for later use and as some to your pages. You could start this with a search for "free clipart".
3. Cascading Style Sheets
3.1. Overview
This section will give an introduction to Cascading Style Sheets, a feature of HTML that gives additional control over the appearance of web pages. The most powerful way of using style sheets will be demonstrated along with some of the most useful properties.
3.2. Objectives
In this section you will learn the following.
*
How to create a stylesheet file
* How to configure common text properties
* How to reference a stylesheet from a web page
* How to use the classes feature
3.3. Using Stylesheets
It is possible with HTML to choose many properties of the text on the screen, such as its colour, size and font name. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) feature of HTML is designed to allow these properties to be changed for all elements in all web pages on a single site, simply by editing a single file. It is, therefore, a powerful way of gaining more control over the appearance of web pages. There are several ways in which CSS can be used but we will only cover the most potent one. Style sheets are a feature of HTML 4, and were not present in earlier versions. They are part of HTML rather than JavaScript, although JavaScript programs can exploit their features.
A CSS file is a plain text file created for example with a simple editor such as Windows Notepad and saved with the extension .css, for example filename.css. It contains formatting information in the appropriate notation. Here is a simple example
```
P { color : red; }
```
This declares that all text in paragraphs should be red instead of black. To apply a style to a web page, a reference to the stylesheet file should be included in the HEAD of the document. If the above file were called mystyle.css then this reference would be the following.
```
<LINK REL=STYLESHEET TYPE = "text/css" HREF = "mystyle.css">
```
The formatting effects that can be applied include the following
* font-family
these can be bold, normal, or 100, 200, … 900, where load is 700 and normal is 400.
the name of the font used to typeset the text. Common web fonts are Verdana, Arial and Helvetica.
* text-decoration
if this is set to none for the anchor element a then clickable links will not be underlined.
The above styles can be applied to any tags in the body of the document, although on some tags, such as INPUT they will be ignored by some browsers. Here is an example of a stylesheet that changes the links to green on a yellow background, without underlining. It also makes the paragraph text red (sorry!) and the main headings blue. The font Verdana is applied to all.
```
A { text-decoration : none; font-family : Verdana; color : green; background-color : yellow; } P { font-family : Verdana; color : red; } H1 { font-family : Verdana; color : blue; }
```
Note that the indentation used above is optional, but the file will be easier to read if you use the tab key to indent the brackets and style commands as above.
Activity
Create a web page with a reference to a stylesheet file as explained above. Experiment with the various styles and attributes to see the different results.
Fonts
When you specify a font, it may not be used in all web browsers because some people may not have that font installed on their computer. A common way to get round this problem is to list several fonts, with the preferred ones earlier in the list. If the computer is missing one font, it will try the next. For example: -
```
font-family : Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;
```
will use Verdana on those computers that have it, and try to use Helvetica on those that don't. Any computer that has neither of these will use Arial, or, failing this, the default browser font. The font 'Verdana' was specially designed to make text in web pages easier to read, so it is worth knowing about. Here is some text typeset in Verdana. If the font is not loaded on your computer then you will see the default font instead when you apply Verdana.
Colours
When you wish to assign a colour, if you are lucky then its name can be used directly. Pre-defined colours are red, green, blue, yellow, black, white, aqua, fuchsia, gray (note the American spelling of gray), lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, silver and teal. If you want a different colour then you can specify it directly with #012345 where the first two digits refer to the amount of green in the colour, the second two green and the last two blue. For example red = #FF0000. The digits are hexadecimal and run from 0 to 9 then A to F. If you want to try this then good luck!
Classes
Sometimes it is necessary to apply different styles to the same HTML element. If you wanted some paragraphs of text to be on a white background but others on yellow then the classes feature must be used to differentiate. To ensure that a style does not apply to all elements of a given type, a class name must be given. Here is an example.
```
P.main { background-color : yellow; }
```
This will not apply to text in a normal paragraph <P> but will to any paragraph with a class name of main.
```
<P CLASS = "main"> I want a yellow background. </P>
```
Any class name of your own choosing can be used and they can be used for any tag. Here is a more complex example where internal links will be blue and external red.
```
A.internal { color : green; } A.external { color : red; }
```
This will have the intended effect on the following section of HTML.
```
<A CLASS = "internal" HREF = "index.htm">index page</A> <A CLASS = "external" HREF = "http://www.JavaScript.com/">JavaScript.com</A>
```
Summary
* A stylesheet file is a text file containing a list of properties for tags.
* A style definition is a bracketed list of values for defined tag properties.
* A stylesheet file can be referenced using the LINK tag.
* Classes enable single tags to be configured with two or more separate sets of properties applicable in different places.
Exercises
1. Use stylesheets to create a web page where all the headings are red on a blue background.
2. Modify your page created for question 1 above so that the paragraph text is blue on a red background.
3. Create a new page and use stylesheets to make its links fuchsia, without underlining and with the largest possible text weight. Apply the font Helvetica to everything on the page.
4. Create a separate class of the bold tag for each named colour. Create a document that lists all of the colours and uses the bold class definitions to show each word in its own colour.
4. Basic JavaScript
4.1. Overview
In this section we are going to create some simple JavaScript programs. You will learn how to use JavaScript to perform some simple tasks, including evaluating a formula.
4.2. Objectives
In this section you will learn the following.
* How to embed a simple JavaScript program in a web page.
* How to write text to a web page as it is being loaded in the browser.
* How to declare and use variables.
* How to create pop-up boxes.
4.3. Embedding JavaScript programs in HTML
JavaScript is not part of HTML, yet it can be placed inside the HTML of a web page. How is this apparent paradox possible? The answer lies in the SCRIPT tag. This tag is part of HTML and can be used to signal that the section of text that follows is not HTML but is a set of commands from a scripting language and should therefore be sent to the appropriate script interpreter rather than the HTML parser. There is more than one scripting language that can be used in web pages, and therefore it is necessary to give the name of the language used. JavaScript programs are normally preceded by
```
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> and followed by </SCRIPT>
```
The actual program should be inserted between these two tags. A browser that understands JavaScript will recognise the <SCRIPT> tag and use its JavaScript interpreter to interpret the program rather than its HTML interpreter. It is possible to specify the version of JavaScript that is being used, for example with the tag
```
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript 1.2">
```
but for our purposes it will not be necessary to do this.
JavaScript programs can be placed inside the head or the body of a web page. It is common to put complex programs in the head so that they are fully loaded before the actual document is visible in the browser. This avoids problems caused by a program being called before it has been loaded. We are going to investigate writing some very simple programs and embedding them in web pages. No attempt will be made to give exhaustive descriptions of each function covered, instead they will be introduced with examples of common ways of using them.
4.4. The function document.write()
The function document.write() writes whatever text is placed in the brackets to the web page. Plain text in the brackets will need to be enclosed in single or double quotes. For example the command
```
document.write("Hello World!")
```
would write Hello World! to the web page. It is actually the same as writing Hello World! in plain text in a page, but bear with it as it will be more useful later. The
function has two parts separated by a full stop. The second one, write, specifies that the text in brackets is to be written somewhere. The first part, document, specifies what part of the system is responsible for doing the writing. In programming terms, the document is an object. In JavaScript 'document' effectively refers to the current web page, and we will not need to know more than this. In fact you can treat document.write() as one indissoluble entity. Note that unlike HTML, JavaScript is CaSe sensitive so document.Write or DOCUMENT.WRITE will not work. Both words must be lower case.
In order to get our single line of code to work we have to declare that it is a JavaScript program with the HTML script tag. Here is the program again, but in a version that you can insert anywhere in the head or body of a web page.
```
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> document.write("HTML Forms in JavaScript"); </SCRIPT>
```
Notice here that there is a semi-colon at the end of the line. The semi-colon is the official indicator of the end of a JavaScript statement, but it is in fact optional if the statement is not on the same line as any other statements. Here is an example of a complete web page with an embedded script.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> document.write("HTML with embedded JavaScript."); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
The end result of this page in the browser will be the same as loading the following plain HTML.
```
<HTML><BODY> HTML with embedded JavaScript. </BODY></HTML>
```
In either case the browser window will simply display the following.
HTML with embedded JavaScript.
Activity
Create a web page to display the words "I've just loaded!" using the JavaScript document.write() function.
Tip
If your example does not work, it could be a mistake on your part or the problem could be with the browser. If you get a JavaScript error message, then it is likely to be your fault. Look very carefully at what you have written and try to find the problem. If nothing appears at all, it could be that JavaScript has been disabled in your browser. You will need to find out how to enable it again. In some versions of Netscape, this can be done by ticking the enable JavaScript box in the advanced section of the preferences box, obtained by selecting Preferences from the Edit menu. [IE5]
Using document.write() to include current information in a web page
The document.write function can process more than simple lines of text, it can also read some information from the browser and echo it back into the web page. In order to do this, you need to know the official name of the source of information that you wish to use. One simple example is document.location.href, which stores the URL of the document containing the JavaScript. This can be useful if you have a web page and you wish to talk about its location, despite the fact that there may be many copies of it in different places.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> document.write(document.location.href); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
This will put the URL version of the file name into the web page. This could produce something like:
```
file:///U|/test.htm for a local web page or http://www.wlv.ac.uk/test.htm
```
for a page on the Internet.
Plain text can be combined with information in a JavaScript page by joining the two with a plus sign. Here is an example.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> document.write("I live at " + document.location.href + "."); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
Here is another example illustrating the ability to get information from the browser about itself, in particular its name and version number. This showcases JavaScript's ability to create pages that will not be the same in all browsers.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> document.write("This browser is " + navigator.appName); document.write(" version " + navigator.appVersion + "." ); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
This is the first program shown so far that has more than one line. JavaScript programs can have any number of commands. Each command should be on a separate line to aid the readability of the code. The lines are processed in order and so we can guarantee that the text produced by the second line will be after that produced by the fist one. The output of this will be all on one line. In a Netscape Navigator version 4.7 browser running in a Windows NT operating system it will produce the following.
This browser is Netscape version 4.7 [en] (WinNT; I).
Activity
Create a web page that includes its own location using the JavaScript document.write() function in conjunction with document.location.href.
Load the browser name and version example into your web browser to see what information it gives about itself.
4.5. Pop-up boxes with alert()
The function alert() causes a pop up box to appear and can be used to draw the attention of the user to some important information. The example that we are going to look at here does not really show the uses of an alert box. They are often used at the end of a longer JavaScript program when some information has been processed and feedback must be given to the user. An example of a good use for an alert box is in a program to check whether a user has correctly filled in a web form. If a mistake is identified then a warning can be given with a pop-up box without having to load a separate page for it.
The same combination of text and information can be put inside the brackets as can be used with the document.write() function. Here is an example of a complete web page containing some working code.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> alert("You have just loaded the bookings page!"); </SCRIPT> This is the bookings page. </BODY></HTML>
```
The above section of code produces the page containing the sentence "This is the bookings page." Before the page appears a box will pop up with the alert message.
The above example will produce a blank web page since the alert statement does not write to the browser window in the same way as document.write does.
Activity
Create a web page with a pop-up box that tells the user the name of the browser that they are using.
4.6. Variables
Like most programming languages, JavaScript allows you to use variables to store numbers and text in. A variable is a location in the computer's memory that stores some information for later use, often some text or a number. Each variable has a name used to identify it in the program. The names of these variables should be 'declared' with a var statement before they are used. Here are some examples of how the var statement can be used to declare some variables.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> var i; var CustomerName = "Fred Bloggs"; var StudentNumber = 34; document.write(CustomerName) document.write(StudentNumber) </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
As these examples show, when a variable is declared it can be assigned a value and this value can be a number or text. Variables do not have to be declared at the start of the program, they can also be declared the first time that they are used.
Numbers and text can be added together with the + sign. This adds numbers and concatenates strings of text. Here are some examples of this.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> var MyName = "Fred"; var YourName = "Jit"; var OurNames = MyName + " and " + YourName; document.write(OurNames) </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
At the end of this first example, the variable OurNames contains the string, "Fred and Jit". Here is another example with numbers.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> var x = 3; var y = 4; var z; z = x + y; document.write(z) </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
At the end of this second example, the variable z takes the value 7.
For arithmetic with numbers you can use the following table.
Round brackets can also be used in mathematical formulae. Here is another example.
```
<HTML><BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> var Height = 3; var Width = 4; var Length = 5; var Volume = Height * Width * Length; var SurfaceArea = 2 * (Height * Width + Height * Length + Width * Length); document.write("The volume of the box is " + Volume + "."); document.write("Its surface area is " + SurfaceArea + "."); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
At the end of this example, the variable Volume takes the value 3 × 4 × 5 = 60. This code will print into the browser window the following line.
The volume of the box is 60. Its surface area is 94.
```
Activity Create a web page that calculates the area of a rectangle using the formula Area = height × width Where the height is 10 and the width is 4. The answer should be displayed in a pop-
```
up box.
4.7. Summary
* JavaScript programs can be embedded in a web page using the <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> and </SCRIPT> tags.
* The document.write command can be used to write HTML into a web page when it is loaded into the browser.
*
The alert command causes a simple pop-up box to be displayed with a given message.
* Variables can be created and initialised with the var command. They can be used to help perform calculations.
Don't miss exercise 3 and 4 which introduce pop-up windows and the JavaScript back command!
4.8. Exercises
1. Describe the actions of the following JavaScript programs when embedded in the body of a HTML file and loaded into a browser.
```
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript>
```
```
document.write("Welcome to my page"); </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> alert("Welcome to my page"); </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> alert("You are viewing file: " + document.location.href); </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> var MyName = "Charmaine"; var YourName = "Sarah"; var Story = MyName + " and " + YourName+" went to the cinema"; document.write(Story) </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> var TreeHeight = 44; var TreeWidth = 3.5; var TreePrice = 44 * TreeHeight * TreeWidth; alert("The tree will cost " + TreePrice + " pounds."); </SCRIPT>
```
2. Produce HTML pages with embedded JavaScript to do the following tasks. Make sure that you load your pages in a browser to check them.
a) Display a page saying This is my page.
b) Produce a blank page with an alert box displaying the message This is a blank page.
c) Calculate the area of a rectangle of width 3 and length 4 and put it on the page as well as in an alert box with an appropriate message.
d) Calculate the average of the numbers 3, 6, 7 and 11 and put the answer in an alert box with an appropriate message.
3. This is an exercise experimenting with new commands. The JavaScript command for creating a new window without any toolbars is window.open("URL"). Use this command to create a page that automatically opens another window.
4. This is another exercise experimenting with a new command. One of the JavaScript commands for going back to the previous page is history.go.back(), but it is used in place of the URL in the A HREF= command, and must be preceded by JavaScript: in the HREF argument. Here is an example.
```
Go <A HREF="JavaScript:history.back()">Back</A>
```
Use it command to create a page with a link back to the previous page.
5. HTML Forms
5.1. Overview
In this section we are going to learn how to create forms to capture user data from web pages. These forms will be created using the raw HTML, in order to be able to edit the HTML later to include JavaScript programs to process the form data for spreadsheet type calculations.
5.2. Objectives
In this section you will learn the following.
* How to add a form to a web page.
* The types of elements that are allowed to be included in a web form.
* What can happen to data in a form when it has been completed.
5.3. Introduction
Most web pages do not interact with the user, who is expected to look at them before clicking on a link to move to another. But some pages need to take specific information from a user to be processed in some way. In response to this need, version two of HTML introduced a new set of HTML tags that provide a means of capturing information from the mouse and the keyboard. These are the form tags. The most common place where these are seen is on a search engine. When you access a search page you are presented with a rectangular white box to type your keywords into. On some search pages you may also be able to select a range of options at the same time, such as how many hits to return per page or which area of the web to search, and these might be implemented by checkboxes, drop-down lists or one of the other possible types of form field. Forms can be processed in the browser with JavaScript, but their contents can also be sent back to a web server for storing or processing using CGI. When a search engine form is filled in with keywords these will be sent back to the server, where a program will match them against the database and produce a web page of results.
Forms are not only used for search purposes, but can also be used for a wide range of applications. Many web sites include a user feedback form or a request for information form on one of the pages.
We are going to combine forms with JavaScript to perform spreadsheet-type calculations. In a spreadsheet there is a range of cells in which data or formulae can be entered. The spreadsheet program automatically applies the formulae to the data whenever it changes, displaying the results in some other cells. We will use the text boxes of HTML forms to perform the function of spreadsheet cells and JavaScript for formulae and for some of the spreadsheet functionality that is not inherent in a web browser, such as causing the formulae to be calculated when the value of a cell changes. In this section we are going to look at HTML Forms and then later we will use JavaScript to make them active.
There is a range of different types of element that can be placed on a HTML
form.
* Text Boxes
* Option buttons
* Large text boxes
* Check boxes
* Clickable buttons
* Selection lists
* Hidden text fields(!)
These can all be used by the person browsing the web page, except the hidden field, which will be discussed later. A form can be put anywhere in the boy of an HTML page. It must start with <FORM> and end with </FORM> but between these can go any HTML that you like as well as the tags for the various types of special form fields.
The syntax for a simple form is shown below
```
<FORM> Please enter your name here: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName"> </FORM>
```
When inserted into an HTML page this will produce something like the following when viewed in a browser.
```
Please enter your name here:
```
The user will then be able to type their name into the box.
We will look now at three of the types of form fields: the input box, the option buttons and the submit button, which are the main ones that we shall be using. The syntax of the others is very similar, however, so you should not find it difficult to learn these if you need to.
5.4. The input box
The tag <INPUT TYPE=TEXT> produces a rectangular box in which the user can enter text. This is the simplest form of the command but there are various properties of the box that you can specify in the tag. The most important are NAME, SIZE and VALUE. Here are some tags with attributes set.
```
<FORM> Please enter the following details about yourself.<BR> Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName" SIZE=30> Age: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourAge" SIZE=2 VALUE="18"> Occupation: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourOccupation" SIZE=40 VALUE="Student"> </FORM>
```
This will produce the following section of a web page.
Please enter the following details about yourself.
Name:
Age: 18 Occupation: Student
As you can see, the attributes are just listed after the INPUT TYPE=TEXT part and before the closing > of the tag. Some of the tags use quotes around them. In HTML these are strictly speaking only necessary if a value has a space or some other funny characters in.
* The NAME attribute names the actual field and is useful when a program needs to refer to the contents of the field.
* The SIZE attribute specifies the width, in characters, of the text box. In the example above the width is large for occupation and name but small for age.
* The VALUE attribute specifies the initial contents of the box. If this is omitted then the box will start off empty.
Activity
Modify the above example as follows.
(a) Change the default age to 25 and the default occupation to manager.
(b) Add an extra form field for nationality with a default value of Dutch.
5.5. Option buttons
The option buttons, known as radio buttons in HTML have a structure similar to that of text buttons but go in groups. Here is an example.
```
<FORM> Please select the option that best describes you.<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Occupation" Value="Student">Student<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Occupation" Value="Lecturer">Lecturer<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Occupation" Value="Other">Some other occupation<BR> </FORM>
```
This will appear in a browser something like this:
Please select the option that best describes you.
Student
Lecturer
Some other occupation
As you can see, option buttons come in groups. All members of the group must have the same name. Another difference between the option buttons and text fields is that you must give a value field, even though it does not appear when the page is viewed in a browser. It is good practise to put a break tag at the end of each option so that the options are all aligned together.
You can have more than one set of option buttons in a form so long as you give each group each a different NAME attribute. The optional attribute for option buttons is CHECKED. If you include this in one of the option buttons then it will start off being selected. The following option buttons could be added to the same form as the one above.
```
<INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="MaritalStatus" Value="Married">Married<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="MaritalStatus" Value="Single" CHECKED>Single<BR> </FORM>
```
These buttons should look something like the following when displayed in a web browser.
Activity
Create a new set of option buttons to look like the following. Remember to use the same name for each one.
5.6. The submit button
This is the button that will get your form processed when you click on it. The simplest syntax for a submit button is: <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT> but you can also specify a name and a value for it as in the following example.
```
<FORM> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Click here" NAME="SubmitOrder"> </FORM>
```
This will produce the following clickable button.
Click here
The value attribute is written on the button itself, so if it were changed to "Process Order Now" then this would be displayed on the button.
```
Activity Create a button with the name "Book" and caption "Place Booking Now".
```
5.7. Whole forms
Forms can have any combination of valid form fields inside them. If the form is to be used to send its contents to a program on a server for processing via the CGI mechanism that search engines use then it will also have the attribute ACTION in the tag together with the web address of the program to do the processing. Later we shall include a program in the page itself to process the form using JavaScript. This could
be done with an onSubmit call in the submit button tag. Forms can also have NAME attributes.
```
<FORM NAME="SubmitOrder" ACTION="http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/ProcessOrder.cg i">
```
Here is an example of a form with most of the features that we have looked at so far.
```
<FORM NAME="PersonalDetails"> Please enter the following details about yourself.<BR> Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName" SIZE=30> Age: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourAge" SIZE=2 VALUE="18"> <P> Please select the option that best describes your occupation.<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Occupation" Value="Student">Student<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Occupation" Value="Lecturer">Lecturer<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Occupation" Value="Other">Some other occupation <P> Please state your marital status.<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="MaritalStatus" Value="Married" CHECKED>Married<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="MaritalStatus" Value="Single"> Single <P> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Send Details" NAME="SubmitInfo"> </FORM>
```
This will produce the following form.
Please enter the following details about yourself.
Name:
Age: 18
Please select the option that best describes you.
Student
Lecturer
Some other occupation
Please state your marital status.
Married
Single
Send Details
5.8. What happens to the data submitted?
The data in a submitted form is normally processed by a program sitting outside the web page, on a web server. This program is often written in a complex programming language such as Perl or C. It is beyond the scope of this course to teach how to program something suitable. This is a major problem, since it means that the visitor would need to print out a form and post it in a letterbox, rather than submitting it. To get round this problem, many Internet Service Providers offer the service of a program that will take the data submitted in a form and send it to a given email address. If you are putting pages on the internet then you would need to talk to your service provider about this. Until then, you can use the program provided here to do the same job. This program is located at
```
http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/cgi/sendmail.cgi
```
This should be entered as the ACTION of the FORM command. You should also include the extra "hidden" form field element
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=mailto Value="myemail@myhost"> immediately after the form tag, where myemail@myhost is replaced by your email address. Here is an example of a working form set up as described.
```
<FORM ACTION="http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/cgi/sendmail.cg i" METHOD=POST> <INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME=mailto firstname.lastname@example.org> <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME=sample VALUE="example of a sample field"> <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME=test VALUE="Another example"> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Sumbit this form"> </FORM>
```
Activity
Try out the above form, but use your own email address and check your mail to see the submitted data. When you have got this working, try using the same method to modify a form that you have created before so that it will be emailed to you.
5.9. Summary
* Forms in a web page start with the <FORM> tag, end with the </FORM> tag and can have any number of form fields in between.
* Web forms can include text fields and option buttons as well as other types of field.
* A submit button is often used to submit the data, which may be processed by JavaScript in the browser or sent to the server for processing.
5.10. Exercises
Note
Use
<FORM METHOD=GET ACTION="http://www.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/cgi-c/query.cgi"> to see your form submitted to a program for processing via the CGI method, or use the email example above but using your own email address
2. Draw the forms that will be produced by the following HTML. Check your answer by creating pages and loading them into a browser.
```
<FORM NAME="EXERCISE_1A"> Enter your student ID number: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="ID"> </FORM> <FORM NAME="EXERCISE_1B"> Type of Work: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="WorkType" VALUE="Part time" SIZE=9> </FORM> <FORM NAME="EXERCISE_1C"> Choose a colour for your room to be painted.<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Colour" Value="Blue">Morning blue<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Colour" Value="Red">Tropical sunset<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Colour" Value="Green">Royal Azure<BR> </FORM> <FORM NAME="EXERCISE_1D"> Would you like a wake-up call for breakfast at 6.30am?<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="WakeUpCall" Value="Yes">Yes, please<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="WakeUpCall" Value="No" CHECKED>No, thank you<BR> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Register" NAME="SubmitRegistration"> </FORM> <FORM NAME="EXERCISE_1E"> Enter your name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="Name" SIZE=35><BR> Choose your breakfast menu:<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Breakfast" Value="FullEnglish" CHECKED>Full English<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Breakfast" Value="Continental">Continental<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="Breakfast" Value="None">None <P> Choose your pack lunch:<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="PackLunch" Value="Meat" CHECKED>Lamb or beef sandwiches<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="PackLunch" Value="Vegetarian">Egg mayonnaise and salad<BR> <INPUT TYPE=RADIO NAME="PackLunch" Value="None">None <P> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Book Food" NAME="Food"> </FORM>
```
2.
Produce HTML for forms to do the following tasks.
(a) Get the name of a customer and their address and credit card number.
(b) Get the name of a client and ask where they come from, giving the choices Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Other West Midlands and Other UK.
(c) Get the age of a car buyer and allow them to choose a primary colour for the car exterior and choose black, grey or brown for the interior. Include a submit button which should say, "Make me this car!" on it.
6. Checking the Data in Form Fields
6.1. Overview
In this section we are going to learn how to access the contents of form fields with JavaScript programs.
6.2. Objectives
In this section you will learn the following.
* How to access the contents of form fields.
* How to use the if statement to perform simple checks on the data entered in form fields.
* How to intercept the data from a form field when it has been submitted.
* How to align a set of form fields with an invisible table.
6.3. Introduction
JavaScript is a natural choice as a programming language to do some housekeeping jobs on a form. One common use is to verify the fields in a form when it is submitted and to cancel its submission if a key form is missing or incorrect. For example on a form to be filled in to request information a small JavaScript program could check that the form field for email address was not blank. JavaScript could also be used to perform calculations when a customer is ordering stock. A program could work out the total bill when the customer fills in form fields specifying how many of each stock item they are ordering.
6.4. Accessing form fields
In JavaScript you can access the current values of any of the form fields as long as you know the correct name. The names are a bit awkward but generally follow the convention document.form_name.field_name.value
where form_name is the name you gave the form and field_name is the name you gave a field in the form. A form or a form field can be given a name by including NAME= with a name inside the tag. For example the following are valid tags.
```
<FORM NAME="Personal Details"> <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="First Name" SIZE=12>
```
Here is an example of a program that accesses the value of a form field.
```
<HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME="Age"> Please enter the following details about yourself.<BR> Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName" SIZE=30> Age: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourAge" SIZE=2 VALUE="18"> </FORM> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> alert("Enter age if not " + document.Age.YourAge.value); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
When loaded, this will produce a pop-up box saying, "Enter age if not 18". The form has been named Age and one of the form fields has been named YourAge and given the value 18 in the input tag and so the value of document.Age.YourAge.value is 18. Remember that all of the JavaScript is case sensitive although HTML is not so if you type in a different case for any of the letters in document.Age.YourAge.value then you will get an error in your program.
The script has to go below the form rather than in the head of the document in this case. If it is ahead of the form then the alert box will be produced before the form has been processed and so the form name will not be recognised and an error will be generated.
Here is another example of referencing a form value.
```
<HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME="Sport"> Please answer the following questions.<BR> What is your name? <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName" SIZE=30> <BR> What is your favourite sport? <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="favourite" SIZE=20 VALUE="football"> </FORM> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> document.write("Most people's favourite sport is " + document.Sport.favourite.value); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML>
```
This program will add the extra line "Most people's favourite sport is football" at the end of the document. The name of the form is Sport and the name of the favourite input field is favourite and so the reference for its value is document.Sport.favourite.value.
Tip
When you edit pages which use this method of accessing form field values, the browser can 'play up' and make mistakes, particularly if you repeatedly load modifications of your program. It also sometimes makes mistakes when the browser is first loaded. If you get this type of problem, close the browser down, then start it up again and reload the page.
6.5. Form processing with onSubmit
The onSubmit function can start a JavaScript function when the submit button is pressed. There are several ways of doing this but only the simplest will be covered here. This way is to include onSubmit=' inside the start FORM tag, then write the program and include another quote before the end > of the form tag.
```
<FORM onSubmit=' …program goes here… '>
```
The program assigned to the onSubmit event will be processed once the submit button is pressed. Here is an example of a complete page with a program triggered by clicking on the submit button of a form.
```
<HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME=Age onSubmit=' alert("Name: " + document.Age.YourName.value); alert("Age: " + document.Age.YourAge.value); return false; '> Please enter the following details about yourself.<BR> Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName" SIZE=30 VALUE="Joe Shmo"> Age: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourAge" SIZE=2 VALUE="18"> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="process form"> </FORM> </BODY></HTML>
```
The above program generates a form with default values Joe Shmo and 18. When the submit button is pressed, pop-up boxes appear showing the name and age values currently in the form boxes.
What is happening here is that the onSubmit command is activated when the submit button is pressed and this calls the program in the single quotes to be processed. The program is then processed as normal before the form is submitted. The program produces two alert boxes so these will both have to be displayed before submitting the form. The line saying return false; on the last line of the onSubmit section actually stops the page from reloading after the submit button has been pressed. The program will still work if it is left out.
The syntax is complicated here but you can copy the example above and make any necessary alterations without having to fully understand it first time. In order to perform any really useful task with the onSubmit event programs you really need to be able to test the values of the fields in the form. For this you will need to use an if statement so it is covered briefly below with some examples of using it on forms.
Activity
Create a web form that asks for a person's name and then when they click on the submit button responds with the message "Thank you [name] for filling in the form."
6.6. Using the if statement
Sometimes your program needs to do one thing or another based on the value a customer has entered. The if statement is provided for this eventuality. The layout of the if statement is:
```
if (condition){ …Statements to execute if the condition is true… } else { …Statements to execute if the condition is false… }
```
When the program is executed, the condition inside the round brackets is evaluated. If that condition is true then the first set of statements is executed. If the condition is false then the second set of statements is executed instead. Here is a simple example.
```
var x=3; if (x > 2) { alert("The value of x is greater than 2."); } else { alert("The value of x is not greater than 2."); }
```
The result of this program will be an alert box saying that the value of x is greater than 2. When the program is executed, the variable x will be created first and assigned the value 3. Then on the second line of the program the condition in the if statement will be checked. Since the value of x is greater than 2, the condition x>2 is true and so the first bracketed set of statements will be executed rather than the second, so the correct alert box will be shown. If the value of x were initialised as 1 then the other alert box message would be shown. Can you see why?
Logical conditions
The logical condition in the if statement can be constructed in a variety of ways. The most common are to check whether a number or a string is equal to another or not. The following table can be used to find the appropriate symbol to use for logic conditions.
Notice that the equality check sign is a double equals sign! The single equals sign is the assignment equals. Here is an example to illustrate that point.
The statement x = 3 would assign the value 3 to the variable x but the statement x = = 3 would not change the value of x, but would be true if x was 3 and false if it wasn't.
Here are some more examples
```
if (x != 4) { alert("The value of x is not 4!"); } else { alert("x is 4."); } if (x >= 3) { document.write("x is at least 3."); } else { document.write("x is less than 3."); }
```
```
if (name == "") { alert("You have not entered your name!"); } else { alert("Your name is: " + name); }
```
The last example illustrates that the comparisons can be performed on strings as well as numbers.
There does not have to be an "else" part of an if statement, this can be omitted as in the following example.
```
if (name == "") { alert("You have not entered your name!"); }
```
Examples
Here is an example of combining 'if' statements with the onSubmit event.
```
<HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME=Age onSubmit=' alert("Name: " + document.Age.YourName.value); if(document.Age.YourAge.value < 18){ alert("You are under age!"); } else { alert("Your age is: " + document.Age.YourAge.value); } return false; '> Please enter the following details about yourself.<BR> Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName" SIZE=30 VALUE="Joe Shmo"> Age: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourAge" SIZE=2 VALUE="18"> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="process form"> </FORM> </BODY></HTML>
```
This example works exactly like the previous example except that if the age entered is below 18 the message will be "You are under age!"
Activity
Create a web form that asks for a person's height in centimetres and then when they click on the submit button responds with the message, "I'm sorry, you are too tall to book a ride", if their height is above 150cm.
6.7. Forms in Tables
HTML has the ability to tabulate information, placing it into appropriately aligned tables. This feature was not present in the earliest versions of HTML, so the oldest browsers will not support it. Tables are not only used for tables of figures but are commonly used simply to align the elements of a web page. It is possible to switch off
the borders of the table, making it invisible. This should always be done if tables are used for alignment purposes.
Tables are very useful to align form fields and also to create a spreadsheet effect. We shall cover the basic tags for tables here, but not the advanced options.
A table starts, unsurprisingly, with the <TABLE> tag and ends with the </TABLE> tag. If you want your table to have invisible borders then the initial tag must have the option BORDER = 0, otherwise BORDER = 1 gives a single pixel width border. In a table you must specify each row and each cell, but not the columns, which are implicit.
* Each row must start with <TR> and end with </TR>
* Each cell must be in a row and start with <TD> and end with </TD>
Here are some examples to illustrate this. First is a table with two cells in two rows.
This will appear as follows.
```
Cell 1 Cell 2
```
The following example has two rows of cells.
This will appear as follows.
6.8. Producing an attractive fill-in form
Many web sites include pages that request basic information from the user with a form containing multiple fields. Aligning such a form can be awkward as it will look best if the instructions and boxes are aligned with each other and the boxes are aligned with each other. This can be achieved with tables better than with other HTML tags. We will see here how to align a set of form fields attractively in the centre of the screen.
Centring a table
In order to cause a table to be centred on the screen, enclose it in center tags as follows.
This will produce a centred table.
Cell 1
Cell 2
Adding form fields to a table
Form fields can be added to a table in the same way as anywhere else in the body of a HTML document. The start and end tag of the form, <FORM> and </FORM> can be placed outside the form itself if necessary, and the fields spread out throughout the table. Here is an example of a table with a simple form field.
This will produce the following simple form in a table.
If there is more than one field to fill in then the instructions will look best when they are aligned to the middle of the table. This can be achieved by instructing the cells containing them to align them to the right hand side of the cell. This can be achieved by using the ALIGN=RIGHT option in the TD cell tag, in other words changing <TD> to <TD ALIGN=RIGHT> in the appropriate cells. Here is an example.
```
HTML Comment <FORM> Start of the form <TABLE BORDER=1> Start of table with a 1 pixel width border <TR> Start of (first) row <TD ALIGN=RIGHT> Start of (first) cell Enter your name here </TD> End of (first) cell <TD> Start of (second) cell <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME=UserName> </TD> End of (second) cell </TR> End of (first) row <TR> Start of (first) row <TD ALIGN=RIGHT> Start of (first) cell Enter your home address here </TD> End of (first) cell <TD> Start of (second) cell <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME=Address SIZE=30> </TD> End of (second) cell </TR> End of (first) row </TABLE> End of table </FORM> End of the form
```
This form will now be aligned correctly.
Completing the form design
To finish off the design of a form, the borders of the table should be switched off by changing <TABLE BORDER=1> to <TABLE BORDER = 0> and the whole table should be centred as before. Here is the above example modified in this way.
Here is the finished form, centred on the screen.
Activity
Add a third row to the above table for a textbox with instructions: "Enter your job title here".
6.9. Summary
* The contents of form fields can be accessed using the document.form_name.field_name.value structure.
* The if statement can be used to perform simple checks on the data entered in form fields.
* The onSubmit keyword can be used in a submit button tag to process the data in the form with a JavaScript program before it is submitted.
* Returning false from an onSubmit section of code stops the data being submitted to the server.
* Tables can be used to align forms and can have their borders switched off to help the appearance of the page.
6.10. Exercises
3. Describe the actions of the following JavaScript programs when embedded in the body of a HTML file and loaded into a browser.
```
<HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME="Name"> Please enter your name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName" VALUE="Bill Gates" SIZE=30> </FORM> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> alert("Enter name if not " + document.Name.YourName.value); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML> <HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME="Phone"> Please enter the following details about yourself.<BR> Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourName" SIZE=30> Phone: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="YourNumber" SIZE=12 VALUE="01902321000"> </FORM> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> alert("Enter phone number if not " + document.Phone.YourNumber.value); </SCRIPT> </BODY></HTML> <HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME=Cost onSubmit=' var Price; Price = 44 * document.Cost.Height.value * document.Cost.Width.value; alert("The price of that tree is £" + Price); '> Please enter the following details about the tree that you would like to buy.<BR> Height: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="Height" SIZE=4 VALUE=100> Trunk Width: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="Width" SIZE=2 VALUE=4> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Calculate Price"> </FORM> </BODY></HTML> <HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME=TestCost onSubmit='
```
```
var Price; Price = 44 * document.TestCost.Height.value * document.TestCost.Width.value; if (Price > 100){ alert("The tree is too expensive for you!"); }else{ alert("The price of that tree is £" + Price); } return false; '> Please enter the following details about the tree that you would like to buy. You have £100 to spend.<BR> Height: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="Height" SIZE=4 VALUE=100> Trunk Width: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="Width" SIZE=2 VALUE=4> <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Calculate Price"> </FORM> </BODY></HTML>
```
4. In the HTML page below, what is the correct JavaScript name for the name field and what is the correct name for the colour field?
5. Assume that the variables a, b and c have been declared and have numerical values. Write "if" statements to do the following tasks.
a) Show an alert box saying that a is bigger than b if it is, otherwise an alert box saying that it isn't.
b) Write "You have enough money" to the browser if a + b >= c, otherwise write, "You do not have enough money".
4. Produce HTML for forms to perform the following tasks.
a) A form for a person to enter their name, email address and employer, with a default employer of Wolverhampton University. Include an alert box to tell them to fill in employer if it is not Wolverhampton University by referencing the value of the employer form field in the same way as in the name and age example.
b) Get the name of a customer and their address and credit card number and give an alert box message if their credit card number is not entered when they press the submit button.
```
<HTML><BODY> <FORM NAME="Colours"> Please fill in this form.<BR> Name: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="MyName" SIZE=30> Favourite colour: <INPUT TYPE=TEXT NAME="Colour"> </FORM> </BODY></HTML>
```
5. Create a web page that contains a table that will look as follows. You will need to use a table with invisible borders to get the correct page layout with neatly aligned boxes.
Name
Age
Married ○ Yes
- No
Submit form
Add some JavaScript to check that the user has filled in their name and age when they submit the form.
7. Web Applications
7.1. Overview
In this section we are going to learn how to construct and use a number of common spreadsheet-type applications in a web page. These will include calculating a bill for an online shop and calculating wages for employees. No new JavaScript features will be introduced, but most of the ones that we have already covered will be reinforced.
7.2. Objectives
In this section you will learn the following.
* How to automatically calculate and complete a purchases form in a web page.
* How to use the image rollover effect.
7.3. Calculating total order values
Many web pages contain an online order form. These are easy to create using a table and text boxes for customers to fill in the number of items required. Here is a typical form.
We are going to use some of the JavaScript that we have learned in order to get all of the totals filled in. This can be achieved with some simple arithmetic using the names of the boxes. In the above example the input boxes are called GreekNumber, GreekTotal, RomanNumber, RomanTotal, EgyptianNumber, EgyptianTotal and Total. The form is called Vases and so the statement to fill in the total in the second row is as follows.
document.Vases.GreekNumber;
This takes whatever number the user has entered into the third column of the table, document.Vases.GreekNumber, multiplies it by 4.56 and then puts the answer in the total cell, document.Vases.GreekTotal. This code should go in the onSubmit event of the form. To complete the total box in the bottom row of the table, the column must be added up. The JavaScript for this should be straightforward, but is not. The reason is that the addition operator '+' is the same as the string concatenation operator, and so in some browsers the numbers will not be added up, but treated as strings and concatenated instead. To get round this, use the parseFloat function to convert the value into a number. This will force the JavaScript interpreter to interpret their values as numbers. Here is the code.
```
<FORM NAME=Vases onSubmit=' document.Vases.GreekTotal.value = 4.56 * document.Vases.GreekNumber.value; document.Vases.RomanTotal.value = 8.15 * document.Vases.RomanNumber.value; document.Vases.EgyptianTotal.value = 9.10 * document.Vases.EgyptianNumber.value; document.Vases.Total.value = parseFloat(document.Vases.GreekTotal.value) + parseFloat(document.Vases.RomanTotal.value) + parseFloat(document.Vases.EgyptianTotal.value); return false; '>
```
Here is the code in action, with the submit button having just been pressed.
Notice that the Roman and Egyptian vase totals are annoyingly slightly incorrect. This is because the calculations have been executed in binary arithmetic, which rounds differently from decimal arithmetic. To avoid this problem, the answer can be multiplied by 100, rounded to a whole number and then divided by 100 again. The function that rounds to the nearest whole number is Math.round.
```
document.Vases.GreekTotal.value = Math.round(4.65 * document.Vases.GreekNumber.value * 100) / 100;
```
For more complicated calculations, Math.round can be used separately from the main part by storing the answer in a variable and then rounding the value in the variable in the following statement, as illustrated below.
```
var Total = parseFloat(document.Vases.GreekTotal.value) + parseFloat(document.Vases.RomanTotal.value) + parseFloat(document.Vases.EgyptianTotal.value); document.Vases.Total.value = Math.round(Total * 100) / 100;
```
Activity
Create the form above and add the rounding function to all four of the calculations. Extra activity
If you are happy with using stylesheets and classes, create a stylesheet for your form with a special class for the end column of the table and colour its background yellow to indicate that the user should not fill it in.
Adding Local Taxes to the Total
Some types of companies normally quote prices without local taxes and only add them to the bill total. In the UK the local tax is Value Added Tax (VAT) and in the USA there are different sales taxes for each state. Other countries will have their own individual tax laws, but the tax to be applied is the one from the selling country, so this is not a problem.
If taxes are not included already in the prices then it is not difficult to add them to the total. An extra line should be added to the table to show the tax before it is added to the total in order to help the customer to understand where the calculation has come from. Taxes are normally expressed as a percentage of the order value, for example 4%, 5% or 17.5%. In order to apply these to the total, multiply the total by the percentage and then divide the answer by 100. For VAT at 17.5% this calculation is as follows.
In the above example, we put the total directly into a cell, but this time we do not want to display the total, just the VAT, so we will modify the code to save the total as a variable and then work out the tax from it.
```
var Tax = document.Vases.Total.value * 17.5 / 100; document.Vases.Tax.value = Math.round(Tax * 100) / 100;
```
The first line calculates the tax on the total by multiplying it by the percentage rate and dividing the answer by 100, storing the answer in a variable named 'Tax'. The next line uses the Math.round trick that we have used once before to ensure that the answer is displayed correctly, storing the answer in a form field named document.Vases.Tax.value. Of course, in order for this to work, there must be a form field with the correct name. We must therefore add two rows to the table, one for the tax and a final row to add the subtotal and the tax. Here is the complete section of code for the form.
```
<FORM NAME=Vases onSubmit=' // Calculate and round the total for Greek vases. document.Vases.GreekTotal.value = Math.round(4.65 * document.Vases.GreekNumber.value * 100) / 100; // Calculate and round the total for Roman vases. document.Vases.RomanTotal.value = Math.round(8.15 * document.Vases.RomanNumber.value * 100) / 100; // Calculate and round the total for Egyptian vases. document.Vases.EgyptianTotal.value = Math.round(9.10 * document.Vases.EgyptianNumber.value * 100) / 100; // Add and round the subtotal for all vases. var Subtotal = parseFloat(document.Vases.GreekTotal.value) + parseFloat(document.Vases.RomanTotal.value) + parseFloat(document.Vases.EgyptianTotal.value); document.Vases.Subtotal.value = Math.round(Subtotal * 100) / 100; // Calculate and round the Tax on the Subtotal. var Tax = document.Vases.Subtotal.value * 17.5 / 100; document.Vases.Tax.value = Math.round(Tax * 100) / 100; // Calculate and round the overall Total. var Total = parseFloat(document.Vases.Subtotal.value) + parseFloat(document.Vases.Tax.value); document.Vases.Total.value = Math.round(Total * 100) / 100; // Stop the form from being submitted. return false;
```
'>
```
Activity Modify the example above to add state tax at 3.4% (instead of VAT).
```
Postage and Packing
In addition to tax, a product to be sent through the post often incurs an additional charge to cover the expenses related to this transaction. The cost is often known as 'Postage and Packing' or 'Shipping and Handling'. These charges are more complicated to calcualate than tax because they are not normally a simple percentage, but carry some extra conditions, such as a minimum and a maximum. Some companies may also not charge for orders over a certain amount.
In order to deal with the various contingencies that arise in these calculations, a combination of arithmetic statements and 'if' statements will be needed. We shall go through an example to illustrate this. The code that we are going to generate is going to implement the following charge rate.
Orders will be charged at 5% of the total order value, with a minimum charge of £10, a maximum charge of £100. Orders with a total value of over £10,000 will be post-free.
The calculation for 5% of the total value is a percentage calculation, similar to that for tax above. The answer will be stored in a variable, Postage, because it will need further processing before being released to the customer by being displayed in a form field.
```
// Calculate and round the basic Postage and Packing rate. var Postage = document.Vases.Total.value * 5 / 100; Postage = Math.round(Postage * 100) / 100;
```
A statement is now needed that will increase this to £10 if it is less than £10. This is a simple use of the 'if' statement.
```
// Ensure that the Postage is not below the minimum. if (Postage < 10) { Postage = 10; }
```
A statement is now needed that will cap the postage at £100 if it is more than £100. This is another simple use of the 'if' statement.
```
// Ensure that the Postage is not above the maximum. if (Postage > 100) { Postage = 100; }
```
A statement is now needed that will set the postage to zero if the total order comes to more than £10,000.
```
// Set Postage to £0 to if the order value is over £10,000. if (document.Vases.Total.value > 10000) { Postage = 0; }
```
The result of all these calculations can now be added to the form, using another two rows at the bottom of the table to accommodate the answers.
```
// Show the Postage in a table cell. document.Vases.Postage.value = Postage // Create a new overall total including the Postage. var OverallTotal = parseFloat(document.Vases.Postage.value) + parseFloat(document.Vases.Total.value; document.Vases.OverallTotal.value = Math.round(OverallTotal * 100) / 100;
```
For the above code to work, there must be two new input boxes, called OverallTotal and Postage, in two new rows at the bottom of the table.
Activity
Write the JavaScript to change the above postage and packing calculation to the one described below. Make sure that you test your program by comparing it with a range of values that you have calculated by hand.
The postage and packing charge is 10% of the order value, with a minimum charge of £5, and a maximum charge of £40.
7.4. The Image Rollover
The image rollover is a special effect on a web page when one image is changed for another when the mouse is over it. Often the two images are very similar but the second one is enhanced or raised in some way in order to indicate that the spot is clickable. It is not difficult to write JavaScript to swap images over, in fact it can be done with one line of code, but three separate things are needed.
* Give the image a name.
* Use the onMouseOver event
* Use the .src property of the image.
The image to be changed should be referenced in the HTML in the normal way, using the <IMG SRC= …> syntax, but an extra argument for a name of the image must be included. This is so that it can be referenced by JavaScript statements. The actual statement to be used is as follows.
```
document.image_name.src = "new_image.gif"
```
Here image_name is the HTML name of the old image but new_image.gif is the file name of the new image. In order to ensure that the image changing occurs only when the mouse is in the right place, it must go inside the image tag and must be labelled
with onMouseOver. This will ensure that it is triggered at the right time. Here is how it all fits together.
```
<HTML> <BODY> <A HREF="http://www.wlv.ac.uk", onMouseOver='document.flashingImage.src="IMAGE2.GIF"'> <IMG NAME=flashingImage SRC="IMAGE1.GIF" BORDER=0></A> </BODY> </HTML>
```
Notice that two different types of quotes are used above, double quotes and single quotes. In JavaScript, whenever quotes are needed in the program when the program itself is in quotes, a different kind of quotes should be used or an error message will be generated.
An extra section of code is now needed to change the image back to its original version. This is very similar to the first one but must be labelled onMouseOut in order to be triggered by the mouse no longer being over the image. Here is the code.
```
<HTML> <BODY> <A HREF="http://www.wlv.ac.uk", onMouseOver='document.flashingImage.src="IMAGE2.GIF"', onMouseOut='document.flashingImage.src="IMAGE1.GIF"'> <IMG NAME=flashingImage SRC="IMAGE1.GIF" BORDER=0></A> </BODY> </HTML>
```
Tip – Use a painting program to lighten the colours on one image to produce a new version that seems to be lit up. This will create a good effect when the images are swapped.
This technique works very well when it is used in the right browser and with the images stored on the computer's hard drive, but it needs some altering before it is used on the Internet. There are two problems: the code will cause an error in Internet Explorer 3 and some other browsers, and the image swap will be slow when the new file has to be downloaded from the Internet. The first problem does not have a perfect solution because some old browsers used an early version of JavaScript that did not support image swapping. As a damage limitation exercise, however, the program needs to be designed so that it does not cause an error when it does not work. This is easy to achieve because the JavaScript 'object' that enables the image swapping is called document.images and so this can be used in an if statement to make execution of the image swap conditional on it being possible, as follows.
```
<HTML> <BODY> <A HREF="http://www.wlv.ac.uk", onMouseOver=' if (document.images) {
```
```
/*The browser supports images */ document.flashingImage.src="IMAGE2.GIF" }', onMouseOut=' if (document.images) { /*The browser supports images */ document.flashingImage.src="IMAGE1.GIF" }' > <IMG NAME=flashingImage SRC="IMAGE1.GIF" BORDER=0></A> </BODY> </HTML>
```
In the above code the image swap statements are only executed if the object document.images exists, otherwise nothing happens.
It is more difficult to get round the problem of an image needing to be downloaded first before it can be used to replace another one. In order to do this, an extra section of JavaScript code must be placed in the head of the web page. This code must create variables to store the images and then download them. This ensures that when they are called for, the images have already been downloaded. Here is the code.
```
<HTML> <HEAD> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript> <!-- COMMENTING OUT FOR OLD BROWSERS var FirstImage = new Image(12,44); FirstImage.src = "IMAGE1.GIF"; var SecondImage = new Image(12,44); SecondImage.src = "IMAGE2.GIF"; <!-- COMMENTING OUT FOR OLD BROWSERS --> </SCRIPT> </HEAD> <BODY> <A HREF="http://www.wlv.ac.uk", onMouseOver=' if (document.images) { /*The browser supports images */ document.flashingImage.src= SecondImage.src }', onMouseOut=' if (document.images) { /*The browser supports images */ document.flashingImage.src= FirstImage.src }' > <IMG NAME=flashingImage SRC="IMAGE1.GIF" BORDER=0></A> </BODY> </HTML>
```
The code works by creating a variable in which to store the image and then allocating an image to the variable. The variable is of a new type: an image object. When it is declared the new keyword is needed because it is an object variable, and the dimensions of the image (height and width in pixels) need to be specified so that the browser can allocate it the correct amount of storage space. When the src is set on an image variable the browser will download the image and store it. When the image is needed it will then be almost instantly available. You might not be able to tell the difference between the speed of this example and the previous one if the images are on the computer that you are using, but it will make a difference when they are published on the Internet.
Tip – To find the dimensions of an image in a web page, view the information available about the page in the browser and select the image. The information given should include its dimensions in pixels.
1. In order to create an image rollover effect the following steps need to be taken: -
2. Obtain two images with the same dimensions that you want to swap over.
3. Find out the width and height of the images. Your image program should tell you this.
4. In the Head of the document include JavaScript to load both versions of each image.
5. In the body of the document include code to swap the images, labelled with onMouseOver and onMouseOut.
6. Protect all references to changed images with if (document images) {} conditional statements.
7.5. Summary
* Totals for purchases in a web page can be automatically tallied with some simple JavaScript statements. Additional code can be used to add postage and packing costs and VAT.
* A short section of code is all that is needed to perform an image rollover, but extra code is needed to make it smooth and error-free.
7.6. Exercises
6. Create an automatically completed form to allow orders for the following stock offered by Cynthia's Garden Supplies.
7. Enhance the example above by including a delivery charge of £5 for orders of value up to £20 but free for orders over £20.
8. Create an image rollover in a web page where the image is a picture of a house that lights up when the mouse is over it.
9. Add some image rollover effects to your home page. Consider creating a 'navigation bar' that you can copy wholesale from one page to another.
Elephant fertiliser
£4.50 a bag
Horse manure
£2.10 a bag
Hay
£1.15 a bag
8. Troubleshooting
This section is simply a list of suggestions to try if your programs do not work.
The program does not work at all.
* Check the cAsE of everything that you type. JavaScript is case sensitive and so on accidental wrong case can cause either a wrong answer to be calculated or the whole program to crash. A likely culprit is the word 'var'. Typing this as 'Var' may stop the entire program from executing. Check carefully that all JavaScript words are the correct case. In particular, check the following: var; if; for; document; Math.round; value; function; return; write.
* Check that you have saved the page in the editor after you have last changed it and then reloaded the page in the browser after the last save in the editor.
* In Netscape, a description of any errors can be found after loading the page by typing JavaScript: in the location bar.
I can't see my JavaScript when I use 'View Source'
If you have used document.write then the browser may choose to show you the result of these statements rather than the statements themselves. You will need to load the original file into an editor such as Notepad in order to see the HTML.
What is <BASE HREF=...> doing in the source of my web page?
If you have used document.write then the browser may choose to show you the result of these statements rather than the statements themselves. It may additionally put the BASE tag at the start of the document to remind itself where the document came from.
My form/half my web page has gone!
Check that you have used a <FORM> tag at the start of the form and that any quotes anywhere in the page matching, in other words that you have not forgotten the second set of quotes anywhere. If you view source in Netscape it sometimes flashes the section of text where an error has been noticed - this can be a great help.
I am using stylesheets, but my styles overflow onto the next elements
Check that you have used an end of section tag for all the elements to which you have supplied a style. For example, it normally does not matter if you do not end a paragraph with </P> but when you are using stylesheets it can make a difference.
When I click on the submit button, all my fields go blank!
This is normal. It can be cancelled by using the onSubmit event (explained in this course) and including the following line in it. This cancels the submission of the form and stops the page being reloaded.
return false;
What is NaN doing in my form fields?
NaN stands for 'Not a Number' and means that a JavaScript program has attempted to do a numerical calculation on some user input that is not a number. This might happen, for example, if the user enters £1.20 instead of 1.20 because the £ may cause JavaScript to ignore the following number. | <urn:uuid:1a3de54b-3c52-4e64-9658-52936e7aecff> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/papers/WebOrderFormsWithJavaScript.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:04:15Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00526.warc.gz | 536,495,869 | 21,855 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.969479 | eng_Latn | 0.998977 | [
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
428,
582,
695,
3637,
6990,
7617,
10072,
12294,
13514,
14401,
15919,
16925,
19627,
22001,
23103,
25321,
27229,
29268,
31216,
31796,
34384,
36719,
38845,
40583,
42240,
43799,
45544,
48316,
50056,
52222,
53646,
54909,
57445,
58907,
59333,
61415,
63603,
65876,
67678,
69366,
70293,
71306,
71774,
72693,
73411,
74624,
76380,
76710,
77912,
79268,
81683,
83568,
85612,
87782,
89993,
91435,
93899,
96675
] | [
2.796875,
1.703125
] | 3 | 0 |
Mission to Mars
Kristen Twombly
December 15, 2016 · Solar System Exploration December 15, 2016 · Solar System Exploration December 15, 2016 · Solar System Exploration
Kristen Twombly
Twombly K. Mission to Mars: Kristen Twombly. The Galactic Inquirer. 2016 Dec 15 [last modified: 2018 May 24]. Edition 1.
Twombly K. Mission to Mars: Kristen Twombly. The Galactic Inquirer. 2016 Dec 15 [last modified: 2018 May 24]. Edition 1.
Twombly K. Mission to Mars: Kristen Twombly. The Galactic Inquirer. 2016 Dec 15 [last modified: 2018 May 24]. Edition 1.
Abstract
Mars represents the first big stepping stone for humanity, as we voyage past the Earth-Moon system into the universe. Human settlement on Mars will aid in our understanding the origins of the solar system, the origins of life, and our place in the larger cosmos. Mars represents the first big stepping stone for humanity, as we voyage past the Earth-Moon system into the universe. Human settlement on Mars will aid in our understanding the origins of the solar system, the origins of life, and our place in the larger cosmos. Mars represents the first big stepping stone for humanity, as we voyage past the Earth-Moon system into the universe. Human settlement on Mars will aid in our understanding the origins of the solar system, the origins of life, and our place in the larger cosmos.
NASA has a plan to send people to Mars. This will be a great accomplishment, since the only other planetary object that humans have walked on was our closest neighbor; the Moon. Besides exploring the Moon, NASA has remotely explored Mars for 40 plus years. This involved sending satellites and rovers to peer and poke at the red planet. One important rover that will be sent out is Mars 2020. This particular mission will study the availability of Martian resources for future manned missions, most importantly oxygen. NASA has a plan to send people to Mars. This will be a great accomplishment, since the only other planetary object that humans have walked on was our closest neighbor; the Moon. Besides exploring the Moon, NASA has remotely explored Mars for 40 plus years. This involved sending satellites and rovers to peer and poke at the red planet. One important rover that will be sent out is Mars 2020. This particular mission will study the availability of Martian resources for future manned missions, most importantly oxygen. NASA has a plan to send people to Mars. This will be a great accomplishment, since the only other planetary object that humans have walked on was our closest neighbor; the Moon. Besides exploring the Moon, NASA has remotely explored Mars for 40 plus years. This involved sending satellites and rovers to peer and poke at the red planet. One important rover that will be sent out is Mars 2020. This particular mission will study the availability of Martian resources for future manned missions, most importantly oxygen.
Accessible oxygen will be the critical component, since NASA has plans to send humans to Mars by 2024-2030. Mars, being months away from Earth, will provide serious obstacles for any astronauts who will embark on this mission. Mars One will help with establishing this home away from home. It is Mars One's goal to establish the key infrastructure for a human settlement on Mars — the next giant leap for humankind (see Figure 1). Accessible oxygen will be the critical component, since NASA has plans to send humans to Mars by 2024-2030. Mars, being months away from Earth, will provide serious obstacles for any astronauts who will embark on this mission. Mars One will help with establishing this home away from home. It is Mars One's goal to establish the key infrastructure for a human settlement on Mars — the next giant leap for humankind (see Figure 1). Accessible oxygen will be the critical component, since NASA has plans to send humans to Mars by 2024-2030. Mars, being months away from Earth, will provide serious obstacles for any astronauts who will embark on this mission. Mars One will help with establishing this home away from home. It is Mars One's goal to establish the key infrastructure for a human settlement on Mars — the next giant leap for humankind (see Figure 1).
SettlementMars One – NASA's design for a human settlement on Mars (Credit: NASA)
Mars represents the first big stepping stone for humanity, as we voyage past the Earth-Moon system into the universe. Human settlement on Mars will aid in our understanding the origins of the solar system, the origins of life, and our place in the larger cosmos. With access to the Martian surface, it will be easier to expand out into the solar system and galaxy. As with the Apollo Moon landings, a human mission to Mars will inspire generations to believe that all things are possible, and that anything can be achieved. It is important that this mission succeeds, for it will indeed inspire many generations to come and will prove that we can inhabit other planets besides our own. Mars represents the first big stepping stone for humanity, as we voyage past the Earth-Moon system into the universe. Human settlement on Mars will aid in our understanding the origins of the solar system, the origins of life, and our place in the larger cosmos. With access to the Martian surface, it will be easier to expand out into the solar system and galaxy. As with the Apollo Moon landings, a human mission to Mars will inspire generations to believe that all things are possible, and that anything can be achieved. It is important that this mission succeeds, for it will indeed inspire many generations to come and will prove that we can inhabit other planets besides our own. Mars represents the first big stepping stone for humanity, as we voyage past the Earth-Moon system into the universe. Human settlement on Mars will aid in our understanding the origins of the solar system, the origins of life, and our place in the larger cosmos. With access to the Martian surface, it will be easier to expand out into the solar system and galaxy. As with the Apollo Moon landings, a human mission to Mars will inspire generations to believe that all things are possible, and that anything can be achieved. It is important that this mission succeeds, for it will indeed inspire many generations to come and will prove that we can inhabit other planets besides our own.
Not only will this mission inspire, it will also give us another way to deal with the increasing population on Earth. It is no secret that climate change and the growing population is taking a toll on Earth. We need to start looking for alternate options for the Not only will this mission inspire, it will also give us another way to deal with the increasing population on Earth. It is no secret that climate change and the growing population is taking a toll on Earth. We need to start looking for alternate options for the Not only will this mission inspire, it will also give us another way to deal with the increasing population on Earth. It is no secret that climate change and the growing population is taking a toll on Earth. We need to start looking for alternate options for the
The Galactic Inquirer
1
years to come. This mission to Mars could be the answer we need to survive and keep the human race alive. Not only will we be on another planet, we also will be reaching out farther into our solar system and galaxy with intelligent life. Figure 2 shows a design for the transit vehicle that will carry astronauts from Earth to Mars in the Mars One mission. By designing this to withstand the journey to Mars, scientists can use the design to build different models that will reach even farther out through the solar system and beyond. There is of course the possibility that the people we send will not be able to make Mars habitable for future generations. This dim prospect may be very unlikely, but in the chance that we do fail initially, we must have a backup mission to get the program back on its feet. That means a strong commitment by NASA and its international partners will be needed for decades to come. years to come. This mission to Mars could be the answer we need to survive and keep the human race alive. Not only will we be on another planet, we also will be reaching out farther into our solar system and galaxy with intelligent life. Figure 2 shows a design for the transit vehicle that will carry astronauts from Earth to Mars in the Mars One mission. By designing this to withstand the journey to Mars, scientists can use the design to build different models that will reach even farther out through the solar system and beyond. There is of course the possibility that the people we send will not be able to make Mars habitable for future generations. This dim prospect may be very unlikely, but in the chance that we do fail initially, we must have a backup mission to get the program back on its feet. That means a strong commitment by NASA and its international partners will be needed for decades to come. years to come. This mission to Mars could be the answer we need to survive and keep the human race alive. Not only will we be on another planet, we also will be reaching out farther into our solar system and galaxy with intelligent life. Figure 2 shows a design for the transit vehicle that will carry astronauts from Earth to Mars in the Mars One mission. By designing this to withstand the journey to Mars, scientists can use the design to build different models that will reach even farther out through the solar system and beyond. There is of course the possibility that the people we send will not be able to make Mars habitable for future generations. This dim prospect may be very unlikely, but in the chance that we do fail initially, we must have a backup mission to get the program back on its feet. That means a strong commitment by NASA and its international partners will be needed for decades to come.
Transit Vehicle Design for the Mars One transit vehicle between Earth and Mars (Credit: NASA)
I think that developing a future manned mission to Mars is the most exciting project that has happened in my lifetime so far. For someone who is interested in astronomy and aspires to be an astronaut, I find myself fully embedded in all the details about this upcoming mission. I feel this could make or break the next 50 years of space travel and astrobiology. There will be a spark of interest in this topic for many years to come. As for my goals and aspirations, I want to go to Mars and help in any way I can to make human life on Mars a reality. I think that developing a future manned mission to Mars is the most exciting project that has happened in my lifetime so far. For someone who is interested in astronomy and aspires to be an astronaut, I find myself fully embedded in all the details about this upcoming mission. I feel this could make or break the next 50 years of space travel and astrobiology. There will be a spark of interest in this topic for many years to come. As for my goals and aspirations, I want to go to Mars and help in any way I can to make human life on Mars a reality. I think that developing a future manned mission to Mars is the most exciting project that has happened in my lifetime so far. For someone who is interested in astronomy and aspires to be an astronaut, I find myself fully embedded in all the details about this upcoming mission. I feel this could make or break the next 50 years of space travel and astrobiology. There will be a spark of interest in this topic for many years to come. As for my goals and aspirations, I want to go to Mars and help in any way I can to make human life on Mars a reality.
Works Cited
"Mars Mission," NASA's Journey to Mars, 1 Dec. 2014, www.nasa.gov/content/nasas-journey-to-mars/.
"Mars One," Mars One, Web. Accessed 12 Oct. 2016, www.mars-one.com/.
Kristen Twombly is a student at Rockport High School and an intern in support of the Workshops in Space Exploration (WiSE) that occur each summer at Tufts University (see http://sites.google.com/site/sciencegazette/workshops) Kristen Twombly is a student at Rockport High School and an intern in support of the Workshops in Space Exploration (WiSE) that occur each summer at Tufts University (see http://sites.google.com/site/sciencegazette/workshops) Kristen Twombly is a student at Rockport High School and an intern in support of the Workshops in Space Exploration (WiSE) that occur each summer at Tufts University (see http://sites.google.com/site/sciencegazette/workshops)
The Galactic Inquirer
2 | <urn:uuid:97d7d6c5-2ad7-4777-b0fd-4c23840305e0> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://galacticinquirer.net/article/mission-to-mars-3/pdf/ | 2018-07-21T03:54:31Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00527.warc.gz | 152,397,850 | 2,623 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.99857 | eng_Latn | 0.998616 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
7160,
12548
] | [
2.859375
] | 6 | 0 |
Chapter 1 : Infant development: Milestones from 4 to 6 months - Mayo Clinic
These fun and simple activities for babies ages 0 to 6 months will stimulate your infant's development. 11 Simple Activities for Babies: 0 to 6 Months. Visual, social, and.
Some of the benefits include: Building a bond between you and your baby Boost healthy psychological and physical development Improved sleep Massage helps babies manage their stress Massage improves autonomic functions such as heart rate and temperature Massage can also help with pain relief. For more information on the effects of touch I recommend you read: Benefits of Infant Massage 5. Floor time play Give your baby the opportunity to move around. Try to avoid placing your baby for extended time in car seats, rockers or swings. Get them down onto the floor either on their tummy or on their back. While on the ground they are starting to strengthen important muscles. These muscles are needed for rolling, crawling, sitting and then walking. Moving with your baby So you have been getting your baby on the floor to work on those important muscles. While off the floor however, take the opportunity to move them in many different directions. Movement helps with development of the vestibular system. A system responsible for the awareness of our body in space. So how can you move? You can put on your favorite music and have a dance with your baby. Or what my husband used to do is play an airplane game. It included some smooth flying through the air with an addition of some turbulence. This can be done in many different ways. You can rock or lift your baby up, down, side to side, round and round. You can move your baby fast and slow. Make sure you stop every minute or so. This will let the body register the movements and make sure your baby is not over stimulated. Exploring through touch The development of the tactile system is important. A baby learns about their body and their environment though the sense of touch. Remember that this is not only about touching through the use of hands. It includes their whole body. This helps in the development of many skills including gross and fine motor skills. Here are some ideas: Lay your baby on a variety of textured fabrics or blankets. It can include sheep skin, silk, cotton etc. Always supervise and ensure that your baby can breathe at all times. Examples can include different fabrics, rattles, textured rings, sponges. There are so many toys these days that can be smooth, bumpy, spikey, hard or squishy. Move different textured materials over their body arms, feet, face, belly and back. Again it can include different fabrics or toys. My son Josh loved when I tickled him with a feather. Water covers their whole body and it is yet another sensation. You may even use different textured towels each time to add some variety. Faces are of course one of their favorites. Another favorite is looking at moving fingers. I had so much fun with this! What to do You can let your imagination run wild. The main purpose is for your little one to watch your fingers dance. You can put some music on and move your fingers to the rhythm. Up, down, side to side, fast or slow. You can get some finger puppets and do a simple puppet show. Get the puppets to go up, down, side to side. Keep your hands no more then 18 inches away from their face. How to position your baby Lying on their tummy Lying on their back Reclined while sitting on your tummy: Lie on your back with a pillow behind your back for support. Slide your feet toward your hips so that your calves are near the back of your thighs. Sit your baby on your tummy facing you so that his back is resting against your thighs. Lets look at things At 2 months your baby can see up to 18 inches away from his face. At this age your baby can also fixate on an object and follow it for a short time. You can promote this skill through play. You can hold a toy or any object that you notice he finds interesting, in front of his face. Move it in different directions. Add some fun to it by singing, talking or making funny sound effects. Mobiles are also fun. Get down with your baby inside the play gym and have some fun with all the dangling toys. You can use your play gym or different rattles or toys. Things that make noise or are fun and shiny. Watch for that excitement when they get to hit the object. Each baby develops at their own pace. If your child is not ready or not interested in these 2 month activities, just try them again in a few weeks. Summary There you have it. Many exciting activities you can do today to help your child develop better. Recapping those 10 sensory activities, they are: Talking to your baby 3. Magic of Human Touch 5. Floor time play 6. Moving with your
baby 7. Exploring through touch 8. Let your fingers do the walking 9. Lets look at things The activities in this blog are intended for sensory play. They are not a replacement for treatment of children with Sensory Processing Disorder, are not medical advice and should not be used in place of the care of a medical doctor or other qualified healthcare professional. These activities should be facilitated and supervised by an adult. All activities are to be performed at your own risk and in no event shall Sensory Lifestyle be liable for any damages.
Chapter 2 : 6 Week Old Baby: The Gift of Grab | What to Expect
Babies this age are also learning so much about cause and effect, which is an exciting new skill." Skills learned: Fine motor skills, auditory discrimination, cause and effect 8.
Babies and toddlers need early learning experiences for emotional, social and intellectual development. But formal classes and activities that push a baby to learn concepts before they are ready do not help their development, according to the Baby Center. The best infant activities involve play and often are sensory in nature. Babies are stimulated by their senses of sight, touch and smell to play and explore the world around them. You can develop your own crafts to create age-appropriate educational activities for babies aged zero to 18 months. Natural Leaf Mobile Newborn babies up to 3 months old are developing their ability to visually focus, so good activities for babies at this age are visual in nature. While you are outside, collect leaves in a variety of bright colors, shapes and sizes. Paper Towel Tube Talk Even before your baby can utter a word, she is developing her sense of speech through listening to the sounds around her. Use the center tube from a roll of paper towels to create a listening game with your baby. This exercise is especially good for babies aged four weeks to four months. Move the tube to the other ear and whisper something else. Simple phrases, like "I love you," are best. Let the baby see your lips while you whisper if she appears confused about the source of the sound. Rattles for Rhythm To help babies 6 to 15 months develop their fine motor skills, use empty film canisters, yogurt cups, plastic containers or empty milk cartons to create your own noise-makers. Fill the containers with rice, macaroni, beans or a mixture of items that will create sound and seal the container tightly with tape. Seal one end of a toilet paper cardboard tube, fill with the noise-making material of your choice, then seal the other end to make an easy-to-hold rattle. You can use brightly colored construction paper to decorate if you choose. Baby Lava Lamp You can create your own baby bubble bottle to help the baby six months old and older develop dexterity and a sense of color. Get a clear plastic water or soda bottle with a tight-fitting lid, water, vegetable oil, food coloring, and a seltzer tablet. Fill the bottle three-quarters full with vegetable oil and add water to just below the top. Add 10 to 12 drops of food coloring. Break the seltzer tablet into small pieces. Drop a piece into the bottle, seal the top tightly and let the baby enjoy watching the bubbles. Older babies will often reach for and handle the bottle, which will stimulate dexterity. When the bubbles stop, open the top and drop in another piece of seltzer to create more bubbles. Water "Coloring" To entertain and engage babies 11 months and older, all you need are some inexpensive paintbrushes and a bowl of water. Set your baby up outside with paintbrushes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Encourage the baby to paint a wall or the concrete. Show him how to make patterns, draw circles, or allow him to "paint" an object. If the baby is too young to handle the brushes, just dip his hands directly in the water and allow him to make hand prints or patterns with his hands. Always closely supervise your infant whenever he is around water, as a child can drown in as little as an inch of liquid.
Chapter 3 : Infant Vision Development - www.nxgvision.com
We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us.
Daily Montessori The main environment for your baby at this age will be the bedroom. Soft classical music can be played in the room as this can be soothing to the young baby. Have some natural lighting and if possible have a window where a child may watch the wind blowing through leaves or trees. Montessori Environment Months Baby this young will be mostly attracted to mobiles with great color contrast, such as black and white. Hanging mobiles can also be effective, these have to be placed about 30 cm from your baby as in the beginning they can only see this far. These mobiles may also have pictures of the mother, the father, or other siblings as babies are generally attracted to the human face. Mobiles can also consist of a glass ball that can reflect light in different ways. There is no need for brightly colored commercially bought mobiles that have too many distracting colors. It can still be decorated with simple beautiful realistic works of art. When breastfeeding, it is ideal that mothers concentrate on the baby and are not too preoccupied doing other things. As children get older, it is important to allow them to have opportunities for movement. This is to make sure a child gets ample tummy time during the day so they can exercise and develop their muscle strength. This can be done at around 3 months. To allow the child to be part of the family, one can have a small flat mat that the child can be placed in, e. The child need not be left alone in their bedroom while he is awake. Hearing the family noises and voices will also help the children to learn as they observe their surroundings. Absorbent Mind Maria Montessori observed how children learned a language without anyone teaching them. For children under the age of three, there is no need to have lessons in order to learn, as they simply absorb everything in the environment by experiencing it and being part of it. It is therefore important that the environment set-up is good, nice and positive, since this is what the child will absorb whether he chooses to or not. There is no need for fancy plastic ones that may break easily. Fluffy toys, cloth books, small rattles and crocheted soft balls will allow the child to practice grasp and use of hands. A silver rattle is especially wonderful for a young baby since it engages many of the senses. It has to be small and light enough for the baby to grasp it for a few moments at first and longer and longer later on. It can also provide auditory stimulation as it makes a soft sound and it can give sense of hot and cold as the child mouths it. Wooden toys and rattles in particular are aesthetically beautiful, last long and give child a different, more natural texture than most plastic toys would. A child will mouth, bang and try many different things with the toys. Crocheted soft balls are good for their tiny fingers to hook and grasp. Children will also follow the movement of the ball with their eyes. Mobiles are also particularly wonderful for children of this age. Mobiles that reflect natural light will also be attractive to babies. Baby Clothing The skin of babies is sensitive, so it is best to use natural fibres, such as pure cotton, as the material that touches the skin directly. For the comfort of a child it is advisable not to have any tight clothing, or clothing that may be small or tight around their arms or legs. Dress your child appropriately according to the weather, with jackets and socks when needed.
Chapter 4 : Month 2: Top 10 Sensory Activities for your 2 month old - Sensory Lifestyle
From ages 4 to 6 months, your baby is likely to enjoy: Around age 6 months, many babies begin sitting alone after being positioned upright. Play favorite games.
Action-Oriented Activities So Big! Hold your grandchild on your lap. Then lift his arms up into the air and say: Babies love this game and will eventually learn to lift their arms in response to your question. Wind at Your Back Place your grandbaby on her tummy on a soft blanket. Billow a light scarf in the air above her and say, Feel the wind! Let the scarf gently fall on her back and then slowly pull it off her. Wave it in front of her and see if she follows it with her eyes. Spending time on her belly is important for building upper body strength. Roll and Go For grandchildren who are crawling, show them a soft ball or interesting toy. Roll it or place it a few feet away and encourage your baby to get it. If your grandchild is cruising along the couch, you can place the toy farther and farther along the couch to motivate him to keep moving. On Your Feet Gather several pieces of material with different texturesâ€"such as a tea towel, fake fur, felt, a silky scarf. Or allow crawling babies to crawl on and over the fabric. Try a few different fabrics to see which textures your grandchild seems to prefer. Quiet Play Activities Shadow Sharing Babies have limited vision in their first few months but they are tuned in to contrasts between light and dark. See if she can follow it with her eyes. For extra fun, squeeze a few drops of blue food coloring into the water and add some glitter or shells. Seal the bag and cover the edge with duct tape to be sure it stays closed. Let your baby squeeze the fish and pat the bag while he is seated in his high chair or on the floor with you. Cut out the leaf shapes, punch a hole in each, and hang with yarn from a clothes hanger. You can even move the mobile gently left, right, and in a slow circle. Make a texture book for your grandbaby by cutting squares of different kinds of fabric with pinking shears and gluing each one to an index card. Punch a hole in the corner of each card and tie together with yarn. As you read the book together, you can name the color and texture of the fabric. Hold it out for your grandbaby and see if she wants to reach for it, grasp it, squeeze it, or crinkle it. Watch her face to see if she is interested or surprised by the sounds the package makes. It crinkles and crackles. Baby in the Mirror Hold your grandbaby in your arms in front of the mirror. Talk about and point to his body partsâ€"eyes, nose, mouth, arms, etc. While she is in her high chair or sitting on the floor, show her one of her favorite rattles or another small toy. Then cover it with a washcloth. Wait a moment to see if she reaches to uncover the toy. Putting It Together Between 6 and 12 months, babies begin to understand how different objects work togetherâ€"what they can do in relationship to the other. To practice this skill, offer your grandchild some small, easy-to-grasp blocks and show him how he can drop them into a bucket, plastic cup, or bowl. Combining the block and the cup shows an early understanding about how things go together. Show baby a bell and then gently ring it so he can hear. Wait until he focuses on the bell and then slowly bring it behind your back or place a washcloth over it. Then ask, Where did it go? Take it out and ring it from a different location. Wait until your grandbaby has found the bell again with his eyes. Take a Whiff Give your grandbaby 6 months old and up an opportunity to use her sense of smell. When you cut an orange, hold it gently under her nose so she can have a sniff. When you take out the cinnamon or cloves for a recipe, do the same thing. You might say, Smell this. We smell with our nose. Then you can point to your nose. Keep in mind, all children process sensory information differently. Some may love it and others may not enjoy it at all. Activities like this help your grandchild connect sensory information to her everyday experiences. Sound It Out Gather several different objects that make distinct noises. Jingle, tap, or shake each one for the baby. If he reaches out to grasp one of the instruments, let him hold it and explore it with his hands. Try a Massage When you get your grandbaby out of the bath, take a moment to gently massage her arms and legs with baby lotion ask her mom or dad if they have a preferred brand. As you massage, gently bring her legs in and out from her body and gently bring her arms toward her chest and out again. Many babies are soothed and comforted through massageâ€"an activity that helps them learn that touch is soothing and that their bodies are special and belong to them. At the end of the song, drop a
handful or two of soft, colorful pompoms over her belly and chest. How does she like this sensation? If she looks interestedâ€"widening her eyes, smiling, kicking arms and legs, do it again. If your grandbaby cries, try it again another time. Singing to your grandbaby is a great way to build language skills. Glue each one to an index card and cover with clear contact paper. Show the photos to your little one and name each person. Over time, your grandbaby will begin to point, smile, and maybe reach for the people in the pictures. Finger Plays Sing songs with your grandchild that have hand motions that go along with the lyrics. When your grandchild is able to use his hands and fingers, he will start to copy your gestures andâ€"before you know itâ€"he will be singing along! As your grandchild approaches 6 to 9 months, you can start to play peek-a-boo. Most babies really enjoy this game! She might even start saying them herself!
Chapter 5 : Your Baby at 4 Months Old | Baby Development | Bounty
Sensory Activities ( months) Look below to find games and activities you can play with your child to promote their sensory development. Activities are divided by age so it is easy to find games and activities that are age appropriate.
Although she may not be running around the house and ready for our craft sessions with her older brother, there are still a ton of activities that you can do with your baby. Here are some of our favorite activities that will promote your babies physical, cognitive, and language development! They love to hear your voice and helps with bonding. We do our story time every day before nap time and bed time. The soft books are a favorite of my daughters or the ones that make noise! At this age they are discovering their feet and hands so we love ours in her pack and play so she can watch herself play! Toys With Sound â€" Anything with sound is a great idea they learn the cause and effect. That once they hit it, it makes a sound. Babies love social play! Rain Bath â€" A great way for your baby to explore their senses is through a rain bath. Water play is a great sensory stimulation. We have Tupperware buckets for play that have holes on the bottom of them that we use for this activity. Talking To Your Baby â€" The most important and simple activity of them all. Your baby loves hearing YOU and seeing you while you talk. It helps language and social development and creates a better bond with you. Our daughter rolled over at 4 months and we spent a lot of time before that doing tummy time. Making Music â€" Now that our daughter is sitting up on her own she is able to sit in her high chair. We usually use one of her small stuffed animals or noisy toys and wave it in front of her to encourage her to look and grab. This strengthens the muscles to help them learn to roll over and crawl. Activity Mat Play â€" Ones with a mobile are great when they are at the following and grasping stage of development. Once they are able to push themselves up you can move on to one of the other play mats without the mobiles. Touching Different Textures â€" We use different books for this that offer different kinds of textures and materials on each page. Encourage them to touch the different pages. Physical Development â€" Do some dancing. Obviously while being gentle and your baby is laying down, gently move their arms or legs around they love moving their legs and arms around at this age so they will probably be doing it themselves. More Fun Baby Activities.
Chapter 6 : Montessori Months - Baby, Infant - Daily Montessori
Your baby's development at months, what to expect from smiling to starting to sit up.
One of the greatest moments when having a child is the first time your newborn daughter or son opens their eyes and makes eye contact with you. The visual system of a newborn infant takes some time to develop. Their first view of the world is indistinct and only in shades of gray. Avoid smoking and consuming alcohol or drugs during pregnancy, as these toxins can cause multiple problems for your baby, including serious vision problems. Smoking is particularly hazardous during pregnancy, as cigarette smoke contains an estimated 3, different chemicals that can potentially harm humans â€" including carbon monoxide, a known fetal toxin. Add potential vision problems for your baby to the list. Research has shown fetal intra-uterine exposure to maternal cigarette smoking is associated with increased risks of growth problems, cognitive delays and other neuro-developmental issues among the children of smokers. In a report published online in December by the Scandinavian eye journal Acta Ophthalmologica, researchers in the U. Of the 24 studies included in the analysis, 18 of them found fetal exposure to active maternal cigarette smoking or passive exposure to cigarette smoke were associated with an increased risk of vision problems in children. In particular, higher rates of refractive errors , strabismus , and retina and optic nerve problems were found among children of mothers who smoked during pregnancy. For more about the harmful effects of smoking and your eyes, read How Smoking Harms Your Vision and see this infographic. Even taking common medications like aspirin can be dangerous to your baby when you are pregnant, increasing the risk of low birth weight and problems during delivery. Low birth weight has been associated with an increased risk of vision problems in infants. Find an eye doctor who can help. Nerve cells in their retina and brain that control vision are not fully developed. It just takes time. So to encourage visual interaction with your newborn child, keep your hair style the same, and avoid altering your appearance. One thing you may notice about your newborn son or daughter is how large their eyes are. This is because normal infant development proceeds from the head down. In fact, the amount of light required for a 1-month-old infant to be aware that light is present called the light detection threshold is 50 times higher than that of an adult. Keeping your appearance consistent helps your baby recognize and interact with you after birth. Infants start to develop the ability to see in colors very quickly. At one week after birth, they can see red, orange, yellow and green. But it takes a little longer for them to be able to see blue and violet. This is because blue light has shorter wavelengths, and fewer color receptors exist in the human retina for blue light. One eye may occasionally drift inward or outward from proper alignment. But if you see a large and constant misalignment of their eyes, notify your eye care practitioner right away. Include artwork and furnishings with contrasting colors and shapes. Also hang a brightly colored mobile above or near their crib. Make sure it has a variety of colors and shapes. Months 2 And 3 Many advances in vision development take place in months two and three. Infants develop sharper visual acuity during this period, and their eyes are beginning to move better as a team. Your child should be following moving objects at this stage and starting to reach for things he sees. Also, infants at this stage of development are learning how to shift their gaze from one object to another without having to move their head. And their eyes are becoming more sensitive to light: So you may want to dim the lights a bit more for naps and bedtime. Add new items to their room or frequently change the location of their crib or existing items in the room. Talk to your baby as you walk around the room. Keep a night light on to provide visual stimulation when they are awake in their crib. While infants should be placed on their backs for sleep to decrease the risk of sudden infant death syndrome SIDS , put them on their stomachs when they are awake and you can supervise them. This provides important visual and motor experiences. The survey, which included responses from 1, American adults, also found that 61 percent were aware that lazy eye and 63 percent were aware that crossed eyes could be found in infants. But fewer than one-third knew that cancer, farsightedness and nearsightedness could also be found in an infant eye exam. This is why the AOA recommends that all infants receive a comprehensive eye exam by 6 months of age.
Months 4 To 6 How quickly they grow! By age 6 months, significant advances have taken place in the vision centers of the brain, allowing your infant to see more distinctly and move his eyes quicker and more accurately to follow moving objects. Color vision should be similar to that of an adult as well, enabling your child to see all the colors of the rainbow. Babies also have better eye-hand coordination at 4 to 6 months of age, allowing them to quickly locate and pick up objects and accurately direct a bottle and many other things! Months 7 To 12 Your child is now mobile, crawling about and covering more distance than you could ever have imagined. He is better at judging distances and more accurate at grasping and throwing objects. When your baby starts crawling, play with him on the floor to help develop his eye-hand coordination and motor skills. This is an important developmental period for your child. At this stage, infants are developing a better awareness of their overall body and are learning how to coordinate their vision with their body movements. Bumps, bruises, eye injuries and other serious injuries can occur as he begins to physically explore his environment. In particular, keep cabinets that contain cleaning supplies locked, and put barriers in front of stairwells. Place a favorite toy on the floor just out of his reach and encourage him to get it. Also provide plenty of objects and toys that he can take apart and put together. Strabismus is the term for a misalignment of the eyes, and it is important that it is detected and treated early so the vision in both eyes develops properly. Left untreated, strabismus can lead to amblyopia or "lazy eye. Vision Problems Of Premature Babies The average length of a normal pregnancy is approximately 40 weeks days. According to the World Health Organization, babies born before 37 weeks of gestation are considered premature. Get prenatal care, eat well and get plenty of rest while pregnant. Smoking while pregnant significantly increases the risk of giving birth prematurely. Premature babies are at greater risk of eye problems than full-term babies, and the odds increase the earlier the child is born. Retinopathy of prematurity ROP. This is the abnormal replacement of normal tissue in the retina with fibrous tissue and blood vessels. ROP can cause scarring of the retina, poor vision and retinal detachment. In severe cases, retinopathy of prematurity can cause blindness. All premature babies are at risk of ROP. Very low birth weight is an additional risk factor, especially if it is necessary to place the infant in a high-oxygen environment immediately after birth. If your baby is born prematurely, ask your obstetrician to refer you to a pediatric ophthalmologist so he or she can perform an internal eye exam to rule out ROP. This is an involuntary, back-and-forth movement of both eyes. In most cases, nystagmus causes the eyes to drift slowly in one direction and then "jump" back in the other direction. The eye movements are usually horizontal, but they can be diagonal or rotational as well. Nystagmus can be present at birth, or it may develop weeks to months later. Risk factors include incomplete development of the optic nerve , albinism and congenital cataracts. If your baby shows signs of nystagmus, consult a pediatric ophthalmologist or other eye doctor immediately. It emerged in the next few months, and autism experts said that might suggest a window during which the progression toward autism can be halted or slowed. Heiting has more than 25 years of experience as an eye care provider, health educator and consultant to the eyewear industry. His special interests include contact lenses, nutrition and preventive vision care. Page updated April Like This Page?
Chapter 7 : Baby Activities â€" Free Infant Learning Activities - JumpStart
During the first few months of life, your baby was growing at a rate of about 1 ½ to 2 pounds a month. By now, she should have at least doubled her birth weight. At six months, baby's growth.
Sign up now Infant development: Milestones from 4 to 6 months From ages 4 to 6 months, your baby becomes more aware of his or her surroundings. Infant development milestones include rolling over, clapping hands and babbling. By Mayo Clinic Staff The newborn days are behind you. As your baby becomes more alert and mobile, each day will bring exciting new adventures. Expect your baby to grow and develop at his or her own unique pace. What to expect As your baby becomes more aware of the surrounding world, he or she will begin exploring. From ages 4 to 6 months, your baby is likely to enjoy: Soon you might notice your baby rocking on his or her stomach and eventually rolling over. As your baby gains muscle strength, he or she will have better head control. Most babies this age raise their heads when lying facedown. They might even try to push themselves up or bear weight on their legs. Around age 6 months, many babies begin sitting alone after being positioned upright. Your baby will probably grasp your finger, a rattle or a soft object. You might notice your baby pulling objects closer with a raking motion of the hands. Your baby is beginning to be able to distinguish subtle shade of reds, blues and yellows. He or she might enjoy more complex patterns and shapes. You might notice your baby concentrating on a toy or staring at his or her reflection. If you roll a ball across the floor, your baby will probably turn his or her head to follow the action. Babbling and other new sounds. Babies this age often start to babble chains of consonants. Your baby might respond to sound by making sounds and use his or her voice to express joy. He or she also might distinguish emotions by tone of voice â€" and begin responding to "no. To promote infant development: Talk to your baby. Use simple words such as "baby," "cat," "go," "walk," "hot" and "cold. Lay your baby on his or her tummy for a few supervised minutes. Hold a colorful toy or make a noise to encourage your baby to pick up his or her head or practice rolling over. Hold your baby or use pillows for support. Babies this age often enjoy colorful toys, especially those that make sounds. Try a musical toy, a rattle with a handle, a soft ball or a wooden spoon. To help your baby focus, put out only one or two toys at a time. Place one toy slightly out of reach to encourage your baby to stretch and creep. Let your baby watch his or her movements in a mirror. Read to your baby. Reading to a baby promotes speech and thought development. Your baby will soak in your words and might even mimic the sounds you make. Start with books featuring large, brightly colored pictures. Point to and name common objects. Cover your face with your hands, then remove your hands and say, "Peekaboo, I see you! Ask, "Where are your toes? Take time to cuddle. Balance stimulation with plenty of quiet time. Gentle caresses and tender kisses can help your baby feel safe, secure and loved. When you hold or rock your baby, talk quietly or sing soothing songs. Turn on the tunes. Music can help calm, entertain and teach your baby. Let your baby set the pace. When your baby turns away, closes his or her eyes, or gets fussy, take a break. Even babies need space. The earlier a problem is detected, the earlier it can be treated.
Page 10
Chapter 8 : CDC | Milestones 6 months | Learn the Signs. Act Early. | NCBDDD
See which developmental milestones your baby may be hitting this week. Doctor visit: The 2-month checkup Discover what will happen at your baby's 2-month well-baby checkup, including exams, shots, and questions the doctor is likely.
Sign up now Infant development: Birth to 3 months Infant development begins at birth. Expect your baby to grow and develop at his or her own pace. As you get to know your baby, consider these general infant development milestones. What to expect At first, caring for your baby might feel like an endless cycle of feeding, diapering and soothing. But soon your baby will be able to lift his or her head and chest while lying on his or her stomach, as well as stretch and kick his or her legs in that position. If you offer a toy, your baby might grasp it and hold on tight for a few moments. Your infant will be sensitive to noise levels. Expect your baby to begin responding to the sound of your voice by smiling and gurgling back at you. He or she will also begin turning toward the direction of sounds. Your baby will probably focus on your face, particularly your eyes, during feedings. At age 1 month, your baby will prefer to look at bold patterns in sharply contrasting colors or black-and-white. Soon your baby will begin to recognize familiar objects and people at a distance. By age 2 months, your baby might coo and repeat vowel sounds when you talk or gently play together. This can help your newborn feel safe, secure and loved. Let your baby grasp your little finger and touch your face. Simple conversation lays the groundwork for language development. Read a story out loud. Remember that your tone of voice communicates ideas and emotions as well. Hold your baby facing outward. With close supervision, place your baby on his or her tummy to play. Hold a colorful toy or make an interesting noise to encourage your baby to pick up his or her head. Many newborns get fussy or frustrated on their tummies, so keep these sessions brief at first â€" just a few minutes at a time. If drowsiness sets in, place your baby on his or her back to sleep. Respond quickly to tears. For most newborns, crying spells peak about six weeks after birth and then gradually decline. Whether your baby needs a diaper change, feeding session or simply warm contact, respond quickly. Your care will help build a strong bond with your baby â€" and the confidence he or she will need to settle down without your help one day. The earlier a problem is detected, the earlier it can be treated.
Chapter 9 : 2 Month Old Baby Development Toys & Activities | Fisher-Price
Newborn babies up to 3 months old are developing their ability to visually focus, so good activities for babies at this age are visual in nature. While you are outside, collect leaves in a variety of bright colors, shapes and sizes.
Page 11 | <urn:uuid:18b12d63-e1c1-4683-a702-0223c87ded53> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://www.nxgvision.com/visual-activities-for-babies-from-6-weeks-to-4-months-of-age-94z91.pdf | 2019-03-23T07:30:41Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202728.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20190323060839-20190323082839-00186.warc.gz | 858,563,635 | 7,542 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998639 | eng_Latn | 0.998898 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
4761,
5316,
8780,
12389,
17235,
18176,
20748,
25545,
29325,
32896,
35811
] | [
3.6875,
3.828125
] | 1 | 0 |
Denmark Estate Records - Not Just Accounts and Ledgers
Jeff Svare, A.G.® firstname.lastname@example.org
When most people in the United States of America think of an estate their mind conjures up images of Downton Abbey, Monarch of the Glen, To the Manor Born and maybe Southfork Ranch from Dallas. While these images may illustrate some of the estates in Denmark, it's not true for all of them. Though estates are correctly associated with nobility and wealthy landowners, this presentation will focus on the records created by the operation of the property rather than the people who owned them.
The nobility constituted a larger portion of the population in Denmark than in Norway. The geography and socio-economic conditions in Norway were not conducive to the development of large estates, except in very small areas. Prior to 1648 it is estimated there were nearly 1,000 estates in Denmark. By comparison, in Norway there were fewer than 100 in 1639, with about half of them in the area of Oslo fjord. By 1821 the number had dropped to about 25. 1
Definition
Estates have existed in Denmark and Norway since the 1200s. Historically several terms have been applied to estates, such as gods , hovedgård and setegård . The setegård came to be associated with the estate where the nobleman and his family lived, while hovedgård indicated the most significant property. In Denmark the term gods is used generically to refer to either a hovedgård or setegård, which is how it will be used in this class.
From their inception estates were associated with families that had obtained noble status. In return for their loyalty and support of the monarch, the nobility enjoyed special privileges such as freedom from taxation, tithes, and military service, as well as income derived from their properties and rent charged to their tenants. In the 1660s laws changed in connection with the establishment of the absolute monarchy. 2 This limited tax-free status to only the estate where the family had their primary residence.
Property Valuations
In Denmark the valuation of a property is tied to its annual production of grain (barley or rye). This measure is called hartkorn (literally, hard corn). The 1688 land survey set the area that a single barrel (tønder ) of seed could sow as 14,000 square alen (5,500 m2 or 1.35 acres) as one hartkorn . Any property 3 that planted over 24 tønder was assessed as an estate.
1 Norsk historisk leksikon , 2nd ed., "Setegard." Other estates were found on the west coast near Bergen and in the north near Trondheim.
2 The Enevoldsarveregeringsakten or Suverænitetsakten , of 10 January 1661.
3 This was then divided further into 8 skæpper containing 4 fjerding land , which included 3 album , separated into 4 penning .
In 1661 a commission was formed in Norway to register all the properties and implement a more evenly applied valuation. In 1665 the assessments were reviewed, and again in 1723. Unlike Denmark, the property classifications were simpler and were based on a system from the 1300s called vissøren . This divided farms into three taxable groups: fullgård , halvgård , and kvartgård (or fjerdingsgård ) the smallest farms, designated ødegård were exempted at this time. Fullgård was taxed at a rate of 1%, halvgård at 4 ½%, and kvartgård at ¼%.
Ranks of Nobility
In 1671 Christian V introduced Grevernes og Friherrernes Privilegier to create more feudal properties and further strengthen the ties between the nobility and himself. Men owning estates valued at 2,500 5 tønder hartkorn were created Grever and their properties became a grevskab . Men owning properties valued between 1,000 and 2,499 tønder were created Friherre or Baroner and their properties became a baroni .
Titles of Nobility (Masculine)
4 This term possibly traces back to the Black Death, when farms were abandoned and left desolate (øde ). Making them profitable, or even sufficient to sustain a family was a considerable undertaking.
5 This is one of three articles enacted simultaneously. The other two, Gemaksordinansen and Rangforordningen regulated access to the king and created a new hierarchy placing the king's officials above those of noble birth respectively.
The End of the Nobility
In Norway in 1821 the nobility lost their privileges as result of the Adelsloven (Lov, angaaende Modificationer og nærmere Bestemmelser af den Norske Adels Rettigheder ). In 1849 the new constitution in Denmark (Junigrundloven) transformed the absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy with Frederik VII as head of state, and abolished the privileges of the nobility, essentially leaving them with only their titles.
The Records
Despite the nobility losing their privileges estates continued to function. Some had already been purchased by wealthy merchants who were looking to expand their enterprises. Many estates are still are in operation today, some as private residences, and others as hotels, restaurants, executive conference centers, or living history museums. The Dansk Center for Herregårdsforskning has several articles online that explore the role of estates in Denmark's history. 6
Digital Publication
In 1946 the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) began microfilming at Rigsarkivet. During the time the GSU was working in Denmark, not all estates had deposited their records with the archive. Therefore, not all of them are represented in the FamilySearch catalog. In December 2012 FamilySearch published the records they had microfilmed with the title Denmark, Estate Records, 1436-1964 . This Historical Record Collection allows users to access the records by selecting the county where the estate is located, the name of the estate, then the record type and volume. A corresponding article in the FamilySearch Research Wiki, Denmark Estate Records (FamilySearch Historical Records) , provides additional information on the collection and links to other helpful resources. Additionally, images can be accessed through the FamilySearch Catalog.
The National Archives of Denmark (Rigsarkivet ) has also made many of these films available on their site through their database Daisy, at https://www.sa.dk/daisy/daisy_forside. The search is available only in Danish, but is very easy to use. Enter the name of the estate in the Arkivskaber (archive creator) field
6 http://www.danskeherregaarde.dk/historisk-kontekst.aspx
and press the button Søg i Daisy. You can click the links in the results list for more details and access the records. Documents that have been scanned can be viewed online, and those which have not can be ordered for use at any of the Archives' reading rooms.
Semi-Diplomatic Transcription
In contrast to diplomatic transcription where all the details of a document are reproduced, semi-diplomatic transcription shows how the text appears on the manuscript as close as possible while maintaining readability. There are several very good software applications available to help you create a good semi-diplomatic transcription. But you can use Google Docs and any image viewing software to accomplish essentially the same thing.
The rules for creating a transcription are simple:
1. Create a new line in your transcription for each new line in the document
2. Use capital letters where capitals are used
3. Use lower case letters for lower case
4. Identify letters you are adding which are not in the document (like spelling out abbreviations) by placing them in square brackets []
5. Identify damage to the document or missing sections with curly brackets {}
With your image viewing software crop the image so only the part you want to transcribe is visible. If you have the original document you can make a scan or photocopy and work from that.
How-To Create a Semi-Diplomatic Transcription Using Google Docs
Create a new Google Docs file, adding any title or text before the point in the document where you will begin the transcription. This makes it easier to make any changes to this section of the text later on. In the section where you will make the transcription create a new numbered list. Keeping the left margin at 1 inch, set the left indent at ½ inch.
This is easier to do if you populate a few lines of the list with some random text. Highlight the text, click the Numbered list icon on the menu bar, then move the First Line Indent icon (the little blue rectangle on the ruler at the top of the page) left to the 1 inch mark. This should give you enough space to transcribe a document of 999 lines. To improve readability use a monospaced font like Courier New with a font size of 10 for the transcription.
If you have only one monitor you will want to hide the menus in the Google Docs window to give you more viewing area for the document you are transcribing. You can do this by clicking the Hide the menus icon at the right of the menu bar. | <urn:uuid:cf5d187a-b20f-462b-aefb-ac2395edbb1e> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://content.ldschurch.org/family-history/bc/rootstech/salt-lake/2019-conference-syllabi/RT4662_Denmark_Estate_Records_Not_Just_Accounts_and_Ledgers.pdf | 2019-03-23T06:17:47Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202728.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20190323060839-20190323082839-00186.warc.gz | 469,021,347 | 1,995 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.993228 | eng_Latn | 0.995757 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2784,
4257,
6446,
8918
] | [
2.359375
] | 1 | 0 |
1
Transcription for CCHS 2004.10.09
This leather bound notebook, 6 ¾" by 8 ½," is bound by a ribbon running through three holes, and tied at the top. The front of the leather cover is embossed with a floral pattern. The first and last pages have been damaged by contact with the leather cover. Notes were kept in this book, beginning in the fall of 1899 and ending in 1924. Please note that sometimes the spelling of the names of authors or titles of books varied – and the names of members of the Reading Class, too.
An Outline History of the Chevy Chase Reading Class
founded in 1899
by
Chevy Chase, Md
Mesdames Verrill, Robertson,
Bowen and Richards
[Page 1]
In the Autumn of 1899, it was suggested to Mrs. Verrill by Mrs. Cousar, then living in Chevy Chase, that we inaugurate a Reading Class, modeled on one Mrs. Cousar had attended. The idea seemed a good one, and Mrs. Verrill invited Mrs. Mary B. Robertson, Mrs. Grace R. Bowen and Mrs. Fannie O. Richards to unite in forming such a class.
In the following year (1900) we read, during the months of February, March and April, from text books on English Literature; Taine, Stopford Brookes and others.
Mrs. Cousar was present a few times.
[Page 2]
Second Year.
The year 1900-1901.
This year we invited to join us the Misses Mary and Helen Childs, Mrs. Helen Z. Tucker and Mrs. Annie L. H. Weaver. We became more methodical in our meetings. We reviewed the life and works of the early English poets and purely literary prose writers up to the eighteenth century.
Chaucer, Spenser, Bacon, Swift, Pope, and Johnson were read, in part.
Each member became in turn the leader for the day, and an author was assigned to her for special work. Meetings were held once a week from eleven to twelve-thirty A.M. Luncheon was abandoned.
Mrs. Weaver resigned.
[Page 3]
Third Year.
The Years 1901-1902.
Membership: [in two columns]
1. Mrs. Verrill,
2. Mrs. Robertson,
3. Mrs. Bowen,
4. Mrs. Richards,
5. Miss M. Childs,
6. Miss H. Childs,
7. Mrs. Tucker
8. Mrs. _ _ Mower,
9. Mrs. Cecily A. Claude,
10. Mrs. Minnie N. Swartzell,
11. Mrs. Blossom D. Oliphant,
12. Mrs. Mary A. Lincoln.
__________ .. __________
[page 4]
The Years 1901-1902
The first set programs were made this year. Wednesday morning was chosen as the time of meeting. Our first lesson was November 4; our last March 31, 22 Lessons. The authors from whom we read were Scott, Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Macauley, Moore, Shelley, Keats, and Byron. A number of papers were read.
Mrs. Mower resigned.
__________ .. __________
[page 5]
Fourth Year.
The Years 1902 – 1903.
Membership: [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill,
Mrs. Bowen,
Mrs. Robertson,
Mrs. Richards,
Miss H. Childs,
Miss M. Childs,
Mrs. Tucker,
Mrs. Swartzell,
Mrs. Claude,
Mrs. Oliphant,
Mrs. Lincoln,
__________ .. __________
[page 6]
The Years 1902, 1903
Our first Lesson was on November twelfth; the last on April eighth, omitting December twentyfourth, twenty-one lessons.
The authors from whom we read were Thackery, Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tennyson, George Eliot, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Mathew Arnold.
[page 7]
Fifth Year.
The Years 1903-1904
Membership: [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill,
Mrs. Bowen,
Mrs. Robertson
Mrs. Richards,
Miss H. Childs,
Miss M. Childs,
Mrs. Tucker,
Mrs. Swartzell,
Mrs. Claude,
3
Mrs. Oliphant,
Mrs. Gertrude McN. Stevens,
Mrs. Lincoln,
Mrs. Minnie A. Whitney,
Mrs. Anna Hamlin Hodges.
[page 8]
The Years 1903-1904.
The year began November fourth, and closed April sixth, twenty-two lessons.
The authors read were Americans. Irving, Bryant, Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Thoreau, and Lowell.
From the organization of the class to and including this year, Mrs. Verrill, after consultation with the class, had decided on the courses, assigned the lessons, and made the programs. Being now convinced that the class was as well qualified to do this work as she was, she begged to be retired, and to place her privileges in the hands of the class.
It was so arranged. The class de-
[page 9]
cided that thereafter all business should be in the hands of a Committee of three, the Chairman to be chosen by the Class, and her assistants to be named by her. The Chairman selected for ensuing year was Mrs. Robertson, her assistants Mrs. Richards and Mrs. Stevens.
de
A few simple rules were formulated, and ordered to be printed on new year's programs.
Mrs. Oliphant resigned.
[page 10]
Sixth Year,
The Years 190-4-1905.
Membership [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill,
Mrs. Bowen,
Mrs. Robertson,
Mrs. Richards,
Miss H. Childs,
Miss Childs,
Mrs. Tucker,
Mrs. Swartzell,
Mrs. Claude,
Mrs. Lincoln,
Mrs. Whitney,
Mrs. Stevens,
Mrs. Hattie Case Howard
Mrs. Hodges.
[page 11]
The years 1904-1905
Lessons commenced October nineteenth and ended April twelfth, twenty-four lessons. December twenty-first and twenty-eighth omitted.
The course chosen by Committee was The Elizabethan Era of English Literature. The sub-heads were Pre-Shakesperean Drama, The Theater in Shakespear's Time, Minor Poets and Prose Writers Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Johnson.
In the course of the year we read Hamlet, Midsummer's Night's Dream, King Lear, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra.
The rules adopted by the class were as follows:
[page 12]
Years 1904-1905
Rules:
1. The membership of the Class shall be limited to twenty and only residents of Chevy Chase shall be eligible.
3. One adverse vote shall defeat candidate.
2. Notice of any name to be voted on for membership must be given one week in advance and all absent members notified. Voting by secret ballot.
4. The preparation of the program, and all other business, shall be in the hands of a program committee.
5. The Program Committee shall consist of a Chairman, elected by the Class, and two assistants, chosen by her.
[page 13]
Term of office, one year.
6. The election of the Chairman shall take place annually at the first meeting in January, a twothirds vote of the members present being necessary for election.
8. Conversation during meetings shall be restricted to the subject in hand.
7. The leader for the day shall call the meeting to order promptly at eleven o'clock.
__________ .. __________
Mrs. Whitney left the Class for her home in Milwaukee, Wis.
[page 14]
Seventh Year.
Years 1905-1906.
Membership: [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill
Mrs. Bowen
Mrs. Robertson
Mrs. Richards
Miss H. Childs
Miss Childs
Mrs. Tucker
Mrs. Swartzell
Mrs. Claude
Mrs. Lincoln
Mrs. Howard
Mrs. Stevens
Mrs. Hodges
Mrs. Sarah C. Davis
[page 15]
Years of 1905-1906.
Lessons commenced October eighteenth, ended April eleventh, December twentieth and twentyseventh omitted.
Mrs. Richards was elected Chairman of the Program Committee; assistants Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Swartzell. They planned another Shakesperean year. The plays read were the Henrys IV and V, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus, Twelfth Night, Othello, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale.
Mrs. Howard was absent during the winter thru illness, and left for California in the Spring.
"An Outline History of the Chevy Chase Reading Class"
[page 16]
Eighth Year.
Years 1906-1907
Membership: [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill
Mrs. Bowen
Mrs. Robertson
Mrs. Richards
Miss H. Childs.
Miss Childs
Mrs. Tucker
Mrs. Swartzell
Mrs. Claude
Mrs. Lincoln
Mrs. Hodges.
Mrs. Stevens
Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Howard.
Mrs. Lincoln went to Worcester, Mass.
[page 17]
Years 1906-1907
Lessons began the first Wednesday in November; November twenty-eight, December nineteenth and twenty-sixth omitted. Twenty one lessons.
Mrs. Tucker was elected Chairman. Miss Helen Childs and Mrs. Davis, assistants. The course chosen was "Four Great Masters of Literature." Homer, Dante, Milton and Cervantes. Each writer was given to a Committee of three.
Homer: Mesdames Richards, Hodges and Claude.
Dante: Mesdames Robertson, Verrill, and Bowen.
Milton: Mesdames H. Childs, Swartzell and Bowen.
Cervantes: Mesdames Stevens, Howard and Tucker.
[page 18]
Six weeks were given to Homer, six to Dante, four to Milton and four to Cervantes. A number of papers were read during the year.
Mrs. Claude resigned.
Average attendance eleven.
[page 19]
Ninth Year.
Years 1907-1907.
Membership. [In two columns}
Mrs. Verrill.
Mrs. Robertson.
Mrs. Bowen.
Mrs. Richards.
Miss Childs.
Miss H. Childs.
Mrs. Tucker.
Mrs. Swartzell
Mrs. Stevens.
Mrs. Hodges.
Mrs. Davis.
Mrs Mary MdI. Glennan
Mrs. Gertrude F. Wedderburn.
Mrs. Mary B. Curtis
__________ .. __________
Mrs. Verrill left for California in February.
[page 20]
Years 1907-1908.
Lessons began November sixth, ended April eighth, omitting Nov. 27, December 25, and Ash Wednesday.
Number of lessons, nineteen.
Average attendance, ten.
9
Miss Helen Childs was elected Chairman of Program Committee, Assistants: Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Davis.
The course chose was Four Great Dramatists:
Molière, Racine, Goethe, Schiller.
Each writer was given to a committee of three.
Molière, Chairman, Mrs. Verrill. Assistants, Mrs. Stevens, Mrs. Davis.
Racine, Chairman, Mrs. Tucker. Assistants, Mrs. Davis, Miss Childs.
[page 21]
Goethe; Chairman, Mrs. Robertson, Assistants, Mrs. Swartzell, Mrs. Stevens.
Schiller; Chairman, Mrs. Hodges, Assistants, Mrs. Richards, Mrs. Bowen.
Six weeks were given to Molière, three to Racine, six to Goethe, and four to Schiller.
__________ .. __________
Readings.
Les Précieuses Ridicules, and portions of Leon Vincent's Hotel de Rambouillet. Tartuffe, Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and portions of Femmes Savantes and Medécin Malgré Lui, Le Misanthrope and Malade Imaginaire –
Shorter poems by Goethe, and the first part of Faust.
[page 22]
Schiller's William Tell, Wallenstein, and minor poems.
Racine's Esther, Andromagne and Athalie.
Average attendance ten.
[page 23]
Tenth Year.
Years 1908-1909.
Members. [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill.
Mrs. Bowen.
Mrs. Robertson.
Mrs. Richards.
Miss H. Childs.
Miss Childs.
Mrs. Tucker.
Mrs. Stevens.
Mrs. Swartzell.
Mrs. Hodges.
Mrs. Glennan
Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Wedderburn
Mrs. Curtis.
Mrs. Verrill was absent throughout the year.
Mrs. Curtis resigned.
Mrs. Swartzell was absent four months in 1909.
[page 24]
The Years 1908 – 1909.
Lessons began November eleventh, and closed March thirty-first, omitting November twentyfifth, December twenty-third, thirtieth and Ash-Wednesday.
Number of lessons seventeen; and an additional one at end of course to complete Ring and The Book.
Mrs. Hodges was chosen Chairman of the Program Committee for 1909-1910. Assistants, Mrs. Robertson and Mrs. Wedderburn. The authors chosen for study were Tennyson, Wordsworth and Browning. The committees were as follows:
Tennyson -- Mrs. Hodges, Ch., Mrs. Davis,
[page 25]
Mrs. Glennan, Mrs. Swartzell, and Mrs. Tucker.
Wordsworth; Miss H. Childs, Ch., Mrs. Bowen, Miss Childs, Mrs. Robertson.
Browning; Mrs. Verrill, Ch., Mrs. Richards, Mrs. Stevens, Mrs. Wedderburn.
Readings.
12
From Tennyson: Idylls of the King, Coming of Arthur, Lady of Shallott, Holy Grail.
From Wordsworth: The Prelude and early poems, following Mrs. McMahan's With Wordsworth in England. Letters. Intimations of Immortality, Extracts from Excursion. Shorter poems.
From Browning; The Barrett Letters, Rabbi Ben Ezra. Abt Vogler, Assolanto, Ina Balcony, Pied Piper, Cleon.
[page 26]
In a Gondola, Hervé Riel, Short poems. Ring and the Book.
Average attendance nine.
Mrs. Albert and Mrs. Ridgway were elected members.
[page 27]
Eleventh Year.
Years 1909-10
Membership. [two columns]
Mrs. Verrill.
Mrs. Bowen
Mrs. Robertson.
Mrs. Richards
Miss Helen Childs
Miss Childs
Mrs. Tucker
Mrs. Stevens
Mrs. Swartzell
Mrs Hodges
Mrs. Glennan
Mrs. Davis
Mrs Wedderburn
Mrs. Janet Jones Albert
Mrs. Carrie King Ridgway
__________ .. __________
Mrs. Verrill absent in 1909. Mrs. Swartzell absent throughout the year.
Resignations.
In October, Mrs. Glennan. In January (1910) Mrs. Davis, Miss Childs, Miss Helen Childs, Mrs. Tucker, Mrs. Swartzell.
In February Mrs. Albert went to Columbus, O, Mrs. Griffin, Mrs. Paschal, Mrs. Parker elected.
Average attendance, 7.7.
[page 28]
Years 1909-10
Lessons began October twenty-seventh, and ended March thirtieth, omitting November twentyfourth, December twenty second and twenty-ninth, and February ninth. Nineteen lessons.
The authors who had been chosen for study were George Meredith, G. Bernard Shaw, R. L. Stevenson, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Kipling, D.G. Rossetti, Victor Hugo, and Materlinck.
Committees: Meredith, Mrs. Richards.
Shaw, Mrs. Davis.
Stevenson, Mrs. Hodges.
Ibsen, Mesdames Stevens and Albert.
Tolstoi, Mrs. Wedderburn.
Rossetti, Mrs. H. Childs, Mrs. Ridgway.
Kippling, Mesdames Robertson and Bowen.
Materlinck, Mrs. Tucker.
[page 29]
Victor Hugo was omitted and readjustments made in consequence of resignations.
At first meeting a paper by Mrs. Bowerman [Wash.] was read. "Have we now any successors to Eliot and Thackery?"
Readings.
From Meredith: Diana of the Crossways. Shaw: Essays. Also Chesterton on Shaw.
Stevenson: Essays and Poems, Will 'o the Mill.
Ibsen: Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, First Act of Peer Gynt, Summary of Master Builder.
Tolstoi: Anna Karenina.
Rossetti: Blessed Damosel, Kings Tragedy, Sister Helen, Jennie, Rose Marie.
Kipling: Light that Failed, Ballads, William the Conqueror.
Materlinck: Monna Vanna, portions of Blue Bird, Essay on Dog.
[page 30]
It was decided that, hereafter, the members of the class should pay for the programs, rather than the members of the Program Committee only. Dues for 1910-11, 10 c. each.
Mrs. Verrill was elected Chairman of Program Committee for 1910-11. Assistants: Mrs. Bowen, Mrs. Ridgway, Mrs. Albert.
Course chosen. The Wisdom of the East.
[page 31]
Twelth Year.
Years 1910, 1911
Membership. [two columns]
Mrs. Verrill.
Mrs. Bowen.
Mrs. Robertson.
Mrs. Richards.
Mrs. Hodges.
Mrs. Stevens.
Mrs. Wedderburn.
Mrs. Lois Sherman Paschal.
Mrs. Ridgway.
Mrs. Emily Osgood Griffin.
Mrs. Sara Meaghley Parker.
Average attendance, 8.25
Mrs. Verrill seldom present on account of ill health.
[page 32]
Years 1910.11
Lessons began November second 1910, ended March fifteenth 1911, omitting November twentythird, December twenty-first and twenty-eighth and February twenty-second. Sixteen lessons. Course chosen. Wisdom of the East.
Committes: Egypt, Babylon and China.
Persia and Buddhism.
Ch. Mrs. Stevens, Assts: Mesdames Paschal, Parker and Ridgway.
Ch. Mrs. Robertson,
Assts: Mesdames Bowen and Hodges.
India.
Assts: Mesdames Wedderburn and Griffin
Ch. Mrs. Richards
[page 33]
Readings.
Babylon and Assyria.
Historical sketch. Reading with explanatory text of Hymns to the Sun God, Legend of Etana, Epic of Gilamesh, including descent of Ishtar into Arallu. Story of Creation. Legend of the Worm. Episode of the Flood. Extracts from Code of Hammurabi.
Egypt.
Historical sketch. The manners, customs and religion of ancient Egypt. Readings from Book of the Dead. Origin and use of the Scarab. Art, Architecture, tombs, and embalming. Rosetta stone. Literary records and literary periods. Precepts of Ptah Hotep. Epic of Pentaur. Lyrics. Epic of the Two Brothers. Setra and the Magic Book.
[page 35]
China
Historical sketch. Script and language. Readings from the Confucian classics and Meucins [spelling?]
Mrs. Verrill was chosen Chairman of Program Committee for 1911, 12. Assts: Mesdames Bowen and Ridgway. Course chosen. Wisdom of the east, concl'd. and the modern authors, Addison, Moore, Trollope and Huxley.
[page 36]
Thirteenth Year.
Years 1911 – 1912.
Membership. [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill.
Mrs. Bowen.
Mrs. Robertson.
Mrs. Richards.
Mrs. Hodges.
Mrs. Stevens.
Mrs. Wedderburn.
Mrs. Paschal.
Mrs. Ridgway.
Mrs. Griffin.
Mrs. Parker.
Average attendance, 7.
Mrs. Paschal in Europe throughout the year.
Resignations.
Nov. 1911, Mrs. Parker. December, Mrs. Griffin. Mrs. Verrill seldom present.
Elections.
December Mrs. Pruden and Mrs. Cushman March, 1912, Mrs. Teel, Mrs. Prentice, Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Lathrop.
[page 37]
Years 1911- 1912.
Lessons began November first, ended April tenth, omitting November twenty-ninth, December twentieth and twenty-seventh. February twenty-first and March thirteenth. Nineteen lessons in all.
Course chose Wisdom of the East, concl'd, and the modern Authors, Trollop, Moore, Addison and Huxley.
__________ .. __________
Japan – Old and New.
Mrs. Ridgway.
India – concluded.
Mrs. Richards.
Anthony Trollope.
Mrs. Stevens.
Mohammed and the Koran.
Mrs. Wedderburn.
[page 38]
Persian Literature
Mrs. Robertson and Mrs. Hodges.
Moore.
Mrs. Griffin.
Arabian Nights.
Mrs. Parker.
Huxley.
Mrs. Paschal.
Addison.
Mrs. Bowen.
Huxley was omitted and the two extra days given to Mrs. Richards.
Readings.
Remarks on Japanese literature. Gengi Mongatari. Two medieval plays: Abstraction and Ribs and Skin. Tanka (verses) ancient and modern; ghost stories; the legend of Ito Norisuki. Romance of the Milky Way. Tanabata and Kikoboshi. Readings […]
[page 39]
[…] from Lafcadio Hearn's translations.
Biography of Trollope. Barchester Towers.
Life of Mohammed and extracts from Koran. The Moors in Spain, Stanley Lane Poole. Irving's Alhambra. Later Indian drama. The Clay Cart and Sakuntala, both by Kalidasa.
Sketch of Persian literature. The Sufis or Mystics. The Shanamah of Firdausi; Khosru and Shireen of Nizami. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam. Rose and Fruit Garden of Rumi and Saadi. Salaman and Absol of Jami. Le Gallienee's translations of Hafiz. Portions of Lall Rookh. Stories from Arabian Nights.
[page 40]
Years 1911-1912
Lives of Addison and Steele and Readings from Spectator.
Mrs. Verrill was chosen chairman of Program Committee for 1912-1913.
Course chosen Historical Plays of Shakespeare.
Assistants: Mrs. Robertson and Mrs. Wedderburn.
Rules put into good shape with several slight alterations and inserted in new programs.
[page 41]
Rules.
1. The membership of the class shall be limited to twenty, and only residents of Chevy Chase shall be eligible.
3. All business matters, including the preparation of the program, shall be in the hands of an Executive Committee. Such Committee shall consist of three members; the Chairman to be selected by the class, and her associate members to be named by her.
2. Notice of any name to be voted on for membership must be submitted to the class by the Executive Committee one week in advance, and all absent members notified. Voting by secret ballot. One adverse vote shall defeat candidate.
[page 42]
4. The election for the Chairman for the following season shall take place annually at the first meeting in January, a two-thirds vote of the members present being necessary for election.
6. Conversation during meetings shall be restricted to the subject at hand.
5. The leader for the day shall call the meeting to order promptly at 11 A. M.
7. Chevy Chase (in Rule 1) shall be construed to include any outlying district of that name, but all meetings are to be held in houses of members in Section 2.
[page 43]
Fourteenth Year.
Years 1912-13.
Members. [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill
Mrs. Bowen
Mrs. Robertson
Mrs. Richards
Mrs. Hodges
Mrs. Stevens
Mrs. Wedderburn
Mrs. Ridgway
Mrs. Stella Test Pruden
Mrs Paschal
Mrs. Dorothy Harris Lathrop
Mrs. Mary Hazard Teele
Mrs. Lucretia Hazard Prentiss
Mrs. Katharine Jones Dawson.
Mrs. Virginia Payson Lane.
Mrs. Mary Bradford Stone.
Average attendance 9.
Resignation.
Election.
November 1. Mrs. Cushman.
January 1913. Mrs. Adkins.
Mrs. Paschal and Mrs. Verrill absent throughout the year.
[page 44]
Years 1912 – 13.
Lessons began November 13, ended April 9, omitting November 27, December 18, 25, January 1, 1913. 17 Lessons.
Course chosen Shakespeare's Historical Plays.
John, with sketch from William the Norman. Mrs. Robinson.
Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. Mrs. Stevens.
Richard II. Mrs. Hodges. Sketch, Mrs. Stone.
Henry V. Mrs. Bowen.
Richard III. Mrs. Ridgway with sketch.
Henry VI. Part 1. Mrs. Richards; Part 2. Mrs Pruden; Part 3, Mrs. Stone.
Henry VIII, with sketch. Mrs. Verrill for Mrs Wedderburn.
[page 45]
Years 1912-13
Mrs. Verrill was chosen Chairman of Program Committee.
Assistants: Mrs. Richards, Mrs. Lane.
Course chosen: Contemporary Drama.
[page 46]
Fifteenth Year
Years 1913-14.
Members, [in two columns]
Mrs. Verrill.
Mrs. Bowen.
Mrs. Robertson.
Mrs. Richards.
Mrs. Hodges.
Mrs. Stevens.
Mrs. Wedderburn.
Mrs. Pruden.
Mrs. Ridgway.
Mrs. Lathrop.
Mrs. Teele.
Mrs. Prentiss.
Mrs. Dawson.
Mrs. Lane.
Mrs. Stone.
Mrs. Bertha McNaughton Adkins.
Av. attendance 8.
Mrs. Verrill, Mrs. Wedderburn, Mrs. Pruden, Mrs. Teele, Mrs. Lathrop absent throughout the year. Mrs. Verrill, Mrs. Wedderburn, Mrs. Teele, ill.
Mrs. Paschal after an absence of 2 years dropt from the list of members.
[page 47]
Fifteenth Year.
1913-1914
Lessons began November 15, ended April 8, omitting November 26, December 24, December 31; 20 lessons in all.
Dramas by Contemporary Authors.
Justice – Galsworthy with criticism. Mrs. Ridgway.
The Piper; Peabody. Mrs. Lane.
Herod. Phillips. Mrs. Richards.
Francesca and Paola. Phillips. Mrs. Richards.
Playboy of the Western World. Synge, with life and criticism. Mrs. Robertson.
Hannele. Hauptman. Mrs. Bowen.
[page 48]
Fifteenth Year.
Years 1913-14.
The Weavers. Hauptman. Mrs. Stone.
Man and Superman. Shaw. Mrs. Stevens.
The class heard Fanny's First Play at Matinee, so it was not read.
Magda. Suderman. Mrs. Hodges.
Pillars of Society. Ibsen. Mrs. Dawson.
Ghosts. Ibsen. Mrs. Adkins.
Rostando Chantecler and Pinero's Second Mrs. Tangueray, assigned to Mrs. Teel and Mrs. Wedderburn, omitted.
[page 49]
Fifteenth Year.
Years 1913-1914.
Mrs. Richards was chosen Chairman. No assistants. Course chosen – Winners of the Nobel Prize for ideal work in Literature.
[page 50 – but not marked as such. All the following page numbers are just for our "modern" reading convenience. From the new handwriting, a different person begins keeping the history.]
Sixteenth Year
Years 1914-1915
Members [in two columns, as usual]
Mrs. Bowen
Mrs. Robertson
Mrs. Richards
Mrs. Hodges
Mrs. Stevens
Mrs. Wedderburn
Mrs. Prentiss
Mrs. Ridgway
Mrs. Teele
Mrs. Stone
Mrs. Dawson
Mrs. Lane
Mrs. Adkins
Lessons began Nov. 11, ended March 24, seventeen lessons in all.
At the first meeting of the season the following resolutions were passed:
[page 51]
Whereas, on July 3rd, the beloved Founder of this Class, Mrs. Elizabeth L. Verrill, passed from our midst into the life beyond.
That we lovingly acknowledge her leadership, not only as Founder of this Class, but as a member whose ideals have, through many years, guided us in work that has been both a profit and a pleasure. That we record our special admiration of the courage and cheerfulness with which she bore many years of illness, of the unfaltering interest in life and humanity which she maintained through it all, and of the intellectual vigor, which in spite of bodily weakness, stimulated to thought and action those who sought her
Resolved,
[page 52]
counsel and companionship.
That a copy of these resolutions be spread upon the minutes of the Chevy Chase Reading Class and that copies be sent to the husband, son, and brother of the deceased.
Resolved further,
Mary B. Robertson
Committee on Resolutions.
Mrs. Pruden and Mrs. Lathrop, having moved away from Chevy Chase, resigned from the Class. Later Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Adkins resigned.
Mrs. Teel was unable on account of illness to attend any meeting except the one at her own home.
Mrs. Wedderburn was absent the entire year.
Mrs. Elizabeth Watson Merrill was elected to membership on Nov. 11 th , and
[page 53]
in December Mrs. Harriet Powell Ashley and Mrs. Abbie Corbin Cushman.
Nobel Prize Winners in Literature was the subject for the year and the authors studied were: Mistral, Carducci, Prudhomme, Heyse, Bjornson, Sienkiewrez, Kipling, Echegaray, Lagerly, Tagore.
Mrs. Ridgway was elected chairman and chose as her assistants, Mrs. Merrill and Mrs. Robertson. The subjects chosen for the next year were "Walt Whitman" and "Some Contemporary Writers."
[page 54]
Seventeenth Year
1915-1916
[in two columns]
Mrs. Bowen
Mrs. Robertson
Mrs. Richards
Mrs. Hodges
Mrs. Stevens
Mrs. Wedderburn
Mrs. Prentiss
Mrs. Ridgway
Mrs. Teele
Mrs. Lane
Mrs. Dawson
Mrs. Bessie Watson Merrill
Mrs. Harriet Powell Ashley
Mrs. Cushman, having permanently left Chevy Chase, was dropped from membership.
Lessons began Nov. 3d and ended March 29 th – 18 in all.
Four meetings were devoted to Walt Whitman and included a lecture to which our friends were invited by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby.
Contemporary writers taken up were Samuel Crothers, John Masefield, Israel Zangwill, Algernon Swinburne, Arthur W. Pinero, Alfred Noyes, Seamus Macmanus and William Watson.
[page 55]
Eighteenth Year
1916-1917
[two columns]
Mrs. Bowen
Mrs. Robertson
Mrs. Richards
Mrs. Hodges
Mrs. Stevens
Mrs. Ridgway
Mrs. Teele
Mrs. Prentiss
Mrs. Dawson
Mrs. Merrill
Mrs. Lane
Mrs. Ashley Mrs. William S. Garland
Mrs. Hodges was Chairman and was assisted by Mrs. Ashley and Mrs. [name omitted] "Nature Writers" was the general topic of the year. Four meetings were devoted to John Burroughs, two to Ernest Thompson Setow, three to Dallas Lore Sharp, one to Gene Stratton Porter, three to George Douglas Roberts, one each to Neltje Blancham and Mable Osgood Wright and three to Jean Henri Cassimer Fabre – eighteen in all.
Mrs. Clinton L. Wolcott and Mrs. Carden F. Warner were added to membership.
[page 56]
Nineteenth Year 1917-1918
Chairman, Mrs. Garland Assistants, General topic, Russian Literature.
First meeting October 31, last meeting April 3d.
Authors taken were Madame Olga Novikoff, Peter Kroptkin, M. Trnbetzkoi, N.V. Gogol, L.N. Tolstoi, L. Andreyev. V. Soloviev, A.P. Checkov, T.M. Dostoievsky, L.N. Polapenko, M. Gorky, T. Sologob, A. Kuprin, P.N. Milinkoff.
Besides these two days were devoted to Russian poetry and three days to a study of history, customs and characteristics.
Mrs. Frank Persons was added to the Membership. Also Mrs. Jesse Potbury.
[page 57]
Twentieth Year 1918-1919
Chairman Mrs. Garland
Scandinavian Literature. First meeting Oct. 30, last meeting April 2d. Nineteen in all.
Assistants
Authors taken were Jonas Liil, Bjornstjerne, two days to Liil, and three to Bjornstjerne, Hjalmer Hjorth Boyesen, one day, Henrik Ibsen, four days, John August Strindberg, one day, Selma Lagerlof, three days. Besides this, two days were given to Scandinavian Poetry and two to history and beginnings of literature.
[page 58]
Twenty-first Year 1919-1920
Mrs. Richards Chairman
This year the novel plan was tried of letting each member select her own writer.
Mrs.William Page Couper, Mrs. Wm. L. Hillyer, Mrs. Charles M. Marsh, Mrs. S.L. Jordidi were added to the membership.
[page 59]
Twenty-second Year 1920-1921
Chairman, Mrs.
The first meeting was held Oct 27 th , the last April 6 th – twenty in all.
The year was devoted to Shakespeare, the following plays being read: Cymbaline, Julius Caesar, Comedy of Errors, King Lear, Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, As You Like It, Macbeth, Richard II, Taming of the Shrew, Winter's Tale, King John. Mrs. Jodidi read a Russian translation. Mrs. Persons, having moved away was dropped.
[page 60]
Twenty-third Year 1912-1922 Chairman, Mrs. Hillyer
Biography and Poetry
First meeting October 26; last, April 5.
Biographies: Juniperro Serra, by William Husdon; Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael,Titian, by Sandhurst; Lady Mary Wortley Montague by Whartons; William of Orange, Motley's Dutch Republic; Garibaldi, by A.L. Swinburne; Richard Brinsly Sheridan by Whartons; Victor Hugo, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, by her daughters; Beethoven by Nohl; Adelina Putti by Herman Klein; Li Hung Chang; Cecil Rhodes by Joh Hays Hammond; Lord Kitchener by H. Beglie; Lucretia
[page 61
Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony; Alexandra Flodoronna; Joseph H. Chrate by Ed. Sandford Martins. Agassiz.
Three meetings were devoted to poetry, ancient and modern, Homer, Dante, Milton, Byron, Keats, Shelley and a number of more modern poets.
Mrs. Edward N. McLellan and Miss Lucy Mackrille were elected to membership.
[page 62]
Twenty-fourth Year 1922-1923
Chairman, Mrs. Ashley
Writers of Today
First meeting, November 1; last, March 28.
Authors read during the year were: Joseph Conrad, Gamaliel Bradford, H.G. Wells, Edward John Dunsany, Knut Hamsun, Arthur Symons, James Bryce, William Clarles Beebe, Modern English and Irish Poets, Anatole France, Walter Lionel George, Eugene G. O'Neill, Hamlin Garland, Edith Wharton, Villjahmur Stefanson, James Gibbons Huneker, Henry Louis Mencken, Leonard Merrick and American Poets.
[page 63]
Twenty-fifth Year 1923-1924
Mrs. McClellan, Chairman.
First meeting, October 31 st ; last March 26.
A varied program of Travel, Economics, Science and Literature with the following authors: James Harvey Robinson, James Gilbane Huniker, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Norman Angell, Jacinto Benavente, George Bernard Shaw, J. Arthur Thomson, Ethel Sedgwick, Theodore Lothrop Stoddard, Edward Simmone, Joseph Hergesheimer, N. Levi, John Galsworthy, Ferdinand Ossendowsky, Louis Hemon, Thomas Morris Longstreth.
[page 64]
Twenty-sixth Year 1924-1925
Mrs. Wolcott, Chairman
Contemporary Writers
First meeting, October 22, Last, April 8.
At the first meeting Mrs. Merrill gave a talk on her trip to Europe during the summer. Authors read during the years were: Robert Underwood Johnson, Frank Richardson Kent, G. Stanley Hall, Margaret Wilson, Edwin E. Slosson and William Otis Caldwell, Michael Idvorsky Pupin, Edith Wharton, André Maurois, William Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, Havelock Ellis, William Lyon Phelps, Marie Curie, Arthur S. Hady, Anzia Yezierska.
[page 65]
Arthur Weigall, Albert Edward Wiggan, Walter Damrosch, Edward Murray East, Mary A. von Arnim.
In February the Class celebrated its Silver Anniversary by an evening party at the home of Mrs. Robertson, with our husbands as guests. | <urn:uuid:c1eb89a4-7ecb-4e62-9c96-8730f0463e91> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://chevychasehistory.org/sites/default/files/An_Outline_History_of_the_Chevy_Chase_Reading_Class_--_CCHS_2004-10-09.pdf | 2018-07-21T04:08:21Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00530.warc.gz | 69,389,564 | 8,350 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.951688 | eng_Latn | 0.985005 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
1610,
2609,
3375,
4670,
5978,
7257,
7312,
8220,
8975,
10104,
11203,
12153,
13558,
14632,
15930,
16838,
17963,
19580,
20670,
21685,
22692,
24591,
25502,
27095,
28531,
29868,
30579
] | [
2.0625,
1.1640625
] | 2 | 1 |
TESOL QUARTERLY
Volume 1
June, 1967
Number 2
Table of Contents
To print, select PDF page nos. in parentheses
Challenge to the Profession *
Most of us have traveled a good deal, I suspect, many in foreign countries. We have known in some measure what is called cultural shock and have struggled with the hardship of the sounds and forms of another language. If so, you can more easily imagine with me now the almost unbelievable saga of Charles Wayo as related in the February issue of Ebony.
Five years ago Charles Wayo, then only fourteen and known by his tribal name of Kofi Akakpo in the Hausa village of Ghana where he lived, found in a trash pile a torn and dirty copy of Ebony. Unable to read it, he still found in its pictures a land where black people live like the white people he had seen—in good houses, with good clothing, and with automobiles and material things he had never even dreamed of. A fierce ambition arose in him—to go to that land and get such an education that he could return to his own people and help them to live in the same way.
In the little school where he worked as janitor, he saw English words and sentences on the blackboards. To the little English that he had acquired in school, he now added more. He memorized what he found on the boards
* This is the presidential address delivered at the TESOL Convention, April 1967.
Mr. Allen, professor of English and linguistics at the University of Minnesota, and president of TESOL during its first year (1966-67), edited the book of readings entitled Teaching English as a Second Language (McGraw-Hill, 1965) and is the author of TENES: A Survey of the Teaching of English to Non-English Speakers in the United States (NCTE, 1966).
Harold B. Allen
before cleaning them. In Ebony he found a letter from an American service man. Now that he had learned enough so that he felt he could write a letter, he wrote to this man, Captain Charles W. Simmons, stationed in Ankara, Turkey.
When he wrote the letter about himself and his ambition to Captain Simmons, he signed himself Charles Wayo, taking the captain's own given name and adding his native word for "intelligent person."
Captain Simmons' interest was aroused by this unexpected communication, and a correspondence followed. But this was not enough for Charles. He knew that now, more than ever before, he had to get to America, and he figured that somehow he would have to find the captain first. He studied a map of Africa and decided that, although he had no money for transportation, he could reach Ankara on his two legs—and this amazing child simply determined that he would walk to Turkey. Barefoot, with no food but two loaves of bread and one pound of onions, with no clothing except shirt and shorts, and with a map from a filling station in Aura, he started out on January 1, 1964. The first day he made forty-five miles, and the next day nearly as much. He began a journal of his travel. He found people from other tribes whose language he could not speak but who gave him food and water. At length he crossed the border into Nigeria, and found refuge for a while with a Nigerian family that wanted him to remain with them. But
he had to go on. By now it seemed that his best route was not eastward to the Sudan and through Egypt but northward to Algeria and along the Mediterranean. So this lad actually set out to cross the Sahara desert alone and on foot. His feet were scratched and torn from rocks; his body suffered from infection; several times he was seriously ill. You yourself will have to read that narrative to learn the details of his well-nigh miraculous journey: the escapes from death by snakes and thirst and starvation; the help extended by a Muslim family in a midSahara oasis; the truck tide offered by French soldiers who dropped him off when he refused homosexual relations; and the ultimate arrival in Algiers. Months had passed by now, and he was prepared for many new experiences. But when he managed to go to Spain by hiding among some barrels on a ferry from Tangier in Morocco, he was shocked when for the first time he saw poor Europeans, and he was angered when a Spanish beggar asked him for money—angered because he felt that the white people in Ghana had been living a lie in giving the impression that they were superior. He saw now that in the world both blacks and whites were both rich and poor; and his desire to do something for his people grew even stronger. Walking and hitch-hiking, without a passport and without money, secreted in a farmer's cart so that he could pass the border into Italy, he made his way across France and into Greece and Yugoslavia and—at last—Turkey. More than two and one half years after he had left his village, he reached the U.S. air base in Ankara. There his search ended; he found Captain Sim- mons. "Why, you're Charles Wayo." And, as the wonder of this boy's pilgrimage suddenly overwhelmed him, he could only exclaim, "Well, I'll be damned. I'll just be damned." The wonder of it amazed others, too; and through the help of Captain Simmons and his friends, Charles is now a student at Father Flanagan's famous Boys' Town in Kansas preparing for an American college where he can get the training that will enable him to return to Ghana to help his people.
Now, Charles Wayo's usefulness to his people will result from his becoming familiar with the ideas and things and ways of another culture through its language—English. Though photographs first awoke the curiosity of this bright young man, it was not until he had some acquaintance with English that he was able to write to Captain Simmons. It will be through English that his life and that of his people, I hope, will be enriched.
Learning English is more than acquiring control of English phonemic patterns, more than learning the morphemic permutations and the syntactic complexity of our language. It is also something about the cultural complex that underlies and accompanies our language.
If we are meeting our high obligation as teachers of English to speakers of other languages, then, we are doing more than teaching the sounds and the words and the structures of English. We are teaching control of these specifics within the frame of reference of the humanistic tradition of the English-speaking peoples. This, indeed, is our obligation—to add to the student's familiarity with one language and one culture some familiarity
with another language and another culture. And though we may never evoke so dramatic an effect as English has already had upon the life of Charles Wayo, we can be certain that we will be making life richer and finer and happier for many of our students. For them, in their own generation, we can make it possible to grow and to advance in the dominant culture without the handicap and the heartache of the non-English immigrants who flooded into the United States for nearly a century of our country's rapid growth.
It is true, as Wallace Lambert has pointed out, that some foreign accents are sometimes acceptable in certain situations. I confess being delighted with the lilt in the speech of a Dutch stewardess on a KLM flight to Amsterdam. Greta Garbo, the Gabor sisters, and Maurice Chevalier are not the only motion picture stars to capitalize upon this kind of attraction. But they are exceptions. The life story of many a first-generation immigrant would include a description of the ridicule and rejection that greeted him because of his speech, his foreign accent. A whole category of American humor is based upon the foreign accents of Swedish and Yiddish and German and other immigrants considered at least laughable if not absurd and inferior. Inability to understand what was heard or to read what was available, inability to speak or to write easily in the new language— these were handicaps that often sharply restricted the social and the occupational opportunities of these new Americans. Frequently it was a major cause for their preferring to live with their own kind in tight little ur- ban or rural communities.
We can certainly look with pride upon the ultimate effect of the great melting-pot, and the world can look with amazement at this nation that has absorbed millions of speakers of German and Italian and Greek and Polish and French and Swedish and Danish and Norwegian and Czech, whose descendants now speak American English as if they had an AngloSaxon ancestry. But the first and sometimes the second generations of these newcomers would not have suffered from this language handicap had they been able to profit by what is known today about teaching English as a second language.
We now have the responsibility of drawing upon that knowledge in order to prevent the frustrations imposed by the language handicap upon the present generation of non-English speaking residents. There is no sound reason today for their being subject to that handicap. We have the job of helping them to gain a second language that will make easier the opening of social and occupational doors and hence enrich their lives and the life of their communities.
At this moment I have not been thinking of teaching English to peoples in other lands, although that is certainly a large part of the job—a critical part of it. Nor at this moment have I been thinking of teaching English to the foreign students who for a few years are in our schools and colleges, although that, too, is part of our job. Rather at this moment I am thinking of those hundreds of thousands of people, some of them Americans with a much better claim to that designation than you and I have,
whose lives are frustrated and restricted because they do not control the dominant language of their country.
Yet, although each of us must work in his own particular place, we as a profession cannot ignore that tripartite nature of our responsibility. The teacher of elementary children in El Paso today may be working in a school in Nigeria tomorrow. The teacher of English to foreign students at the University of Ilinois may have just arrived after a two-year stint in Tanzania. It is essentially one job— that of teaching English, the language and its culture, to speakers of other languages, regardless of how old they are or where they live. It is a job that calls for teachers who can give more of themselves than other people usually do. It calls for something we call dedication and commitment.
Of course, not all persons teaching English as a second language have such a commitment. Plenty of Americans abroad are teaching English because it is a way to make a little money. Nearly two years ago, my daughter and son-in-law took positions teaching English in a private language school in Spain. Idealistic about their work, they entered upon it with vast enthusiasm. Disillusionment came swiftly when they discovered that the school was essentially a money-making operation and that neither the management nor the other teachers cared about whether they were actually teaching English. Certainly there are teachers in this country with equal lack of commitment. Yet, commitment is what I would first check in looking for the good teacher of English as a second language—such commitment as I have found in a volunteer Junior League teacher in New York city, a teacher in a BIA school in Arizona, a teacher in a public school in New Mexico, and another in a university in Utah.
But commitment is not enough. Idealism and good will are not enough. I have seen committed teachers do egregiously wrong things in the classroom, and I have heard them make palpably unsound statements about the English language. No, the teaching of a second language is a professional skill requiring professional training and competence in linguistics and in methods and in materials. The teaching of English as a second language calls for special preparation in the field of English—in language and composition and literature. The TENES survey completed a year ago revealed how grossly inadequate is such preparation on the part of most of the teachers now engaged in teaching English to speakers of other languages, especially in the critical primary grades.
On a national scale the problems cannot be met by one person's saying to himself, "I'm going to get some professional training next summer." They are too large and complex for any such individual solution, dedicated though the individual may be.
Recognition of this fact led to the creation of TESOL one year ago. Useful as had been the ad hoc conferences planned by a committee representing the five interested organizations, no such conferences can really do all that needs to be done. The situation clearly demanded the development of an independent professional organization primarily concerned with the teaching of English to speakers of
other languages. It would have to be an organization for all teachers having that concern, and it would have to be an organization for action. TESOL is that organization.
This first year has been a good year. At its inception, TESOL was blessed with a small treasury inherited from the three ad hoc TESOL conferences. This made it possible to distribute one newsletter and to lay plans for its continuance, to publish the proceedings of the New York conference last spring, and to get our own professional journal under way. As editor the executive committee was fortunate to obtain Betty Wallace Robinett of Ball State University.
The initial nestegg also enabled the executive committee to search for a part-time executive secretary. Through the intermediation of our first vice-president, Robert Lado, we were able to enlist the services of James E. Alatis, just as he was leaving the U.S. Office of Education to become Associate Dean at Georgetown University. Since last September, he has been able to establish office procedures, develop a mailing list of more than 5,000 names, and lay a foundation for the growth of TESOL.
The most recent appointment of the executive committee is that of Alfred Aarons as editor of the newsletter. He brings to the position long experience as the able editor of the Florida FL Newsletter and deep concern with the teaching of English to non-English speakers. He and Mrs. Aarons acomplished a small miracle in getting his excellent first issue out in time for the Miami convention.
The two other major individual contributions to the year's work have been those of the first vice-president and the local chairman. As first vicepresident, David Harris was constitutionally charged with the responsibility of planning the convention you are attending. Those who have attended can appreciate the excellence of the program, but unless you yourself have had the task of planning one and getting the speakers for the various assignments, you cannot fully appreciate the amount of preparation behind the program. Fate twice wished such a job on me, once for CCCC and once for NCTE; and you must believe me when I say that out of this experience, I can express the deepest appreciation for the fine work of Dave Harris and his cooperating committee. The local chairman of the 1967 TESOL Convention, Paul Ball, charged with what is probably the most thankless job of all, very capably set up the smoothly running machinery which made it possible for the program to function.
Two other events can be mentioned. One was that, with William Slager, chairman of the English association in NAFSA, I called upon Harold Howe, U.S. Commissioner of Education, to present the executive committee's resolution asking for a full time person in ESL to be attached to his own staff and not to a particular elementary, secondary, or college division. The other is that, with the financial support of the Center for Applied Linguistics, certain members of your executive committee and certain members of the NAFSA group met in Washington last fall to discuss areas of mutual concern and cooperation. The meeting was, I should say, successful beyond our expectations.
All this activity this year, and much
else that I will not now detail, is only a forecast of what TESOL will be doing, with your help, next year and in the years to come. A glimpse of that future I suggested in three talks this past year, one to the Arizona Bilingual Council after a day of visiting Indian reservations, one to the South Dakota Federation of Modern Language Teachers, and one last month to the Alaska Council of Teachers of English in Anchorage. In those talks I estimated the 1970 membership of TESOL as about 5,000. Here are some of the things we can look forward to if you help get 4,000 other teachers to join your professional association. Most of these points were described in greater detail in the March, 1967 issue of the TESOL Quarterly.
First, a membership that large will insure for the organization itself these provisions already begun or about to begin:
1. A central office, with a TESOL library that can serve as a repository of TESL textbooks and reports and other materials and hence will be a clearing-house for the profession.
2. A quarterly journal devoted exclusively to matters of interest to teachers of English to speakers of other languages.
3. A newsletter reporting all kinds of events relevant to the TESL field.
4. A national register of competent TESL personnel.
5. A publishing program offering pamphlets, special studies, and other materials regular publishers would be unlikely to prepare.
6. A speaking and consulting program.
7. A national convention each year.
8. A planned program of co-sponsored local and regional meetings, perhaps with the support of future affiliate organizations.
9. Official organizational cooperation
in any and all kinds of relevant meetings, studies, research, and other activity, especially with the five original organizations sponsoring the ad hoc conferences, as well as with the U.S. Office of Education.
Then, second, I see the influence of TESOL helping to bring about the following:
1. Appointment of a TESL specialist in the U.S. Office of Education.
2. Appointment of a TESL specialist as an English-as-a-second-language consultant in the department of education of every state where the TESL problem exists.
3. Appointment of at least one TESL specialist as a consultant in the board of education in every major city where the TESL problem exists.
4. Additional recognition by each relevant school administration in terms of the time and materials and other resources necessary because of the special needs of teaching English as a second language.
5. Establishment of guidelines for the preparation and perhaps ultimately the certification of teachers of English as a second language.
6. Increased research in the special pedagogy of foreign-language learning and teaching, especially with relevance to English.
7. Establishment of guidelines for the evaluation of TESL materials of all kinds, printed as well as audiovisual.
These action specifics by no means constitute the whole picture of the future, but they point to much of it. It is a future in which we who have TESL concerns will become increasingly proud of our profession as it becomes a profession to more and more persons now engaged in it. But it is a future that will not come about without your support. This is a membership organization. It will produce
positive action only if it has many members, for in its active members will lie its strength and its leadership. You have already revealed your commitment by coming here to this convention. I urge you now to demonstrate that commitment further by talking about TESOL to fellow teachers and administrators and enlisting them as TESOL members.
Only as increased professional competence is developed among all who teach English to our speakers of other languages, will those speakers be able to move more readily into the fullness of the English-speaking culture. Only as this organization grows in size and prestige can it support such competent teachers through working with administrative officials in city, state and federal agencies.
The future of TESOL—indeed, the future of the profession—is in your hands.
The Promises of the Newest and Limitations Type of Grammatical Analysis 1
Archibald
I. MAINLY PROMISES
There can be no doubt that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been more exciting to students of linguistics than all those that came before, nor can there be much doubt that the two centuries, linguistically speaking, are much alike. The linguists of the nineteenth century felt that their discovery of the systematic quality of change in sound made a revolution in language study, and that when they talked of "the laws of sound change" they were making statements as important and as fruitful as many of those in the natural sciences of their day. It was less fortunate, perhaps, that their insistence on absence of exception in "laws of sound change" was set up as a dogma used by them as a mark of orthodoxy.
1 This article is an abridgement and revision of two lectures delivered in 1965 at the University of Cincinnati with the sponsorship of the Department of English under the auspices of the Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund and published in 1966 with the help of the Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund. The present article is reduced by about half, but as well as reduction there have been a number of revisions, partly because some statements are no longer relevant, but more importantly because I have had the benefit of correspondence with Noam Chomsky and was thus able to clear up a number of misunderstandings and even errors. Needless to say, I am not claiming that Professor Chomsky is in any way responsible for such errors as appear in this form.
Mr. Hill, professor of English and linguistics at the University of Texas and secretary of the Linguistic Society of America, is the author of Introduction to Linguistic Structures (Harcourt Brace, 1958) and Oral Approach to English (English Language Education Committee, Tokyo, 1965).
10
A. Hill
Our own century also has resulted in discoveries, and in dogmas, so that one could describe our era as like the one preceding, but with all bids doubled and redoubled. If we confine ourselves to American activity alone, there have been two major revolutions, and many others which approach the major. The first of these revolutions appeared in the 1930's in response to an epochmaking book, Language, b y Leonard Bloomfield.2 Bloomfield and his followers created the school now known as structuralism. Its major insight, I believe, was the realization of the importance of contrasts. Thus one of Bloomfield's most famous articles starts out with the statement that in language, some things are the same, and some are different.3 The things which are different are the contrasts, set in a framework of things which are the same. Almost the whole of the Bloomfieldian position follows from this statement; as one goes on identifying "sames" and "different," one draws a map of the total structure of language. The Bloomfieldian maps were based on language behavior, and were thus severely positivist and antimentalist.
Structuralism had remarkable success, particularly in phonology. Thus for instance, I once had occasion to work with both a pre-structural phonetic transcription of Cherokee, and a structural description in terms of con-
2 Language (New York, 1933).
3 "A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language," Language, II (1926), p. 154.
trasts.4 I never succeeded in identifying any of the forms in the prestructural transcription with forms as written by the Cherokees themselves. The structural descriptions were readily identifiable. Structural phonology gave great simplification and great clarity, but brought with it, however, a complex and unfamiliar terminology. Classes of contrasting sounds, such as the vowels of met and mat were called phonemes, and non-contrasting sounds such as the slight nasalization brought about in mat by the initial consonant, and necessarily absent in pat where there is no nasal consonant, were spoken of as allophones. Unfortunately, use of these terms in an approved fashion came to be a mark of orthodoxy, and much ink was spilled in repelling heresies. Nor were the structuralists always ingratiating in argument. Bloomfield's thumbnail review of Ogden and Richards' work, The Meaning of Meaning, was devastating.5 Ogden and Richards set up the semantic situation as a triangle, a hen, say, as the outside stimulus, giving rise to a mental concept, and this in turn to an audible word, each forming one angle of the triangle. Such a mentalist picture was anathema to the great positivist, and he demolished it neatly by pointing out that such a triangle gave no notion of how a man might talk about hens when none were immediately present. The positivist attitude also appeared in conversations. This was the era when if someone said that "lousy" was an ugly sound, there was always an irritating linguist around
4 Cf. my "A Note on Primitive Languages," IJAL, XVIII (1952), 172-77.
5 "On Recent Work in General Linguistics," Modern Philology, XXV (1927-28), p. 214.
to ask "How do you know?" and after the usual answers had been given, to point out that the word was ugly only by association with an ugly insect, which by any other name would smell no more sweet.
Yet in spite of the successes of structuralism, there were signs of weakness. Thus structuralists agreed on the importance of contrasts, but never on what the contrasts were. The number of basic vowel phonemes was given sometimes as nine, sometimes as ten, sometimes as six. Sometimes the sum total of vowels and diphthongs was given as thirty-six, sometimes as only fourteen. Some contrasts were explained as differences in length, or as differences in quality, or as differences between simple sounds and combinations, And finally, no agreement was ever reached on whether pairs like its wings and it swings were or were not different, and if so what the difference was.
More important, perhaps, was the disagreement between the group that followed George Trager, and those who followed Kenneth Pike. Recognizing that in all languages there are but a limited number of phonemes which combine into a larger number of morphemes and words, and that the words combine into an infinite number of sentences, the Tragerians always began their descriptions with phonemes, and ended with sentences. The Pike school insisted that the student begin with the sentence, and work downward to the smaller units. The dispute is capable of being resolved, since the Tragerians are right that description can be more economically handled by giving the smaller units first, and the followers of Pike are right in that analysis must proceed from sentences, since these are the forms in which language is presented. This was roughly the state of linguistics in 1958, the year of the appearance of Noam Chomsky's manifesto, Syntactic Structures. 6 There had been intimations of a coming revolution before, particularly in a talk before the Linguistic Society of America by Zellig Harris, 7 but for most the appearance of Chomsky as a major linguist must have been as startlingly complete as the birth of Athena.
What is this newest linguistics, newer than that linguistics which our schools call the new linguistics? Perhaps its most general tenet is that every adult has a set of rules which he uses to combine simple, underlying and internal structures into an infinite number of sentences, unlimited in their number and complexity. The adult hearer, also, is provided with some sort of recognition process which enables him to recognize the structure of the sentences he hears. The process of combining structures into more complex structures is known as transformation, and has given one of the names by which the school is known. The process of understanding is thought to be closely similar to that of production, since the hearer is believed to start internal, silent speech as soon as he begins listening, and in doing so, to use the usual transformational processes. When a match between internal sentence and incoming sentence is achieved, understanding is reached. Let me say at once that I think these main tenets are indisputable, and that
6 Janua Linguarum, series minor, 4 (1957).
7 "Transformation in Linguistic Structure," Dec. 29, 1955.
they have had a tremendous impact on linguistics. Both traditional grammar and structural linguistics found it necessary to work with presented sentences, thus reducing analysis to a kind of parsing. The reduction is what led Charles Hockett to speak of such analyses as "marble slab linguistics," since it required that a piece of utterance be caught and dissected like a cadaver. The taunt, though there is one which is an answer, is justified enough. At a blow, the new notion of hearer as speaker, made of language something dynamic, in which process is important, and in which sentences can be predicted. The linguist no longer needs to catch his sentence and spread it out on the slab.
A second tenet of transformational theory is that the goal of linguistics should not be to create a "discovery procedure" for laying bare the structure of all languages. When this statement is meant as a criticism of previous linguistic activity, however, it must be accepted with some reservation, since I am not at all sure that linguistics of the thirties and forties strove for an automatic and mechanical procedure, guaranteeing discovery. It would seem to me that most of us were interested at the most in a "search procedure" and that we would have regarded a super Donderbeck's machine for grinding out structure as proof of the triviality of our science. On this statement I may be wrong, and in any event the transformationalist warning is a wise one, since all sciences are essentially criteria for the judging of competing theories, rather than theories themselves. Linguistics should judge between competing grammars, so that as they are criticized, they become continuously better. Moreover, transformational theory has provided the criterion needed. It is based on the belief that every native speaker has a set of rules which enable him to produce an infinite number of sentences and which also inhibit the production of pseudo-sentences which are not acceptable. Thus the nativespeaker grammar is the set of rules for producing sentences and rejecting ungrammatical sentences. Linguist's grammars are the description of these rules. Both types of grammar cover or "generate" sentences and sentence types, though generate in this sentence does not mean that a grammar is a machine for making sentences. On this basis, then, a perfect grammar must generate all and only the grammatical sentences of the language for which it is written.
The results of this criterion are somewhat surprising. The best grammars turn out to be the great compilations of the traditional type, those of Jespersen, Poutsma, and Kruisinga. All were based on large corpora, and provide for a large number of sentences. Yet all these works remain basically "marble slab" grammars, and generate sentences outside their corpora only by accident. They are also not very consistent, since many decisions are left to the reader's judgment, giving room for variation. Also, since they are very long indeed, they can hardly be very simple. One reason why with all their faults these pre-Bloomfieldian grammars are better than the productions of structuralists is that structuralists largely confined themselves to discussing how to write grammars, illustrating their discussions with partial specimens. In this, transforma- tionalists are now repeating earlier history, since discussion of how to write grammars is now very lively indeed. The development of criteria of judgment is, however, a very great achievement and springs quite naturally from the dynamic approach to language. Native speaker's grammar as a set of rules can be said to predict all possible sentences from the time the rules are learned. The ancient criterion of completeness is thus made to mean grammatical completeness, and together with the other traditional criteria of consistency and simplicity made up revitalized tools.
In striving for consistency the transformationalists make effective use of formulaic statements of the conditions under which a rule applies, statements which are sufficiently rigorous so as to force the grammarian to apply the rule each time the conditions recur. The rules often take the form
AYB —> AZB.
That is, when the environment consists of a preceding A and a following B, Y becomes Z. Formulae have several consequences. For the skillful user they give rigor and consistency. For the outsider they are repellent, and have at best only the doubtful value of a pons asinorum. They may also, if the user is unskillful, be elaborated only for their own sakes. All three results have certainly already occurred, though increase in precision has been the main one. It should not be thought, however, that use of formulaic statement is the property of transformationalists alone, since many schools of linguistics have employed it. The particular virtue of Chomskyan formulae is that they are employed as
a thought-out part and tool in a unified approach to language. They are a part of a unified approach also in that they are looked upon merely as more precise statements of the unexpressed knowledge the layman already has. The unexpressed knowledge is called by the transformationalists intuition, though this is not the only entity called by that term in their vocabulary. The term and the importance attached to it represent a violent break with Bloomfieldian tradition, since for Bloomfieldians to say that a position was intuitive meant that it was probably wrong. For Chomskyans it means that it is probably right, but in need of replacement by an explicit statement. The great grammars of the past are then good because they most nearly agree with the native speaker's intuition. Structural grammars can be called bad or counter-intuitive. One profitable result is that respect for the older tradition has been greatly increased, even for such distant works as the Port Royal Grammar which Chomsky has found parallel to many of his ideas.8
A final tenet of transformational grammarians, never quite explicitly stated, is that the basic items of which the language is made up are the morphemes (though they no longer use the word) which are the meaningful elements of communication. In accord with this view, sentences are described in inverted tree-diagrams, very like the familiar diagrams of our school days, and which more and more precisely specify the sentence elements. Typically a tree begins with
8 Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Janua Linguarum, series minor, 38 (1964), p. 15.
Sentence is to be rewritten as Noun Phrase plus Verb Phrase S — > N P + V P
Noun Phrase is to be rewritten as Determiner plus Noun N P — > D + N
Verb Phrase is to be rewritten as Verb plus Noun V P — > V b + N
until at last a "string" of morphemes is uniquely specified by abstract, written designations. Thereafter, this "terminal string" is converted by a set of rules into the audible sounds we produce while speaking. There are, I think, many ways in which this view of phonology as a sort of pronouncing dictionary, 9 can be useful. It fits very well with traditional English-teaching attitudes, since the abstractly noted string can be translated into writing quite as well as into speech, and will therefore appeal to teachers who have been repelled by structuralist insistence that before analyzing sentences it is necessary to learn both phonetics and phonemics. Yet as will be shown later, this attitude toward phonology is one of the sharply controversial issues today.
If I now try to summarize some of the reasons why transformational analysis deserves the name of a major linguistic revolution, I can begin by saying that its admirable unity and completeness shows a way in which grammars can (at least ideally) be written for the whole of a language. Previously we have always managed to get stuck in phonology, or if we
9 Cf. L. M. Myers, "Two Approaches to Language," PMLA, LXXVII, No. 4, pt. 2, (September 1962), p. 8.
were lucky, half-way into morphology. It is now possible to make complete, precise, and admirably economical statements about syntax, something which before we had no more than fumbled at. For instance, we now see that it is possible to put a firm base under syntactic classes of words without reference to non-linguistic meaning, the bugaboo which had frightened us away from syntax. I can illustrate what I mean by a simple example. School grammars used to divide nouns into animate and inanimate classes according to what was designated, as with animate soldier, and inanimate table. Since structuralists objected to the circularity of making meaning both tool and end of analysis, structural grammars did not make use of the animate and inanimate distinction. Yet we now see that it is possible to set up operations which are applicable to one set of nouns, but not the other. No reference is made to meaning, and the only test is whether the operation produces a grammatical sentence or does not. There is a class of nouns which can act as either subject or object in sentences which contain verbs like astonish, terrify, puzzle.
The soldier puzzled the dog, OR the dog puzzled the soldier. John astonished his wife, OR, his wife astonished John.
There is a second class of nouns which can stand only as the subjects, not the objects of these verbs. As a result, these sentences are not reversible.
The rock astonished the soldier. The painting frightened my wife.
We have no real hesitation in rejecting such a form as * "The soldier astonished the rock," even though we might accept it in a fairy story. Yet we can construct the sentence "The chair astonished John" and reverse it to "John astonished the chair." I believe we would all agree that if "chair" in the first sentence is the same as in "John sat in the chair," then "chair" in the second sentence is a different "chair," probably that in "the chair called for order." With the two chairs we have settled a question of identity by syntactic habit and the test of acceptability, not by reference to meaning. Such present-day tests, as transformationalists are quick to point out, are, ironically enough, vindications of the Bloomfieldian position.
Further, such syntactic tests and operations will greatly benefit such areas of linguistics as lexicography, in that there will be a basis on which to write dictionary entries. How many should there be for chair, for instance? At least two, one animate, the other inanimate.10 Complete syntactic study should make dictionary entries systematic as none are at present.
Language teaching has already profited from the appearance of transformational analysis. It is possible to present a great part of the structure of the target language as a series of processes by which a starting sentence is transformed. Such a view is certainly a vulgarization of the basic theory of sentence relations, but a useful and I believe, a harmless one. Suppose we start with
10 Labels like animate and inanimate are, of course, linguistically based and so are not in exact accord with the divisions of the outside world. Amoeba is animate in reality, but since for me at least *"John astonished the amoeba" is impossible, amoeba is linguistically inanimate.
Standard Oil sells gasoline.
Without taking account of differences in tense and number, this can be varied to
Gasoline is sold by Standard Oil and Standard Oil doesn't sell gasoline or Gasoline isn't sold by Standard Oil.
For anyone who bothers to count, the number of sentences that can be built up in this way is astonishing, and it is clear that operational and transformational drills can teach a lot of English in a short time.
Composition classes can profit, since transformational explanations and drills can certainly bean aid in acquisition of conscious control of sentence patterns. In literature classes, the effects have already been felt, and teachers are beginning to use such terms as "poetic deviance," "embedding," and "concatenation."
Perhaps the most wide-reaching result is statable by merely describing the goal of a fully developed transformational analysis. If the transformationalists' picture of the nativespeaker grammar is accepted, then the most important characteristic of the human child is that he is born with the capability of constructing such a grammar for himself, with remarkable efficiency and with remarkable closeness to the other grammars of his community. To study the acquisition of native-speaker grammar is the longrange goal of transformational analysis, and it is certain that to achieve such an understanding would be no less than to achieve understanding of the nature of man himself.
II. MAINLY LIMITATIONS
The current prestige of transformational analysis is very great indeed, so great that criticism of any of its tenets or techniques is fraught with some peril. Yet the experience of structuralists a generation ago indicates that criticism is, as always, possible, and that it is a healthy thing for the science if it is fully discussed. Criticism of transformationalism can be directed either against details, or against some of the more basic assumptions of the group. The first sort can probably be left for normal processes of correction if the criticism is justified. The more important type of criticism might, at least conceivably, require change in essential parts of the theory.
As an example of a criticism of detail, I can cite one area in which a position sometimes held by transformationalists might profit by more systematic examination. This is the position that phrases containing prenominal adjectives have been "derived" from predicate sentences. That is, that "important duty" is "derived" from "duty is important." The statement, of course, is a structural description and no more, and does not mean that the derivation is in any sense a historical fact. A different position would be that pre-nominal adjective sequences are built up directly by filling a series of ordered slots. The latter position was my own as a structuralist, and is also similar to that of the Pike school of tagmemics. It would seem to me that neither position is fully established, and that one kind of evidence which could be brought to bear on it has not been gathered. This would be a complete survey of adjectives (gathered from some such corpus as a dictionary, but added to from the investigator's nativespeaker grammar) to see how many
instances there are of both nonprenominal adjectives like content in the men are content, but not *the content men, and on the other hand, how many instances there are like Werner Winter's the late President, which can not be derived from the President is late. Such a survey seems to me a desideratum, as much for transformationalists as for others.
There is other evidence which bears on this question of the construction of nominal phrases. In a paper before the Linguistic Society I described two versions of the sentence
Take the first crossing which is paved and go North. 11
If the sentence was given with the kind of terminals around which is paved that usually mark the ends of fully independent sentences, juries consistently interpreted the wh- clause as independent (or non-restrictive); other pronunciations were either ambiguous or clearly non-independent (that is, restrictive). Current transformational theory derives both sentence types from two independent sentences, but with different processes of combination. Such a conclusion is certainly possible, but seems to me to sacrifice the distinction offered by the phonological connection with an independent sentence for one type, but not for the other. Again, more investigation is needed, and until it is available, the possibility that "first paved crossing" is built up by slot-and-filler is not ruled out. If slot-filling is actually the process of accretion, then in the non-independent type of this sentence, paved has simply been
11 "Post-Nominal Modifiers: Transformations and Phonology," Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, IX (1965), 37-49.
moved to post-nominal position and was never an independent sentence.
A second, and more important, criticism concerns the violent disagreements over the nature of phonology. In the 1930's it was usual to say that there were two types of sound-classes recognized as parallel but different. One was phonemes, thought of as all the sounds of a language arranged in the most economical, consistent, and complete sets of contrasts which the analyst could find. Further, it was argued that all members of any class had to share some one unique physical characteristic.
The second type of sound class was called the morphophoneme, all those phonemes which occupied a given position in a morpheme, once that morpheme had been identified. A typical example is the last sound of calf, which alternates with a /v/ in the plural. The /f/ and /v/ can be said to be the two members of the morphophoneme which is the final of calf. The two sounds do not cease to be different phonemes, since they still distinguish morphemes like duff and dove. Moreover, since wife, life, half all show the same /f/: /v/ alternation, all these /f/: /v/ sets can be grouped into a single, generalized morphophoneme. A further difference between the morphophoneme and the phoneme is that a morphophonemic position may be left unfilled, as when the final /d/ of cold is lost in the pronunciation of "It's a cold day." Since the slot has been defined when the morpheme cold is identified, it is possible to say that one member of the final morphophoneme is a zero. A phoneme, on the other hand, is a physical event, and so must be either
present or absent, and can not be both at the same time.
Dispute arises because the transformationalists have argued strongly that the step of classing sounds into phonemes, before they are again classed into morphophonemes as members of identified morphemes, is unnecessary and wasteful. That is, transformationalists move from the physical distinctive features of sounds directly to morphemes, and then use the morphemes not only to identify the audible properties of utterance, but to formulate rules for the translation of the meaningful parts of utterance into the audible result. No part of recent linguistic theory has been so fraught with misunderstanding, if for no other reason than that it is now impossible to know what is meant by such a term as phoneme, which means quite different things according to who is using it. The underlying dispute is real, not merely terminological, and ultimately turns on the nature of the clues to identification. In spite of the cogency of transformational argument, I do not believe the dispute has ended in complete victory, and it seems to me that there are some signs that it will continue to some ultimate clarification, at which point it will not matter whether there is victory for one side or the other, or adjustments for both.
A basic fact, and one important to the Chomskyan interest in the acquisition of native-speaker grammar, is that the child must listen to what is said around him, and guess at morphemes and sentences in terms of what he hears. There are three main possibilities for the identification of what the native speaker hears when he is in the listening-learning stage. One is the set of relevant contrasts, that is, the set of phonemes. Another is the set of Jakobsonian distinctive features, recorded by sound-spectrograph, arranged binarily, and set up as universal phonetic distinctions,12 The third candidate is sounds grouped rather grossly and intuitively into phonetic classes in the manner of nineteenth century phoneticians. This last is obviously the weakest and need no longer be taken seriously.
Speaking for myself alone, I think it might be possible to resolve the whole dispute by solution of this uncertainty. Obviously, it makes little difference whether we think of distinctive features as the acoustic qualities represented by the spectrographic records, or the articulations which produced them and which correspond with them—though not perfectly, apparently. Also, if the role of contrast within a framework of some kind of distinctive features were clarified, perhaps dispute and disputants would be happily deflated.
A second important problem is the activity of the hearer when he is listening to the sentences of his already learned language. It is generally agreed that he starts an internal sentence when he starts to listen, and that when internal and external sentence match, understanding is achieved. I would insist, however, that the role of the hearer is not yet clear. Though we often match on very flimsy evidence, it is also true that for a short time after an utterance, its image persists, and we can re-listen to
12 Jakobson, Fant, and Halle, Preliminaries to Speech Analysis, (Cambridge, 1951) .
it. The hearer can use this play-back for more exact matching. In this kind of matching activity, a phonemic difference can be defined as a minimal non-match. That is, if a speaker produces the sentence "pick up the coat," and the hearer's tentative match is "pick up the goat," he can re-listen and get the right form though he may, of course, also follow the different, conscious technique of trying all the possibilities without relistening. Once again, the nature of the dispute is not fully clear. Do we hear in terms of a /k/:/g/ contrast relevant to English, though not to such a language as Chinese? Or do we hear a binary contrast in much the same way whether the original sentence was English or Chinese? Or possibly, do we hear morphophonemes because we identify first, and listen afterward? This last possibility is not quite absurd, since we may indeed guess at morphemes and only then listen in terms of matching.
Yet the language of much transformational writing seems to define morphemes as the primary "givens" of language, independent of any substance of which they are made up. Not infrequently, as a result, transformationalists are accused of basing their analysis on written forms, a charge which has often and rightly been denied. I have, equally, been misled into believing that the transformational morphemes (or formatives) were quite bodiless, again a charge which has rightly been denied. It would seem that what is true is that occasional loosenesses of language lead the unwary to this interpretation, and that the actual belief that morphemes are made up of Jakobsonian distinc- tive features still needs clarification, in spite of the discussion it has already had. On this matter again, the real question is whether we hear contrasts or distinctive features.
At present, I should view the descriptions of the hearer's situation as essentially incomplete. The best formulation that I can give is that I think the input is phonemes, in much the classical sense. These are clues or triggers, which set off the hearer's process of guessing at the morphemes and chains of morphemes, for which he employs the full battery of probabilities, from most probable followers for previously identified morphemes, from grammatical structure of the language, from the non-linguistic context. The input of phonemes is then normalized, in terms of the reverse of morphophonemics rules as generally given, and always in terms of the assumed identity of the morphemes. Note that this statement is a necessary part of the position, and one which has not always been understood. An omitted phoneme can, of course, be supplied in more than one way, unless the morpheme has been previously identified. An example is a current television ad which speaks of "the makers of /kówl smòwk/." This could, in terms of English morphophonemics, be identified as either "coal smoke," or "cold smoke." I suspect that others, like me, misidentified this momentarily as the first, rather than the second. When, however, the hearer has made his normalization and his match, he becomes a speaker in replying. In this phase of communication, he then follows the morphophonemics rules as ordinarily given, translating the full and normalized
structure of internal speech into the "degenerate" sequences which once again constitute the phonemes with which the cycle started.
The last criticism of transformational theory concerns the description of the perfect grammar. Many transformationalists, though not Chomsky himself, make the statement that the perfect grammar would generate all and only the grammatical sentences of the language in question. Chomsky's position is (if I understand it rightly) that the perfect grammar would not only generate all and only the grammatical sentences, but would provide a description of any presented ungrammatical sentence which would show exactly how it departed from the grammatical. The point is perhaps not critically important, but in the Chomskyan view generation of "all and only" would then necessarily precede recognition of deviation. In any event, inclusion of deviant sentences by the grammarian would obviously upset his grammatical rules. There can be no disagreement with the statement that a grammar of the sort envisaged would indeed be perfect. Disagreement can only be concerned with whether or not such perfection is reachable.
It will be remembered that the cutting tool for rejecting ungrammatical sentences is the native speaker's unexpressed knowledge of what is or is not acceptable. The transformationalists' (or other linguists') use of "ungrammatical" is only one of several ways in which this term is used. One use will immediately occur to teachers of English—the term is used to condemn forms like ain't. Such a use identifies "ungrammatical" with use of a low-prestige dialect, or dialect form. For purposes of analysis it can be dismissed as irrelevant. A second way of defining "ungrammatical" has been widely used by structural linguists, particularly in anthropological field work. This is that "ungrammatical" equals only what a native speaker would not say. The definition is useful in working with an informant whose language the linguist does not know, but it is objectionable to generative grammarians for good reasons, since quite obviously native speakers make mistakes. The third use of "ungrammatical" is the only one of importance here, namely that the ungrammatical is what does not correspond to the rules of the native-speaker grammar. Transformationalists usually say that the ungrammatical is what does not correspond to the intuition of correctness on the part of the native speaker. I should prefer the statement that the ungrammatical is what is discovered by the native speaker not to correspond to his rules when he uses the process of introspection. As I have said before, intuition is a troublemaking term. Understanding of ungrarnmaticality has been curiously hard to reach. Transformationalists (and others) often toss out sentences with no context as examples of ungrammaticality. Since no context is given, the sentences are often taken as an invitation to conjure up some context, no matter how improbable, which will justify the sentence as grammatical. Also, though the issue is now water under the bridge, some of the early transformationalist language permitted the interpretation
that things like difficulty of remembering, or of supplying a coherent intonation pattern, were experimental criteria for ungrammaticality. 13 As a cutting tool, a sentence must, I believe, be defined as ungrammatical without reference to a special context. In fact, when reliance is placed on a jury decision, the question has to be quite carefully framed, and must be in terms of operations, not isolated sentences. That is, a question should be something like "can the second word in the phrase 'pairs of shoes' be put in the empty slot in 'Look at the crosseyed—.'?"
Transformationalists usually make a further statement, namely that there is a scale of grammaticality, a statement which is pretty obviously true. They also assume that a sentence which violates a generally applicable rule is more ungrammatical than one which violates only a narrowly applicable one. Again, I find no particular objection, except that some specific, narrow violations invoke a strong emotional response, which is not what the transformationalists are talking about. A purist might react more strongly to the use of ain't in place of am not than to Cummings' "he danced his did." But even when the notion of ungrammaticality is made thus relative, it is assumed that
13 My article, "Grammaticality," and Chomsky's reply, "Some Methodological Remarks on Generative Grammar," are both conveniently available in Readings in Applied English Linguistics, edited by Harold B. Allen, 2nd ed. (New York, 1964), pp. 163-92. In this exchange, neither of us fully understood the other, and it is certain that I demolished a position Chomsky did not hold. Yet my article may be granted a modest value in having raised some questions about grammaticality which have certainly troubled others as well as me.
it is possible to set the threshold at some designated point, so that the grammar will be perfect to that point.
It is my contention, however, that such a perfect grammar is—ideally at least—unreachable for any natural language. Grammatical sentences can be recognized only if they contain fully identified morphemes, and these are not allowed to change. Change is an inescapable quality of all natural languages, and all analysts have had to pretend that it did not exist, in order to analyze at all. We have all had to use the marble slab, of course. Yet generative description is rather specially vulnerable to this objection. Generative grammar is not concerned with the relatively slow changes which make all dictionaries out of date, but with the prediction of sentences by individual, living speakers, who continually shift identities of words and morphemes, and continually break rules. My sentence "look at the crosseyed of" is grammatical enough if of is taken to be the name of an unknown animal. I believe, therefore, that transformational-generative grammar—like other scientific endeavors— can describe its subject matter only on an "as if" basis. The fluid nature of individual language-use makes of the "all and only" grammar an unreachable goal, like the now unlamented goal of reaching syntax solely on the basis of phonology. Lest this seem too severe, let me say that both goals can be aims which it is useful to strive for, though unattainable.
One final bit of confusion is the insistence that the perfect grammar can not omit "all" from "all and only" since to do so would mean that a
grammar which generated only one grammatical sentence would then be acceptable. But even if "all" is unreachable, it does not have to be abandoned. A way out is to draw the generative rules so that a rule is necessary before a sentence is permitted— ungrammatical sentences would be those left out. It would also be necessary to avoid the difficulties over the continuum of grammaticality by setting the threshold at one hundred per cent. Nothing would then be grammatical unless it were completely, even trivially so, and unless it were immediately recognized as grammatical when fully free of context. Under such circumstances, competing grammars could be judged by their positive generative power, though to do so, the possibility of recursion so necessary if a grammar is to produce an infinite number of sentences, would have to be left out of account. If it were not, then any grammar which allowed for
"then another ant took a grain of wheat, and then another ant took another grain of wheat" would have to be regarded as satisfactory. I am, in short, suggesting still another "as if" limitation. I am suggesting that we treat the sentences of the language only as a very large, even unlimited number, not a truly infinite one.
Structural grammar gave us many insights in spite of the fact that it was in some ways false to language. It was thus open to the taunt that it was "marble slab" grammar. Transformational grammar is open to the counter taunt that it is "strait jacket" grammar, in that it must adopt in a special way a prohibition of change of identity. Yet the sting can be taken out of both taunts when linguists become fully conscious of their limitations, and realize that human conditions make absolute and final truth something for another world only.
Maximum Results from Minimum Training*
J. Donald Bowen
Preparing a paper on the subject of short-term training for teaching English as a second language is not an easy assignment. This is true for several reasons. One is that all of our experience in teacher education warns us that limited training tends to be superficial, to yield results that are below the standards we are willing to defend professionally. Few indeed are the brief training programs that can be endorsed without reservation on the grounds of adequacy.
Another reason to prompt skepticism is a general one: We just don't know enough about teaching or learning to compress a few neat answers to general questions into a seminar-type presentation. We have not defined all of our teaching problems in detail, and such as we have defined are not correlated with specific classroom methods or techniques in a way that permits us to confidently proclaim a definite class routine. Teaching is an art, a skill, and it is learned through an apprenticeship, not from a manual of instructions. And apprenticeships are notably difficult to compress.
There are other reasons why it is not easy to generalize about short-term
* This paper was presented at the TESOL Convention, April 1967.
Mr. Bowen, now professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, was formerly co-director of the Philippine Center for Language Study and is the editor of their monograph series which includes Techniques and Procedures in Second Language Teaching by Fe R. Dacany. He is himself author of several articles on Spanish, English, general linguistics, and language pedagogy.
training. Very much depends on whom the training is for. A seminar for experienced teachers with a general education background who want to learn the specifics of language teaching is very different from training a group of liberal arts graduates who have accepted a Peace Corps assignment abroad. And training for a group of teachers who will be teaching a language not their own would be very different in still another way— they might need an important concentration of language learning themselves, in some cases that very part of the language they will themselves teach in the next school year.
Still another variable that can have a profound effect on the training design is the situation in which the trainee will be teaching. Will he be working with children or adults? With beginning or advanced students? Will he have possibly difficult cultural adjustments to make, or will he be "Americanizing" immigrant students willingly seeking a new cultural identification? It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to make any useful generalizations on training that will have an inherent validity, regardless of training of whom, for what, or where.
Longer-term training offers an opportunity to provide familiarity with a large body of experience, which can build a certain amount of versatility into the participants. Their training experience is ideally varied; it may consist of a philosophical understanding of educational theory and processes; of an appreciation for the patterned arrangements of linguistic structures; of an awareness of the forms and effects of interference between linguistic systems in a language classroom; of a close acquaintance with a variety of language-teaching materials, perhaps with the experience of attempting to learn a new language; of an understanding of the interrelationship between a language and the culture it is a part of. On the basis of this kind of training, necessarily longterm, a participant can hope to develop a level of adaptability that will help him to accommodate to whatever local conditions are imposed by the situation he works in and, with experience, perhaps to participate creatively in working towards improved teaching patterns. It is quite obvious that this kind of professional development is hardly possible in a short-term training program.
What can be accomplished in a limited period of time? There are some who say the main value of shortterm training is morale building, that teachers go back to their jobs with renewed self-confidence, though in spite of the training they return to their classrooms to teach in much the same way as previously. This may be an extreme view that overminimizes what can be accomplished. Perhaps it would be instructive to ask some of those who have had the experience of short-term training what benefits were gained and what shortcomings were apparent.
I have had recent contact with two kinds of short-term training: NDEA summer TESL institutes and Peace Corps training programs. The two could hardly be more different, and taken together they illustrate most of the problems of generalizing on the subject of short-term training. NDEA institutes are available mainly to established teachers who feel they need more information about second-language teaching in the United States, working with students who already are or will likely become U.S. citizens. Peace Corps trainees, on the other hand, are typically younger participants, usually fresh graduates from a liberal arts college, with neither training nor experience in teaching. And they will be working in areas of the world where it will be the teacher's, not the student's, responsibility to adapt to new cultural patterns.
These two groups have had training programs designed as much as possible with the differences of their situations in mind. A large majority of the NDEA institute participants have reacted favorably to the training they have received, either complimenting the program they were in or offering criticism that was constructive and well based. A number of objections have been made to practice teaching, to examinations, and to grades. All of these appear to be reflections of a need for ego preservation. Perhaps this is a result of an inherent contradiction: training offered to professionals who possibly should be presumed not to need it. Whatever the reason, there seem to be teachers who, through insecurity or shyness, do not want to be observed, evaluated, or compared in their professional performance.
The reactions of the Peace Corps Volunteers are quite different. They have recently been regular students and they have no professional status
to defend, so they don't often object to examinations or grades. They feel the lack of teaching experience and place a high value on any opportunity to practice on real students, often remembering these opportunities as the most useful part of their training.
The NDEA participants and the Peace Corps trainees both need to be convinced of the practical relevance of their training. No one likes to think he is wasting his time, and a credibility gap in a training program is especially damaging. The NDEA teacher shows this when she looks at a practice-teaching class and says, "This is very fine for these children, but my students are different in many ways." The Peace Corps trainee may just fail to believe that Nigerians or Malaysians or Bolivians can possibly have trouble with the use of the definite article in English, or with plural forms, or with prepositions; these patterns are too clear and consistent. It is possible that both the NDEA participants and the Peace Corps trainees are wrong, and that later on they may remember and make good use of what they were taught during training.
This opens a question: Should short-term training attempt to win the full confidence of the participants, or since time is limited, should the concentration be on presenting what experience has shown to be useful and valuable, storing up information which the trainee can call on when the need becomes apparent to him? My own opinion is that the training should try hard to win participant confidence, that more efficient learning takes place with the willing cooperation of the participants, whether on the level of teacher training or any other peda- gogical application,
Why do trainees fail to accept the content of a program? Most of them feel that it is because the program is too general and theoretical, and this is no doubt a valid criticism. Peace Corps training has improved with experience—and with the feedback of earlier Volunteers who could speak in very specific terms about the details of their assignments. In some of the earlier efforts there were conspicuous shortcomings. In one the trainees were given practice in the structural analysis of exotic languages, such as Swahili for a Malaysia-bound group, which was about as useless as the jungle-survival training given the first Philippine contingent.
Former Peace Corps Volunteers complain of irrelevancies in their training, of too much theory, of generalities that were never made meaningful in a specific situation. There seems to have been very little of the adaptability that a fuller program would attempt to develop.
One answer to more relevant preparation would seem to be on-site training, in the situation where the trainees will work and teach. The Peace Corps has recognized the value of this concept and has split training between stateside institutions and in-country programs. But this is not the full answer, even assuming the two phases are well correlated in a single program. Just teaching in an environment is not sufficient preparation—or all formal training could be discontinued. An adequate staff and facilities may not be present and available in rural Ethiopia, even though there are schools and students in abundance.
What then is the best solution
available for a relevant and concrete training program? I should like to discuss this question in two separate frames of reference—first for what might be referred to as an NDEA situation, then to a Peace Corps situation. Other kinds of programs may selectively apply some of the ideas presented for these two, which represent widely different circumstances, though they have certain features in common, such as the fact they both are teaching their own language. A quite different program would have to be designed for teachers with a native language other than the one they are preparing to teach.
The typical NDEA institute program has four or five ingredients: introduction to linguistics or applied linguistics, methods of teaching a second language, observation and practice teaching, principles and methods of acculturation, and a shock language. This curriculum seems balanced and has proved to be generally satisfactory.
There are weaknesses, however, at least potential weaknesses. The linguistics can be too abstract and theoretical for the short time available, failing to show relevance to classroom procedures. The methods course can present a quick definition of situation, overview of philosophy, and catalog of techniques, from which choral repetition, backward buildups, and substitution drill seem to be the participants' most permanent acquisition. The observation and practice teaching, if available at all, are certain to be very limited, both in choice of level and in opportunity to participate. The practicing teacher finds it very difficult to identify with a group of students she personally teaches only two or three times in a summer. The culture course may be an intellectual presentation of geography, history, and customs, or a listing of a group's traditional frustrations and fears, but it may only go skin deep as far as really transferring the effects of the deepest feelings of a Spanish American or Indian student in an American classroom. The shock language may be Spanish, which so many participants have a smattering of that it has little shock value, or it may be Chinese or Tagalog, languages hard enough to learn, but difficult to apply in convincingly realistic situations.
I don't mean by this long list of potential shortcomings to say that this is a description of the NDEA institutes in TESL for the past three summers. This would be unfair and untrue. But these are the dangers, and I suspect most TESL institutes, including two I have directed, have experienced at least some of these shortcomings.
What would be an ideal program for an NDEA TESL participant? I would apply the ingredients of the present programs in a somewhat different way, designed to impress them more vividly on the participant. He feels a need for new insights and new approaches. Often he can be helped most by a chance to look at his language and culture the way his students do. An ideal program would lift him out of his own situation to gain a new perspective on techniques and procedures, to move back for a view of the forest instead of the trees.
He needs to practice, not just to observe and discuss. But his practice must avoid embarrassment, especially
if too many colleagues are witnessing what he considers his mistakes and limitations.
I would suggest that the ideal NDEA type program would be experience in an overseas environment, which would combine English teaching with living in a new culture for an impressive application of secondlanguage teaching.
An overseas institute would make it possible to provide practice-teaching assignments in abundance—a class for every participant, and at the age level each is accustomed to. This is a serious limitation of domestic institutes; at great expense and inconvenience the director assembles students for the practice class, only to be told by the participant that his sixth-grade students are very different from the grade one students in the demonstration class. And he is right. No wonder he feels uncomfortable and insecure; he has little chance to establish a normal teacher-student relationship. Overseas he can be assigned responsibilities in a sixth-grade class, and he can meet and teach these students daily, for six or eight weeks, not just take turns with thirty other participants to actually teach the class a total of two or three times.
But an overseas institute would have to provide supervision, consultation, and evaluation. This could be done in two ways: (1) Local teachers and supervisors, plus the institute staff, would help plan and then visit classes, and (2) a special program seminar would set aside time to consider curriculum and plans, and to discuss any problems participants encounter in their practice-teaching assignments. This would be the core of the institute curriculum: supervised practice teaching on a daily basis and a methods seminar, supported by a course in the local language and a course in the contrastive analysis of the American and the local cultural patterns. There would be lots of free discussion in and out of classes, with theoretical implications treated only when they can be related to a specific problem. The reality of the situation—the class the participant teaches, the language he studies, the culture he lives in and interacts with—these would provide the opportunity and motivation, and the staff would give guidance, direction, and pertinence to the institute. The participants would come out knowing much more about the application of techniques to teaching problems.
The cultural component of the program would be real and personal. The participants would be faced with the problems of adjustment that living and working abroad require. They would live in local homes, taking board and room with local families, probably of teachers of the schools to which they would be assigned. They would have to solve the problems of a new money system, different means of shopping and public transportation, a new linguistic environment. They couldn't come out of this experience without having a new respect for the seriousness of the problems their own students at home face in adapting to the demands of American life.
The advantages of this program would be the personal contact with language teaching and cultural adjustment, both highly relevant to successful ESL experience in the United States. During the institute there would be competent advice and adequate guidance, available on a personal basis, to provide not just experience, but professional growth.
Let's turn now to a Peace Corps type program. The typical curriculum is much more complicated, with less experienced trainees and more varied goals to reach. The Peace Corps trainee has been considered a semiofficial representative of his government, who must arrive at his assignment in good physical and mental health, who must be prepared to explain his way of life, and who must be able to make a useful professional contribution.
The training program has included several components: introductory or applied linguistics, methods of secondlanguage teaching, often including observation and practice teaching with his peers, with ESL students, or in poverty pockets. It also includes intensive language training for a skill that will be absolutely essential in his assignment: communication. Also included are a course in culture and society, an indoctrination of American institutions and ideals, an exposure to the inherent contradictions of world communism, and physical education— the latter often as a tension breaker in a hard packed program. Finally such administrative details as shots, personnel records, orientation lectures, and selection interviews with the program psychologist must be included. It is an overintensive and very difficult program.
I won't try to make recommendations on any but the TESL phase of the program, though some former Volunteers would suggest trimming out such things as communism and American institutions, a criticism which may be directed not at content, but at a superficial presentation.
In the TESL segment an ideal program for Peace Corps Volunteers should be based on a specific set of materials designed for a particular teaching situation. The training would be aimed at familiarizing the trainees with the materials, the educational setting, and the students, with basic theory considered only if and when it is clearly relevant to the understanding and solution of specific problems.
Such a program for each group of Peace Corps trainees is obviously not feasible. Even if the astronomical sums of money were available to pay for it, the skilled personnel to produce the variety of programs needed would not be. A compromise is imperative, one that would preserve training directed toward individual situations without sacrificing the common denominator of shared experience which is inherent in the general theory of second-language teaching. I would suggest a bank of materials from which segments could be withdrawn and combined in different patterns to provide logical and coherent sequences of methodological experience. These would have to be produced in a form not presently available.
The materials for an integrated TESL-training course—linguistics, methods, and applications—would be based on an extensive set of video tapes or films, each tape or film an audio-visual presentation of from three to five minutes illustrating a single teaching point, course problem, presentation technique, or drill procedure. A selection of these tapes or films would be sequenced and coordinated with the syllabus or text the
trainee would be later teaching from. The total collection would have to include a wide representation of classrooms and situations, varied to show all the specific types of classes the trainees would eventually work in.
After an appropriate brief orientation, trainees would view these microlessons—or perhaps in this day they should be called mini-lessons—and immediately after, there would be a guided discussion on what had been witnessed, emphasizing aims and techniques, with theory otherwise entirely incidental, or even ignored. Trainee discussion would be encouraged for as long as interest could be maintained.
When the trainees understood the what and the how of a mini-lesson, they would go before a class of real students and present the same lesson. The feature of this training that would be emphasized is the specific correlation of illustration to practice.
This teaching experience would, if possible, be recorded on video tape, so that in a subsequent evaluation session the trainee could participate as a witness. A very useful incidental advantage of a video tape replay is that it facilitates verification of just what happened in the class, so the memory of those present can be checked in case of disagreement.
The next step would be a careful evaluation of the trainee's presentation of the lesson, emphasizing what was effectively done, but including suggestions for improvement. Trainees would participate in small groups in these critiques, and each group would be coordinated by a teacher or teacher educator with recognized successful teaching experience. Each group should have access to someone who is closely familiar with or who has experience in the school system the trainees will be assigned to, that is, a person who can speak with authority and assurance on the details of the future assignment.
The final step would be optional, included in the cycle if it was felt to be useful. This would be a generalization of the principles illustrated in the presentation and discussion. In this area of pedagogical theory, due caution should be exercised. The important function of the training is illustration of procedures; there is little time for adequate discussion of generalized or theoretical applications of the procedures shown.
The of: training cycle, then, consists
0. A brief introduction
1. Observation
2. Discussion
3. Application
4. Evaluation
5. Generalization
This cycle should be repeated as many times during the training period as available time and the absorption capacity of the trainees permit, making sure that the teaching points of the sequence of cycles is varied in order to maintain trainee interest and to assure a broad coverage of all the skills and techniques needed.
This sort of training program would anticipate many of the real needs of the future teachers. One former Peace Corps Volunteer told me that almost the only thing he said for the first two weeks in his classroom was "Will you please say that again." He couldn't understand the English his Nigerian students used. He would have been
much better prepared if he had had a chance to hear what these students sound like when they speak in English.
An important feature of the training suggested is the short illustration video tapes or films. These should work better than visits to real classes because of the considerable expenditure of time necessary to get into, observe, and get out of a classroom. Also the films allow a predetermined selection and sequence of presentations; you can never be really sure how a live class will go, whether it will effectively illustrate a point. This obliges the training coordinator to plan his discussions on short notice, where with an edited series of training films the entire discussion sequence can be planned, amended, and replanned as many times as necessary to provide a more complete coverage and balance.
It seems clear that observation of classes is an activity that cannot be prolonged over more than a limited period of time without losing effectiveness. One former Peace Corps Volunteer told me he judged the MLA-CAL training films to have had little effect on his short-term training chiefly because they didn't maintain viewer interest. So much was shown at a sitting that there was no opportunity to digest and assimilate.
Another important feature of this program is the opportunity to take fresh ideas into a class and try them out. This would certainly require special classes and would complicate the administrative aspects of the program. It is easy enough to assemble special students (if they are available in the area—and they are in many), but it would not be a simple matter to send trainees in and out for short teaching stints. It would be necessary to plan the practice-class curriculum to intersperse intensive teaching activities with songs, games, review, etc. The result might well prove that short, well planned lessons are more effective than forty- or fifty-minute sessions both for the trainee and for the student. In any case it would be advisable to cycle training activities so that an integrated series of illustrations, observations, and discussions are staggered to provide a sequenced output of trainees ready to teach their segments—for the convenience of scheduling the practice class.
It is obvious that course materials for the program described here do not exist, particularly the crucial set of mini-lessons on video tape or film. It is also obvious that they could be produced only by a major effort with a substantial infusion of time, money, and talent. Such a program would have to be general—if only to justify the enormous investment involved. Yet some segments almost necessarily must be specific to a particular language-teaching setting. Perhaps one could envision an extensive collection of filmed mini-lessons from which a selection could be organized for any of various teaching situations, varying student age, level of training, geographical location of classes, type of educational problem presented, etc. This collection could be added to as experience revealed gaps.
It is not likely that a full program of such lessons will be available very soon. In any case, lots of training programs will be planned and offered before filmed lessons could be made ready, even if an early effort were made. For the present, or in the
meantime, what ideas can be applied to current programs?
It is possible to incorporate some of the ideas presented here into present programs. One useful generalization is to reduce the theoretical component, with a corresponding emphasis on more obviously practical needs of the trainees. This is not to imply theory isn't important; only that it cannot be successfully taught in a short time, and an attempt to do so runs the risk of failure to establish concepts plus the likelihood that the trainee's morale will be lowered if he cannot see the relevance of the program activities.
The sequence of a brief introduction, observation, discussion, application, evaluation, and generalization can be utilized, and the essential idea of mini-lessons can be preserved in modified form. The introduction and observation might be replaced by a presentation which would take the form of a description of a typical class situation, with teaching aims and techniques spelled out, and the teaching sequence described in detail. A relatively easy and highly worthwhile enrichment would be an audio-taped example of the lesson from a real class. The sound of a lesson would certainly not be as effective as a film with picture and sound, but a lot goes on in a classroom that can be captured with a tape recorder, and the trainees would have an opportunity to listen to the speech of actual, typical students. Also by editing the tape one could expect a considerable increase of efficiency in presenting only the most important selections, a considerable advantage over physical visits to actual classes.
In this version the first three steps are coalesced into a general presentation, with or without a taped illustration. The application, in the absence of a class of bona fide students, can be done by means of peer teaching. However, peer teaching must be employed with a certain amount of caution. In small groups it is easier to encourage serious application, and specific ground rules should govern the acceptance of a correction by the acting teacher. If horseplay and insincerity cannot be controlled, it is better to eliminate peer teaching entirely. One help in making peer teaching of short segments more meaningful is to make a video tape recording of the segment. The replay is usually an excellent means of an evaluation, the next step in the training sequence.
The generalization, the last step in each cycle, is the training coordinator's opportunity to talk about the possibilities for using, in other situations, the techniques illustrated, discussed, applied, and evaluated. Here, if anywhere, is the opportunity to infuse a bit of theory into the program, in explaining the reasons a technique did or did not work, how it can be modified, further applied, etc. Even here the rationale should be limited pretty much to the matter at hand, to keep the conviction of relevance alive in the minds of the trainees.
In the programs described above the sequence of teaching segments is very important. They must illustrate real teaching problems that can be understood and moved from observation to discussion to application to evaluation. If at all possible, this sequence should be correlated with a teaching program or set of course materials demonstrated to be teachable and effective, probably the materials the trainee will later be using.
The preparation of an ideal teachertraining program that would fit into a limited amount of training time is an ambitious but worthwhile project, one that should be attempted before we conclude that effective short-term training is inherently impossible and that we will continue sending out poorly prepared teachers as long as we persist in trying to use this kind of teacher training. Certainly research in this area should continue, since the need for limited training will not be diminished in the foreseeable future.
One thing seems perfectly clear: It is neither possible nor feasible to produce an effective short-term training program by condensing a longer one.
The needs of the two are different, and there is no appropriate common basis underlying both. The compression of ideas doesn't work because it ignores the need for intellectual absorption, a period of time for concepts to marinate, to acclimate themselves and reproduce in kind.
Something must be sacrificed in short-term training—or we confess to a gross mismanagement of time in our longer programs. I suggest it should be the exposition of theory. The theory itself, to the extent we can understand and manipulate it, is not removed from the training; it is applied in providing sound and effective sequences and methods to display good model teaching. Perhaps after successful classroom experience, theory can be captured more quickly; before, only an investment of time that a short program makes impossible.
In pedagogy the surface structure concerns the how of teaching: classroom techniques and procedures. The deep structure concerns the why: basic learning theory. We perceive the deep structure through models constructed on our observations of the surface. Our models need more theoretical elaboration, as do the transformational rules that take us from underlying structures to surface behavior. Better theory will come in time and will no doubt force us to reevaluate and modify our applications. Short-term training should, in the state of our present knowledge, limit itself to surface structure, to teaching the application of the best and most productive of current teaching techniques presented as effectively as possible.
Writing: A Thinking Process*
Nancy Arapoff
Why teaching writing is different from teaching other language skills.
For some years linguists have been writing textbooks designed to teach foreign students spoken English. But only recently, as teachers have found that many students want and need to learn how to write English as well as to speak it, have linguisticallyoriented textbooks designed to teach written English appeared. These textbooks have a number of approaches, from variations on the "copybook" method at one end of the spectrum to the "free composition" method at the other end. No doubt most of you have tried some of these approaches, and, I suspect, found all of them lacking in some way. In my experience, this lack has always been in efficiency. None of the textbooks so far published seems to teach anything that cannot be learned from other ESOL courses: from courses in oral production, grammar, or reading.
Obviously, grammar, aural comprehension, reading, and even oral production are to varying degrees involved in writing. Certainly we cannot teach a writing course which never touches on these areas. But at the same time teaching a writing course which covers only these areas is redundant. Given the limited time most of us have to teach students as much as we can; about English, we ought to, if purely for efficiency's sake, use a method which teaches the students something
* This paper was presented at the TESOL Convention, April 1967.
Mrs. Arapoff is an instructor at the English Language Institute, University of Hawaii.
they will not learn in their other courses; something they cannot learn from conscientiously translating vocal symbols into orthographic ones, from oral or written pattern practice, or from reading; i.e., a method which emphasizes that which is unique t o writing.
Writing is much more than an orthographic symbolization of speech; it is, most importantly, a purposeful selection and organization of experience. By experience I mean all thoughts—facts, opinions, or ideas— whether acquired first-hand (through direct perceptions and/or actions) or second-hand (through reading or hearsay). This includes all kinds of writing from the poem to the scientific experiment, for all have a purpose and an organized body of selected facts, opinions, or ideas. How clear the purpose, and how relevant and well-organized the facts, determines the effectiveness of the writing.
Since, then, learning to write does not just involve learning to use orthographic symbols, but primarily how to select and organize experience according to a certain purpose, it follows that teaching our students to write is different in a very important way from teaching them to speak or teaching them to use grammar. A purposeful selection and organization of experience requires active thought. When writing, the students must keep in mind their purpose, think about the facts they will need to select which are relevant to that purpose, and think about how to organize those facts in a coherent fashion. The process of learning to write is largely a process of learning to think more clearly.
On the other hand, learning to speak and learning grammar essentially involve learning not to think. The goal is to form habits; the procedure is to drill the students on pronunciation or grammar to the point where they will no longer have to think about what they are saying. It is more than likely that the habit-forming process which students of oral English and grammar must go through interferes with the process of learning to write well.
And the students don't learn to write via a reading course either. Although, unlike pronunciation and grammatical production, the process of reading requires thought, it does not, as does writing, also require activity. Reading is a passive process while writing is active. Although they can learn through reading how various writers have selected and organized facts in order to carry out a specific purpose, the students themselves must ultimately be forced to undergo the intense mental activity involved in working out their own problems of selection and organization if they are ever really going to learn to write. This is why the copybook approach, which requires that the students copy or emulate certain writings, doesn't work very well, for while it does require that the students memorize structures, thereby increasing their grammatical ability, and perhaps even teaching them something about style, it does not require them to do much thinking.
Because the combination of thought and activity are unique to writing, we must in planning a writing curriculum devise exercises which necessitate intense concentration. While grammar and reading are both certainly indispensable to such a curriculum, they must be presented in such a way that students will learn to use them as tools. For example, one of the first things they will have to learn is that writing has certain structural differences from speech. One difference is that writing generally has longer sentences—what might be two or three sentences in speech is often only one sentence in writing. So the students should learn how to combine the short sentences of spoken English by modification, or by using sentence connectors of various kinds (conjunctions, words like however, therefore, phrases like in the first place, etc. ). This involves learning grammar, but the students should learn to consciously select and use various grammatical devices with which to combine sentences as the problems arise in a writing situation: e.g., when they convert a dialog or narration into a paraphrase.
Of course, one of the biggest problems in teaching writing is that the students must have facts and ideas in order to write and that these must be manifested in the form of grammatical English sentences. But if we allow them to use the facts and ideas gained from their first-hand experiences, they will think of these in their own language and then try to translate them word-for-word into English, often with most ungrammatical results. This is why the free composition approach to teaching writing is just as unsatisfactory as the copybook method, but in a different way. The students make so many grammatical errors that their compositions lose much of the original meaning.
We can, however, avoid the problems caused by the students' limited knowledge of grammar and of the idioms of English by requiring that instead of using the facts of first-hand experience, they use second-hand facts gained through the vicarious experience of reading. Since what is unique in learning to write is not so much learning to state facts as it is to use them, we can give our students the facts they will be required to use in the form of reading assignments. By using sentences gleaned from reading they can avoid making grammatical errors and actively concentrate on the purposeful selection and organization of these sentences; i.e., they can concentrate on thinking.
A New Method for Teaching Writing
Contending, then, that learning to write is a process whereby students learn to use grammar and facts as tools in carrying out a particular purpose, we are confronted with the question of precisely how we are going to teach them to do this. Obviously, just as writing is a process, so too is the teaching of writing. We must proceed by stages from simple to complex. Because we cannot expect students to learn all there is to learn about writing at once, or even in a short time, we must in some way control the complexity of the writing they will be expected to do at various learning stages.
We can do this by controlling the purpose of the writing, for it is largely the purpose the writer must implement which determines the complexity of the selecting and organizing process. While a purpose of some sort is inherent in any kind of writing, it is the writing with an explicit rather than an implicit purpose that we should teach: i.e., expository prose. This kind of writing, because it "exposes" its purpose, lends itself much more easily to analysis than does writing with an implicit purpose (i.e., "fiction" or "literature" or "creative writing"), and therefore it is easier to teach. Too, expository prose is the only kind of writing that the students will need to use in their school work (except for assignments given in certain specialized English courses). Finally, the students will learn a great deal about all kinds of writing from learning to write good expository prose.
There are roughly three types of expository prose that students regularly use in school: these are lecture and reading notes, answers to examination questions, and research or critical papers. Each type has a different general purpose: note-taking is intended to report the facts, answering exam questions to explain them, and paperwriting to evaluate them. Each purpose—reporting, explaining, and evaluating—requires a selecting and organizing task of differing complexity.
For example, a student whose assignment is to summarize an essay has a purpose of the first type: reporting. His summary might begin with an assertion like: "The essay 'We Shall Overcome' says that the Negro is slowly making gains in status." This assertion tells us that the writer will use facts selected from the essay which exemplify the Negro's gain in status and that he will organize them in much the same order as they appeared in the essay.
But a student asked in an essay exam to write on, say, the types of
gains in status the Negro has made must go through a more complicated process of selection and organization. His beginning statement might read: "The essay, 'We Shall Overcome' lists gains in status the Negro is making which can be classified as either material or spiritual," and he will have to explain the facts he selects by organizing them into two categories— a more complex process than reporting, requiring deeper thought.
An assignment which requires that the student write a paper giving his opinion of an essay necessitates a still more complicated selecting and organizing process. He will have to begin with an assertion like: "The essay 'We Shall Overcome' is a realistic appraisal of the Negro's gain in status," and then he will have to cite evidence making a case for his opinion; i.e., he will have to evaluate the facts.
The curriculum for writing, then, should be planned in accordance with the three general types of expository prose the students will need to use in school : prose which reports, prose which explains, and prose which evalates. Of course such a task isn't simple. Teaching beginners or nearbeginners in English how to summarize, for example, is not a one-step process. Before they can do this successfully, they must learn to recognize structural and semantic clues which identify the important ideas within a given piece of prose. And the most efficient way for them to learn to do this (if we remember that writing involves the unique combination of thought and activity) is by having them use such clues in their own writing. Similarly, teaching reasonably sophisticated students how to write essays involves the complex process of teaching them how to find topics and sub-topics, how to recognize relevant similarities or differences between facts, and how to make assertions about their findings. Finally, teaching even advanced students how to judge various written pieces on a logical basis is a very involved process which includes teaching them to recognize the two parts of an argument, how to look for fallacies in these, and how to compose their own logically sound arguments.
So, although there may be only three general types of expository prose, teaching these is a long process which takes the students through several stages of writing, beginning with a form very close to speech—direct address-and ending with a form very different-a footnoted thesis. Naturally, as the purpose of the writing becomes more complex, the facts that the students are given to use must become more complex also. However, the teaching process can be most clearly illustrated by showing how the facts from one simple six-line dialog could be used in all stages of writing, from simple to complex:
Bill: Hi, Mary.
Mary: Hi.
Bill: Where are you going?
Mary: To the beach. Why don't you come along?
Bill: I think it's going to rain. Look at those clouds.
Mary: It can't rain again today! It's rained every day this week.
Direct Address
"Hi, Mary," said Bill.
"Hi," the girl answered.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To the beach," Mary replied. "Why don't you come along?"
"I think it's going to rain." Bill
pointed. "Look at those clouds."
"It can't rain again today!" his friend exclaimed. "It's rained every day this week."
Narration
Bill greeted Mary.
Mary greeted Bill.
He asked her where she was going.
She said that she was going to the beach. She asked Bill to go along.
He answered that he thought it was going to rain. He told Mary to look at the clouds.
Mary said that it couldn't rain again that day. It had rained every day that week.
Paraphrase
Exchanging greetings with Mary, Bill asked her where she was going. She said that she was going to the beach, and asked Bill to go along; however, he said that he thought it was going to rain, and told Mary to look at the clouds. But Mary said that it couldn't rain again that day because it had rained every day that week.
Summary
When Mary asked Bill to go to the beach with her, he said that he thought it was going to rain, and told her to look at the clouds. However, she said that it couldn't rain again that day since it had rained every day that week.
Factual analysis
Topic #1: Mary
1. Mary asked Bill to go to the beach with her.
2. She said that it couldn't rain again that day since it had rained every day that week.
Topic #2: Bill
1. Bill thougt it was going to rain.
2. He told Mary to look at the clouds.
Assertion
Bill and Mary had opposite ideas about the weather: he was a pessimist and she was an optimist.
Essay
"THE PESSIMIST vs. THE OPTIMIST"
Bill and Mary had opposite ideas about the weather: he was a pessimist and she was an optimist.
When Mary asked Bill to go to the beach with her one day, he was very pessimistic, telling her that he thought it was going to rain, and to look at the clouds. On the other hand, Mary was optimistic. She said that it couldn't rain again that day since it had rained every day that week.
People like Bill, who notice clouds in the sky, are pessimists, while people like Mary, who don't notice them, are optimists.
Argumentative analysis
Argument #1: premise—there are clouds in the sky; conclusion—it is going to rain.
Argument #2: premise—it has rained every day this week; conclusion—it can't rain again today.
Evaluation of the arguments
Argument #1 is reasonably sound: the evidence is both verifiable and relevant although the conclusion may be somewhat hasty. Argument #2 is fallacious: the evidence is verifiable but irrelevant, or, if relevant, leads to an opposite conclusion.
Critical review
In the essay "The Pessimist vs. The Optimist" by in Bill argued that it was going to rain because there were clouds in the sky, while Mary disagreed saying that it couldn't rain again that day because it had rained every day that week. Bill's argument was stronger than Mary's. ,
Bill's evidence was both verifiable and relevant. He said that there were clouds, which anyone could immediately verify by looking toward the sky. Since rain occurs only when there are clouds, certainly the evidence— clouds in the sky—was relevant to the conclusion that it was going to rain. However, the conclusion may have been somewhat hasty; it does not always rain when there are clouds. But Bill's argument was reasonably sound.
On the other hand, Mary's argument was fallacious. Her evidence, like Bill's was verifiable: one could check with the Weather Bureau. But from the fact that it had rained every day that week it did not follow that it therefore could not rain again that day; the evidence was irrelevant. In fact, a stronger logical case could have been made for the opposite conclusion: that because it had rained every other day that week, it would also rain that day, since in some areas there is a rainy season during which it rains almost every day.
Therefore, Bill's argument was sounder than Mary's, and from the evidence given in the essay, the chances for rain that day were higher than the chances for a good beach day.
Term paper
Contrasting Opinions About Weather
People are often either pessimists or optimists about the weather. Evidence of this is widespread. One example is the case of Bill and Mary in the essay "The Pessimist vs. the Optimist"'. . .
Each of the above samples of writing is, of course, the product of several lessons and "practices." Even learning to convert a dialog into what appears to be a simple form—direct address—involves learning a number of concepts about punctuation, about speaker identification, about stylistic variety. Learning to write a narration involves learning to change verbs to other tenses, to change first and second person pronouns to third person, to change words like now and here to then and there, and so forth. A given lesson, then, is designed to teach just a few of many concepts that the students need to learn at a certain stage of the writing process.
The following two lessons appear in the mimeographed text—REPORTING THE FACTS—which we are now using at the University of Hawaii, and they illustrate how learning to write can be a step-by-step process, but at the same time an active, thinking one:
LESSON 10
1. Compare the two models below.
—
Narration:
Liz called Mary. She told her that it was almost nine o'clock. They had better drive to school.
Mary told Liz that her car had a flat tire. They would have to walk. They would probably be late.
Liz said that she didn't mind being late. They needed the exercise. It would be good for them to walk.
Paraphrase:
Liz called Mary, and told her that it was almost nine o'clock, so they had better drive to school. Mary told Liz that her car bad a flat tire; therefore they would have to walk. They would probably be late as a result. Liz said that she didn't mind being late; besides, they needed the exercise, so it would be good for them to walk.
2. In what ways are so, therefore, and as a result similar in grammatical usage to and, in addition, and besides?
3. Therefore and as a result occur in the same position and have the same punctuation. How does so compare with them in this?
4. What are some other sentences that can be connected by so, therefore, and as a result?
5. Make a paraphrase out of the narration below. Use so/therefore/as a result as well as and/in addition/besides where appropriate.
Liz asked Mary how she liked French I. She asked her if she was planning to take French II the following semester.
Mary said that the teacher gave them a lot of homework. She had to stay up late doing it. It was difficult. They also had to memorize a long list of words for
each lesson. She didn't like French I. She wasn't going to take French II.
Liz said that she had been thinking of taking French. She was glad Mary had warned her about it. She thought she would take Spanish instead.
LESSON 11
1. Compare the two models below:
Paraphrase #1:
Liz called Mary, and told her that it was almost nine o'clock, so they had better drive to school. Mary told Liz that her car had a flat tire; therefore they would have to walk. They would probably be late as a result. Liz said that she didn't mind being late; besides, they needed the exercise, so it would be good for them to walk.
Paraphrase #2:
Liz called Mary, and told her that they had better drive to school, for it was almost nine o'clock. Mary told Liz that because her car had a flat tire, and since they would have to walk, they would probably be late. Liz said that she didn't mind being late; besides, it would be good for them to walk because they needed the exercise.
2. What are the differences in the grammatical usage of therefore/as a result and because/since?
3. In what ways are and, so, and for similar?
4. For/because/since and so/therefore/as a result indicate a cause-effect relationship between two sentences or clauses. Which words occur within a sentence stating the cause? The effect?
5. What is the time relationship of a cause to an effect?
6. Which of the following three sentences states a cause? An effect? Both a cause and an effect? Mary told Liz that her car had a flat tire. They would have to walk. They would probably be late.
7. What are some ways of writing the above three sentences using one or more of the six cause-effect sentence connectors?
8. For/because/since and so/therefore/as a result do not occur in the same causeeffect relationship, but they can occur in the same sentence. Why? Give an example.
9. Rewrite the paraphrase you did for Lesson 10. Use for/because/since instead of so/therefore/as a result. Make all of the necessary changes in punctuation and word order.
Lessons like these, then, are designed to teach only a small amount of the writing process at a time, but to teach it in such a way that the students learn to think more and more actively as they progress. They learn to read more carefully than they have in the past, for they must compare two similar but slightly different models, noting the grammatical and semantic differences between them. And they learn to discover reasons for these differences as they answer the questions following the readings. They learn to review constantly in order to compare and contrast previous lessons with the current one. Finally, they learn to make analogies as they work with an entirely different model, deciding whether their changes in the new model are justifiable on the basis of changes made in the old model.
As they go through the lessons, then, the students learn that grammar and semantics are inter-related, and that they are important tools for them to use consciously in order to make coherent pieces of prose out of different sets of English sentences. In short, they learn, first and foremost, that writing is a thinking process.
Literature in TESL Programs:
The Language and the Culture*
John F. Povey
As we begin to plan a course which offers an introduction to English literature to non-native speakers, we find that the need for a fresh approach makes us first begin to reconsider our justifications for teaching literature at all. Usually our presuppositions remain unquestioned because of the long tradition of such courses for native speakers. Even to pose the question of purpose may cause shocked responses, for is not the value of literature so self evident as to be beyond discussion? Yet for ESL students we must at least define our assumptions, the more so in that a sad amount of literature teaching (and dare I add literary scholarship) seems to maintain only a remote connection with that enobling of the human spirit which is supposed to be the justification of our early assaults on the fortress of Chaucer's medieval style, for example.
There is a basic dichotomy in English studies in this country (as in England). We learn "grammar" until some ill-defined point of competence is reached. (Freshman composition classes are certain to be the last formal English language training a native speaker could receive.) Language studies are gradually phased out in
* This paper was presented at the TESOL Convention, April 1967.
Mr. Povey is associate professor of English and associate director of the African Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
favor of literary studies which finally become the only "English" taught at all. At any age level above about seven years, the division between language and literature is deliberately engineered into the planning of the general syllabus. The fact that in the earliest levels of English learning educationalists perceive the advantage derived from the interaction of language and literature may be suggestive of the direction into which we should lead the ESL student, but this thought would make the theme of another paper and is only observed in passing here. The more significant point is that we have inherited from the format of English studies in this country a division from which we derive most of the extra difficulties which confront us as we plan English courses for the non-native speakers. In educational terms English has become two "subjects," and an "A" for grammar and a "C" for literature or vice versa does not strike us as extraordinary so accustomed are we to the attitude it exemplifies. We have exported this system with lamentable results. Professor Donald Bowen's recent study visit to India confirmed my own African experience that students are being required to study English "classics" without the least attempt being paid to the inadequate language skills they bring to such a study. Even foreign teachers, forgetting their own student days of despair, have inherited much of this attitude about literature. As one student patiently explained in
answer to a class enquiry I had assumed was merely rhetorical, "Why should we teach literature?": "If you didn't have literature what would you teach in the classes when you didn't teach grammar?" I was polite, but I mildly resented the not unique attitude that literature fills up the class programs when there isn't any more grammar to teach. We might recognize that this would give us a very long wait.
Where we have classes of native speakers, many of the difficulties that ought to intrude from the unsuitable division we are making in our classes are kept out of sight. There are signs of the problem in the whimpers that come from freshmen who spend their first class morning of the inevitable survey course approaching the mysteries of Beowulf because academics have only a spatial concept of time, even if such planning means that a student flounders into the deep end of the most difficult works first. (Such chronological order does have one advantage. In the face of some revolutionary protest from the dragooned engineering students who always demand, "Why do we have to read Chaucer?" you can always answer firmly, "Because it comes next." ) Rapidly such students take refuge in "ponies" which are wretchedly written originally and gain little by being dimly comprehended and garbled in the transition through memory to the "D" blue-book. But these native speakers, for all their problems that we blinkered professors are refusing to see, do have the all important qualification that the English which they use suffuses all their learning. Home-life, play, school, all reinforce their English to such a de- gree that the fact that literature is an awkwardly isolated part of language learning for them may be overlooked.
Not the same can be said of the unfortunate foreign student struggling with inadequate English to handle the survey courses for freshmen. Hindered by language, denied the short cuts of common cultural assumptions, the nonnative speaker flounders. What method can we devise that may help him to learn English in that fullest sense which must surely include an acquaintance with the literature of our language.
This problem necessitates an examination of our defined aims even though they may in themselves contain contradictory elements. This need was brought home to me when I began planning the courses which I had been asked to initiate in the TESL section of the English Department at UCLA. Since I was given a completely free hand in planning such a course, I had to take considerable time in deciding my intentions. When you have only yourself to blame, you cannot indulge in that luxury of inertia that permits you to blame some externally imposed syllabus or text for the inadequacies of the result. I was dealing, I might explain, with advanced non-native speakers only. They usually had first degrees from universities in their own countries. Since most of them were destined to teach English when they left the States, I was the more determined to treat them to a first acquaintance with some of the major authors in the language. I felt that the following were a reasonable series of general aims in the teaching of literature.
1. Literature will increase all language skills because literature will extend linguistic knowledge by giving
evidence of extensive and subtle vocabulary usage, and complex and exact syntax. It will often represent in a general way the style that can properly stand as a model for students. (One would have to qualify here what one assumed was a suitable model. Hemingway's would seem a safer style for a student's emulation than Faulkner's, though both may be admirable for the artists' purpose.)
2. Literature is a link towards that culture which sustains the expression of any language. American literature will open up the culture of this country to the foreign student in a manner analogous to the extension of the native speaker's own awareness of his own culture. We must consider, however, whether we wish in our choice of material to seek for the universal elements in order that the students will find familiarity with the human experience or whether we wish to select the most American of cultural incident. The latter will obviously be more difficult to comprehend but will be guiding the students towards the culture of their target language.
3. We must acknowledge the indefinable, though all-important, concept that literature gives one awareness and human insight. In this respect great literature can be justified as one could assert the value of listening to a major symphony.
4. Literature may guide a few more gifted students towards their own creativity by example derived from their reading of successful writers. There is already fascinating evidence of a second-language literature in English from several countries across the world, especially India and Nigeria.
Although each of these four elements is relevant to the foreign student, the first and second will be of most immediate and specific concern to the ESL teacher. This is because the issues listed as three and four have the clearest analogies with the students' first-language culture. Many of the foreign students in our universities come to us with an intelligent and broad perception of their own literatures, and some are no doubt beginning to experiment with writing in their own language.
We may ask ourselves despairingly whether it is possible for any piece of writing to combine a suitability for teaching the student all these elements appropriately. It is clear that we must, in fact, weigh the varied and sometimes conflicting elements in the function of literature in the classroom. My own concern has been that in our estimate of relevant importance of those aspects upon which we must base our selection of text material, we have, to date, placed far too heavy a premium upon the issue of language. Language has been so stressed that it has been elevated to the totality of expression, whereas it is rather the technique by which expression and ideas are conveyed. I wish to argue that language difficulty for the ESL student may have been exaggerated as a greater dragon than it really is. Obviously language must come first—there can be no other basis for comprehension at all. This is even more obvious in the case of the non-native speaker, for his limitation of comprehension will be more sharply defined since he will not be able to draw upon that common pool of instinctive language recognition which is available to the native speakers.
Yet if we have to accept the primacy of language, we cannot make this our only concern, otherwise the most effective ESL reading material would be those items we created ourselves to the specific linguistic architecture of levels of difficulty. Such works more often become readers without any element of literature in them. The simplified stories from the classics are justified by a similar appeal to language necessity, but they are usually only a thin reminder of what was once a significant book. My basic belief is that we have exaggerated the significance of the element of linguistic difficulty in ESL reading by assuming that reading requires that same total comprehension that comes with understanding speech in our aural/oral methods. The fact that the great impetus to TESL has come from linguistic science may also account for this attitude. The existence of a "recognition" vocabulary is well known, and there is, I believe (though I freely admit this to be an entirely unscientific and subjective impression), a similar partial perception of syntax and style. There can be a general comprehension even when there has not been a precise understanding of a certain syntactic structure. Perception may be general as well as literal. My students saw this when we found Rip Van Winkle sitting under a sycamore tree and one worried individual lamented that he could not understand because he did not know what a sycamore was. I discovered with some embarrassment that I didn't know what a sycamore was either—at least in any botanical sense. We then agreed that if we got as far as "tree," as the context dictated, we would have got as far towards comprehension as that detail needed.
One especial aspect of language difficulty we are inclined to exaggerate is the dialog parts. One is instinctively doubtful about the accents and colloquial idioms of such sections in a piece. I prepared very anxiously for the introduction of the regional accents in Willa Cather's story "The Sculptor's Funeral." In spite of the apparent lexical problems, I had wanted to use this story to initiate some discussion about the American attitude towards artists and intellectuals. To my surprise they had no difficulty at all in comprehending the dialog because they said (with some exaggeration surely) that it was "like the speech we hear every day on television." I am not always happy with the priority given to the TV experience. Introducing some ESL students to a section of The Grapes of Wrath, I elicited the following response: "I see a lot of TV, and this story reminds me of the Beverly Hillbillies, so the characters were stuck in my mind before I knew who John Steinbeck was." It is a clear comment on our newer language-teaching method, with its emphasis upon the heard rather than the read, that dialog appears to offer little difficulty. On the other hand when I tried the students on the introduction to USA by Dos Passos, I had a reaction opposite to my expectation. I had chosen this piece because I had wished to discuss the common vision of the American man, the lone hero, enviable in his aloofness. The language looked direct enough in its vocabulary and syntax so that I anticipated no serious difficulties. The students found it inordinately hard to appreciate because of its rhetorical and mannered style. As
one student remarked indignantly, "I had to read the story twice in order to understand what Dos Passos meant." Where I had seen simple enough underlying structures, they saw the occasional inversions and repetitions, and their recognition broke down at once.
Clearly our assessment of the difficulty that will be encountered in reading needs rethinking in the light of the fact that our present students have not learned English as I learned French, through a reading of texts and translation. They have learned English through speech. The omnipresence of TV (shades of Marshall McLuhan) has "massaged" the areas of their easier comprehension. This argument was summed up unexpectedly by a Japanese girl who wrote modestly, "My English is poor. For instance when I hear President Johnson speaking, I don't understand well. But on TV shows I understand quite well in spite of my poor English. This is because most shows concern affairs which I experienced in Japan." (I should like to have pursued this assertion further, but unfortunately the section is culled from a terminal blue-book.)
It has been my experience that the whole area of cultural comprehension is more likely than language problems to cause difficulty. This is aggravated by the fact that confusion shows up in such unexpected ways. In preparing for the difficulties one will encounter it is necessary to strike a balance, as I observed earlier, between writing which stresses cultural universality, the generality of human emotions, and those cultural elements which are most specifically and individually American. Discovery of American attitudes through such a presentation will aid the student's awareness of this country and his adjustment to it.
As an example of my attempts in this direction I would like to describe my experiences in teaching that famous American story "Rip Van Winkle." This story proved very difficult in its language, but the readers persevered. We talked generally about folk tales and the reason that Washington Irving felt it necessary to initiate that form in the Eastern States. In subsequent discussion students told me several tales from their own traditions which concerned the same situation, the man who sleeps for a generation without recognizing the passing time. Several countries seem to have such a tale. Then with the similarities established it was time to stress the American element. "If this story were told in your country, would it come out roughly the same in its characters and motivation?" I questioned. "No," said the Latin Americans. "Our women are satisfied with their position at home, and we have no stories of this henpecking." (That last word caused great delight for its expressiveness.) The Japanese were in general agreement with this view, though they expressed it a little more cautiously. "There is a Japanese word for this. It is kakadena which means 'petticoat government,' but I have never read a story about it." There were several other responses from students in the same tone. "A Chinese wife is obedient to her husband. Wives in Taiwan don't take part in social activities at all." The Africans responded more firmly. "It is foolish to put the blame on the wife, for a man's friends would say 'Why don't you marry another one?' " "Our people would blame the wife's bad temper on
the wrath of the unappeased spirit of his dead grandfather." (I admit by the time I got to that latter remark I began to wonder whether I was merely having my leg pulled as I sought for cultural anthropology. )
At this point with the differences clearly established I tried to lead them into the specifically American elements by appealing first to their personal experience here. "Is Rip a typical American man?" I asked. Opinion in the class divided in a way that revealingly exposed the accepted stereotypes. "Yes, Rip is typical because all men are henpecked by their wives in this country." One student felt so strongly about this that he went so unreasonably far as to insist, "And his dog is an American dog, for it too is frightened of a woman." Others thought that Rip was hardly the conventional American since by definition all Americans work hard to gain the material comforts of this society and Rip is indifferent to keeping up with the Joneses.
This division of attitude exposes the nature of the prejudice which is established when the American scene is observed from the viewpoint derived from films and magazines. The possibility of using such comments as the link into a more rational class discussion of American culture is clear. In every piece which we read, we make many cultural presuppositions with unthinking confidence, most of which are going to be quite literally foreign to the nonnative speaker. This introduction to a nation's literary culture has got to be undertaken with some concessions to general interest, too. A half-term bluebook produced this disconsolate assessment: "Nothing happens, nothing changes. I think that these writings can be appreciated only by a certain group of people who are interested in things like this and understand them." Include me out, I detected there. But that remark did make me question whether my own "literary" standards had been pitched too high. I therefore fell back upon one of the Hyman Kaplan stories. I had considerable doubts about this. The language is difficult because of its errors and the attempt to record idiosyncratic pronunciation. I wondered, too, whether the tone did not indicate a certain kind of mockery in the characterization for all its general affection: "Foreigners speak funny." Surprisingly it was a great success. My concern that I was proving myself unable to estimate what was a suitable piece for the students' enjoyment was offset by my pleasure in the very warm response they had to Kaplan's predicament. "The characters are all foreign as we are, and so we see ourselves through the story. Kaplan could be one of us." "It shows students having the same problems that we had when we came to this country, and it gives us a good feeling that we can already laugh at them."
It is a common enough truism of linguistic studies that an accurate contrastive analysis between the language of the learner and the target language will facilitate the recognition of likely areas of difficulty. What an overwhelming task it is going to be if we are also going to require a similar contrastive analysis between the cultures. Perhaps this is too strong a view, yet the response of a particularly able Japanese student remains in my mind. We had been reading through Nathaniel Hawthorne's Ethan Brand in class. We had discussed the universality of certain human fears—of darkness and madness. "But how would Ethan have behaved if he had not had that puritanical conscience?" asked this student. "What can an unforgivable sin be to a Buddhist or a believer in Shinto?" Such an enquiry pierced my parochial outlook and opened up to me evidence of the yawning gulfs of misunderstanding of ideas and motivations that may make virtually all a foreign student's reactions distorted by the difference between his intellectual and cultural presuppositions and ours.
We know now roughly how to control difficulties so that items may be presented in an ascending hierarchy of difficulty. Can we begin to plan a similar control of the degree of cultural difficulty by leading the student more gently from the most familiar, the most readily comprehensible, ideas into those elements of our own culture which will be most foreign to him? Those beliefs most difficult for him to appreciate will be those which are in greatest contrast with his own national and racial assumptions.
If we cannot yet do this in a broad, theoretical way, we can only plead for more general and wider individual experiment with materials in the classrooms. Some pieces seem to have an immediate appeal; others unwarrantable seem a dreary flop. Which are which, and why? The linguists have established a very successful basis for the teaching of language at the elementary levels. Perhaps we can be equally successful at this more advanced level of language study in bringing to the foreign student the beginning steps in his acquaintance with our extensive range of literature. It seems a challenge to the humanist as teacher to show others successfully the delights of his own discipline.
Some Co-occurrences in American Clichés
Kenneth Croft
Quite a number of "language" matters which students of English as a second language need to learn about are not treated in textbooks at all. Many of these are partly linguistic in nature and partly non-linguistic, that is, "cultural''—involving other aspects of culture. Actually, hardly anything in the language-learning situation can be said to be purely linguistic, divorced completely from the "cultural" side. Most of the time there seems to be simply a stronger tendency in one direction or the other—more toward the linguistic on the one hand or more toward the "cultural" on the other; but somtimes these matters appear to lie pretty much on "middle ground."
One such matter I've been occupied with recently has to do with our habit of associating words in pairs and groups in clichés. We usually think of the following, for example, in sets of two: salt and pepper, cup and saucer, bread and butter, hands and feet, doors and windows; sink or swim, sooner or later, heads or tails. If we give a native speaker of American English the first member of the set, he will ordinarily respond with the second. Not long ago some of my colleagues and I made a list of over 200 of these pairs. Sets of three are fairly
Mr. Croft, professor of English and anthropology at San Francisco State College, is the author of many English-as-a-secondlanguage texts including Reading and Word Study (Prentice-Hall, 1960).
common, too, but not as numerous as the pairs: food, clothing, and shelter; hop, skip, and jump; stop, look, and listen; good, bad, or indifferent; beg, borrow, or steal. Here, the first two automatically evoke the third. These pairs and triplets appear to have a fixed order, however: as a rule, left and will evoke right, whereas right and will evoke wrong.
Another pairing device is the simile, with the word as or like: light as a feather, fit as a fiddle, happy as a lark, fresh as a daisy; kicks like a mule, sleeps like a log, grows like a weed, cries like a baby. Many of these and many of the previously mentioned pairs have what we might call a "tight" association; they are universal, so to speak—used consistently throughout the entire United States. Others have a "looser" association; they vary geographically and also, perhaps, socially. Black as, for example, may evoke night or coal or pitch. A situational variation also occurs in some instances: eats like, depending on the situation, may evoke a horse or a bird or even some other heavy or light eater.
It's my guess that relatively few students of English (or teachers, either) realize how extensive our use of pairs and triplets in these ways actually is. To show a little more of this proliferation I'm noting below some additional examples of each type (sets
of two and three).1 But rather than give a straight list of items as they seem most natural to me or to someone else, I ask you to complete them yourself by filling in the blanks. Then you can check your responses with those given at the end of this article. If you are a native speaker of American English or have spent many years in the United States, your responses and the ones given will match very well—perhaps exactly. On the other hand, if you are a non-native speaker and your contact with Americans has been somewhat limited, your response and those given will probably not match very well.
This is an exercise on word association, not idea association—an exercise on how Americans put words (and sometimes phrases) together by two's and three's without conscious thought. The term "co-occurrence" has come into fairly general use during the past decade; it applies to sentence elements that occur together. The items presented here are all co-occurrences in American clichés, the co-occurrence range in each case being extremely limited.2
1 I acknowledge with thanks the suggestion by Robert B. Kaplan of the University of Southern California that lists such as these be prepared and tested, and I express my appreciation to him for arranging to have the items tested on foreign students at USC and on American elementary school children (5th and 6th grades). I am also grateful to Ralph Beckham of the University of Illinois and Edith F. Croft of San Francisco State College for their generous assistance in preparing these lists.
2 For a discussion of co-occurrences with broader ranges, see Earl W. Stevick, A Workbook in Language Teaching: With Special Reference to English as a Foreign Language (New York: Abingdon Press, 1963) , pp. 97-119 passim.
P AIRS WITH A N D Example: husband and wife
1. comb and
2. shoes and
3. tables and
4. stop and
5. top and
6. arms and
7. up and
8. heel and
9. in and
10. thunder and
11. thick and
12. chills and
13. needle and
14. cops and
15. north and
16. fact and
17. lost and
18. sticks and
19. duke and
20. fame and
21. cowboys and
22. Greeks and
23. straight and
24. ladies and
25. prose and
26. far and
27. safe and
28. before and
29. off and
30. various and
31. brothers and
32. sweetness and
33.
34. hit and
35. pure and
36. aches and
37. forgive and
38. judge and
39. supply and
40. do's and
PAIRS WITH O R Example: same or different
silver and
41. more or
42. trick or
43. win or
44. rain or
45. double or
46. better or
47. this or
48. heaven or
49. friend or
50. truth or
TRIPLETS Example: red, white, and blue
51. knife, fork, and
52. tall, dark, and
53. love, honor, and
54. eat, drink, and
55. blood, sweat, and
56. how, when, and
57. morning, noon, and
58. healthy, wealthy, and
59. friends, Romans, and
60. on land, on sea, and
61. ready, willing, and
62. solid, liquid, or
63. lost, strayed, or
64. win, lose, or
SIMILES W ITH A S Example: blind as a bat
65. busy as
66. cheap as
67. sick as
68. nutty as
69. cool as
70.
71. flat as
72. slippery as
73. hairy as
75. straight as
76. stiff as
77. sober as
78. old as
79. scarce as
80. naked as
81. easy as
82. hard as
83. sharp as
84. heavy as
stubborn as
dry as 74.
S
IMILES WITH
LIKE Example: growls
like a bear
85. roars like
86. shuts up like
87. drinks like
88. cracks like
89. spins like
90. climbs like
91. laughs like
92. goes out like
93. shakes like
94. leaps like
95. cuts like
96. multiplies like
97. bounces like
98. barks like
99. sells like
100. sticks (adheres) like
T YPICAL RESPONSES: 1 brush 2 socks 3 chairs 4 go 5 bottom 6 legs 7 down 8 toe 9 out 10 lightning 11 thin 12 fever 13 thread 14 robbers 15 south 16 fiction 17 found 18 stones 19 duchess 20 fortune 21 Indians 22 Romans 23 narrow 24 gentlemen 25 poetry 26 wide (near) 27 sound 28 after 29 on 30 sundry 31 sisters 32 light 33 gold 34 run 35 simple 36 pains 37 forget 38 jury 39 demand 40 don't's 41 less 42 treat 43 lose 44 shine 45 nothing 46 worse 47 that 48 hell 49 foe (enemy) 50 consequences 51 spoon 52 handsome 53 obey (cherish) 54 be merry 55 tears 56 where 57 night 58 wise 59 countrymen 60 in the air 61 able 62 gas 63 stolen 64 draw 65 a bee 66 dirt 67 a dog 68 a fruitcake 69 a cucumber 70 a mule 71 a pancake 72 an eel 73 an ape 74 a bone 75 an arrow 76 a board 77 a judge 78 the hills (Methuselah) 79 hen's teeth 80 a jaybird (a new-born babe) 81 pie 82 nails (a rock) 83 a razor (a tack) 84 lead 85 a lion 86 a clam 87 a fish 88 a whip 89 a top 90 a monkey 91 a hyena 92 a light 93 a leaf 94 a frog 95 a knife 96 rabbits 97 a ball 98 a dog 99 hotcakes 100 glue
Coral Way: A Bilingual School*
The bilingual program which was organized at Coral Way Elementary School, Miami, Florida during the spring of 1963 was part of a Ford Foundation Project awarded to the Dade County Schools to develop materials to teach English as a second language to non-speakers of English. The need for these materials became acute in south Florida after the large number of Cuban refugees came to Miami.
which had proved successful in bilingual schools of other parts of the world—Latin America, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Europe—and incorporate the best into a program that would be compatible with the basic Dade County curriculum and the Coral Way School plant. The committee at no time nor in any way attempted to develop a program around the personnel in the building.
Our first problem at Coral Way was that of organizing a planning and steering committee. We needed brainpower and experience which, fortunately, we had in our county: Dr. Pauline Rojas, who was to direct the Ford Foundation Project, had directed the English-as-a-second-language program in Puerto Rico for twelve years; Ralph Robinett had also been a director of the English program in Puerto Rico; Paul Bell, who is supervisor of bilingual education in this county, had worked in the bilingual schools of Guatemala; others employed in the Ford Foundation Project had directed or worked in the bilingual schools of Cuba. These people, plus the district director for Coral Way School, the assistant principal, and the principal, made up the planning committee which developed a philosophy and a set of guidelines, and from these recommended an overall organizational pattern. The committee worked with one thought in mind: Select that
*This paper was presented at the TESOL Convention, April 1967.
Mr. Logan is principal of Coral Way Elementary School, Miami, Florida.
The committee made the following recommendations:
That the Dade County Curriculum Scope and Sequence be followed and the time allocations for each skill area be observed.
That each child receive his instruction for a part of the day in his vernacular with a native teacher of his language. That each child receive his instruction for a part of the day in his second language with a native teacher of the second language.
That he spend a part of each day in a mixed group, at which time both or either language might be used.
That second language materials be purchased or developed to reinforce or supplement vernacular instruction. That a summer workshop be planned to train personnel and that the school day be organized to effect daily inservice training and planning.
That non-instructional help be employed to assist instructional personnel.
With these guidelines clearly defined it was then the principal's responsibility to name committees and plan the summer workshop. A personnel committee started interviewing teaching applicants immediately. The regular teachers in the building were offered an opportunity to teach in the program if they could attend a
six-week summer workshop. Those teachers who could not and those who did not wish to work in the program transferred to nearby schools.
The University of Miami was at this time (the 1962-1963 school year) training a class of thirty Cuban refugee teachers to teach Spanish in the Florida schools. The state certification department had agreed to give threeyear provisional certificates to these teachers after the completion of one year of prescribed work. From this group of thirty, the committee selected six: two for the first, two for the second, and two for the third grades. (The program during the first year included only the first three grades.) A scheduling committee also started to work immediately developing a workable schedule that would give the teachers one hour of planning time during the day and at the same time give the pupils the recommended time allotted for each subject area. This scheduling was accomplished by using aides to assist with music, art, physical education and supervised play. The bilingual aides were former Cuban teachers who were not certified to teach in Florida.
The principal and other members of the planning committee were also meeting at the time with groups of parents whose questions seemed to be repeated over and over again:
"If my child spends part or half of his day working in a second language, what will he miss?"
"How can you crowd a full day's work into one-half day?"
"What kinds of Spanish printed materials will you use?"
"What about library books?"
"Will reading achievement be lower?"
"Will it be Cuban Spanish?"
These questions went on and on, and the committee continued its program of public relations. Meetings were held with parents in all grade groups. Speakers explained the program to parents at PTA meetings. Teachers talked with parents who were undecided about enrolling their children in bilingual classes. About eighty percent of the parents wanted their children in the program—we had anticipated this—and for the children whose parents did not want them to participate, a regular self-contained class at each grade level was provided.
The school year started with four bilingual classes and one regular class at each grade level—grades one, two, and three—but by the end of the first year self-contained classes became smaller because the parents, as they saw the progress the children were making in the second language, requested that their children be transferred to the bilingual classes. At the end of the second year the number in the regular classes had dwindled to less than one-half of one class or about fifteen pupils. At the present time there are 941 pupils in the school, and only eleven in the regular sixth grade class. After this school term all pupils will participate in the bilingual program.
The 1963 six-week summer workshop day was divided into two parts. During the forenoon the twelve teachers, six English-speaking and six Spanish-speaking, were enrolled in two three-semester-hour classes, Basic Linguistics and Structure of the English Language. In the afternoon from 12:30 to 3:30 P.M. the teachers worked in grade level groups developing the second-language program and
adjusting this program to the Dade County Curriculum Scope and Sequence for the elementary grades. Textbooks were examined, and from the vocabulary in these books the basic language patterns were developed. From these language patterns the yearly, monthly, and weekly plans were developed. Even though the language lessons were structured, they were flexible to the extent that adjustment to the progress of the pupils could be easily made. In addition, hundreds of visual aids were prepared, and they were "finger-tip" filed for instant use.
The scheduling was not easy. In addition to being guided by the recommendations of the steering committee, the group had to keep in mind that the program had to be compatible with Florida state law, Florida accreditation standards, Dade County School Board policy, and of course, good school administration. The schedule had to be flexible because of the plan for grouping the pupils according to their knowledge of their second language. During the first year there was a great deal of shifting of pupils from one group to another.
The organization provides for first grade pupils to gradually move into the second language, beginning with fifteen minutes per day during the first four weeks to one hundred fifty minutes per day during the last twelve weeks of school. A typical day for a first grade child during the last two marking periods would be: vernacular, one hundred sixty-five minutes; second language, one hundred fifty minutes; mixed groups—English and Spanish— seventy-five minutes. As the pupils move through grades two to six, the time for mixed grouping increases, and second-language and vernacular time decreases. In the sixth grade two classes are mixed for the complete day.
It is the opinion of those who have worked in the school that the one hour of daily planning time has made the greatest contribution to the success of the bilingual program. This one hour of planning time is scheduled while the pupils go to music and physical education. At each grade level, music is scheduled to follow physical education or vice versa in order to provide the one-hour time block. Each day during this planning time the teachers of a grade level meet as a group to do team planning. A team consists of one English- and one Spanish-speaking teacher.
The three days each week the music teacher is not in Coral Way School, the aides continue her program or do follow-up activities in what the music teacher has introduced. In physical education a Spanish-speaking aide assists the teacher during the entire day. One bilingual aide works in the library part of each day helping pupils with their selection of Spanish books. In addition to helping with the pupils, the aides assume clerical responsibilities such as pupil accounting, typing report cards (Coral Way has a special report card), posting information in the pupils' cumulative folders, preparing visual materials, and helping with the ordering of Spanish books and other Spanish materials. Incidentally, we experienced some difficulty in finding suitable printed materials in Spanish.
At the present time the Miami Linguistic Readers are being used to introduce reading to the Spanish-speaking pupils. These materials have been
developed for grades one and two. In addition to these, the regular stateadopted textbooks are used for all English instruction. To teach Spanish we are using materials from the following publishers: Laidlaw (health and readers); D. C. Heath (Miami Linguistic Readers, science, Fries American English Series); Silver-Burdett (math); Follett (library books).
One of the evaluations of the scholastic achievement of the pupils in the bilingual program at Coral Way is being done by Mabel Richardson. Briefly, Mrs. Richardson is attempting to do three things:
1. To compare the academic progress of the English-speaking pupils in the bilingual program, grades one through three, with the academic progress of pupils, grades one through three, who attend a regular Dade County school. The pupils in the bilingual program are taught one-half day in English and one-half day in Spanish. The control groups are taught the full day's activities in English.
2. To compare the academic progress of the Spanish-speaking pupils who are in the bilingual program with the academic progress of Spanishspeaking pupils who attend a regular school in Dade County. All instruction for this control group is in English.
The assumption is that there will be no significant differences in the academic progress of the pupils in the control groups and the progress of the pupils in the bilingual program at comparable grade levels. For these comparisons, data from the Dade County testing program has been used. In this county Stanford Achievement Tests are given to all elementary pupils at the beginning of October each year. Results were obtained for the first three years of this program.
3. To determine if, and at what point, the students in the study become bilingual. Will the English-speaking pupils in the study have learned Spanish? Will the Spanish-speaking pupils have learned English?
At the end of the school year 1964, 1965, and 1966 the Cooperative InterAmerican Tests were given to all students in the bilingual program in Coral Way School. These tests have equivalent forms in English and Spanish. Each pupil was given his second language test first, and a day or two later he was given the same test in his native language. These two tests give an idea of how much of the second language the pupil has learned.
Mrs. Richardson is completing the first stage of this evaluation at the present time and hopes to make the results of the study available to those interested. She hopes to carry this study through the next three years to gain a more comprehensive evaluation of this unique program.
With one exception the basic overall organization of the school today is the same as the original plan. However, because of an increased enrollment two rooms, one at first and one at second grade level, have been set up as self-contained classes. In these rooms the bilingual teacher directs all activities, one-half day in English and one-half day in Spanish. The first presentation of a new concept may be in either language; this same concept is then received and enlarged in the other—either that same afternoon or the next day.
One major problem concerns the needs of pupils transferring to Coral Way. Those pupils who came after
the program was under way were assigned to a small group (with a second-language teacher) for a part of each day to learn the basic language patterns.
In summary, we feel that the success of this program is due largely to:
1. A flexible organizational plan
2. Good consultant services available on call
3. One hour of planning time each within the school day
4. The use of aides
5. Democratic planning within the school
6. Personnel enthusiasm
7. Community enthusiasm
8. Personnel with a bilingual point
of view
9. Cooperative and team teaching
10. Additional funds for books and materials
11. The second language being taught by native speakers of the second language.
Teaching Short Serial Items in a Target Language
Faze Larudee
In teaching short serial items such as the numbers one through ten, days of the week, and months of the year, language teachers are faced with the question, "How should these items be taught so that the student may not have to recall one in order to remember the name preceding or following it?" More specifically, how can a student be taught the days of the week in a target language so that he may be able, for example, to recall Wednesday without having to remember that Wednesday comes after Tuesday or before Thursday?
For the past three years I have found the solution to this problem in the application of a simple teaching technique consisting of the following steps: 1
Step 1. The teacher writes on the blackboard, for example, the names of the days of the week in both English and Persian in opposite columns. Since the ultimate goal is to teach each item as a separate and independent unit, the days of the week should appear in random order. Nevertheless, it is important that items opposite each other in the two columns be counterparts. Furthermore, in order to reduce the students' tendency to
1 In this explanation English is used for the students' target language and Persian for the native language. The same steps can be followed, however, in teaching any target language.
Mr. Larudee is professor of linguistics at Inter American University of Puerto Rico and author of Reading Persian: A Programmed Course Based on the Structure of Written Persian (Ann Arbor Publishers, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1964).
translate, items in the native language column (Persian in this case) should appear in their abbreviated form. The following example will demonstrate an arrangement of items in step 1:
Step 2. The teacher reads the items in the English column and points simultaneously to their counterparts in the Persian column as the class listens. It may be necessary to repeat this step once or twice.
Step 3. The teacher substitutes each item of the target language column in a short and familiar sentence and asks the class to repeat the sentence after him. In the course of this repetition drill, however, the teacher names one of the items more often than the others. For example, the class repeats after the teacher the following utterances as he points to the Persian items and uses their English counterparts in the sentences:
1. We had English on Tuesday.
```
2. We had English on Sunday. 3. We had English on Thursday. 4. We had English on Tuesday. 5. We had English on Monday. 6. We had English on Tuesday. 7. We had English on Wednesday. 8. We had English on Saturday. 9. We had English on Tuesday. 10. We had English on Friday. 11. We had English on Tuesday. 12. We had English on Thursday. 13. We had English on Tuesday. 14. We had English on Monday.
```
15. We had English on Tuesday.
16. We had English on Saturday.
17. We had English on Wednesday.
18. We had English on Tuesday.
Step 4. After a short repetition drill, the teacher gives the items in the English column for substitute items to be used in the same pattern as presented in step 3.
Step 5. When the class seems to respond to the most-frequently-referred-to item with ease, and usually with a smile of satisfaction, the teacher erases this particular word in English, gives only the visual cue by pointing to the Persian word, and waits for the class to respond in English. Invariably a few seconds of laughter and fun break the tenseness of drilling.
Beyond this point the teacher has two basic choices: (1) He may test the ability of the individual members of his class to recall the particular item; or (2) he may continue to elicit choral responses until he has taught all of the items before calling upon the individual students to respond.2
Step 6. After all the items in English have been erased, and a period of drill for overlearning has followed, the teacher asks each student to name the days of the week in order. This is to test the students' ability to rearrange the material he has just learned. If the response indicates the
2In general, individual drill should be combined with choral drill for making the best use of the class time and for holding the interest of the class. For this purpose:
a) Teacher stimulates and points to the individual student for response.
b) Teacher repeats the student's response, signals for the class to respond, and so on.
need for further drill, it should be conducted.
Step 7. The teacher uses various days of the week in a question which he poses to individual students for response. If these responses point to the need for additional drill, some of the previous steps should be repeated for reinforcement.
Step 8. The teacher divides the class into pairs of students who will conduct a controlled conversation simultaneously in which one question is asked with days of the week as substitute items. Answers will be given either in the affirmative or negative, or in the negative followed by the affirmative. For example:
Q1: Did it rain here on Saturday?
Al: Yes it did; it rained hereon Saturday.
A2: No, it didn't rain here on Saturday.
A3: No, it didn't rain here on Saturday; it rained here on Sunday.
Q2: Didn't it rain here on Saturday?
Al: Yes, it rained here on Saturday.
A2: No, it rained here on Sunday.
A3: No, it didn't; it rained here on Sunday.
Step 9. In order to ascertain the students' mastery in the use of the new items, a transformation drill should be conducted. Such a drill will require the use of the newly learned material in conjunction with other changes, e.g., changes in number, addition of possessive and verbal suffixes. For example:
Q1: Did you have English on Saturday?
A1: Yes, we had English on Saturday.
A2: No, we didn't have English on Saturday.
A3: No, we didn't; we had English on Thursday.
Q2: Didn't we have English on Thursday?
Al: Yes we did; we had English on Thursday.
A2: No, we didn't; we didn't have English on Thursday.
A3: No, we didn't have English on Thursday; we had it on Wednesday.
This technique has proved to be effective and economical of time and effort. Furthermore, students exposed to this technique demonstrate the ability to recall each item of the series both independently and as a member of the series to which it belongs.
Review
GUIDED WRITING AND FREE WRITING: A Textbook in Composition for English as a Second Language. L OIS R OBINSON (Harper and Row, 1967, 216 pp.) .
The title of Lois Robinson's textbook, GUIDED WRITING AND FREE WRITING, well expresses what the book purports to do—to give students practice in guided writing as preparation for free composition. Exercises in rather closely guided writing alternate in each lesson with assignments in freer composition presented in such a way that the student is led to use the structures that he has been practicing. The procedure, with some variation, is as follows: A structure pattern is presented and a brief rule for its formation or use is given. The student then practices the pattern orally, sometimes by answering questions, sometimes by completing statements, sometimes by inserting elements in the pattern. Guided writing exercises generally come next. The most common ones consist of paragraphs of questions to be turned into paragraphs of statements. Other types call for copying paragraphs, supplying in spaces left blank the elements being taught—verb forms, subordinators, or articles—or for completing statements. In the free expression assignments that follow, students are given the opening sentence of a paragraph and sometimes the concluding one. Suggestions may be made for material to include in the paragraph or phrases to use.
All of the writing assignments, both guided and free, are a paragraph or more in length. A typical guided writing assignment is the following, de- signed to teach the present perfect tense. (126)
THE LUNCH-COUNTER HABIT
NOTE: When you eat in public on a narrow shelf while sitting on a stool, you are eating at a lunch counter.
DIRECTIONS: Turn the three following paragraphs of questions into three paragraphs of statements, affirmative or negative, noting how the present perfect tense and the past tense alternate throughout the exercise.
Did you eat at a table or did you eat at a lunch counter in (name of your country) ? Have you acquired the lunch-counter habit since coming to this country?
Have you now drunk many cups of coffee while sitting on a high stool? Did you climb on a stool and have a cup of coffee yesterday? Have you learned to pile catsup, chopped pickle, and raw onion on the same hamburger? What did you put on a hamburger yesterday? . . . etc.
The student will produce a composition as follows:
I ate at a table in Turkey. I have acquired the lunch-counter habit since coming to this country.
I have now drunk many cups of coffee while sitting on a high stool. I climbed on a stool and had a cup of coffee yesterday. I have learned to pile catsup, chopped pickle, and raw onion on the same hamburger. Yesterday I put mustard and chopped pickle on my hamburger . . . . etc.
Here is a free writing exercise from the text on the same grammatical point. (130)
NEW EXPERIENCES
DIRECTIONS : Write a paragraph beginning, "I have had a variety of new experiences since coming to the United States." Use the following phrases only if you find them useful.
have had a leisurely dinner at have danced for hours in have gone to again and again to have enjoyed lectures have enjoyed concerts have had long conversations with have taken pictures of
Generally the assignments make acceptable English paragraphs. Sometimes an attempt to pack a large number of uses of a structure is less fortunate from the standpoint of content or of style, and the student is given an admonition to the effect that in a normal writing situation such a structure might not occur so many times in the same paragraph.
A strong feature of the book, however, is that the assignments are varied and interesting. Paragraphs covering such aspects of the American scene as the cable cars in San Francisco, the subways in New York City, life in a small town, atypical American kitchen, an American drug store, the PTA, or historical incidents of local interest are interspersed with paragraphs dealing with the student's life in the university and his views on current problems such as civil rights or international politics.
Another excellent feature is the sequencing of grammatical material so that the point being taught builds on those just previously drilled on. The text is divided into twelve sections headed according to the major grammatical emphasis in each. Thus there is Section A—The Simple Present and Present Progressive Tenses, Section B—The Articles, Section C—The Past Tense, and so on. However, within each section other items are taught which fit in well with these points of emphasis. Section A teaches, using the present and present progressive verb forms, negative and question patterns with do and be, the uses of there is as opposed to it is, uses of do and make, idioms with get, and the distinction in use between some and any. In Section C wh- questions and adverbs of place and time are taught with the past tense. This drill leads to Section D where adverbial clauses and the past progressive are introduced, and sequencing of tenses in complex sentences appears. In the next section the teaching of the past perfect comes in naturally in drilling on this sequencing, and in Section F this sequencing is carried out in the use of the modals in sentences expressing unreal conditions. Thus review is built in, and there is no abrupt transition from one grammatical item or from one lesson to another.
Students and teachers oriented in traditional grammar and methodology will not be disturbed by new terms and will find the approach through presentation of a rule followed by application a familiar one. Others may regret the fact that, although grammatical explanations are generally wisely kept to a minimum, the lessons do not begin with examples from which the principle may be derived by observing the language in operation, and may find the rules a bit burdensome. The section on articles is perhaps the least fortunate in this respect. Some forty rules are presented which the student is immediately expected to apply with few examples in context to guide him.
Some users of the book may question the amount of time devoted to copying
paragraphs, making only slight modifications. In a manual (29 pages) accompanying the text—a manual which, incidentally, may serve as an excellent guide to methods for those with little experience in teaching English as a second language—the author anticipates this, and suggests that for students who are fairly proficient in English and who become impatient with following the guided writing exactly without inserting words and phrases of their own, the instructor may say something like this occasionally:
These exercises can sharpen your eyes regarding written English. They can help you to observe details. They can show you numerous small points of usage which you may have been overlooking. (Manual, p. 11)
She suggests that the guided writing assignments be strictly held to, that students should be checked against departing from them even when they can do so without error, and that guided writing and free writing should be strictly separated to make for the development of greater accuracy.
The text does provide this opportunity for careful, accurate writing and gives an orderly approach to the main points, though by no means all of the details, of English grammar. It is designed, says the author, to prepare foreign students to go into regular college freshman composition courses with native Americans, and thus does not teach composition in the sense of teaching rhetorical principles—patterns of organization, methods of development of a topic, and the like. Though it was prepared to be used with foreign students in American colleges and universities, the book, with its variety of topics for writing and careful sequencing, should be a most welcome aid in teaching accurate writing to students of English as a second language who are at the intermediate level of proficiency in the use of written English in secondary schools or the upper years of elementary school both in this country and abroad.
JANET ROSS BALL STATE UNIVERSITY
Announcements
The 1968 TESOL Convention will be held at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, March 6–9. The Convention will provide programs of interest to ESL teachers at all levels— elementary, secondary, and college. In addition, Russell N. Campbell, Convention Chairman, has announced that an innovation in the program will be made this year. One of the plenary sessions is to be devoted to the reading of papers on research in English language teaching, testing, and linguistics (linguistics should be interpreted to include sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics as well as theoretical and applied linguistics). Members are invited to submit one page abstracts of papers they wish to present to:
Professor Robert Kaplan Department of Linguistics University of Southern California Los Angeles, California 90007
Abstracts must be received before January 15, 1968. From these a committee will select a number of papers for presentation at the TESOL Convention. In addition to summarizing the proposed paper the abstract should indicate presentation time (maximum 20 minutes). Also, please indicate any special apparatus needed in the presentation such as slide projectors or blackboards. All papers submitted will be considered for publication in the TESOL Quarterly. | <urn:uuid:b339bf91-0e0d-44ce-a781-8d9e712c7f69> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://tesol.aua.am/TQ_DIGITAL/TQ_DIGIT/VOL_01_2.PDF | 2018-07-21T04:02:23Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00529.warc.gz | 352,990,834 | 34,694 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.991184 | eng_Latn | 0.998976 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
113,
3189,
6430,
9612,
12810,
16036,
19320,
20134,
23471,
26755,
30053,
33277,
36321,
39584,
42787,
46012,
49229,
52466,
55615,
59010,
60789,
63880,
67084,
70340,
73534,
76764,
79947,
83020,
86319,
89569,
91893,
94959,
98252,
101424,
104581,
107744,
111051,
114197,
117133,
120422,
123664,
126993,
130318,
133655,
135373,
138179,
140739,
142864,
145901,
149087,
152336,
155570,
156243,
159093,
162115,
162577,
165552,
168742,
170702,
171980
] | [
1.7890625,
2.65625
] | 1 | 0 |
ARE YOU A CELLULAR PHONE USER?
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should!
To put it bluntly, there are appropriate times and places to make car phone calls. There are times when it isn't appropriate. Despite technical advancements, the most important element in highway safety is still you - the driver! Car phone usage involves two potentially critical driver distractions: loss of attentiveness to driving and one handed steering. A little precaution goes a long way. Make safety your priority and utilize these tips.
Stop and pull off the road in a safe location to make or take a call.
This is the safest practice. New studies are showing that many vehicle accidents are caused, not by the physical holding or dialing of the phone, but by the driver's mental involvement in the conversation - attention taken away from one's crucial driving concentration. Handle your calls when your car is not in motion. Particularly if it is an intense, emotional or complex call or driving conditions are not optimal. If you insist on driving and utilizing a cellular phone at the same time, then read on.
If driving in hazardous conditions (severe weather, heavy traffic), allow incoming calls to be picked up by a voice mailbox option. This allows you to retrieve the message later and respond when it is safe to do so. Don't make outgoing calls in these conditions. Always be prepared to give driving your full attention - even if it means ending a call or not taking a call.
Reduce your driving speed while phoning.
Recognize that you are distracted and allow yourself that extra distance and time to react to hazards. Consider: it takes approximately five seconds to dial a phone. Five seconds that you are not watching for road hazards. Use your memory dialing function. OR Dial, pause, dial. You don't have to dial the number all at once. Dial a few numbers, assess the driving situation and dial a few more numbers. Then hit send.
Placement: phones and microphones.
If you can reach your phone with your safety belt and harness securely fastened, your phone is in the safe zone. You should not change your driving position to dial your phone. And you should never unbuckle your seat belt to access a phone. Check out your options when making a cell phone purchase. Using a hands-free phone puts microphone placement within easy access of the driver. This is the safest and best way to use your phone (if you insist on doing so while in a moving vehicle) because you can keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
Safety consideration: If using a portable phone, consider strapping it into the passenger seat with a seat belt or securing it in some other way. A loose phone can become a dangerous projectile if you stop suddenly. Also, make sure your handset is fastened securely in the cradle when it is not in use.
REMEMBER....Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Be a responsible and safe cellular phone user. | <urn:uuid:14ddfa3d-e21c-4caa-bd8f-808ec6b9c7b2> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://www.maine.gov/osc/sites/maine.gov.osc/files/inline-files/Cellphone.pdf | 2019-03-23T06:18:01Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202728.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20190323060839-20190323082839-00187.warc.gz | 823,294,063 | 620 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999198 | eng_Latn | 0.999198 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2970
] | [
2.265625
] | 1 | 0 |
Chapter 3: COMMUNITY PROFILE
The Physical Environment, Socio-Economics and History of Fremont County
Natural and technological hazards impact citizens, property, the environment and the economy of Fremont County. These hazards expose Fremont County residents, businesses and industries to financial and emotional costs. The risk associated with hazards increases as more people move into areas. This creates a need to develop strategies to reduce risk and loss of lives and property. Identifying risks posed by these hazards, and developing strategies to reduce the impact of a hazard event can assist in protecting life and property of citizens and communities.
Physical / Environment
Geology
Much of Fremont County is made up of the 8,500 square mile Wind River Basin. This basin is typical of other large sedimentary and structural basins in the Rocky Mountain West. These basins were formed during the Laramide Orogeny from 135 to 38 million years ago. Broad belts of folded and faulted mountain ranges surround the basin. These ranges include the Wind River Range on the west, the Washakie Range and Owl Creeks and southern Big Horn Mountains on the north, the Casper Arch on the east, and the Granite Mountains on the south. The center of the basin is occupied by relatively un-deformed rocks of more recent age.
Formations of every geologic age exist in Fremont County. These create an environment of enormous geologic complexity and diversity. The geology of Fremont County gives us our topography, mineral resources, many natural hazards and contributes enormously to our cultural heritage.
Topography
Fremont County is characterized by dramatic elevation changes. Surface elevations range from 13,783 feet above sea level on Gannett Peak, which is the highest point in Wyoming, to 4,800 feet on the Sand Mesa west of Boysen Reservoir. Although there is nearly 9,000 feet separation between the highest and lowest elevations in the county the average elevation is 5,500 feet.
Mountain topography characterizes much of the county and contributes to the spectacular views anywhere in the county. However, the majority of the topography consists of the broad, fairly flat, depositional strata of the central basin and the landforms that wind and water have sculpted upon them.
Climate
The climate of Fremont County is mainly semi-arid. Technically, it is classified as middlelatitude desert. The central part of Fremont County, away from the mountain ranges that ring the basin, are semi-arid. The aridity is produced because of our central location in the North American Continent and the great distance from a source of moisture. The prevailing winds are from the west. Air masses from the Pacific are depleted of moisture by the time they reach Wyoming, which occupies a position in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains. The Gulf of Mexico can, under certain conditions, be a source of moisture for Fremont County and Wyoming as a whole. Occasionally, a cyclonic disturbance from the west can "stall out" just east of the Rocky Mountain Front over the High Plains. If the cyclonic depression is large enough much moisture can be back funneled up the mountains and produce prodigious amounts of moisture, usually in the form of snow. This is called an "up slope condition."
The approximately 9,000 foot difference between the lowest and highest point in Fremont County elevation has a major impact on precipitation and temperature. Many tests on geography and climate simply label mountainous areas as "highland climates: too variable to be rated". Precipitation varies from 60 inches per year on Gannett Peak to 8 inches per year in the central basin area of the Fremont County around Shoshoni. Most of the habituated area of the county receives between 8 and 14 inches per year.
Water
The semi-arid climate of Fremont County makes water extremely important to Fremont County. Adequate water supplies have affected the historical settlement of the county and will also determine future settlement. Although not enough precipitation falls in the warmer months for adequate natural growth of crops, a tremendous amount of precipitation is accumulated in the mountains in the form of snow. his water reservoir, in the form of snow, is distributed by a system of ditches that allow the water to be issued over the length of the growing season in many parts of the county. Water in this environment of water scarcity is allocated to users in a "first in time, first in right" system.
Surface water supplies about 99 percent (592 million gallons per day in 1990) of the total offstream use in Fremont County. Irrigation is the largest off-stream use of surface water. The largest use of ground water is for public supply. Total ground-water use in 1990 was 5.9 million gallons per day. (U.S.G.S. Water-Resources Investigations Report 95-1095). Ground water in Fremont County varies greatly in availability and quality. Often, adequate quantity is only available at great depth. However, depth and quantity does not always assure quality.
History
Humans have occupied what is now called Fremont County for over 5,000 years and perhaps longer. Hard archeological evidence is lacking for earlier occupation by humans. However, humans probably traveled through, if not actually stayed here, soon after the last ice age that ended 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.
This vast and beautiful area of land lying between the Owl Creek and Wind River mountains was known by the People (Native American Indians) as the "Warm Valley". The earliest historic record links the occupation of Fremont County with the Crow and the Shoshone Tribes. In 1854 Chief Washakie of the Shoshones and Big Robber of the Crows met in battle along the Wind River in the vicinity of Crowheart Butte. According to legend the battle between the two tribes was climaxed when Chief Washakie killed Big Robber on top of Crowheart Butte and proudly displayed his heart on the end of his lance. It was the winning of this battle that transferred the historical dominance of the area from the Crow Nation to the Shoshones.
The first white people to enter the area were fur trappers from Canada. A French Canadian by the name of Slear de La Verendrye and his sons came down through northern Wyoming as far as the Wind River. They traded with the Indians and the Indians in turn acted as their guides. Sometime later, French Canadians and Indians formed the Northwest Fur Company which was to become the largest in the world.
President Jefferson in 1803, after the Louisiana Purchase, commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find a water route through the new territory. Two people in their party Sacajawea, their Indian guide, and John Colter played later roles in Wyoming's history. Colter returned to the West after the Lewis and Clark expedition and entered what is now Fremont County over the Northern Owl Creek Mountains, ascended the Wind River and crossed over Union Pass into Jackson Hole. Other trappers and hunters in the area during the early 1800's included people such as Wilson Hunt, General Ashley, Captain Benjamin Bonneville, Kit Carson and Jim Bridger. Some of these early hunters and trappers, notably Hunt, Ashley and Bonneville were the first to use South Pass as a trail route that became, the Oregon Trail, one of America's most important emigrant trails.
The history of the fur trade is a fascinating chapter of Fremont County history. Many "rendezvous", yearly gatherings of trappers, traders, Indians and fur company men, were held in the Wind River Basin. These were the first temporary, mainly white, settlements anywhere in Fremont County. The trappers and traders of the 1820's and 1830's pioneered the exploration of Fremont County that would help bring permanent later settlement.
In 1846, General C. Fremont, with the help and knowledge of early trappers and explorers such as John Colter, explored and mapped portions of the area that was later named in his honor. Later in 1859, Col. F. W. Lander was commissioned to survey and layout a road from Burnt Ranch on the Sweetwater to the upper crossing of the Green River thence to Oregon via Bear Lake, Utah. Fremont County's county seat was later named in honor of Col. Lander.
Gold was known to exist in the area many years before the actual rush of 1867. Emigrants, on their way to California, had discovered gold along Strawberry Creek and the Sweetwater. Soldiers also found small amounts of gold in various locations and the Indians had found gold bearing quartz that they had taken to their trading places. Louis Robinson discovered and brought a considerable amount of gold to Fort Bridger, Utah in 1867. Shortly afterward there was a rush to South Pass. The first major load mine "the Clarissa", now called the Carissa was located by a group of Salt Lake City men in 1867. Within a very short time there were as many as five thousand people combing the hills and valleys of the area.
The city of South Pass was established in 1867 in what is called the Clarissa Gulch below the Clarissa mine. It was estimated that during South Pass's heyday that there was a resident population of between 1200 and 2000 people. Other mining camp towns created during the gold rush days included Atlantic City and Miners Delight. The last gold mining camp to be created was Lewiston in 1881 sometime after the main gold rush was over. By the early 1870's most of the easy gold had been removed and the area began to lose population with only a few remaining to carry on with hard rock mining. While vast sums of money were never made from the sale of gold, the gold rush greatly accelerated the settlement of the Wind River Valley and the development of its early farms and villages.
South Pass is as equally known for being the birthplace of women's suffrage as it is for its gold production. Ester Hobart Morris, a resident of South Pass City, obtained a pledge from Col. William H. Bright, a member of the Wyoming Territorial Legislature, to introduce and work for the passage of legislation granting suffrage to women. Col. Bright's bill was passed and signed into law by Governor J. A. Campbell on December 10, 1869. Wyoming territory thus became the first government to grant its women the right to vote. Mrs. Morris was then honored in 1870 by being appointed as the world's first woman Justice of the Peace.
The Reservation, Forts, and Settlers
The creation of the Shoshone Indian Reservation, the result of a treaty signed at Fort Bridger, Utah Territory on July 3, 1868 by the U.S. Government, Eastern Shoshone and Bannock tribes was another important event that helped accelerate the settlement of the area. After the boundaries of the reservation were established the government built several forts and camps to keep the peace. The earliest military camps included Camp Auger, built in 1869, where the City of Lander is now located, and Camp Stambaugh near South Pass City in 1970. Camp Auger was renamed Camp Brown in honor of Captain Brown of the Eighteenth Infantry who was killed in the Fort Phil Kearney massacre of 1866. Three years later Camp Brown was moved sixteen miles north of Lander to its present location. In 1879 Camp Brown was renamed Fort Washakie in honor of the great Chief Washakie of the Shoshone tribe.
The Arapaho tribe, now co-occupying the reservation with the Shoshone are known as the "Northern Arapaho". Their placement on the reservation stems from a series of actions and inactions taken by the government after the treaty entered into by the U.S. Government and the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1876. The Arapaho agreed to take up residence in the Indian Territory on a separate reservation to be created for them. After reaching the north Platte River in eastern Wyoming a portion of the Arapaho decided they would travel no further and they asked that a reservation be established for them along the North Platte. The government, because winter was coming, sought and obtained permission from the Shoshone to place them temporarily on the Shoshone Reservation. Unfortunately, no later action was taken to move the Arapaho. The whole situation dragged along until a new administration in Washington was elected and all promises made by the earlier administration were forgotten. Consequently the Arapahos still reside on the reservation. The government later changed the name of the reservation to the Wind River Indian Reservation and has officially recognized it as being jointly owned by both tribes.
Early Towns
The very earliest towns within the county were the gold mining towns mentioned earlier. Many of the miners however, after the mining played out, moved further north and settled in the "Warm Valley" on the north side of the Wind River Mountains. Some of the earliest settlers had started truck gardening in areas along the Popo Agie (current Lander area) and supplied the mining towns with fresh vegetables. This vegetable growing earned the community to be formed near the Popo Agie the name of "Push Root". The treaty of 1868 with the Shoshone resulted in the building of Camp Auger located near the location of Fourth and Main Streets in Lander. The same treaty also diminished the Shoshone areas by relinquishing the area between the Sweetwater and the North Fork of the Popo Agie to settlers. In 1882 a town site was platted by B. J. Lowe and Peter Dickenson which encompassed the old Camp Auger site. The new town site was named in honor of Col. F. W. Lander who surveyed land and established the Lander Cut-Off portion of the Oregon Trail.
Moneta, another of the County's earliest trading spots originated as a Texas cattle drive stop. It was here that the hired hands received and spent a part of their pay. Later when the Wyoming and Northwestern Railroad was built (1906), J. B. Okie, an Englishman, built a sheep shearing barn, holding pens and a store in the area. The town also boasted three houses, a livery stable and a hotel.
Fremont County Created
Fremont County was created by the Wyoming Territorial Legislature in 1884. The history of its creation can be traced from Idaho Territory, through Dakota, Nebraska and finally the Wyoming Territory. Fremont County was cut from a then much larger Sweetwater County which was originally called Carter County. When Fremont County was first established it contained over twelve and one half million acres. Subsequent actions have reduced the overall size of the County to approximately six million acres.
Lander was named as the County Seat and the first Board of County Commissioners met and organized the County on May 6, 1884. It is interesting to note that the very first formal action of the Board of that day was the establishment of the first county road.
Riverton Reclamation Project
In 1904 Goyne Drummond, after completing a thorough study of a portion of the Reservation between the Owl Creek and Wind River Mountains, found that the study area could be made agriculturally productive through irrigation. In 1906 the Government withdrew that area from the Reservation (ceded portion) and opened it to homesteading. Initially the project was called the Riverton Project and was funded through the Indian Service. Wide spread irrigation did not get underway until 1920 when the project was officially named the Reclamation Project and all funding and development responsibility was transferred to the Bureau of Reclamation.
The Midvale Irrigation District was organized in 1921 and it was through the District that the principal water storage and distribution facilities were constructed. At the present time there are
over 74,000 acres under irrigation within the project. The LeClair and Riverton Valley Irrigation Companies irrigate an additional 20,000 acres outside the project boundaries but within the general Riverton area.
All water used in the project comes from the Wind River and its tributaries above the Wind River Diversion Dam. The estimated annual water runoff at the Diversion Dam is 870,000 acre feet.
Later Towns
When the ceded portion of the Reservation was opened to homesteading, a town site was platted by the government surveyors to provide lots for the coming homesteaders and to create a center of commerce. The town was first called "Wadsworth" in honor of the first station agent who came with the railroad being built from Shoshoni to Lander in 1906. The name Riverton was chosen after a few weeks as the permanent name for the town built in response to the boom brought about by the irrigation project. Riverton is now the largest city in the county.
Shoshoni is another town which came into being because of the development of the Riverton Reclamation Project. With the announcement that the government was going to open a portion of the Reservation to homesteading, the Pioneer Townsite Company platted and laid out the border town of Shoshoni. The official opening of the date of the new town was September 1905, nearly one year before the opening of the ceded portion of the Reservation. It is reported that the town became an instant tent city with over two thousand residents prior to the opening of the Reservation.
Railroads and Timber
The coming of the railroad in 1906 stimulated the local economy and provided further impetus to the overall development of the area. At least one town, Hudson, owes its origin to the building of the railroad. Hudson began as a railroad depot at the confluence of the Big and Little Popo Agie Rivers. Subsequent growth of the town was stimulated by the development of a coal mining operation. Hudson's peak population numbered approximately 1500 persons. Later reductions in the demand for coal, caused by the advent of the diesel locomotive, coupled with operational problems at the two mines caused the town's population to dwindle.
The railroad was originally built by the Wyoming and Northwestern Railroad Company from the east connecting the towns of Moneta, Bonneville, Shoshoni, Riverton, Hudson and Lander. The majority of the track has since been taken over by the Burlington Northern which ran a northsouth line from points north through the Wind River Canyon connecting with the WyomingNorthwestern near Bonneville. These railroads served as major transportation arteries for a number of years. The railroad discontinued its service between Riverton and Lander in the late 1960's. Rail service from Riverton to Shoshoni was discontinued in the late 1980's.
The timber industry, the principal economic stimulus to the growth of Dubois, was begun in 1905 by Jim Seward who had been logging the Sheridan area. The main products of the industry were timber and ties. The ties were used in the construction of the railroad. The ties were hand
hewn by a group of rugged lumberjacks called "tie-hacks". The first tie drive downstream to Riverton took place in 1915 and such tie drives were commonplace until 1946. Between 1946 and the late 1980's all timber was processed in Dubois.
Mining
The search for and use of mineral deposits in the earth has long been an activity of Fremont County residents. The first mining in Fremont County was conducted by Indians looking for flint deposits in order to fashion projectile points, knives and other cutting/piercing implements. he upper rim of Sinks Canyon near Lander bears the imprint of some of these early miners in the form of several prehistoric pits where flint was extracted and worked. Steatite (soapstone) was also mined by Paleo-Indians for use in making pots.
Mining gained commercial importance in the county with the gold rush at South Pass in 1868. Since that time, gold, coal, magnetite, feldspar and uranium have been mined commercially in Fremont County.
The gold rush in South Pass lasted until the late 1870's. Since then, gold has not been of commercial importance - although small amounts of gold have been recovered by individuals "panning" in the streams of the area. Periodic interest prevails in reopening one or more of the old mines.
Coal production was important in Hudson between 1907 and1940. Two large mines and several smaller ones produced coal for the railroad and other uses until the 1940's when natural gas started to replace coal for heating purposes.
In more recent times, the discovery of uranium south of Riverton in 1953 launched Fremont County into the uranium industry. The importance of uranium mining grew to a peak in the early 1980's and has since declined due to reduced emphasis on nuclear power and lower priced uranium from foreign sources.
Copper deposits are known to exist in Fremont County north of Shoshoni, however, no commercial extraction has occurred to date. Feldspar was mined in the Owl Creek Mountains north of Shoshoni between 1970 and 1979.
Jade, a semi-precious gemstone has been used since pre-historic times in the manufacture of weapons, utensils, ornaments, bells and jewelry. Several claims southeast of Lander supply jade for use in jewelry.
The first producing oil well west of Pennsylvania was drilled near Lander in 1884. Prior to that, naturally occurring oil springs and tar seeps were used by Indians for medicinal purposes and by early settlers for wagon lubrication.
Iron ore (Magnetite) was mined at Atlantic City by U.S. Steel from 1962 to 1984. This large commercial mining operation had a great impact on Fremont County and Lander in particular.
When U.S. Steel closed the mine and milling operations in 1984, Lander suffered a significant loss of population and as a result, lost revenue in the form of taxes and wages.
The new prospecting interest in recent years has been for diamonds. Exploration companies and consultants working in Wyoming have led to some interesting new discoveries and information regarding the potential for diamond occurrences in Wyoming. Although the two most significant areas are the Colorado-Wyoming State line district south of Laramie and the Green River Basin of southwestern Wyoming, new information about possible occurrences in the Bighorn and Owl Creek Mountains and in central Wyoming have raised interest in those areas.
The importance of the geology of Wyoming in relation to public lands as a source of minerals and gemstones cannot be overemphasized both as a local and national economic resource. However, one economically overlooked national asset of public lands is their educational value for study of the discipline and praxis of geology and the mineral industry. Fremont County is the location of two university geology field camps. Other colleges and universities frequently make scheduled stops in Fremont County during field trips. Fremont County schools and Central Wyoming College make use of public lands as an outdoor classroom as well.
Modern Prospectors
The oil industry has been a part of the Wyoming economy since the beginning days of statehood. In fact, explorers in what is now Wyoming in the early 19 th century reported evidence of oil. Capt. B. L. E. Bonneville's Adventures include reference to oil springs near present Dallas Dome, the location of what would be the state's first drilled oil well in 1885.
During the fur trade and Overland trails periods, mountain men commented on "oil springs" where oil bubbled to the surface of water pools. Native people seined off the oil for eons, using the greasy residues for war-paint, decoration on hides and teepees, as horse and human liniments, and for medications. An oil spring near Hilliard was well-known when Fort Bridger was established in 1842. The first recorded oil sale in Wyoming, however, happened along the Oregon Trail when, in 1863, enterprising entrepreneurs sold oil as a lubricant to wagon train travelers. The oil came from Oil Mountain Springs, some 20 miles west of present-day Casper.
Nationally, oil had a similar history. Thirteen years after the world's first oil well was drilled in Baku, Azerbaijan, America's first gusher, was struck. Made by "Colonel" Edwin Drake, America's initial discovery was at Titusville, Penn., in 1859. It led to an oil rush to western Pennsylvania. Initially, even the newly "drilled" oil had only nominal use in transportation—as axle grease for wagons and coaches or lubricant for steam engines powered by wood or coal. Source: Phil Roberts, A New History of Wyoming
The first oil discovered in Wyoming was found drilling the Murphy No. 1 in 1883 in the Dallas Oil Field approximately eight miles southeast of Lander. Since then numerous oil and gas wells have been brought into production. The oil fields lie mainly along a northwest-southeast axis running roughly parallel to the Wind River Mountains passing through the center of the county. The natural gas fields are mainly found within the northeastern part of the county.
The early 1950's brought another kind of prospector to Fremont County. This time the object of the search was uranium. Major uranium fields were first discovered in 1953 in both Gas Hills and Crooks Gap areas of the county. In the late 1970's and early 80's over two thousand people were employed within the county in the mining and milling of uranium.
Iron ore was also discovered within the area in the 1950's. The Columbia-Geneva Steel Division of the United States Steel Corporation began taconite mining and milling operations in 1962. Until 1982 over 500 people were employed by U.S. Steel. Between 1982 and 1985 the taconite mine saw several periods of declining activity followed by renewed vigor. By 1985 the mine was closed permanently.
Wyoming Agriculture 2009
The value of the agricultural sector output in Wyoming annually approaches or exceeds one billion dollars. Cash receipts have exceeded that threshold in 4 of the last 9 years. In 2009, 11,000 farms and ranches were operating in Wyoming with a total land area of 30.2 million acres. Wyoming ranks 11th nationally in total land in farms and ranches and 1st in average size of farms and ranches. The cattle industry is by far the largest component of Wyoming agriculture accounting for 64 percent of all cash receipts in 2009. Cattle also led the way in 2009 in terms of value of production at $400 million. All livestock production was valued at $501.6 million, down 14 percent from 2008.
Hay is by far the leading crop in Wyoming in terms of value of production totaling $271 million in 2009, but most is fed to livestock. Barley had the next highest crop value followed by sugar beets, wheat and dry beans. Fremont County harvested 58,000 acres of hay with a yield of 4.3 tons per acre bringing production totals to 249,000 tons of hay produced. In comparison with Wyoming's other 22 counties, Fremont County ranks first in all hay production Source: Wyoming 2010 Agricultural Statistics compiled by USDA NASS, Wyoming Field Office
Fremont County Agriculture
The cultivation of crops first appeared in Fremont County by early semi-nomadic Indian Tribes. Later, vegetables were grown near Lander to sell to the miners at South Pass.
Agriculture continues to be a very important part of Fremont County's economic and cultural heritage. As of the 2010 Census of Agriculture, Fremont County had 1,394 farms. Fremont County has 2,509,897 acres in agriculture with an agriculture value of $ 73.9 million dollars. Fremont County is ranked third in total value of livestock and crops. Based on assessed valuation, the amount of land in agricultural use has remained relatively constant in Fremont County over time.
Fremont County also ranks third in all Wyoming counties in cattle numbers, fourth in sugar beet, fourth in oat and fifth in barley production. Ranching, like crop cultivation, came to Fremont County very early in its history. William Boyd brought in the first stock of cattle in 1869 and William Tweed was the first to introduce sheep raising in 1870.
Today two-thirds of Fremont County contributes significantly to the State of Wyoming's national ranking in agriculture. Wyoming ranks second in the nation in average size of farms, ranches, wool production and number of breeding sheep. Wyoming ranks third in the nation in number of all sheep and lambs.
Source: http://fremontcountywy.org/uwextension/agriculture/
Fremont County has the largest number of irrigated acres of any county in Wyoming. Irrigation is the key factor in agriculture production in Fremont County. Primary irrigation districts in Fremont County are Midvale Irrigation District, LeClair, Wind River Reservation (BIA Systems) and Riverton Valley. The acres under irrigation in county are 185,000 in the districts.
Annual precipitation amounts recorded in 2009 in Riverton were 11.59 inches of moisture. This was 3.39 inches above normal.
Source: Climatologically Data, U.W. Department of Commerce, NOAA.
Tourism- Wyoming & Fremont County
Visitors traveling to and throughout Wyoming represent an important component of the state's economy. Travel originating in domestic and international markets generates valuable business sales, payroll, employment and tax receipts for the state as well as for local jurisdictions. Further, many locations within Wyoming serve as travel destinations in their own right, for both Wyoming residents and out-of-state visitors. These areas accordingly consider travel and tourism a primary industry.
DIRECT IMPACTS
The estimates of the direct impacts associated with traveler spending in Wyoming were produced using the Regional Travel Impact Model (RTIM) developed by Dean Runyan Associates. The input data used to detail the economic impacts of the Wyoming travel industry were gathered from various local, state and federal sources. Travel impacts consist of estimates of travel spending and the employment, earnings, and state and local taxes generated by this spending.
This section provides detailed county estimates, as well as a number of summary tables, for the years 1997 to 2009p. In interpreting these estimates, readers are advised that: • All monetary values are expressed in current dollars (no inflation adjustment). The estimates measure direct impacts only. Secondary impacts are reported at the state level for employment and earnings. In general, estimates of counties with small populations and economies are less reliable than estimates for more populous and economically diverse areas. Trend analysis and comparisons of counties with relatively low levels of travel related economic activity should therefore be interpreted cautiously.
Wyoming travel impacts by county (2009 preseason projection) total earnings including wages and salary disbursements for the state was $2,466.6 million. Fremont County showed travel spending including total direct spending as $188.7 million. This is an increase over the 1997 season of $ 65.9 million in Fremont County.
A substantial portion of the Fremont County economy is related to tourism. Snowmobiling is a primary contributor to that economy in the western half of the County, supporting at least six lodges and much of the winter economy of the town of Dubois. The Lander office of the U.S. Forest Service reports an estimate of around 10,000 snowmobile crossings of traffic counters on the Continental Divide snowmobile Trail near Dubois per winter, and around 7,500 crossings per year on the Loop Road above Lander. These numbers do not include the number of snowmobiles using Fremont County's snowmobiling areas where traffic counters have not been installed. Recreational boating on Boysen, Bull Lake, Pilot Butte reservoirs, and other water bodies also contributes significantly to the tourism economy of the County. The use of four-wheelers and other off road vehicles is also recognized as a significant contributor to this sector of the economy as well, as are the drive-through activities of tourists headed for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.
Source: The Economic Impact of Travel in Wyoming,
May 2010, Dean Runyan Associates
Lands
Land, and control of that land, is important to the people of Fremont County. Our cultural heritage is based on either the ownership or control of land.
14.91 %
Source: Fremont County Assessor, February 24, 2004
It is obvious that with almost 60 percent of the land area in Fremont County in public ownership that public policy set by the U.S. Congress and carried out by those agencies that manage lands can pose monumental impacts on local governments and economics.
In Fremont County, including the Wind River Indian Reservation, eighty seven percent (87 %) of the land is impacted by federal or state land management policies.
Grazing
Grazing has been important in the Fremont County area for fifty thousand (50,000) years. Prior to the establishment of commercial cattle operations in the mid 1800's, wild game and buffalo, the sustainer of the Indian culture, grazed in the semi-arid lands of the area. The grazing of ungulates is not a modern invention of White culture. Both historically and recently the Indian and White cultures have relied on the grazing lands of Fremont County to provide food, clothing, utensils, recreation and sources of income.
The semi-arid climate and topography on both rangeland and forest provide excellent areas for the grazing of livestock. The continued viability of the livestock industry is vital in maintaining Fremont County's economy and government, as well as preserving the culture and heritage of the Indian and Euro-American inhabitants. In 1997, the Bureau of Land Management authorized a total of 285,221 animal unit months (AUM) in Fremont County.
Population Growth
The population in Fremont County has continued to increase following the "bust" in the mining industry that took place in the 80's. The population of Fremont County was 38,992 in 1980. The fall within the mining and oil exploration in the 80's brought the census count to 33,662 in 1990. Beginning in 2000, the population increased to 35,804. 2009 U.S. Census Bureau figures maintains the population has increased to 38,719.
Building Trends in Fremont County
The saying in Fremont County is that "we are getting the millionaires that the billionaires are running out of the Jackson Hole area." The largest incoming populations are those looking for a retirement "summer home" in the mountains or just a second home to enjoy the outdoors. The communities of Riverton, Lander and Dubois continue to expand. Development, across the county, is not uniform. It is organized in some areas and random in others. Limited or minimal codes do not allow control over what is developing in the urban and rural areas of the county.
The continued increase in population stretches the volunteer emergency services that serve Fremont County. Fremont county is just under 10,000 square miles (larger than the State of Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia). Newcomers expect the same services (i.e. fire, ambulance, law enforcement and waste removal) in the same short amount of time as where they previously resided (usually much larger communities.) There is the expectation of immediate response without consideration of the size of the county as a whole, especially in the rural areas. | <urn:uuid:aa0f2e86-5c3e-403d-b107-2d1e638dcf22> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://fremontcountywy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Chapter-3-Community-Profile1.pdf | 2018-07-21T03:46:40Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676592309.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20180721032019-20180721052019-00529.warc.gz | 138,784,442 | 7,445 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998197 | eng_Latn | 0.998514 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2302,
5397,
8994,
12563,
15685,
18811,
21457,
24827,
27887,
30520,
33159,
35258
] | [
3.375,
1.8046875
] | 1 | 0 |
The SAT Subject Tests™
Answer Explanations
TO PRACTICE QUESTIONS FROM THE SAT SUBJECT TESTS STUDENT GUIDE
French and French with Listening
Visit sat.org/stpractice to get more practice and study tips for the Subject Test in French and French with Listening.
SAT Subject Tests in French and French with Listening
This document gives detailed answer explanations to French practice questions from The SAT Subject Tests ™ Student Guide. By reviewing these explanations, you'll get to know the types of questions on the test and learn your strengths and weaknesses. Estimated difficulty level is based on a 1–5 scale, with 1 the easiest and 5 the most difficult.
For more about the SAT Subject Tests, go to satsubjecttests.org.
Reading Questions
Choice (A) is correct. The sentence means, "Why are you up so late since you have to get up early?" It does not make sense to ask why one would be up so far (B), so little (C), or so high (D) when one must get up early.
1. Difficulty: 1
6. Difficulty: 4
2. Difficulty: 2
Choice (D) is correct. The sentence means, "I am not crying! I have something in (my) eye." In this context, it does not make sense to refer to having something in one's work (A), tool (B), or pillow (C).
3. Difficulty: 3
Choice (B) is correct. The sentence means, "Diplomats negotiated an agreement between the two countries." It does not make sense to say that diplomats negotiated a treatment (A), an approval (C), or a cucumber (D) between the countries.
4. Difficulty: 2
Choice (A) is correct. Chemise (shirt) is a singular feminine noun. In French, the possessive adjective agrees in gender and number with the noun it modifies, not with the subject of the sentence; here, the adjective modifies chemise. Choice (A), sa (agreeing with a singular feminine noun), correctly completes the sentence. Choice (B), son (his), is used with a singular masculine noun, and choice (C), ses (his), is used with plural nouns whether masculine or feminine. Choice (D), sienne (his), is a possessive pronoun for a singular feminine noun.
5. Difficulty: 3
Choice (B) is correct. Sentences introduced by si express hypothetical situations when the verb in the subordinate clause introduced by si is in the past tense (imparfait). When this is the case, the verb in the main clause must be in the conditional. Choice (B), sentirais (would feel), is in the conditional form and is therefore the correct answer. Choice (A), sentiras (will feel), is in the future tense; choice (C), sentais (felt), is in the past tense (imparfait); and choice (D), sens (feel), is in the present tense.
Choice (D) is correct. The question … est sur la table? requires a subject. Choice (D), Qu'est-ce qui (What), correctly completes the sentence because it can replace the subject. Choice (A), Quoi (What), is asking grammatically for the object of the action rather than the subject. Choice (B), Qu'est-ce qu' (What), is only used as a direct object. And choice (C), Quel (What), would need to be followed by a noun.
7. Difficulty: 2
Choice (A) is correct. The sentence Les Français célèbrent les fêtes de fin d'année means, "The French celebrate the holiday season." It makes sense to describe this celebration as a custom (A) that is followed. It does not make sense to say that the French celebrate the holiday season according to the use (B), clothing (C), or time (D).
8. Difficulty: 2
Choice (A) is correct. Here en should be followed by a present participle gerund, equivalent to the English –ing verbal nouns following words such as "while" or "by." Choice (A), consommant (eating), is the present participle and therefore the correct answer. Choice (B), consommé (eaten), is the past participle. Choice (C), avoir consommé (to have eaten), is the past infinitive. And choice (D), consommer (to eat), is the present infinitive.
9. Difficulty: 2
Choice (D) is correct. The sentence mentions huîtres (oysters) and mer (sea). In context, it is clear that choice (D), fruits (fruits), completes the sentence; in French, fruits de mer means seafood. It does not make sense to refer to vegetables (A), flowers (B), or poisons (C) of the sea.
10. Difficulty: 5
Choice (A) is correct. The sentence means, "They offer small gifts to those to whom they are grateful." The preposition à is used after the verb offrir to indicate to whom something is being offered. An object is expected after the preposition à. Choice (A), ceux (those), correctly completes the sentence. Choice (B), lesquels (the ones), is incorrect both because auxquels should be used after the preposition à and because it refers to someone or something previously mentioned. Choices (C), quels (which), and (D), leurs (their), are incorrect because they are adjectives, not pronouns; the sentence contains no noun with which these choices could agree.
11. Difficulty: 3
Choice (D) is correct. The passage says Ils offrent de petits cadeaux à … envers qui ils sont, which means, "They offer small gifts to … to whom they are …" It makes sense to say that people offer gifts to show that they are grateful (D). It is illogical to suggest that people would offer gifts to show that they are indifferent (A), and there is no reason to suggest that people offer gifts to show that they are repentant (B) or careful (C).
12. Difficulty: 3
Choice (C) is correct. The passage says Et ils envoient des … de vœux à … amis et collègues, which means, "And they send … with wishes to … friends and colleagues." There is no indication that people send cardboard boxes (A), photos (B), or sheets (D). It is more likely that people send cards (C).
13. Difficulty: 2
Choice (C) is correct. Ils is the plural subject of the last sentence, so the possessive adjective needed here is leurs (their) (C). The nouns amis (friends) and collègues (colleagues) are plural, so leur needs an "s" at the end. Choices (A), ses (his/her/its), and (D), mes (my), do not agree with the plural subject ils in this sentence. Choice (B), tous (all), cannot modify a noun unless a possessive adjective is also used.
Listening Questions
Choice (D) is correct. The picture shows a rowboat on a river; therefore, choice (D), Les bateaux à rames sont lents et silencieux (Rowboats are slow and quiet), is the correct answer. Choice (A) refers to waves, but the picture does not depict waves. Choice (B) refers to a forest, and choice (C) to a sailboat; these things do not appear in the picture.
1. Difficulty: 4
2. Difficulty: 3
Choice (A) is correct. The picture shows people playing music outdoors; therefore, choice (A), C'est bien, la musique en plein air! (It is good, outdoor music!), is the correct answer. Choice (B) refers to a speech, but the
14. Difficulty: 3
Choice (D) is correct. The question asks in which way, according to the article, television's violent scenes and sexual complacency usually affect young children. The article indicates that young children are usually indifferent to them (y sont en général indifferents). In other words, the effects are usually insignificant (D). The passage does not indicate that the effects are harmful (A), serious (B), or favorable (C).
15.
Difficulty:
4
Choice (A) is correct. The question asks what reaction television news evokes in young children, according to the text. The passage indicates that television news makes young children uncomfortable (il les met mal à l'aise). In other words, it disturbs them (A). The passage does not indicate that it interests them (B), that it leaves them indifferent (C), or that it reassures them (D).
16. Difficulty: 3
Choice (A) is correct. The question asks what the article's conclusion is regarding advertising. The text says Ce n'est pas le problème des enfants. Cela peut être celui des parents (It is not the children's problem. It might be the parents'). That is, the passage concludes that children's reaction to advertising depends on parents (A). The passage does not conclude that all children react differently to advertising (B), that advertising is beneficial in child development (C), or that it is right to denounce advertising messages (D).
17. Difficulty: 3
Choice (A) is correct. The question asks at which time people who travel by train should make a reservation for a table. The advertisement says that the SNCF suggests you make a reservation for your meal at the same time as your seat (la SNCF vous recommande de réserver votre repas en même temps que votre place). That is, one should make a reservation for a table when one buys his or her ticket (A), not when one starts the trip (B), announces meal time (C), or arrives at his or her destination (D).
musicians are playing music, not making a speech. Choice (C) refers to people complaining about noise, but the people seem to be enjoying the music. Choice (D) refers to a concert hall, but the musicians are playing outdoors, not in a concert hall.
3. Difficulty: 2
Choice (C) is correct. The question asks what the man wants to do. He asks, "Pourriez-vous m'aider à trouver un vol pour Toronto?" ("Could you help me to find a flight for Toronto?") In other words, he wants to take a plane (C). He does not want to make a room reservation (A) or buy a computer (B).
3
4. Difficulty: 2
Choice (B) is correct. The question asks when the man is going to leave. He asks, "Pourriez-vous m'aider à trouver un vol pour Toronto dans la semaine du 15 avril?" ("Could you help me to find a flight for Toronto in the week of April 15?") The man is going to leave during the week (B) of April 15; he is not going to leave immediately (A) or during the weekend (C).
5. Difficulty: 2
Choice (C) is correct. The question asks about the purpose of the radio announcement. The man on the radio says, "Des échanges auront lieu entre des étudiants de Paris et de New York" ("Exchanges will take place between students from Paris and students from New York"). The purpose of the ad is to present an exchange program (C), not to encourage tourism during the summer (A) or to provide information on Paris (B).
6. Difficulty: 3
Choice (A) is correct. The question asks how long the stay should last. The man on the radio says, "Étudiants âgés de 15 à 17 ans viendront passer trois semaines" ("15- to 17-year-old students will stay three weeks"). Therefore, the stay should last three weeks (A), not six months (B), or one year (C).
7. Difficulty: 2
Choice (B) is correct. The question asks what the friends are going to do together. The man says, "Nous allons d'abord voir un film." ("First, we are going to see a movie."); the friends are going to go to the cinema (B). They are not going to take the train (A) or listen to records (C).
8. Difficulty: 3
Choice (B) is correct. The question asks where the friends are going to meet Anne and Sophie. The man says, "… retrouver Anne et Sophie au café de la gare" ("… meet Anne and Sophie at the train station's café"). The friends are going to meet Anne and Sophie in a café (B), not at their place (A) or at the theater (C).
9. Difficulty: 2
Choice (A) is correct. The question asks what we learn about Éric through this conversation. Man B (Éric) says, "Je suis chanteur …" ("I am a singer"). Therefore, we learn that he is a singer (A). We do not learn that Éric finished his studies (B), that he is an actor (C), or that he wants to learn French (D).
10. Difficulty: 4
Choice (A) is correct. The question asks why the members of the Rythme & Blues band don't often rehearse. Man B (Éric) says, "… nous avons répété pendant huit mois et donc nous connaissons bien le répertoire …" ("We rehearsed for eight months and so we know the repertoire well"). In other words, the members don't often rehearse because they know the songs well (A), not because they like to improvise (B), because they are interested in other concerts (C), or because they rarely play in public (D).
11. Difficulty: 3
Choice (C) is correct. The question asks where Eric and his band practice. Man B (Eric) says, "On peut payer à l'heure pour répéter dans un studio" ("We can pay by the hour to rehearse in a studio"). This corresponds to Choice (C), We can rent a studio by the hour. There is no need to bring any equipment (A), to know the owner of the rehearsal space (B), or to only rehearse on weekends (D). | <urn:uuid:a707b009-a5bb-4e8a-b419-9e49bb3fa72d> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/french-french-listening-sat-subject-tests-answer-explanations-revised.pdf | 2019-04-26T16:37:20Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578841544.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426153423-20190426175423-00186.warc.gz | 383,654,935 | 3,026 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.96159 | eng_Latn | 0.9972 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
261,
4152,
9215,
12275
] | [
2.21875
] | 1 | 0 |
Year 5/6 End of Term 1 Newsletter
Empower students to be critical, reflective and self-directed learners
What it's like to be a leader
Literacy
Being a leader has been an amazing experience so far this year. It has helped to improve our confidence and has set the challenge for us to be the best we can be in all areas. The challenges of being a leader include having to manage our time wisely, because leadership responsibilities take up extra time. We are learning to manage our time really carefully because we need to fit in a lot! We know that being a leader means we need to be very responsible and organised. We need to be on our best behavior and show that we are good role models of the school.
To be a leader you have to be very committed to leadership and be willing to use spare time like lunch and snack. We have been able to improve our confidence by doing assemblies in front of the whole school and being able to make friends with the people we work with. The best part of being a leader is being able to build strong relationships with other people and learn more about the school and the people within it.
By Anakin and Melina (School Captains) Bryan and Holly (School Vice Captains)
In Literacy students have been excited to learn new skills when writing narratives and persuasive pieces. They have been engaged in independent projects during the latter part of the term developing arguments around topics that interest and inspire them. Consolidation and further development of independent reading skills have been a focus this term. Students have shown their ability to respond to a text of their choice in a variety of ways including critiquing and text analysis. Every student is learning at their own level and learning is personalised to cater for this. Reading Eggs is a very successful program that the students use to develop their comprehension skills in a fun, online environment at their own reading level. Each student should be very proud of what they have achieved this term in Literacy!
Maths
This Term students have been busy learning new concepts and consolidating their knowledge of place value to transfer and apply to the 4 operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Students in Year 5 have been building upon their understanding of place value and that it extends to tenths, hundredths and thousandths. While working with decimals numbers students have built their understanding by renaming, comparing and ordering numbers. Some students have extended beyond this and have begun adding, subtracting and multiplying with decimal numbers. Students in Year 6 have been consolidating their understanding of place value and have been comparing and ordering decimal numbers as well as solving problems by using addition, subtraction and multiplication. Students have also been linking decimal numbers to real life, such as with money.
Inquiry and Science
Year 5 Science
This term, the Year 5 students explored the Desert Survivors unit. Students worked collaboratively in small groups to explore and investigate how leaves can change over time in an enclosed plastic bag, without their natural environment. It was fantastic to see students make predictions, observations and compare results of how their bagged leaves would adapt during biological science sessions. They were very surprised to see physical changes of colour, size and smell during the investigation!
Year 6 Science
This term, the Year 6 science students have been investigating mysterious micro-organisms. Starting with an investigation into yeast, they explored how these micro-organisms and their discovery have improved our modern lifestyle. They were all very surprised to know that these amazing micro-organisms can be found in everyday foods. Their experiment involving bottles and balloons allowed them to discover that yeast needs a very particular diet and environment to thrive, helping them to understand that yeast feeds on sugar to create carbon dioxide waste. However, they also learned that Micro-organisms are not always beneficial in the kitchen, which was apparent in the investigation of mouldy bread. (Don't worry parents, this was of course, a well prepared, safe and hygienic scientific experiment!)
Inquiry
Students explored a Diverse and Connected World this term. The teachers were very fascinated to hear about students' families, cultures and experiences from all around the world! Students focused on how Australia is different and similar to other places and chose their own country on which to base their project. Students researched the country's culture, religion, population and geographical information and collated their information to present an assessment piece of their choice. What a fantastic experience for teachers to learn from students about different countries!
Cultural Diversity Week
This year the theme for Cultural Diversity Week was 'Proud to Belong'. As part of our Social and Emotional Learning program students proudly shared their cultures and traditions, drawing their unique handprint to celebrate and share all the cultures that are special to them on their handprint. | <urn:uuid:1c4e1172-0514-40b5-b13c-bbf7810bfb08> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://atholroadps.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Year-5.6-End-of-Term-1-newsletter.pdf | 2019-04-26T16:36:13Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578841544.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426153423-20190426175423-00185.warc.gz | 330,294,425 | 965 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999087 | eng_Latn | 0.999124 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2901,
5169
] | [
3.34375
] | 1 | 0 |
Mrs Bennett's Blog
Thursday 15th November 2018
Hi Everyone,
Tomorrow, the 16 th of November, we will be celebrating Children in Need in school. This year the theme is 'Do your thing' So the children are invited to come to school doing exactly that. Their thing. So if they want to come to school in fancy dress or a football kit or a uniform or simply in their own clothes this will all be great. Anything goes. We just ask that each child brings a £1 donation to contribute to this worthy cause.
It has been friendship week in school this week, so we have been thinking about what makes a good friend and we have talked about what bullying is. We have reminded the children of the definition of bullying-
Bullying is something that can hurt you on the inside or on the outside. It hurts you on the outside by hitting you and hurting you physically. It hurts you on the inside by name calling or hurting your feelings. Bullying is done on purpose, it is not an accident. If someone hurts you during a game by accident that is not bullying, but if every time you played a game they hurt you, or your feelings that would be bullying. It can aim to hurt a group of people or just one person and can be done by a group or just one person. Bullying happens more than once. The bully/bullies do it over and over and over again and is not a falling out with a friend. It can take place on line, via social media, via text message or in person. Almost everyone will be affected by bullying during their life. This can be as a child or as a young person or it can happen as an adult in the work place or by a member of a community, it can even be as an elderly person in the community and nobody deserves to be bullied. EVER.
Safeguarding
We have a zero tolerance of bullying at Crossflatts Primary School and our children are very clear as to what they should do if they were ever to feel they were being bullied in any way. If as a parent or carer, you should ever have any concern that your child is being bullied, which is a very rare instance at Crossflatts Primary School, it is vitally important that you come into school and talk to us so that we can firstly be made aware of the situation and then act swiftly to make it stop.
Attendance:
Here are last week's figures:
Our
Aspirational
Target
98%
There were 2 children late for school last week. (Before registration closed at 9am) and 2 children later than 9am
Best wishes
Mrs Bennett
Headteacher | <urn:uuid:01c19cc7-956c-4e72-9501-aa1780c58d92> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/production-eu-west-1/user_store/132083/user/SwezQjGGVc?response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename=Mrs_Bennett%2527s_Blog_15.11.18.pdf&AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJIR6B76NNU2A4JGQ&Expires=1553365357&Signature=wc4cWy3WfgiTKiUdWDygK0YuX0A%3D | 2019-03-23T06:22:38Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202728.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20190323060839-20190323082839-00188.warc.gz | 617,339,970 | 552 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.99881 | eng_Latn | 0.99905 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2234,
2465
] | [
2.4375
] | 1 | 1 |
Green Advice for Boaters
Most of the environmental, historical and cultural objects which are listed in our tours are protected as natural or cultural monuments. What is more, most of them are in NATURA 2000 and other specifically protected natural territories. This means that when you look at the water tourism routes, you must think and act green!
Reaching your destination
* As you approach your starting or finishing point, please remember that proper people in Latvia drive their automobiles exclusively on roads that are meant for them.
* Leave your car where it will not harm nature and will not hinder other travellers.
* Get into your boat at a location where the river is easily accessible and where you will not erode the soil on the shoreline.
"Green" boating
* Don't dump your garbage on the banks of the river or along your route. Take it with you, and you will soon find out how much trash you produce. That's something to think about.
* On the river, speak quietly, and don't make lots of noise – then you'll see lots of forest and water-based animals right nearby, as if you were in a National Geographic special.
* During your trip, pack up your mobile boat carefully enough that you don't want to drag it out unnecessarily. Turn off the sound – it won't bother you or the residents of the environment.
* Read Latvia's fishing rules and make sure that you are familiar with them insofar as fishing in lakes and rivers is concerned.
* Respect limitations on travel where there are seasonal restrictions aimed at protecting nesting birds.
* Don't try to chase families of wild ducks, swans and other water fowl down the river, particularly if they have young. Instead, carefully boat around them and leave them behind.
* Don't leave anything in the water – and we mean anything. Otherwise you might be part of a big problem for Latvian waterways – overgrowth. Do you like swimming or boating in an overgrown river or lake? Of course you don't.
* Any improvements on the shoreline should be treated carefully and politely, because others will want to use them, too.
* Boating will offer you new knowledge, experience and emotions, and it will improve your health and your fitness.
email@example.com,
www.celotajs.lv
Boating in NATURA 2000 territories
* Learn about the rules related to each specific territory. The Internet pages of the Environmental Protection Board and of the Country Traveller organisation will help.
* Visit the visitors' centre of each national park.
* Build campfires only where that is permitted.
* If there is no firewood, try to buy some from a nearby farm. If there is a larger group of travellers, bring your own firewood, or perhaps charcoal and a grill for cooking purposes. Don't use open fire during the season when forest fires are a risk. Please do not dump ashes from a campfire into the water, because that will promote overgrowth.
* Remember that in NATURA 2000 territories, you may spend the night only at facilities that are meant specifically for that purpose. If there are no such facilities, you will have to spend the night at countryside tourist accommodations.
* You probably shouldn't bring man's best friend along on a boat ride, but if you have to bring a dog, then remember that it must always be on a leash and with a muzzle in these territories.
* Don't write or draw anything on outcrops – after all, you wouldn't draw or write anything on your walls at home.
* Think about what you're doing. Don't hurt species and their habitats, because they're the reason why protected territories are established in the first place. After all, your purpose in taking this trip was to enjoy the beauty of nature and the environmental treasures that are all around you.
Learning about nature in a friendly way
* Pieces of outcrops, fossils and snail shells are not souvenirs. Although they are not alive, they are a very important part of the environment and the ecosystem. You know, after all, where they'll end up.
* Use binoculars to view landscapes and animals.
* If you watch birds or animals, do it from a distance, and don't disturb them where they relax or nest. The welfare of animals is the main thing.
* When you see a rock or a sandstone or dolomite outcrop, don't clamber on it or walk on its surface. That's no way to treat a cultural and historical object!
*
Don't damage outcrops or crawl into caves, because those are important habitats for many species. You wouldn't like it if someone poked his head into your lair.
* Don't go into caves during the autumn, winter and spring, when bats and other animals live there. You don't like to be woken up in the middle of a deep sleep, and bats perish if they are woken up at the wrong time.
* Sometimes it's more interesting to learn about those species that are encountered frequently, not seldom, and on an everyday basis.
Local residents
* Don't stock up with food from a city supermarket. Shop at a small village store instead.
* Use local services as much as you can – eat at a countryside café, spend more than just one day in the territory that you've selected.
Vīlipa iela 12-21, Rīga, LV-1083, Tālr.: 67617600, Fakss: 67830041
E-pasts: firstname.lastname@example.org, www.celotajs.lv
LAUKU CEĻOTĀJS
* Buy country goodies from local farmers.
* Use inventory offered by local businesses, thus supporting them.
* At a country tourism facility or hotel, make sure that you don't waste natural resources. We pay "European prices" for electricity, heat and gas.
* Respect local residents and their way of life. Demonstrate an interest in the environment, history and cultural heritage of the place which you're visiting.
Supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEZ Financial Mechanism and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism
Vīlipa iela 12-21, Rīga, LV-1083, Tālr.: 67617600, Fakss: 67830041
E-pasts:
email@example.com,www.celotajs.lv | <urn:uuid:0e75b6b9-0787-4183-a1eb-b5094943f922> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://www.celotajs.lv/cont/tour/tours/files/zalie_padomi_en.pdf | 2019-04-26T16:35:49Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578841544.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426153423-20190426175423-00183.warc.gz | 621,439,302 | 1,415 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.920034 | eng_Latn | 0.998772 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2307,
5184,
5985
] | [
2.640625
] | 1 | 0 |
Press release: UK sends humanitarian experts ahead of Mozambique cyclone
The UK is sending humanitarian experts to assess the impact of an expected cyclone in Mozambique which could leave hundreds of thousands of people without food and shelter.
Specialist humanitarian advisers, from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), are expected to deploy from London this evening (14 March). The experts will assess what UK aid is needed to support people affected by the cyclone and plan and co-ordinate relief efforts.
The Met Office predicts that flash flooding, large waves and extremely highspeed winds pose a danger to life and could also significantly damage buildings and other infrastructure. The cyclone is expected to make landfall this evening (14 March), and thousands of Mozambicans have already been evacuated for their own safety.
International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said:
We are sending UK aid experts to Mozambique to be our eyes and ears on the ground and to make sure we're ready to rapidly increase our response if needed.
UK aid is already helping people and families affected by the heavy rains, as we had pre-positioned items including tents, buckets for clean water and basic cooking items. We are ready to offer further help to anyone in need.
My thoughts remain with those people who have already been affected by the recent extreme weather, and anyone who has lost loved ones.
UK aid prepositioned vital relief items in Mozambique to support any response to a humanitarian emergency – some of which have now already been given to people in need – including:
9,000 hygiene kits, which include basic hygiene items such as soap, toothbrushes and buckets to carry clean water;
7,000 tool kits, which include shovels, saws and other items to help repair homes and clear debris;
6,000 family kits and 1,000 latrine kits, which include solar lamps, water purifiers and toilet paper;
5,000 shelter kits, 10,000 tarpaulins and 600 plastic rolls to provide emergency shelter to those that have been made homeless; and
1,573 family tents and 15 community tents.
In addition to the humanitarian aid items, the UK is supporting the World Food Programme (WFP) to help 130,000 people feed themselves for two weeks.
WFP will distribute emergency food and food vouchers for people to use at local markets.
The cyclone is also expected to hit Malawi, which has been suffering from severe flooding over the last five days, leaving at least 56 people dead, and may also affect Zimbabwe. The START Fund, which is managed by a group of NGOs and to which DFID is the biggest donor, has allocated £400,000, to enable Trocaire and HelpAge International to meet immediate needs such as clean water and shelter in Malawi.
Tomorrow in Mozambique, a UK government team is leading a meeting of donors and other countries, alongside the Government of Mozambique, to help coordinate the response.
Notes to editors
DFID has provided £764,000 to the World Food Programme to provide food and food vouchers. This is an allocation from DFID Mozambique's annual budget for 2018/19.
DFID provided approximately £1.5 million from the 2018 Mozambique bilateral budget to preposition relief items in warehouses of the Mozambique National Institute for Disaster Management.
DFID is the largest donor to the Start Fund. In 2018, we committed an additional £37.5m over three years
ENDS | <urn:uuid:d9cd90bf-2f89-4d59-8c90-a684afdafece> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | http://www.government-world.com/press-release-uk-sends-humanitarian-experts-ahead-of-mozambique-cyclone-2/?print=pdf | 2019-03-23T07:53:23Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202728.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20190323060839-20190323082839-00188.warc.gz | 292,956,934 | 708 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998941 | eng_Latn | 0.998989 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
2263,
3410
] | [
2.046875
] | 1 | 0 |
Faith formation in the home Grades 4 to 6
Supplies Venture magazines, WCBT and Activity sheets
Week of 1/27- Jesus fulfills prophecies
Material- Venture, WCBT pg. 47 Activity sheet 20
Start with WCBT page 47- review the Liturgy of the Word- Remind students that the Prayer of the Faithful is one of the oldest parts of the Mass. It sums up the concern of the whole assembly for the needs of the church, world and local community
Complete activity sheet 20
Using the Venture; read the cover sheet and write a short story about themselves following the guidelines
Read pages 2-3 about the gospel of Luke and discuss questions 1-4
Read and complete page 5close with prayer on page 8
Week of 2/3- Jesus' neighbors reject him
Venture 2/3, WCBT page 48 Activity sheet 17
Using the WCBT review the Liturgy of the Eucharist and complete activity sheet 17
From Venture
Complete cover
Read the Gospel and doctrine on page 4 and answer question 1 under Gospel and 1 under Doctrine in the space below
Read and complete page 5
Read about St Maximilian Kolbe page 6 – Write 3 facts learned about him
1
2
3
Week of 2/10-Jesus calls his followers
Venture 2/10 WCBT page 11- What is the church
Complete the cover activity
Read pages 2-3
Read page 11in WCBT
Read the Sunday gospel and doctrine
Complete the timeline
Week of 2/17 no class no assignment
Week of 2/24- love your enemies
Venture 2/24, WCBT pg. 36, Moral law WCBT pages 33-35
Please review the Commandments and Beatitudes pages 33- 36 of WCBT Complete activity sheet 23
Venture read pages 2-3 and answer question 1 in the space below 1
Read the Sunday gospel on page4 and Doctrine and answer question 1 under Gospel and 2 under Doctrine in the space below
1
2
Complete page 5 in Venture
Week of 3/3-Jesus speaks to us in sayings and images
Venture 3/3
Cover activity
Gospel and doctrine page 4
Questions 1 and 2 under Gospel and 1 under Doctrine
1
2
1
Joan of Arc page 6 write 3 facts learned about St Joan
Week of 3/10-Jesus faces temptation
Venture 3/10, WCBT page 45 and Activity sheet 1
Read the story on page 2 and answer question 2
2
Complete activity sheet 1
Read the Sunday gospel
Read and complete page 5 in Venture
WCBT page45 read over we will be studying the Our Father during Lent Turn to pages 6-7 and complete Our Father activity | <urn:uuid:364fd9be-8017-48bb-a077-37d51106abb4> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://saintchris.org/media/1/22/44/Grades%204%20to%206%203rd%20quarter.pdf | 2019-04-26T15:36:10Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578841544.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426153423-20190426175423-00183.warc.gz | 524,974,806 | 642 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.956123 | eng_Latn | 0.968342 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
1002,
1393,
1932,
2340
] | [
3.171875
] | 1 | 0 |
Maths
Counting, sequencing and place value
Addition, subtraction, doubling and halving, number bonds, money
Multiplication and division (Tables –Espresso / Abacus)
Two & three dimensional shape, angles and symmetry and fractions of shapes / numbers Co-ordinates, time tables, analogue and digital clocks / Time – seasons, birthdays, weather diary Weight and length, Capacity and area
Music
Singing/Curriculum to whole school – Music Partnership to deliver school – 10 weeks (one hourly sessions delivered to KS1 and KS2 alternate weeks)
MFL
Home and abroad – My home, how do I get there, what do I need?
Science / Topic
Seasonal changes – weather – what do I wear? What are the changes? How does it affect me? Comparing and contrasting localities British Isles to Uganda.
Investigating modes of transport through history and making journeys which includes map work and features of a locality
Working roles of adults – Who does what job and why?
Forces – pushes, pulls ad twists. Investigating magnets and floating and sinking – what makes a good boat?
Literacy
Springtime / Easter Prayers – poetry -acrostic, riddles, rhymes, Haiku, weather and guess who Information Texts / non-fiction reports / captions Recounts of familiar events and thank-you letters to Santa
Instructional writing – dressing for winter and spring, making pancakes.
Biography of a favourite author,
The story of Jack Frost, Rules and notices – the importance of keeping safe Spelling, grammar, phonics punctuation Writing a diary about their weekend Writing a longer story – Christmas and Easter Newspaper articles – linked to journeys and the environment.
Spring Term in KS1 and Lower KS2 2018
Learning about forces and magnets. Investigating transport and modes of transport in the past and present
Art / DT
Group collage work linked to Spring time and Easter using Found Materials.
Dressing for warmer weather – waterproofing materials
Structures – what makes a structure strong?
Sliding mechanisms push and pull
RE / PSHE
Festivals and traditional events – New Year's Resolutions, Shrove Tide, Easter story, Chinese New Year, (including displays), Nativity Story from the viewpoint of a key character.
Community Lunches, gardening club linked to the community, who helps us in school in the community? Stories from the Bible – New Testament – MAT What makes a place special – investigating key features of places of worship – Christianity and Judaism
Computing
Labelling and using a word bank/ dress teddy Naming parts of the computer / staying safe when using the computer - Online Safety.
Using a Paint programme to produce pictures linked to topic work – making a landscape picture (link to literacy / geography),
Power point work linked to work on Uganda and comparing a traditional Christmas to one in the United Kingdom.
Algorithms – following instructions to make a route
Convert simple algorithms to programmes (Scratch) Making predictions about what a programme might do
PE
Gymnastics and Dance delivered by Derby County Football Club
After school clubs – Gymnastics and dance Healthy bodies and minds - linking to inclusive curriculum for all children – Tai Chi including after school club
Healthy lifestyle – Playground Buddies Mental health and well being | <urn:uuid:110be272-01ad-4928-895e-70dffaea5f43> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | http://hartington.derbyshire.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Class-1-Curriculum-Planning-Overview-Sheet-Spring-term-2018.pdf | 2019-04-26T15:50:50Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578841544.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426153423-20190426175423-00184.warc.gz | 76,615,360 | 670 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.994506 | eng_Latn | 0.994506 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
3281
] | [
3.671875
] | 1 | 0 |
What's New in 1/2?
Inspire students to be positive, resilient learners who become creative problem solvers.
Literacy
During reading sessions students explored how to choose a 'just right' text: to ensure that the books that they are reading are not too hard or too easy. They also developed an understanding of making personal connections with texts. In Writing, students learnt about the structure of the text types recount and persuasive writing.
"We learnt about how to write a recount. I published my recount using the laptop." Brian (Year 2)
"We learnt how to persuade an audience. We had to convince Mrs Salt to share her ice cream with us." Jessica C. (Year 2)
Students using a Venn diagram to compare and contrast lions and tigers using the whiteboard table.
Language experience has been a key part of the Literacy program.
Crystal, Hayden, Sally and Ethan Q. enjoying their tacos as part of a language experience session
"On Thursday we had a taco party. First we ate tacos. Then we sang the song 'Its Raining Tacos'. Finally we played some games." Louis (Year 1)
Maths
Students have worked in targeted needs groups to develop their understanding of numbers to 100 and 1000.
"In Maths, we learnt about digits and numbers – we made numbers with digits. The Year 2 students learnt about the place value of numbers to 1000. We made model of numbers using hundreds, tens and ones and organised them from smallest to largest." Elisha (Year 2)
Students learnt about reading time to the hour, half-hour and quarter-hour. They also developed their understanding of how to read calendars. Students explored the measurement concepts of lengths, mass and capacity.
PJ measuring the length of the table with Unifix blocks
"We learnt about mass, comparing which objects were heavier and lighter than each other. After we read 'Who Sank the Boat?', we made a boat out of foil, paper and masking tape. We investigated to see which boat would hold the most weight." Chloe L. (Year 2)
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
In SEL, students learnt about different types of feelings, such as happy and angry.
"We also learnt about 'ant' and 'elephant' problems. 'Ant problems' are problems that you can solve yourself, like if someone is sitting in your seat. An 'elephant problem' is a problem that you cannot solve by yourself - you need help from a teacher, for example when someone has a broken leg."
Jammy and Jenny (Year 2)
Inquiry
This term, students learnt about celebrations in Australia and around the world in addition to cultural diversity.
"We learnt about celebrations around the world, like Halloween." Emily (Year 2)
"We learnt about special days in Australia, such as ANZAC Day." Melinda (Year 2)
"We talked about cultural diversity. We found out which countries people in our learning space come from." Yasmin and Jayden Q. (Year 2)
Science
This term students explored chemical science units, looking at mixtures and how materials change when they were heated up and cooled down.
"In Science we melted chocolate to see how it changed." Drake (Year 1)
"We learnt about mixtures. Some mixtures can be liquid, solid, poison, sticky, hard, smelly and tasty. We can see science in the kitchen and the bathroom. My favourite experiment was the 'milk experiment'. First, we poured some milk on aplate. Next, we dropped some food we put some dish soap, but not too much. Then you put dye in the water. Lastly, you put a piece of paper on it gently. Take it off - now it is a piece of artwork." Jessica H. (Year 2)
Swimming
Over the last couple of weeks, students have participated in swimming lessons at Haileybury College. "When I went swimming, I tried my best. We did 'torpedo dives' and 'starfish floating'. I also learnt how to swim backwards." Ethan Q. (Year 1) | <urn:uuid:ba44502c-5c88-4625-bc64-93a1bcaa507f> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://atholroadps.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Yr-1.2-Newsletter-T1-W9-2019.pdf | 2019-04-26T16:42:32Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578841544.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20190426153423-20190426175423-00186.warc.gz | 350,816,148 | 838 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999067 | eng_Latn | 0.999161 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | false | docling | [
1991,
3795
] | [
4.09375
] | 1 | 0 |
People began settling in the Wildwood area as early as the 1870s; however, the village got its real start in 1914 when it was platted. The original name, Wildwood, was changed to Willernie due to another Wildwood already being registered in the State of Minnesota. As the area took shape, there were a variety of factors that have shaped the Willernie people know today: the small village of cottages along winding roads, giving it the very fitting nickname, “Tangletown.” Transportation innovations, tourism, architectural decisions, and political independence have all contributed to Willernie’s present appeal.
At the turn of the last century, modern transportation was surpassing simple horse and carriage. Rail lines linked Willernie to Stillwater and the Twin Cities. Bridges were being built, and streetcars were gaining popularity. The development of Willernie was linked to these new modes of transportation. The Minneapolis and St. Paul Suburban Railroad Company reached the area in 1892. By 1898, the Twin City Rapid Transit Company had begun streetcar service routes, and St. Paul and White Bear Railroad put in an electric trolley line from St. Paul to the Mahtomedi area. Wildwood Amusement Park began in earnest the same year. By 1904, there was a branch line around the southside of White Bear Lake, and in 1905, the Stillwater route was extended to Bayport. The combination of streetcar and railroad routes made transportation even more integrated and helped make Wildwood a popular destination. Additionally, these new modes of transportation helped establish Willernie as a place to live, first attracting summer residents and eventually year-round residents. Over time, the village added paved streets, sidewalks, street lighting, and police protection. Municipal water, sewer, and gas were added in the 1960s. Such improvements modernized the village while preserving the village’s classic features.
Tourism is the closest Willernie has come to having an industry. Over the years, Willernie has kept its resort-era heritage alive with few changes to its landscape. By 1917, Willernie was a thriving summer resort for cottages. Because of its close proximity to White Bear Lake and the popular Wildwood Amusement Park, Willernie was a hot travel spot for summer fun. Advertisements lured summer tourists from all over. People from St. Paul took trains and streetcars to relax and enjoy delightful White Bear Lake. By 1910, a streetcar ride from Wildwood to St. Paul took forty minutes and lasted about 12 miles; fares were 15 cents. Wildwood also became...
“The Front” in Willernie has been the business district of the community since its beginnings, a site for early businesses like The Piccadilly restaurant, the Glazer Bakery, Cusick’s general store and Dick’s Inn. As demands grew, more businesses populated the main street (Stillwater Road,) earning itself the nickname, “The Front.” Wildwood Park was directly across Main Street where there was dining, live music and dancing at the Pavilion. Behind “The Front” small footpaths and bridges led to the summer cottages. On the south side of the village people enjoyed swimming, boating, canoeing and ice skating on Lake Washington.
According to city records and press sources Willernie was built to resemble an English Manor. In *Mahtomedi Memories* former Mayor Louis Millner recounts that “two surveyors laid out the town on the lines of an Old English country Manor” and former Postmaster Bob Ingham describes Willernie as an “exact duplicate of a homesick Englishman’s old home town.” There were newspaper ads pricing the sum of 5 lots for $5 a piece. In 1914 when the Wildwood Manor Improvement Association and a real estate company auctioned off open lots, townspeople were involved in shaping the appearance of their community. Townspeople cut down trees, removed stumps and helped lay out the roadways to their summer homes. Consistent with English Manor village styles the streets were made narrow, cottages were small and built near each other. By the 1930s business slowed down, the Wildwood Amusement Park
Willernie continued from page 2
Willernie Flood – 1941
accounts for approximately 82 acres and 590 residents of Washington County. The Willernie community has changed since becoming independent in 1947 and opting out of the early 1960s Lincoln Township annexation. Despite the changes, the village has maintained control over its city ordinances and tax levies. In a 2001 White Bear Press article, Willernie resident Claudette Munson remembers when people voted against the annexation. She contributes the preservation of the village’s classic appeal to its political independence and politically-involved community members. Munson goes on to say “it’s (Willernie) kind of stuck in time. It was laid out to look like an English Village. The streets are narrow and they go nowhere and everywhere. People like it that way.” Munson’s words echo the spirit of earlier times; a village built by the people for the people.
Willernie Hall – 2012
Editor’s Note: Kyle M. Swenson is a graduate of Hamline University with a degree in History and a 2011 summer intern at the WBLAHS.
Due to popular demand the annual Children’s Story Time at the Fillebrown House over the holidays was increased to two offerings in December. Volunteer Lynn Bartol stepped up to fill the increased demand and put her teacher skills to work entertaining toddlers and young school-agers with holiday themed stories under the tree at the Fillebrown House.
Thanks Lynn for helping to keep this holiday tradition alive!
We would not be able to provide many of our programs, resources and events without our numerous volunteers who make things happen. Whether it is giving tours at the House, sorting papers at the Resource Library or answering questions for visitors, we rely heavily on the help of our volunteers. Thank you to all of you – new and continuing!
The colder, quieter months of winter are our time to regroup, reorganize and try to catch up on all of those tasks and assignments that haven’t gotten the attention they deserve during the busier seasons. As the first quarter of 2012 barrels on you may notice a few changes including more photos being uploaded to our searchable online database, the addition of the White Bear Town Board minutes to resources section of the website-the culmination of a two year project with White Bear Township, and an overall refreshed layout of both our online presence and our quarterly newsletter, The Lake Area Preserver.
We have also been physically reorganizing our space at the depot as well as working behind the scenes to update the tour experience at the Fillebrown House this summer season. In fact, we have created a “Garage Sale Corner” on our Facebook page that offers up items that still have life in them, but we no longer need or are duplicated at the WBLAHS. Recent offerings include items such as office chairs that required too much space in our tight quarters!
This time of year is also when the new programs, projects and events really start to take shape. The board identifies the priorities for the upcoming year and plans start to take shape. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to capture, preserve and share the stories, images and objects of our past and present for the future!
Opportunities to Support Your Local Historical Society
Do you like what the WBLAHS does? Now is your chance to make a difference and support the efforts of your local historical society. The WBLAHS is a private 501c3 non-profit and does not receive direct operating support from government sources or tax dollars. We rely on membership dues and donations either directly or through our fundraising efforts as our main source of income throughout the year. The WBLAHS is Minnesota’s most active local historical society and we accomplish it all with one paid staff member and group of dedicated volunteers who believe in our mission.
Please consider supporting the WBLAHS today!
Become an Annual Member
Memberships start as low as $20 per year for individuals and increase based on your generosity. Benefits of membership include our quarterly newsletter, *The Lake Area Preserver*, discounted admission to WBLAHS events such as the Quarterly Scrapbooking Crops and the Annual Historic House Tour. To learn more about membership visit whitebearhistory.org/membership or call 651-407-5327.
Sponsorship Opportunities
Opportunities abound to tie your business to a quality product or event created by the WBLAHS.
- Sponsor a batch of 100 calendars to distribute to your clients with your company logo and information prominently displayed for as little at $350. Orders being processed now!
- Sponsor a home on the Historic House Tour on September 30th or be a supporting sponsor of the whole event. Openings are being filled now. Contact Sara at 651-407-5327 or email@example.com for more information.
Our Biggest Fundraising Event of the Year!
Connecting Our Community to Its Past Fundraising Breakfast
Thursday, May 3rd 7:30-8:30am at the White Bear Country Inn
Please join us for an engaging, one-hour event that focuses on the mission and impact of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society on the five communities we serve – Birchwood, Dellwood, Mahtomedi, White Bear Lake and White Bear Township. Our goal for this event is to raise funds to support the level of professional collections, preservation and interpretation that a community like ours deserves. The event is free to attend. Each guest will have the opportunity to make a tax-deductible contribution.
To register call Sara Hanson at 651-407-5327 or email firstname.lastname@example.org
Registrations kindly requested by April 26, 2012
Donation in memory of June Jantzen Osmundsen From Cathy Iverson
Donation in memory of Virginia Lindbeck From Thomas and Arlene Zwickel
Thank you!
Mission Statement of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society
The White Bear Lake Area Historical Society connects the community to its past, fostering an understanding and appreciation for our history.
We fulfill our mission by….
- Gathering and maintaining historical information and artifacts. *We are safe keepers of our heritage.*
- Educating the community about our history. *We are the community storytellers.*
- Encouraging personal and community responsibility for preserving our physical links to the past. *We are advocates for historical preservation.*
Sleigh Rides
GROUPS – PARTIES – CHURCHES
Old Fashion Winter Fun
Bundle up - Enjoy a winter evening - pulled through the snow by horses, sleigh bells and all.
RESERVATIONS 429-6540 or 429-1342
BROKEN ARROW RANCH
OTTER LAKE ROAD & COUNTY ROAD H2
LICENSED & BONDED MINNESOTA DEALER
HORSES BOUGHT and SOLD
REASONABLY BOARDED
Proprietor of the Past
Ad reprinted from the February 11, 1971 issue of The White Bear Press. The Broken Arrow Ranch was located where Otter Lake Elementary School is today.
Recent Donations
The Historical Society has been the recipient of several wonderful donations to our collections recently, including:
♦ Super 8 and 8mm film projector and supplies
donated by Jack Smith
Donations accepted for the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society’s collections must pertain to the area surrounding White Bear Lake and meet other requirements. For more information on what those requirements are, please contact Sara at 651-407-5327. Without donations like these the collections and resources of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society would not grow. They are greatly appreciated!
WBLAHS 2012 Board of Directors
Tracey Montgomery, President
Jo Emerson, Past President
Jenni Corbett, Secretary
Shana Karle, Treasurer
Scott Freeberg, Birchwood Liaison
Christy Gutt, Education Liaison
Keith Hisdahl, Community Liaison
Jan Holtz, At-Large
Chris Johnson, At-Large
Shana Karle, At-Large
Lin Lindbeck, Fillebrown House, Out-house
Bill Matschke, Asst. Fillebrown House, Out-house
Tom Rice, At-Large
Gloria Tessier, In-house
Meg Todd, Membership & Promotion
A Special Thank You To Our Hometown Business Members
Proud of Our History
Proud of Our Community
HomeTown Business
Knutsen Auto
Lisa Madore, Edina Realty
Manitou Station
Mueller Lake Mortuary
Parkway Painting Company
Porterfolio, Inc.
Sunbear Salon & Spa
Town Life Magazine
Ursula’s Wine Bar & Café
Washington Square Grill
White Bear Country Inn/Rudy’s Red Eye Grill
White Bear Eye Clinic
Organizations:
Lakeshore Players
VFW Post 1782
White Bear Lake Lion’s Club
For information on how your business can be a WBLAHS Hometown Business Member please contact Sara at 651-407-5327
Calendar of Events
For more details on these events and more visit whitebearhistory.org or call 651-407-5327.
Monday March 26th The Home Front: A Small Town During World War II*
6-7pm at the Ramsey County Library-White Bear Lake Branch
Local author Peter R. Reis will share photos and anecdotes recalling life in the White Bear area during the war years including rationing, the impact on local businesses and community organizations.
Monday April 23rd Where Exactly Was Wildwood Amusement Park?*
6-7pm at the Ramsey County Library-White Bear Lake Branch
Wildwood Park boomed on the southwest shore of White Bear Lake during the first part of the twentieth century. Join us as we set the scene with images and stories from the park’s heyday. You can almost feel the streetcars rattling along the tracks!
Thursday May 3rd Connecting Our Community to Its Past Fundraising Breakfast
7:30-8:30am at the White Bear Country Inn, 4940 Highway 61 North
Please join us for an engaging, one-hour event that focuses on the mission and impact of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society on the five communities we serve – Birchwood, Dellwood, Mahtomedi, White Bear Lake and White Bear Township. Our goal for this event is to raise funds to support the level of professional collections, preservation and interpretation that a community like ours deserves. The event is free to attend. Each guest will have the opportunity to make a tax-deductible contribution.
To register call Sara Hanson at 651-407-5327 or email email@example.com
Registrations kindly requested by April 26, 2012.
Saturday May 19th Scrapbooking Quarterly Crop
10am-10pm at the White Bear Armory, 2228 Fourth Street.
Enjoy a FUN day of scrapbooking with friends, new and old. Other crafts are welcome, too! Close proximity to downtown White Bear Lake allows for fun shopping breaks or walks by the lake.
Cost: $30 members/$35 nonmembers – includes morning coffee and donuts, lunch, dinner, snacks, door prizes; and more! All proceeds benefit the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society and our ongoing efforts to preserve the stories of our community.
Pre-register online at http://www.whitebearhistory.org/scrapbooking.html or send your check to: WBLAHS, PO Box 10543, White Bear Lake, MN 55110 or call 651-407-5327. Visa/Mastercard/Discover are welcome.
Monday May 21st White Bear and the Civil War*
6-7pm at the Ramsey County Library-White Bear Lake Branch
The “War Between the State” was felt across our young country and the White Bear area was no exception. Hear the tales of several veterans from our area and learn about our soldiers’ monument on Clark Avenue.
*FREE event but donations are welcome. This project was funded in part or in whole with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008 which dedicated funding to preserve Minnesota’s art and cultural heritage. Presented by the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society. 651-407-5327, www.whitebearhistor.org.
Mother's Day Tea
Saturday, May 12
1 - 3 pm
The Fillebrown House
4735 Lake Ave, White Bear Lake
Reservations Required
651-407-5327
or www.whitebearhistory.org
Tickets:
$25 public
$20 WBLAHS members
Presented by the WBLA Historical Society
To share your memories in future issues, contact:
Sara Markoe Hanson
Depot Museum
4751 Highway 61
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
651-407-5327 | fa478a81-bb62-4258-b434-260b42b906d5 | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://whitebearhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2012-Newsletter-Winter-Spring.pdf | 2021-11-26T23:25:21+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964358074.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20211126224056-20211127014056-00163.warc.gz | 719,310,669 | 3,518 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.962175 | eng_Latn | 0.995648 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2578,
4096,
5172,
7331,
10463,
12622,
15596,
15977
] | [
2.171875
] | 1 | 0 |
It is been over a year now since COVID-19 appeared in our lives. We can all agree that, 2020 was a complete mess. Indeed, during this particular time, traditions will be celebrated in a different way. We will see how the anglophone countries as South Africa, Australia and the USA deal with the pandemic during celebrations time.
**Independence Day (USA)**
In the United States, Independence Day is extremely important to all American citizens; it is celebrated each July 4th. It is the National Day of the country and a very patriotic celebration since it commemorates the Declaration of Independence of the United States voted on July 4th, 1776. It became a federal paid holiday in 1870. Nowadays, the Americans celebrate this event with several patriotic displays and festivities. They organize huge outdoor barbecues or picnics, usually on the beach or near a lake while gathering with their friends and family. The places are decorated with flags, streamers and balloons and the people are dressed in blue, white and red to recall the colours of the American flag. In the morning, cities usually organize big parades, which attract many spectators especially in big metropolises such as Washington. They sing patriotic songs in the streets while fireworks are organized by the city. However, this year Independence Day was different from the other years because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, the parades had been cancelled, and a lot of events were organized online. For instance, concerts, parties with music and artistic performances were broadcast through virtual platforms. Moreover, many public spaces such as beaches were closed to the public. It is true to say that the cancellation of July 4th events represented a big disappointment for all the American citizens who waited during the whole year to celebrate it. Nonetheless, it was unthinkable to maintain the events, because social distancing could not have been respected; there would have been a lot of contagions and protecting the weakest is also a patriotic duty. But we can also guess that it was fortunate that alternatives to still celebrate this day were found because it is so important to keep joyful moments in those hard pandemic times. (B.L.N AMC Gr1)
Cape Town Minstrel
Usually, it is celebrated at the Green Point Stadium with more than 10,000 costumed persons. At this event, there are also musicians and especially the Dixie’s Band, an Irish band from the 90s. Most people paint their faces with white to contest the original black face. For the inhabitants, this festival has lost a little of its aspect “Day of break for the slaves” because most of those are 3rd or 4th generation and has become a traditional event not to be missed. Music and dance are associated to freedom and the minstrel’s troupes give a sense of community to the group members. In South Africa, the lock down is very light, people are confined in the interior of the country. With the current situation, we believe that there will be no tourists at the Cape Town Minstrel because the borders will surely be closed. People will probably have masks too which will hide part of their faces and one of the key elements of this carnival is make-up! For us it is a good thing that the Cape Town Minstrel will be maintained, because it’s an important event for South Africa, as long as the restrictions related to coronavirus are put in place. However, we don’t know how the pandemic will evolve… Indeed, if the number of cases increases a lot, it would be better to cancel the event, the government will have to be careful. (I.E.S.S AMC grp1)
The Festival Adelaide Fringe
It is a tradition which happens every year in South-Australia from February 14th to March 15th. It was created in 1960 and it is the world’s second-largest annual arts festival. Nowadays, it brings together 7000 artists each year from all Australia and the world. Over 1,300 amazing events are planned. Unfortunately, COVID 19 had an impact on this celebration. Even if the last week-end of the 2020’s festival took place before the lock down on March 15th, many shows were cancelled or rescheduled to 2021. However, the 2021 organisation festival is still uncertain. Therefore, a range of public health measures were put in place. 1.5 meters distance has to be kept between artists, we should wear a mask in the theatres, the seats are spaced apart… The SA Health also planned to clean the sanitizers and doors handles more often. In our opinion, the festival is a lot of entertainment but during pandemic times, even with all these measures, it is not safe because there are too many people. This is why the next 2021 festival will be able to welcome only 50 percent of the visitors and will propose 800 shows instead of a 100. This is unheard of in the festival’s history. To Miss Croal, the director of the festival, it is a lot of pressure, so it is for all the performers. We spare a thought for all the artists who couldn’t do their shows. Nevertheless, we all hope that the show must go on. (L.M.R AMC Grp1) | b57971f0-8888-43af-8920-25b1e8ec76f4 | CC-MAIN-2025-08 | https://lyc-descartes-montigny.ac-versailles.fr/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2021/01/AMC-Majors-News-Second-Edition-V2.pdf | 2025-02-08T00:07:56+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2025-08/segments/1738831951532.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20250207225929-20250208015929-00619.warc.gz | 355,761,101 | 1,080 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.999277 | eng_Latn | 0.999282 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2237,
5050
] | [
2.28125
] | 1 | 0 |
MAKING OUR SHORELINES FRIENDLY FOR FISH AND PEOPLE
A walk along the shoreline is one of the activities that has remained a constant this year. Whether you are drawn by the salty breeze or expansive views or the chance to see wildlife, there’s a world of beauty and adventure to be found along our Island County shores. There are many local organizations working to preserve our beautiful shorelines and many ways for you to help those efforts.
Little fish with a big purpose
The Island County Marine Resources Committee (MRC) is an advisory board to county government made up of several volunteers, with the goal to protect and restore our marine resources through monitoring, restoration, and outreach. One of the MRC’s activities is to monitor beaches around Island County to understand when and where forage fish lay their eggs (spawn) and how they use restored beaches.
Around our Island County shorelines, small fish known as forage fish utilize our beaches and nearshore habitats. Forage fish represent a critical link in the food web, supporting larger species, such as seabirds, seals and salmon, which in turn support our iconic orca population. When we can improve habitat for forage fish, we improve conditions for the entire marine ecosystem that make our shorelines so inviting.
Two species of forage fish – surf smelt and Pacific sand lance – lay their eggs on our sand and gravel beaches. This spawning behavior relies on natural shoreline habitat. The less armored a shoreline is, the more likely it is to support these species.
For many years, shoreline armoring, such as bulkheads and seawalls, were installed around Puget Sound to protect shoreline properties from erosion. Over the past few decades, we have learned more about the negative impacts structures can have on the marine environment, including that they are not always the most effective erosion protection method, and that they cover up important habitat which supports the very marine life that draws us to our shorelines.
Shoreline restoration
The MRC also works to identify and support nearshore restoration projects. The MRC is currently partnering with the Northwest Straits Foundation and local community members to remove shoreline armoring at Seahorse Street, a private property in South Whidbey. The project involves the removal of an old grounded barge and concrete bulkhead that jut out into the intertidal habitat.
The armoring sits at the bottom of a feeder channel that runs into coastal bluffs whose natural erosion creates sediment to the shoreline that “feeds,” or builds up, its beaches. Removing armoring at the bottom of this feeder bluff will restore the natural sediment movement along the shoreline. It will also uncover habitat for those small, but important, forage fish in which to lay their eggs.
How to make a difference along the shoreline
Whether you live along the shoreline, on a farm, or in the woods, there are actions you can take to protect our beaches. The activities we do on land impact the waters around Island County. Here are some ideas about actions you can take to support healthy shorelines.
Manage water runoff
You’ve seen it after a rain storm – water rushing down streets and into storm drains or ditches. This stormwater can pick up pollutants on its journey, which may end up flowing onto our shorelines and into the waters of Puget Sound.
While you may not live near the shoreline, runoff from your property may make its way to the shore and into the ocean. There are actions you can take to lower pollutants that end up in the water as well as decrease runoff. Here are a few to get you started:
- Maintain your car. Fixing car leaks not only keeps your vehicle running well, but also keeps excess fluids from dripping on the road, which contributes pollutants to stormwater runoff.
- Install a rain garden. Rain gardens add natural beauty to your property and treat polluted runoff at the same time. Maximize your rain garden’s utility by directing water from impervious surfaces (e.g., your roof or driveway) into the rain garden.
- Minimize impervious surfaces. Your driveway, roof, deck, and patio are all potential areas where stormwater could be contributing to runoff. You can minimize this potential by utilizing pervious materials, installing a green roof, or converting a paved patio to one with native vegetation.
Whidbey Island Conservation District, as well as Washington State University Extension – Island County, have great resources for learning stormwater management techniques at your property and in your daily activities.
Make your beach Shore Friendly
If you live along the shoreline, there are actions you can take to preserve or restore natural habitat while also protecting your property. Now through April 2021, shoreline landowners are invited to apply for mini-grants through the Island County Shore Friendly program for actions that remove or prevent shoreline armoring.
Eligible activities include shoreline armor removal, soft shore protection, native vegetation planting, removing impervious roofs, and moving a house or septic system, where these actions are associated with either the removal or prevention of shoreline armoring. Mini-grant amounts range from $500-$5,000, depending on the eligible activity, and can be used for initial consultation, permit fees, permitting costs, or project implementation.
Grant funding is provided by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Estuary and Salmon Restoration Program, and administered through Island County. For more information, visit www.islandcountywa.gov/Health/County/Shore-FriendlyPages/Home.aspx or contact Anna Toledo at email@example.com or 360-678-2349.
To learn more about the Island County Marine Resources Committee, visit www.islandcountyncrr.org.
Make a Difference Column is coordinated by Whidbey Island Conservation District. View current and past articles at whidbeycd.org/make-a-difference-column.
This restored shoreline at the Sunlight Shores community provides improved habitat, natural beauty, and shoreline accessibility. Photo by Anna Toledo. | 7af9d7e4-c400-4682-85b7-1ab772df38f6 | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://www.whidbeycd.org/uploads/1/1/6/8/11683986/12.47_november_19_2020-09.pdf | 2021-12-05T07:01:52+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964363149.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20211205065810-20211205095810-00474.warc.gz | 1,149,963,825 | 1,208 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997074 | eng_Latn | 0.997074 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
6121
] | [
3.21875
] | 1 | 0 |
Why are Wetlands Important?
Wetlands Improve Water Quality
Surface water runoff from cities, towns, roads, agriculture, mining and forestry operations may contain sediments, excess nutrients, viruses and pathogens and/or a variety of chemicals. If this runoff flows through a wetland, the wetland acts like a filter to remove sediments, absorb nutrients and biologically change many chemicals into less harmful forms.
“Treatment wetlands” can be specifically designed and constructed to improve surface water quality, such as artificial wetlands to treat storm water runoff. Natural wetlands can perform the same functions but care is needed not to “overload” these systems. The capacity of wetlands to neutralize harmful substances is limited; too much runoff can degrade or destroy the wetland. For example, too many nutrients (such as phosphorus) entering a wetland can cause algal blooms (eutrophication) which reduces the oxygen content in the water, killing fish and other wildlife, and rendering recreation unpleasant or impossible.
Wetlands Reduce Flood Damage
Wetlands can reduce flooding by holding back peak water flows when water levels are high and, in some cases, storing water within the wetland. This results in more gradual discharges of water over a longer period of time, which can protect downstream property owners from flood damage. A 1972 study by the U.S. Corps of Engineers in Massachusetts determined that the loss of 3,400 hectares of wetland near Boston would result in an increase in flood damage costs of $17 million (US) per year. Re-calculating these costs in today’s dollars would greatly increase the monetary value of this wetland function.
Wetlands Reduce Erosion
Wetland vegetation along the shorelines of rivers, streams and lakes reduces erosion. Plants trap soils in their roots, helping to stabilize shorelines by dampening wave action and slowing water currents. When such vegetation is removed, efforts to control shoreline erosion are usually expensive, not always successful and can result in further degradation of fish and wildlife habitat.
Wetlands and Groundwater Recharge/Discharge
Wetlands are essential components of the water cycle and many are a link between surface and groundwater. The level of groundwater (the “water table”) varies depending on the type of soil and bedrock, time of year and climate conditions.
A wetland is a groundwater discharge area if water enters it by moving upwards from the soils beneath the wetland or from the upland areas surrounding it. These “discharge wetlands” are ecologically important because they help control erosion and maintain water quality. Conversely, some wetlands act as recharge areas, collecting surface water and allowing it to percolate down through the soil and rock to the groundwater. This water recharge helps to maintain water quality and groundwater supplies, especially during dry periods. This contributes to the water required for essential activities such as human consumption and agriculture.
Some wetlands may be discharge areas in the spring, when the water table is high, and recharge areas in the summer, when the water table has dropped. They also contribute moisture to the atmosphere, influencing rainfall patterns. In the absence of wetlands, the summer months would be much drier.
Wetlands Provide Habitat
Wetlands provide food, shelter, breeding and resting places for an incredible number of species of plants, mammals, bird, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates. Wetlands provide the critical habitat that many such organisms need to survive.
Game species such as ruffed grouse, wild turkey and white-tailed deer utilize wetlands for at least part of their life cycle. Migratory waterfowl depend on wetlands for survival during their long flight. Many fish in the Great Lakes Basin (e.g., northern pike and muskellunge) directly rely on wetlands for spawning, feeding or protection. In addition, wetlands provide critical habitat for about one-third of all threatened or endangered animal species in North America. In Ontario, wetlands provide habitat for at least 47 plant and animal species that have been identified as “at risk”.
Wetlands and Climate Change
Peat consists of partially-decomposed plants. Peatlands – wetlands that actively accumulate peat – act as long-term sinks for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is one of the “greenhouse” gases that contribute to global warming. Carbon is retained in peatlands instead of being released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Recreation and Tourism
Wetlands are popular places for non-consumptive recreation such as photography, bird watching, canoeing, hiking, snowshoeing, relaxation and spiritual or cultural experiences. Some wetlands have interpretive facilities, boardwalks and viewing towers where people can go to observe wildlife and learn about nature. Such facilities attract people to the wetland and provide an economic return to local communities and the tourism industry.
Wetlands can also serve as “outdoor classrooms” and can be extremely valuable to scientific research studies. Wetlands are also valuable for more consumptive recreational uses, such as hunting, fishing and trapping. Such activities can also increase tourism and boost local economies.
Sustainable Wetland Products
Wetlands “produce” a number of valuable plants and animals, which can be harvested on a sustainable basis to provide an economic return. Such “products” include: trees (for lumber, pulp, fencing and firewood), wild rice, cranberries and blueberries, fish and commercial baitfish, bullfrogs and snapping turtles, waterfowl, furbearers (e.g., beaver, muskrat, mink), and natural medicines. These products can be harvested from wetlands in a sustainable, ecologically-conscious manner, avoiding degradation of the wetland. A few products from wetlands, such as peat, are not renewable and their large-scale removal can seriously degrade the wetland and negatively impact its dependant plants and wildlife. | <urn:uuid:7393b828-4447-4f18-97e7-fb92d62c7fc9> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | http://www.abca.on.ca/downloads/MNR_Why_are_Wetlands_Important_-_final_23Feb07b.pdf?phpMyAdmin=fa638e549ab1e05917617e02161cad78 | 2018-03-22T06:10:57Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257647777.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20180322053608-20180322073608-00094.warc.gz | 310,931,092 | 1,207 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.995319 | eng_Latn | 0.995404 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1680,
4184,
6037
] | [
3.9375
] | 3 | 3 |
Get help when you need it. Build your team!
Encourage your child to talk to you about their anxiety and include you as a part of their team. Their teachers and if needed, psychologists, can also be a part of their team. If the tips on our website are not enough for your family, consider these additional resources. Remember, we all need extra help sometimes. Our mental health deserves as much care and attention as our physical health.
1. Useful Websites
Below are some websites that we find helpful when working with children with anxiety.
- Anxiety self-help material - [www.anxietybc.com](http://www.anxietybc.com)
- A useful video explaining child anxiety: [http://www.heysigmund.com/age-by-age-guide-to-fears/](http://www.heysigmund.com/age-by-age-guide-to-fears/)
- Belly Breathing Video from Sesame Street: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZbzDOpylA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZbzDOpylA)
- Buddy breathing example - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2Tbfs7neAk&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2Tbfs7neAk&feature=youtu.be)
- Child Mind Institute - [https://childmind.org/](https://childmind.org/)
2. Useful Books
- A book for children on anxiety: [http://www.apa.org/pubs/magimation/441A314.aspx](http://www.apa.org/pubs/magimation/441A314.aspx)
- A parenting book on teaching emotion coping - *The Whole Brain Child* by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D. - [http://www.drdansiegel.com/books/the_whole_brain_child/](http://www.drdansiegel.com/books/the_whole_brain_child/)
- A book on mindfulness for children - *Planting Seeds* by Thich Nhat Hanh - [https://www.amazon.ca/Planting-Seeds-Practicing-Mindfulness-Children/dp/1935209809](https://www.amazon.ca/Planting-Seeds-Practicing-Mindfulness-Children/dp/1935209809)
3. Community Resources
There are a number of helpful resources, at the community level, that are available in Manitoba. Below are some ideas we often share with people.
- Anxiety Disorders Association of Manitoba - [www.adam.mb.ca/winnipeg](http://www.adam.mb.ca/winnipeg)
- Student Services at your local school with school psychologists. Ask about this at your school.
4. Clinical Services
- Clinic Psychology Manitoba - [www.clinicpsychology.com](http://www.clinicpsychology.com)
- Manitoba Psychological Society - [www.mps.ca](http://www.mps.ca)
- Child and Adolescent Mental Health - Centralized Intake: [http://www.matc.ca/services-cimh.html](http://www.matc.ca/services-cimh.html) | b2116a99-5a88-4846-ba24-85f7a8a3006c | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://clinicpsychology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/5.pdf | 2021-06-14T22:13:55+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623487613453.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20210614201339-20210614231339-00078.warc.gz | 177,639,171 | 643 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.960373 | eng_Latn | 0.960373 | [
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2471
] | [
2.296875
] | 1 | 0 |
CREATIVE LEARNING
2020 Forest of Imagination
FOREST OF IMAGINATION 2020
Creative learning for schools leading up to/ following 10 October 2020
FOI, Big Green Draw, TEDx Bath and TED Countdown event
FOI Online Teaching Resources: Key to Symbols
- Link to artist’s work
- Link to video
- Outdoor green space
- Outdoor urban environment
- River, stream, water
- School based enquiry
- Making a film
- Art Resources
- Technological resources
- Journaling
- Writing process
- Class discussion
- Exchanging thoughts and ideas in small groups
- Co-creating in small groups
- Celebration
1. Being in Nature/Connecting with Nature
1. Being in Nature/Connecting with Nature
This co-enquiry is based upon the children’s exploration and responses to nature or green space and the sense of well-being that it can evoke. Children can explore their feelings, thoughts, imaginings, and wonderings to being in nature and through being playful with words, sounds, movement and music create soundscapes, dance and film.
Initial preparation for teachers
- Research a wild or green space that is accessible from the school.
For an alternative possibility see Alison Harper and Brian Madigan, Enchanted Forest:
- [View video](#)
- Watch the film Rocks Roots Rhythm by Denise Rowe and Kennedy Chinyere:
- [View video](#)
Linking to the film, and using it as an inspiration before venturing out, opens up the possibility of working with music and movement. Also see forestofimagination.org.uk/rocks-roots-rhythm
- Gather technological resources you or the children can safely use for photography, video, and sound recording.
1. Being in Nature/Connecting with Nature
The creative co-enquiry process with the children could involve:
Watching the film Rocks Roots Rhythm by Denise Rowe and Kennedy Chinyere with the children.
The following are possibilities that could form a framework over one or more visits to the natural or green space.
Giving time and space for an initial exploration of the space and nature.
Stillness. Giving time for just being and listening.
Giving time to wander and wonder. Feeling at one with the natural world.
Deeper enquiry could take the form of either or both of the following:
- Focusing in on something small; noticing, wondering, imagining. Imagining if they were a tree/plant what kind would they be?
- Exploring the space or natural landscape with their bodies and movement (in reference to the Rocks Roots Rhythm film).
Exploring sound, whilst retaining a connection to the feelings the space evoked when they were still and listening. Suggestions include:
- Inviting the children to generate words in response to their experience and to be playful with the sound of the words in the space.
- Using their voice/body/natural found materials to make sounds in response to the space.
Co-creating a soundscape. Selecting and reproducing some of the sounds they’ve made and recording them. The soundscape recordings could include sounds they can hear around them that are natural to the space e.g. birdsong.
Visual recordings. Making artistic choices of what and how to capture through photography and/or video the green/natural space, to best convey their feelings, wonderings and imaginings.
Back at school. How can you and the children combine their soundscape and visual representation to produce your own film.
2 Landscape City Outlook
2. Landscape City Outlook
Using viewing places to look out onto the local environment or city and to imagine what they would like it to be like in ‘their’ future? Drawing upon this perspective small groups are invited to co-design a 3D vision of their Landscape city or renewed local environment through the process of making with paper, card or clay.
Initial preparation for teachers
Research a suitable high viewing point that is accessible from the school e.g. a hill, a road with a view, Beckford’s Tower, a window, Bath City Farm.
Perry Harris: [View document](#)
Beckford’s Tower: [View video](#)
Links to Forest of Imagination artists’ work:
Jessica Palmer, Forest of Imagination Walking Route, p48 [View document](#)
Collect resources e.g. journals or sketch books, drawing materials, paper, card, paper from recycling that can be re-used, natural found materials, clay, materials for cutting and joining.
Jessica Palmer making in 3D with paper/card: [View video](#)
2. Landscape City Outlook
The creative co-enquiry process with the children could involve:
Looking at photographs or video of an artist/s work linked to Forest of Imagination.
Discussing the aims of the visit to the viewpoint and framing it with the notions of ‘outlook’, a ‘landscape city’ and what they would like the local environment or city landscape to be like in their future?
Looking out from a high viewpoint: from a window, a hillside, a view over the city.
Using journals or sketch books to draw and note down words that spring to mind.
Working in small groups, through a process of exchange and dialogue, to re-imagine the landscape city or local environment in their future? Sketching out their co-created idea.
Collaborating to co-create a 3D Landscape from their dialogue and sketched idea. Potential materials: paper, card, recycled paper, clay, natural found materials.
3 Forest City
Exploring the local lived environment, green spaces or riverside in relation to climate change. Sharing their perspective on issues of climate change and how they want their lived environment to be? Creating narratives in poetry, prose or spoken word linking to Tania Kovat’s idea of the ‘memory of the water’, ‘following a river and listening to its voice’, ‘river running through’, and the ‘many stories of the place’ or Martyn Ware’s idea of imagining their story in the future where the city has been greened or rewilded. Alternatively children could imagine their story in the future where the city has been greened or rewilded, to design and make a Forest City using found natural materials, reusable and recycled materials.
Initial preparation for teachers
Research the links to Forest of Imagination artists’ work and decide which best connects with your and the children’s interests and dispositions.
Martyn Ware, Sonic Green Time Machine, see pg 30:
Tania Kovat’s River River, see page 38, FoI Concept pdf (link above).
Travelling Forest Lost Robot, Playable benches for urban spaces, see page 15, FoI Concept pdf (link above).
Enchanted Forest Alison Harper reusing materials:
Jessica Palmer’s Forest City:
Jo Backhouse video on creating Haiku:
Also see useful videos on Jo’s website.
Toby Thompson: On Spoken Word (Interview):
Research a location you want to explore with the children in relation to your proposed co-enquiry.
Collect the resources you might need in relation to it.
The creative co-enquiry process with the children could involve:
- An initial discussion with the children about climate change: what do they understand, what are their concerns, what are their questions?
- Exploring and noticing their local lived environment. Questions might include: What do you notice? What stops you in your tracks? What are your thoughts or feelings about it? What would you like to change?
- Some creative possibilities:
- Based upon Martyn Ware’s idea of imagining their story in the future where the city has been greened or rewilded: the children could create written narratives, poetry or spoken word poetry to convey their ideas. Drawings or photographs could be combined with these.
- Based upon Jessica Palmer’s work on Forest City and Ruby Jennings and Joseph Wilkes, Travelling Forest Lost Robot, the children could work in small groups to redesign their lived environment using their ideas for changing the local environment for the better for those living there and bearing in mind climate change. Recycled, repurposed and natural found materials could be a basis for designing and making.
Look at photographs or video of the chosen artist/s work and discuss this in relation to their perceptions of climate change and their interpretations of the artists’ work.
The children could use journaling to support their thought process.
Discuss the aims of the visit to the location with the children and the questions/notions to keep in their minds.
Discussion in small groups, to exchange their observations, thoughts, feelings and ideas of their lived environment; changing it for the better for those living there; bearing in mind the climate change issues they discussed.
4 TALES OF A FOREST OF IMAGINATION
4. Tales of a Forest of Imagination
Engaging children in tinkering with words and images to create a Tree or Forest of Imagination. A process using collected images, words, reworked artworks to be playful with, in a process of story-making. Creating illustrated books to form a Tree of Books or Forest of Imagination.
Initial preparation for teachers
- Research the links to Forest of Imagination artists’ work
- Clare Day’s Gifted Forest using reworked art works
- View on FOI website
- Jo Backhouse tinkering with words and images
- View video
- Visit FOI website
- Matt Leece & Budi AgungKuswara, Charcoal for Children, see pg 21
- View document
4. Tales of a Forest of Imagination
Initial prep’ (cont’d)
- Research a wooded space or local trees.
- Collect the resources e.g. artworks that can be reworked; photographs or images of trees of woodland habitats; text that can be a source of words related to trees and woodland habitats that can be cut up; materials for writing, illustration and book-making.
The creative co-enquiry process with the children could involve:
- Visit a loved tree or wooded space that the children connect with. Giving them time to explore, wonder and imagine.
- Possible questions to ponder and journal might be: What might the trees story be? Who might live there? Who are it’s family and friends? Who are it’s enemies? If you were a tree what tree would you be? What might your story be?
- In pairs they could draw out (randomly) a set of words and a set of images to work with. Give time for them to tinker with, arrange and rearrange the images and words to form the basis of the lines of a story, and then a whole story.
- Each pair can collaborate to turn their story into an illustrated book.
- The whole class could collaborate to design and create a Forest of Imagination with their books or a Tree of Books.
Collecting or generating banks of words and images. For example children in each small group could add words from their journals and sourced from texts to a word bank. They could each select images (from photographs, artworks that can be reworked, or that they draw) to add to an image bank.
what is inside your tree?
draw the story of a tree
how could you live in a tree?
what do trees mean to you and to us all?
where could we plant a tree?
A RIVER RUNNING THROUGH
5. A River running Through
A co-enquiry based upon the theme of the river running through Bath and the surrounding area. It relates to local history, local Springs, health and well-being. It explores water as a basic human need, sustainability, and the global environmental crisis and draws upon Tania Kovat’s idea of the water that connects us all. The enquiry can be explored and expressed through the visual arts including journaling, photography, drawing, painting, clay.
Initial preparation for teachers
Research the links to Forest of Imagination artists’ work.
Tania Kovat’s River River, see page 38:
- View document
Funda Kemal, focus on water/springs and a city of well-being, see pg 47 of FoI Concept pdf (link above).
A film by Helen Lawrence:
- View video
Choose a focus for the enquiry that connects with your and the children’s interests and dispositions for example: Tania Kovat’s idea of the river running through, the memory of water, following a river and listening to it’s voice, and the many stories of the place.
OR Funda Kemal’s focus on water, springs and a city of well-being.
OR Helen Lawrence’s film of rain could be a starting point for an enquiry into water as a basic human need, sustainability, and the global environmental crisis.
A video that might inspire different explorations through painting and film. See Dave Webb’s work here:
- View video
Perry Harris drawing and painting locations in Bath:
- View on FOI website
5. A River running Through
Initial prep’ (cont’d)
Research an accessible location if it is integral to your proposed enquiry e.g. stream, river, spring canal, Roman Baths.
Collect the resources that you might use safely with students for photography, videoing, journaling, drawing and painting materials, clay.
The creative co-enquiry process with the children could involve:
Sharing your proposed co-enquiry with the children: what is the focus and its aims? What are the children’s initial understandings, questions and thoughts relating to it?
Explore the stream, river, or site of the spring (if appropriate to your enquiry) or rain and puddles.
Remind children of the questions (above). Use journals as a process for the children to collect visual expressions of their thoughts, imaginings and wonderings in response to their enquiry of the site or journey along the river.
Revisit the experiences through sharing memories, thoughts, feelings, questions, wonderings, visual expressions from journals, photographs and video. Share thoughts on: If you were a river what would you be? If you were a river what story would you tell?
Discuss and negotiate your proposal with the children. Pose the questions to keep in mind throughout the co-enquiry: If you were a river what would you be? If you were a river what story would you tell?
Encourage children to capture the water or river in photographs or video.
Drawing upon their personal journaling and shared thoughts encourage the children to be playful with the ideas through experimenting with different media and materials for drawing or painting. Possibilities could include: tinkering with the images through cutting up the photographs and adding words and drawings; large scale drawing and painting using different paints, brushes, techniques, charcoal; making a short film.
6 Trees of Hope
6. Trees of Hope
An co-enquiry based upon artistic reconnections with nature and the land linked to the Trees of Hope project in collaboration with WOMAD, an eco-educational project with images, people, land, music and dance of Zimbabwe.
This invitation could follow on from participation in some of the other Forest of Imagination events 2014-2019.
Initial preparation for teachers
Watch the film Rocks Roots Rhythm by Denise Rowe and Kennedy Chinyere:
View video
Also see
FOI website
Collect the resources that you might use safely with students for digital sound recording, journaling, drawing, painting, musical instruments or reusable/recyclable materials to make them with.
Trees of Hope in Collaboration with WOMAD, see pg 26:
View document
Matt Leece & Budi AgungKuswara Tree Ceremony Workshop, see pg 20, FoI Concept pdf (link above).
Funda Kemal’s The Writings on the Wall, see pg 17, FoI Concept pdf (link above).
6. Trees of Hope
The creative co-enquiry process with the children could involve:
Hold a discussion about nature, drawing upon the children’s previous engagements in The Forest of Imagination invitations. This could be recorded digitally. Consider some of the key questions:
- What is nature?
- When and how do you make connections with nature?
- How does nature look after itself?
- How does nature look after us?
- How do we look after nature?
- How should we look after nature?
- How do human beings relate to nature and the land?
Watch the video and share some of the material from the other artists which you can consider and reflect upon together.
Digitally record a new discussion with the class based on their responses to the film/s and consider:
- What do the dances, music and images say about nature, land and human beings?
- What do they say about the relationship between human beings, nature and land?
- What do you think about communicating ideas through music, dance and visual images?
Working safely in pairs / small groups invite the children to decide what feelings they want to communicate about human beings, nature and the land and what form they want to use (music, movement and/or artwork). They can draw upon their previous engagement in the arts as a form of communication and those they have explored and experimented with in these enquiries.
Hold a celebration by sharing these within the class and by finding a way to share them safely with others in your school community.
Edible Forest
This could be a long term project for a class involving them in designing and making a small-scale, sustainable, edible forest or landscape for the school grounds. The project could involve families. It could engage the children in discussion about the global and environmental crisis; positive actions for the environment; and on personal health and well-being. The enquiry process could involve dialogue, design, engineering, project-management, growing food, and creative cookery.
Initial preparation for teachers
- Research the links to Forest of Imagination artists’ work:
- Helen Lawrence’s Edible Forest
www.forestofimagination.org.uk/edible-forest-helen-lawrence-week-five/
- Gather resources you think would be useful initially e.g for photography or video, journals, drawing materials.
- Research possible locations that you think the children may draw inspiration from e.g. a walk in nature, a garden, a park, allotments.
7. Edible Forest
The creative co-enquiry process with the children could involve:
Sharing your proposal for the project with the children and looking at Helen Lawrence’s Forest of Imagination webpage together for insights into her artistic process and ways of enquiring. What locations can the children suggest as places to visit for inspiration? The children could be invited to bring photographs of the families garden or growing of food.
Explore the agreed locations. The children could use journaling, video and photography to record sources of inspiration from nature and plants.
Working in small groups the children could co-design a small-scale, edible, forest/landscape with a sustainable water supply. The children could generate and exchange ideas through discussion and drawing. Key questions for them to consider could include:
- What would you grow below/above ground?
- What would you grow in different seasons?
- Where would the water come from?
- How would it feed the plants?
- What form would the landscape/forest take? Thinking about space, shape, height, levels, accessibility?
- What materials could the structure be made of? Thinking about the use of natural materials, repurposed and recycled material.
Working up their idea into a design drawing and planning how to present it to the rest of the class.
Sharing and presentation of the ideas from each group. Discussing the pro’s and con’s of each idea as a class. Thinking about creativity, practicality, sustainability, health. As a class deciding upon one design to take forward practically.
Decision making and planning. Key questions to be discussed and decided upon could include:
- Where would the Edible Forest go in the schools grounds? Who would you need to consult and agree this with?
- What materials would it be made from? What resources would you need?
- How could you fund it?
- What help would you need? Could you involve families and other members of the school community?
- How will you take it forward as a class? Decide if it is to be managed by a project group and who this will be?
- How will you sustain it once it is made and planted? Whose responsibility will it be?
Further phases for the children, educators and families:
- Making and planting the edible forest/landscape.
- Harvesting and sharing the food.
- What tasty recipes can you create and learn to cook?
7. Edible Forest | 0f40b471-1b7d-43bc-8f0e-1420e1469f1d | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://5x5x5creativity.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/foi-2020_creative-learning.final_.pdf | 2020-10-22T06:44:50+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107878921.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20201022053410-20201022083410-00055.warc.gz | 190,372,318 | 4,156 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.976207 | eng_Latn | 0.996869 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
45,
200,
584,
627,
1616,
3352,
3378,
4362,
5257,
5272,
6779,
8494,
8530,
9197,
10702,
10858,
10883,
12349,
14195,
14212,
15150,
16661,
16676,
17620,
19993,
20011
] | [
4.125,
4.5625
] | 2 | 0 |
Clixby
Active Pro Sports
Children's Activity Book
Name: ____________________________
This second instalment of the children’s activity book has been created by Clixby Active Pro Sports Ltd to support cricketing families during periods of social isolation. We hope you enjoy the activities in the April edition!
Stay safe!
Clixby Active Pro Sports Ltd
Contents:
1. Cricket Colouring
2. Cricket World Cup Colouring
3. Cricket Conundrums
4. Garden Graphs
5. Batting Bingo
6. “You’ve caught my batter”
7. Target Practice
8. Commentary Cakes
9. Commentary Challenge
10. Hide and Seek
11. Fitness Fun
12. Rapid Reactions
13. Agile Athletes
14. Cricket Legend
15. County Championship
16. Travelling Tourist
17. Fielding Position Problems
18. Memory Madness
Activity 1: Cricket Colouring
Cricket teams, from all over the world use coloured clothing to identify themselves as a team. Can you use the internet to find your favourite cricket clothing and then colour the batter below using the same colours?
Hint: You could look at County Cricket, International Cricket, BBL, IPL or The HUNDRED.
Activity 2: Cricket World Cup Colouring
In 2019, England and Wales hosted the Cricket World Cup, and England won by the barest of margins! The logo below could be found at every major cricket ground in the country in 2019, but we think it needs to have an update! Can you colour the logo to represent England winning the World Cup?
Activity 3: Cricket Conundrums
Every Cricketer, Coach and Organiser needs to practice their maths skills regularly because they are often faced with challenges throughout the match. Can you help Wiltshire Cricket by answering some of these common questions below?
1. In an over of cricket, there are 6 balls. If an innings is 8 overs long, how many balls are there?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
2. A batsman scored twelve 4s and seven 6s. What is his current score?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
3. Eight teams of 8 children enter a school cricket tournament and all children receive a certificate. How many certificates need to be written?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
4. A wicketkeeper took three catches in every game of the season. She played 19 games. How many catches did she take?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
5. A bowler takes 9 steps for his run up to bowl. If he bowls 5 overs, how many steps has he taken?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
6. There are 90 children in the year group and teams are going to be made up of 6 pupils. How many teams will there be?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
7. Cricket balls come in boxes of 6. A cricket club buys 12 boxes, but two balls are missing. How many balls are there?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
8. Bowlers are allowed to bowl a maximum of 9 overs in an innings of 45 overs. How many bowlers are needed to complete the innings?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
9. In the cricket league, teams were given three points for a win, two points for a tie and one point for a loss. What is the fewest amount of games a team must play to reach 50 points?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
10. An over is made up of 6 legal balls (straight and one bounce). If the ball is not legal, the bowler must bowl it again. If a bowler bowls 4 wides and 3 no-balls in a completed over, how many balls did they bowl in total?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
11. The distance between each of the wickets in a game of professional and blind cricket is 20.12 meters.
a) If the batter hits a three, how far does he run?
b) As there are two batters, how far do they run altogether?
c) What is this distance in centimetres?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
12. The weight of a professional cricket ball is 155.9 grams. There are six in a box. Not including the box, how much will they weigh altogether?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
13. The height of each stump is 71cm. What is the total height of all six stumps?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
14. The length of each bail, to go on top of the stumps in a game of professional cricket is 10.8cm. There are 2 on each set of stumps. If they were laid on the floor, how long would they be altogether?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
15. The maximum height of a bat in professional and blind cricket can be 96.5cm. If two were laid end to end, how long would this be?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
16. The weight of a professional cricket ball is 155.9 grams. The weight of a junior cricket ball is 134.7 grams. How much heavier is the professional cricket ball?
Answer: ____________________________________________________________
Activity 4: Garden Graphs
Cricket has a HUGE database of statistics! These statistics are really important for the players, coaches and commentators. At the moment, we don’t have enough statistics for you – can you help us?
With a partner, can you use your garden or an open space in your house to complete the following activity.
a) Place 5 targets around the playing area. These could be cushions, cereal boxes, dustbins etc.
b) Ask your partner to bowl the ball to you as many times as possible (minimum of 30 hits)
c) Using a bat, hit the ball at the target areas and record what happens in the table below. You could tally as you go.
d) After your game, convert the numbers in the tables into a bar graph on the next page.
| Number of misses. | Target 1 Hits | Target 2 Hits | Target 3 Hits | Target 4 Hits | Target 5 Hits |
|-------------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|
| | | | | | |
Title: __________________________
y-axis: _______________________
x-axis: _______________________
Notes:
Activity 5: Batting Bingo
This activity is for the whole family! Follow the instructions below and have fun playing a cricket variation of BINGO!
1. Copy the list of cricket words below onto paper, fold each of them separately and place them into a bowl or hat.
2. Using a sheet of paper for each player, draw the grid below on each sheet.
3. Choose 9 words from the list below, write one in each box of the grid.
4. Nominate a ‘Bingo Caller’ who will randomly pick words out of the bowl or hat. If he/she calls your word, cross it off.
5. The winner is the first person to cross off each of their cricket words.
| Howzat | LBW | Wicket-Keeper | Flipper |
|--------|-----|---------------|--------|
| Bowler | Cover | Captain | Doosra |
| Batter | Mid-On | Slips | Cricket |
| Four | Mid-Off | Fielder | Gully |
| Six | Square-Leg | Bouncer | Fine-Leg |
| Wicket | Sweep | Yorker | Third-man |
| Stumped | Drive | Leg-Spin | Pavilion |
| Caught | Cut | Off-Spin |
Activity 6: “You’ve caught my batter”
This activity is designed for 2 players and requires the grids and bats in the resource section of this activity book (last few pages). Firstly, cut out the resources and check that each player has:
1x Large Grid
1x Large Bat (5 Squares)
2x Big Bat (4 Squares)
2x Small Bat (3 Squares)
2x Tiny Bats (2 Squares)
Once all of the resources have been cut out, make sure your opponent cannot see your large grid. You could use a cardboard box between you or sit away from each other.
Next, strategically place each of the bats across the grid and take it in turns to call out a coordinate on the grid. If your opponent calls a coordinate without a bat, you must say “Play and Miss”. If your opponent calls a coordinate with part of a bat in, you must say “Dot-Ball”. If your opponent has called all of the coordinates for one of the bats, you must say “You’ve caught my batter”.
The player who ‘catches’ all of their opponents batters first is the winner!
Activity 7: Target Practice
One of the most important skills in cricket is throwing! It’s also very important to be accurate when throwing to increase your chances of run-outs. Using the ‘Target Practice’ resource at the back of the activity pack, try this throwing challenge at home! You could try this challenge every day and record your score in the table below or you could challenge someone to a competition.
Using the resource, cut the inside of the circles out and scrunch up the off-cuts. Use the scrunched-up paper to throw through the circles. The biggest circle is worth 1 point, second biggest is worth 2, middle size is worth 3, small circle is worth 4 and the tiniest circle is worth 5 points.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 |
|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|--------|
| | | | | | | | | | |
| Day 11| Day 12| Day 13| Day 14| Day 15| Day 16| Day 17| Day 18| Day 19| Day 20 |
| | | | | | | | | | |
| Day 21| Day 22| Day 23| Day 24| Day 25| Day 26| Day 27| Day 28| Day 29| Day 30 |
| | | | | | | | | | |
Activity 8: Commentary Cakes
Cricket fans all over the World enjoy listening to the BBC Test Match Special radio show when England are playing. One of the regular features on the radio show, besides the commentary, is the inclusion of cakes. Some fans enjoy baking a cake and sending it to the commentary team. Whilst you are at home, could you bake a cake for your family and perhaps decorate it with a cricket theme?
Hint: Use the internet or a recipe book to find a suitable recipe.
Here are some examples of cricket themed cakes...
Activity 9: Commentary Challenge
Cricket commentary is a hugely skilful job – not only do the commentators need to describe what is happening on the pitch, every ball, but they also need to fill the time between deliveries. Can you put your commentary skills to the test by filming and commentating over something that is happening in your house. Here are some ideas that you could commentate about:
- Parents Cooking Dinner
- Brother/Sister playing sport in the garden
- Family board game or activity
- Sports match on the TV or internet
- “A day in the life of you”.
Activity 10: Hide and Seek
For this activity, you will need two objects of similar size. Ideally, this would be two tennis balls or cricket balls. With a partner, start in the same location in the house and shout “GO”. You then have 30 seconds to hide the ball or object somewhere in your house. Once hidden, you must race your partner to find their ball/object.
Why don’t you keep a score to see who is best?
Activity 11: Fitness Fun
Cricketers need to be really fit and healthy to perform at their best! One of the important parts of professional training is fitness testing and practice. In this activity, our County Coaches challenge you to jump as high and as far as you can, using your leg strength.
a) Standing Broad Jump
Mark out a line on the floor using tape. Bend your knees and jump as far as you can, landing on two feet and keeping your balance. Ask a partner to mark where your heel is using tape. Practice some leg exercises from the March Activity Book and try this activity everyday to see if you improve.
b) Vertical Jump
Stand in a space near a wall. Bend your knees and jump as high as you can, touching the wall as you reach the peak of your jump. Ask a partner to mark this out with masking tape (Be careful of the paint). Practice some leg exercises from the March Activity Book and try this activity everyday to see if you improve.
Activity 12: Rapid Reactions
The best cricketers can react to challenging situations quickly! In this activity, you will need two tennis balls (or balls that bounce) and a partner. One person will be the ‘coach’ and the other will be the ‘player’. The ‘Coach’ should hold a ball in each hand at chest height. Without counting down, randomly drop one of the balls.
Variations:
1. The player should face the coach and catch the ball before it bounces twice.
2. The player should face the coach and catch the ball before it touches the floor.
3. The player should have their back to the coach, and as the coach shouts “Go”, the player spins around and catches the ball before the second bounce.
4. Restrict the player to using one hand only.
5. Drop the balls from a higher/lower height to make the challenge easier/harder.
6. Add some movement into the activity by dropping the balls to either side of the player, challenging them to get there before the first or second bounce. You could do this in quick succession to keep the player moving.
7. Facing each other, throw both balls to one another and try to catch both at the same time.
Activity 13: Agile Athlete
Cricketers need to be agile to be the best they can be. Agility helps with fielding a ball on the ground quickly, turning at the crease when running as a batter or catching a superb catch! In this activity, you will need a ‘player’ and a ‘coach’. Firstly, find 4 different objects to place in a 2x2m square on the floor. Ask the player to stand in the middle of the square. The coach will then call out one of the objects, the player must touch it and return to the middle of the square, ready for the next object call.
For example: “Socks” – Player quickly touches the socks and returns to middle.
“Shoes” – Player quickly touches the shoes and returns to middle.
“Plant Pot” – Player quickly touches the plant pot and returns to middle.
Note for parents: As a variation, you could change the name of the objects to add additional cognitive workload. For example, the socks could become “TWO” and the Shoes could become “RED”. To develop further, you could say “10 divided by 5”, the player identifies this as ‘two’ and touches the socks.
Activity 14: Cricket Legend
The game of cricket was played a long time ago...but how much do you know about the history of cricket? Do you know who played the game? Do you know which country invented it? Do you know any famous cricketers from before 1980? Were the rules always the same? Why do cricketers wear ‘whites’?
Using the internet and maybe some books, can you write some notes on the page below and then teach your family about the history of cricket?
You could make a presentation on Powerpoint too or draw some diagrams to illustrate some of your research.
Activity 15: County Championship
In the last activity book, you may have designed your own cricket logo/badge. Interestingly, every county in the county championship has their own logo/badge, but can you identify which county is which? (The names have been erased) For a bonus point on each logo/badge, can you number each county correctly?
Activity 16: Travelling Tourist
Every year, lots of tourists visit England and Wales to see some of our best tourist attractions, natural scenic areas and famous heritage sites. Can you pick one of the counties from the list above (perhaps one that you have never visited) and design a leaflet for some tourists who are coming to visit next year!
You might want to include:
- Tourist Attractions
- Places to stay
- Things to do
- Local Celebrities (Including famous cricketers)
- What they should bring with them. *(Example: A Coat, Sun cream etc.)*
- Local Transport Links
Use the space below to plan your leaflet and collect your information. Once you have enough research, use a new sheet of paper and create a leaflet for the tourists.
Activity 17: Fielding Position Problem
The School team has a new captain! However, the captain doesn't know the names of the fielding positions. Can you help the captain?
Match the description with the name of the fielding position and then identify it with a number on the pitch on the next page.
a) This infield position is on the leg-side and is at a right angle to the batsman. A four sided shape also has right angles.
Answer: _______________________________ Number: _____________
b) A common boundary fielding position behind the wicket keeper on the offside.
Answer: _______________________________ Number: _____________
c) Another legside infield position, roughly in line with the middle of the wicket.
Answer: _______________________________ Number: _____________
d) The fielding position usually responsible for stopping the ball when the batter plays a Cover Drive.
Answer: _______________________________ Number: _____________
e) Often seen in test match cricket for new-ball bowlers, responsible for catching an edge.
Answer: _______________________________ Number: _____________
f) A wider fielding position with a similar role to the one above. The same word could be used to describe a landform created by running water, eroding into soil, typically created on a hillside.
Answer: _______________________________ Number: _____________
g) Another word for the leg-side is the on-side. This fielder is near the bowler on the leg side and usually has a mirrored position on the off-side. The fielder is at the mid-point between the batter and the boundary.
Answer: _______________________________ Number: _____________
Activity 18: Memory Madness
The previous activity mentions just 7 of the fielding positions in a game of cricket, when in fact there are many more positions that the captain needs to remember.
Using the diagram in the resource section, can you memorise all of the fielding positions. Then, draw a diagram of a cricket field and ask a partner to test you. Can you learn all of the positions before your next game of cricket?
Activity Resource Pages
Some of the activities in this booklet require additional resources which can be found below. Using scissors, please cut around each picture to use with the specified activity.
1. “You’ve caught my batter”
A variety of bats for use in the game. Place the bats across various squares on the activity and take it in turns to find the other players bats.
Note: The playing grids can be found on the next page.
| | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 2 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 3 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 4 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 5 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 6 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 7 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 8 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 9 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|10 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|11 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|12 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 2 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 3 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 4 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 5 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 6 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 7 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 8 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 9 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|10 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|11 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|12 | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Memory Madness
Can you learn the fielding positions?
Target Practice | a25804f1-5d20-49f5-9cd0-71dccde0ad04 | CC-MAIN-2024-46 | https://clixbyactiveprosport.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/CAPS-Cricket-Activity-Book-2.pdf | 2024-11-12T06:08:09+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-46/segments/1730477028242.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20241112045844-20241112075844-00171.warc.gz | 146,336,590 | 4,880 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.993913 | eng_Latn | 0.999596 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
86,
755,
1093,
1427,
3193,
5171,
6210,
6319,
7286,
9574,
10114,
11099,
12050,
14261,
14833,
15176,
15920,
17570,
17997,
18435,
19949,
20003,
20020
] | [
4.1875,
4.125
] | 1 | 0 |
Sharing Chemistry
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE • Spreading Peace and Global Understanding through Chemistry PAGE 12
• College to Career: Teaching High School Chemistry PAGE 20
• Community Outreach with Boy Scouts: Fun, Fire, and Food! PAGE 26
EXPLORE
At Texas Woman’s University, we believe a student’s place is in the classroom – and the research laboratory. That’s why you’ll find undergraduate and graduate students working with TWU faculty to achieve real-world breakthroughs in cancer, HIV/AIDS, climate change and other conditions that impact our daily lives. They also present their work at major scientific conferences and win competitive national research internships.
Because at TWU, our students aren’t just students. They’re working scientists, too.
For more information on TWU’s undergraduate and graduate chemistry programs:
www.twu.edu/chemistry-biochemistry
940-898-2550
CONTENTS
ACS & YOU
EDITORIAL
K–12 Science Education Needs Your Help By Thomas J. Barton .................. 3
Atomic News Compiled by Chris Zeigler ......................................................... 4
Undergraduate Program: 247th ACS National Meeting, Dallas, TX ........... 6
ACS Launches the College to Career Website for Undergraduates By ACS Staff ................................................................. 8
Call for Papers: 248th ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA ............ 9
FEATURES
Make It Count: Valuable Experiences for Working Students Adapted from www.onlinecolleges.net ....................... 10
Peace through Chemistry: Chemistry Concepts Were Only One Aspect of What I Shared through the Peace Corps By Philip Rodenbough .................. 12
CAREERS
Analyzing Your Career Chemistry By Nancy McGuire ............................. 16
COLLEGE TO CAREER
Become a High School Chemistry Teacher:
Introduce Chemistry Concepts and Inspire Future Careers By ACS Staff ....... 20
CHAPTERS
SPOTLIGHTS
Duquesne University, Aquinas College, and University of Maryland, Baltimore County Compiled by Robin Lindsey .......... 23
Fun, Fire, and Food! How We Help Local Boy Scouts Earn Their Chemistry Merit Badges By Marie Melzer and Kaleigh Wiley ........... 26
A Note about the Cover Photo
ACS strongly supports complying with all applicable lab safety requirements. The lack of protective eyewear on the students depicted in the cover photograph is troubling. As detailed in the accompanying article, the extreme poverty in Burkina Faso renders such compliance extremely difficult. ACS urges everyone to use protective eyewear whenever they are in a lab. For more information, please consult the materials on the website of the ACS Committee on Safety, including the materials on Chemical Safety in the Classroom. http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/committees/chemicalsafety/chemical-safety-in-the-classroom.html
American Chemical Society Scholars Program
Pathways to Success in the Chemical Sciences
Inviting African-American, Hispanic, & Native American students to apply for renewable scholarships for the 2014–2015 academic year.
Up to $5,000 will be awarded to underrepresented minority students who want to enter the field of chemistry or chemistry-related fields, such as environmental science, toxicology, and chemical technology. High school seniors and college freshmen, sophomores, or juniors are eligible to apply.
Eligible applicants include those who are interested in:
• pursuing four-year degrees in the chemical sciences
• transferring from two-year colleges to four-year colleges to pursue chemical science degrees
• pursuing two-year degrees in chemical technology.
For more information, and to access the online application form, visit: www.acs.org/scholars
Application deadline is March 1, 2014.
Approximately 100 scholarships will be awarded.
One of the great pleasures in my career was teaching organic chemistry to undergraduate students. Why? Probably first and foremost, because I’m a ham. Secondly, I love getting to know the students, who almost inevitably are open to new ways of looking at things. Another reason is that teaching is in my blood: my dad, mother, and sister were all teachers. Lastly, teaching satisfies for me a fundamental aspect of life, as I have long believed that if a significant portion of your life did not in some way involve helping people, then there wasn’t really a good reason for you being here.
I have many passions, but if I had to pick one to put at the top of the list, it would be improving the quality of K–12 science education in the United States. Annual international competitions have long revealed that the average performance of our students in such vital areas as reading, math, and science is well below that of many other industrialized nations. There are many contributing factors: lack of parental emphasis on STEM education; school years that are too short; ineffectiveness of government (state and federal) education programs; and teacher unions that focus more on seniority than performance, to cite just a few. These factors are controversial and difficult to address, but that shouldn’t be a reason not to discuss them.
So, why should you be concerned about elementary and secondary science education? I assume that one of the reasons you are taking chemistry is that you understand its significance and benefits in our daily lives. If that is correct, then you are in a position to share the importance of chemistry with others — and I hope you will do just that. ACS has two excellent outreach programs that offer resources to help you communicate with non-scientists about the value of chemistry in education. One is Chemistry Ambassadors (www.acs.org/ChemistryAmbassadors); the other is ACS’s legislative network, Act4Chemistry (www.acs.org/Act4Chemistry). I encourage you to check out both.
No matter where the future takes you, you will always have the experience of having learned how chemistry can improve the world we live in. Use this knowledge to explain to others why it’s critical that our students graduate from high school with a good grounding in science. The goal isn’t to turn all students into scientists; the goal is to give them the tools necessary to make informed decisions on issues such as the environment, energy, and other important areas.
The National Science Board’s biennial report, *Science and Engineering Indicators 2012*, notes that public understanding of science and technology is a cause for concern: “U.S. survey data indicate that many Americans provide multiple incorrect answers to basic questions about scientific facts and do not apply appropriate reasoning strategies to questions about selected scientific issues.”
As I have written on several occasions, we currently have an ever-increasing technological world with an ever-decreasing level of technological literacy. This is not sustainable. Do your part to make change happen!
Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with me at firstname.lastname@example.org or in person at a future meeting. Best wishes for the future.
Thomas J. Barton, professor emeritus of chemistry at Iowa State University and former director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, is president of ACS.
**About Thomas J. Barton**
Tom Barton entered Wharton County Junior College as a journalism/prelaw student on a music scholarship for voice and clarinet — then opted to take a course in chemistry and enjoyed it. Although he eventually gave up the clarinet, he still loves to sing today (mainly for his church and his two cats). His other pastimes include golf, fishing, motorcycling, flying, sailing, and languages, to name a few. He and his wife, Betty, have lived in Ames, Iowa, since 1967 (but enjoy spending their winters in places like Mexico, Thailand, and Nicaragua).
Making a common cosmetic and sunblock ingredient safer
Using a particular type of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) — a common ingredient in cosmetics, food products, toothpaste, and sunscreen — could reduce the potential health risks associated with the widely used compound. The report on the substance appears in the ACS journal *Chemical Research in Toxicology*.
TiO₂ is generally considered a safe ingredient in commercially available skin products because it doesn’t penetrate healthy skin. However, research has shown that TiO₂ can cause potentially toxic effects when exposed to ultraviolet light, which is in the sun’s rays. To design a safer TiO₂ for human use, the researchers tested different forms of the compound, each with its own architecture.
They tested TiO₂ powders on pig skin with indoor lighting, which has low ultraviolet light. They discovered that rutile, one of the two most commonly used crystalline forms of TiO₂, easily washes off and has little effect on skin. Anatase, the other commonly used form, was difficult to wash off and damaged the outermost layer of skin even in low ultraviolet light. The findings strongly encourage the use of rutile to produce safer TiO₂-based cosmetic and pharmaceutical products.
Read more about the research: “Crystal-Line Phase Modulates the Potency of Nanometric TiO₂ to Adhere and Perturb the Stratum Corneum of Porcine Skin under Indoor Light,” *Chem. Res. Toxicol.*, 2013, 26 (10), pp 1579–1590.
Toward a urine test for detecting blood clots
Detecting dangerous blood clots, which can cause life-threatening conditions such as strokes and heart attacks, has been a coveted and elusive goal. But scientists are now reporting progress in the form of a simple urine test. Their study, in which they demonstrated that the test works using laboratory mice, appears in the journal *ACS Nano*.
Blood clots — clumps of platelets and fibrin proteins — can threaten to choke off blood flow and lead to a wide range of serious and sometimes fatal conditions, including atherosclerosis and stroke.
Usually, blood clots are a good thing. They form a plug that stops the bleeding after an injury. But sometimes a clot forms when it really isn’t needed, such as when a person sits too long on a long-distance flight and develops deep-vein thrombosis. In that case, a clot forms in the leg, blocking blood flow and causing leg pain. But it also can dislodge and move throughout the body to the heart or even the brain, which is life-threatening. Diagnosing a blood clot, or thrombosis, is tricky, however, and current clinical tests aren’t always reliable. Sangeeta Bhatia’s team wanted to develop a simple and more reliable way to test for these obstructive blood clots.
They describe development and testing of synthetic biomarkers — lab-made materials for detecting what is going on in the body. They conjugated peptides onto the surface of nanomaterials that are similar to those already approved and used in clinical settings. They injected the nanomaterials into mice. The peptides break up if a blood clot is actively forming, and those peptide fragments were detected in a simple urine test. “Our results demonstrate that synthetic biomarkers can be engineered to sense vascular diseases remotely from the urine and may allow applications in point-of-care diagnostics,” the researchers state.
Read more about the research: “Nanoparticles That Sense Thrombin Activity as Synthetic Urinary Biomarkers of Thrombosis,” *ACS Nano*, 2013, 7 (10), pp 9001–9009.
Maximizing broccoli’s cancer-fighting potential
Spraying a plant hormone on broccoli boosts its cancer-fighting potential, and researchers say they have new insights on how that works. They published their findings, which could help scientists build an even better, more healthful broccoli, in ACS’s *Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry*.
Eating broccoli regularly has been linked to lower rates of prostate, colon, breast, lung, and skin cancers. In this superfood, glucosinolates (GSs) and the substances that are left when GSs are broken down can boost the levels of a broccoli enzyme that helps rid the body of carcinogens. One way to increase GSs is to spray the plant hormone methyl jasmonate on broccoli. To determine which GSs and their products actually boost the enzyme levels when broccoli is treated, researchers tested five commercial types of broccoli by spraying them in the field with the hormone. They found that sulforaphane is the major contributor toward enhanced cancer-fighting enzyme levels, although other substances also likely contribute.
Environmental conditions played a role, too. This information could be used to identify superior broccoli and to breed even more healthful broccoli plants.
Read more about the research: “Influence of Seasonal Variation and Methyl Jasmonate Mediated Induction of Glucosinolate Biosynthesis on Quinone Reductase Activity in Broccoli Florets,” *J. Agric. Food Chem.*, 2013, 61 (40), pp 9623–9631.
Recycling valuable materials used in televisions, car batteries, and cell phones
Many of today’s technologies, from hybrid car batteries to flat-screen televisions, rely on materials known as rare earth elements (REEs) that are in short supply, but scientists are reporting development of a new method to recycle them from wastewater. The process, which is described in a study in the journal *ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces*, could help alleviate economic and environmental pressures facing the REE industry.
Zhang Lin and colleagues point out that REEs, such as terbium — a silvery metal so soft it can be cut with a knife — behave in unique ways as super magnets, catalysts, or superconductors. That makes them irreplaceable in many of today’s tech gadgets and machines. Market watchers expect global demand to rise to at least 185,000 tons by 2015. Although some of these elements are actually plentiful, others are indeed in short supply. According to reports, terbium and dysprosium supplies may only last another 30 years. Attempts so far to recycle them from industrial wastewater have proven expensive or otherwise impractical. A major challenge is that the elements are typically very diluted in these waters. The team knew that a nanomaterial known as nano-magnesium hydroxide, or nano-Mg(OH)$_2$, was effective at removing some metals and dyes from wastewater. So they set out to understand how the compound worked and whether it would efficiently remove diluted REEs, as well.
To test their idea, they produced inexpensive nano-Mg(OH)$_2$ particles, whose shapes resemble flowers when viewed with a high-power microscope. They showed that the material captured more than 85% of the REEs that were diluted in wastewater in an initial experiment mimicking real-world conditions. “Recycling REEs from wastewater not only saves rare earth resources and protects the environment, but also brings considerable economic benefits,” the researchers state. “The pilot-scale experiment indicated that the self-supported flowerlike nano-Mg(OH)$_2$ had great potential to recycle REEs from industrial wastewater.”
Read more about the research: “Recycling Rare Earth Elements from Industrial Wastewater with Flowerlike Nano-Mg(OH)$_2$,” *ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces*, 2013, 5 (19), pp 9719–9725.
Baking blueberries changes their polyphenol content — and possibly their health benefits
Blueberries are called a superfood for their high polyphenol content, but when served as warm, gooey pie filling or when lending bursts of sweet flavor to a muffin, their “super” health benefits change. Scientists studied how cooking and baking affect the increasingly popular fruit’s polyphenols and reported their mixed findings — levels of some of these substances rose while others fell — in ACS’s *Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry*.
Ana Rodriguez-Mateos and colleagues note that eating blueberries is associated with several health perks, including improved thinking, reduced risk for heart disease, and reduced inflammation. Research suggests that polyphenols lend the fresh fruit these benefits. But consumers don’t always enjoy blueberries raw. Some methods of processing, such as juicing and canning, lower polyphenol levels by 22–81%. However, no studies have tested whether using blueberries in breads, muffins, or pies affects their polyphenol content. Rodriguez-Mateos’ team sought to test the stability of these health-promoting compounds during cooking, proofing (when the dough rises before baking), and baking.
They found that all three processes had mixed effects on blueberries’ polyphenols — which include anthocyanin, procyanidin, quercetin, and phenolic acids. For example, anthocyanin levels dropped by 10–21%, while the levels of smaller procyanidin oligomers got a boost and those of larger ones dipped. In addition, phenolic acid levels increased, while other compounds such as quercetin remained constant. The researchers note that the retention of certain polyphenols observed in their study might be due to the use of yeast, which may act as a stabilizing agent during baking. “Due to their possible health benefits, a better understanding of the impact of processing is important to maximize the retention of these phytochemicals in berry-containing products,” the researchers state.
Read more about the research: “Impact of Cooking, Proving, and Baking on the (Poly)phenol Content of Wild Blueberry,” *J. Agric. Food Chem.*, Article ASAP, DOI: 10.1021/jf403366q.
POWER YOUR FUTURE!
Undergraduate Program
SUNDAY, MARCH 16
Hospitality Center
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Undergraduate Research Papers (Oral)
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Making the Most of Your First ACS Meeting
9:00 – 9:45 AM
Graduate School Reality Check: Getting In
10:00 – 11:15 AM
Graduate School Reality Check: You’re In—Now What?
11:15 AM – 12:15 PM
Chem Demo Exchange—Household Chemicals
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Networking Social with Graduate School Recruiters
1:00 – 5:00 PM
Technical Symposium: The Many Faces of Energy Research
1:00 – 2:30 PM
Careers in the Energy Industry Panel
2:45 – 4:00 PM
Workshop: Improving Scientific Communication Skills
2:45 – 4:00 PM
Workshop: Making Demos Matter
4:00 – 5:30 PM
ACS Student Chapter Awards Ceremony
7:00 – 8:30 PM
Undergraduate Social
8:30 – 11:00 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 17
Hospitality Center
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Undergraduate Research Papers (Oral)
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Technical Symposium: Materials Science and Energy Research
9:00 – 10:30 AM
Workshop: Chemists Celebrate Earth Day Research Events
9:45 – 11:45 AM
How to Network 101
10:45 AM – 12:00 NOON
Undergraduate Poster Session
12:00 – 2:00 PM
Eminent Scientist Lecture
2:30 – 3:30 PM
Undergraduate Speed Networking with Chemistry Professionals
3:45 – 5:15 PM
Kavli Lecture
5:30 – 6:30 PM
Sci-Mix/Successful Student Chapter Posters
8:00 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 18
Chemistry and the Environment Film Series: Movie TBA
12:00 NOON – 2:00 PM
Attention: Graduate School Recruiters!
Network with highly qualified undergraduate students who are interested in learning more about your graduate school programs. Register to participate in the graduate school recruiting events. For more information contact Lori Betsock at email@example.com. To register, go to www.acs.org/GradSchoolRecruiters.
All events are sponsored or co-sponsored by the Society Committee on Education Undergraduate Programs Advisory Board.
Chair: Matthew J. Mio, University of Detroit Mercy, MI
Program Chair: Christopher Bradley, Mount St. Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, MD
Program format and times are subject to change. Please consult the final program.
As an undergraduate chemistry major, you’ve developed a certain passion for your chosen science. But how can you develop this passion into a career that you find equally fascinating and challenging?
If you’re like many undergraduates, you probably have a ton of career-related questions… or perhaps you’re not even sure what questions to ask?
College to Career, a new ACS website for undergraduate students, is designed to help you to answer many career-related questions — and then take the next steps to launch a successful career involving the chemical sciences. The site is now available at www.acs.org/CollegeToCareer — and it’s totally free to use.
**Exploring chemistry careers and fields**
The College to Career website offers career resources specifically designed for chemistry undergraduates. For starters, it provides a wealth of information on 36 traditional and non-traditional careers relating to chemistry — and even more career options will be added in the future. The site also enables you to explore career options within the five major disciplines of chemistry: analytical, biochemical, organic, inorganic, and physical.
To help you learn more about career options that are available at various degree levels in chemistry, College to Career also features more than 70 career profiles of real-world chemists. In their own words, these chemists provide detailed insights into their individual career pathways. Courtesy of ACS Webinars, you’ll also find short video clips highlighting alternative career options.
**Take the next steps**
Once you’ve explored career options in chemistry, the Next Steps section of the website will provide you with a variety of resources to get your career off to a great start.
As you may know, research experience has become a prerequisite for gaining entry into a graduate program and obtaining many entry-level jobs in chemistry. As a result, you’ll find the Get Research Experience section to be an especially helpful and important resource. This section’s Get Experience database contains leads on summer internships, research experiences, and co-op opportunities for undergraduate chemistry students.
By pursuing these experiential opportunities, you can learn to conduct research under the guidance of a faculty supervisor, mentor, or advisor — and also work independently or with a research group. You can also expand your knowledge and lab skills, and experience chemistry in a real-world setting. These positions also enable you to begin to develop your network with professionals, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars.
The Further Your Education section helps you to determine what level of education you will need to reach your career goals. Whether you’re looking for a bachelor’s program, transferring to a four-year college, or planning for graduate school, you’ll find helpful information for identifying a program that fits your needs… and succeeding once you’ve been accepted!
Having a solid grasp of chemistry concepts and laboratory skills is essential to your success in a chemistry career, but that’s not all you need. The Job Hunting and Career Skills section is a complete resource that will help you successfully compete for a job, and once you’re hired, excel in your position. This section contains a variety of career resources, such as career interest assessment tools, proven tips on résumé writing and job interviewing, up-to-date facts about the chemical industry, and access to the ACS Career Consulting program — a valuable ACS member benefit.
The fourth area of the Next Steps section is called Develop Your Network. Access this section to find out why networking is important, read articles and tips on networking, and learn about the networking opportunities that ACS offers.
**Start on your career path today!**
For most chemistry undergraduates, choosing a career that will be the best personal fit (and the most rewarding, intellectually and financially) is neither simple nor easy. But by taking a little time looking through the College to Career site, you can greatly reduce the amount of time and effort needed to find the best path forward. You can also save yourself the expense and frustration of starting down a career path that really isn’t for you… and ultimately, end up happier with your career decision.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Present Your Research at the 248th ACS National Meeting
SAN FRANCISCO, CA • AUGUST 10-14, 2014
Join more than 15,000 chemists, academics, students, and other professionals
To be considered for a poster presentation, submit your abstract via the Program and Abstract Creation System (PACS) at http://abstracts.acs.org
Chemistry and Global Stewardship
ACS Chemistry for Life®
www.acs.org
Enrolled college students who also maintain part-time or full-time employment are a common part of today’s academic climate. According to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 70% of U.S. students held down jobs during their four years of undergraduate study, and roughly one in five logged 35 hours or more per week throughout the school year.
Clearly, a routine that effectively balances school and work with family and social life is crucial for employed college students. However, it’s also important for all undergraduates to gain experience in the professional field they are studying during their program, and for many employed students, their current occupation does not match their long-term professional goals.
This article provides some tips and ideas for students who wish to gain valuable skills and experience vital to their prospective career — without sacrificing that much-needed paycheck.
**The life of a working student**
Before pursuing professional opportunities related to their degree path, students should ensure they are able to make such a commitment. For this reason, University of Pennsylvania professor Laura Perna recommends that students curtail their weekly work schedules. “While working more than 15 hours per week may be financially necessary,” she told *U.S. News & World Report*, “I suggest that students first be sure that they have taken full advantage of all available sources of financial aid, especially financial aid in the form of grants.”
That being said, it’s still important to note that some employment options are more beneficial to students than others. Robin Dizes, manager of career development services at Peirce College, told Fox Business that certain opportunities — such as paid internships and temporary positions in a student’s chosen field — often lead to promising career leads after graduation. “If you choose employment that meets your needs, you will be more likely to continue to work there long-term, and long-term employment is attractive to employers, builds your résumé, and allows you to have stability in your career,” she said.
An additional reality is that many students are required to take on jobs unrelated to their field just to finance their tuition payments, pay rent and bills, and provide for extracurricular activities. Rather than jeopardizing their primary means of support, academic experts urge students to seek out opportunities that will assist their career plans without consuming large amounts of time or energy.
**Internships**
Internships are highly coveted among college students, for several reasons. First, they enable students to experience firsthand the working environment they plan to enter once they have obtained a degree. Additionally, these positions allow students to network with professionals in their field, learn practical skills not taught in the classroom, and collaborate with other interns to hone their teamwork skills. And in many cases, internships can also lead to entry-level positions for students once they graduate.
However, there are also some drawbacks to internships. Time commitment is a major factor; most internships require 20 hours or more per week — and since the majority of these opportunities do not award any monetary compensation, students must forgo paid work to satisfy their demands as an intern. However, even paid interns often encounter another problem: the work they perform is vastly different from that performed by hired employees. Interns often assist with housekeeping, office logistics, and other menial tasks that may have little (if anything) to do with their prospective career. Finally, the quality of the internship is important; some companies seek interns with the genuine desire to train them and expose them to working conditions in their future field, while others simply view them as free laborers.
Students can learn about different internship opportunities by reaching out to their professors and corresponding with officials at their institutions’ career centers; information is also available through nationally oriented websites like InternMatch.com and Indeed.com. However, *Forbes* contributor Frances Bridges says the key to landing a desirable internship is through thorough research of the industry as a whole. Students should look into hiring practices and business philosophies of all the major companies and organizations in their field, as well as the companies’ stock market performance, popular products, and other constantly changing variables. Students who can intelligently discuss the current state of their prospective profession fare best during intern interviews.
**Tutoring**
Undergraduate students often opt to tutor children and adults in their local community, as well as their collegiate peers; some specialize in group classes, while others tutor clients one-on-one. Many student chapters provide opportunities for their members to tutor through their chemistry departments. Some chemistry students also pursue independent tutoring gigs (based on the demands of their individual schedule) that allow them to gain experience in their field and earn a little money on the side. The
key components to being a successful tutor are identifying the educational demands within one’s local community, creating a viable lesson plan, and delivering satisfactory services that generate positive word of mouth.
College career centers usually provide resources for students who wish to tutor; additionally, web users can register with online tutor referral agencies like TutorGeek and TutorMatch to locate potential clients. Community outreach is also crucial; tutors should create a website with information about their services, post advertising flyers on job boards, and print business cards. Home-based tutoring is somewhat frowned upon because of safety and liability issues. For this reason, students are urged to contact their local library or community center to inquire about reserving conference rooms on a regular basis. Digital tutoring is also a popular alternative to face-to-face sessions.
**Volunteering**
In lieu of paid opportunities, many students obtain skills and experience through unpaid volunteer work. Your student chapter or ACS local section often needs volunteers for outreach or other chemistry-related events. Aspiring medical students can donate their time to blood banks and other medical establishments, and student teachers spend their time assisting educators in the classroom. Volunteering is especially useful for students in any major who don’t have any professional experience and are hoping to bolster their résumé — particularly opportunities that allow the student to travel abroad.
*Huffington Post* contributors Steven Weddle and Billy Beltz urge prospective overseas volunteers to thoroughly research all potential opportunities before signing up. “You’re about to make a very serious commitment in terms of time, money, and impact on others,” they note. “Questions to ask include: Is your program fee going to good use? Will you actually add meaningful value to your project? Will you be safe?” They recommend visiting reputable sites like Volunteer Forever to learn more about viable international opportunities.
For those who wish to volunteer stateside, the University of New Hampshire encourages college students to contact different organizations within their local communities; websites like www.volunteer.gov provide detailed, area-specific information about different opportunities. And while all volunteer work is inherently rewarding on a karmic level, students should prioritize opportunities that help them build the skills they need to succeed and gain insight into the industry they’ll enter upon graduation.
**Other ways to gain experience**
In addition to internships, tutoring services, and volunteer projects, students can prepare themselves for the workforce by attending seminars, conferences, and other events associated with their future career. These gatherings often provide outlets for attendees to learn new skills, network with professionals in their field, and learn more about the current state of their industry. ACS offers special low student rates to attend regional and national meetings (www.acs.org/meetings). Massive open online courses (MOOCs) may also be useful; these free web classes typically don’t award credit, but they do impart valuable skills and proficiencies to students who complete the coursework. Coursera, edX, and Udacity are some of today’s leading MOOC providers.
But even with all of these options, students should seek out as much wisdom as they can from their current job, even if that job isn’t related to their degree or career path. Every position carries transferable duties and responsibilities; for example, restaurant workers must excel at customer service, office assistants gain a good grasp of the inner workings of business operations and corporate culture, and employees in retail learn about sales, marketing, and financial management. And regardless of the position itself, every place of employment offers the chance for students to network with co-workers, clients, and customers.
Juggling academic responsibilities and work obligations can be frustrating, and these demands ostensibly leave little time for other pursuits. However, there are plenty of professionally oriented opportunities available to today’s students that require minimal time commitment, but still manage to reward them with the skills, experience, and expertise required to excel in their field once they’ve earned their degree. The trick is knowing where — and how — to find them.
The local high school in Yembering has no chemistry lab. No beakers, no flasks, no chemicals. I suppose you might not find this surprising, given that Yembering uses well water instead of indoor plumbing, gas-powered generators in place of an electrical grid, and dirt roads in lieu of paved ones.
Yembering, a typical small village in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, is where I spent much of my term of service as a public high school chemistry teacher with the U.S. Peace Corps. I had joined the Peace Corps because I wanted to help people in need, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t also looking for adventure. My time there was filled with inspiring ups and disheartening downs — but looking back, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
**Forécariah**
Guinea is a beautiful country with diverse natural regions, from mountains to savannahs and forests. My first stop in Guinea was the Peace Corps training town, Forécariah, a small community in the country’s hot and humid coastal region.
Like all the other incoming volunteers, I lived with a host family, who helped me acclimate to the culture. My particular family consisted of a man, his two wives, and two children (one by each of the wives). We ate rice with peanut sauce, potatoes, and the occasional chicken. The quality and preparation style of the food took some getting used to: I had to watch out for pebbles in the rice. Water came from a well, and although there was wired electricity, the town turned it on only sporadically.
During the day, I attended intensive training classes with my fellow new volunteers, run by Peace Corps staff and experienced volunteers. Although I had tutored freshman chemistry as a junior and senior in college, this experience was proving to be relevant and helpful.
As I would be teaching in French, the national language of Guinea, I also took some French language lessons. I had previously studied French, but this was not true of all incoming volunteers. Complete immersion allowed us all to learn to communicate effectively. In addition to language skills, I was instructed in how to teach and how to run a chemistry classroom in Guinea. We all learned about cross-cultural communication, and generally how to live and be happy in our new environment. Toward the end of the 12-week training session, we conducted a summer school for the community of Forécariah, where we eagerly practiced our new teaching skills.
**Koupéla**
In a normal Peace Corps experience, after training I would have settled down in another nearby town, where I would conduct my two years of service. Instead, Guinea experienced unexpected political turmoil and violence, so shortly after a program-wide evacuation, I ended up continuing my service in Burkina Faso, a landlocked country 200 miles east of Guinea, located just south of the Sahara Desert. Incoming volunteers generally should not anticipate such abrupt changes, but the Peace Corps does value flexibility in its volunteers. Burkina Faso is not far from Guinea, and also has important cultural similarities (including its national language of French). I started my real service in a medium-sized town called Koupéla, and it was always very hot there.
I lived in a small, three-room house made out of concrete. I shared a courtyard with another identical house, in which lived an elementary school teacher and his family. Out in the courtyard was a hole-in-the-ground bathroom and a shower area, each partially enclosed but open to a sky that virtually never rained. Most
importantly, there was our shared water spigot, a true luxury.
I was very fortunate to have sympathetic neighbors. They came to my rescue many times, including one night when bats snuck into my house. My full-size electric fan was my most valuable possession in Koupéla: I could hardly sleep without it (although many of my fellow volunteers managed without such extravagances). The electricity would occasionally cut out at night, and I would immediately wake up drenched in sweat.
Koupéla is located at a regional transport intersection, so every morning after my oatmeal breakfast, I’d hop on my bike and ride down the busy interstate road to the school where I taught.
In many ways, teaching in Africa is similar to teaching in the United States. You get up in front of a class, talk about chemistry, draw on the chalkboard, try to encourage some student activities, assign homework, conduct tests, and try out labs. I taught two sections of what would be roughly the equivalent of 8th grade physical sciences in the United States. The school was fortunate to have a small science lab with some glassware and even a few essential chemicals.
Previous Peace Corps volunteers had put together a booklet on local methods for science experiments, which served as a useful guide. We did distillations, talked about the planets, and played with batteries and light bulbs. My classes in Koupéla had about 80 students each. All the students rode their bikes to school (like I did), but all the other teachers rode their motorcycles to school. Don’t expect to operate motor vehicles as a volunteer, however: the Peace Corps strictly forbids it.
I taught my science classes in the morning and ran the school computer lab in the afternoon. The computer lab was the only room in the school with air conditioning. The computers were ancient: they had been donated a few years back by a non-governmental organization, or NGO. Despite the organization’s efforts to train teachers to maintain the lab, the computers had quickly fallen into disrepair and disuse.
I fixed up the computers as best I could. I started holding regular hours and training student leaders to manage the lab by themselves. At first I didn’t give much thought to my fellow teachers’ lack of interest in the lab. It wasn’t until after several months that I learned that one of the lead teachers ran the private for-pay cyber-café (computer lab) down the street from the school, creating a serious conflict of interest. I suppose this fact
was overlooked by the NGO that donated the computers. This is one of the advantages of the Peace Corps model of service: complete and sustained immersion into a community leads to a depth of understanding that is unmatched by development organizations seeking to simply swoop in and drop off aid.
When summer came, I helped train incoming Burkina Faso volunteers and worked at a U.S. embassy program teaching English to students in the capital. At the end of summer, the Peace Corps program in Guinea decided to open up again. I opted to return to Guinea to finish out my second year and help reestablish the program (again, a very unusual circumstance).
**Yembering**
I served my second year in a tiny village called Yembering, high up in the mountains of Guinea. I was happy to have some relief from the heat of Koupéla, but Yembering was two hours from the nearest paved road, had zero wired electricity, and water came from the village hand pumps or wells. The bush-rats there were both enormous and terrifying, especially when they took up residence in my outdoor latrine.
I lived on the school grounds in Yembering, in a building just a few yards behind the classrooms. My school encompassed both middle and high school grades, and I taught chemistry at both levels. There were far fewer supplies in Yembering, so my classes and I got creative. We electrolyzed water with little more than some D batteries, plastic water bottles, copper wire, and the graphite from a couple of pencils.
The evenings in Yembering were peaceful and beautiful. I spent them chatting with the improbable friends I had started to make in Yembering. We sipped tea and simply relaxed under the vast and luminous starlit sky.
In Yembering especially, there were times that I felt discouraged. What good was talking about organic chemistry in an impoverished community that faces so many other more important challenges? I had students coming into class who were clearly malnourished. The dropout rate was atrocious: from 120 students in the lowest grade to only 20 in the highest. Our school didn’t even have enough enrollment to have a senior class: students who wanted to complete their high school education had to go to the distant regional capital. Despite my best efforts, academic discourse often felt hollow. I had to convince myself that I was really teaching critical thinking, and that these skills would transfer to other aspects of my students’ lives. I’m still not completely sold.
In fact, the chemistry that I taught was not the primary way I helped the students in my classes. Instead, the main benefit of my time in the Peace Corps was the cultural exchange, and in that sense I benefited at least as much as (if not more than) the communities that I served. I got to experience a completely different way of life, and in turn, a handful of Africans got better acquainted with American culture through me. This cultural exchange is in fact spelled out in the official goal of the Peace Corps, which is only one-third technical assistance. The other two-thirds are Americans learning about the world, and the world learning about Americans. Of course I had known about these goals for a long time, but I find they have even more meaning in hindsight. My favorite memories in the Peace Corps have little to do with the organization itself, my job, or the various exotic events I witnessed; rather, they center on a handful of incidental evening conversations where I embraced local friendliness and appreciated our shared humanity.
**New York**
Coming back to the United States was challenging. I dove straight into graduate school, in the middle of New York City, no less. For the first few months I struggled to adjust and return to the American pace of life. I’ve since found a good balance, but “reverse culture shock” is real and should not be underestimated.
In many respects, I had exactly the adventure that I was seeking. I saw monkeys and elephants. I lived without modern luxuries. I rode my bike through endless miles of dirt road to obscure and hidden places.
But Africa is still calling me! So, I’ve sought out new volunteer opportunities that I can pursue while in grad school. I’m part of the UN Online Volunteering program, and I’m an eIntern for USAID through the U.S. Department of State Virtual Student Foreign Service program. Essentially I’m building a career trajectory that will send me back to Africa. Mostly this is because I want to participate in much-needed development work there.
But once again, I would be lying if I didn’t say that part of the reason I wanted to return is so that I could experience those hot and lazy starry nights again, sipping tea, talking with unlikely friends about everything and nothing.
Learn more about the Peace Corps at www.peacecorps.gov/, and learn more about Philip’s experience in particular at http://philgoestoguinea.blogspot.com/.
Philip Rodenbough is pursuing his Ph.D. in chemistry at Columbia University, and hopes to work in science advising for international development. Follow him on Twitter: @prodenbough.
ACS Directory of Graduate Research 2013 DGRweb
>> Facilitates Research Collaborations in the Chemical Sciences
>> Enables Networking Across Chemical Subdisciplines
>> Helps Students with Selecting a Graduate Program
>> Identifies Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs)
Conduct free online searches at www.acs.org/dgrweb.
The Redesigned ACS Directory of Graduate Research (DGRweb)
Get Fast, Accurate, and Indispensable Results Using the DGRweb!
The ACS Directory of Graduate Research (DGRweb) is a free searchable, online database that provides the most comprehensive compilation of information on graduate study in the chemical sciences at universities in North America. The Directory has been redesigned with improved and expanded searching capabilities. To learn more about the DGRweb, go to www.acs.org/dgrweb.
SEARCH EIGHT AVAILABLE DISCIPLINES:
> Chemistry
> Chemical Engineering
> Biochemistry
> Medicinal/Pharmaceutical Chemistry
> Polymers and Materials Science
> Toxicology
> Marine Science
> Environmental Science
FIND INFORMATION ON:
673 academic departments
8,846 faculty members
In the daily deluge of class assignments, lab projects, and campus life in general, it’s easy to lose track of where you’re going in the long run. Perhaps you’ve realized that what first drew you to chemistry doesn’t motivate you anymore. Or it could be that the job market isn’t looking for what you have to offer, or that you’re considering postponing graduation another year or two to take some courses to build up your weak areas. Or perhaps your interests are all over the place, and organizing them into something that resembles a job description seems impossible.
This is a tough job market. Job ads list such specific requirements, and you may wonder how any one person could have all those skills. You could send out hundreds of applications and grab the first job offer that comes along, but will that get you where you want to go?
**Draw your own map**
Taking stock of what you’re good at and what you love to do lets you look beyond the job titles and “knowledge, skills, and abilities” lists for opportunities that let you be *you* at your best. This approach helps you stand out from the crowd, and it provides you with a creative outlook and resiliency in a challenging job market.
Developing this mindset can require a mental shift. School life rewards students for being their best in every subject. Straight-A students get recognition, scholarship money, and their choice of top universities. Weak areas must be strengthened, deficiencies addressed. How can you balance a chemical equation if you can’t do simple arithmetic? However, the more advanced you get, the harder it is to be excellent at everything. Just trying to manage all of your academic commitments can leave you feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed.
Fortunately, a little specialization is good for you, and it’s good for business, too. In their book *Now, Discover Your Strengths*, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton report that the most successful managers enable their employees to do what they are best at every day. They don’t focus exclusively on correcting their employees’ weak areas, and they don’t assume that anyone can be good at anything if they simply get enough training. Highly successful people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett focus on the things that require their strongest skills and interests. They find colleagues who have skills that complement theirs, rather than trying to be good at everything.
How can you find what you’re really good at and what you enjoy doing, and then shape that into a career plan? Richard
Take advantage of ACS career resources
ACS CAREER PATHWAYS WORKSHOPS
ACS Career Pathways workshops represent another effective way to discover the career path that best matches your talents, goals, and personality. The program begins with an introductory half-day workshop where you’ll learn about the career pathway options available to chemical professionals. Next, you can choose among four workshops that focus on academic, government, industry, and entrepreneurial career pathways to continue exploring and developing your personal career pathway plan. The third phase of the program focuses on interviewing, giving you the skills you need to ace your next interview and begin a new career.
ACS WEBINARS
If you find yourself considering employment outside the lab or classroom, you can learn about alternative careers in chemistry via ACS webinars (http://acswebinars.org/career-ondemand) or live seminars (http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings.html). In these presentations, chemistry graduates working as lawyers, public policy experts, art conservators, border security agents, and writers talk about what it’s like to work in their fields.
Nelson Bolles’ book *What Color is Your Parachute?* takes you through a series of exercises designed to identify the skills you most enjoy using, and places where you can put those skills to use.
Even if you’re certain that you want to spend the rest of your career designing photoluminescent quantum dots, it’s worth considering other options. It’s a real rarity to find someone who has spent an entire career doing only one thing. Identifying your best skills on the most basic level can open up career options you might not have thought of otherwise. Having a road map can also help you home in on areas where you can strengthen a few specific skills.
What’s your style?
The type of organization you work for and your role in that organization should fit well with your preferred work style. If you’re comfortable doing many different tasks simultaneously, you might want to work for a small company, a small group within a larger company, or even run a solo operation. If you prefer to focus on just a few specific areas of inquiry, working in a larger team will let you specialize in your strengths.
If you’re really outgoing, you might try to find a role that lets you interact with colleagues, co-workers, and customers. Or, if you’re the solitary type, you could find satisfaction doing field studies in remote locations or analyzing large databases in front
of a computer screen. Risk-takers often enjoy the adventure of working for a start-up company, while those who need a more secure income gravitate toward more established businesses.
If you enjoy tending to the details and making sure that everything is done according to protocol, you could work in a medical diagnostics laboratory or process evidence for use in legal cases (think CSI labs and environmental cleanup operations). Product development chemists enjoy refining and optimizing processes or prototypes. If you chafe at routine and repetition and you like working on open-ended questions, then basic research might be your field.
Every team needs people whose styles complement each other: idea generators, practical planners, visionaries, detail people, programmers, theorists, people persons, and marketing wizards, to name a few.
**Do your research**
How will you find a role that fits you well? Ask questions of yourself and others, observe, and listen.
A few years ago, two friends and I were dissatisfied with our careers, and we formed an informal support group. I promised my friends that I would spend two hours alone every Saturday morning at a nearby coffee shop (so I couldn’t procrastinate by doing housework or watching television). I would spend this time reading relevant books and writing in my journal.
I spent this time away from friends and family — anyone who was eager to load me up with free advice on “what you need to do.” I turned off my cell phone and any Internet connections, to thwart my urge to check my messages or look at funny cat pictures. I used this time to create an inventory of the things that made me happy and were fun to do, and what I wanted more of in my working life (as well as types of functions and responsibilities I wanted to minimize).
**Start exploring**
Looking inward shows you what’s inside your own mind. Reaching out helps you move past the limits of your own knowledge and imagination, and puts you in contact with people you’ll be interacting with throughout your career. The best way to find things out and make yourself visible to potential employers is to contact people in your field and ask questions.
This can seem very daunting. Whom should you contact? Why would they want to talk to you? When you get right down to it, this is part of your undergraduate research, and it’s your job to be asking these questions. Building your network can be an enjoyable way to expand your horizons. Meeting and maintaining contacts online and in the “real world” can make you the go-to person when potential employers come looking for promising prospects. This is something you can start during your freshman year — but it’s never too late to begin.
Start small — pick a few faculty members, grad students, or postdocs from your department who are working on things you’re interested in and with whom you feel comfortable. Do your homework — what problems are they trying to solve? Have they published a paper recently? Have they just returned from an interesting conference? Write down a few specific questions in advance. Tell the person that you are doing some career planning, and ask if he or she would be willing to meet with you one-on-one for about a half hour to talk about their work. Not everyone is receptive to this kind of meeting, but those who understand the concept of networking will be happy to share their ideas with you.
This is very different from an interview with a recruiter or a hiring manager. You’re doing this to learn what’s going on in your field, sharpen your sense of direction, and learn what things you need in order to get where you’re going. Even if you don’t directly land a job this way, you will be better informed when you do go on a job interview.
Close your discussion with two questions: “Is there anything that I haven’t asked about that you think I should know?” and “Who else should I be talking to about this?”
Send the person a note of thanks afterward (tell them in person if you see them regularly), and mention two or three specific things that you learned from them. Taking notes during your meeting will help you remember these things, but don’t get so involved in your note-taking that you drop out of the conversation.
Stay in contact with the people with whom you really hit it off. Send them an interesting article now and then, or tell them if you’ve gone to their seminars or seen them mentioned in the press. If you see these people often, ask them how their work is going.
**Expand your network**
Attend ACS local section and regional meetings. Find people who are presenting research in your field. Contact them in advance to request and schedule half-hour meetings during the conference.
Establish e-mail contact with researchers who publish on topics that interest you. Follow them on Facebook or Twitter and respond to their posts when you have something relevant to say. Set up a LinkedIn profile and join several discussion groups: the online version of dressing up in your “business attire” and mingling with professional colleagues at an international conference. Reach out to people all the way up the hierarchy in your field, and you might be surprised who responds. If you ask well-thought-out questions and make intelligent comments, you’ll establish yourself as someone worth paying attention to.
Your first job after graduation might be exactly what you envisioned. More likely, it will be a first step in a long journey. Your road map will help you know when you’re moving in the right direction.
---
**Nancy McGuire** is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, MD. She has a Ph.D. in solid state chemistry, and began her career doing applied research.
**REFERENCES**
Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton. *Now, Discover Your Strengths*; Free Press: New York, 2001.
Richard Nelson Bolles. *What Color Is Your Parachute? 2014: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers*; Ten Speed Press: New York, 2013.
inChemistry Magazine for iOS, Kindle Fire and Android devices
Your digital library on chemistry careers, graduate school, and ACS student chapters.
American Chemical Society Undergraduate Programs Office
Send comments to: firstname.lastname@example.org.
© 2014 American Chemical Society
www.acs.org
Teaching allows you to share your passion for chemistry with others. Many educators say the most satisfying aspect of their work is helping to shape the lives and minds of students. Successful high school chemistry teachers are well-organized and disciplined enough to apply structure to a flexible but demanding teaching schedule.
On an average day, high school chemistry teachers facilitate student learning and understanding of chemistry through guided inquiry, direct instruction, investigations, problem solving, and discussion. Teachers are also responsible for class preparation, classroom management, as well as developing and grading assessments, and meeting with students and parents outside class. High school educators may teach between four and six classes comprising 20 to 30 students each. They may also lead field trips, organize after-school activities, and provide tutoring outside of class.
High school chemistry teachers often develop curriculum objectives for their classrooms using state and national science teaching standards, guidelines from national science organizations, and local input. Objectives are used as a planning guide for daily lessons that might include guided lectures, modeling laboratory investigations, projects, and group inquiry.
**Is this career a good fit for you?**
High school chemistry teachers agree that it is important to feel enthusiastic about the subject and to have a sincere interest in student development. They must have mastery of chemistry content and a variety of strategies for facilitating student engagement and deep understanding of that information. They are able to support students in making connections between classroom learning and the world around them. High school teachers must be willing to create an environment that enables all students to have an opportunity to learn chemistry. They should demonstrate patience, flexibility, fairness, and humor. Teachers must also enjoy working with teenagers and the special challenges that come with that age group.
Excellent chemistry teachers are themselves lifelong learners and are willing to collaborate and share their expertise with other education and science professionals.
**Future employment trends**
Despite budget limitations, science (particularly chemistry and physics) and math remain in demand in a considerable number of high schools. Increases in student enrollments and projected retirements should contribute to a favorable job market for teachers.
The job market for chemistry teachers is competitive. In some parts of the country, there is a severe shortage of qualified science teachers. In some instances, high school teachers may be asked to teach related courses (e.g. physics, mathematics) depending on the size of the school and course needs.
Lisa M. Balbes of Balbes Consultants LLC also contributed to this article.
Chemists in the Real World: Jennice Ozment
HIGH SCHOOL CHEMISTRY TEACHER
WALTON HIGH SCHOOL, COBB COUNTY, GA
Jennice Ozment has been teaching high school chemistry at Walton High School in Cobb County, Georgia, for six years. She spent 20 years working in the paper and oil and gas industries before transitioning into teaching. Two semesters’ worth of tertiary oil recovery research as an undergrad helped to launch her career, which steadily progressed into positions of increasing responsibility with international research projects and achievements during this tenure. However, the company she was working for in 2004 was shut down, and Ozment decided to stay at home, immersing herself in volunteer activities at her sons’ high school.
At about the same time, she was diagnosed with a neurological condition affecting her motor abilities that made a return to industry difficult. Fortunately, her involvement at the local high school led to substitute teaching, which turned into a full-time teaching position. Ozment says her own high school teacher, Mrs. Johannessen (Mrs. Jo), ignited her interest in chemistry. She now seeks to do the same for the next generation. She says, “I like to see a student’s eyes light up when they ‘get it.’”
She received the Hach-ACS scholarship for chemists who want to change careers and become teachers, and she credits the ACS for allowing her to explore this opportunity. She earned a Master’s of Arts in Teaching in chemistry, and has served as the lead on-level chemistry teacher at Walton High School. She also serves as the chief chemical safety officer at the school, where she is in charge of making sure safety equipment is in proper working order, chemicals are inventoried and stored correctly, and that the faculty is properly trained.
THIS IS HOW SHE WORKS:
How did you decide to become a chemist?
My high school chemistry teacher, Mrs. Jo, ignited my interest in chemistry. She was very positive, patient, and an incredible teacher. I took two years of chemistry from her and was her lab assistant my senior year. Not only did she teach me chemistry, she showed me how a great teacher cares about her students, doesn’t give up on them, and continually gives them positive feedback. She attended my wedding, held our firstborn son in her arms, and has been my friend for these last 34 years. Mrs. Jo has always been and will always be an inspiration to me.
Please describe your typical day on the job.
I arrive at school around 7:45 and have cafeteria duty from 8:05 to 8:15. School starts at 8:20. I teach 2 classes in a row from 8:20 to 10:30 and then have 55 minutes for planning. I teach another class from 11:35 until 12:30, and then I get 55 minutes for lunch. I teach 2 more classes from 1:35 to 3:30. I am usually at school until 6:00 pm setting up experiments and/or demos, cleaning up experiments and/or demos, making copies, tutoring, planning, grading, or doing paperwork.
What apps/software/instrumentation/tools can’t you live without?
Microsoft Office, SigmaPlot, and Edmodo.
How many hours do you work in a typical week?
I put in around 80 hours a week. I’m usually at school 10–11 hours a day, and then I go home and grade papers or work on lesson plans for about 3–4 hours each night and 10–15 hours on the weekends. The environment is insanely busy!
continued on page 22
What is your work environment like?
I have a classroom that holds 28 student desks, my desk and demo table, 7 lab benches, a safety shower and eye wash station, a fume hood, a handicap lab station, and some cabinet storage on the walls. It is my classroom—I do not have to share it. We average 1.5 labs per week.
I also have 2 desktop computers, 2 bookcases loaded with reference materials, all kinds of plastic storage bins filled with items to do demos or labs, 30 hanging lab aprons for my students, and my goggle cabinet. Inside are 30 psychedelic colored goggles, and the outside, well, you just have to look at the picture!
Lastly, in the front of the room by my whiteboard and smartboard are my “gadgets”: lava lamp, glitter lamp, plasma ball, fiber optic light, wave machine, and 2 phosphorescent lamps, all lined up on a table.
And how could I forget? My “Ashes of Problem Students” jar—with ashes!
What is your best productivity trick?
Work the week between Christmas and New Year’s; no one else does, and you will get tons of things done. Getting in early or staying late gives you time to get things done before the work day and interruptions begin or after the work day and interruptions end.
What’s the best career advice you’ve received?
Your greatest strength can also be your greatest weakness. For example, my greatest strength is the fact that I am extremely organized, which means I usually don’t miss anything when I’m doing a project. But being organized is also my greatest weakness. I tend to focus so much on staying organized and making sure all the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted that I miss the big picture. I lose my ability to “think outside the box” and to perhaps make a significant contribution.
What personal talent or trait makes you a great fit for your job?
I want to help people succeed.
What essential habit do you have now that you wish you’d started much earlier?
Not sleeping in so long on the weekends. You can really get a lot done with a few extra hours in the morning.
What is your favorite ACS resource?
Journal of Chemical Education. It’s a great source for new demos and inquiry ideas. Love it!
Q: How do you ensure a smooth officer transition from year to year?
A: We train younger members as executive board apprentices. The semester prior to their official nomination, they sit in on executive board meetings and help make decisions for the chapter. This allows the apprentices to learn from the executive board and become more involved in activities.
Q: How did you celebrate National Chemistry Week (NCW)?
A: For NCW, our chapter volunteers at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh and demonstrates various experiments to elementary through high school students, such as hydrogen rockets, ferrofluids, and properties of micelles. To spread awareness of NCW on campus, we sell hot dogs, drinks, and cupcakes decorated as the periodic table to other students as a fundraiser and play “Human Whack-A-Mole” where both students and professors act as the “moles” in a real-life game. This year, we raised approximately $300 through this event.
Q: In what ways does your chapter give back to the community?
A: Outreach is one of our chapter’s highest priorities; we realize that it is just as important to give back to the community and teach younger kids about science as it is to earn a worthwhile education for ourselves. In addition to volunteering at the Carnegie Science Center, we visit a local elementary school to teach a science lesson to 3rd grade students, and we sponsor a local ACS High School ChemClub.
Q: What is your most popular chapter activity?
A: Pi Day is one of our chapter’s favorite events. In addition to selling a complete periodic table of cupcakes, we hold a Pie Your Professor contest. Professors from the department of chemistry and biochemistry volunteer to be pied, and then students vote on which professors will be pied. The three professors with the most votes get pied by a student on Academic Walk at exactly 3:14 p.m.
Q: What local ACS student chapters have you collaborated with?
A: Thanks to a Student Inter-Chapter Relations Grant from the ACS, Duquesne sponsored PuRSUE (Pittsburgh Regional Seminar for Undergraduate Excellence). This seminar series was held monthly and featured undergraduate students from local universities who presented their scientific research to peers, graduate students, and faculty. Not only did this event give undergrads the opportunity to practice presenting their research, but PuRSUE also acted as a foundation for furthering collaboration among local universities.
Q: What is your most successful fundraiser to date?
A: At the beginning of each new school year, we sell modeling kits, lab coats, goggles, and lab notebooks to incoming freshmen. Not only is this a valuable fundraiser for our chapter, but the items are sold at a reduced price compared with the campus bookstore to assist students. This fundraiser helps us to sponsor other outreach events and chapter activities throughout the year. This year’s sales raised approximately $1000.
Faculty advisor:
Jeffrey D. Evanseck, 6 years
Faculty co-advisors:
Ellen S. Gawalt, 1 year
Paul G. Johnson, 25 years
Q: What challenges have you faced as faculty advisors?
Evanseck: There is definitely a learning curve on how to harness the creativity and energy of the students. It takes significant effort to build an effective core of motivated and directed students; however, once it is formed, then the process is easy.
Q: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your service as a faculty advisor?
Evanseck: Beyond any doubt, the success of the students is the most rewarding aspect of being ACS faculty advisors.
Q: What advice can you offer those new to the advisor position?
Evanseck: If your institution values undergraduate education and professional preparation, then definitely get involved and make the effort to create an active ACS chapter. It will initially take effort, but is well worth it in the long run.
Q: How do you ensure a smooth officer transition from year to year?
A: We hold our officer elections for next year very early. Nominations are in February and the actual election occurs in March. From this time on, we begin transferring responsibilities to the new officers. We are currently compiling a notebook that maps out the year’s responsibilities and a Google Drive folder with agendas and activities to pass on to the new executive board.
Q: Do you have any unique positions?
A: Each officer plans and organizes at least one major event for the year. By choosing an activity of interest, each officer can better support the chapter by using their talents and passions. We also have a publicist who advertises our activities and successes across campus.
Q: In what ways does your chapter give back to the community?
A: Our chapter celebrates the feast of our science building’s namesake, Albertus Magnus, by hosting nearly 100 4th graders to experience a day of fun science experiments and activities. This year, we invited four other clubs to join us, so we had a range of stations from frog dissection to the classic exploding gummy bears.
Q: What is your most popular chapter activity?
A: We hold the biannual Aquinas Chemistry Society and Math Club vs. Beta Beta Beta and Alpha Epsilon Delta kickball game and cookout at the beginning and end of each academic year. Needless to say, a little bit of competition over a golden rubber duck trophy doesn’t hurt either!
Q: What is the most effective communication tool that your chapter uses to promote chapter activities?
A: We use a variety of tools to reach out to our chemistry students. We post flyers and we have our Facebook group to send out messages online. Our college uses CourseConnect for teachers to give out information and assignments online. We’ve created a class page for our chapter and contact all new general chemistry students each year to encourage them to get involved.
Q: Describe any fun social events your chapter recently had.
A: We hosted a Science Lock-In, an all-night study party in our science building. In addition to having a place open for the annual exam cram, we had several professors volunteer their time to host exam review sessions. We also had a variety of activities and games for study breaks and breakfast in the morning for those that survived the entire night.
Q: If your chapter has recently attended an ACS regional, national, or local section meeting, how did members benefit?
A: We attend the national meeting every year and attend local section meetings when they are within a reasonable distance. Our chapter members are able to do a lot of networking and attend graduate school events at the national meeting. At the local section meetings, we are able to see what careers are available in chemistry in our area and we are able to network and learn about possible future employment or internship opportunities.
Faculty advisor:
Elizabeth Jensen, 9 years
Q: How did you become a faculty advisor?
Jensen: I have always been interested. When I was hired at Aquinas, I started attending the student chapter meetings. After a few years, my colleague who had been the advisor asked me to take on the role so he could do other things.
Q: What advice can you offer those new to the advisor position?
Jensen: Think ahead, because the students do not always have the perspective necessary to plan out an entire academic year and they will need help. A few years ago, I wrote up a list of expectations for the officers. I meet with the incoming officers near the end of each academic year and discuss this list with them. We set goals, assign committees, and plan the work that needs to happen over the summer break. I think this helps everyone get organized and be ready for fall semester to start in August.
Q: How do you ensure a smooth officer transition from year to year?
A: We hold an end-of-the-year officer election in late May. Only ACS student members who have demonstrated outstanding dedication and commitment to the chapter can be nominated for officer positions. ACS members then vote for their officers. After elections, we hold officer training sessions focusing on duties and expectations for the upcoming year.
Q: Do you have any unique positions?
A: We have a public relations liaison who is in charge of publicizing the activities of the chapter via social media, campus-wide electronic bulletin postings, and creating flyers/posters for events.
Q: How did you celebrate National Chemistry Week? Chemists Celebrate Earth Day?
A: Chapter members spread chemical joy to the rest of the campus through a bake sale and science night. We also sold beaker mugs and a chemistry-themed T-shirt, which were both a huge hit. We also chalk the sidewalk along Academic Row for the UMBC community to admire. At our science night we do hands-on chemistry activities with grade school students, which gives our members a chance to explain basic chemistry to the kids.
Q: In what ways does your chapter give back to the community?
A: We sponsor science nights at local elementary and middle schools and participate in stream cleanups at Patapsco Valley State Park. Our chapter also raises funds for Pennies for PUR, an ACS initiative, and Children’s Safe Drinking Water program, and we participate in the Relay for Life event sponsored by the American Cancer Society each spring.
Q: What is your most successful recruiting event?
A: We participate in the UMBC Involvement Fests three times a year, during the summer, fall, and spring semesters. New students can get information about our club and we have a poster highlighting the activities we have.
Q: What are some of the interesting ways your chapter recruits and retains its members?
A: After the Involvement Fests we have a chapter get-together to introduce new members to returning members. Our favorite and most successful event is our Fall Saccharide Social. We make s’mores over a fire, play games, and have a good time as new members meet existing members and faculty.
Q: Do you collaborate with other clubs on campus on activities?
A: We collaborate with the Environmental Awareness Club to put together an event for Earth Day. We have worked with the Maryland Local Section to conduct science nights. We also attend some of the local section monthly meetings so that members can experience the professional talks as well as the networking opportunity.
UMBC sponsors science nights at local elementary and middle schools and community service activities, including stream cleanups, raising funds for ACS’s Pennies for PUR, and participating in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.
Faculty advisor:
Tara Carpenter, 6 years
Q: Why did you become a faculty advisor?
Carpenter: I became the faculty advisor when we reinstated our chapter. I was excited to help our students share their passion for chemistry with the campus and the community. I was active in my club as an undergraduate and participated in outreach as a graduate student. Advising the club was a natural extension of my experience and interest.
Q: What advice can you offer those new to the advisor position?
Carpenter: Make your expectations known from the start, but be there for them when they need guidance. Resist the temptation to do things for the students, and instead help them develop their time management and leadership skills. It is rewarding for everyone.
Faculty co-advisor:
Stephen Mang, 2 years
Q: Why did you become a faculty advisor?
Mang: I had previous experience with science demonstrations in elementary, middle, and high schools from my grad school career. I wanted to help the chapter expand their science nights and other outreach activities.
Q: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your service as a faculty advisor?
Mang: Working with students who are actually interested in chemistry, and helping give them the opportunity to share that interest with young kids. Many of the elementary school children in our area do not have too many positive scientist role models, so helping to expose them to college students who are interested in chemistry is very rewarding.
One day each fall and spring, the chemistry building at Old Dominion University (ODU) is taken over by 60 members of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) from the Virginia Tidewater area and their Scoutmasters. The boys spend the day fulfilling the requirements of the BSA Chemistry merit badge, while encountering a few extra surprises that entertain, educate, and excite everyone involved about chemistry.
Challenges of the Chemistry merit badge
Merit badges have been an integral part of Scouting since the start of the program in the United Kingdom in 1907. The Chemistry merit badge was created in 1911 when Scouting began in the United States, and was one of the original 57 merit badges issued by the BSA. There are only 11 original merit badges still active, and at the end of 2012, the Chemistry merit badge ranked around 72nd of 130 offered merit badges.
To a chemist, the Chemistry merit badge requirements (listed on the BSA website as a set of activities and research requirements) are simple to accomplish. The Scouts are required to conduct a few experiments, record their observations, and — oh yeah — have a full understanding of chemical safety, MSDS sheets, the classical divisions of chemistry, and how government agencies depend on chemists. They must also visit a laboratory and interview a practicing chemist. For Scouts (and Scout leaders) without a background in the sciences, these requirements are often daunting, confusing, and hard to understand.
In 2010, a local Scoutmaster contacted the ACS student chapter at ODU seeking a partnership to help the Scouts complete this merit badge. Since then, our chapter has hosted seven Chemistry merit badge events at ODU, with roughly 350 Scouts earning the merit badge, and “Scouts’ Day” has become one of our favorite ways of reaching out to the community. In fact, our biannual event is posted on www.meritbadge.info, a website created by Scout leaders to list merit badge events across the United States and even several other countries, providing opportunities for Scouts to earn their merit badges while experiencing a variety of settings, such as our university laboratories.
In adapting the merit badge requirements into a full morning of activities, we felt the list needed some embellishing. And how do chemists embellish? To name a few, we added fire, color changes, glow-in-the-dark solutions, and liquid nitrogen ice cream! We then transformed the requirements of the BSA Chemistry merit badge into a four-lab rotation.
What our day looks like
In order to corral and ensure the safety of 60 excited Boy Scouts, we run a very tight schedule. Each Scout is assigned to a team at check-in — Oxidizers, Flammable, Water Reactive, and Poisonous — and the entire troop is sent to an auditorium for introductions,
orientation, and a safety lecture. After the safety lecture, each group rotates through four labs: fun, fire, kitchen, and environmental. After everyone enjoys lunch and dessert on us, the boys interview a few chemists and — voilà! — they have earned their merit badge.
**Safety talk**
We tell the Scouts that the safety talk is the most boring, but most important, part of the day. An undergraduate ACS student gives a short talk explaining safety equipment, MSDS sheets, the proper storage, disposal, and handling of chemicals, government agencies, and the classical divisions of chemistry. This half-hour briefing fulfills many of the badge’s requirements and prepares the Scouts for the lab environment.
**Kitchen lab**
The kitchen lab includes many more required elements of the merit badge — chemistry of starches and sugars in onions (taste-test of raw, browned, and caramelized onions), separation of mixtures, the importance of concentration (why you don’t brush your teeth with household bleach), and chemical versus physical change. One favorite additional demonstration includes a discussion of stomach pH using hydrochloric acid (HCl) and milk of magnesia (Mg(OH)$_2$, magnesium hydroxide): we add a few drops of the universal indicator to a solution of HCl, which turns dark red, showing that the stomach is very acidic. Milk of magnesia is then added and, as the solution turns basic, it goes through the entire color range of the universal indicator. This experiment is a dramatic demonstration of the pH range of “stomach neutralization.” Another fun addition to the kitchen lab is “rubber eggs.” We soak eggs in vinegar (acetic acid) overnight, allowing the egg shells, which are made of calcium carbonate, to react with acetic acid to break down and dissolve the shell. This chemical change results in a rubbery egg that can bounce!
**Environmental lab**
The environmental lab consists primarily of a lecture about environmental chemistry, types of chemical pollution, and the role of government agencies. The Scouts see the effects of acid rain firsthand through a demonstration of the interaction of HCl with concrete. Without a proper background in chemistry, the Scouts can fulfill the requirements covered in this lab by using Internet and book sources, but are unlikely to understand all they are reading.
---
**A Scout Leader’s Perspective**
In 2003 my son (stepson) Blake moved up from Webelos to Boy Scouts. I subsequently became a Scout leader and merit badge counselor. I noticed how difficult it was for Scouts to complete some merit badges (such as Chemistry, Oceanography, and Law) and that most of these merit badges were being taught in a classroom or at summer camp. Imagining these encounters, all I could picture was a Scout in uniform listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher saying “WAWAWAWA” — and the Scout not getting anything positive. I realized that our community could support these and other merit badges, thereby introducing Scouts to colleges and businesses. I contacted the chemistry department at ODU to see if they could help us with the Chemistry merit badge, and thus a partnership began.
In addition to the Scouts earning their Chemistry merit badge, they also come away with a positive impact from the host facility. The boys see the college students in a casual learning environment, and learning becomes easy and non-threatening. The students welcome questions, and the boys oblige with much curiosity. This opens many doors to Scouts who were not particularly interested in chemistry or college, and allows them to gain a new perspective for their future.
Since working with the ODU ACS Club, I have had numerous parents comment on what a great event it is and the positive impact it has had on their boys. Several have commented that their Scouts are now actively thinking about going to college, or taking chemistry classes in high school. I may not know the long-term impact of this program, but I do know that I have helped expose the Scouts to a world beyond television and video games.
Joe Colby, Committee Chair and Merit Badge Counselor, Troop 256.
In contrast, during our lecture the Scouts learn about the chemistry of greenhouse gases and the use of phosphates in fertilizers in a clear, easy-to-understand format.
**Fire lab**
The discussion of physical and chemical change continues in the fire lab. The only merit badge aspect of the fire lab is the reaction of an iron nail with copper (II) sulfate. As the iron nail becomes plated with copper metal, the boys are able to observe firsthand the chemical change occurring and the different forms of copper: a blue copper (II) sulfate solution and a metallic copper plating. From there the excitement builds, along with the exothermic nature of the reactions. We show them how fireworks exploit the emission spectrum of various compounds through colored flames, “sacrifice” a gummy bear in a very exothermic redox reaction with potassium chlorate, and conduct a colorful combustion reaction in a five-gallon plastic water jug. The fire lab never fails to elicit “oohs” and “ahhs” from Scouts and Scoutmasters alike.
**Fun lab**
The fun lab was added, um... for fun! The demonstrations in this lab range from a glow-in-the-dark luminol solution, to a non-Newtonian fluid that can be formed into a ball, to making fake snow. This lab is more hands-on than other labs, and the Scouts are encouraged to engage in the chemistry — and in the fun. The finale of the lab is the infamous elephant toothpaste experiment, where the reaction of potassium iodide with hydrogen peroxide releases voluminous oxygen gas, which forms bubbles in the added dish soap, causing massive amounts of colored foam to shoot out of the graduated cylinder.
Each of these labs has been carefully planned and practiced to maximize safety, learning, and “wow factor.” Although we place a graduate student or faculty supervisor in each lab, the undergraduates conduct the experiments, engage with the Scouts, and explain the chemistry behind the demonstrations. The Scouts’ thoughtful and curious questions challenge the ACS undergraduates to interact with them on a level they can understand — and get excited about.
**Lunch and dessert**
After the lab rotations are over, we provide the Scouts and Scoutmasters a pizza lunch, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and a “periodic table of cupcakes.” Excited conversations about the day can be overheard in all directions as the participants talk about all they have encountered that day and continue to ask questions.
**Interview a chemist**
After the boys are carb-loaded, they go and sit in a room with a panel of chemists to interview. This is a very open-ended activity. The panelists introduce themselves and their careers, and then the floor opens for questions. Naturally inquisitive and fueled by all they have learned (and eaten) throughout the morning, the Scouts always have more questions than we have time for interviews — which is good!
And this is just a quick overview of an insanely fun, educational, crazy, and rewarding day. During a time in the semester when students are bogged down with long hours of homework, midterms, and lab reports, this day reminds them about the fun and excitement of chemistry. While we are honored to provide the requirements for the Boy Scouts to earn their merit badge, the ACS undergraduates are also served by the opportunity to teach others and enthuse the younger generation about chemistry... and the opportunity to make liquid nitrogen ice cream is always a bonus!
---
Marie Melzer earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, lectures full-time at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, and is faculty advisor of the ODU ACS student chapter.
Kaleigh Wiley is a senior chemistry major at Old Dominion University, and is president of the ODU ACS student chapter.
THE SECOND HOTTEST TOOL IN CHEMISTRY?
If you think Bunsen burners are hot, get to know SciFinder®, the world’s hottest chemical information research product. Used by top scientists, SciFinder is the only tool that provides access to the most comprehensive and trustworthy chemistry-related content. And that’s why SciFinder is the choice for chemistry research.
Find out more at www.cas.org.
REACTIONS
THE ACS UNDERGRADUATE BLOG
FOLLOW us to read about:
- Demonstration inspiration
- Chemistry in culture commentary
- Current research
- Tips for surviving undergrad…and beyond
- And more!
WRITE for us!
We need your voice for our blog!
E-mail email@example.com for more details.
www.acs.org/undergradblog
A blog of The American Chemical Society
ACS Student Chapters Online!
The Undergraduate Programs Office is introducing a new tool that will make chapter management and reporting much easier for ACS student chapters!
New features will include:
- A student chapter dashboard to easily make chapter updates
- Annual access to plan future events or activities as they happen
- Increased storage for images and other report files
- A new sharing feature to post chapter event ideas for other chapters to see!
Go to www.studentchaptersonline.acs.org to access the new tool today! | <urn:uuid:22dc5e9b-e6fe-4a12-a35e-811ec090501b> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | https://inchemistry.acs.org/content/dam/inchemistry/magazine/feb-march-2014-issue.pdf | 2018-12-11T16:14:34Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376823657.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20181211151237-20181211172737-00052.warc.gz | 645,053,587 | 18,172 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.961943 | eng_Latn | 0.997659 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
233,
882,
2863,
3822,
7804,
12792,
17294,
18092,
19428,
23758,
24168,
29364,
33855,
37384,
39890,
44985,
46093,
48628,
51156,
57140,
57429,
60303,
63662,
65823,
69690,
73511,
77853,
80646,
84769,
88530,
89282,
89820
] | [
1.6875,
2.203125
] | 1 | 0 |
I Choose the Right by Living Gospel Principles
“Wherefore, let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord” (1 Nephi 3:16).
Supplement the ideas provided here with some of your own. Each week, plan ways to (1) identify the doctrine, (2) help the children understand it, and (3) help them apply it in their lives.
Ask yourself, “What will the children do to learn, and how can I help them feel the Spirit?”
Week 1: Fasting and prayer can strengthen my testimony.
Identify the doctrine (seeing an object lesson):
Prepare two wordstrips: Fasting and Prayer. Invite two children to stand close together, and give each child one of the wordstrips. Have another child walk between them. Ask the first two children to securely link their arms, and ask the other child to try to walk between them again. Point out how much stronger the children are when they are linked together. Explain that fasting and prayer are more powerful when we use them together. Write “Fasting and prayer can strengthen my testimony” on the board, and have the children repeat it together.
Encourage understanding (listening to scriptures and participating in an object lesson):
Ask the children to listen for things the sons of Mosiah did to become strong in the gospel as you read Alma 17:2–3. Invite the children to flex their muscles each time they hear something that helped the sons of Mosiah become strong.
Lead a discussion on fasting by asking several questions such as “What is fasting?” “Why should we fast?” “When should we fast?” and “Why should we pray when we fast?” (see Joseph B. Wirthlin, “The Law of the Fast,” Ensign, May 2001, 73–75). Let every child who adds to the discussion hold on to one end of a piece of yarn or string. Hold the other end of each piece of string in your hand. At the end of the discussion, ask the children holding the strings to come to the middle of the room and twist all of their pieces of string together, making a strong rope. Explain that each piece of string we add to the rope makes the rope stronger. Help the children understand that in a similar way, each time we fast and pray we add strength to our testimony.
A visual demonstration helps children understand abstract concepts.
Tip: As you teach about fasting, remember that younger children do not need to fast.
Week 2: Being kind is doing and saying nice things to others.
Identify the doctrine (reciting a scripture):
Write “Be ye kind one to another” (Ephesians 4:32) on the board with a number from 1 to 6 written beneath each word. Assign each child a number from 1 to 6. Begin by having all of the 1s stand and say “Be” and then quickly sit down. Then have the 2s stand and say “ye” and quickly sit down. Continue with the rest of the phrase. Repeat several times. Then have all of the children repeat the whole phrase together.
Encourage understanding (listening to a story and singing a song):
Tell the children a story of kindness, such as “Standing Up for Caleb” (Friend, Mar. 2009, 4–5). Ask them to put both thumbs up when they hear about an act of kindness in the story and both thumbs down when they hear about an unkind act. Sing “Kindness Begins with Me” (CS, 145). Ask the children to stand up when they sing about who we should be kind to. Sing the song again, and have them point both thumbs to themselves when they sing, “Kindness begins with me.”
**Week 3: Reverence is deep respect and love toward God.**
**Identify the doctrine (singing a song):** Prepare several string necklaces with a paper heart attached to each. Write a key word or phrase from “Reverence Is Love” (CS, 31) on each heart (for example, *quietly sitting, thinking, feeling*, and so on). Invite several children to wear the necklaces. Sing “Reverence Is Love,” and ask the children with the necklaces to walk reverently to the front of the room when the word on their heart is sung. Invite the children with the necklaces to stand in order, and sing the song again.
**Encourage application (discussing reverence):** Prepare wordstrips or draw simple pictures of eyes, hands, feet, ears, mouth, and mind. Divide the children into groups, and let each group choose one or two of the wordstrips or pictures. Have each group share (with words and actions) several ways this part of their body can be reverent by showing respect and love toward God.
*Images available at sharingtime.lds.org*
**Week 4: Honesty is telling the truth regardless of the consequences.**
**Encourage understanding (discussing consequences)** Prepare several case studies (see *TNGC*, 161–62) in which children are faced with a choice to be honest or dishonest. For example, “You hit your brother, and your mother asks why he’s crying.” Ask, “What would the consequences be of being honest?” Then ask, “What would the consequences be of being dishonest?” Help the children discover that immediate consequences of honesty might be difficult but long-term consequences lead to peace and happiness.
**Encourage application (creating a rhyme):** Invite each class (with the help of their teachers) to create a one-line phrase or a rhyme about honesty. For example, “If the truth is what I tell, I will never, never fail!” Invite each class to share their phrase with the other children. Encourage them to repeat the phrase whenever they are tempted to be dishonest.
*Images available at sharingtime.lds.org*
**Scriptures:** Having children read from their own scriptures reinforces the importance of the scriptures and invites the Spirit. If possible, invite the children to mark verses in their own scriptures and then read them together. | 11ef9bd4-81e4-471a-b3e8-a6e0097d7b61 | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://media.ldscdn.org/pdf/primary/2017-sharing-time-outline/2017-07-0008-i-choose-the-right-by-living-gospel-principles-eng.pdf?download=true | 2021-03-06T15:12:07+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178375096.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20210306131539-20210306161539-00194.warc.gz | 434,101,166 | 1,259 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.991108 | eng_Latn | 0.991133 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
3370,
5610
] | [
4.1875
] | 1 | 0 |
Poison Safety
Each year, poison centers receive more than 145,000 reports involving pesticides and disinfectants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) urges parents, school staff and caregivers to secure pesticides and other household chemicals in locked cabinets out of children’s reach. More than 90% of poisonings happen in homes. Each year, approximately 65,000 children aged 5 and younger are accidentally exposed to pesticides. More than 10,000 of those exposures involve mouse and rat poisons. EPA established new and improved safety standards for consumers to use a protective tamper-resistant bait station for mouse and rat bait products. These measures will prevent children from accessing baits and reduce exposure to the active ingredient.
National Poison Prevention Week (March 15-21, 2015), the third week in March each year is designated to highlight the dangers of poisonings and how to prevent them. Every day, people can and do prevent poisonings. We invite you to review the information here and to become actively involved to ensure the safety of children and adults in your home and in your community.
Poisonings are preventable
Here are some simple tips to keep your home and school environment safe from accidental poisonings:
- Always store pesticides and other household chemical products out of the reach of children – preferably in a locked cabinet.
- Use mouse and rat poison products with a tamper-resistant bait station.
- Inspect your home and school regularly, room by room, for potential poisoning hazards and remove any unsafe products.
- Use child-resistant packaging properly by closing the container tightly after use.
- Purchase only the amount of pesticide product that is required for the job.
- Never transfer pesticides or other household chemical products to containers that can be mistaken for food or drink.
- Never store pesticides in the same locations with food products.
- Never mix household or chemical products together. Doing so can create dangerous gases or other chemical reactions.
Pesticide Safety Tips
Although pesticides are useful tools to control pests, they can be dangerous if used carelessly or not stored properly. EPA provides some tips for safer pest control:
- The most effective way to reduce risks posed by pesticides is to use non-chemical control methods to reduce or eliminate pest problems. Around homes and schools, such measures include removing sources of food and water (such as leaky pipes) and destroying pest shelters and breeding sites (such as indoor clutter, outdoor litter and plant debris).
- If you decide you need to use pesticides, always read the label first and follow the directions to the letter, including all precautions and restrictions.
- Don’t use products for pests that are not indicated on the label and don’t use more pesticide than directed by the label. Don’t think that twice the amount will do twice the job. Sometimes twice the amount will be less effective, because of the way the pesticide works.
- Use protective measures when handling pesticides as directed by the label, such as wearing impermeable gloves, long pants, and long-sleeved shirts. Change clothes and wash your hands immediately after applying pesticides.
• Before applying a pesticide (indoors or outdoors), move children, their toys, and pets from the area and keep them away until the pesticide has dried or as recommended by the label.
• Don’t spray outdoors on windy or rainy days. Take precautions to keep the pesticide from drifting or running off into the vegetable garden, pool, or neighbor’s yard.
• Remove and containerize food including pet food during indoor applications.
• If using a commercial applicator or lawn care service, ask for information about potential risks and safety precautions to take.
• Don’t buy more pesticides than you will need. If you have leftover pesticides, check with your local government or waste management agency to determine whether your community has a household hazardous waste collection program or other program for disposing of pesticides. If no community program exists, follow label directions and any state or local regulations regarding disposal.
• Keep the telephone number of your area Poison Control Center near your telephone: 1-800-222-1222.
For more information on pesticide safety, please read:
http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/factsheets/pest_ti.htm
The EPA recommends and promotes integrated pest management (IPM) in schools, to reduce pesticide risk and exposure to children, because children spend so much of their time at school. For more information on school IPM read:
http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/ipm/
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2007-150/
Bed Bug Battle – We Want to Hear From You
The University of Arizona and several partnering research institutions are working to battle the bed bug resurgence in the United States. Researchers hope to determine the real impact and social cost of bed bugs, the risks to individuals and society, as well as the significant causes of infestations.
We hope you will complete an online bed bug survey. This survey asks brief questions on how bed bugs affect your life, how bed bugs cause people stress, and what people do when trying to get rid of them. This voluntary survey should take about ten minutes. The survey is available in English and Spanish. There is no compensation available for your participation. Your answers are anonymous and you will be contributing to information that will help us battle the pesky parasites.
Who should take this survey? Everyone! We would like to hear from people who currently live with bed bugs, people who have dealt with them in the past, and people who have never experienced bed bugs. We are dedicated to helping community members who need it most, and sharing your experience will be extremely helpful to develop strategies to reduce the bed bug problems.
English version of Bed Bug survey: [http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DGLQS52](http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DGLQS52)
Spanish version of Bed Bug survey: [https://es.surveymonkey.com/s/F5NZXJK](https://es.surveymonkey.com/s/F5NZXJK)
---
**IAQ Master Class Webinar Series Continues**
As part of EPA’s ongoing effort to continue the momentum to create healthy school indoor environments in all our nation’s schools, they are pleased to announce the launching of a new **IAQ Master Class Webinar Series**.
At the June 2014 SHIELD Summit, the SHIELD Network began work on designing ten 1-hour technical core-competency web-based trainings intended to build the capacity of school district staff across the country to start, improve, or sustain an IAQ management program.
The webinars will feature technical experts, industry leaders and model school districts from the SHIELD Network. CEU’s are pending and certificates of completion will be provided to all who complete the post-training evaluation.
Mark your calendar to join the Master Class Technical Webinar Series. Schedule below.
| Webinar Topic | Webinar Date |
|-------------------------------|--------------|
| Energy Efficiency and IAQ | 3/12/15 |
| Integrated Pest Management | 4/16/15 |
| Asthma Management | 5/07/15 |
| Cleaning and Maintenance | 6/04/15 |
| Materials Selection | 7/16/15 |
| Source Control | 8/06/15 |
March 12, 2015, 1:00-2:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00-11:30 p.m. Arizona: [Indoor Air Quality Plus Energy Efficiency: A Formula for Saving Money While Protecting Your School’s Indoor Environment](#)
---
**Upcoming Webinars and Events**
Attend Free Sessions of the [Green Strides Webinar Series](#). View archived webinars [here](#).
The Green Strides Webinar Series provides school communities the tools to reduce their schools’ environmental impact and costs; improve health and wellness; and teach effective environmental literacy, including STEM, green careers, and civic engagement.
**School IPM Webinar Series:** EPA’s Center of Expertise for School IPM will host a series of webinars in the coming months on pest management topics of special interest to the school community. These monthly webinars feature presentations from experts in the field. Find information about these webinars: [http://www.epa.gov/pestwise/events/sipm-webinars.html](http://www.epa.gov/pestwise/events/sipm-webinars.html)
March 19, 2015, 2:00-3:30 p.m. Eastern / 11:00-12:30 p.m. Arizona: Bed Bugs in Schools
March 23-26, 2015, 8th International IPM Symposium – IPM: Solutions for a Changing World, Salt Lake City, Utah
The 8th International IPM Symposium, "IPM: Solutions for a Changing World," will be held March 23-26, 2015 at the Salt Palace Convention Center, 100 S. West Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah USA. The symposium sessions will be divided into tracks based on commodity or setting and will address various aspects of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) across disciplines and around the world.
June 5, 2015, 24th Annual Desert Horticulture Conference, JW Mariott Starr Pass, 3800 W Starr Pass, Tucson, AZ 85745
The Desert Horticulture Conference is the premier annual conference for all members of the southwest green industry: landscape architects, designers, growers, retailers, contractors, maintenance personnel, suppliers, and educators. Presenting timely and research-based information relevant for designing, building, maintaining, and producing plants for urban landscapes in the arid Southwest. Please visit the website at http://cals.arizona.edu/deserthort/.
For more information about the EPA Schools program, visit: http://www.epa.gov/schools/
For more information about the Community IPM, visit: http://www.extension.org/pages/23359/urban-integrated-pest-management-community-page
For more information about School IPM in Arizona, visit: http://cals.arizona.edu/apmc/westernschoolIPM.html
Shujuan (Lucy) Li, Newsletter Editor and Assistant in Extension. Email: email@example.com
Dawn H. Gouge, Public Health IPM Expert. Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Shaku Nair, Assistant in Extension. Email: email@example.com
Al Fournier, IPM Assessment. Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Ursula Schuch, Landscape Horticulture. Email: email@example.com
Kai Umeda, Extension Agent, Turf. Email: firstname.lastname@example.org; http://turf.arizona.edu
Dave Kopec, Turf Specialist. Email: email@example.com
Paul Baker, Urban Entomologist. Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Acknowledgements
This material is based upon work that is supported in part by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA NIFA). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Additional support is provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the University of Arizona – Arizona Pest Management Center (APMC). | <urn:uuid:544e88ad-6a54-4c55-901d-910ceece7274> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | https://cals.arizona.edu/apmc/docs/2015MarchAZschoolandhomeIPMNewletter.pdf | 2018-02-24T04:04:42Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891815318.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20180224033332-20180224053332-00694.warc.gz | 627,823,510 | 2,359 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.975332 | eng_Latn | 0.993066 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2052,
3250,
5909,
8392,
10464,
10979
] | [
2.703125
] | 1 | 1 |
FACING AIDS
Education in the Context of Vulnerability HIV/AIDS
STUDY DOCUMENT AND STATEMENT ON HIV/SIDA
WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
BEFORE YOU START.........
This Study Guide accompanies the World Council of Churches’ Study Document on HIV/AIDS, “Facing AIDS – The Challenge the Churches Response, 1997”. It contains a structured framework for group learning sessions, designed to help and resource group leaders who intend to undertake HIV/AIDS awareness building. At the same time, we hope that this material will allow easier access to the Study Document itself, and will encourage people to read larger portions of it than we can offer here.
The material used here and in the Study Document is the outcome of the reflections of WCC’s Consultative Group on AIDS which, over recent years, was accompanied by a team of educators, and others involved at a practical level in the churches’ work on HIV/AIDS. For the four modules in this Study Guide, we have chosen the issues of
COMMUNITY,
CHANGE,
VULNERABILITY, and
CARE AND PREVENTION.
We have tried to use as broad a range of educational approaches as possible, both theoretical and experiential, and to present the material in a way that will be acceptable ecumenically. But in such a general study resource, the suggestions and activities are bound to seem more appropriate for some cultures than others. So it is not intended to be followed slavishly. The material you will find in it needs adapting for particular groups in local contexts and particular cultures, and the task of facilitator must include the initial preparation involved in adapting it to his or her own situation. This is particularly true of the Bible studies, where we only offer the texts themselves. It is also true of some of the experiential learning sessions.
In Appendix III you will find a short list of resource materials, and in Appendices IV – VI the most important texts from the Study, needed for your work. We however strongly suggest that the Facilitator has a complete copy of the WCC Study “Facing AIDS”, which can be obtained from us.
Our thanks go to Francisco Ramos, Santiago de Chile, who did the illustrations for us; to all the participants in the Tübingen workshop on Education for Vulnerability; and to the community of health workers at EPES, Santiago de Chile, who have contributed so significantly to the content. Thanks as well to Jenny Roske and Gillian Paterson for helping with proofreading. When you have tried using this material, please let us know what you think of it. In the meantime, for the sake of those living with HIV, we hope you enjoy working with this new Study Guide on HIV/AIDS and Vulnerability.
Karen Anderson, EPES, Santiago de Chile
Gert Rüppell, Unit II, World Council of Churches.
RATIONALE:
The magnitude of the loss of lives through HIV/AIDS represents only one aspect of the tragic impact of the epidemic. The epidemic has the potential to undermine permanently the social and economic fabric of affected communities (1). For many people, HIV/AIDS has acted as a spotlight exposing and revealing the many iniquitous conditions, such as poverty and injustice, in our communities' lives which we have neglected to confront (2). As Christians we are challenged to examine the underlying realities in our churches and communities which encourage the spread of HIV/AIDS and to work to address those realities in a way which can help build or restore healthy, safe communities.
The church by its very nature as the body of Christ is called to become a healing community. This community must be a safe space of openness and acceptance; healing spaces, for sharing and telling life and death experiences. Christ's community of care should be an environment of trust and commitment, in which risks can be taken and where all members acknowledge their mutual vulnerability.
The presence of HIV/AIDS in our community, particularly but not exclusively in the church community, requires us to reflect on who we are and how we are responding to the urgent need to act for inclusiveness and justice. We are not simply called upon to offer charity to those whose physical bodies have the virus. We are challenged by our belonging to this community to acknowledge that the virus has come into our own body.
(For further study see Appendix IV)
AIMS:
To identify the effects HIV/AIDS has on community life in all its aspects and to develop necessary actions for building supportive and healing communities.
GENERAL OBJECTIVES:
(1) Participants will examine their own experience of community and their experience of the church as community,
(2) Participants will identify the reasons for brokenness in communities and discover the relationship between this brokenness and HIV/AIDS,
(3) Participants will look critically at their own communities to identify who is excluded and why this is so,
(4) Participants will discover examples of the church as a healing community and will identify concepts and actions towards inclusiveness and renewal of communities.
ACTIVITY No 1 – DISCUSSION STARTER
a) The facilitator should select 10-15 photographs and/or headlines from magazines and newspapers that reflect different positive and negative aspects of the local community. To begin have the group look at these materials and then describe together their community, its strengths and weaknesses.
b) Where it is difficult to find photographs and headlines which reflect the community, the group could draw a picture of their community on a flip chart / large piece of paper reflecting both positive and negative aspects. A round of discussion in which each participant should be given the opportunity to comment on her/his drawings should follow this exercise.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
I. From where do we start?
1) What does community mean for you?
2) Where have you experienced community?
3) What is your experience with community?
4) What is your experience of the church as a community?
5) Identify elements of brokenness in your communities
6) Are there people living with HIV/AIDS who are members of your community?
II. Broadening our perception
1) Are there specific groups of people who are not members of our community and if so what might be the reason for this?
2) Why are there broken communities?
3) What is the role of institutionalized communities such as: family neighbourhood, school, church, with regard to persons who are considered to be outsiders?
PART II : EXPERIENCING THOSE LIVING OUTSIDE OUR COMMUNITY
In Part Two the task is to find out, through experiential forms of learning, observations, dialogue and involvement with groups concerned, about their understanding of community, what the elements for community building are and also to learn how persons/groups who are excluded from a particular community understand their lives and situations.
ACTIVITY No 1
Step one) Form a small team to identify community leaders, health centres, churches etc., organizations which are working around the issue of HIV/AIDS. You may use newspapers, telephone directories or other sources of local information.
Step two) Try to make contact with persons or groups often ostracized by the church and the community in general, and also linked in the public’s mind to HIV/AIDS. Examples are, prison population, gays and lesbians, commercial sex workers. It would also be important to include organizations of people living with HIV/AIDS.
Step three) Extend invitations to groups asking them to speak on their issues and experiences in church groups, services or council meetings and where possible make appointments to visit groups in their own spaces. Think beforehand about those questions which interest you and can generate discussion and at the same time will give you a chance to understand the problems, dreams and hopes of these persons. Remember to enter into dialogue with an open heart, ready to listen to what people are saying about their experiences.
Try to have at least two different visits. After the visits are completed the group should collectively reflect on and discuss what they have learned from the experience. What were the needs expressed by the groups, that are not being responded to? Make a list of things learned through these dialogues.
Read again the introduction to COMMUNITY. Is the community to which you belong an example of a “safe place” as referred to in the introduction? What evidence would you give for your answer?
PART III: THE BIBLE AND COMMUNITY
The centre of Christ’s ministry among the rejected and neglected people of Israel is to restore their sense of belonging to the community of the people of God. In our relationship with people the first thing which is implied in a good relationship is respect for the otherness of the other, and a renunciation of domination. The second, and equally important, characteristic is the affection, love or esteem in which each holds the other. Only with that warmth of regard and sense of interconnectedness will the relationship blossom for both and flourish. Thus in the Bible it is often said that God is love; that “God so loved the world…” (John 3:16), while women and men are called to love God in their turn, and so walk in God’s ways. Christ’s ministry among the neglected and forgotten in his community, was an expression of this divine love.
Read together the following Biblical texts:
Mark 5: 25-34,
John 4:7-30,
Luke 14: 15-24,
In these stories, Jesus’ activity shows how in the midst of pain, brokenness and decay, healing is possible. Where there is no apparent hope, where death seems the overwhelming reality, and against all obstacles, Jesus’ acts create a situation, where community can be reinstated and life gains new significance.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Where do we find ourselves in these stories and where do we see the challenge for our congregation?
Do you know of any situation in your community where people were healed despite the medical prognosis?
What can we learn from Christ’s way of interacting with people that can guide our own relationships and communication with people living with HIV/AIDS?
For further study see WCC Document Chapter 3: Theological Perspectives
PART IV: LOOKING AT COMMUNITIES OF HOPE
Read together the following stories from the WCC document:
The example from Zaire (Appendix IV)
Gay Men’s Health Crisis, USA, (Appendix IV)
Project Momentum, New York City / USA (Appendix IV)
Northern Thailand, (Appendix IV)
DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:
1) How did communities become places of hope in these stories?
2) What did you find hopeful about these examples?
3) What did you find surprising?
4) How do these stories challenge us personally and collectively?
5) Are there examples of “communities of hope” in our own neighbourhood or community?
6) How can we respond to the brokenness we see around us?
7) How can we make our church a safe place in the time of HIV/AIDS?
PART V: TAKING ACTION TO MAKE OUR COMMUNITY SUPPORTIVE AND HEALING
Develop a plan of action
By now the group should have:
- developed an analysis of their own community or congregation;
- encountered people’s hopes and dreams inside and outside the church community;
- discovered examples of communities of hope;
- reflected on the respective biblical foundations.
THE FOLLOWING STEP IS TO HELP THE GROUP MOVE FROM REFLECTION TO ACTION.
1) Make a list of the problems you identified during your exposure visits both within your church and the broader community.
2) Brainstorm a list of actions which your group could take to address these problems.
3) List the resources which are available in your community and make a list of those which you need for your plan of action.
4) Commit your group to the realization of at least one action you have listed and which you will be committed to carry out.
RATIONALE:
The impact of HIV/AIDS has brought tremendous change to the world. It has devastated the lives of many people and affected individuals, families and communities around the globe. At the same time, individuals, communities, churches and governments have come together in new and creative ways to respond to the health and social challenges of the pandemic.
In this context, some Christians and churches have addressed the problems of HIV/AIDS and human sexuality with openness, compassion and solidarity, while others have nurtured negative, judgmental and condemnatory attitudes. The time has come for all churches to examine and assess their own life and action. We are confronted with a growing need to address issues like love, human relationships and sexuality in a totally new and urgent way. We must strive to join with others in collective action to end all kinds of discrimination and the structural injustices which put people at risk for HIV/AIDS.
The church cannot be a credible witness in the context of HIV/AIDS unless it understands the nature of change in people's lives, the factors that contribute to them, as well as their fears and hopes, and is willing to change itself to become a more loving, inclusive community for all God's people.
AIMS:
TO DEVELOP AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOW HIV/AIDS HAS CHANGED AND CONTINUES TO CHANGE OUR LIVES - AS INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES, CHURCHES, COMMUNITIES AND SOCIETIES.
TO IDENTIFY HOW WE AS INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES NEED TO CHANGE IN ORDER TO BUILD HEALTHY AND DIGNIFIED LIVES IN THE CONTEXT OF HIV/AIDS.
TO IDENTIFY THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH AND THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN PROMOTING LIFE-AFFIRMING CHANGE IN THE TIME OF HIV/AIDS.
GENERAL OBJECTIVES:
(1) Participants will define change and identify how it operates in their lives.
(2) Participants will describe what kind of individual and collective change is needed in the context of HIV/AIDS.
(3) Participants will explore biblical stories which provide examples of change.
(4) Participants will identify resources in the church and community to facilitate and sustain change.
CHANGE: ENTERING NEW LAND
Change and the idea of change create different responses in each of us. Change can be perceived as promising or as threatening. Whether we feel that change is basically positive or negative can depend on our personalities. If you strive for security and order, safety and control, you will resist change. Routine and stability is then what you appreciate. If you find routine boring and frightening, and you always want to see new things, change is positive, even necessary. This striving for constant changes can also be an escape from oneself, from intimacy and faithfulness; you may become very restless. Some persons are extreme on one of these sides; most of us are somewhat in between in that we want some things to change and some to remain the same.
Changes are inevitable. They happen all the time. Changes may be dramatic or gradual, and they may be profound or superficial. And they happen to each one of us in many different ways. Sometimes we have no choice, we may for instance lose our job, and our daily lives are completely changed. The structure of a society may also promote or hinder change.
Changes in our private, intimate life are also encouraged. We should eat healthier food, exercise, stop smoking, change sexual habits etc. In other societies or in other times, tradition was more important, - doing the right thing meant living as generations had done before us. “What would my grandfather have done in this situation?”, is a relevant question in such societies and cultures.
In our churches, as in many other situations and especially in relation to HIV/AIDS, we want to see behavioural changes and we want to see those positive changes promoted. What then promotes change?
It may be helpful to divide the changing factors into two categories, internal and external.
**Internal:** Those are what we may call psychological forces, where a person balances the risk and the desires, and makes a decision in her/his mind which one to carry out.
We may call this an internal discussion between the “ought-to” and the “want-to”. Through information we try to influence the person to change and thus to have an impact on the decision making process in that individual. Self control of the person is a precondition if this is going to work.
**External:** These are all kinds of social forces, which influence people’s lives from outside. They may be media, advertisements, societal/cultural norms and most effectively group pressures and group values. They supply norms and values to the persons saying “join”, “be a part of us”, “come with us”. We often term this “peer pressure”. It is powerful, and can be very destructive, but also tremendously constructive and good, helping a person to safeguard her/his identity.
In fact, change very often happens as a form of dialogue between the internal and the external and we will have to realize the interdependence between them.
It is important to influence both these forces to promote change. Change can only happen based on the reality of our lives, not on how we ought to live.
(Excerpt from a presentation by Anne Skjelmerud, Norway, 1996)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
a) Divide into small groups. The participants should discuss the above text in relation to their own experiences with change.
1) How does the author of the text describe change?
2) What were the most important changes in your life and given the two categories of the text, was this “internally” or “externally” motivated change?
3) What would you like to change in your life?
4) How will this change occur?
5) Give examples of promising and threatening change.
6) What are the obstacles to change?
Note: Each group should select a recorder to write its answers on a flip chart/large piece of paper.
b) The small groups will return to the plenary, where each one will present the results of its discussion.
c) The facilitator will close the session by summarizing the main ideas presented by the groups.
PART II : REFLECTING ON HIV/AIDS AND CHANGE
ACTIVITY No 1
a) Divide the participants into small groups
b) Have each group read one of the following stories and reflect on these questions:
1) Who was changed in these stories?
2) Why were they changed?
3) Do you think these changes were positive or negative, for whom?
4) How did people respond to change?
STORY 1 (a Latin American story)
A church-based community health team in Chile had worked for many years confronting common illnesses in urban shantytowns. In the early 90s, when the issue of HIV/AIDS and the vulnerability of poor communities became apparent the group decided to organize a meeting between shantytown health promoters and a large AIDS service organization run primarily by gay men. When the women health promoters arrived at the AIDS organization, many were shocked and embarrassed to see the explicit educational posters. There was a room full of nervous laughter and whispered jokes. When the meeting began, however, there was an amazing transformation as these women began to see the similarities between the discrimination suffered by the gay community and their own situation as poor women. One of the men who was living with HIV told of how he had been treated in the hospital the first time that he had been hospitalized; the nurses left his food outside the door and refused to touch him. He told of how humiliated he felt when he had first been diagnosed and one of the doctors pointed to him and said, “That one’s gay, he probably has AIDS.”
The women looked at each other in silence as these men explained that they had initiated their work in an effort to respond to the crisis of AIDS which was silently affecting their community and largely ignored by the wider society. It sounded so much like the reality in the shantytowns where the women have come together to deal with their own problems in the absence of governmental responses.
When the meeting was over, one of the health promoters stood up and hugged the young man with HIV. With tears in her eyes she said, “This meeting has been like waking up for me. I never knew
STORY 2 (a Uganda community/women)
“In the Participatory Action Research Project in Kagoma, Uganda, the community started to discuss and address the issues of inequality and human rights within their local experience of HIV/AIDS.
Through focus group discussions in the community people realized, for example, that the underprivileged status of women was a problem for the whole community to address. Girls were deprived of rights for education, which in turn made them vulnerable for sexual and economic exploitation which could make them HIV/AIDS infected. Promoting education for girls was identified as a way of reducing the infection rate. This was combined with the enforcement of sanctions against rape. The groups also started to discuss the traditional male/female roles and division of labour in the community, in order to propose changes and strategies to improve cooperation.”
STORY 3 (a north american mother)
“I was having a difficult time dealing with her son’s homosexuality let alone his AIDS diagnosis, so although she had never travelled alone, she made the trip without him. She didn’t know any other person who was openly gay and she had never been to San Francisco before or met any of her son’s friends.
However her apprehensions were quickly dispelled. She was surprised at how quickly she was accepted by his partner and their circle of friends and she was impressed by the loving support her son was receiving from all of them. For those who were estranged from their families, she soon became “Mom.”
She talked about how much she had changed since she arrived. Caring for her ill son was physically and emotionally draining to be sure but she felt honoured that he was allowing her to care for him. She also felt she was learning something about herself and her relationship to her son. She spoke, as many family members have done, of feeling enriched by the experience. And while it is still difficult to accept her son’s illness, she knows that she will be less afraid to talk about it with other family members and friends when she goes back to her home community” (A. Grant, A Mother’s Story, Kairos News, Spring 1994, Vol 4, No. 30)
ACTIVITY No 2
In this activity the group discussion will focus on the question of how the understanding of love, intimacy and inter-personal relationships have changed in the time of HIV/AIDS. The facilitator should create a climate of trust in which people can open up and talk about their own fears, anxieties and hopes.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1) In what ways has HIV/AIDS changed our lives - as individuals, families, churches, communities and society?
2) Which of these changes are positive and which are negative?
3) What kinds of individual and collective changes are needed in the context of HIV/AIDS?
4) What barriers/obstacles to change exist in the church and community for youth, women, men and families?
5) What strategies can we develop to deal with these barriers/obstacles?
PART III: THE BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING OF CHANGE
The call to change/conversion is at the core of Jesus’ teaching as is reported right from the beginning of his ministry (Mk.1:14f.) It is however important to notice that the various biblical stories, which report on how the encounter with Christ has led to change, are complemented by stories, where even Christ himself is changed in the encounter with people, or where he only indicates the direction for change, leaving it to the people to follow or to reject.
These stories were preserved in the early church as concrete models for the pastoral work in discipleship. Even today that remains the central message of them. In many cases, the study of the biblical narratives will show that the call for change has often been a call to the community of disciples themselves.
The following texts for bible studies show different understandings and objects of change, in the ministry of Christ.
1. Each group selects a Bible story and presents a dramatization which portrays the main ideas.
2. Let each group classify the kind of change which the story is reporting, and find out how it relates to the local congregation.
Bible studies may be selected from the following:
- Mark 7:24-30 The relation of object and subject in the process of change
- Matthew 18:1-6 Change in the context of strong and weak
- Mark 10:16-23 The risks of change
- Matthew 12:1-7 Righteousness vs. change
- Luke 19:1-9 Change in personal life
AFTER THE PRESENTATIONS DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:
1) What do the Bible stories teach us about change?
2) Why do people change in these stories?
3) Discuss where these Bible texts relate to our own stories of change.
PART IV: PROMOTING LIFE AFFIRMING CHANGES
ACTIVITY No 1
a) The group is asked to explore the community for examples of positive action on change and inclusiveness.
b) Each person in the group should visit an individual, an organization and/or a church that is promoting life affirming changes related to HIV/AIDS.
c) The group is requested to interview these persons or groups informally and report their findings to the larger group. Some guidelines for discussion are found below.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS I
1) What are the characteristics of these groups/individuals that make them life affirming?
2) Is there any relationship between these groups/individuals and your specific congregation?
3) Do these groups cooperate with each other?
4) What can we learn from these groups/individuals about change?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS II
1) What changes do we need to make in our personal lives, our churches, and in our communities in order to respond effectively to HIV/AIDS?
2) How do we support each other in affecting changes?
3) Identify resources in the church and community which can help to facilitate and sustain change?
4) What obstacles to change do you see in the communities you belong to?
Vulnerability means that something or someone can be hurt or wounded; it means to be exposed to danger or attack, to be unprotected. Our world today bears the signs of vulnerability through various socio-economic and cultural contexts and the trends of globalization and fragmentation that contribute to the fragility in human life and relationships.
To be vulnerable in the context of HIV/AIDS means to have limited or no control over one’s risk of acquiring HIV infection or, for those already infected with or affected by HIV, to have little or no access to appropriate care and support. Vulnerability is the net result of the interplay among many factors, both personal (including biological) and societal; it can be increased by a range of cultural, educational, demographic, legal, economic and political factors.
Currently it is estimated that nine out of ten people with HIV live in areas where poverty, subordinate status of women and children, and discrimination are pre-existing. (WHO)
Racism, sexual harassment, discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation, disparities in economic situation, lack of political will, huge external and internal debts, critical health problems, illicit drug and sex trades and fragmentation and marginalization of communities all contribute to the web of global problems that intensify the VULNERABILITY of human communities to HIV/AIDS.
The reality of HIV/AIDS challenges the church to recognize and respond to this situation by addressing the underlying issues of inequality and injustice that have created the conditions for the spread of HIV infection and AIDS. We are called to acknowledge the vulnerability in each one of us and our communities, moving beyond the notion of individual risk, to a new understanding of social vulnerability as crucial not only to our comprehension of the dynamic of the epidemic, but to any strategy capable of diminishing its advance. As churches we are in particular challenged to address the issues and act in light of the inclusive nature of the gospel.
Vulnerability is usually seen as a negative term. However, it contains the possibility of an awareness – an awakening capacity - which may be described as “healthy vulnerability”. This implies that we are aware of the limits to strength and power, to growth and success, to our capacities. We must accept that the virus affects us as a community. We are not called to simply offer charity, but we are challenged to see that as we all belong to the body of Christ the suffering caused by HIV/AIDS affects all of us. We must recognize that the crisis of AIDS is our crisis and as such, “Our church has AIDS”.
AIMS:
TO UNDERSTAND HIV/AIDS AS AN EXPRESSION OF A FRAGMENTED WORLD
TO IDENTIFY THE VARIOUS FORMS OF VULNERABILITY THAT PUT US AT RISK FOR HIV/AIDS
GENERAL OBJECTIVES:
- Participants will identify experiences of vulnerability including situations of powerlessness in their own lives and in their community
STUDY PROCESS
VULNERABILITY
- Participants will explore their own fear and vulnerability related to HIV/AIDS.
- Participants will examine the social, political, economic and cultural factors which enhance the vulnerability of people to HIV/AIDS.
- Participants will explore ways to cope with HIV/AIDS through reflecting on biblical texts which address vulnerability, powerlessness and empowerment.
PART I: LOOKING AT VULNERABILITY
ACTIVITY No. 1 – DISCUSSION
Divide into groups and discuss, writing your findings onto a piece of paper:
* What does it mean to be vulnerable?
* What other word can you use for it?
ACTIVITY No. 2 – GROUP ACTIVITY
Develop a collage with images of vulnerability. Cut out items from newspapers and magazines which reflect this idea (as an alternative markers or crayons should be provided to draw these images).
Follow-up collage: Look at the different aspects of vulnerability, and how they influence you as an individual, and the community.
ACTIVITY No. 3
Read the statement from the rationale: Current estimates indicate that nine out of ten people with HIV live in areas where poverty, subordinate status of women and children, and discrimination are pre-existing.
For further reading, the group may look at the (Appendix, Vulnerability, 1)
Reflect on the text and give your reactions and comments on it.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1) Who are the most vulnerable persons in your community?
2) Have these people traditionally been accepted in your church? Explain.
3) Why are people in poor communities more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS?
PART II: LOOKING AT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HIV/AIDS AND VULNERABILITY
ACTIVITY No. 1:
The group should divide into small groups and read the following story:
“A young girl from a hill tribe in Asia leaves her family to find a job in the big city. Her parents urge her to do that, because they are very poor and cannot survive without additional income as they are subsistence farmers and the prices for their produce are very low.”
GROUP DISCUSSION:
Have the group invent the rest of the story.
What happens to this girl?
After this discussion read the rest of the TRUE story:
“In the city, the girl is put into a brothel where many girls are held in captivity by a wealthy brothel owner. Most of the money from the clients goes to the brothel owner, but she manages to send small amounts of money to her family at home.
The brothel is regularly visited by rich men from the city and also by sex tourists coming from different countries, abusing the girls for their personal pleasure. The HIV infection rate among the girls is very high, as many of the clients are HIV infected and pass the virus on to them as they in turn pass it on to other clients.”
GROUP DISCUSSION:
1) Compare this ending to the story invented by the group. Were they similar? Why or why not?
2) Identify four factors which have put this young girl at risk for HIV/AIDS.
3) How does this situation make you feel?
4) What can/should be done to help protect this young girl’s life and the lives of other girls like her?
5) Do situations like this exist in your community? If not, what situations in your community make women vulnerable to HIV/AIDS?
Let the group develop or share a story from their own locality which would also demonstrate the interplay of factors that leads to vulnerability. Afterwards the group meets in plenary to share the results of their discussions and evaluate the session.
ACTIVITY No. 2
Alternative or additional story about women and vulnerability:
WOMAN, SOUTH PACIFIC: “I was aware my husband was having casual sex when not with me, but I was too ashamed to ask him to take precautions. I kept telling myself, next time. My advice to young mothers is, ‘Don’t ever wait for next time.’ Now I have big regrets. I’m so lucky that I didn’t have any more children after I was infected.” (Facing the challenges of HIV/AIDS/STDs: A Gender-based response, Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Amsterdam, 1995, p 16).
1) Discuss the factors that make it difficult for this woman to protect herself.
2) Identify comparable situations in your community.
3) How do such situations make you feel?
4) What can be done to help women protect themselves from HIV/AIDS?
For further study and ideas for action read the:
Ecumenical Platform of Action - Women’s Health and the Challenge of HIV/AIDS from the Study Document.
ACTIVITY No. 3
“We went together to tell his Mum and Dad that he had HIV, but first, the most difficult, to say that he is homosexual. Then we found ourselves propelled to the door, if not physically manhandled, certainly ejected by the torrent of disgust and vindictiveness. Then we were backing down the neat, patterned tile path. His mother screaming, ‘The sooner you are dead the better,’ and his father, red faced and eyes bulging, slammed the door shut on us.
In the shocking silence I hear the first time his urgent, despairing pleading which I realize he has been repeating throughout. ‘But I need you, I’m dying, I love you, I’m afraid, I need you, need you...’
I couldn’t get the key into the lock of the car door at first, but anyway he walked on, unseeing except for his misery and abandonment. He walked on, and I sat down in the gutter and wept.”
(Testimony from: A Gift Wrapped in Thorns? Cara Trust (1995), London, England).
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1) How did you feel about this story? Who do you relate to in the story? The son, the parents or the friend?
2) How do you explain the parents’ reaction? How do you explain the son’s reaction?
3) Is anyone to blame? If so, who?
4) In what ways will this reaction affect the son? How does this situation make him more vulnerable?
5) What services does the son need now? What services do the parents need?
PART III : BIBLICAL REFLECTIONS ON VULNERABILITY, HOPE & HEALING
Vulnerability is a theme in the Bible which very often is reported in connection with discipleship, obeying to the call of God. The prophets as well as the apostles show that standing against the dominant understanding of religion and society brings one into conflict with the ruling powers.
There is also a whole set of stories which show vulnerability as illness or obsession by demons, which needed the healing intervention of Jesus to restore life. All these stories have in common the fact that life-affirming action comes through support from outside.
But as you look at the biblical records, you will also discover that Jesus himself was vulnerable and was saved by the actions of others.
While reading the biblical texts indicated below, try to discover the message that vulnerability addresses for the “non-vulnerable” and identify the forces which caused the vulnerability. What meaning does this have for your local congregation and its activity in the context of vulnerability?
1.Kg 21 Naboth’s vineyard
Jer. 37 Jeremiah in prison
Mtt. 2:1-15 Child murder at Bethlehem.
Luke 22: 39-46 Jesus in Gethsemane
Is. 53 The suffering servant
Matt 26,69-75 Peter’s denial.
Acts 16 Paul and Silas in prison
(Study in this context the Appendix V, 2)
PART IV: THE CHURCH: AGENT FOR CHANGE IN THE CONTEXT OF VULNERABILITY
ACTIVITY No. 1 – AIDS & SILENCE.
Read and discuss the following story:
“I was increasingly convinced that AIDS was a disease that shines in hush and thrives on secrecy. It was prospering because people chose not to talk about it…The quieter we keep it the more it will affect and stigmatize, especially while people believe that AIDS affects some people and not others. I reasoned that if people could see how it affected us, an ordinary average family, they would understand the importance of coming out. If it could happen to us, it could happen to anybody. The support that I received after my husband died was in response to my coming out.” (in the open)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1) Are there situations regarding HIV/AIDS in our own communities in which we have remained silent? If so, why?
2) What happens to people and families when their realities are kept in silence? How does silence make people vulnerable?
3) Referring to this story: discuss the relationship between “coming out” and receiving support. What risks did she have to take to come out? In what way did her coming out affect her surroundings, such as other people with HIV, or her own relationships?
4) What role can and should the church play in overcoming silence?
ACTIVITY No. 2
To prepare for this activity the facilitator should make placards with the following statements
1) “WE DON’T WANT A HOSPICE IN OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD FOR PERSONS WITH AIDS”
2) “I WON’T SEND MY CHILDREN TO SCHOOL BECAUSE THERE IS A CHILD WITH AIDS”
3) “I DON’T WANT MY CHILDREN TO RECEIVE SEX EDUCATION BECAUSE IT ONLY PROMOTES EARLY SEXUAL ACTIVITY”
4) “OUR CHURCH MADE BADGES WHICH SAID ‘OUR CHURCH HAS AIDS’”
5) “OUR CHURCH IS LOANING ITS BASEMENT SPACE TO ‘POSITIVE LIVING’ A GROUP OF MEN AND WOMEN WHO ARE HIV+”
6) “OUR CHURCH BULLETIN STATES: WE WELCOME PEOPLE OF ALL SEXUAL ORIENTATIONS”
To begin the session the facilitator should distribute the placards to different people. Form a large circle and ask the person with placard number one to walk across the circle holding the placard high in the air. Have him/her walk several times around the inside of the circle so that everyone can see the statement. Open the discussion using the following questions:
DISCUSSION
1) Does this statement make people vulnerable? Who is vulnerable?
2) Does this statement empower or protect people? Who?
3) Has anything like this happened in your community? Why or why not?
4) How do you feel about this statement? What impact does this have on the community?
5) How can we respond to this statement?
Repeat the process with the remaining five placards. For statement number three add the question:
6) Do you think this is true? Why or why not?
Finish the session by having the group brainstorm a list of all the factors in their own communities which make people vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and all the factors which help reduce vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.
PART V: ACTING IN THE CONTEXT OF VULNERABILITY
Read together the conclusion of the WCC Study Document, Part VII. WHAT THE CHURCHES CAN DO. Then divide into small groups and have each group develop an action plan based on the needs in their own community. Record each work plan on a flip chart/large piece of paper so that it can be shared with the whole group at the end of the session.
Follow the seven steps of planning to develop a concrete plan:
1. Diagnosis. What are the problems? What are the needs?
2. What do we want to achieve (objective) in a particular period? This week, this month, this year?
3. What are the possible ways of achieving this objective? Brainstorm for proposals.
4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each proposal? How much time, money and personal effort will be needed for each proposal?
5. Which proposal (plan) do we accept? This may include several suggestions.
6. Who will do what, when, where and how?
7. At what point do we need to evaluate? Who should be involved in the evaluation?
(Taken from: Hope, A. and Timmel, S. (1984). Training for Transformation: A Handbook for Community Workers (Book 2). Zimbabwe, Mambo Press).
In the plenary session, each small group will present its work plan. Discuss the different presentations and select at least one activity to implement. Organize a follow-up meeting to begin the implementation of the work plan.
ACTIVITY No. 4
In light of the insights gained during this process organize a liturgy to remember those who have died of HIV/AIDS and those who live with HIV/AIDS. Invite people in your community living with HIV/AIDS to help plan the service.
FACING AIDS
Education in the Context of Vulnerability HIV/AIDS
STUDY PROCESS
VULNERABILITY
RATIONALE:
The church as the body of Christ is expected to give both spiritual direction and moral guidance within its own communities and beyond. Such direction and guidance need to be given in caring love for the individual and in recognition of the value and dignity which each human being has in the face of God. Thus it is important to acknowledge, that the church is the communion of the one body with many members, each distinct: “God so arranged the body that there may be no dissension within it, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the Body of Christ and individually members of it” (I.Corr.12:25-27).
It is when the church adequately responds to the suffering, sick, to people living with HIV/AIDS, when it ministers to and learns from them - that the relationship between the church and such persons will indeed “make a difference”, and thus become “growth-producing”. Through this relationship we are pushed back on ourselves, because in the Gospels we are required to love as a demand, a requirement, not an option.
In this context the rapid growth of HIV/AIDS has sharply raised the question of the caring quality of the local congregation. HIV/AIDS becomes a testing ground for the pastoral capacity of a congregation. Providing comprehensive physical, emotional and spiritual care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS and their families helps limit the impact of the pandemic. As HIV/AIDS expands, the need for preventive education, medical care, counselling and adequate social services also increases. The church is called to act with compassion and to work for justice to respond to these needs at the local, national and global level. The church can work with and for people living with HIV/AIDS in working to speak the truth and to work against discrimination and social injustice, and in that it can contribute to prevention.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic challenges the church to rediscover and strengthen its ministry to those under threat of death, or dying. It believes, that hope is not lost when a person is infected with HIV; it believes that the spiritual resources of the church can be used to help people to accept, and to come to terms with their own mortality. Where such caring is exercised it also becomes an act of prevention. As St. Basil the Great has taught, the church needs to create an atmosphere of openness and acceptance, where goodness and love can prevail in the community and thus love will issue forth in the lives of the human community as a whole.
In living as a caring community, and in facilitating change in the personal as well, as in the socio-economic and cultural-political arena, the church thus can develop practical approaches to HIV/AIDS which contribute to prevention. It is through caring with and about people that changes happen in attitudes and behaviour and in the environment. There is a link between the care process and peoples’ response, through which they move towards their own change and healing. In doing so they prevent HIV/AIDS from spreading and find hope for the future of their families and communities. The nature of true and loving care is to be transforming and this is what they are living out (SD 83)
AIMS:
- TO UNDERSTAND THE LINK BETWEEN CARE AND PREVENTION AND TO ACCEPT THE PRACTICAL AND SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE OF BECOMING A HEALING COMMUNITY
- TO REFLECT ON THE DYNAMIC ROLE OF COMPASSION IN CARE AND PREVENTION FINDING EXPRESSION IN “LOVE IN ACTION”.
GENERAL OBJECTIVES:
- The participants will reflect on what the Bible teaches about care and prevention.
- Participants will become aware of the needs of the people living with HIV/AIDS in their own community.
- Participants should identify practical ways through which the church can become active in care and prevention.
- Participants will seek ways to develop or strengthen programmes of prevention and care in the community.
- Participants will explore the variety of approaches to healing and the link between liturgy and healing.
PART I: LOOKING AT CARE AND PREVENTION IN OUR OWN COMMUNITY
ACTIVITY No. 1 – FROM WHERE WE START
Group activity
Note: The Facilitator should provide large sheets of paper /flipchart, for the participants to work with during this session, prepare the text as a “hand out” and draw the “Triangle” on a large piece of paper.
1. Divide participants into groups and ask them to write their understanding of and experiences with care and prevention on the flipchart. Ask the group to concentrate on HIV/AIDS and provide a list of the needs they think people living with HIV/AIDS have.
2. Afterwards share the results in a discussion and make a list of the prevention messages and programmes that the group is aware of in their community.
ACTIVITY No. 2
Read and discuss the following statement before you do the next activity, as background information
“Prevention activities over the past decade all over the world have shown that prevention can work if it includes the following three essential elements:
**Information and education**: about modes of HIV transmission and information on how to avoid becoming infected. Most effective if the messages are directed towards specific target populations.
**Health and Social Services**: Services include counselling, testing, treatment programmes for injection drug users, support programmes and condoms. Effectiveness depends on whether the services are geographically accessible, financially affordable, occur in a favourable environment, delivered by skilled personnel, sustainable over time.
**Supportive social environment**: the term empowerment is useful to describe the process through which individuals assume for themselves the power to determine their behaviour. (Mann, et.al. (1992), AIDS in the World, Cambridge, MA: Harvard)
ACTIVITY No. 3 – Group activity
Participants are sent out to visit the community and to find out:
STUDY PROCESS
CARE & PREVENTION
- What forms of care and prevention work are available in your community/congregation?
- Who is involved? Interview care receivers and care givers.
- What kinds of needs and resources do you discover from this?
- What lessons have been learned? How have people providing or receiving care experienced this?
When the participants return share with each other
- What kinds of needs and resources did you discover during your visits?
- What lessons have been learned?
- What have been the experiences of people providing or receiving care?
- How do we understand the alternative approaches in light of the prevention triangle? What needs are being met?
- How do these methods complement or contradict our own beliefs and practices?
- Is everyone in need of care receiving an equal share of it? (quality and equality of care).
- Who is providing care?
Draw a graph which contains a structural picture of the total findings of the group. (sociogram)
ACTIVITY No. 4 – WE and OTHERS
GROUP EXERCISE:
Step 1: Explore alternative modes of healing and care available in your or neighbouring communities.
Step 2: Invite a speaker who is involved in traditional or alternative healing to make a presentation in your church.
Step 3: As follow-up of this experience discuss among your group how this relates to the experiences you have made during your visits.
You may find a number of “traditional” forms of healing, the following lists some:
**Naturopathy:** A system of medicine which looks at the whole person - body, mind and spirit in the context of his/her natural environment and in relationship with it. It uses what is naturally available, with the minimum amount of necessary modification, to promote health, build up stamina and body resistance, and prevent diseases.
**Herbal Medicine:** The use of plants to facilitate the return of the body’s balance to normal or to relieve fever and headache and other body pains. Herbal medicine comes in decoction, infusion, tincture, as oil extracts.
**Homeopathy:** A system of medicine formulated in the rule, “Let likes be treated by likes”. Homeopathy treats the patient, not the disease.
**Pranic healing** is an ancient science and art of healing which utilizes PRANA or vital energy to heal the whole physical body. It is also called psychic healing, vitalic healing, Therapeutic Touch, laying on of the hand, magnetic healing, faith healing, and charismatic healing.
**Massage:** Manipulation of the whole body using the fingers, knuckles, hands, elbow, or the feet in order to stimulate the flow of the body’s energy patterns and so harmonise them. Some prefer to massage acupuncture points and meridians. In Japan, this form of massage is called shiatsu or literally finger pressure. In the USA, this is called acupressure or acupuncture without needles. Deep massage manipulates the tissues of the body that are tense or feel hard and knotted because of repeated strain on a muscle or the whole body. Massage is very soothing to people living with HIV/AIDS.
Contact no 151, WCC Geneva
PART II: BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CARE AND PREVENTION
In the following Bible studies the central question is the inter-relationship of caring and prevention. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son” (John 3:16) is the most complete expression of that love which leads to compassionate caring. The Bible is full of stories about love. Love is expressed in care for others, the restoration of community, the transformation of unjust situations, the healing of woundedness. Very often in these episodes, human life is saved and relationships are healed by love acting as preventive care. In the following Bible studies you may therefore find it helpful to draw on the insights from the Bible studies on Community, Change and Vulnerability which you will find in the Study Document itself.
As you go through the texts and find your own stories in the Bible, you may want to ask: What kind of prevention is achieved through caring for the other? How do you see the interlinkage of care and prevention in the texts chosen? What does prevention mean in those cases?
Read and study one or more of the following texts:
Ruth 1:6-22 Ruth and Naomi
Dtnt 6:4-24 The great commandment
Isaiah 53 The suffering servant
Lk 10:29-37 The good Samaritan
Mark 2:1-12, The healing of the paralytic
Mt. 25:31-46 The last judgement
I.Corr.:12:12-26 One body, many members
Human relationship plays a vital role in the reflections on HIV/AIDS
Read and reflect in this context the Statement of the Archbishop of York (SD 3B) and reflect on: John 4:1-30 The women at the well.
What understanding of healing and human relationship issues does this text raise?
Read from the Study Document the rest of section 3 B on Human Sexuality.
GROUP ACTIVITY
- How would you articulate the central issues of that text in a popular flyer for your community, how for a news article?
- Re-write the text and try to publish it or get the congregation to help you make a flyer.
For more information on the issue you may wish to draw on the material available in your region on sex education or draw on the Study Document chapter 4, p. 60f.
PART III: THE CHURCH AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR CARE & PREVENTION
WHERE DOES THE CHURCH GET ITS MANDATE?
“Jesus Christ demonstrated God’s love to all human beings and came to be in the midst of human struggle. If the churches are to fulfil this mission, they must first recognise that HIV/AIDS brings the lives of many people into crisis, and secondly that it is a crisis which churches must face. The very relevance of the churches will be determined by their response” (from WCC Study Document p.1).
ACTIVITY No. 1 – Group exercise
Read and reflect on the following stories to see examples of what the church has done and is doing in situations of care and prevention.
STORY 1:
“Kiran, a counsellor at the Salvation Army hostel in Bombay, India, tells of his experience when he was told he was HIV-positive. He had gone to a hospital for physical check-up to obtain a work permit to work in Saudi Arabia. When he went to receive his results, in the middle of sixty persons in the clinic, the nurse shouted to him that he had HIV/AIDS. He was shocked. He asked again what she meant. He was told that he had AIDS and that he would soon die. He said he stumbled home very distraught, angry and confused. There was no counselling. He was not prepared for this news. There was no privacy in the clinic. He learned of the Salvation Army hostel. There he found compassion, care, acceptance. He was able to regain some self-respect in a support group. Now he is one of the leading counsellors at the Salvation Army hostel. He helps the hostel to establish testing and counselling services.”
STORY 2:
In Kagoma, a rural community in Uganda, the Participatory Action Research (PAR) was introduced to address the issue of AIDS in the community. In order to explore what were the factors in their lives that promoted AIDS and made the population vulnerable to AIDS, an extensive process of focus group discussions was undertaken in the community. The groups were homogeneously composed, so that the participants in each group would generally share the same life conditions and positions in society (unmarried youth/boys/girls, married women/men, community leaders, church leaders etc.)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- What in these stories are either cultural or economic barriers to care and prevention?
- How would you describe the role of the church in these cases as an agent for care and prevention?
ACTIVITY No. 2 – Group Activity
Read together from the Study Document, the story of Arthit and Urai (Appendix IV)
Discuss in your group the questions following that story, 1-4!
- Afterwards try to outline what the church can learn from this example in the various cultural and religious contexts?
PART IV: WHAT HAS THE CHURCH TO OFFER?
ACTIVITY No 1
At this point the group should first review what they have learned so far from this study process.
The facilitator should provide some large piece of paper to collect all the insights during the discussion.
Some suggested questions which should be answered:
1) What are the main needs identified in the community?
2) What skills are available in the group and how can they be matched with the needs?
3) Discuss many activities which the group can undertake (for example, adoption of persons with HIV/AIDS, support group for care givers, counselling workshop, and so on.)
**ACTIVITY No 2**
Read the following text from the Study Document
Afterwards discuss in how far this model can be practised in your congregation and in how far the description given here is valid for your community:
“Focus group discussion in churches could be encouraged as a vital ministry for the church. Questions such as the following could be raised: what unique contribution does the church bring to our efforts to face the challenges of HIV/AIDS? Has the church become a “ghetto,” isolated from the life of the people? Does the church touch the existential lives of people? How can the church deal with, and be responsive to, the life of the community? How can the church be supported in identifying its priorities, and in tackling difficult issues related to its identity, life and mission? How can the church identify efficient and relevant action to meet the challenge of HIV/AIDS? How can those in the church best reflect on what they have learned in meeting this challenge?
The role of the church should be seen in the light of its particular cultural context as well as in the light of the universal gospel message.
An example of a church where focus group discussion on HIV/AIDS took place was in the Armenian Church in Lebanon. The church in Lebanon has particularities because the society has become pluralistic. This is the context of the mission and the life of the church. Culture carries a direct influence on life and HIV/AIDS issues, in a context where the Lebanese Christians have maintained their particular way of life. Ideally, the church is where people seek solutions; but actually, the church has been shying away from the realities of everyday life. There is minimal dialogue with youth. The church is slow in reacting to social issues. The church faces difficulties in preparing young people for sexuality. Religion and sexuality were not seen as contradictory, but practical approaches became problematic. Therefore the need is seen for the priests to have education on human sexuality. Priests are poorly informed about HIV/AIDS. Their source of information is what they read in newspapers or see on television. Action on HIV/AIDS is delegated to non-governmental organizations. It is something the church is not involved in.”
**ACTIVITY No 3**
Look at the role of worship and liturgy in care and prevention. Read the section from the WCC Document (78):
“Worship Life: The celebration of life through renewal in worship
“Worship - a special moment for celebration - attempts to place daily life on the stage. The repetition of gestures, words, sounds, colours that form the moment of celebration re-creates a reality that in many aspects is lived in an unconscious way.
Worship is more than the scheduled moment of celebration. Worship is the connection with this moment of celebration and life itself. Worship is the time to recognize that we are created in God’s image. It is a time to recognize our differences, to learn to be together, to be in touch, and to overcome prejudices. Worship calls the body in its totality to express daily life moments and to recognize God’s will and the importance of God’s commitment to care for people and creation. The worship can help the churches to remove the barriers that we create in daily life of human communities by “opening up their windows” - eyes, ears and all the senses - for ordinary experiences and ways to express God’s
presence amidst the people and creation. We need to recognize the importance of renewing the ways we celebrate life and our faith as we worship together, as we read the Bible, pray and praise and as we share experiences, life stories and bear one another’s burdens. Some are challenged to enlarge their fellowship and include other Christian denominations and other faiths. In this fellowship, the community joins hands and hearts for a healing service for all humankind amidst tragedies and suffering and to heal people, cultures, nations and creation.
The unique thing the church can offer is for persons to be included in the worship and the prayer of a community which understands itself as a healing community, cared for by the Grace of God. Such a community can be a safe place, where in prayer people can express anxieties, frustrations and hope, and also celebrate the gifts of life. Holy communion has a central place in celebrating relationship with God, and as an expression of hope, also for life after death. Persons living with the virus may help the congregations (or groups in the church) to revitalize the prayer life and liturgical, communal expressions of the church.
The following text gives some insight, how people living with HIV/AIDS are reflecting on central questions of our Faith, such as the “Mystery and Grace - Hope and Resurrection” by Ernesto Barros Cardoso. (cf. Facing Aids, 35-43)
“The Key to understanding hope seems to me this courage or energy to throw oneself into Mystery, the Sacred, what is beyond… I wonder what further action would be necessary to perceive this contact with the Mystery and the whole range of unheard of and unusual situations, and the perplexity that they cause in the mutilated and suffering bodies that seek hope and signs of resurrection. I remember the absurd amount that Job suffered and how, at the end of his experience with doing theology with his own body, he learned to reject rationalisations imposed as truths - I remember what he had learned, but also what his friends said was “the foundation”, “the basis” of arguments, and how they said that he should trust them, accept the pain, confess his sin and, who knows, be forgiven and cured!... Yes, at the end of his experience, Job collapses when he sees the Sacred in all its grandeur, and says: “I knew of thee then only by report, but now I see thee with my own eyes” (Job 42:4)... Hope and Resurrection are intimately related to his profound experience of faith. This confrontation usually does not find words and arguments that can express its impact. A radical change of perception, of view and of projection…
In the face of the drama of so many bodies walking seeking a home a shoulder, an embrace, a meaning that helps to understand this pain, to face it, and go beyond resignation… and then integrate it as a part of life experience of exercising the limits imposed daring to advance and extend the margins imposed by illness…
I think the attitude of the leadership of the churches, its thinkers (theologians) and its ministers (deacons and pastors), should help these people – the multitude of homeless, roofless, shelterless, familyless, energyless, futureless people… to recover and re-encounter, from within their pain and their suffering body, the responses and arguments, the inexhaustible spring that helps to make radical changes. Only confrontation with the Mystery, with the always-open Revelation of God, can break down the faith in well-prepared speeches which - for that very reason - no longer “convince” many people. Now is when symbols, gestures, indirectness, silence are fundamental… learning to do liturgy with people who suffer… learning to discover signs of the Sacred in the midst of garbage and dregs, learning to recognize this “holy land” in order to remove one’s sandals and… in silence and profound expectations, to meet what is “further beyond!” (cf. Moses)
GROUP ACTIVITY
- Reflect on this text in the context of preparation of a worship in your own congregation.
- How would you describe what the author says, in your own words?
- Where do you see the relation to care and prevention work of the church?
- Afterwards read the example from the liturgical life of the Orthodox tradition.
“Within the Russian Orthodox Church spiritual healing gains a new momentum. Its practice draws on the mid 19th century Russian Saint Feofan the Recluse. He included healing as an element of the praxis of liturgy containing several steps, such as follows:
Most important is to create a special atmosphere of love, attention, understanding and respect around the sick and the suffering which comprises several aspects.
The next central step is to assist in care which contains several aspects a priest will have to observe.
The priest is to help the faithful to come to an awareness of the brokenness (sinfulness) of one’s way of life with the help of a counsellor or spiritual director and to assist in finding ways of renewed, healed life (repentance);
Holy Communion is a central focus point for this process of care and healing; supporting the correction of one’s former way of life, by means of active repentance (love in action).”
Anatoly Berestov
ACTIVITY No 4
The group is asked to visit religious communities in the local area and find out, how are they helping those in need of care and prevention.
Note to the facilitator: Have the group divided into several subteams and develop together a questionnaire
After the group has returned find out what kind of different approaches there are; the group may want to make a little information brochure on Care & Prevention in the local community.
ACTIVITY No 5
Visit the local Churches and ask the church leaders/elders, how you could organize together an ecumenical worship on care and prevention.
Plan and organize the worship together with people living with HIV/AIDS.
I. Introduction
1. Already in 1987 the executive committee of the World Council of Churches called the churches to address the urgent challenges posed by the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout the world. Appealing for an immediate and effective response in the areas of pastoral care, education for prevention and social ministry, the executive committee noted that “the AIDS crisis challenges us profoundly to be the church in deed and in truth: *to be the church as a healing community*”.[1]
2. The spread of HIV infection and AIDS has continued at a relentless and frightening pace. The cumulative number of persons infected by the virus — women, men and children on all continents — is about 28 million by mid-1996; and it is estimated that 7000 new infections occur each day, including 1400 babies born infected. Individuals, communities, countries and churches are highly affected by this pandemic.
3. Given the tragic impact of AIDS on persons, communities and societies all over the world; given its direct impact upon many Christians and churches; recognizing the need for careful reflection on a number of inter-related issues bearing on the churches’ understanding of and response to AIDS; and believing it imperative that the churches address *together* this issue of global concern, the WCC central committee at its meeting in Johannesburg in 1994 commissioned a comprehensive study to be done by a consultative group on AIDS.[2]
4. In its reflection the group has focused on theological and ethical issues raised by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, on questions of human rights in relation to AIDS, and on pastoral care and counselling within the church as a healing community. As it draws its findings into a final report, the consultative group wishes to make available the present statement indicating some of the main concerns and implications of its work. We request that this statement be *adopted* by the central committee, that the report from the study be *welcomed* by central committee, and that both be shared with the churches for their reflection and appropriate action.
II. The impact of HIV/AIDS
5. HIV is a virus and, medically speaking, AIDS is the consequence of viral infection; but the issues raised by the pandemic are far from purely medical or clinical. They touch on cultural norms and practices, socio-economic conditions, issues of gender, economic development, human responsibility, sexuality and morality.
6. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is not just a matter of statistics. Its effects are impoverishing people, breaking their hearts, causing violations of their human rights and wreaking havoc upon their bodies and spirits. Many who suffer do so in rejection and isolation. In a striking way HIV/AIDS has become a “spotlight” revealing many iniquitous conditions in our personal and community lives, revealing our inhumanity to one another, our broken relationships and unjust structures. It reveals the tragic consequences of personal actions which directly harm others, or of negligence which opens people to additional risk. The pandemic exposes any silence and indifference of the churches, challenging them to be better informed, more active, and more faithful witnesses to the gospel of reconciliation in their own lives and in their communities.
7. Almost every day there are new discoveries, new information, new hopes and accounts of how communities are affected by, and are dealing with, the challenge of HIV/AIDS. The reality of the pandemic seems increasingly complex, confounding the generalizations, stereotypes and partial or false information which all too often dominate discussion of HIV/AIDS. We know, for example, that HIV/AIDS is not confined to particular groups within society, although in any given country particular groups may be more affected.
8. AIDS was first recognized in industrialized countries where, indeed, the vast majority of the funding for research, prevention and care has been concentrated. Now in its second decade, the pandemic is expanding fastest in countries with poor economies, where all the economic, political and social mechanisms that keep countries poor interact to produce a context in which AIDS thrives. Thus AIDS has become a development issue. The HIV/AIDS pandemic adds a heavy burden on health-care systems. The cost of treatment is often completely disproportionate to the incomes of the affected families. In Thailand, for example, the cost of treatment for one person with AIDS absorbs up to 50 percent of an average annual household income.
9. AIDS impacts societies in many ways, challenging some traditional notions of the social order. In some places, the pandemic is raising questions about the meaning and role of the family; elsewhere it has focused attention on those using drugs and their increased risk; still elsewhere it has raised questions about human sexuality and relationships. In the course of the pandemic the role of gay communities in compassionate care and effective prevention has been recognized. This perspective has challenged the churches to rethink their relation to gay persons.
10. The pandemic is also having profound consequences for family and community life. In addition to causing the illness and death of members of the most productive age groups, it severely restricts the opportunities for those — for the most part, women and girls — who care for persons suffering from the disease. In some societies whole communities are weakened by the pain and disruption HIV/AIDS brings to families and other basic social units. Grandparents find themselves caring for their sick children or orphaned grandchildren, and children and young people are forced to become the bread-winners for others.
III. The beginnings of a response
11. The challenges posed by AIDS require both a global and a local response. How can we develop the will, knowledge, attitudes, values and skills required to prevent the spread of AIDS without the concerted efforts of governments, local communities, non-governmental organizations, research institutions, churches and other faith communities?
12. A full range of inter-related approaches is called for. Effective methods of prevention include sexual abstinence, mutual fidelity, condom use and safe practices in relation to blood and needles. Education, including education for responsible sexual practices, has been shown to be effective in helping to stop the spread of the infection. Other measures which inhibit its spread or help to deal with the suffering which it causes include advocacy for justice and human rights, the empowerment of women, the training of counsellors and the creation of “safe spaces” where persons can share their stories and testimonies. In addition all societies — whether “developed” or developing — need to address practices such as drug abuse and commercial sex activity, including the increasing incidence of child prostitution, as well as the root causes of destructive social conditions such as poverty, all of which favour the spread of HIV/AIDS.
13. Strategies for prevention and care may fail if those affected by HIV/AIDS play no part in designing or carrying them out. In the course of the current study, the consultative group noted the role played by the WCC in promoting participatory action research on “AIDS and the Community as a Source of Care and Healing” in three African countries.[3] This process enabled village people to analyze the issues and problems raised by AIDS and to develop actions which foster prevention and care.
14. From the beginning of the pandemic some Christians, churches and church-related institutions have been active in education and prevention programmes and in caring for people living with HIV/AIDS. The consultative group was privileged to have worked with several of these during the study. The group observes, however, that by and large the response of the churches has been inadequate and has, in some cases, even made the problem worse. As the WCC executive committee noted in 1987, “through their silence, many churches share responsibility for the fear that has swept our world more quickly than the virus itself”.[4] Sometimes churches have hampered the spread of accurate information or created barriers to open discussion and understanding. Further, churches may reinforce racist attitudes if they neglect issues of HIV/AIDS because it occurs predominantly among certain ethnic or racial groups. These groups may be unjustly stigmatized as the most likely carriers of the infection.
15. The situation continues to call for “metanoia in faith” and a fresh resolve by the churches to address the situation directly. This must be done in a spirit of humility, knowing that we do not fully understand the scope and significance of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It requires openness to new information, long discussion of sensitive issues and readiness to learn from the experience of others, as we seek a more adequate response to the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS today.
IV. Theological dimensions
16. The HIV/AIDS pandemic raises difficult theological issues in the areas of creation, human nature, the nature of sin and death, the Christian hope for eternal life and the role of the church as body of Christ. Furthermore the reality of AIDS raises issues, such as human sexuality, vulnerability and mortality, which stir and challenge us in a deeply personal way. Christians and the churches struggle with these theological and human issues and they differ, sometimes sharply, in their response to some of the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS. But it is imperative that they learn to face the issues together rather than separately, and that they work towards a common understanding of the fundamental questions — theological, anthropological and ecclesiological — which are involved.
17. The church’s response to the challenge of HIV/AIDS comes from its deepest theological convictions about the nature of creation, the unshakable fidelity of God’s love, the nature of the body of Christ and the reality of Christian hope.
18. The creation in all its dimensions is held within the sphere of God’s pervasive love, a love characterized by relationship, expressed in the vision of the Trinity as a model of intimate interaction, of mutual respect and of sharing without domination. This inclusive love characteristic of the Trinity guides our understanding of the Christian claim that men and women are made in the “image of God”. Because humanity is created in God’s image, all human beings are beloved by God and all are held within the scope of God’s concern and faithful care.
19. Within the fullness of creation we affirm the potential for goodness of the human body and of human sexuality. We do not completely comprehend the meaning of human sexuality. As with other aspects of creation, sexuality also can be misused when people do not recognize their personal responsibility; but it is to be affirmed strongly as one of God’s good gifts, finding expression in many dimensions of human existence. The churches have recognized marriage as the primary place for the expression of sexuality in its various dimensions.
20. We live from God's promise that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ: no disasters, no illness or disease, nothing done by us and nothing done to us, not even death itself, can break God's solidarity with us and with all creation (Rom. 8:38-39). And yet the creation "groans in travail" (Rom. 8:22); we see in the world much suffering, injustice and waste. Some of this can be understood as the consequence, for ourselves and others, of the exercise of the freedom given by God to God's creatures; some of it, we sense, may be part of a larger pattern of which we now glimpse only a part; some of it defies understanding, leaving us to cry: "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24).
21. Finally we live by hope, holding our questions and doubts within the larger frame of God's love and final purpose for our lives and for all creation: life abundant, where justice reigns, where each is free to explore all the gifts God has given them. More particularly, we live by hope in Christ: Christ gone before us into glory is the basis for our hope. We share in the sufferings of Christ — Christ who is Immanuel, "God with us" — "that we may also be glorified with him" (Rom. 8:17). And in our weakness we are sustained by the "Spirit who lives within us", interceding when we know not how to pray and finally granting anew "life to our mortal bodies" (Rom. 8:11,26; cf. Eph. 3:16).
22. Strengthened by this hope, we wrestle with the profound questions put to us by suffering. We affirm that suffering does not come from God. We affirm that God is with us even in the midst of sickness and suffering, working for healing and salvation even in "the valley of the shadow of death" (Ps. 23:4). And we affirm that it is through bearing the suffering of the world on the cross that God, in Christ, has redeemed all of creation. Our hope is rooted ultimately in our experience of God's saving acts in Jesus Christ, in Christ's life, death and resurrection from the dead.
23. Remembering the suffering servant (Isa. 42:1-9; 49:1-7; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12), we are called to share the sufferings of persons living with HIV/AIDS, opening ourselves in this encounter to our own vulnerability and mortality. This is to walk with Christ; and as Christ has gone before us through death to glory, we are called to receive "the sure and certain hope of the resurrection". This is God's promise that God's promise, for us and for all creation, is not destroyed by death: we are held within the love of God, claimed by Christ as his own and sustained by the Spirit; and God will neither forsake us nor leave us to oblivion.
24. We affirm that the church as the body of Christ is to be the place where God's healing love is experienced and shown forth. As the body of Christ the church is bound to enter into the suffering of others, to stand with them against all rejection and despair. Because it is the body of Christ — who died for all and who enters into the suffering of all humanity — the church cannot exclude anyone who needs Christ. As the church enters into solidarity with those affected by HIV/AIDS, our hope in God's promise comes alive and becomes visible to the world.
25. We celebrate the commitment of many Christians and churches to show Christ's love to those affected by HIV/AIDS. We confess that Christians and churches have also helped to stigmatize and discriminate against persons affected by HIV/AIDS, thus adding to their suffering. We recall with gratitude the advice of St Basil the Great to those in leadership positions within the church, emphasizing their responsibility to create an environment — an ethos, a "disposition" — where the cultivation of love and goodness can prevail within the community and issue in the "good moral action" which is love.[5]
26. We affirm that God calls us to live in right relationship with other human beings and with all of creation. As a reflection of God's embracing love, this relationship should be marked not just by mutual respect but by active concern for the other. Actions taken deliberately which harm oneself, others or the creation are sinful; and indeed we are challenged by the persistence of sin, which is the distortion of this right relationship with God, other persons, or the natural order. Yet sin does not have the last word; as we are "renewed by the Holy Spirit" (cf. Titus 3:5) and continue to grow in our communion with God, our lives will show forth more of God's love and care.
27. The World Council of Churches executive committee emphasized in a 1987 statement the need "to affirm that God deals with us in love and mercy and that we are therefore freed from simplistic moralizing about those who are attacked by the virus".[6] Furthermore we note how easily a moralistic approach can distort life within the Christian community, hampering the sharing of information and open discussion which are so important in facing the reality of HIV/AIDS and in inhibiting its spread.
28. In the light of these reflections, and on the basis of our experience in this study, we wish to avoid any implication that HIV/AIDS, or indeed any disease or misfortune, is a direct "punishment" from God. We affirm that the response of Christians and the churches to those affected by HIV/AIDS should be one of love and solidarity, expressed both in care and support for those touched directly by the disease, and in efforts to prevent its spread.
V. Ethical dimensions
29. In responding to the challenge of HIV/AIDS Christians are motivated by urgent imperatives, passionately felt: to show Christ's love for the neighbour, to save lives, to work for reconciliation, to see that justice is done. Making ethical decisions, however, requires a process of discernment which includes gathering the latest information, wrestling with deeply sensitive issues and weighing differing, sometimes conflicting views and interests. This process needs to be undergirded by Bible study, prayer and theological reflection.
30. Christians make ethical choices following principles which derive from their understanding of the biblical witness and their faith convictions. These may be stated and developed differently in various traditions, but are likely to include the following points:
- because all human beings are created and beloved by God, Christians are called to treat every person as of infinite value;
- because Christ died to reconcile all to God, Christians are called to work for true reconciliation — which includes justice — among those alienated from one another;
- because we are "members one of another", being built up by the Spirit into one body. Christians are called to responsible life within community.
31. Such principles — the infinite value of each person, the gospel of reconciliation, the call to responsible life within community — have to be applied to such questions as: How do churches respond to their members living with HIV/AIDS? How can churches promote responsible behaviour without being judgmental and moralistic? What public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS transmission should churches advocate? How can resources for care and research be fairly shared? This means in each case exploring all available options, weighing the benefits (and difficulties) of each, and finally asking, "which of the possible courses of action best expresses Christ's love for all those involved?"
32. Such a process of discernment is often difficult: the options may not be fully clear; none of the options may be wholly satisfactory; the implications of some biblical or theological principles for specific problems today may not be clear. It is all the more important, then, that Christians and churches reflect and work on these ethical issues together. The challenge of HIV/AIDS demands nothing less than an ecumenical response.
33. Churches are expected to give both spiritual direction and moral guidance, and to play a responsible role in the discussion of these issues in the wider society, as well as in discussions of biomedical ethics. Witnessing to their own faith convictions, they enrich the wider debate and make common cause, where possible, with persons of goodwill who appeal to more general sets of ethical principles such as respect for persons, beneficence and non-maleficence, and justice.
34. The churches have crucial contributions to make to this wider debate. For example first, in accordance with their commitment to truth they can emphasize that the process of ethical discernment leaves no room for judgments based on superficial generalizations or stereotypes, on fear, or on incomplete or false information. The churches can do much to promote, both in their own lives and in the wider society, a climate of sensitive, factual and open exploration of the ethical issues posed by the pandemic.
35. Second, in accordance with their emphasis upon personal and communal responsibility the churches can promote conditions — personal, cultural, and socio-economic — which support persons in making responsible choices. This requires a degree of personal freedom which is not always available: for example, women, even within marriage, may not have the power to say "no" or to insist on the practice of such effective preventive measures such as abstinence, mutual fidelity and condom use.
VI. Human rights in relation to HIV/AIDS
36. The HIV/AIDS pandemic raises important issues relating to human rights. People living with HIV/AIDS generally encounter fear, rejection and discrimination, and often are denied basic rights (such as liberty, autonomy, security and freedom of movement) enjoyed by the rest of the population. Because such reactions contradict the values of the gospel, the churches are called to formulate and advocate a clear policy of non-discrimination against persons living with HIV/AIDS.
37. One of the tasks of the WCC over the last three decades has been to be actively involved in human rights standard setting, promotion and protection. The last decade has witnessed a significant trend in the development of international norms and standards in relation to people that are discriminated against on grounds of race, gender, ethnicity and religion. There are other kinds of discrimination as well. Some of them arise because of lack of awareness and fear. People living with HIV/AIDS fall in this category. They are often denied their fundamental right to security, freedom of association, movement and adequate health care.
38. The issue of human rights also has important implications for the spread of HIV/AIDS. We note the alarming rise in sex tourism. Some men in societies in both the North and the South abuse the young and poor children for prostitution or in an effort to try to escape infection. This is also an issue of violence against children. We further note that men and women who are denied their fundamental human rights, whether on the grounds of social status, sexual orientation or addiction to drugs, are thereby made especially vulnerable to the risk of HIV infection. Thus broadly-based strategies which advocate human rights are required to prevent the spread of HIV.
VII. Pastoral care and counselling within the church as healing community
39. By their very nature as communities of faith in Christ, churches are called to be healing communities. This call becomes the more insistent as the AIDS pandemic continues to grow. Within the churches we are increasingly confronted with persons affected by HIV/AIDS, seeking support and solidarity and asking: are you willing to be my brother and sister within the one body of Christ? In this encounter our very credibility is at stake.
40. Many churches, indeed, have found that their own lives have been enhanced by the witness of persons living with HIV/AIDS. These have reminded us that it is possible to affirm life even when faced with severe, incurable illness and serious physical limitation, that sickness and death are not the standard by which life is measured, that it is the quality of life — whatever its length — that is most important. Such a witness invites the churches to respond with love and faithful caring.
41. Despite the extent and complexity of the problems, the churches can make an effective healing witness towards those affected by HIV/AIDS. The experience of love, acceptance and support within a community where God's love is made manifest can be a powerful healing force. Healing is fostered where churches relate to daily life and where people feel safe to share their stories and testimonies. Through sensitive worship, churches help persons enter the healing presence of God. The churches exercise a vital ministry through encouraging discussion and analysis of information, helping to identify problems and supporting participation towards constructive change in the community.
42. Many trained and gifted members of the community, as well as some pastors, are already providing valuable pastoral care. Such care includes counselling as a process for empowerment of persons affected by HIV/AIDS, in order to help them deal with their situation and to prevent or reduce HIV transmission.
VIII. Conclusion: what the churches can do
43. This study has shown us the delicate, interwoven relationships of human beings and their connectedness to all of life. It has proved neither desirable nor possible to do a "one-dimensional" study of AIDS, describing only its dramatic spread and devastating impact on those who are directly affected. Rather, the AIDS pandemic requires the analysis of a cluster of inter-related factors. These include the theological and ethical perspectives that inform, or arise from, our understanding of AIDS; the effects of poverty on individuals and communities; issues of justice and human rights; the understanding of human relationships; and the understanding of human sexuality. Of these the factor of sexuality has received the least attention within the ecumenical community. We recognize that further study in this area is essential for a deeper understanding of the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS.
44. Our exploration of these themes has brought us face to face with issues, understandings and attitudes of major consequence to the churches and their role in responding to the pandemic. Through their witness to the gospel of reconciliation, the value of each person, and the importance of responsible life in community, the churches have a distinctive and crucial role to play in facing the challenges raised by HIV/AIDS. But their witness must be visible and active. Therefore we feel it essential to highlight the following concerns as points for common reflection and action by the churches:
A. The life of the churches: responses to the challenge of HIV/AIDS
1. We ask the churches to provide a climate of love, acceptance and support for those who are vulnerable to, or affected by, HIV/AIDS.
2. We ask the churches to reflect together on the theological basis for their response to the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS.
3. We ask the churches to reflect together on the ethical issues raised by the pandemic, interpret them in their local context and to offer guidance to those confronted by difficult choices.
4. We ask the churches to participate in the discussion in society at large of ethical issues posed by HIV/AIDS, and to support their own members who, as health care professionals, face difficult ethical choices in the areas of prevention and care.
B. The witness of the churches in relation to immediate effects and causes of HIV/AIDS
1. We ask the churches to work for better care for persons affected by HIV/AIDS.
2. We ask the churches to give particular attention to the conditions of infants and children affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and seek ways to build a supportive environment.
3. We ask the churches to help safeguard the rights of persons affected by HIV/AIDS and to study, develop and promote the human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS through mechanisms at national and international levels.
4. We ask the churches to promote the sharing of accurate information about HIV/AIDS, to promote a climate of open discussion and to work against the spread of misinformation and fear.
5. We ask the churches to advocate increased spending by governments and medical facilities to find solutions to the problems — both medical and social — raised by the pandemic.
C. The witness of the churches: in relation to long-term causes and factors encouraging the spread of HIV/AIDS
1. We ask the churches to recognize the linkage between AIDS and poverty, and to advocate measures to promote just and sustainable development.
2. We urge that special attention be focused on situations that increase the vulnerability to AIDS such as migrant labour, mass refugee movements and commercial sex activity.
3. In particular, we ask the churches to work with women as they seek to attain the full measure of their dignity and express the full range of their gifts.
4. We ask the churches to educate and involve youth and men in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
5. We ask the churches to seek to understand more fully the gift of human sexuality in the contexts of personal responsibility, relationships, family and Christian faith.
6. We ask the churches to address the pandemic of drug use and the role this plays in the spread of HIV/AIDS and to develop locally relevant responses in terms of care, de-addiction, rehabilitation and prevention.
NOTES
[1] Quoted in the Minutes of the 38th meeting of the WCC central committee, Geneva, WCC, 1987, Appendix VI, “AIDS and the Church as a Healing Community”, p.133.
[2] Minutes of the 45th meeting of the WCC central committee, Geneva, WCC, 1994, pp.45-49, 102f.
[3] See Participatory Action Research on AIDS and the Community as a Source of Care and Healing, Geneva, Christian Medical Board of Tanzania, Uganda Protestant Medical Bureau, Eglise du Christ au Zaire and WCC, 1993.
[4] Loc. cit., p.135.
[5] Ascetic Works, 2.1.
[6] Loc. cit., p.135.
**Affected:** a term used for the family, friends and other persons associated with someone living with HIV/AIDS.
**AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome):** a group of signs and symptoms or a combination of diseases caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which impairs the body’s ability to fight infection, making it especially susceptible to opportunistic infections, of which the most common include Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and certain cancers, such as Kaposi’s sarcoma, a skin cancer.
**AIDS test:** a misnomer sometimes incorrectly used to refer to the HIV antibody test HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus); the virus that can eventually cause AIDS. People infected with HIV may look and feel well for a number of years before any opportunistic infections develop. Many people infected with the HIV virus are completely unaware of the fact, unless they decide to have a medical blood test. However, they can be carriers of the virus, transmitting it to other people.
**HIV antibody test:** a laboratory test made on a small sample of blood to detect whether the body has reacted to the presence of HIV by trying to protect itself against the virus through producing antibodies. Though the presence of antibodies indicates that a person has been exposed to the virus, their absence does not necessarily mean that the person is not infected with HIV, since this reaction takes an average of three months after infection to show up in the blood. If the test is positive, the infected person will have been able to pass on the virus from the moment of infection. It is not possible to tell from this test when or how the person tested will proceed to AIDS.
**HIV-positive (or seropositive):** a term indicating that the HIV antibody test on a person has indicated the presence of antibodies in the blood. If the test is positive, it means that the person has been exposed to HIV and that his or her immune system has developed antibodies to the virus.
**Immune deficiency:** impairment of the body’s ability to resist infection.
**Immune system:** the body’s natural defence system which protects it from infection by recognizing bacteria, viruses and diseases in general. It consists of cells that (among other things) produce antibodies, which can recognize materials as foreign to the body and then attempt to neutralize them without injury to the person’s cells.
**Incubation period:** the period of time between infection by the disease-causing organism and the onset of signs and symptoms of the disease. In people with HIV infection, the average incubation period is seven to ten years.
**Infected:** a term used for a person who has the HIV virus within his or her body.
**IVDU (Intravenous Drug Use):** one of four main high-risk behavioural patterns resulting in HIV infection. Drug use may involve using and often sharing unsterilized needles and syringes that serve to transmit HIV.
**Opportunistic infection:** an infection caused by an otherwise harmless micro-organism that can become pathogenic when the host’s resistance is impaired.
**Transmission:** the spread of the disease-causing organism from one person to another. The major modes of transmission of HIV are penetrative sexual intercourse, shared contaminated equipment of intravenous drug users, transfusion of unscreened blood (blood which has not been tested) and from mother to unborn or newborn infant.
| Terms to avoid | Why to avoid them | Use instead |
|---------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------|
| Carrying AIDS | These terms confuse two distinct phases: being infected with HIV and having AIDS.| HIV-antibody positive; people with HIV. |
| AIDS carrier | | |
| AIDS positive | | |
| AIDS test | The most commonly used test detects antibodies to HIV. There cannot be a test for | HIV antibody test |
| | AIDS; the diagnosis for AIDS is based on clinical symptoms. | |
| AIDS virus | This term can lead to confusion between HIV and AIDS. | HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) |
| Catch AIDS | It is not possible to "catch" AIDS. Although it is possible to "catch" HIV, this | Contract HIV; become infected with HIV; become |
| | is a misleading expression, because it may suggest that transmission of HIV is | HIV-positive. |
| | similar to transmission of colds or flu. | |
| AIDS sufferer | Having AIDS does not mean being sick all the time. Someone with AIDS can continue | Person with AIDS. |
| | to work and lead a normal life for some time after diagnosis. The term "suffering"| |
| | is thus inappropriate. | |
| AIDS victim | The language of "victim" suggests helplessness. | Person with AIDS, person who has AIDS. |
| Innocent victim | This term implies that anyone else with AIDS is "guilty". | |
| High-risk groups | The fact of being classified as a member of any particular group does not put | High-risk behaviour. |
| | anyone at greater risk; it is what he or she does, regardless of group, that | |
| | may put him or her at greater risk. In other words, one should speak of risk | |
| | behaviour, not of high risk groups. | |
This material has been adapted from Beverly Booth, “Health Professionals and the AIDS Epidemic: Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say”, Contact, no. 136, Apr. 1994, pp.10f.; and Guide to HIV/AIDS Pastoral Counselling, Geneva, WCC AIDS Working Group, 1990, pp. v-vii.
Educational Resources on HIV/AIDS
Gender Issues and HIV/AIDS
Facing the Challenges of HIV/AIDS/STDs: A Gender-based Response . Maria de Bruyn, Helen Jackson, Marianne Wijermars, Virginia Curtin Knight and Riet Bervens. Published by: Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, Southern Africa AID Information Dissemination Service, Zimbabwe, and World Health Organization Global Programme on AIDS. c. 1995. ISBN: 90 6832 708 9.
This publication aims to provide policy-makers, planners and programme implementers with information and ideas on how to incorporate a gender-based response to HIV/AIDS and STDs into their policies and programmes. It contains background information on HIV/AIDS/STDs; educational tools and list of resource centres. The tool cards and posters are designed as guides for practical activities to promote gender awareness as well as attitude and behaviour change.
Available for free from:
Royal Tropical Institute
Mauritskade 63
1092 AD Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Fax: 31 20 6654 423
Sexuality and HIV/AIDS
Sexual Health, Assertiveness and HIV. Carol Painter . Produced in association with the Sheffield Centre for HIV and Sexual Health. Daniels Publishing.
The resource manual explores the ways in which assertiveness can help negotiate safer sex. It explores the social and emotional needs related to sexual health and shows how assertiveness training might help these goals to be achieved. It stresses the importance of enabling and encouraging vulnerable groups to negotiate safer sex. It focuses on the vulnerability of a wide range of people in relation to HIV and the cultural factors that might make it difficult to negotiate safer sex. It also looks at the ways in which people can develop the healthy sense of self-esteem that is needed to express sexuality both safely and confidently.
Available at: Daniels Publishing
38 Cambridge Place
Cambridge CB2 1NS
United Kingdom
Fax: 0223 467145
Prevention and Care of HIV/AIDS
Community Action on HIV: A Resource Manual for HIV Prevention and Care . Tamara Aboagye-Kwarteng and Rob Moodie, ed. International Health Unit, Macfarlane Burnet Centre for Medical Research. c. April 1995 ISBN 0 642 22583 4.
The resource manual provides a clear and relevant information on HIV infection which will assist Australian NGOs and their partners in planning, designing, implementing and evaluating HIV prevention and care projects and improve project design through emphasizing the relationship between the HIV epidemic and wider development issues.
Available for free and may be used for non-profit purposes from:
Macfarlane Burnet Centre for Medical Research
International Health Unit
PO Box 254
Fairfield Vic 3078
Australia
Fax: (61 3) 9482 3123
AIDS Home Care Handbook. c. World Health Organization 1993.
The handbook is an illustrated teaching guide that helps health care workers give important advice about HIV/AIDS. It is also a reference guide containing detailed information about common AIDS-related problems and possible causes, what can be done at home to alleviate these problems, and when to seek further help.
The information provided is based on accepted international guidelines and the extensive programme experience of many individuals and agencies working to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Available at: World Health Organization
Avenue Appiah
Geneva, Switzerland
HIV/AIDS and the Church as a Healing Community
The Congregation: A Community of Care and Healing: HIV/AIDS Awareness Resources. Beth Basham, ed. Presbyterian Church (USA)/Presbyterian AIDS Network. c. 1993.
The resource manual is written for congregations who desire to be better informed and who may be seeking ways in which to become involved in HIV/AIDS Ministry.
Available at: Presbyterian Church (USA)
100 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, KY 40202-1396
USA
HIV/AIDS Ministry: A Practical Guide for Pastors. Patricia Hoffman.
This resource provides pastors, lay church professionals and church leaders with practical, straightforward information on how to deal with issue of HIV/AIDS from a compassionate basis. Practical models of response will enable any congregations to develop its own compassionate outreach.
World Council of Churches' HIV/AIDS Resource Materials
What is AIDS? Birgitta Rubenson. (Available in English, Spanish, French)
The booklet contains basic facts about HIV/AIDS.
Confronting Aids Together. Participatory Methods in addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Including learning from the WCC experience in East and Central Africa, Anne Skejelmerud/Christopher Tusubira, Oslo, DIS 1997
The book will help groups to deal with the method of participatory action research in Health Community Work, addressing HIV/AIDS.
Learning About AIDS: A Manual for Pastors and Teachers. Birgitta Rubenson. revised 1994
The booklet will help teachers, pastors, and youth leaders to give relevant information about AIDS to those they work with.
A Guide to HIV/AIDS Pastoral Counselling. Jorge Maldonado, ed. Published by: WCC AIDS Working Group. 1990. (Available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese)
The guide covers the various aspects of pastoral counselling and factual information on HIV/AIDS. Case studies with questions for thought and discussion is included to help the counsellor determine when he or she is ready to begin counselling.
Making Connections: Facing AIDS - An HIV/AIDS Resource Book. Joao Guilherme Biehl, Janet Kenyon, Siv Limstrand, Anu Talvivaara, eds. Published by the Youth Desks of the World Council of Churches and Lutheran World Federation. (Available in English, French, Spanish)
The book provides resources for dealing with youth and AIDS as one of the greatest challenges in our time. It is a tool for thinking and acting and not a manual of recipes. It acknowledges the complexity of the issue as people are struggling for their lives.
All these publications are available at the:
World Council of Churches
PO Box 2100
1211 Geneva 2
Switzerland
1. THE BODY OF CHRIST, THE HUMAN BODY AND HIV/AIDS
As the body of Christ, the church is to be the place where God’s healing love is experienced and shown forth and God’s promise of abundant life is made freely available. In making tangible the love and care of Christ, the church offers a prophetic sign and foretaste of the kingdom. In its confession, proclamation, worship and service, the church is called to witness to the presence of Christ in the world.
Christ’s offer of abundant life is to be made available to all. The inclusiveness of Christ is especially seen in his parables about meals, such as that of the great banquet pictured in Luke 14:15-24, with their emphasis on the generosity of God’s invitation, which does not discriminate among those invited on grounds of their merits, abilities, beliefs or moral standing.
Because all persons fall within the scope of God’s love and are honoured with Christ’s care, we are called to honour one another as if in each person we encounter Christ himself. When we fail to honour the icon and image of the divine which we should see in ourselves and in our neighbours, then we are not being true to our calling as members of Christ’s body, the church.
As Christ identifies with our suffering and enters into it, so the church as the body of Christ is called to enter into the suffering of others, to stand with them against all rejection and despair. This is not an option; it is the church’s vocation. And because it is the body of Christ — who died for all and who enters into the suffering of all — the church cannot exclude anyone who needs Christ, certainly not those living with HIV/AIDS.
In opening itself to persons living with HIV/AIDS, in entering into their suffering and bearing it with them, in standing with them against rejection and despair, the church expresses more fully what it is to be the body of Christ. And as the church enters into solidarity with persons living with HIV/AIDS, its hope in God’s promise of abundant life comes alive and becomes visible to the world.
Some churches are showing courage and commitment in manifesting Christ’s love to persons affected by HIV/AIDS. Other churches have contributed to stigmatizing and discriminating against such persons thus added to their suffering. The advice of St Basil the Great comes to all those in leadership positions within the church, emphasizing their responsibility to create an environment — an ethos, a “disposition” — in which the cultivation of love and goodness can prevail within the community and issue in that “good moral action” which is love.
The church is called to stand with persons who are affected by HIV/AIDS. This “standing with”, this service of the church on behalf of those who suffer, will take different forms in each situation depending on the needs and possibilities. In some cases the church will need to work for better medical care for affected persons; in other cases, to work for improved counselling services, or for the defence of basic human rights, or to ensure that accurate factual information is available within the church and to the general public, or to ensure that a climate of understanding and compassion prevails. Most of the time all of these efforts and more will be needed.
In the incarnation, God in Christ has entered into the world, breaking down the barriers between the spiritual and the material, claiming the material world as a place where God is present and active for good.
(Facing AIDS, 43)
2. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY
The complex relationship between rights and duties is confirmed by the status of human beings as created in the image of God. The Bible, rather than referring to “rights”, speaks about duties to God within the covenant; this is in order to safeguard others from abuses and to give all people an equal possibility to benefit. God is described as love; and human beings, created in God’s image, are therefore called and given the possibility to reflect that reality. The image of God is an inclusive description of the human family, not a cause for human pride. In light of this, humanity’s very existence as love and koinonia should be approached according to the principles of relationships with others, including the natural world. Such an approach will in fact result in implementing the idea of human rights and duties.
For this reason, human rights also has to do with economic and social, environmental and ecological justice, and with the relationship between the individual, community and government. In saying this, however, it is important to be clear about the community’s interests — and to identify who determines the nature of these. What is often put forward as the interest of the community may in fact be based on the selfish, individual interests of dominant “representatives” of the community.
In authentic koinonia, rights and duties are considered in harmony. The “individual”, as usually described, does not prevail over the communitarian, but neither does the communitarian suppress the individual. From this theological perspective, the very idea of human rights can be looked at only in the light of life in community rather than against community.
There is consequently no necessary conflict between the rights of the person and the interests of the community. Human rights should be a tool for the empowerment of both persons and communities, in order to restore their dignity and enhance the quality of life.
(Facing Aids, 72)
3. THE CHURCH AS A HEALING COMMUNITY
The church, by its very nature as the body of Christ, calls its members to become healing communities. Despite the extent and complexity of the problems raised by HIV/AIDS, the churches can make an effective healing witness towards those affected. The experience of love, acceptance and support within a community where God’s love is made manifest can be a powerful healing force. This means that the church should not — as was often the case when AIDS was first recognized in the gay community — exclude, stigmatize and blame persons on the basis of behaviour which many local congregations and churches judge to be unacceptable.
It is important to acknowledge that the church is a communion of one body with many members, each distinct:
*But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the Body of Christ and individually members of it* (1 Cor. 12:24b-27).
When the church properly responds to people living with HIV/AIDS, both ministering to them and learning from their suffering, its relationship to them will indeed make a difference, and thus become growth-producing. And if through this relationship — out of fidelity to others who are suffering and because of the significance of those who suffer — we are again pushed back on ourselves, it is because in the gospels we are *required* to love: this is a demand, a requirement, not an option.
(Facing Aids, 77)
4. THE DIVINE RELATIONSHIP OF LOVE
If the first characteristic of a good relationship is respect for the otherness of the other and renunciation of domination, a second, equally important characteristic is the affection, love or esteem in which each holds the other. Only with that warmth of regard and sense of interconnectedness will the relationship blossom and flourish for both. Thus the Bible portrays a God of love, who “so loved the world…” (John 3:16), and beseeches women and men in their turn to love God and to walk in God’s ways.
No creature is excluded from this love and this pilgrimage. If God’s love had to be *earned* by what men and women do, no one would be worthy of it. But because it is given, everyone is included. All those who tend to be forgotten, excluded, denigrated or marginalized in every society in this world are never abandoned, because the divine relationship is constant. Even those who refuse this relationship are not cut off from the omnipresent love of God.
**HUMAN BEINGS IN RELATION**
To be human is to be in relation, to be involved in a web of connections with others — in the family, at work, in the church, at leisure. Above and beyond all this human relating is the relationship God freely offers to all in love. Relations with other human beings, like relations with God, may manifest the same respect for the otherness of the other which makes freedom possible and the same warmth of relationship in the form of love.
Christians may speak confidently concerning God who is known in relationship because such a relationship of freedom and love was enacted visibly in Jesus Christ. During his life — which is as important for belief as his death, although it has had less attention in the Western theological tradition — Jesus showed in practice what it is to live this relationship with God, encountering others with the promise and demand of the kingdom.
There was in the way Jesus behaved an *openness* to people of all kinds, without barriers of class or race or gender. Just as God in love accompanies all creation, so Jesus went among the poor, telling them that they were loved by God even if they had not been able to keep the law scrupulously. He dined with a rich Pharisee, and told another who came to see him at night that he needed new vision and had to be born again (John 3:3). He healed Jewish lepers and a Roman soldier’s child. There were women in the group that travelled with him, and unlike many holy men he did not shrink from the touch
of a prostitute. In all that breadth of relationship, Jesus incarnated the accessibility of God, who “shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:11), but is open to all — rich or poor, sick or healthy, old or young.
When people and churches live out of relationship with God and follow Jesus, therefore, they will be continually open to others and offer relationship to them, even to those who seem very different. Just as there is no closing off of relationships in the gospel accounts of Jesus, so churches cannot withdraw into being congenial groups of the like-minded, refusing openness to and esteem for others who are physically or socially different.
A similar observation emerges from considering Jesus’ relations with the religious establishment of his day. He attended the synagogue and was certainly no religious dissenter. But he denounced or bypassed religious practices and ordinances which put difficulties in the way of ordinary people in their relationship with God. Not only did he preach the immediacy of unconditional divine love and forgiveness, but he also put it into practice through his own accessibility and his going to where the people were. All this has something to say to the churches about human being-in-relation. It speaks powerfully against churches which confess that nothing separates us from the love of God (Rom. 8:39) and then go on to set up barriers of their own between themselves and other people.
(Facing Aids, 23)
5. EXAMPLES: LOOKING AT COMMUNITIES OF HOPE
REPUBLICQUE DU CONGO (ZAIRE)
In Zaire a team visited a man who had been abandoned by his family because of his illness. He was pitifully lonely, waiting for visitors, and looking for what the team might be bringing for him. Some discussion began to build his confidence to take the initiative to call his family together. The team offered to come and talk with them in the hope of encouraging reconciliation. He invited them; and when the team left he was looking very different from when they first arrived. He was looking forward to an opportunity for family reconciliation, not just for his own benefit but for the well-being of his children and grandchildren all of whom, he felt, need to protect themselves.
(Ian Cambell in a report of a Salvation Army team visit to Zaire)
GAY MEN’S HEALTH CRISIS
Two months after the Federal Centre for Disease Control’s (CDC) 1981 report of the first cases of an illness to become known as AIDS, eighty men alarmed by the report gathered in New York writer Larry Kramer’s apartment to hear a doctor speak about “gay cancer”. Passing the hat, the men contributed $6635 for biomedical research. Six months later, this fund-raising group became Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC).
Even as GMHC, one of the largest AIDS service organizations in the USA, was coming into existence, members of Metropolitan Community Churches and Episcopal churches in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles were voicing concern and taking action regarding AIDS and those infected by the virus. They thereby launched the very first religious community response to AIDS — a response “from the pews up”. Those who had long worshipped together and shared church socials together were now together in the face of the virus as they had never been before. They began to provide personal care services including meals, house-cleaning, transportation to clinics or hospitals; they provided emergency financial assistance or housing; they offered free legal or dental services. And they began to devise new liturgical responses to their suffering.
(From the AIDS National Interfaith Network, Washington DC, USA)
REPORT FROM NORTHERN THAILAND
Case Study: the Strength of a Woman
The Church of Christ in Thailand has experienced the importance of community involvement in counselling and on this basis has developed case studies to assist churches in reflecting on pastoral care and healing community. These case studies, drawn from concrete experiences, include questions for discussion and reflection. One of these studies is as follows:
Arthit and Urai lived together with their six-year-old daughter Nut and Arthit’s parents in a village about 30 km. south of Chiang Mai. They learned that they were both HIV-positive when they went for medical check-ups prior to deciding whether to have a second child. Arthit, angry with himself for having brought this upon his family, became suicidal. Urai’s love, equanimity and firmness kept him from taking his life. “Whatever happens, we’ll face it together,” she said. When Arthit was diagnosed with cryptococcal meningitis, he again felt discouraged and defeated. On top of the physical suffering came the pain inflicted by others. Neighbours stopped coming to visit for fear of contracting HIV. People in the market where Urai sold fresh vegetables avoided her stand, and her business slowed drastically. The family of Arthit’s sister even took Nut away for fear that she would contract HIV by living under the same roof. Although he had been very close to his daughter, Arthit’s own irrational fear even stopped him touching and holding Nut. He missed her comfort and warmth. He would not go outside the house, he stopped eating and he stopped taking care of himself. Still, Urai rose early each morning to go and sell her vegetables, only allowing herself to cry for a few minutes in the darkness before her husband awoke, refusing to let him see her tears. Again, it was her love, determination and commitment to him that made life worth fighting for and pulled Arthit back from despair.
After visiting a specialist at the hospital, and receiving medication for his meningitis, Arthit’s condition improved within a matter of days. Some time later Arthit and Urai heard about a Buddhist meditation centre where the abbot taught a technique designed for people living with AIDS. Based loosely on psychological and psychosomatic principles, and using a model which combined traditional Buddhist teachings and healing, it was providing many people with an effective spiritual discipline. It helped to release their pent-up emotions, focus their minds and to clarify their thoughts and planning, resulting in improved health and a strengthened immune system. After a one-week session at the centre, they returned home feeling utterly renewed, refreshed, re-invigorated, and with new desire and energy for the struggle for life. At home they kept up the meditation, growing stronger day by day. While pain, problems, obstacles, frustration, grief and family issues which brought disagreement and quarrels did not disappear, Urai and Arthit felt able to confront them one by one, day by day, without fear.
About this time they were introduced to the Church of Christ in Thailand’s AIDS ministries team. The team visited weekly, brought basic medicine they needed and, more importantly, just sat and talked quietly with them, giving them a chance to express their feelings, giving voice to their thoughts and breath to their dreams. Soon Arthit’s sister returned Nut to them, and Arthit himself packed away the thin mattress from the front room of the house where he had become accustomed to lying when he was sick or feverish. “I don’t need it now,” he said, “because there are no longer any sick people in this house.” Urai gradually assumed the role of unofficial counsellor to people with problems in their district — anyone who needed a listening ear, a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on. She was a source of encouragement and hope for dozens of persons and families who were HIV-positive. Even some who had shunned her in the marketplace sought her help, asking what made her so strong in the midst of her crisis.
One day Urai appeared at the CCT AIDS ministries office with fear and confusion in her eyes. Arthit had terrible headaches, could not rise from bed, and there were new skin lesions even worse than before. “Does this mean he is really at the last stage now?”, she whispered between gasps, with barely enough strength to force the words out. Then the tears, held back for months, came rushing out. We sat with her and let her cry until she finished, then found some pain medication for her to take to Arthit, and promised to visit them both the next day.
When members of the team arrived at their home, Arthit was just as Urai had described. Yet it became clear after only a few minutes of sitting and talking together that the most distressing and disheartening thing was that neither Arthit’s father nor mother, nor anyone else in the household or neighbourhood dared to touch him. They were afraid even to spend more than a few moments at a time in the room with him. He wanted to sit and look out of the window, but no one would help him up. Our workers went to Arthit’s side, touched his face and arms, and applied ointment to the affected skin. Placing their arms gently around his waist, they eased him to his feet, and supported him as he walked the few paces to the door to see the sunshine.
From that day nearly ten months ago, Arthit began to improve. He weighs more now than he did before getting sick, and while you might see the scars on his face and arms if you looked for them, you cannot help noticing the radiant smile which is on his face most of the time. It is a hard-won smile which comes from learning to live and love each day, one day at a time. Urai, still Arthit’s rock, solace and joy, continues in good health offering friendship, advice, encouragement and hope to many others living with HIV. Some have formed an informal support group which meets regularly in their home. And reporting on what has been a personal and family disaster, “I have found true love… I think it’s worth it, don’t you?”
**QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:**
1. In the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, how should Christians and churches respond to claims of healing potential (physical, spiritual and otherwise) arising from other traditions, such as Buddhist meditation or natural “folk” medicines?
2. Imagine yourself in Arthit’s place. How would he feel about being touched, or physically cared for in the way he was by members of the CCT AIDS ministries team? How would you feel about being touched? How would feel if your parents refused to touch you?
3. In terms of mental, spiritual, social and relational health, how much of Arthit’s and Urai’s success in living with HIV/AIDS is due to medical care and treatment, and how much to other sources?
4. Consider Urai’s role in this story. What observations, as general as they may be, would you venture to make regarding the role of women (wives, mothers, daughters, etc.) in Asian households during times of disease, death and crisis? Where does Urai’s strength come from?
*From a report by Prakai Nontawasee on the Church of Christ in Thailand’s Health Promotion Unit; Source: Report on the Meeting of the Sub-Group on Pastoral Care and Healing Community, New York, pp.35-38.*
*(Facing Aids, 89)*
1. SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
Socio-economic and cultural contexts are determining factors in the spread of HIV/AIDS. Because these circumstances differ in from place to place, countries, districts and even villages may have quite different HIV/AIDS stories and current profiles. But the WHO currently estimates that nine out of ten people with HIV live in areas where poverty, the subordinate status of women and children, and discrimination are prevalent.
Development practice with respect to HIV is paradigmatically the practice of human development. This is so for significant reasons. The focus of HIV is people’s sexual, psychological and social relations and behaviour. No roads, fertilizers, procurement systems or stock exchanges are available to distract attention from or mask the fact that people are the focus of its practice. It is critical to explore the relationship between economic, social and cultural variables and the spread of HIV — who becomes infected with the virus and with what spatial distribution. Examples which have been identified as having a causal role in the spread of the virus include gender (more specifically the economic, social and cultural lack of autonomy of women, which places them at risk of infection); poverty and social exclusion (the absence of economic, social and political rights); and labour mobility (which is more than the physical mobility of persons and includes the effects on values and traditional structures associated with the processes of modernization). At the core of the problem of transmission of HIV are issues of gender and poverty. Thus, the classical components of development — transportation systems, labour markets, economic growth, governance, poverty and more — are within the causal framework which determines the patterns and speed of spread of the virus. These components will also be affected by the impact of the spread of the virus, its associated mortality and morbidity and the burden of dependency and social disruption it will create. No longer can the implications of failures to alleviate poverty or success in employment be understood in isolation. All of the components of development affect what happens with the HIV epidemic.
(Elizabeth Reid, UNPD, Facing Aids 14)
At the root of the global socio-economic and cultural problems related to HIV/AIDS are the unjust distribution and accumulation of wealth, land and power. This leads to various forms of malaise in human communities. There are more and more cases of economic and political migration of people within and outside of their own countries. These uprooted peoples may be migrant workers looking for better-paying jobs or refugees from economic, political or religious conflicts. Racism, gender discrimination and sexual harassment, economic inequalities, the lack of political will for change, huge external and internal debts, critical health problems, illicit drug and sex trades, including an increase in child prostitution, fragmentation and marginalization of communities — all these factors, which affect “developed” as well as “developing” societies, form a web of inter-related global problems which intensify the vulnerability of human communities to HIV/AIDS.
(Facing Aids, p.231)
2. HUMAN BEINGS IN RELATION
To be human is to be in relation, to be involved in a web of connections with others — in the family, at work, in the church, at leisure. Above and beyond all this human relating is the relationship God freely offers to all in love. Relations with other human beings, like relations with God, may manifest the same respect for the otherness of the other which makes freedom possible and the same warmth of relationship in the form of love.
Christians may speak confidently concerning God who is known in relationship because such a relationship of freedom and love was enacted visibly in Jesus Christ. During his life — which is as important for belief as his death, although it has had less attention in the Western theological tradition — Jesus showed in practice what it is to live this relationship with God, encountering others with the promise and demand of the kingdom.
There was in the way Jesus behaved an openness to people of all kinds, without barriers of class or race or gender. Just as God in love accompanies all creation, so Jesus went among the poor, telling them that they were loved by God even if they had not been able to keep the law scrupulously. He dined with a rich Pharisee, and told another who came to see him at night that he needed new vision and had to be born again (John 3:3). He healed Jewish lepers and a Roman soldier’s child. There were women in the group that travelled with him, and unlike many holy men he did not shrink from the touch of a prostitute. In all that breadth of relationship, Jesus incarnated the accessibility of God, who “shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:11), but is open to all — rich or poor, sick or healthy, old or young.
When people and churches live out of relationship with God and follow Jesus, therefore, they will be continually open to others and offer relationship to them, even to those who seem very different.
Just as there is no closing off of relationships in the gospel accounts of Jesus, so churches cannot withdraw into being congenial groups of the like-minded, refusing openness to and esteem for others who are physically or socially different.
A similar observation emerges from considering Jesus’ relations with the religious establishment of his day. He attended the synagogue and was certainly no religious dissenter. But he denounced or bypassed religious practices and ordinances which put difficulties in the way of ordinary people in their relationship with God. Not only did he preach the immediacy of unconditional divine love and forgiveness, but he also put it into practice through his own accessibility and his going to where the people were. All this has something to say to the churches about human being-in-relation. It speaks powerfully against churches which confess that nothing separates us from the love of God (Rom. 8:39) and then go on to set up barriers of their own between themselves and other people.
There can be no valuable relationship in which each does not desire the *well-being* of the others. God’s concern for the well-being of creation is visible in Jesus’ healing of the sick and his exorcising of demons. Medical work and forms of other healing maintain that tradition. This is one way human beings express both the openness and the esteem and affection of their being-in-relation to those with HIV/AIDS, even though no cure has been found.
Relationships continually require an enlargement of understanding. No one understands from the start everything about being in relation. It seems that this was the case even for Jesus. The gospels tell of Jesus’ encounter with a Syrophoenician woman who asked for his help (Mark 7:24-30; Matt. 15:21-28). At first he answered that his calling was to Israel alone; but through this woman he came to understand that his ministry was to extend far more widely. Similarly, human beings in relation are always being called on to extend their understanding, especially when confronted by new situations like that brought by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Again, Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might be taken from him does not appear as one who is iron-clad in divine immunity, but rather as a person who went forward without the certainty of any such position and *trusted* in God. Nor are we required to be invulnerable and certain in our relationships. Rather we are called to be open, learning and trusting.
It is demanding to follow the way of Jesus in relationships. Such open being-in-relation, which acknowledges no barriers but seeks the well-being of all, will seldom be popular with the authorities. In political terms, Jesus was crucified because of who he was and what he did represented a threat to the power which maintained public order as the Roman authorities saw it and to the religious sensibilities of the Jewish leaders. Yet one understanding of the resurrection is to see in retrospect that no matter how abandoned and forsaken by God (Mark 15:34) Jesus felt himself to be, God was present through it all and finally vindicated him. Not even the greatest misunderstanding or repression can separate those who are “on the way” from this sustaining love of God and from the fellowship of the church.
*(Facing AIDS, p.23f)*
1. SAFE PLACES FOR SHARING, TELLING AND LISTENING
The church can be a healing community only if it is truly a sanctuary, that is, a safe space, a healing space. For healing, people need a place where they can be comfortable in sharing their pain. The church needs to create an atmosphere of openness and acceptance. St Basil the Great taught that it is up to those in leadership positions in the church to create an environment, an ethos, a “disposition” for the cultivation of goodness and love in the community. The leadership of the church is called upon to nurture the seeds of the *Logos*, God’s own word and God’s own energy among the people. By creating a proper atmosphere or disposition, that “good moral action” which is love will issue forth in the lives of the human community.
*The advice of St Basil the Great comes to all those in leadership positions within the church, emphasizing their responsibility to create an environment — an ethos, a “disposition” — in which the cultivation of love and goodness can prevail within the community and issue in that “good moral action” which is love.*
*(Facing Aids, 44)*
Creating “safe spaces” for telling one’s own story within our church communities is therefore a practical step through which congregations can become healing communities. The church, which is built upon and shaped around the master story of the gospels, can offer a forum where those who are afflicted can, in trust and acceptance, let down their guards and share their stories. Of course, this is not easily done. Self-disclosure, surrendering the chains of shame and guilt that have held one in bondage, may seem like a kind of “death”. Many would rather keep the contents of such a story hidden — not realizing that a person’s hold on the story is often as much the problem as the story’s hold on the person.
*(Facing Aids, 79f)*
2. ARCHBISHOP OF YORK JOHN HABGOOD, SPEAKING AT A HEARING ON AIDS DURING THE WCC CENTRAL COMMITTEE MEETING IN JANUARY 1987
The AIDS virus is fragile. For its transmission it depends upon intimate contact. And there is an interesting connection between intimacy and vulnerability. Every intimate contact makes us vulnerable in all sorts of ways, not only through transmission of infection but also psychologically and in our personal identity. This is why every civilization has in various ways surrounded intimate relationships with rules, with structures, with ceremonies, with taboos. These have, as it were, protected the relationships.
What I see the AIDS epidemic as teaching us is that we can no longer treat these intimate relationships lightly. That is where the world has lost its sense that close contact between human beings needs to be within an ordered framework… This, it seems to me, is a moral and theological understanding which can be expressed in ways which are accessible not only to those with Christian commitment but to all those who think seriously about our human nature and our contacts with one another.
*(Facing Aids, 31)*
3. HUMAN SEXUALITY
Sexuality is an integral part of human identity. It is expressed in a variety of ways, but finds particular expression in intimate human relationship. It is “erotic” in the classic sense, that is, it drives one to move beyond oneself into encounter with another in relationship. And while this aspect of human identity finds particular expression in the dimension of physical intimacy, it cannot be separated from its emotional, intellectual, spiritual and social dimensions. A Christian understanding of sexuality seeks to take account of the fullness of all these dimensions, yet recognizes the mystery which God has given to human beings in sexuality as a whole.
Christianity has traditionally understood sexuality to be a gift of God for the task of procreation. In some traditions this is linked with an understanding of human beings as “co-creators” with God. While the role of sexuality in procreation is clear, a broader understanding of sexuality also values its role in enriching partnership between persons and in bringing pleasure. Society has therefore come to recognize a diversity in the types of human sexual relationships and continues to face questions, for example, about the acceptance of non-heterosexual identity.
Along with its potential for bringing the richness of intimacy and joy to human relationships, sexuality makes people particularly vulnerable — to each other and to social forces. In connection with HIV/AIDS, sexuality increases vulnerability in two ways. First of all, as we have seen, many physical expressions of sexuality can bring one into contact with HIV infection. Second, the very fact that humans are sexual beings makes them vulnerable to the many and varied social factors which influence moral decisions and actions.
Like other aspects of creation, sexuality can be misused if people do not recognize their personal responsibility. Thus societies have always sought to protect people from vulnerability in this area. Through value systems which classify certain behaviours as socially unacceptable or through more formal means such as the institution of marriage, the expression of human sexual desire has been regulated and directed in ways deemed necessary for responsible and safe community life. Churches have particularly affirmed the role of marriage in this regard. In spite of all these attempts to provide protection and encourage responsibility, the abuse of sexual power and relations remains a reality. This is particularly apparent in the growing commercialization of sex and in sex tourism.
But ideas of what is sexually moral (that is, of what is “right” and not “wrong”) are formed in a constant interaction between personal and community values. There is continuing debate about the origins of sexual identity, that is, whether it is genetically “given” or learned through social development. But it is certain that belief in and adherence to moral behaviour are developed in social interaction.
Christian faith and the churches clearly have an important role in influencing how this interaction occurs, and in the development of personal and community beliefs. In many instances Christianity and other religions have helped to develop, if not determine, prevailing systems of social moral responsibility. A case in point, as noted earlier, is the affirmation of the primary nature of marriage in building family and community.
(Facing AIDS, 301)
“Orthodoxy is quite clear on this point: the sexual life of men and women is possible only in marriage, the purpose of which is procreation. Throughout the Christian world, marriage has become so unstable that it now seems almost unnecessary. In Russia, almost half of marriages break up, leaving about half a million children without one parent every year. Sixty percent of men and forty percent of women commit adultery, and infidelity ranges from one-time unfaithfulness to creation of a second and even a third family on the side. It is in this age that children enter sexual relations nowadays. The young people who do not want to marry entertain themselves sexually, corrupting their own bodies and souls. To speak nowadays about sexual restraint before marriage is something abnormal and even “amoral”.
Meanwhile, marriage is God’s institution. Orthodoxy has always taught that marriage has a great calling and regarded it as God’s will and the fulfilment of one’s earthly duty, which is procreation and propagation of Christian faith on earth.
Anatoly Berestov, Russian Orthodox Church,
WCC consultative group on AIDS meeting, Geneva, September 1994 | 08cc903c-5253-4f08-a55c-df24fc474f5b | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/mission/ehaia-pdf/facing_aids_eng.pdf | 2021-12-01T12:19:49+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964360803.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20211201113241-20211201143241-00275.warc.gz | 136,580,286 | 28,925 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.974493 | eng_Latn | 0.997614 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
132,
2768,
5041,
7433,
10195,
11825,
13929,
17081,
20031,
22994,
25175,
25888,
28858,
30863,
33242,
35943,
38436,
40569,
40664,
44255,
46686,
49768,
52387,
54889,
58623,
62548,
64517,
69623,
75683,
82067,
87841,
92344,
93726,
97144,
100593,
103314,
106554,
111403,
116236,
121797,
127185,
132611,
135718,
140528,
143340
] | [
2.265625,
1.1484375
] | 1 | 0 |
This is the second article in a two-part series on using maps in genealogical research. The first article focused on commercially-published maps.
I must give a big thank you to Cassandra Farrell, Senior Map Archivist at the Library of Virginia, for her assistance researching and compiling the information for this article.
This article will review the types of government issued maps that can aid in genealogical research, including military maps, topographic maps, nautical charts, aeronautical charts, highway maps, and postal route maps. Of course before you begin your journey into your ancestors' world, you must collect basic information first, such as the names, places and dates of your ancestors. Get a sense for the towns, counties, and regions in which they lived. Find out if they were in the military and whether they were involved in any battles or where they were stationed. Once you have gathered this data, you will begin to see how maps can lead you to more information, and which types of maps may offer the most useful information.
Governments, whether at the country, state, or local level, have always been invested in generating and compiling maps. Within the United States, there are a number of different agencies that have been involved in creating maps, including the United States Geological Survey, the General Land Office, the Corps of Topographical Engineers, the Coast Survey, and the Army Map Service, among others. Agencies sometimes shared information with one another, but alas, not always. And as many of these agencies were focused on mapping different aspects of the world, their maps often show different features.
**Military Maps**
Military maps can be a great tool for genealogical researchers, although they are more limited in the regions they depict and in the time periods they represent. However, if your ancestors lived in the United States during the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, you may be able to find military maps with a lot of useful information. As these maps were created to aid in planning military movements, they are some of the most detailed maps you can find, showing landowners, property boundaries, mills, plantations, farms, churches, roads, footpaths,
railroads, bridges, ferries, streams, creeks, and topography. Many of these maps also show the planning of a battle and its aftermath, with fortifications, troop movements, and military sites. Military maps can be helpful in locating an ancestor's property and its boundaries, the types of businesses and employment that was available in the area, and the roads and waterways that were used at the time. They can also show the location of county courthouses to determine where records may be held. Accurate and detailed maps were a necessity for cartography, surveying, and mapping tools and techniques.
Desandroüins, Jean Nicolas, *Plan du terrain à la rive gauche de la rivière de James vis-à-vis Jamestown en Virginie ou s'est livré le combat du 6 juillet 1781 entre l'armée américaine commandée par le Mis. de La Fayette et l'armée angloise aux ordres du Lord Cornwallis*, 1781. Image courtesy of Library of Congress.
Military maps can be found in both manuscript form as well as engraved and printed form. The Library of Congress Geography & Map Division ([https://www.loc.gov/maps/](https://www.loc.gov/maps/)) holds a large repository of Civil War Maps, over 2,000 of which are digitized online, as well as a strong collection of American Revolution era maps, with over 800 digitized. State libraries will also typically have a collection of military maps of their state and region, although their online resources are often limited.
Topographic Maps
Another type of government map that includes a wealth of information is the topographic map. The United States Geological Survey was founded in 1879 and was charged with the "classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain." While the first surveys focused on mining districts, they were extended at the end of the 19th century to include the study of the water supply, and then in the 20th century eventually to cover all other regions of the United States. The topographic mapping of the entire US was finally completed in 1990. The field maps were engraved on three separate copper plates, with each plate representing a different feature. The first plate showed topography and was printed in brown; the second plate showed hydrography and was printed in blue; the third plate showed civil and public works and was printed in black. The three plates were printed on the same sheet, resulting in a three-color lithographic printing process.
U.S. Geological Survey, Virginia - Maryland. Mt. Vernon Sheet, 1904. Image courtesy of Old World Auctions.
The features shown in black on these topographic maps are typically of most value to genealogical research. They include public buildings, schools,
churches, cemeteries, roads, trails, railroads, and bridges. Also shown are fence lines, land grants, and boundary lines between counties, parishes, townships, and even individual properties. Armed with a topographical map of your ancestor’s town, you can identify where court records were kept, the boundary lines of their property, where their grave marker is located, and the overall cultural landscape in which they lived.
**BUILDINGS AND RELATED FEATURES**
| Feature | Symbol |
|-------------------------------|--------|
| Building | ■ |
| School; church | ♦ ♦ |
| Built-up Area | |
| Racetrack | ○ ○ |
| Airport | ✗ ✗ |
| Landing strip | |
| Well (other than water); windmill | ● ● |
| Tanks | ● ● |
| Covered reservoir | |
| Gaging station | ♦ |
| Landmark object (feature as labeled) | ● |
| Campground; picnic area | |
| Cemetery: small; large | |
**ROADS AND RELATED FEATURES**
Roads on Provisional edition maps are not classified as primary, secondary, or light duty. They are all symbolized as light duty roads.
| Feature | Symbol |
|-------------------------------|--------|
| Primary highway | |
| Secondary highway | |
| Light duty road | |
| Unimproved road | |
| Trail | |
| Dual highway | |
| Dual highway with median strip| |
| Road under construction | |
| Underpass; overpass | |
| Bridge | |
Topographic maps are identified by the quadrangle they represent. Over time, many of these quadrangles were re-surveyed, with changes engraved on a fourth copper plate and printed in purple ink. Comparing successive revisions of topographic maps of the same quadrangle will show the growth and evolution of the area over time. Noting these revisions can give you a sense of how your ancestor's life would have changed during that time, such as regarding employment opportunities or land ownership.
The USGS (www.usgs.gov) has an extensive website, with their entire collection of historical topographical maps from 1884-2006 available digitized online through the USGS store (https://store.usgs.gov/) and the National Map (https://nationalmap.gov/historical/index.html).
Coast Survey Charts
Established in 1807, the United States Survey of the Coast is one of the US government's oldest scientific organizations. It was created to "provide for surveying the coasts of the United States" in order to address issues of national boundaries, defense, and commerce. Of course coast surveys were intended to assist sailors in navigating the waters and are therefore limited in their depiction of land, showing between one half to three miles inland. However, they do provide detailed information for areas along the coast of the US and along major lakes, bays, rivers, or tributaries within the US. Onshore information includes topography, roads, settlements, farmsteads, and occasionally names of landowners. The agency was renamed the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878, and became a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1970. The Office of Coast Survey has digitized its collection of historical charts and offers them free to download through their site (https://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/).
U.S. Coast Survey, City of San Francisco and Its Vicinity California..., 1853.
Image courtesy of Old World Auctions.
Aeronautical Charts
In 1921, the United States Army Air Corps initiated an evaluation of aeronautical charts in an effort to develop a standardized map for visual aerial navigation. Based upon this study, the Air Corps issued 63 air navigation maps covering most of the military routes in the United States. Prior to 1926, these maps were jointly compiled by the Geological Survey and U.S. Army Engineer Reproduction Plant. By 1926, the preparation of air maps shifted to the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (under the Commerce Department) with the passage of the Air Commerce Act. Maps from this point on were intended to merge the growing commercial airways system with the military network. These aeronautical surveys were intended for pilots, air traffic controllers, and eventually the Federal Aviation Administration. The charts show some unique information that is typically not found on other historical maps, including restricted or private use airports, abandoned airports, heliports, power plants, and open air theaters.
Although not central in a genealogist’s toolkit, aeronautical charts can offer helpful information, in particular regarding migration and travel patterns in the 21st century. The Library of Congress ([https://www.loc.gov/maps/](https://www.loc.gov/maps/)) has a comprehensive collection of aeronautical charts of the United States that were created in 1926.
United States Army Air Corps, *Air Navigation Map No. 4 (Experimental)*
*Washington. D.C. to Hampton, VA, 1929.* Image courtesy of Old World Auctions.
State Highway Maps
Of course travel by car was much more common than air travel in the 21st century, with automobile road maps beginning to appear on the market around 1904 with Rand McNally's *New Automobile Road Map of New York City & Vicinity*. Road navigation was difficult at the beginning of the century, as the road system was still under-developed with few paved roads and signage on roads was inconsistent or nonexistent. Wisconsin was the first state to number its highways in the U.S., with signs erected in 1918. Other states soon followed, however each state maintained its own set of numbered highways. The US Numbered Highway System was finally created in the 1920s to create a uniform system of identifying major routes and interstate highways. While commercial road maps were popular give-aways at filling stations from 1920-1970, state highway commissions also published official state road maps.
*Department of Highways, Map of Accomack County Showing State and County Roads, 1932.* Image courtesy of Library of Virginia Map Collection.
In addition to showing roads, these maps also identified the type and condition of the roads, mail routes, school bus routes, railroads, ferries, airports, schools, churches, and county court houses. Color was often used to designate different types of roads on these state highway maps, making the legend an necessary tool in deciphering the map. These maps can aid genealogists in finding old roads or towns that no longer exist, establishing how families moved across a state, and locating county boundaries and court records. State and county
highway maps can be found in local state libraries, as well as at the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/maps/).
**Postal Route Maps**
US Postal route maps of counties, states, and regions were regularly published between 1830-1940. These maps showed mail routes, post offices, distances between post offices, frequency of mail service, discontinued post offices, railroads, canals, towns and county boundaries. The primary focus of these maps is post offices and railroad stations, so not all roads are shown, only those followed by a mail route. Postal route maps of individual counties often show the exact location of houses. Some postal route maps even give statistical information, such as population and population density, number of post offices, and miles of railroads and canals. Genealogists use postal route maps to find old roads and railroads no longer in use, determine the approximate location of an ancestor’s home, and identify travel and migration routes. These maps can be found at the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/maps/), the National Archives’ Cartographic and Architectural Section (https://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/26-cartographic.html), and at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland (https://www.archives.gov/dc-metro/college-park).
*Post Office Department, Rural Delivery Routes Fairfax County, VA, 1912. Image courtesy of Library of Congress.*
Putting It All Together
There are so many types of maps that can aid in genealogical research, it can be a bit overwhelming. To simplify the process, follow these key steps:
1. First gather basic information on your ancestors, including full names, dates of birth and death, and the known locations where they lived.
2. Next figure out what information you are missing, or what additional questions you have about your ancestors. Was your ancestor born in one city, but was laid to rest in another city, and you aren't sure what precipitated the move? Are you missing birth, death or marriage certificates for an ancestor? Do you want to understand what life was like for your ancestor? Do you want to learn more about your ancestor's home town or neighborhood? Did an ancestor's whereabouts suddenly become unclear, and you want to determine where to regain their trail? Being specific about what information you need is critical in determining how maps can help you.
3. Determine what type (or types) or maps have the information you need. Many different types of historical maps, whether government issued or commercially produced, will offer similar information. Sometimes several types of maps could suffice, so consider which type will have the most comprehensive or up-to-date information for the specific time period you seek, or which type might be the easiest to locate.
4. Locate the maps you need. Throughout this two-part article I have listed resources for each type of map. Ideally, first look at what sources are available online. Online search functionality, whether on your favorite search engine or the search feature on a specific resource website, can often make it easy to find a specific map. Also, digital images can be more useful than paper maps because you can zoom in and see great detail. Once you have exhausted online sources, contact local libraries or public records offices to search for maps in their archives.
5. Analyze the map for clues relating to your ancestors. Some of the key details to note are place names (including their exact spelling), transportation routes (both on land and water), economic development (such as local businesses, industries, or natural resources), decorative elements or images that provide more information about the time period, and textual elements (such as tables or notes on the map). Ideally make a copy of the map to keep in your records, whether by downloading a digital image, taking a photo of a physical map, or making a photocopy of a map. Make sure you also note where you found the map for future reference.
Using maps in genealogical research opens up a wealth of information that court records alone cannot provide. Learning about who your ancestors were, where they lived, how they lived, and what their communities were like adds color and context to your family history. Whether you've just begun to research your
heritage, or you've already identified the last ten generations, don't forget to look to maps for a visual image of your ancestor's era.
References
Guthorn, Peter J. *United States Coastal Charts 1783-1861*, Exton, PA, 1984.
Kashuba, Melinda, *Walking with your Ancestors*, Cincinnati, OH, 2005. | 396956bb-fe13-4da6-828c-471514650761 | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://www.washmapsociety.org/resources/Documents/Articles%20and%20Papers%20Page/Explore%20-%20Articles%20-%20Mapping%20Our%20Ancestors%20II.pdf | 2021-12-06T09:17:21+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964363290.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20211206072825-20211206102825-00379.warc.gz | 1,161,320,896 | 3,366 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.99121 | eng_Latn | 0.996963 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2229,
3673,
4980,
7555,
8730,
10276,
11883,
13312,
16221,
16521
] | [
2.5
] | 1 | 0 |
Preventing Prescription Opioid Misuse Among Student Athletes
Massachusetts is in the midst of an opioid epidemic. Athletes in particular, due to their risk of injury and the resulting pain, may be at risk for misusing prescription opioids.
While playing a sport and being on a team benefits middle and high school athletes in many ways—including social connections, structured afterschool time, and physical fitness—it can also lead to injury. In rare cases, sports injuries may result in pain that is severe or long-lasting enough to require a prescription painkiller.
If a student athlete is injured, whenever possible, treat the injury first with rest, ice, compression, elevation, and anti-inflammatory medication—but do seek medical care if it’s necessary. Opioids for pain should be considered only by a physician and only when other approaches have not provided relief.
For the last four years, parents, coaches, athletic directors, athletic trainers, and school nurses involved in 6th–12th grade extracurricular sports have been required to complete an annual training on risks of concussion and head injury. New opioid legislation (An act relative to substance use, treatment, education and prevention) has added a requirement that BSAS provide educational materials on the dangers of opioid use and misuse to those persons participating in the annual head injury safety program. The educational materials shall also be distributed in written form to all students participating in an extracurricular athletic activity prior to the commencement of their athletic seasons (see also www.mass.gov/dph/resourcesforyouthopioidmisuse)
MOST IMPORTANT:
An injured athlete needs time to heal.
Missing a game or two is better than missing an entire season—or more.
After an injury, it is important to have a communications and a return-to-play plan put in place. (Look at the format and wording of your school’s concussion protocols for guidance.) Too often, athletes do not allow sufficient time to recover from their injuries and turn to pain medication to enable their continued participation in their sport. Care must be taken to avoid the common cycle of injury, pain, and re-injury.
In addition, keep in mind the mental and social components of being on a school team and how this may impact the athlete’s recovery and behavior. Losing the social connection to the team can be as damaging in some ways as the physical injury. As appropriate, continue to include the student in team practices, games, and social events.
The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) provides workshops and training programs for school administrators, educators, teacher-coaches, and student athletes. The MIAA Partners in Prevention is a consortium of more than 60 health, wellness, and safety organizations working together to provide resources and programming to schools and communities. The MIAA Sports Medicine Committee, comprising athletic directors, physicians, school nurses, administrators, and coaches, strives to ensure the safety of our students. The MIAA Youth Substance Misuse Prevention Collaborative is a committee of key Commonwealth stakeholders who provide prevention programming and resources. For information about MIAA initiatives and programming, please call 508/541-7997 or visit our website (www.miaa.net).
The MIAA is the Massachusetts Alliance Partner for the Partnership for Drug Free Kids. Learn more about the Partnership on its website: http://www.drugfree.org/
For more information and resources on preventing substance misuse:
Massachusetts Health Promotion Clearinghouse offers a number of free health education resources from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. https://massclearinghouse.ehs.state.ma.us/
Massachusetts Substance Abuse Information and Education Helpline provides free and anonymous information and referrals for alcohol and other substance use problems. http://helpline-online.com/ 1-800-327-5050 TTY: Use MassRelay at 711 or 1-800-439-2370
Bureau of Substance Abuse Services, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, oversees treatment for substance use disorders in the Commonwealth. http://www.mass.gov/dph/bsas
National Institute for Drug Abuse (part of the National Institutes of Health) is charged with advancing the science of addiction, and provides the latest research and resources. https://www.drugabuse.gov/
If a student athlete is injured:
- Ice can be used to reduce soreness and inflammation. If symptoms persist, contact a physician, especially if there is a lack of full-joint motion.
- Check with a health care provider to see if over-the-counter nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications are needed. As with all medications, always follow the directions on the label and any instructions from a health care provider.
- Opioids for pain should be considered only by a physician and only when other approaches have not provided relief.
- Fractures, sprains, and broken bones need plenty of rest to heal properly. The athlete should see an orthopedic specialist, who can evaluate and manage the healing process.
- The athlete’s parents or guardians and coach should discuss together how the injury will impact the student’s ability to play. If an injury will sideline the athlete, the parents or guardians and coach should consider creating a return-to-play plan together.
NOTE: Painkillers are generally not prescribed for injuries that involve concussion, so those injuries are not addressed here. For more information on preventing and treating concussions, please see the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services website: www.mass.gov/sportsconcussion
For more information on preventing sports injuries in youth:
The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association provides safety, wellness, and prevention resources and information for student athletes, teacher-coaches, athletic directors, and school personnel. [www.miaa.net](http://www.miaa.net)
The Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention offers sport-specific injury prevention information. [http://www.themicelicenter.com/resources/healthcare-providers-coaches/](http://www.themicelicenter.com/resources/healthcare-providers-coaches/)
Bureau of Injury Prevention, Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH), offers resources on reducing injuries among youth at school, at home, and in the community. [www.mass.gov/dph/injury](http://www.mass.gov/dph/injury)
MDPH Sports Concussion Prevention and Management Program provides information on a number of important topics, including regulations, training, required forms for schools and clinicians, and model policies for schools. [www.mass.gov/sportsconcussion](http://www.mass.gov/sportsconcussion)
CDC Child Injury Prevention offers many resources on injury prevention. [http://www.cdc.gov/safechild/index.html](http://www.cdc.gov/safechild/index.html)
Boston Children’s Hospital, Sports Medicine Division, provides comprehensive multidisciplinary care to athletes of all ages and abilities, from professional athletes to eager novices. [http://www.childrenshospital.org/centers-and-services/division-of-sports-medicine/overview](http://www.childrenshospital.org/centers-and-services/division-of-sports-medicine/overview)
Sports Medicine Center, Mass. General Hospital, provides interdisciplinary care for athletes. [www.massgeneral.org/ortho-sports-medicine/](http://www.massgeneral.org/ortho-sports-medicine/)
What to Know About Prescription Opioids
Which medications are prescription opioids?
- Prescription opioids are narcotic pain medications that are prescribed for people with moderate to severe pain. They include Vicodin, OxyContin, OxyCodone, Percocet, Fentanyl, Opana, and codeine.
What should parents or guardians do if prescription pain medication is recommended for the injured athlete?
- Talk openly with the health care provider about the need for prescription pain medicine. Make sure to ask about possible risks and side effects, alternatives that may exist, precautions, and proper use of the medication.
- If anyone in the family has had problems with prescription drugs, alcohol, or any other drugs, share this information with the doctor.
- Be sure that the athlete takes the medication only as prescribed and uses only the minimal amount for the shortest period needed for effective relief.
- Keep control of the medication bottle, and supervise the athlete when he or she is taking the medication. Do not allow the athlete to self-administer. Count the pills or keep track of the level of medicine in the bottle on a regular basis.
- Keep the medication at home, if possible. If the athlete needs to take medication during the school day, the school (by law) must approve its use. Talk with school staff about proper supervision, and follow the necessary protocols.
- Remind the athlete that prescription medication is only good for the person it is prescribed for and that it could seriously hurt others.
- Be sure that the athlete takes the medication no longer than necessary.
How should prescription medications be stored?
- Don’t keep prescription medicine in the medicine cabinet. Secure it in a place that only the parents know about. Ideally, keep all medicines, both prescription and over-the-counter, in a locked cabinet or other secure place that children and teens cannot access.
- Tell relatives, especially in homes that children and teens may visit, to lock up their medicines or keep them in a safe place.
- Talk to the parents of your teenager’s friends, and encourage them to secure their prescriptions as well.
How should unused opioid medication be disposed of?
- Check [www.mass.gov/DrugDropbox](http://www.mass.gov/DrugDropbox) to see if there is a permanent waste medication collection site in your town or city that you can go to right away.
- If a medication Drop Box program does not exist in your community, the Food and Drug Administration recommends that opioids be flushed down the toilet, due to the high risk of accidental overdose for people and pets. Medications recommended for flushing include the following:
- Actiq (fentanyl citrate)
- Daytrana Transdermal Patch (methylphenidate)
- Duragesic Transdermal System (fentanyl)
- OxyContin Tablets (oxycodone)
- Avinza Capsules (morphine sulfate)
- Baraclude Tablets (entecavir)
- Reyataz Capsules (atazanavir sulfate)
- Tequin Tablets (gatifloxacin)
- Zerit for Oral Solution (stavudine)
- Meperidine HCl Tablets
- Percocet (Oxycodone and Acetaminophen)
- Xyrem (Sodium Oxybate)
- Fentora (fentanyl buccal tablet)
*Check the paperwork that came with the medicine to learn what other drugs can be flushed.*
Guidance on Communications After a Non-Concussion Sports Injury
Teens who participate in extracurricular activities have a positive alternative to using drugs and alcohol. When student athletes are sidelined with an injury, their time may be less structured, they may be in need of pain management, and they may lose their connections to a supportive community. This may be a time of increased risk for substance misuse.
Coaches and parents or guardians should remember that they each have the same goal: ensuring the best possible outcome for the child. When a student athlete is injured, coaches and parents or guardians should work together to share information about the diagnosis and treatment plan and to craft the plan for returning to play.
Adolescence is a time when students are encouraged to advocate for themselves and become more independent. However, when it comes to health and injury, it is essential that a parent or guardian become involved.
Information-sharing should be coordinated among all those who may be appropriate in the care and management of a sports injury. This may include the parent or guardian, physician, school nurse, athletic trainer, physical therapist, coach, and/or athletic director. These individuals, as appropriate, should all participate in return-to-play decisions.
Pay attention to the social and emotional impact of a sports injury. Being sidelined may lead to general depression and a loss of structured activity, connection to friends, and identity as an athlete. Speak to the student athlete about his or her preferences, and find ways for the athlete to stay involved with the team.
Return-to-play decisions should have the proper healing of the injured athlete as the primary objective. Some students may be eager to return to the game and will try to mask their discomfort. To avoid improper healing and premature participation, have a medical professional and/or the school’s athletic trainer make the final decision regarding the athlete’s return-to-play plan.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health, The Massachusetts Technical Assistance Partnership for Prevention, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association support your efforts to keep youth healthy and strong. | d9cfe513-847a-4b1d-aabf-3bbebe0b8b76 | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.mersd.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=1209&dataid=1222&FileName=Opioid%20Misuse%20Prevention%20Athletes.pdf | 2021-03-02T14:50:29+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178364008.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20210302125936-20210302155936-00113.warc.gz | 896,841,385 | 2,582 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.965417 | eng_Latn | 0.994594 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2529,
4399,
5678,
7465,
9615,
10706,
12959
] | [
2.53125
] | 13 | 14 |
This youth voices project was funded through the #iwillfund and Essex Community Foundation and was run specifically to hear from young people in Essex over the Covid-19 pandemic to learn how they were feeling at this point in the pandemic, and what we could do to help them cope.
The project was aimed at young people from voluntary youth settings who were currently engaging with their groups via Zoom or other social media platforms. It was run by their own youth leaders, who could run the session plan with any of the various games/activities included to encourage discussion, fun and engagement around the topic. The session plan could be shaped to fit the young people in the group, the space that the group had access to, the amount of time they had to run the session and the type of group it was (i.e open youth club, Faith based, Uniformed, SEN etc). This flexibility meant that we could be as inclusive as possible and hear from lots of different groups across Essex (including Southend & Thurrock).
Questions that formed the basis of our youth session & research findings
1.) What do you think adults could do to help improve young people’s mental-health during lockdown?
2.) How are young people being affected most during lockdown?
3.) What is helping you to cope during lockdown?
4.) Are you worried that your education/ future might be affected because of lockdown?
5.) In which ways do you think your education/ future might be affected?
6.) What is the worst thing about being in lockdown?
7.) What is the best thing about being in lockdown?
8.) What methods of communication are you using to stay in touch with friends, school work, family etc?
9.) Is there anything positive that you feel people could learn from this experience?
Which Organisations took part?
1) Essex Boys & Girls Clubs (Uttlesford & Chelmsford)
2) InterAct (Chelmsford)
3) Chelmsford Diocese (Essex wide)
4) Great Yeldham youth club (Braintree)
5) Saint John Ambulance (Essex wide)
6) 2nd Hadleigh Guides (Castle Point)
7) 3rd Downhall Guides (Rayleigh)
8) Witham Boys Brigade (Braintree)
9) 10th Leigh on Sea Rangers (Southend)
10) Phoenix Rangers (Southend)
11) Gateway 97.8 community youth radio (Basildon)
12) African Families in the UK (Colchester)
13) Epping Forest Youth Council (Epping)
14) Teen Talk (Harwich)
15) Lads Need Dads (Colchester)
16) Red Balloon (Epping Forest)
17) Halstead Youthy (Braintree)
What were the ages of young people who took part?
| Age | Count |
|-------|-------|
| 9yrs | 1 |
| 10yrs | 3 |
| 11yrs | 19 |
| 12yrs | 18 |
| 13yrs | 23 |
| 14yrs | 37 |
| 15yrs | 30 |
| 16yrs | 28 |
| 17yrs | 19 |
| 18yrs | 7 |
| 19yrs | 2 |
| 20-25yrs | 15 |
Total: 202 young people
1.) How are you generally feeling during lockdown?
Really Good 66
OK 92
A bit low 38
Really low 6
2.) What do you think adults could do to help improve young people’s mental health during lockdown?
Top answers
1.) Provide fun activities for us to do (Zoom, distractions from gaming and t.v, social media activites, youtube channels)
2.) Be more supportive if we are feeling down and help us have positive mental health
3.) Have proper conversation with us instead of just asking how we are all the time, because we don’t know how we feel!
5.) Understand how stressful it is to try to keep up with school work during a Global pandemic
6.) Teachers could do more to check we understand the work being set and be more lenient with deadlines
7.) Spend more time doing family activities or chilling out together (i.e walks, board games, making memories)
8.) Give us some more time and space alone (especially if we have younger siblings)
9.) Teachers give lots of work, but we need more support from parents
10.) let us sleep & don’t make us feel guilty for doing nothing
11.) Give more definite answers to enquiries about the lockdown & Covid-19
12.) Let us exercise more so we don’t feel trapped at home
13.) Hug us
Key Comments from young people
‘Being in Lockdown has helped me to think about my priorities. I have worked so hard for my exams that didn’t happen and now realised that I need to spend more time on myself’
‘I have got no social life and I am dependent on technology for entertainment. I am overwhelmed with online stuff to do but want to be outside’
‘Provide us with face-to-face teaching rather than just giving us lots of work which we have to do on our own’
‘instead of asking us how we are feeling all the time, just make general conversation or ask what we’ve been doing, watching or listening to – because we don’t know how we’re feeling half the time!’
‘leave us alone when we want to be alone but make sure we get plenty of rest and don’t stay up all night’
2.) How are young people being affected most during lockdown?
Top answers
1.) I Miss seeing and being with my friends
2.) I am bored! There is nothing to do and I miss my hobbies (football, swimming, gymnastics, Youth club)
3.) I miss my wider family
4.) I feel socially isolated. I miss my freedom and feel trapped inside
5.) I miss my school education and having proper teaching
6.) I am not motivated to work from home/ I feel stressed by working from home
7.) There is a lack of routine and no end to school!
8.) I am worried about my future because of no school/ college
9.) I don’t think I am being affected
10.) My mental health has declined
11.) My sleep pattern has changed
12.) I am sad because of cancelled events and holidays
Key Comments from young people
‘It’s so hard not being able to see the people who mean the most to you’
‘I feel like this is going on and on now. I just wish I could see the future to know that things will be alright’
‘I miss my girlfriend and my grandparents so much it hurts’
3.) What is helping you to cope during lockdown?
Top answers
1.) Family time (card games, walks, games)
2.) Using technology to have time with friends/wider family (Quizzes, parties, dressing up, virtual film club & sleep overs)
4.) Exercise (biking, dancing, walks, skateboarding, basketball)
5.) Hobbies & learning new ones (drawing, reading, writing, guitar, baking)
6.) Doing activities on zoom with my youth organisation (games, magazine writing, singing, art work, music, art work, council)
7.) Gaming
8.) Trying to keep busy and have a routine
9.) Looking after my pets
10.) My friends
11.) Music
12.) Chocolate/ junk food
13.) School/ College work
14.) T.V
15.) Napping
‘Family time’ was over twice as popular as the second highest answer
4.) Are you worried that your education/ future might be effected because of lockdown?
152 young people said YES
50 young people said NO
Over three times as many young people said that they did feel their education/ future would be effected because of lockdown!
5.) In which ways do you think your education/ future might be effected?
Top answers
1.) I am falling behind because of having to do school/college work from home (lack of resources, motivation, bad internet having to teach yourself with lack of teacher support)
2.) It won’t affect me as I can work at home
3.) I am worried because I can’t take exams and my predicted grades could have been better
4.) The transition to College/ University is going to be really hard
5.) Because of the lack of exam experience when take my A-levels
6.) I might lose my job and I need the money
Over twice times as many young people said that they were worried about failing behind with their school work than the second most popular answer
Key Comments from young people
‘I feel like jobs might be more flexible in the future with home working. This will really help with my anxiety if I can work from home sometimes when I’m feeling low’
‘Getting set work from school is not as good as things you don’t understand can’t be explained to you’
‘My GCSE results will not be reflective of what I actually could’ve got. Plus, I don’t want to be in a position where my results are considered less valuable because I didn’t earn them the proper way’
‘It can be hard having a Mum as a teacher because it’s not the sort of relationship you want to have with your Mum’
‘At school we can ask a question and get an answer straight away. Sometimes teachers take days to answer an email’
6.) What is the worst thing about being in lockdown?
Top answers
1.) Not seeing my friends
2.) Not seeing wider family
3.) Boredom and not being able do the things I enjoy (hobbies, sports, being outside, youth club, shopping, eating out)
4.) Feeling isolated and trapped at home
5.) Not knowing what the future will hold & cancelled events
6.) The stress and pressure from online school work
7.) Lack of routine
8.) Less hugs from friends
9.) living with family 100% of the time as you can’t escape from your siblings
7.) What is the best thing about being in lockdown?
Top answers
1.) More family time
2.) Having time for hobbies/ learning a new one (gardening, languages, sign language, cooking, art, instruments, reading)
3.) Doing school work at my own pace without the pressure
4.) Being able to relax, sleep in and have more free time
5.) Doing more exercise (working out, basketball, walks, swimming at home)
6.) Being in touch with my friends more online
7.) No bullying like at school
8.) No school work or exams
9.) Not having a strict routine
10.) Spending time with my pets
Key Comments from young people
‘I really enjoy doing school work in my pyjamas!’
‘Doing school work from home is good because it means I only need to communicate with people that I actually like!’
‘It’s great to have extra family time- even if its forced’
8.) What methods of communication are you using to stay in touch with friends, school work and family?
The colour of the word in the image shows the ways that young people have been connecting with-
Friends = Red
Family = Green
School = Blue
Youth Organisation = Purple
(The bigger the word, the more)
Zoom was by far the most common method to talk with friends, family & Youth clubs
Email was the most common method used to communicate with School
7.) Is there anything positive that you feel people could learn from this experience?
Top answers
1.) Taking care of the planet is important. Look how much the environment has changed
2.) Learnt how important family and friends are to me and will value time with them
3.) To never take life or freedom for granted
4.) The sense of community and helping vulnerable people is great (like during the War times)
5.) Don’t take school education for granted
6.) I have learnt new skills (instruments, baking, gardening)
7.) To enjoy being outside and doing exercise
8.) How to be by myself without friends
9.) Value the NHS
10.) Learnt to be more independent and manage school work
11.) Washing hands more and self-hygiene
12.) To try to have a positive mental attitude
Young people feel strongly about environmental issues and have enjoyed seeing rivers become cleaner, wildlife thriving, less litter and less air pollution because of lockdown
Key comments from youth leaders:
‘It is clear the young people have a lot of questions and just want some answers, especially around school. They want to be told that this won’t have a knock on effect for their future plans’
‘Young people’s voices haven’t really been heard in lockdown and so a survey like this is really beneficial’
‘One young man who wanted to take part has a life threatening illness so we met physically at a socially distant meeting with his parents in the front garden!’
‘Even the young people that are still doing school are finding they are less stressed than they would be normally going to school’
‘Even though they have been trapped in their houses some of the young people mentioned that their family bond has actually increased and that they know who their friends are better due to different circumstances of communicating’
‘The young people are really struggling with their school work and appear to be worried for their future’
‘We found that the quite a lot of our younger group were more positive about the situation then we were expecting them to be and most of this is due to less pressure being on them’
‘The young people who are normally quite isolated have got involved in the group more due to it being on zoom. It has helped with their anxiety and they have asked if we can continue doing some session on zoom after the lockdown’
Summary
Online education seems to be a bit hit and miss as some young people are enjoying managing their time and schooling but most are struggling with the workload and the inability to get an instant answer if they don’t understand the work set.
Young people are mostly coping with this, but desperate for normality and some face time with their teachers as the current support is not enough to help them learn the work they are being set.
There were a few comments from young people that they enjoy doing school work from home because it has meant they do not experience any bullying.
An overwhelming majority of young people are worried that the lockdown will have an effect on their education and their future. Those in year 11 and 13 are worried about grades, transition to college/uni and that they may be looked down upon as they didn’t get their results ‘the proper way’. Those in College are desperately worried about their colleges courses as work placements may have stopped and practical courses may not be able to start up again soon.
Young people are experiencing a sense of community that they haven’t experienced before and have really appreciated having extra time to learn new skills and spend time with family. Young people are missing their friends the most, but it is family that is helping them through lockdown and they are grateful for that support. Although some young people mentioned that they would appreciate time away from siblings and more help from parents with school work.
Online technology has been a massive plus in helping young people stay in contact with friends and wider family, but has also made them realise how much they take family, friends and the freedoms that we have for granted.
The Young people have enjoyed the positive impact on the environment that lockdown has bought and it has given them a renewed sense of environmental awareness and passion to look after the planet.
Young people miss taking part in activities that are not currently available such as sports and youth clubs but have enjoyed taking exercise each day.
It is clear that Lockdown has thrown young people a massive curve ball, they miss their freedom and hate being stuck inside. Thankfully the majority seem to be coping ‘ok’, but I would worry about the young people who don’t have access to youth groups for support or a trusted adult to listen to their views.
We often characterise young people as those most comfortable with living virtually and engaging with friends on social media, but these findings show that young people hugely value the physical presence of others and the hugs from family and friends. Young people need people - and they need people with them physically not just virtually.
Lockdown is helping us all to stay safe physically and protect our NHS, and as lockdown continues we may see a rise in young people’s anxiety levels and poor mental health because of the issues highlighted in this report.
A BIG thank you to all 202 young people in 17 youth clubs who took part, to their leaders for taking the time to run the session online, and to the #iwillfund & Essex Community Foundation for allowing this project to take place. I am certain that this information will be a valuable insight into the lives of young people during lockdown and that adults who read this will have a greater understanding of what they are going through and how they may be able to help them at this time.
Thank you, stay safe
-Rachel Brett
(ECVYS CEO) | 2d6c9361-704e-415e-ba78-8f102146d8cb | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://ecvys.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/young-people-in-lockdown-ecvys-youth-voices-report.pdf | 2020-10-25T19:58:31+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107889651.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20201025183844-20201025213844-00026.warc.gz | 281,049,339 | 3,507 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.98772 | eng_Latn | 0.996065 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1760,
3965,
6512,
9587,
12365,
15861
] | [
2.296875
] | 1 | 0 |
I've been seeing some discussion the last couple of days about music theory and chord names. When I have a client who wants to learn about music theory, I make sure we spend however many sessions it takes so that they understand the essentials of chord names, and don't ever get caught using that dreaded term "Dominant 7th chord". I'm conducting a songwriting retreat in a couple of weeks, and I know this stuff will come up.
The most confusing part of chord naming is understanding the use of "7". There is no chord type called a 'dominant 7th'. It's just "7" or 7th". The term dominant 7, which derived from misuse of classical music terminology, refers to taking the V chord in a scale (the major based on the 5th degree of the scale) and making it a 7th chord. But let's back up to basics of chord naming and get there more clearly (all examples below refer to the key of C).
The names of chord are based on the distance (interval) between the root of the chord, and each of the other notes in the chord (i.e. the name of the chord tells you what notes are in the chord).
If the root of the chord is C, the next highest note is usually a third, or the note "E", the third note of the C scale. If the interval is a major 3 (2 steps, or 4 guitar frets, C-E), then
the chord is major. We don't have to say "major" in the chord name, as that is understood by default. If the interval is a minor 3rd (3 half-steps or 3 guitar frets, C-Eb), then the chord is a minor chord, and we use the word minor in the name of the chord - Thus, the word MINOR in a chord name always refers to the status of the 3rd. If the 3rd is moved one half-step (fret) in the other direction, the interval is now a perfect 4th (C-F), and the chord is called Suspended or sus4. The third is changed to the 4th. "Sus" in a chord name refers to changing the 3rd to the 4th.
The 5th in a chord is usually going to be a Perfect 5th or P5 (C-G) and if so, is not mentioned in the chord name. Like the major 3rd, it is the default (Thus a major chord - Root, Major 3rd, P5th) is just called by the letter name e.g., "C". If we mess with the 5th, and move it down one fret, it is now a diminished 5th, and the chord name says (-5). If we push the 5th one fret higher, it is now an augmented 5th, and the chord name says "aug" or "+". Thus, the chord C+ would mean C-E-G#, and the name C-5 would mean C-E-Gb.
Now, this brings us to the confusing 7. If we have a normal major chord, and add to it the note that is the normal 7th degree of the scale, the interval is a Major 7th and the chord is called maj7 or M7. CM7 = C-E-G-B. The major7th interval is always designated with "maj" or "M". If you reduce the M7th interval by one fret (e.g. from B to Bb) it is now a minor 7th interval. BUT, the word "minor" in a chord name is reserved to refer to the 3rd. So we can't use the word "minor" to refer to adding a minor 7th interval to a chord. So what do we do? WE USE JUST THE NUMBER 7. Thus a 7 or 7th chord is root-Major 3rd-Perfect 5th-Minor 7th, or C-E-G-Bb. It has nothing to do with whether the chord is a dominant chord (built on the 5th degree of the scale) or not. In the key of C, "G" is the 5th, so a G7 is the 7th of the dominant chord, but just as easily, F is the 4th, so an F7 chord in the key of C is the 7th of the Sub-Dominant, but no one ever says "F Sub-Dominant 7". D is the 2nd and a D7 is the 7th of the Super-Tonic but no one ever says D SuperTonic 7. It makes no sense, and is just a perpetuated misunderstanding of classical music terminology. (1= Tonic, 2= Supertonic, 3=Mediant 4=Subdominant 5=Dominant, 6=Submediant, 7=Leading tone, 8=Octave)
Now what happens if you have a minor 3rd in a chord AND a minor 7th (C-Eb-G-Bb)? By the rules above, the minor 3rd is noted by the word 'minor', and the minor 7 by just the number 7, so you have Cm7. What if you have a minor 3rd and a major 7 (C-Eb-G-B)? It is a Cm(M7). That name tells you every note in the chord. Similarly if you messed with the 5th, and had C-Eb-Gb-B you'd have Cm-5(M7).
You've probably seen the chord name "dim" or diminished. This means that EVERY interval in the chord is reduced one half-step. Thus a C7 (C-E-G-Bb) becomes C-Eb-Gb-A (technically, the "A" is Bbb) and is called Cdim. In classical music, a diminished chord would not typically include the diminished 7th. Just the Root, m3rd, and dim 5th.
Other points to remember: Just a number after a chord name means that the chord includes every third interval from the root to that number, i.e "9" means Root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th. An 11th chord means Root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th. Depending on whether
each of those intervals is raised or lowered, you would adjust the chord name accordingly.
C-Eb-G-Bb-D is root, m3, P5, m7, and maj9, and the chord name is Cm9. The "m" means the 3rd, and the 9 means both the 7th (NOTE that the "7th means the minor 7th, Bb instead of B), and the major 9. If instead you had C-E-G-B-D, it is now Cmaj9, as the "maj" indicates a major 7 interval, instead of a minor 7.
Last point: We commonly see chord names such as Cadd9. This means exactly what it says. It's a major chord (C-E-G) to which we ADD the major 9, which is D. (D' is 9 because it is nine scale degrees above the root i.e., the octave C-to -C is 8 (C on the A-string to C on the B-string) plus one step to D is 9, which is why we stick our little finger on the 3rd fret of the B string while fingering a regular C to make Cadd9. Same concept on the keyboard.
There are many more chord names and variations, but the principles are all the same. The name of a chord, based on the distances from the root to each not in the chord, should tell you all the notes in that chord. - And there is NO SUCH CHORD TYPE AS A DOMINANT 7!
For more: www.songcrafterscoloringbook.com
Bill Pere was named one of the "Top 50 Innovators, Groundbreakers and Guiding Lights of the Music Industry" by Music Connection Magazine. With more than 30 years in the music business working with top industry pros as a songwriter, performer, recording artist and educator, Bill is well known for his superbly crafted lyrics, with lasting impact. Bill has released 16 CDs, and is President of the Connecticut Songwriters Association. He is an Official Connecticut State Troubadour, and is the Founder and Executive Director of the LUNCH Ensemble (www.lunchensemble.com). Twice named Connecticut Songwriter of the Year, Bill is a qualified MBTI practitioner, trained by the Association for Psychological Type. He is a member of CMEA and MENC, and as Director of the Connecticut Songwriting Academy, he helps develop young talent in songwriting, performing, and learning about the music business. Bill’s song analyses and critiques are among the best in the industry. Bill has a graduate degree in Molecular Biology, an ARC Science teaching certification, and he has received two awards for Outstanding contribution to Music Education.
© Copyright 2009 Bill Pere. All Rights Reserved. This article may not be reposted without permission of the author. Reproduction for educational purposes is permitted with proper attribution. For workshops, consultation, critiques, or other songwriter services, contact Bill via his web sites, at www.billpere.com, www.ctsongwriting.com, and www.lunchensemble.com | <urn:uuid:74a6f463-fde9-4338-ac54-4497c3e78cd1> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | http://www.billpere.com/PDF/ChordNaming.pdf | 2018-03-23T22:22:37Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257649095.35/warc/CC-MAIN-20180323220107-20180324000107-00294.warc.gz | 346,177,364 | 1,989 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998664 | eng_Latn | 0.998799 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1269,
4628,
7296
] | [
2.171875
] | 2 | 0 |
The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency
No 1
Includes STEM Connections & Common Core Standards Correlations
Ada and Mary are on the case!
The CASE of the Missing Moonstone
by JORDAN STRATFORD art by KELLY MURPHY
EDUCATORS’ GUIDE
RHTeachersLibrarians.com
WollstonecraftAgency.com #Wollstonecraft
In an alternate 1826, Ada Lovelace (the world’s first computer programmer) and Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) meet as girls and form a secret detective agency!
Eleven-year-old Ada is somewhat on her own in pre-Victorian London. Her mother is off in the country, her governess has just left to get married, and her father—the poet Lord Byron—is dead. But Ada, who feels awkward around most people anyway, prefers books to company. Unless she’s getting a visit from Mr. Babbage, the marvelous mathematician who shares and encourages her enthusiasm for variables and equations, Ada would rather be left alone to read and invent.
That means Ada is not at all pleased to learn that a tutor has been arranged for her, especially as the tutor, who calls himself Percy B. Snagsby, seems to have plans to foist poetry on her. While having a tutor is an annoyance to Ada, it means the world to fourteen-year-old Mary Godwin, who has been invited to study alongside Ada. Every day, Mary rides unchaperoned to the Byron town house in a carriage with Charles, a factory boy who asks her to pretend he isn’t really there (because he isn’t supposed to be) and who all the while keeps himself buried in a book.
Though Ada finds Peebs—her name for her nervous tutor—quite useless, she quickly warms to the curious and adventurous Mary. The girls, who feel frustrated by society’s constraints on women, find an outlet for their clever and inquiring minds by forming a secret constabulary, the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency. Their first case involves a stolen moonstone pendant, a false confession, mesmerism, a chase by omnibus, a hot-air balloon flight, and a showdown on a steamboat. In the end, Ada and Mary are able to right several wrongs. But in the course of doing so, they’ve revealed themselves. The clandestine detective agency is on its way to becoming one of London’s most talked-about secrets.
PRE-READING ACTIVITY
Ask students to think about a time they thought they were being treated in a particular way because of their gender. Have them write about their experiences and then share them with the class. Focus discussion on why they think they received certain treatment and how they felt about it. Follow up with further discussion on the questions, “Do you believe males and females have equal opportunities in education and employment in today’s society? Why or why not?”
INTERNET RESOURCES
Information Pioneers: Ada Lovelace
Vimeo.com/11923950
Computer Science Unplugged
CSUnplugged.org/
The First 2000 Years of Computing
ComputerHistory.org/revolution
Great Women in Engineering History
EngineerGirl.org/4356.aspx
Historic Female Scientists and Mathematicians
SmithsonianMag.com/science-nature/ten-historic-female-scientists-you-should-know-84028788
SmithsonianMag.com/science-nature/five-historic-female-mathematicians-you-should-know-100731927
Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer
Mary Shelley, author of *Frankenstein*
**Genre**
What genre or genres do you think *The Case of the Missing Moonstone* fits into? The author uses history as a backdrop and historical figures to present imagined events. How did you decide what was historically true and what was made up? What other fictional books have you read that included characters from history? What knowledge or discovery did you take away from the book that you might not have found by reading a history book?
**Role of Women**
What did you learn about the status of women in English society during the time period of the book? Mary explains to Ada that “young ladies cannot be magistrates, or on the constabulary.” Why does Ada assume she can do whatever she wants? What explanation and advice does Mary have for Ada for dealing with the restrictions society places on women? How is Mary’s thinking affected by the writings of her mother? What advice would you give someone being treated differently or unfairly because of gender, race, or class? Discuss how opportunities for women have evolved since the 1800s.
**Friendship**
Since Ada is not really interested in interacting with people, how do she and Mary become friends? What are the makings of a good friendship, and which elements are present for Mary and Ada? Through Mary, Ada learns to pay more attention to her own actions and behaviors. How does having a friend like Mary affect how Ada relates to other people? How does Ada respond when she learns that Mary has kept a secret from her? What advice would you give Ada about friendship to help her sort out her feelings when she feels betrayed by Mary? How have the relationships in this book added to or changed your ideas about friendship?
**Education**
Though a number of characters in the book are children, none of them go to school. What opportunities for learning were available in 1826? To whom were they available? What does Mary’s attitude about school indicate about the conditions of schools available to her? How do you think a character like Charles would feel about the opportunity to go to school? The real Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin spoke out for universal education. How would you define universal education? Is it something available in today’s society? Without benefit of school or instruction, how does Ada educate herself, making connections between math, science, language, and her own life? Give examples from the book that show that one doesn’t need to be a genius in order to make a valuable contribution.
**Science**
To close the case of the missing acorn pendant, Mary imagines Ada “swooping down in [her] balloon with a contraption of some sort, solving all of this with science.” Ada asserts that she and Mary (with some help from Charles) did solve their case with science. “Wondering, guessing, trying, looking at things, sorting variables, guessing again. That’s how we did it. Science.” Which character do you think is right about how science works? How would you define what science is and how it works? What connections do you see between science and imagination in this book? In real life? In what ways, if any, has this book changed the way you think about the nature of science?
---
The above discussion questions correlate to the following Common Core Standards and can be used for class or small group discussion and reflection or offered to students as reflective writing prompts: Reading: Literature: Key Ideas and Details: RL.4.1, RL.5.1, RL.6.1 and RL.4.3, RL.5.3, RL.6.3; Writing: Text Type and Purposes: W.4.1, W.5.1, W.6.1 and W.4.2, W.5.2, W.6.2; Speaking & Listening: Comprehension and Collaboration: SL.4.1, SL.5.1, SL.6.1; Language: Conventions of Standard English: L.4.1, L.5.1, L.6.1.
History
Like the real Ada Lovelace, women who made history in male-dominated math, science, and engineering fields are often not as well known as their male counterparts. Give students a chance to investigate and tell the stories of women’s achievements through living-history interviews. Have students work in pairs to select a significant female scientist, mathematician, or engineer in world history and identify and research the key accomplishments in her life. Students should also explore the challenges and restrictions women faced during the subject’s lifetime. To share what they’ve learned, student pairs should prepare for an interview with their subject. After writing interview questions and answers, one student can serve as the interviewer while the other portrays the woman from history. Student presentations can be live in front of a classroom audience or audio-recorded for a class “history radio” podcast.
Correlates to the following Common Core Standards:
Reading: Informational Text: Key Ideas and Details: RI.4.3, RI.5.3, RI.6.3; Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: RI.4.9, RI.5.9, RI.6.9; Writing: Text Type and Purposes: W.4.2, W.5.2, W.6.2; Research to Build and Present Knowledge: W.4.7, W.5.7, W.6.7; Speaking & Listening: Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas: SL.4.4, SL.5.4, SL.6.4 and SL.4.5, SL.5.5, SL.6.5
Science
Mary marvels at the maze of pipes that funnel hot air from chimneys to keep Ada’s hot-air balloon aloft over the house. How does it work? Have half the class research the science behind how hot-air balloons work; the other half, how chimneys work. Then, divided into small groups, have students discuss both areas of research, determine how Ada’s balloon worked, and examine what scientific principles are involved. Each group should create a drawing and fill in details of how they believe Ada constructed her balloon and its hot-air source to share with the class. To make their own balloon, groups can draw inspiration from their ideas about Ada’s balloon, then create their own plan or work from the balloon design available from Sonic Junior Balloonist (Balloonist.com), which includes step-by-step instructions for building and launching a hot-air balloon constructed from tissue paper. Provide materials for students to construct their balloons, arrange for a heat source, gather necessary safety equipment, and prepare to launch!
Correlates to the following Common Core Standards:
Reading: Literature: Key Ideas and Details: RL.4.1, RL.5.1, RL.6.1; Reading: Informational Text: Key Ideas and Details: RI.4.3, RI.5.3, RI.6.3; Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: RI.4.7, RI.5.7, RI.6.7; Speaking & Listening: Comprehension and Collaboration: SL.4.1, SL.5.1, SL.6.1
Engineering
In designing her cannon, Ada is thinking about using something explosive to help fire a sock and/or Peeps into the air! Have students work in pairs to design and build a device that can send one of their own clean socks aloft without any explosives. Provide materials that encourage the creation of sock-conveyance devices propelled by air pressure, such as balloons, straws, string, tape, plastic and cardboard tubing, cardboard, and items from the recycling bin, like water bottles and yogurt cups. Students who need help getting started can search online for stomp rockets or balloon rockets. Have students keep notes as they research, brainstorm, plan, and design their device and encourage students to test and refine them before everyone competes to see which device can transport the sock the farthest.
Correlates to the following Common Core Standards:
Writing: Research to Build and Present Knowledge: W.4.7, W.5.7, W.6.7; Speaking and Listening: Comprehension and Collaboration: SL.4.1, SL.5.1, SL.6.1
Engineering and History
Even as Ada’s hot-air balloon is going down in flames, she’s already thinking about making it bigger and better. Improving and refining is an important part of the engineering design process. Many inventions we enjoy today were imagined and developed long ago, but were refined and improved later by subsequent inventors, engineers, and designers.
Ask students to share what they know about the origins of technologies they regularly use—from indoor plumbing to cell phones. Following this discussion, divide students into small groups to research how the computer has evolved since Charles Babbage started with his ideas for the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. Beginning with the 1800s, have each group focus on a different time period, covering developments in computer technology in that era, how the technology was utilized, and how that usage compares to the way we meet a similar need today. Students should also include their own ideas for improving computers to meet a current problem or need and what they think will happen in the future of computing. Small groups should present their research and ideas to the entire class in a multimedia presentation.
Math
If having students sit and imagine themselves as points on a curve, as Ada and Mr. Babbage do, is too abstract, get them focused on aspects of the work of the real Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. Babbage conceived the idea of the Analytical Engine—a general-purpose computer. But Ada Lovelace, who added extensive notes in her 1842 translation of *Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage*, made clear how it would work. Her algorithm for generating Bernoulli numbers with the Analytical Engine is regarded as the world’s first computer program. Present Lovelace’s and Babbage’s ideas and the concept of algorithms to students before showing them how to think about programming with this exercise in writing precise language and instructions.
As a set of step-by-step instructions for solving a problem, algorithms are all around us. They are especially important
Correlates to the following Common Core Standards:
Reading: Informational Text: Key Ideas and Details: RI.4.3, RI.5.3, RI.6.3; Writing: Research to Build and Present Knowledge: W.4.7, W.5.7, W.6.7 and W.4.9, W.5.9, W.6.9; Speaking & Listening: Comprehension and Collaboration: SL.4.1, SL.5.1, SL.6.1; Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas: SL.4.4, SL.5.4, SL.6.4 and SL.4.5, SL.5.5, SL.6.5
to computers, which need methods for solving problems. Explain to students how a recipe could be considered an algorithm, as it produces a result given a specific set of inputs (ingredients) in a finite amount of time. Ask students to think about what other activities they do that could be broken down into step-by-step instructions. Ask them to pick one and describe it, breaking it down so that a computer might understand it. In their writing, students should include *inputs* (everything needed to do the steps) and *outputs* (the solution to the problem). Students should number each step and separately note any *assumptions* (accepted facts that relate to the activity). Have students exchange their work and act as the “computer” to check one another for precision and for reproducability.
Correlates to the following Common Core Standards:
Writing: Text Type and Purposes: W.4.2, W.5.2, W.6.2;
Production and Distribution of Writing: W.4.4, W.5.4, W.6.4;
Speaking & Listening: Comprehension and Collaboration: SL.4.1, SL.5.1, SL.6.1
**Poetry**
The real poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley are part of the fictional world created by the author of *The Case of the Missing Moonstone*. But Ada prefers math and science to poetry. Perhaps making science poetical would change her mind! Have students explore the connection between discovery in science and creativity on the page as they write poetry about or inspired by scientific ideas. As with science, poetry is a way to look at the world. Encourage students to think about the scientific process—observation, examination, inference, description, explanation, and the communication of ideas—as they develop a poem about a scientific idea that interests them or would have intrigued Ada.
Correlates to the following Common Core Standards:
Writing: Text Type and Purposes: W.4.2, W.5.2, W.6.2;
Production and Distribution of Writing: W.4.4, W.5.4, W.6.4
VOCABULARY/USE OF LANGUAGE
About Ada, Mary quickly learns that “clearly, the younger girl needed no assistance so far as vocabulary was concerned.” As all are not quite the genius that Ada is, the author often has a character weave the definition of a word into dialogue or sometimes provides clues to meaning in the context of the story. Encourage student discussion of the words and meanings that they discover in the book by having students make an illustrated poster to hang on a World of Wollstonecraft Word Wall. Students can present their posters and then work in small groups to seek out related words to add to the wall.
Also woven throughout the book are allusions to many historical and literary people, places, and things. Help students identify names that have a meaning behind them. Then ask students to work together in small groups to try to determine the author’s reason for choosing those names. Ask each group to investigate at least one allusion and prepare a case file that includes details about the reference and what connection it has to the book. Students should present their deductions to the entire class.
Correlates to the following Common Core Standards: Reading: Literature: Craft and Structure: RL.4.4, RL.5.4, RL.6.4; Language, Vocabulary Acquisition and Use: L.4.4, L.5.4, L.6.4
ADDITIONAL READING
The Case of the Missing Moonstone is rooted in the tradition of the early masters of the mystery genre: Wilkie Collins and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Have students choose a Sherlock Holmes story to read. Then ask them to compare and contrast its plot, characters, use of deductive reasoning, and mystery to The Case of the Missing Moonstone.
MysteryNet.com/holmes/sherlock-holmes-stories
Students may find the [London] Times as interesting as Ada does. Have them explore and read historical newspaper articles from London in 1826. Ask students to compare and contrast an article on a similar topic in a current edition of the New York Times or your local paper.
NewspaperArchive.com/uk/middlesex/london/london-times/1826
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JORDAN STRATFORD is a producer, author, and screenwriter. Stratford launched the idea for the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency series on Kickstarter, where the response was overwhelming enthusiasm.
Mr. Stratford lives on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada, with his wife and children and is hard at work on The Girl in Grey, the next book in the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency series.
Guide prepared by Rachael Worthington Walker, Children's Literary Consultant. Random House Children's Books • School and Library Marketing • 1745 Broadway, 9-1 • New York, NY 10019 • 1/15 | 50e840e9-eaed-448e-802d-51fadfce8295 | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | http://wollstonecraft.com/activities/Wollstonecraft_Educators_Guide.pdf | 2020-10-20T03:05:51+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107869785.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20201020021700-20201020051700-00511.warc.gz | 116,623,851 | 4,018 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.982666 | eng_Latn | 0.9968 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
297,
2199,
3260,
6959,
10709,
13195,
15118,
17783
] | [
4.40625
] | 1 | 0 |
Can you find me?
**White-headed woodpecker**
Unique to Ponderosa pine forests and recently burned areas. Watch for the quick flash of white as they land on the closest trunk.
**Sharp-tailed snake**
This endangered species was discovered on our property in 2018 by a volunteer and group of students. The snakes can be found hiding under logs and rocks.
**Mule deer**
This year-round resident is named after their large ears, similar to those of a mule. Look for the black-tipped tail to tell the difference from its relative, the White-tailed deer.
**Praying Mantis**
These green assassins are often seen on the walls of the River Haus stalking their prey.
**American black bear**
Throughout spring, summer and fall be on the lookout for large piles of bear scat. Can you tell what they have been eating?
**California Quail**
Year-round residents, seen in flocks with many young chicks in August.
**American beaver**
Walk along the river to look for sign of Black cottonwoods chopped down by beaver. Wenatchee River beavers do not build dams, but they build homes in the banks of the river.
Welcome!
We are an environmental learning center that connects people, communities and the natural world.
The land you are on is the ancestral homelands of the šn̓pašqʷáwšəxʷ (p’squosa/Wenatchi band). We acknowledge they are the original stewards of this land. Many no longer live here, but they are still alive and practicing many of their traditional ways of living. Most now live on the Colville Reservation, 150 miles northeast of Leavenworth.
Taxidermy Awaits
Head inside the River Haus and Red Barn to tour the taxidermy we have on display. Experience the local fauna up close and personal!
Scavenger Hunt
Based on the season, explore around the property with our scavenger hunt. Grab one from the kiosk.
StoryWalk®
Walk along the trail, stopping at each page of the storybook. Don’t forget to do the exercises!
eBird is among the world's largest biodiversity-related science projects. Birders enter when, where, and how they went birding online, and fill out a checklist of all the birds seen and heard during the outing. The data is used to understand bird distribution, abundance, habitat use, and trends.
The Wenatchee River Institute is home to four different eBird hotspots. Grab a pair of binoculars and bird ID guide from inside the River Haus. Go see what is out there!
Each hotspot has a list of birds previously seen. Do you see any of those birds today?
Black birds on map show eBird hotspots | 0509ddd3-3f26-43e1-98bc-80d6e431da76 | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://wenatcheeriverinstitute.org/file_download/inline/30d45e61-e029-4dbb-ba4c-290560b791d5 | 2021-12-04T14:00:51+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964362992.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20211204124328-20211204154328-00342.warc.gz | 667,134,719 | 568 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998691 | eng_Latn | 0.998697 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1096,
2520
] | [
3.328125
] | 1 | 0 |
Hello Everyone,
Welcome back to the 2nd term. The first term is a long and hot term, so term 2 should be a lot easier and of course cooler. I hope you all have a great term and have come back refreshed from the break.
Autumn and Easter are both fast approaching. For both the themes there are plenty of ideas on the Pinterest boards so take a look and start collecting and planning for what you need. I have sent a separate mail with some Easter ideas I used at school.
Theme/topic planning
Have you ever considered involving the planning of your theme or topic with your children? I have seen it done in New Zealand and I think it’s a great idea as part of their thinking and language development. Here are some examples of planning a theme around the sea.
Start off by asking the children a leading question such as “what lives in the sea?” Record their answers on a paper and then create a concept web from that. If the children are a bit older such as the Grade R group, then record what the children tell you directly onto individual papers for each child’s response so they can see you writing what they say. This teaches them that the print has meaning. Once written, show it to the children and point to the words as you read it out together. You don’t have to type it up on a computer as they have done in these pictures. Just use a koki pen and good print. Remember to add who gave you the information at the end of the comment. Display these where the children can see them and ‘read’ them again. Write the comments as close as possible to how the children relayed them to you. You won’t be able to ask all the children, but try to include as many children as you can over the planning days. Doing this shows you what the children already know about the sea and the beach.
Extend this activity to “what would you like to learn about the sea and the beach?”
Some creative activities
Collage with cardboard shapes. Extending a simple art activity to become a more complex one with more learning opportunities
We often get given some firm cardboard like ‘stuff’ which is used in the building industry. You can substitute this with cut up polystyrene trays (we almost never get polystyrene trays in New Zealand?) or cardboard or paper shapes.
I cut the cardboard into a variety of shapes and encouraged the children to create. William (4 ½) began to paste the shapes and soon he decided it was a truck and needed wheels. I cut some circles from paper as cutting the thick cardboard into neat circles was a bit difficult. As he created, I added components to extend the activity and the learning.
I suggested he draw the driver and put something in the back of the truck. William is “obsessed” with wanting to use the teacher’s koki pen and he always insists on writing his own name. If I don’t rescue my pen he will draw endlessly, which is not a bad thing apart from the fact that I need my pen to write names on other children’s art works! And yes there are koki pens freely available but he always wants my pen. He wrote his name which you can see has only some resemblance to his actual name, (reversed w, l, D, y, e all placed in a random order) but this is a great start and what we call emergent writing. It shows he is ready for and interested in learning to write. He then asked me to write his surname which he also ‘copied’ and then I suggested we cut out his name and paste it onto his truck. He thought this was a cool idea and so his truck was named. He also decided to make a person.
Painting with cardboard rollers/tubes
I had collected several nice firm cardboard rolls from the inside of foil, Glad wrap etc. I decided to use them for a painting activity. I set out paint in flat plates (needs to be nice and thick so ready mixed works the best), large sheets of paper (we had A2 posters we were donated so it was slightly glossy which was great), teaspoons and I added glitter glue/paint to the activity but it’s not essential.
Choose your paint colours carefully so they blend to make a pleasing effect. If you don’t do this, you just end up with a messy brown blur. I used blue, green and white.
I had learnt my lesson from a previous lesson where I had put paint brushes out to dab the paint and they all ended up painting with brushes instead of with the rollers, so I put out teaspoons to dispense the paint and it was great. The children dabbed different colours of paint on the paper and then rolled the paint together to create an interesting and textured end product. I dropped blobs of glitter paint onto the paper to add sparkle.
The sheets of paper make great backgrounds for sea pictures or gardens. One of the teachers cut the paper into seaweed shapes and added them to the group display board. These sheets of paper can also be cut up and used as collage paper to create other pictures.
Note: Some children love the sensation of paint on their hands and will spend a long time rolling the rollers and adding more and more paint. Make sure you have a bucket of water nearby to
clean up.
I loved the end product and the children loved creating the paintings. This is a great opportunity for gross motor and small muscle development especially when standing and a good sensory activity.
Drawing with the 2-3 year olds
This age group has a really short attention span. I find they will draw for a short time, move away and then come back and draw some more. Often we cover the table with paper so they can draw freely over a period of time.
I drew some circles for the children and they created faces. Some of the older children wanted to try and trace around the round bowl themselves so we had a few attempts at that.
Young children need to have an opportunity to draw everyday so they can go through the developmental stages of drawing just as they go through the stages of rolling, sitting, crawling etc. If they do not have this opportunity, they may still be in the scribble stage when they are older!
NOTE: The children do draw on the floor and themselves which is frustrating but it’s all part of the learning process and consistent and close supervision teaches them acceptable behaviour and pays off in the end.
Picture 1 and 2 Uncontrolled scribbling moving towards controlled scribbling and the start of circles being formed
Easter ideas
There are some more ideas on my blog (see address below) and also in the gallery on the web site. Archived editions of the newsletter on the web site will have some Easter ideas in the Feb, March or April editions depending on where Easter fell that year. And of course my Pinterest boards have plenty of ideas.
http://www.pinterest.com/kstedall/easter/ for adult and personal ideas
http://www.pinterest.com/kstedall/easter-school/
Web site: www.preschoolthemes.co.za
Facebook: www.facebook.com/preschoolthemes
Blog: http://preschoolthemeideas.wordpress.com/
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/kstedall/
A clever idea for all the random items and puzzle pieces that get lost
Have a Happy Easter and happy teaching.
Regards Karin | <urn:uuid:ff6d9315-bb0b-4ba5-ac0e-ac67ec95117b> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | http://www.preschoolthemes.co.za/Preschool-Theme-newsletter-April2014.pdf | 2019-04-20T10:24:49Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578529606.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20190420100901-20190420122901-00252.warc.gz | 289,443,305 | 1,496 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.992124 | eng_Latn | 0.999054 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1873,
5034,
6299,
6917,
7045
] | [
3.828125
] | 2 | 1 |
Research on “Zai Yi” (Disasters and Anomalies) and Countermeasures in the Silla Era
Xiang Li\textsuperscript{1,2}
\textsuperscript{1}College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Yanbian University, Yanji, Jilin Province, China
\textsuperscript{2}College of Literature and History, Mianyang Teachers’ College, Mianyang, Sichuan Province, China
Keywords: Silla, “zai yi”, Countermeasures
Abstract: In the history of Silla, “Zai Yi” (disasters and anomalies) covers various types such as astronomy, geology, meteorology, hydrology, etc. “Zai Yi” shows the characteristics of geographic wideness, type diversity, persistence, and mass occurrence. “Zai Yi” affected the political society of Silla to varying degrees. The rulers of Silla adopted a series of political and economic response measures to “Zai Yi”, and built a disaster response system for pre- “Zai Yi” defense, “Zai Yi” relief, and post- “Zai Yi” recovery. Silla’s “Zai Yi” view was not only deeply influenced by China’s “theory of interaction between heaven and man” and “the theory of Yin and Yang and five elements”, it was also influenced by primitive beliefs from the northern system or the indigenous beliefs inherent in Silla, presenting a complete and systematic view of “Zai Yi” with Silla features.
1. Introduction
The Chinese term “Zai Yi” is a combination of “Zai” and “Yi”. “Zai” generally refers to natural disasters, earthquakes, fires, floods, droughts, plagues, etc., and “Yi” usually refers to supernatural phenomena that violate conventions, or rare natural phenomena, such as solar eclipses, star changes, and abnormal climates. There is a difference between “Zai” and “Yi”, but due to the cognitive limitations of the ancients, “Zai” and “Yi” were usually connected to form a complete set of “Zai Yi” theory [2].
Silla (57-935 BC) is an ancient civilization in the southeastern part of the Korean Peninsula. It stretched for nearly a thousand years and occupied an important position in the history of Northeast Asia. This paper mainly analyzes the types, characteristics, impacts and related countermeasures of “Zai Yi” in the Silla era, and aims to further understand the understanding of “Zai Yi” concepts in the East Asian Chinese character cultural circle.
2. The Types of “Zai Yi” in the Silla Era
*Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms* was written in 1145 by the Korean literati Kim Bu-shik. The book is the first official history on the Korean peninsula so far. It records the history of the Silla regime more completely and retains a large number of “Zai Yi” records. It is relatively complete and comprehensive data on “Zai Yi” phenomena in the Silla era. According to the book, there are many types of “Zai Yi” in Silla. We can roughly divide them into seven types: astronomical, geological, meteorological, hydrological, animal and plant, social and personnel.
Silla's astronomical “Zai Yi” include three types: daily, moon and star changes. The “daily change” includes solar eclipses and anomalies related to the sun. The *Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms* recorded 30 “solar eclipses” in Silla and 6 visions related to the sun. There are 2 “moon changes” records and 125 “star changes” records, 60 of which are mainly comets and meteors.
Geological “Zai Yi” have manifestations such as earthquakes, ground fissures, and landslides. There are 82 records in the *Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms*. Earthquakes are usually recorded as “shakes” or “earthquakes”. They are the main manifestations, with 67 places in total. There are 8 records of landslides, which are generally secondary disasters caused by “big water”.
Meteorological “Zai Yi” are the most frequent in the Silla era. There are 208 records of meteorological “Zai Yi”. They include both meteorological disasters and climate abnormalities. Meteorological disasters mainly include drought, wind, snow, frost, hail, fire, fog, thunder and lightning. Droughts accounted for the highest proportion of all meteorological disasters, with 66 records in total.
Droughts are often recorded as “dry” or “droughts”, and sometimes recorded as “no rain”. Drought, frost, wind, hail, and lightning are the most common meteorological disasters in the Silla era. Climatic anomalies refer to climatic phenomena that do not conform to the laws of nature, including no snow, no ice, etc. There are 11 places in total.
Hydrological “Zai Yi” mainly include floods and hydrological anomalies. Floods in the *Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms* are generally called “big waters” [1], and there are 10 records of “big waters” in Silla. “Floods” occurred in Jingdu, Guodong, Guoxi, and Yishan County. In addition, “heavy rain” and “thunderstorm” also belong to the category of hydrological “Zai Yi”. Sometimes, there were natural disasters such as “water gushing, spring gushing, and well overflowing”.
For animal and plant “Zai Yi”, they are divided into animal and plant disasters and animal and plant anomalies. The most important animal disaster in the Silla era was the locust plague, with 24 recorded. The locust plague is “one of the three most serious natural disasters that threaten agricultural production and affect people’s lives.” Plant disasters are the death of vegetation and trees caused by the “great drought”. There are 54 records of animal and plant anomalies, including 41 animal anomalies and 13 plant anomalies.
Social and personnel “Zai Yi” refer to social and personnel disasters and anomalies in addition to natural disasters and anomalies. For example, there are 16 records of human plagues. Plagues generally occurred in winter and spring, and were often accompanied by other disasters such as “drought” and “famine”. Another example is famine. There are as many as 40 records of famine in Silla in the *Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms*. It can be seen that the phenomenon of famines caused by disasters in the Silla era was still very serious, and sometimes even reached the point of “selling children”.
Special category. The aforementioned various “anomalies” are “bad” “anomalies” that generally lead to disasters, but there is also a special “good” “anomaly” that symbolizes the monarch’s virtue and governance, and the world is peaceful. This is “auspiciousness”. Auspiciousness is a “commendation” from God for his benevolent governance to the monarch. Auspiciousness and “Zai Yi” are closely related, and you can’t ignore auspiciousness to study “Zai Yi”. Historical *Records of the Three Kingdoms* contains a total of 63 auspiciousness in Silla, divided by kings. Most of them are concentrated in the unified Silla period such as King Seongdeok, King Jingdeok, King Yuansheng, King Aizhuang, King Xiandeok. Among the 56 kings, there are 32 kings with auspicious records and 24 kings without auspicious records. For example, the 42nd generation of Xingdeok has no auspicious records, but there are as many as 15 “Zai Yi” records.
### 3. The Characteristics of “Zai Yi” during the Silla Era
According to the literature, the “Zai Yi” of the Silla era have the following characteristics:
First, in terms of regions, the *Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms* records that the area where the Silla “Zai Yi” occurred has a wide range of space, and the focus of the record is on the capital area. There are obviously more “Zai Yi” records in the capital area than in other areas. The important position of this area in the Silla regime is obvious. Silla pays more attention to the stability and development of this area. Therefore, the record of this area is the most detailed. The capital city of Silla was Gyeongju. The “Zai Yi” records of royal capital, and Gyeongju in historical records about “Zai Yi” all occurred in the Silla capital area. Most of the records of Silla in the *Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms* only record their nature, time and location. Using the location to refer to the place of occurrence, which is called the eastern country, the southern country, the western country, etc. The record location of the Silla “Zai Yi” is not clear, and the capital area with clear records accounted for the vast majority. This has a lot to do with the important role
played by the capital city in Silla's political life, and those unspecified “Zai Yi” in the area prove that it has a broad geographical scope.
Second, the “Zai Yi” of the Silla era is characterized by diversity. There are seven different kinds. Astronomical ones are divided into daily changes, moon changes and star changes. Geological ones have manifestations such as earthquakes, ground fissures, and landslides. Meteorological ones include natural disasters such as drought, wind, snow, frost, hail, fire, and thunder, as well as climate anomalies such as no snow or ice. Hydrological ones include floods, hydrological phenomena and so on. Animal and plant ones are divided into animal and plant disasters such as locust plagues, grass and trees withered, and animal and plant anomalies. Social and personnel ones include plague, famine, etc. The special ones contain 26 kinds of anomaly changes. It can be seen that the Silla “Zai Yi” has the characteristics of diversity.
Third, from the perspective of the degree of damage, the “Zai Yi” in the Silla era can be divided into general “Zai Yi”, severe “Zai Yi” and severe “Zai Yi”. Distinguishing the degree of damage of “Zai Yi” is mainly based on the record of the degree of disaster relief. For example, only the basic information such as the type, time, and location of the “Zai Yi” is recorded, and there is no aftermath measure, it can be regarded as a general “Zai Yi”. If there are disaster relief behaviors such as “donation from the warehouse”, they can be classified as more severe “Zai Yi”. Because the people’s power alone cannot recover the losses caused by the disaster, government relief is needed to help them tide over the difficulties. If there is a monarch participating in praying, or the phenomenon of “popular hunger, selling children”, etc., it can be regarded as a serious “Zai Yi”. Such disasters are usually locust plagues, famines, and plagues caused by prolonged drought.
Fourth, the “Zai Yi” of the Silla era have obvious persistence and mass occurrence. The so-called continuity means that certain disasters and anomalies continue to occur in the same area for several years; the so-called mass-occurrence means that many natural disasters, especially high-level and strong natural disasters, often induce successive occurrences of secondary disasters [4]. For example, droughts are often accompanied by locust plagues, droughts often occur after floods, and “no snow” in winter often causes plagues.
4. The Impacts of “Zai Yi” on the Society of Silla
The occurrence of “Zai Yi” has brought varying degrees of impact to Silla's society. The scholar Deng Yunte believes: “The main result of the severe development of the famine is social unrest, and the main form of the so-called social unrest is nothing more than population migration and death, peasant riots and alien invasion.[5]” Silla is ancient. One of the Northeast Asian countries, the impacts can be roughly manifested in the following aspects:
4.1 The Throne Changes
The occurrence of “Zai Yi” directly led to the change of Silla's throne. According to historical records, among Silla's total 56 kings, as many as 40 kings changed their thrones due to “Zai Yi” (usually the death of kings), accounting for more than half. This shows that “Zai Yi” has had a great impact on Silla's political life. Among the 40 records, there are cases in which the king was assassinated, and cases in which the king committed suicide. In addition, there are records of the death of important people in Silla caused by “Zai Yi”.
4.2 Mass Death and Migration of the Population
The population death or migration caused by “Zai Yi” in Silla is extremely serious. As there are only phrases in the history books such as “there are dead” and “there are many dead”, there is no actual statistics. However, according to some historical records, the number of people who died due to the “Zai Yi” in Silla should be countless. In addition, the population migration caused by the famine is also serious. Based on this, it can be seen that the phenomenon of population migration caused by “Zai Yi”, a large number of people were displaced in floods and earthquakes, not only that, but also the incidents of “eating bark” due to famine, and even the occurrence of “selling children”. “Zai Yi” caused a huge impact on Silla people's concept of human relations.
4.3 The Decline of Agricultural Production.
The scholar Zheng Gongcheng put forward: “The essence of disasters is economic problems.” Ancient Silla was a small peasant economy and society dominated by agriculture. In ancient societies where productivity was not yet developed, agricultural production was greatly affected by natural conditions. “Zai Yi” had a huge impact on production. It caused damage to agricultural production in the Silla era. The reduction in crop production and the failure of grain harvests were the direct results of “Zai Yi”. According to historical records, there were 29 major agricultural disasters in Silla. Frost, locusts, and hail are predominant, and the disaster was the most serious in autumn and July. It is not difficult to see that the damage of “Zai Yi” to Silla’s agricultural production is incalculable.
4.4 Seriously Affect the Stability of Social Order
The social order problems caused by “Zai Yi” are mostly reflected in the “proliferation of thieves” and the decline of agricultural production. Deng Yunte once described: “Peasants’ lack and hunger have reached the extreme, and the phenomenon of migration and death continues to expand. Under such circumstances, peasant uprisings are inevitable… peasant uprisings are often gradually brewing and getting worse. A drama of recovery.[5]” The famine caused a “massive thieves” and even peasant uprisings in Silla's history, which seriously threatened the stability of the Silla regime.
4.5 Silla Buddhism Was Hit Hard
Buddhist temples are important places for Buddhist religious activities and residence. The stupa is one of the symbols of Buddhist temples. Both are important carriers for recording and inheriting Buddhist history and culture. However, a large number of Buddhist temples and pagodas were severely damaged in the disasters and anomalies, causing heavy losses to Silla Buddhism. Buddhist temples and pagodas were destroyed, and Buddhist activities could not be carried out normally, which was not conducive to the stability of the entire Silla society, and its impact on Silla's Buddhist cause cannot be ignored.
4.6 Invasion of External Forces
The scholar Deng Yunte believes: “The prolonged famine will consume the internal strength of the nation, and the internal strength will be insufficient, and the external force will invade. This is also an ordinary reason.[5]” The disasters and anomalies caused the rapid intensification of social and economic contradictions in Silla, and the internal resistance of the nation was completely lost, external forces took the opportunity to invade.
5. The Countermeasures on “Zai Yi” of the Silla Era
“Zai Yi” seriously threatened the stability of the government and social order of Silla. The monarch and ruling class of Silla often took corresponding measures.
First, the monarch always adopts the method of offering sacrifices to pray for the end of the “Zai Yi”. This is because the ancients were unable to withstand some natural disasters and their knowledge of disasters was limited. He regards nature as the mystery ruler, and uses blessing for disasters as a means of disaster prevention and relief. The King of Silla prayed for rain by praying to the ancestor temple, shrines, mountains and rivers, and drawing dragons to pray for rain. Praying is often valued by the rulers. Praying has become a way for the rulers of Silla to deal with disasters [6].
Second, implement ethical governance. The monarch should adjust the ruling policy in time and implement ethical governance to conform to the will of God. Sometimes when “Zai Yi” occurred, ministers asked the monarch about the pros and cons of politics by means of surpassing, and persuaded the monarch to exercise moral governance.
Third, go on an inspection tour. After the “Zai Yi” occurred, the monarch patrolled various places to deal with it. According to the literature, there are as many as 39 records of patrols of monarchs related to “Zai Yi” during the Silla era. Some patrolled territories, confirmed and consolidated
territories, and maintained stability in border areas. Some responded to “Zai Yi” by hunting “auspiciousness”. Through hunting for “auspiciousness”, “Zai Yi” and other bad things could be “washed away”, so that the country could be peaceful and the people could be safe. In addition, the king personally patrolled and sympathized the victims in order to stabilize the people’s hearts.
Fourth, recommend. After the “Zai Yi”, the king won the hearts and minds of the people through “herders’ recommendation”. The king believed that the “Zai Yi” happened because the country did not have outstanding talents. It was a way to deal with “Zai Yi” through the implementation of “herders’ recommendation”. For local officials who had outstanding performance in “filial piety”, rewards would be given.
Fifth, appoint, promote, and dismiss officials, and punish insurgents. After the “Zai Yi” occurred, the king also responded to it by appointing, promoting, and dismissing officials, and killing the insurgents. In addition, the king also used more radical political means to kill the insurgents to deal with “Zai Yi” and maintain his own rule.
In addition to the above-mentioned political countermeasures, there are also various government-led economic measures to alleviate disasters [7]. The policies and practices of the relief in ancient China can be broadly summarized as pensions, rent reduction and exemption adjustment, aid, loan relief, work relief, and settlement, etc [3]. The situation in Silla is also roughly the same.
First, relief. Relief refers to the provision of food, clothing and other materials. The government directly distributes grain, millet, and rice in the national granary to help the people affected by disasters. It has always been the most direct, common and important form of disaster relief by the government. From the perspective of Silla's entire history, the relief mainly consisted of the royal family's granting of grains, gifts, and envoys opening positions. The royal family patrolled the valley and gifts. It can be said that the Silla monarch attached great importance to disaster relief work and continuously improved the response methods. “Relief from the warehouse” is the most direct and common way of relief. It is generally implemented after the famine.
Second, pension, which means support and relief, is a temporary pension policy. The situation of sending envoys to provide compensation can be seen everywhere in the literature. According to historical records, it is most common to send pensions due to floods and droughts. This is because floods and droughts are closely related to crop harvests. Once floods and droughts caused crops to be damaged, the people might be hungry or even die. The government paid the most attention to the relief work for floods and droughts.
Third, rent reduction and exemption adjustment (slow down). That is, the form of exemption or suspension of taxation or corvee. This is more common in the history of disaster relief in Silla, which is enough to show that the Silla government attached great importance to “Zai Yi” and constituted a way for the rulers to deal with disasters. The Silla government used the form of mitigation to alleviate the disaster, but this method mostly occurred in remote areas and the scope of application was relatively limited, and it did not fundamentally solve the problem.
Fourth, Settlement. Settling down victims is a measure of resettlement for victims who had nowhere to survive due to the “Zai Yi”. It includes different methods such as the prince's comfort and the dispatch of the envoys to soothe the inquiries, which also occupies an important position in the history of disaster relief in Silla. The phenomenon of the ruler personally comforting the victims was very common in Silla. The behavior of the king's personal governor shows that the government attached great importance to “Zai Yi” relief, which not only comforted the victims, but also won the hearts of the people. Sending envoys to calm down questions is one of the most common and direct ways to settle disaster victims.
Fifth, pardon. It is a way of reducing or exempting criminals from the state's order, and pardons include amnesty and special pardon. An amnesty was a system of pardoning part or all of the punishments of offenders nationwide, pardoning both their sins and their sentences. Special pardon was also one of the important ways to respond to disasters in the Silla era. Through pardons, the king could establish authority, reduce financial expenditures, and increase labor, which was conducive to the restoration of post-“Zai Yi” production and the easing of social conflicts. Especially during the “Zai Yi”, the occurrence of refugees could be suppressed and the degree of
harm could be reduced.
Sixth, loan relief. That is, the government loaned cattle, seeds, etc. to disaster victims to help them resume production. Different from the previous temporary disaster relief measures, loan relief is a “constant” protection measure. Under normal circumstances, the monarch of Silla would use a variety of policies to alleviate the disaster and stabilize the social order.
The book *History of Chinese Famine Relief* summarizes Chinese famine relief thoughts of past dynasties with destinyism, the theory of passive relief, and the theory of positive prevention. Compared with the post-“Zai Yi” praying for the gods and disasters, the various countermeasures before the “Zai Yi” are also an important part of disaster response, which is the most significant damage to agricultural production in ancient times. The active defense against catastrophes during the Silla era was also mainly reflected in the heavy agriculture. In response to food failures caused by natural disasters, the *Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms* records disaster prevention thoughts that reflect the consciousness of heavy agriculture.
First, the government took corresponding measures to supervise and encouraged the development of the natural economy, which was dominated by agriculture. There are various records of persuading farmers returning to farming in historical records. The rulers used various methods to call on the people to return to farming, which shows how much Silla attached to the above disaster prevention measures. The ruler also attached great importance to the work of warehouse shortages.
Second, building water conservancy projects. Hydrological “Zai Yi” endangered agricultural production in Silla at that time, and the construction of water conservancy was also an important means of preventing disasters. Through the construction of water conservancy, flood and drought disasters were effectively prevented, and the economic and social damage caused by disasters was reduced.
Third, saving costs and reducing food. “In ancient times, monarchs often gave orders to reduce food whenever there was a famine, as a sign of saving and overcoming suffering, and often set an example to advocate for the world.” When a “Zai Yi” occurred, the monarch expressed his acceptance of god’s warning and prayed through “reduction of regular food.” Calm down, it is obvious that the measures taken by the Silla monarch embodies Dong Zhongshu’s thought of “sensing between heaven and man”. Shutting down projects. This reflects that if the monarch did not economize and insisted in a great bustle of masons and carpenters, he would cause “Zai Yi”. It reflects a kind of economical thought.
Fourth, the power of Buddhism. While the government was responding positively to disasters, Buddhism had also actively participated in the relief operations, effectively cooperated with and supporting the government’s relief operations, and had become an important force. Meanwhile Buddhist temples also became an important place for the “Zai Yi” relief. First, Lecture. sutra lecture was the main form of Buddhism’s response to “Zai Yi”. Lectures were originally a normal relief activity, but in the face of “Zai Yi”, it became an important force for Buddhism to participate in the government’s relief. Second, praying for rain. When a major “Zai Yi” occurs, relying on the power of Buddhism to pray for rain became one of the most important forms of relief activities. In short, Silla Buddhism participated in “Zai Yi” relief in the form of lecturing and praying for rain, and actively supported the relief operations of the Silla government, which effectively enriched and perfected the relief and prevention system of the Silla era.
6. The “Zai Yi” View of the Silla Era
In the Silla era, there were various types of “Zai Yi”. In the process of dealing with them, the concept of “Zai Yi” with its own national culture was formed. As a country in the East Asian Chinese character cultural circle, Silla was influenced by Chinese culture for a long time [8]. Therefore, the interpretation of the “Zai Yi” view of the Silla era is obviously inseparable from the analysis of Chinese “Zai Yi” thought. China’s view of “Zai Yi” has a long history, and there are records in *Zuo Zhuan*, *Chun Qiu*, and *Gong Yang Biography*. After Dong Zhongshu in the Han Dynasty put forward the theory of *Heaven and Human Reception*, Xia Hou Shichang wrote *Hong*
Fan's Five Elements Biography, Liu Xiang wrote Hong Fan's Five Elements Biography, and Liu Xin conducted a review of Liu Xiang's Hong Fan Five Elements Biography as supplements and revisions. The most important thing is that "Hanshu-Five Elements" links "Zai Yi" with the five elements. For the first time in official history, the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements was used to explain "Zai Yi". As a country in the East Asian Chinese character cultural circle, Silla is deeply influenced by Chinese culture. As a Confucian political concept, "Zai Yi" view was introduced into Silla along with Confucianism. The people of Silla have combined "Zai Yi" and politics for interpretation, reflecting the influence of Chinese culture on "Zai Yi" thought in the Silla era. However, the Silla "Zai Yi" view has some differences from China's. The primitive beliefs of the northern system or the indigenous beliefs inherent in Silla have a great influence on Silla. Silla's "Zai Yi" view is not only deeply influenced by China's "Heaven-Human Induction Theory" and "Yin-Yang Five Elements Theory", it is also influenced by primitive beliefs from the northern system or indigenous beliefs inherent in Silla, presenting a complete and systematic view of "Zai Yi" with unique Silla characteristics.
7. Acknowledgments
Foundation project: This paper is the research result of the Sichuan provincial social science research planning project “A Comparative Study of Ancient Disasters and Anomalies in China and South Korea”(Project number: SC20B031); Research results of the philosophy and social science research project of the Federation of Social Sciences of Mianyang “Research on Ancient Korean Disasters and Anomalies and Social Order” (Project number: MY2020ZC022).
References
[1] Bu-Shik Kim. Historical records of the Three Kingdoms [M]. Changchun: Jilin Literature and History Publishing House, 2003, pp.45.
[2] Guihuan Luo. Chinese history of biology (modern times volume) [M]. Nanning: Guangxi Education Publishing House, 2018, pp.204.
[3] Shaopin Sun. Research on China's disaster relief system [M]. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2004, pp.39.
[4] Bingwei Huang. Modern physical geography [M]. Beijing: Science Press, 1999, pp.67.
[5] Yunte Deng. China’s history of famine relief [M]. Kaifeng: Henan University Press, 2010, pp.80, 122 & 151.
[6] In-Sook Lee. Koguryo's natural disasters and countermeasures [D]. Korea National University of Education, 2006.
[7] Ke Yan. Study on natural disasters and disaster relief measures in Silla [J]. Agricultural Archaeology, 01, pp.195-204, 2020.
[8] Hongbo Wang, Liqun Wang. Analysis on the features and causes of climate disasters in Koguryo period [J]. Journal of Tonghua Normal University, 34 (08), pp.137-139, 2013. | 6959d667-43dd-44bb-b127-bc6a50cca37e | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://webofproceedings.org/proceedings_series/ESSP/ICEESR%202021/WHCP21C037.pdf | 2021-12-05T14:34:32+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964363189.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20211205130619-20211205160619-00187.warc.gz | 679,339,333 | 6,291 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.985133 | eng_Latn | 0.994268 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
3638,
8200,
12585,
16642,
21428,
25892,
28664
] | [
1.609375,
2.296875
] | 1 | 0 |
AMS FBF24
A dinky shaped board book packed with dinosaurs.
- 7 uniquely shaped spreads full of playful shapes to trace give this book a fun, toy-like quality.
- Bursting with brightly coloured, friendly characters illustrated by Matthew Scott
- Each spread features a first dinosaur fact - perfect for toddlers who are interested in dinosaurs, but still too young for longer non-fiction
- Full of sounds to join in with... ROAR!
- A sturdy board book that can be given to the youngest of babies
- Also in the series: I'M A CAR
- CONTENTS: T.rex, Parasaurolophus, Diplodocus, Pterodactyl, Triceratops, Plesiosaurus, Stegosaurus
I’m a Dinosaur
Pub Date: 13/02/2025
Pub Price: £6.99
ISBN: 9781800788183
H x W: 180 x 180mm
Binding: Board Book
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Ruth Symons
Illustrator: Matthew Scott
Extent: 14pp
Word Count: 120 words
Rights Available: World
I’m a Car
A dinky shaped board book packed with things that go.
- 7 uniquely shaped spreads full of playful shapes to trace give this book a fun, toy-like quality.
- Bursting with brightly coloured, friendly vehicle characters illustrated by Matthew Scott.
- Each spread features a first vehicle fact - perfect for toddlers who are interested in cars, trucks, trains and boats, but still too young for longer non-fiction.
- Full of sounds to join in with... BEEP BEEP!
- A sturdy board book that can be given to the youngest of babies.
- Also in the series: I’M A DINOSAUR
- CONTENTS: Car, tractor, ice cream van, fire engine, train, boat, helicopter.
I’m a Car
| Pub Date | 13/02/2025 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £6.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800788190 |
| H x W | 180 x 180mm |
| Binding | Board Book |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Ruth Symons |
| Illustrator | Matthew Scott |
| Extent | 14pp |
| Word Count | 120 words |
| Rights Available | World |
A dinky shaped board book packed with things that go.
- 7 uniquely shaped spreads full of playful shapes to trace give this book a fun, toylike quality.
- Bursting with brightly coloured, friendly vehicle characters illustrated by Matthew Scott.
- Each spread features a first vehicle fact - perfect for toddlers who are interested in diggers and tipper trucks, but still too young for longer non-fiction.
- A sturdy board book that can be given to the youngest of babies.
I'm a Digger
I use my big bucket to scoop up rocks and soil.
Pub Date: 05/03/2026
Pub Price: £6.99
ISBN: 9781835870655
H x W: 180 x 180mm
Binding: Board Book
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Ruth Symons
Illustrator: Matthew Scott
Extent: 14pp
Translation Files: 21/04/2025
Files To Printer: 14/07/2025
Freight On Board: 16/10/2025
Rights Available: World
A dinky shaped board book packed with things that go.
- 7 uniquely shaped spreads full of playful shapes to trace give this book a fun, toylike quality.
- Bursting with brightly coloured, friendly vehicle characters illustrated by Matthew Scott.
- Each spread features a first vehicle fact - perfect for toddlers who are interested in animals, but still too young for longer non-fiction.
- Full of sounds to join in with... ROAR ROAR!
- A sturdy board book that can be given to the youngest of babies.
I’m a Lion
Pub Date: 05/03/2026
Pub Price: £6.99
ISBN: 9781835870662
H x W: 180 x 180mm
Binding: Board Book
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Ruth Symons
Illustrator: Matthew Scott
Extent: 14pp
Translation Files: 21/04/2025
Files To Printer: 14/07/2025
Freight On Board: 16/10/2025
Rights Available: World
Animal Snap: Farm
A flip-flap farm book
- A chunky flip-flap board book with big and little pages - match the babies to their parents for an animal SNAP!
- With playful and adorable animal characters beautifully illustrated by Mel Matthews.
- Each animal gives a simple description of its baby. Older toddlers will love to shout out the name when they know the answer.
- A sturdy board book with rounded edges, perfect for babies and toddlers.
- Also in the series: Animal Snap Jungle.
- Hoping to sign up Mel for 2 more titles in 2026: potentially Safari and Ocean.
I'm a cow. My baby is spotty and drinks milk. Can you find him?
I'm a lamb.
I'm a sheep. My baby is white and fluffy. Can you find her?
We're chicks.
I'm a sheep dog. My baby has a waggly tail and pink tongue. Can you find him?
I'm a kid.
I'm a pig. My baby is pink with a curly tail. Can you find her?
I'm a calf.
| Pub Date | 13/03/2025 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £6.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800788268 |
| H x W | 200 x 160mm |
| Binding | Board Book |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Ruth Symons |
| Illustrator | Mel Matthews |
| Extent | 14pp |
| Word Count | 110 words |
| Freight On Board | 22/12/2024 |
| Rights Available | World |
Animal Snap: Jungle
A flip-flap jungle book.
- A chunky flip-flap board book with big and little pages - match the babies to their parents for an animal SNAP!
- With playful and adorable animal characters beautifully illustrated by Mel Matthews.
- Each animal gives a simple description of its baby. Older toddlers will love to shout out the name when they know the answer.
- A sturdy board book with rounded edges, perfect for babies and toddlers.
- Also in the series: Animal Snap Jungle
- Hoping to sign up Mel for 2 more titles in 2026: potentially Safari and Ocean
Animal Snap: Jungle
I'm an elephant. My baby has big ears and a long trunk. Can you find her?
I'm a tiger. My baby has stripy orange fur. Can you find him?
I'm a crocodile. My baby has scaly skin and sharp teeth. Can you find her?
I'm a gorilla. My baby has black fur and sucks his thumb. Can you find him?
I'm a calf.
Pub Date 13/03/2025
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800788275
H x W 200 x 160mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Mel Matthews
Extent 14pp
Word Count 110 words
Files To Printer 09/09/2024
Freight On Board 22/12/2024
Rights Available World
The Snow Queen
Award-winning illustrator Lesley Barnes brings a magical touch to this pop-up edition of The Snow Queen.
- Illustrations by Lesley Barnes, author and illustrator of Jill and Dragon and Jill and Lion (Tate).
- A beautifully produced gift edition for the Christmas market.
- Clever paper engineering from the renowned in-house team at Templar.
- Lesley Barnes has created product ranges for both the V&A and Tate Museums.
- 100% foil on the cover. Printed with gold ink on every pop-up page.
The Snow Queen
| Pub Date | 21/10/2021 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £11.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787416888 |
| H x W | 200 x 180mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | Lesley Barnes |
| Illustrator | Lesley Barnes |
| Extent | 12pp |
| Word Count | 1200 words |
| Rights Available | World |
A magical pop-up edition of Sleeping Beauty.
- Brought to life by the intricate folk art by Anja Sušanj, illustrator of *Nature Tales*.
- Charles Perrault’s classic is retold with elegance by Laura Sampson, author of *Enchanted Tales*.
- A beautifully produced gift edition for the Christmas market.
- Clever paper engineering from the renowned in-house team at Templar.
- 100% foil on the cover.
- Also in the series: *The Snow Queen*, *The Nutcracker* and *Swan Lake*.
Sleeping Beauty
| Pub Date | 09/10/2025 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £11.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800788114 |
| H x W | 200 x 180mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | Laura Sampson |
| Illustrator | Anja Sušanj |
| Extent | 12pp |
| Word Count | 1500 words |
| Translation Files | 02/12/2024 |
| Freight On Board | 17/07/2025 |
| Rights Available | World |
A series that grows with your baby
- Written in consultation with Early Years Expert, Lizzie Noble, each book perfectly suits your baby’s needs at every stage of their first year
- Fills a gap in the market: parents are told to read to their baby every day, but black and white books usually have little text. Reading aloud soothes babies from birth, promotes baby-carer bonding, builds children’s language skills, and increases the chances that parents will continue to read to babies as they grow older
- Perfect for parents who use the Wonder Weeks App, read Your Baby Week by Week, or use milestone cards to mark big moments
- 4 books in the series, all featuring the same animal characters: 0-3 months; 3-6 months; 6-9 months; 9-12 months
Jane Foster’s Baby’s First Stories: 0–3 months
SLURP...
... she sucks up water,
And sprays it in a cloud.
She watches all the droplets
As they shimmer to the ground.
Where is Little Panda?
He’s resting in a glade.
See him gently snoring
In the cool and dappled shade.
Little Bunny’s hopping home,
Her tail a flash of white.
She dives into her burrow . . .
It’s time to say, “Goodnight!”
She sings her song out loud again,
And trumpets just to say,
She’s such a happy elephant
And ready for her day!
Pub Date 03/08/2023
Pub Price £10.99
ISBN 9781800785137
H × W 200 × 200mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Lily Murray
Illustrator Jane Foster
Extent 32pp
Rights Available World
A series that grows with your baby
• Written in consultation with Early Years Expert, Lizzie Noble, each book perfectly suits your baby’s needs at every stage of their first year
• Fills a gap in the market: parents are told to read to their baby every day, but black and white books usually have little text. Reading aloud soothes babies from birth, promotes baby-carer bonding, builds children’s language skills, and increases the chances that parents will continue to read to babies as they grow older
• Perfect for parents who use the Wonder Weeks App, read Your Baby Week by Week, or use milestone cards to mark big moments
• 4 books in the series, all featuring the same animal characters: 0-3 months; 3-6 months; 6-9 months; 9-12 months
Here’s Panda! Worried Panda,
What’s that on your nose?
It’s a buzzy bumblebee –
Achoo!
And off she goes!
Here’s a funny bunny.
Do you think she ever stops?
Round and round and round she spins,
Loppity-hoppity-hop!
Tickle, Tickle
Little Whale, here’s a fish
Tickling your nose.
Tickle, tickle everywhere,
That’s the way it goes.
Little Elephant, rest your head.
Little Elephant, curl up tight.
Little Elephant, close your eyes.
Little Elephant, say “Goodnight!”
| Pub Date | 03/08/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £10.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800785144 |
| H x W | 200 x 200mm |
| Binding | Board Book |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Lily Murray |
| Illustrator | Jane Foster |
| Extent | 32pp |
| Rights Available | World |
A series that grows with your baby
- Written in consultation with Early Years Expert, Lizzie Noble
- Fills a gap in the market: parents are told to read to their baby every day, but black and white books often have little text. Reading aloud soothes babies, promotes bonding, builds language skills, and increases the chance that parents will read to babies as they grow older. 6-9 months has black, white, red and blue art, as from 6 months, babies can see most colours. The story relates to routines, to reflect little ones starting to wean, and settling into more regular patterns.
- Perfect for parents who use the Wonder Weeks App, read Your Baby Week by Week, or use milestone cards to mark big moments.
Bunny’s Lunch Time
It’s lunch time, Little Bunny,
Let’s clean your paws and face.
Here’s your spoon and here’s your bib
And here’s your bunny plate!
Wakey-wakey, Panda,
Let’s stretch our arms up high.
Higher, higher, higher still!
Right up into the sky.
Are you ready, Little Bunny?
Here it comes! Open wide . . .
A spoon of yummy bunny food
To make you warm inside.
But just before you close your eyes,
Let’s wave to all the stars.
Can you see them shining down?
They’re smiling from afar . . .
Pub Date 04/01/2024
Pub Price £10.99
ISBN 9781800785151
H × W 200 × 200mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Lily Murray
Illustrator Jane Foster
Extent 32pp
Rights Available World
Jane Foster’s Baby’s First Stories: 9–12 months
A beautifully illustrated series that grows with your baby.
• Written in consultation with Early Years Expert, Lizzie Noble
• Fills a gap in the market: parents are told to read to their baby every day, but black and white books often have little text. Reading aloud soothes babies, promotes bonding, builds language skills, and increases the chance that parents will read to babies as they grow older. 9-12 months has black, white, red, blue and yellow art, as babies’ eyesight becomes more like our own. The stories introduce questions and spotting elements for older babies who can notice small details and respond to basic questions.
• Perfect for parents who use the Wonder Weeks App, read Your Baby Week by Week, or use milestone cards to mark big moments
Jane Foster’s Baby’s First Stories: 9–12 months
Who’s that in the rushes,
Where soft winds gently blow?
Quack, quack, quack!
It’s Papa Duck!
Where did Bunny go?
Now Panda needs your help again –
He’s feeling rather sore.
Can you make him better?
Will you stroke his little paw?
Elephant’s Lost Hat
Little Elephant’s lost her hat!
Wherever could it be?
It’s not in the grass or the bushes . . .
Oh look! It’s in the tree!
... It’s Jellyfish!
Little Whale loves to swim
Where the sea grass sways.
But who do you think is hiding?
Will they come out and play?
Pub Date 04/01/2024
Pub Price £10.99
ISBN 9781800785168
H × W 200 × 200mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Lily Murray
Illustrator Jane Foster
Extent 32pp
Rights Available World
A dog and little pup think about all the things that are most precious to them.
- Emma Dodd’s foiled picture book series has sold a combined total of over 1 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Celebrating all that is really important in life
- Featuring two endearing dog characters
- A wonderful text to read aloud, with universal appeal
- With Emma’s deceptively simple trademark illustrations which pack real emotional punch
- Matt lam with glitter foil on cover. Glitter foil on 50% of inside pages
Counting Blessings
Playing together is number three.
Four is in the blue sky above.
Five is the joy of being alive.
Six is your paw in mine.
Seven is hearing the rain outside.
Pub Date 04/10/2018
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781787411913
H × W 200 × 200mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Emma Dodd
Illustrator Emma Dodd
Extent 24pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
What Matters Most
A joyous celebration of differences featuring a very BIG horse and a tiny little one!
- Emma Dodd’s foiled picture book series has sold a combined total of over 1 million copies worldwide. *What Matters Most* has sold over 91,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
- A charming book conveying a life-affirming message about the importance of being yourself
- A wonderful rhyming text, perfect for reading out loud
- Emma Dodd’s deceptively simple trademark illustrations pack real emotional punch
- A universal theme which will appeal to all ages
- Matt lam with foil on cover. Foil on 50% of internal pages
| Pub Date | 07/02/2019 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787411920 |
| H x W | 200 x 200mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Emma Dodd |
| Illustrator | Emma Dodd |
| Extent | 24pp |
| Word Count | 200 words |
| Rights Available | World |
Home is Where the Heart is
A charming celebration of what home means to all of us.
- Emma Dodd’s foiled picture book series has sold a combined total of over 1 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Emma Dodd’s deceptively simple illustrations pack real emotional punch
- A universal theme that will resonate with every reader
- Matt lam with foil on cover, and foil on 50% of internal pages
Home is Where the Heart is
| Pub Date | 24/06/2021 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787415614 |
| H x W | 200 x 200mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Emma Dodd |
| Extent | 24pp |
| Word Count | 170 words |
| Rights Available | World |
Spread Your Wings
A heartwarming book about growing up and exploring the world around you
• A continuation of Emma Dodd’s bestselling series of foil books
• Dealing with universal themes that will resonate with every reader
• Featuring an adorable baby cockatoo
• Cover treatments: matt lam & foil; 50% of pages foiled throughout
• Sales of the foil books for UK and International now total 240,000 copies
As we cuddle here together, going at the sky,
I know that soon the day will come when you’ll spread your wings and fly.
And when the time is right,
I know that you’ll be free.
Stretch out your wings and you will see
that they are strong, like mine.
For I will be right by your side,
and with you all the way.
You’ll find me here, within your heart,
and that is where I’ll stay.
Swinging, diving, circling in the wild blue sky.
| Pub Date | 28/09/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800781764 |
| H x W | 200 x 200mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Emma Dodd |
| Illustrator | Emma Dodd |
| Extent | 24pp |
| Word Count | 150 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Follow Your Heart
An inspirational book about the importance of letting your heart show you the way...
• A continuation of Emma Dodd’s bestselling series of foil books
• Featuring an adorable baby penguin
• Emma Dodd’s foiled picture book series has sold a combined total of over 1 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
• Cover treatments: matt lam & foil; 50% of pages foiled throughout
Follow Your Heart
Exciting decisions and choices to make.
Which way will you go?
Which path will you take?
Will you follow the crowd and join in the fun, laughing and laughing, as you play in the waves?
Will you be by yourself and go it alone, taking some time to explore on your own?
Though you are young, you are brave and strong.
Pub Date 26/09/2024
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800781771
H x W 200 x 200mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Emma Dodd
Illustrator Emma Dodd
Extent 24pp
Word Count 145 words
Rights Available World
Discover Pop-up Prehistoric Animals
- *Prehistoric Pets* (2020) was shortlisted for ASE Book of the Year 2021.
- Features 7 wild animals and their fascinating animal ancestors
- CONTENTS: Dragonfly / *Meganeura* 305-299 mya (before dinosaurs!); Great White Shark / *Megalodon* 16-3.6 mya ago; African elephant / Woolly Mammoth 400,000-4,000 ya; American Alligator / *Deinosuchus* 82-75 mya; Emperor penguin / *Icadytes* 36 mya; Sloth / *Megatherium* 100,000-10,000 ya; Blue whale / *Pakicetus* 50-45 mya
- Dean is a palaeontologist, as well as a science communicator, author of *Dinosaurs of the British Isles* and expert presenter on ITV’s *Dinosaur Britain*. He has discovered 6 new species, including a Velociraptor-like dinosaur.
- Fold-out pages reveal pop-up prehistoric animals that ‘jump’ out of the page
Prehistoric Beasts
African Elephant
Next door to the African bush elephant, Nil colo de elephant, lives the smaller forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis. The elephant family is called Loxodonta, which means 'elephant' in Greek.
MAMMUTHUS
Mammuthus was a large elephant that lived during the Ice Age. It had long tusks and a thick layer of fat under its skin to keep it warm. Mammuthus was one of the last of the woolly mammoths to go extinct.
INJURY RECOVERY
In 2014, scientists discovered a fossil of a baby mammoth with a broken tusk. The baby mammoth was only about 3 months old when it died. Scientists think the baby mammoth may have been attacked by a predator or fell into a hole.
IT'S AMY!
In 2016, a 50,000-year-old woolly mammoth was found frozen in the Siberian permafrost. It's named Amy after the author's daughter. Amy was the first baby mammoth to be found in the author's lifetime.
SMALL TUSK
Mammuthus had two tusks, but they were not as big as those of the African elephant. The tusks were used for digging and fighting.
A TOT ON THE GO!
Mammuthus was a fast runner and could run up to 30 miles per hour. It had long legs and a short neck. Its ears were small and round, like those of a dog.
Fossil File
- **TAXONOMY**
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Class: Mammalia
- Order: Proboscidea
- Family: Elephantidae
- Genus: Mammuthus
- Species: Mammuthus primigenius
- **FOSSIL FILE**
- **AGE:** 10,000 years ago
- **LOCATION:** Siberia, Russia
- **DISCOVERED BY:** Paleontologist
- **DESCRIPTION:** Woolly mammoth with long tusks and thick fur
- **FACTS**
- **SIZE:** 12 feet tall at the shoulder
- **WEIGHT:** 10 tons
- **DIET:** Herbivore
- **LIFESPAN:** 30-40 years
- **EXTINCT?** Yes
- **REASONS FOR EXTINCTION?**
- Climate change
- Human hunting
- **OTHER INTERESTING FACTS:**
- Mammuthus had a thick layer of fat under its skin to keep it warm.
- Mammuthus had long tusks and a short neck.
- Mammuthus was one of the last of the woolly mammoths to go extinct.
Pub Date: 02/03/2023
Pub Price: £16.99
ISBN: 9781800782099
H x W: 250 x 250mm
Binding: Hardback
Age Range: 7-9 years
Author: Dean Lomax
Illustrator: Mike Love
Extent: 16pp
Word Count: 5000 words
Rights Available: World
A lift-the-flap, slide-the-tab first experiences book
- With flaps, tabs, sliders and wheels throughout the book for an interactive reading experience.
- A gentle rhyming story to read together: a rhyming text makes it easy for little ones to remember and join in with some of the text.
- With practical tips for tooth-brushing from Early Years expert Lizzie Noble.
This is the Way We... Go to the Potty
A lift-the-flap, slide-the-tab first experiences book
- With flaps, tabs, sliders and wheels throughout the book for an interactive reading experience.
- A gentle rhyming story to read together: a rhyming text makes it easy for little ones to remember and join in with some of the text.
- With practical tips for potty-training from Early Years expert Lizzie Noble
This is the Way We... Go to the Potty
Let's go to the shops and choose the potty you like best.
And don't forget some snazzy pants for when you're getting dressed!
While you're sitting on the potty, why not try out something fun?
And when you've done your wee or poo you need to wipe your bum!
Oops, a wee went on the floor. It's made a little puddle.
Don't worry -- we'll just get you changed. You're not in any trouble.
This is the way we use the potty. Do you know what to do?
Are you ready to take your nappy off, and try the potty too?
Let your child see you on the loo, or pop teddy on a potty if you have one. Children love to imitate real-life activities with their toys before they encourage themselves.
Top Tips
Watch for your child to show signs of needing the loo, such as shifting position or pulling up their trousers during times of change. Be a helper at a new baby.
Pub Date 17/07/2025
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800788602
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Fernando Martin
Extent 10pp
Word Count 450 words
Files To Printer 27/01/2025
Freight On Board 01/05/2025
Rights Available World
Mini Pops: Happy Baby
An adorable new series of mini-pop ups, perfect for the very youngest readers.
- Chunky board book format with 6 durable pop-ups
- Full of faces to engage even the youngest of readers
- Illustrated with nostalgic warmth by Isa Pirracas
- With a gentle rhyming text for reading aloud together
Mini Pops: Happy Baby
Happy baby, clappy baby,
arms that wave and JIGGLE!
Pub Date 10/04/2025
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781835870044
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Isa Pirracas
Extent 12pp
Word Count 45 words
Freight On Board 30/01/2025
Rights Available World
Mini Pops: Growly Tiger
Pop-Up Animal Faces
- Chunky board book format with 6 durable pop-ups
- Full of faces to engage even the youngest of readers
- A first bright introduction to animals
- Illustrated with nostalgic warmth by Isa Pirracas
- With a gentle rhyming text for reading aloud together
Mini Pops: Growly Tiger
Cosy panda, dozy panda, eating tasty shoots.
Cheeky monkey, peeky monkey, in the tree tops!
Happy froggy, spotty froggy, HOP! HOP! HOP!
Growly tiger, prowly tiger, ROAR! ROAR! ROAR!
Pub Date 10/04/2025
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781835870051
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Isa Pirracas
Extent 12pp
Word Count 45 words
Freight On Board 30/01/2025
Rights Available World
A gentle non-fiction book full of squeaky clean animals and splash-tastic facts.
- Gentle non-fiction picture book, perfect for readers aged 3-7
- Written in accessible language, packed with amazing facts and questions to consider, with text by award-winning author and travel-writer Ben Lerwill.
- Beautiful illustrations of adorable animals and their habitats by Spanish illustrator Maribel Lechuga.
- A page of information at the back of the book includes fun bathtime tips for families.
- The perfect companion to Time for Bed, Animals, also by Ben Lerwill and Maribel Lechuga.
Time for a Bath, Animals
TIGERS
Tigers have a special way of washing themselves in the water and they clean!
They use their long, sharp claws to scratch their bodies and clean their fur.
GORILLAS
Gorillas groom each other, picking out insects and dirt from their fur.
Do you like having your hair brushed?
OSTRICHES
Ostriches keep their feathers clean by having dust baths.
They roll around in the dirt. What a big, fluffy, beautiful sight!
SNOW MONKEYS
Snow monkeys like to stay warm by sitting in steamy hot springs.
Do you like having nice warm baths?
A hot spring is a natural pool full of special warm water from underground.
When snow monkeys rest in hot springs, it also helps them to feel relaxed and sleepy.
Pub Date 09/10/2025
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800789838
H x W 250 x 250mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ben Lerwill
Illustrator Maribel Lechuga
Extent 32pp
Word Count 900 words
Translation Files 06/01/2025
Files To Printer 19/05/2025
Freight On Board 24/07/2025
Rights Available World
A gentle non-fiction book full of sleepy animals
- Gentle non-fiction picture book, perfect for readers aged 3-7.
- Written in accessible language, packed with amazing facts and questions to consider, with text by award-winning author and travel-writer Ben Lerwill.
- With lush illustrations full of adorable animals by Spanish illustrator Maribel Lechuga. Maribel has illustrated books for the Usborne Beginners and Look Inside series and Oxford Reading Tree among others.
- A page of information at the back of the book includes sleep-tips for families.
- CONTENTS: Dogs, chimpanzees, dolphins, sea otters, cats, ants, kangaroos, bats, birds, fish (Great Barrier Reef), giraffes, tortoises
Time for Bed, Animals
Chimpanzees
Chimpanzees build their own beds, using strong sticks and branches. They like to lie in them.
Dolphins
Dolphins sleep with one eye open! These clever animals are always full awake, even when they’re asleep.
Cats
Cats have dreamers too. Sometimes we can even see their legs moving in our dreams! What do you think your cat dreams about?
Dogs
Dogs like to lick their paws before they go to sleep. It helps them to feel relaxed and keeps their paws clean.
Before they lie down, dogs often turn in circles to find the perfect spot. They like feeling safe and comfortable.
Puppies need more sleep than adult dogs. Very old dogs need lots of sleep too.
Pub Date 12/09/2024
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800785038
H × W 250 × 250mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Ben Lerwill
Illustrator Maribel Lechuga
Extent 32pp
Word Count 900 words
Rights Available World
A collection of winter tales from cultures around the world, beautifully brought together with striking gilt artwork.
- A timeless, treasured classic that speaks to all ages - following on from the success of *Star Stories*
- Includes stories from cultures on every continent giving it a universal appeal
- Written by Dawn Casey - author of Templar’s *My Nana’s Garden.*
- Over 76,000 copies sold worldwide (as of October 2022).
Nature Tales
A collection of nature folk tales
• CONTENTS: The Bramble’s Gift Greece; Fox’s Tail Norway; Little Brown Mouse Himalayas; Pigeon and Bee Ukraine; The Magic Acorn Russia; Wild Strawberries Britain; Eagle and Owl Wales; Hare’s Ears Siberia; The Hedgehog and Hare Germany; Little Lark, Robin Redbreast and Jenny Wren France; Little Red Squirrel America; Rabbit’s Tale Brazil; The Healing Apple Tree Poland; The Pine Tree Japan; Badger Boy Ireland; Bringing Back Wolf Mexico; The Birth of Bear Finland; The Stork’s Nest Morocco.
• A timeless, treasured classic that speaks to all ages, following on from the success of Star Stories (2018), Winter Tales (2020) and Enchanted Tales (2023).
• Includes stories from every continent, giving it a universal appeal.
Enchanted Tales
A spellbinding treasury of magical tales
• A timeless, treasured classic that speaks to all ages, following on from the success of Star Stories (2018) and Winter Tales (2020)
• Universal appeal, including stories from cultures on every continent
• Winter Tales has sold more than 80,000 copies across 15 territories
• Cover: Arlin + foil
The Magic Fish
A tale from China
The Buddhist Chinese version of *Cinderella* is the only story of all we are familiar with that there are hundreds – maybe even thousands – of different versions of this tale from around the globe. This version from China was the first to be written down, over 1,000 years ago.
Once upon a time, in a little shed outside a little house in the caves mountains of Southern China, there lived an orphan called Yo-Tsien. She was bright-eyed, clever, kind and good at making things. Yo-Tsien’s stepmother loved her own daughter better than Yo-Tsien had to do all the heaviest, most dangerous work, like collecting firewood, carrying heavy clay pots full of water from the mountain pools.
One day, Yo-Tsien was collecting water from a pool from the bottom of a deep mountain pool there was a shimmering and a glimmering. It swirled up and up until something broke the surface – a tiny, shining golden fish! The fish looked up at Yo-Tsien, Yo-Tsien looked back – and from that moment, the fish and Yo-Tsien became friends. She took it home, placed it in a box and fed it every day with scraps from her own plate. The fish grew and grew until, one day, it became so big she had to take it back to the pool. Still, Yo-Tsien visited the golden fish every single day; time that she would poke its shining golden head out of the water and pet it.
A few weeks later, the Stepmother was hungry and had an idea. Secretly, she filled Yo-Tsien’s pot with water and put the huge, sparkling, shimmering-looking fish inside. When Yo-Tsien came to see her fish, it was under the water when anyone else came by. How can I catch this fish? she thought.
The next day, back at home, the Stepmother gave Yo-Tsien new clothes to wash and said she would take a long crust down the mountains. This was supposed to be a ‘thank you’ to Yo-Tsien for cleaning the pool and caring for the fish. When it bubbled up from the bottom of the pool, the Stepmother was ready with a knife. She took the golden fish home, chopped it up, cooked it and served it up with her favourite vegetables.
“Delicious!” they both said, wiping their mouths. They ate every morsel and threw its bones away into the rubbish heap.
The following day, Yo-Tsien hurried to the mountain pool and called – but no fish came. Big tears fell from her eyes and splashed into the empty pool. But as she cried, the air thickened, shimmering and glittering, and a figure appeared: it spoke in a voice that reminded her of safety:
Today you eat, today you weep.
But look upon the rubbish heap,
And you will find magic treasures there.
They’ll grant you wishes, never fear.
---
**Pub Date**
28/09/2023
**Pub Price**
£16.99
**ISBN**
9781800785915
**H x W**
265 × 228mm
**Binding**
Hardback
**Age Range**
7-9 years
**Author**
Laura Sampson
**Illustrator**
Phung Nguyen Quang & Huynh Thi Kim Lien
**Extent**
96pp
**Rights Available**
World
A retelling of Disney Lady and the Tramp.
- Disney Animated Classics, Disney Modern Classics and Pixar Modern Classics have exceeded TCM sales of 100k copies since the first title was released in 2018.
- The classic animation and live-action remake of Lady and the Tramp are available on Disney+.
- Never-before-seen, age-appropriate retelling of the movie.
- Original concept art from the Disney archive, featuring artwork by classic Disney artists.
- Beautifully illustrated and presented version of the well-known Disney story.
- Approx size (inches): 10 x 7”. Co-edition cover finishes: Arlin with foil stamping.
Just Christmas time. Snow fell on golden feathers covering the house, and sparkled down the chimney.
Inside was picturesque heaven, brimming with presents and decorations, a Christmas tree, and a dog bed.
“Hi for you, Darling,” he said. “Merry Christmas!”
“Oh, Jim, Jim,” she said, smiling, beginning to unwrap the box. “Is it the new collar? I’ve been wanting one with ribbons!”
“Ribb, a ribb is a ribb,” laughed Jim.
From inside the box came little springing voices. The basset hound, Jock, had come home from the dog show, happy, winning a medal.
“Hi for the win, Darling!” said Jim.
“Oh, I love her,” Darling cooed, lifting up the puppy and bringing her close. “What a precious beautiful little lady!”
And Lady became his name.
---
That night, Jim finished his dinner and Lady came meowing after him.
“Come in, Lady! Come in!” said Jim, coming towards the basket.
“But Jim, dear,” said his wife, “don’t you want the warm supper?”
Now, warm, that wasn’t Darling’s, said Jim. “But it’s right to her.”
Then they shut the door and went upstairs to bed.
---
But Lady was lonely. She panted at the door. And when she got into the room, she jumped on the bed and yawned, flipping and fidgeting all over the matress. Then she sat breathless on corners, looking around the room.
Jim covered her nose with a pillow.
Lady looked inside.
“Oh, all right,” said Jim, placing Lady at the end of the bed. “But remember, you’re in my room.”
---
Lady, however, was already snoring there the minute. She tucked the pillow under her chin and closed her eyes and fell asleep through the big door.
But she knew someone’s, Lady couldn’t see or smell.
“Have you noticed, Darling,” said Jim over breakfast, “since we’ve had Lady, we’ve not lost and lost our dear Darling’s beautiful?”
“No,” said Jim, “but I think we’ve even got along without her,” Darling replied, glancing Lady’s direction.
Lady’s life was very good.
---
“Guess again,” said Lady, shimmyming her collar.
“Why, lassie. A bonnie new collar. Have you shown it to Trusty yet?”
“No,” replied Lady.
“We’d best go at once,” said Jock. “You know how sensitive he is about these things.”
They walked down the street to Trusty’s house. There lay the old bloodhound, fast asleep on the porch.
A few days later, Darling placed a beautiful blue collar with a shiny gold buckle around Lady’s neck. Lady proudly showed it off to her friend, Jock, the terrier from next door.
“Notice anything different?” Lady asked.
“You’ve had a bath?” asked Jock.
“No, not that,” said Lady.
“You’ve had your nails clipped?” asked Jock.
---
| Pub Date | 14/04/2022 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787417014 |
| H x W | 250 x 175mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Lily Murray |
| Extent | 64pp |
| Word Count | 5000 words |
| Rights Available| Disney Territories |
A retelling of Disney Beauty and the Beast with stunning development art from the original Disney Studio artists.
- Never seen before, age-appropriate retelling of the movie
- Beautifully illustrated and presented version of well-known stories
- With an additional section at the end providing more detail on the artwork and artists
- Official Disney product
- Approx size (inches): 10 x 7". Co-edition cover finishes: Arlin with foil stamping.
- Disney Animated Classics, Disney Modern Classics and Pixar Modern Classics have exceeded TCM sales of 100k copies since the first title was released in 2018.
Long, long ago, on a land far from our own, a little girl lived in a town out doors bracketed on the sides of a magnificent palace.
The night was cold and the pass, elderly woman settled a place for herself by the fire. She had been walking all day and was tired. She had no one to get him to exchange for her hospitality. But the Princess was not alone. She had a beautiful garden and a rose bush. The old woman asked the Prince to look beyond her ugliness, but he answered that he would never marry an ugly woman. The old woman turned toward a possible enchantment. Seeing the Enchantress, the Beast took the rose and threw it over his shoulder so the Princess's heart and resolved to punish her.
When she left the bookshop, Belle caught the eye of a man named Gaston. Gaston was the strongest and handsomest man in the village – at least, according to himself. He was determined to marry Belle.
"Hello, Belle," said Gaston.
"Bonjour, Gaston," Belle replied, still reading as Gaston took the book from her.
"Belle, it’s about time you got your head out of those books and paid attention to more important things. Like me," said Gaston.
"I have to get home to help my father," Belle said.
"That crazy old boar. He needs all the help he can get," said Gaston's friend, LeFou.
"My father is not crazy. He’s a genius," Belle said.
But as she spoke, an explosion came from her house. Belle hurried to see what had happened.
Pub Date 02/09/2021
Pub Price £14.99
ISBN 9781787417366
H x W 250 x 175mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Sally Morgan
Extent 64pp
Word Count 12000 words
Rights Available Disney Territories
A retelling of Disney Lilo & Stitch, accompanied by art from the original Disney Studio artists.
- Original concept art from the Disney archive, featuring artwork by classic Disney artists.
- Beautifully illustrated and presented version of the well-known Disney story. With an additional section at the end providing more detail on the artwork and the artists.
- Never seen before, age-appropriate retelling of the movie.
- Disney Animated Classics, Disney Modern Classics and Pixar Modern Classics have exceeded TCM sales of 100k copies since the first title was released in 2018.
A retelling of Disney Encanto featuring beautiful concept and development art.
- Building on our Disney Animated Classics series, this is the first title in our line of Disney Modern Classics that feature more contemporary Disney films.
- Encanto made around $255 million at the global box office and is a huge hit on Disney+ - it’s first full week on Disney+, Encanto was watched for 2.2 billion minutes.
- We Don’t Talk About Bruno was a viral sensation on TikTok, bringing Encanto to a wider audience than other Disney animations.
- Encanto won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2022.
- Cover features a custom illustration with arlin and foil finishes.
- Disney Modern Classics: Moana will follow in July 2023.
As the Madrigals got ready for the day, Mirabel explained that she came from a family of stars. At their centre, Abuela Alma made sure everyone knew their place.
When the family left for work, Mirabel introduced them to the children, explaining each of their gifts.
First was her Tía Pepa who controlled the weather with her emotions. Mirabel also had a Tío Bruno who could see the future, but Bruno disappeared and nobody talked about him. Mirabel’s mother, Julieta, could heal people with the food that she cooked.
Mirabel said that the family grew larger when her Tía Pepa married a man named Félix and had children, and when her mother married her father, Agustín and had Mirabel and her two sisters. The children were confused. They didn’t know who were Mirabel’s sisters and who were her cousins.
Mirabel explained that her cousins were Dolores, Camilo and Antonio. Dolores had the gift of being able to hear the quietest sounds and Camilo could shapeshift to look like other people. Mirabel said Antonio would find out his gift that evening.
Mirabel’s sisters were Luisa and Isabela. Luisa was incredibly strong, Isabela could make flowers bloom wherever she walked.
Mirabel told the children everything she could but when she tried to leave, the children had one more question.
“What is your gift?” asked a little girl.
Two years later, the story of the Madrigal family ends in the very same way it began, with Mirabel gifting something. It is a gift that will change her life and Mirabel wanted to give it to her family. She is not the only one to do so; the house, the land and help from the community are all part of Mirabel’s gift. The Madrigals are all changed, thriving together and the community is grateful for what Mirabel created to share their story.
---
**Pub Date** 16/02/2023
**Pub Price** £13.99
**ISBN** 9781800784512
**H x W** 250 x 174mm
**Binding** Hardback
**Age Range** 9-11 years
**Author** Sally Morgan
**Extent** 64pp
**Word Count** 6500 words
**Rights Available** World
---
A stunning colouring book dedicated to the magical worlds of Disney Princesses.
- Features twelve magical Disney Princesses: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, and Moana.
- Cover finish: mat lam and foil.
- Highly detailed maps and beautiful character art to colour - hours of mindful fun.
| Pub Date | 01/08/2024 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £10.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800785045 |
| H x W | 276 x 216mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | Adult |
| Author | Walt Disney|
| Extent | 80pp |
| Rights Available | Disney Territories |
Christmas colouring with favourite Disney characters.
- Over 80 detailed images, patterns and scenes to colour with a festive theme.
- The next title in our Disney adult colouring range, following the Nightmare Before Christmas, The Fashion Collection Colouring Book and Hocus Pocus in 2022. The Vintage Poster Collection Colouring Book and 100 Years of Wonder Colouring Book will follow in 2023.
- The cover will feature foil blocking and spot UV.
- Lead into the Disney centenary in 2023.
| Pub Date | 27/10/2022 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £10.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800784031 |
| H x W | 276 x 216mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | Adult |
| Author | Walt Disney|
| Extent | 80pp |
| Rights Available | Disney Territories |
AMS FBF24
Created by Dani Cowell
firstname.lastname@example.org
Updated 27 November 2024
bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/collections/AMS-FBF24 | 457a1c15-7b86-43e8-8f88-a000d01f119f | CC-MAIN-2024-46 | https://files.circularsoftware.com/DOWNLOAD/Client5352/PDF/COLLECTION/AMS-FBF24.pdf | 2024-11-09T00:23:44+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-46/segments/1730477028106.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20241108231327-20241109021327-00771.warc.gz | 237,977,355 | 11,131 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.956387 | eng_Latn | 0.997629 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
9,
628,
869,
1524,
1915,
2390,
2744,
3248,
3551,
4121,
4869,
5442,
6036,
6544,
6942,
7415,
7881,
8627,
9324,
10073,
10897,
11609,
12302,
13115,
13868,
14382,
14770,
15400,
15776,
16177,
16550,
16959,
17779,
18176,
18721,
19536,
21805,
22173,
22579,
23746,
24063,
24379,
24680,
25131,
25715,
26738,
27432,
28335,
28766,
29539,
29896,
32834,
33453,
36416,
37023,
38657,
39242,
39977,
42014,
42370,
42697,
43190,
43517,
43661
] | [
2.3125,
0.90234375
] | 1 | 0 |
Energy and nutrients
Ecosystem
Energy flows from the sun, through plants, animals, and decomposers, and is lost as heat.
Chemicals (nutrients) are recycled between air, water, soil, and organisms.
A terrarium ecosystem
Presentation adapted from: Campbell, N., Reece, J., Mitchell L., Taylor M., 2003. Biology: Concepts and Connections. Powerpoint lectures. Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Benjamin Cummings.
Trophic (food) structure
A food chain is the stepwise flow of energy and nutrients
- from plants
- to herbivores
- to carnivores
Figure 36.9a
Decomposition
Detritivores decompose waste matter and recycle nutrients
- Examples: animals, scavengers, fungi, and bacteria
Food chains interconnect, forming food webs
Production pyramid: flow of energy from producers to higher trophic levels
Only about 10% of the energy in food is stored at each trophic level and available to the next level
The rest is lost as: feces, growth, cellular respiration, & heat loss
Because the production pyramid tapers so sharply, a field of corn or other plant crops can support many more vegetarians than meat-eaters
Chemicals are recycled between organic matter and abiotic reservoirs
Ecosystems require daily infusions of energy
- The sun supplies the Earth with energy
- But there are no extraterrestrial sources of water or other chemical nutrients
Nutrients must be recycled between organisms and abiotic reservoirs
- Abiotic reservoirs are parts of the ecosystem where a chemical accumulates
There are four main abiotic reservoirs
- Water cycle
- Carbon cycle
- Nitrogen cycle
- Phosphorus cycle
Figure 36.14
Figure 36.15
Figure 36.16
Figure 36.17
Nutrient cycling experiment
Dams were built across streams at the bottom of each watershed to monitor water and nutrient losses.
In 1966, one of the valleys was completely logged:
- It was then sprayed with herbicides for 3 years to prevent plant regrowth
- All the original plant material was left in place to decompose
Researchers found that the total removal of vegetation can increase the runoff of water and loss of soil nutrients.
Environmental changes caused by humans can unbalance nutrient cycling over the long term:
- Examples
- eutrophication
- acid rain
Algal bloom can cause a pond or lake to lose much of its species diversity
- Human-caused eutrophication wiped out fisheries in Lake Erie in the 1950s and 1960s
Dr. David Schindler is an ecologist who worked at the Experimental Lakes Project in northern Ontario
- His experiments on eutrophication led to the ban on phosphates in detergents
According to Dr. Schindler, there are three serious threats to freshwater ecosystems
- Acid precipitation
- Climate warming
- Changes in land use
Zoned reserves are an attempt to reverse ecosystem disruption
The human alteration of ecosystems threatens the existence of thousands of species
- Zoned reserves
a) Undisturbed wildlands surrounded by buffer zones
Costa Rica has established eight zone reserves
Green: reserves
Yellow: buffers
Figure 36.20
Phytoplankton: March
Phytoplankton: September | d342b460-51f2-407d-a214-c40550236dcc | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://mariabiocourses.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/3_energy-nutrients-ch.-3.pdf | 2020-10-30T05:16:45+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107907213.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20201030033658-20201030063658-00496.warc.gz | 422,467,816 | 705 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.990518 | eng_Latn | 0.995022 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
564,
1125,
1670,
2246,
3053,
3101
] | [
3.875
] | 1 | 0 |
17 A Healthy Home
In this chapter:
| Topic | Page |
|--------------------------------------------|------|
| Health problems at home | 350 |
| Indoor air pollution | 352 |
| Story: Improved ventilation solves many problems | 353 |
| Carbon monoxide poisoning | 354 |
| Cigarette smoke | 355 |
| Tuberculosis (TB) | 356 |
| Allergies | 357 |
| Dust and dust mites | 357 |
| Mold | 358 |
| Improved stoves | 359 |
| Story: Women improve stoves for fuel and flavor | 359 |
| Fuels for cooking and heating | 363 |
| Fire safety | 365 |
| Controlling pests | 366 |
| Toxics in the home | 368 |
| Lead poisoning | 368 |
| Asbestos | 371 |
| Toxics in furniture and fabrics | 372 |
| Home cleaning products | 372 |
| Story: Natural home cleaning protects health | 374 |
| Safe food preparation | 375 |
| Reduce food-borne illness at home | 375 |
| Do not bring work hazards home | 376 |
| Building a healthy home | 377 |
| Choosing building materials | 379 |
| Story: Teenagers produce improved building materials | 380 |
| Planning with communities | 384 |
| Story: Building homes and community | 385 |
The ideal home is not just a building for shelter. A home should be a place free from harm, that supports physical, mental, and social well-being, and provides dignity and a sense of community. A healthy home protects against extreme heat and cold, rain and sun, wind, pests, disasters such as floods and earthquakes, and pollution and disease.
Unfortunately, many people’s living conditions do not protect their health. Poor living conditions may even cause illness, or make health problems worse. Whether people live close together or spread apart, poor housing, indoor air pollution, pests, and toxic chemicals in household products can cause many illnesses.
As more people move from rural areas into cities and towns, the way people live and maintain their homes changes, often for the worse. People who spend a lot of time in the home, such as children, the elderly and disabled, and people with long-term health problems such as HIV, suffer the most.
How to improve living conditions by making homes safer and more comfortable depends on local traditions, available materials, and climate. Unfortunately, it also depends on income and ownership. People who rent their homes often have little control over their living conditions and must depend on their landlords to make improvements. People in shantytowns, marginal communities, or other “temporary” settlements (which too often become permanent) live in homes that rarely provide security or comfort. But whether a person owns, rents, or lives in makeshift housing, working with neighbors is the most effective way to improve living conditions in the whole neighborhood.
Health Problems at Home
Our homes are not separate from the environment. They can have many of the same environmental health problems we find in our communities and workplaces. When planning a new home or improving the home you live in, you can protect your health by considering problems caused by how and where houses are built, how they are furnished, and what work is done at home.
Open eaves and windows without screens can let in mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue (see Chapter 8).
Lead paint flakes, if eaten or breathed in, damage the nerves and brain (see pages 368 to 370).
Carpets and furniture may contain finishes, sealants, or glues that are harmful when touched or breathed in. Also, they can be breeding places for insects.
Electrical wiring can cause fires if not properly installed.
Animals in the house can cause allergies and asthma (see pages 331 and 357), and their droppings can cause worm infections and other illnesses (see Chapter 5).
Air pollution from outside the home, especially in cities, industrial areas, and where large amounts of pesticides are used, causes asthma and other illnesses of the lungs, nose, throat, and eyes.
Rodents, mosquitoes, and other insects can live and breed in roof thatch and cracks in the walls and floors, spreading diseases such as Chagas (see page 367).
Cracks in foundations, floors, and walls, and unsealed roofs and windows cause heat loss and dampness. This allows mold to grow on walls, bedding, and furniture. Mold can cause breathing problems, rashes, and other illnesses (see page 358).
Cleaning products, pesticides, and other chemicals can cause skin rashes, respiratory illnesses, and other long-term health problems (see page 372).
Lead water pipes pollute drinking and cooking water, leading to birth defects and other serious health problems (see pages 368 to 370).
Germs from food or food surfaces where food is prepared cause diarrhea and food poisoning (see page 375).
Burning any fuel without ventilation releases carbon monoxide (CO) and other harmful gases into the air, leading to serious illness (see page 354).
Open fires make harmful smoke that causes illnesses of the nose, throat, eyes, and lungs, and cause burns and house fires (see page 365).
Indoor Air Pollution
When people burn wood, dung, coal, charcoal, gas, and crop wastes indoors for cooking or heating without good ventilation, smoke fills the house. This smoke contains harmful gases (fumes) and tiny particulates (soot) that cause breathing problems and other illnesses. Headaches, dizziness, and fatigue are often followed by serious illnesses such as asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, or lung cancer. Indoor air pollution from smoking fires also increases the risk of getting TB (see page 356).
Women and children are the most exposed to harmful cooking smoke. When pregnant women are exposed to a lot of smoke every day, it can cause their children to be born very small, grow slowly, and have difficulty learning later on. In some cases, it can even cause children to be born dead.
To reduce indoor air pollution, you can:
- improve ventilation (see pages 352 to 354).
- improve stoves (see pages 359 to 362, and Resources).
- use cleaner fuels (see page 362 to 364, and Chapter 23).
- use safer cleaning products (see page 358, and 372 to 374).
- reduce air pollution from outdoors (see Chapter 20).
Poor ventilation harms health
Ventilation is the way fresh air moves into a room or building, and how old and polluted air moves out. If a house has poor ventilation, smoke and polluted air stay inside. Poor ventilation also traps moisture in the house, causing dampness and mold. The easiest way to reduce indoor air pollution is to improve ventilation. To know if your house has poor ventilation, look for these signs:
- Smoke stays in the house, or the ceilings are black from cooking or heating smoke.
- Moisture collects on windows or walls.
- Clothing, bedding, or walls grow mold.
- Bad smells from toilets or sewers stay in the house.
If you cook with gas and often suffer from dizziness and confusion, this may be a sign of poor ventilation or a gas leak.
Improved ventilation solves many problems
Ndito, a mother of 3 children, once began every morning with a terrible coughing fit. When she built a fire in the kitchen to heat water and prepare food, the house filled with smoke, causing Ndito to wheeze. Each breath was painful and labored. The smoke in Ndito’s kitchen gave her asthma.
Because of her health problems, Ndito and her husband Refa agreed to join the Kenya Smoke and Health Project. Refa learned to measure the air pollution in their house, and found that the amount of smoke was very unhealthy. Refa and Ndito decided to make changes to reduce the smoke pollution.
Project workers helped Ndito build a hood over her stove with a chimney to remove smoke from the house. Also, Refa built new, larger windows to improve ventilation. With less smoke in the house, the family spends more time together. The windows also make it easier for Ndito to watch over their livestock, and they let in more light, making it easier to do beadwork.
Before these changes, Refa stayed away from the kitchen. Now he wakes up before dawn to start the fire and puts on a pot of water for tea. Ndito is relieved from waking up early and doing all the chores by herself. The new smoke hood and chimney have reduced the amount of soot, so Ndito has less to clean. Her coughing fits are less common now. Refa and Ndito had to pay for the smoke hood, but the changes they made improved Ndito’s health and will protect the whole family from illness. Better health improved their livelihood, so the money they spent on the smoke hood is an investment in their future.
Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning
Stoves or appliances that burn natural gas, liquid petroleum (LP gas), oil, kerosene, coal, charcoal, or wood may produce carbon monoxide (CO), a poisonous gas with no color, taste, or smell. CO is also produced by cars.
People often close a room tightly to keep warm or use less fuel. But heating without ventilation can be dangerous. In a poorly ventilated space, CO can cause serious illness, or even death.
Signs
CO poisoning seems at first like flu, but without fever. Signs include headache, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, and dizziness.
Prevention
The best way to prevent CO poisoning is to make sure your home has good ventilation. Check chimneys and flues for cracks, blocks, rust, and loose connections. Never burn charcoal, gas, wood, or other fuel inside a home, vehicle, or tent with poor ventilation. Do not use gas appliances such as stove tops, ovens, or clothes dryers to heat your home. Avoid using gasoline-powered tools and engines indoors. If you must use them, make sure there is good ventilation and place the engine so exhaust fumes will go outdoors.
Cigarette smoke
Smoking tobacco can cause many health problems for the smoker and for other people exposed to the smoke. Health problems from smoking include:
- serious lung diseases, such as lung cancer, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.
- heart disease, heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure.
- cancer of the mouth, throat, neck and bladder.
Second-hand smoke is the mixture of smoke that comes from cigarettes, pipes, and cigars, plus the smoke breathed out by the smoker. Second-hand smoke makes smoking dangerous for everyone who lives with a smoker, especially children. It causes the same health problems as does smoking.
To stop or help someone stop smoking
People who smoke become addicted to a drug in tobacco called nicotine. Without a cigarette, they may feel sick or nervous. As every smoker knows, it is difficult to stop smoking because nicotine is a very addictive drug.
Because tobacco companies market their products aggressively, many people begin smoking at a young age and continue smoking because of the addiction to nicotine. Cigarette companies say smoking is a personal choice, not an addiction. This is not true. Understanding that smoking is a harmful addiction and not a personal choice is the first step toward stopping.
Telling people “DO NOT SMOKE,” is rarely successful in helping smokers to stop. Some ways to help break the addiction and stop smoking include:
- Practice deep breathing every time you crave a cigarette.
- Exercise daily.
- Replace smoking with a healthy habit such as drinking a cup of tea or walking.
- Drink plenty of water to flush nicotine out of the body.
- Ask for support from friends and family.
Tuberculosis (TB, consumption)
Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease that most often affects the lungs. It passes easily from person to person because when someone with TB coughs, the germs get into the air and live for many hours, letting other people breathe in the germs. TB spreads quickly in crowded homes and neighborhoods, in factories, work camps, prisons, refugee camps, and other places where people live or work closely and there is little ventilation.
Who gets sick from TB germs?
Many people have TB germs in their bodies, but only 1 out of 10 of them will get sick with TB. People are more likely to get sick if they are already weak from illnesses like asthma, malaria, or HIV, or if they are very young, very old, or malnourished. Smoking tobacco and breathing polluted air increase the risk of TB.
Signs
Tuberculosis is curable if it is treated early and completely. A person may have all or some of these signs when they first get sick:
- a cough that lasts longer than 3 weeks, often worse just after waking up
- a slight fever in the evening and sweating at night
- pain in the chest and upper back
- steady loss of weight and increasing weakness
Young children may have frequent fevers, steady weight loss, swellings in the neck or belly, or a lighter skin color.
Treatment
If you think you may have TB, cover your mouth or cough into your shirt when you cough around other people, and wash your hands often. Go to a clinic right away. If the health worker finds you have TB, you will need to begin taking medicines. To cure TB, people take 4 different medicines every day for 2 months, then, if they are getting better, 2 or 3 medicines for another 4 months. If someone in the home has TB:
- Test the whole family for TB and begin treatment for those who are sick.
- Vaccinate all children against TB.
- The person with TB should eat and sleep apart from the children if he or she has any cough at all.
People with TB should cover their mouths when they cough and not spit on the floor.
TB is less of a problem when homes and workplaces are well-ventilated. But as long as people in the community have TB germs, it will be a threat. Reducing poverty and training people to recognize and treat TB are more likely to stop the spread of TB than any other solution. To learn more about the signs of TB and ways to prevent and treat it, see a health worker or a general health care book such as *Where There Is No Doctor*.
Allergies
Allergies are signs of the body’s reaction to substances it finds difficult to tolerate. Allergies are often difficult to recognize and treat because they have the same signs as many common illnesses. Common allergic reactions include difficulty breathing, coughing, itchy throat, runny nose, tiredness, red or itchy eyes, and skin rashes.
Many things in the home can cause allergies, such as cleaning products, chemicals in carpeting and furniture, mold, pollen, animal dander, feathers, waste, dust and dust mites, cockroaches, rats, mice, and other pests. Exposure to toxics can lead to Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), which is similar to allergies (see page 333). Some ways to prevent allergic reactions are:
- Improve the flow of air through the house.
- Reduce contact with the pollutant causing the allergic reaction.
- Keep the house clean and free of dust.
Dust and dust mites
Dust mites are tiny, invisible bugs that are the biggest cause of indoor allergies. They irritate the eyes and nose and cause asthma attacks (see page 331). Dust mites live in warm, humid places filled with dust such as bed pillows, mattresses, carpets, stuffed toys, clothing, and furniture.
To get rid of dust and dust mites
Cleaning sleeping areas and bedding will help reduce dust, dust mites, and animal hair. Covering mattresses and pillows with tightly woven fabrics or plastic, and washing these covers in hot water regularly will help get rid of dust mites. If someone in the home is allergic to dust or dust mites, you may want to avoid having carpets, rugs, or other fabrics in the home.
Regular cleaning and airing materials outside in the sun will help to get rid of dust and dust mites.
Mold
Mold is a kind of fungus, a simple plant that grows on soil and other plants. In the home, it grows on walls, clothing, old or spoiled foods, and in any damp place. Mold is also called ‘mildew.’ Most molds and mildews look like black or yellow powder, tiny threads, or white and blue fuzz.
Outdoors, molds are important to the environment. Molds help dead things decay and turn back into soil. But mold releases tiny spores that can cause health problems for people who breathe them. Molds also destroy the things they live on, so having mold inside the home is never good.
Molds cause breathing problems, headaches, skin irritation, and can trigger asthma attacks and allergic reactions. Rarely, exposure to some molds may lead to serious health problems and death, especially in infants. People with HIV are especially vulnerable to the health problems caused by molds.
To prevent and get rid of mold
Molds grow in damp places with poor ventilation. To prevent and get rid of mold, try to do 1 or more of these things:
- Fix leaks in walls, roofs, and pipes.
- Improve ventilation. When more air passes through the home, it keeps everything drier and helps prevent mold from growing.
- Wash areas where molds grow with bleach solution.
How to make a bleach solution
Mix: 1 cup of bleach, \( \frac{1}{4} \) teaspoon of liquid soap, and 4 liters (1 gallon) of water
(Adding one cup of vinegar will help this solution kill more germs along with the mold.)
Wear gloves and a face mask or cloth over your nose and mouth, and keep windows open while washing surfaces with this bleach solution. Let the solution stay on for 10 to 15 minutes, then rinse with plain water. Wipe the surfaces dry to prevent mold from growing back.
Improved Stoves
Smoky cooking stoves cause many serious health problems. Reducing smoke from stoves is an important way to improve family health.
The type of stove people use depends on what foods are cooked, what fuels and stove-making materials are available, and traditional cooking methods. To improve stoves and solve the problems of indoor air pollution, development workers and health promoters need to work together with the people who will use the stoves. Only an improved stove that pleases the cook while using less fuel and reducing smoke will be used and seen as a real improvement.
Women improve stoves for fuel and flavor
Like many women in Guatemala, Inez used to cook her family’s meals on a hand-built stove that burned a lot of wood and filled the kitchen with smoke. When an organization that builds improved stoves came to her town, she went with other women to hear them speak.
People from the organization had designed a new stove that used less wood, made less smoke, and cost very little to build. They asked who wanted to try the new stove, and Inez volunteered.
Inez and her neighbors worked with the organizers, mixing clay with straw and sand to build the body of the stove. The organization provided a metal griddle that was set on top of the stove to cook tortillas. They cut wood into small pieces and lit the stove. It worked really well! Inez saw that it used much less wood than her old stove, and the chimney carried smoke out of the house. But after eating just a few meals cooked on the stove, Inez and her family realized the tortillas cooked on the metal griddle had no flavor.
Months later, when people from the stove group returned, Inez thanked them. Then, in a small voice she said, “There is one problem with the stove. I think it makes tortillas taste bad.” The organizers listened, and asked why tortillas tasted different on this stove. “The old griddle was made of clay,” she said. “Maybe that’s the difference.”
That afternoon Inez, her neighbors, and the organizers made a griddle from local clay. They molded it, let it dry a few days, and then replaced the metal griddle with the clay one. Inez let the stove heat slowly while her daughter made tortillas. When the stove was hot enough, she laid the tortillas on the griddle. When they were ready she shared them with her family. They tasted good! Now, Inez and her family truly have an improved stove.
How a good stove works
Here are simple ways to improve stoves so they will burn less fuel, produce less smoke, and cook foods more quickly.
A hot fire burns fuel completely. A fire smokes when fuels do not burn completely. To make the fire hot, use small, dry pieces of fuel.
A grate under fuel for the fire creates a draft (moving air), helping the fire burn hotter.
Heat from the fire touches the pot. When more of the pot bottom touches the fire, heat goes into the pot and cooks food faster.
No heat is lost to the air because the pot sits right on the fire.
The stove is made with material that keeps heat inside the stove (insulation), so foods cook faster using less fuel.
A chimney, hood, or vent to carry away smoke. This also moves air inside the stove, making the fire hotter and cooking food faster.
Vent cooking and heating stoves
Good: Place the stove near a window. Having 2 openings helps air move through the room.
Better: A hood with a chimney above the stove carries most of the smoke outside. A hole in the roof or a space between the wall and the eaves will also help remove smoke.
Best: A stove with a chimney attached carries most smoke out of the house.
Improving open fires
The most basic “stove” is an open fire. It is sometimes called a 3-stone fire because in many parts of the world the fire is made with 3 stones to surround the burning fuel and to hold up the food or cooking pot.
With small changes, open fires can be made safer, create less smoke, and use less fuel. For example, burning only small pieces of wood which are dry and not “green” makes less smoke. Making a small wall of mud or stones around your fire pit can prevent accidents that lead to house fires or injuries from burns.
In a clean fire, just the tips of the wood burn, creating less smoke and using less fuel.
In a dirty fire, the wood burns all over, creating a lot of smoke and using a lot of fuel.
Simple clay stove
A simple clay stove with a metal grate to lift fuel off the ground takes very little material to make. It burns hot and clean, and uses less wood than an open fire. To make a simple clay stove, mix:
- 6 parts sand
- 4 parts clay
- a few handfuls of fine sawdust or chopped straw
- enough water to make the clay hold together so it can be shaped into a ring
The pot sits inside the clay ring.
Rocks hold the pot just above the fire.
A small space between the pot and the ring, about the width of your smallest finger, will heat the pot best and reduce smoke.
Firewood rests on a grate made of scrap metal, allowing air underneath.
A hole in the clay ring draws air in to keep the fire burning.
Haybox cookers save fuel
A haybox cooker is a way to prepare slow cooking foods (like stew, beans, and rice) and to keep food warm while saving fuel. A haybox cooker is made from hay or whatever insulating materials are available to you. It can be made from a cardboard box, a basket filled with straw or newspapers, or by simply wrapping your cooking pot in a heavy blanket or cloth.
After the food on the stove boils for a few minutes, remove the pot and place it in the haybox. The food will continue to cook for 2 or more hours. The more food in the pot, the more heat it will keep. Haybox cookers do not work well for small amounts of food. Let the cooker dry out after each use.
An improved metal stove
The rocket stove is a small metal stove that can be used in temporary living situations such as refugee camps, or any place where people do not have the resources to build a full-size stove. It burns fuel cleanly with little smoke. The rocket stove can be made from inexpensive, locally available materials. (For more detailed instructions on how to build a rocket stove, see Resources and *Where Women Have No Doctor*, page 396.)
How the rocket stove works:
Fuels for Cooking and Heating
Wood, crop wastes, coal, dung, and charcoal are the most widely used cooking fuels. But when they burn, they can all cause pollution and breathing problems. And in many places, wood and charcoal are scarce resources.
Many people are turning to other cooking fuels such as sunlight, processed plant wastes (rice husks and other crop wastes made into pellets or briquettes), and biogas (a gas produced by rotting plant matter and human and animal waste).
Crop wastes (residues)
Dried crop wastes, such as rice and maize husks and coconut shells are used as fuel in many places. When these materials are used without processing, they cause smoke that can lead to health problems. Chopping the material and pressing it into blocks (fuel briquettes) can make it burn longer and cleaner.
Mixing chopped crop wastes with water, and pressing and drying them, makes a cleaner burning fuel.
Making fuel briquettes requires some machinery and an energy source, both of which can be costly. Some people do not like the taste of food cooked with briquettes. But in areas where there is a shortage of fuel, or where people want to limit the use of coal and charcoal, briquettes may be a good choice.
Firewood
Wood is one of the best sources of fuel, but it is scarce in many places. To conserve valuable forest resources and reduce smoke, use dry wood, cut into small pieces.
Biogas
Biogas, a natural gas that is mostly methane, is a valuable source of energy. By turning the organic matter in human, animal, and plant waste into energy, biogas turns waste products into a resource less harmful to the environment and community health than other fuels. (To learn more about biogas, see page 540, and Resources.)
Cooking with sunlight
You can use the sun’s heat to cook in solar cookers. Solar cookers require changing your regular cooking habits, and many solar cookers cook more slowly than a fire or a stove. But by using the solar cooker when the sun shines brightly, and using the regular household stove at night or when the weather is cloudy, you can save fuel. Some cookers can pay for themselves in just a few months because they reduce expenses for charcoal, gas, or firewood. Solar cookers can also be used to disinfect water for drinking (see page 98).
Guidelines for cooking with sunlight
There are many kinds of solar cookers you can make or buy (see Resources). All of them work in basically the same way. They:
- **change sunlight to heat energy.** Dark surfaces get hot in sunlight. Food cooks best in dark, shallow, thin metal pots with tight-fitting lids to hold in heat and moisture.
- **retain heat.** A clear heat trap around the dark pot lets in sunlight and traps heat. Use a glass top, an upside-down glass bowl, or a clear, heat-resistant plastic bag marked HDPE.
- **capture extra sunlight.** Shiny surfaces reflect extra sunlight onto the pot to help cook food faster. Aluminum foil mounted on cardboard provides a good, low-cost shiny surface. Sheet metals and metallic paints are not reflective enough to work well.
**IMPORTANT:** Never look directly into the sun or at the shiny surface of a solar cooker while it is cooking. This can damage your eyes.
When building a solar cooker, do not use materials that will melt or give off fumes, such as styrofoam, polyvinyl, or some plastics.
How to use a solar cooker
Use a black pot with either a black or clear glass top. To help it cook faster, cut food into small pieces and add a small amount of water. Place a blanket or other insulation under the oven and place the oven in full sun just before and during the hottest part of the day. Be sure that the solar collector opening faces toward the sun. Turn the oven every 30 minutes or so to face directly into the sun. If the sun goes behind a cloud, surround the oven with more insulation. If the food is hot but not cooked, finish cooking the food on a stove or fire.
Fire Safety
An important part of a healthy home is preventing fires.
- Keep cooking fires enclosed.
- Keep fires away from children, and keep children away from fires.
- Keep flammable and toxic materials (such as gasoline, paint, paint thinner, solvents and kerosene) out of the house and in well-sealed containers. If such materials are in the house, keep them far from any heat source.
- Make sure electrical connections are safe.
- Keep a covered water bucket, a bucket of sand or dirt, or a fire extinguisher near the stove.
**IMPORTANT:** DO NOT put water on a fire caused by cooking grease. This will make the fire spread! Grease fires are put out by stopping them from getting air. To put the fire out, cover it with a blanket or heavy cloth, or throw sand or dirt on the grease.
Smoke alarms warn if a fire has started, and are available at low cost in some countries.
Electricity
Even a small amount of electricity makes a big improvement in people’s lives, for cooking, light, refrigeration, and so on. But unsafe electric wires can cause electric shocks and fires. To prevent harm:
- Make sure electric lines are properly installed and grounded.
- Never run electric wires under carpets.
- Avoid connecting many electric extension cords together to form one long cord. If they are not designed to be connected, they can cause fires.
- Do not install outlets or switches where they can get wet from water pipes, taps, or sinks.
Electric transmission wires
High-voltage electrical cables give off large amounts of electric radiation that can cause headaches, stress, irritation, and may lead to more serious health problems such as cancer of the blood (leukemia). Just as light from a candle becomes dimmer as our eyes get farther away from it, the harm from electricity grows weaker with distance. To reduce the danger:
- Build houses 50 to 70 meters away from high-voltage power lines.
- Utility companies should not build power lines or cellular telephone towers near schools or hospitals.
- Power lines should be buried when possible, rather than run above ground.
Controlling Pests
Pests, such as cockroaches and rodents (rats and mice), live wherever there are food crumbs, trash, and places to hide. They carry illnesses and are a common cause of allergies and asthma attacks. Unfortunately, the sprays often used to get rid of insects and rodents also cause asthma attacks and other health problems.
Many people use chemical pesticides to control insects and rodents in the home. Pesticides are poison (see Chapter 14). If they are used at all they should be used, handled, and stored with great care.
The best way to control household pests is to get rid of the conditions that attract them:
- Sweep and clean regularly to get rid of food scraps, crumbs, and materials in which rodents can nest.
- Clean and dry surfaces where food is prepared after cooking and eating.
- Store food in tightly covered containers.
- Fix leaking pipes and keep sinks dry. Cockroaches and other insects like water.
- Keep household waste in covered containers, and remove it regularly.
- Fill holes and cracks in walls, ceilings, and floors to prevent pests from entering. Fill small holes with materials such as steel wool, fine mesh screens, mortar, sheet metal, etc.
Many pests can be driven away using organic materials that are less harmful and less costly than chemical pesticides.
Pest control without chemicals
Sometimes keeping the house clean is not enough, and more active pest control is needed.
For cockroaches, make a mixture of sugar and boric acid or baking soda. Sprinkle it on surfaces where cockroaches crawl. They will eat it and die. OR, mix boric acid with water to make a thick paste. Add corn flour and make little balls. Leave them around the house, but take care that children do not eat them!
For ants, sprinkle red chili powder, dried peppermint, or crushed cinnamon where they enter.
For fly maggots, soak crushed basil leaves in water for 24 hours. Filter and spray onto maggots. To learn how to make a simple fly trap, see page 57.
For termites, make sure wooden building materials do not come into direct contact with the soil. Do not store firewood next to the house.
To kill rodents, use traps. Poisons should be used only by people trained in their use, with great care, and with good safety equipment.
Some insect pests, such as “chinches” that cause Chagas’ disease in Mexico, and Central and South America, live in cracks in the floors, walls, and roofs of houses, especially those made from mud, adobe, and thatch. Sealing wall cracks with plaster, and plastering the walls completely or even just the bottom meter of wall, will help prevent insect breeding. (To make earth plaster, see page 382.) Replacing thatch roofs with tile, metal, or cement, or lining the inside of the roof will also keep the insects out.
How to make a simple roach trap
1. Fill the bottom of a jar with beer, boiled raisins, or some other sweet substance.
2. Smear a band of petroleum jelly inside the jar below the rim to prevent roaches from crawling out.
3. To kill the captured roaches, dump them in hot, soapy water.
Toxics in the Home
Building materials, paint, furniture, cleaning products, and other things used at home may contain harmful chemicals. Asbestos and lead paint have been banned in some countries, but other toxics are still common.
Lead poisoning
Lead is a toxic metal found in common products such as paint, water pipes, some glazed ceramic pots, dishes, and floor tiles, tin cans, gasoline (petrol), and engine exhaust. A single high dose of lead can cause severe health problems. But it is more common for lead poisoning to build up slowly from repeated exposure to small amounts of lead. There may not be any obvious signs of lead poisoning, but over time it causes serious health problems.
Lead poisoning is more harmful to children than adults because it affects children’s developing nerves and brains. The younger the child, the more harmful lead can be. Over time, even low levels of lead exposure can harm a child’s mental development. (For more about how toxics affect children, see page 322.)
Ways people are exposed to lead
- **Lead pipes**
- **Some glazed pottery**
- **Lead paint**
- **Contaminated soil**
- **Car fumes**
- **Industrial pollution**
Like other toxics, lead gets into the body through eating or drinking, or being absorbed through the skin. Lead can damage the kidneys and blood, nerves, and digestive system. Very high levels of lead in the blood may cause vomiting, staggering, muscle weakness, seizures, or coma. Health problems get worse as the level of lead in the blood gets higher.
**Signs**
If you think someone has lead poisoning, test her blood at a health center or clinic. By the time a person has signs of lead poisoning, there is already a lot of lead in the person’s blood. This is why it is important to prevent lead poisoning before it starts. Signs of lead poisoning include:
- being angry all the time.
- low appetite and low energy.
- difficulty sleeping.
- headaches.
- when young children lose skills that they had before.
- anemia (weak blood).
- constipation (difficulty passing stool).
- pain and cramping in the belly (this is usually the first sign of a high, toxic dose of lead poison).
**Prevention**
Preventing exposure to lead is the best treatment:
- Find out if local health authorities test water for lead. If your water is high in lead, find a different water source for drinking and cooking.
- Let tap water run for a minute before drinking or cooking with it.
- Do not use pottery with lead glazes for eating or cooking.
- Avoid foods from cans that may be sealed with lead.
- Throw out old painted toys if you do not know if the paint contains lead.
- Do not store liquids in lead crystal containers, as lead can leach into the liquid.
- Avoid growing food, building houses or digging wells on or in soil that may contain lead. If you find batteries, paint flakes, oil drums, and other industrial waste either on or buried in the soil, it is a sign that the soil may be contaminated.
- Wash hands before eating, especially if you have been working or if children have been playing outside.
Prevent poisoning from lead paint
When paint becomes old or is poorly applied, it breaks down and often peels or flakes off of walls, railings, and furniture. These flakes can be easily breathed in or swallowed by small children. If the paint has lead in it, this is very harmful. The best way to prevent lead poisoning from old paint is to remove it from surfaces and repaint with paint that does not contain lead.
When removing old paint:
- Always wear gloves, masks, and safety glasses.
- Keep children away from work areas or from playing in areas that may be contaminated.
- To keep paint dust out of the air, wet surfaces with water as you sand and scrape.
- Clean up all paint dust carefully after each work session. Use damp mops and rags, not a broom.
- Collect paint flakes and dust in a tin can or other strong container, seal in plastic bags, and bury in a safe burial pit (see page 438).
Cleaning surfaces often with a wet cloth will help reduce exposure to dust and flakes from lead paint.
Prevent poisoning from lead water pipes
Some signs that your water may be contaminated with lead are rust-colored water and stained dishes and laundry. Water from lead pipes should never be used to prepare infant formula, and if possible lead pipes should be replaced with pipes made of iron, copper, or plastic.
Because lead from pipes dissolves in hot water more easily than it does in cold water, it is better not to use hot water from lead pipes for cooking or drinking. Let the water run until it is as cold as possible before using it. Some water filters will filter out lead (see Resources).
IMPORTANT: Boiling water does not get rid of lead, it makes it worse!
To prevent lead poisoning from outside air pollution
To trap some dust from outside that may contain lead, put damp rags under doors and in windows. To reduce lead poisoning in the air, governments and industry must work together to reduce the use of lead in industrial products and restrict how much air pollution industries are allowed to create.
Asbestos
Asbestos is a material that was once commonly used for insulation and fire-protection in buildings, paint, and in some appliances (especially older ones) such as toasters, ovens, broilers, and refrigerators. Asbestos is made of tiny fibers that get into the air and are easily breathed into the lungs where they cut and scar the lung tissue, causing permanent damage many years after the fibers are breathed in. Because asbestos is so dangerous, many governments no longer allow it to be used in new buildings or industrial products. But it remains in many older ones.
Exposure to asbestos leads to **asbestosis** (a disease that scars and damages the lungs), and lung cancer. Early signs of these illnesses are coughing, shortness of breath, chest pain, weight loss, and weakness.
**How are people exposed to asbestos?**
When asbestos gets old, it begins to break down. If asbestos is used when a house is built, but is sealed off and not touched or moved afterward, it does no harm. When materials or appliances that have asbestos in them are moved or taken apart, dangerous fibers are released into the air. This causes great harm to anyone who breathes them. People who mine asbestos (see Chapter 21) also have a high risk of asbestosis.
**Prevention**
Asbestos can be removed from buildings and building materials, but only at great cost. Because removing asbestos can lead to exposure, it must be done by people with proper training and protective equipment.
**IMPORTANT:** Do not try to remove asbestos without professional help and proper protective equipment.
**Treatment**
Once asbestos is breathed into the lungs, it cannot be removed. It takes years for signs of asbestosis or lung cancer to appear, and these diseases cannot be reversed once they have started. Treatments can make a person have less pain, but will not cure the disease.
Toxics in furniture and fabrics
Some carpets, curtains, clothing, and furniture made with fabrics are made with toxic chemicals. Some of these chemicals, called BFRs (brominated flame retardants), prevent fabrics from catching fire or wearing out quickly. However, they can be harmful to our health when our skin is in contact with them for long periods, when we breathe dust that carries them, or when they burn and we breathe the fumes. (To find out more about these chemicals and ways to reduce harm from them, see Chapters 16 and 20.)
Home cleaning products
Many cleaning products are made with toxic chemicals that make people sick. When these toxic products are breathed in, swallowed, or absorbed through the skin, they can cause health problems right away or illnesses that may appear years later, such as cancer.
The labels on most products do not say if they are toxic, or how to protect yourself. Some labels sometimes say “caution” or “keep out of the reach of children.” That is a good sign you may want to change to a different product. But lack of a warning on the label does not mean you should not be careful.
Usually, if a product smells very strong and makes your eyes water, your chest hurt, or creates a bad taste in your mouth, it is toxic. The best way to get rid of the health risks from chemicals used in the home is to safely get rid of the chemicals (see page 410) and use safer cleaning products. Often, cleaning with soap and water is just as good, safer, and less costly than using harmful products.
Safer cleaning products
Unlike some chemical cleaners, natural cleaners work more effectively when you let them soak in before scrubbing, use tools like scrubbers and spatulas to lift grease and scum, and apply the cleaner more than once.
Soap is better than detergent because it is not made from petroleum and does not leave toxins in the water. Borax and washing soda (sodium carbonate) are safe for cleaning surfaces. White vinegar or lemon juice can be used to clean away kitchen grease, and vinegar and baking soda to unclog drains. These cleaners can be stored more easily because they are safe, do not go bad, and do not need to stay cold. But they still should be kept out of the reach of children.
Cleaning without toxic chemicals leaves the house smelling good, and it doesn’t harm my health!
How to make safer cleaning products
- **All-purpose cleaner**
- **Ingredients**
1 teaspoon liquid soap, 1 quart of water, plus ¼ cup undiluted white vinegar or washing soda to clean away grease
- **Directions**
Mix all the ingredients and store in a spray bottle or a bottle with a lid. Shake until mixed. Use for cleaning walls, stoves, cooking or food preparation areas, carpets, and upholstery.
- **Glass cleaner**
- **Ingredients**
1 quart water plus ¼ cup white vinegar or 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- **Directions**
Mix ingredients and store in a spray bottle.
- **Laundry starch**
- **Ingredients**
Corn or yucca starch, 1 pint cold water
- **Directions**
Put starch in a bottle with a small amount of water and shake until all the starch dissolves. Fill the bottle with water and shake again. Seal bottle with a sprinkle cap or lid to store. Sprinkle damp clean garment with starch, lay flat or hang to dry.
- **Surface disinfectant**
- **Ingredients**
½ cup borax, 2 liters water
- **Directions**
Dissolve borax in water. Wipe the surface that needs cleaning with the solution on a sponge or rag, followed by water. To prevent mold or mildew from forming, do not rinse off the borax solution.
Natural home cleaning protects health
When Maribel came to the United States from Nicaragua, she found a job with a cleaning company. Every night she cleaned 3 offices, washing floors and windows. Sometimes she got dizzy, nauseous, and confused after several hours of work. She went to a doctor who gave her some medicine that only made her feel worse. As long as she worked, her sick feeling did not go away.
One day her job ended. Though she was out of work, she soon began to feel better. Then she learned about another cleaning company, the Natural Home Cleaning Professionals, which used nontoxic cleaning products. The women at Natural Home Cleaning said that many cleaning products people used were harmful and made people feel ill. Suddenly Maribel knew what had made her sick!
Natural Home Cleaning is a worker-owned cooperative. The women who are the cleaners own the business, so they decide what products to clean with. The workers decided to use only healthy products like vinegar, baking soda, liquid soap, and warm water. With practice, they learned how to make these materials more effective by using cleaning tools like spatulas and scrubbing sponges. As part of their work, they also trained other women to clean using natural methods.
When Maribel started working with Natural Home Cleaning, she told her neighbors, friends, and even strangers at the market how to replace toxic cleaners with natural ones. Cleaning with natural products is sometimes harder than working with chemicals, but it is healthier. While she works, Maribel remembers how her grandmother used to clean, and she wants to hand this knowledge down to her sons and daughters. For Maribel, training people in natural home cleaning is not just part of her job. It is now an important part of her life as well.
Safe Food Preparation
Preparing food for the family is the center of home life. But food itself, and the surfaces on which it is prepared, can carry many kinds of germs. Eating food or drinks contaminated with germs can cause food poisoning, stomach pain, cramps, diarrhea, swollen belly, parasites, fever, hepatitis, typhoid, weakness and dehydration, constipation, and other problems.
Because germs are invisible, they can cause illness even in kitchens that look clean.
Reduce food-borne illness at home
Spoiled food — Throw away food that smells bad, or has mold on it, or strange textures. Do not eat food from cans that are dented or bulging because the food inside is spoiled by germs that are already inside the can.
Food handling — Wash hands before and after preparing food.
Food surfaces — Clean dishes, pots, and surfaces where food is prepared with hot water and soap before and after preparing food and eating. To remove germs from cloths used to clean kitchen surfaces, wash the cloths with soap and hang them in the sun to dry, or iron them.
Fruits and vegetables — Wash or peel all fruits and vegetables before eating.
Cooking — Heat kills germs. To make sure food is safe, make sure it is well-cooked, and eat it soon after it is prepared. Cook meats until they are no longer bloody or red in color. Cook eggs until the yolks and whites are firm. Cook fish until it flakes easily with a fork.
Meat handling and storage — Because germs from raw meat, chicken, and seafood spread easily to other foods, store meat separately or wrap it carefully so juice does not drip onto other foods. Use a separate cutting board and knife when preparing meat, and clean cooking tools well with hot water and soap before cutting other foods. It is not safe to place cooked food on a plate or surface that held raw meat.
Safe food storage — Store leftover food safely in secure containers in a cool and dry place, and dispose of trash right away. (See Chapter 12 and Chapter 15 for ways to safely store food and crops.)
Do Not Bring Work Hazards Home
People who use toxic materials in their jobs in farm labor, mining, health care, and factory work often bring toxics home on their clothes and bodies. This can harm the workers and everyone in their homes. (To avoid these risks, see Chapters 14, 20, and 21.)
Many health problems are caused by jobs done at home with toxic materials and dangerous machinery, such as assembling electronics or textiles, or taking apart batteries or computers (see page 464). Doing these kinds of work in the home is especially dangerous because companies usually do not provide people who work at home with protective equipment. Nor do they pay fair wages or other rights that all workers deserve. This dangerous work also exposes other family members, especially children, to toxic materials.
When working at home with dangerous materials, take precautions.
- Know what chemicals you are using and how to handle them safely.
- Make sure there is proper ventilation (see page 352 to 354).
- Use protective equipment if you can get it (see Appendix A).
- Keep children away from work areas and materials.
- Try not to work long hours that make you tired, and make the work more dangerous.
- Talk to other people who do similar work, and organize to demand your rights to health and safety.
Keeping toxic work materials in a locked cupboard will help keep children safe.
Building a Healthy Home
Homes designed with care contribute to communities that are safe and healthy. Putting a house in a place that takes advantage of sun and shade can help with heating, cooling, lighting, and ventilation. Choosing building materials right for your climate is also important.
Trees provide shade and beauty.
A good roof should keep out water and have a slope or drainage canals to carry water away from the walls and foundation.
Insulation in walls and ceiling keeps the house warmer in cold weather and cooler in hot weather.
Vents at each end of the roof allow fresh air to enter and stale air to leave, and prevents mold and rot.
A clear panel in the roof allows daylight in.
A gutter and downspout attached to the roof can catch rainwater and direct it into a cistern.
Windows on both sides of the house improve ventilation.
Screens on windows keep insects out.
Shutters on windows block out sun, rain, and wind, and help keep heat inside.
A split door provides ventilation while keeping animals out.
A shaded porch provides additional living space.
A foundation and platform provide stability and protection from dampness, flooding, and pests. Platforms can be built with a ramp instead of a step, making it easier for children, the elderly, and people with disabilities to get in and out of the house.
Make best use of sunlight
When building a house or a settlement, consider where the sun will be at different times of the year in order to make best use of the sun’s heat. In hot months, the sun rises high overhead at noon and provides direct heat for much of the day. In colder months, the sun is lower in the sky, gives little heat, and travels a different path through the sky.
In southern countries, houses will be more comfortable if most windows and exposed walls face north, where the sun is. In northern countries, most windows and exposed walls should face south. This general rule will help the entire house capture and retain the sun’s heat.
In the cold season, the low sun shining on exposed walls and windows helps keep a house warm.
In the hot season, trees planted on the side of the house where afternoon sun shines will help keep the house cool.
Choose materials for warmth
In places that get cold, some building materials help capture and store heat in the house. Materials with more thickness store heat best. Stone, brick, and blocks made of mud and straw store heat better than wood or unfilled concrete blocks. Filling concrete blocks with earth or concrete helps them store heat better. Using any of these materials, the best wall thickness for storing heat is 4 to 5 inches.
When the sun shines on the house, heat collects in the walls and floor.
When the sun sets and the air cools, the walls and floor release heat into the room.
Protect against heat and cold
Insulation is material that protects against heat and cold. Rather than having a single thin wall and a roof without a ceiling, a well-insulated house has a space between the outside and inside walls, and a ceiling below the roof. These spaces are filled with materials such as sawdust, wool, straw, cork, or cardboard or paper soaked in diluted borax and dried (to prevent termites from eating it).
In wooden houses, double walls with insulation between keep heat in and cold out.
If you cannot build double walls, cover inside walls with paper, foam, cardboard, or similar materials. This will add some insulation.
Thatch roofs give good insulation. So do floors of brick and compacted earth. To keep heat in or out of the house, seal cracks or holes around windows and doors. Cover windows to help keep the home cooler during the day and to retain heat at night. Windows that open will also allow air to flow for good ventilation.
Choosing building materials
The materials used to build a house can make the difference between an uncomfortable shelter and a healthy, beautiful one. But when forests and watersheds are damaged, natural building resources such as wood, thatch, and other plant materials are lost. And when large amounts of concrete and other “modern” materials become available, traditional materials and knowledge of how to build with them is lost, or is no longer valued by many people. The best building materials:
- come from the earth, and can be reused or returned to the earth when the life of the building is over.
- are harvested and produced locally, and fit the local climate.
- do not contain harmful chemicals or require large amounts of energy to produce.
Teenagers produce improved building materials
In the neighborhood of Santo Antonio on the outskirts of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, most houses are built in a few days using clay bricks and concrete blocks that are bought outside the community. There are few skilled builders and no one has much money, so residents build their houses with the help of unskilled workers.
Because of this, materials are often poorly prepared, by adding too much water to make cement, or by leaving out reinforcing steel.
Rosa Fernandez, an architect, visited Santo Antonio and saw how the lack of skills led to poor planning and building. She set out to improve the situation. With the help of government funding, she trained a group of teenagers in Santo Antonio to make compressed earth blocks. These were made from 2 parts sand to 1 part clay, with a small amount of cement, and then were pressed in a simple hand-operated machine. After the teenagers had learned to make the blocks, Rosa taught others in the community how to build with them, and the teenagers began a business of making and selling the blocks.
Now, many new houses are built with this safer, stronger building material. The money people use to buy the blocks stays in the community and helps to build a stronger future. And with all the practice and training the teenagers received, Santo Antonio now has many skilled builders.
Traditional and modern building materials
Most traditional buildings use combinations of mud, sand, clay, stone, straw, wood, and plant materials such as bamboo, thatch, and vines for roofs and walls. These materials are strong, locally available, and cost little or nothing. But they also have some problems. Mud walls may erode in the rain, thatch roofs can become homes for insect pests, and buildings that use only these materials may not last long.
Factory-made materials such as concrete blocks and metal roofing have replaced traditional materials in many places. People often use concrete because it is easy to handle and a house can be built in stages, with additions built on as the family earns more money. For some people, building a concrete home means economic success and a modern lifestyle.
But houses built with factory-made materials may not be best for peoples’ health or the environment. Often they are not well insulated for cold weather. Making concrete requires a lot of water and a lot of energy. If they are not reinforced, concrete block buildings collapse easily in earthquakes. Also, these materials are costly, and often are only available to people in large towns and cities.
When planning to build a home, consider the good and bad qualities of different materials that may be available. Just because others build their homes in a certain way does not mean it is the best way for everyone.
How to make natural earth plaster
Covering an earth, straw bale, or mud and stick house with plaster protects it from rain and prevents insects from living in the cracks in the walls. Plaster also makes a house more attractive.
You will need:
1½ parts of water + 2½ parts of clay soil (sifted with ¼ inch screen) = 1¼ parts of sand + 2 to 3 parts of chopped straw
1. Add sand and clay soil to water. Let it sit until clay and sand absorb the water.
2. Mix by hand until there are no lumps.
3. Add chopped straw and mix again until there are no lumps.
If you are plastering a mud wall, wet the wall. For adobe, straw bale, or other surfaces you may need to apply a layer of clay before applying the plaster. Apply plaster to a small section of wall with your hands and then smooth it with a trowel. When it dries, test it. Does it crack easily or crumble when you press it with your thumb? Does it break away from the wall easily when you pull it, or break down easily when you sprinkle water on it? If it cracks, add more straw. If it crumbles, try adding a paste made from wheat flour and water. If it breaks down easily in water, add longer straw. Once you have plaster that does not crumble, crack, or break down easily, apply it to your walls.
To plaster a floor, add more sand to this mix. Press down the surface to make it smooth and level before you start the new floor. Then apply plaster, smooth it, and let it dry for several weeks to prevent cracking later. If possible, seal the floor with linseed oil after it dries.
Earthquake resistant building
Many lives are lost every year because people live in houses that do not withstand earthquakes. Houses of unreinforced concrete block, or unreinforced brick or earth, and houses without solid foundations, are most vulnerable to earthquakes. Houses made of traditional and flexible materials, such as mud and sticks, wood, or piled earth mixed with straw (called “cob”), or straw bales stacked and tied together and covered with plaster (see Resources) are better able to withstand damage from earthquakes.
Combining traditional materials with improved building methods, such as foundations, cross-braces, and waterproof plaster, can make houses safer, more comfortable, and affordable. To reduce the risk of earthquake damage to earthen houses:
- Build low, single story, small buildings.
- Make walls curved if possible, especially at the corners.
- If you build in a square shape, reinforce corners with wooden cross-braces. If wood is not available, you can use wire.
- Build a foundation on solid ground using lime mortar or concrete with broken brick or large stones. Anchor the foundation materials together by including sticks, bamboo, iron wire or metal rods in the mix.
- Secure the wall to the foundation using rush matting, sticks, nails, metal, or iron wire cemented into the foundation.
- Use light materials for the roof (thatch or corrugated metal).
- To make brick or block houses safer, fasten the layers of brick or blocks together. Attach crossbeams from one wall to the other, and set horizontal braces between the beams to prevent the building from moving side-to-side. Attach the roof to the crossbeams.
Light materials, like straw bales, make walls that are safer in earthquakes, and help keep inside temperatures mild.
Planning with Communities
When people plan and build their own homes and communities together, they have more control over their lives and can develop a plan that fulfills their needs, hopes, and desires. As much as possible, governments and community development agencies should involve people in planning and maintaining their own housing projects. Remember, at its best, a community is more than a group of houses. In a vibrant community, each home is connected by shared public spaces, such as gardens, water and washing facilities, markets, schools, and other places where people interact.
Building housing requires people to work together. If planners, builders, development agencies, and housing providers encourage people to work together in ways that promote education, skill-sharing, and full participation, they will not only build housing, they will build healthy communities.
Building homes and community
For many years, poor people in South Africa have lived with a housing crisis that makes their poverty and health problems worse. The government tried to solve this by building housing for poor people. But the new houses were small, dark, too close together, and built in such a way that they were either too hot or too cold. They were far from schools, health centers, and shops, and had poor access to water, poor sanitation, did not keep the bad weather out, and needed to be repaired often. They just kept poor people poor.
In response to these problems, a group called Tlholego came together to build a new kind of village. They designed homes using locally available materials like earth, bricks, and straw. Using mud bricks on stone foundations, they designed and built houses that were healthy and attractive for the lowest possible cost (a little more than US $1000 for each house).
Besides being comfortable, the houses were designed to make the best use of local conditions. They had electricity, tanks to collect rainwater, gardens that reused water from the kitchen and bath, composting toilets, water heated by the sun, and window screens to keep insects out. With windows facing the sun, shade trees all around, and solid mud brick walls, the houses were protected from extreme heat and cold. Tlholego taught people how to build the houses. This saved on construction costs, and made sure each family had a house they were proud to live in.
The houses were planned and built around common spaces, such as roads, gardens, and public buildings. This way, each family’s home was a part of the larger community. Tlholego organized an education and training program for adults, and a school where children could learn reading and math, and also about farming, health, and the environment.
Tlholego is an “eco-village,” a village built in harmony with the environment and the needs of its people. Rather than building cheap homes for poor people, Tlholego built a community. Through their success, Tlholego showed it was possible for people who were once forced to live in poverty to use their own resources to build homes and a community rich in dignity. | <urn:uuid:1326fe1b-5648-4b7e-8e3b-d090c0e329bc> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://hesperian.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/en_cgeh_2012/en_cgeh_2012_17.pdf | 2019-03-20T14:18:03Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202347.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20190320125919-20190320151919-00372.warc.gz | 511,076,656 | 13,217 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998482 | eng_Latn | 0.998993 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1679,
3313,
4285,
5567,
7461,
9067,
10187,
11860,
14306,
16017,
17756,
20171,
21361,
22812,
23986,
25725,
27922,
30012,
31327,
33089,
34260,
36161,
38194,
40063,
41599,
43660,
45463,
47495,
48883,
50225,
51690,
53416,
54807,
56233,
57770,
59548,
60440,
62639
] | [
4.0625,
4.0625
] | 1 | 1 |
Chemical structures
- **Giant ionic structure**
- e.g. table salt
- IONIC
- electrons transferred
- e.g. sodium chloride (salt)
- **Giant covalent structure**
- e.g. diamond
- COVALENT
- electrons shared
- e.g. water, diamond
- **Simple molecules**
- e.g. water
- **Giant metallic structure**
- e.g. copper
- METALLIC
- electrons shared
- e.g. copper
**Metal atoms**
- Yellow
**Non-metal atoms**
- Blue
Giant Ionic Structures
In substances which have ionic bonding, the ions are arranged in geometric 3D patterns which go on “forever” (i.e. over extremely long distances compared to the size of the ions).
We call this a giant ionic structure (or lattice). All ionic compounds have giant ionic structures.
The electrostatic attraction of each ion affects all the other ions around it. It acts equally in all directions.
Properties of substances with giant ionic structures:
| structure | type of bonding | hardness | melting and boiling points | electrical conductivity |
|--------------------|-----------------------|---------------------------|----------------------------|-------------------------|
| Giant ionic lattice| Ionic (metal to non-metal) | Hard and brittle, crystalline | High | Solid – No Molten/solution - Yes |
High melting and boiling points:
Melting or boiling requires the lattice to be broken down so the ions can move around.
Throughout the lattice the ionic bonds are very strong it takes a lot of (heat) energy to break the lattice apart so that the ions are free to move.
What affects how high the melting point is?
Compare the melting points of these ionic compounds:
- NaCl: \( \text{Na}^+ \) and \( \text{Cl}^- \) \( 801^\circ\text{C} \)
- MgO: \( \text{Mg}^{2+} \) and \( \text{O}^{2-} \) \( 2852^\circ\text{C} \)
The higher the charges on the ions are, the stronger the electrostatic attraction between the ions is, and hence the more energy is needed to break these bonds to melt, or boil the substance.
Higher charges = higher melting/boiling points
Crystalline Structure
The regular arrangement of ions in the lattice gives these substances their crystalline structure and shape.
Ionic crystals are brittle because once a layer of ions in the crystal has been forced to move, ions of the same charge will be next to each other, and they will repel, splitting the crystal.
Electrical Conductivity
In order to conduct electricity, there must be **charge carriers** (charged particles) which are free to move.
Giant ionic lattices have charge carriers (ions) but solid ionic compounds do not conduct electricity because the ions are fixed in position in the giant ionic lattice so unable to move.
When liquid (melted) and when in solution, ionic compounds do conduct electricity because the ions are free to move, carrying the electrical charge.
Simple molecular structures
These pictures illustrate some common substances with covalent bonding – you should notice that they are all liquids or gases at room temperature. This tells us that they all have low melting and boiling points.
Substances with covalent bonding are often made up of individual molecules. We call this a simple molecular structure. Inside each molecule, strong covalent bonds hold the atoms together, but between the molecules there are only weak forces holding one molecule to another.
- **strong covalent bonds between atoms in a molecule**
- these are not broken when the substance melts or boils
- **very weak forces between molecules**
- these must be overcome to allow the molecules to move around in liquids, or gases
full of $\text{Br}_2$ molecules
Properties of substances with simple molecular structure:
| structure | type of bonding | melting and boiling points | Electrical conductivity | Hardness |
|-----------------|--------------------------|----------------------------|-------------------------|---------------------------|
| Simple molecules| Covalent (non-metal to non-metal) | Low | Solid – No | Typically soft and not brittle |
Melting and boiling points are low because the intermolecular forces between the individual molecules are weak. Overcoming these forces does not take much energy. NO BONDS NEED TO BE BROKEN TO MELT OR BOIL SIMPLE MOLECULAR SUBSTANCES!
Substances with simple molecular structures do not conduct electricity, either when solid or when liquid (melted), because there are no charge carriers (no ions or delocalised electrons) to carry the electrical charge.
Macromolecules
**Macromolecules** are simple molecules, but they are VERY LARGE - containing many atoms, arranged in a geometric structure.
Like any simple molecules they have weak intermolecular forces between the macromolecules, hence low melting and boiling points.
**Fullerenes** are macromolecules containing carbon atoms in linked rings (often hexagonal). These form cage- or tube-like structures.
A variety of **fullerenes** have been made, in different shapes including carbon nanotubes, which are extremely strong.
Applications:
- drug delivery into the body
- lubricants
- new catalysts
- reinforcing materials e.g. in tennis rackets
Sir Harry Kroto (a UK chemist) got a Nobel Prize for discovering $C_{60}$ in 1985.
Giant Covalent lattices
Atoms that share electrons by covalent bonding can sometimes form large networks of covalent bonds (lattices) called giant covalent structures.
This is most common with Group 4 elements and their compounds.
Examples include
- graphite and diamond (two forms of carbon)
- quartz (silicon dioxide)
Properties of substances with giant covalent lattices:
| structure | type of bonding | melting and boiling points | Electrical conductivity | Hardness |
|--------------------|-----------------------|----------------------------|-------------------------|---------------------------|
| Giant covalent lattice | covalent (non-metal to non-metal) | High | Solid – No, Liquid – No, Solution - No | Very hard, crystalline (except graphite) |
Graph showing melting and boiling points for C (diamond) and SiO₂.
Substances with giant covalent lattice structures are **hard materials**, because the bonds holding the atoms in place are strong.
They **don’t conduct electricity** – there are no charge carriers (no ions or delocalised electrons) to carry the electrical charge. **EXCEPT GRAPHITE!**
Because it takes a lot of energy to break the strong covalent bonds throughout the lattice:
- They are chemically very **unreactive**
- They have **very high melting and boiling points**
**Structure of diamond**
Each carbon atom is bonded to four other carbon atoms, arranged tetrahedrally throughout the lattice. The structure is therefore a 3D network of single covalent bonds.
**Use of diamond:**
Because diamond is very hard, it is a good material to use for the cutting edges of drills or saws which must cut through hard materials such as metals or ceramics.
Its high melting point means it won’t melt even when the cutting edge gets very hot due to the friction.
*You need to be able to draw something like this!*
Graphite
In graphite, the atoms are bonded in giant layers, with each carbon atom covalently bonded to 3 neighbours.
The layers are attracted to one another by weak intermolecular forces, so the layers easily slide over each other making graphite softer than diamond.
The bonds throughout a layer are strong, so melting and boiling points are high.
The ‘extra’ outer shell electron from each carbon atom is delocalised so it is able to move through the lattice, and therefore can carry an electrical charge. Graphite therefore conducts electricity.
Use of graphite:
Because graphite is softer than diamond, the layers slide over one another. This property makes graphite useful in pencils and as a lubricant.
Because graphite is fairly inert (unreactive), has a high melting point, and can conduct electricity, it is used where electrical contacts must be made to moving parts, e.g. in motors.
Giant Metallic lattices
The arrangement of layers of metal ions, surrounded by delocalised electrons is called a Giant Metallic structure (or lattice). Many of the properties of metals are due to their bonding and structure.
Properties:
| structure | type of bonding | melting and boiling points | Electrical conductivity | Hardness |
|--------------------|-----------------------|----------------------------|-------------------------|-----------------------------------------------|
| Giant metallic lattice | metallic (metal to metal) | High | Yes – solid and liquid | Hard, not brittle (can be bent and shaped) |
High melting and boiling points
Because the metallic bonds throughout the lattice are very strong it takes a lot of (heat) energy to break the lattice apart so that the metal ions are free to move. This is why metals have high melting and boiling points.
The higher the charge on the metal ion, the stronger the metallic bonds will be, and so the higher the melting point.
e.g. Magnesium (Mg$^{2+}$) has a higher melting point than sodium (Na$^+$)
Good electrical conductors
The delocalised electrons in a metal can move throughout the lattice. These are charge carriers, so metals conduct electricity whether solid or molten.
Good conductors of heat
Metals are also good conductors of heat because the delocalised electrons can spread the vibrational (heat) energy through the metal lattice.
Ductile and Malleable
The layers of metal ions in a pure metal can slide over each other – this is why metals can be hammered and bent into different shapes (malleable), or drawn out into wires (ductile).
NOT brittle
Because the electrons are free to move, the layers don’t break apart when they slide over each other – the electrons keep the layers bonded together.
Alloys
Definition: An alloy is a metal which has been mixed with small amounts of other elements (usually metals) to give it special properties e.g. greater hardness.
Pure metal:
SOFT
Alloy:
HARDER
Examples:
- **steel** – an alloy of iron with other metals e.g. chromium (stainless steel) which stops the iron rusting, and makes it harder for use in tools.
- **brass** – an alloy of copper and zinc. It only tarnishes slowly, and is used e.g. for door knobs, and musical instruments.
- **solder** – an alloy of zinc and lead. It is used in electronics to fix components to circuit boards.
- **amalgam** – an alloy of mercury with silver or tin. It is used for dental fillings because it can be shaped when warm and resists corrosion.
Pure gold jewellery?
Gold jewellery is always an alloy of gold with other metals, because pure gold would be too soft, so it would bend easily, or wear away quickly.
White gold is an alloy of gold with nickel, platinum or palladium.
The familiar yellow gold is an alloy of gold with copper and silver. Adding more copper than silver gives pink gold.
Smart alloys
A shape memory alloy (SMA) or smart alloy returns to its original shape after being deformed.
The alloy has a special temperature (the memory temperature).
- below this temperature it can be bent and shaped
- once heated above the memory temperature it goes back to its “remembered” shape
Nitinol is an SMA made from nickel and titanium. It is used to make spectacles that ‘remember’ their shape and do not break when crushed.
SMA is used in dental braces. When cooled, it can be bent to fit around teeth that are out of position. When it warms up in the mouth it returns to its correct shape, pulling the teeth into alignment. | e62dd281-00d5-4da4-ae38-da10d9132552 | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://chemistryklipz.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/igcse-structure.pdf | 2020-10-30T07:16:33+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107909746.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20201030063319-20201030093319-00452.warc.gz | 251,817,478 | 2,506 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.975006 | eng_Latn | 0.997533 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
434,
855,
2081,
2407,
2882,
3124,
3676,
4596,
5330,
6215,
7229,
8131,
9282,
10002,
10741,
11741
] | [
4.03125
] | 1 | 0 |
Basic Concepts in DBMS
NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA
SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
COURSE CODE: CIT 843
COURSE TITLE: INTRODUCTION TO DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
COURSE GUIDE
Course Code: CIT 843
Course Title: Introduction to Database Management System
Course Developer/Writer:
Course Editor:
Programme Leader:
Course Coordinator:
NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA
| CONTENTS | PAGE |
|----------------------------------------------|------|
| Introduction | iii |
| Course Aims | iii |
| Course Objectives | iii |
| Working through this Course | iv |
| What you will Learn in this Course | iv |
| The Course Material | iv |
| Study Units | iv |
| Textbooks and References | v |
| Presentation Schedule | vi |
| Assessment | vi |
| Assessment File | vi |
| Tutor-Marked Assignment | vi |
| Final Examination and Grading | vii |
| Course Marking Scheme | vii |
| Course Overview | vii |
| How to Get the Most from this Course | vii |
| Facilitators/Tutors and Tutorials | vii |
| Summary | viii |
Introduction
Let me welcome you to this course titled CIT 843 - Database Management System. I promise enjoyment and reward as you study Database Management System.
Database Management System is a two credit unit course available to all students offering Masters of Science (M.Sc.) Computer and Information Technology (CIT).
A Database Management System (DBMS) is a set of software programs that controls the organization, storage, management, and retrieval of data in a database. It is a set of pre-written programs that are used to store, update and retrieve a Database. The DBMS accepts requests for data from the application program and instructs the operating system to transfer the appropriate data. When a DBMS is used, information systems can be changed much more easily as the organization's information requirements change. New categories of data can be added to the database without disruption to the existing system. Organizations may use one kind of DBMS for daily transaction processing and then move the detail onto another computer that uses another DBMS better suited for random inquiries and analysis. Overall systems design decisions are performed by data administrators and systems analysts. Detailed database design is performed by database administrators.
Course Aims
The aim of the course is not complex. The course will allow you to develop background knowledge as well as core expertise in Database Management Systems.
Course Objectives
To achieve the aims set out, the course has a set of objectives. Each unit has specific objectives which are included at the beginning of unit. You should read these objectives before you study the unit. You may wish to refer to them during your study to check on your progress. You should always look at the unit objectives after completion of each unit. By doing so, you would have followed the instructions in the unit.
Below are the comprehensive objectives of the course as a whole. By meeting these objectives, you should have achieved the aims of the course as a whole. In addition to the aims above, this course sets out some objectives. Thus, after going through the course, you should be able to:
- Understand database Design and Normalization techniques.
- Use Structured Query Language and Transaction Management.
- Understand the Importance of backup and recovery techniques.
- Develop database system to handle real world problem.
Working through this Course
To complete this course you are required to read each study unit, read the textbooks and read other materials which may be provided by the National Open University of Nigeria.
Each unit contains self-assessment exercises and at certain points in the course you would be required to submit assignments for assessment purposes. At the end of the course there is a final examination. The course should take you about a total 15 weeks to complete. Below you will find listed all the components of the course, what you have to do and how you should allocate your time to each unit in order to complete the course on time and successfully.
This course entails that you spend a lot of time to read. I would advice that you avail yourself the opportunity of attending the tutorial sessions where you have the opportunity of comparing your knowledge with that of other people.
What you will learn in this Course
This course consists of units and course guide. This course guide tells you briefly what the course is all about, what course materials you will be using and how you can work with these materials. In addition, it advocates some general guidelines for the amount of time you are likely to spend on each unit of the course in order to complete it successfully.
It gives you advice in terms of your Tutor-marked Assignment which will be made available in the assignment file. There will be regular tutorial classes that are related to the course. It is advisable for you to attend these tutorial sessions. The course will prepare you for the challenges you will meet in the database management systems.
The Course Materials
The main components of the course are:
1. The Course Guide
2. Study Units
3. References/Further Readings
4. Assignments
5. Presentation Schedule
Study Units
The study units in this course are as follows:
Module 1 Database Management systems Concepts
Unit 1 the Basic Concepts of DBMS
Basic Concepts in DBMS
Unit 2 Data Modeling Overview
Unit 3 Entity-Relationship Modeling
Unit 4 Relational Data Integrity: Conversion of E-R Model to Relational Model
Unit 5 Data Redundancy and Normalization
Unit 6 Relational Algebra
Module 2 Structured Query Languages and Transaction Management
Unit 1 Structured Query Language (SQL)
Unit 2 SQL Functions
Unit 3 Transactions and Concurrency Management
Unit 4 Security
Unit 5 Database Architectures
Module 3 Design and Development of Database Applications
Unit 1 Introduction to Microsoft Access Tables
Unit 2 Introduction to Microsoft Access Queries
Unit 3 Introduction to Microsoft Access Forms
Unit 4 Introduction to Microsoft Access Reports
Textbooks and References
Brainbell.com (2008). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved June 20th, 2008, from http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/Access_2003/
Bcschool.net (2003-2006). Create Database Applications using Microsoft Access, Retrieved June 20th, 2008, from http://www.bcschool.net/staff/accesshelp.htm
cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu (2008). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved January 15th, 2008, from http://cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu/holowczak/classes/2200/access/accessall.html
databasedev.co.uk (2003-2006). Data Redundancy Defined - Relational Database Design. In, Database Solutions for Microsoft Access, Retrieved October 10th, 2006, from: http://www.databasedev.co.uk/data-redundancy.html
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey . Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Graeme C. Simson, Graham C. Witt (2004). Data Modeling Essentials. San Francisco. Morgan Kaufmann
Microsoft.com (2009). Microsoft Access help file. Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://microsoft.com/office/access/default.htm.
Microsoft.com (2009). Microsoft Access Tutorial: Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://www.bcschool.net/staff/accesshelp.htm
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
Presentation Schedule
Your course materials have important dates for the early and timely completion and submission of your TMA and attending tutorials. You should remember that you are required to submit all your assignments by the stipulated time and date. You should guide against falling behind in your work.
Assessment
There are three aspects to the assessment of the course. First is made up of self-assessment exercises, second consists of the tutor-marked assignments and third is the written examination/end of course examination.
You are advised to do the exercises. In tackling the assignments, you are expected to apply information, knowledge and techniques you gathered during the course. The assignment must be submitted to your facilitator for formal assessment in accordance with the deadlines stated in the presentation schedule and the assignment file. The work you submit to your tutor for assessment will count for 30% of your total course work. At the end of the course you will need to sit for a final or end of course examination of about three hour duration. This examination will count for 70% of your total course mark.
Assessment File
Assessment file for this course will be made available to you. In this file, you will find details of work that you must submit to your tutor for marking. The marks you obtain in the continuous assessment will count towards your final marks. You are expected to pass both the continuous assessment and the final examination.
Tutor-Marked assignment
The TMA is a continuous assessment component of your course. It accounts for 30% of the total score. You will be given four (4) TMAs to answer. The three of these must be answered before you are allowed to sit for the end of course examination. The TMAs would be given to you by your facilitator and returned after you have done the assignment. Assignment questions for the units in this course are contained in the assignment file. You will be able to complete your assignment from the information and materials contained in your reading, references and study units. However, it is desirable in all degree level of education to demonstrate that you have read and researched more into your references, which will give you a wider view point and may provide you with a deeper understanding of the subject.
Make sure that each assignment reaches your facilitator on or before the deadline given in the presentation schedule and assignment file. If for any reason you can not complete your work on time, contact your facilitator before the assignment is due to discuss the
possibility of an extension. Extension will not be granted after the due date unless there are exceptional circumstances.
**Final Examination and Grading**
The end of course examination for Introduction to database management Systems will be for about three hours and it has a value of 70% of the total course work. The examination will consist of questions, which will reflect the type of self-testing, practice exercise and tutor-marked assignment problems you have previously encountered. All areas of the course will be assessed.
Kindly use the time between finishing the last unit and sitting for the examination to revise the whole course. You might find it useful to review your self-test, TMA’s and comments on them before the examination. The end of course examination covers information from all parts of the course.
**Course Marking Scheme**
| Assignment | Marks |
|-----------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Assignment 1 – 4 | Four assignments, best three marks of the four count at 10% each – 30% of the course marks. |
| End of course examination | 70% of overall course marks. |
| Total | 100% of course materials. |
**Course Overview**
The first module unit focuses on the meaning, concepts and advantages of database management system. Module two deals with architecture of the database management system, relational database integrity, transaction and concurrency management, redundancy and associated problems. The third module introduces you to Microsoft Access as an example of database management systems.
**How to Get the Most from this Course**
Although you will be required to study the units on your own, arrangements have been made for regular interactions with your tutor at the study center. The tutor is expected to conduct tutorials and useful discussion sessions with you and the other members at the study center. Please be available at each tutorial session and participate actively.
**Facilitators/Tutors and Tutorials**
There are 16 hours of tutorials provided in support of this course. You will be notified of the dates, times and location of these tutorials as well as the name and phone number of your facilitator, as soon as you are allocated a tutorial group.
Your facilitator will mark and comment on your assignments, keep a close watch on your progress and any difficulty you might face and provide assistance to you during the course. You are expected to mail your Tutor Marked Assignments to your facilitator before the schedule date (at least two working days are required). They will be marked by your tutor and returned to you as soon as possible.
Do not delay to contact your facilitator by telephone or e-mail if you need assistance.
The following might be circumstances in which you would find assistance necessary, hence you would have to contact your facilitator if:
- You do not understand any part of the study or the assigned readings.
- You have difficulty with the self-tests
- You have a question or problem with an assignment or with the grading of an assignment.
You should endeavour to attend the tutorials. This is the only chance to have face to face contact with your course facilitator and to ask questions which are answered instantly. You can raise any problem encountered in the course of your study.
To gain much benefit from the course tutorials prepare a question list before attending them. You will learn a lot from participating actively in discussions.
**Summary**
Introduction to Database Management Systems is a course that teaches learners to create and maintain their own database systems using software readily available in the industry such as MS Access. It also provides knowledge on theoretical concepts like relational algebra and query processing.
You will be required to design your own simple information retrieval system for a given application. This will give you thorough exposure to a multitude of DBMS tasks, such as database creation, maintenance, query processing etc. At this stage you would summarize your experiences with the knowledge gained. You would also be made to provide feedback to the course instructor about your view of the pros and cons of a DBMS from your perspective, and about how the course enhanced your sphere of knowledge, and how the course can be improved even further. This would serve the purpose of the course instructor learning from the learners about the application side of things and also about better structuring of courses.
I wish you success in the course and I hope that you will find it both interesting and useful. Thank you.
Basic Concepts in DBMS
Basic Concepts in DBMS
Course Code: CIT 843
Course Title: Introduction to Database Management System
Course Developer/Writer:
Course Editor:
Programme Leader:
Course Coordinator:
NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA
Module 1: Database Management systems Concepts
Basic Concepts in DBMS
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 2 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 2 |
| 3.0 What is Database? | 2 |
| 3.1 Database Management System (DBMS) | 3 |
| 3.2 Advantages of DBMS | 3 |
| 3.3 Example Database | 4 |
| 3.4 Brief History of Database | 4 |
| 3.5 Contents of a Database | 6 |
| 3.5.1 User Data | 6 |
| 3.5.2 Metadata | 7 |
| 3.5.3 Indexes | 8 |
| 3.6 Data Modeling and Database Design | 8 |
| 3.6.1 Database Development Process | 9 |
| 3.6.2 Designing a Database – A Brief Example | 9 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 11 |
| 5.0 Summary | 11 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 12 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and Other Resources | 12 |
1.0 Introduction
Data Management is one of the areas of Computer Science that has applications in almost every field. In this unit, we shall examine some basic terms in database management system.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
a. Define database
b. Know why you need database management system
c. Know the advantages of using database management system
3.0 What is Database?
a. A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can easily be accessed, managed, and updated.
b. A Database (DB) is structure that can store information about:
i. multiple types of entities;
ii. the attributes that describe those entities; and
iii. the relationships among the entities
c. A Database (DB) is collection of related data - with the following properties:
i. A DB is designed, built and populated with data for a specific purpose
ii. A DB represents some aspect of the real world.
d. An integrated, self-describing collection of related data.
i. **Integrated**: Data is stored in a uniform way, typically all in one place (a single physical computer for example)
ii. **Self-Describing**: A database maintains a description of the data it contains (Catalog)
iii. **Related**: Data has some relationship to other data. In a University we have learners who take courses taught by instructors
iv. By taking advantage of relationships and integration, we can provide information to users as opposed to simply data.
v. We can also say that the database is a model of what the users perceived.
vi. Three main categories of models:
1. **User or Conceptual Models**: How users perceive the world and/or the business.
2. **Logical Models**: Represent the logic of how a business operates. For example, the relationship between different entities and the flow of data through the organization. Based on the User's model.
3. **Physical Models**: Represent how the database is actually implemented on a computer system. This is based on the logical model.
3.1 Database Management System
A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can easily be accessed, managed, and updated.
Database Management System (DBMS) is a collection of software programs that are used to define, construct, maintain and manipulate data in a database. Database System (DBS) contains:
a. The Database;
b. The DBMS; and
c. Application Programs (what users interact with)
**Figure 1.1** Block diagram of a Database system
*Source: Baruch College City University of New York*
### 3.2 Advantages of a DBMS
A DBMS can provide:
a. Data Consistency and Integrity - by controlling access and minimizing data duplication
b. Application program independence - by storing data in a uniform fashion
c. Data Sharing - by controlling access to data items, many users can access data concurrently
d. Backup and Recovery
e. Security and Privacy
f. Multiple views of data
### 3.3 Example Database
Table 1: An Example Database
| CustomerID | Name | Address | City | State | AccountNumber | Balance |
|------------|--------------|------------------|--------|-------|---------------|---------|
| 123 | Mr. Sola | 12 Lekki | Lagos | LA | 0001 | 4000 |
| 123 | Mr. Sola | 12 Lekki | Lagos | LA | 0002 | 2000 |
| 124 | Mrs. James | 15 Awolowo Ave. | Lagos | LA | 0003 | 1000 |
| 125 | Mr. Ade | 43 Gwagwa Ln. | Maitama| AB | 0004 | 6000 |
| 125 | Mr. Ade | 43 Gwagwa Ln. | Maitama| AB | 0005 | 9000 |
| 127 | Mr. & Mrs. Bayo | 61 Zik Rd. | Garki | AB | 0006 | 500 |
| 127 | Mr. & Mrs. Bayo | 61 Zik Rd. | Garki | AB | 0007 | 800 |
Activity A
Use table 1 to answer the following questions
1. What happens when a customer moves to a new house?
2. Who should have access to what data in this database?
3. What happens if Mr. and Mrs. Bayo both try and withdraw N500 from account 0006?
4. What happens if the system crashes just as Mr. Ade is depositing his latest paycheck?
5. What data is the customer concerned with?
6. What data is a bank manager concerned with?
7. Send a mailing to all customers with checking accounts having greater than N2000 balance
8. Let all AB customers know of a new branch location
3.4 Brief History of Database Systems
a. Ancient History:
i. Data are not stored on disk; programmer defines both logical data structure and physical structure, such as storage structure, access methods, I/O modes etc.
ii. One data set per program: High data redundancy.
iii. There is no persistence; Random access memory (RAM) is expensive and limited, Programmer productivity low.
b. **1968 File-Based:**
i. Predecessor of database, data maintained in a flat file.
ii. Processing characteristics determined by common use of magnetic tape medium.
iii. Data are stored in files with interface between programs and files.
iv. Mapping happens between logical files and physical file, one file corresponds to one or several programs.
v. Various access methods exits, e.g., sequential, indexed, random.
vi. Requires extensive programming in third-generation language such as COBOL, BASIC.
vii. **Limitations:**
1. Separation and isolation: Each program maintains its own set of data, users of one program may not aware of holding or blocking by other programs.
2. Duplication: Same data is held by different programs, thus, wastes space and resources.
3. High maintenance costs such as ensuring data consistency and controlling access
4. Sharing granularity is very coarse
5. Weak security
c. **1970 presents Era of relational database and Database Management System:**
Based on relational calculus, shared collection of logically related data and a description of this data, designed to meet the information needs of an organization; System catalog/metadata provides description of data to enable program-data independence; logically related data comprises entities, attributes, and relationships of an organization’s information. Data abstraction allows view level, a way of presenting data to a group of users and logical level, how data is understood to be when writing queries.
d. In 1970, Ted Codd at IBM’s San Jose Lab proposed relational models. Two major projects started and both were operational in late 1970s. INGRES at University of California, Berkeley became commercial and followed up POSTGRES which was incorporated into Informix. System R at IBM san Jose Lab, later evolved into DB2, which became one of the first DBMS product based on the relational model. (Oracle produced a similar product just prior to DB2.)
e. 1976: Peter Chen defined the Entity-relationship(ER) model
f. 1980s: Maturation of the relational database technology, more relational based DBMS were developed and SQL standard adopted by ISO and ANSI.
g. 1985: Object-oriented DBMS (OODBMS) develops. Little success commercially because advantages did not justify the cost of converting billions of bytes of data to new format.
h. 1990s: incorporation of object-orientation in relational DBMSs, new application areas, such as data warehousing and OLAP, web and Internet, Interest in text and multimedia, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and management resource planning (MRP).
i. 1991: Microsoft ships access, a personal DBMS created as element of Windows gradually supplanted all other personal DBMS products.
j. 1995: First Internet database applications were introduced.
k. 1997: XML applied to database processing, which solves long-standing database problems. Major vendors begin to integrate XML into DBMS products.
3.5 Contents of a Database
Database consists of:
a. User Data
b. Metadata
c. Indexes
d. Application metadata
3.5.1 User Data
i. Users work with database directly by entering, updating and viewing data.
ii. For our purposes, data will be generally stored in tables with some relationships between tables.
iii. Each table has one or more columns. A set of columns forms a database record.
iv. Recall our example database for the bank. What were some problems we discussed?
v. Here is one improvement - split into 2 tables:
| CustomerID | Name | Address | City | State |
|------------|----------|------------------|------|-------|
| 123 | Mr. Sola | 12 Lekki | Lagos| LA |
| 124 | Mrs. James | 15 Awolowo Ave. | Lagos| LA |
| 125 | Mr. Ade | 43 Gwagwa Ln. | Maitama| AB |
Table 3: Account Table
| CustomerID | AccountNumber | Balance |
|------------|---------------|---------|
| 123 | 0001 | 4000 |
| 123 | 0002 | 2000 |
| 124 | 0003 | 1000 |
| 125 | 004 | 6000 |
| 125 | 005 | 9000 |
| 127 | 006 | 500 |
| 127 | 007 | 800 |
vi. The customers table has 4 records and 5 columns. The Accounts table has 7 records and 3 columns.
vii. Note relationship between the two tables - CustomerID column.
viii. How should we split data into the tables? What are the relationships between the tables?
These are questions that are answered by Database Modeling and Database Design. We shall consider Database modeling in unit 2.
### 3.5.2 Metadata
Recall that a database is self describing, therefore, Metadata can be described as:
i. Data about data.
ii. Data that describe how user data are stored in terms of table name, column name, data type, length, primary keys, etc.
iii. Metadata are typically stored in *System tables* or *System Catalog* and are typically only directly accessible by the DBMS or by the system administrator.
Have a look at the Database Documentor feature of MS Access (under the tools menu, choose Analyze and then Documentor). This tool queries the system tables to give all kinds of Metadata for tables, etc. in an MS Access database.
### 3.5.3 Indexes
In keeping with our desire to provide users with several different views of data, indexes provide an alternate means of accessing, sorting and searching data.
An index for our new banking example might include the account numbers in a sorted order.
Indexes allow the database to access a record without having to search through the entire table.
Updating data requires an extra step: The index must also be updated.
Example: Index in a book consists of two things:
1) A Keyword stored in order
2) A pointer to the rest of the information. In the case of the book, the pointer is a page number.
3.5.3 Applications Metadata
Many DBMS have storage facilities for forms, reports, queries and other application components.
Applications Metadata is accessed via the database development programs.
Example: Look at the Documentor tool in MS Access. It can also show metadata for Queries, Forms, Reports, etc.
3.6 Data Modeling and Database Design
In this section, we will define the following:
a. **Database Design**: The activity of specifying the schema of a database in a given data model
b. **Database Schema**: The structure of a database that:
i. Captures data types, relationships and constraints in data
ii. Is independent of any application program
iii. Changes infrequently
c. **Data Model**:
i. A set of primitives for defining the structure of a database.
ii. A set of operations for specifying retrieval and updates on a database
iii. Examples: Relational, Hierarchical, Networked, Object-Oriented
In this course, we focus on the Relational data model.
d. **Database Instance or State**: The actual data contained in a database at a given time.
3.6.1 The Database Development Process
The following are brief outline describing the database development process.
a. **User needs assessment and requirements gathering**: Determine what the users are looking for, what functions should be supported, how the system should behave.
b. **Data Modeling**: Based on user requirements, form a logical model of the system. This logical model is then converted to a physical data model (tables, columns, relationships, etc.) that will be implemented.
c. **Implementation**: Based on the data model, a database can be created. Applications are then written to perform the required functions.
d. **Testing**: The system is tested using real data.
e. **Deployment**: The system is deployed to users. Maintenance of the system begins.
### 3.6.2 Designing a Database - A Brief Example
For our Bank example, let's assume that the managers are interested in creating a database to track their customers and accounts.
a. **Tables**
**CUSTOMERS**
CustomerId, Name, Street, City, State, Zip
**ACCOUNTS**
CustomerId, AccountNumber, AccountType, DateOpened, Balance
Note that we use an *artificial* identifier (a number we make up) for the customer called CustomerId. Given a CustomerId, we can uniquely identify the remaining information. We call CustomerId a **Key** for the CUSTOMERS table.
- CustomerId is the **key** for the CUSTOMERS table.
- AccountNumber is the key for the ACCOUNTS table.
- CustomerId in the ACCOUNTS table is called a **Foreign Key**
b. **Relationships**
The relationship between CUSTOMERS and ACCOUNTS is by CustomerId. Since a customer may have more than one account at the bank, we call this a **One to Many** relationship. (1:N).
c. **Domains**
A domain is a set of values that a column may have. Domain also includes the type and length or size of data found in each column.
**CUSTOMERS**
| Column | Domain |
|--------|--------|
| | |
| Column | Data Type | Size |
|-----------------|-----------|------|
| CustomerId (Key)| Integer | 20 |
| Name | Character | 30 |
| Street | Character | 30 |
| City | Character | 25 |
| State | Character | 2 |
| Zip | Character | 2 |
**ACCOUNTS**
| Column | Domain |
|----------------------|--------|
| CustomerId (FK) | Integer 20 |
| AccountNumber (Key) | Integer 15 |
| AccountType | Character 2 |
| DateOpened | Date |
| Balance | Real 12,2 |
We use the above information to build a logical model of the database.
This logical model is then converted to a physical model and implemented as tables.
The following is some example data for the Accounts and Customers tables:
**Customers Table**
| CustomerID | Name | Street | City | State | Zip |
|------------|--------------|-------------------------|------|-------|-----|
| 123 | Mr. Sola | 12 Lekki | Lagos| LA | 01 |
| 124 | Mrs. James | 15 Awolowo Ave. | Lagos| LA | 01 |
| 125 | Mr. Ade | 43 Gwagwa Ln. | Maitama| AB | 09 |
| 127 | Mr. & Mrs. Bayo | 61 Zik Rd. | Garki| AB | 10 |
**Accounts Table**
| CustomerId | AccountNumber | AccountType | DateOpened | Balance |
|------------|---------------|-------------|------------|---------|
| 123 | 0001 | Checking | 10/12/08 | 4000.00 |
d. **Business Rules**
Business rules allow us to specify constraints on what data can appear in tables and what operations can be performed on data in tables. For example:
- An account balance can never be negative.
- A Customer cannot be deleted if they have an existing (open) account.
- Money can only be transferred from a "Savings" account to a "Checking" account.
- Savings accounts with less than a $500 balance incur a service charge.
**Activity B**
Briefly explain the following terms:
(a) User data (b) Metadata (c) Indexes (d) Tables (e) Relationship (f) Domains
### 4.0 Conclusion
A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can easily be accessed, managed, and updated. Database Management System is a software package designed to store and manage databases.
### 5.0 Summary
In this unit we have learnt that:
i. A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can easily be accessed, managed, and updated.
ii. **Database Management System (DBMS)** is a collection of software programs that are used to define, construct, maintain and manipulate data in a database. A DBMS contains User Data, Metadata, Indexes and Application metadata.
iii. The advantages of DBMS include: data independence and efficient access; reduced application development time; data integrity and security; uniform data administration; concurrent access and recovery from crashes.
iv. A Data Model is a collection of concepts for describing data.
v. The relational model is the most widely used model today
vi. The relational model concept is relation; this is basically a table with rows and columns.
vii. Every relation has a schema which describes the columns or fields.
viii. A database schema is a description of a particular collection of data, using a given model.
ix. Database development process include: User needs assessment and requirements gathering; Data Modeling; Implementation; and Testing.
x. The following three terms are used in database design: Table, Relationship, and Domain.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1(a) Using Table I, design a database for ABC Bank which would allow them to track their customer and accounts. Pay good attention to tables structures, relationship and domains
(b) Explain the following terms:
i. Key
ii. Foreign key
iii. Domains
2. What are the advantages of using a Database management System?
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey . Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives
3.0 What is Data Modeling?
3.1 Data Modeling in the Context of Database Design
3.2 Components of a Data Model
3.3 Why is Data Modeling Important?
3.4 What Makes a Good Data Model?
3.5 Entity-Relationship Model
3.6 Basic Constructs of E-R modeling
3.6.1 Entities
3.6.2 Attributes
3.6.3 Identifiers
3.6.4 Relationships
3.6.5 Generalization Hierarchies
3.7 E-R Notation
4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
7.0 Further Reading and Other Resources
This unit is about one of the most critical stages in the development of a computerized information system – the design of data structures and the documentation of that design in a set of data model.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
d. Know what data modeling and Entity Relationship is all about
e. Understand the E-R modeling constructs
f. Identify an entity in an E-R relation
g. Know what relationship is in E-R relationship model
h. Draw graph of relations in E-R relationship model
i. Know the advantages of using database management system
3.0 What is Data Modeling?
A data model is a conceptual representation of the data structures that are required by a database. The data structures include the data objects, the associations between data objects, and the rules which govern the operations on the objects. To use common analogy, the data model is equivalent to an architect’s building plans.
There are two major methodologies used to create a data model: the Entity-Relationship (ER) approach and the Object Model. In this unit, we shall focus on the Entity-Relationship approach.
3.1 Data Modeling in the Context of Database Design
Database design is defined as: “designing the logical and physical structure of one or more databases to accommodate the information needs of the users in an organization for a defined set of applications”. The design process roughly follows five steps:
1. planning and analysis
2. conceptual design
3. logical design
4. physical design
5. implementation
3.2 Components of a Data Model
The data model gets its inputs from the planning and analysis stage. Here the modeler, along with system analysts, collects information about the requirements of the database by reviewing the existing documentation and interviewing end-users.
The data model has two outputs. The first is an entity-relationship diagram which represents the data structure in a pictorial form. Because the diagram is easily learned, it is valuable tool to communicate the model to the end-user. The second component is a
data document. This is a document that describes in detail the data objects, relationships, and rules required by the database.
3.3 Why is data Modeling Important?
The goal of the data model is to make sure that all the data objects required by the database are completely and accurately represented. Because the data model uses easily understood notations and natural language, it can be reviewed and verified as correct by the end-users.
The data model is also detailed enough to be used by the database developers as a “blueprint” for building the physical database.
The information contained in a data model will be used to define the relational tables, the primary and the foreign keys, stored procedures, and triggers.
A poorly designed database will require more time in the long-run. Without a careful planning you may create a database that omits data required to create critical reports, produces results that are incorrect or inconsistent, and is unable to accommodate changes in user’s requirements.
3.4 What Makes a Good Data Model?
The following are the characteristics of a good Data Model:
a. **Completeness**: Does the model support all necessary data?
b. **Non redundancy**: Does the model specify a database in which the same fact could be recorded more than once?
c. **Enforcement of Business Rules**: How accurately does the model reflect and enforce the rules that apply to the business data?
d. **Data Reusability**: Will the data stored in the database be reusable for the purposes beyond those anticipated in the process model?
e. **Stability and Flexibility**: How well will the model cope with possible changes to the business requirements?
f. **Elegance**: Does the data model provide a reasonable neat and simple classification of the data?
g. **Communication**: How effective is the model in supporting communication among the various stakeholders in the design of the system?
h. **Integration**: How will the proposed database fit with the organization’s existing and future database?
Activity A
1. What is Data Modeling?
2. Why is Data Modeling important?
3. What are the characteristics of a good data model?
3.5 The Entity-Relationship Model
The Entity-Relationship (ER) model is a conceptual data model that views the real world as entities and relationships. A basic component of the model is the Entity-Relationship diagram which is used to visually represent data objects. Today, ER model is commonly used for database design. For the database designer, the utility of the ER model is:
a. It maps well to the relational model. The constructs used in the ER model can easily be transformed into relational tables.
b. It is simple and easy to understand with a minimum of training. Therefore, the model can be used by the database designer to communicate the design to the end user.
c. In addition, the model can be used as a design plan by the database developer to implement a data model in specific database management software.
3.6 Basic Constructs of E-R Modeling
The ER model views the real world as a construct of entities and association between entities. E-R Modeling Constructs are: Entity, Relationship, Attributes, and Identifiers.
It is important to get used to this terminology and to be able to use it at the appropriate time. For example, in the ER Model, we do not refer to *tables*. Here we call them *entities*.
3.6.1 Entities
*Entities* are the principal data object about which information is to be collected. Entities are usually recognizable concepts, either concrete or abstract, such as person, places, things, or events which have relevance to the database. Some specific examples of entities are:
i. EMPLOYEES
ii. PROJECTS
iii. CUSTOMER
iv. ORGANIZATION
v. PART
vi. INGREDIENT
vii. PURCHASE ORDER
viii. CUSTOMER ORDER
ix. INVOICES
An entity is analogous to a table in the relational model.
Entities are classified as independent or dependent (in some methodologies, the terms used are strong and weak, respectively). An *independent entity* is one that does not rely on another for identification. A *dependent entity* is one that relies on another for identification. The following terms are used with entity:
a. **Entity Occurrence**: An *entity occurrence* (also called an instance) is an individual occurrence of an entity. An occurrence is analogous to a row in the relational table.
An *instance* of an entity is like a specific example:
Bill Gates is an Employee of Microsoft
SPAM is a Product
Greenpeace is an Organization
Flour is an ingredient
b. **Associative entities** (also known as intersection entities) are entities used to associate two or more entities in order to reconcile a many-to-many relationship.
c. **Subtypes entities** are used in *generalization hierarchies* to represent a subset of instances of their parent entity, called the supertype, but which have attributes or relationships that apply only to the subset.
### 3.6.2 Attributes
*Attributes* describe the entity of which they are associated. i.e., properties used to distinguish one entity instance from another.
Attributes of entity EMPLOYEE might include:
i. EmployeeID
ii. First Name
iii. Last Name
iv. Street Address
v. City
vi. Local Government Area
vii. State
viii. Date of First Appointment
ix. Current Status
x. Date of Birth
Attributes of entity PRODUCT might include:
i. ProductID
ii. Product_Description
iii. Weight
iv. Size
v. Cost
A particular instance of an attribute is a value. For example, "Chukwudi R. Nnanna" is one value of the attribute Name.
The domain of an attribute is the collection of all possible values an attribute can have. The domain of Name is a character string.
Attributes can be classified as identifiers or descriptors. Identifiers, more commonly called keys, uniquely identify an instance of an entity. A descriptor describes a non-unique characteristic of an entity instance.
3.6.3 Identifier
Identifier is a special attribute used to identify a specific instance of an entity.
- Typically we look for unique identifiers:
- Personal File Number uniquely identifies an EMPLOYEE
- CustomerID uniquely identifies a CUSTOMER
- We can also use two attributes to indicate an identifier: ORDER_NUMBER and LINE_ITEM uniquely identify an item on an order.
3.6.4 Relationships
A Relationship represents an association between two or more entities. An example of a relationship would be:
employees are assigned to projects
projects have subtasks
departments manage one or more projects
Relationships are classified by their degree, connectivity, cardinality, direction, type, and existence. Not all modeling methodologies use all these classifications.
(a) Degree of a Relationship: The degree of a relationship is the number of entities associated with the relationship. The n-ary relationship is the general form for degree n. Special cases are the binary, and ternary, where the degree is 2, and 3, respectively.
Binary relationships, the association between two entities, are the most common type in the real world. A recursive binary relationship occurs when an entity is related to itself. An example might be "some employees are married to other employees".
A ternary relationship involves three entities and is used when a binary relationship is inadequate. Many modeling approaches recognize only binary relationships. Ternary or n-ary relationships are decomposed into two or more binary relationships.
(b) Connectivity and Cardinality
The connectivity of a relationship describes the mapping of associated entity instances in the relationship. The values of connectivity are "one" or "many". The cardinality of a relationship is the actual number of related occurrences for each of the two entities. The basic types of connectivity for relations are: one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many.
i. A *one-to-one* (1:1) relationship is when at most one instance of entity A is associated with one instance of entity B. For example, "employees in the company are each assigned their own office. For each employee there exists a unique office and for each office there exists a unique employee."
ii. A *one-to-many* (1:N) relationship is when for one instance of entity A, there are zero, one, or many instances of entity B, but for one instance of entity B, there is only one instance of entity A. An example of a 1:N relationship is
- a department has many employees
- each employee is assigned to one department
iii. A *many-to-many* (M:N) relationship, sometimes called non-specific, is when for one instance of entity A, there are zero, one, or many instances of entity B and for one instance of entity B there are zero, one, or many instances of entity A. An example is:
- employees can be assigned to no more than two projects at the same time;
- projects must have assigned at least three employees
A single employee can be assigned to many projects; conversely, a single project can have assigned to it many employees. Here the cardinality for the relationship between employees and projects is two and the cardinality between project and employee is three. Many-to-many relationships cannot be directly translated to relational tables but instead must be transformed into two or more one-to-many relationships using associative entities.
(c) **Direction**
The direction of a relationship indicates the originating entity of a binary relationship. The entity from which a relationship originates is the *parent entity*; the entity where the relationship terminates is the *child entity*.
The direction of a relationship is determined by its connectivity. In a one-to-one relationship the direction is from the independent entity to a dependent entity. If both entities are independent, the direction is arbitrary. With one-to-many relationships, the entity occurring once is the parent. The direction of many-to-many relationships is arbitrary.
(d) **Type**
An *identifying relationship* is one in which one of the child entities is also a dependent entity. A *non-identifying relationship* is one in which both entities are independent.
(e) **Existence**
*Existence* denotes whether the existence of an entity instance is dependent upon the existence of another, related, entity instance. The existence of an entity in a relationship is defined as either *mandatory* or *optional*. If an instance of an entity must always occur for an entity to be included in a relationship, then it is mandatory. An example of mandatory existence is the statement "every project must be managed by a single department". If the instance of the entity is not required, it is optional. An example of optional existence is the statement, "employees may be assigned to work on projects".
### 3.6.5 Generalization Hierarchies
A generalization hierarchy is a form of abstraction that specifies that two or more entities that share common attributes can be generalized into a higher level entity type called a *supertype* or *generic* entity. The lower-level of entities become the *subtype*, or categories, to the supertype. Subtypes are dependent entities.
Generalization occurs when two or more entities represent categories of the same real-world object. For example, Wages_Employees and Classified_Employees represent categories of the same entity, Employees. In this example, Employees would be the supertype; Wages_Employees and Classified_Employees would be the subtypes.
Subtypes can be either mutually exclusive (disjoint) or overlapping (inclusive). A mutually exclusive category is when an entity instance can be in only one category. The above example is a mutually exclusive category. An employee can either be wages or classified but not both. An overlapping category is when an entity instance may be in two or more subtypes. An example would be a person who works for a university could also be a student at that same university. The completeness constraint requires that all instances of the subtype be represented in the supertype.
Generalization hierarchies can be nested. That is, a subtype of one hierarchy can be a supertype of another. The level of nesting is limited only by the constraint of simplicity. Subtype entities may be the parent entity in a relationship but not the child.
3.7 ER Notation
There is no standard for representing data objects in ER diagrams. Each modeling methodology uses its own notation. Today, there are a number of notations used; among the more common are Bachman, crow's foot, and IDEFIX.
All notational styles represent entities as rectangular boxes and relationships as lines connecting boxes. Each style uses a special set of symbols to represent the cardinality of a connection. The symbols used for the basic ER constructs are:
i. Entities are represented by labeled rectangles. The label is the name of the entity. Entity names should be singular nouns.
ii. Relationships are represented by a solid line connecting two entities. The name of the relationship is written above the line. Relationship names should be verbs.
iii. Attributes, when included, are listed inside the entity rectangle. Attributes which are identifiers are underlined. Attribute names should be singular nouns.
iv. Cardinality of many is represented by a line ending in a crow's foot. If the crow's foot is omitted, the cardinality is one.
v. Existence is represented by placing a circle or a perpendicular bar on the line. Mandatory existence is shown by the bar (looks like a 1) next to the entity for an instance is required. Optional existence is shown by placing a circle next to the entity that is optional.
Examples of these symbols are shown in Figure 2.1:
**Figure 2.1: ER Notation**
Source: [http://www.utexas.edu/](http://www.utexas.edu/)
**Activity B**
1. Come up with a list of attributes for each of the entities in section 3.3.1
2. Choose one of your attributes as the identifier for each of the entities.
**4.0 Conclusion**
The data model is relatively small part of the total systems specification but has a high impact on the quality and useful life of the system. Time spent producing the best possible design is very likely to be repaid many times over in the future.
**5.0 Summary**
In this unit, we have learnt that:
i. A data model is a plan for building a database. To be effective, it must be simple enough to communicate to the end user the data structure required by the database yet detailed enough for the database designer to use to create the physical structure.
ii. The Entity-Relationship Model is a conceptual data model that views the real world as consisting of entities and relationships. The model visually represents these concepts by the Entity-Relationship diagram.
iii. The basic constructs of the ER model are entities, relationships, and attributes.
iv. Entities are concepts, real or abstract, about which information is collected.
v. Relationships are associations between the entities.
vi. Attributes are properties which describe the entities.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. Explain the following E-R Modeling Constructs with examples:
i. Entity
ii. Relationship
iii. Attributes
iv. Identifiers
2. What do you understand by the term Generalization Hierarchies?
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey. Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Graeme C. Simsion, Graham C. Witt (2004). Data Modeling Essentials. San Francisco. Morgan Kaufmann
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
| 1.0 Introduction | 25 |
|------------------|----|
| 2.0 Objectives | 25 |
| 3.0 Requirements Analysis | 26 |
| 3.1 Steps in Building the Data Model | 26 |
| 3.2 Identifying Data Objects and Relationships | 26 |
| 3.2.1 Entities | 27 |
| 3.2.2 Attributes | 28 |
| 3.2.3 Relationship | 29 |
| 3.2.4 Naming Data Objects | 30 |
| 3.3 Developing the Basic Schema | 30 |
| 3.3.1 Binary Relationships | 30 |
| 3.3.2 Recursive Relationships | 31 |
| 3.4 Refining the Entity-Relationship Diagram | 32 |
| 3.4.1 Entities must participate in a Relationship | 33 |
| 3.4.2 Resolve many-to-many Relationships | 33 |
| 3.4.3 Eliminate redundant relationships | 34 |
| 3.5 SET Primary and Foreign Keys | 34 |
| 3.5.1 Define Primary Key Attributes | 34 |
| 3.5.2 Foreign Keys | 37 |
| 3.6 Adding Attributes to the Model | 38 |
| 3.6.1 Relate attributes to entities | 38 |
| 3.6.2 Parent-Child Relationships | 38 |
| 3.6.3 Multivalued Attributes | 39 |
| 3.6.4 Attributes That Describe Relations | 39 |
| 3.6.5 Derived Attributes and Code Values | 39 |
| 3.7 Generalization Hierarchies | 40 |
| 3.7.1 Description | 40 |
| 3.7.2 Creating a Generalization Hierarchy | 41 |
| 3.7.3 Types of Hierarchies | 41 |
| 3.7.4 Rules | 42 |
| 3.8 Add Data Integrity Rules | 43 |
| 3.9 Domains | 44 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 45 |
| 5.0 Summary | 45 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 46 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 47 |
1.0 Introduction
The data model is one part of the conceptual design process. The other is the function model. The data model focuses on what data should be stored in the database while the function model deals with how the data is processed. To put this in the context of the relational database, the data model is used to design the relational tables. The functional model is used to design the queries that will access and perform operations on those tables.
Data modeling is preceded by planning and analysis. The effort devoted to this stage is proportional to the scope of the database. The planning and analysis of a database intended to serve the needs of an enterprise will require more effort than one intended to serve a small workgroup.
The information needed to build a data model is gathered during the requirements analysis. Although not formally considered part of the data modeling stage by some methodologies, in reality the requirements analysis and the ER diagramming part of the data model are done at the same time.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
j. Know what data modeling and Entity Relationship is all about
k. Understand the E-R modeling constructs
l. Identify an entity in an E-R relation
m. Know what relationship is in E-R relationship model
n. Draw graph of relations in E-R relationship model
Know the advantages of using database management system
3.0 Requirements Analysis
The goals of the requirements analysis are:
a. to determine the data requirements of the database in terms of primitive objects
b. to classify and describe the information about these objects
c. to identify and classify the relationships among the objects
d. to determine the types of transactions that will be executed on the database and the interactions between the data and the transactions
e. to identify rules governing the integrity of the data
The modeler, or modelers, works with the end users of an organization to determine the data requirements of the database. Information needed for the requirements analysis can be gathered in several ways:
a. Review of existing documents - such documents include existing forms and reports, written guidelines, job descriptions, personal narratives, and memoranda. Paper documentation is a good way to become familiar with the organization or activity you need to model.
b. Interviews with end users - these can be a combination of individual or group meetings. Try to keep group sessions to under five or six people. If possible, try to have everyone with the same function in one meeting. Use a blackboard, flip charts, or overhead transparencies to record information gathered from the interviews.
c. Review of existing automated systems - if the organization already has an automated system, review the system design specifications and documentation.
The requirements analysis is usually done at the same time as the data modeling. As information is collected, data objects are identified and classified as either entities, attributes, or relationship; assigned names; and, defined using terms familiar to the end-users. The objects are then modeled and analyzed using an ER diagram. The diagram can be reviewed by the modeler and the end-users to determine its completeness and accuracy. If the model is not correct, it is modified, which sometimes requires additional information to be collected. The review and edit cycle continues until the model is certified as correct.
3.1 Steps in Building the Data Model
While ER model lists and defines the constructs required to build a data model, there is no standard process for doing so. Some methodologies, such as IDEFIX, specify a bottom-up development process where the model is built in stages. Typically, the entities and relationships are modeled first, followed by key attributes, and then the model is finished by adding non-key attributes. The sequences used in this unit are:
a. Identification of data objects and relationships
b. Drafting the initial ER diagram with entities and relationships
c. Refining the ER diagram
d. Add key attributes to the diagram
e. Adding non-key attributes
f. Diagramming Generalization Hierarchies
g. Validating the model through normalization
h. Adding business and integrity rules to the Model
3.2 Identifying Data Objects and Relationships
In order to begin constructing the basic model, the modeler must analyze the information gathered during the requirements analysis for the purpose of:
a. classifying data objects as either entities or attributes
b. identifying and defining relationships between entities
c. naming and defining identified entities, attributes, and relationships
d. documenting this information in the data document
To accomplish these goals the modeler must analyze narratives from users, notes from meeting, policy and procedure documents, and, if lucky, design documents from the current information system.
While the definitions of the constructs in the ER Model are simple, the model does not address the fundamental issue of how to identify them. Some commonly given guidelines are:
a. entities contain descriptive information
b. attributes either identify or describe entities
c. relationships are associations between entities
3.2.1 Entities
There are various definitions of an entity:
a. An entity is a "thing", "concept" or, object". However, entities can sometimes represent the relationships between two or more objects. This type of entity is known as an associative entity.
b. Entities are objects which contain descriptive information. If an data object you have identified is described by other objects, then it is an entity. If there is no descriptive information associated with the item, it is not an entity. Whether or not a data object is an entity may depend upon the organization or activity being modeled.
c. An entity represents many things which share properties. They are not single things. For example, King Lear and Hamlet are both plays which share common attributes such as name, author, and cast of characters. The entity describing these things would be PLAY, with King Lear and Hamlet being instances of the entity.
d. entities which share common properties are candidates for being converted to generalization hierarchies
e. Entities should not be used to distinguish between time periods. For example, the entities 1st Quarter Profits, 2nd Quarter Profits, etc. should be collapsed into a single entity called Profits. An attribute specifying the time period would be used to categorize by time
f. not every thing the users want to collect information about will be an entity. A complex concept may require more than one entity to represent it. Others "things" users think important may not be entities.
3.2.2 Attributes
Attributes are data objects that either identify or describe entities. Attributes that identify entities are called key attributes. Attributes that describe an entity are called non-key attributes.
Attribute values should be atomic, that is, present a single fact. Having disaggregated data allows simpler programming, greater reusability of data, and easier implementation of changes. Normalization also depends upon the "single fact" rule being followed. Common types of violations include:
a. Simple aggregation - a common example is Person Name which concatenates first name, middle initial, and last name. Another is Address which concatenates, street address, city, and zip code. When dealing with such attributes, you need to find out if there are good reasons for decomposing them. For example, do the end-users want to use the person's first name in a form letter? Do they want to sort by zip code?
b. Complex codes - these are attributes whose values are codes composed of concatenated pieces of information. An example is the code attached to automobiles and trucks. The code represents over 10 different pieces of information about the vehicle. Unless part of an industry standard, these codes have no meaning to the end user. They are very difficult to process and update.
c. Text blocks - these are free-form text fields. While they have a legitimate use, an over reliance on them may indicate that some data requirements are not met by the model.
d. mixed domains - this is where a value of an attribute can have different meaning under different conditions
Two areas where data modeling experts disagree is whether derived attributes and attributes whose values are codes should be permitted in the data model.
Derived attributes are those created by a formula or by a summary operation on other attributes. Arguments against including derived data are based on the premise that derived data should not be stored in a database and therefore should not be included in the data model. The arguments in favor are:
a. derived data is often important to both managers and users and therefore should be included in the data model
b. it is just as important, perhaps more so, to document derived attributes just as you would other attributes
c. including derived attributes in the data model does not imply how they will be implemented
A coded value uses one or more letters or numbers to represent a fact. For example, the value Gender might use the letters "M" and "F" as values rather than "Male" and "Female". Those who are against this practice cite that codes have no intuitive meaning to the end-users and add complexity to processing data. Those in favor argue that many organizations have a long history of using coded attributes, that codes save space, and improve flexibility in that values can be easily added or modified by means of look-up tables.
3.2.3 Relationships
Relationships are associations between entities. Typically, a relationship is indicated by a verb connecting two or more entities. For example:
Employees **are assigned** to projects
As relationships are identified they should be classified in terms of cardinality, optionality, direction, and dependence. As a result of defining the relationships, some relationships may be dropped and new relationships added. Cardinality quantifies the relationships between entities by measuring how many instances of one entity are related to a single instance of another. To determine the cardinality, assume the existence of an instance of one of the entities. Then determine how many specific instances of the second entity could be related to the first. Repeat this analysis reversing the entities. For example:
employees **may be assigned** to no more than three projects at a time;
every project has at least two employees assigned to it.
Here the cardinality of the relationship from employees to projects is three; from projects to employees, the cardinality is two. Therefore, this relationship can be classified as a many-to-many relationship.
If a relationship can have a cardinality of zero, it is an optional relationship. If it must have a cardinality of at least one, the relationship is mandatory. Optional relationships are typically indicated by the conditional tense. For example:
An employee **may** be assigned to a project
Mandatory relationships, on the other hand, are indicated by words such as must have. For example:
a student **must** register for at least three course each semester
In the case of the specific relationship form (1:1 and 1:M), there is always a parent entity and a child entity. In one-to-many relationships, the parent is always the entity with the cardinality of one. In one-to-one relationships, the choice of the parent entity must be
made in the context of the business being modeled. If a decision cannot be made, the choice is arbitrary.
3.2.4 Naming Data Objects
The names should have the following properties:
- unique
- have meaning to the end-user
- contain the minimum number of words needed to uniquely and accurately describe the object
For entities and attributes, names are singular nouns while relationship names are typically verbs.
Some authors advise against using abbreviations or acronyms because they might lead to confusion about what they mean. Other believes using abbreviations or acronyms are acceptable provided that they are universally used and understood within the organization.
You should also take care to identify and resolve synonyms for entities and attributes. This can happen in large projects where different departments use different terms for the same thing.
3.3 Developing the Basic Schema
Once entities and relationships have been identified and defined, the first draft of the entity relationship diagram can be created. This section introduces the ER diagram by demonstrating how to diagram binary relationships. Recursive relationships are also shown.
3.3.1 Binary Relationships
Figure 3.1 shows examples of how to diagram one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships.
(a) **One-To-One**: Figure 3.1A shows an example of a one-to-one diagram. Reading the diagram from left to right represents the relationship every employee is assigned a workstation. Because every employee must have a workstation, the symbol for mandatory existence—in this case the crossbar—is placed next to the WORKSTATION entity. Reading from right to left, the diagram shows that not all workstations are assigned to employees. This condition may reflect that some workstations are kept for spares or for loans. Therefore, we use the symbol for optional existence, the circle, next to EMPLOYEE. The cardinality and existence of a relationship must be derived from the "business rules" of the organization. For example, if all workstations owned by an organization were assigned to employees, then the circle would be replaced by a crossbar to indicate mandatory existence. One-to-one relationships are rarely seen in "real-world" data models.
(b) **One-To-Many**: Figure 3.1B shows an example of a one-to-many relationship between DEPARTMENT and PROJECT. In this diagram, DEPARTMENT is considered the parent entity while PROJECT is the child. Reading from left to right, the diagram represents departments may be responsible for many projects. The optionality of the
relationship reflects the "business rule" that not all departments in the organization will be responsible for managing projects. Reading from right to left, the diagram tells us that every project must be the responsibility of exactly one department.
(c) **Many-To-Many**: Figure 1C shows a many-to-many relationship between EMPLOYEE and PROJECT. An employee may be assigned to many projects; each project must have many employees. Note that the association between EMPLOYEE and PROJECT is optional because, at a given time, an employee may not be assigned to a project. However, the relationship between PROJECT and EMPLOYEE is mandatory because a project must have at least two employees assigned. Many-To-Many relationships can be used in the initial drafting of the model but eventually must be transformed into two one-to-many relationships. The transformation is required because many-to-many relationships cannot be represented by the relational model. The process for resolving many-to-many relationships is discussed in the next section.
### 3.3.2 Recursive relationships
A recursive relationship is an entity that is associated with itself. Figure 3.2 shows an example of the recursive relationship.
An employee may manage many employees and each employee is managed by one employee.
**Figure 3.2:** Example of Recursive Relationship
*Source: [http://www.utexas.edu/its/](http://www.utexas.edu/its/)*
### 3.4 Refining the Entity-Relationship Diagram
This section discusses three basic rules for modeling relationships.
3.4.1 Entities Must Participate In Relationships
Entities cannot be modeled unrelated to any other entity. Otherwise, when the model was transformed to the relational model, there would be no way to navigate to that table. The exception to this rule is a database with a single table.
3.4.2 Resolve Many-To-Many Relationships
Many-to-many relationships cannot be used in the data model because they cannot be represented by the relational model. Therefore, many-to-many relationships must be resolved early in the modeling process. The strategy for resolving many-to-many relationship is to replace the relationship with an association entity and then relate the two original entities to the association entity. This strategy is demonstrated below Figure 3.2A shows the many-to-many relationship:
Employees may be assigned to many projects.
Each project must have assigned to it more than one employee.
In addition to the implementation problem, this relationship presents other problems. Suppose we wanted to record information about employee assignments such as who assigned them, the start date of the assignment, and the finish date for the assignment. Given the present relationship, these attributes could not be represented in either EMPLOYEE or PROJECT without repeating information. The first step is to convert the relationship assigned to to a new entity we will call ASSIGNMENT. Then the original entities, EMPLOYEE and PROJECT, are related to this new entity preserving the cardinality and optionality of the original relationships. The solution is shown in Figure 3.2B.
A. Many-to-Many Relationship Unresolved
EMPLOYEE
PROJECT
assigned to
has assigned
B. Many-to-Many Relationship Resolved
EMPLOYEE
ASSIGNMENT
PROJECT
are given
done by
Figure 3.2: Resolution of a Many-To-Many Relationship
Source: http://www.utexas.edu/its/
Notice that the schema changes the semantics of the original relation to employees may be given assignments to projects and projects must be done by more than one employee assignment.
3.4.3 Eliminate redundant relationships
A redundant relationship is a relationship between two entities that is equivalent in meaning to another relationship between those same two entities that may pass through an intermediate entity. For example, Figure 3.3A shows a redundant relationship between DEPARTMENT and WORKSTATION. This relationship provides the same information as the relationships DEPARTMENT has EMPLOYEES and EMPLOYEES assigned WORKSTATION. Figure 3.3B shows the solution which is to remove the redundant relationship DEPARTMENT assigned WORKSTATIONS.
Figure 3.3: Removing A Redundant Relationship
Source: http://www.utexas.edu/its/
3.5 Primary and Foreign Keys
Primary and foreign keys are the most basic components on which relational theory is based. Primary keys enforce entity integrity by uniquely identifying entity instances. Foreign keys enforce referential integrity by completing an association between two entities. The next step in building the basic data model to
1. identify and define the primary key attributes for each entity
2. validate primary keys and relationships
3. migrate the primary keys to establish foreign keys
### 3.5.1 Define Primary Key Attributes
The primary key is an attribute or a set of attributes that uniquely identify a specific instance of an entity. Every entity in the data model must have a primary key whose values uniquely identify instances of the entity.
To qualify as a primary key for an entity, an attribute must have the following properties:
- it must have a non-null value for each instance of the entity
- the value must be unique for each instance of an entity
- the values must not change or become null during the life of each entity instance
In this section, we shall discuss the following:
**(a) Candidate Key**
In some instances, an entity will have more than one attribute that can serve as a primary key. Any key or minimum set of keys that could be a primary key is called a candidate key. Once candidate keys are identified, choose one, and only one, primary key for each entity. Choose the identifier most commonly used by the user as long as it conforms to the properties listed above. Candidate keys which are not chosen as the primary key are known as alternate keys.
An example of an entity that could have several possible primary keys is Employee. Let's assume that for each employee in an organization there are three candidate keys: Employee ID, Social Security Number, and Name.
Name is the least desirable candidate. While it might work for a small department where it would be unlikely that two people would have exactly the same name, it would not work for a large organization that had hundreds or thousands of employees. Moreover, there is the possibility that an employee's name could change because of marriage. Employee ID would be a good candidate as long as each employee was assigned a unique identifier at the time of hire. Social Security would work best since every employee is required to have one before being hired.
**(b) Composite Keys**
Sometimes it requires more than one attribute to uniquely identify an entity. A primary key that made up of more than one attribute is known as a composite key. Figure 3.4 shows an example of a composite key. Each instance of the entity Work can be uniquely identified only by a composite key composed of Employee ID and Project ID.
(c) **Artificial Keys**
An artificial key is one that has no meaning to the business or organization. Artificial keys are permitted when
1) no attribute has all the primary key properties, or
2) the primary key is large and complex.
(d) **Primary Key Migration**
Dependent entities, entities that depend on the existence of another entity for their identification, inherit the entire primary key from the parent entity. Every entity within a generalization hierarchy inherits the primary key of the root generic entity.
(e) **Define Key Attributes**
Once the keys have been identified for the model, it is time to name and define the attributes that have been used as keys.
There is no standard method for representing primary keys in ER diagrams. For this document, the name of the primary key followed by the notation (PK) is written inside the entity box. An example is shown in Figure 3.5A.
(f) Validate Keys and Relationships
Basic rules governing the identification and migration of primary keys are:
a. Every entity in the data model shall have a primary key whose values uniquely identify entity instances.
b. The primary key attribute cannot be optional (i.e., have null values).
c. The primary key cannot have repeating values. That is, the attribute may not have more than one value at a time for a given entity instance is prohibited. This is known as the No Repeat Rule.
d. Entities with compound primary keys cannot be split into multiple entities with simpler primary keys. This is called the Smallest Key Rule.
e. Two entities may not have identical primary keys with the exception of entities within generalization hierarchies.
f. The entire primary key must migrate from parent entities to child entities and from supertype, generic entities, to subtypes, category entities.
3.5.2 Foreign Keys
A foreign key is an attribute that completes a relationship by identifying the parent entity. Foreign keys provide a method for maintaining integrity in the data (called referential integrity) and for navigating between different instances of an entity. Every relationship in the model must be supported by a foreign key. In this section we shall discuss the following:
(a) Identifying Foreign Keys
Every dependent and category (subtype) entity in the model must have a foreign key for each relationship in which it participates. Foreign keys are formed in dependent and subtype entities by migrating the entire primary key from the parent or generic entity. If the primary key is composite, it may not be split.
(b) Foreign Key Ownership
Foreign key attributes are not considered to be owned by the entities to which they migrate, because they are reflections of attributes in the parent entities. Thus, each attribute in an entity is either owned by that entity or belongs to a foreign key in that entity.
If the primary key of a child entity contains all the attributes in a foreign key, the child entity is said to be "identifier dependent" on the parent entity, and the relationship is called an "identifying relationship." If any attributes in a foreign key do not belong to the child's primary key, the child is not identifier dependent on the parent, and the relationship is called "non identifying."
(c) **Diagramming Foreign Keys**
Foreign keys attributes are indicated by the notation (FK) beside them. An example is shown in Figure 3.5 (B) above.
**Activity A**
1. Explain the following terms in relation to data objects
i. Primary Key
ii. Candidate Key
iii. Composite Key
iv. Artificial Key
v. Foreign Key
2. What do you understand by Binary relationship in database design?
### 3.6 Adding Attributes to the Model
Non-key attributes describe the entities to which they belong. In this section, we discuss the rules for assigning non-key attributes to entities and how to handle multivalued attributes.
#### 3.6.1 Relate attributes to entities
Non-key attributes can be in only one entity. Unlike key attributes, non-key attributes never migrate, and exist in only one entity, from parent to child entities.
The process of relating attributes to the entities begins by the modeler, with the assistance of the end-users, placing attributes with the entities that they appear to describe. Once this is completed, the assignments are validated by the formal method of normalization.
Before beginning formal normalization, the rule is to place non-key attributes in entities where the value of the primary key determines the values of the attributes. In general, entities with the same primary key should be combined into one entity. Some other guidelines for relating attributes to entities are given below.
#### 3.6.2 Parent-Child Relationships
- With parent-child relationships, place attributes in the parent entity where it makes sense to do so (as long as the attribute is dependent upon the primary key)
- If a parent entity has no non-key attributes, combine the parent and child entities.
3.6.3 Multivalued Attributes
If an attribute is dependent upon the primary key but is multivalued, has more than one value for a particular value of the key, reclassify the attribute as a new child entity. If the multivalued attribute is unique within the new entity, it becomes the primary key. If not migrate the primary key from the original, now parent, entity.
For example, assume an entity called PROJECT with the attributes Proj_ID (the key), Proj_Name, Task_ID, Task_Name
| Proj_ID | Proj_Name | Task_ID | Task_Name |
|---------|-----------|---------|-----------|
| 01 | A | 01 | Analysis |
| 01 | A | 02 | Design |
| 01 | A | 03 | Programming |
| 01 | A | 04 | Tuning |
| 02 | B | 01 | Analysis |
Figure 3.6: Example of multivalued Attributes
Source: http://www.utexas.edu/its/
Task_ID and Task_Name have multiple values for the key attribute. The solution is to create a new entity, let’s call it TASK and make it a child of PROJECT. Move Task_ID and Task_Name from PROJECT to TASK. Since neither attribute uniquely identifies a task, the final step would be to migrate Proj_ID to TASK.
3.6.4 Attributes That Describe Relations
In some cases, it appears that an attribute describes a relationship rather than an entity (in the Chen notation of ER diagrams this is permissible). For example,
A MEMBER borrows BOOKS.
Possible attributes are the date the books were checked out and when they are due. Typically, such a situation will occur with a many-to-many relationship and the solution is the same. Reclassify the relationship as a new entity which is a child to both original entities. In some methodologies, the newly created is called an associative entity.
3.6.5 Derived Attributes and Code Values
Two areas where data modeling experts disagree is whether derived attributes and attributes whose values are codes should be permitted in the data model.
Derived attributes are those created by a formula or by a summary operation on other attributes. Arguments against including derived data are based on the premise that derived data should not be stored in a database and therefore should not be included in the data model. The arguments in favor are:
- derived data is often important to both managers and users and therefore should be included in the data model.
- it is just as important, perhaps more so, to document derived attributes just as you would other attributes
- including derived attributes in the data model does not imply how they will be implemented.
A coded value uses one or more letters or numbers to represent a fact. For example, the value Gender might use the letters "M" and "F" as values rather than "Male" and "Female". Those who are against this practice cite that codes have no intuitive meaning to the end-users and add complexity to processing data. Those in favor argue that many organizations have a long history of using coded attributes, that codes save space, and improve flexibility in that values can be easily added or modified by means of look-up tables.
### 3.7 Generalization Hierarchies
Up to this point, we have discussed describing an object, the entity, by its shared characteristics, the attributes. For example, we can characterize an employee by their employee id, name, job title, and skill set.
Another method of characterizing entities is by both similarities and differences. For example, suppose an organization categorizes the work it does into internal and external projects. Internal projects are done on behalf of some unit within the organization. External projects are done for entities outside of the organization. We can recognize that both types of projects are similar in that each involves work done by employees of the organization within a given schedule. Yet we also recognize that there are differences between them. External projects have unique attributes, such as a customer identifier and the fee charged to the customer. This process of categorizing entities by their similarities and differences is known as generalization.
#### 3.7.1 Description
A generalization hierarchy is a structured grouping of entities that share common attributes. It is a powerful and widely used method for representing common characteristics among entities while preserving their differences. It is the relationship between an entity and one or more refined versions. The entity being refined is called the supertype and each refined version is called the subtype. The general form for a generalization hierarchy is shown in Figure 3.7.
Generalization hierarchies should be used when:
- A large number of entities appear to be of the same type,
- Attributes are repeated for multiple entities, or
- The model is continually evolving. Generalization hierarchies improve the stability of the model by allowing changes to be made only to those entities germane to the change and simplify the model by reducing the number of entities in the model.
### 3.7.2 Creating a Generalization Hierarchy
To construct a generalization hierarchy, all common attributes are assigned to the supertype. The supertype is also assigned an attribute, called a discriminator, whose values identify the categories of the subtypes. Attributes unique to a category, are assigned to the appropriate subtype. Each subtype also inherits the primary key of the supertype. Subtypes that have only a primary key should be eliminated. Subtypes are related to the supertypes through a one-to-one relationship.
### 3.7.3 Types of Hierarchies
A generalization hierarchy can either be overlapping or disjoint. In an overlapping hierarchy an entity instance can be part of multiple subtypes. For example, to represent people at a university you have identified the supertype entity PERSON which has three subtypes, FACULTY, STAFF, and STUDENT. It is quite possible for an individual to be in more than one subtype, a staff member who is also registered as a student, for example.
In a disjoint hierarchy, an entity instance can be in only one subtype. For example, the entity EMPLOYEE, may have two subtypes, CLASSIFIED and WAGES. An employee may be one type or the other but not both. Figure 1 shows A) overlapping and B) disjoint generalization hierarchy.
3.7.4 Rules
The primary rule of generalization hierarchies is that each instance of the supertype entity must appear in at least one subtype; likewise, an instance of the subtype must appear in the supertype.
Subtypes can be a part of only one generalization hierarchy. That is, a subtype can not be related to more than one supertype. However, generalization hierarchies may be nested by having the subtype of one hierarchy be the supertype for another.
Subtypes may be the parent entity in a relationship but not the child. If this were allowed, the subtype would inherit two primary keys.
3.8 Add Data Integrity Rules
Data integrity is one of the cornerstones of the relational model. Simply stated data integrity means that the data values in the database are correct and consistent.
Data integrity is enforced in the relational model by entity and referential integrity rules. Although not part of the relational model, most database software enforces attribute integrity through the use of domain information.
3.8.1 Entity Integrity
The entity integrity rule states that for every instance of an entity, the value of the primary key must exist, be unique, and cannot be null. Without entity integrity, the primary key could not fulfill its role of uniquely identifying each instance of an entity.
3.8.2 Referential Integrity
The referential integrity rule states that every foreign key value must match a primary key value in an associated table. Referential integrity ensures that we can correctly navigate between related entities.
3.8.3 Insert and Delete Rules
A foreign key creates a hierarchical relationship between two associated entities. The entity containing the foreign key is the child, or dependent, and the table containing the primary key from which the foreign key values are obtained is the parent.
In order to maintain referential integrity between the parent and child as data is inserted or deleted from the database certain insert and delete rules must be considered.
(a) Insert Rules
Insert rules commonly implemented are:
i. **Dependent**. The dependent insert rule permits insertion of child entity instance only if matching parent entity already exists.
ii. **Automatic**. The automatic insert rule always permits insertion of child entity instance. If matching parent entity instance does not exist, it is created.
iii. **Nullify**. The nullify insert rule always permits the insertion of child entity instance. If a matching parent entity instance does not exist, the foreign key in child is set to null.
iv. **Default**. The default insert rule always permits insertion of child entity instance. If a matching parent entity instance does not exist, the foreign key in the child is set to previously defined value.
v. **Customized.** The customized insert rule permits the insertion of child entity instance only if certain customized validity constraints are met.
vi. **No Effect.** This rule states that the insertion of child entity instance is always permitted. No matching parent entity instance need exist, and thus no validity checking is done.
(b) **Delete Rules**
i. **Restrict.** The restrict delete rule permits deletion of parent entity instance only if there are no matching child entity instances.
ii. **Cascade.** The cascade delete rule always permits deletion of a parent entity instance and deletes all matching instances in the child entity.
iii. **Nullify.** The nullify delete rules always permits deletion of a parent entity instance. If any matching child entity instances exist, the values of the foreign keys in those instances are set to null.
iv. **Default.** The default rule always permits deletion of a parent entity instance. If any matching child entity instances exist, the value of the foreign keys are set to a predefined default value.
v. **Customized.** The customized delete rule permits deletion of a parent entity instance only if certain validity constraints are met.
vi. **No Effect.** The no effect delete rule always permits deletion of a parent entity instance. No validity checking is done.
### 3.9 Domains
A domain is a valid set of values for an attribute which enforce that values from an insert or update make sense. Each attribute in the model should be assigned domain information which includes:
a. **Data Type**—Basic data types are integer, decimal, or character. Most databases support variants of these plus special data types for date and time.
b. **Length**—This is the number of digits or characters in the value. For example, a value of 5 digits or 40 characters.
c. **Date Format**—The format for date values such as dd/mm/yy or yy/mm/dd
d. **Range**—The range specifies the lower and upper boundaries of the values the attribute may legally have
e. **Constraints**—Are special restrictions on allowable values. For example, the Beginning_Pay_Date for a new employee must always be the first work day of the month of hire.
f. **Null support**—Indicates whether the attribute can have null values
g. **Default value (if any)**—The value an attribute instance will have if a value is not entered.
### 3.9.1 Primary Key Domains
The values of primary keys must be unique and nulls are not allowed.
### 3.9.2 Foreign Key Domains
The data type, length, and format of primary keys must be the same as the corresponding primary key. The uniqueness property must be consistent with relationship type. A one-to-one relationship implies a unique foreign key; a one-to-many relationship implies a non-unique foreign key.
**Activity B**
1. What do you understand by the term Generalization Hierarchy?
2. Explain the following terms:
i. Entity Integrity
ii. Referential integrity
iii. Entity
iv. Attributes
v. Relationship
vi. Supertypes
### 4.0 Conclusion
Data modeling stage is a very important stage in database or information system design. There would be problems either now or in the nearest future if proper and complete data modeling is not done.
### 5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt that:
i. Data modeling must be preceded by planning and analysis. Planning defines the goals of the database, explains why the goals are important, and sets out the path by which the goals will be reached. Analysis involves determining the requirements of the database. This is typically done by examining existing documentation and interviewing users.
ii. An effective data model completely and accurately represents the data requirements of the end users. It is simple enough to be understood by the end user yet detailed enough to be used by a database designer to build the database. The model eliminates redundant data, it is independent of any hardware and
software constraints, and can be adapted to changing requirements with a minimum of effort.
iii. Data modeling is a bottom up process. A basic model, representing entities and relationships, is developed first. Then detail is added to the model by including information about attributes and business rules.
iv. The first step in creating the data model is to analyze the information gathered during the requirements analysis with the goal of identifying and classifying data objects and relationships.
v. The Entity-Relationship diagram provides a pictorial representation of the major data objects, the entities, and the relationships between them.
vi. Generalization hierarchies are a structure that enables the modeler to represent entities that share common characteristics but also have differences.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. Draw an entity-relationship model diagram that captures the student grading system requirements stated below. Once done, validate the model against the requirements to make sure nothing was missed.
i. Each student has a first and last name, and a student number.
ii. Each course has a course number (e.g. CIT843) and a title.
iii. A course will have multiple offerings, identified by year, term, and possibly section.
iv. A student may enroll in multiple course offerings.
v. Each course offering divides its overall evaluation into one or more components (e.g. Assignments, Quizzes, Seminars, Final Exam), each weighted some specified fraction of the offering's final grade (e.g. assignments are worth 35%, quizzes worth 35% and the final exam worth 30%).
vi. Each component is made up of one or more graded items (e.g. assignment #3 is a single graded item).
vii. Each graded item records the order number of the item within its component, the date of evaluation, and the maximum mark possible (e.g. quiz number four will be held October 19, 2006, and it is out of a total of 10 marks).
viii. A student’s mark is recorded for each graded item in a course offering.
ix. When evaluating some components, one or more of the graded items with the lowest marks are dropped from the calculation.
x. In extenuating circumstances, an instructor may drop a student’s mark from his or her evaluation.
xi. At the end of the term, the student’s final mark in a course offering is converted to a letter grade and GPA.
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey. Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Graeme C. Simsion, Graham C. Witt (2004). Data Modeling Essentials. San Francisco. Morgan Kaufmann
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 49 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 49 |
| 3.0 Data Structure and Terminologies | 49 |
| 3.1 Schema Conversion Rules | 51 |
| 3.2 Null Values | 52 |
| 3.3 Keys | 52 |
| 3.3.1 Candidate Keys | 52 |
| 3.3.2 Primary Keys | 52 |
| 3.3.3 Foreign Keys | 53 |
| 3.3.4 Surrogate Keys | 53 |
| 3.4 Schema Diagram Notation | 53 |
| 3.5 Conversion Specifics | 54 |
| 3.5.1 One-to-One Relationships | 54 |
| 3.5.2 One-to-Many Relationships | 54 |
| 3.5.3 Many-to-Many Relationships | 55 |
| 3.6 Relationship Participation | 56 |
| 3.7 Subtype Entities | 57 |
| 3.8 Reflexive Relationships | 58 |
| 3.9 Properties of Relational Tables | 59 |
| 3.10 Relational Data Integrity | 60 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 61 |
| 5.0 Summary | 61 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 61 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and Other Resources | 61 |
1.0 Introduction
Previously, we covered modeling the user's view as an E-R diagram, and Entities, Relationships, Attributes and Identifiers were used.
We now need to convert this conceptual representation to a model that can be implemented directly in a database.
The relational model was formally introduced by Dr. E. F. Codd in 1970 and has evolved since then, through a series of writings. The model provides a simple, yet rigorously defined, concept of how users perceive data. The relational model represents data in the form of two-dimensional tables. Each table represents some real-world person, place, thing, or event about which information is collected. A relational database is a collection of two-dimensional tables. The organization of data into relational tables is known as the logical view of the database. That is, the form in which a relational database presents data to the user and the programmer. The way the database software physically stores the data on a computer disk system is called the internal view.
2.0 Objectives
This unit discusses the basic concepts—data structures, relationships, and data integrity—that are the basis of the relational model.
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
a. Explain Data Structure and Terminology
b. Know Relational Model Notation
c. Know some of the properties of Relational Tables
d. Explain Relationships and Keys
e. Understand Data Integrity with respect to Relational Model
3.0 Data Structure and Terminology
In the relational model, a database is a collection of relational tables. A relational table is a flat file composed of a set of named columns and an arbitrary number of unnamed rows. The columns of the tables contain information about the table. The rows of the table represent occurrences of the "thing" represented by the table. A data value is stored in the intersection of a row and column. Each named column has a domain, which is the set of values that may appear in that column. Figure 4.1 shows the relational tables for a simple bibliographic database that stores information about book title, authors, and publishers.
A Relational Data Base
**AUTHOR**
| au_id | au_lname | au_fname | address | city | state |
|-------------|----------|----------|--------------------------|----------|-------|
| 172-32-1176 | White | Johnson | 10932 Bigge Rd. | Menlo Park | CA |
| 213-46-8915 | Green | Marjorie | 309 63rd St. #411 | Oakland | CA |
| 238-95-7766 | Carson | Cheryl | 589 Darwin Ln. | Berkeley | CA |
| 267-41-2394 | O'Leary | Michael | 22 Cleveland Av. #14 | San Jose | CA |
| 274-80-9391 | Straight | Dean | 5420 College Av. | Oakland | CA |
| 341-22-1782 | Smith | Meander | 10 Mississippi Dr. | Lawrence | KS |
| 409-56-7008 | Bennet | Abraham | 6223 Bateman St. | Berkeley | CA |
| 427-17-2319 | Dull | Ann | 3410 Blonde St. | Palo Alto| CA |
| 472-27-2349 | Gringlesby | Burt | PO Box 792 | Covello | CA |
| 486-29-1786 | Locksley | Charlene | 18 Broadway Av. | San Francisco | CA |
**TITLE**
| title_id | title | type | price | pub_id |
|----------|--------------------------------------------|----------|-------|--------|
| BU1032 | The Busy Executive's Database Guide | business | 19.99 | 1389 |
| BU1111 | Cooking with Computers | business | 11.95 | 1389 |
| BU2075 | You Can Combat Computer Stress! | business | 2.99 | 736 |
| BUT832 | Straight Talk About Computers | business | 19.99 | 1389 |
| MC2222 | Silicon Valley Gastronomic Treats | mod_cook | 19.99 | 877 |
| MC3021 | The Gourmet Microwave | mod_cook | 2.99 | 877 |
| MC3026 | The Psychology of Computer Cooking | UNDECIDED| 22.95 | 1389 |
| PC1035 | But Is It User Friendly? | popular_comp | 20 | 1389 |
| PC8888 | Secrets of Silicon Valley | popular_comp | 20 | 1389 |
| PC9999 | Net Etiquette | popular_comp | 1389 | |
| PS2091 | Is Anger the Enemy? | psychology | 10.95 | 736 |
**PUBLISHER**
| pub_id | pub_name | city |
|--------|-------------------|----------|
| 736 | New Moon Books | Boston |
| 877 | Binnet & Hardley | Washington|
| 1389 | Algodata Infosystems | Berkeley |
| 1622 | Five Lakes Publishing | Chicago |
| 1756 | Ramona Publishers | Dallas |
| 9901 | GGG&G | München |
| 9952 | Scootney Books | New York |
| 9999 | Lucerne Publishing| Paris |
**AUTHOR_TITLE**
| au_id | title_id |
|-------------|----------|
| 172-32-1176 | PS3333 |
| 213-46-8915 | BU1032 |
| 213-46-8915 | BU2075 |
| 238-95-7766 | PC1035 |
| 267-41-2394 | BU1111 |
| 267-41-2394 | TC7777 |
| 274-80-9391 | BU17832 |
| 409-56-7008 | BU1032 |
| 427-17-2319 | PC8888 |
| 472-27-2349 | TC7777 |
Figure 4.1: Relational Tables
Source: http://www.utexas.edu/
There are alternate names used to describe relational tables. Some manuals use the terms tables, fields, and records to describe relational tables, columns, and rows, respectively. The formal literature tends to use the mathematical terms, relations, attributes, and tuples. Figure 4.2 summarizes these naming conventions.
### 3.1 Schema Conversion Rules
Schema conversion is the process of translating an entity-relationship model to a relational schema. A relational **schema** defines the structure of a relational database, not the data that it will contain. Unlike an E-R model, a schema can be directly encoded into an RDBMS using something called the SQL Data Definition Language (DDL).
We will always follow this procedure from start to finish when converting a model to a schema.
i. Convert all entities to tables. The entity name becomes the table name, and the entity attributes become the table columns.
ii. Find the candidate keys for each table, and from them choose a primary key for each table (if possible).
iii. Replace one-to-one, one-to-many, and subtype entity relationships with foreign key columns in the appropriate tables.
iv. Replace many-to-many entity relationships with a new join table that contains foreign key columns of the related tables.
v. Based on the participation of the entity relationships, set the column datatype for the foreign keys to allow or disallow NULL values.
vi. Now that the foreign key columns are in place, find the candidate keys for the tables again (including any newly-added tables), and select a primary key from these. Add surrogate keys if necessary.
vii. Write down the functional dependencies between columns for each table and validate the tables against the COMP210 interpretation of the first 5 normal forms for potential modification anomalies. If there are problems, revisit the E-R model, make corrections, and begin the schema conversion procedure again from the top.
viii. Translate the validated schema into SQL DDL and create the tables, indices, and any referential or unique integrity constraints, in an RDBMS.
3.2 NULL Values
Relational databases introduce the useful, but occasionally misused, concept of a NULL value. NULL should be thought of the absence of any meaningful value: it is not the same as zero, or false, or an empty string. Bear in mind that any mathematical operation including a NULL will always result in NULL: $2 + 0 = 2$, but $2 + \text{NULL}$ is just NULL again. Note that the equality operator ($=$) can't be used with NULL, because NULL does not equal NULL, and even more strangely, NULL does not equal NULL.
NULL values are most often used in columns to indicate either Unknown or Not Applicable. Of the two, Not Applicable is the more "proper" interpretation, but both uses are common.
A column in a table may be declared to either allow or disallow NULL values. Despite their utility, columns that allow NULL values should be kept to an absolute minimum (just as we tried to minimize the number of E-R relationships with optional participation).
An optional attribute in the E-R model will convert to a column that accepts NULL values (that's why we tried to minimize the number of those too).
3.3 Keys
Keys are very important to relational schemas; much more so than identifiers to E-R models.
3.3.1 Candidate Keys
A candidate key is the set of one or more columns in a table that uniquely identifies a row in that table. A table may have many candidate keys, and by definition will always have one (relational theory requires that all rows in a table be distinct).
3.3.2 Primary Keys
A single primary key is chosen from a table's candidate keys. Every table must have one, and only one, primary key. Primary keys have two important restrictions:
- A primary key must not contain any columns that allow NULL values.
- The value of a primary key, whether composed of one or many columns, must never change.
As long as these restrictions are followed, the choice of primary key is largely a design decision, often influenced by either performance or business concerns.
3.3.3 Foreign Keys
A **foreign key** is the set of one or more columns in a table that together are the designated primary key of another, related table. Relational schemas, oddly enough, have no concept of a relationship as in the E-R model. Instead, foreign keys are used to define the relationships between tables. A table may have many foreign keys, and the column or columns making up the foreign key may be included in the table's primary key. A column that is part of a foreign key does not have to use the same name as that used in the primary key of the related table, but it usually does.
3.3.4 Surrogate Keys
A **surrogate key** (a.k.a. artificial key) is a system-supplied unique value for a column that will serve as a table's primary key. The value of a surrogate key has no business meaning and is intended only as a means for establishing relationships between tables (through foreign keys).
There are three main reasons for using surrogate keys:
i. Performance: If the primary key for a table is a long text string, the RDBMS will have to create an enormous index for the table. Foreign keys that reference this table will be similarly huge. Surrogate keys are usually 32-bit integers and can therefore be manipulated very efficiently.
ii. Primary keys must not change values: if, for example, the primary key for a table is an employee’s full name, the values of the primary key could potentially change (through marriage, or for celebrity-induced reasons: "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince"). A surrogate key is not affected by such changes, *particularly if the users of the system never see the surrogate key values*.
iii. No other primary key can be found for a table.
3.4 Schema Diagram Notation
The notation used for relational schemas is arbitrary at best. There are no standards. I have used a simplified version of Crow's Foot notation, although it's not unusual to just use unmarked lines to connect tables and infer their relationship from the primary and foreign keys. Microsoft Access's "Relationships" tool can also be used to draw schema diagrams.
Primary key columns are underlined in the schema notation (as were identifier attributes) and may also be followed by "\( \text{PK} \)". Foreign key columns are indicated by "\( \text{FK}_x \)" where \( x \) is a number assigned to the foreign key to distinguish it from other foreign keys in the table. Columns that accept NULL values are identified by "\( \text{NULL} \)" following the column name. All other columns are assumed not to accept NULL values.
3.5 Conversion Specifics
The actual mechanics of converting entities into tables is relatively straightforward. Each of the special cases is described in the following sections.
3.5.1 One-to-One Relationships
One-to-one relationships are recognized in tables by inserting a foreign key column or columns into one of the tables that refers to the primary key of the other table. The inserted foreign key becomes the primary key of that table. Which table will receive the foreign key is a design decision, but if one already has a primary key, then the other table should add the foreign key column(s), as in this example:
 
**Figure 4.3** One-to-One Relationships
Source: [http://college.yukondude.com/](http://college.yukondude.com/)
Since USER_ACCOUNT already had a primary key (from the user_name identifier), then PERSON will receive the user_name foreign key column and it will become the primary key for the PERSON table.
3.5.2 One-to-Many Relationships
A one-to-many relationship is converted by inserting a foreign key into the table that lies on the "many" side of the relationship.
 
**Figure 4.4** One-to-Many Relationships
Source: [http://college.yukondude.com/](http://college.yukondude.com/)
In this example, the foreign key is inserted into the REGION table because it lies on the "many" side of the relationship. Since REGION already had a column named "name", it was renamed to region_name and the foreign key was renamed to country_name so there wouldn't be any confusion. The primary key for REGION can now be chosen as the combination of country_name and region_name because both together guarantee uniqueness (a country will not have two regions with the same name).
3.5.3 Many-to-Many Relationships
To implement a many-to-many relationship in a schema, an additional table must be added that contains foreign keys for each of the two related tables. The additional table—called a join table (a.k.a. mapping, pivot, or junction table)—may also have additional columns for any attributes of the many-to-many relationship. The primary key of the new join table is the complete set of all foreign key columns.
**Figure 4.5** Many-to-Many Relationships
Source: [http://college.yukondude.com/](http://college.yukondude.com/)
In this example, both the ACTOR and FILM entities had unique identifiers, so those are chosen as the primary keys and are received by the new join table, FILM_ACTOR, as foreign keys. The role attribute of the many-to-many relationship becomes an attribute of the join table. The primary key for the FILM_ACTOR table is the combination of all foreign key columns.
If no other name suggests itself for the new join table, it's acceptable to concatenate the names of the two formerly-related tables as above (although ROLE might have made more sense—there's no reason a table can't have a column with the same name).
The "relationships" that connect the join table to the other tables will always be one-to-many, with the "many" side closest to the join table. Imagine slicing the many-to-many
relationship in half, and then swapping the two halves and placing them on either side of the join table.
**Activity A**
1. Explain the following terms
i. Candidate Key
ii. Foreign Key
iii. Surrogate Key
iv. Null value
2. Explain with aid of diagram how the following E-R notation can be converted to Relational Model. Pay good attention to Primary, Foreign and Surrogate keys.
### 3.6 Relationship Participation
The participation of a relationship (optional or mandatory) is converted to schema form depending upon the location of the foreign keys. The rule depends on the location of the relationship's optional symbol in the E-R diagram in relation to the table that receives the foreign key in the schema:
- If the optional symbol is on the *same side* as the foreign key, no further action is necessary.
- If the optional symbols is on the *opposite side* from the foreign key, the foreign key column(s) must accept NULL values.
For example, the optional symbol is on the same side as the foreign key in this model/schema ("a country may not have any sub-regions"):
**Figure 4.6(a) Relationships Participation**
Source: [http://college.yukondude.com/](http://college.yukondude.com/)
The resulting schema is exactly the same as it would have been for a full mandatory relationship.
In this next example, the optional symbol is on the opposite side from the foreign key ("some extra-country regions exist"):
**Figure 4.6(b) Relationships Participation**
Source: http://college.yukondude.com/
The converted schema is considerably different from the previous example:
i. The foreign key still goes on the "many" side of the one-to-many relationship, and, as before, it is renamed country_name to avoid confusion.
ii. Because this foreign key is on the opposite side from the optional symbol, its column must accept NULL values.
iii. A primary key cannot contain columns that accept NULL values, so the combination of country_name and region_name no longer services.
iv. A new surrogate key, region_id, is instead chosen as the REGION table's primary key.
Now you see why we try to avoid optional participation when modelling. It can make quite a difference to a schema, but only when the optional symbol appears on the "one" side of a relationship. (Therefore, many-to-many relationships are immune from this complexity--join tables never contain NULL foreign key columns.)
### 3.7 Subtype Entities
At the relational schema level, a subtype relationship is nothing more than a one-to-one relationship that is optional on the side of the subtype table.
In this example, EXECUTIVE is a subtype of EMPLOYEE, and has extra attributes that apply only to executive employees. Once converted to schema form, the relationship is nothing more than one-to-one. A subtype table will always carry a foreign key to the supertype or parent table, and that foreign key will almost always serve as the primary key for the subtype table. Because the foreign key is on the same side of the relationship as the optional symbol, it does not accept NULL values.
The same principle applies to all non-subtype one-to-one relationships with one side that has an optional participation: whenever possible, put the foreign key into the table on the same side as the optional to avoid NULL foreign key columns.
Note that the "is a" sense of the subtype relationship evaporates after schema conversion. The EXECUTIVE table doesn't automatically inherit EMPLOYEE's attributes; the association between the two tables is now indistinguishable from a normal one-to-one relationship.
3.8 Reflexive Relationships
Finally, reflexive relationships are really no different than inter-entity relationships. Foreign keys are allocated using the same rules, and extra join tables are added for many-to-many reflexive relationships. The only difference is that the foreign keys for one-to-one or one-to-many reflexive relationships will end up in the same table, and so must be renamed.
In this example, the reflexive relationship represents cat mothers: "a cat may have many kittens, or none if it is not a mother, and a cat must have one mother, or none at all if the mother is unknown." Because this is a one-to-many relationship, the foreign key goes on the "many" side of the relationship, or right back into the CAT table. There is already a
tag_no column, so the foreign key must be renamed ("mother_tag_no" seems reasonable because it mentions the reflexive relationship's label).
It may not be immediately obvious, but this foreign key is on the opposite side from the optional symbol that appears on the "one" side of the reflexive relationship. Therefore the mother_tag_no column must accept NULL values.
3.9 Properties of Relational Tables
Relational tables have six properties:
i. Values are atomic.
ii. Column values are of the same kind.
iii. Each row is unique.
iv. The sequence of columns is insignificant.
v. The sequence of rows is insignificant.
vi. Each column must have a unique name.
(i) Values Are Atomic
This property implies that columns in a relational table are not repeating group or arrays. Such tables are referred to as being in the "first normal form" (1NF). The atomic value property of relational tables is important because it is one of the cornerstones of the relational model.
(ii) Column Values are of the Same Kind
In relational terms this means that all values in a column come from the same domain. A domain is a set of values which a column may have. For example, a Monthly_Salary column contains only specific monthly salaries. It never contains other information such as comments, status flags, or even weekly salary.
This property simplifies data access because developers and users can be certain of the type of data contained in a given column. It also simplifies data validation. Because all values are from the same domain, the domain can be defined and enforced with the Data Definition Language (DDL) of the database software.
(iii) Each Row is Unique
This property ensures that no two rows in a relational table are identical; there is at least one column, or set of columns, the values of which uniquely identify each row in the table. Such columns are called primary keys and are discussed in more detail in
(iv) The Sequence of Columns is Insignificant
This property states that the ordering of the columns in the relational table has no meaning. Columns can be retrieved in any order and in various sequences. The benefit of this property is that it enables many users to share the same table without concern of how the table is organized. It also permits the physical structure of the database to change without affecting the relational tables.
(v) The Sequence of Rows is Insignificant
This property is analogous to the one above but applies to rows instead of columns. The main benefit is that the rows of a relational table can be retrieved in different orders and sequences. Adding information to a relational table is simplified and does not affect existing queries.
(vi) Each Column has a Unique Name
Because the sequence of columns is insignificant, columns must be referenced by name and not by position. In general, a column name need not be unique within an entire database but only within the table to which it belongs.
3.10 Relational Data Integrity
Data integrity means, in part, that you can correctly and consistently navigate and manipulate the tables in the database. There are two basic rules to ensure data integrity; entity integrity and referential integrity.
The *entity integrity rule* states that the value of the primary key can never be a null value (a null value is one that has no value and is not the same as a blank). Because a primary key is used to identify a unique row in a relational table, its value must always be specified and should never be unknown. The integrity rule requires that insert, update, and delete operations maintain the uniqueness and existence of all primary keys.
The *referential integrity rule* states that if a relational table has a foreign key, then every value of the foreign key must either be null or match the values in the relational table in which that foreign key is a primary key.
**Activity B**
1. List six properties of Relational Tables
2. Explain the following terms
i. Reflexive Relationships
ii. Entity Integrity
iii. Referential Integrity
4.0 Conclusion
A basic understanding of the relational model is necessary to effectively use relational database software such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or even personal database systems such as Access or Fox, which are based on the relational model.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
vii. Conversion from E-R Model to RM and the rules governing the conversion
viii. NULL values are most often used in columns to indicate either Unknown or Not Applicable
ix. Keys are very important to relational schemas; much more so than identifiers to E-R models.
x. A one-to-many relationship is converted by inserting a foreign key into the table that lies on the "many" side of the relationship.
xi. To implement a many-to-many relationship in a schema, an additional table must be added that contains foreign keys for each of the two related tables.
xii. Relational tables have six properties: Values are atomic; Column values are of the same kind; Each row is unique; The sequence of columns is insignificant; The sequence of rows is insignificant; and Each column must have a unique name.
xiii. There are two basic rules to ensure data integrity; entity integrity and referential integrity.
xiv. Relational tables are sets. The rows of the tables can be considered as elements of the set. Operations that can be performed on sets can be done on relational tables. The eight relational operations are: Union; Product; Division; Projection; Join; Selection; Intersection; and Difference
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. Convert the student grading system E-R model generated in unit 3 TMA to their relational schema representation. When converting, pay special attention to: primary keys, foreign keys, many-to-many relationships, and Nulls. At this stage of the game, try to avoid surrogate keys if at all possible.
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey . Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 63 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 63 |
| 3.1 Data Redundancy | 63 |
| 3.1.1 Reasons against most types of unnecessary duplicate data | 64 |
| 3.1.2 Types of data anomalies | 64 |
| 3.1.3 How to eliminate redundant data | 64 |
| 3.2 Basic Concepts of Normalization | 64 |
| 3.3 Functional Dependencies | 65 |
| 3.4 Overview of Normalization | 65 |
| 3.5 Sample Data | 66 |
| 3.6 First Normal Form | 66 |
| 3.7 Second Normal Form | 67 |
| 3.8 Third Normal Form | 68 |
| 3.9 Advanced Normal Form | 71 |
| 3.9.1 Boyce-Codd Normal Form | 71 |
| 3.9.2 Fourth Normal Form | 71 |
| 3.9.3 Fifth Normal Form | 72 |
| 3.9.4 Domain Key Normal Form (DK/NF) | 74 |
| 3.10 De-Normalization | 74 |
| 3.11 Example of Normalization | 74 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 77 |
| 5.0 Summary | 79 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 80 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 81 |
1.0 Introduction
Normalization is a design technique that is widely used as a guide in designing relational databases. Normalization is essentially a two step process that puts data into tabular form by removing repeating groups and then removes duplicated data from the relational tables.
Normalization theory is based on the concepts of normal forms. A relational table is said to be a particular normal form if it satisfied a certain set of constraints. There are currently five normal forms that have been defined. In this unit, we will cover the first three normal forms that were defined by E. F. Codd.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
f. Explain Functional Dependencies
g. Explain Data redundancy and Modification Anomalies
h. Understand what Normalization is all about
i. Explain First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth normal forms
j. Know when to de Normalize your Tables
3.1 Data Redundancy
Data Redundancy is a condition that exists when a data environment contains unnecessarily duplicated data. A change or modification, to redundant data, requires that you make changes to multiple fields of a database. While this is the expected behaviour for flat file database designs and spreadsheets, it defeats the purpose of relational database designs. The data relationships, inherent in a relational database, should allow you to maintain a single data field, at one location, and make the database’s relational model responsible to port any changes, to that data field, across the database. Redundant data wastes valuable space and creates troubling database maintenance problems. Data Redundancy is the bane of DBMS development and management as it wastes resources.
Unnecessary data can occur when an organization stores several copies of similar information about the same data in multiple departments within an organization (ie; Sales, Support, and Marketing) maintaining their "own" customer databases (ie; SALES_CUST, SUPPORT_CUST, and MARKETING_CUST). It can also occur if repeatable data types are contained within repeating fields, and not segregated into their own tables and related by a unique ID key (ie; CUST_ID).
3.1.1 Reasons against most types of unnecessary duplicate data:
- Change requires reconciling data in multiple locations or fields in the database
- Wastes physical storage space
- Can decrease performance, accuracy, reliability, and stability
- Introduces maintenance issues
- Increases difficulty of troubleshooting database problems
- Data redundancy results in data inconsistency, or a lack of data integrity.
- Different and conflicting versions of the same data appear in different places
- Errors more likely to occur when complex entries are made in several different files and/or recur frequently in one or more files
- Data anomalies develop when required reconciliations in redundant data are not made successfully
3.1.2 Types of data anomalies:
- Update anomalies
- Occur when changes must be made to existing records
- Insertion anomalies
- Occur when entering new records
- Deletion anomalies
- Occur when deleting records
3.1.3 How to Eliminate Redundant Data:
To eliminate redundant data from your database, you must take special care to organize the data in your data tables. Normalization is a method of organizing your data to prevent redundancy. Normalization involves establishing and maintaining the integrity of your data tables as well as eliminating inconsistent data dependencies.
Normalization requires that you adhere to rules, established by the database community, to ensure that data is organized efficiently. These rules are called normal form rules. Normalization may require that you include additional data tables in your database. Normal form rules number from one to three, for most applications. The rules are cumulative such that the rules of the 2nd normal form are inclusive of the rules in the 1st normal form. The rules of the 3rd normal form are inclusive of the rules in the 1st and 2nd normal forms, etc.
3.2 Basic Concepts of Normalization
The goal of normalization is to create a set of relational tables that are free of redundant data and that can be consistently and correctly modified. This means that all tables in a
relational database should be in the third normal form (3NF). A relational table is in 3NF if and only if all non-key columns are:
- mutually independent and
- fully dependent upon the primary key.
Mutual independence means that no non-key column is dependent upon any combination of the other columns. The first two normal forms are intermediate steps to achieve the goal of having all tables in 3NF. In order to better understand the 2NF and higher forms, it is necessary to understand the concepts of functional dependencies and lossless decomposition.
### 3.3 Functional Dependencies
The concept of functional dependencies is the basis for the first three normal forms. A column, $Y$, of the relational table $R$ is said to be **functionally dependent** upon column $X$ of $R$ if and only if each value of $X$ in $R$ is associated with precisely one value of $Y$ at any given time. $X$ and $Y$ may be composite. Saying that column $Y$ is functionally dependent upon $X$ is the same as saying the values of column $X$ identify the values of column $Y$. If column $X$ is a primary key, then all columns in the relational table $R$ must be functionally dependent upon $X$.
A short-hand notation for describing a functional dependency is:
$$R.x \rightarrow; R.y$$
which can be read as in the relational table named $R$, column $x$ functionally determines (identifies) column $y$.
**Full functional dependence** applies to tables with composite keys. Column $Y$ in relational table $R$ is fully functional on $X$ of $R$ if it is functionally dependent on $X$ and not functionally dependent upon any subset of $X$. Full functional dependence means that when a primary key is composite, made of two or more columns, then the other columns must be identified by the entire key and not just some of the columns that make up the key.
### 3.4 Overview of Normalization
Simply stated, normalization is the process of removing redundant data from relational tables by decomposing (splitting) a relational table into smaller tables by projection. The goal is to have only primary keys on the left hand side of a functional dependency. In order to be correct, decomposition must be lossless. That is, the new tables can be recombined by a natural join to recreate the original table without creating any spurious or redundant data.
3.5 Sample Data
A company obtains parts from a number of suppliers. Each supplier is located in one city. A city can have more than one supplier located there and each city has a status code associated with it. Each supplier may provide many parts. The company creates a simple relational table to store this information that can be expressed in relational notation as:
\[ \text{FIRST (s#, status, city, p#, qty)} \]
where
- s# supplier identification number (this is the primary key)
- status status code assigned to city
- city name of city where supplier is located
- p# part number of part supplied
- qty> quantity of parts supplied to date
In order to uniquely associate quantity supplied (qty) with part (p#) and supplier (s#), a composite primary key composed of s# and p# is used.
3.6 First Normal Form
A relational table, by definition, is in first normal form if all values of the columns are atomic. That is, they contain no repeating values. Figure 1 shows the table FIRST in 1NF.
| s# | status | city | p# | qty |
|----|--------|--------|----|-----|
| s1 | 20 | London | p1 | 300 |
| s1 | 20 | London | p2 | 200 |
| s1 | 20 | London | p3 | 400 |
| s1 | 20 | London | p4 | 200 |
| s1 | 20 | London | p5 | 100 |
| s1 | 20 | London | p6 | 100 |
| s2 | 10 | Paris | p1 | 300 |
| s2 | 10 | Paris | p2 | 400 |
| s3 | 10 | Paris | p2 | 200 |
| s4 | 20 | London | p2 | 200 |
| s4 | 20 | London | p4 | 300 |
| s4 | 20 | London | p5 | 400 |
Figure 5.1: Table in 1NF
Source: http://www.utexas.edu/
Although the table FIRST is in 1NF it contains redundant data. For example, information about the supplier's location and the location's status has to be repeated for every part supplied. Redundancy causes what are called update anomalies. Update anomalies are problems that arise when information is inserted, deleted, or updated. For example, the following anomalies could occur in FIRST:
- **INSERT.** The fact that a certain supplier (s5) is located in a particular city (Athens) cannot be added until they supplied a part.
- **DELETE.** If a row is deleted, then not only is the information about quantity and part lost but also information about the supplier.
- **UPDATE.** If supplier s1 moved from London to New York, then six rows would have to be updated with this new information.
### 3.7 Second Normal Form
The definition of second normal form states that only tables with composite primary keys can be in 1NF but not in 2NF.
A relational table is in second normal form 2NF if it is in 1NF and every non-key column is fully dependent upon the primary key.
That is, every non-key column must be dependent upon the entire primary key. FIRST is in 1NF but not in 2NF because status and city are functionally dependent upon only on the column s# of the composite key (s#, p#). This can be illustrated by listing the functional dependencies in the table:
\[
\begin{align*}
s# & \rightarrow \text{city, status} \\
\text{city} & \rightarrow \text{status} \\
(s#, p#) & \rightarrow \text{qty}
\end{align*}
\]
The process for transforming a 1NF table to 2NF is:
1. Identify any determinants other than the composite key, and the columns they determine.
2. Create and name a new table for each determinant and the unique columns it determines.
3. Move the determined columns from the original table to the new table. The determinate becomes the primary key of the new table.
4. Delete the columns you just moved from the original table except for the determinate which will serve as a foreign key.
5. The original table may be renamed to maintain semantic meaning.
To transform FIRST into 2NF we move the columns s#, status, and city to a new table called SECOND. The column s# becomes the primary key of this new table. The results are shown below in Figure 2.
| SECOND | PARTS |
|--------|-------|
| s# | status | city | s# | p# | qty |
| s1 | 20 | London | s1 | p1 | 300 |
| s2 | 10 | Paris | s1 | p2 | 200 |
| s3 | 10 | Paris | s1 | p3 | 400 |
| s4 | 20 | London | s1 | p4 | 200 |
| s5 | 30 | Athens | s1 | p5 | 100 |
| | | | s1 | p6 | 100 |
| | | | s2 | p1 | 300 |
| | | | s2 | p2 | 400 |
| | | | s3 | p2 | 200 |
| | | | s4 | p2 | 200 |
| | | | s4 | p4 | 300 |
| | | | s4 | p5 | 400 |
Figure 5.2: Tables in 2NF
Source: http://www.utexas.edu/
Tables in 2NF but not in 3NF still contain modification anomalies. In the example of SECOND, they are:
INSERT. The fact that a particular city has a certain status (Rome has a status of 50) cannot be inserted until there is a supplier in the city.
DELETE. Deleting any row in SUPPLIER destroys the status information about the city as well as the association between supplier and city.
3.8 Third Normal Form
The third normal form requires that all columns in a relational table are dependent only upon the primary key. A more formal definition is:
A relational table is in third normal form (3NF) if it is already in 2NF and every non-key column is non transitively dependent upon its primary key. In other words, all nonkey attributes are functionally dependent only upon the primary key.
Table PARTS is already in 3NF. The non-key column, qty, is fully dependent upon the primary key (s#, p#). SUPPLIER is in 2NF but not in 3NF because it contains a transitive dependency. A transitive dependency is occurs when a non-key column that is a determinant of the primary key is the determinate of other columns. The concept of a transitive dependency can be illustrated by showing the functional dependencies in SUPPLIER:
\[
\text{SUPPLIER.s\#} \rightarrow \text{SUPPLIER.status}
\]
\[
\text{SUPPLIER.s\#} \rightarrow \text{SUPPLIER.city}
\]
\[
\text{SUPPLIER.city} \rightarrow \text{SUPPLIER.status}
\]
Note that SUPPLIER.status is determined both by the primary key s\# and the non-key column city. The process of transforming a table into 3NF is:
1. Identify any determinants, other the primary key, and the columns they determine.
2. Create and name a new table for each determinant and the unique columns it determines.
3. Move the determined columns from the original table to the new table. The determinate becomes the primary key of the new table.
4. Delete the columns you just moved from the original table except for the determinate which will serve as a foreign key.
5. The original table may be renamed to maintain semantic meaning.
To transform SUPPLIER into 3NF, we create a new table called CITY_STATUS and move the columns city and status into it. Status is deleted from the original table, city is left behind to serve as a foreign key to CITY_STATUS, and the original table is renamed to SUPPLIER_CITY to reflect its semantic meaning. The results are shown in Figure 3 below.
| SUPPLIER_CITY | CITY_STATUS |
|---------------|-------------|
| s# | city | city | status |
| s1 | London | London | 20 |
| s2 | Paris | Paris | 10 |
| s3 | Paris | Athens | 30 |
| s4 | London | Rome | 50 |
Figure 5.3: Tables in 3NF
Source: http://www.utexas.edu/
The results of putting the original table into 3NF has created three tables. These can be represented in "pseudo-SQL" as:
PARTS (#s, p#, qty)
Primary Key (s#, #p)
Foreign Key (s#) references SUPPLIER_CITY.s#
SUPPLIER_CITY(s#, city)
Primary Key (s#)
Foreign Key (city) references CITY_STATUS.city
CITY_STATUS (city, status)
Primary Key (city)
3.8.1 Advantages of Third Normal Form
The advantage of having relational tables in 3NF is that it eliminates redundant data which in turn saves space and reduces manipulation anomalies. For example, the improvements to our sample database are:
INSERT. Facts about the status of a city, Rome has a status of 50, can be added even though there is not supplier in that city. Likewise, facts about new suppliers can be added even though they have not yet supplied parts.
DELETE. Information about parts supplied can be deleted without destroying information about a supplier or a city. UPDATE. Changing the location of a supplier or the status of a city requires modifying only one row.
Activity A
1. Explain the following terms
i. Functional dependency
ii. First, Second, and Third Normal Forms
2. What do you understand by modification anomalies?
3.9 Advanced Normalization
After 3NF, all normalization problems involve only tables which have three or more columns and all the columns are keys. Many practitioners argue that placing entities in 3NF is generally sufficient because it is rare that entities that are in 3NF are not also in 4NF and 5NF. They further argue that the benefits gained from transforming entities into 4NF and 5NF are so slight that it is not worth the effort. However, advanced normal forms are presented because there are cases where they are required.
3.9.1 Boyce-Codd Normal Form
Boyce-Codd normal form (BCNF) is a more rigorous version of the 3NF deal with relational tables that had
(a) multiple candidate keys,
(b) composite candidate keys, and
(c) candidate keys that overlapped.
BCNF is based on the concept of determinants. A determinant column is one on which some of the columns are fully functionally dependent.
A relational table is in BCNF if and only if every determinant is a candidate key.
3.9.2 Fourth Normal Form
A relational table is in the fourth normal form (4NF) if it is in BCNF and all multivalued dependencies are also functional dependencies.
Fourth normal form (4NF) is based on the concept of multivalued dependencies (MVD). A Multivalued dependency occurs when in a relational table containing at least three columns, one column has multiple rows whose values match a value of a single row of one of the other columns. A more formal definition given by Date is:
given a relational table R with columns A, B, and C then
R.A —>> R.B (column A multidetermines column B)
is true if and only if the set of B-values matching a given pair of A-values and C-values in R depends only on the A-value and is independent of the C-value.
MVD always occur in pairs. That is R.A —>> R.B holds if and only if R.A —>> R.C also holds.
Suppose that employees can be assigned to multiple projects. Also suppose that employees can have multiple job skills. If we record this information in a single table, all three attributes must be used as the key since no single attribute can uniquely identify an instance.
The relationship between emp# and prj# is a multivalued dependency because for each pair of emp#/skill values in the table, the associated set of prj# values is determined only by emp# and is independent of skill. The relationship between emp# and skill is also a multivalued dependency, since the set of Skill values for an emp#/prj# pair is always dependent upon emp# only.
To transform a table with multivalued dependencies into the 4NF move each MVD pair to a new table. The result is shown in Figure1.
| EMPLOYEE_PROJECT | EMPLOYEE_SKILL |
|------------------|---------------|
| emp# prj# | emp# skill |
| 1211 1 | 1211 Analysis |
| 1211 5 | 1211 Design |
| | 1211 Program |
Figure 5.4: Tables in 4NF
Source: http://www.utexas.edu/
3.9.3 Fifth Normal Form
A table is in the fifth normal form (5NF) if it cannot have a lossless decomposition into any number of smaller tables.
While the first four normal forms are based on the concept of functional dependence, the fifth normal form is based on the concept of join dependence. Join dependency means that an table, after it has been decomposed into three or more smaller tables, must be capable of being joined again on common keys to form the original table. Stated another way, 5NF indicates when an entity cannot be further decomposed. 5NF is complex and not intuitive. Most experts agree that tables that are in the 4NF are also in 5NF except for "pathological" cases. Teorey suggests that true many-to-many-to-many ternary relations are one such case.
Adding an instance to an table that is not in 5NF creates spurious results when the tables are decomposed and then rejoined. For example, let's suppose that we have an employee who uses design skills on one project and programming skills on another. This information is shown below.
| emp# | prj# | skill |
|------|------|-------|
| | | |
Next we add an employee (1544) who uses programming skills on Project 11.
| emp# | prj# | skill |
|------|------|-------|
| 1211 | 11 | Design|
| 1211 | 28 | Program|
| 1544 | 11 | Program|
Next, we project this information into three tables as we did above. However, when we rejoin the tables, the recombined table contains spurious results.
| emp# | prj# | skill |
|------|------|-----------|
| 1211 | 11 | Design |
| 1211 | 11 | Program | <<—spurious data
| 1211 | 28 | Program |
| 1544 | 11 | Design | <<—spurious data
| 1544 | 11 | Program |
By adding one new instance to a table not in 5NF, two false assertions were stated:
**Assertion 1**
- Employee 1211 has been assigned to Project 11.
- Project 11 requires programming skills.
- Therefore, Employee 1211 must use programming skills while assigned to Project 11.
**Assertion 2**
- Employee 1544 has been assigned to project 11.
- Project 11 needs Design skills.
- Therefore, Employee 1544 must use Design skills in Project 11.
3.9.4 Domain Key Normal Form (DK/NF)
A relation is in DK/NF if every constraint on the relation is a logical consequence of the definition of keys and domains.
**Constraint:** An rule governing static values of an attribute such that we can determine if this constraint is True or False. Examples:
i. Functional Dependencies
ii. Multivalued Dependencies
iii. Inter-relation rules
iv. Intra-relation rules
However: Does not include time dependent constraints.
**Key:** Unique identifier of a tuple.
**Domain:** The physical (data type, size, NULL values) and semantic (logical) description of what values an attribute can hold.
There is no known algorithm for converting a relation directly into DK/NF.
### 3.10 De-Normalization
Consider the following relation:
CUSTOMER (CustomerID, Name, Address, City, State, Zip)
This relation is not in DK/NF because it contains a functional dependency not implied by the key.
\[ \text{Zip} \rightarrow \text{City, State} \]
We can normalize this into DK/NF by splitting the CUSTOMER relation into two:
CUSTOMER (CustomerID, Name, Address, Zip)
CODES (Zip, City, State)
We may pay a performance penalty - each customer address lookup requires we look in two relations (tables).
In such cases, we may de-normalize the relations to achieve a performance improvement.
### 3.11 Example
This is an example that runs through all of the normal forms from beginning to end using the same tables.
Example relation:
EMPLOYEE ( Name, Project, Task, Office, Phone )
Note: Keys are underlined.
Example Data:
| Name | Project | Task | Office | Floor | Phone |
|------|---------|------|--------|-------|-------|
| Bili | 100X | T1 | 400 | 4 | 1400 |
| Bili | 100X | T2 | 400 | 4 | 1400 |
| Bili | 200Y | T1 | 400 | 4 | 1400 |
| Bili | 200Y | T2 | 400 | 4 | 1400 |
| Sule | 100X | T33 | 442 | 4 | 1442 |
| Sule | 200Y | T33 | 442 | 4 | 1442 |
| Sule | 300Z | T33 | 442 | 4 | 1442 |
| Edo | 100X | T2 | 588 | 5 | 1588 |
- **Name** is the employee's name
- **Project** is the project they are working on. Bill is working on two different projects, Sue is working on 3.
- **Task** is the current task being worked on. Bill is now working on Tasks T1 and T2. Note that Tasks are independent of the project. Examples of a task might be faxing a memo or holding a meeting.
- **Office** is the office number for the employee. Bill works in office number 400.
- **Floor** is the floor on which the office is located.
- **Phone** is the phone extension. Note this is associated with the phone in the given office.
**First Normal Form**
Assume the key is **Name, Project, Task**.
Is EMPLOYEE in 1NF?
**Second Normal Form**
List all of the functional dependencies for EMPLOYEE.
Are all of the non-key attributes dependant on all of the key?
Split into two relations EMPLOYEE_PROJECT_TASK and EMPLOYEE_OFFICE_PHONE.
EMPLOYEE_PROJECT_TASK (Name, Project, Task)
| Name | Project | Task |
|------|---------|------|
| Bili | 100X | T1 |
| Bili | 100X | T2 |
| Bili | 200Y | T1 |
| Bili | 200Y | T2 |
| Sule | 100X | T33 |
| Sule | 200Y | T33 |
| Sule | 300Z | T33 |
| Edo | 100X | T2 |
EMPLOYEE_OFFICE_PHONE (Name, Office, Floor, Phone)
| Name | Office | Floor | Phone |
|------|--------|-------|-------|
| Bili | 400 | 4 | 1400 |
| Sule | 442 | 4 | 1442 |
| Edo | 588 | 5 | 1588 |
Third Normal Form
Assume each office has exactly one phone number.
Are there any transitive dependencies?
Where are the modification anomalies in EMPLOYEE_OFFICE_PHONE?
Split EMPLOYEE_OFFICE_PHONE.
EMPLOYEE_PROJECT_TASK (Name, Project, Task)
| Name | Project | Task |
|------|---------|------|
| Bili | 100X | T1 |
| Bili | 100X | T2 |
| Bili | 200Y | T1 |
EMPLOYEE_OFFICE (Name, Office, Floor)
| Name | Office | Floor |
|------|--------|-------|
| Bili | 400 | 4 |
| Sule | 442 | 4 |
| Edo | 588 | 5 |
EMPLOYEE_PHONE (Office, Phone)
| Office | Phone |
|--------|-------|
| 400 | 1400 |
| 442 | 1442 |
| 588 | 1588 |
**Boyce-Codd Normal Form**
List all of the functional dependencies for EMPLOYEE_PROJECT_TASK, EMPLOYEE_OFFICE and EMPLOYEE_PHONE. Look at the determinants.
Are all determinants candidate keys?
**Forth Normal Form**
Are there any multivalued dependencies?
What are the modification anomalies?
Split EMPLOYEE_PROJECT_TASK.
EMPLOYEE_PROJECT (Name, Project)
| Name | Project |
|------|---------|
| Name | Task |
|------|------|
| Bili | T1 |
| Bili | T2 |
| Sule | T33 |
| Edo | T2 |
**EMPLOYEE_OFFICE (Name, Office, Floor)**
| Name | Office | Floor |
|------|--------|-------|
| Bili | 400 | 4 |
| Sule | 442 | 4 |
| Edo | 588 | 5 |
**R4 (Office, Phone)**
| Office | Phone |
|--------|-------|
| 400 | 1400 |
| 442 | 1442 |
| 588 | 1588 |
At each step of the process, we did the following:
1. Write out the relation
2. (optionally) Write out some example data.
3. Write out all of the functional dependencies
4. Starting with 1NF, go through each normal form and state why the relation is in the given normal form.
**Activity B**
1. Explain the following terms:
i. Boyce-Codd Normal Form
ii. Fourth Normal Form
iii. Fifth Normal Form
2. What are the benefits of Normalization?
**4.0 Conclusion**
Once our E-R model has been converted into relations, we may find that some relations are not properly specified. There can be a number of problems:
- **Deletion Anomaly**: Deleting a relation results in some related information (from another entity) being lost.
- **Insertion Anomaly**: Inserting a relation requires we have information from two or more entities - this situation might not be feasible.
Typical way to solve these anomalies is to split the relation into two or more relations - Process called *Normalization*.
**5.0 Summary**
In this unit, we have learnt:
xv. Data Redundancy is a condition that exists when a data environment contains unnecessarily duplicated data.
xvi. Normalization is a set of techniques for organizing data into tables in such a way to eliminate certain type of redundancy and incompleteness, and associated complexity and/or anomalies when updating it.
xvii. Normalization is a set of techniques for organizing data into tables in such a way to eliminate certain type of redundancy and incompleteness, and associated complexity and/or anomalies when updating it.
xviii.
xix. The designer starts with a single file and divides it into tables based on dependencies among the data item.
xx. Normalization relies on correct identification of determinants and keys.
xxi. A table is in 3NF if every determinant of a non key item is a candidate key.
xxii. In practice, normalization is used primarily as a check on the correctness of a model developed using a top-down approach.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
Question 1
A company obtains parts from a number of suppliers. Each supplier is located in one city. A city can have more than one supplier located there and each city has a status code associated with it. Each supplier may provide many parts. The company creates a simple relational table to store this information that can be expressed in relational notation as:
\[ \text{FIRST} (s\#, \text{status}, \text{city}, p\#, \text{qty}) \]
where
- \( s\# \) supplier identification number (this is the primary key)
- status status code assigned to city
- city name of city where supplier is located
- \( p\# \) part number of part supplied
- qty quantity of parts supplied to date
In order to uniquely associate quantity supplied (qty) with part (\( p\# \)) and supplier (\( s\# \)), a composite primary key composed of \( s\# \) and \( p\# \) is used.
The sample data is shown below:
| FIRST |
|-------|
| \( s\# \) | status | city | \( p\# \) | qty |
| s1 | 10 | Lagos | p1 | 300 |
| s1 | 10 | Lagos | p2 | 200 |
| s1 | 10 | Lagos | p3 | 400 |
| s1 | 10 | Lagos | p4 | 200 |
| s1 | 10 | Lagos | p5 | 100 |
| s1 | 10 | Lagos | p6 | 100 |
| s2 | 15 | Jos | p1 | 300 |
| s2 | 15 | Jos | p2 | 400 |
| s3 | 15 | Jos | p2 | 200 |
| s4 | 10 | Lagos | p2 | 200 |
| s4 | 10 | Lagos | p4 | 300 |
| s4 | 10 | Lagos | p5 | 400 |
Use the above information to explain the following in detail
a. Normalization
b. Functional Dependencies
c. First Normal Form
d. Update anomalies
e. Second Normal Form
f. Third Normal Form
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
databasedev.co.uk (2003-2006). *Data Redundancy Defined - Relational Database Design*. In, Database Solutions for Microsoft Access, Retrieved October 10th, 2006, from: [http://www.databasedev.co.uk/data-redundancy.html](http://www.databasedev.co.uk/data-redundancy.html)
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). *Database Concepts*. New Jersey . Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). *Fundamentals of Database Systems*. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). *Modern Database management*. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Graeme C. Simsion, Graham C. Witt (2004). *Data Modeling Essentials*. San Francisco. Morgan Kaufmann
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). *Concepts of Database Management*. United States. Course Technology.
| 1.0 | Introduction | 83 |
|-----|--------------|----|
| 2.0 | Objectives | 83 |
| 3.0 | Relational Algebra | 83 |
| 3.1 | Set Theoretic Operations | 83 |
| 3.1.1 | Union | 84 |
| 3.1.2 | Difference | 84 |
| 3.1.3 | Intersection | 85 |
| 3.2 | Union Compatible Relations | 85 |
| 3.3 | Cartesian Product | 85 |
| 3.4 | Selection and Projection Operations | 87 |
| 3.4.1 | Selection Operators | 87 |
| 3.4.2 | Selection Examples | 88 |
| 3.4.3 | Projection Operator | 90 |
| 3.4.4 | Projection Examples | 90 |
| 3.4.5 | Combining Selection and Projection | 90 |
| 3.5 | Aggregate Functions | 91 |
| 3.6 | Join Operations | 93 |
| 3.6.1 | Join Examples | 93 |
| 4.0 | Conclusion | 94 |
| 5.0 | Summary | 95 |
| 6.0 | Tutor Marked Assignment | 95 |
| 7.0 | Further Reading and other Resources | 95 |
1.0 Introduction
Relational tables are sets. The rows of the tables can be considered as elements of the set. Operations that can be performed on sets can be done on relational tables. The relational operations are the main focus of this unit:
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
k. Know what relational algebra is all about
l. Have good understanding of Set Theory operations which include: Union, Intersection, Difference and Cartesian product.
m. Know how to use Specific Relational Operations: Selection, Projection, Join, and Division in a relation.
3.0 Relational Operations
Let us recall that,
a. The Relational Model consists of the elements: relations, which are made up of attributes.
b. A relation is a set of attributes with values for each attribute.
c. Relational Algebra is a collection of operations on Relations.
d. Relations are operands and the result of an operation is another relation.
e. Two main collections of relational operators:
i. Set theory operations:
Union, Intersection, Difference and Cartesian product.
ii. Specific Relational Operations:
Selection, Projection, Join, Division
3.1 Set Theoretic Operations
In this section, we shall consider the following set operations: Union, Intersection, and Difference.
Consider the following relations A and B
| Firstname | Surname | Score |
|-----------|----------|-------|
| John | Ayodeji | 75 |
| Firstname | Surname | Score |
|-----------|---------|-------|
| Sheu | Abdul | 76 |
| Taiwo | Lawrence| 77 |
| Dan | Musa | 78 |
### 3.1.1 Union: $A \cup B$
The union operation of two relational tables is formed by appending rows from one table to those of a second table to produce a third. Duplicate rows are eliminated.
$A \cup B$
| Firstname | Surname | Score |
|-----------|---------|-------|
| John | Ayodeji | 75 |
| Sheu | Abdul | 76 |
| Taiwo | Lawrence| 77 |
| Dan | Musa | 78 |
| Wale | Osa | 65 |
| Chidi | Brown | 66 |
### 3.1.2 Difference: $A - B$
The difference of two relational tables is a third that contains those rows that occur in the first table but not in the second. The Difference operation requires that the tables be union compatible. As with arithmetic, the order of subtraction matters. That is, $A - B$ is not the same as $B - A$.
3.1.3 Intersection: $A \cap B$
The intersection of two relational tables is a third table that contains common rows. Both tables must be union compatible.
$A \cap B$
| Firstname | Surname | Score |
|-----------|---------|-------|
| Dan | Musa | 78 |
3.2 Union Compatible Relations
- Attributes of relations need not be identical to perform union, intersection and difference operations.
- However, they must have the same number of attributes or arity and the domains for corresponding attributes must be identical.
- **Domain** is the data type and size of an attribute.
- The **degree** of relation R is the number of attributes it contains.
- Definition: Two relations R and S are *union compatible* if and only if they have the same degree and the domains of the corresponding attributes are the same.
- Some additional properties:
- Union, Intersection and difference operators may only be applied to Union Compatible relations.
- Union and Intersection are commutative operations
\[ R \cup S = S \cup R \]
\[ R \cap S = S \cap R \]
- Difference operation is NOT commutative.
\[ R - S \text{ not equal } S - R \]
- The resulting relations may not have meaningful names for the attributes. Convention is to use the attribute names from the first relation.
Activity A
- Assume relation C
| Firstname | Surname | Score |
|-----------|---------|-------|
| Sanyo | Kunbi | 89 |
| Alli | Barry | 53 |
| Dan | Musa | 78 |
- Compute $A \cup C$
- Compute $A \cap C$
- Show that $A - C$ is not equal to $C - A$
3.3 Cartesian Product
The Cartesian product of two relational tables is the concatenation of every row in one table with every row in the second. The product of table A (having m rows) and table B (having n rows) is the table C (having m x n rows). The product is denoted as $A \times B$ or $A$ TIMES $B$.
**A**
| Firstname | Surname | Score |
|-----------|---------|-------|
| John | Ayodeji | 75 |
| Sheu | Abdul | 76 |
| Taiwo | Lawrence | 77 |
**B**
| Lunch | Drink |
|--------------|-------|
| Pounded Yam | Malt |
| Bean Cake | Beer |
3.4 Selection and Projection Operations
The project operator retrieves a subset of columns from a table, removing duplicate rows from the result while the select operator, sometimes called restrict to prevent confusion with the SQL SELECT command, retrieves subsets of rows from a relational table based on a value(s) in a column or columns.
We shall consider these operators one after the other.
3.4.1 Selection Operators
The selection operator has the following characteristics:
i. Selection and Projection are unary operators.
ii. The selection operator is sigma: $\sigma$
iii. The selection operation acts like a filter on a relation by returning only a certain number of tuples.
iv. The resulting relation will have the same degree as the original relation.
v. The resulting relation may have fewer tuples than the original relation.
vi. The tuples to be returned are dependent on a condition that is part of the selection operator.
vii. $\sigma_C (R)$ Returns only those tuples in R that satisfy condition C
viii. A condition C can be made up of any combination of comparison or logical operators that operate on the attributes of R.
- Comparison operators: $= < > \geq \leq \neq$
- Logical operators: $\land \lor \neg$
ix. Use the Truth tables (memorize these) for logical expressions:
3.4.2 Selection Examples
Let us assume that the following staff table (STAFF) has the following records:
| Name | Room | Department | Designation |
|-------|------|------------|---------------|
| Ajayi | 101 | CIT | Professor |
| Chidi | 201 | ECO | Lecturer I |
| Musa | 202 | ECO | Professor |
| Bello | 301 | CIT | Senior Lecturer |
| Ajayi | 220 | ACC | Senior Lecturer |
a. Select only those Staff in the CIT department:
\[ \sigma_{\text{Dept} = 'CIT'}(\text{STAFF}) \]
Result:
| Name | Room | Department | Designation |
|-------|------|------------|---------------|
| Ajayi | 101 | CIT | Professor |
| Bello | 301 | CIT | Senior Lecturer |
b. Select only those Staff with last name Ajayi who are professors:
\[ \sigma_{\text{Name} = 'Ajayi' \land \text{Designation} = 'Professor'}(\text{STAFF}) \]
Result:
c. Select only those Staff who are either Professors or in the Economics department:
\[ \sigma_{\text{Designation} = 'Professor'} \lor \sigma_{\text{Department} = 'ECO'} (\text{STAFF}) \]
Result:
| Name | Room | Department | Designation |
|------|------|------------|-------------|
| Ajayi| 101 | CIT | Professor |
| Chidi| 201 | ECO | Lecturer I |
| Musa | 202 | ECO | Professor |
d. Select only those Employees who are not in the CIT department or Lecturer I:
\[ \sigma_{\neg(\text{Designation} = 'Lecturer I')} \lor \sigma_{\neg(\text{Department} = 'CIT')} (\text{STAFF}) \]
Result:
| Name | Room | Department | Designation |
|------|------|------------|-----------------|
| Musa | 202 | ECO | Professor |
| Ajayi| 220 | ACC | Senior Lecturer |
**Activity B**
1a. Evaluate the following expressions:
i. \( \sigma_{\neg(\text{Designation} = 'Lecturer I')} \land \sigma_{\text{Department} = 'CIT'} (\text{STAFF}) \)
ii. \( \sigma_{\text{Designation} = 'Professor'} (\sigma_{\text{Department} = 'CIT'} \text{STAFF}) \)
iii. \( \sigma_{\text{Department} = 'CIT'} (\sigma_{\text{Designation} = 'Professor'} \text{STAFF}) \)
iv. \( \sigma_{\text{Designation} = 'Professor'} \land \sigma_{\text{Department} = 'CIT'} (\text{STAFF}) \)
v. \( \sigma_{\text{Score} > 60} (A \cup B) \)
For this expression, use A and B from section 3.1.
b. Do expressions ii, iii and iv above all evaluate to the same thing?
3.4.3 Projection Operator
The projection operator has the following characteristics:
- Projection is also a Unary operator.
- The Projection operator is pi: $\pi$
- Projection limits the attributes that will be returned from the original relation.
- The general syntax is: $\pi_{\text{attributes}} R$
Where attributes is the list of attributes to be displayed and $R$ is the relation.
- The resulting relation will have the same number of tuples as the original relation (unless there are duplicate tuples produced).
- The degree of the resulting relation may be equal to or less than that of the original relation.
3.4.4 Projection Examples
Assume the same STAFF table above is used.
a. Project only the names and departments of the employees:
$\pi_{\text{name, department}} (\text{STAFF})$
Results:
| Name | Department |
|------|------------|
| Ajayi| CIT |
| Chidi| ECO |
| Musa | ECO |
| Bello| CIT |
| Ajayi| ACC |
3.4.5 Combining Selection and Projection
The selection and projection operators can be combined to perform both operations.
a. Show the names of all employees working in the CS department:
$\pi_{\text{name}} (\sigma_{\text{Department = 'CIT}} (\text{STAFF}))$
Results:
b. Show the name and designation of those Employees who are not in the CIT department or Lecturer I:
\[ \pi_{\text{name, Designation}} (\sigma_{\text{Designation = 'Lecturer I' \lor Department = 'CIT'}}(\text{STAFF})) \]
Result:
| Name | Designation |
|-------|---------------|
| Musa | Professor |
| Ajayi | Senior Lecturer |
**Activity C**
1. Evaluate the following expressions:
a. \( \pi_{\text{name, Designation}} (\sigma_{\text{Designation = 'Lecturer I' \land Department = 'CIT'}}(\text{STAFF})) \)
b. \( \pi_{\text{Firstname, Score}} (\sigma_{\text{Score > 70}}(A \cup B)) \)
For this expression, use A and B from section 3.1.
c. \( \sigma_{\text{room > 201}}(\pi_{\text{name, Designation}}(\text{STAFF})) \)
### 3.5 Aggregate Functions
Aggregate functions are sometimes written using the *Projection* operator or the *Script F* character: \( \sum \) as in Elmasri/Navathe book. In this section, we shall consider the following aggregate functions:
- SUM
- MINIMUM
- MAXIMUM
- AVERAGE, MEAN, MEDIAN
- COUNT
3.5.1 Aggregate Function Examples
Let us assume that the table STAFF has the following records:
| Name | Room | Department | Designation | Salary |
|-------|------|------------|-----------------|--------|
| Ajayi | 101 | CIT | Professor | 45000 |
| Chidi | 201 | ECO | Lecturer I | 35000 |
| Musa | 202 | ECO | Professor | 50000 |
| Bello | 301 | CIT | Senior Lecturer | 65000 |
| Ajayi | 220 | ACC | Senior Lecturer | 60000 |
a. Find the minimum Salary: $\sum_{\text{MIN (salary)}}(\text{STAFF})$
Results:
| MIN(salary) |
|-------------|
| 35000 |
b. Find the average Salary: $\sum_{\text{AVG (salary)}}(\text{STAFF})$
Results:
| AVG(salary) |
|-------------|
| 51000 |
c. Count the number of employees in the CIT department: $\sum_{\text{COUNT (name)}}(\sigma_{\text{Department = 'CIT'}}(\text{STAFF}))$
Results:
| COUNT(name) |
|-------------|
| 2 |
d. Find the total payroll for the Economics department: \( \sum_{\text{SUM(salary)}} (\sigma_{\text{Department = 'ECO'}}(\text{STAFF})) \)
Results:
| SUM(salary) |
|-------------|
| 85000 |
3.6 Join Operation
A join operation combines the product, selection, and, possibly, projection. The join operator horizontally combines (concatenates) data from one row of a table with rows from another or the same table when certain criteria are met. The criteria involve a relationship among the columns in the join relational table. If the join criterion is based on equality of column value, the result is called an equijoin. A natural join is an equijoin with redundant columns removed. The following are the properties of join operation:
- Join operations bring together two tables and combine their columns and records or rows in a specific fashion.
- The generic join operator (called the Theta Join) is:
- It takes as arguments the columns from the two tables that are to be joined.
- For example assume we have the STAFF table as above and a separate DEPARTMENT table with (Dept, MainOffice, Phone):
\[ \text{STAFF} \bowtie_{\text{STAFF.Department} = \text{DEPARTMENT.Dept}} \text{DEPARTMENT} \]
- The join condition can be \( = < > \geq \leq \neq \)
- When the join condition operator is \( = \) then we call this an Equijoin
- Note that the columns in common are repeated.
3.6.1 Join Examples
Let us assume we have the STAFF table from above and the following DEPARTMENT table:
| Dept | MainOffice | Phone |
|------|------------|----------------|
| CIT | 404 | 010-234-0001 |
| ECO | 200 | 010-234-0002 |
a. Find all information on every employee including their department info:
\[
\text{STAFF} \bowtie_{\text{staff.department} = \text{department.Dept}} \text{DEPARTMENT}
\]
Results:
| Name | Room | Department | Salary | Dept | MainOffice | Phone |
|-------|------|------------|--------|------|------------|-----------|
| Ajayi | 101 | CIT | 45000 | CIT | 404 | 010-234-0001 |
| Chidi | 201 | ECO | 35000 | ECO | 200 | 010-234-0002 |
| Musa | 202 | ECO | 50000 | ECO | 200 | 010-234-0002 |
| Bello | 301 | CIT | 65000 | ACC | 501 | 010-234-0003 |
| Ajayi | 220 | ACC | 60000 | Yor | 100 | 010-234-0004 |
b. Find all information on every employee including their department info where the employee works in an office numbered less than the department main office:
\[
\text{STAFF} \bowtie_{(\text{staff.room} < \text{department.mainoffice}) \land (\text{staff.department} = \text{department.dept})} \text{DEPARTMENT}
\]
Results:
| Name | Room | Department | Salary | Dept | MainOffice | Phone |
|-------|------|------------|--------|------|------------|-----------|
| Ajayi | 101 | CIT | 45000 | CIT | 404 | 010-234-0001 |
| Bello | 301 | CIT | 65000 | ACC | 501 | 010-234-0003 |
### 4.0 Conclusion
The relational algebra is a procedural query language with several fundamental operations: select (unary), project (unary), rename (unary), cartesian product (binary), union (binary), set-difference (binary), set-intersection, natural join, division, assignment. Operations produce a new relation as a result.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
xxiii. The union operation of two relational tables is formed by appending rows from one table to those of a second table to produce a third.
xxiv. The difference of two relational tables is a third that contains those rows that occur in the first table but not in the second.
xxv. The intersection of two relational tables is a third table that contains common rows.
xxvi. The product of two relational tables, also called the Cartesian product, is the concatenation of every row in one table with every row in the second.
xxvii. The project operator retrieves a subset of columns from a table, removing duplicate rows from the result.
xxviii. A join operation combines the product, selection, and, possibly, projection.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
2. Briefly explain the following terms
i. Union
ii. Intersection
iii. Difference
iv. Cartesian product.
v. Selection
vi. Projection
vii. Join
viii. Division
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey. Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Graeme C. Simsion, Graham C. Witt (2004). Data Modeling Essentials. San Francisco. Morgan Kaufmann
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
## Module 2: Structured Query Language and Transaction Management
### Unit 1: Structured Query Language (SQL)
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 97 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 97 |
| 3.0 What can SQL do? | 97 |
| 3.1 Database Tables | 97 |
| 3.2 SQL Data Type | 98 |
| 3.2.1 Numeric Data Type | 98 |
| 3.2.2 Character Strings | 98 |
| 3.2.3 Date and Time | 98 |
| 3.2.4 Microsoft Access Data Types | 99 |
| 3.2.5 MySQL Data Types | 99 |
| 3.2.6 SQL Server Data Types | 102 |
| 3.3 Data Definition Language | 104 |
| 3.3.1 Create Database Statement | 104 |
| 3.3.2 Create Table Statement | 104 |
| 3.3.3 SQL Constraints | 105 |
| 3.3.4 Not Null Constraint | 105 |
| 3.3.5 SQL Unique Constraint | 106 |
| 3.3.6 Primary Key Constraint | 107 |
| 3.3.7 SQL Foreign Key Constraint | 107 |
| 3.3.8 Use Command | 108 |
| 3.3.9 Alter | 109 |
| 3.3.10 Drop | 109 |
| 3.4 Data Manipulation Language | 109 |
| 3.4.1 The SQL Select Statement | 110 |
| 3.4.2 The SQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement | 110 |
| 3.4.3 The WHERE Clause | 110 |
| 3.4.4 The AND & OR Operators | 111 |
| 3.4.5 The ORDER BY Keyword | 111 |
| 3.4.6 The INSERT INTO Statement | 111 |
| 3.4.7 The UPDATE Statement | 112 |
| 3.4.8 The DELETE Statement | 112 |
| 3.4.9 The LIKE Operator | 113 |
| 3.4.10 The IN Operator | 113 |
| 3.4.11 The BETWEEN Operator | 113 |
| 3.4.12 SQL JOIN | 114 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 118 |
| 5.0 Summary | 118 |
1.0 Introduction
Structured Query Language (SQL) is a database computer language designed for managing data in relational database management systems (RDBMS). Its scope includes data query and update, schema creation and modification, and data access control.
SQL was developed at IBM by Andrew Richardson, Donald C. Messerly and Raymond F. Boyce in the early 1970s. This version, initially called SEQUEL, was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original relational database product, System R.
SQL has two major parts:
a. Data Definition Language (DDL) Used to create (define) data structures such as tables, indexes, clusters
b. Data Manipulation Language (DML) is used to store, retrieve and update data from tables.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
n. Know what relational algebra is all about
3.0 What Can SQL do?
a. SQL can execute queries against a database
b. SQL can retrieve data from a database
c. SQL can insert records in a database
d. SQL can update records in a database
e. SQL can delete records from a database
f. SQL can create new databases
g. SQL can create new tables in a database
h. SQL can create stored procedures in a database
i. SQL can create views in a database
j. SQL can set permissions on tables, procedures, and views
3.1 Database Tables
A database most often contains one or more tables. Each table is identified by a name (e.g. "Customers" or "Orders"). Tables contain records (rows) with data.
Below is an example of a table called "Persons":
Table 7.1: Persons Table
Source: http://www.w3schools.com/
| P_Id | LastName | FirstName | Address | City |
|------|----------|-----------|-----------|----------|
| 1 | Hansen | Ola | Timoteivn 10 | Sandnes |
| 2 | Svendson | Tove | Borgvn 23 | Sandnes |
| 3 | Pettersen| Kari | Storgt 20 | Stavanger|
The table above contains three records (one for each person) and five columns (P_Id, LastName, FirstName, Address, and City).
### 3.2 SQL Data Types
Each implementation of SQL uses slightly different names for the data types.
#### 3.2.1 Numeric Data Types
- Integers: INTEGER, INT or SMALLINT
- Real Numbers: FLOAT, REAL, DOUBLE, PRECISION
- Formatted Numbers: DECIMAL(i,j), NUMERIC(i,j)
#### 3.2.2 Character Strings
- Two main types: Fixed length and variable length.
- Fixed length of \( n \) characters: CHAR(n) or CHARACTER(n)
- Variable length up to size \( n \): VARCHAR(n)
#### 3.2.3 Date and Time
- Note: Implementations vary widely for these data types.
- DATE
Has 10 positions in the format: YYYY-MM-DD
- TIME
Has 8 positions in the format: HH:MM:SS
- TIME(i)
Defines the TIME data type with an additional \( i \) positions for fractions of a second. For example:
HH:MM:SS:dd
- Offset from UTZ. +/- HH:MM
- TIMESTAMP
- INTERVAL
Used to specify some span of time measured in days or minutes, etc.
- Other ways of expressing dates:
• Store as characters or integers with Year, Month Day:
19972011
• Store as Julian date:
1997283
• Both MS Access and Oracle store date and time information together in a DATE data type.
### 3.2.4 Microsoft Access Data Types
Microsoft Access is one of the popular Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). The acceptable data types are as shown in table 7.2
| Data type | Description | Storage |
|---------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------|
| Text | Use for text or combinations of text and numbers. 255 characters maximum | |
| Memo | Memo is used for larger amounts of text. Stores up to 65,536 characters. **Note:** You cannot sort a memo field. However, they are searchable | |
| Byte | Allows whole numbers from 0 to 255 | 1 byte |
| Integer | Allows whole numbers between -32,768 and 32,767 | 2 bytes |
| Long | Allows whole numbers between -2,147,483,648 and 2,147,483,647 | 4 bytes |
| Single | Single precision floating-point. Will handle most decimals | 4 bytes |
| Double | Double precision floating-point. Will handle most decimals | 8 bytes |
| Currency | Use for currency. Holds up to 15 digits of whole dollars, plus 4 decimal places. **Tip:** You can choose which country's currency to use | 8 bytes |
| AutoNumber | AutoNumber fields automatically give each record its own number, usually starting at 1 | 4 bytes |
| Date/Time | Use for dates and times | 8 bytes |
| Yes/No | A logical field can be displayed as Yes/No, True/False, or On/Off. In code, use the constants True and False (equivalent to -1 and 0). **Note:** Null values are not allowed in Yes/No fields | 1 bit |
| Ole Object | Can store pictures, audio, video, or other BLOBs (Binary Large OBjects) | up to 1GB |
| Hyperlink | Contain links to other files, including web pages | |
| Lookup Wizard | Let you type a list of options, which can then be chosen from a drop-down list | 4 bytes |
3.2.5 MySQL Data Types
MySQL is another powerful RDBMS in use today. In MySQL there are three main data types: text, number, and Date/Time types (see figure 7.3 for more detail).
Table 7.3: Microsoft Access Data Types
Source: http://www.w3schools.com/
Text types:
| Data type | Description |
|--------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| CHAR(size) | Holds a fixed length string (can contain letters, numbers, and special characters). The fixed size is specified in parenthesis. Can store up to 255 characters |
| VARCHAR(size) | Holds a variable length string (can contain letters, numbers, and special characters). The maximum size is specified in parenthesis. Can store up to 255 characters. **Note:** If you put a greater value than 255 it will be converted to a TEXT type |
| TINYTEXT | Holds a string with a maximum length of 255 characters |
| TEXT | Holds a string with a maximum length of 65,535 characters |
| BLOB | For BLOBs (Binary Large OBjects). Holds up to 65,535 bytes of data |
| MEDIUMTEXT | Holds a string with a maximum length of 16,777,215 characters |
| MEDIUMBLOB | For BLOBs (Binary Large OBjects). Holds up to 16,777,215 bytes of data |
| LONGTEXT | Holds a string with a maximum length of 4,294,967,295 characters |
| LONGBLOB | For BLOBs (Binary Large OBjects). Holds up to 4,294,967,295 bytes of data |
| ENUM(x,y,z,etc.) | Let you enter a list of possible values. You can list up to 65535 values in an ENUM list. If a value is inserted that is not in the list, a blank value will be inserted. **Note:** The values are sorted in the order you enter them. You enter the possible values in this format: ENUM('X','Y','Z') |
| SET | Similar to ENUM except that SET may contain up to 64 list items and can store more than one choice |
Number types:
| Data type | Description |
|--------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| TINYINT(size) | -128 to 127 normal. 0 to 255 UNSIGNED*. The maximum number of digits may be specified in parenthesis |
| SMALLINT(size) | -32768 to 32767 normal. 0 to 65535 UNSIGNED*. The maximum number of digits may be specified in parenthesis |
| Data type | Description |
|-----------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| MEDIUMINT(size) | -8388608 to 8388607 normal. 0 to 16777215 UNSIGNED*. The maximum number of digits may be specified in parenthesis |
| INT(size) | -2147483648 to 2147483647 normal. 0 to 4294967295 UNSIGNED*. The maximum number of digits may be specified in parenthesis |
| BIGINT(size) | -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 normal. 0 to 18446744073709551615 UNSIGNED*. The maximum number of digits may be specified in parenthesis |
| FLOAT(size,d) | A small number with a floating decimal point. The maximum number of digits may be specified in the size parameter. The maximum number of digits to the right of the decimal point is specified in the d parameter |
| DOUBLE(size,d) | A large number with a floating decimal point. The maximum number of digits may be specified in the size parameter. The maximum number of digits to the right of the decimal point is specified in the d parameter |
| DECIMAL(size,d) | A DOUBLE stored as a string, allowing for a fixed decimal point. The maximum number of digits may be specified in the size parameter. The maximum number of digits to the right of the decimal point is specified in the d parameter |
*The integer types have an extra option called UNSIGNED. Normally, the integer goes from an negative to positive value. Adding the UNSIGNED attribute will move that range up so it starts at zero instead of a negative number.
**Date types:**
| Data type | Description |
|---------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| DATE() | A date. Format: YYYY-MM-DD |
| | **Note:** The supported range is from '1000-01-01' to '9999-12-31' |
| DATETIME() | *A date and time combination. Format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS |
| | **Note:** The supported range is from '1000-01-01 00:00:00' to '9999-12-31 23:59:59' |
| TIMESTAMP() | *A timestamp. TIMESTAMP values are stored as the number of seconds since the Unix epoch ('1970-01-01 00:00:00' UTC). Format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS |
| | **Note:** The supported range is from '1970-01-01 00:00:01' UTC to '2038-01-09 03:14:07' UTC |
| TIME() | A time. Format: HH:MM:SS |
| | **Note:** The supported range is from '-838:59:59' to '838:59:59' |
| YEAR() | A year in two-digit or four-digit format. |
Note: Values allowed in four-digit format: 1901 to 2155. Values allowed in two-digit format: 70 to 69, representing years from 1970 to 2069.
*Even if DATETIME and TIMESTAMP return the same format, they work very differently. In an INSERT or UPDATE query, the TIMESTAMP automatically sets itself to the current date and time. TIMESTAMP also accepts various formats, like YYYYMMDDHHMMSS, YYMMDDHHMMSS, YYYYMMDD, or YYMMDD.
3.2.6 SQL Server Data Types
Table 7.4 lists some of the available Data Types in Microsoft SQL Server.
Table 7.4: Microsoft Access Data Types
Source: http://www.w3schools.com/
Character strings:
| Data type | Description | Storage |
|-------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------|
| char(n) | Fixed-length character string. Maximum 8,000 characters | n |
| varchar(n) | Variable-length character string. Maximum 8,000 characters | |
| varchar(max)| Variable-length character string. Maximum 1,073,741,824 characters | |
| text | Variable-length character string. Maximum 2GB of text data | |
Unicode strings:
| Data type | Description | Storage |
|-------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------|
| nchar(n) | Fixed-length Unicode data. Maximum 4,000 characters | |
| nvarchar(n) | Variable-length Unicode data. Maximum 4,000 characters | |
| nvarchar(max)| Variable-length Unicode data. Maximum 536,870,912 characters | |
| ntext | Variable-length Unicode data. Maximum 2GB of text data | |
Binary types:
| Data type | Description | Storage |
|-------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------|
| bit | Allows 0, 1, or NULL | |
| binary(n) | Fixed-length binary data. Maximum 8,000 bytes | |
| varbinary(n)| Variable-length binary data. Maximum 8,000 bytes | |
| varbinary(max)| Variable-length binary data. Maximum 2GB | |
| image | Variable-length binary data. Maximum 2GB | |
## Number types:
| Data type | Description | Storage |
|---------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------|
| tinyint | Allows whole numbers from 0 to 255 | 1 byte |
| smallint | Allows whole numbers between -32,768 and 32,767 | 2 bytes |
| int | Allows whole numbers between -2,147,483,648 and 2,147,483,647 | 4 bytes |
| bigint | Allows whole numbers between -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 and 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 | 8 bytes |
| decimal(p,s) | Fixed precision and scale numbers. | 5-17 bytes |
| | Allows numbers from $-10^{38} +1$ to $10^{38} -1$. | |
| | The p parameter indicates the maximum total number of digits that can be | |
| | stored (both to the left and to the right of the decimal point). p must be | |
| | a value from 1 to 38. Default is 18. | |
| | The s parameter indicates the maximum number of digits stored to the right | |
| | of the decimal point. s must be a value from 0 to p. Default value is 0 | |
| numeric(p,s) | Fixed precision and scale numbers. | 5-17 bytes |
| | Allows numbers from $-10^{38} +1$ to $10^{38} -1$. | |
| | The p parameter indicates the maximum total number of digits that can be | |
| | stored (both to the left and to the right of the decimal point). p must be | |
| | a value from 1 to 38. Default is 18. | |
| | The s parameter indicates the maximum number of digits stored to the right | |
| | of the decimal point. s must be a value from 0 to p. Default value is 0 | |
| smallmoney | Monetary data from -214,748.3648 to 214,748.3647 | 4 bytes |
| money | Monetary data from -922,337,203,685,477.5808 to 922,337,203,685,477.5807 | 8 bytes |
| float(n) | Floating precision number data from $-1.79E + 308$ to $1.79E + 308$. | 4 or 8 bytes |
| | The n parameter indicates whether the field should hold 4 or 8 bytes. | |
| | float(24) holds a 4-byte field and float(53) holds an 8-byte field. Default| |
| | value of n is 53. | |
| real | Floating precision number data from $-3.40E + 38$ to $3.40E + 38$ | 4 bytes |
## Date types:
| Data type | Description | Storage |
|-------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------|
| datetime | From January 1, 1753 to December 31, 9999 with an accuracy of 3.33 milliseconds | 8 bytes |
| datetime2 | From January 1, 0001 to December 31, 9999 with an accuracy of 100 nanoseconds | 6-8 bytes|
| smalldatetime | From January 1, 1900 to June 6, 2079 with an accuracy of 1 minute | 4 bytes |
| date | Store a date only. From January 1, 0001 to December 31, 9999 | 3 bytes |
| time | Store a time only to an accuracy of 100 nanoseconds | 3-5 bytes|
| datetimeoffset | The same as datetime2 with the addition of a time zone offset | 8-10 bytes|
| timestamp | Stores a unique number that gets updated every time a row gets created or modified. The timestamp value is based upon an internal clock and does not correspond to real time. Each table may have only one timestamp variable | |
**Other data types:**
| Data type | Description |
|-----------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| sql_variant | Stores up to 8,000 bytes of data of various data types, except text, ntext, and timestamp |
| uniqueidentifier| Stores a globally unique identifier (GUID) |
| xml | Stores XML formatted data. Maximum 2GB |
| cursor | Stores a reference to a cursor used for database operations |
| table | Stores a result-set for later processing |
### 3.3 Data Definition Language (DDL)
The Data Definition Language (DDL) is used to create and destroy databases and database objects. Let us take a look at the structure and usage of basic DDL commands:
#### 3.3.1 The CREATE DATABASE Statement
The `CREATE DATABASE` statement is used to create a database. SQL `CREATE DATABASE` Syntax is:
```sql
CREATE DATABASE database_name
```
Example: Let us create a database called "my_db". We use the following `CREATE DATABASE` statement:
```sql
CREATE DATABASE my_db
```
This statement creates an empty database named "my_db" on your DBMS. After creating the database, your next step is to create tables that will contain data.
3.3.2 The CREATE TABLE Statement
The CREATE TABLE statement is used to create a table in a database. SQL CREATE TABLE Syntax is:
```
CREATE TABLE table_name
(
column_name1 data_type,
column_name2 data_type,
column_name3 data_type,
...
)
```
The data type specifies what type of data the column can hold. See tables 7.2 to 7.4 for a complete reference of all the data types available in MS Access, MySQL, and SQL Server.
Example: Let us create a table called "Persons" that contains five columns: P_Id, LastName, FirstName, Address, and City. We use the following CREATE TABLE statement:
```
CREATE TABLE Persons
(
P_Id int,
LastName varchar(255),
FirstName varchar(255),
Address varchar(255),
City varchar(255)
)
```
The P_Id column is of type int and will hold a number. The LastName, FirstName, Address, and City columns are of type varchar with a maximum length of 255 characters.
3.3.3 SQL Constraints
Constraints are used to limit the type of data that can go into a table. Constraints can be specified when a table is created (with the CREATE TABLE statement) or after the table is created (with the ALTER TABLE statement).
In this section, we will focus on the following constraints:
a. NOT NULL
b. UNIQUE
c. PRIMARY KEY
d. FOREIGN KEY
3.3.4 NOT NULL Constraint
The NOT NULL constraint enforces a column to NOT accept NULL values.
The NOT NULL constraint enforces a field to always contain a value. This means that you cannot insert a new record, or update a record without adding a value to this field.
The following SQL enforces the "P_Id" column and the "LastName" column to not accept NULL values:
```sql
CREATE TABLE Persons
(
P_Id int NOT NULL,
LastName varchar(255) NOT NULL,
FirstName varchar(255),
Address varchar(255),
City varchar(255)
)
```
3.3.5 SQL UNIQUE Constraint
The UNIQUE constraint uniquely identifies each record in a database table.
The UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY constraints both provide a guarantee for uniqueness for a column or set of columns.
A PRIMARY KEY constraint automatically has a UNIQUE constraint defined on it.
Note that you can have many UNIQUE constraints per table, but only one PRIMARY KEY constraint per table.
Example 1: The following SQL creates a UNIQUE constraint on the "P_Id" column when the "Persons" table is created:
```sql
CREATE TABLE Persons
(
P_Id int NOT NULL UNIQUE,
LastName varchar(255) NOT NULL,
FirstName varchar(255),
Address varchar(255),
City varchar(255)
)
```
Example 2: To create a UNIQUE constraint on the "P_Id" column when the table is already created, use the following SQL:
ALTER TABLE Persons
ADD CONSTRAINT uc_PersonID UNIQUE (P_Id, LastName)
Example 3: To drop a UNIQUE constraint, use the following SQL:
ALTER TABLE Persons
DROP CONSTRAINT uc_PersonID
### 3.3.6 PRIMARY KEY Constraint
The PRIMARY KEY constraint uniquely identifies each record in a database table. Primary keys must contain unique values. A primary key column cannot contain NULL values.
Each table should have a primary key, and each table can have only one primary key.
Example 1: The following SQL creates a PRIMARY KEY on the "P_Id" column when the "Persons" table is created:
```sql
CREATE TABLE Persons
(
P_Id int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
LastName varchar(255) NOT NULL,
FirstName varchar(255),
Address varchar(255),
City varchar(255)
)
```
Example 2: To create a PRIMARY KEY constraint on the "P_Id" column when the table is already created, use the following SQL:
```sql
ALTER TABLE Persons
ADD CONSTRAINT pk_PersonID PRIMARY KEY (P_Id, LastName)
```
### 3.3.7 SQL FOREIGN KEY Constraint
A FOREIGN KEY in one table points to a PRIMARY KEY in another table.
Let us illustrate the foreign key with an example. Look at table 7.1 above and table 7.5:
The "Persons" table:
| P_Id | LastName | FirstName | Address | City |
|------|----------|-----------|-------------|--------|
| 1 | Hansen | Ola | Timoteivn 10| Sandnes|
| 2 | Svendson | Tove | Borgvn 23 | Sandnes|
| 3 | Pettersen| Kari | Storgt 20 | Stavanger|
Table 7.5: Orders Table
Source: http://www.w3schools.com/
| O_Id | OrderNo | P_Id |
|------|---------|------|
| 1 | 77895 | 3 |
| 2 | 44678 | 3 |
| 3 | 22456 | 2 |
| 4 | 24562 | 1 |
Note that the "P_Id" column in the "Orders" table points to the "P_Id" column in the "Persons" table.
The "P_Id" column in the "Persons" table is the PRIMARY KEY in the "Persons" table.
The "P_Id" column in the "Orders" table is a FOREIGN KEY in the "Orders" table.
The FOREIGN KEY constraint is used to prevent actions that would destroy link between tables.
The FOREIGN KEY constraint also prevents that invalid data is inserted into the foreign key column, because it has to be one of the values contained in the table it points to.
Example 1: The following SQL creates a FOREIGN KEY on the "P_Id" column when the "Orders" table is created:
```sql
CREATE TABLE Orders
(
O_Id int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
OrderNo int NOT NULL,
P_Id int FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES Persons(P_Id)
)
```
Example 2: To create a FOREIGN KEY constraint on the "P_Id" column when the "Orders" table is already created, use the following SQL:
```sql
ALTER TABLE Orders
ADD FOREIGN KEY (P_Id)
REFERENCES Persons(P_Id)
```
3.3.7 USE
The USE command allows you to specify the database you wish to work with within your
3.3.8 ALTER
Once you have created a table within a database, you may wish to modify the definition of it. The ALTER command allows you to make changes to the structure of a table without deleting and recreating it. Take a look at the following command:
ALTER TABLE personal_info
ADD salary money null
This example adds a new attribute to the personal_info table -- an employee's salary. The "money" argument specifies that an employee's salary will be stored using a dollars and cents format. Finally, the "null" keyword tells the database that it's OK for this field to contain no value for any given employee.
3.3.9 DROP
The final command of the Data Definition Language, DROP, allows us to remove entire database objects from our DBMS. For example, if we want to permanently remove the personal_info table that we created, we'd use the following command:
DROP TABLE personal_info
Similarly, the command below would be used to remove the entire employees database:
DROP DATABASE employees
Use this command with care! Remember that the DROP command removes entire data structures from your database. If you want to remove individual records, use the DELETE command of the Data Manipulation Language.
Activity A
1a. what do you understand by Data Definition Language? Then list some of the available DDL commands
b. Write briefly on the following commands:
i. Create
ii. Use
iii. Alter
iv. Drop
3.4 Data Manipulation Language (DML)
Data Manipulation Language (DML) is used to manipulate (select, insert, update, delete) data.
3.4.1 The SQL SELECT Statement
The SELECT statement is used to select data from a database. The result is stored in a result table, called the result-set. The SQL SELECT syntax:
```
SELECT column_name(s) FROM table_name
SELECT * FROM table_name
```
3.4.2 The SQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement
In a table, some of the columns may contain duplicate values. This is not a problem; however, sometimes you will want to list only the different (distinct) values in a table.
The DISTINCT keyword can be used to return only distinct (different) values. The syntax is
```
SELECT DISTINCT column_name(s) FROM table_name
```
3.4.3 The WHERE Clause
The WHERE clause is used to extract only those records that fulfill a specified criterion. The syntax is:
```
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
WHERE column_name operator value
```
Example:
```
SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE City='Sandnes'
```
Note: SQL uses single quotes around text values (most database systems will also accept double quotes). Although, numeric values should not be enclosed in quotes.
The operators allowed in the WHERE clause are:
| Operator | Description |
|----------|-------------------|
| = | Equal |
| <> | Not equal |
| > | Greater than |
| < | Less than |
| Operator | Description |
|----------|--------------------------------------------------|
| >= | Greater than or equal |
| <= | Less than or equal |
| BETWEEN | Between an inclusive range |
| LIKE | Search for a pattern |
| IN | If you know the exact value you want to return for at least one of the columns |
### 3.4.4 The AND & OR Operators
The **AND** operator displays a record if both the first condition and the second condition is true.
**Example**
```sql
SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE FirstName='Tove' AND LastName='Svendson'
```
This will select only the persons with the first name equal to "Tove" AND the Last name equal to "Syendson".
The **OR** operator displays a record if either the first condition or the second condition is true.
**Example**
```sql
SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE FirstName='Tove' OR FirstName='Ola'
```
This will select only the persons with the first name equal to "Tove" OR the first name equal to "Ola".
### 3.4.5 The ORDER BY Keyword
The **ORDER BY** keyword is used to sort the result-set by a specified column. It sorts the records in ascending order by default. If you want to sort the records in a descending order, you can use the **DESC** keyword. The syntax is:
```sql
SELECT column_name(s) FROM table_name ORDER BY column_name(s) ASC|DESC
```
### 3.4.6 The INSERT INTO Statement
The **INSERT INTO** statement is used to insert a new row in a table. The syntax is:
```sql
INSERT INTO table_name VALUES (value1, value2, value3,...)
INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2, column3,...)
VALUES (value1, value2, value3,...)
```
3.4.7 The UPDATE Statement
The UPDATE statement is used to update existing records in a table. The SQL UPDATE syntax is:
```
UPDATE table_name
SET column1=value, column2=value2,....
WHERE some_column=some_value
```
**Note:** Notice the WHERE clause in the UPDATE syntax. The WHERE clause specifies which record or records that should be updated. If you omit the WHERE clause, all records will be updated!
3.4.8 The DELETE Statement
The DELETE statement is used to delete rows in a table. The SQL DELETE Syntax is:
```
DELETE FROM table_name
WHERE some_column=some_value
```
**Note:** Notice the WHERE clause in the DELETE syntax. The WHERE clause specifies which record or records that should be deleted. If you omit the WHERE clause, all records will be deleted!
Activity B
Use the customer table shown in table 7.6 to answer the following SQL statements, displaying the resulting record sets
i. `SELECT * FROM customers`
ii. `SELECT CompanyName, ContactName FROM customers`
iii. `SELECT * FROM customers WHERE companyname LIKE 'a%'`
iv. `SELECT CompanyName, ContactName FROM customers WHERE CompanyName > 'a'`
v. `SELECT CompanyName, ContactName FROM customers WHERE CompanyName > 'g' AND ContactName > 'g'`
Table 7.6: Customers table
Source: Microsoft Northwind database sample
| CompanyName | ContactName | Address | City |
|----------------------|-------------------|-----------------------|--------|
| Alfreds Futterkiste | Maria Anders | Obere Str. 57 | Berlin |
| Berglunds snabbköp | Christina Berglund| Berguvsvägen 8 | Luleå |
| Centro comercial Moctezuma | Francisco Chang | Sierras de Granada 9993 | México D.F. |
| Ernst Handel | Roland Mendel | Kirchgasse 6 | Graz |
| Company Name | Contact Person | Address | City |
|------------------------------|------------------|--------------------------------|----------|
| FISSA Fabrica Inter. Salchichas S.A. | Diego Roel | C/ Moralzarzal, 86 | Madrid |
| Galería del gastrónomo | Eduardo Saavedra | Rambla de Cataluña, 23 | Barcelona|
| Island Trading | Helen Bennett | Garden House Crowther Way | Cowes |
| Königlich Essen | Philip Cramer | Maubelstr. 90 | Brandenburg|
| Laughing Bacchus Wine Cellars| Yoshi Tannamuri | 1900 Oak St. | Vancouver|
| Magazzini Alimentari Riuniti | Giovanni Rovelli | Via Ludovico il Moro 22 | Bergamo |
### 3.4.9 The LIKE Operator
The LIKE operator is used to search for a specified pattern in a column. The SQL LIKE Syntax is:
```sql
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
WHERE column_name LIKE pattern
```
Example: If we want to select the persons living in a city that starts with "s" from the table 7.6; We use the following SELECT statement:
```sql
SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE City LIKE 's%'
```
The "%" sign can be used to define wildcards (missing letters in the pattern) both before and after the pattern.
### 3.4.10 The IN Operator
The IN operator allows you to specify multiple values in a WHERE clause. The syntax is:
```sql
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
WHERE column_name IN (value1,value2,...)
```
Example: if we want to select the persons with a last name equal to "Hansen" or "Pettersen" from the Persons table; We use the following SELECT statement:
```sql
SELECT * FROM Persons
WHERE LastName IN ('Hansen','Pettersen')
```
### 3.4.11 The BETWEEN Operator
The BETWEEN operator selects a range of data between two values. The values can be numbers, text, or dates. The SQL BETWEEN Syntax is:
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name
WHERE column_name
BETWEEN value1 AND value2
Example: If we want to select the persons with a last name alphabetically between "Hansen" and "Pettersen" from the persons table. We use the following SELECT statement:
SELECT * FROM Persons
WHERE LastName
BETWEEN 'Hansen' AND 'Pettersen'
3.4.12 SQL JOIN
The JOIN keyword is used in an SQL statement to query data from two or more tables, based on a relationship between certain columns in these tables.
Tables in a database are often related to each other with keys.
A primary key is a column (or a combination of columns) with a unique value for each row. Each primary key value must be unique within the table. The purpose is to bind data together, across tables, without repeating all of the data in every table.
Look at the "Persons" table shown in table 7.1:
**Persons table**
| P_Id | LastName | FirstName | Address | City |
|------|----------|-----------|-----------|---------|
| 1 | Hansen | Ola | Timoteivn 10 | Sandnes |
| 2 | Svendson | Tove | Borgvn 23 | Sandnes |
| 3 | Pettersen| Kari | Storgt 20 | Stavanger |
Note that the "P_Id" column is the primary key in the "Persons" table. This means that no two rows can have the same P_Id. The P_Id distinguishes two persons even if they have the same name.
Next, we have the "Orders" table shown in table 7.7:
Table 7.7: Orders Table
Source: [http://www.w3schools.com/](http://www.w3schools.com/)
| O_Id | OrderNo | P_Id |
|------|---------|------|
| 1 | 77895 | 3 |
| 2 | 44678 | 3 |
| 3 | 22456 | 1 |
Note that the "O_Id" column is the primary key in the "Orders" table and that the "P_Id" column refers to the persons in the "Persons" table without using their names.
Notice that the relationship between the two tables above is the "P_Id" column.
The different types of Joins are listed below
- **JOIN**: Return rows when there is at least one match in both tables
- **LEFT JOIN**: Return all rows from the left table, even if there are no matches in the right table
- **RIGHT JOIN**: Return all rows from the right table, even if there are no matches in the left table
**a. SQL INNER JOIN Keyword**
The INNER JOIN keyword return rows when there is at least one match in both tables. The SQL INNER JOIN Syntax is:
```
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name1
INNER JOIN table_name2
ON table_name1.column_name=table_name2.column_name
```
Example:
Using tables 7.1 and 7.7 above; if we want to list all the persons with any orders. We use the following SELECT statement:
```
SELECT Persons.LastName, Persons.FirstName, Orders.OrderNo
FROM Persons
INNER JOIN Orders
ON Persons.P_Id=Orders.P_Id
ORDER BY Persons.LastName
```
The result-set will look like this:
| LastName | FirstName | OrderNo |
|----------|-----------|---------|
| Hansen | Ola | 22456 |
| Hansen | Ola | 24562 |
| Pettersen| Kari | 77895 |
| Pettersen| Kari | 44678 |
b. SQL LEFT JOIN Keyword
The LEFT JOIN keyword returns all rows from the left table (table_name1), even if there are no matches in the right table (table_name2). The SQL LEFT JOIN Syntax is:
```
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name1
LEFT JOIN table_name2
ON table_name1.column_name=table_name2.column_name
```
In some databases LEFT JOIN is called LEFT OUTER JOIN.
Example: If we want to list all the persons and their orders - if any, from the tables 7.3 and 7.4 above. We use the following SELECT statement:
```
SELECT Persons.LastName, Persons.FirstName, Orders.OrderNo
FROM Persons
LEFT JOIN Orders
ON Persons.P_Id=Orders.P_Id
ORDER BY Persons.LastName
```
The result-set will look like this:
| LastName | FirstName | OrderNo |
|----------|-----------|---------|
| Hansen | Ola | 22456 |
| Hansen | Ola | 24562 |
| Pettersen| Kari | 77895 |
| Pettersen| Kari | 44678 |
| Svendson | Tove | |
The LEFT JOIN keyword returns all the rows from the left table (Persons), even if there are no matches in the right table (Orders).
c. SQL RIGHT JOIN Keyword
The RIGHT JOIN keyword Return all rows from the right table (table_name2), even if there are no matches in the left table (table_name1). SQL RIGHT JOIN Syntax is:
```
SELECT column_name(s)
FROM table_name1
RIGHT JOIN table_name2
ON table_name1.column_name=table_name2.column_name
```
Example: Let us list all the orders with containing persons - if any, from the tables 7.3 and 7.4 above. We use the following SELECT statement:
SELECT Persons.LastName, Persons.FirstName, Orders.OrderNo
FROM Persons
RIGHT JOIN Orders
ON Persons.P_Id=Orders.P_Id
ORDER BY Persons.LastName
The result-set will look like this:
| LastName | FirstName | OrderNo |
|----------|-----------|---------|
| Hansen | Ola | 22456 |
| Hansen | Ola | 24562 |
| Pettersen| Kari | 77895 |
| Pettersen| Kari | 44678 |
| | | 34764 |
The RIGHT JOIN keyword returns all the rows from the right table (Orders), even if there are no matches in the left table (Persons).
d. The SQL UNION Operator
The UNION operator is used to combine the result-set of two or more SELECT statements.
Notice that each SELECT statement within the UNION must have the same number of columns. The columns must also have similar data types. Also, the columns in each SELECT statement must be in the same order. SQL UNION Syntax:
```
SELECT column_name(s) FROM table_name1
UNION
SELECT column_name(s) FROM table_name2
```
Example: Let us consider tables 7.8:
Table 7.8: Employees table
Source: http://www.w3schools.com/
(a) Employees_Norway:
| E_ID | E_Name |
|------|----------------|
| 01 | Hansen, Ola |
| 02 | Svendson, Tove |
| 03 | Svendson, Stephen |
| 04 | Pettersen, Kari |
(b) Employees_USA:
(c) UNION of tables 7.8 a and b:
| E_Name |
|-----------------|
| Hansen, Ola |
| Svendson, Tove |
| Svendson, Stephen |
| Pettersen, Kari |
| Turner, Sally |
| Kent, Clark |
| Scott, Stephen |
If we want to list all the different employees in Norway and USA; we use the following SELECT statement:
```
SELECT E_Name FROM Employees_Norway
UNION
SELECT E_Name FROM Employees_USA
```
The result-set will look like this table 7.8c
Activity C
1. Using tables 7.1 (Person’s table) and 7.7 (Order’s table), Demonstrate how to execute the following commands:
i. Join
ii. Left Join
iii. Right Join
iv. Full Join
4.0 Conclusion
When we wish to extract information from a database, we communicate with the Database Management System (DBMS) using a query language called SQL. SQL is the most frequently used programming language in the world, in the sense that every day, more SQL programs are written, compiled and executed than programs in any other computer programming language. SQL is used with relational database systems. In a relational database, all of the data is stored in tables.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
xxix. **Structured Query Language** (SQL) is a database computer language designed for managing data in relational database management systems (RDBMS).
xxx. SQL has two major parts: Data Definition Language and Data Manipulation Language.
xxxi. Data Definition Language (DDL) Used to create (define) data structures such as tables, indexes, clusters.
xxxii. Some of the available DDL commands are: Create, Use, Alter, and Drop.
xxxiii. SQL Constraints are used to limit the type of data that can go into a table. The following constraint types were considered: Not Null, Unique, Primary Key, Foreign Key.
xxxiv. Data Manipulation Language (DML) is used to manipulate (select, insert, update, delete) data in a Table.
xxxv. The JOIN keyword is used in an SQL statement to query data from two or more tables, based on a relationship between certain columns in these tables.
xxxvi. **JOIN**: Return rows when there is at least one match in both tables.
xxxvii. **LEFT JOIN**: Return all rows from the left table, even if there are no matches in the right table.
xxxviii. **RIGHT JOIN**: Return all rows from the right table, even if there are no matches in the left table.
xxxix. The UNION operator is used to combine the result-set of two or more SELECT statements.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
| PFNO | NAMES | STATUS | HIREDATE | SALARY | COMM | DEPTNO |
|------|---------|------------|----------|--------|------|--------|
| 1 | AJAYI | CLERK | 17-Dec-80| 800 | | 10 |
| 2 | CHIM | SALESMAN | 20-Feb-81| 1600 | 300 | 40 |
| 3 | JOHN | MANAGER | 2-Apr-81 | 1250 | | 40 |
| 4 | WILL | SALESMAN | 28-Sep-81| 1250 | 300 | 30 |
| 5 | KUDI | MANAGER | 1-May-81 | 2975 | | 30 |
| 6 | TOLA | MANAGER | 9-Jun-81 | 2850 | | 20 |
| 7 | ABDUL | ANALYST | 27-Jun-90| 3000 | | 20 |
| 8 | JAKE | PRESIDENT | 3-Dec-81 | 5000 | | 10 |
| 9 | CLERK | SALESMAN | 31-Jul-90| 1234 | 500 | 40 |
| 10 | SHEU | CLERK | 3-Dec-81 | 1100 | | 40 |
| 11 | CHIDI | CLERK | 3-Dec-81 | 950 | | 20 |
| 12 | HENRY | ANALYST | 23-Jan-82| 3000 | | 20 |
| 13 | IDIA | CLERK | 23-Jan-82| 1200 | | 30 |
| 14 | KUTI | SALESMAN | 23-Jan-82| 1600 | 600 | 20 |
| 15 | BELLO | CLERK | 23-Jan-82| 1250 | | 10 |
Employees Table
| DEPTNO | DNAME | LOCATION |
|--------|---------|----------|
| 10 | ACCOUNTING | IBADAN |
| 20 | RESEARCH | LAGOS |
| 30 | SALES | MINNA |
| 40 | OPERATION | KADUNA |
Department Table
Use the above tables to answer the following questions:
Write an SQL statement that:
i. List all clerks who work in department 20
ii. List the names of all managers and analysts
iii. List the names of analysts who are not working in department 20
iv. List Employees with salary greater than 2500
v. Which status are paid less than 2000 but more than 1000
vi. What is the total remuneration of sales people
vii. List all employees in department 10, order by their salary
viii. Which employees work in Lagos
ix. Where does KUDI work?
x. Which position are paid higher than average salary
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey. Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Graeme C. Simsion, Graham C. Witt (2004). Data Modeling Essentials. San Francisco. Morgan Kaufmann
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
## Module 2: Structured Query Language and Transaction Management
### Unit 1: SQL Functions
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 122 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 122 |
| 3.1 SQL Aggregate Functions: | 122 |
| 3.1.1 AVG Function | 122 |
| 3.1.2 COUNT Function | 123 |
| 3.1.3 FIRST Function | 125 |
| 3.1.4 LAST Function | 125 |
| 3.1.5 MAX Function | 126 |
| 3.1.6 MIN Function | 126 |
| 3.1.7 SUM Function | 127 |
| 3.1.8 GROUP BY Statement | 127 |
| 3.1.9 HAVING Clause | 128 |
| 3.2 SQL Scalar functions | 129 |
| 3.2.1 UCASE Function | 130 |
| 3.2.2 LCASE Function | 130 |
| 3.2.3 MID Function | 131 |
| 3.2.4 LEN Function | 131 |
| 3.2.5 ROUND Function | 132 |
| 3.2.6 NOW Function | 132 |
| 3.2.7 FORMAT Function | 133 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 134 |
| 5.0 Summary | 134 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 134 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 135 |
1.0 Introduction
A function is a special type of command word in the SQL command set. In effect, functions are one-word commands that return a single value. The value of a function can be determined by input parameters, as with a function that averages a list of database values. But many functions do not use any type of input parameter, such as the function that returns the current system time, CURRENT_TIME.
The SQL supports a number of useful functions. This unit covers those functions, providing detailed descriptions and examples.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
- Perform arithmetic operations such as: finding average of column, finding sum of a column, finding the number of records in a table; finding the minimum and maximum values in a column.
- Convert a field to upper or lower case
- Extract characters from a text field
- Format how a column or field should be displayed.
3.1 SQL Aggregate Functions
SQL aggregate functions return a single value, calculated from values in a column. In this section, we discuss the following SQL aggregate commands. By the end of this section, you will learn the basics of retrieving data from the database using SQL.
Useful aggregate functions are:
i. AVG() - Returns the average value
ii. COUNT() - Returns the number of rows
iii. FIRST() - Returns the first value
iv. LAST() - Returns the last value
v. MAX() - Returns the largest value
vi. MIN() - Returns the smallest value
vii. SUM() - Returns the sum
3.1.1 The AVG Function
The AVG function returns the average value of a numeric column. AVG Syntax is:
SELECT AVG(column_name) FROM table_name
Example: Let us consider the following “Orders” table:
| OrderId | OrderDate | Price | Customername |
|---------|--------------|-------|--------------|
| 11 | 2008/11/12 | 1000 | Henry Bank |
| 21 | 2008/10/23 | 1600 | Niyi Alade |
| 31 | 2008/09/02 | 700 | Henry Bank |
| 41 | 2008/09/03 | 300 | Henry Bank |
| 51 | 2008/08/30 | 2000 | James Adeola |
| 61 | 2008/10/04 | 100 | Niyi Alade |
Question: Let us find the average value of the Price column.
Answer: We use the following SQL statement:
SELECT AVG(Price) AS AveragePrice FROM Orders
The result-set will look like this:
| AveragePrice |
|--------------|
| 950 |
We may decide to find the customers that have order Price value higher than the average Price value.
We use the following SQL statement:
SELECT Customername FROM Orders
WHERE Price>(SELECT AVG(Price) FROM Orders)
The result-set will look like this:
| Customername |
|--------------|
| Henry Bank |
| Niyi Alade |
| James Adeola |
### 3.1.2 The COUNT function
The COUNT function returns the number of rows that matches specified criteria. Note that null values will not be counted. In the section, we shall consider the following:
- SQL COUNT(column_name) Syntax
- SQL COUNT(*) Syntax
- SQL COUNT(DISTINCT column_name) Syntax
a. SQL COUNT(column_name) Syntax
The COUNT(column_name) function returns the number of values (NULL values will not be counted) of the specified column:
SELECT COUNT(column_name) FROM table_name
Example: Let us consider our order table in section 3.11 again.
Now we want to count the number of orders from "Customer Niyi Alade".
We use the following SQL statement:
SELECT COUNT(Customer) AS NiyiAlade FROM Orders
WHERE Customer='Niyi Alade'
The result of the SQL statement above will be 2, because the customer Niyi Alade has made 2 orders in total:
| NiyiAlade |
|-----------|
| 2 |
b. SQL COUNT(*) Syntax
The COUNT(*) function returns the number of records in a table:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_name
Example: Let us consider our order table again. Now we want to find the number of records in the order table.
We use the following SQL statement:
SELECT COUNT(*) AS NumberOfOrders FROM Orders
The result-set will look like this
| NumberOfOrders |
|----------------|
| 6 |
This is the total number of rows in the order table.
c. SQL COUNT(DISTINCT column_name) Syntax
The COUNT(DISTINCT column_name) function returns the number of distinct values of the specified column:
\[
\text{SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT column\_name) FROM table\_name}
\]
Example: Now we want to count the number of unique customers in the "Orders" table.
We use the following SQL statement:
\[
\text{SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT Customer) AS TotalCustomers FROM Orders}
\]
The result-set will look like this:
| TotalCustomers |
|----------------|
| 3 |
### 3.1.3 The FIRST Function
The FIRST function returns the first value of the selected column. The SQL Syntax is:
\[
\text{SELECT FIRST(column\_name) FROM table\_name}
\]
Example: We will still make use of our orders table in section 3.11
Now we want to find the first value of the "Price" column.
We use the following SQL statement:
\[
\text{SELECT FIRST(Price) AS FirstPrice FROM Orders}
\]
The result-set will look like this:
| FirstOrderPrice |
|-----------------|
| 1000 |
### 3.1.4 The LAST Function
The LAST function returns the last value of the selected column. The syntax is:
\[
\text{SELECT LAST(column\_name) FROM table\_name}
\]
Example: We have the "Orders" table in section 3.11
Now we want to find the last value of the Price column.
We will make use of the following SQL statement:
SELECT LAST(Price) AS LastOrderPrice FROM Orders
The result-set will look like this:
| LastOrderPrice |
|----------------|
| 100 |
3.1.5 The MAX Function
The MAX function returns the largest value of the selected column. The SQL MAX Syntax is:
```
SELECT MAX(column_name) FROM table_name
```
Example: Let us consider Orders table again:
This time around we want to find the largest value of the Price column.
We shall make use of the following SQL statement:
```
SELECT MAX(Price) AS LargestPrice FROM Orders
```
The result-set will look like this:
| LargestPrice |
|--------------|
| 2000 |
3.1.6 The MIN Function
The MIN function returns the smallest value of the selected column. The SQL MIN Syntax is as follows:
```
SELECT MIN(column_name) FROM table_name
```
Example from our Orders table: let us find the smallest value of the Price column.
We use the following SQL statement:
```
SELECT MIN(Price) AS SmallestPrice FROM Orders
```
The result-set will look like this:
3.1.7 SUM Function
The SUM function is used to calculate the total for a column. The syntax is,
\[ \text{SELECT SUM("column\_name") FROM "table\_name"} \]
Example from Orders table: we want to find the sum of all Price field.
We use the following SQL statement:
\[ \text{SELECT SUM(Price) AS OrderTotal FROM Orders} \]
The result-set will look like this:
| OrderTotal |
|------------|
| 5700 |
3.1.8 The GROUP BY Statement
The GROUP BY statement is used in conjunction with the aggregate functions to group the result-set by one or more columns. The syntax is:
\[ \text{SELECT column\_name, aggregate\_function(column\_name)} \]
\[ \text{FROM table\_name} \]
\[ \text{WHERE column\_name operator value} \]
\[ \text{GROUP BY column\_name} \]
Example: let us consider the Orders table again:
Now we want to find the total sum (total order) of each customer.
We will have to use the GROUP BY statement to group the customers.
We use the following SQL statement:
\[ \text{SELECT Customername, SUM(Price) FROM Orders} \]
\[ \text{GROUP BY Customername} \]
The result-set will look like this:
Let us see what will happen if we omit the GROUP BY statement:
SELECT Customername, SUM(Price) FROM Orders
The result-set will look like this:
| Customername | SUM(Price) |
|--------------|------------|
| Henry Bank | 5700 |
| Niyi Alade | 5700 |
| Henry Bank | 5700 |
| Henry Bank | 5700 |
| James Adeola | 5700 |
| Niyi Alade | 5700 |
The result-set above is not what we wanted.
### 3.1.9 The HAVING Clause
The HAVING clause was added to SQL because the WHERE keyword could not be used with aggregate functions. The syntax is:
```
SELECT column_name, aggregate_function(column_name)
FROM table_name
WHERE column_name operator value
GROUP BY column_name
HAVING aggregate_function(column_name) operator value
```
Example: Now we want to find if any of the customers have a total order of less than 2000.
We use the following SQL statement:
```
SELECT Customername, SUM(Price) FROM Orders
GROUP BY Customer
HAVING SUM(Price)<2000
```
The result-set will look like this:
| Customername | SUM(Price) |
|--------------|------------|
Now we want to find if the customers "Henry Bank" or "James Adeola" have a total order of more than 1500.
We add an ordinary WHERE clause to the SQL statement:
```
SELECT Customername, SUM(Price) FROM Orders
WHERE Customername='Henry Bank' OR Customername='James Adeola'
GROUP BY Customername
HAVING SUM(Price)>1500
```
The result-set will look like this:
| Customername | SUM(Price) |
|----------------|------------|
| Henry Bank | 2000 |
| James Adeola | 2000 |
**Activity A**
1. Write out the SQL syntax for the following functions
i. AVG()
ii. COUNT()
iii. FIRST()
iv. LAST()
v. MAX()
vi. MIN()
vii. SUM()
### 3.2 SQL Scalar functions
SQL scalar functions return a single value, based on the input value. In this section, we discuss the following SQL scalar commands. By the end of this section, you will learn the basics of manipulating data from the database using SQL.
Some useful scalar functions are:
- UCASE() - Converts a field to upper case
- LCASE() - Converts a field to lower case
- MID() - Extract characters from a text field
- LEN() - Returns the length of a text field
- ROUND() - Rounds a numeric field to the number of decimals specified
- NOW() - Returns the current system date and time
- FORMAT() - Formats how a field is to be displayed
We shall make use of the following Persons table throughout this section
| PersonId | Surname | Firstname | Address | City |
|----------|---------|-----------|------------------|-------|
| 1 | Henry | Bank | 15 Allen Avenue | Lagos |
| 2 | Ebuka | Tunji | 23 Wuse Zone 4 | Abuja |
| 3 | Peter | Kasim | 78 Baba street | Kaduna|
### 3.2.1 The UCASE Function
The UCASE function is used to convert the value of a column to uppercase. The syntax is:
```
SELECT UCASE (column_name) FROM table_name
```
Example: We have a Persons table in section 3.2, now we want to select the content of the Surname and FirstName columns, and convert the Surname column to uppercase.
We use the following SELECT statement:
```
SELECT UCASE(Surname) as Surname, FirstName FROM Persons
```
The result-set will look like this:
| Surname | FirstName |
|---------|-----------|
| HENRY | Bank |
| EBUKA | Tunji |
| PETER | Kasim |
### 3.2.2 The LCASE Function
The LCASE() function converts the value of a column to lowercase. The syntax is:
```
SELECT LCASE(column_name) FROM table_name
```
Example: Let us select the content of the Surname and FirstName columns from our Persons table, and convert the Surname column to lowercase.
We use the following SELECT statement:
```
SELECT LCASE(Surname) as Surname, FirstName FROM Persons
```
The result-set will look like this:
| Surname | FirstName |
|---------|-----------|
3.2.3 The MID Function
The MID function is used to extract characters from a text column. The syntax is:
```
SELECT MID(column_name, start[,length]) FROM table_name
```
| Parameters | Description |
|------------|-------------|
| column_name | Required. The column to extract characters from |
| start | Required. Specifies the starting position (starts at 1) |
| length | Optional. The number of characters to return. If omitted, the MID() function returns the rest of the text |
Example: Let us extract the first four characters of the "City" column from Persons table.
We use the following SELECT statement:
```
SELECT MID(City,1,4) as City FROM Persons
```
The result-set will look like this:
| City |
|------|
| Lago |
| Abuj |
| Kadu |
3.2.4 The LEN Function
The LEN function returns the length of the value in a text column. The syntax is:
```
SELECT LEN(column_name) FROM table_name
```
Example: Let us select the length of the values in the Address column of Persons table.
We use the following SELECT statement:
```
SELECT LEN(Address) as LengthOfAddress FROM Persons
```
The result-set will look like this:
| LengthOfAddress |
|-----------------|
| 15 |
| 14 |
| 14 |
### 3.2.5 The ROUND() Function
The `ROUND` function is used to round a numeric field to the number of decimals specified. The syntax is:
```sql
SELECT ROUND(column_name, decimals) FROM table_name
```
| Parameter | Description |
|---------------|------------------------------------|
| column_name | Required. The field to round. |
| Decimals | Required. Specifies the number of decimals to be returned. |
Example: Let us consider the Products table below:
| ProductID | ProductName | Unit | UnitPrice |
|-----------|-------------|---------|-----------|
| 11 | Sugar | 1000 g | 10.45 |
| 12 | Salt | 1000 g | 32.56 |
| 13 | Palm Oil | 1000 g | 15.67 |
Now we want to display the product name and the price rounded to the nearest integer.
We use the following SELECT statement:
```sql
SELECT ProductName, ROUND(UnitPrice,0) as UnitPrice FROM Products
```
The result-set will look like this:
| ProductName | UnitPrice |
|-------------|-----------|
| Sugar | 10 |
| Salt | 33 |
| Palm Oil | 16 |
3.2.6 The NOW Function
The NOW function returns the current system date and time. The syntax is:
SELECT NOW() FROM table_name
Example: Let us consider the product table again. Now we want to display the products and prices per today’s date.
We use the following SELECT statement:
SELECT ProductName, UnitPrice, Now() as PerDate FROM Products
The result-set will look like this:
| ProductName | UnitPrice | PerDate |
|-------------|-----------|-----------------------|
| Sugar | 10.45 | 8/18/2009 10:35:02 AM |
| Salt | 32.56 | 8/18/2009 10:35:02 AM |
| Palm Oil | 15.67 | 8/18/2009 10:35:02 AM |
3.2.7 The FORMAT Function
The FORMAT function is used to format how a field is to be displayed. The syntax is:
SELECT FORMAT(column_name,format) FROM table_name
Parameter Description
column_name Required. The field to be formatted.
Format Required. Specifies the format.
Example: Let us make use of the products table here. Now we want to display the products and prices per today's date (with today's date displayed in the following format "YYYY-MM-DD").
We use the following SELECT statement:
SELECT ProductName, UnitPrice, FORMAT(Now(),'YYYY-MM-DD') as PerDate
FROM Products
The result-set will look like this:
| ProductName | UnitPrice | PerDate |
|-------------|-----------|---------|
| Sugar | 10.45 | 2009/8/18 |
| Salt | 32.56 | 2009/8/18 |
| Palm Oil | 15.67 | 2009/8/18 |
Activity B
1. Write out the SQL syntax for the following functions:
i. UCASE
ii. LEN
iii. MID
iv. LCASE
v. ROUND
vi. NOW
vii. FORMAT
4.0 Conclusion
SQL has many built-in functions for performing calculations on data. These functions were categorized into: SQL Aggregate functions and SQL Scalar functions. The aggregate functions operate against a collection of values, but return a single, summarizing value. Scalar functions Operate against a single value, and return a single value based on the input value. Some scalar functions, CURRENT_TIME for example, do not require any arguments.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
xl. The basics of retrieving data from the database using SQL.
xli. AVG function is to return the average value of a column in a database table.
xlii. COUNT function returns the number of rows in a database table.
xliii. FIRST function returns the first value in a database table.
xliv. LAST function returns the last value in a database table.
xlv. MAX function returns the largest value
xlvi. MIN function returns the smallest value
xlvii. SUM function returns the sum
xlviii. UCASE function converts a field to upper case
xlix. LCASE converts a field to lower case
l. MID function extract characters from a text field
li. LEN function returns the length of a text field
lii. ROUND function rounds a numeric field to the number of decimals specified
liii. NOW function returns the current system date and time
liv. FORMAT function formats how a field is to be displayed
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
| PFNO | NAMES | STATUS | HIREDATE | SALARY | COMM | DEPTNO |
|------|--------|-----------|----------|--------|------|--------|
| 1 | AJAYI | CLERK | 17-Dec-80| 800 | | 10 |
| 2 | CHIM | SALESMAN | 20-Feb-81| 1600 | 300 | 40 |
| | | | | | | |
|---|---|-------|----------|--------|----|----|
| 3 | JOHN | MANAGER | 2-Apr-81 | 1250 | | 40 |
| 4 | WILL | SALESMAN | 28-Sep-81 | 1250 | 300 | 30 |
| 5 | KUDI | MANAGER | 1-May-81 | 2975 | | 30 |
| 6 | TOLA | MANAGER | 9-Jun-81 | 2850 | | 20 |
| 7 | ABDUL | ANALYST | 27-Jun-90 | 3000 | | 20 |
| 8 | JAKE | PRESIDENT | 3-Dec-81 | 5000 | | 10 |
| 9 | CLERK | SALESMAN | 31-Jul-90 | 1234 | 500 | 40 |
|10 | SHEU | CLERK | 3-Dec-81 | 1100 | | 40 |
|11 | CHIDI | CLERK | 3-Dec-81 | 950 | | 20 |
|12 | HENRY | ANALYST | 23-Jan-82 | 3000 | | 20 |
|13 | IDIA | CLERK | 23-Jan-82 | 1200 | | 30 |
|14 | KUTI | SALESMAN | 23-Jan-82 | 1600 | 600 | 20 |
|15 | BELLO | CLERK | 23-Jan-82 | 1250 | | 10 |
**Employees Table**
From the above tables, write the SQL statement that:
xi. Calculate the employees salary
xii. Find the number of employees
xiii. Find the highest salary
xiv. Find the total sum of salary paid
xv. Find the total salary for each status
xvi. Which positions are paid higher than average salary?
### 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). *Database Concepts*. New Jersey . Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). *Fundamentals of Database Systems*. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). *Modern Database management*. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Graeme C. Simsion, Graham C. Witt (2004). *Data Modeling Essentials*. San Francisco. Morgan Kaufmann
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). *Concepts of Database Management*. United States. Course Technology.
## Module 2: Structured Query Language and Transaction Management
### Unit 3: Transactions and Concurrency Management
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 137 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 137 |
| 3.0 Multi Users Databases | 137 |
| 3.1 What is Transaction? | 138 |
| 3.1.1 Transaction Examples | 138 |
| 3.1.2 Multi-Statement Transactions | 140 |
| 3.2 Transaction Management with SQL | 140 |
| 3.2.1 Rolling Back | 140 |
| 3.2.2 Transaction Log | 141 |
| 3.2.3 Stored Procedures | 142 |
| 3.3 Concurrency Control and Locking | 144 |
| 3.3.1 The Scheduler | 144 |
| 3.3.2 Characteristics of Locks | 144 |
| 3.3.3 Two Phase Locking (2PL) | 145 |
| 3.3.4 Deadlocks | 146 |
| 3.3.5 How to Prevent Deadlock | 147 |
| 3.4 Database Recovery and Management | 147 |
| 3.4.1 Reprocessing | 147 |
| 3.4.2 Automated Recovery with Rollback / Rollforward | 148 |
| 3.5 Database Backup | 149 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 149 |
| 5.0 Summary | 149 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 150 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 150 |
1.0 Introduction
In a database management system (DBMS), a transaction consists of one or more data-manipulation statements and queries, each of which is reading and/or writing information into the database. A transaction is usually issued to the DBMS in SQL language wrapped in a transaction, using a pattern similar to the following:
- Begin the transaction
- Execute several data manipulations and queries
- If no errors occur then commit the transaction and end it
- If errors occur then rollback the transaction and end it
If there is no error during the execution of the transaction then the system commits the transaction. A transaction commit operation applies all data manipulations within the scope of the transaction and store the results to the database. If an error occurs during the transaction, or if the user specifies a rollback operation, the data manipulations within the transaction are not persisted to the database. In no case can a partial transaction be committed to the database since that would leave the database in an inconsistent state.
In this unit, we shall make use of the pubs database found in Microsoft SQL Server DBMS if the need arises.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to know:
a. What a database transaction is and what its properties are
b. How database transactions are managed
c. What concurrency control is and what role it plays in maintaining the database integrity
d. What locking methods are and how they work
e. How database recovery management is used to maintain database integrity
3.0 MultiUser Databases
Multi-user database access is one of the DBMS properties that motivate transactions. In a multi-user database, more than one user processes the database at the same time. Several issues arise:
- How can we prevent users from interfering with each other's work?
- How can we safely process transactions on the database without corrupting or losing data?
- If there is a problem (e.g., power failure or system crash), how can we recover without loosing all of our data?
3.1 What is a Transaction?
A transaction is a logical unit of database processing, which include one or more database operations, such as insertion, deletion, modification, or retrieval operations.
Transaction processing systems are systems with large databases and hundreds of concurrent users.
A transaction must be entirely completed or aborted, no intermediate states are acceptable.
A consistent database state is one in which all data integrity constraints are satisfied.
A transaction can also be defined as a sequence of operations performed as a single logical unit of work. A transaction has four key properties that are abbreviated ACID. ACID is an acronym for Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durability.
a. Atomic means that all the work in the transaction is treated as a single unit. Either it is all performed or none of it is.
b. Consistent means that a completed transaction leaves the database in a consistent internal state.
c. Isolations mean that the transaction sees the database in a consistent state. This transaction operates on a consistent view of the data. If two transactions try to update the same table, one will go first and then the other will follow.
d. Durability means that the results of the transaction are permanently stored in the system.
The simplest transaction in SQL Server is a single data modification statement. The following is a transaction even though it does not do much.
```
UPDATE authors
SET au_fname = 'John'
WHERE au_id = '172-32-1176'
```
SQL Server first writes to the log file what it is going to do. Then it does the actual update statement and finally it writes to the log that it completed the update statement. The writes to the log file are written directly to disk but the update itself is probably done to a copy of the data that resides in memory. At some future point that database will be written to disk. If the server fails after a transaction has been committed and written to the log, SQL Server will use the transaction log to "roll forward" that transaction when it starts up next.
3.1.1 Transaction Examples
Consider two users, each executing similar transactions:
Example #1:
User A
Read Salary for emp 101
Multiply salary by 1.03
Write Salary for emp 101
User B
Read Salary for emp 101
Multiply salary by 1.04
Write Salary for emp 101
Example #2:
User A
Read inventory for Prod 200
Decrement inventory by 5
Write inventory for Prod 200
User B
Read inventory for Prod 200
Decrement inventory by 7
Write inventory for Prod 200
First, what should the values for salary (in the first example) really be?
The DBMS must find a way to execute these two transactions concurrently and ensure the result is what the users (and designers) intended.
These two are examples of the Lost Update or Concurrent Update problem. Some changes to the database can be overwritten.
Consider how the operations for user's A and B might be interleaved as in example #2. Assume there are 10 units in inventory for Prod 200:
Read inventory for Prod 200 for user A
Read inventory for Prod 200 for user B
Decrement inventory by 5 for user A
Decrement inventory by 7 for user B
Write inventory for Prod 200 for user A
Write inventory for Prod 200 for user B
Or something similar like:
Read inventory for Prod 200 for user A
Decrement inventory by 5 for user A
Write inventory for Prod 200 for user A
Read inventory for Prod 200 for user B
Decrement inventory by 7 for user B
Write inventory for Prod 200 for user B
In the first case, the incorrect amount is written to the database. This is called the Lost Update problem because we lost the update from User A - it was overwritten by user B.
The second example works because we let user A write the new value of Prod 200 before user B can read it. Thus User B’s decrement operation will fail.
Here is another example. User's A and B share a bank account. Assume an initial balance of $200.
User A reads the balance
User A deducts $100 from the balance
User B reads the balance
User A writes the new balance of $100
User B deducts $100 from the balance
User B writes the new balance of $100
The reason we get the wrong final result (remaining balance of $100) is because transaction B was allowed to read stale data. This is called **the inconsistent read** problem.
Suppose, instead of interleaving (mixing) the operations of the two transactions, we execute one after the other (note it makes no difference which order: A then B, or B then A)
User A reads the balance
User A deducts $100 from the balance
User A writes the new balance of $100
User B reads the balance (which is now $100)
User B deducts $100 from the balance
User B writes the new balance of $0
If we insist only one transaction can execute at a time, in serial order, then performance will be quite poor.
### 3.1.2 Multi-Statement Transactions
To make transactions a little more useful we really need to put two or more statements in them. These are called **Explicit Transactions**. For example,
```
BEGIN TRAN
UPDATE authors
SET au_fname = 'John'
WHERE au_id = '172-32-1176'
UPDATE authors
SET au_fname = 'Marg'
WHERE au_id = '213-46-8915'
COMMIT TRAN
```
Note that we have a BEGIN TRAN at the beginning and a COMMIT TRAN at the end. These statements start and complete a transaction. Everything inside these statements is considered a logical unit of work. If the system fails after the first update, neither update statement will be applied when SQL Server is restarted. The log file will contain a BEGIN TRAN but no corresponding COMMIT TRAN.
3.2 Transaction Management with SQL
Transaction support:
a. Commit
b. Rollback
User initiated transaction is executed in sequence until:
a. Commit statement is reached
b. Rollback statement is reached
c. End of a program is reached
d. Program reaches abnormal termination which leads to rollback
3.2.1 Rolling Back
You can also roll back a transaction if it does not do what you want. Consider the following transaction:
BEGIN TRAN
UPDATE authors
SET au_fname = 'John'
WHERE au_id = 172-32-1176'
UPDATE authors
SET au_fname = 'JohnY'
WHERE city = 'Lawrence'
IF @@ROWCOUNT = 5
COMMIT TRAN
ELSE
ROLLBACK TRAN
Suppose that for whatever reason, the second update statement should update exactly five rows. If @@ROWCOUNT, which holds the number of rows affected by each statement, is five then the transaction commits otherwise it rolls back. The ROLLBACK TRAN statement undoes all the work since the matching BEGIN TRAN statement. It will not perform either update statement. Note that Query Analyzer will show you messages indicating that rows were updated but you can query the database to verify that no actual data modifications took place.
3.2.2 Transaction Log
The following are the functions of transaction log:
a. It tracks all transactions that update the database
b. It may also be used by rollback command
c. It may be used to recover from system failure
d. It log record for beginning of a transaction
e. It also log each SQL statement which include:
i. Operation type (retrieve, update, insert, delete)
ii. Names of objects
iii. Before and after values for updated fields
iv. Pointers to previous and next entries
f. It log commit statement
3.2.3 Stored Procedures
A stored procedure is a subroutine available to applications accessing a relational database system. Stored procedures are actually stored in the database data dictionary.
Typical uses for stored procedures include data validation (integrated into the database) or access control mechanisms. Furthermore, stored procedures are used to consolidate and centralize logic that was originally implemented in applications. Large or complex processing that might require the execution of several SQL statements is moved into stored procedures, and all applications call the procedures only.
Hopefully most of transactions will occur in stored procedures. Let us look at the second example inside a stored procedure.
Create Proc TranTest1
AS
BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO [authors]
([au_id],
[au_lname],
[au_fname],
[phone],
[contract])
VALUES ('172-32-1176',
'Gates',
'Bill',
'800-BUY-MSFT',
1)
UPDATE authors
SET au_fname = 'Johnzzz'
WHERE au_id = '172-32-1176'
COMMIT TRAN
GO
The problem with this stored procedure is that transactions do not care if the statements run correctly or not. They only care if SQL Server failed in the middle. If you run this stored procedure, it will try to insert a duplicate entry into the authors database. You will get a primary key violation error message. The message will even tell you the statement has been terminated. But the transaction is still going. The UPDATE statement runs just fine and SQL Server then commits the transaction. The proper way to code this is:
Create Proc TranTest2
AS
BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO [authors]([au_id],
[au_lname],
[au_fname],
[phone],
[contract])
VALUES ('172-32-1176',
'Gates',
'Bill',
'800-BUY-MSFT',
1)
IF @@ERROR <> 0
BEGIN
ROLLBACK TRAN
return 10
END
UPDATE authors
SET au_fname = 'Johnzzz'
WHERE au_id = '172-32-1176'
IF @@ERROR <> 0
BEGIN
ROLLBACK TRAN
return 11
END
COMMIT TRAN
GO
You will notice that we check each statement for failure. If the statement failed (i.e. @@ERROR <> 0) then we rollback the work performed so far and use the RETURN statement to exit the stored procedure. It is very important to note that if we do not check for errors after each statement we may commit a transaction improperly.
Activity A
1. What is Transaction?
What are the properties of a transaction?
2. Explain the following transaction problems with examples
i. Concurrent Update problem
ii. Inconsistent read problem.
3.3 Concurrency Control and Locking
We need the ability to control how transactions are run in a multiuser database. Let us define some basic terms that are related to concurrency control:
a. **Concurrency Control** is a method for controlling or scheduling the operations in such a way that concurrent transactions can be executed. If we do concurrency control properly, then we can maximize transaction throughput while avoiding any chance.
- Concurrency control ensures serializability of transactions in a multiuser environment.
- It solves problems in a multiuser environment which include:
- Lost Updates
- Uncommitted data
- Inconsistent retrievals
b. **Transaction throughput**: The number of transactions we can perform in a given time period. Often reported as Transactions per second or TPS.
c. A group of two or more concurrent transactions are serializable if we can order their operations so that the final result is the same as if we had run them in serial order (one after another).
d. Consider transactions A, B, C, and D. Each has 3 operations. If executing:
\[ A1, B1, A2, C1, C2, B2, A3, B3, C3 \]
has the same result as executing:
\[ A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3 \]
Then the above schedule of transactions and operations is serialized.
e. We need a way to guarantee that our concurrent transactions can be serialized. Locking is one such means. **Locking** is done to data items in order to reserve them for future operations.
f. A lock is a logical flag set by a transaction to alert other transactions the data item is in use.
3.3.1 The Scheduler
Scheduler establishes the order of concurrent transaction execution. It interleaves execution of database operations to ensure serializability. It bases its actions on concurrency control algorithms which are Locking and Time stamping.
3.3.2 Characteristics of Locks
Locks may be applied to data items in two ways: Implicit and Explicit.
**Implicit Locks** are applied by the DBMS, while **Explicit Locks** are applied by application programs.
Locks may be applied to:
i. a single data item (value)
ii. an entire row of a table
iii. a page (memory segment) (many rows worth)
iv. an entire table
v. an entire database
This is referred to as the Lock granularity.
Locks may be of the following types depending on the requirements of the transaction:
i. An **Exclusive Lock** prevents any other transaction from reading or modifying the locked item.
ii. A **Shared Lock** allows another transaction to read an item but prevents another transaction from writing the item.
### 3.3.3 Two Phase Locking
The most commonly implemented locking mechanism is called Two Phased Locking or **2PL**. 2PL is a concurrency control mechanism that ensures serializability.
2PL has two phases: Growing and shrinking.
i. A transaction acquires locks on data items it will need to complete the transaction. This is called the **growing phase**.
ii. Once one lock is released, all no other lock may be acquired. This is called the **shrinking phase**.
Let us consider our previous examples in section 3.11, this time using exclusive lock:
User A places an exclusive lock on the balance
User A reads the balance
User A deducts $100 from the balance
User B attempts to place a lock on the balance
but fails because A already has an exclusive lock
User B is placed into a wait state
User A writes the new balance of $100
User A releases the exclusive lock on the balance
User B places an exclusive lock on the balance
User B reads the balance
User B deducts $100 from the balance
User B writes the new balance of $100
Here is a more involved illustration using exclusive and shared locks:
User A places a shared lock on item **raise_rate**
User A reads **raise_rate**
User A places an exclusive lock on item **Amy_salary**
User A reads **Amy_salary**
User B places a shared lock on item **raise_rate**
User B reads **raise_rate**
User A calculates a new salary as **Amy_salary** * (1+**raise_rate**)
User B places an exclusive lock on item **Bill_salary**
User B reads **Bill_salary**
User B calculates a new salary as **Bill_salary** * (1+**raise_rate**)
User B writes **Bill_salary**
User A writes **Amy_salary**
User A releases exclusive lock on **Amy_salary**
User B releases exclusive lock on **Bill_Salary**
User B releases shared lock on **raise_rate**
User A releases shared lock on **raise_rate**
Here is another example:
User A places a shared lock on **raise_rate**
User B attempts to place an exclusive lock on **raise_rate**
Placed into a wait state
User A places an exclusive lock on item **Amy_salary**
User A reads **raise_rate**
User A releases shared lock on **raise_rate**
User B places an exclusive lock on **raise_rate**
User A reads **Amy_salary**
User B reads **raise_rate**
User A calculates a new salary as **Amy_salary** * (1+**raise_rate**)
User B writes a new **raise_rate**
User B releases exclusive lock on **raise_rate**
User A writes Amy_salary
User A releases exclusive lock on Amy_salary
3.3.4 Deadlock
Deadlock refers to a specific condition when two or more processes are each waiting for each other to release a resource, or more than two processes are waiting for resources in a circular chain. Deadlock is a common problem in multiprocessing where many processes share a specific type of mutually exclusive resource known as a software lock or soft lock.
Deadlock occurs when two transactions wait for each other to unlock data.
Example of deadlock in database as follows:
Client applications using the database may require exclusive access to a table, and in order to gain exclusive access they ask for a lock. If one client application holds a lock on a table and attempts to obtain the lock on a second table that is already held by a second client application, this may lead to deadlock if the second application then attempts to obtain the lock that is held by the first application. (But this particular type of deadlock is easily prevented, e.g., by using an all-or-none resource allocation algorithm.)
Locking can cause problems, however, let us consider another example:
User A places an exclusive lock on item 1001
User B places an exclusive lock on item 2002
User A attempts to place an exclusive lock on item 2002
User A placed into a wait state
User B attempts to place an exclusive lock on item 1001
User B placed into a wait state
This is also called a deadlock. One transaction has locked some of the resources and is waiting for locks so it can complete. A second transaction has locked those needed items but is awaiting the release of locks the first transaction is holding so it can continue.
3.3.5 How Prevent Deadlock
Two main ways to deal with deadlock.
1. Prevent it in the first place by giving each transaction exclusive rights to acquire all locks needed before proceeding.
2. Allow the deadlock to occur, and then break it by aborting one of the transactions.
3.4 Database Recovery Management
There are many situations in which a transaction may not reach a commit or abort point.
a. If an operating system crashes, it can terminate the DBMS processes.
b. The DBMS can crash.
c. Power failure i.e., the system might lose power.
d. Disk or hardware failure.
e. Human error can result in deletion of critical data.
In any of these situations, data in the database may become inconsistent or lost.
**Database Recovery** is the process of restoring the database and the data to a consistent state. This may include restoring lost data up to the point of the event (e.g., system crash).
Two approaches are discussed in this section: Reprocessing and Rollback/Rollforward.
### 3.4.1 Reprocessing
In a **Reprocessing** approach, the database is periodically backed up (a database save) and all transactions applied since the last save are recorded.
If the system crashes, the latest database save is restored and all of the transactions are re-applied (by users) to bring the database back up to the point just before the crash.
### 3.4.2 Automated Recovery with Rollback / Rollforward
In this approach, we apply a similar technique: Make periodic saves of the database (time-consuming operation). However, maintain a more intelligent log of the transactions that have been applied. This transaction log includes before images and after images.
- **Before Image**: A copy of the table record (or page) of data before it was changed by the transaction.
- **After Image**: A copy of the table record (or page) of data after it was changed by the transaction.
- **Rollback**: Undo any partially completed transactions (ones in progress when the crash occurred) by applying the before images to the database.
- **Rollforward**: Redo the transactions by applying the after images to the database. This is done for transactions that were committed before the crash.
The recovery process uses both rollback and rollforward to restore the database.
- In the worst case, we would need to rollback to the last database save and then rollforward to the point just before the crash.
- **Checkpoints** can also be taken (less time consuming) in between database saves.
- The DBMS flushes all pending transactions and writes all data to disk and transaction log.
• Database can be recovered from the last checkpoint in much less time.
3.5 Database Backup
When secondary media (disk) fails, data may become unreadable. We typically rely on backing up the database to cheaper magnetic tape or other backup medium for a copy that can be restored. However, when a DBMS is running, it is not possible to backup its files as the resulting backup copy on tape may be inconsistent.
One solution: Shut down the DBMS (and thus all applications), do a full backup - copy everything on to tape. Then start up again.
Most modern DBMS allow for incremental backups.
• An Incremental backup will backup only those data changed or added since the last full backup. Sometimes called a delta backup.
• Follows something like:
a. Weekend: Do a shutdown of the DBMS, and full backup of the database onto a fresh tape(s).
b. Nightly: Do an incremental backup onto different tapes for each night of the week.
Activity B
1. Explain the terms in relation to database transactions management:
i. Concurrency Control
ii. Transaction Throughput
iii. Serialization
iv. Implicit Locking
2. What is deadlock? How can deadlock be prevented?
4.0 Conclusion
Database transaction management is a crucial issue in order to maintain data consistency.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
Iv. Transactions are set of read and write operations that must either execute to completion or not at all.
Ivi. A transaction has four key properties that are abbreviated ACID. ACID is an acronym for Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durability.
Ivii. Concurrency Control is a method for controlling or scheduling the operations in such a way that concurrent transactions can be executed.
lviii. Transaction throughput is the number of transactions we can perform in a given time period.
lix. A group of two or more concurrent transactions are serializable if we can order their operations so that the final result is the same as if we had run them in serial order (one after another).
lx. Locking is one of the ways to guarantee that our concurrent transactions can be serialized.
lxi. Locks may be applied to data items in two ways: Implicit and Explicit
lxii. Deadlock refers to a specific condition when two or more transactions are each waiting for each other to release a lock.
lxiii. Database Recovery is the process of restoring the database and the data to a consistent state. This may include restoring lost data up to the point of the event (e.g., system crash).
lxiv. An Incremental backup will backup only those data changed or added since the last full backup.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. Explain the following SQL Transaction terms with an example:
i. Lost Update problem
ii. Dirty read
iii. Non-repeatable read
iv. Phantom read
2. Explain the following Database recovery terms:
i. Before Image
ii. After image
iii. Rollback
iv. Roll forward
v. Checkpoints
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey. Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
w3schools.com (2009). SQL Tutorial. Retrieved April 10th, 2009, from: http://www.w3schools.com/sql/
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 152 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 152 |
| 3.1 Database Security | 152 |
| 3.1.1 Need for Database Security | 152 |
| 3.1.2 Approaches to Database Security | 152 |
| 3.1.3 Database Security Goals and Threats | 153 |
| 3.1.4 Security Threat Classification | 153 |
| 3.1.5 Classification of Database Security | 154 |
| 3.1.6 Database Security at Design Level | 154 |
| 3.1.7 Database Security at Maintenance Level | 154 |
| 3.1.8 Database Security System | 155 |
| 3.1.9 Authorization Subsystem | 155 |
| 3.2 The SQL GRANT and REVOKE Statements | 157 |
| 3.2.1 The Grant Statement | 157 |
| 3.2.2 The Revoke Statement | 158 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 159 |
| 5.0 Summary | 159 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 160 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 160 |
1.0 Introduction
Database security refers to the protection of data against unauthorized access, alteration, or destruction. System needs to be aware of certain constraints that users must not violate; those constraints must be specified in a suitable language and must be maintained in the system catalog; DBMS must monitor users to ensure that the constraints are enforced.
Security in a database involves mechanisms to protect the data and to ensure that it is not accessed, altered or deleted without proper authorization. Access to data should be restricted and should be protected from accidental destruction.
This unit provides an overview of database security and recovery. The need for database security, classification of database security and different type of database failures were discussed.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be familiar with the following concepts:
s. Need for database security
t. Classification of database security
u. Database security at design and maintenance Level
v. Database security through access control
3.1 Database Security
The issues relating to database security will be discussed in this section.
3.1.1 Need for Database Security
The need for database security is given below:
a. In a multi-user database, multiple users try to access the data at the same time. In order to maintain the consistency of the data, database security is needed.
b. For the data that are being accessed through the World Wide Web, there is need to protect the data against hackers.
c. The use of credit cards is becoming more popular, the money transaction has to be saved. More specialized software both to enter the system illegally to extract data and to analyze the information obtained are available. Hence, it is necessary to protect the data.
3.1.2 Approaches to Data Security
There are numerous aspects to the security problem, some of them are:
a. Legal, social, and ethical aspects
b. Physical controls
c. Policy questions
d. Operational problems
e. Hardware control
f. Operating system support
g. Issues that the specific concern of the database system itself
As database practitioners, we must provide a means of preventing unauthorized use of data in a database. Three areas are considered:
a. Access Control: Who should be allowed access to which databases? This is typically enforced using system level accounts with passwords.
b. Authorization: for the purposes of:
Reading Data - Such as reading another employee's salary (using a SELECT statement for example).
Writing Data - Such as changing a value in a database (using UPDATE or DELETE).
c. Statistical Information: Enforcing who should be allowed access to information derived from underlying databases.
3.1.3 Database Security Goals and Threats
Some of the goals of Database security are:
a. Confidentiality (Secrecy and Privacy – data are only accessible by authorized users
b. To ensure data integrity which means data can only be modified by authorized users
c. Availability – data are accessible to authorized users
Some of the threats of database security are:
a. Improper release of information caused by reading of data through intentional or accidental access by unauthorized users
b. Improper modification of data
c. Action could prevent users from accessing data for which they are authorized
3.1.4 Security Threat Classification
Security threat can be classified into accidental and intentional, according to the way they occur.
The accidental threats include human errors, software errors, and natural or accidental disasters:
a. Human errors include giving incorrect input and incorrect use of applications
b. Software errors include incorrect application of security policies, denial of access to authorized users.
c. Natural or accidental threat includes damage of hardware or software
The intentional threat includes authorized users who abuse their privileges and authority, hostile agents like unauthorized users executing improper reading or writing of data.
3.1.5 Classification of Database Security
Database security can be classified into physical and logical security.
a. Physical Security: This refers to the security of hardware associated with the system and the protection of site where the computer resides. Natural events such as fire, floods, and earthquakes can be considered as part of the physical threats. It is advisable to have backup copies of databases in the face of massive disasters.
b. Logical Security: This refers to the security measures residing in the operating system or the DBMS to handle threats to the data.
3.1.6 Database Security at Design Level
It is necessary to take care of security at the database design stage. The following guidelines should be put into consideration at the design stage:
a. The database should be simple and easier to use.
b. Database must be normalized.
c. You should decide the privilege for each group of users.
d. Create unique view for each user or group of users.
3.1.7 Database Security at Maintenance Level
The security issues with respect to maintenance are as follows:
a. Operating system availability
b. Confidentiality and Accountability through Authorization rules
c. Encryption
d. Authentication Scheme
a. **Operating system Availability**: The operating system should verify that users and application programs attempting to access the system are authorized.
b. **Confidentiality and Accountability**: Accountability means that the system does not allow illegal entry. Accountability is related to both prevention and detection of illegal actions. Accountability is assured by monitoring the authentication and authorization of users.
Authorization rules are controls incorporated in the data management system that restrict access to data and also restrict the actions that people may take when they access data.
Authentication may be carried out by the operating system or the relational database management system. Users are given individual accounts or usernames and passwords.
c. **Encryption**: This is the coding of data so that they cannot be read and understood easily. Some DBMS products include encryption routines that automatically encode sensitive data when they are stored. They also provide complementary routines for decoding the data.
**Activity A**
1. What are the goals of database security?
2. What do you understand by database security threat?
### 3.1.8 Database Security System
The person responsible for security of the database is the database administrator (DBA). The database administrator must consider a variety of potential threats to the system. Database administrators create authorization rules that define who can access what parts of the database for what operations. Enforcement of authorization rules involves authenticating the user and ensuring that the authorization rules are not violated by access requests.
The database security system stores authorization rules and enforces them for each database access. When a group of users accesses the data in the database, then privileges may be assigned to the groups rather than individual users. In this section we shall consider the authorization subsystem of the database security system.
### 3.1.9 Authorization Subsystem
Typically, security for database authorization purposes is implemented in an *authorization subsystem* that monitors every transaction in the database. This is part of the DBMS.
Authorization rules take into account a few main ideas:
i. **Subjects**: Individuals who perform some activity on the database. Might include specific people or a group of users.
ii. **Objects**: Database units that require authorization in order to manipulate. Database units might include an entire table, specific columns in a table, specific rows in a table, etc.
iii. **Actions**: Any action that might be performed on an object by a subject. For example: Read, Modify, Insert, Write, Delete, Grant (the ability to grant authorizations to others)
iv. **Constraint**: A more specific rule regarding an aspect of the object and action.
These elements are commonly combined into an *authorization table*
| Subject | Object | Action | Constraint |
|---------------|------------|--------|---------------------|
| Rasheed | Employee | Read | None |
| Rasheed | Employee | Insert | None |
| Rasheed | Employee | Modify | None |
| Rasheed | Employee | Grant | None |
| Bola | Employee | Read | Salary < 50,000 |
| Sola | PurchaseOrder | Insert | Total < 1,000 |
| Sola | PurchaseOrder | Modify | Total < 1,000 |
| PayrollClerks | Employee | Read | None |
- What happens as the number of subjects and objects grows?
- Presently, no commercial DBMS support this level of authorization flexibility.
- Typically, a DBMS supports some basic authorization models. Application developers must provide more complex constraint enforcement.
i. **Subject-Based Security**
a. Subjects are individually defined in the DBMS and each object and action is specified.
b. For example, user Salim (a Subject) has the following authorizations:
| Actions | EMPLOYEES | ORDERS | PRODUCTS | ... |
|---------|-----------|--------|----------|-----|
| Read | Y | Y | Y | ... |
| Insert | N | Y | N | ... |
| Modify | N | Y | Y | ... |
| Delete | N | N | N | ... |
| Grant | N | N | N | ... |
ii. **Object-Based Security**
a. Objects are individually defined in the DBMS and each subject and action is specified.
b. For example, the EMPLOYEES table (an Object) has the following authorizations:
| Actions | SALIM | JOHN | GAFAR | DBA | ... |
|---------|-------|------|-------|-----|-----|
| Read | Y | Y | N | Y | ... |
| Insert | N | N | N | Y | ... |
| Modify | N | N | N | Y | ... |
| Delete | N | N | N | Y | ... |
| Grant | N | N | N | Y | ... |
### 3.2 The SQL GRANT and REVOKE Statements
SQL provides two main statements for setting up authorization namely: grant and revoke.
#### 3.2.1 SQL Grant Statement
**GRANT** is used to grant an *action* on an *object* to a *subject*. The SQL syntax is:
```
GRANT action1, action2 ...
ON object1, object2, ...
TO subject1, subject2 ...
```
Another option of the GRANT statement is WITH GRANT OPTION. This allows the grantee to propagate the authorization to another subject.
**Example:**
Let us assume that we have a database with:
- Tables: employees, departments, orders, products
- Users: salim, john, gafar, dba
```
GRANT INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT
ON employees, departments
TO salim;
GRANT INSERT, SELECT
ON orders
TO salim;
```
GRANT SELECT
ON products
TO salim;
GRANT SELECT
ON employees, departments
TO john;
GRANT INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT
ON employees, departments, orders, products
TO dba
WITH GRANT OPTION ;
Grants can also be done on specific columns in a table:
GRANT SELECT ON products TO jones ;
GRANT UPDATE ON products (price) TO jones ;
If no GRANT statement is issued, it is assumed that no authorization is given (e.g., user GREEN above).
3.2.1 SQL Revoke Statement
REVOKE is used to revoke authorizations from subjects. The SQL syntax is:
REVOKE action1, action2, ...
ON object1, object2, ...
FROM subject1, subject2, ...
Example:
If Mr. Salim leaves the company, then we should revoke the privileges given to him as follows:
REVOKE INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT
ON employees, departments
FROM salim;
REVOKE INSERT, SELECT ON orders FROM salim ;
REVOKE SELECT ON products FROM salim;
Many RDBMS have an ALL PRIVILEGES option that will revoke all of the privileges on an object from a subject:
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES
ON employees, departments, orders, products
FROM salim ;
Activity B
1. Explain SQL commands with examples:
a. Grant statement
b. Revoke statement
2. Let us assume that we have a database with the following information:
Tables: employees, departments, orders, products
Users: salim, john, gafar, dba
Write SQL statement that:
a. Grant read access to salim on employees table
b. Grant read, insert, update access on all tables to Mr Gafar
c. Grant modify access on orders table to Mr. John
4.0 Conclusion
Database security is the system, processes, and procedures that protect a database from unintended activity. Unintended activity can be categorized as authenticated misuse, malicious attacks or inadvertent mistakes made by authorized individuals or processes.
Databases provide many layers and types of information security, typically specified in the data dictionary, including: Access control, Auditing, Authentication, Encryption, and Integrity controls.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
lxxv. Database security refers to the protection of data against unauthorized access, alteration, or destruction.
lxxvi. Access to data should be restricted and should be protected from accidental destruction.
lxxvii. In a multi-users environment, database security is needed in order to maintain the consistency of the data.
lxxviii. Some of the goals of Database security include confidentiality, integrity, and availability
lxxix. Security threat can be classified into accidental and intentional, according to the way they occur.
lxxx. Database security can be classified into physical and logical security.
lxxxi. The database security system stores authorization rules and enforces them for each database access.
lxxxii. Authorization rules take into account a few main ideas such as: Subjects, Objects, Actions, and Constraints.
lxxxiii. **GRANT** is used to grant an *action* on an *object* to a *subject*
REVOKE is used to revoke authorizations from subjects
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. Use the table below to answer the following questions:
a. Write SQL statement that grant authorization to database users shown in the table
b. Write SQL statement that revoke authorization granted to Mr. Sola
| Subject | Object | Action | Constraint |
|---------|------------|--------|------------------|
| Rasheed | Employee | Read | None |
| Rasheed | Employee | Insert | None |
| Rasheed | Employee | Modify | None |
| Rasheed | Employee | Delete | None |
| Bola | Employee | Read | Salary < 50,000 |
| Sola | PurchaseOrder | Insert | Total < 1,000 |
| Sola | PurchaseOrder | Modify | Total < 1,000 |
| Chidi | Employee | Read | None |
2. How would you ensure database security at Design and Maintenance levels?
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). Database Concepts. New Jersey. Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). Modern Database management. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). Concepts of Database Management. United States. Course Technology.
w3schools.com (2009). SQL Tutorial. Retrieved April 10th, 2009, from: http://www.w3schools.com/sql/
## Module 2: Structured Query Language and Transaction Management
### Unit 5: Database Architectures
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 162 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 162 |
| 3.0 Database System Architectures | 162 |
| 3.1 Traditional Mainframe Architecture | 162 |
| 3.1.1 Advantages of Traditional Mainframe Architecture | 163 |
| 3.1.2 Disadvantages of Traditional Mainframe Architecture | 163 |
| 3.2 Personal Computer - Stand-Alone Database | 163 |
| 3.3 File Sharing Architecture | 164 |
| 3.3.1 Advantages of File Sharing Architecture | 164 |
| 3.3.2 Disadvantages of File Sharing Architecture | 164 |
| 3.4 Two-Tier Client/Server Architecture | 165 |
| 3.4.1 Advantages of client/server | 166 |
| 3.4.2 Disadvantages of client/server | 167 |
| 3.5 N-Tier Client/Server Architectures | 167 |
| 3.5.1 Advantages of N-Tier Client Server | 168 |
| 3.5.2 Advantages of N-Tier Client Server | 168 |
| 3.6 Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) | 169 |
| 3.6.1 ODBC CLIENT | 169 |
| 3.6.2 ODBC Driver for the ODBC Server | 169 |
| 3.6.3 DBMS Server | 170 |
| 3.6.4 How do these three components interact? | 170 |
| 3.6.5 What is so great about ODBC? | 170 |
| 3.6.7 ODBC Implementation | 170 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 174 |
| 5.0 Summary | 174 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 175 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 175 |
1.0 Introduction
The database architecture is the set of specifications, rules, and processes that dictate how data is stored in a database and how data is accessed by components of a system. It includes data types, relationships, and naming conventions. The database architecture describes the organization of all database objects and how they work together. It affects integrity, reliability, scalability, and performance. The database architecture involves anything that defines the nature of the data, the structure of the data, or how the data flows.
This unit is intended to be a fairly comprehensive description of database architectures.
2.0 Objectives
What you will learn in this unit is listed below:
a. Database System Architectures
i. Mainframe Architecture
ii. Stand-Alone PC Architecture
iii. File Sharing Architecture
iv. Classic Client/Server Architecture
v. Three-Tier Client/Server Architecture
b. Open Database Connectivity
i. ODBC Implementation
ii. ODBC Example
3.0 Database System Architectures
There are a number of database system architectures presently in use. One must examine several criteria:
a. Where do the data and DBMS reside?
b. Where are the application program executed (e.g., which CPU)? This may include the user interface.
c. Where are rules of business (applications logic) enforced?
3.1 Traditional Mainframe Architecture
Figure 11.1 is a block diagram of the mainframe architecture. Some of the properties of traditional mainframe database system architecture are:
a. Database (or files) resides on a mainframe computer.
b. Applications are run on the same mainframe computer. e.g., COBOL programs or JCL scripts that access the database.
c. Business rules are enforced in the applications running on the mainframe.
d. Multiple users access the applications through simple terminals (e.g., IBM 3270 terminals or VT220 terminals) that have no processing power of their own. User interface is text-mode screens.
e. Example: DB2 database and COBOL application programs running on an IBM 390.
### 3.1.1 Advantages of Traditional Mainframe Architecture
a. Excellent security and control over applications
b. High reliability - years of proven MF technology
c. Relatively low incremental cost per user (just add a terminal)
### 3.1.2 Disadvantages of Traditional Mainframe Architecture
a. Unable to effectively serve advanced user interfaces
b. Users unable to effectively manipulate data outside of standard applications
**Figure 11.1** Mainframe Architecture
*Source:* http://cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu/holowczak/
### 3.2 Personal Computer - Stand-Alone Database
This is referred to as single-user database mode. In the single-user database mode, you can create any number of databases on local or network drives for individual use. This framework is suitable for users who wish to maintain private databases of personal or corporate information, but without losing the ability to easily exchange data with other users' private databases, or with central corporate databases.
Figure 11.2 is a block diagram of the stand-alone architecture. Some of the properties of stand-alone database system architecture are:
a. Database (or files) resides on a PC - on the hard disk.
b. Applications run on the same PC and directly access the database. In such cases, the application *is* the DBMS.
c. Business rules are enforced in the applications running on the PC.
d. A single user accesses the applications.
e. Example: MS Access running on a PC.
**Stand-Alone PC Architecture**
| Personal Computer or Workstation |
|----------------------------------|
| - User Interface |
| - DBMS |
| - Communications |
| - Operating System |
| - Storage (DB Files) |
**Figure 11.2** Stand-Alone PC Architecture
Source: [http://cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu/holowczak/](http://cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu/holowczak/)
### 3.3 File Sharing Architecture
Figure 11.3 is a block diagram of the file sharing architecture. Some of the properties of stand-alone database system architecture are:
a. PCs are connected to a local area network (LAN).
b. A single file server stores a single copy of the database files.
c. PCs on the LAN map a drive letter (or volume name) on the file server.
d. Applications run on each PC on the LAN and access the same set of files on the file server. The application is also the DBMS.
e. Business rules are enforced in the applications - Also, the applications must handle concurrency control. Possibly by file locking.
f. Each user runs a copy of the same application and accesses the same files.
g. Example: Sharing MS Access files on a file server.
#### 3.3.1 Advantages of File Sharing Architecture
a. (limited) Ability to share data among several users
b. Costs of storage spread out among users
c. Most components are now commodity items - prices falling
#### 3.3.2 Disadvantages of File Sharing Architecture
a. Limited data sharing ability - a few users at most
3.4 Two-Tier Client/Server Architecture
A database server is the computer software managing a database, and a client is an application that requests information from a server. Each computer in a network is a node that can host one or more databases. Each node in a distributed database system can act as a client, a server, or both, depending on the situation.
A client can connect directly or indirectly to a database server. A direct connection occurs when a client connects to a server and accesses information from a database contained on that server.
Two-tier architecture is one that is familiar to many of today's computer users. A common implementation of this type of system is that of a Microsoft Windows based client program that accesses a server database such as Oracle or SQL Server. Users interact through a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to communicate with the database server across a network via SQL (Structured Query Language).
In two-tier architectures it is important to note that two configurations exist. A thin-client (fat-server) configuration exists when most of the processing occurs on the server tier. Conversely, a fat-client (thin-server) configuration exists when most of the processing occurs on the client machine.
Another example of two-tier architecture can be seen in web-based database applications. In this case, users interact with the database through applications that are hosted on a web-server and displayed through a web-browser such as Internet Explorer. The web server processes the web application, which can be written in a language such as PHP or ASP. The web application connects to a database server to pass along SQL statements which in turn are used to access, view, and modify data. The DB server then passes back the requested data which is then formatted by the web server for the user.
Although this appears to be a three-tier system because of the number of machines required to complete the process, it is not. The web-server does not normally house any of the business rules and therefore should be considered part of the client tier in partnership with the web-browser.
Figure 11.4 is a block diagram of the client-server architecture. Some of the properties of client-server database system architecture are:
a. **Client machines:**
i. Run own copy of an operating system.
ii. Run one or more applications using the client machine's CPU, memory.
iii. Application communicates with DBMS server running on server machine through a *Database Driver*
iv. Database driver (middleware) makes a connection to the DBMS server over a network.
v. Examples of clients: PCs with MS Windows operating system. Forms and reports developed in: PowerBuilder, Centura, MS Access, Borland Delphi, Oracle Developer/2000, MS Visual Basic, "C" or "C++", etc.
b. **Server Machines:**
i. Run own copy of an operating system.
ii. Run a Database Management System that manages a database.
iii. Provides a *Listening* daemon that accepts connections from client machines and submits transactions to DBMS on behalf of the client machines.
iv. Examples: Sun Sparc server running UNIX operating system. RDBMS such as Oracle Server, Sybase, Informix, DB2, etc. PC with Windows NT operating system.
c. **Middleware:**
i. Small portion of software that sits between client and server.
ii. Establishes a connection from the client to the server and passes commands (e.g., SQL) between them.
3.4.1 **Advantages of client/server**
a. Processing of the entire Database System is spread out over clients and server.
b. DBMS can achieve high performance because it is dedicated to processing transactions (not running applications).
c. Client Applications can take full advantage of advanced user interfaces such as Graphical User Interfaces.
3.4.2 Disadvantages of client/server:
a. Implementation is more complex because one needs to deal with middleware and the network.
b. It is possible the network is not well suited for client/server communications and may become saturated.
c. Additional burden on DBMS server to handle concurrency control, etc.
**Two-Tier Client-Server Architecture**
**Web-Based, Two-Tier Client-Server Architecture**
**Figure 11.4** Two-Tier Client/server Architecture
Source: [http://www.windowsecurity.com/](http://www.windowsecurity.com/)
### 3.5 N-Tier Client/Server Architectures
Most n-tier database architectures exist in a three-tier configuration. In this architecture the client/server model expands to include a middle tier (business tier), which is an application server that houses the business logic. This middle tier relieves the client application(s) and database server of some of their processing duties by translating client calls into database queries and translating data from the database into client data in return. Consequently, the client and server never talk directly to one-another.
A variation of the n-tier architecture is the web-based n-tier application. These systems combine the scalability benefits of n-tier client/server systems with the rich user interface of web-based systems (see figure 11.5).
Because the middle tier in three-tier architecture contains the business logic, there is
greatly increased scalability and isolation of the business logic, as well as added flexibility in the choice of database vendors.
**Three-Tier Client-Server Architecture**
**Web-Based, Three-Tier Client Server Architecture**
**Figure 11.5** Three-Tier Client/server Architecture
Source: [http://www.windowsecurity.com/](http://www.windowsecurity.com/)
### 3.5.1 Advantages N-Tier Client/server Architecture
a. Centralize applications logic (one place to make changes)
b. Relieves clients from having to load up on applications logic (the "fat client" approach).
c. Frees up DBMS server to efficiently process transactions
### 3.5.2 Disadvantages Three-Tier Client/server Architecture
a. System complexity - extremely complex to program and debug
b. Security issues
### Activity A
1. What do you understand by the term Database Architecture?
2. Explain the following terms:
a. Mainframe Database Architecture
b. Stand-Alone Database Architecture
c. Two-Tier Database Architecture
d. Three-Tier Database Architecture
3.6 Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is Microsoft's strategic interface for accessing data in a heterogeneous environment of relational and non-relational database management systems. ODBC provides an open, vendor-neutral way of accessing data stored in a variety of proprietary personal computer, minicomputer, and mainframe databases.
ODBC alleviates the need for independent software vendors and corporate developers to learn multiple application programming interfaces. ODBC now provides a universal data access interface. With ODBC, application developers can allow an application to concurrently access, view, and modify data from multiple, diverse databases.
ODBC is a specification to which developers write either:
a. An ODBC-enabled front-end or client desktop application, also known as an ODBC Client.
b. This is the application that the computer-user sees on the computer screen.
c. An ODBC Driver for a "back-end" or "server" DBMS (Database Management System). This is the DBMS application that resides on a computer that is used to store data for access by several users. This application is not what is loaded on the end user's computer. This server application is usually more robust (faster, with centralized security, and backups of data, and so forth) than the client application. The ODBC Driver resides between the ODBC Client and the DBMS; however, it is loaded on the front-end computer.
To use ODBC, client, driver and server components are required.
3.6.1 ODBC CLIENT
An ODBC-enabled front-end (also called ODBC client) is one of the required components to use ODBC. Examples of ODBC clients are:
a. Microsoft Access, an application created with Access,
b. An application created with Microsoft Visual Basic
c. An application created with C+Win SDK+ODBC SDK, or ODBC-enabled applications from other vendors (such as Lotus).
3.6.2 ODBC Driver for the ODBC Server
This ODBC driver is software that resides on the front-end. The ODBC Driver Catalog contains an extensive listing of ODBC Drivers. For example, the Microsoft ODBC Driver Pack is a collection of seven ODBC Drivers ready to be used or bundled with ODBC clients. A SQL Server ODBC Driver is included with Access.
3.6.3 DBMS Server
Any ODBC client can access any DBMS for which there is an ODBC Driver. DBMS SERVER is a back-end or server DBMS, for example SQL Server, Oracle, AS/400, Foxpro, Microsoft Access, or any DBMS for which an ODBC driver exists.
3.6.4 How do these three components interact?
The ODBC client uses a language or vocabulary of commands (which is referred to as "ODBC") to request data from, or to send data to, the back-end or server DBMS. However, the DBMS does not understand the ODBC client request until the command passes through the ODBC Driver for that specific DBMS. The ODBC driver translates the command into a format that the ODBC Server can understand. The ODBC Server sends the answer back to the ODBC Driver, which translates the answer into a format that the ODBC Client can understand.
3.6.5 What's so great about ODBC?
- First, application developers do not need to modify their applications to allow them to access data from several back-ends. As long as there is an ODBC Driver for a particular back-end, an ODBC-enabled front-end can access it.
- Second, one ODBC Driver for a particular DBMS allows any ODBC-enabled application to be an ODBC client.
3.6.7 ODBC Implementation
Look in the Control Panel, select administrative tools (shown in figure 11.6, from Windows XP):
Open up the **Data Sources ODBC** icon. This is called the *ODBC Data Source Administrato*.
Click on the **ODBC Drivers** tab to see which drivers are installed:
In the above example (see figure 11.7), we have ODBC drivers for:
- Microsoft Access, MS Excel, MS Foxpro, MS Visual FoxPro
- Borland dBase and Paradox
- Text files
- Oracle 8
- MS SQL Server
To add more drivers, download or install the ODBC driver from the database manufacturer. The ODBC driver will then appear on this list.
Clicking on the **User DSN** tab shows those data sources that have been defined for a user (see figure 11.8).
A user data source simply gives a name to a configuration that includes:
- The specific ODBC driver to be used.
- In some cases, the specific database table or file that will be used.
- If necessary, a username and password required to gain access to the database.
- Finally, any other options the particular ODBC driver requires.
Figure 11.8 User DSN
Source: Microsoft Windows XP Control Panel
User DSNs may only be used by the current user.
Systems DSNs may be used by anyone with an account on the computer system.
Both User and System DSNs are maintained in the registry of the local machine.
File DSNs store all of the DSN information in a file that can be shared between users of many machines, e.g., put the File DSN on a file server.
Figure 11.9 shows the setup dialog for a Microsoft Access ODBC driver:
Activity B
1. Explain the following terms:
a. ODBC
b. ODBC Client
c. ODBC Driver
d. DBMS Server
2. Explain how to setup an ODBC for SQL Server
4.0 Conclusion
Database architectures can be distinguished by examining the way application logic is distributed throughout the system. Application logic consists of three components: Presentation Logic, Processing Logic, and Storage Logic.
By determining which tier(s) these components are processed on we can get a good idea of what type of architecture and subtype we are dealing with.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
lxxv. In stand-alone or one-tier database architecture, program (e.g. Microsoft Access) runs on the user's local machine, and references a file that is stored on that machine's hard drive, thus using a single physical resource to access and process information.
lxxvi. Mainframe Architecture is another form of one-tier database architecture. In this system, large machines provide directly connected unintelligent terminals with the means necessary to access, view and manipulate data.
lxxvii. Common implementation two-tier database architecture is that of a Microsoft Windows based client program that accesses a server database such as Oracle or SQL Server.
lxxviii. Two configurations exist in two-tier architectures namely: A thin-client (fat-server) configuration and fat-client (thin-server).
lxxix. In the n-tier configuration, the client/server model expands to include a middle tier (business tier), which is an application server that houses the business logic.
lxxx. A variation of the n-tier architecture is the web-based n-tier application.
lxxxi. The middle tier in three-tier architecture contains the business logic.
lxxxii. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is Microsoft’s strategic interface for accessing data in a heterogeneous environment of relational and non-relational database management systems.
lxxxiii. With ODBC, application developers can allow an application to concurrently access, view, and modify data from multiple, diverse databases.
lxxxiv. To use ODBC, client, driver and server components are required.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1a. what do you understand by the term database architectures?
1b. Explain the following database terms
i. Application Logic
ii. One-tier Database Architecture
iii. Two-tier Database Architecture
iv. Three-tier Database Architecture
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
David M. Kroenke, David J. Auer (2008). *Database Concepts*. New Jersey . Prentice Hall
Elmasri Navathe (2003). *Fundamentals of Database Systems*. England. Addison Wesley.
Fred R. McFadden, Jeffrey A. Hoffer (1994). *Modern Database management*. England. Addison Wesley Longman
Pratt Adamski, Philip J. Pratt (2007). *Concepts of Database Management*. United States. Course Technology.
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 177 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 177 |
| 3.0 Database Design Steps | 177 |
| 3.1 Planning a Microsoft Access Application | 177 |
| 3.2 Creating a Microsoft Access Application | 177 |
| 3.3 Introduction to Microsoft Access | 180 |
| 3.3.1 Starting Microsoft Access | 180 |
| 3.3.2 Create a database using the Database Wizard | 181 |
| 3.3.3 Create a database without using the Database Wizard | 181 |
| 3.4 Creating Tables in Microsoft Access | 183 |
| 3.4.1 Creating a Table Using the Design View | 183 |
| 3.4.2 Primary Key | 183 |
| 3.4.3 Switching Views | 184 |
| 3.4.4 Entering Data | 184 |
| 3.4.5 Manipulating Data | 185 |
| 3.5 Creating Relationships between Tables | 186 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 189 |
| 5.0 Summary | 189 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 190 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 191 |
1.0 Introduction
This unit introduces fundamental relational database management system (RDBMS) concepts using Microsoft Access, providing a foundation for creating simple tables.
2.0 Objectives
On successful completion you will be able to apply these new skills:
c. Create tables and setting properties and constraints.
d. Create table relationships (One-to-One, One-to-Many, Man-to-Many).
3.0 Database Design Steps
This section serves as a reminder to what we have learnt from all the previous units. The basic steps to design a database are as follows:
i. Collect data about the business model.
ii. Divide the data into main subjects, so called Entities (Entities become tables in most cases).
iii. Assign fields to the subjects, ensuring that the field truly adds information to the subject (attribute of an Entity).
iv. Test the first normal form (1NF)
v. Determine primary keys.
vi. Test the second normal form (2NF) (applies only to composite primary key tables).
vii. Test the third normal form (3NF).
viii. Create relationships:
a. If a one-to-many relationship is encountered, everything is fine.
b. If a one-to-one relationship is encountered, question it. Can both tables be combined into one table?
c. If a many-to-many relationship is encountered, create an intersection table.
ix. Enter some test data and verify that all data is stored accordingly.
x. Fine-tune the database, formats, input masks, validation rules, etc.
3.1 Planning a Microsoft Access Application
To design a Microsoft Access Database application, you will first need to define the purpose of the application by determining how it will be used and what the results that it must produce are. You can gather this information by talking to the people who will be using the application. You will want to list the tasks that the users must perform with the database and gather together examples of the current paper forms and reports that they use and produce.
After analyzing the database users need and workflow, you can then decide how users would be able to navigate through your application and complete their tasks. Some of the
customized navigation tools that you can incorporate into your application design include command buttons, custom menu commands and custom toolbar buttons. You can also design an interface that controls how the database applications will start-up and what parts of the database application are available to individuals or groups of the database users. Other elements of the graphical user interface that you should consider are the layout that you should use, how you will group particular objects and the logic that you will apply to allow the user to move from one object to another.
As you will be designing database queries, forms, reports and other objects based upon your database table design, it is extremely important that you take time up front to plan a sound database structure and its relationships. As you analyze the data that the users will be working with, separate it into different subjects, each of which will become an entity. You can eliminate data redundancy and inconsistent data dependency by normalizing your data to ensure that all tables are in at least third normal form.
You will also need to plan the database security. Planning security means that you can control what individuals or groups of users can do with the database tables, queries, forms, reports, macros and modules. You will need to determine, again by interviewing the application's users, who should have access to an application's objects and data and who should be able to change an object's design.
3.2 Creating a Microsoft Access Application
Once you have worked through the stages of Planning a Microsoft Access Application, you will then move onto creating the application in Microsoft Access. The following checklist details the application needs and data sources:
a. Investigation Phase
i. Talk to the users who will be working with the database application to find out their data input needs, reporting needs, querying and other data needs and application security needs.
ii. Create a rough prototype by using the Database Wizard and other wizards and templates.
b. Planning the Database Tables
i. Account for all of the data.
ii. Normalise the data tables.
iii. Set up the database relationships and referential integrity.
iv. Create tables, write in field descriptions in design view and add sample data to test the design.
c. Planning the Queries
i. Create queries for forms and reports.
ii. Create queries for selecting and modifying data.
d. Create the required Forms
i. Start with the forms needed for data entry.
ii. Test the forms.
iii. Test the working prototype by using macros to automate tasks.
e. Creating the necessary Reports
i. Start with the reports needed to display entered information.
ii. Test the reports.
f. Create other Forms or Reports
i. Create forms or reports for other user designated uses.
ii. Test the forms and reports.
g. Connecting and automating the Tables, Forms and Reports
i. Create buttons, menus and toolbars needed for navigation purposes.
ii. Test the buttons, menus and toolbars
h. Verifying Application Design with the client
i. Verify that forms, reports and queries perform as desired.
ii. Verify that all data is accounted for.
iii. Discuss any additional features that may be required.
i. Adding the final Application Design touches
i. Create a splash screen for the Microsoft Access application.
ii. Create a start-up form for the application.
iii. Add captions.
iv. Refine the design of the forms.
v. Convert macros to Access VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)
vi. Set startup properties
j. Implementing Security
i. Create user and group security dependent upon who can access what in the database application.
ii. Assign permissions to the security groups.
iii. Make Backups of the application.
k. Testing, Rollout and Training Users of the Microsoft Access Application
i. Test the application to verify that everything works as required.
ii. Roll out the application to the end users.
iii. Plan a training program to train the users of the application. Consider the depth of documentation appropriate to distribute to the trainers and the users.
3.3 Introduction to Microsoft Access
Microsoft Access is a powerful program to create and manage your databases. It has many built-in features to assist you in constructing and viewing your information.
First of all, you need to understand how Microsoft Access breaks down a database. Some keywords involved in this process are: Database File, Table, Record, Field, Data-type.
**Database File:** This is your main file that encompasses the entire database and that is saved to your hard-drive or floppy disk. Example is Bank.mdb
**Table:** A table is a collection of data about a specific topic. There can be multiple tables in a database. Examples: Customers and Account tables
**Field:** Fields are the different categories within a Table. Tables usually contain multiple fields. Example: Customers LastName, Customers FirstName etc
**Data types:** Data types are the properties of each field. A field only has one data type. Example: the Lastname field in student table could be of type Text
3.3.1 Starting Microsoft Access
There are two ways to do this:
i. Double click on the Microsoft Access icon on the desktop (see figure 12.1).
*Figure 12.1: Microsoft Access icon*
*Source:* Microsoft Corporation
ii. Click on Start --> Programs --> Microsoft Access (see figure 12.2)
3.3.2 Create a database using the Database Wizard
The steps involved are:
a. When Microsoft Access first starts up, a dialog box is automatically displayed with options to create a new database or open an existing one. If this dialog box is displayed, click **Access Database Wizards, pages, and projects** and then click **OK**.
If you have already opened a database or closed the dialog box that displays when Microsoft Access starts up, click **New Database** on the toolbar.
b. On the **Databases** tab, double-click the icon for the kind of database you want to create.
c. Specify a name and location for the database.
Click **Create** to start defining your new database.
3.3.3 Create a database without using the Database Wizard
The steps involved are:
a. When Microsoft Access first starts up, a dialog box is automatically displayed with options to create a new database or open an existing one. If this dialog box is displayed, click **Blank Access Database**, and then click **OK**.
If you have already opened a database or closed the dialog box that displays when Microsoft Access starts up, click **New Database** on the toolbar, and then double-click the **Blank Database** icon on the **General** tab.
b. Specify a name and location for the database and click **Create**. (Figure 12.3 is the screen that shows up following this step)
**Figure 12.3:** Microsoft Access Database Screen
*Source: Microsoft Corporation*
The two main features of this main screen are the menu bar that runs along the top of the window and the series of *tabs* in the main window. The menu bar is similar to other Microsoft Office products such as Excel. The menus include:
i. File - Menu items to Open, Close, Create new, Save and Print databases and their contents. This menu also has the Exit item to exit Access.
ii. Edit - Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete
iii. View - View different database objects (tables, queries, forms, reports)
iv. Insert - Insert a new Table, Query, Form, Report, etc.
v. Tools - A variety of tools to check spelling, create relationships between tables, perform analysis and reports on the contents of the database.
vi. Window - Switch between different open databases.
vii. Help - Get help on Access.
The tabs in the main window for the database include:
i. Tables - Displays any tables in the database.
ii. Queries - Displays any queries saved in the database.
iii. Forms - Displays any forms saved in the database.
iv. Reports - Displays any reports saved in the database.
v. Macros - Displays any macros (short programs) stored in the database.
vi. Modules - Displays any modules (Visual Basic for Applications procedures) stored in the database.
3.4 Creating Tables in Microsoft Access
Tables are the main units of data storage in Access. There are a number of ways to create a table in Access. Access provides *wizards* that guide the user through creating a table by suggesting names for tables and columns. The other main way to create a table is by using the *Design View* to manually define the columns (fields) and their data types.
3.4.1 Creating a Table Using the Design View
To create a table in Access using the Design View, perform the following steps:
i. Click on the Tables tab in the left hand pane of the database dialog box
ii. Double click on the "Create Table in Design View" item in the right hand pane.
The Table Design View will appear. Fill in the **Field Name**, **Data Type** and **Description** for each column/field in the table. Refer to table 7.2, Module 2, Unit 1 for available data types in Microsoft Access.
3.4.2 Primary Key
One or more fields (columns) whose value or values uniquely identify each record in a table. A primary key does not allow Null values and must always have a unique value. A primary key is used to relate a table to foreign keys in other tables.
**NOTE:** You do not have to define a primary key, but it is usually a good idea. If you do not define a primary key, Microsoft Access asks you if you would like to create one when you save the table.
To define primary key, simply select the field or fields to be used and select the primary key button (see figure 12.4)
**Figure 12.4: Primary Key button**
**Source:** Microsoft Corporation
3.4.3 Switching Views
To switch views from the datasheet (spreadsheet view) and the design view, simply click the button in the top-left hand corner of the Access program.
Datasheet view button allows you to enter raw data into your database table (see figure 12.5)
Figure 12.5: Datasheet button
Source: Microsoft Corporation
Design view button allows you to enter fields, data-types, and descriptions into your database table (see figure 12.6)
Figure 12.6: Datasheet button
Source: Microsoft Corporation
3.4.4 Entering Data
Click on the Datasheet View and simply start entering the data into each field (see figure 12.7). **NOTE:** Before starting a new record, the primary key field must have something in it.
Figure 12.7: Data entry screen
Source: Microsoft Corporation
3.4.5 Manipulating Data
To add a new row, simply drop down to a new line and enter the information.
To update a record, simply select the record and field you want to update, and change its data with what you want.
To delete a record, select the entire row and hit the Delete Key on the keyboard.
Activity A
1. Create a database application for bank customer information.
a. Start Microsoft Access
b. Create a blank database and save it as bank.mdb
c. Create Customer table with the following fields
Fill in the information for the fields as follows:
| Field Name | Data Type | Description |
|------------|-----------|-------------|
| CustomerID | Number | The Unique Identifier for a Customer |
| FName | Text | The First Name of the Customer |
| Sname | Text | The Surname of the Customer |
| Sex | Text | Sex of Customer |
| Address | Text | Customer’s Address |
| LGA | Text | Customer’s Local Government of Residence |
| State | Text | The State of residence of the Customer |
d. Choose CustomerID field as the Primary key
e. Create account table with the following fields
| Field Name | Data Type | Description |
|----------------|-----------|-------------|
| CustomerID | Number | The Unique Identifier for a Customer |
| AccountNumber | Number | The Unique Identifier for a Bank Account |
| AccountType | Text | The type of account (Checking, savings, etc.) |
| DateOpened | Date | The date the account was opened |
| Balance | Number | The current balance (money) in this account (in $US) |
f. Choose AccountNumber as the Primary key
g. Open the customer table enter the following data
h. Open the account table and enter the following data
| CustomerID | FName | Sname | Sex | Address | LGA | State |
|------------|-----------|----------|------|--------------------------|-------------|-------|
| 1001 | Odusanya | Adebimpe | Male | 23A Adetokunbo Str. | Ibadan North| Oyo |
| 1002 | Nkechi | Francis | Female| 12 Mavis Ave. | Nnewi East | Enugu |
| 1003 | Bala | Usman | Male | 44 Kano Way | Mantu | Kaduna|
| 1004 | Christopher| Bello | Male | 661 Parker Rd. | Etiosa | Lagos |
| 1005 | Patricia | Popoola | Female| 23 Queens Road | Ikoyi | Lagos |
| CustomerID | AccountNumber | AccountType | DateOpened | Balance |
|------------|---------------|-------------|------------|---------|
| 1001 | 9987 | Current | 10/12/1989 | 4000.00 |
| 1001 | 9980 | Savings | 10/12/1989 | 2000.00 |
| 1002 | 8811 | Savings | 01/05/1992 | 1000.00 |
| 1003 | 4422 | Current | 12/01/1994 | 6000.00 |
| 1003 | 4433 | Savings | 12/01/1994 | 9000.00 |
| 1004 | 3322 | Savings | 08/22/1994 | 500.00 |
| 1004 | 1122 | Current | 11/13/1988 | 800.00 |
### Creating Relationships between Tables
After you have set up multiple tables in your Microsoft Access database, you need a way of telling Access how to bring that information back together again. The first step in this process is to define relationships between your tables.
A relationship works by matching data in key fields - usually a field with the same name in both tables. In most cases, these matching fields are the primary key from one table, which provides a unique identifier for each record, and a foreign key in the other table.
In the Bank database we have created, the Customers table is related to the Accounts table by virtue of the CustomerID field appearing in both tables.
Steps involved in creating relationship:
i. On the menu bar click on Tools --> Relationships. The Show Table dialog box will appear as shown in figure 12.8
ii. Highlight both the Customers table and the Accounts table as shown below and then click on the Add button.
iii. Click on the Close button to close this dialog box. The Relationships screen will now reappear with the two tables displayed in figure 12.9
iv. To connect the Customers table with the Accounts table to form a relationship, click on the CustomerID field in the Customers table and drag it over on top of the CustomerID field on the Accounts table. Upon releasing the mouse button, the Edit Relationships dialog box will appear as in figure 12.10
Access tries to determine the Relationship Type between the two tables. Most times two tables have a *One-to-Many* relationship and this is usually the default chosen by Access. For this example, Access knows that CustomerID is a key of the Customer table so it chooses this field as the "One" side. This makes the Accounts table the "Many" side as *One* customer may have *Many* accounts.
v. One additional step to be taken is the check off the box labeled "Enforce Referential Integrity". This option puts constraints into effect such that an Accounts record cannot be created without a valid Customer and Access will also prevent a user from deleting a Customer record if a related Accounts record exists. At this point, click on the Create button to create the relationship. The Relationships screen should reappear with the new relationship in place as shown if figure 12.11
a. When the Cascade Update Related Fields check box is set, changing a primary key value in the primary table automatically updates the matching value in all related records.
b. When the Cascade Delete Related Records check box is set, deleting a record in the primary table deletes any related records in the related table.
Note the symbols "1" (indicating the "One" side) and the infinity symbol (indicating the "Many" side) on the relationship. Close the relationships screen and select Yes to save the changes to the Relationships layout.
**Activity B**
1. Explain how to create relationship between tables in a database
2. What do you understand by the term Referential Integrity?
3. How would you enforce referential integrity in a relationship?
**4.0 Conclusion**
Microsoft Access is a very powerful relational database management tool for creating database applications. It has many built-in features to assist you in constructing and viewing your information.
**5.0 Summary**
In this unit, we have learnt:
lxxxv. Microsoft Access is a powerful program to create and manage your databases.
lxxxvi. Database file is the main file that encompasses the entire database.
lxxxvii. Tables are the main units of data storage in Microsoft Access.
lxxxviii. Tables can be created by using design view or by using wizards
lxxxix. Fields are the different attributes of a Table.
xc. Data types are the properties of each field and a field only has one data type.
xci. Primary key is one or more fields (columns) whose value or values uniquely identify each record in a table.
xcii. Before starting a new record, the primary key field must have something in it.
xciii. It necessary to define relationships between tables in a database
xciv. A relationship works by matching data in key fields in both tables.
xcv. Referential integrity option in relationship puts constraints into effect.
When the Cascade Update Related Fields check box is set, changing a primary key value in the primary table automatically updates the matching value in all related records.
When the Cascade Delete Related Records check box is set, deleting a record in the primary table deletes any related records in the related table.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. What are the basic steps in designing a database application?
2. Examine the following flat file and design the relational model for this kind of data:
| ISBN | Title | AuthorID | Author Name | AuthorPhone | PubID | Publisher Name | Publisher Phone | Price |
|------|---------|----------|-------------|-------------|-------|----------------|-----------------|-------|
| 1 | Iliad | 3 | Iyabo | 01-234-7777 | 1 | Mint Press | 020-234-9870 | N500 |
| 2 | Freedom | 8 | Olu | 02-345-9988 | 1 | Mint Press | 020-324-6789 | N500 |
| 3 | Love | 7 | Ayo | 09-589-0081 | 1 | Mint Press | 020-324-6790 | N1000 |
| 4 | Indy | 1 | Ade | 04-589-0082 | 1 | Mint Press | 020-456-7890 | N600 |
| 5 | C++ | 4 | Ken | 06-589-0083 | 1 | Mint Press | 020-456-7890 | N1500 |
| 6 | Visual J++ | 4 | Ken | 03-589-0084 | 1 | Mint Press | 020-456-7890 | N750 |
| 7 | A+ | 6 | Sulia | 08-589-0085 | 2 | Ajayi Press | 234-999-9999 | N1200 |
| 8 | Bello | 5 | Chidi | 09-589-0086 | 2 | Ajayi Press | 234-999-9999 | N300 |
| 9 | Bus | 5 | Chidi | 02-589-0087 | 2 | Ajayi Press | 234-999-9999 | N250 |
| 10 | Mill | 5 | Chidi | 01-589-0088 | 2 | Ajayi Press | 235-999-9999 | N1800 |
| 11 | Booking | 2 | Ray | 01-589-0089 | 3 | Ann Press | 210-000-0000 | N1800 |
| 12 | Alade | 1 | Ade | 01-589-0090 | 3 | Ann Press | 210-000-0000 | N1800 |
| 13 | Bukky | 11 | Kate | 02-589-0091 | 3 | Ann Press | 210-000-0000 | N1500 |
| 14 | Bukky | 12 | Salim | 05-589-0092 | 3 | Ann Press | 210-000-0000 | N1500 |
| 15 | Bukky | 13 | Slim | 06-589-0093 | 3 | Ann Press | 210-000-0000 | N1500 |
| 16 | Broad | 9 | John | 07-589-0094 | 3 | Ann Press | 210-000-0000 | N750 |
| 17 | Broad | 10 | Mba | 09-589-0095 | 3 | Ann Press | 210-000-0000 | N750 |
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu (2008). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved January 15th, 2008, from http://cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu/holowczak/classes/2200/access/accessall.html
databasedev.co.uk (2003-2006). Create Database Applications using Microsoft Access, Retrieved October 10th, 2008, from: http://www.databasedev.co.uk/plan-an-access-application.html
Elmasri Navathe (2003). Fundamentals of Database Systems. England. Addison Wesley.
Microsoft.com (2009). Microsoft Access help file. Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://microsoft.com/office/access/default.htm.
Microsoft.com (2009). Microsoft Access Tutorial: Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://www.bcshool.net/staff/accesshelp.htm
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 193 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 193 |
| 3.1 Types of Microsoft Access Queries | 193 |
| 3.1.1 Select Query | 194 |
| 3.1.2 Action Query | 194 |
| 3.1.3 Parameter Query | 196 |
| 3.1.4 Aggregate Query | 196 |
| 3.2 Creating Select Queries in MS Access | 196 |
| 3.3 Creating a Calculated Field | 199 |
| 3.4 Working with IIf Function | 200 |
| 3.5 Summarising Group of Records | 200 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 202 |
| 5.0 Summary | 202 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 203 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 204 |
1.0 Introduction
Queries are very useful tools when it comes to databases and they are often called by the user through a form. They can be used to search for and grab data from one or more of your tables, perform certain actions on the database and even carry out a variety of calculations depending on your needs.
In this unit, we will use Access to create a variety of queries that analyze and manipulate database information.
2.0 Objectives
On successful completion you will be able to:
e. Create a variety of queries that analyze and manipulate database information.
3.1 Types of Microsoft Access Queries
Microsoft Access allows for many types of queries, some of the main ones being select, action, parameter and aggregate queries. Table 13.1 shows different types of queries in Microsoft Access.
Table 13.1: Types of Queries
Source: http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/Access_2003/
| Query Type | Description |
|------------|-------------|
| Select | The most basic and common type of query, select queries find and display the data you want from one or more tables or queries. |
| Parameter | Prompts the user for specific information every time the query is run. |
| Aggregate | Summarizes data in a table format that makes it easy to read and compare information. |
While select queries display information that matches your criteria, the following action queries do something to the data that matches your criteria such as change or delete it.
- **Append Query**: Creates a new table from all or part of the data in one or more tables. Useful for backing up and exporting information.
- **Delete Query**: Deletes selected records from one or more tables.
- **Update**: Updates selected information in a table. For example, you could raise the
Query Type Description
Query prices on all trips to Europe by 15 percent.
Union Query Combines fields from two or more tables or queries into one field and is written directly in SQL.
3.1.1 Select Query
The select query is the simplest type of query and because of that, it is also the most commonly used one in Microsoft Access databases. It can be used to select and display data from either one table or a series of them depending on what is needed.
In the end, it is the user-determined criteria that tell the database what the selection is to be based on. After the select query is called, it creates a "virtual" table where the data can be changed, but at no more than one record at a time.
3.1.2 Action Query
When the action query is called, the database undergoes a specific action depending on what was specified in the query itself. This can include such things as creating new tables, deleting rows from existing ones and updating records or creating entirely new ones.
Action queries are very popular in data management because they allow for many records to be changed at one time instead of only single records like in a select query.
There are four kinds of action queries:
a. Append Query – takes the set results of a query and append (or add) them to an existing table.
b. Delete Query – deletes all records in an underlying table from the set results of a query.
c. Make Table Query – as the name suggests, it creates a table based on the set results of a query.
d. Update Query – allows for one or more field in your table to be updated.
a. Creating Append Query
To Create an Append Query:
i. Create a new query, select Design view, and click OK.
ii. Click the tables and/or queries you want to use in the append query, click Add, and then click Close when you are through.
iii. Click the Query Type button list arrow on the toolbar and select Append Query or select Query → Append Query from the menu.
iv. Select the table to which you want to add the results of the query.
v. If you select an existing table, click one of the following options: Current Database (if the table is in the currently open database) or Another Database (and type the name of the other database, including the path, if necessary). Click OK, and then add the fields you want to append and identify a matching field if Access does not supply one.
vi. Click OK and click the View button on the toolbar to view the results of the query or the Run button on the toolbar to append the records.
b. Creating Delete Query
To Create a Delete Query:
i. In the Database window, click the Queries tab in the Objects bar and click the New button.
ii. Select Design view and click OK.
iii. Add the appropriate tables and/or queries and click close, and then connect any unrelated tables.
iv. Click the Query Type button list arrow on the toolbar and select Delete Query.
v. Click the View button to view the results of the delete query.
vi. If you are satisfied that the appropriate records will be deleted, click the Run button on the toolbar and click yes to confirm the deletion.
c. Creating a Make-Table Query
To Create a Make-Table Query:
i. In Design view, create a select query; including tables and fields.
ii. Click the Query Type button list arrow on the toolbar and select Make-Table Query Type the name of the table you want to create. If you select an existing table, click one of the following options: Current Database (if the table is in the currently open database) or Another Database (and type the name of the other database, including the path, if necessary).
iii. Click OK.
iv. Click the View button on the toolbar to view the results of the query or the Run button on the toolbar to create the new table.
d. Creating an Update Query
To Create an Update Query:
i. Create a new query in Design view, and then select the tables and/or queries you want to use in the update query.
ii. Click the Query Type button list arrow on the toolbar and select Update Query or select Query Update Query from the menu.
iii. Double-click the fields that you want to appear in the query or click and drag the fields onto the design grid.
iv. Enter an expression to update the selected field and enter any criteria, if needed, to select which records should be updated.
v. Click the View button to view the results of the update query. If you're satisfied that the appropriate records will be updated, click the Run button on the toolbar to update the records.
3.1.3 Parameter Query
In Microsoft Access, a parameter query works with other types of queries to get whatever results you are after. This is because, when using this type of query, you are able to pass a parameter to a different query, such as an action or a select query. It can either be a value or a condition and will essentially tell the other query specifically what you want it to do.
It is often chosen because it allows for a dialog box where the end user can enter whatever parameter value they wish each time the query is run. The parameter query is just a modified select query.
3.1.4 Aggregate Query
This is a special type of query. It works on other queries (such as selection, action or parameter) just like the parameter query does, but instead of passing a parameter to another query it totals up the items by selected groups. It essentially creates a summation of any selected attribute in the table.
The SQL aggregate functions available to Microsoft Access are:
a. Sum
b. Avg
c. Min
d. Max
e. First
f. Last
g. Group By
h. Count
i. StDev
j. Var
k. Expression
l. Where
3.2 Creating Select Queries in MS Access
Creating a query can be accomplished by using either the query design view or the Query wizard. In this section, we will use design view.
Queries are accessed by clicking on the Queries tab in the Access main screen as shown in figure 13.1:
To create a new query in design view:
i. Click the queries icon in the objects bar, then double-click create query in design view.
ii. Select the table or query you want to use and click.
iii. Repeat step 2 as necessary for additional tables or queries. Click close when you are through.
iv. Double-click each field you want to include from the field list or drag the field from the field list onto the design grid add (see figure 13.2).
v. In the design grid enter any desired criteria for the field in the criteria row (see figure 13.3).
vi. Click the sort box list arrow for the field and select a sort order (see figure 13.4).
Figure 13.4: Microsoft Access Queries Sort Order
Source: Microsoft Office
vii. Close the query window.
viii. Click yes to save the query, enter a query name, and click OK.
Activity A
1. Display the list of customers that reside in Lagos sorted by their surname.
a. Open the Bank database created in unit 1
b. Click the Queries icon in the Objects bar and then double-click Create query in Design view.
c. Click the Customer table and click Add.
d. Click Close.
e. Double Click each of the fields in the field list.
f. Click the State column’s Criteria row and type Lagos.
g. Click the Sname column’s Sort box list arrow and select Ascending.
h. Save the query as qryCustomer and click OK.
i. Run the query by pulling down the Query menu and choosing the Run menu item.
What is the output?
3.3 Creating a Calculated Field
A calculated field performs some type of arithmetic on one or more fields in a database to come up with a completely new field.
You must create an expression (or formula) to perform a calculation. To enter fields in an expression, type the field name in brackets ([FName]). If a field name exists in more than one table, you will need to enter the name of the table that contains the field in brackets ([Customer]) followed by an exclamation mark (!). Then type the field name in brackets, such as [FName]. For example, customer surname in a customers table could be represented as [Customers]![SName]
To create an expression or calculated in a query:
a. Display the query in design view.
b. Click the field row of a blank column in the design grid.
c. Enter the field name for the calculated field followed by a colon (:).
d. Enter the expression you want Microsoft access to calculate, using the proper syntax
e. Click the view button or run button on the toolbar to see the results.
3.4 Working with IIf Function
Functions are used to create more complicated calculations or expressions than operators can.
There are several hundred functions in Microsoft Access, but all of them are used in a similar way:
The name of the function, followed by the arguments in parenthesis.
An argument in Microsoft Access is the value a function uses to perform its calculation.
This section introduces a very useful database function: the IIf function. The IIf function evaluates a condition and returns one value if the condition is true and another value if the condition is false. The syntax is:
\[ \text{IIf(expr, truepart, falsepart)} \]
The IIf function syntax has these named arguments:
| Part | Description |
|------------|--------------------------------------------------|
| expr | Required. Expression you want to evaluate. |
| truepart | Required. Value or expression returned if \( \text{expr} \) is True. |
| falsepart | Required. Value or expression returned if \( \text{expr} \) is False |
To create an IIf (IF...THEN) Function:
a. Display the query in design view.
b. Click the field row of a blank column in the design grid.
c. Enter the field name for field name followed by a colon (:).
d. Enter the expression using the syntax IIf(expr, truepart, falsepart)
3.5 Summarising Group of Records
When you work with queries, you will often be less interested in the individual records and more interested in summarized information about groups of records. A query can calculate information about a group of records in one or more tables. For example, you could create a query that finds the total tuition fee paid by student in all the departments a particular academic. The Total row lets you group and summarize information in a query. The Total row normally is tucked away from view in the query design window; you can make the Total appear by selecting View followed by Totals from the menu. Once the Total row is displayed, you can tell Microsoft Access how you want to summarize the fields. Table 13.2 is a summary of the available Total options in Microsoft Access.
Table 13.2: Total Options
| Option | Description |
|----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Group By | Groups the values in the field so that you can perform calculations on the groups. |
| Sum | Calculates the total (sum) of values in a field. |
| Avg | Calculates the average of values in a field. |
| Min | Finds the lowest value in a field. |
| Max | Finds the highest value in a field. |
| Count | Counts the number of entries in a field, not including blank (Null) records. |
| StDev | Calculates the standard deviation of values in a field. |
| Var | Calculates the variance of values in a field. |
| First | Finds the values from the first record in a field. |
| Last | Finds the values from the last record in a field. |
| Expression | Tells Access that you want to create your own expression to calculate a field. |
| Where | Specifies criteria for a field to limit the records included in a calculation. |
To summarize a group of records:
a. Display the query in design view.
b. If necessary, click the totals button on the toolbar.
c. Move the field that you want to group data by onto the design grid and make sure group by appear in that field total row.
d. Move the field that you want to perform calculation onto the design grid. Choose the type of calculation that you want to perform.
Activity B
1. Create query using Wizards and design views.
a. Open the Bank database created in unit 1
b. Click the Queries icon in the Objects bar and then double-click Create query using wizard.
c. Select Accounts table from Table/Queries dropdown list.
d. Move the AccountNumber, AccountType and Balance fields over to the selected fields’ area. Then click the Next button.
e. In the next panel, you will be asked to choose between a detail or summary query. Choose detailed query and click on the Next button.
f. Save the query with qryAccounts and click on the Finish button.
2. Modify the query to sort the output on the account number and only display the saving account.
a. From the Queries tab on the Access main screen, highlight the qryAccounts and click on the Design button.
b. Change the Sort order for the AccountNumber field to Ascending. Add the following statement to the Criteria under the AccountType field:
= 'Savings'
c. Run the query by pulling down the Query menu and choosing the Run menu item. The output is shown below.
d. Save and close the query to return to the Access main screen.
3. Create multiple tables query
a. Create a new query called "Accounts Summary Query" that joins the Customers table (include the CustomerID and Name fields) with the Accounts table (include the Balance field only).
b. In the second step of the wizard, click on the Summary choice (instead of Details) and then click on the Summary Options... button.
c. Check all of the Summary option boxes such as Sum, AVG, Min and Max.
4.0 Conclusion
Queries are a fundamental means of accessing and displaying data from tables. Queries can access a single table or multiple tables.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
xcviii. Queries can be used to search for and grab data from one or more tables.
xcix. Some of the main queries types in Microsoft Access are: select, action, parameter and aggregate queries.
c. Select query can be used to select and display data from either one table or a series of them depending on what is needed.
ci. There are four kinds of action queries: Append, Delete, Make-Table, and Update.
cii. Parameter query can be used to pass parameter to select and action queries.
ciii. Aggregate query essentially creates a summation of any selected attribute in the table.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. Which of the following criterion is NOT written using the proper syntax?
A. "Harris"
B. Between 1/1/2000 and 12/31/2000
C. NO VALUE
D. 500
2. Which of the following types of queries are action queries? (Select all that apply.)
A. Parameter queries.
B. Append queries.
C. Update queries.
D. Crosstab queries.
3. Which of the following expressions is NOT written in the correct syntax?
A. [Order Total]*[Tax Rate]
B. "Order Total"*0.1
C. [tblCustomerTours]![Cost]*[tblEmployees]![Commission]
D. 100+10
4. If you are having trouble remembering how to write expressions using the correct syntax, you can use the Expression Builder to help you create the expression. (True or False?)
5. Rebate: IIF([Age]>65,"Senior","Adult") This expression is an example of:
A. Something I learned back in high school algebra and thought I would never see again.
B. A financial expression.
C. Something that belongs in a Microsoft Excel book.
D. A conditional expression.
6. A query prompts a user for a date and then displays only records that contain the specified date. Which type of query is this?
A. A parameter query.
B. A crosstab query.
C. An action query.
D. An update query.
7. You must create a report if you want to calculate totals for a group of records, as queries can't perform this task. (True or False?)
8. A query summarizes information in a grid, organized by regions and months. Which type of query is this?
A. A parameter query.
B. A crosstab query.
C. An action query.
D. An update query.
9. Your company finally agreed to buy you a nifty 3COM Palm palmtop. Now you want to extract your clients from the company's database and put them into a separate table that you can export to your Palm. Which type of query could help you accomplish this task?
A. A parameter query.
B. A crosstab query.
C. An update query.
D. A make-table query.
10. If you are creating a crosstab query, what must the table you are querying contain?
A. At least one text field.
B. At least one number field.
C. More than 100 records.
D. Lots of confusing information.
11. How can you add a table to the query design window?
A. Select Edit → Add Table from the menu.
B. Click the Show Table button on the toolbar.
C. Select the table from the Table list on the toolbar.
D. Select Tools → Add Table from the menu.
12. You want a query to calculate the total sales for your employees. How can you do this from the query design window?
A. Click the Totals button on the toolbar. In the Total row select "Group By" under the Employee field and "Sum" under the Sales field.
B. Click in the Sales field and click the AutoSum button on the toolbar.
C. You need to export this information to Microsoft Excel and calculate it there.
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
Brainbell.com (2008). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved June 20th, 2008, from http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/Access_2003/
Bcschool.net (2003-2006). Create Database Applications using Microsoft Access, Retrieved June 20th, 2008, from http://www.bcschool.net/staff/accesshelp.htm
Cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu (2009). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu/holowczak/classes/2200/access/accessall.html
Databasedev.co.uk (2009). Microsoft Access Tutorial: Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://www.databasedev.co.uk/plan-an-access-application.html
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 206 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 206 |
| 3.0 Introduction to Forms | 206 |
| 3.1 Controls | 206 |
| 3.2 Creating Forms using Forms Wizard | 211 |
| 3.3 Making Simple Design Changes | 215 |
| 3.4 Creating a Calculated Control | 216 |
| 3.5 Form/Subforms | 216 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 217 |
| 5.0 Summary | 217 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 217 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 218 |
1.0 Introduction
Data entry forms are the primary means of entering data into tables in the database. In the previous units, we described how to add data to a table using a spreadsheet-like view of the data. Data entry forms offer a more user-friendly interface by adding labels for each field and other helpful information.
Microsoft Access provides several different ways of creating data entry forms. These include creating the forms by hand using a Design View as well as a number of wizards that walk the user through the forms creation process.
This unit explains everything you have ever wanted to know about forms.
2.0 Objectives
On successful completion you will be able to:
f. View and use Microsoft Access forms
g. Design forms to present information in any way you like.
h. Combine data from several related tables or queries.
3.0 Introduction to Forms
Microsoft Access provides the tools for developing graphical user interfaces (GUI) that facilitate the use of database applications.
An Access GUI consists of a set of Forms. Forms are front ends for accessing the data that is stored in database tables or that is generated by queries. Some of the available controls are: Text labels, Text boxes, List boxes, Combo boxes, Option groups, Buttons, Objects created by other applications, Decorative lines and boxes.
3.1 Controls
Forms are made up of controls. Individual control is typically “bound” to a particular field of the table or query that is associated with the form. Therefore, a “screen” of a form displays the contents of a record of the associated table/query whereas individual “bound” controls display the values of individual fields within that record.
Every control has a set of properties. Properties determine where a form/control gets its data from, whether the form/control can be used for editing data or for displaying data only as well as several details which determine how the form/control is displayed. Form/control properties are automatically set by “Wizard” programs provided by Access in order to facilitate the creation of forms. Users only need to edit them occasionally, in
order to fine-tune the appearance and behavior of the forms they create. Some of the available properties in Microsoft Access are shown in Table 14.1a and b
Table 14.1a: Common Forms/Report Properties
Source: http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/
| Property | Tab | Description |
|------------------------|---------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Caption * | Format | Displays a descriptive caption for a form or text label. |
| Format * | Format | Customizes the way numbers, dates, times, and text are displayed and printed. |
| Decimal Places * | Format | Determines the number of decimal places displayed. |
| Visible * | Format | Shows or hides a control. Useful if you want to use information on the form without it being visible. For example, you could use the value in a hidden control as the criteria for a query. |
| Display When | Format | Determines whether a section or control always appears or only appears when it is displayed on screen or printed. |
| Scroll Bars | Format | Determines whether scroll bars appear in the control. |
| Left * | Format | Determines the horizontal position of the control. |
| Top * | Format | Determines the vertical position of the control. |
| Width * | Format | Determines the width of a control. |
| Height * | Format | Determines the height of a control. |
| Back Style | Format | Determines whether a control is transparent or not. |
| Back Color | Format | Determines the color of a control. Click the button to select a color from a palette. |
| Special Effect | Format | Applies a 3-D effect to a control. |
| Border Style | Format | Determines the line style of a control's border—select from transparent lines, solid lines, dashed lines, etc. |
| Border Color | Format | Determines the color of a control's border. Click the button to select a color from a palette. |
| Border Width | Format | Determines the width of a control's border (in points). |
| Fore Color | Format | Determines the color of text in a control or the fill color of an object. Click the button to select a color from a palette. |
| Font Name | Format | Determines the font used in a control (such as Arial or Times New Roman). |
| Font Weight | Format | Determines the thickness (boldface) of text in a control. |
| Font Italic | Format | Determines whether the text in a control appears in italics. |
| Property | Tab | Description |
|--------------------------|---------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Font | Format | Determines whether the text in a control is underlined. |
| Underline | Format | Determines how text should be aligned in a control. |
| Text Align | Format | Determines how text should be aligned in a control. |
| Control Source * | Data | Determines the data that appears in the control. |
| Input Mask * | Data | Limits the amount and type of information that can be entered in a field, |
| | | such as (____) ___-___-_____ for a phone number. Click the button to create |
| | | an input mask using the Input Mask Wizard. |
| Default Value * | Data | Specifies a value that is automatically entered in this field for new |
| | | records. |
| Validation Rule * | Data | Allows you to enter an expression that is evaluated when data in the field |
| | | is added or changed. |
| Validation Text * | Data | Allows you to enter a message that is displayed when data doesn't meet the |
| | | Validation Rule property. |
| Locked * | Data | Determines whether changes can be made to a field's data. |
| Event Tab | Event | Allows you to assign a macro or Visual Basic procedure to a specific event,|
| | | such as when you click or update a control. |
| Name * | Other | Specifies the name of the control that identifies it in expressions, |
| | | macros, and Visual Basic procedures. |
| Status Bar Text | Other | Specifies a message to display in the Status bar when the control is |
| | | selected. |
| Enter Key Behavior | Other | Determines if pressing the Enter key adds a new line of text in a control |
| | | or if it moves to the next field. |
| Allow AutoCorrect | Other | Determines if AutoCorrect (i.e., "teh" → "the") is used in a control. |
| AutoTab | Other | Used with the Input Mask property. Determines whether an automatic tab to |
| | | the next field occurs when the last character permitted by a text box |
| | | control's input mask is entered. |
| Tab Stop | Other | Determines whether users are able to tab to the control. |
| Tab Index | Other | Determines the tab order. |
| Shortcut Menu Bar | Other | Specifies a user-created shortcut menu that appears when the control is |
| | | right-clicked. |
| ControlTip Message | Other | Specifies a brief message that appears when a user points at the control |
| | | for a couple of seconds. |
| Help Context Id | Other | Specifies an identifier number for a user-created Help file that appears |
| | | when the user selects the control and presses F1. |
| Property | Tab | Description |
|------------------|---------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Tag | Other | Specifies extra, user-defined information that is stored in the object. |
**Table 14.1b: Important Forms Properties**
Source: [http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/](http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/)
| Property | Tab | Description |
|---------------------------|---------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Caption * | Format | Displays a descriptive caption in the form's title bar. |
| Default View * | Format | Determines the view the form is in when opened. |
| | | Single Form: Displays one record at a time. |
| | | Continuous Forms: Displays multiple records in a form. |
| | | Datasheet: Displays multiple records in a Datasheet. |
| | | PivotTable: Dynamically analyzes data, summarizes into a table. |
| | | PivotChart: Dynamically analyzes data, summarizes into a chart. |
| Allow Form View | Format | Determines if users can switch to this view. |
| Allow Datasheet View | | |
| Allow PivotTable View | | |
| Allow PivotChart View | | |
| Scroll Bars * | Format | Determines whether scroll bars appear on the form. |
| Record Selectors * | Format | Determines whether a form contains a record selector. |
| Navigation Buttons * | Format | Determines whether a form has navigation buttons. |
| Dividing Lines | Format | Determines if lines appear between records in continuous forms. |
| Auto Resize | Format | Resizes the form automatically to display a complete record. |
| Property | Tab | Description |
|--------------------------|-------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Border Style * | Format| Determines the type of window the form appears in: None, Thin, Sizable, or Dialog. |
| Control Box | Format| Determines if a control menu appears in the form. |
| Min Max Buttons | Format| Determines if minimize and/or maximize buttons appear in the form. |
| Close Button | Format| Determines if a close button appears on the form. |
| Width * | Format| Determines the width of the form. |
| Height * | Format| Determines the height of the form. |
| Picture | Format| Adds a graphic or picture for the form or report background. Click the Build button to browse for the folder and file. |
| Picture Type | Format| Determines if the picture is embedded or linked. |
| Picture Size Mode | Format| Determines how the contents of a picture frame are displayed: Clip, Stretch, or Zoom. |
| Picture Alignment | Format| Determines the alignment of a picture within a frame. |
| Picture Tiling | Format| Determines whether a picture is tiled within a frame. |
| Grid X | Format| Determines the number of subdivisions (horizontal) in a grid. |
| Grid Y | Format| Determines the number of subdivisions (vertical) in a grid. |
| Layout for Print | Format| Determines whether the form uses printer fonts. |
| Palette Source | Format| Specifies the path and file name for the graphic file used as a palette. |
| Record Source * | Data | Specifies the table or query whose data will be used in the form. |
| Filter | Data | Specifies a filter that is loaded automatically with the Form/Report. |
| Order By | Data | Specifies a sort order that is loaded automatically with the Form/Report. |
| Allow Filters | Data | Determines whether filters may be applied to the form. |
| Allow Edits * | Data | Determines whether records can be modified in the form. |
| Allow Deletions * | Data | Determines whether records can be deleted in the form. |
| Allow Additions * | Data | Determines whether records can be added in the form. |
| Data Entry * | Data | Allows you to select "Yes" if you only want to use the form to add new records. |
| Property | Tab | Description |
|--------------------------|-------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Event Tab | Event | Allows you to assign a macro or Visual Basic procedure to a specific event, such as when you click or update a control. |
| Pop Up | Other | Determines whether the form appears in a pop-up window that remains on top of all other windows. |
| Modal | Other | Determines whether the form keeps the focus (you can't switch to any other windows or forms) until it is closed. |
| Cycle | Other | Determines how the tab key should cycle. |
| Menu Bar | Other | Allows you to select a custom menu bar that you created that should appear when the form is active. |
| Toolbar | Other | Allows you to select a custom toolbar that you created that should appear when the form is active. |
| Shortcut Menu | Other | Determines if right mouse button shortcut menus are permitted in the form. |
| Shortcut Menu Bar | Other | Specifies a user-created shortcut menu that appears when a user clicks the right-mouse button. |
| Fast Laser Printing | Other | Print the form using optimized laser-printer formatting. |
| Help File | Other | Specifies the name of the custom Help file for the form. |
| Help Context Id | Other | Specifies an identifier number for a user-created Help file that appears when the user selects the control and presses F1. |
| Tag | Other | Specifies extra user-defined information that is stored in the form. |
| Has Module | Other | Specifies if the form has Visual Basic code behind it. |
### 3.2 Creating Forms using Forms Wizard
Microsoft Access provides a set of Wizards that facilitate the creation of new forms.
To create a simple form that displays records from a table:
a. Click the Forms tab of the main database window.
b. Choose the **Create form using Wizard**
c. Specify the table/query with which the new form will be associated (for example: Customers). See figure 14.1
d. Select which fields of the selected table/query will actually appear on the form. (See figure 14.2)
e. Click on the Next button
f. Select the general layout of the form (See figure 14.3). The available options are:
i. Columnar - Places the labels to the left of each field. This is similar to a paper form. This layout is suitable for viewing data one record at a time.
ii. Tabular - Places the field labels at the top of the screen and the records are displayed below. This is similar to how a spreadsheet would display the data and is suitable for displaying multiple records of data at a time.
iii. Datasheet - The data appears in the same fashion as when viewing or adding data to a table.
iv. Justified - Places the labels above each field with the fields spread out on the form. This is suitable for viewing a single record at a time as with the columnar layout.
g. Click on the Next button
h. Choose the desired form background pattern (see figure 14.4).
i. Give name under which the new form will be stored (see figure 14.5).
j. Click Finish Button.
k. Finally, the form will be created and open for data display/editing (see figure 14.6).
Figure 14.2: Form Wizard Dialog box 2
Source: Microsoft Corporation
Figure 14.3: Form Wizard Layout Dialog box
Source: Microsoft Corporation
Figure 14.4: Form Wizard Background Dialog box
Source: Microsoft Corporation
3.3 Making Simple Design Changes
In Design View, the structure of the form in terms of its controls and their properties can be manipulated. To make changes to a form:
a. Open the Form.
b. From the View Menu, select Design view.
c. Select any control and then resize it, or move it around to any part of the form.
d. Selected controls can be deleted by pressing CTRL-X
e. The property list of a control can be accessed by doing a right-mouse-click on a selected control and then selecting “Properties” from the menu that appears.
f. Property lists are conveniently organized into categories:
i. Format -- includes properties that affect how the control is displayed
ii. Data -- includes properties that affect where the control gets its data from (notice that some controls get their data from locally defined queries, example “Reports To”)
iii. Event -- includes properties that specify what happens where various events involving the control
g. The properties of a FORM can be accessed by right-clicking on an area that lies outside of the boundaries of the form (“gray area). The most important form properties specify where a form gets its contents from (which table or query), whether it is used for editing or display only, whether it can be resized, etc.
h. New controls can be added to a form by dragging and dropping them from the Toolbox. Newly created controls then need to be sized and moved to their final position in the form. Their properties also need to be set. In most cases, the only
property that matters in the “Control Source”, which specifies the field to which the new control is bound.
**Activity A**
Create a data entry form for the Accounts table.
a. Click on the Forms tab on the Access main screen and then click on Create form by using wizard.
b. Select the Accounts table.
c. Select all of the available fields and click on the Next button.
d. Choose a Tabular layout and click on the Next button.
e. Choose the Standard style and click on the Next button.
f. Name the form: AccountsDataEntry
g. Click on the Finish button to create, save and view the new form.
h. Close the form and return to the Access main screen, by pulling down the File menu and choosing Close.
### 3.4 Creating a Calculated Control
A calculated control is an unbound control that displays totals and other arithmetic computations on a form. You create calculated controls by entering an expression (or formula) to perform the calculation in the control’s Control Source property.
To create a calculated control:
1. Display the form in design view.
2. Select the control and click the properties button on the toolbar.
3. Click the data tab and click in the control source box.
4. Type the expression using proper access syntax.
### 3.5 Form/Subforms
A subform is a form within a form. The primary form is called the main form, and the form within the form is called the subform. Subforms are especially useful when you want to show data from tables or queries with a one-to-many relationship. For example, a Customer form might have a subform that displays each customer's Accounts.
The main form and subform are linked so that the subform displays only records that are related to the current record in the main form. For example, when the main form displays a particular customer, the subform displays only accounts for that customer.
**Activity B**
1. Open the Homework database.
2. Use AutoForm to create and save a columnar form named "Customers," using the Customers table as the underlying data source.
3. Add a text box control with today's date in the bottom-right corner of the Customers form. Hint: You will need to change the text box control's data source to the expression =Today( ).
4. Rearrange the control fields on the form, so that the LastName and FirstName fields appear before the SSN field.
5. Change the Customer form's tab order to reflect the new field order.
6. Delete the DOB field control from the form.
7. Resize the Customers form as necessary, then use the SubForm Wizard to create a subform based on the Insurance Claims table.
8. Modify the Insurance Claims subform so that its Default View property is Single Form View.
Save your changes to the main form and the subform. Then close the form and the Homework database.
4.0 Conclusion
A form is nothing more than a graphical representation of a table. You can add, update, and delete records in your table by using a form. A form is very good to use when you have numerous fields in a table. This way you can see all the fields in one screen.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt:
civ. Forms are front ends for accessing the data that is stored in database tables or that is generated by queries.
cv. Forms are made up of controls and individual control is typically “bound” to a particular field of the table or query that is associated with the form.
cvi. Properties determine where a form/control gets its data from.
cvii. Forms can be created in two ways: Design view and Wizards.
cviii. A subform is a form within a form. The primary form is called the main form, and the form within the form is called the subform.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. Which of the following statements about the AutoForm Wizard is NOT true?
A. The AutoForm Wizard is the fastest and easiest way to create a form in Microsoft Access.
B. The AutoForm Wizard can only create five types of forms: Datasheet, Columnar, Tabular, PivotTable, or PivotChart.
C. Forms created with the AutoForm Wizard usually come out looking sharp and professional and don't require any further clean-up work.
D. The AutoForm Wizard can only create forms based on a single table or query.
2. Which of the following statements is NOT true?
A. The Field List displays all the fields from a form's underlying table or query.
B. Click the Field List button on the Toolbar to display the Field List.
C. You can add fields to a form by dragging them from the Field List onto the form.
D. The Field List displays all the fields from every table in a database.
3. Controls and their corresponding text labels cannot be moved independently of one another. (True or False?)
4. If you move a control on a form, the Tab Order, in which you advance from one field to the next when you press the Tab key, is automatically updated. (True or False?)
5. A form that has a Datasheet Default View property would display one record at a time in the form. (True or False?)
6. A calculated field... (Select all that apply.)
A. ...is a bound control.
B. ...is a control that contains an expression.
C. ...can perform calculations on fields values, such as = [Cost] * [Commission].
D. ...can perform calculations on explicit values, such as = 2 + 4.
7. Which of the following set(s) of tables would benefit from a subform? (Select all that apply.)
A. A Customer table and the Customer Orders table.
B. A Customer table and Products table.
C. A Customer table and Foreign Currency table.
D. A Customer table and a Customer Contacts table.
8. When you add a subform to a main form, Access always recognizes how the two forms are related (True or False?)
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
Brainbell.com (2008). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved June 20th, 2008, from http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/Access_2003/
Bcschool.net (2003-2006). Create Database Applications using Microsoft Access, Retrieved June 20th, 2008, from http://www.bcschool.net/staff/accesshelp.htm
Cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu (2009). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu/holowczak/classes/2200/access/accessall.html.
Databasedev.co.uk (2009). Microsoft Access Tutorial: Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://www.databasedev.co.uk/plan-an-access-application.html
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| 1.0 Introduction | 220 |
| 2.0 Objectives | 220 |
| 3.0 Introduction to Reports | 220 |
| 3.1 Understanding Report Sections | 220 |
| 3.2 Creating a Single Report using Wizards | 221 |
| 3.3 Report Controls | 228 |
| 3.4 Design View | 229 |
| 4.0 Conclusion | 230 |
| 5.0 Summary | 230 |
| 6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment | 231 |
| 7.0 Further Reading and other Resources | 232 |
1.0 Introduction
A report is an effective way to present your data in a printed format. Because you have control over the size and appearance of everything on a report, you can display the information the way you want to see it.
This unit explains everything you will need in creating and working with reports.
2.0 Objectives
On successful completion you will be able to create and modify a variety of reports.
3.0 Introduction to Reports
Reports present information from tables and queries in a format that looks great when printed. Reports help to print records from tables or queries in a professional way; you can even include calculations, graphics, or a customized header or footer.
Reports are similar to queries in that they retrieve data from one or more tables and display the records. However, reports add formatting to the output including fonts, colors, backgrounds and other features. Reports are often printed out on paper rather than just viewed on the screen.
Reports can also summarize and analyze the information in the database. The following are some of the available features in Microsoft Access Reports:
a. Formatting Options: Change the type, size, and color of the fonts used in a report or add lines, boxes, and graphics.
b. Sorting and Grouping Options: Reports are great for summarizing and organizing information.
c. Combine Data from Linked Tables: One report can display data from several related tables or queries.
3.1 Understanding Report Sections
Microsoft Access breaks reports up into separate parts called sections. Each section has its own specific purpose and always prints in the same order on a report. Table 15.1 shows the available sections.
Table 15.1: Report Sections
Source: http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/Access_2003/
| Resolution | Description |
|------------|-------------|
| Report | Contains text that appears at the top of the first page of a report, such as the name of the report. |
| Header | Contains text that appears at the top of each page of a report, such as the |
| Resolution | Description |
|--------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Group Header | Used to place text, such as a group name, at the beginning of each group of records. |
| Detail | Contains text and the actual fields that are displayed for each record. This would be equivalent to the main body in a word-processing document. |
| Group Footer | Used to place text and numeric summaries, such as totals or averages, at the end of each group of records. |
| Page Footer | Contains text that appears at the bottom of each page of a report, such as page numbers. |
| Report Footer | Contains text that appears at the end of the last page of a report. Often also contains numeric summaries for the report, such as a grand total. |
### 3.2 Creating a Single Report using Wizards
To create a new report:
a. Click on the **Reports** tab in the Main Access menu.
**Figure 15.1: Report Screen**
Source: Microsoft Corporation
b. Select the **Create Report by using wizard**, then select the **Customer** table as shown in figure 15.1.
c. Next specify the fields from the Customer table that will appear on the report. In this case, we want all of the fields to appear. Move each of the fields from the
Available Fields side over to the Selected Fields side as in the following figure as shown in figure 15.2. Then click on the Next button.
Figure 15.2: Report Field Selection
Source: Microsoft Corporation
d. In the next step, we have the opportunity to add Grouping Levels to the report. A grouping level is where several records have the same value for a given field and we only display the value for the first records. In this case, we will not use any grouping levels so simply click on the Next button as shown in figure 15.3.
e. In the next step, we are given the opportunity to specify the sorting order of the report. For this example, we will sort the records on the CustomerID field. To achieve this, pull down the list box next to the number 1: and choose the CustomerID field as shown in the figure 15.4. Then click on the Next button.
Figure 15.4: Report Sorting Level
Source: Microsoft Corporation
The next step is to specify the layout of the report. The three options are:
i. Columnar - Places the labels to the left of each field. This is similar to a paper form.
ii. Tabular - Places the field labels at the top of the report page and the records are displayed below. This is similar to how a spreadsheet would display the data.
iii. Justified - Places the labels above each field with the fields spread out on the report page.
Generally, reports use the tabular layout. For this example, choose Tabular layout and set the page Orientation to Landscape so that all of the fields will fit across one page. This is shown in the figure 15.5. Click on the Next button to continue.
In the next step, the style of the report can be selected. For this example, choose the Corporate style as shown in figure 15.6 and click on the Next button to continue.
Finally, give a name for the new report: CustomerReport and then click on the Finish button to create, save and display the new report (see figures 15.7 and 15.8).
Figure 15.7: Final step in Report Creation with wizard
Source: Microsoft Corporation
The output from the report is shown in the figure below. Note that on some screens, the first or last fields may not display without scrolling over to the left or right.
Once the report is displayed, it can be viewed, printed or transferred into Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. The button bar across the top of the screen is as shown in figure 15.9
- Print the report
- Zoom into a region of the report
- Display the report as one, two or multiple pages
- Zoom into or out of the report
- Transfer the report into MS Word
- Close the report
To close the report and return to the Access main screen, pull down the File menu and choose Close or click on the Close button.
**Activity A**
Create a report showing all of the Accounts information.
1. From the Reports tab on the Access main screen, click on the Create Report using Wizard.
2. Select the Accounts table.
3. Select all of the fields in the Accounts table by moving them all over to the Selected Fields side then click Next.
4. Group the report by CustomerID by clicking on the CustomerID field and then clicking on the right arrow button. This is shown in the following figure: Click on the Next button.
5. Choose to sort the report on the AccountNumber field. Note that a new button will appear called Summary Options. Click on the Summary Options button. Choose the Balance field and select the Sum option. Choose the option to show both Detail and Summary data (see figure 15.10.) Then click on the OK button.
Source: Microsoft Corporation
Click on the Next button.
6. Choose a Block layout and click on the Next button.
7. Choose the Corporate style and the click on the Next button.
8. Finally, name the report: AccountsReport and click on the Finish button to create, save and run the report.
The output from the AccountsReport is shown in Figure 15.11:
3.3 Report Controls
Any object that appears on a report is called a control. A text box used to display record information or a column heading are both examples of controls. You add controls to a report by clicking the control you want to use from the tool box and then dragging it onto the report. See Table 15.1 for Toolbox.
Table 15.2: Toolbox Buttons and Controls
Source: http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/Access_2003/
| Toolbox Button | Description |
|----------------|-------------|
| ![Button] | Click this button and then click the control you want to select. To select multiple controls, click this button and hold down the Shift key as you click each control, or drag a rectangle shape around all the controls you want to select. |
| ![Button] | Click to use Control Wizards when you add controls to your report. |
| Toolbox Button | Description |
|----------------|-------------|
| Aa | Creates a text label that appears the same for every record, such as a heading. Most controls already include a text label. |
| ab | Creates a text box that displays information from tables and queries in a report. |
| c | Creates a box around a group of option buttons so that the user is only allowed to make one selection from the group box. Normally used in forms, not reports. |
| d | Creates a toggle button. Normally used in forms, not reports. |
| e | Creates an option button (or radio button) that displays data from two or more options. Normally used in forms, not reports. |
| f | Creates a box that is empty or contains a checkmark. Use to display data from a Yes/No field. |
| g | Creates a combo box. Normally used in forms, not reports. |
| h | Creates a list box. Normally used in forms, not reports. |
| i | Creates a button that runs a macro or Visual Basic function. Normally used in forms, not reports. |
| j | Displays a picture by using a graphic file that you specify. |
| k | Inserts an OLE object that is not bound to a field in the current database. Use an Unbound Object Frame to display information from an external source or program, such as a spreadsheet, graphic, or other file. |
| l | Inserts an OLE object that is bound to a field in the database. Use Bound Object Frames to display pictures or other OLE information in the database. |
| m | Inserts a page break. |
| n | Creates a tab control. Normally used in forms, not reports. |
| o | Inserts another report within the main report. Use when you want to show data from a one-to-many relationship. |
| p | Enables you to draw a line in the report. |
| q | Enables you to draw a rectangle in the report. |
| r | Click to display other toolboxes and OLE objects. |
### 3.4 Design View
Design view is used to modify a report so as to make it easier to read and understand. For example, you might want to add or delete a field, change a column heading, or change the locations of the fields in the report. Figure 15.12 shows a sample report in design view.
To modify a report in design view:
a. In the Database window, click the Reports icon in the Objects bar
b. Select the report you want to modify and click the Design button.
Activity B
What are the types of reports that can be created in Microsoft Access?
4.0 Conclusion
Microsoft Access Reports have powerful built-in tools that allow you to present your data in a professional way. It is possible to include calculations, graphics, and a customized header or footer in a report.
5.0 Summary
In this unit, we have learnt that:
cix. Reports present information from tables and queries in a format that looks great when printed.
cx. Microsoft Access breaks reports up into separate parts called sections.
cxi. Reports can be created by using report wizard or design view.
Design view is used to modify a report so as to make it easier to read and understand.
Any object that appears on a report is called a control.
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment
1. Which of the following statements about the AutoReport Wizard is NOT true?
A. The AutoReport Wizard is the fastest and easiest way to create a report in Microsoft Access.
B. The AutoReport Wizard can only create two types of reports: Columnar and Tabular.
C. Reports created with the AutoReport Wizard usually come out looking sharp and professional and don't require further clean-up work.
D. The AutoReport Wizard can only create reports based on a single table or query.
2. Which of the following statements is NOT true?
A. The Field List displays all the fields from a report's underlying table or query.
B. Click the Field List button on the Toolbar to display the Field List.
C. You can add fields to a report by dragging them from the Field List onto the report.
D. The Field List displays all the fields from every table in a database.
3. Controls and their corresponding text labels cannot be moved independently of one another. (True or False?)
4. Which of the following statements is NOT true?
A. You can move a control to a different location on a report by clicking, dragging, and dropping the control.
B. To add a page number to a report, select View → Header/Footer from the menu and click the Page Number button on the Header/Footer toolbar.
C. You can resize a report by clicking and dragging the right edge of the report.
D. You can resize a control by clicking the control to select it, grabbing one of its sizing handles, and dragging and releasing the mouse button when the control reaches the desired size.
5. You want a report to group and total sales by month. Where would you place a calculated control containing the following expression =SUM([Sales]) to calculate the totals for each month?
A. In the Month Group Footer section.
B. In the Page Footer section.
C. In the Report Footer section.
D. In the Summary section.
6. Which of the following is NOT a report section?
A. Report Header section.
B. Page Header section.
C. Summary section.
D. Detail section.
7. The only way to sort a report's records is to base the report on a query, which actually does the work of sorting the records. (True or False?)
8. Which of the following expressions is incorrect?
A. =Total for: [Employee].
B. =[InvoiceDate]+30.
C. =[LastName]&" "&[FirstName].
D. =[Units]*[UnitPrice].
9. You want to track the progress of the stock market on a daily basis. Which type of chart should you use?
A. Line chart.
B. Column chart.
C. Row chart.
D. Pie chart.
10. How do you adjust a page's margins?
A. Click and drag the edge of the page to where you want the margin set.
B. Select Format → Page Setup from the menu, click the Margins tab, and adjust the margins.
C. Select File → Page Setup from the menu, click the Margins tab, and adjust the margins.
D. Click the Margins button on the Formatting toolbar.
11. How can you view a report's sorting and grouping options?
A. Select Format → Sorting and Grouping from the menu.
B. By double-clicking the Report Selector box in the upper left corner of the report.
C. Select File → Page Setup from the menu and click the Sorting and Grouping tab.
D. Click the Sorting and Grouping button on the toolbar.
12. What is the procedure for selecting multiple controls on a report?
A. Press and hold down the Shift key as you click each object that you want to select.
B. Use the arrow pointer to draw a box around the object that you want to select.
C. If the controls are aligned along a horizontal or vertical line, click the horizontal or vertical ruler above or to the left of the controls.
D. All of these.
7.0 Further Reading and other Resources
Brainbell.com (2008). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved June 20th, 2008, from http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/ms-office/Access_2003/
Bcschool.net (2003-2006). Create Database Applications using Microsoft Access, Retrieved June 20th, 2008, from http://www.bcschool.net/staff/accesshelp.htm
Cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu (2009). Microsoft Access Tutorial. Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://cisnet.baruch.cuny.edu/holowczak/classes/2200/access/accessall.html
Databasedev.co.uk (2009). Microsoft Access Tutorial: Retrieved March 15th, 2009 from http://www.databasedev.co.uk/plan-an-access-application.html | f53d8dc5-2738-40df-89fe-22e583760d9f | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/CIT843.pdf | 2022-07-05T05:59:12+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104514861.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20220705053147-20220705083147-00335.warc.gz | 450,577,138 | 88,112 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.938473 | eng_Latn | 0.994724 | [
"nld_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"swe_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"fin_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"fin_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"fin_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"nld_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
173,
385,
1506,
3922,
5872,
8023,
10614,
13088,
15457,
15481,
15751,
15775,
17414,
19473,
19591,
20424,
22094,
24474,
26080,
27689,
29257,
31191,
32716,
34220,
35547,
36060,
38136,
40200,
41953,
43566,
45115,
47476,
50177,
51785,
53083,
53955,
55363,
57471,
59925,
62142,
64514,
66945,
68245,
69519,
71114,
72881,
74158,
76557,
77460,
79399,
81525,
83502,
86149,
87839,
88435,
90607,
92867,
94551,
96912,
97431,
99568,
101694,
105052,
106827,
108826,
111379,
112690,
114547,
115905,
117183,
118944,
120871,
123002,
125251,
127378,
129554,
131641,
133973,
135536,
137422,
139290,
141271,
142475,
144315,
146521,
147549,
148997,
150436,
151419,
152118,
152681,
154507,
156172,
157042,
157843,
159287,
160245,
161543,
162410,
163715,
164615,
166014,
167326,
168376,
169331,
170997,
172641,
174148,
177463,
179005,
180403,
182736,
185288,
189713,
192353,
195264,
197827,
199097,
200457,
201939,
203251,
204708,
206104,
207855,
209628,
211526,
213144,
214522,
216064,
217363,
218487,
220992,
222337,
224565,
226210,
227547,
228656,
229947,
230960,
232070,
233158,
234472,
235957,
237053,
238325,
239790,
241617,
243281,
245531,
247592,
249759,
251264,
252761,
254403,
255904,
257359,
259487,
261048,
262399,
264392,
266688,
268402,
270151,
271878,
273849,
275549,
277578,
279900,
281539,
282790,
283872,
285767,
287202,
289688,
291480,
293194,
294796,
296647,
298610,
300031,
301070,
303314,
304625,
304789,
305564,
306053,
306910,
308910,
310709,
312842,
315249,
316696,
318297,
319304,
320638,
322622,
323404,
325186,
327316,
327880,
329089,
330657,
333237,
333970,
335367,
337148,
339158,
341310,
343014,
343457,
343652,
345512,
347674,
349772,
351721,
353635,
355234,
356387,
358521,
361569,
365769,
368373,
371297,
373776,
374940,
375087,
375166,
376681,
378579,
380781,
382995,
384063,
386125,
387522,
388055,
389123,
389294,
389716,
390296,
391425,
392275,
394624,
395403,
397634,
399930
] | [
1.09375,
2.21875
] | 1 | 0 |
It is the only purely herbivorous aquatic mammal. It eats significant amounts of vegetation because, on average, it can eat up to 10% of its weight in one day. Its feces help fertilize the waters of rivers, narrow rivers, and swamps where it lives, and they also are food for different kinds of fish that share its environment.
It does not have natural predators, except for human beings, who have damaged its habitat by not performing productive activities in a responsible manner. This has caused the manatee to be considered vulnerable. Currently, WCS Colombia coordinates the Wildlife Project* (Proyecto Vida Silvestre – PVS), an initiative that, in conjunction with Cabildo Verde Sabana de Torres, works in favor of this animal.
Some of the activities of the PVS have included supporting and training the Guardians of the Manatee, a group of volunteers that seeks to contribute to the conservation of this mammal and its habitat. Likewise, they bring the message to their neighbors and share what they have learned in the different meetings with the technical team of the Wildlife Project.
PVS:* The Wildlife Project works for the conservation of ten species of flora and fauna in the Middle Magdalena and the Eastern Plains. It is funded by Ecopetrol and coordinated by WCS Colombia. Ten implementing organizations are part of this initiative, which is supported by Fundación Mario Santo Domingo.
The fieldwork begins in the Farallones de Cali Natural National Park to benefit threatened amphibians
This activity is part of the conservation strategy that aims to protect that taxonomic group in the protected areas of the country.
The trip covered four places inside the park located in two townships of Valle del Cauca: Cali and Dagua. The researchers took 42 tours in mountain streams to find out about potential threats that amphibians face in the conservation area. Samples were taken from individuals found to detect diseases affecting them worldwide.
This activity was performed with officials from the Natural National Parks of Colombia, who were trained by WCS to identify the species, record information, and take the corresponding samples. Altogether, 658 individuals from 36 species of amphibians, 35 of anurans, and one salamander were recorded. These researches, along with the work of Universidad del Valle, are essential to determine the conservation actions to preserve amphibian populations in the Farallones NNP.
Secondly, some of the tours were taken together with the staff of Zürich Zoo, who prepared a documentary as part of the project “Conservation Strategy of Threatened Amphibians in the Protected Areas of Colombia.” This includes illegal trade, deforestation, and emerging diseases that amphibians might suffer from.
The records highlight the observation of the Lehmann’s poison frog (Oophaga lehmanni), which is critically endangered. The team also visited a place in Buenaventura where a project is being carried out together with the Cali Zoo. In this area, the golden poison frog (Phyllobates terribilis) can be found, the most poisonous frog in the world and which is also highly threatened due to illegal trade.
The project “Conservation Strategy of Threatened Amphibians in the Protected Areas of Colombia” is part of an agreement signed by the Zürich Zoo, the Cali Zoo, and WCS Colombia, together with the Natural National Parks of Colombia and the participation of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
BIOLOGICAL INVENTORY IN WETLANDS OF THE PEASANT FARMER RESERVE ZONE (ZRC, by its acronym in Spanish) OF THE CIMITARRA RIVER VALLEY
Joint work of researchers and local guides to study biodiversity in swamps in the south of Serranía de San Lucas.
The activity was led by the Peasant Farmer Association of the Cimitarra River Valley – National Agroecological Network (ACVC-RAN, by its initials in Spanish), as part of a project co-financed by Fondo Acción.
This evaluation included groups of plants, aquatic ecosystems, fish, herpetofauna, birds, and mammals that live in the bodies of water and forests of the Cimitarra River Valley ZRC, located between the townships of Yondó (Antioquia) and Cantagallo (Bolívar). A second study is expected to be performed with the same groups during the summer, as well as an analysis of mercury existence.
The main findings include the presence of the second largest bat in Colombia and the American continent (Chrotopterus auritus) and a specimen of the Dermanura genus, which suffers from leucism (a partial loss of pigmentation that gives color to the fur).
The results of this inventory will be used as a technical tool in the search and consolidation process of a local or regional environmental protection figure for some ecosystems related to the swamps, which are still preserved because of community agreements and that could be part of the conservation variety around the Serranía de San Lucas. This procedure is developed with the assistance of Fundación Panthera, Fundación Proyecto Primates, and WCS Colombia.
This first expedition counted on the participation of members of Cabildo Verde de Sabana de Torres, Natural National Parks of Colombia, Oficina de Nuevas Áreas - Subdirectorate of Administration and Management, the Caribbean Territorial Directorate, the Universities of: Antioquia, Los Andes, Tolima, Unipaz, CeTAmB-Lab (Italy), and Praxis Collective of Universidad Nacional, Bogotá.
WORKSHOPS TO APPROACH COMMUNITIES OF CRAVO NORTE (ARAUCA)
One more step to support Natural National Parks of Colombia in the protection of new areas of the country.
The process has included activities to generate (biological, spatial, and social) information that supports the importance of preserving the area known as Cinaruco, located in the western part of the department of Arauca, near the border with Venezuela.
The workshops were held with landowners of the villages of Juriepe and Lejanías del Juriepe, but who live in the capital city of Arauca. Through a social cartography procedure, about 161 species of fauna were identified and spatialized, highlighting the richness of felines, reptiles, and aquatic mammals.
The main threats identified were intentional fires and indiscriminate logging of saladillo and congrio (timber resources of great importance in the area).
An identical activity was performed with the residents of La Esperanza and La Virgen villages (also located in Juriepe and Lejanías del Juriepe) in the township of Cravo Norte. Together with them, the priority areas for conservation were determined.
This was part of the agreement signed by Natural National Parks of Colombia, Fundación para el Beneficio (Grupo Argos), Fundación Mario Santo Domingo, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), to support the declaration of new protected areas in strategic threatened ecosystems of the country.
WCS participated in the Interinstitutional Committee of the Territorial Planning Commission (COT) and the International Forum on Management of Protected Areas
A researcher of the WCS program in Democratic Republic of the Congo shared his experiences in territorial planning and management of parks in conflict scenarios.
The WCS representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Deo Kujirakwinja, participated in the special committee of the Territorial Planning Commission (COT, by its initials in Spanish), organized by Natural National Parks of Colombia (NNP). The purpose of this space was to strengthen skills and share experiences about the work of institutions in territorial planning, and it is a contribution to the general policy of territorial planning in Colombia.
The meeting was also attended by representatives of the National Planning Department, the United Nations (UN), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Regional Autonomous Corporations, Research Institutes, and NNP, among others. The international cases presented included those from El Salvador, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As for the latter, Deo Kujirakwinja presented the role of protected areas in territorial planning in the east part of his country, in particular, the role that parks administrations play in the involvement of communities and townships in the management of protected areas.
Also, during the forum “Challenges and opportunities for the conservation of protected areas in conflict and post-conflict scenarios”, the different presentations analyzed, evaluated, and shared national and international experiences on protected area management for conservation during and after armed conflicts. This space arose in view of the political, social, and technical situation Colombia is facing, in the context of the recent definitive peace agreement.
Regarding the work performed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the work of WCS with the initiative “Conflict-Sensitive Conservation” was highlighted, which aims to improve the management of protected areas and minimize conflict over natural resources. This approach takes into account the connection with local communities, their involvement in park management, and the strengthening of control and surveillance activities. Such initiative has been adopted in the DRC as one of the cornerstones for natural resources conservation in that country.
Under the premise “Forests, people, and peace, an opportunity for Latin American integration,” the congress was consolidated as an academic, social, and institutional discussion about the future of Colombian forests in the post-conflict scenario.
The event revolved around four themes: territorial peace; who governs forests in post-conflict; agrarian, forestry, and environmental law and justice; and the economic opportunity of forests in the post-conflict.
WCS Colombia took part with two presentations: “Emerging environmental markets in Colombia, resources for the sustainable conservation of forests” and “Multiple planning instruments for rural development”, the latter in conjunction with WWF and Corporación Ecoversa.
The event was organized by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and the Latin American Network of Forestry and Environmental Law (RELADEFA, by its initials in Spanish), and was supported by Revista Catorce 6, Bioparque Corporation, Corporación Ecoversa, WWF Colombia, Natura Foundation, ONF Andina, WCS Colombia – Fundación Mario Santo Domingo, and other important organizations.
Find more information about the congress in the following link:
congresoderechoforestal2016.com | cfb36a14-df36-4d19-b3dd-61ab73174c3d | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://colombia.wcs.org/Portals/113/Newsletter%20WCS%20Colombia_11.pdf | 2021-12-08T15:43:28+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964363515.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20211208144647-20211208174647-00249.warc.gz | 262,193,880 | 2,124 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.988037 | eng_Latn | 0.992907 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1405,
3474,
5423,
6880,
9339,
10567
] | [
2.28125
] | 2 | 0 |
Wanaque Reservoir’s Coming Brought Mixed Reactions
Herald News, August 2, 1968
The Wanaque Reservoir has played an important part in the lives of local residents. Its scenic beauty has been admired by visitors to the area along Ringwood Avenue, the borough’s main and only thoroughfare and many residents have located their homes by association with the reservoir.
When the idea for the project was conceived the borough was both sad and happy. Happy because the reservoir was to be an outstanding asset to the community. Sad because the Wanaque Valley Paper Mill and may homes scattered throughout the hills and valleys were to be replaced by the 10-mile stretch of reservoir. Seventy buildings and homes were removed, seven miles of highway and six miles of railroad were relocated.
Four small cemeteries had to be removed to make way for the watershed. The Brown Cemetery was moved according to the wishes of Squire Edward J. Brown to a tract in Midvale Cemetery and fenced in. There were 65 graves and tombstones all in good condition. The Ryerson Cemetery was also moved according the wishes of the family to the Midvale Cemetery.
At the request of the Board family the 19 graves there were reinterred in a lot purchased by the reservoir commission in the Pompton Reformed Church Cemetery. The old stones were repaired where possible, and others were replaced. The commission obtained brownstone from Connecticut and duplicated the old style inscriptions on the new grave markers.
The Erskine Cemetery was in a dilapidated state. There were few monuments and no record of burials. Since the location of some of the graves could not be known, the whole area to a depth of six feet was turned over and all remains removed. Where identity was possible remains were placed with the consent of living relatives in Midvale Cemetery, Pompton Reformed Cemetery, Butler Cemetery and Bernardsville Cemetery. The total cost for removing 256 bodies and 37 tombstones was $17,865.44.
The Wanaque Basin was as a source of water supply for Newark was first studied in 1879 and again in 1907. Paterson protested that Wanaque’s natural watershed should not be lost as a source for Passaic County. In 1916 a joint effort by Newark and Paterson resulted in the appointment of a North Jersey Water Commission to govern the water supply areas in the northern section of the state.
By 1920 the first construction contract was awarded and during the following 10 years $30,597,675.37 was spent on the reservoir. The reservoir is made of seven dams; the largest is the Raymond and is approximately 6.6 miles long and 1.2 miles wide at maximum. Raymond Dam is an earth structure with concrete corewall extending from the waterflow line down to solid bedrock.
cont. on page 3
Club News
The Passaic County Historical Society Genealogy Club holds meetings 10:00 a.m. at Lambert Castle on the second Saturday of the month from September through May (unless otherwise specified).
Meeting dates for the 2012 year are as follows:
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Program to be announced.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Program to be announced.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
(Meeting will be held at the Hawthorne Library,
345 Lafayette Ave., Hawthorne, NJ.)
Program to be announced.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
(Meeting will be held at the Hawthorne Library,
345 Lafayette Ave., Hawthorne, NJ.)
Annual Holiday Brunch and Silent Auction
For more information about any of these events, please visit out website at:
www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/%7Enjpchsgc/contact
or contact the PCHS office at:
973-247-0085 x200.
Passaic County Historical Society Genealogy Club
Lambert Castle, Valley Road, Paterson, New Jersey 07503
(973) 247-0085 • FAX (973) 881-9434
www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/%7Enjpchsgc/
OFFICERS
President ........................................... Annita Zalenski
Vice President ................................. Judi Bonzkowski
Recording Secretary ..................... Pat Van Steyn
Treasurer ........................................ Marie Mahler
Corresponding Secretary ........ John Koontz
All Members are invited and encouraged to submit material for publication in The Castle Genie. We will try to publish at least a portion of everything we receive. Information is published as submitted and has not been verified. Material will be printed as space permits. When information is extracted from another publication, please give proper credit.
Send material to: Passaic County Historical Society Genealogy Club
Lambert Castle, 3 Valley Road, Paterson, New Jersey 07503
For Membership information, please contact the
PCHS office at 973-247-0085.
Genealogy
Some think of it wise, some other wise,
To trace one's family tree;
For naught they see in family tree
Or in heredity.
They think the past dead should remain
At peace within the grave,
And of their life, what is the gain,
When, what or how they gave.
Although they may be partly right
Yet much more are they wrong;
Our fathers bore the Torch of Light
Which we must pass along.
So then if they have done much good
Each in his little way,
Is this not fine for mental food?
Just stop! and think! and pray.
If my forefather was a man
Of patriotic trend,
Then I shall try the best I can
My aims with his to blend.
Those souls who lived and walked with God
Show me the way to live;
And though they sleep beneath the sod
Yet constant good they give.
Wm. H. Rauchfuss
Preakness, NJ, July 6, 1935
A Toast to Our Flag
Here’s to the flag that still is flying,
While the radical is crying
Threats of hate, and rights defying,
While it stands out true;
Hope, today, of every nation,
Bringing to oppressed elation;
Patriotism’s true creation;
“THE RED, WHITE AND BLUE!”
Wm. H. Rauchfuss
To the Captain Abraham Godwin Chapter,
Sons of the American Revolution.
Paterson, NJ, June 11, 1924
Wanaque Reservoir cont. from page 1
Note: Burial listings for the Brown, Ryerson Board, and Erskine Cemeteries can be found in the book “Written In Stone” Gravestone Inscriptions of Passaic County, by Annita Zalinski. This publication has recently been reprinted in softcover and is available for purchase at the Passaic County Historical Society Gift Shop or online at www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njpchsgc/.
Brown, Board, Erskine and Ryerson Cemeteries of the Wanaque Valley
BROWN Cemetery prior to removal, July 13, 1921.
BOARD Cemetery prior to removal, April 26, 1921.
BROWN Cemetery during removal of bodies, July 26, 1921.
ERSKINE Cemetery, April 26, 1921.
BROWN Cemetery after removal to the Midvale Cemetery, August 18, 1921.
RYERSON Cemetery, April 26, 1921.
PETRY Family Bible
Presented to JOSIE PETRY by her Mother.
This Bible was donated to the Passaic County Historical Society by Mary Lombardo Willever, May 12, 2012.
A copy of the handwritten pages can be found in the Bible files in the library.
MARRIAGES
Frederick PETRY and Sally QUACKENBUSH were married January 25th in the Year of our Lord 1823.
John PETRY and Caroline BRUSH were married January 25th, 1845.
George F. PETRY and Sarah BRUSH were married April __.
Hannah PETRY and John DANIELS were married March 26th, 1853.
Hannah DANIELS and George BILLSON were married April 4th, 1860.
Daniel F. PETRY and Elizabeth ACKERMAN were married March 26th, 1857.
Rinier PETRY and Eufehemia VAN DELINDA were married February 22nd, 1860.
Sarah PETRY and Thomas BARRITT were married ___.
Elizabeth PETRY and Thomas BARRITT were married January 24th, 1866.
Charles H. PETRY and Mary HETHERINGTON were married October 3rd, 1879.
Mr. Horace E. PAGE and Mrs. Elizabeth PETRY were married June 24th, 1889, Paterson, NJ.
Mr. Wallace BROWN and Miss Josie PETRY were married November 11th, 1885, Paterson, NJ.
Edwin F. PETRY and Gertrude HORN were married September 15th, 1897 at the parsonage of the Westminster Church, 23rd St., NY, by the Rev. Robert F. Sample.
BIRTHS
These comprise all the births in the family of Frederick and Sally PETRY.
Frederick PETRY was born October 21st, 1801.
Sally PETRY was born March 25th, 1801.
Marie PETRY was born October 27th, 1823.
John PETRY was born October 24th, 1824.
George F. PETRY was born September 13th, 1826.
Petry F. PETRY was born August 30th, 1829.
Ellen PETRY was born July 3rd, 183(1).
Hannah PETRY was born June 30th, 1833.
Margaret PETRY was born August 29th, 1835.
Daniel F. PETRY was born February 24th, 1838.
Reiner PETRY was born November 13th, 1840.
Sarah PETRY was born April 25th, 1843.
Elizabeth PETRY was born December 12th, 1845.
Abraham PETRY was born April 29th, 1848.
Wallace BROWN, son of Andrew and Mary BROWN was born October 29, 1864 in Paterson, NJ.
Fannie BROWN, first daughter of Wallace and Josie BROWN, born August 10, 1886, Paterson, NJ.
FAMILY RECORD
Daniel and Elizabeth PETRY family.
Daniel F. PETRY was born at Preakness, NJ, February 24th, 1838.
Elizabeth PETRY was born at the Ponds, NJ, May 7th, 1835.
They were married at Monsey, Rockland County, NY, March 26th, 1857.
Their first son Charles PETRY was born at Preakness, NJ, March 4th, 1858.
Their second son Daniel PETRY was born in the village of Hackensack, NJ, February 28th, 1860.
Their third son was still born in the village of Hackensack, NJ, August 6th, 1861.
Their fourth son was born in Jersey City, December 14th, 1862, his name is Edwin Franklin PETRY.
Their first daughter Josephine PETRY was born in New York City, January 20th, 1865.
DEATHS
Frederick PETRY family.
Maria PETRY died November 9th, 1823.
Hellen PETRY died September 5th, 1833.
Margaret Petry died September 12th, 1837.
Peter PETRY died September 23rd, 1851.
Reiner PETRY died March 1st, 1860.
Frederick PETRY died December 3rd, 1864.
Sarah PETRY died July 2nd, 1865.
Daniel F. PETRY family.
Our 2nd son Daniel PETRY died in the village of Hackensack, April 11th, 1860, aged one month and eleven days.
Our third son was still born in the village of Hackensack, August 6th in the year 1861.
Hannah PETRY died September 13, 1869.
Daniel F. PETRY died November 3rd, 1870.
Fannie BROWN, daughter of Wallace and Josie BROWN died April 23, 1891, Paterson, NJ.
Elizabeth PETRY PAGE, died October 21, 1910 at West Palm Beach, Florida. Buried in Plot No. 7 in Block 45.
Wallace BROWN, died April 15, 1945 in Paterson, NJ.
Mary BROWN wife of Wallace, died June 28, 1958.
Andrew J. BROWN, born June 3, 1834. Married to Mary HILTON, May 13, 1857. Died March 13, 1914.
Mary BROWN, born April 29, 1835. Married to Andrew J. BROWN. Died December 4, 1910.
HEWITT A locality in West Milford Township.
HICKORY MOUNTAIN A locality in Ringwood Borough.
HIGH MOUNTAIN A locality in North Haledon Borough.
HUYLER’S Community in Passaic County, N.J. originally called Acquackanonk until 1851 when the railroad named it Huyler’s after the family name of the agent for the railroad at that place. Name changed April 25, 1854 to Passaic.
IRISHTOWN A section of Erskine in Ringwood, N.J.
JENNINGS HOLLOW A location noted between Hewitt and Sterling Forest, on Greenwood Lake, in what is today Passaic County, NJ.
KALKOENBERG A section of Paterson near Market and Madison Avenues.
KANOUSE MOUNTAIN A locality in West Milford Township. Its name derived from the Knauss family who lived in the area.
LAKE LOOKOVER A locality in West Milford Township.
LAKESIDE A locality in West Milford Township.
LAKEVIEW One of six sections of the City of Clifton in today’s Passaic County. Formerly part of the area known as Acquackanonk. The area roughly north of Piaget Ave., to Crooks Ave., and from Hazel St. east to the Passaic River. The name was in use by 1880 or earlier.
LITTLE FALLS Little Falls Township was formed April 2, 1868 from Acquackanonk Township. Includes or included Great Notch, Notch Brook, and Singac.
LONG POND A locality in West Milford Township. Peter Hasenclever began the ironworks at Long Pond in 1766. Also the early name for Greenwood Lake.
LOWER MACOPIN A locality in West Milford Township.
LOWER PREAKNESS A locality in Wayne Township.
MACOPIN Locality in old Pompton Township (now West Milford). The name comes from an Indian word for which various meanings have been suggested, including “land of the wild potato,” “Beaver Dam,” “place where the pumpkins grow,” and “pickerel waters.” The body of water called Echo Lake was once called Macopin Pond. Erskine spelled it Makapien on some of his maps; another early spelling is Makapin.
MANCHESTER Manchester Township was formed February 7, 1837 from Saddle River Township, Bergen County, and set off to Passaic County. Through the years parts of its area transferred to Wayne Township (1847); Paterson City (1854, 1855); Totowa Borough(1898); Hawthorne Borough (1898); Prospect Park Borough (1901); and North Haledon Borough (1901). On April 8, 1908 Manchester Township became Haledon Borough. Includes or included a locality called the Goffle.
MEAD’S BASIN A locality on the Pequannock River, in the Mountain View section of Wayne Township near the Morris Canal Towpath. The Mead family was prominent in this section, and Andrew H. Mead (d. 1867) ran a hotel here. The area was known for a large clay deposit, used in brick making. Also written Meade’s Basin. Mead’s Basin Postal Service —A Bergen County post office named Mead’s Basin was established 6 March 1833 with Nathaniel Wilson as the first Postmaster. Other early Mead’s Basin postmasters included Henry Doremus, and Isaac H. Mead (25 Mar 1833). The post office became part of Passaic County when that county was formed by Act of the New Jersey Legislature on 7 Feb 1837. The name was later changed to Mountain View, Passaic County, NJ.
MIDVALE A locality in Wanaque Borough.
MOE A locality in West Milford Township.
MORROW’S MILLS An early name for the locality now called Hawthorne. Named for the woolen goods mill established here sometime after 1816 by John Morrow. Also called Degray’s Mills.
MOUNTAINVIEW A locality in Wayne Township. Earlier called Mead’s Basin.
MOUNT WASHINGTON Great Notch in Little Falls.
NEWFOUNDLAND A locality in West Milford Township.
NORTH HALEDON A Passaic County borough formed March 20, 1901 from Manchester Township. Includes High Mountain.
NORTH PATERSON An early name for the locality now called Hawthorne.
NORTHWEST KILL The Passaic River.
NORWOOD An early name for the south part of Hawthorne.
NOTCH [ THE] An early name for Totowa.
NOTCH BROOK A locality in Little Falls. In 1857 it was the focal point of a fresh-water pearl search that spread through the northeast.
OAK RIDGE A locality in West Milford Township.
OUGHVICKENON (See Acquackanonk)
OUCHQUIKENUNK (See Acquackanonk)
PACKANACK A locality in the vicinity of Wayne Township.
PACKANACK LAKE A locality in Wayne Township.
PACQUANAC An early name for the Mountain View section of Wayne.
PARADISE A locality in West Milford Township.
PASSAIC
(1) Passaic River. The name “Passaic” is supposedly Indian, meaning “where the water goes over the falls.”
(2) Passaic County. Passaic County is a New Jersey County formed February 7, 1837 from Bergen and Essex Counties. It consisted of Acquackanonk, Manchester, Paterson, Pompton, and West Milford Townships. On October 28, 1907 part of Little Falls and Acquackanonk Townships transferred to Montclair town, in Essex County.
(3) Passaic Village. A community existed and was known by this name prior to its official formation on March 10, 1869 as a village
Passaic County Place Names cont. from page 5
within Acquackanonk Township. On March 21, 1871 Passaic Village was incorporated and set off from Acquackanonk Township. On April 2, 1873 Passaic Village became Passaic City. Earlier called Aquackanonk, then Huyler’sin mid-1800s. Included Passaic Park.
(4) Passaic City formed April 2, 1873 replacing Passaic Village. In 1901 Passaic City exchanged small parts with Acquackanonk Township.
PASSAIC PARK A locality in Passaic City.
PATERSON A city in Passaic County, founded and incorporated on November 22, 1791 as “Paterson Town” by the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, and named for the New Jersey Governor at the time, William Paterson. Paterson Town was incorporated in 1791 within Bergen and Essex Counties. On April 11, 1831 Paterson Township was set off from Acquackanonk Township in Essex County, N.J. In 1837 Paterson Township was set off to Passaic County, and on April 14, 1851 the township became Paterson City. Paterson City was incorporated April 14, 1851 (referendum April 14, 1851) and replaced Paterson Township. In 1854 and again in 1855 it acquired area from Manchester Township. On March 14, 1861 it was reincorporated. In 1869 it acquired parts 78 from Acquackanonk and Little Falls Townships. On March 23, 1871 Paterson City was again reincorporated. Because of its large textile industry and many silk mills, Paterson became known as “Silk City” and is often referred to as the Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. Earlier the vicinity was known as Great Falls. Includes or included Riverside and South Paterson.
PATERSON LANDING Passaic, N.J.
PAYQUANAC (possibly either Pequannock or Packanack?)
PECKMAN RIVER Located in the Little and Woodland Park area.
PINES LAKE A locality in Wayne Township.
POMPTON Pompton Township was organized February 8, 1797, formed April 10, 1797 from area taken from Saddle River and Franklin Townships in Bergen County. Pompton Township was incorporated February 21, 1798. In 1834 part of its area was set off to West Milford Township. On February 26, 1895 part of its area went to Pompton Lakes Borough. On February 23, 1918 Pompton Township was divided into Bloomingdale, Ringwood, and Wanaque Boroughs and the remainder went to Pompton Lakes Borough. Originally in Bergen County, all of Pompton Township in Bergen County became part of Passaic County on February 7, 1837. The name Pompton is said to come from an Indian word meaning sucking fish or place where they catch soft fish. An ironworks was begun here in 1726 or earlier, probably by members of the Schuyler family.
POMPTON JUNCTION A locality in Pompton Lakes Borough.
POMPTON LAKES Pompton Lakes Borough was formed February 26, 1895 from Pompton Township. Includes or included Pompton Junction.
POSTVILLE A locality in West Milford Township.
PREAKNESS A locality in Wayne Township near the Bergen County border. From an Indian word meaning young buck. The Preakness Reformed Dutch Church was established here in 1831. The Berdan family settled here by 1720.
PROSPECT PARK Prospect Park Borough was formed March 13, 1901 from Manchester Township.
RINGWOOD An ironworks was established at this locality in what is today Passaic County, N.J. by the Ogden family in 1742. Peter Hasenclever purchased the Ringwood Ironworks from David Ogden, Sr. and others in 1764 and brought more than 500 men from Germany to work the enterprise. Hasenclever ambitiously acquired about 50,000 acres, built furnaces, forges, roads, and dams, and purchased horses, oxen and implements in vast numbers. In 1767 new partners in the American Company Iron Works (of British ownership) discharged Hasenclever. Robert Erskine, known for his American Revolutionary era maps, became its manager in 1772. The area includes or included Conklintown, Erskine Lakes, Hickory Mountain, Skyline Lake, and Stonetown. Ringwood Borough in Passaic County, N.J. was formed February 23, 1918 from Pompton Township.
SANDY HILL A section of Paterson in the vicinity of Eastside High School. At one time it was the location of the Sandy Hill Cemeteries, a complex of burial grounds maintained by various religious congregations.
SCHUYLERS A locality near Pompton. Its name is probably derived from the Schuyler family that lived in the area.
SCHUYLER’S BASIN An area probably in what is today Wayne Township or the south part of Pompton.
SINGAC A locality in Little Falls Township. The name is said to be Indian, meaning flat country or marshy meadow. On 10 June 1696, “Spring Brook or Singanck” was cited as a boundary in a confirmation of 240 acres to Anthony Brockholls and Arent Schuyler.
SKYLINE LAKE A locality in Ringwood Borough.
SMITHS MILLS A locality in West Milford Township.
SNUFFTOWN A locality in West Milford Township.
SOUTH CLOVE A location at Preakness. On 4 February 1803, cited in Bergen County Deed R:107 from Theunis Ryerson to Albert Berdan as “Ridge at west side of South Clove.”
SOUTH PATERNOR A locality in Paterson City.
STOCKHOLM A locality in West Milford Township.
STONETOWN A locality in Ringwood Borough.
TOTOWA A locality in what is today Passaic County. The name is supposedly Indian, meaning “land between river and mountain.” The Totowa (Paterson) Reformed Dutch Church was established here in 1755. Totowa Borough, in Passaic County, N.J., was formed March 15, 1898 from Manchester and Wayne Townships.
TURKEY HILL A section of Paterson near Madison Avenue and Market Street.
UPPER MACOPIN A locality in West Milford Township.
UTTERTOWN A locality in West Milford Township.
VAN WINKLE A locality in Passaic County, N.J., near Manchester Township.
VOGELVILLE A location at the intersection of the Greenwood Lake Turnpike and Lakeside Road in West Milford, Passaic County, NJ. Named for Vogel’s Store, a general store at the location around 1930.
cont. on page 7
WAGARAW An area in or near Hawthorne. The Indian word may be from (1) “waaken,” meaning the place at the bend of the river (or “crooked place”) or (2) “Wogaw” meaning “around.” Various spellings include Wachra Brook, Waggerewu, Wegreuw, Wegruf, Wagharaw, Weghrauw, Wagraw, and Wagara.
WANAQUE A locality in what is today Passaic County, N.J. The Indian name Wanaque is said to mean “place of Sassafras.” Early spellings include Whynockie and Wynockie. Wanaque Borough was formed February 23, 1918 from Pompton Township and Pompton Lakes Borough. Includes or included Haskell and Midvale.
WAYNE Wayne Township was set off from Manchester Township on April 12, 1847 and named for Gen. Anthony Wayne. Includes Lower Preakness, Mountain View, Packanack Lake, Pines Lake, and Preakness.
WEASEL / WEESEL / WEEZEL (See Wesel)
WESEL An area in the southern part of the Paterson-Clifton vicinity in Passaic County, N.J. Said to have been named by settlers of the area who came from Wesel (pronounced “Weasel”) in Rhenish Prussia. Various spellings include Wezel, Weasel, and Weezel.
WEST MILFORD A locality in what is today Passaic County, organized in Bergen County as the Township of West Milford on February 25, 1834 (March 10, 1834) from Pompton Township. In 1837 West Milford was set off to Passaic County. Its name is derived from that of Milford, Connecticut, because some of its first settlers came from that locality, via Newark, N.J. (which, for a time, was known as “New Milford”). West Milford was first called New Milford, but in 1828, with the establishment of a post office here, the name was changed to West Milford to differentiate between this community and the other “New Milford” established in Bergen County, N.J. Includes or included Apshawa, Awosting, Browns, Canister, Charlottetburg, Clinton, Clinton Furnace, Corterville, Echo Lake, Greenwood Lake, Hewitt, Lakeside, Long Pond, Lower Macopin, Macopin, Moe, Newfoundland, Oak Ridge, Paradise, Postville, Smiths Mills, Snufftown, Stockholm, Upper Macopin, and Uttertown.
WEST PATTERSON A borough in Passaic County formed March 25, 1914 from a section of Little Falls Township known as West Park. On November 4, 2008, the citizens of West Paterson voted to change the official name of the borough from West Paterson to Woodland Park.
WEZEL (See Wesel)
WHYNOCKIE Early spelling for Wanaque. The name is said to be Indian, meaning “place of Sassafras.” Also found written Wynockie, and Winochie.
WINOCHIE (See Wynockie)
WOODLAND PARK (See West Paterson)
WYNOCKIE (See Wynockie)
---
**Genealogical Standards & Guidelines**
**Guidelines For Using Records Repositories And Libraries**
**Recommended by the National Genealogical Society**
Recognizing that how they use unique original records and fragile publications will affect other users, both current and future, family history researchers habitually —
- are courteous to research facility personnel and other researchers, and respect the staff’s other daily tasks, not expecting the records custodian to listen to their family histories nor provide constant or immediate attention.
- dress appropriately, converse with others in a low voice, and supervise children appropriately.
- do their homework in advance, know what is available and what they need, and avoid ever asking for “everything” on their ancestors.
- use only designed work space areas and equipment, like readers and computers, intended for patron use, respect off-limits areas, and ask for assistance if needed.
- treat original records at all times with great respect and work with only a few records at a time, recognizing that they are irreplaceable and that each user must help preserve them for future use.
- treat books with care, never forcing their spines, and handle photographs properly, preferably wearing archival gloves.
- never mark, mutilate, rearrange, relocate, or remove from the repository any original, printed, microform, or electronic document or artifact.
- use only procedures prescribed by the repository for noting corrections to any errors or omissions found in published works, never marking the work itself.
- keep note-taking paper or other objects from covering records or books, and avoid placing any pressure upon them, particularly with a pencil.
- use only the method specifically designated for identifying records for duplication, avoiding use of paper clips, adhesive notes, or other means not approved by the facility.
- return volumes and files only to locations designated for that purpose.
- before departure, thank the records custodians for their courtesy in making the materials available.
- follow the rules of the records repository without protest, even if they have changed since a previous visit or differ from those of another facility.
© National Genealogical Society. Phy National Genealogical Society; includes material © by Joy Reisinger, CG. Both copyright owners grant permission to copy or publish these standards. | <urn:uuid:318867a2-4906-485c-b964-762daad3dd12> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | https://lambertcastleweb.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/2012-vol-20-no-2.pdf | 2018-12-14T09:46:06Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376825512.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20181214092734-20181214114234-00492.warc.gz | 644,088,099 | 6,690 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.98486 | eng_Latn | 0.992679 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2763,
5829,
6605,
10493,
15430,
21336,
26321
] | [
1.6796875,
2.15625
] | 2 | 0 |
Text of the Megilah
The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.
After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.
Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, ma'pilim [(Hebrew) – immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive legislation] and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
HaShem said to Abram, "Go forth from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing" (Bereshit 12:1-2)
ה' appeared to Abram and said, "I will assign this land to your offspring." (Bereshit 12:7)
For He has said: "It is too little that you should be My servant In that I raise up the tribes of Jacob And restore the survivors of Israel: I will also make you a light the agent of good fortune of nations, That My salvation may reach the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6)
Now we are here, next year we will be in the land of Israel this year we are slaves, next year we will be free people. (Haggadah)
But Judah shall be inhabited for ever, And Jerusalem from generation to generation (Joel 4:20)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What have the Jewish people given to the world?
What does it really mean to come back home after being in exile for centuries?
What has come with the price of returning home?
What does it mean to keep faith of the Jewish people?
If you had the opportunity to reinvent the state of Israel for the first time, would you start with language, community, economy, or where to live?
Do you feel at home in Israel?
What would need to change in order for you to feel more at home in Israel?
How can Israel have peace while defending itself at the same time?
How do these sources add to the text of the Megillah?
Text of the Megilah
In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.
This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and reaffirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
We want to lay the foundation stone for the home, that is destined to be a safe haven for the Jewish people. This undertaking is so great, that we must speak of it only in the simplest words. Zionism is the return to Judaism even before the return to the land of the Jews. On this cordial occasion, when Jews from so many lands are assembled together, to hear the clarion call, the ancient call of the people, we must again cordially repeat this our belief... [Zionism] is a legal and civilized movement full of love of the masses, with the ancient and coveted goal of our people. (selected passages from Herzl's speech at the First Zionist Congress)
"Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet." His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation." (Balfour Declaration)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What impact did Hertzl leave in the founding of the state of Israel?
What weight does the first zionist congress carry today?
Do you think the Jewish people have a right to return to their land?
Do you think there is importance in having international recognition of the right for Jews to return to Israel?
What was the goal of zionism back then and what is the aim and goal now?
How does being a Jew from outside of Israel look different than living in Israel?
What is your goal for spreading light to others as a Jew living outside of Israel?
How do the additional sources add to the text of the Megillah?
Text of the Megilah
The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people – the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe – was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.
Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.
In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
"Some have argued that many Jewish DPs (Displaced persons) naturally came to see the establishment of a Jewish state as the only solution to their displacement. It also became a central part of their postwar Jewish identities. Others have suggested that Zionist activists were responsible for recruiting support for the idea of a Jewish state among the DP population. Whatever its origins, so-called "DP Zionism" helped shape the politics and the daily lives of Jewish DPs" (US Holocaust Museum)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Is the Holocaust the only reason for founding the state of Israel?
How much of an impact does the Holocaust continue to have in day to day life in Israel?
Does the Holocaust shape your personal Jewish identity and zionism?
Was there the same sense of urgency to reestablish the state of Israel before and after the Holocaust?
Was the return to Israel true freedom? What does it mean to be truly free in your own land?
How can Jewish people living outside of Israel spread light?
Text of the Megillat.
On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.
This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.
Accordingly we, members of the people's council, representatives of the Jewish community of Eretz-Israel and of the zionist movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British Mandate over Eretz-Israel and, by the virtue of our national and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the united nations general assembly, hereby seclare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the state of Israel
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
Considers that the present situation in Palestine is one which is likely to impair the general welfare and friendly relations among nations;... Takes note of the declaration by the mandatory power that it plans to complete its evacuation of Palestine by August 1948;... Recommends to the United Kingdom, as the mandatory power for Palestine, and to all other members of the United Nations the adaptation and implementing, with regard to the future government of Palestine of the plan of partition with economic union set out below"
(Passages from the partition plan of the UN General Assembly)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What does a Jewish State mean to you?
Do you see value in having a Jewish state?
Is there value to being a Jewish and democratic state?
If one should take precedence, would it be a Jewish state or a democratic state?
Do you feel that Israel has accomplished its goal of being a sovereign Jewish state?
What does independence mean to you?
If you were sitting at the table the day the declaration of independence was signed, what do you think this would have meant to you?
How do these sources add to the text of the Megillah?
Text of the Megilah
WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People's Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel".
The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion. The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy. An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognised as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration to assist and take part in the development of the country. The Zionist organization, so long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be recognised as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the co-operation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.
(Articles 2-4 of the British mandate of Palestine)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Why do you think the founders of the state chose the name Israel?
Would you have chosen a different name for the new state?
Has Israel upheld its promise of ingathering exiles?
How have we seen Israel keep its declaration of justice, freedom, and peace for all inhabitants?
What more can be done to ensure equality is fully realized in Israel?
Is it important for Israel to be a safehaven for Jews around the world?
How can we ensure that Israel is a pluralistic environment for all types of Jews?
Text of the Megilat.
THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.
WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.
We appeal – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
Calls upon the inhabitants of Palestine to take such steps as may be necessary on their part to put this plan into effect;
Appeals to all governments and all peoples to refrain from taking any action which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations, and Authorizes the Secretary General to reimburse travel and subsistence appropriate in the circumstances, and to provide the Commission with the necessary staff to assist in carrying out the functions assigned to the Commission by the General Assembly. (passages from UNGA resolution 181 from 29 November)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How has Israel grown since the founding of the state?
Is the Zionist dream of a Jewish state fully realized?
If not, what else can be done to fulfill this?
What does true "full and equal citizenship" look like?
How can we ensure all people living in the land of Israel are treated equally?
Text of the Megilat.
WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream – the redemption of Israel.
Placing our trust in the "rock of Israel", we affix our signatures to this proclamation at this session of the provisional council of the state, on the soil of the homeland in the city of Tel-Aviv, on this Sabbath eve, the 5th day of Iyar, 5708 (14th May, 1948)
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
Rock of Israel, arise to Israel's defense. Fulfill Your promise to deliver Judah and Israel. Our Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, HaShem Tz'va-ot. Praised are You, HaShem, Redeemer of the people Israel. (Blessings of the Shema)
Just as this lily continues to exist due to its fragrance, so Israel continues to exist due to mitzvot and good deeds. Just as this lily is only for its fragrance, so too, the righteous were created only for the redemption of Israel. (Shir haShirim Rabbah 2:2)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Has Israel aided in the advancement of the Middle East?
Does the concept of love thy neighbors apply to the nations surrounding you?
Did the diaspora rally enough for the state of Israel?
Is the connection between Israel and the diaspora stronger or weaker now than it was at the founding of the state of Israel?
Who is the "rock of Israel" and how does this rock look differently to different groups of people living in Israel? | b08897c7-ca90-4c15-95be-2665ade30f97 | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://www.the-megillah.com/_files/ugd/6cd9d4_8323d919bad6430fbf98d83aa04ec24c.pdf | 2023-12-01T06:11:51+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100276.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20231201053039-20231201083039-00803.warc.gz | 1,133,985,214 | 3,365 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997544 | eng_Latn | 0.997979 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2654,
5317,
7386,
9600,
12632,
14313,
16170
] | [
2.234375
] | 1 | 0 |
Mora Publishing
Join Bee on the busy journey to collect nectar and pollen throughout the spring and summer.
- *Drip* won a Right Start Award in 2022.
- The *Little Life Cycles* series has sold over 154,000 copies worldwide.
- A stunning introductory STEM board book series on life cycles for the very young.
- Addresses a poignant and timely topic, reinforcing the need for us to protect bees and the importance of the pollination process.
- With tactile, die-cut pages, the reader can easily connect with the buzzy bee as they follow it on its journey.
- Book five in the successful and well-established series.
- Cover treatment: gloss UV varnish.
Little Life Cycles: Bee
Whose bee going next?
But some places don’t have enough.
Oh no! Poor bee is very hungry!
For wind, wind, high and low, Bee flies a long way to search for flowers …
But look!
Someone special is looking by …
It’s Queen Bee!
It’s her job to protect the hive.
Buzz!
Bee and the colony help her by keeping their home strong and clean.
Until spring comes around and Bee’s adventures begin again.
Without Bee’s hard work, many plants, fruits and vegetables wouldn’t grow.
Luckily, this little child wants to help Bee. They know exactly what to do.
Grow pretty flowers!
Pub Date 01/02/2024
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800785960
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Maggie Li
Illustrator Maggie Li
Extent 26pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Join Whale on the journey from tiny calf to the biggest creature in the ocean!
- *Drip* won a Right Start Award in 2022.
- The *Little Life Cycles* series has sold over 154,000 copies worldwide.
- A stunning introductory STEM board book series on life cycles for the very young.
- The first mammal to be added to the series, offering a new range of life cycle structures.
- With tactile, die-cut pages, the reader can easily connect with and follow the whale on its journey across the ocean.
- Book six in the successful and well-established series.
- Cover treatment: gloss UV varnish.
Little Life Cycles: Whale
Pub Date 01/02/2024
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800785977
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Maggie Li
Illustrator Maggie Li
Extent 26pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Baby Steps: Spot the Shape
Peep through the shape, learn the word!
- Introduces first shapes, and builds early language skills.
- Featuring S&B®’s innovative anti-bacterial finish on all pages: 100% natural, plant based and sustainable, offering 99.99% germ control including covid-19, MRSA, E-coli, mold and yeast. This green formulation is safe for babies and contains no microplastics.
- Peep-through windows stimulate little readers.
- Illustrated by London-born illustrator, Richard Merritt.
Baby Steps: Spot the Shape
| Pub Date | 04/01/2026 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £6.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800786431 |
| H × W | 180 × 180mm |
| Binding | Board Book |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Ruth Symons |
| Illustrator | Richard Merritt |
| Extent | 10pp |
| Word Count | 120 words |
| Rights Available | World |
Baby Steps: Faces and Feelings
Trace the shape, name the feeling - features a real mirror!
• With trace-the-trail elements on every page AND a mirror!
• Featuring S&B®’s innovative anti-bacterial finish on all pages: 100% natural, plant based and sustainable, offering 99.99% germ control including covid-19, MRSA, E-coli, mold and yeast. This green formulation is safe for babies and contains no microplastics.
• A simple rhyming text is fun to read aloud and easy for little ones to join in with.
• This book will help little ones learn to recognise and name a range of emotions.
• Illustrated by London-born illustrator, Richard Merritt.
Baby Steps: Faces and Feelings
Sometimes bear feels happy.
He smiles up to his ears.
Sometimes bear feels sad.
And down fall big wet tears.
Sometimes mouse feels scared.
Her lip begins to wobble.
Sometimes mouse feels brave.
She can take on any trouble!
Sometimes frog feels angry.
His face gets hot and red.
Sometimes frog feels calm.
And all thoughts leave his head.
Pub Date 04/01/2026
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800786424
H x W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Richard Merritt
Extent 10pp
Word Count 115 words
Files To Printer 18/03/2025
Freight On Board 18/06/2025
Rights Available World
Imagine if... Fruits!
Zany new slider books from Aya Watanabe!
• A playful and engaging novelty title all the family will love. Push, pull, slide and spin the wheels on every page: with 5 spreads and a mechanism on the cover!
• A playful rhyming text is perfect to read aloud with little ones - introducing first concepts such as colours and shapes
• Vibrant artworks from rising talent, Japanese illustrator Aya Watanabe
• Also in the series: Veggies!
• Search and find element: find the ant on every page!
• "The world of true imagination found in this book, brings joy and creativity for a never-ending gateway to learning" - Lizzie Noble, Early Years expert
Imagine if... Fruits!
A wobbling watermelon, with juices red and happy.
But I imagine if...
...it was an umbrella, wet and drippy!
Rolling, round, ripe oranges, so full of vitamin C!
But I imagine if...
...they made a bicycle for me!
Hooray for all the fruits we eat, they’re whooey, who are free.
With my imagination...
...there is nothing they can’t be!
Hello yellow bananas, all bunched up side by side.
But I imagine if...
...they were a super-slippy slide!
Pub Date 22/06/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800784666
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Aya Watanabe
Illustrator Aya Watanabe
Extent 10pp
Word Count 100 words
Rights Available World
Imagine if... Veggies!
Zany new slider books
• A playful and engaging novelty title all the family will love. Push, pull, slide and spin the wheels on every page: with 5 spreads and a mechanism on the cover!
• A playful rhyming text is perfect to read aloud with little ones - introducing first concepts such as colours and shapes
• Vibrant artworks from rising talent, Japanese illustrator Aya Watanabe
• Also in the series: Fruits!
• Search and find element - find the ant hiding on every page!
• “The world of true imagination found in this book, brings joy and creativity for a never-ending gateway to learning” - Lizzie Noble, Early Years expert
Imagine if... Veggies!
Corn cobs sweet and yellow,
the tastiest I’ve tried.
But I imagine if...
Asparagus, purple, green or white,
it’s summer dipped in plain.
But I imagine if...
Hooray for all the veggies,
this taste is good so me.
With my imagination...
there is nothing they can’t be!
But I imagine if...
Green and crunchy cucumbers,
as cool as they can be.
But I imagine if...
...they were a hammock in a tree!
Pub Date 22/06/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800784659
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Aya Watanabe
Illustrator Aya Watanabe
Extent 10pp
Word Count 100 words
Rights Available World
Imagine if... Bugs!
Zany slider books from Aya Watanabe!
• A playful and engaging novelty title all the family will love. Push, pull, slide and spin the wheels on every page: with 5 spreads and a mechanism on the cover!
• Vibrant artworks from rising talent, Japanese illustrator Aya Watanabe
• Also in the series: Veggies!, Fruits! and Flowers!
• Search and find element: find the ant on every page!
• “The world of true imagination found in this book, brings joy and creativity for a never-ending gateway to learning” - Lizzie Noble, Early Years expert
Imagine if... Bugs!
A big brown ground beetle, with nighties jutting from his head.
But I imagine if...
...they hung for washing out instead!
A glorious green mantis, with bulging eyes and legs so soft.
But I imagine if...
...it was a bee-saw for us all!
Busy yellow honeybees, in their bonnets making honey.
But I imagine if...
...what nice bee lights we brighten one summer!
Beautiful bright butterflies, flit-fluttering everywhere.
But I imagine if...
...they were the ribbons in my hair!
Imagine if... Flowers!
Zany new slider books from Aya Watanabe!
• A playful and engaging novelty title all the family will love. Push, pull, slide and spin the wheels on every page: with 5 spreads and a mechanism on the cover!
• Also in the series: Veggies!, Fruits! and Bugs!
• Search and find element: find the ant on every page!
• "The world of true imagination found in this book, brings joy and creativity for a never-ending gateway to learning" - Lizzie Noble, Early Years expert
Imagine if... Flowers!
Beautiful blooming bluebells, each bell like a jingling star.
But I imagine if...
Yellow smiling sunflowers, with petals bright as flames.
But I imagine if...
Perfect purple pansies, your petals are so pretty.
But I imagine if...
Woozy for all the flowers, from roses to sweet peas.
Wish me imagination...
...there is nothing they can't be!
Animal Homes: Ocean
Dive in and explore the ocean in this introduction to habitats for the very young.
• Using Natasha Durley’s striking and recognisable animals from *Creature Features* and newly illustrated plants and environments, her colourful and engaging artwork will be enjoyed by a whole new age of reader.
• The first spread starts on the lowest layer of the ocean (the ocean trench) and each subsequent shaped spread introduces the next layer of the ocean (the abyss, the midnight zone, the twilight zone and the sunlight zone). Add a new layer with each page turn until the final spread reveals the full habitat. This tactile, die-cut board book format is a new way to explore and introduce animal habitats, making this series an essential addition to parents’ and educators’ STEM library.
Animal Homes: Ocean
Near the surface, it is very colourful. The coral reef is like a busy underwater town!
How many creatures can you spot on the reef?
Above the rolling waves, island birds float on the ocean.
Hope you will see these penguins in the sky and making in the pink peals.
Pub Date 20/07/2023
Pub Price £8.99
ISBN 9781800782082
H × W 228 × 165mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Amelia Warren
Illustrator Natasha Durley
Extent 14pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Animal Homes: Rainforest
Explore the rainforest in this introduction to habitats for the very young.
- Using Natasha Durley’s striking and recognisable animals from *Creature Features* and newly illustrated plants and environments, her colourful and engaging artwork will be enjoyed by a whole new age of reader.
- The first spread starts on the lowest layer of the rainforest (the forest floor) and each subsequent shaped spread introduces the next layer of the rainforest (the understory, the canopy, the emergent). Add a new layer with each page turn until the final spread reveals the full habitat. This tactile, die-cut board book format is a new way to explore and introduce animal habitats, making this series an essential addition to parents’ and educators’ STEM library.
Animal Homes: Rainforest
High up in the trees, it is very busy and noisy. The thick trees are like a roof, making the perfect home for many animals. There is also plenty of fruit and seeds to eat.
Pub Date 20/07/2023
Pub Price £8.99
ISBN 9781800782266
H x W 228 x 165mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Amelia Warren
Illustrator Natasha Durley
Extent 14pp
Word Count 175 words
Rights Available World
A paper-cut book about the body
- Vibrant paper-cut artwork by award-winning British artist Gail Armstrong
- Deep die-cuts and integrated flaps on every spread provide a unique interactive look at the human body
- A fact-packed text reveals fascinating facts about the human body
- Striking cover design with a large die-cut through the cover and title page
- The Paper World series has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide
- Book 4 Paper World: Oceans coming 2024
- CONTENTS: Organs & Systems; Skeleton & Muscles; Heart & Lungs; Digestive System; Digestive Organs; The Senses; The Brain; Reproductive System; Growth of a Baby; Glossary
- Fact-checked by Dr Jennifer Paxton of the University of Edinburgh
Paper World: Human Body
| Pub Date | 16/02/2023 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £16.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800782365 |
| H x W | 330 x 225mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Ruth Symons|
| Illustrator | Gail Armstrong |
| Extent | 30pp |
| Word Count | 5500 words |
| Rights Available | World |
A one-of-a-kind paper-cut book all about our planet’s oceans
- The Paper World series has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Contents: Water World; The Shore; Mangroves; Kelp Forest; Coral Reef; Ocean Zones; Ocean Depths; Polar Waters; Tides and Waves; Humans and the Ocean
- Vibrant paper-cut artwork by award-winning British artist Gail Armstrong
- Deep die-cuts and integrated flaps on every spread, with an incredible double-gatefold for the coral reef
- A fact-packed text reveals fascinating facts about the ocean - fact-checked by marine biologist Dr Helen Scales
- Striking cover design with a large die-cut through the cover and title page
Paper World: Ocean
Pub Date 29/02/2024
Pub Price £16.99
ISBN 9781800783317
H × W 330 × 225mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Gail Armstrong
Extent 30pp
Word Count 5500 words
Rights Available World
Up in the Canopy
Explore the jungle layer by layer with a huge fold-out surprise at the end.
- James Aldred’s book *The Goshawk Summer* won the 2022 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.
- Written from the perspective of real-life Emmy-nominated cameraman and explorer, James Aldred
- Stunningly illustrated - with artwork as rich and dense as the rainforest itself
- Huge fold-out tree at the back of the book, which readers can pore over.
- Matt lam and spot UV finishes.
Welcome to the emergent layer – the rainforest’s tree-top canopy.
Like this laptop, some of the largest trees in the Amazon stand head and shoulders above the rest. They form the topmost layer of the rainforest; these emergent trees are exposed to strong winds and intense sunlight for most of the day. This is a hot place, and the sun is a lot hotter up here, making it feel more like a desert than a rainforest. The trees have adapted by growing thick bark to protect them from evaporation. In addition, tall trees are often exposed to fierce storms. Lightning strikes a tree’s canopy several times each year, and the bark can be charred or even ripped away by high winds. This is the most extreme environment in the rainforest and only the toughest plants and animals can survive here.
Reaching the top of your tree, you are rewarded with far-reaching views, despite the wind. You can see the forest stretching out before you, and the rivers that meander gently in the distance, and sea mile your climbing helmet off to find the wind in your hair. You look down at the forest floor, where the canopy has been lifted by a strong storm, you assemble into a writing position. Settling down to eat a snack, you immerse yourself in one of the best views anyone could wish for: You’ve made it!
| Pub Date | 24/10/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781835870945 |
| H x W | 300 x 238mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | James Aldred |
| Illustrator | Good Wives and Warriors |
| Extent | 20pp |
| Word Count | 4319 words |
| Freight On Board| 09/08/2024 |
| Rights Available| World |
Explore the legendary world of fairies in this stunningly illustrated guide to the mythical realm.
- An incredible collection of fairies to be enjoyed by children and adults alike.
- *Faedom* also includes facts about the natural world including lunar cycles, astrology, crystal healing and herbology, bringing the world of fairies to life.
- Stunning ethereal artwork by debut talent Nadzeya Makeyeva.
- Large format and foil cover finish makes this the ideal gift.
- Agnes Monod-Gayraud is an award-winning translator and editor. Lorna White is a writer and researcher whose focus and expertise is in Ancient Mythology and Folklore.
- Celebrating 10 Years of Extraordinary Illustrated Books
All of nature is beautiful. This stunning book shows how a variety of amazing creatures have evolved to look and behave the way they do.
- Stunning watercolour artwork by the phenomenally talented natural history artist William Spring.
- Large format with 100% foil cover treatments makes this the ideal gift book.
- A poignant message with significance for today’s world.
- Includes 50 beautiful creatures to marvel at.
- The perfect book for fans of *Hidden Planet* by Ben Rothery and *The Golden Mole* by Katherine Rundell.
Bat-Eared Fox
The name explains it all: a fox with ears like a bat. But why has this extraordinary animal developed such unusual features?
Living in small, tightly knit social groups, these foxes make their home on the savannahs of eastern and southern Africa. This is a dry and hot landscape where food is scarce and water is even scarcer. The bat-eared fox has evolved to survive and flourish by evading other inhabitants of these kinds of environments, such as the hyena (in showing how evolution works to find the most efficient solution to the problem of surviving in a particular environment, this book is an excellent example of a science book at its best).
In order to do so, the fox’s specialised ears serve several purposes. Firstly, they give it an enhanced sense of hearing that helps it to detect the slightest sound for its next meal. Secondly, they help smell out prey, but also help the fox to avoid becoming a predator itself. It encounters a wide range of prey, including moths, spiders and millipedes, and occasionally even small mammals. The fox’s ears are so sensitive that it can hear prey that is hiding either partially hidden, or deep in shallow underground. In such situations, the ability to hear your dinner before you can makes it far easier to locate. Bat-eared foxes can often be seen sitting upright, with their ears held high above their head. With all of their external senses alert, they have a good view of everything around them. If they see a bird or other animal moving, they may pounce on it. If they see a snake, they will run away.
The ears also serve another vital function. Because of its particularly sensitive hearing, if you live in a quiet environment and you are not wearing earplugs, you will hear the slightest whisper (see page 45), the fox’s ears serve as radiators. Because the fine capillary veins close to the surface of its ears, the fox can maintain at a comfortable temperature by warming up its ears when it is cold, and cooling down its ears when it is warm.
Apart from its temperature control, the bat-eared fox also has more than one other special feature (see illustration on page 53). Its ears are covered in fur, which prevents them from overheating. But because foxes have large eyes and flat faces, it makes them vulnerable to the effects of the sun’s rays – which is why they have two upper and three lower eyelids. These extra eyelids mean that the fox is perfectly adapted to chewing creamy carrots.
As the world becomes more crowded, the bat-eared fox is one of the increasingly rare examples of an animal with a safe conservation status. It is helped by the fact that during the month of July, when the foxes are most active, they are worth the biggest commercial value for humans comes from keeping these foxes alive. Most threats to this fox come from the dangers its food sources might face, such as flooding from drought or the use of pesticides.
A vibrant introduction to gardening.
- A vibrant first introduction to gardening for ages 6+
- Includes DIY activities to try at home.
- Text by expert ecologist and educator, Michael Holland.
- Colourful, charming artwork by illustrator Maria Dek.
- Expanding the younger side of the Big Picture Press list.
- Gardening is a subject only growing in popularity.
- Arlin quarter binding and matt lam cover finishes.
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Gardening!
Whether you have a big garden or a small windowsill, you can make the world a greener place. Gardening is one of the best hobbies in the world and it’s good for you, your neighbours and the planet! People have been gardening and growing food for thousands of years, so you will be continuing a very long and important tradition.
In this book, you’ll learn about how plants work, how to grow your own vegetables, how to encourage wildlife to your garden and why protecting plants is important for our future. Also included here are lots of fun games and activities and experiments for you to try for yourself – most using everyday materials you can find at home.
What are you waiting for? Let’s begin!
Can you make a face with vegetables? How do you paint a dream? This bright and busy book provides a fun first look at art concepts, and is jam-packed with things for busy little fingers to try!
- Contents: Hello, Art World!; Mannerism; Impressionism; Cubism; Fauvism; Symbolism; Surrealism; Abstract Expressionism; Pop Art; Op Art; Contemporary Art; Make Your Mark!
- A vibrant new series for 4-6 year olds exploring the creative arts
- Fun artwork by Big Picture Press debut artist, Eleonora Marton
**MANNERISM**
What do you find beautiful? Discover the art of Mannerism with this new book from award-winning author Eva Wong Nava.
The Mannerist period, which lasted for about 100 years in the 16th century, was a time when artists from the Italian and northern European schools of “MANIERE” (“style”) competed to create the most beautiful and elegant works of art.
**IMPRESSIONISM**
Sunset! Outdoors! Light!
How can you create beautiful paintings using only a few simple tools? Learn how to paint like an Impressionist artist by following these easy steps:
1. Choose your subject matter (a sunset, a landscape, or a still life).
2. Sketch your composition on paper.
3. Mix your colors (you’ll need yellow, blue, red, and black).
4. Paint your masterpiece!
**BUSY LITTLE FINGERS: ART**
**Pub Date** 06/07/2023
**Pub Price** £9.99
**ISBN** 9781800784642
**H x W** 246 x 189mm
**Binding** Flexiback
**Age Range** 0-5 years
**Author** Eva Wong Nava
**Illustrator** Eleonora Marton
**Extent** 48pp
**Word Count** 2001 words
**Rights Available** World
This bright and busy book provides a fun first look at music, with lots for busy little fingers to try!
- Pantone and spot UV cover finishes
- Fun flexi format is perfect for busy little fingers!
- A vibrant new series for 4-6 year-olds exploring the creative arts
- Fun artwork by Eleonora Marton, and expert text by children's author Eva Wong Nava
- Contents: Hello, Music!, Classical, Opera, Jazz, Soul, Blues, Folk, Country, Rock, Pop, Hip Hop
- Celebrating 10 Years of Extraordinary Illustrated Books
Jazz
Jazz comes from New Orleans in America, and was born around 1890. It is a lively music that is full of life. Jazz heard from Europe in the 1920s, and it spread to the rest of the world. Jazz is a type of music that is played by many instruments.
Country
Country does not have the country name. There are many types of country music, but one type of music is called country music. Country is a type of music that is played by many instruments.
Pop
Pop music makes people happy, and it is very popular. Pop music is a type of music that is played by many instruments.
Rock
Rock is popular music in the USA and UK. Think The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Queen. Think big hair, costume performers, and lots of denim and leather.
Pub Date: 04/07/2024
Pub Price: £9.99
ISBN: 9781800786455
H x W: 246 x 189mm
Binding: Flexiback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Eva Wong Nava
Illustrator: Eleonora Marton
Extent: 48pp
Word Count: 1560 words
Rights Available: World
Get the inside story on today’s most important topics and learn to navigate the news like a pro!
• An all-encompassing, no-nonsense guide to the news industry, looking at how news is made, what and who it’s for, what to look out for when digesting news and tips on how to be a savvy news-consumer.
• Written by expert authors from ITN news team, including tips form ITV’s Charlene White. Informed by lived experiences of real journalists from across the news sector.
• News from a global perspective: look at key moments in news history and stories that shaped the world from Europe, America, China, Indonesia, India and more.
The World’s First Rollercoaster
Amazing inventions stories in comic-book form by Blue Peter Award-winner Mike Barfield.
• An irresistible way into science and technology with a dash of history from the brilliant Mike Barfield, author of *A Day in the Life of a Poo*, *a Gnu and You*, winner of the 2021 Blue Peter Award for a Book With Facts. Mike’s books have sold in over 40 territories.
• Featuring the greatest inventions in architecture, travel, the home, food, fashion, toys, sports, technology and more, this book is packed with facts for curious minds. Includes tops tips on sending in a patent and profiles of young inventors alongside greats such as Diebedo Kere, Bertha Benz, Percy Spencer, Momofuku Ando, Kano Jigoro and Jawed Karim.
The World’s First Rollercoaster
| Pub Date | 11/04/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £10.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800783720 |
| H x W | 280 x 215mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Mike Barfield |
| Illustrator | Franziska Höllbacher |
| Extent | 96pp |
| Word Count | 7000 words |
| Rights Available | World |
80 inventions from around the world
- A fun and accessible look at history and STEM with ties to the curriculum
- Written by emerging author Matt Ralphs, who has titles published with Nosy Crow, DK and Flying Eye
- Exciting talent Robbie Cathro has worked for clients including Aquila Magazine, Natural History Museum and Kingfisher.
- A travel theme inspired by postcards and travel posters gives this book a fun and engaging aesthetic
- Expertly checked by science writer Anne Rooney
**Wheel**
“The revolutionary design that makes the world go round”
Can you imagine a world without wheels? Apart from planes and ships, there would be no vehicles—no carts, cars, bikes, buses, trucks, or trains. The wheel was invented in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. It was first used to make two-wheeled, horse-drawn carts with solid wooden wheels. They were invented in Mesopotamia because the region had plenty of trees for making wood and stone for the wheel. These carts carried cargo to market and heavy loads, such as stone and clay. The wheel was so useful that it didn’t take long to invent some next. In about 2900 BCE, chariot wheels were spoked rather than solid, which made them lighter and therefore easier to pull and fight. The wheel may be one of the simplest inventions ever created, but without it our world would be completely different.
**Potter’s Wheel**
The very first wheels were used to make pottery. The art of pottery has been around for thousands of years. Originally, potters used their hands to shape clay into pots. This took a long time. The Mesopotamians invented a better method in about 3500 BCE. They used a potter’s wheel, which was a paddle balanced on a stick called an “axle,” which could be spun by hand. As the paddle turned, the clay on top of it would spin too. A potter could shape the clay quickly into pots. We don’t know who invented the potter’s wheel, but the potter’s wheel led to the invention of the vehicle wheel.
**Internet**
“The world at your fingertips”
The invention of the Internet—a network of computers that “spoke” to each other—was a concentrated effort in the United States during the 1960s. The first computer networks were built in the early 1960s during the Cold War (1947–1991), a time of hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union. At that time, computers had when computers were the size of an entire room. This is why the Internet was created as a communication system that couldn’t be easily destroyed. To do this, they created ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network): a series of linked computers located in different locations, which allowed information to be relayed along telephone lines. The first message was sent in 1969. It read only one word: LOREN, but only the “L” and the “R” were typed before the network crashed. By the end of 1969, the four computers were connected to ARPANET. It took years to create the “network of networks” that allows computers to transfer data and information. In the late 1990s this network grew into the global Internet, which connects billions of devices. Today, whatever you want to know, wherever you are, with just a few clicks, you can find it online. Social media sites allow people all over the world to connect, share news, consume films, television shows, music and video games, and even talk to each other.
**World Wide Web**
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a gateway to the Internet. It’s made up of search engines like Google and Safari, the blogs and websites we visit every day, and the videos and websites that appear on our screens. It was invented by a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while working at CERN, a science research laboratory in Switzerland. The web is not just for scientists and academics; everyone, not just scientists and academics.
Raising the Roof
A cool introduction to classical music
- Broadcaster, songwriter, composer and Scala Radio presenter Jack Pepper is an exciting, young voice in classical music.
- A fun and approachable introduction to classical music
- Includes a playlist, so you can listen as you read
- SAMPLE CONTENTS: Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179; Claudio Monteverdi 1567-1643; Barbara Strozzi 1619-c. 1664; JS Bach 1685-1750; Joseph Bologne 1745-1799; Ludwig van Beethoven 1770-1827; Richard Wagner 1813-1883; Giuseppe Verdi 1813-1901; Ethel Smyth 1858-1944; Arnold Schoenberg, 1874-1951; Igor Stravinsky, 1882-1971; Florence Price, 1887 - 1953; George Gershwin, 1898-1937; Leonard Bernstein, 1918-1990
- Cover: matt Lam, spot UV + holo foil
Music was just one part of Hildegard’s world. Hildegard was born in 1098, around the time the Crusades began. When she came home — via (deep breath) a nun, a mystic, a composer, and a composer — it all came back to her. Hildegard’s music was incredibly popular and she produced her own manuscript with 100 canticles. As if that wasn’t enough, Hildegard also wrote 25 books on theology, philosophy, and possibly to help bring her men together. She used the Bible as her inspiration for her writing, but her books were all ultimately about experience. Hildegard wrote books on natural science, medicine, and even a book on how to write in person to write a morality play: a drama where good battles evil.
Hildegard’s Sound
Her music is often monophonic — a single line — here is a more common polyphonic example of her work. This creates a sense of calm, perfect for a focused, intense contemplation of faith. Hildegard’s music was also very repetitive, using the same tune, with religious texts used for the words. In addition to her music, Hildegard was also a writer. She was one of the first women to write in Latin, and she was one of the first who all had trained voices and would sing daily. It’s believed that Hildegard’s music was performed every day at least once each day! With an increase choir, then, an abbey provided an ideal setting for the performance of Hildegard’s music. It’s hard to imagine and having everyone sing the same tune creates a powerful symbol of righteousness through faith.
Learning by Ear
The Greeks were the first to use letters of the alphabet to represent different notes. It was until the Middle Ages, almost all music was written down. The first musical notation consisted of being written down. There was a lot to learn. In the 600s, there were only 4 notes. By the 1300s, there were 7 notes of music, all by ear! By the 900s, it took around 15 years to teach a young theorist to read and write music for the Roman services. And you think school is...
In this beautifully illustrated book, learn about the incredible variety of sports that are played around the world.
- A lively, inspiring and fact-filled exploration of a globally unifying topic: sport! From ancient times to today, covering every corner of the world.
- Featuring extensive coverage of women's sports and sporting heroes, plus sports from different, lesser-known regions and cultures around the world.
- Positioned to publish in time for the 2024 Olympic Games.
- With vibrant, energetic illustrations from Violeta Noy, author and illustrator of *The Right One*.
**World of Sport**
**How Sport Began**
People have always enjoyed getting together and competing to find out who’s the strongest, fastest or best at something. Humans have been playing sport since ancient times.
- **Track and Field Sports**
- **Javelin**
- The javelin is a long spear used in track and field events. It is thrown by hand and the distance it travels determines the winner.
- **Long Jump**
- The long jump is an event where athletes run down a track and jump as far as they can.
- **Discus**
- The discus is a heavy metal disc that is thrown by hand. The distance it travels determines the winner.
- **American Football**
- **Aim for the Goal**
- The aim of American football is to score points by getting the ball into the opponent's end zone.
- **First Team**
- The first team in American football consists of 11 players on each side.
- **Rushing**
- Rushing is when a player runs with the ball while being tackled by other players.
- **Passing**
- Passing is when a player throws the ball to another player who catches it.
- **Blocking**
- Blocking is when a player uses their body to stop an opponent from reaching the ball.
- **Rugby**
- **Rugby Rules**
- Rugby is a contact sport played between two teams of 15 players each. The aim is to score points by carrying the ball over the opposition's try line.
- **Rugby Ball**
- The rugby ball is oval-shaped and made of leather or synthetic material. It is inflated with air and has a rubber bladder inside.
- **Tackle**
- Tackling is when a player uses their arms and legs to bring down an opponent while holding onto the ball.
- **Scrum**
- A scrum is a method of restarting play after a foul or infringement. Players from both teams form a scrum around the ball and push against each other to try and gain possession.
- **Baseball**
- **Baseball Rules**
- Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting the ball and running around four bases.
- **Pitcher**
- The pitcher is the player who throws the ball to the batter. They stand on a mound and throw the ball underhand.
- **Catcher**
- The catcher is the player who catches the ball thrown by the pitcher. They stand behind home plate and wear protective gear.
- **Cricket**
- **Cricket Rules**
- Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting the ball and running between wickets.
- **Wicket**
- A wicket is a set of three wooden posts with two bails on top. The batsman must hit the ball between the wickets to score runs.
- **Batsman**
- The batsman is the player who hits the ball with a bat. They stand at the end of the pitch and try to score runs by hitting the ball.
- **Bowler**
- The bowler is the player who bowls the ball to the batsman. They stand at the other end of the pitch and try to get the batsman out.
**Grand Beginnings**
The first competitive sport we know about was wrestling. It originated in the land of Olmecca, from 2100 BC. In it, King Olmecca fights a wild man to see who is stronger.
**Pub Date**: 06/06/2024
**Pub Price**: £14.99
**ISBN**: 9781787416642
**H x W**: 280 x 215mm
**Binding**: Hardback
**Age Range**: 7-9 years
**Author**: Lawrence Alexander
**Illustrator**: Violeta Noy
**Extent**: 64pp
**Word Count**: 10500 words
**Rights Available**: World
[bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/books/9781787416642]
World of Food
A colourful celebration of food, farming and dishes from around the world!
- Sample contents: The Beginning of Cuisine; A Roman Banquet; The Vegetable Garden; Fruits and Nuts; A Feast of Fungi; A Cornucopia of Corn; Rice of Life; Where Meat Comes From; Salt and Pepper; Hot Hot Chillies; Chocolate; Sweets Around the World; Festive Foods; Is There Enough Food?
- Featuring more than 100 dishes and food traditions from around the world
- Includes information on sustainability and foods of the future
- Colourful, exuberant illustrations from Violeta Noy bring energy to the pages
- Cover finish: matt lam + spot UV
What is black and white? A word-juggling penguin called Norman.
- From the author and illustrator of the bestselling *I Say Ooh, You Say Aah*, which has sold over 160,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- John Kane is a master of interactive storytelling and child-centric humour.
- *I Say Ooh, You Say Aah* won the English Picture Book Awards 4-& category; won the Children's and Teen choice Award in the US; and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year.
What is black and white, can’t fly, likes to swim, is called Norman, is cool, fast and HUNGRY?
Norman, on a skateboard.
What is black and white, can’t fly, likes to swim, is called Norman, is cool, fast, full, tall and warm?
Norman, eating a taco, on skis, on a skateboard.
What is black and white, can’t fly, likes to swim, is called Norman, is cool, fast, full, tall, wears magic, not so dirty still showing off and is now falling?!
My penguin.
What is black and white, can’t fly, likes to swim, is called Norman and is COOL?
| Pub Date | 28/03/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800782303 |
| H x W | 260 x 260mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | John Kane |
| Extent | 32pp |
| Word Count | 320 words |
| Rights Available| World |
The Boy, the Troll and the Chalk
A touching picture book about the power of art and the imagination, brought to life by David Litchfield’s stunning illustrations.
• “A perfectly pitched, heartfelt meditation” *The Guardian* on *A Shelter for Sadness*
• Anne Booth is known for the exceptional warmth and authenticity of her writing.
• Award-winning artist David Litchfield and author Anne Booth come together again, following on from the international success of *A Shelter for Sadness*. *Shelter* was a 2022 Empathy Lab selection and has sold over 60,000 copies worldwide (as of September 2023).
• Cover treatment: matt lam, SPUV and foil.
The Boy, the Troll and the Chalk
Pub Date: 19/06/2025
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781800783065
H x W: 287 x 247mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Anne Booth
Illustrator: David Litchfield
Extent: 40pp
Word Count: 474 words
Rights Available: World
From talented duo comes a FLAP-TASTIC garden bird adventure.
- From the creative duo behind *A Field Guide to Leaflings*.
- Niamh Sharkey is creator and executive producer of *Henry Hugglemonster* on Disney Junior and launched a new series called *Eureka!* with Disney Junior in June 2022.
- It takes a timeless theme and familiar characters to create a quirky and fresh picture book for the very young.
- Niamh’s recognisable artwork style is achieved through ink outlines and watercolour washes.
- Cover treatment: matt lam and SPUV.
Hello Bird
Topsy-turvy, Bird likes to look at things from a different point of view.
Hello Bird! You're the wrong way round!
From here, it looks like you're the one who's upside down.
Screech... Squawk... Cough!
Bird finds her voice.
I like it better when we all join in!
Oh no!
Pub Date: 14/03/2024
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781787419247
H x W: 250 x 250mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Owen Churcher
Illustrator: Niamh Sharkey
Extent: 32pp
Word Count: 250 words
Rights Available: World
Meet the Wildlings
A hilariously relatable story about learning to share and tantrums.
- A hilarious twist on a universal theme that creatively encapsulates the emotions that come with learning to share, teamwork and kindness.
- Includes representation of a blended family.
- Humorous back matter that includes a ‘how to spot a Wildling’ checklist for all readers big and small to make use of!
- Our first book with Gwen Millward as author-illustrator, the very talented illustrator of another Templar title One Tiny Dot.
- Gwen’s second book as author-illustrator, My Friend Leafy is scheduled to publish with us in 2025.
- Cover treatments: matt lam and SPUV.
Meet the Wildlings
| Pub Date | 04/01/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787419339 |
| H x W | 265 x 228mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Gwen Millward |
| Illustrator | Gwen Millward |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 540 words |
| Rights Available | World |
A Bad Day for Bear
The lovable bear is back - this time he’s having a VERY bad day indeed!
- Duncan’s Waterstones Children’s Book Prize shortlisted *The Bear Who Stared* has sold over 40,000 copies worldwide
- Children will engage with the lovable bear who is having a bad day!
- Universal theme which will strike a chord with all parents
- Illustrated with Duncan’s trademark vibrant and quirky art style
A Bad Day for Bear
Bear strode out of his cave and felt the warm sun on his face. It was a great day to be outside, but it was also a very important day. All his friends were coming and he had a very important job to do. He was in charge of building the bonfire.
Please let me off to collect some more wood.
He found a big stick that looked perfect, but when he picked it up …
He got a splinter in his paw. It hurt a lot.
The ladybird heard Bear’s cries. “Ouch, that looks sore,” said Daisy Ladybird. “You need to find some wood that isn’t so splintery.”
When all the wood was gone, they carried the logs to the clearing.
Frog helped Bear with his very important job.
Soon the campfire was lit and the party was in full swing.
“Oh dear!” he sighed. “I’ve got a splinter in my paw, a big bump on my head and now all the firewood is soaking wet too. Today really is the worst day EVER!”
Then Bear had an idea. He would go and visit his wise friend, Frog. Frog always knew how to make everything better.
He was lugging the wood towards the pond, when …
Henri and the Machine
Join Henri at the gallery and be AMAZED by the creative potential of art.
• A beautiful picture book about the nature of art and its endless creative possibilities.
• From the creator of the best-selling picture book, *Leo and the Octopus*, which has sold over 47,000 copies worldwide.
• Illustrated by an exceptional new talent Olga Shtonda, an award-winning artist from Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Henri and the Machine
Everyone seemed happy. Except for Henri.
He didn't want to go to an art gallery. He wanted to go to the beach instead. To collect seashells and to swim in the ocean.
But then there was a painting that he liked. It was all blue. The smell of blue. Blue was Henri's favourite colour.
The next day, Henri went to the art gallery with his family. He looked at all the paintings. But none of them made him feel happy.
Then he saw a painting of a machine. It was blue too. And it had lots of different parts. Henri thought it looked like a big, friendly animal.
He asked his parents if they could take him to see the machine again. They said yes.
When they got to the museum, Henri ran straight to the machine. He climbed on top of it and hugged it tight.
Everyone watched him. They thought he was crazy. But Henri didn't care. He was happy.
In 1942, the artist who painted the machine died. Henri never forgot about her. He always remembered how she made him feel.
And now, when Henri looks at paintings, he thinks about the machine. He knows that even though they look different, they can all make people feel happy.
Pub Date: 06/07/2023
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781800783751
H x W: 265 x 228mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 5-7 years
Author: Isabelle Marinov
Illustrator: Olga Shtonda
Extent: 32pp
Word Count: 529 words
Rights Available: World
A monkey counting adventure
- A stylishly clever counting adventure from surrealist author-illustrator Ximo Abadiaiaiaiaia
- Encourages counting from 1 to 100, which children learn around age 5
- The number of monkeys to spot on each page increases through the book
- High-contrast black, white and red illustrations are both stylish and engaging for young readers
- Ximo’s previous titles (including picture books Toto, 2018, and I Can’t Sleep, 2020, and the STEM series including The Speed of Starlight, 2018) have sold more than 80,000 copies worldwide.
- Cover: matt lam + spot UV
The Escape
1 monkey had to go to the living room.
A monkey went to the city.
7 monkeys went to the classroom.
1 monkey went to the park.
Pub Date: 03/08/2023
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781787419308
H x W: 250 x 250mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Ximo Abadía
Extent: 32pp
Rights Available: World
Mora Publishing
Created by Ilina Yosifova
firstname.lastname@example.org
Updated 13 April 2025
bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/collections/Mora-Publishing | 48f51d03-7fda-4b3b-9151-65de5fdaca28 | CC-MAIN-2024-46 | https://files.circularsoftware.com/DOWNLOAD/Client5352/PDF/COLLECTION/Mora-Publishing.pdf | 2024-11-09T00:07:34+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-46/segments/1730477028106.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20241108231327-20241109021327-00036.warc.gz | 227,977,432 | 11,118 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.95393 | eng_Latn | 0.998161 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"dag_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
15,
651,
1456,
2045,
2280,
2780,
3202,
3846,
4494,
5159,
5848,
6502,
7138,
7696,
8201,
8690,
9064,
9869,
10375,
11159,
11575,
12280,
12685,
13356,
13591,
14081,
15808,
16503,
17032,
19963,
20380,
21130,
21632,
22708,
23216,
24183,
24814,
25564,
25996,
26484,
29807,
30543,
32540,
33122,
36665,
37298,
37788,
38679,
39323,
39583,
40121,
40634,
41299,
41713,
42122,
43184,
43599,
44973,
45560,
45877,
46036
] | [
3.484375,
1.796875
] | 1 | 0 |
Nobody knows exactly what dinosaurs looked like, but by looking at fossil evidence, we can make predictions about their appearance. As people have discovered more fossils and the technology used to analyze those fossils has improved, predictions have become more and more accurate.
MATERIALS
- Something to color with (examples: crayons, markers, colored pencils)
- Science notebook or paper
- Something to write with
PROCEDURE
- Observe the picture of a dinosaur skeleton included below.
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95, Box 44, Folder 13, Image No. SIA_000095_B44_F13_001
Show us how you're being curious! Share your results with us.
In your science notebook, draw what you think this dinosaur might have looked like.
- Feel free to draw your dinosaur in a different pose.
- When you’re deciding where to draw the skin, make sure to leave some space around the skeleton for fat and muscle.
- Some dinosaurs had feathers. Do you think this one did? Draw some feathers in if you like.
- Color in your dinosaur. Many animals blend in with their habitats (the place where they live) to help them sneak up on prey or avoid predators. Consider what your dinosaur’s habitat looked like and whether it would have blended in with its environment to survive.
- What other adaptations, or special features, can you imagine your dinosaur had?
Invite a friend to draw a dinosaur from the same skeleton, and then compare. Did you come up with the same exact ideas, or were your drawings different?
EXPLORE MORE
- What do you think paleo artists of the future might think the animals of today looked like? Try creating a drawing of the modern animal below without knowing what it is.
- When your drawing is done, turn the page upside down to discover what creature the skeleton belongs to.
DID YOU KNOW?
Paleontologists, scientists who study prehistoric animals, have discovered the coloration of some species of dinosaurs. While not all dinosaur fossils can tell us what color a dinosaur was, some fossils have been found to contain melanosomes, which are microscopic structures that contain pigment that gives skin, feathers, and fur their colors.
K–2 GRADE EXPLORATION
• Looking at these fossils, which of the dinosaurs below do you think ate meat and which one ate plants? What makes you say that? Pay special attention to their teeth.
• Look at the horns on the triceratops. How do you think this structure helped it to survive?
• Why do you think it is that we don’t see dinosaurs anymore?
• What modern day animals have traits in common with dinosaurs? | 9fbf3a1f-7512-4908-9c44-ab25245fea93 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://pacificsciencecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cah-dinosaur-drawings-k-2.pdf | 2024-03-03T12:31:53+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947476374.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20240303111005-20240303141005-00165.warc.gz | 419,952,470 | 542 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998024 | eng_Latn | 0.998354 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
658,
2166,
2581
] | [
4.53125
] | 2 | 0 |
THE GREAT LAKES
An Introduction
If you check the shelves of your local library or bookstore, you will likely find Dr. Seuss’s *The Lorax*. In it, what you will *not* find is this reference to Lake Erie:
“You’re glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hummed! No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed. So I’m sending them off. Oh, their future is dreary. They’ll walk on their fins and get woefully weary in search of some water that isn’t so smeary. I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.”
Included in the original 1971 version of the well-known children’s book about environmental stewardship, the line about Lake Erie has been omitted since the 1992 edition. Surprised? The story of why reflects the story of the Great Lakes. And now, perhaps, it is time to put that line back in.
**WHAT MAKES THE GREAT LAKES GREAT?**
The Great Lakes form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth, making up about one-fifth of the world’s surface fresh water. Because of the wealth of resources and opportunities the lakes offer, the region around them has grown into one of the most economically powerful and culturally diverse in the world.
Over 40 million people rely on the Great Lakes for everything from water to power generation for their homes and businesses. A wide range of economic activities, including agriculture, commercial and sport fisheries, manufacturing, shipping and tourism, are dependent on the lakes and on resources from them. And the residents of the Great Lakes Basin also draw other, less tangible benefits from the lakes, such as recreational opportunities and access to the natural world, often in close proximity to urban centres.
**THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE GREAT LAKES**
Just as the riches of the Great Lakes environment have shaped the development of the communities within it, that development has in return shaped the environment of the lakes, and often not for the good. As far back as the late 1800s, economic pursuits, such as fur trapping and widespread logging and farming, contributed to the depletion of wildlife populations and severe soil erosion in the Great Lakes Basin. Once-shaded bodies of water increased in temperature as vast areas of forest were cut down. Erosion from open land and dust from sawmills settled in warmer streams, choking off spawning grounds for a variety of fish and eventually all but destroying local fisheries.
The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the Welland Canal in 1829 created a navigable waterway between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie and from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. Thousands of immigrants arrived from Europe, and farms, commercial enterprises and factories expanded in the area. Runoff and dumping from these activities polluted the water and depleted the vast populations of fish, animals and birds. Recognizing that something needed to be done, the governments of Canada and the United States signed the Boundary Waters Treaty in 1909.
The intensification of human settlement put increasing strain on the environment throughout the early 20th century. During the 1940s, industrial expansion led to increases in mining as well as steel, rubber and chemical production around the lakes. New chemicals were invented and used extensively in manufacturing. In 1959, the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway opened the entire St. Lawrence–Great Lakes waterway, from the Atlantic...
to the Lakehead at Thunder Bay on Lake Superior, to large vessels. This newly continuous shipping route resulted in a dramatic increase in trade and prosperity for the Great Lakes region but also made the entire waterway vulnerable to the introduction of invasive non-native species found in ships’ ballast water.
A series of events from the 1940s through the 1960s brought greater attention to the dire environmental situation in the Great Lakes Basin. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio repeatedly caught fire due to its oily surface, and industrial wastes in Michigan’s Rouge River turned the water orange. Earning it mention in *The Lorax*, Lake Erie was said to be “dying” as a result of too much phosphorus from detergents and untreated sewage, causing the proliferation of algae, foamy water and dead fish (the decomposition of algae uses up oxygen in the water, essentially “choking” the lake). In the year following the publication of *The Lorax*, limits on phosphorus in detergents were set under the binational Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) when it was first introduced in 1972.
During the 1960s and ’70s, toxic chemicals were found in Great Lakes fish and wildlife in greater concentrations than ever before, sparking concern about the implications for the ecosystem and human health. In response, a number of substances, including mercury, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), were either banned or controlled, and fish and bird populations began to rebound.
Thanks to these efforts, the overall environmental state of the lakes improved. And so, in 1987, two Ohio State University graduate students wrote to Dr. Seuss to tell him about the progress in Lake Erie, convincing him to remove mention of it from the next edition of *The Lorax*.
While many of the most visible problems of the past have been addressed, there are still major issues facing the lakes today. These include toxic substances, returning algal blooms, the introduction and proliferation of invasive species, habitat destruction and a resulting loss of biodiversity, climate change, increasing water and energy demands, and sprawl in urban centres.
If Dr. Seuss were alive today, he might well be convinced to add that line about Lake Erie back into *The Lorax*. You can find out why by reading Pollution Probe’s Great Lakes Fact Sheets.
**POLLUTION PROBE’S GREAT LAKES FACT SHEETS**
The Great Lakes constitute a unique resource that faces challenges as communities continue to develop around them. Protecting the Great Lakes environment is vital to the economic, social and ecological wealth not just of the region, but of the continent as a whole. For residents of the Great Lakes Basin, and those beyond, understanding the issues facing these vital resources is becoming more and more urgent. Pollution Probe’s series of Great Lakes Fact Sheets is intended to advance that understanding and create a context for public discussion and action, at both the institutional and individual level. The Fact Sheets look at some of the key challenges affecting the future of the Great Lakes and align with important issues under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) and other initiatives. For a complete list of Pollution Probe’s Great Lakes Fact Sheets, please see the accompanying box.
1. **The Great Lakes: An Introduction**
2. **Lake Profiles**
3. **Economy & Culture: The Society of the Great Lakes**
4. **Who’s Who: Legislation and Institutions**
5. **Algae: Phosphorus and Algal Blooms**
6. **Energy: Wind, Water and Electricity Generation**
7. **Invasive Species: Ecosystems and Non-native Species**
8. **Biodiversity: Ecosystem Services, Habitat Loss and Species at Risk**
9. **Climate Change: Ecosystems, Infrastructure and Adaptive Capacity**
10. **Harmful Pollutants: Toxic Substances, Legacy Contaminants and Substances of Emerging Concern**
11. **Urban Sprawl: Land Use and Transportation**
12. **Wastewater Management: Stormwater Runoff and Sewer Overflows**
SELECTED RESOURCES
For more information about a broad range of Great Lakes issues, consult the following resources:
Binational.net. http://binational.net/ourgreatlakes/ourgreatlakes.pdf
Environment Canada. http://www.ec.gc.ca/grandslacs–greatlakes/default.asp?lang=En
Fisheries and Oceans Canada. http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/regions/central/science/greatlakes–grandslacs/index-eng.htm
International Joint Commission. http://www.ijc.org/
Ontario Ministry of the Environment. http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/environment/en/subject/great_lakes/index.htm
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/GreatLakes/index.html
United States Environmental Protection Agency. http://epa.gov/greatlakes/
PHOTOS
Cover: Map of the Great Lakes, 1795.
What Makes the Great Lakes Great? The lake schooner York navigates the first Welland Canal at Port Dalhousie, c. 1840. Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library. Artist: Anton Akkerman. Used with permission.
The Environment of the Great Lakes: Cuyahoga River on Fire. Cleveland Press Collection, Cleveland State University Library. Photographer: James Thomas, 1952. Used with permission. | e225a569-6bf4-4706-ab50-7fec5f3483d1 | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.pollutionprobe.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/PP_GLFS1_INTRO_FA.pdf | 2024-02-21T01:13:44+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473360.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221002544-20240221032544-00197.warc.gz | 1,001,595,502 | 1,836 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.937738 | eng_Latn | 0.994589 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
31,
3391,
7406,
8561
] | [
3.234375
] | 1 | 0 |
Fieldwork Takes Flight
Taking off with a mosquito-like hum, the Watershed Council’s drone whirred 300 feet up in the air above Larks Lake. From those heights, patches of plants showed up as dark streaks on the lake’s bottom, and clouds formed a ceiling just out of reach. Moving back and forth in parallel lines, the drone captured images of the lake’s surface and bottom. Later, the images were stitched together using a mapping program to make a fine-resolution aerial map.
Dubbed “The Mayfly” because of its winged resemblance to a common aquatic macroinvertebrate, the Watershed Council incorporated a DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2 drone into its field work in 2020. The drone was purchased with funds awarded by the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation and with a contribution from Pickerel-Crooked Lakes Association. The new drone was part of a larger project to survey vegetation on Crooked, Pickerel, and Larks Lakes. Watershed Council staff used the drone to identify the presence of invasive species and determine if surveying could be enhanced with aerial imagery.
The invasive species identification portion of the project resulted in tangible protection of lakes with the help of local lake associations. The survey identified invasive *Phragmites*, a tall reed that can block out lake views and hinder wildlife habitat, in one location on Larks Lake. The Larks Lake Association and Watershed Council worked together to understand the benefits and risks of herbicide treatment, procure a treatment permit from the state of Michigan, and ultimately treat the *Phragmites* in the fall. While treatment may be needed for a few years, this partnership exemplified how detecting invasive species early and responding rapidly can prevent whole-lake infestations.
The Watershed Council also checked certain areas on Pickerel and Crooked Lakes that previously had or were prone to having invasive species, such as high traffic areas like boat launches. The Pickerel-Crooked Lakes Association’s efforts to treat and manage invasive species (using information from the last Watershed Council survey in 2014) have been successful - only a few stems of curly-leaf pondweed (a crinkly-leaved aquatic plant) were found, and no Eurasian watermilfoil was found in areas where it previously existed. The lake association identified one new patch of Eurasian watermilfoil and then worked with Watershed Council staff to quickly share treatment options with the riparian landowner.
So is the drone a good survey companion? The answer is as tricky as airspace regulations. In addition to complicated Federal Aviation Administration rules that the Watershed Council must follow, the drone can only fly in a light wind and can only take good aerial imagery in the calmest of conditions. Calm weather becomes especially important when photographing water, as the slightest of ripples will obscure the view of the lake bottom. Surveys over water mean that the drone has to be operated from a boat in order to keep it in sight during flight. The drone’s short battery life and tracking the position of the sun to minimize shadows is also a limitation. Taking all of this into consideration means that the window for capturing aerial imagery each day becomes very small when on the water.
Once the logistics of using a drone are sorted, the resulting imagery offers a window into an underwater world. The presence and absence of vegetation can be detected, as can changes in the lake bottom and water color. In addition to vegetation surveys, the Watershed Council has tested the drone for use in detecting shoreline impacts on water quality. While analysis is still incomplete, views from the air allow both the shoreline and lake bottom to be evaluated for water quality impacts. While the drone has its own set of challenges, the Watershed Council is committed to protecting water resources with the best technology, no matter how turbulent.
Watershed Council 2020 Wins for Water
I’m sure all of you will agree, 2020 was like no other year in Northern Michigan. Despite the limitations that the COVID-19 pandemic presented to us, the Watershed Council accomplished a tremendous amount. We adjusted our approach and continued to address the threats facing our pristine waters. We are particularly proud of the important work we undertook this year and the highlighted wins for water presented here. In addition, please see the article on page 4 describing our policy wins for 2020.
- Gov. Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources revoked and terminated the 1953 easement allowing Enbridge to operate Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac.
- We completed fundraising for the first phase of construction for Cheboygan River fishing piers.
- We properly disposed of more than 4,500 pounds of unwanted and unused medications through our Prescription and Over-the-Counter Drug Drop-Off Program.
- Our mobile boat washing team cleaned 59 boats at 11 lakes, and educated over 400 members of the public on preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species.
- We completed our public survey on potential engineering alternatives for the Lake Street Dam.
- We obtained significant public feedback on green stormwater infrastructure projects in the Lake Charlevoix Watershed.
- We were certified by the Federal Aviation Administration to use drones in survey work.
- Staff educated over 2,000 members, lawmakers, and individuals in the public on topics that ranged from protecting the Great Lakes from oil spills to coastal resiliency and water levels.
- Our Watershed Protection Team surveyed 30 miles of the Walloon Lake shoreline.
- We completed two rain garden projects that will filter stormwater in Petoskey with support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Sustain Our Great Lakes Program and the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation.
- With our fundraising support, the Emmet County Road Commission replaced a culvert at the Snider Road road/stream crossing.
Our events and education programs went virtual this year. We successfully hosted lake and river clean ups, our annual boat sale, our annual membership meeting, and several webinars and workshops. Resources on the above topics, along with many others, can be found on the Watershed Council’s website at www.watershedcouncil.org.
The Watershed Council would like to thank our members and local foundation funders for making this work, and numerous other projects over the last 41 years, possible. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation and the Charlevoix County Community Foundation. Both of these foundations have been instrumental in making several of the programs described above possible.
Our efforts this past year and throughout the past 41 years have focused on what each of us can do to protect our waters. We will continue to work tirelessly toward this end as we celebrate our forty-second anniversary in 2021. Please join us! Together, we can protect our resources for the good of our community today and for future generations.
On November 13, 2020, we experienced a historic win for the Great Lakes, our citizens, and our Northern Michigan economy. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) revoked and terminated the 1953 easement allowing Enbridge to operate Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac. The termination requires the pipeline to cease operations in the Straits on May 13, 2021.
After spending years and countless hours working to improve pipeline safety and emergency management, all the while working towards an end goal of decommissioning Line 5, the Watershed Council was thrilled with this decision.
The revocation and termination order came after the MDNR spent more than 15 months looking into Enbridge’s compliance with the 1953 easement and determined there are persistent and incurable violations of the easement’s terms and conditions. The MDNR found that Enbridge has failed to show “due care” while operating the pipeline, ignored pipeline support requirements for essentially the life of the easement, failed to properly monitor coating and address coating loss, and failed to comply with curvature requirements that can impact the structural integrity of the line. Many of these failures persisted for decades and cannot be corrected or otherwise cured.
The state also determined that the continued operation of the dual pipelines violates the state’s solemn duty to protect the Great Lakes under the public trust doctrine. This body of law recognizes the State of Michigan as the “trustee” of the public’s rights in the Great Lakes and lays upon the state legal obligations to protect those rights from any impairment. According to the state, “transporting millions of gallons of petroleum products each day through two 67-year-old pipelines that lie exposed in the Straits below uniquely vulnerable and busy shipping lanes presents an extraordinary, unreasonable threat to public rights because of the very real risk of further anchor strikes and other external impacts to the pipelines, the inherent risks of pipeline operations, and the foreseeable, catastrophic effects if an oil spill occurs at the Straits.”
As expected, Enbridge responded to the State of Michigan stating they have no intention of shutting down the pipeline. Instead, Enbridge filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court to dismiss the state’s action. Enbridge is claiming that the revocation of the easement is contrary to federal law, and that pipeline safety resides with the federal Pipeline Safety Act and its enforcement is the responsibility of a federal agency, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).
Enbridge has yet to acknowledge that they entered into a binding agreement with the State of Michigan when they signed the 1953 easement. Enbridge failed to uphold the agreement and adhere to the required conditions since its inception. Their current disregard of the governor’s and MDNR’s revocation and termination order, which is based upon Enbridge’s improper historic and current operation and maintenance of the pipeline, is inappropriate. Enbridge claims to be a good neighbor and steward for the lakes, but their brazen disrespect for Michigan law proves otherwise.
The state has a solemn, constitutional duty to protect the Great Lakes for the citizens of Michigan. We continue to support the efforts of Gov. Whitmer and the MDNR as they fulfill this duty by revoking and terminating the easement that Enbridge has breached and continues to breach. We hope to be celebrating the closure of Line 5 on May 13.
Leading in Lansing
New Board Chair at Michigan Environmental Council
We are thrilled to announce that our policy director, Jennifer McKay, has been elected as chair of the Board of Directors for Michigan Environmental Council (MEC). MEC, a nonprofit organization founded in 1980, is a coalition of approximately 70 environmental and conservation organizations from around Michigan. MEC serves as a leading environmental voice in Lansing to educate officials and further protections of natural resources in Michigan. McKay has been a member of the MEC Board of Directors since 2018, and has served on a number of board committees, including as chair of the Policy Committee.
“Jennifer has been one of our strongest, most thoughtful, and most consistent policy voices at MEC, and her leadership is exactly what our movement needs as we step into an era of unprecedented challenges and opportunities,” said Conan Smith, CEO and President of MEC. “Her passion for Michigan’s ecological treasures and her deep experience in environmental policy will ensure that MEC and its member organizations are heard—and heeded—in the state capital.”
MEC is collaborating with the Watershed Council on many current initiatives, including developing holistic surface water management for addressing lake level fluctuations in the Great Lakes and inland lakes, improving groundwater protection by implementing findings of the Water Use Advisory Council, and intervening on the Line 5 application before the Michigan Public Service Commission.
Highlights from 2020:
Celebrating Important Policy Victories
As with the rest of our community, the state, and the country, Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council has grappled with the unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19. For the Watershed Council’s policy team, we went from walking the halls of Congress during Great Lakes Day in Washington, D.C., to working remotely. Despite the difficulties that have come with conducting our work in the midst of a global pandemic, we achieved a number of accomplishments in 2020.
Stopping Water Shutoffs
The Watershed Council, along with partners across the state, helped Senator Stephanie Chang pass the Water Shutoff Restoration Act. The bill protects Michiganders from the spread of COVID-19 by ensuring that every occupied residence has access to clean running water. It prohibits water shutoffs due to nonpayment and mandates that water services be restored to residences where shutoffs have occurred, in most circumstances, through March 31, 2021. Every Michigander should always have access to clean and affordable water, and the Watershed Council will continue to work toward these efforts.
Voters Passed a Referendum to Protect our Water, Wildlife, and Parks
The Watershed Council was part of a broad and diverse coalition formed to encourage Michiganders to vote yes on Proposal 1 in November. Proposal 1 was a ballot initiative to ensure that all future state mineral royalties are dedicated to conservation and recreation, and to require that at least 25% of the expenditures of these funds are used for activities like building trails, restoring historic structures, or reclaiming land for urban parks so the public can use and enjoy these special places. At least 25% of the fund will continue to be used to acquire and protect lands. The proposal passed with 84% voter support. With its passage, we are protecting our beautiful and essential land, creating opportunities for all Michiganders to experience the great outdoors, and fostering an appreciation for Michigan’s natural beauty in each successive generation.
Boost in Great Lakes Restoration Funding
In a major victory for the Great Lakes and clean water advocates, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act of 2019 passed through Congress and was signed into law. The bill allows Congress to continue funding the initiative for five years, and increases the program’s annual funding from $300 million to $475 million by 2026. This is tremendous news for the more than 30 million people who rely on the Great Lakes for their drinking water, health, jobs, recreation, and quality of life.
New Standards for PFAS
In response to inaction by the federal government, Michigan enacted new standards for seven per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) compounds in drinking water—some of the toughest, most comprehensive standards on the chemicals anywhere in the country. In addition, the state updated its clean-up criteria for groundwater used as drinking water to include five new PFAS compounds, bringing the total number of PFAS regulated in groundwater to seven.
This highlights just a few of our 2020 policy successes. As we move forward in 2021, we will continue to be a trusted voice and a leading advocate while on the front lines protecting our water resources.
Farewell Grenetta
Watershed Policy Director Grenetta Thomassey is leaving the Watershed Council this summer after 16 years as a dedicated staff member. We are going to miss her immensely, and we wanted to take this opportunity to thank her for all of the years she’s spent protecting Northern Michigan’s precious freshwater resources.
Thomassey described her introduction to the Watershed Council in June 2005 as “jumping right into the fire.” She immediately started forming a coalition of Michigan environmental groups to support the Great Lakes Compact, with a goal of banning the withdrawal of water from the Great Lakes to areas outside of the basin, with limited exceptions. The coalition needed to get the compact through the legislatures of eight states and two Canadian provinces, then through Congress and onto the desk of former President George W. Bush, who signed the compact in 2008.
A second achievement came about in 2009 after previous Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm gave the State of the State address and proposed to cut funding for the state’s wetland program. Under the proposal, Michigan would have relinquished responsibility for wetland management to the federal government, meaning fewer protections and a longer and more complicated permitting process. “I fell off my couch when I heard the announcement,” said Thomassey. In the end, Michigan’s wetland program and hundreds of thousands of wetlands were saved by Thomassey’s hard work.
Thomassey also spent a significant amount of time reviewing water-related ordinances in our four-county service area to protect our waters and offered recommendations for improving regulations. She also advocated for a statewide septic code and worked with local municipalities to enact ordinances to ensure septic systems are monitored and remain functioning to prevent contamination of our lakes and streams. These are just a few of the many ways Thomassey has advocated for healthy Michigan waterways during her tenure here.
“Grenetta has been such a remarkable asset to the Watershed Council and the waters of our region. She has earned the respect of local government officials, lake associations and their members, state and federal representatives, and our members. It will be hard to fill her shoes,” said Executive Director Gail Gruenwald.
Grenetta has been a tireless champion for the Great Lakes and all of Michigan’s water resources,” said Policy Director Jennifer McKay. “Having the privilege of working beside Grenetta for the last 16 years, I have witnessed her passion and professionalism. She had some long, contentious battles over the years, but she never gave up. The Watershed Council and our lakes, streams, and wetlands are fortunate that she was always there to advocate on their behalf.”
“I’m one of the lucky people,” said Thomassey. “This was the perfect job for me and I think I was the perfect person for the job. I have tremendous relationships with all the staff, and I love everything about being at the Watershed Council.”
We’ll miss you, Grenetta!
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Task Force Formed
As our nation continues to grapple with painful reminders of multi-generational injustice and inequity, we are also seeing individuals, companies, social groups, and organizations engaging in civil discourse and taking a stand for justice. The Watershed Council deemed it crucial to participate in the important conversations that have been happening across the nation around justice and equity.
As a result, the Watershed Council has formed a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Task Force. The task force was formed to develop strategies and action plans for incorporating the core values of anti-racism, justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion into the organization’s culture, policies, operations, and procedures. The task force, comprised of board members and staff, will provide a recommended action plan to the board of directors for approval and implementation.
If you have questions about this work, contact Watershed Policy Director Grenetta Thomassey at (231) 347-1181, Ext. 1118.
Your Opinion Matters To Us!
The Watershed Council is conducting a reader survey. We want to know if our newsletter is serving you. Can you help us by taking about 15 minutes to answer some questions about your experiences with Current Reflections? The survey is anonymous, unless you want to share your contact information with us. Please help us out by visiting http://bit.ly/TOMWCreadersurvey and letting us hear about the topics that interest you. Thanks so much for all you do!
Piloting Coastal Leadership in Emmet County
Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council had the unique opportunity to help plan and participate in a pilot program for the Coastal Leadership Academy. The Michigan Association of Planning (MAP), in coordination with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy’s (EGLE) Coastal Management Program, Michigan Sea Grant, and the University of Michigan piloted the leadership academy for our coastal community. The academy consisted of a sequence of three intensive, peer-learning virtual workshops for local decision-makers dealing with coastal hazards.
The pilot program engaged 15 community leaders representing shoreline interests within Emmet County. Representatives from the City of Petoskey, the City of Harbor Springs, West Traverse Township, Emmet County Lakeshore Association, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Little Traverse Conservancy, Emmet County, and the Watershed Council participated. The goal of the academy was for participants to come away from this experience with the technical knowledge and local partnerships necessary to move planning and zoning changes forward that will provide non-structural approaches to coastal shoreline protection. Participants will become ambassadors for coastal resilience.
The pilot Coastal Leadership Academy was a great success. We hope that other coastal communities across the state can participate in the academy, and that participants in Emmet County will use what was learned to preserve and protect the county’s vulnerable shoreline.
Grant & Project Announcements
In 2021, the Watershed Council received a $72,900 grant from the Michigan Invasive Species Grant Program to fund our Mobile Boat Washing Station (MOBO), which you can read more about on the last page of this newsletter. We also received a $15,000 grant from the U.S. Forest Service to support MOBO. We’ll be working to prevent the spread of invasive species among water bodies and educating boaters about simple steps to protect Northern Michigan’s waters.
This year, we also received a $22,600 grant from the Little Traverse Bay Protection and Restoration Fund of the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation. The Watershed Council will be using the grant for green stormwater infrastructure planning in Petoskey.
In late 2019, the Great Lakes Fishery Trust Access to the Great Lakes Fishery Fund pledged $325,000 to the Watershed Council for a portion of Phase 1 construction on the Cheboygan Fishing Access Project. In addition to this commitment, the City of Cheboygan applied for and was awarded $300,000 from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund in late 2020. We are excited to begin construction in 2021 with plans funded by the Great Lakes Fishery Trust in 2019.
Thanks so much to all our funders and partners! We couldn’t do this work without you.
Plans for an improved fishing access along the Cheboygan River in downtown Cheboygan will allow for anglers of all abilities to fish along boardwalks while reducing erosion from foot traffic.
Image credit: Sanders & Czapski Associates, PLLC.
“Old Equipment Collects Data for Modern Problems”
“I’m rusty, but I can still get the job done,” I thought. It was the first monitoring day of the season and I was on my way to the deepest point of my home lake. It was the same trip I’d taken once a week every summer since 1986. The wind felt warm, the sun bright. It was a bumpy ride, but I managed. My job? To collect a water sample for the Watershed Council’s volunteer lake monitoring program. I was there from the program’s start and the data I’ve collected has been used to detect trends and changes in water quality in inland lakes over time. Now, you might be thinking I’m a volunteer lake monitor, but you’d be wrong. I’m just a simple water sampler, a coffee can weighted with concrete and a plastic bottle. I might be a crude, cobbled together piece of equipment, but I’ve been a steadfast companion over the years to our real human volunteers (who honestly do most of the work).
Watershed Council volunteer lake monitors are very familiar with those humble water samplers, which they use to measure phytoplankton populations. Chlorophyll-α, a pigment found in all green plants and algae, is first collected in the water sampler. Water is then filtered and later analyzed to estimate the density of phytoplankton in the water column. Higher chlorophyll-α concentrations indicate greater phytoplankton densities, which reduce water clarity. Volunteers also measure water clarity by lowering a black and white Secchi disk into the water and recording the depth at which it is no longer visible. These two parameters together can tell us about a lake’s productivity, or ability to support aquatic life. Water that is clear can indicate a lake without a lot of plant growth, while water that is turbid, or cloudy, can indicate abundant plant life.
Trophic state index (TSI) is a way to classify lakes using Secchi disk, chlorophyll-α, and total phosphorus measurements. Nutrient availability, water volume, and the rate at which water is added to or lost from a lake are just a few of the factors determining some of this productivity. TSI values range from 0 to 100. See Table 1 to learn about each category.
Table 1. Trophic state indices and their relation to lake characteristics.
| Trophic State | Carlson TSI | Lake Characteristics |
|---------------|-------------|----------------------|
| Oligotrophic | <38 | Low levels of organic matter, deep, clear, oxygen-rich bottom, cold-water fish species like trout, limited by phosphorus |
| Mesotrophic | 38-48 | More organic matter, oxygen is low at lake bottom, good habitat for walleye |
| Eutrophic | 48-61 | High amount of organic matter, lots of plant growth, poor clarity, no oxygen at lake bottom |
| Hypereutrophic| >61 | Nutrient-rich, nuisance algal blooms and plants, low visibility |
Table 2. Volunteer lake monitoring results in Northern Michigan, 2020.
| Lake or Basin Name | Secchi disk average (ft) | Chlorophyll-α average (µg/L) | Total phosphorus (µg/L) | TSI Carlson |
|-------------------------------------|--------------------------|------------------------------|-------------------------|-------------|
| Black Lake | 12.25 | 0.42 | -- | 31.52 |
| Burt Lake, South | 17.57 | 0.92 | -- | 32.79 |
| Clam Lake | 11.75 | 0.97 | 4.8652 | 32.98 |
| Crooked Lake | 10.15 | 0.37 | -- | 32.23 |
| Douglas Lake, Otsego | 16.96 | 2.25 | -- | 37.43 |
| Elk Lake | 19.50 | 0.19 | -- | 24.32 |
| Lake Bellaire | 11.45 | 1.02 | 3.9483 | 32.27 |
| Lake Charlevoix, Main West | 22.50 | 0.50 | -- | 28.02 |
| Lake Charlevoix, South Arm | 13.90 | 1.37 | -- | 36.43 |
| Lake Louise/Thumb Lake | 20.54 | 0.30 | -- | 26.18 |
| Larks Lake | 6.32 | 2.09 | -- | 44.18 |
| Mullett Lake, Mullett Creek | 14.61 | 0.24 | -- | 27.52 |
| Mullett Lake, Pigeon Bay | 16.36 | 0.63 | -- | 31.43 |
| Nowland Lake | 10.07 | 2.01 | -- | 40.64 |
| Pickerel Lake | 9.69 | 0.98 | -- | 37.41 |
| Six Mile Lake | 7.06 | 1.70 | -- | 42.39 |
| Skegemog Lake | 16.09 | 0.65 | -- | 31.72 |
| Thayer Lake | 8.04 | 2.43 | -- | 43.19 |
| Torch Lake North | 28.14 | 0.25 | 2.739 | 21.58 |
| Torch Lake South | 26.38 | 0.30 | 1.0287 | 17.18 |
| Twin Lake | 16.50 | 1.30 | -- | 34.93 |
| Walloon (Foot Basin) | 13.23 | 0.96 | 3.70 | 35.07 |
| Walloon (North Arm Basin) | 8.59 | 1.33 | 7.04 | 39.77 |
| Walloon (West Arm Basin) | 13.60 | 0.80 | 4.54 | 33.98 |
| Walloon (Wildwood Basin) | 14.69 | 0.51 | 2.6384 | 31.18 |
Note: Summary data only includes data collected between June 1, 2020 and August 30, 2020. Quality assurance controls were applied to data to ensure summary results are representative of the entire season and reduce bias towards a particular month. Data was only available for Crooked Lake in June and July 2020. Total phosphorus was either collected by the Watershed Council or volunteers.
The majority of lakes monitored in the Watershed Council’s program were oligotrophic in 2020, meaning they were relatively clear compared to high productivity eutrophic lakes. Oligotrophic lakes are characteristic of glacial geology and point to some success in controlling excess nutrients from outside sources like fertilizers and leaky septic systems. A few lakes were mesotrophic, and still have high water quality while providing extra habitat for certain fish species like walleye.
The seasonal averages reported here do not capture changes in lakes from month to month, as some lakes became eutrophic later in the season. The Watershed Council uses volunteer data to help lake associations and riparians understand and address nonpoint source pollution.
Are you interested in being a lake monitor? We need help on a number of lakes! Contact us at firstname.lastname@example.org or call (231) 347-1181, Ext. 1111, for more information about our monitoring programs.
We need help monitoring the following lakes:
**Emmet County**
- O’Neal
- Wycamp Lake
- French Farm Lake
- Round Lake
**Cheboygan County**
- Douglas Lake
- Munro Lake
- Lancaster Lake
- Silver Lake
- Wildwood Lake
**Charlevoix County**
- Deer Lake
- Huffman Lake
- Marion Lake
- Susan Lake
**Antrim County**
- Bass Lake
- Beals Lake
- Birch Lake
- Ellsworth
- Hanley Lake
- Scotts Lake
Volunteer Stream Monitors Get the Scoop on River Health
Nestled in submerged logs, tucked away beneath rocks, and clinging to pieces of pondweed, tiny macroinvertebrates live in an underwater world, owing their existence to resources traveling down streams and rivers. They breathe water, eat slime, spin nets, and cocoon themselves in rocks and sand for protection. They don’t have backbones, and many of them have complicated camouflage. They go about their daily lives, filtering, feeding, and relying on their adaptations and water quality to keep them alive. While they spend most of their lives in the water, you may be more familiar with their adult forms as they hatch into flying mosquitoes, black flies, caddisflies, mayflies, and stoneflies. Their omnipresence and sensitivity to pollution make them good candidates to indicate water quality.
Every spring and fall since 2005, Watershed Council volunteer stream monitors perform biological monitoring by scooping aquatic insects and other macroinvertebrates out of streams using nets. Volunteers look for macroinvertebrate groups such as mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies, which are highly sensitive to environmental change or pollution. A healthy variety of these pollution-sensitive macroinvertebrates indicates a healthy ecosystem with high water quality, while a stream with only pollution-tolerant aquatic worms and midges suggests an ecosystem is likely suffering. A water quality grade is assigned to each monitoring site using a weighted numeric scoring system based on total groups of mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies. Because so many factors can affect macroinvertebrate counts, it’s important to compare biological data over many years. From year to year, macroinvertebrate grades can vary and sometimes can’t be explained by water quality or habitat changes. The timing of seasons or hatches could be the culprit. A lowered grade one year is less concerning if the overall average is still high and the stream returns to its typical grade.
COVID-19 concerns prevented many teams from monitoring in 2020. Stay-at-home orders only allowed teams to monitor in the fall. Six streams were monitored this year and we have included the results for four of them in this summary. The Watershed Council plans to offer volunteer stream monitoring in the spring and fall of 2021 as long as the activity meets COVID-19 criteria for gatherings set by the state government. Volunteers will also have the chance to be at the forefront of invasive species detection as New Zealand mudsnail monitoring will be incorporated. The mudsnail is a rapidly spreading and highly adaptable miniscule snail. Many agencies in the region will work together to determine if it is present north of Traverse City, Michigan.
**Boyne River = A**
Flowing in two branches that begin near Thumb Lake and Elmira, the Boyne River feeds into Lake Charlevoix. It has been monitored since 2005 and both the north and south branches were monitored in 2020. The Boyne River is a designated trout stream and the north branch is home to the endangered Hungerford’s crawling water beetle. Historically, the Boyne River has an A rating and it received the same score in 2020.
**Eastport Creek = C**
Three Lakes Association has found high bacteria and phosphorus in the creek in the past. The stream has been sampled for macroinvertebrates since 2005 and has a mix of agricultural, developed, and natural areas in its watershed. Historically, the stream was rated a B. The abundance of sand at one site may account for the lower score, as sand has less habitat for macroinvertebrates than a mix of cobble, rock, and vegetation.
Pigeon River = A
The Pigeon River begins just northeast of Gaylord and flows north into Mullett Lake. Monitoring sites were added in 2011 after dam failures occurred along the Pigeon River. First monitoring efforts revealed low diversity. However, subsequent sampling years have revealed strong scores and the river retained its historic A score.
Stover Creek = C
Stover Creek is 6.9 miles long and flows into Lake Charlevoix just south of the City of Charlevoix. Its watershed encompasses over 4,000 acres and is dominated by agricultural lands upstream and urbanized areas towards the mouth. This year, the Brookside Cemetery location decreased from a B to a C, which held Stover Creek at its average C score. The monitoring day was very stormy, which may have resulted in fewer macroinvertebrates found.
Thinking about monitoring a stream? We’ve got one for you! The following streams are Watershed Council priorities because they are slated for road/stream crossing improvements or they need more local volunteers to monitor them.
Charlevoix County
Boyne River
Horton Creek
Jordan River
Cheboygan County
Berry Creek
Kimberly Creek
Antrim County
Cedar River
Contact us at email@example.com or (231) 347-1181, Ext. 1111, to learn more about becoming a stream monitor.
Record High Water Levels Mean Fewer Bird Deaths Due to Avian Botulism
While the Great Lakes’ high water levels are a bane to beach lovers and riparian property owners, they could be a boon for birds. Water levels and water temperatures are related to the production of a neurotoxin called botulinum. Lower water levels and higher water temperatures can cause an abundance of Cladophora algae. The algae provide a food source for the bacterium that creates the botulinum. Two invasive species (zebra mussels and round gobies) help botulinum up the food chain where it bioaccumulates and causes paralysis and eventually death in fish and birds. If you’ve seen a dead bird on a Great Lakes beach, it may have died from botulism.
In fall 2020, high water levels made for the second difficult year in a row for avian botulism monitoring. The absence of beaches reduced collection points for washed up birds, so volunteers focused on coves and bays that were “hot spots” in previous years. In total, Watershed Council volunteers walked 49.2 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline in Emmet and Charlevoix Counties in their search and found 11 dead birds. The mortality decreased drastically from previous years in the same two counties (some as high as 900 birds).
Common loons made up the majority of dead birds in 2020, and none were sent to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources because of difficult logistics caused by working remotely. The Watershed Council’s data is used to estimate total Lake Michigan mortalities and predictions for next year. Botulism outbreaks throughout the Great Lakes are mapped using the Wildlife Health Information Sharing Partnership (WHISPers), which can be viewed at https://whispers.usgs.gov/home.
Freshly dead birds such as this juvenile gull found at Sturgeon Bay in Emmet County can be frozen and later tested by the MDNR’s Wildlife Disease Lab in Lansing for the botulism toxin. This bird likely died from an injury and was not sent in for testing. Photo by Sue Stewart.
Bringing Back Brookies
One of Michigan’s most iconic fish—the brook trout—got a boost when the Emmet County Road Commission, with help from Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, replaced two culverts at a road/stream crossing in the Crooked River Watershed.
Road/stream crossings are areas where roads pass over flowing bodies of water. An inventory completed by the Watershed Council in 2015 indicated there are 168 crossings in the 580 square miles of the Burt Lake Watershed, which includes the Crooked River Watershed.
Why are road/stream crossings important? Aquatic animals need room to roam and reproduce. For a fish, some areas of a stream might be much better places to find food or mates than others. If a road crosses a stream, and the passageway that diverts water under the road is too small or perched above the water level, aquatic species can’t travel as easily.
At Snider Road, two old culverts were rusted and undersized. They were also perched a few feet above the stream level, leaving no way for brook trout to swim through without a big struggle.
Brian Gutowski, the engineer manager of the Emmet County Road Commission, explained that undersized culverts can build up water pressure on the upstream side. “This forces the water through the culvert at high speed and on the downstream side it washes a lot of material away.” The Snider Road culverts were responsible for eroding over 500 pounds of soil per year from the banks of the tributary.
To address these problems, the Snider Road culverts were replaced with a single, larger culvert that will allow aquatic species to pass through and prevent flooding. The next road/stream crossing improvement on the list is at Berry Creek and Banwell Road, in which two culverts will be replaced with a 26 foot clear-span bridge.
“We’ve partnered with Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council on several road/stream crossings in the past and this is the next phase,” said Gutowski. “Without working with the Watershed Council on funding, we’d never be able to get them replaced.”
Funding for these road/stream crossing improvement projects was provided by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Fish Habitat Partnership Program and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Aquatic Habitat Grants Program.
We Speak For Our Waters
Protecting our region’s waters benefits everyone in the community. Our lakes, rivers, and wetlands have no voice in our political or economic system. Oftentimes, the advocacy undertaken by the Watershed Council acts as the only “voice” for our waters.
To give voice to our waters, we review copies of all permit applications within our four-county service area for projects that may impact wetlands, streams, shorelines, inland lakes, and the Great Lakes. We first determine if the proposed project meets the requirements of state and/or federal law. This includes looking to see if the proposed project will avoid and minimize adverse impacts to water resources, if there is a feasible and prudent alternative to the project, and if mitigation has been proposed. For those projects that could impact water resources, we often provide recommendations to avoid or reduce impacts. In some circumstances, the project is so poorly designed, not needed, or will have unacceptable impacts on aquatic resources that we recommend denial of the project.
Because we review all permit applications in our service area, we highly recommend that any home owner or consultant who will be submitting an application meet with us first. We will gladly review site plans and provide you with our thoughts and recommendations prior to the permitting process. We would much rather review your proposed project than recommend denying it. Please contact the Watershed Council with any questions on this permit review program at (231) 347-1181 or firstname.lastname@example.org.
Protecting Lake Charlevoix with New Green Stormwater Infrastructure
After a year of conducting site surveys, monitoring stormwater, meeting with local government officials, and hosting interactive community meetings, the Watershed Council’s Lake Charlevoix Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) project, Increasing Capacity for Coastal Resilience, has concluded. Boyne City, East Jordan, and Charlevoix have been presented with a variety of potential site-specific GSI practices—like rain gardens, bioswales, and tree box filters—that, if implemented, will protect the water quality of Lake Charlevoix. These GSI techniques help to manage stormwater by mimicking natural processes that can help keep water resources clean and protect public health. When used in tandem with existing stormwater infrastructure, they lower costs and can enhance stormwater treatment prior to release into Lake Charlevoix.
During the fall of 2020, residents of the three cities were invited to participate in a unique online survey using ArcGIS StoryMap, an immersive online platform, to gauge their interest in 25 potential GSI projects that could be constructed in their cities. The ArcGIS map showed participants artistic renderings of proposed GSI practices and compared them to existing site conditions. In total, more than 150 people participated in the online survey.
Of the proposed GSI projects presented across the three cities, all were met with a mostly positive public response. In fact, most survey respondents expressed a desire to see more GSI implemented in their communities. Also, a majority of the survey respondents strongly agreed that GSI is important to improving the water quality of Lake Charlevoix, demonstrating a strong local understanding of the interconnectedness between GSI and water quality.
Funding for this project was generously provided by the Coastal Management Program, Water Resources Division, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and the Charlevoix County Community Foundation. The project was a collaboration among Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, Drummond Carpenter, and the three municipalities within the Lake Charlevoix Watershed. Now, leaders from Boyne City, Charlevoix, and East Jordan can move forward in pursuing funding to bring these design concepts to life, which will help protect the Lake Charlevoix Watershed for generations to come.
These photos show some of the proposed GSI projects for the Lake Charlevoix Watershed that survey participants could choose as their favorites.
Watershed Academy: More Than Meets The Eye
The students scoop their nets into Bellaire’s Shanty Creek and dig into the rippling water and sediment. Water Resources Education Coordinator Eli Baker directs them to take the muck they’ve collected and deposit it into trays. When their time wading in the creek is finished, the students and Baker hunch over the trays, searching for signs of life. Petri dishes fill with wriggling masses of insects, and they even spot a few fish. They record the species they found, take off the waders, and head back to Bellaire High School. This is the Watershed Academy (WA), where students monitor the state of Northern Michigan streams as part of their science curriculum.
The Watershed Council’s WA programs have been implemented across Northern Michigan for the past six years. Before the pandemic changed how classrooms operated, Baker was educating students at 13 high schools and students were monitoring 14 streams. However, WA is more than just an education program.
“The students are collecting the same data that our volunteer stream monitors are collecting over our entire service area,” explained Caroline Keson, our monitoring programs coordinator. Not only are the students learning about ecology and water chemistry, they’re also contributing to the baseline data that we use to detect changes in stream water quality and habitat over time. For instance, Shanty Creek runs through a golf course on its way to the data collection site, and the students could detect potential changes in the creek due to landscaping practices.
Baker said that students collect data on stream characteristics like potential aquatic habitats and macroinvertebrate diversity, hence the long trays full of interesting insects scooped from Shanty Creek. They also collect information on pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrates, phosphates, and bacteria levels.
Baker loves getting into the streams with new students: “For some it might be their first time stepping into this water body or their first time wearing waders. It’s exciting to explore and see their discoveries firsthand.”
The students’ hard work doubles the Watershed Council’s reach of data collection, according to Keson. She said that the quality of student’s data means that it can be used for water management plans and entered into a statewide database that allows for the comparison of stream quality all over the state.
Tom Baeckeroot is a science teacher at Bellaire High School, and he’s been working with the Watershed Academy since 2016. Baker comes into his freshman science classes to pitch WA to the students, and encourages students that are interested to apply for the program. Baeckeroot’s had a lot of fun, and a lot of success. As a result of the program, three of his WA students have gone on to study environmental sciences.
“Two of them would tell me, ‘I hate science,’ and now they’re looking into a career in science,” Baeckeroot said. “I sit back and smile and think, ‘Told ya.’”
Bellaire High School students identify the macroinvertebrates they found in Shanty Creek and measure water chemistry.
Upcoming Events
We are still recipients of the Pour for More Microgrant program. All year round, your purchases at certain restaurants benefit the Watershed Council. Visit www.pourformore.org to find participating venues, and make sure to ask for the Pour for More drink when you go.
Volunteer Stream Monitoring
New Monitor Training: May 12, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Located at the Bear River Shelter, Bear River Valley Recreation Area, Petoskey. Register at www.watershedcouncil.org/attend-an-event.
Volunteer Lake Monitoring
Existing Monitor Training: May 18, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Register at www.watershedcouncil.org/attend-an-event for this online training.
Volunteer Lake Monitoring
New Monitor Training: May 20, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30pm. In-person training, with location dependent on number of registrants. Register at www.watershedcouncil.org/attend-an-event.
Whale of a Sale: July 15 – 17, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Irish Boat Shop Storage Unit, 7580 S. State Street in Harbor Springs. For more information, check out www.watershedcouncil.org/wos.
Annual Meeting: July 20, 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Join us as we celebrate the retirements of devoted staff members over Zoom. See www.watershedcouncil.org/attend-an-event for details on registration.
Clean Waters Challenge: Join us August 7 – 14 for our socially distanced virtual lake and river cleanup. There will be fun challenges and prizes! See www.watershedcouncil.org/clean-waters-challenge for more details.
Winter Wonderland
From the surface, everything looks lifeless. Dried sedges and cattails rustle in the wind, and the ice is an opaque sheet over the lake’s surface. In winter, it’s hard to imagine that life still goes on under the frigid water. After all, a fall into a frozen lake would be treacherous for a human. Still, animals make their lives and homes beneath the ice and snow while we huddle beside our wood stoves, and then emerge victorious in the spring. What were they doing down there while we tried to keep warm? If you’ve ever asked that question, read on!
Fish tend to slow down a lot when it’s cold outside. The ice that forms over water insulates lakes and rivers, while the warm water sinks towards the bottom. While some fish, such as invasive round gobies, burrow into the sediment, most fish just hang out and rest near the bottom. Their lowered metabolisms mean they don’t have to move around as much to find food. It can take a bit of work for anglers to find that sweet spot of warm water to pull out a walleye or perch in winter.
What about aquatic macroinvertebrates? Those small animals without backbones, like stoneflies, water striders, and other lake and stream residents, have different strategies to deal with the cold. Insects like water striders find places on land to hide from the snow, while whirligig beetles burrow into the mud. However, some insects party like it’s 1999 under the water. Some types of larval stoneflies, which can indicate good stream quality, transition from larvae to adult in the freezing cold winter, crawl out onto the snow and ice, and look for mates. Nymphs of mayflies and dragonflies are also active underwater in winter as they hunt for food and prepare to emerge as adults in the spring.
Do you miss frogs and turtles in the winter? While not entirely aquatic like fish, some spend a lot of time in or near aquatic habitats. Michigan has 12 frog species, two kinds of toads, 12 salamander species, and 10 kinds of turtles. None of them enjoy winter very much. American bullfrogs, leopard frogs, and a few others go dormant underwater. The rest burrow beneath the frost line or find shelter from the snow beneath logs or other debris. A handful of our Michigan frogs actually produce loads of sugar that acts as antifreeze in their vital organs. Most of the salamanders burrow underground in the winter, but a few, like the intrepid mudpuppy, stay active underwater. Our turtles can handle the winter months at low oxygen levels buried under sediment in the bottom of lakes and streams, though box turtles hibernate on land.
When you look out over a frozen inland lake or the stilled oxbow of a river next winter, don’t be fooled! Animals are still there, either moving in slow motion, like walleye; thriving without the threat of predation, like stoneflies; or deep in a contemplative sleep, like snapping turtles. If you’re interested in reading more about adaptations that make animals so successful in winter, check out Bernd Heinrich’s book, “Winter World.”
THANK YOU
Tia Esposito
Kathy Germain
VSM, VBM, and VLM monitors
Daniel Gonzalez, Watershed Council Policy Intern in 2018, who generously volunteered time in the final quarter of 2020 to help organize raw data from survey responses, and created graphs needed for reports and presentations.
Welcome New Members
Mr. and Mrs. Bill Albertson
Dr. and Mrs. Mark Antonishen
Ruth and Jerry Augustine
Mr. and Mrs. Josh
Baker Marianne and Thom Barry
Roger and Jennifer Bates
Alex and Phyllis Bauer
Ray and Susan Bice
Birch Lake Association
Mr. and Mrs. James M. Braun
Mr. and Mrs. Robert F. Brinich
Tim and Deb Broderick
Barbara M. Camp
Mr. and Mrs. Michael W. Carland
Donald Carpenter
Mr. and Mrs. Todd Chappell
Martha Churchill
Mr. and Mrs. Royal Clippert
Martha H. Coscina
Mr. and Mrs. Loic Couraud
Patricia Zajac and Mark Cowles
Crooked Tree Breadworks
Frank and Dana D’Andraia
Nancy P. Dennis
Mr. and Mrs. John Dorland
Danyelle Douglas
Mary Dye
Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Eisendrath
Barbara Nixon and George Elias
Jacalyn and Andrew Elsoffer
Kurtis and Lynn Finch
Nathan Fleshman
Mr. and Mrs. James S. Goetz
David and Laurie Graham
Green Toe Gardens
John and Carrie Hayden
Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Heid
Glenn and Dorothy Hessler
Karen and David Hill
Dr. Charles S. Holmes
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Jackson
Mr. and Mrs. Adam Jankowski
Claire Kafer
Mr. and Mrs. David L. Kendall
David Kolar Milos Kosicca
Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Lacks
Lake Club of Hidden Valley Property Owners Association
Ty and Lisa LaPrairie
Ms. Phyllis H. Ledyard
Harry Lenick
Mr. and Mrs. Martin Luchtefeld
Mr. and Mrs. Joe Malloure
Ronald Miller
Ms. Dana Mulder
Chris and Molly Nawrocki
Andrew Norden
Mr. Jonathan Parlow
Frances Pattison
Todd and Sharon Pawlik
Ms. Pamela Reyburn
Mr. David Robinson
Mr. and Mrs. Mark Rowlands
Tom and Joan Schellenberg
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Sgroi
John D. Staley
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Teel
Wendi Tilden
Chris Tracy
Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey R. Twyman
Honorarium & Memorial Gifts
In Honor Of:
Mr. and Mrs. A.W. Hallett
Barbara Kauper
Charles and Patty Forsberg
Mr. and Mrs. Erik Borgen
Mr. and Mrs. Greg Renker
Mr. and Mrs. Alex Taylor
Mr. and Mrs. Michael Pettibone
Tom Stringer
Mr. Bill Craig
Mr. and Mrs. John McCoy
Mr. and Mrs. Matt Bowman
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bowman
Mr. and Mrs. Todd Winnell
Evening Star Joinery
Isaac and Lauren Winnell
Kate Winnell
Liz and Ben Doornbos
Michael and Kate Winnell
Todd and Jennifer Winnell
James and Dawn Kerwin
Sue Maxey
Jim and Therry Colombo
Sue and Gary Stewart
Ken and Jan Stewart
Kris and Terry Finn
Kenneth Knowles
Barb and Frank Rider
Linda Badalucco
Linda Heller
Ashley Soltsysiak
Mr. and Mrs. David Lurie
John and Sandy Baker
Mr. and Mrs. David M. Culver
Jerry Draheim
Mr. Andy Draheim
Andrea Kramer
Nathaniel Kramer
Mike and Peg Supernault
Ty and Lisa LaPrairie
In Memory Of:
Janet MaCris
Barbara M. Camp
Judi Walter Pabst
Sandy Smith
Leonard Stenger
Birchwood Association of Mullett Lake
Dave Irish
Coastal Crawl Swim Club
John Douglas Zoerhoff
Doug and Nancy Zoerhoff
Debbie Messer
John Messer
Charles Letts
Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Kneese
Asho and Lyle Craine
Mr. and Mrs. Tim Craine
Share Your Love of Water
Give a personalized gift membership today. Not only does this unique gift idea help protect our waters, it will be enjoyed by your friends and loved ones throughout the whole year. To learn more about gift memberships, visit our website at https://www.watershedcouncil.org/donate.
Blasting Away Invasive Species
After completing a successful 2020 pilot year, we’re making big plans for our 2021 Mobile Boat Washing Station field season. Our station, lovingly dubbed “MOBO” by last year’s crew, is ready to kick off this year’s programming starting on Memorial Day weekend and running through Labor Day. Last season, we visited 11 water bodies and engaged with over 400 members of the public despite challenges presented by COVID-19. This year, thanks to funding provided by the United States Forest Service and the Michigan Invasive Species Grant Program, we are pleased to expand upon the existing program and have an even greater impact.
Our crew will again use hot water to blast away invasive species, like Eurasian watermilfoil, zebra mussels, and curly-leaf pondweed, among many others, from the boats entering and leaving our area lakes. The program, which will run each weekend throughout the summer, will continue to limit new aquatic invasive species (AIS) introductions and reduce the transmission of established invasive species populations from Northern Michigan waterbodies. We will accomplish this goal by physically removing organic material from water crafts and raising public awareness about AIS and effective mitigation tactics.
We are especially excited to highlight two weekend events with the U.S. Forest Service, with more information on our website as the details are finalized. Additionally, we are expanding our efforts to team up with local lake associations to reach even more lakes in our service area this summer. Volunteers are welcome to participate and help spread the word. So, please stop by when MOBO comes to your area. Check our website, https://www.watershedcouncil.org/attend-an-event.html, and social media posts for our MOBO schedule. We encourage people to help themselves to our free AIS information and fun summer swag. Don’t forget to get your boat or trailer washed so we can all continue to enjoy healthy Northern Michigan lakes for many summers to come.
Garrett Greer washes a boat in summer 2020 as part of our inaugural year with the Mobile Boat Washing Station. | b2ca04dd-c2e5-4b99-93a1-a28b472fd2b5 | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://www.watershedcouncil.org/uploads/1/2/6/3/126321286/2021sp-newsletter-web-final.pdf | 2021-12-01T07:16:47+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964359093.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20211201052655-20211201082655-00347.warc.gz | 1,175,699,270 | 12,255 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.987933 | eng_Latn | 0.997608 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
3941,
7094,
10670,
15492,
20094,
23207,
30245,
31604,
35270,
38565,
42424,
45026,
48140,
52647,
56069,
58208
] | [
2.015625,
2.484375
] | 1 | 1 |
Florida, Naturally
Florida Environmental Literacy Plan
Photos provided by The Florida Aquarium, Inc.
# Table of Contents
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| Introduction | 2 |
| Climbing the Environmental Literacy Ladder | 7 |
| Home | 8 |
| Learning | 10 |
| • Early Childhood | 11 |
| • PreK-12 | 13 |
| • Higher Education | 14 |
| • Administrators | 14 |
| • Students | 15 |
| • Nonformal and Informal Educators | 16 |
| Work | 18 |
| • Policy Makers | 18 |
| • Business and Community Groups/Organizations | 19 |
| • Tourism Industry | 21 |
| Appendix A: References and Resources | 23 |
| Appendix B: Major EE Milestones in Florida | 24 |
| Appendix C: History of EE in Florida | 25 |
Environmental literacy is the awareness and knowledge of interrelationships among natural systems; the skills to investigate and make informed decisions; and the understanding of how to apply this information.
Coyle, K. 2005
Environmentally literate Floridians have the knowledge, skills, and motivation to act responsibly and implement positive actions for achieving and maintaining a sustainable balance between human and environmental systems. Ensuring every person in Florida receives a balanced, academically centered environmental education is central to achieving environmental literacy and securing healthy, prosperous lives.
What is an Environmental Literacy Plan?
An Environmental Literacy Plan or ELP is a plan to teach about how ecosystems and human systems are interdependent and to increase environmental literacy for everyone in a state.
The current trend in creating each state’s environmental literacy plan emerged from the No Child Left Inside initiatives. The gains for environmental education came as a result of years-long work by champions of the bipartisan No Child Left Inside (NCLI) Act, which sought to secure federal dollars to support states’ efforts to implement environmental literacy plans in K-12 public schools. In anticipation of this new emphasis on environmental education, the No Child Left Inside Coalition worked with states since 2008 to develop environmental literacy plans, identifying the necessary steps to ensure students are environmentally literate when they graduate from high school.
On December 10, 2015, President Obama signed the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law, reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (formerly, No Child Left Behind). Now, with the passage of ESSA, environmental education, for the first time, has been singled out in an Elementary and Secondary Act Authorization bill, a victory for environmental education advocates who fought hard to make this a reality.
Congress and the White House stepped up incentives (authorizing more grant funding) to encourage states and local state governments to provide students with a well-rounded education, including environmental education, history, civics, and STEM, among others.
The states that have developed Environmental Literacy Plans such as the FELP will be able to use the plans to help set the stage to give environmental education a leg up, as states and localities implement the law.
**How is Environmental Literacy Connected to Environmental Education?**
Environmental education is the framework on which environmental literacy is built. Through EE, individuals, communities, and organizations learn about the environment, develop skills to investigate and analyze environmental problems, and make wise, informed decisions about how to care for the environment.
*Environmental education (EE) provides the skills necessary for people of all ages to make intelligent, informed decisions about the environment and how they can take care of it—Most importantly, it can help people make informed decisions about the environment that lead to lifelong stewardship and a more sustainable society.*
NAAEE: *About EE and Why It Matters*
Why Should Florida Have an Environmental Literacy Plan?
An ELP presents an occasion to increase opportunities to learn about environmental issues to make informed decisions about complex environmental issues affecting the economy, public health and safety, and shared natural resources, such as the water, air and land on which life depends. Ideally, an ELP:
- Should inspire and guide more focused campaigns for change
- Will help us meet environmental and social challenges.
- Includes notes on the relationship between a plan and specific campaigns
- Will balance aspirational goals with more readily achievable goals
- Fosters collaboration between educators with an aim to leverage their expertise and resources
- Benefits Florida’s environment and economy by preparing young people to become citizens with the knowledge and skills to make responsible decisions that protect ecosystems and support sustainability. (MAINE)
- Highlight optimism, opportunity, and future potential
Thoughts from Maine’s ELP:
As economic and environmental challenges arise, so do opportunities. Maine’s unique combination of human and natural resources positions Maine to be at the forefront of many new technologies and groundbreaking environmental policies. By helping Maine’s young people become environmentally literate, the State is cultivating innovation, prosperity, and an informed citizenry with the knowledge and skills to address future challenges."
The Role of the League of Environmental Educators in Florida (LEEF) in the Development of the ELP
The mission of the League of Environmental Educators in Florida (LEEF) is to advance environmental literacy and promote stewardship through excellence in environmental education. Florida's environmental literacy plan was originally developed by LEEF and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Office of Environmental Education and Sustainable Initiatives in partnership with the Florida Department of Education Office of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and Florida Department of Education Office of Healthy Schools, with additional input from a wide range stakeholders in the education and environmental communities. LEEF is the official sponsor of the Florida Environmental Literacy Plan.
How to Use this Environmental Literacy Plan
Everyone can contribute to increasing environmental literacy in Florida. The Florida Environmental Literacy Plan is divided into three contexts: Home, Learning, and Work. The latter two each contain their own important categories so you can quickly find the information that is most relevant to you. Each section will include a brief introduction to how environmental literacy relates, as well as some key goals. The goals will include concrete, actionable suggestions for implementation. Most sections will also include resources to pursue for more ideas and specifics.
Naturally, there is considerable overlap in how environmental literacy can be improved in a state as large as Florida; it is connected to our lives in many ways. In addition to examining the context most relevant to you, be sure to browse other sections that may be of interest. LEEF developed this environmental literacy guide as a reference material for individuals, businesses, and communities and as a handbook for setting priorities and making decisions regarding environmental literacy and sustainability. Now, LEEF, the state’s non-profit professional organization for environmental education, will develop its own ELP that will put many aspects of the guide into effect by supporting and training
Individuals and groups are encouraged to create their own ELP that is specific to their personal beliefs and values. It is recommended that goals and action items, time bound when possible, will lead towards an increased environmental literacy. The plans may be flexible and able to be amended as circumstances require.
**Outcomes of Successful Implementation**
All people in Florida use sustainable practices at home, work, learning, and play.
All people in Florida have access to clean and sustainable natural resources.
All people in Florida have access to quality outdoor experiences.
All people in Florida have opportunities to learn about the natural world and their place in or connections to it.
Adapted from Wisconsin’s Plan for Environmentally Literate and Sustainable Communities
Environmental Literacy in Action
Climbing the Environmental Literacy Ladder
Capacity for personal and collective action and civic participation
Problem solving and critical thinking skills
Attitudes of appreciation and concern for the environment
Knowledge and understanding of human and natural systems and processes
General awareness of the relationship between the environment and human life
© 2007 Campaign for Environmental Literacy
By practicing sustainable behaviors, spending time outdoors, and acting locally on behalf of the environment, we create environmentally literate households. Below are suggestions on steps you can take at home.
**Sustainable Behaviors**
**Goal 1:** Reduce your negative impact on environmental quality.
- Consider carpooling, bicycling, or walking instead of driving
- Purchase eco-friendly and energy efficient products
- Investigate alternative energy choices used by household (solar, wind, etc.)
- Be aware of where and how the food is produced and the environmental consequences associated with its production
- Reduce food waste and packaging
- Install eco-friendly landscaping
- Reduce water usage
- Refuse, reduce, reuse, and recycle
**Time Outdoors**
**Goal 2:** Incorporate time outside into your family’s routine.
- Visit local, regional, and statewide nature centers, preserves, forests, and parks
- Learn about Florida’s unique ecosystems
- Play with your children outdoors and encourage independent exploration
- When choosing outdoor activities, select providers that actively reduce their environmental impact
- Select the appropriate place to play to avoid damaging natural resources
- Integrate environmental education when participating in leisure activities
- Promote healthy lifestyles through frequent outdoor recreation activities
**Think Globally, Act Locally**
**Goal 3:** Model civic engagement and responsibility regarding environmental issues.
- Increase knowledge of local, regional, state, and global environmental issues
• increase knowledge of the origin of water resources and issues facing its quantity and quality
• Join reputable environmental groups, online environmental communities, etc.
• Ask questions of local community leaders and organizations
• Seek out multiple viewpoints to better understand the issue
• Stay abreast of decisions and outcomes related to environmental issues
• Attend local town hall meetings related to environmental issues
• Familiarize oneself with local elected leaders’ positions on environmental issues and use that knowledge to inform voting
• Participate in service learning and citizen science projects as a family
The Florida State Standards and the Next Generation State Standards do include some environmental literacy concepts that are infused throughout the PK-12 curriculum, mainly as part of science and social studies standards. However, to be effective, education for environmental literacy needs to be integrated throughout the PreK-16 curriculum in Florida’s classrooms and include connected, sustained opportunities for students to participate in direct outdoor learning experiences and classroom activities that increase awareness of environmental topics and core content knowledge. Because the traditional curriculum is often subject specific, EE often falls through the cracks in our educational system, leaving a gap in the essential knowledge that students need in a well-rounded curriculum.
EE is a multi-disciplinary field integrating disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, earth science, atmospheric science, mathematics, history, and geography. It helps students connect and apply learning from all content areas such as math, science, language arts, social studies, physical education, practical living, and arts and the humanities.
STEM includes science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. EE is often minimally included in STEM activities. Consider as an example, though, the field of environmental engineering. In recent years, it has broken away from civil engineering to become a much more important field on its own to encompass water, wastewater, soil pollution, air pollution, risk assessment, ecosystems, human health, toxicology, sustainable development, and much more. If we have
In the classroom and beyond, the desired outcome of environmental education is environmental literacy.
North Carolina Environmental Literacy Plan
students pursuing this field, clearly their education about the environment must be started at an early school grade and continued through the college years.
The FELP Team recognizes that support for environmental literacy within educational standards happens on a variety of levels: the classroom, the school, the school district and at the state level. As such, recommendations for supporting student environmental literacy at each of those levels are provided in this plan. Professional development opportunities for teachers are also included at each level. Each strategy outlined below supports one or more of the three overall objectives of the plan.
Early Childhood
Environmental literacy begins with life experiences during the very earliest years of life. The North American Association of Environmental Education defines early childhood environmental education as “a holistic concept that encompasses knowledge of the natural world as well as emotions, dispositions, and skills,” (NAAEE, 2010, 3). ECEE stimulates high levels of physical activity and increases motor skills, fitness, and balance. Cognitively, it stimulates creativity, language
building, concentration and self-control. Social benefits include less anxiety, a higher self-worth, and formation of positive environmental attitudes. In early childhood, it is important to concentrate on building a foundation that will allow for positive examination of issues and appropriate action later in life. Outdoor experiences for young children should focus primarily on exploring and enjoying the natural world under the guidance.
Goal 1: Provide developmentally appropriate experiences for young children to connect with nature.
- Focus on “experiencing” versus “teaching”. The adult is a facilitator rather than a teacher.
- Experiences should incorporate getting feet wet, climbing rocks, building with sticks, exploring woodlands, following insects, and so forth. The emphasis is on positive and frequent interactions with nature.
- Provide the young child with a space to develop a sense of wonder and the joy of discovery.
- Place an emphasis on the development of individual feelings, beliefs, and inner unity with nature. Environmental literacy begins with an emotional attachment to the natural world and an understanding of the link between the child and nature.
- Naturalize outdoor environments in early childhood centers by adding features such as diverse vegetation, a shallow water feature, vegetable and wildlife gardens, and versatile loose parts of natural objects for children to manipulate.
- Take note of the Call to Action, RE-CONNECTING THE WORLD’S CHILDREN, for research-based information about the benefits derived from making sure nature learning becomes a part of each child’s life. (See resource list)
Goal 2: Provide early childhood educators with opportunities for professional development related to nature education.
- Provide early childhood educators with information about nature education resources as part of the Early Childhood Teacher Certification in Florida.
- Encourage early childhood educators to participate in annual professional development opportunities related to nature education.
- Create partnerships and active communication between early childhood educators and a variety of interested individuals and organizations to
support networking, resource sharing, and advertising of professional development opportunities.
**PreK-12**
Goal 1: Ensure that environmental literacy is integrated into and becomes an integral part of the PK-12 standard curriculum.
- Identify specific content standards, content areas, and courses or subjects where instruction could take place to use as a basis for incorporating environmental literacy into school practices.
- Identify model curriculum and instructional units in all content areas to guide teachers in the effective implementation of identified standards.
- Include environmentally oriented careers in career development activities to assist in graduating college and career ready students that will have the critical tools to become the 21st century workforce to meet our increasingly complex environmental issues and problems.
- Provide programs for professional development of K-12 educators and administrators to improve their environmental content knowledge, skill in teaching about environmental issues, including the use of interdisciplinary, field-based, and research-based pedagogical skills while ensuring utilization of this information.
- Engage underserved communities through an inclusive process so that all stakeholders are beneficiaries of environmental education in schools.
- Ensure consistency, accuracy, and excellence in environmental content knowledge.
- Design all programs to ensure access for special needs students.
- Include instructional opportunities for outdoor learning, service learning, career pathways, and STEM programs.
- Ensure the operation of school buildings is conducted in an environmentally sensitive manner. This could include, for example, restoring natural habitats on school grounds or practicing increased energy conservation. Many city, county, or state environmental management agencies are potential partners to develop strategies for new school construction and school renovation projects to meet “green building” design requirements.
Higher Education
Environmental literacy needs to be incorporated into all aspects of higher education, such as education for students, faculty and staff, and also in the functioning of the institutions.
Goal 1: Identify and promote interdisciplinary majors/certificates that address environmental literacy in students
Goal 2: Identify and promote campus organizations that work towards developing environmental literacy in students and in the community
Goal 3: Facilitate professional development for faculty to incorporate aspects of environmental literacy into courses across the institution, not just science courses/departments
Goal 4: Coordinate sustainability initiatives campus wide that include education components to communicate and encourage environmentally responsible behaviors and operations of campus buildings and facilities, for example, campaigns across campus that not only encourage things like alternative transportation efforts, but also green buildings and operations such as water use, energy use, recycling, etc.
- carpooling and alternative transportation to campus
- reduce waste programs on campus including recycling
- efficiency of buildings, water and energy
- Green Team or some kind of monitoring organization on campus to promote sustainability
- low waste at events such as sporting events
- encourage green building such as committing to only building LEED certified facilities
- retrofit old buildings to be more efficient
Administrators
Goal 1: Facilitate the robust implementation, funding, and evaluation of environmental literacy at the local and state levels. (Vicki)
- Endorse the FELP and write a state and/or district environmental literacy implementation plan.
• Assign personnel to coordinate environmental literacy programs at the state/district level.
• Facilitate the implementation, integration, and evaluation of environmental education in existing school curricula.
• Offer professional development programs with associated inservice credits for educators to enhance effective implementation of EE programs/activities.
• Identify traditional and non-traditional opportunities and partnerships, both during and beyond the school day, to integrate environmental education into the school setting.
• Seek and receive support to fund state and regional environmental education initiatives to allow broad implementation across all grade levels and school settings.
• Monitor and report on environmental literacy in Florida public schools.
• Make recommendations and seek changes through regulations, legislation, and other means to promote environmental literacy in Florida as a way to provide sustainability of the EE initiatives that have been included in the school curricula.
Students
Goal 1: Strive to achieve environmental literacy by acquiring the tools needed as a responsible citizen to make decisions about environmentally important topics
• Improve academic achievement on standardized tests and other measures of academic progress by stimulating cognitive development as well as to improve motivation, behavior, and attendance.
• Contribute to the whole child development by participating in activities that require teamwork, problem solving, increased attention span, attention to details, and higher-order thinking skills.
• Develop workforce readiness by practicing college and career ready workplace skills and behaviors such as critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration; and acquiring environmentally related skills that are a 21st century workforce priority.
• Foster environmental sustainability by acquiring basic tools to find solutions and make informed choices in their own lives to achieve and maintain a viable balance between man and the environment.
Nonformal and Informal Educators
According to NAAEE Nonformal Environmental Education Programs: Guidelines for Excellence the above topics are defined as:
**Nonformal Education:** Education about the environment that takes place at nonformal settings such as parks, zoos, nature centers, community centers, youth camps etc., rather than in a classroom or school. Any organized educational activity about the environment that takes place outside the formal education system. (Frequently used interchangeably with the term informal education)
**Informal Education:** Any unstructured environmental education activity outside the formal system where people learn from exhibits, mass media, and everyday living experiences. Also referred to as free choice environmental education; frequently used interchangeably with the term nonformal education.
These types of environmental education may include, but are not limited to: teacher professional development, community-based service organization programs, youth group merit badge requirements, summer camp themes, and elder hostel seminar objectives.
Goal 1: The Goal of nonformal and informal education is not meant to replace the instruction provided in school classrooms, but work in conjunction with it, enriching it and helping students make real-world connections to their community.
- Teach awareness, understanding and appreciation of natural resources.
- Allow program participants to demonstrate learning through site specific stewardship tasks and projects that they can carry over into their own everyday lives.
- Advance environmental and scientific literacy through an interdisciplinary approach to learning
Goal 2: Improve understanding of ecological systems and conservation efforts
- Establish partnerships with like missioned agencies and organizations to support environmental education both on and off site.
- Support local, state and national educational standards.
- Help participants experience wildlife, wildlife habitat, and cultural resources.
Goal 3: Create stewards of our lands, help develop skills, motivate and increase commitment and support in conservation efforts at not only a local level but a global scale.
- Instill a sense of stewardship and an understanding of our conservation history.
- Use experiential learning to connect children to nature.
- Promote self-guided learning and exploration, rather than highly structured activities.
- Provide opportunities to form an emotional attachment to nature,
The overarching goal of environmental education is an environmentally literate citizenry. Education for environmental literacy and sustainability in prekindergarten through twelfth grade (PK-12) schools provides a foundation where young people acquire the critical thinking and problem solving skills they will need to be successful in this changing world.
Wisconsin ELP
Policy Makers
All the commitment in all the categories of this document is not enough without the support of the administrators who make the laws, govern their constituents—whether they be local, state or federal—and provide budgetary funding.
Policy-makers include:
**Local, State and Federal Government** (Governor, State Representatives, Mayors, Municipal Leaders, State Divisions and Departments, Advocacy Groups, Policy Officials, etc.)
---
**Benefits of a Governmental Plan**
- Provides a common vision and set of goals to work toward.
- Guides decision-making, policy making, and priority setting.
- Serves as justification for and purpose behind creating or continuing programs, tools, and resources.
- Sets priorities for development and delivery of educational programs, business plans, and community efforts.
- Supplies a rationale and guidance for funding and research efforts.
Adapted from Wisconsin’s Plan for Environmentally Literate and Sustainable Communities
---
Goal 1: Specifically endorse the inclusion of environmental literacy (EL) in education.
• Provide policy support, guidelines, and/or recommendations at all levels of administration.
• Promote outreach to show public endorsement of EL via various media-print, TV, internet.
Goal 2: Provide funding opportunities to organizations involved in environmental literacy.
• Develop a budget to provide for outreach, funding and grants.
• Create a mechanism to provide grants to organizations and schools.
Goal 3: Use LEEF as a resource for policy makers.
• Review LEEF’s accurate and up-to-date information for help in interpreting policies.
Business and Community Groups and Organizations
Businesses may include sole proprietors, small and large businesses, business associations, and networks while community groups and organizations may include non-government organizations, civic organizations, youth groups, faith-based groups, cultural groups, general public.
Developing a greater sense of the importance and impact of environmental literacy in the workplace can not only shift attitudes and actions, but may also increase productivity, efficiency and profitability.
Delaware and Wisconsin ELPs
Support for guidance in environmental literacy can be useful and relevant. It must consider the mission of the organization or business; provide information that relates to the success of the business; and take into account the needs and goals of future generations of employers and employees. Increasing environmental
literacy in the workplace will also positively affect the health, safety, and welfare of employees and employers.
Note: LEEF can partner with businesses to provide assistance on how best to improve their conservation work (outreach/educational resources).
The Environmental Literacy Plan addresses ways that can effect change in our communities. The following considerations should be taken into account when striving for environmental literacy in the workplace:
- Best practices within a business or industry should be recognized, shared, and replicated.
- Relationships between businesses and their local communities should be created and/or strengthened.
Goal 1: Adopt and implement sustainability as an organizational value.
- Designate, train and equip key personnel to guide internal and external practices that promote natural resource conservation, preservation, or environmentally responsible actions.
- Review internal organizational procedures or models that facilitate environmentally friendly or sustainable behaviors and implement industry-specific best practices.
- Recognize and celebrate efforts and achievements that support the development of environmental literacy within the organization.
- Collaborate with other organizations and agencies to increase sustainable development or environmentally responsible behavior throughout the community or state. (See business resources—SBA and Enviroliteracy Greening Business Guides—for specific examples.)
Goal 2: Become a resource for schools and youth development organizations.
- Identify key staff and provide tools for them to interact with schools and non-formal education (e.g., part of process in NWF Eco-schools USA)
- Provide opportunities for hands-on, real-world experiences for students and youth to connect with their local natural resources.
- Provide technical support to education organizations (school districts, museums, centers, etc.) to leverage and utilize the organization’s assets, expertise, infrastructure and systems.
• Provide financial support to educational and youth organizations that strive to provide opportunities for increasing environmental literacy.
**Tourism Industry**
Tourism is Florida’s number 1 industry; in 2015 it employed 1.2 million Floridians and welcomed 105 million visitors who spent 89 million dollars. People visit Florida for a wide range of reasons, including sunshine and warmth. Activities as diverse as golf, paddle boarding, beaches, boating, fishing, kayaking, wildlife viewing, camping, hiking, biking, golf, theme parks, cruises, fishing, etc.
Florida’s coastal areas are rich in biodiversity and include fragile ecosystems, but are the most popular places to visit, so environmental literacy can play an important role in alleviating some of the negative impacts that millions of visitors may have.
Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the wellbeing of local people is an important aspect of living in the Sunshine State. To minimize impact on our natural resources (e.g., soil erosion, increased pollution, discharges into water bodies, natural habitat loss, and increased pressure on endangered species), we must convey a message of environmental and cultural awareness and respect.
Boosting environmental literacy amongst tourism operators and their customers can also improve the connections visitors make to Florida’s natural resources and ecosystems, while helping to conserve those aspects of Florida that many tourists want to experience when they visit. Here are some things that the tourism industry should consider.
**Goal 1: Show visitors that you care about the environment.**
• Include signage that describes how your business supports and protects local communities and ecosystems, and complies with laws regarding the protection of natural resources.
• Seek and display certifications that show your commitment, so visitors can appreciate and patronize your business.
• Be aware of local environmental issues and incorporate them into your business plan.
Goal 2: Provide environmental education to help staff and visitors see connections between your business, your community, and local species and ecosystems.
• Educate and train yourself and your staff about local environments, species, and issues.
• Connect with local environmental education providers to help your customers learn and appreciate what you have to offer.
• Utilize knowledgeable local volunteers.
Appendix A: References and Resources
Learning resources
605 FW 6 Environmental Education, NAAEE Nonformal Environmental Education Programs: Guidelines for Excellence
https://naaee.org/our-work/programs/guidelines-excellence
Call to Action to reconnect the world’s children with nature:
https://www.education.ne.gov/oec/nature/Call_to_Action.pdf
Business resources –FELP (temporary reference location for relevancy)
http://www.delawarecin.org/ELP%20Sept%202015.pdf
https://www.sba.gov/managing-business/running-business/green-business-guide
http://enviroliteracy.org/environment-society/environmental-resource-economics/the-greening-of-business/
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/sustainability-business-sense-profit-purpose
Tourism Resources
Florida Society for Ethical Ecotourism (FloridaSEE): http://www.floridasee.org/
Ecotourism in Florida: Letting Nature Work for You
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/fr/fr17800.pdf
Visit Florida: www.visitflorida.com/
General Resources
Coyle, K. (2005). *Environmental Literacy in America: What Ten Years of NEET/Roper Research and Related Studies Say About Environmental Literacy in the U.S.* Washington, DC: The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation
About EE and Why It Matters: NAAEE
https://naaee.org/search/site/Environmental%20literacy%20for%20students
Appendix B: Major EE Milestones Florida’s History
1949: Governor’s Resource Use Education Committee.
1970: EE Act in adopted by FL; Positions within DOE w/ budget to develop a state EE program and EE Advisory Council; Completion of Florida Master Plan and Action Guide for State EE.
1973: Bureau of EE within DOE, 8 staff positions, mini-grant program.
1981: League of Environmental Educators in Florida created.
1983: All funding for EE in DOE cut due to lack of complete grant records and support.
1986: Comprehensive EE Act of 1986 adopted; Council on Comprehensive EE established.
1987: Interagency Coordinating Committee (ICC) established and Comprehensive Plan for EE completed.
1989: Amendment Comprehensive EE Act of 1986; Save Our State EE Trust established as dedicated EE funding source, Florida Advisory Council on EE (FACEE), Interagency Coordinating Committee for EE (ICCEE), Dept. of Ed- Office of EE (OEE), EE program in Executive Office of Governor, and EE Foundation of FL manage EE in Florida. Regional Service Projects (RSPs) established.
1991: Budget shortfalls statewide; large portion of funding loss for EE.
1992: ICCEE and EE program in the Governor’s Office are repealed; SCENE, informal State Committee on EE, begins.
1993: Florida Department of Environmental Protection Office of EE established.
1995: Florida Advisory Council on EE (FACEE) became Advisory Council on EE (ACEE).
2000: Funding for RSPs dissolved.
2001: Office of EE at DOE closed. Grant funding enabled DOE to have an EE Specialist on staff.
2004: ACEE ended.
2008: SCENE published the *State of Florida Environmental Primer*.
2009: Florida Environmental Literacy Plan Working Group formed.
2010: Funding for EE Specialist in DOE ended.
Appendix C: History of Environmental Education in Florida
Since the 1970s, the state of Florida has had advances and set-backs in providing support for environmental education at the state level. Seeing the need to protect Florida’s natural resources, policy makers adopted the Environmental Education Act of 1970. This legislation included (1) consultant and staff positions within the Department of Education’s (DOE) Bureau of Curriculum; (2) a budget of for the development of a state EE program; and (3) an EE Advisory Council (Hammond, 1994).
The Advisory Council included state legislators, government department staff, educators, business industry leaders, and representatives from environmental and civic organizations. This group oversaw completion of the *Florida Master Plan and Action Guide for State Environmental Education*. When mandated funds were not being used to fund EE programs, the council successfully lobbied for an amendment to the 1970 EE Act for a separate Bureau of Environmental Education within the DOE. This was passed in 1973. In the remaining 70’s, DOE staff organized state, regional, and local conferences and conducted teacher training workshops throughout Florida on ways to integrate EE into all grade levels and disciplines.
The early 1980’s brought to light possible misspending of mini grant funds due to poor record keeping and involvement of the EE Coordinator in partisan politics possibly alienated a variety of supports resulting in little support for renewed legislative acts for EE. (Hammond, 1994) This resulted in loss for funding EE programs.
EE supporters rallied together to support passage of the 1986 EE Act. This legislation required a *Comprehensive Plan for Environmental Education* (CPEE) and a Council on Comprehensive Environmental Education with members representing a large number of governmental, civic, environmental, and business agencies and organizations. The Interagency Coordinating Committee (ICC) was created to bring representatives from different governmental agencies together to coordinate efforts for supporting EE and implementing sections of the CPEE. The council created a unique structure for implementing the CPEE. In addition to ICC, Office of the Governor, Office of EE in DOE, and Community EE Coordinating Committee each had different roles for implementation. This structure was an exciting innovation among state-level EE initiatives because it linked all relevant government officials and departments and involved the business and the private/non-profit sectors. (Hammonds, 1994)
The *Master Plan and Action Guide for State Environmental Education* resulted in an EE resource clearinghouse of EE information and materials, a Florida Directory for EE Programs, solid waste and recycling awareness specialist positions, a State Agency Resources Directory and Speakers Guide, teacher summer institutes, and a database of available nonformal EE programs.
The 1989 Amendment to the Comprehensive Environmental Education Act as sponsored by Senator Tom McPherson (Chair of the Natural Resources Committee and a member of the Appropriations Committee) and Representative Everett Kelly established a dedicated funding source for EE programs named the Save Our State EE Trust fund (SOS EE Fund) (Hammond, 1994).
The Florida Advisory Council on Environmental Education (FACEE) coordinated the state's EE program by administering a grants program and recommended policies and practices needed to provide quality EE in the state to the legislature. FACEE emphasized EE for the general Florida citizenry and not only school children. FACEE’s membership includes lawmakers, public officials, agency representatives and community, environmental and industry leaders.
The Office of Environmental Education (OEE) in the Department of Education had five full-time staff and conducted curriculum development, teacher education, and the distribution and production of EE materials. This office maintained a computerized clearinghouse of EE materials, established five Regional Service Projects (RSPs) to help deliver EE throughout the state's K-12 schools, community colleges, and state universities.
The Interagency Coordinating Committee for Environmental Education (ICCEE) was composed of representatives of sixteen governmental. This committee was established to reduce overlap in agency programs and to work collectively on special events and projects such as promoting Earth Day and a state provided tree planting campaign.
Executive Office of the Governor (EOG) administered the governor's EE grants program aimed at visitors and residents not served by the public education system. EE publications that the EOG produced included a monthly EE bulletin and the Florida Directory of Environmental Agencies and Organizations.
The Environmental Education Foundation of Florida was established as a non-profit, private corporation to further EE in Florida. The primary goals of the foundation were to raise funds from the private sector for EE programs, and to help foster a better understanding of the relationship between Florida's environment and economy. (Hammond, 1994)
A recession hit all states in 1991. Funding for EE programs was cut to cover general costs of needed public services. Senator George Kirkpatrick introduced Senate Bill 1850 to streamline EE programs and committee’s to improve the output of EE. The ICCEE and EOG were repealed due to duplication of efforts by FACEE. SCENE, State Committee on EE, was established as an informal group to replace ICCEE. At this time, DOE’s Florida’s Fragile Environment five-year program began. This program aimed to improve middle school math, science and technology instruction through teacher professional development events and curriculum development.
Through the 1990’s EE was in a good position in the state of Florida. In 2000 support and funding for EE began to diminish. First loss of funding for RSPs followed by the Office of EE at
DOE in 2001 and later ACEE (originally named FACEE) dissolved in 2004. The members of SCENE published the *State of Florida Environmental Education Primer* in 2008. A copy was given to all legislators and a box delivered to the Governor's Office. The purpose of the primer is to establish a common understanding about various scientific or environmental topics/terms that are either a priority for Florida’s environmental administrators or are commonly used in environmental education literature, wildlife publications or reports.
The introduction of the No Child Left Inside Act of 2009 brought a renewed focus to Florida as a way to reinvigorate support for EE at the state level.
Hammond, W. (1994). State-level Case History: Florida. In A. Ruskey and R. Wilke, *Promoting Environmental Education: An Action Handbook for Strengthening EE in Your State and Community* (pp. 187-196). Stevens Point, WI: University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point Foundation Press, Inc. | d3fa42c1-f9a4-4d4f-ab38-84975289b28d | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.leef-florida.org/resources/Documents/FLORIDA%20ENVIRONMENTAL%20LITERACY%20PLAN%20(draft).pdf | 2021-03-07T02:34:26+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178376006.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20210307013626-20210307043626-00438.warc.gz | 842,460,415 | 7,640 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.977454 | eng_Latn | 0.994143 | [
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
102,
1684,
3223,
4883,
6333,
8476,
9274,
9720,
11281,
11918,
13545,
14852,
17040,
19053,
20770,
22818,
24842,
25690,
26769,
28199,
30212,
32166,
32667,
34014,
35764,
38710,
41748,
42718
] | [
3.671875,
2.109375
] | 1 | 1 |
Introduction
WHAT IS TAJWEED?
Our Approach to the Jazariyyah
There are two main ways in which this text is approached:
- Line by line translation and commentary
- Studying one of its commentaries and moving chapter by chapter
We will be doing a bit of both, but the chapters will be presented in the order in which they appear in Al Muneer fi Ahkam At Tajweed.
Structure
- One, hour long lesson per week.
- Because the slides will be posted on the classroom, only write down what is not on the slides.
- Set aside at least an hour each week to complete the assigned homework.
- The homework prepares you for the exam, as well as counts as extra credit towards the exam.
- Each class session will focus on theory, as well as looking for examples in the Qur’an when applicable.
- We may also do recitation together on some days.
- Recordings will be available.
Outline
• Definition of Tajweed
• The Ruling Concerning Tajweed
• Lahn – two kinds
• Tajweed in the Qur’an and Hadith
• Etiquettes of reciting the Qur’an
• The riwayah of Hafs ‘An ‘Asim
• The speeds of recitation
Definition of Tajweed
- Imam ‘Ali’s definition of Tarteel: تجويد الحروف و معرفة الوقوف
- Makharij ul Huroof
- Sifaat of the Huroof
- Knowing when and how to stop at a word and to begin from it.
The Ruling Concerning Tajweed
Al Fard Al Kifayah
Knowing and memorizing the rules of Tajweed is a communal obligation.
Al Fard Al ‘Ain
Reciting it correctly without changing the meaning is obligatory for every Muslim.
Two Categories of Mistakes: al-Lahn al-Jali
- Substituting a letter for another letter, such as saying س instead of ص
- Putting sukoon on a letter that has a vowel
- Adding a vowel to a letter that is sakin
- Elongating sounds more than necessary
- Omitting a letter of Madd
- Placing a shadda on a letter that does not have shadda
- Not pronouncing the shadda on a letter with shadda
- Changing the harakah on a letter (ex. Changing a fatha to a dhamma, etc.)
- Not pronouncing the Laam in Al - Huroof al-Qamariyyah
Subtle Mistakes: al-Lahn al-Khafi
- Not making ghunna long enough
- Not stretching Al Madd Al Muttasil for a full 4 counts
The Ruling Regarding These Mistakes:
It is sinful to read the Qur’an with mistakes that would alter the meaning.
For subtle mistakes, some scholars say that is haram, while others say it is makrooh if you know the rules and don’t apply them.
Speeds of Recitation
- التحقيق (The slowest speed. Only for learning purposes)
- الحدر (The reciter recites fast, but still applies all the rules of Tajweed.)
- التدوير (This speed is between the two.)
The Merits of Reciting the Qur’an
Hadith
'Uthman reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The best of you is the one who learns the Qur'an and teaches it." [al-Bukhari]
'Aisha reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Someone who recites the Qur'an and is fluent in it, is with the noble pious angels. Someone who recites the Qur'an and stammers in it has two rewards as it is difficult for him." [Agreed upon]
Abu Musa al-Ash'ari reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The metaphor of a believer who recites the Qur'an is that of a citron - its scent is fragrant and its taste is good. The metaphor of a believer who does not recite the Qur'an is that of a date - it has no scent but its taste is sweet. The metaphor of a hypocrite who recites the Qur'an is that of basil - its scent is fragrant but its taste is bitter. The metaphor of a hypocrite who does not recite the Qur'an is that of colocynth - it has no scent and its taste is bitter." [Agreed upon]
'Abdullah ibn 'Amr ibn al-'As reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "It will be said to those who know the Qur'an, 'Recite and ascend. Recite slowly as you did in the world below. Your station will be at the last verse you recite.'" [Abu Dawud and at-Tirmidhi]
Reciting with a Beautiful Voice
Abu Hurayra said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, 'Allah does not listen to anything so gladly as He listens to a Prophet with a good voice chanting the Qur'an aloud.'" [Agreed upon]
Abu Musa al-Ash'ari reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said to him, "You have been given one of the flutes of the family of Da'ud." [Agreed upon]
Ibn 'Umar reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The metaphor of someone who knows the Qur'an is that of a hobbled camel. If he attends to it, it stays with him. If he lets it go, it wanders away." [Agreed upon]
The Etiquette of Recitation
Before Reciting
External Aspects
One must be in a state of wudu
The place where one is reciting, and one’s clothes should be clean
One must cover their awra
Should face the qiblah if possible
Use the miswak
Internal Aspects
Reflect on the greatness of Allah Ta’ala and the greatness of the Qur’an.
During Recitation
- Say Istiadha.
- Apply all the rules of Tajweed.
- Make your voice and recitation beautiful and recite in a rhythm.
Choose a speed of recitation, and apply the rules in all of the speeds.
Make sajdah at-tilawah after reciting an ayah that requires it.
Recite Surah Al-Fatihah and the first five ayat of Surah Al-Baqarah after you complete a khatam of the Quran.
Reflect on the Ayat as you are reciting them.
Respond to the ayat:
Say “SubhanAllah” when the verses speak about praising Allah.
Make dua to be included amongst the people of Jannah when reciting ayat about Jannah
Make dua for protection from the Hell Fire when reciting ayat about it.
General Etiquettes
If we work in teaching the Quran, then we should try to have the best Akhlaq.
We should have a daily wird that we recite from the Quran.
Ar Rasul (SAW) gave different assignments to different Sahaba (RA). The time frame ranged from 3 days to 40 days.
Protect ourselves from eating Haram.
Be careful about what we say, and the language that we use.
Protect our hands and feet from committing sin.
The Riwayah of Hafs
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE IMAMS
Imam ‘Āsim
‘Āsim ibn Bahdalah Abū al-Najūd
Held the highest sanad in Kufa. He took the place of his teacher, Abu Abdur Rahman As-Sulami, when he passed away.
He was also a scholar of Grammar and a jurist. Ibn Jazari writes that Imam Asim was also a muhaddith, and narrations from him can be found in the seven famous books of Hadith.
He was also a Tabi’i. He met Sayyiduna Harith ibn Hassaan (RA).
He loved to offer prayers so much that if he learned that there was a masjid close by, he would stop to offer nawafil prayers.
Two main rawis (narrators): Imam Hafs and Imam Shuba
Imam ‘Asim
Imam ‘Asim was blind. Someone would have to hold his hand when he needed to go somewhere.
Imam Asim was an extremely patient person.
Story of when he fell.
When he was about to pass away, he was reciting the following ayah with perfect Tajweed.
ثمَّ رُدُوْا إِلَى اللّهِ مَوْلَاهُمْ الْحَقِّيْ أَلَا لَهُ الْحُكْمُ وَهُوَ أَسْرَعُ الْخَلِسِينَ
Passed away in Kufa in 127 A.H.
Why do Hafs and Sh’uba differ?
He taught Imam Hafs the narration that he learned from Abu Abdur Rahman As-Sulami, a famous Tab’i who learned from Ali ibn Abi Talib (RA).
He taught Imam Shuba the narration that he learned from Zir ibn Hubaysh who learned from Abdullah ibn Masud (RA).
Imam Abu Hanifa, and Imam Hamza were also students of Imam Asim. Khalil ibn Ahmed An-Nahwi, the one who introduced the symbols that we use in the Quran today, was also a student of Imam Asim.
Imam Sh’uba
Shu‘bah ibn ‘Ayyāsh ibn Sālim al-Hannāṭ al-Asadī
Although there are many other names that are assigned to him.
He was born in 95 A.H.
He was also a muhaddith and a jurist. He narrated more ahadith than Imam Hafs.
Imam Sh’uba made three khatams with Imam ‘Asim.
Sometimes, he had to wade in chest deep water in order to reach his teacher.
Story of his death. Completed the Quran 18,000 times.
He passed away in 193 A.H.
Imam Hafs
Hāfṣ ibn Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīrah ibn Abī Dāwūd al-Asadī al-Kūfī al-Bazzāz
He was the stepson of Imam ‘Asim.
Recited the Quran to Imam ‘Asim multiple times.
Had the most knowledge amongst the rawis of Imam ‘Asim of his narration.
He taught Qiraat in Baghdad and in Makkah Al Mukarramah
Was born in 90 A.H. and passed away 180 A.H.
Qari Muhi Al-Islam Panipati writes that it is a sign of the acceptance of Imam Hafs with Allah Subhana Wa Taala that his riwayah is so prevalent. Most huffaz have memorized in the riwayah of Hafs.
Slides prepared by Saima Yacoob | ba4b002f-ab7e-46ec-8cf4-4d147605f9c2 | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://recitewithlove.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/chapter-1-introduction-1.pdf | 2020-10-29T19:35:55+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107905777.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20201029184716-20201029214716-00423.warc.gz | 486,231,515 | 2,346 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.955513 | eng_Latn | 0.99714 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
30,
365,
871,
1086,
1282,
1503,
2022,
2392,
2596,
2631,
3995,
4710,
4739,
5042,
5428,
5719,
6141,
6188,
6773,
7167,
7647,
8087,
8633,
8666
] | [
3.0625
] | 1 | 0 |
| Topic | Scripture References | Page |
|---------------|--------------------------------------|------|
| Acceptance | Colossians 3:12-13 | 4 |
| Appearance | 1 Samuel 16:7; Matthew 23:25-26 | 10 |
| Attitude | Ephesians 4:31-32 | 19 |
| Bullying | Matthew 5:43-44 | 23 |
| Change | Matthew 6:31-33 | 27 |
| Character | Romans 5:3-5 | 33 |
| Choices | Romans 12:1-2 | 37 |
| Christmas | Matthew 23:27 | 41 |
| Community | Acts 2:42-43 | 44 |
| Confidence | Jeremiah 17:5-8 | 47 |
| Depression | Psalm 40 | 53 |
| Discipleship | Matthew 8:18-22; Matthew 5:3-10 | 58 |
| Distractions | Hebrews 12:1-2; Genesis 37-50 | 63 |
| Doubt | Psalm 10 | 71 |
| Easter | Luke 24:1-8; Mark 8:31 | 78 |
| Easter | Matthew 28:1–10 | 81 |
| Encouragement | 1 Thessalonians 5:11; Philippians 1:3-11 | 88 |
| Evangelism | Matthew 13:44 | 94 |
| Faith | Psalm 119:105; Hebrews 11:1 | 97 |
| Family | Joshua 24:15 | 100 |
| Fear | Isaiah 41:9-10 | 105 |
| Topic | Scripture References | Page |
|-----------------------|---------------------------------------------|------|
| Forgiveness | Matthew 18:21–35; Colossians 3:13 | 111 |
| Freedom (Memorial Day)| Luke 4:14-21 | 118 |
| Friendship | Proverbs 17:9; Colossians 3:13 | 126 |
| Fruits of the Spirit | John 15:5; Galatians 5:20, 22–23 | 128 |
| Giving | Luke 6:38 | 134 |
| God’s Blessings | Psalm 1:1-3 | 139 |
| God’s Love | Romans 8:38-39 | 147 |
| Grace | Romans 6:23 | 154 |
| Happiness | Matthew 5:1-12 | 160 |
| Honesty | Luke 16:1-15 | 168 |
| Hope | Psalm 25:5; Psalm 42:5 | 174 |
| Humility | Matthew 20:25 | 178 |
| Identity | 1 Peter 2:9-10 | 183 |
| Integrity | Psalm 139:23-24 | 186 |
| Jesus | Mark 1:35-39 | 193 |
| Job | Job 38-39 | 200 |
| Joshua | Joshua 1:9 | 207 |
| Joy | Romans 15:13 | 214 |
| Judging Others | John 8: 3-11; Ephesians 2:8-9 | 218 |
| Kindness | Colossians 3:12; Job 6:14 | 226 |
| Labels | 1 Samuel 16:7 | 234 |
| Leadership | Daniel 1 | 242 |
| Lent | Luke 4:1-13; Philippians 2 | 247 |
| Missions | Acts 1:1-11 | 258 |
| Moses | Exodus 14: 21-31 | 265 |
| Topic | Scripture References | Page |
|-----------------------|---------------------------------------------|------|
| Mother's Day | Proverbs 31 | 270 |
| Nehemiah | Nehemiah 1:1-4 | 277 |
| New Year's Lesson | Deuteronomy 6:1-12; 8:11 | 281 |
| Peace | Matthew 5:9 | 287 |
| Pentecost | Acts 2:1-13 | 292 |
| Perseverance | Hebrews 12:1-2; 2 Timothy 4:7 | 298 |
| Prayer | 1 Peter 2:9-10 | 306 |
| Pride | Luke 18:9-14 | 309 |
| Priorities | Psalm 90:12; Ephesians 5:15-17 | 315 |
| Quiet Time | James 4:8-10 | 324 |
| Relationship with God | Luke 10:38-42 | 331 |
| Respect | 1 Samuel 24:8-10 | 336 |
| Self-Image | Psalm 139:13-15 | 339 |
| Social Media | Colossians 3:16-17 | 345 |
| St. Patrick’s Day | Romans 10:13-15; Romans 12:6-8 | 351 |
| Stress | Matthew 6:31-34 | 356 |
| Temptation | 1 Corinthians 10:12-13 | 365 |
| Thankfulness | Colossians 2:6-7; Ephesians 5:20 | 372 |
| Thanksgiving | Luke 17:11-19 | 380 |
| Trust | Proverbs 3:5-6 | 385 |
| Unity | Galatians 3:26-28 | 395 |
| Valentine’s Day (Love)| John 3:16 | 400 |
| Who God Says You Are | Exodus 14:14; Ephesians 2:10 | 405 |
| Wisdom | Proverbs 1:7 | 413 |
| Worry | Matthew 6:25-27 | 418 |
Bottom Line: There are things about ourselves and others that we struggle to accept. God chose you because He loves you for who you are. Just as He made allowances for your faults, He expects you to make allowances for the faults of others.
Bible: “Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.” - Colossians 3:12-13
OPENING GAME
SUPPLIES
Paper
Pens/crayons/markers
Table/flat surface
Blindfolds
Space Requirements
Room upfront for four-eight people to work side by side at tables
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Divide contestants into pairs.
One partner will be blindfolded.
The other will not be allowed to make any noises whatsoever.
During the allotted time (1-2 minute rounds recommended) the partners must work together despite their individual “flaws” to have the blindfolded person draw the items listed on a sheet of paper that only his/her partner can see.
The non-blindfolded partner helps the blindfolded partner by giving advice and direction, but cannot do the actual drawing him/herself.
The Team that finishes drawing the most amount of items wins.
In the event of a tie, the leader (or a panel of judges) can judge the quality artwork to determine the winner.
**Items to Draw**
Cross, Smiley face, Heart, Stick figure, Tree, Bird, Cat, Football, Chair, Capital letter “G”, Cell phone, Flower
**Game Tie-in**
In this game, students with different “flaws” were forced to work together to overcome them.
Though they probably wanted to, they couldn’t change their partner’s flaws just as they couldn’t change their own.
Instead, they had to make “allowances” for them to move on and complete the challenge at hand.
**TEACH**
Doesn’t it just stink when there’s something you don’t like, but there’s nothing you can do about it?
Sometimes, there are things about ourselves that we wish we could change.
Maybe we don’t like our physical appearance.
We just don’t feel like we are attractive enough like we don’t live up to the unrealistic expectations of popular culture.
Sometimes there is something that we wished that we could be better at, but no matter how hard we try, we just don’t improve, at least not in a way that satisfies.
What about when your issue is with someone else?
Maybe there’s a person or group of people in your life with whom you just can’t get along.
It could be an attitude issue or perhaps this person treats you poorly.
In the scenarios I have described, the circumstances might be different, but they point to the same unfortunate truth: we can’t always make things (people) the way we want.
Sure, we can do our best to minimize the problem through fashion choices, avoiding the activity we struggle at or ignore the people who bother us, but they are still there.
Life is often outside of our ability to control.
That's just... well... Life. Cheerful topic, huh?
Don't you wish I could just give you the secret answer that will solve all of life's problems?
In truth, I can, but it may not be the solution you are hoping for.
The solution boils down to one word—acceptance.
**Accepting Others**
I'm going to start with the second scenario first.
Take a moment to close your eyes.
Who is the person or persons in your life that you are having a hard time accepting?
Why do you have a hard time accepting this person(s)?
It is entirely possible that you have every reason to dislike this person.
He/she might treat you poorly, might do things to you that Jesus would frown upon. That, however, doesn't change God's solution.
“Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.” - Colossians 3:12-13 (NLT)
Let’s look at a few key points in this verse.
**God chose you to be holy.**
The Creator of the Universe looked down at the billions of people that have walked the earth since He formed it and said, “I choose you.”
That’s pretty amazing.
He chose you for a purpose—to be holy.
Because of this He expects us to live a certain way—to be merciful, kind, humble, gentle, and patient.
**Make allowances for each other’s faults.**
People aren’t perfect.
If you are willing to be honest, neither are you.
Everyone has faults.
As much as we would love to be able to fix them, learning to accept others requires us to make allowances—make room—for other people’s faults.
**Forgive like Jesus.**
Finally, the key to learning how to accept others is to forgive like Jesus.
We could spend a lifetime describing the ways that Jesus has forgiven us.
Let’s hone in on just a couple.
First, Jesus forgave when we didn’t deserve it.
The just reward for our sinful lives (yes, we all sin) is death—an eternity separated from God.
Instead, He forgives everyone who follows Him.
Second, He forgives and *forgets*.
Boy, isn’t that the hardest part of forgiveness?
If we are to learn to accept others, we must forgive them even if they don’t deserve it.
We must also not continue to hold it against them for how they treated us.
**Accepting Others**
I decided to finish with this because, in my experience, accepting one’s self is the hardest thing to do.
We all have flaws, but even though we know this, it is hard to get past the flaws we see in ourselves.
Popular culture often doesn’t help with this.
For someone to truly live up to the “ideals” we see in the media, he/she would have to be obscenely rich, have access to the best plastic surgeons in the world, and be willing to sell his/her very soul to achieve “perfection.”
Here’s the saddest truth of all: there are plenty of people in the world right now with the means to do just that, and guess what, they are some of the most unhappy people alive.
The truth is that God doesn’t make mistakes.
He created you and loves you for who you are right now.
Next time you have a chance, look in a mirror and study the person looking back at you.
This person is so amazing in God’s eyes that He was willing to sacrifice His only Son to brutal torture so that He could spend an eternity with you.
Let’s look at a few things the Bible says about how He sees you.
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” - Ephesians 2:10 (NLT)
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” - Psalms 139:14 (NIV)
“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” - John 3:16 (NLT)
Look at some of those key words: God’s masterpiece, fearfully and wonderfully made.
Those words describe you. God loved you so much that He sent His only Son to die for you. You’re not perfect.
You may not be the person you’d like to be, but never forget that God would do it all over again just for you.
You are His masterpiece.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
God has already accepted you.
Now, it’s on you to start accepting yourself.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Which is harder for you, accepting others or accepting yourself? Why?
How can you start making allowances for other people’s faults starting today?
What does it mean to forgive like Jesus?
What does it mean to be “fearfully and wonderfully made”?
What are some ways that you feel God has shown you that He loves you just the way you are today?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON APPEARANCE
Bible: 1 Samuel 16:7; Matthew 23:25-26
Overview: Students spend more time on their outward appearance than they do on most other things in life. The problem with this is that people are the ones who look at the outward appearance; God looks at the heart. He’s more concerned with your character than how you look on the outside.
OPENING GAME: FRUIT BOX MIX-UP
SUPPLIES
One coffee cup that is clean on the outside, but dirty on the inside
One coffee cup that is dirty on the outside, but clean on the inside
A mask of a famous person or character
Ten shoeboxes:
- Two that say lemon on the outside
- Two that say orange on the outside
- Two that say banana on the outside
- Two that say apple on the outside
- Two that say lime on the outside
Two lemons
Two oranges
Two bananas
Two apples
Two limes
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Before the game begins, put a piece of fruit in each box, and make sure the fruit inside the box is different than what the box says.
Scatter the boxes around the room. Break the group up into two teams.
Tell the teams that they have to find the labeled boxes around the room and gather one orange, one apple, one lemon, one lime, and one banana and bring it back to you.
The first team to do that will win.
Let the teams start looking.
If they bring you back the correct boxes without opening them, tell them that’s incorrect.
Eventually, someone will open a box and realize that the boxes are labeled wrong.
The teams will then have to scramble to figure out which boxes contain which fruits.
The first team to bring you all five fruits wins.
TEACH
Wasn’t that game tricky?
You didn’t know it, but the outsides of the boxes were totally wrong.
It didn’t matter that you brought me boxes that looked like they were the right ones from the outside, it was what was on the inside of the boxes that mattered.
How much time do you spend on your appearance?
Think about it—between your face, your hair, your clothes and shoes…that’s a lot of time that you spend every single day.
How much time do you spend thinking about your appearance?
Thinking about if people will like the way you look, or if you should try to look like someone else.
Thinking about how you could fit in or stand out more with your appearance.
Sometimes, we probably spend more time thinking and worrying about our appearance than we actually do on our actual appearance.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with spending time on your appearance.
It’s okay to want to look nice, and it’s a good thing to care about your outward appearance. It just shouldn’t be your focus.
So if outward appearance shouldn’t be your main focus about yourself, what should be?
Your heart should be your main focus.
Why?
Because the heart is what God looks at.
He doesn’t look at the outward appearance, like we do.
No, He looks straight at the heart.
“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’” - 1 Samuel 16:7
In this verse, Samuel was choosing the next king.
God could have told Him anything about choosing the next king—He could have just told him who the next king was supposed to be.
Instead, He tells Samuel to not look at appearance or height, because that’s not what He looks at.
He looks at the heart.
This verse says that people look at the outward appearance.
So when we put all of this effort and time and thought into our outward appearance, it’s obviously for people.
I mean, you already knew that, right?
It’s not like you thought that one day you were going to walk outside and bump into Jesus and say, “Oh, look how nice I look for you today!”
Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to look nice.
When it starts to become a problem is when you focus so much on your outer appearance that you forget to focus on your heart.
It’s no good to put all of your time and energy into making sure you look good on the outside if you’re not going to have any time or energy left to make sure you look good on the inside.
Get out two coffee cups.
I need a volunteer to come up here.
Okay, so I thought we’d share a cup of coffee together.
Sound good?
Now, I only have two cups here.
Since you’re my guest, I’ll let you pick first.
*Hold up the coffee cup that’s dirty on the outside first, and then the coffee cup that’s clean on the outside.*
Which one would you want to drink out of?
*If the student chooses the clean coffee cup, show them the inside.*
*Have them pass it around to the rest of the group.*
Isn’t that gross?
What if you came over to my house and we sat down for dinner, and I served you a drink in that cup?
It would be disgusting, right?
Why, though?
I worked hard to clean the outside of it, since I knew you were coming over.
The table looks nice.
Everything looks great from the outside—does it really matter what the inside looks like?
Of course it does!
You would never drink out of that nasty cup!
But that’s how we act in our lives, isn’t it?
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” – Matthew 23:25-26
The Pharisees were people who prided themselves on being very religious and “godly” in front of other people.
They publicly paraded around following all of the Biblical rules.
They made sure everyone around them knew that they were doing what was right, and they were very quick to condemn others who weren’t doing what was right.
These people were all about appearance.
But Jesus is quick to call them out here.
He says that even though the outside is clean and looks right, the inside is filthy and full of greed and selfishness.
Ouch. That’s tough to hear, isn’t it?
Mostly because we’re very guilty of acting like that sometimes.
We look the part, dress the part, and act the part.
We go to church, we raise our hands during worship, and we don’t take part in things at school or with friends that we know are wrong.
Hey, we’ll even be quick to tell everyone that they’re wrong for doing those things.
But all of that means nothing if our heart isn’t right.
Jesus doesn’t care how you look to other people; He cares about how you look to Him.
And in order to look good to Him, we’re going to have to make sure our hearts are in the right place. So how do we do that?
We act like Jesus.
Do you think it’s possible to try your best to be like Jesus and to still have a heart that’s in the wrong place?
I really don’t think so.
So if you want to work on your heart, here’s a great place to start: look at the heart of Jesus.
Jesus loved others.
He loved others so much so that He was willing to come to a world filled with sin and die for us, so that we could spend forever with Him.
If that’s not love, then love doesn’t exist.
All throughout Jesus’ life, we can see how much He loved others.
He spent so much time not only telling others about God and His great love, but showing them as well.
If you want your heart to be like the heart of Jesus, you have to love others.
And guess what…it takes hard work to love others.
Sure, we don’t usually talk about loving others as something that takes a lot of effort.
But if we’re honest, we know that it does.
Loving others means putting them above yourself.
It means taking the time to talk to them, pray for them, and show them love, even when you’re busy.
It means making sure the things you say and do are said and done in love.
It takes a lot of work.
**Jesus knew the Word of God and lived according to it.**
His entire time on earth, Jesus lived out the Bible.
When you look at the heart of Jesus, you see the Word of God.
He followed it, quoted it, told other people about it.
It was obviously very important to Him.
It should be just as important to you.
You should take the time to read the Bible, to learn the Bible, to pray about what the Bible says and what God is trying to say to you through His Word.
You cannot have a heart like Jesus without knowing what His heart was like—so read about it!
**Jesus served others.**
Jesus didn’t have to serve anyone—He was the Son of God.
But all through His life, we see Jesus serving others.
Even when He was tired, He would take the time to help others.
On the last night before He was captured to be crucified, He got on His knees and washed His disciples’ feet, showing them how important it was to be a servant.
Jesus had a servant’s heart.
He wanted people to accept Him, but He did not parade around acting as if He were more important than everyone else.
Instead, He got on their level and served them, showing such a clear picture of how much God loved them.
Serving others is never going to be an easy choice, but it is the right choice.
Do you think that it was easy for Jesus to wash His disciples’ feet when He knew what was about to happen to Him?
I don’t think so.
But He still did it, because that was His heart.
If you want to reflect the heart of Jesus, you’re going to have to have a servant’s heart.
Above all, Jesus cared about God’s will.
Jesus was all God, but He was also human.
The night before He was captured, He knew what was going to happen.
He knew how terrible it was going to be, and He asked God, if it was at all possible, to stop what was about to happen.
But then He said, “Not my will, but Yours be done.”
Even in the face of great horror and pain, Jesus was more concerned with the will of God than anything else.
There are going to be times in your life where you think that you know best.
There are going to be times where nothing seems like it could be better than the plan that you have for your life.
And even in those times, you need to mimic Jesus and say, “Not my will, but Yours be done.”
You cannot have a heart like Jesus without following God’s will.
You cannot follow God’s will if you’re too busy thinking about how your plan is better than His.
It takes a lot of trust, but you have to care about God’s will more than you care about your own.
So no, having a heart like Jesus is not easy. It’s going to take some work.
Having a good outward appearance takes work, right?
Of course it does.
You don’t just roll out of bed in the morning and never think about how you look to other people.
It’s time to start working as hard on the inside as you work on the outside.
**Teach - Wrap Up**
Okay guys, I have an announcement to make.
*Put on the mask.*
I am now [character’s name].
I look like him/her, so obviously, that’s who I am, right?
Do you believe me?
How silly is that?
To act like you guys would really think that’s who I was, just because my face looked like them.
That’s crazy!
But that’s how we act sometimes.
I hope that tonight has shown you how the outside appearance does not matter nearly as much as the inside appearance, your heart, matters.
We’ve talked about four different ways we can try to copy the heart of Jesus.
I really want to challenge you guys to try your best to follow Him in those four areas this week.
If you do, your heart will start looking more and more like Jesus.
And that’s going to look better than your outside appearance could ever look.
End in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Do you spend more time thinking about your outward appearance or your heart?
Have you ever thought about which one God is more concerned with?
When you look at Jesus, do you think He was more concerned with His outward appearance or with His heart?
What are some things that you think you need to change about your “inside appearance?”
How can you work on loving people like Jesus loved them?
Do you spend time reading the Bible? Do you think that if you spent more time reading the Bible, your heart would be in better shape?
Do you think that knowing what the Bible says is important?
How can you serve others more?
Do you trust that God’s will is better than your own? Why or why not?
Do you think that having a heart like Jesus is possible? How are you going to try to do that this week?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON ATTITUDE
Bible: Ephesians 4:31-32
Use this lesson to teach students that they need to get rid of bad attitudes and instead have an attitude like Jesus.
SUPPLIES
Two clear containers
Cereal—enough to fill one of the clear containers all the way up
Sand or dirt—enough to fill one of the clear containers all the way up
Bowls
Tape
OPENING GAME - Cereal Pour
Before the game, place a piece of tape about three-quarters of the way up on each clear container.
Split the group into two teams. Have each team line up in front of a clear container. Give each student a bowl.
Set the cereal and sand or dirt up (either on the floor or on a table) behind the students.
The student at the end of the line must run to the table and fill their bowl with cereal.
They then must pour it from their bowl into the next student’s bowl, who then pours it into the next student’s bowl, etc. This continues until it gets to the final student, who has to pour it into the clear container.
Once the final student pours it into the container, the student at the end of the line must run and fill their bowl with sand or dirt, and it must make its way through all the students’ bowls, just like the cereal did.
Continue this, each time alternating cereal and sand/dirt.
The first team to fill their clear container to the taped off line wins!
After the game, discuss these questions:
Do you normally eat this kind of cereal?
Would you have eaten that cereal before the dirt got mixed in?
What about after we played the game—would you eat it now?
After the game, say:
Well, that cereal certainly doesn’t look so good now, does it? Now that’s it’s all mixed in with the dirt, I don’t know that I’ll ever look at it the same way again!
Have you ever had an experience where a bad attitude just really ruined your day? I think we’ve all had those types of days. It didn’t matter what else had happened, once the bad attitude came, everything was ruined.
Just like the dirt in the game we played, when you add a bad attitude to the mix—even if it’s a really good mix—it turns things sour.
Read Ephesians 4:31-32
“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
Bitterness, rage, anger, slander…those things all sound like a bad attitude, don’t they?
And if we’re honest, those are all things we’ve experienced every now and then.
I know I have!
But those are the kinds of things that our attitude should not reflect.
And do you know why that is?
Because Jesus didn’t have that kind of attitude! At the end of that verse, it says we’re supposed be kind and compassionate and forgiving.
Why? Because that’s how Jesus was!
Hold up one of the clear containers. Now, what if I were to pour you up a nice, big bowl of this cereal. Would you want to eat it?
Of course you wouldn’t! It would taste gross because it has been tainted by the dirt and sand.
It doesn’t matter that this cereal is actually really good on its own, because it’s been ruined by the dirt.
It’s the same way with our attitude.
It doesn’t matter if we’re acting like Christ—being kind and compassionate, obeying our parents, and coming to church on Sundays—if we also have a bad attitude. Bad attitudes ruin everything else. Just like the dirt, they mix into every other part of your life and take away from how good things are.
So what are you supposed to do?
Focus on Jesus.
Keep your eyes on him!
When you do, he begins to transform you to become more like him.
The Holy Spirit does his work in you, changing you to become more like Jesus in your attitude (and actions).
He rids you of anger, bitterness, and anything like that that causes your attitude to be bad instead of like Jesus.
When you focus on Jesus, he gives you a kind and compassionate attitude.
An attitude like Jesus is full of love and grace instead of hatred and bitterness.
Which attitude would you rather have?
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
If we’re supposed to have an attitude like Jesus, what are some things we should be doing?
Do you think the attitude you have now is one that Jesus would be proud of?
How can you focus on Jesus in your everyday life?
How can you work on having an attitude that is more kind and compassionate?
Do you have any of those things that the verse talked about—bitterness, anger, those things—in your attitude right now? Do you want to get rid of them?
**WRAP-UP**
As Christians, we model our lives after Jesus. This includes our attitudes as well as our actions.
When things don’t go our way, it’s always going to be easiest to just have a bad attitude.
That’s why you’ve got to make the decision to have a Christ-like attitude and to get rid of your bad attitude, once and for all!
And the way to do that is to keep your eyes on Jesus. Focus on him.
When people look at you, they’re going to see someone that makes Christ look appealing to them—like the cereal before the game—or they’re going to see someone with a bad attitude mixed in, which makes Christ seem less appealing to them.
You are the only one who gets to choose what they see!
So choose to have a Christ-like attitude. You won’t regret it!
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON BULLYING
Bible: Matthew 5:43-44 (MSG)
Anyone here ever struggle with loving someone or something? (Have audience give you some examples)
Struggle with loving school?
Struggle with loving yourself?
Struggle with loving that boy or girl who is always pointing out your flaws...
Always on your case about something...
Always being mean?
Let’s run with that last one!
How do you deal with someone who is always picking on you...
Always spreading rumors...
Always threatening you?
What do you do when someone is bullying you?
Wow! This is a tough one. On one hand you don’t like the emotional and sometimes physical stuff that comes from being bullied...
But you don’t want to speak up because you don’t want the bullying to continue or get worse! You don’t want to get labeled a rat or a snitch!
Bullying makes it hard to love.
TEACH
What constitutes bullying?
It’s the intentional tormenting…upsetting…in physical, verbal, or psychological ways.
It can range from hitting, shoving, name-calling, threats, and mocking to extorting money and possessions.
Some kids bully by shunning others and spreading rumors about them. Others use social media or text messaging to taunt others or hurt their feelings.
Any of this sounds familiar to anyone? Is any of this happening to you? Are you doing any of this to someone else?
**How do we love like Jesus did while we are being bullied?**
How did Jesus respond when he was persecuted?
He showed love…and even said “Father forgive them they know not what they do” while he was hanging on the cross!
When people were intentionally trying to trick him into saying the wrong thing so they could get him thrown in jail or killed, how did Jesus respond?
He remained calm, allowed the spirit of God to guide his thoughts, and responded in love.
What did Jesus do when he was betrayed by one of his closest friends? He allowed himself to be arrested and didn’t fight back.
You may be saying, but yeah that is Jesus…he was perfect!
But who are we trying to be like more and more each day? Jesus!
We may never respond exactly like he did in every situation, but we can strive to! We also need to remember that all the persecution Jesus went through was for a purpose.
When we are bullied, it’s not the same as the persecution Jesus went through. When we are bullied…it’s not God’s will!
It’s someone being mean and malicious…it’s not right! And we need to make sure we are doing something about it.
**Bullying is wrong and needs to be stopped!**
So what do we do?
1. **We need to realize that first bullying is wrong!**
Whether you are being bullied or you are doing the bullying.
Just because you don’t do things or act a certain way doesn’t mean that you need to be teased.
Just because you come from a certain family or neighborhood doesn’t mean you deserve to be ridiculed.
Just because you took a stand on a certain issue isn’t justification for people to hurl insults at you on Facebook or in text messages.
2. Bullying needs to be stopped!
You really need to talk to an adult about what is going on. I know you will be scared to open up and even admit that you are being bullied.
I know you will be afraid of what happens when the person who is bullying you finds out you told someone.
But too many people just hid from the fact they are being bullied and over time it takes a toll on you emotionally, mentally, and sometimes physically.
After you tell an adult that you are being bullied…and they take the necessary action against the person who is bullying you, where do you go from there?
More than likely you will have feelings about the person who was bullying you, so what’s next?
Forgive and Love
Let’s see what Jesus has to say about forgiving and loving in Matthew.
Read Matthew 5: 43-44 (MSG)
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.”
Now will this happen overnight? Probably not.
There must be something inside you that wants to forgive the person who bullied you. And every time you see that person and you get angry or feel shameful again, you ask God for the power to forgive them…again and again.
If you were the person who was doing the bullying, you need to ask for forgiveness from the person you were bullying.
You need to be sympathetic to that person’s hurts and feelings towards you.
Bullying happens everywhere. School, work, online…
Doesn’t mean it’s right…or that is needs to be tolerated.
We just need to be the people of God who can come to place to where we no longer treat people differently because of their culture, interest, or beliefs…
And we also need to be people of God who can love our family, friends, and the people who may have bullied us.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What is one of your pet peeves…what gets under your skin?
What is your definition of bullying?
How hard is it to love someone that is bullying you? Why?
What are some things that could happen as a result of being bullied?
Why is it important to forgive and love your enemies?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON CHANGE
Bible: “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” - Matthew 6:31-33
Bottom Line: Life is full of change. This is never more true than during the teen years. This season of constant new beginnings can lead to a lot of stress and worry. God knows what we need. If He cares so much about something small like a flower or a bird, what do you think that says about how much He wants to take care of you?
OPENING GAME
SUPPLIES
Enough plastic spoons for everyone
Peanuts
Space Requirements
Large enough space for teams to stand in a line
Game Description
Split your entire group into equal teams and have each team stand in a line.
Each person should have a plastic spoon.
The must put the tip of the spoon in their mouths (so that the actual spoon portion is out) and their hands behind their backs.
The first person in each line will start with a peanut on their spoon.
Once you tell them to go, they must, without using their hands or anything else, pass the peanut to the person behind them.
If the peanut falls, you must start all over again.
The first team to get the peanut to the end of the line, wins!
Game Tie-in
Having to start over can be stressful.
Though in this game, starting over came after a mistake, it often is just a part of life.
Starting over comes with the many changes in life that come our way.
TEACH
Life is filled with change. No one understands that more than a teenager. Think about it.
Look over the last 10 years or so of your life.
How many times have you had to start a "new beginning"?
Grades change every year which means new teachers, new classmates.
Many of you change school at least three times (elementary to middle to high school).
When you get to middle school and high school, you change your entire learning routine by having multiple teachers that teach different subjects.
There are the changes with friends.
The friends that were your closest in say 2nd grade are most likely not the same by the time you are a sophomore in high school.
Finally, your teen years end with your biggest change yet.
You leave the part of your life you’ve grown to understand in high school to the vastly different worlds of college or the career field.
This period of constant change can be equal parts scary and exciting.
There are so many unknowns involved in new beginnings.
Will I be able to handle the change?
How will people like me at my new school?
What will be expected of me?
For those who find change to be difficult (which is probably all of us at some point or another), the scariest part is that we can’t stop the changes from coming.
We are left with having to adapt or get left behind.
How can we learn to navigate this constantly changing world?
What are some ways that we can start our "new beginnings" on a good fit.
Let’s look at a few keys from the Bible.
Don’t Worry
Ever heard the saying, “Don’t worry, be happy”?
I’m not a fan.
It sounds like painfully simple advice that just isn’t realistic.
When something is looming on the horizon—maybe it’s a change you know is coming that you are dreading—isn’t it hard to do anything but worry?
As hard as it is to fathom, one of the keys to starting a new beginning on the right foot is to surrender your worry to God.
In Matthew 6, Jesus paints an amazing picture of the freedom from worrying we can find in Him.
“That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing?” - Matthew 6:25 (NLT)
We are going to look at a few verses from this passage, but it’s good to start here.
There are two interesting things to point out.
First, Jesus clearly understands the pangs of worry.
He starts with the essentials of life: food and drink.
Then, he hits on clothing—something that protects us from the "elements" as well as show our status to the world.
Whenever we start a new beginning, we want to know that we are going to be okay, that whatever changes may come, we will survive it. Jesus knows that feeling.
Though this verse may not specifically mention high school or college, it does identify some of the most basic ingredients to a good life that people have been worrying about for centuries.
Second, Jesus goes on to ask a critical question: “Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing?”
In other words, there’s more to life than just these things we need for survival and protection/status.
Before we dive any further, I want to join with Jesus and say that, no matter what you may feel at the moment, there is more to life than school, social groups, and your teen years.
They can seem so big, so overwhelming sometimes, but there is certainly more to our lives and our Savior than the circumstances you are facing right now.
In the next verse, Jesus gives the example of birds.
They don’t have warehouses full of food that they have been storing; yet, somehow they survive.
God provides for them.
What Jesus is saying is that if God will take care of birds, how much more will He take care of you?
You are His masterpiece.
You are worthy dying for.
I think that says it all.
“Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?” - Matthew 6:27
Great point, Jesus!
Though I definitely struggle with this, the point Jesus is making is that when you get right down to it, what good does worry do?
Maybe you’re stressed out about changing grades or schools.
What will worrying about it solve?
Will it make the transition go smoothly?
Will it make it come faster?
The obvious answer is no.
New beginnings are a part of life.
Worry doesn’t have to be.
Jesus goes on to make another analogy using flowers.
If God cares so much about them to clothe them in such beauty, how much more will He take care of you?
Again, you are incredibly important as an individual to the Creator of the universe.
He knows you by name.
If He cares about flowers, what does that say about His true masterpiece?
“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.” - Matthew 6:31-32 (NLT)
Why worry? When you get right down to it, God knows all of your needs.
He knows the new beginnings looming on the horizon.
He knows exactly what you need to not only survive but to thrive in this situation.
Does that mean that everything will go perfectly smoothly all the time?
No, God doesn’t promise a problem-free life, but what He does promise is that He knows what you are going through and will be right there with you at all times.
Again, I cannot overstate this, you have the all-powerful God, Creator of the universe saying, “I’ve got your back.”
**The Solution**
So far, we have looked at some compelling words from Jesus.
He tells us that worrying is pointless.
God has you covered.
But how do you truly defeat worry?
Jesus has a rather simple (yet, incredibly complicated) answer.
**Read Matthew 6:33**
“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”
The answer to happiness in life is right there in that verse.
Or maybe, it is better to say that the answer to joy in life is right there.
You see, happiness is an emotional state that is sometimes hard to control, but joy—something far greater and more lasting—is something we can live in every day.
The key, is found in seeking the Kingdom of God above all else. What does this mean?
The first step is seeking God’s way over everything else.
God’s way isn’t always the easiest, but it is always the best.
Pursuing the kind of life that Jesus talks about throughout Scripture is the key to joyful living.
So, I live the way that God wants, and I get what I want? Um, almost.
The second part of this verse is key. If you seek to live like Christ, God “will give you everything you need.”
What we need is not always the same as what we want.
I want a billion dollars. I don’t need that much money, though.
When you worry about a new beginning, many of the things that are stressing you out are wants.
What do you need?
Pursue God and He will make that happen.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What are some of the “new beginnings” that you have faced or will face soon in your life?
What makes new beginnings scary?
What does it mean to seek the Kingdom of God above all else?
What are your true “needs” in life? What are some of your “wants”?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON CHARACTER
Bible: Romans 5:3-5
SUPPLIES
Two large white t-shirts
Washable paint
Paintbrushes
A tarp or towel to lay down on the ground
Two blindfolds
OPENING GAME - Paint It
Before the game begins, lay down a tarp or a towel on the ground.
Select two students to wear the t-shirts. Once they have put them on over their clothes, blindfold them and have them stand on the tarp or the towel.
Split the rest of the group into two teams and assign a team to each blindfolded student.
Give the teams the paint and paintbrushes.
Let the students take turns putting different colored paints on a brush and then stand with the brush almost touching the blindfolded student. Call out a command that will make the blindfolded students move, such as spin around three times!
As the blindfolded students move, they will bump into the paintbrush, causing paint to get on the shirts.
When it’s the next student’s turn, call out another command, like do five jumping jacks!
Continue this until all the students have had a chance to hold the paintbrush.
Have a leader carefully remove the t-shirts from the students wearing them. Lay them on the tarp.
Have the two students remove their blindfold and decide which shirt looks the coolest and should win!
After the game, discuss these questions:
Would the shirts have gotten any paint on them if the students who were blindfolded never moved?
Would they have moved if I hadn’t called out things for them to do?
Did they know why I was telling them to move around?
After the game, say:
You guys actually came up with some pretty cool t-shirt designs!
It would have been too easy to let you guys just paint the shirts, so I decided to make it more interesting and have them be blindfolded.
While it would have been easier for them to just stand there wearing their t-shirts, the end product wouldn’t have looked as cool!
Even though they didn’t know why they were moving around and doing all the things I was saying, they were actually creating something really awesome!
They were blindfolded, so they didn’t know what was going on. But by walking through the motions I called out, they were transforming something very plain into something very colorful.
Read Romans 5:3-5:
"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."
Don’t get me wrong; I love this verse.
But wouldn’t it be nice and so much easier if it just said, “God will give you character and hope” instead of that our sufferings produce perseverance, which produces character?
But that’s not the way it works. See, every single thing you go through produces some type of character.
We started the game with two white shirts.
And if you guys want have wanted to, you could have ignored my instructions.
If you had ignored me, you still would have had the shirts when the game was over.
They just wouldn’t be as colorful!
With every situation in life that you walk through, it will build your character in some way.
You can choose to walk through times of suffering leaning on God, obeying and trusting Him, and that will produce good character, character that leads to hope.
Or you can try to get through hard times all on your own, ignoring God completely.
That will produce a character that’s hard, isolated, and jaded. That kind of character is hopeless.
Which sounds like the type of character you would rather have?
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Have you ever been through a hard time that made your character better?
Do you think it’s possible to persevere through times of suffering without God?
Would you rather have a character that came from God and produces hope, or a character that you developed on your own that is hopeless?
**WRAP-UP**
Just like this verse talks about, you are going to go through times of suffering in your life.
There’s no way to avoid that.
But if you persevere through them, that’s when good character is made.
So how do you persevere? You turn to God for strength and guidance.
You ask Him to help you persevere through the hard, suffering times so that you can develop good character.
If you turn to Him, God will help you.
But He doesn’t make you turn to Him.
In fact, if you want to, you can ignore Him completely, trying to get through everything on your own.
But that will only make the times of suffering even harder.
Or, you can turn to Him, have Him walk you through the hard times, and develop amazing character in the process.
It’s your choice.
I think the choice is pretty clear. Don’t you?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON CHOICES
Use this lesson to help students in your ministry make good choices.
Students are often blinded by what molds and shapes the decisions they make.
This lesson helps peel back the "why", "how" and "what" behind their choices.
This lesson really has the power to help your students in a big way.
Especially if you create some space at the end of the message, allowing students to reflect and go to God with the choices they make.
Doing that allows room for God to move in their hearts and minds.
Bible: Romans 12:1-2 (MSG)
Say: Ever think about the everyday choices we make?
Like for real!
Why do we dress the way we do?
Why do we talk and act the way we do?
Why do we hang around the people we hang with?
Why are we sitting in this room right now?
Before today is over, I want you to ask yourself three questions...
• Who makes my choices?
• How am I making my choices?
• Why am I making them?
Who Makes Our Choices?
Who or what pressures us to do what we do?
Wear what we wear...
Talk how we talk...
If we are honest with ourselves, we would say that the culture around us has a huge say in what we do, what we wear, how we act, and how we talk.
And when I say culture, I'm talking about social media, movie stars, recording artist, athletes, where we live, the school we go to, and the friends we hang out with.
I’m talking about technology, books, and whatever social class people put us in.
Maybe your parents make all the choices for you. Either because they are afraid that you are going to turn into a heathen, or because they want to “protect you”!
Maybe your friends make your decisions for you. Because they are the closest family you have, and you’re afraid you will lose them too!
Maybe money makes your choices. Because you don’t have any, and you are tired of living broke!
Or you have a lot of “stuff” and that’s what drives you.
That’s a few examples of what could be making your choices.
Let’s look at how we are making our choices.
How are we making our choices?
How can music influence the choices you make?
How does it influence how we act, talk, and what we wear? (Get responses)
Most of you have probably heard the phrase “YOLO”, you only live once.
A lot of people adopted this “motto” and started to live life like there was no tomorrow because of a popular song.
Now what happens when you live like there is no tomorrow? Then all of a sudden, tomorrow comes.
You’ve been spending all your money.
Telling people what’s on your mind, because you know they deserve it.
Maybe you started gravitating towards drugs and alcohol.
Skipping school and sleeping in.
What happens then?
What happens when someone disrespects you and you’re like “YOLO”!
What happens when you are tempted to steal from the mall, knowing the police is in there, knowing they have people watching you, knowing they have cameras…but you’re like “YOLO”!
What happens when your boyfriend or girlfriend is pressuring you to have sex, and you’re like “YOLO”. Then a month later someone is pregnant!
That’s just one example of the culture around us can influence our choices.
The idea is to be aware of what is influencing you and how you make the choices you do.
What is the "why" behind our choices?
Again, if we are honest - music, money, friends, movies, sports shape the choices we make for two reasons:
Acceptance and fear!
Pretty much any choice we make hinges on those two things.
We dress like our friends because we FEAR that we will look different, and we want to be ACCEPTED by our friends. We want to fit in!
We chase money or "stuff" because we FEAR that we won’t live a good life and have good things. We fear that we won’t be ACCEPTED if we don’t have a lot of money or "stuff".
We flirt and sleep around because we FEAR that we are not good enough for someone to love us, and we want to be ACCEPTED by our boyfriends and girlfriends.
We get drunk at parties and do drugs because we FEAR that people will label us "goody goodies", and goody goodies are not ACCEPTED by the circles we run in.
Listen to what Romans 12:1-2 has to say about choices.
Read Romans 12:1-2 (MSG)
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you
(Note to leader – Talk a little about the meaning of this passage in your own words)
Let me give you a choice to make.
Live free following Jesus!
Or...
Be enslaved to FEAR and ACCEPTANCE
Who’s going to make that choice for you?
How are you going to make that choice?
Why will you make that choice?
I hope this message has challenged you to think about the choices you make.
I hope you’re inspired to ask God to show you the source of your choices, how you make them, and why you make them.
(Note to leader: End the message with a time of reflection for students. Have the worship band (if you have one) come up and play a song.
If you don’t have a worship band, play a worship video or song. During the worship song, encourage students to reflect on the message, bringing their choices before God.
Allowing Him to speak to them about the choices they make.)
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Say your name, grade, and if you prefer Apple or Android.
How easy is it to cruise through a day and not even think about the choices we make?
Why is it so easy?
How do things like music, media, celebrities sports, etc. influence the choices we make?
How/why do we allow our friends to influence the choices we make?
What does “the renewing of your mind” in Romans 12:2 mean to you and how can your mind be renewed?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON CHRISTMAS - INAPPROPRIATE WREATHS
Bible: Matthew 23:27
Topic: Jesus is concerned with what's going on inside you, not how you look or how cool you are.
PREPARATION
Note: If you're tight on time (or budget), an alternative to having a real wreath is to find pictures of some online, insert into PowerPoint or some other presentation software, and show to students.
Get a standard wreath (made of green branches) and place it on a table.
Also, get one that is made of a different material—something interesting, but not too unusual.
For example, one made of ornaments or twigs. Place this "different" wreath out of sight but near the teaching area.
In addition, make one or two "inappropriate wreaths" out of material that really should not be used for a wreath.
For example, make them out of bacon or doll heads or toilet paper rolls.
You can accomplish this by gluing the "inappropriate" material to a cardboard ring.
Place these 2 "inappropriate wreaths" out of sight, but near the teaching area.
Also, make a sign that reads, "IT LOOKS LIKE A WREATH, BUT IT'S NOT RIGHT."
Place this sign out of sight near the teaching area.
Mark a Bible at Matthew 23:27.
TEACH
Show the students the standard wreath and ask if anybody knows what it is called.
After getting the answer (wreath), Ask: What is it that makes something a wreath?
(Take responses and then show your "different" wreath.)
Ask: Is this considered a wreath also? (Sure)
Say: According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, a wreath is either ‘something intertwined or arranged in a circular shape.’
Or ‘something having a circular or coiling form.’
According to those definitions, these are both ‘wreaths.’
Explain: I would gladly hang either of these wreaths in front of my house, even though they are made of different materials.
However, some materials just shouldn’t be used to make a wreath.
Look at this.
(Pull out one of the “inappropriate wreaths” and enjoy the students’ response.)
OR… How about this?
(Pull out the second “inappropriate wreath.”)
Ask: What’s the problem with these wreaths? I mean, they’re in the right shape, right?
They meet the definition of a wreath that we read earlier.
What’s the problem here?
(Take response, and then show your sign - “IT LOOKS LIKE A WREATH, BUT IT’S NOT RIGHT.”)
Say: On Christmas, we celebrate that God came to Earth 2,000 years ago as a baby named ‘Jesus.’
As Jesus grew up, he explained that He came to save the lost.
And, He desires to CHANGE us on the inside.
See, Jesus is more concerned with what ‘we are made of’ than how we look.
Listen to what Jesus said to some of the religious leaders when he was around 30 years old.
Read Matthew 23:27:
“How terrible for you, teachers of the law and Pharisees! You are hypocrites! You are like tombs that are painted white. Outside, those tombs look fine, but inside, they are full of the bones of dead people and all kinds of unclean things.”
Say: The same problem that Jesus saw with the religious leaders then, is the same problem that these wreaths have.
They are made of the wrong stuff.
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day tried to walk around DOING the right thing, but Jesus says, ‘No. It’s not enough to look right. You’ve got to be made right from the very core of who you are.’
(Hold up sign.)
I really hope Jesus doesn’t look at me and say, ‘IT LOOKS LIKE A CHRISTIAN, BUT IT’S NOT RIGHT.’
(Challenge students to look at themselves a little more deeply this Christmas.)
It’s not enough to DO the right things at Christmas time—come to Church, sing Christmas songs, etc.
What Jesus is really concerned with is what’s happening inside us.
What really matters is what we are made of.
This Christmastime when you see a wreath, think about what the wreath is made of.
And remember that when Jesus looks at you, he’s thinking about the same thing.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON COMMUNITY
Bible: Acts 2:42-43
Use this lesson to teach students that the community they choose for themselves is important!
OPENING GAME
SUPPLIES
Water balloons
Access to water (a sink or a hose)
Towels (optional, so student’s can dry off after the game if needed)
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Before the game begins, fill up the water balloons. Choose three (or more, depending on the size of your group) students to be the ones to throw the water balloons.
Line the rest of the group up and count down the line, “one, two, one, two, one, two.”
Have the team split into groups of two with the person standing next to them. Explain that if they were a number one, their goal is to not get hit by a water balloon. If they were a number two, their goal is to protect their partner from getting hit by a water balloon.
On the count of three, have the chosen students start throwing water balloons. The point is for the number two students to protect their partner by jumping in front of them, using their hands, or whatever else to ensure their partner doesn’t get hit.
If a number one gets hit with a water balloon, their team is out. The last remaining team where the number one teammate is still dry wins!
After the game, discuss these questions:
• Do you think it was more fun for the number ones of the group or the number twos of the group?
• Was it easier to avoid the water balloons when you had someone protecting you?
• Did you work well together as a team?
TEACH
After the game, say:
That was probably the riskiest version of dodgeball you’ve ever played, huh? In the game, half of you were trying to avoid getting wet, and half of you were trying to protect your teammate from getting hit. Without working as a team, you had no chance of winning! You had to rely on each other as teammates.
We have teammates in life, too. The friends that you choose, the community you surround yourself with, those are your teammates.
What if, in this game, I had told all the number one players that their teammates would be protecting them, but then I never told the teammates what they were supposed to do? It would have been pointless, right?
Everyone would have gotten wet!
It’s important to choose teammates in life who are on the same page as we are.
Read: Acts 2:42-43
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.”
This verse is talking about what Christians did during this time. They devoted themselves to learning more about God and praying, and they did it together. And because of their belief in Jesus, they had things in common.
It’s so important to have a community of Christian friends who have a relationship with Jesus like you do.
If they don’t, they can be the best friend in the world, but it won’t make them a good teammate for you, because you won’t ever be on the same page.
If you don’t share the same life-beliefs with your community around you, it will be just like it would have been if I hadn’t told anyone what to do in the game—it just would have been chaotic.
No one would be able to protect each other, even if they wanted to.
As a Christian, the most important thing in your life is your relationship with Jesus.
The community you surround yourself with should be one you can walk through life together with.
The ones you turn to when you need help, the ones who help you when you’re going through something difficult.
And how can you expect that to happen if the most important things in your life don’t line up?
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Do you agree that the community of friends you surround yourself with should be people who share your belief in Jesus?
Do you think it’s hard for people who don’t believe in Jesus to support you and be there for you when it comes to the big things in life?
Do you have any friends like the ones in Acts 2, who you can pray with and learn more about God with?
Do you think that you will grow more in your faith if you are surrounded by Christian friends?
**CLOSE**
Please don’t leave here thinking that you are never supposed to even speak to people who aren’t Christians. If that was the case, how could you ever share Jesus’ love with anyone?
What I’m telling you is that it’s important that the people closest to you—your community—also have a relationship with Jesus.
When you surround yourself with a community of Jesus-following friends, you set yourself up to be the best you can be. You give yourself a community to grow closer to God and to grow stronger in your faith
That’s the best kind of community there is!
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON CONFIDENCE
Bible: Jeremiah 17:5-8
Bottom Line: True confidence comes from trusting in God.
LEADER PREP
Confidence is a subject that, yes, even us adults struggle with in life.
Just when you think that you’ve ‘arrived’ in being confident…something or someone can seem to knock the wind out of your sails with a small push.
But this week’s lesson will hopefully remind you and students that our confidence is not to be found in ourselves, in other’s opinions of us, the latest ideas, or anything other than the fact that God has us securely in his grasp.
The true key to living with confidence is to remember that we find our confidence in God alone.
All of the other voices, thoughts, or ideas around us can be very fickle.
Yet, God does not change and He loves us with a love and confidence that is greater than any other force we might encounter.
So, today, right now, survey your own spiritual landscape and ask yourself: Am I truly leaning on the confidence of God?
Or am I going about this life on my own strength?
Really reflect on these questions, and ask God to remind you to rely on Him alone.
SUPPLIES
2 large buckets filled with water
A lot of sponges divided between the buckets
A plant that you’ve failed to water for a few days or more (make sure that it is really crispy/or bring in a rose that has been cut off and dying
Another plant that you have watered and is flourishing
Small Succulent plants for each student
OPENING GAME: Garden Warfare
Divide the group into 2 teams of equal number.
The ‘garden’ should be the size of a basketball court with a large bucket filled with water and 5-10 sponges placed where the basketball baskets would be located.
Each team needs to choose 4 people to be their ‘plants’.
Teams will each take opposite sides of the ‘court’, and both team’s plants will be in the center in a straight line facing one another with about 4 feet in between the two groups (almost like linemen on a football set up).
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
The goal of this game is to water your plants without getting sprayed by the other team.
Also, ‘Plants’ must begin seated and can only rise up when they are ‘watered’.
To water your plants, you must squeeze the sponge over their heads to water them.
But watch out, because if you get hit with someone else’s sponge, you are out.
You can steal the other team’s sponges so hold onto your sponges!
If the game goes quickly where teammates get out, restart the game with new ‘plants’ from each team.
TEACH - Youth Group Lesson on Confidence
Show the youth the plant that is thriving.
This plant is alive and growing.
What kinds of things do I need to do, though, to keep it alive and green?
Give the youth a chance to share ideas.
Now, hold up the dead shriveled plant or rose stem.
Now, this plant is not only dead, but crispy.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that no plants were harmed in the making of this week’s lesson, right?
Today’s scripture tells us that we are a lot like these plants.
Some of us are growing and alive…while some of us are crispy.
And though we might think that we are fooling everyone around us, and hey, maybe we are even fooling ourselves - there is no fooling God.
Read Jeremiah 17: 5-8
Basically, God is saying: Either you are growing and finding your confidence and strength from the Living God, or you are trying on your own, relying on people and not on God and you are wasting away.
See, we humans like to do things on our own, right?
Every little kid goes through a time in their life where they want to do everything on their own.
Share a funny story from your childhood about a time that you wanted to do things on your own and failed miserably and hopefully, comically.
It’s like we want to take the training wheels off of the bike in our lives and do things in our own strength, right?
But life with God is not meant to be a solo journey.
We cannot live and grow and thrive without God being our strength.
Ask yourself this question: On a scale of 1 to 10 - how much do I rely on God and how much do I rely on others or myself?
Being a teenager can be super tough, can’t it?
Everyone seems to have an idea of what you should do, how you should dress, what activities are important to you, what friends you have, etc.
And having confidence can be really hard.
But what if we rethought how we look at having confidence?
What if, rather than looking to humans (our friends, teachers, even our family) for confidence or approval…what if your first stop was with God?
What if, in everything you did, it was HIS opinion that was the one that mattered?
Wouldn’t you think living like THAT would help your confidence?
Because let’s face it, you have so many different voices and ideas pulling at you.
Ask for a volunteer from the group to come forward with you.
Imagine yourself as this plant.
Hold up a tiny succulent plant.
And you are in God’s hands.
Place the plant in your hands.
He is holding you and wants to help you grow.
Yet, what would happen if I took this cute little plant, took it out of its pot, and instead, put this plant in the hands of __________ (the volunteer name)?
And __________ (volunteer name) thinks that the plant is just fine without water.
They think that actually, this little plant would love some soda or maybe some hot coffee.
Then ________ (volunteer name) says that the plant doesn’t need her soil.
Take the soil away.
Nope, the plant just needs to be off all by itself with no light, no water, and no air.
Thank the volunteer and have them sit down.
What will happen to this little plant?
Allow the group to answer.
See, living without God and trying to do things on our own strength, basically, is exactly what we’ve done to this little plant.
It’s experiencing what God described as the wasteland in our scripture - no water, no nourishment, hot, and no growth.
And we all know enough about plants to know that left like this, this little plant will die.
Yet, how often do we as people live like this little plant?
We say to God with how we live and the things or people that we choose that we don’t need him.
We look to our friends; people we wish were our friends to see what we should be doing or thinking.
We do things that we know we shouldn’t, and why?
To impress others?
To gain their confidence that we are worthy of being their friend?
Ask yourself this tough question: What gives you confidence?
Is it how you look?
How you dress?
The friends that you have?
And then ask yourself - what would it look like to find my confidence in God?
Because here is the amazing thing that you find when you truly find your confidence in God alone - you find yourself truly loving others while not needing their approval.
You make your decisions based on who you are in Christ.
You find your confidence in the fact that you are a child of God.
And THAT brings true growth in your life.
It might seem like a small change, this whole relying on God thing, but trust me, when you truly put your trust and confidence in God alone, the changes are huge.
Bring out the growing plant.
You become alive in a way that is beautiful and brings beauty to those around you.
You are confident in a way that cannot be explained any other way than in God.
Each of you can take a small plant with you to remind you to find your confidence in God.
To remember that when you grow in God and trust in Him, you will be more alive than you ever thought possible.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
If you had to describe a plant to show where you are right at this moment with God, what would the plant look like? Alive, dead, withering, etc.
What are some of the things or people that you are tempted to look to for your confidence?
What would have to change in your life or the way you make decisions for you to really trust in God?
What do you think it means to find your confidence in God? What would that look like for you?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON DEPRESSION
Depression is a challenging topic to address in any youth ministry.
It is important to remember that many of your students are likely, at some point in their lives, to struggle with depression in some form or another.
However, there are still many misconceptions about depression.
In fact, odds are that many of you reading and preparing to teach this lesson struggle with depression, and there is one thing that you need to know: you are not alone.
Depression is **not** a sign of weakness or of lack of faith.
It is a very important reminder to each of us that we are human and for many amazing Christians throughout the centuries, depression has been a struggle.
Yet, we as leaders must be the first to 1). Know the signs of depression and 2). Know when we or others need professional health.
For some of you, this lesson is might be a holy nudge that you need to spend some time taking care of your soul, your body, and your heart.
Youth group time, of course, is not the time to nurse these wounds and is definitely not meant to be a ‘therapy session’ for the leader.
But spend time this week in prayer, doing some real soul searching and evaluating if you indeed sense that you are depressed.
Next, spend time praying for the students in your youth group, as it is very likely that there are youth in your group who are depressed.
Again, this time is not a time for therapy, but rather a time for them to learn some ways that they can share their heart with God.
One of the beautiful things, and yet maddening at times, about teenagers is that they often feel things very strongly.
It is important to remember that though their ‘issues’ or feelings might seem trivial to us as adults, they are feeling them and we must recognize that.
It is a holy thing for a teenager to share how they truly feel and nothing throws cold water on their bravery than being told that their emotions, or feelings, are not valid.
In fact, try to remember a time when you were a teenager and your feelings were dismissed…it’s a hard thing.
It is also important to guard against what I call the ‘drama trap’ - in which you open the conversation about feelings and suddenly the tidal wave opens!
Oh, how many youth lock-ins have been derailed by the infamous cry fest!
As you can see, it is a juggle to discern how best to respond, but the best advice is to respond with grace.
It is important to sense where your group is at in regards to the stage of life that they are in.
For example, for some middle schoolers, depression might be a bit heavy for them, but they can identify with being sad or disappointed.
It is tough to paint any group with a single brush, though, as many students have endured pain that many adults cannot fathom.
Again, it requires discernment, grace, and wisdom as a leader to navigate these discussions.
It might also be an important time in which you open their eyes to the fact that they need further help, which is not something to be ashamed of, but is actually a sign of great strength to know when help is needed.
Anytime that depression is addressed, it is also important to remember to be very aware that if a youth in the group shares that they are having suicidal thoughts, this is very serious and it is important that you seek help.
Encourage students to share their feelings with their parents and a pastor.
Though youth ministers do a great deal of counseling, it is important to remember that most of us are not counselors and to know when we have reached our limits.
**Bottom Line:** God is with us no matter how we feel and He cares. No judgement.
**Bible:** Psalm 40, The Message
**SUPPLIES**
- Poster board for each youth
- Magazines of many different types
- Scissors
Glue sticks
Psalm 40 from the Message printed for each youth
Pens
OPENING ACTIVITY: Feelings Board
Say: Each of you are going to create what I would call a ‘Feelings Board’.
Today, we are going to tackle a deep topic and you will help us to start the conversation by making these feelings boards.
Here’s what I want you to try to describe with pictures: Depression.
(Leader note: The tone in which groups go about this activity might vary from age groups to how comfortable they feel. Some might go the humor route, which shouldn’t be immediately discounted… you can learn a great deal from teenage humor. The thing to try to avoid is any mocking or belittling about depression.)
Give the students 10-15 minutes to make their boards and then to present them IF THEY WANT. Display the boards around the room to reference throughout the lesson.
After the activity, ask:
Which of the images on the posters do you think help to describe what depression must feel like?
Why do you think that so many people are depressed?
Depression is a tough topic, but one that can’t be ignored.
TEACH
In 2015, an estimated 3 million adolescents ages 12 to 17, in the United States, had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.
This number represented 12.5% of the U.S. population ages 12 to 17 (from NIMH).
But let me ask you this: How many of you have not felt ‘down’ or sad at all this past year?
I bet if we are honest… not one of us could say that we haven’t ever had a down moment.
You know what that means?
WE ARE HUMAN!
Have any of you seen the movie *Inside Out*?
Basically, it is a movie that presents a creative way to explain emotions to kids.
There is Fear, Greed, Anger, Sadness, and Joy.
It is a huge surprise to everyone in the movie to realize that sometimes joy and sadness can go together, or that you can be ‘Sad Mad’.
This movie really brings home the important reminder that our emotions are not bad.
We are human and God made us to feel strong emotions.
Just think about this past week for you: How many different emotions did you feel?
*Share about a time in the past few weeks in which you felt strong emotions (a funny example might be a good reprieve at this point in the lesson!)*
God created us to feel emotions.
The Bible might not use the exact word ‘depression,’ but it uses words like “downcast,” “brokenhearted,” “troubled,” “miserable,” “despairing,” and “mourning,” among others.
I think those will fit for depression, don’t you?
The Bible also tells about amazing men and women of God who truly struggled.
Even Jesus expressed how deeply he hurt for others. He felt betrayed.
He felt sad.
He felt disappointed.
He felt lonely.
And He is God.
I hope this helps you to see is that God is going to be the last person to judge you for feeling down because He knows and He created us to feel deeply.
King David, you know the kid-wonder who killed a giant with some rocks and was the most amazing King of all time for the Israelites?
David, the one who was called ‘the man after God’s heart’… do you think he struggled with feeling down?
Let’s see.
*Give each youth a copy of Psalm 40 as you read it out loud.*
David wrote songs and prayers, which expressed a wide range of emotions.
Some are full of joy… some are filled with raw words.
What are some of the words that David prayed that stuck out to you?
It is interesting that in this Psalm, David seems to go back and forth from feeling very down… to then reminding himself that God is with him.
This is a really important thing to remember: It is ok to feel and to feel deeply.
And there might be days when you feel like nobody cares or hears or understands.
But if you leave this place knowing one thing, it needs to be this: God cares deeply about you and your feelings.
I want you to read Psalm 40 again and underline any of the lines that bring you comfort.
*Give the youth a few minutes to read again.*
These are the words that you need to remind yourself of when you find yourself in a place where you feel alone.
Because we all will be there at some point in our lives.
But know this: God is with you and He cares.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Which emotion do you struggle with the most from the movie *Inside Out*: fear, greed, anger, joy or sadness?
How does it make you feel to know that Jesus felt the same emotions that we do?
Share a line from Psalm 40 that you want to remember that brings you comfort?
Which line in Psalm 40 surprised you that David felt that way?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON DISCIPLESHIP
Bible: Matthew 8: 18-22, Matthew 5:3-10 (MSG)
Ask: When you hear the word disciple…what do you think about? (Get responses)
People who followed Jesus?
12 people way back in Jesus’ time?
Devoted followers?
Anyone here a disciple?
Whether you know it or not, we are all disciples…we all follow something.
Question is…what are we following?
WHAT IS A DISCIPLE?
A disciple is a follower, a student of a mentor, teacher, or other figure.
Why would you want to be a follower or a student?
Because we all need to learn!
When you think you know it all - you are one of two things: dead or a fool!
So we are all being taught by someone…a mentor, teacher, friend. We are all following something.
WHAT DOES DISCIPLESHIP LOOK LIKE?
Well, if you are a disciple of baseball, then it looks like practicing, working out, focusing on techniques, and repetition.
You eat, sleep, drink, and live baseball.
You talk about baseball, watch baseball, read baseball articles…you think baseball!
If you are a disciple of music, then it looks like learning the theory of music, notes, rhythm, reading sheet music, and chords.
You are patiently practicing your instrument.
Sometimes so much your fingers bleed.
Your hands hurt; your voice can’t utter another sound.
You live in music stores and always have earphones in your ears.
Music soothes your soul.
If you are a disciple of literature or poetry, then you’re learning allegory, foreshadowing, etc..
You are reading all kinds of literature, like Treasure Island, Les Miserables, and The Man in the Iron Mask.
You go to book clubs, attend public readings, and even begin to write on your own.
WHAT DOES A DISCIPLE OF JESUS LOOK LIKE?
Read Matthew 8: 18-22 (MSG)
When Jesus saw that a curious crowd was growing by the minute, he told his disciples to get him out of there to the other side of the lake. As they left, a religion scholar asked if he could go along. “I’ll go with you, wherever,” he said. Jesus was curt: “Are you ready to rough it? We’re not staying in the best inns, you know.” Another follower said, “Master, excuse me for a couple of days, please. I have my father’s funeral to take care of.” Jesus refused. “First things first. Your business is life, not death. Follow me. Pursue life.”
Jesus puts it another way…
Read Matthew 5: 3-10 (MSG)
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule. 4 “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought. “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat. “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for. “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family. “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
WHY IS DISCIPLESHIP IMPORTANT?
With baseball, it’s about the thrill of the game.
With literature/poetry it is important to be able to express yourself through the art of writing.
With Jesus, it’s important to show the world what the people of God looks like.
It’s important to show the world that despite all the evil and wrong in the world…there is hope!
It’s important to display the glory of God and invite everyone around you into that story.
Baseball is great…
Literature is awesome…
But being a disciple of Jesus…it gives us life. It sustains your life.
There’s a reason why baseball is America’s “pastime”. It’s a fun competitive game with a long history.
There’s a reason poetry exist. Those emotions, the pain, the triumph, all trying to grasp the thing that sustains life.
Being a follower of Jesus means that you are following him and his ways.
You are practicing loving God with all you heart, soul, and mind.
You are loving your neighbor as yourself, and you are inviting other people to join this story with you.
Close in Prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Say your name, school, and if you prefer Coke or Pepsi.
In your opinion, what is the definition of disciple?
What are you a disciple of…what do you follow?
Why is it easier to be a “disciple” of sports or music than it is to be a disciple of Jesus?
What does a disciple of Jesus look like? How can you adopt those traits?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON DISTRACTIONS
The goal of our lives is to focus on Jesus. Instead of focusing on the distractions of life, it's important to focus on God. Sometimes the distractions actually help us see God more clearly.
That's the heart of this youth group lesson on distractions.
Lesson Overview: How to Not Get Distracted from Focusing on God
Bible: Hebrews 12:1-2; Genesis 37-50
OPENING GAME: DISTRACTED DRIVING
SUPPLIES
Two storage tubs, large enough for a student to sit inside
Several blindfolds
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Divide your entire group into teams consisting of four people.
The goal of the game is to race from one end of the room to the other without getting distracted, and to do it faster than the other teams.
Teams race one at a time.
Each team chooses one person to “drive” the storage tub in the race.
The other members of that team are blindfolded and will push the tub from the start to the finish line as fast as they can.
Put several obstacles between the start and finish lines. (ex: chairs, tables, etc.)
The driver will direct their team members to move around the obstacles to reach the finish line.
The teams who are not racing will stand on the sidelines, doing whatever they can to distract the driver and slow down the racing team.
Distractors can say things, do stupid actions, make lots of noise, etc. - while remaining on the side of the racing lane.
Each team gets its own turn racing.
Time each team to see who crosses the finish line in the least amount of time.
The team with the shortest time wins.
(Note: You might also like this free game, Paper Plate Powerball, that helps students focus on Jesus.)
TEACH
Even with distractions, it's a lot easier to drive a tub than it is to drive a car!
Not all of you have had the experience of standing in line at the DMV, having your picture taken, and being handed that golden ticket to freedom, but you will have your turn someday.
There's a lot to learn before you can take your driving test – the rules of the road, how to drive in dangerous conditions, and the dreaded parallel parking.
But, there are some things that aren't outlined in the driver's manual; things that are essential if you are going to drive safely and avoid accidents.
Can you guess what the biggest cause of car accidents is today? (Allow students to respond.)
Distracted driving.
When a driver is distracted, he or she can cause an accident and endanger not only their own life, but also the lives of others on the road.
Have you ever heard of the word "rubbernecking?"
That’s when people just have to look at something going on outside of the car, on the side of the road.
They slow down and sit up a little straighter so they can see more of the action.
Rubbernecking can lead to accidents or cause traffic to be backed up for hours just because one person had to slow down and see what was going on outside their car.
Unfortunately, there’s a danger that is far more likely to cause you distraction on the road, something almost all of us carry around with us all the time – cell phones. *(Hold up your phone.)*
There’s a reason texting, and even talking on the phone in some places, while driving is illegal.
People who use their phone while driving are almost three times more likely to get into an accident than those who don’t.
Just like there are distractions when driving, we have distractions in our spiritual lives too.
**Read Hebrews 12:1-2 (NCV):**
“We are surrounded by a great cloud of people whose lives tell us what faith means. So let us run the race that is before us and never give up. We should remove from our lives anything that would get in the way and the sin that so easily holds us back. Let us look only to Jesus, the One who began our faith and who makes it perfect. He suffered death on the cross. But he accepted the shame as if it were nothing because of the joy that God put before him. And now he is sitting at the right side of God’s throne.”
Our goal as Christians is to “look only to Jesus”…to focus on our relationship with God.
But it’s so easy to get distracted.
The Bible tells us to “remove from our lives anything that would get in the way”.
In other words, don’t get distracted from your personal relationship with Jesus.
Distractions come in many forms: sin, problems, successes, friends, family, school, girlfriends/boyfriends, etc.
Instead of focusing on the distractions, focus on Jesus.
Having a quiet time where you dedicate a chunk of your day to being with God is a great place to start. It gives your relationship with God a solid foundation.
(Note: Use this free lesson to help students develop a quiet time in their lives).
Coming to youth group (or church), singing praise and worship songs, and attending a small group are some other ways to focus on God.
But what about the rest of your life?
You spend about 7 hours a day at school.
You might play sports or do some other after school activity that takes up a few hours a week.
You're on your phone texting, watching youtube videos, snap chatting, and on Instagram.
You might watch some TV on Netflix too.
Or maybe you do other stuff in your spare time.
Most of your life is spent doing these things.
Why do you separate everyday activities from your relationship with God? How can you focus on God while doing what you do all day long?
The key is to look for what God is doing in your life and those around you.
Be aware that God is always doing something in your life. He's always up to something good. Just ask God to show you what he's doing, then be on the lookout for what that might be. Trust your gut. Trust the Holy Spirit's soft voice within you. Be willing to respond to whatever it is that he's showing you.
Here's a couple of examples...
Let's say you have a science teacher that you really hate.
She's mean to you and your classmates.
She gives you a lot of homework, and her tests are really difficult.
Instead of just complaining about how horrible she is, maybe you could pause and ask God what to do about the situation.
Maybe this situation is an opportunity for you to learn patience and humility.
Boom! There's God at work in your life.
Maybe you start crying during a scene in a movie on Netflix (use a personal example here if applicable).
You're moved deeply.
Maybe that's God speaking something to you in that moment.
That could be God at work in your life.
Let's say you're best friend does something horribly mean to you.
So bad that it ends your friendship.
You pause and ask God for help and insight into the situation.
Maybe that friendship needed to end so that you could open up yourself to other friendships that are even better for you.
That's God at work in your life.
(Give an example in your own life).
Instead of putting "time with God" and "time doing life" in separate compartments, blend them together.
Notice what God is doing in your everyday life as you go to school, hang out with friends, play sports or other activities, spend time on social media, etc.
Okay, here's another idea to think about.
**The distraction is sometimes the way.**
What often looks like a distraction away from God can actually bring you closer to God.
Let's take a look at the life of Joseph.
His full story is written in Genesis 37-50.
Joseph was misunderstood by his family, rejected by his brothers and sold into slavery.
He became the slave of Potiphar, an officer to the king of Egypt (the Pharaoh).
**Read Genesis 39:3-6:**
"Potiphar saw that the Lord was with Joseph and that the Lord made Joseph successful in everything he did. So Potiphar was very happy with Joseph and allowed him to be his personal servant. He put Joseph in charge of the house, trusting him with everything he owned. When Joseph was put in charge of the house and everything Potiphar owned, the Lord blessed the people in Potiphar’s house because of Joseph. And the Lord blessed everything that belonged to Potiphar, both in the house and in the field. So Potiphar left Joseph in charge of everything he owned and was not concerned about anything except the food he ate."
Joseph remained loyal to God.
The situation forced him to focus on God, who proved himself faithful to Joseph.
God gave him favor with Potiphar, who put Joseph in charge of his entire household.
This was a big deal for a servant. It was an honor and privilege to be in that position.
Then, things took a dive for the worse.
He was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife and put in jail, but Joseph continued to focus on God.
Here's what happened next.
**Read Genesis 39: 21-23:**
"But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him kindness and caused the prison warden to like Joseph. The prison warden chose Joseph to take care of all the prisoners, and he was responsible for whatever was done in the prison. The warden paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph’s care because the Lord was with Joseph and made him successful in everything he did."
God continued to show up in Joseph's life.
The very thing that could have distracted Joseph from God, being falsely accused and put in jail, was just another opportunity for God to show up.
Joseph interprets a dream for some people close to the king, and almost gets a "get out of jail free card" because of it.
Unfortunately, he remains in jail for another 2 years.
The Pharaoh has a bad dream, and Joseph is called in to interpret it.
The dream meant there will be 7 years of plenty food, followed by 7 years of famine.
Then, check out what the Pharaoh told him:
Read Genesis 41:39-40:
"So the king said to Joseph, 'God has shown you all this. There is no one as wise and understanding as you are, so I will put you in charge of my palace. All the people will obey your orders, and only I will be greater than you.'"
Joseph literally went from jail to being the second in charge of Egypt.
He was later reunited with his family, and found it in his heart to forgive this brothers.
Wow. What an amazing story!
Joseph's story reminds us that what appear to be distractions away from God can actually bring us closer to God.
The distraction is the way.
The problem is the way.
Any one of these events could have turned Joseph away from God.
He could have become bitter and angry towards his brothers and the unfair circumstances.
However, he chose to let those circumstances bring him closer to God.
What problems or distractions are you facing that could bring you closer to God?
Take a moment to reflect on that question.
End in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What are some examples of distractions that get in the way of your relationship with God?
Do you find it hard to focus on God in everyday life? Why or why not? Explain.
What are some ways you stay focused on God?
What is God doing in your life right now?
What is God doing in the lives of your friends or family right now?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON DOUBT
Sometimes we get really nervous when students express their doubts or question their faith.
Yet, for many, the time they doubted and asked those tough questions, in retrospect, is actually a time when they were ‘chewing on their faith’.
A common response from adults to those types of questions is - “just have faith” or “pray more” …which can be a point of frustration when those are the exact questions that students are asking in the first place!
If instead, we can engage in discussion and take the time to talk with students through their questions, it can have a huge impact on their spiritual growth.
It is an honor when students come to us with their questions and doubts because it’s an evidence of faith: a faith that is wanting to engage and think and wrestle.
So, the next time you have a concerned parent come to you with worries that their youth is having doubts, remind them that doubts are often just the beginning of a search for truth. If those doubts are engaged and patiently chewed on together, it can build faith.
And even more, that God WANTS to hear what we are thinking and struggling with, yes, even you as a leader.
He wants to walk with you through those doubts.
He is loving and patient. He can be trusted. He can take your questions and He wants to hear them.
And you can also be sure that the questions that you wrestle with God with, will be asked by someone else somewhere down the road, so ask away!
Bible: Psalm 10 (preferably from the Message)
Bottom Line: Doubt is often the evidence of faith.
OPENING GAME – I DOUBT IT
SUPPLIES
Bible trivia (from your brain or find some online!)
Notecards
Pens for each youth
Say: (in an overly dramatic voice)
Today, we are going to play a game that will test even the best Bible scholars among us.
You will scratch your heads in agony as you doubt if you truly do know the right answer.
Only the bravest should step forward.
Ask for 6 brave volunteers who feel confident in their Biblical knowledge.
Have the volunteers go in the other room to spend time with their Bibles (make this a funny challenge), making sure that they cannot hear what is going on in the room.
Tell the group once the volunteers are in the other room: Today we are going to try to make our Biblical scholars doubt their answer to these questions.
I want to see your best arguments and confusion tactics, ok?
I will bring the contestants in one at a time and ask them one question each, and once they answer, try to make them second-guess their answer. Then we will call the next scholar in and on and on.
Once the volunteer has answered the question (or attempted to answer) have them join the group. It will be funny to see their reactions as they realize they have been tricked into doubting their answers.
After the game, ask the contestants:
What was the most difficult thing about answering the trivia questions with others trying to make you doubt your answer?
Did you doubt whether you had the right answer? Why or why not?
How is this game like trying to figure out what you believe?
Is it ok to doubt? Why or why not?
TEACH - YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON DOUBT
Today, we are talking about doubt.
Doubt can be a tough topic, and today you might be surprised by what you will discover.
I want everyone to take some index cards and a pen.
As we talk about doubt, if you think of a question or a doubt that you have, please write it down on those cards.
Don’t put your name on it because if it were me and my name were on it, I might not write out my honest doubts.
It’s hard to admit that you have doubts.
I know because I have had doubts.
Share, if it isn’t too fresh, some of the doubts that you had when you were younger in the faith.
For example, maybe you doubted about prayer or the problem of evil and why bad things happen.
Share honestly, but don’t ‘rip the bandaid’ off too much with this short sharing.
Would it surprise you to hear that many of the greatest Christians throughout time have had serious doubts and questions about the faith?
Feel free to choose one of the prominent Christians mentioned in this article: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/7-prominent-christian-thinkers-who-wrestled-doubt
King David in the Bible was said to be a man after God’s heart, and even he had questions.
**Read Psalm 10.**
What were some of the questions that David asked of God?
What did you think after reading this Psalm, especially knowing that it was written by a man who truly loved God?
So, let me ask you: Do you have doubts?
Do you secretly worry that your questions or doubts are wrong?
Maybe some of you have already written questions down on your cards….and most of you have questions but are afraid to write them down.
**Let me share a few things that doubt says about us:**
#1 - **Doubt sometimes shows that we have faith.**
Expressing the fact that you have questions about God or faith or the Bible is a really scary and brave thing to admit.
And unfortunately, some adults and even pastors can feel uncomfortable with questions, but God does not have a problem with the questions.
In fact, God says that we should come to him with our requests and our needs.
Many Christians have found that when they come to God honestly with their questions, that something amazing happens, which leads to..
#2 - **Asking questions of God requires that we have faith that He is there and loves us.**
Think of any relationship in your life: when you get to the point that you can ask honest questions, that is when you know that your relationship is close.
You aren’t putting on a show or acting like everything is fine, but being honest and vulnerable.
That takes faith.
#3 - Doubt can lead us closer to God and help us grow in our faith.
Many Christians who are very strong in their walk with God will point to the times that they had a crisis of faith or asked serious questions.
Why do you think it works that way?
How can doubt bring you closer to God?
Imagine that you go to God with those doubts and questions that make you worry that you aren’t strong enough and that you actually have him answer?
God wants us to ask him questions.
God wants us to come to him with those questions.
And through that searching, amazing growth can happen in your life.
#4 - Doubt can lead to answers that strengthen you and prepare you for real life, which can be tough.
One of the main questions that people ask about is "why do bad things happen?"
Maybe share your own struggle with this question.
And though there are no easy answers, when you go to God with these questions, you learn things about him.
That he is loving and fair always.
That he knows our hearts and motives, and we don’t have to ever worry that He doesn’t understand us or ‘get’ us.
# 5 - Doubt can lead you closer to God if you just simply go to Him.
Does it mean that He will immediately answer you?
No, probably not.
And God has shown a habit of answering His children in strange ways, such as whispering to them, speaking in burning bushes, and even in the life of a tiny baby born in a manger.
But this is something you can be sure of: God wants to talk to you.
He wants to hear what you are thinking, and if you listen or watch….you might just be surprised in how God talks with you about your questions.
Maybe someone will come up to you with just the thing you were asking or you hear a song with words that really speak to you.
It might take years or seconds, but keep on going to God and waiting on those answers. And know that God loves you.
You are safe asking him…questioning him.
I want you to take a minute and just write down the questions and doubt that you might have.
Don’t put your name, but know that I will be here afterwards to talk if you want to come up and say “hey, that was my question…can we talk more about this?”
And I will take these questions and try to answer these questions in lessons the next few weeks.
I was going to read them out loud in a minute, but only to show you all something really important, so write on the card “Don’t read out loud” if you don’t want me to read it.
Give the students a few minutes (some will finish quickly, some will take longer) and pass them in to you.
Read the questions/doubts slowly and making sure to not let this become a time to laugh at others or try to guess who wrote what as this might be very vulnerable for some.
As you read, you will likely find very similar questions, which is a great insight into the group of where to go with future lessons.
After you have read the questions, ask:
Were you surprised by any of the questions?
Raise your hand if you have asked any of these questions at some time in your life? (Hopefully, most of the students will raise their hands).
I hope you see through this simple exercise that you are not alone in your doubt or your questions.
Share some of the questions that you yourself have asked.
If there are questions that you feel a need to immediately answer address those with the group at this point as you feel is age and situationally appropriate.
What questions or doubts did you hear a couple of times as I read?
I hope this lesson gives you some peace in realizing that no one has all the answers. No one has it all together in this faith thing, and that is actually a good thing because it is in asking questions sometimes that we learn.
It is the questions that can drive us to really depend on God and one another in ways we wouldn’t if we had all the answers.
God loves us just as much, if not more, after hearing these questions and doubt than he ever has.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What questions did you hear that were asked the most by the group?
How does it make you feel to know that everyone has questions or doubts at some point?
What is the one question that you would ask God if he were sitting next to you right now?
What are some of the ways that God might answer your questions or doubts?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON EASTER
Title: Empty is a Good Thing!
Bible: Luke 24: 1-8; Mark 8: 31; Romans 6: 6-11
When you think about Easter, what do you think about? (repeat their answers)
Easter bunny…
Candy…
Family get togethers…
Pastel colors?
All of those things are good and cute, but when you think about the true meaning of Easter, those seem so empty.
And when it comes to the true meaning of Easter, empty is a good thing!
Normally the concept of something being empty isn’t really a good thing is it?
Empty…it brings about unneeded stress.
Empty gift cards…
Empty coffee cup…
Empty wallet!!!
So, empty equals no good right?
You see everybody and their momma gets together for Easter to celebrate a holiday that is to them…empty
But I’m here to tell you today that…
The Message
Point #1: Empty is a good thing.
When we look at Easter in the proper light, and we understand what really happened, and what was going on, and why we celebrate Easter…empty is a good thing.
When Jesus was murdered and nailed to a cross, they buried him in a tomb, basically a cave, and rolled a huge heavy stone in front of the tomb.
Then three days later something unbelievable happened. The tomb was empty.
**Luke 24: 1-8** it says this...
*But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes. The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.” Then they remembered that he had said this.*
**Point #2: Empty is proof.**
Now let’s back up a minute. Let’s look earlier during Jesus’ ministry when he said had to go through this to his disciples.
**Mark 8: 31 (NLT)**
*Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead.*
**Proof Jesus is who he says he is.**
Ever heard someone make a bunch of claims, but couldn’t back it up? Jesus didn’t do that.
We just read in Mark that Jesus said he would die and rise again after three days….and he backed it up. Now I can follow somebody who makes a claim as huge as this, and then backs it up!!
**Point #3: Empty is powerful.**
**Jesus has power over death**
Because Jesus died and rose again, because he Jesus is who he says he is, Jesus has power of sin’s greatest weapon…death.
You know for something to have life, something else has to die. Did anyone eat some fruit today?
It had to be disconnected from its tree, its life source; it had to die to give you life. Jesus is the one who says I can give you life, I can make it so that you will never really die...that even after life on earth is done with, you will live with me forever....because that is how much I love you!!
The empty tomb shows us that Jesus has power over death, he looked death straight in the eyes, he took death’s best sting....and overcame it!! How amazing is that!!
**Point #4: Empty is permanent.**
You know plenty of people visit Jerusalem every year. Plenty of people walked down some of the same roads that Jesus may have walked down. One of the places people love to visit is the place where historians believe Jesus was buried…and guess what? Till this day the tomb is still empty!!!
**Romans 6: 9 (NLT)**
*We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him.*
Jesus wasn’t in the tomb 3 days after he died….he isn’t in the tomb today….and he never will be!! Jesus is God and is alive forever! His body wasn’t stolen, it wasn’t in the wrong tomb, it wasn’t some magic trick….
So, when we look at the true meaning of Easter and everything Jesus did for us on the cross…empty is a good thing!!
Empty means Jesus is who he says he is,
Empty means Jesus has power over death,
And empty is permanent…
Jesus is permanently alive and death will never overcome him again. When we decide to follow him instead of following our own selfish desires, we too can begin to really live!
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
What is your favorite Easter candy?
Why is the concept of something being empty usually considered a bad thing?
When it comes to Easter, how is empty a good thing?
What thing in your life seems “empty” right now?
Easter Youth Group Lesson
Jesus displayed his power over sin at the resurrection. When we surrender our lives to Him, we possess the same power to overcome our own sin.
Use this Easter lesson to drive home that point to the students in your ministry.
We all struggle with sin. Our only hope is Jesus. When we rely on Him, he gives us the power to resist temptation.
Although this is a serious topic, this lesson opens up with a fun game called – Epic Noodle Challenge.
And yes, the game does connect to the main idea of the lesson. It’s actually a great opener.
Bible: Matthew 28: 1–10
Bottom Line: With God’s help, the power of sin in your life can be broken!
SUPPLIES
Opening Game
- One three-foot swimming noodle per student. Cut noodles in half, giving each player a three-foot noodle.
- Optional – an equal amount colored bracelets to separate teams (2 colors). An equal amount of colored bracelets to separate the teams. Two colors, one color for each team.
- Alternative is to put boys on one team and girls on another (try and get an equal amount of players on each team).
Teach
- One donut. Substitute something else if your students don’t absolutely love donuts.
- Skateboard - borrow one from a student.
OPENING GAME: EPIC NOODLE BATTLE
Description: Split up the group into two teams of even amount of players.
Give each student a three-foot swimming noodle & a bracelet to wear on their wrist.
The bracelet identifies the teams.
The goal of the game is to hit players on the opposing team (below the waist) with the noodle.
If a player is hit, she is “dead” and sits down on the ground.
Dead players cannot move from the spot they were hit, unless they are resurrected.
A player from the same team can hit “dead” players with the noodle and “resurrect” them to life. Resurrected players are back in the game and continue playing.
The goal is to hit all players on the opposing team, declaring them all “dead”.
Once successful, declare that team as the winner.
If you need to end the game before all players on one team are “dead”, call time when appropriate. Whichever team has the least amount of “dead” players wins.
**Variation:** If you have access to a large building, with a lot of empty rooms, then open up the building as your playing area.
Students will enjoy the large playing area and hiding in the many room (it makes the game more exciting).
**After the game, say:** Congrats to the winning team! In today’s message we will be focusing on Jesus’ “death” and “resurrection.”
Sound familiar?
Ha, that’s right.
We just played a game involving “dead” & “resurrected” players.
Let’s talk about this a few minutes.
**Discuss the following questions:**
- If you were Jesus’ best friend, what would be going on in your mind when he died on the cross? What emotions would you be feeling?
- If you were Jesus’ best friend, what would be going on in your mind when he rose from the dead? What emotions would you be feeling?
- Why do you think Jesus’ resurrection is so important to us today?
**TEACH - EASTER**
**SUPPLIES**
- One donut. Substitute something else if your students don’t absolutely love donuts.
- Skateboard - borrow one from a student.
(Note: This experience could trigger the emotions of some students who have experienced a death of a family member or friend. In the event that occurs, please be
sensitive to the student’s emotions and feelings. If necessary, pull the student aside to talk through the issue and pray together. Look at it as a ministry opportunity.)
Close your eyes and imagine the events I am about to describe happen to you.
I want for you to imagine in your mind one of your close friends.
Choose a friend and get a clear picture of him or her in your head.
As I read through the following events, picture they are happening to you.
- You’re at home watching your favorite show on TV while sitting on the sofa.
- Your mom enters the room and asks you to turn off the TV. You can tell she has something important to tell you by the tone of her voice.
- She tells you that your friend has died in a car accident.
- Your friend’s death troubles you deeply—you are sad, mad and confused.
- You are at the funeral a few days later when all of a sudden someone notices the casket is empty.
- The family starts to complain to the funeral home only to soon realize an amazing miracle has taken place. Your friend is alive. In fact, she enters the room appearing to be quite normal.
- Question: What would you be thinking & feeling at that moment?
When Jesus died on the cross, his closest friends and family were devastated.
They loved and cared for him deeply.
When they discovered he was alive, they were thrilled!
Their thoughts and feelings were probably similar to what you would experience in the same situation.
Read Matthew 28:1–10 (NCV):
The day after the Sabbath day was the first day of the week. At dawn on the first day, Mary Magdalene and another woman named Mary went to look at the tomb. At that time there was a strong earthquake. An angel of the Lord came down from heaven, went to the tomb, and rolled the stone away from the entrance. Then he sat on the stone. He was shining as bright as lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The soldiers guarding the tomb shook with fear because of the angel, and they became like dead men. The angel said to the women, “Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus, who has been crucified. He is not here. He has risen from the dead as he said he would.”
Come and see the place where his body was. And go quickly and tell his followers, ‘Jesus has risen from the dead. He is going into Galilee ahead of you, and you will see him there.’”
Then the angel said, “Now I have told you.”
The women left the tomb quickly. They were afraid, but they were also very happy. They ran to tell Jesus’ followers what had happened. Suddenly, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings.”
The women came up to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.
Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my followers to go on to Galilee, and they will see me there.”
Say: You may have heard this story before, but have you ever thought about why it is so important that Jesus came back from the dead?
Today we are going to explore that question, and you might be surprised at the answer. (Hold up the donut)
*Note: feel free to use something else that your group would really like if donuts aren’t appealing enough.
Who likes donuts? Who is a really big fan and would like to eat this one?
(Pick a student to come upfront.) Hi there, what’s your name? Great, before you eat this.
I am going to put it right under your nose, but you can’t have it yet.
(Put it under the student’s nose.) Now, smell this yummy donut.
Smells good, doesn’t it? I want you to hold it now, but you still can’t eat it. (Hand the donut to the student.) What’s going through your mind right now? (Get response.)
I bet your mouth is watering and you can’t wait to eat it.
Well, you can’t have it yet. But you will soon, so hang on.
I’ve got a few more things I want to share with everyone.
So, while I do that. You just hold up the donut. But don’t eat it yet.
I have a love-hate relationship with hot, warm donuts.
I love them because they’re soooo good (especially when they are warm and gooey), but I hate them because they aren’t very healthy.
I try to eat a healthy diet, and donuts aren’t on the list of good things to eat.
But once I smell and see yummy donuts, I simply can’t resist.
A certain kind of power comes over me. I will try with all my strength to not eat one, but I just got to have it. So warm, tasty and soooooo goooood!
(Talking to the volunteer with the donut)
Has it been difficult not eating the donut?
Why or why not? (Get a response)
You’ve done a great job, go ahead and eat it.
Let’s give him a round of applause. You can go sit down now.
It’s hard to resist what I call, the “power of the donut”.
Donuts are a great illustration of the power of sin.
For many of us, we can’t resist the tempting power of the donut. Like the donut, sin has power over us.
In fact, its power is much stronger.
Before we surrender our lives to Jesus, we can’t break the power of sin. In some area of our lives, sin will control and overpower us.
And that sin blocks us from having a forever friendship with Jesus.
SIN was powerful enough to kill Jesus.
Although Jesus was whipped, wore a crown of thorns, nailed to a cross and stabbed on the side – none of those things killed him.
What killed Jesus was the weight of all the sins of the world. The Bible tells us that SIN crushed and killed Jesus.
The good news is that Jesus came back to life. Why is that so important? Because he broke the power of sin! Sin killed him, but God’s power raised him from the dead!
With God’s help, the power of sin in your life can be broken!
Jesus broke the power of sin in his life when he came back from the dead.
When we surrender our lives to Jesus and follow Him, we are given the same power to overcome sin in our lives.
What does that look like in everyday life?
- God gives you the power to say no when all your friends are going out partying and drinking, and they want you to join them.
- God gives you the power to say no when you’re all alone online, and are tempted to go to that website you know you shouldn’t.
- God gives you the power to say no when you and your boyfriend/girlfriend are all alone late at night…and you really want to have sex.
Who can give some more examples? (Get responses)
(Hold up the skateboard)
Who likes to skateboard and is pretty good at it?
I need someone to show us a skateboard trick. Who wants to do that? (Pick a volunteer)
Okay, thanks for coming up here. Go for it.
(Allow the volunteer a few minutes to show everyone a trick.)
Great job!
I have a few questions for you.
- How long have you been skateboarding?
- When you first started, did you fall down a lot?
- When learning a new trick, do you still sometimes fall down?
Thanks for sharing! You can have a seat now. (Volunteer goes back to his chair.)
When you first learn something new, such as skateboarding, you’re going to fail a lot. But over time, you get better.
Like how you saw (name of volunteer) do those cool skateboard tricks.
At first, he probably messed up a lot.
Even when you get really good at something, you’re going to mess up some.
You will never be perfect at anything. But you do get better over time with practice.
It is the same with sin.
The first step is to surrender your life to Jesus.
You then have access to God’s power to overcome sin.
But you’re still going to sin, mess up and fail.
The goal is to start relying on God’s power to resist sin now. Over time, with God’s help, you’re going to get better.
One day you will be like a pro-skater, where, for the most part, you do what is right and live life God’s way.
You will still mess up every once in awhile, like any pro-skater does, but for the most part you are overcoming sin in your life.
Note: Consider allowing students an opportunity to get prayer for whatever issues they’re struggling with. Do that in small groups, ask students to come to the front for prayer, or whatever method you feel comfortable with. This is a great opportunity for a time of prayer.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON ENCOURAGEMENT
Bible: 1 Thessalonians 5:11, Philippians 1:3-11
Bottom Line: We are called to encourage one another. Our words can either build up or tear each other down.
SUPPLIES
Colored paper with the name of each student in your group written across the top. (Even make a paper for students who are not present and these will be sent to them to encourage them.)
Pens for each student
Encouraging Christian music to play for the group.
Envelopes and postage to mail letters to absent students.
LEADER PREP
Our prayer is that this lesson will grow into a ministry of encouragement for your students.
Take time before the lesson to write down the names of the students in your church, even and especially those who might not be active.
Write one name per page which will be passed around to the students in the group to write words of encouragement to the person named on the sheet.
Prior to the lesson, write words of encouragement to each student on the sheet to give you a chance to think and pray about the words that you share with each student.
Pray for each student as you write on their sheet.
Write a letter of encouragement to your group to read out loud.
Look to the letter that Paul wrote to the Philippians as you pray for your group and pray that God would lead you in words to write to encourage them.
Make the letter personal and affirming, pointing out the strengths that you see in the group.
OPENING GAME— Cheerleader Huddle
Say: How many of you have been to a game with cheerleaders?
What are some of the cheers or phrases that they say to encourage the team?
Write their ideas down, and add any others such as “You Rock!”, “Way to go”, etc.
Ok, we are going to use these cheers in this game: Cheerleader Huddle.
Let’s get in a circle, and I need one person to volunteer to be the first cheerleader.
Your challenge is to go to each person in the circle and yell out, cheer out, or whatever you need to do - using one of these phrases to make someone in the circle smile.
Circle - your challenge is to NOT SMILE.
Cheerleader - get creative, but you cannot touch the person you are cheering to.
Be funny, be serious, do a cartwheel, just be creative to make them smile.
If someone smiles, then they become the cheerleader. Then, go to the person beside them to the left and go around the circle trying to make someone smile.
If you go around the circle and no one smiles, choose another ‘cheer’ and maybe add a tumble!
If you find that a student struggles to make anyone smile, nonchalantly join the circle and relieve them by smiling or maybe talk to some of your other leaders beforehand to help those who struggle out…for some introverted students, this activity could be very stressful.
After the game, ask:
Which cheer was the toughest to not smile through?
What methods seemed to work the best to make someone smile?
Which cheer did you like the best?
Which phrase would be a phrase that could really encourage you and why?
TEACH – Encouragement
You might have guessed that today we are going to be talking about cheering one another on, or encouraging one another.
Raise your hand if you can remember (almost word for word) a time that someone said something harsh to you that hurt you.
Leader could share at this time a personal story in which the words of another stuck with them in a negative way.
How many of you know the children’s rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones....”
Allow the group to finish the phrase.
But, think about those words that have been spoken to you that still sting. They hurt and they can stay with you for days, weeks, or even years.
It is a sad reality that there are many people who still carry the scars of words said to them as little children as adults.
Words that the person who said them probably doesn’t even remember saying.
Our words to one another really do matter more than we can realize, and that is why today’s lesson is so important for our group.
I want you to think about a time when you were really encouraged.
Maybe someone said something to you that has stuck with you, and encourages you.
Invite them to share these instances and be prepared to share a personal story in which you were encouraged.
Read 1 Thessalonians 5:11.
We seldom realize that our words really do make a difference, both for good and for bad.
And God knows this.
Paul was an apostle of Jesus who spent his adult life encouraging Christians.
He wrote letters to the churches saying things like this:
Read Philippians 1:3-11.
How do you think Paul’s words made the Christians in Philippi feel?
I want to read you a letter that I think will encourage you.
Read the letter that you wrote to the group in your prep time.
God made us for community and far too often we forget to encourage and lift one another up.
We forget to tell each other that we truly thank God for each other.
There is something really powerful that happens when we say or write words with the purpose of encouraging each other.
Don’t just assume that others know how you feel, but let them know the talents and gifts that you see in them.
As our scripture said, “do this as the day draws near”, which is a way of saying that we never know how much time we may have to bless one another.
Take the opportunity today to encourage one another.
I have sheets of paper that have each of your names written across the top. We are going to take time today to encourage one another.
Have the group sit in a circle and if possible sit around tables.
Write a word of encouragement to the person named on the sheet and then pass that sheet to the person on your right and just keep passing.
Remember to be encouraging.
This isn’t the time to write things that you might think are funny but could hurt someone.
Try doing this: As you get a paper, pray for the person at the top of the paper.
Ask God to help you to write something that He loves about them.
Write about how you see God shine through them or something that makes them special.
Really try to avoid writing things like “You are cool” or “I like your hair”, but rather really pray about how you can say something that will encourage this person.
You could draw a picture, if you are more creative and prefer art over words.
And if you find that you want to write more, know that this might be just the beginning of you really taking a step to encourage others.
Write thoughts to each person today, but then feel free to go home and continue encouraging one another in creative ways.
Hopefully, this encouragement will last well beyond today.
Start circulating the papers and play some encouraging music for the students as they write.
Once everyone has completed their writing, pass the papers out to each student and let them know they can read them whenever they prefer.
Mail the papers to those students who are not present and take this as an opportunity to let them know they are important and thought of.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How did it feel to read the words of encouragement on your paper?
Which words stick out to you most?
Why do you think encouraging others is so rare?
Who is someone in your life that you can encourage in this way this week?
Challenge one another to choose 3 people that they can encourage through writing a letter, a text, an email, etc. over the next week.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON EVANGELISM
Bible: Matthew 13:44
Topic: Telling others about Jesus
Use this youth group game and lesson to challenge the way your students think about sharing Jesus with their friends.
As students search for hidden treasure with no direction from their friends, they will learn how important it is to share directions to the most important treasure of all: Jesus.
Opening Game - Hidden Treasure
SUPPLIES
A “treasure” (something like enough candy for the winning group)
Clues written down to the location of the treasure: both true and false
Before the game starts, hide the treasure somewhere in the building, or outside, if that works with your location.
Split the students into two groups.
Choose one student from each group and pull them aside.
Tell them where the treasure is, but tell them that they cannot give their teammates any hints at all.
Send the surely confused students back to their groups and tell everyone to start looking for the treasure—without giving them any rules or hints to where it may be.
After teams have been looking for a while, start passing out clues.
For every true clue you give the students, also give them a false clue.
After the students run around confused for a few minutes, eventually give them enough true clues to allow one of the groups to find the treasure.
Ask:
- Wasn’t that a confusing treasure hunt?
- Did the false clues make it a lot harder to find what you were looking for?
- Wouldn’t it have been easier if I had given you directions at the beginning of the game?
TEACH
Say: Now, I’m going to confuse you all just a little bit more. What if I told you that (names of students you pulled aside at the beginning) knew where the treasure was the entire time?
Pause and allow students to react.
That’s right, they knew exactly where the treasure was. They even knew that some of the clues I gave you were wrong!
If they had spoken up, your entire team would be enjoying candy right now!
What kind of friend keeps their mouth shut when they know something that could help their friends?
Say: Sadly, a lot of you may be that kind of friend this year.
You see, as you go back to school, you’re going to rub elbows with a lot of people who don’t know Jesus on a daily basis. You may even become close friends with some of them.
Ask: What kind of friend would you be if you didn’t tell them about Jesus?
Say: If you know Jesus, you already have found the greatest treasure in the entire world.
Ask:
- What reasons do you have to not tell your friends about Jesus?
- Do you agree that knowing Jesus is like having a treasure?
- If you think of knowing Jesus as a treasure, does that motivate you more to share him with others?
Say: It’s easy to just go throughout the school year focused on yourself. It would be really easy for you to just worry about your assignments and making sure you got in with the right group.
It would be easier to *not* worry about telling people about Jesus this school year. But if you did that, you would be withholding the secret to the greatest treasure there is.
Read: Matthew 13:44
“The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”
Say: Isn’t that verse so cool? It shows us how excited we should be over the fact that we know about Jesus and Heaven.
The man in this story was so excited that he rushed to give away everything he had so he could get the treasure.
Now, if he was that excited, don’t you think he told all of his friends once he got the treasure?
WRAP UP
Maybe you’ve never thought of having a relationship with Jesus as having a treasure. I hope that after reading that verse, you will.
Think of how many people in your school don’t know Jesus and are just blindly wandering around looking for something.
Just like in the game, they don’t have clear direction on where they should be looking. They’re receiving false advice on where they should be going. They’re waiting on someone to tell them something that makes sense.
You could be that someone. Someone needs to tell the students at your school about the greatest treasure they could ever have. Is it going to be you?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON FAITH
Bottom Line: Use this lesson with your youth group, student ministry, youth ministry or youth sunday school class to teach "trusting the voice".
SUPPLIES
Items for obstacle course (could include chairs, cones, books, coats, shoes... basically anything that you would want the contestants to “avoid”)
Blindfolds
SPACE REQUIREMENTS
You will need room to set-up a sort of obstacle course.
This space can be as small or large as you would like it to be depending on the size of the teams competing.
Game Description (for a small youth group)
Select six students and pair them up.
One will be the “voice” while the other will be the “contestant”.
Have the “voices” stand at the end of the obstacle course while the “contestants” are blindfolded and placed at the beginning.
When the game starts the “voices” must guide their specific “contestant” to the finish line at the other end of the obstacle course.
The first “contestant” to cross the finish line wins.
Game Description (for a large youth group)
Divide the group into teams (two or three works best).
Have each team select two players: one will be the “voice” the other will be the game’s “contestant”.
Have the “voice” stand at the end of the obstacle course.
Make sure that the “contestant” knows who is the “voice” and can recognize the sound of his/her voice.
Have the members from the other team surround the obstacle course.
Blindfold the “contestant” and place him/her at the beginning of the obstacle course.
When the game starts, the “voice” must guide the “contestant” through the obstacle course while the opposing team tries to distract the “contestant” with incorrect directions.
If the groups are very large the game leader has the option to limit the opposing team to using whispers as opposed to shouting.
In this scenario there can be multiple “voices” and “contestants” competing on the same course if space allows.
The goal of the game is for the “contestant(s)” to be guided through the obstacle course by their “voice” despite the surrounding distractions.
**Read Psalm 119:105**
*Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.* (New Living Translation)
**Read Hebrews 11:1**
*Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.* (NLV)
As we saw in the game we just played, sometimes it can be really hard to follow a voice in the middle of all the distractions.
How can we find our way when we can’t see where we are going and can hardly understand what our Guide is saying?
Even when we can hear Him, how do we know it is safe for us to follow?
The two verses that we just read are foundational for Christians when it comes to understanding how faith works.
In Psalm 119:105 we see that our Guide, the “Voice” that we need to follow is God’s Word.
In Hebrews 11:1, we see that faith is what gives us strength to follow that “Voice” even when we can’t see where it is leading us.
Make no mistake about it, faith takes hard work.
It takes trust, focus, and the ability to ignore the distractions around us.
Overall, faith requires us to understand that the true “Voice” knows the absolute best way through the giant obstacle course that is life.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What was the hardest part about being the blindfolded person in the game?
What are some of the distractions in life that make it hard to hear God's Voice?
Why is sometimes so hard for us to use God's Word as our guide in life?
What are some ways that we can shut out the "distractions" around us?
How can we make our faith stronger?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON FAMILY
Bible: Joshua 24:15
Bottom Line: Family can be amazing and messy, but a family that loves God together can be an awesome thing for the world to see.
LEADER PREP
God created us for relationship and there is no relationship quite like that of a family that is seeking God together.
Today’s lesson might be the first picture that some students get of a family that could really change the world for God together.
Family can be a very dicey topic with youth because nobody’s family is perfect.
Sadly, some of our teens’ families are very far from perfect.
Family can also be wonderful and some of the students in your group might be a part of an amazing and godly family.
It’s important to remember that sitting in your group could be students who have suffered at the hands of their family or ARE currently suffering, so pray even now that your words might bring them the healing and clarity that they need.
And for many of you, leaders, you might know in a very personal way the messiness of family.
Prayerfully ask God to give you the words to share to be honest, yet to not use the time with the youth as your own personal therapy.
Spend some time before this lesson thinking about the specific families of the students in the youth group and pray for those who you know might be struggling.
OPENING GAME – Family Charades
Divide the group into 2 teams.
You could have older siblings on one team versus the younger siblings or some other random grouping.
Teams will send a member of their team to act out one of the following family ‘relationships’ using words or actions to get their team to guess the word first.
Leader will tell the 2 opponents the word they are to act out and then say ‘Go’.
Family Words:
Cousin
Brother
Grandpa
Godmother
3rd cousin
Step mom
Mother
Uncle
Grandmother
Step sister
After the game, ask:
Which family relationships would you add to the list that weren’t mentioned in the game?
What family relationships do you think are the toughest for people in general?
Which family member would you like to be like in your life? Why?
TEACH – Youth Group Lesson on Family
Find some funny family photos to project (if you don’t have any go to http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ and find some hilarious options.
It would also be funny to find some funny photos of your family to show.
Say: We are going to show some pictures of families
Raise your hand when you see one that might as well be your family.
Have a good time with this activity.
Families can be super funny, awkward, messy….(add words that you think of when we talk about family.)
Give the students a chance to share their words, which will give you insight into where they might be in regards to thinking about family.
What emotions come to your mind when we talk about families?
Would it surprise you to hear that there are more dysfunctional families in the Bible than there are good ones?
There are some really messed up families in the Bible - brothers who sell their brother and then pretend that he is dead (Joseph), a brother who tricks his blind dad to think that he is his other brother (Jacob), a son who chooses his Dad's enemy over his dad (Jonathan), and then there are some really troubling stories in the Bible that we won't go into here, but just trust me...it gets really dark. You should read it!
But here is something to think about - why do you think that God created families?
What do you think God had in mind with moms and dads and children and grandparents?
There is one passage in the Old Testament that really does give an amazing idea of what God might have intended with families to look like:
**Read Joshua 24:15**
Some of you sitting here might be the only Christian in your family, but this passage of scripture could be a reminder to you that YOUR family, when you are a parent, could be a picture to others of God's love.
*If you have a story from your life of someone in your family who might have come to faith, or a relationship that has been reconciled, share it!*
Ask yourself, if my family were asked to make a choice right now, would we serve God even if everyone around us was not choosing God?
What if your family didn’t choose God, would you be able to say to them like Joshua did – “I am choosing God”?
Because for some of you, your family might not ever take the stand that Joshua made, but you won’t always be the ‘youth’ or child in your family, right?
Someday, you will be the adult and maybe today you need to hear that YOU can be the one even right now to make that stand for your family, both now and in the future.
God can do amazing things in even the worst families.
Maybe some of us here have seen families changed by the love of God…and it is these stories that remind us to pray for our family, ESPECIALLY if your family is a hot mess!
Because God is in the business of redeeming lost lives.
Just like the Bible is full of stories of dysfunctional families and messed up people in them, the Bible also is full of stories in which truly messed up people are transformed into beautiful testaments of God’s power.
Stories of lives changed and people who were hateful, selfish, and mean became true people of God.
Stories of forgiveness.
Stories of joy and redemption.
And God can do that in your family.
It might not happen tomorrow or the next day or even in a year, but begin praying even today for God to do amazing things in the lives of your family members.
Some of you might have amazing parents, and if you do, thank God and thank them because it can be really easy to take them for granted.
Ask anyone who has had parents who are less than great and they will tell you not to ever take them for granted.
Sure, they might nag you or not let you stay out until 2 am, but if they love God, love you and are trying….you are one of the lucky few.
Maybe things that are really tough and hard are going on in your family, and if that’s the case, please find an adult that you trust to share these things with because it is never ok for family to hurt you on purpose.
Maybe your family is ok, but there is some tension, which is tough.
Maybe your parents are divorced or family members are sick.
These things can be really tough.
But know this: God sees your family issues and He is listening.
I want you to think of one relationship in your family that is not what it should be, and honestly, sometimes this is not your fault at all.
But picture them in your mind, and right now, let’s pray for those relationships.
Pray with me:
God, I lift up (say the name of your family member to yourself right now).
Our relationship is (choose a word that would describe your relationship with them and say it now).
God, you are in the business of doing amazing things in people’s lives, and I ask that you cover us in your love.
Help us to choose you, God.
Amen.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Give the youth a chance to share the family member they prayed for if they feel comfortable.
Share about a family relationship that makes you happy. Why?
Share about family relationship that is a challenge to you. Why?
What dreams do you have for your family when you grow older and maybe have your own family?
What do you wish your parents knew or would do?
How could your family serve God and share his love as a family?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON FEAR
Bible: Isaiah 41:9-10
Bottom Line: We do not have to fear when we know that we have God by our side.
OPENING GAME - Bean Boozeled Challenge
SUPPLIES
Bean Boozeled Jelly Bean Challenge (http://www.jellybelly.com/beanboozled-challenge)
Spit cups
Box filled with ‘scary/gross’ items such as sardines, crickets, play spiders or bugs, rubber snake, a baby doll (which to some is very scary!), clown toy, villain figure, etc.
Scary ‘fear’ music
Index cards for each student
Pens
Big bag
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Ask for 2 volunteers to ‘face off’ to the Bean Boozeled Challenge.
Spin the wheel to choose the type of jelly bean and then they eat the bean at the same time.
The trick with this game is that a ‘good tasting’ bean and a bad tasting bean look the same and you can only tell the difference once you bite into the bean.
Take pictures of the youths’ faces as they eat the beans to have a hilarious photo collage.
Ask for the next 2 volunteers and continue until all of the beans have been tasted.
Spin the wheel provided in the game to choose the color of jelly bean to be tasted, hand the youth the beans, and on the count of 3, they eat the bean.
Provide ‘spit cups’ for contestants to spit out the ‘bad beans’.
Next Game: The Box of Fear
Inside of this box, I have items which should strike terror in your heart.
Everyone will sit in a large circle and when the music stops, if you are holding the box, you have to reach in and grab an item.
You will have to hold onto that item for the rest of the night unless you are able to scare someone and make them jump...then they have to keep the item.
Play music (the scarier the better) and start passing the Box of Fear.
Remind the youth that they have to hold onto the object and they can only get rid of it if they scare another youth and make them jump.
TEACH - Fear
Large Group Questions:
What was something that you were really afraid of as a small child?
What helped you to not be afraid as a little child?
Hold up a large bag.
Imagine right now that you are a contestant in the popular show, Fear Factor.
What would be in this bag if I were to be holding something that you would truly be afraid of?
Share what would be in bag for you. Share why this item would cause you fear.
Fear is something that all of us struggle with at some point.
Maybe you can remember lying in bed as a small child and being so afraid that the shadows on the walls were monsters, or being afraid of the dark.
Leader, share a story of a time that you were very afraid.
How many times have you been afraid of something only to find that it really wasn’t that bad?
But no amount of telling yourself that it was ‘ok’ before that point seemed to help, did it?
Fear is a very real and powerful emotion.
And it can cause us to do some pretty crazy things, too.
So let me ask you: What are you afraid of today?
Maybe it is your future.
Maybe it is what others think about you?
Many people fear death or someone you love dying.
Maybe it is that someone will find out something that you are ashamed of.
Maybe you are afraid of love.
Of disappointing someone.
Are you afraid that God will judge you?
The list could go on and on…
Everyone is going to get a notecard.
I want you to write down what your greatest fear is on that card and pass it to me.
Do not write your name on the card because I will be reading these out loud.
Give the youth a few minutes to write down their fears and pass them in.
Read the fears on the cards to the group.
How many of you were surprised to hear that others have the same fear as you do?
How did it make you feel to know that you are not the only one who gets afraid or fears certain things?
Were there any fears that we should add to this stack?
Give students a few minutes to share more fears. (Some to add might be: being alone, what others think of you, not having enough food.)
Now this list of what we fear would also change depending on where we are in life or what type of community we live in.
There are some places in the world today where people worry about violence or what they will eat.
They worry that war will break out or that their lives are in danger.
For them, fear is real and it is life or death.
Can you imagine living every day with that level of fear?
Just think about how your body feels when you are really afraid.
Sweaty palms.
Your stomach gets all queasy.
Every single inch of your body is on alert.
And each of us respond to fear in different ways.
Some of us freeze.
Others run.
And some of us fight, but regardless, we all know what it is like to be afraid.
Fear can truly be paralyzing and it can be very difficult to think clearly when you are truly afraid.
It is no surprise, then, that the Bible talks a lot about fear and being afraid.
Read Isaiah 41:9-10
This scripture is one that we all should probably memorize because it is so important.
Is there really anything that we should be afraid of when we have God with us?
But it is almost like God knows that we will struggle with fear, isn’t it?
He reminds us that he is with us.
And he tells us to not fear.
Why?
Because God is with us.
Say that with me: God is with us.
And not only that, He will strengthen us.
As if his presence with us isn’t enough, he also gives us strength.
God knows that we will be afraid.
Over and over in scripture are these reminders: Do not be afraid.
Do not fear.
So think about the situations that cause you to be afraid.
Now, picture yourself facing those situations WITH GOD.
Because that is the reality.
You do not face those things alone.
Hold up the index cards with their fears.
These things: Do not fear. God is with you.
Even those people who live in real fear every single day, God’s promise is true for them also.
God is greater than all of our fears.
And he can and WILL give us the strength to face those fears.
I am going to read each of these fears again, and after each one, I want you to say these words: “Do not fear. God is with you.”
Read each card and prompt the students to respond “Do not fear. God is with you” after each one.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What fear can we pray with you about?
What times are the hardest for you to remember not to be afraid?
When you think about your future, what causes you fear?
How does it make you feel knowing that God is with you? Does it help you to face your fears?
Have each student write “Fear Not, I am with you” on a note card. Challenge them to put this in a place where they can see it and read it each day.
Close in prayer.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON FORGIVENESS
Forgiving others can be tough. It can also be difficult to ask God for forgiveness for something you did. We've all been there.
The good news is, experiencing God's forgiveness enables us to forgive others.
Use this lesson to help teenagers in your ministry grapple with this topic.
Bible: Matthew 18:21–35; Colossians 3:13
Bottom Line: Forgive others the way God has forgiven us.
OPENING GAME: HEAD SQUARE, 9-SQUARE
Supplies: One playground ball and some masking tape for each group playing the game. We recommend setting up one playing area for every 20 players. So, if you have 100 students, then setup 4-5 playing areas.
Prepare: Here’s how to setup one playing area. Using masking tape, make one large square that contains nine small, equal squares. The nine squares should each be 4-5 feet high and wide.
How to play: This game is a modified version of four square. Here are the official rules of four square - http://www.squarefour.org/rules. For this game, players use nine squares instead of four and use their head to hit the ball rather than hands. For a detailed explanation of nine-square, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-Square.
Ask the following questions after playing the game: Was it easy or hard to use your head instead of hands when playing the game? Explain.
Say: It didn’t feel natural to play with your head, did it?
You might even say it was awkward, wasn’t it?
Today we’re going to talk about forgiveness.
And the truth is that it doesn’t come natural to us.
We have to work at it.
But the more we do it, the more natural it will become.
Optional: If players get real frustrated using their heads to hit the balls, then after a few minutes allow them to use their hands. But make them work for it.
TEACH
Prepare: During the teaching time, you’re going to share personal examples describing two ways people often react to someone hurting or upsetting you.
Be prepared to share a time when you ignored being hurt and a time when you were hurt and you got revenge.
Be prepared to also share the consequences of ignoring it and getting even.
Say: Today we’re going to talk about forgiveness.
Is it easy or hard to show forgiveness to your classmates at school (or anyone for that matter)?
Think of the students in your class.
Imagine you are in the classroom and take a look around at everyone that would be there with you.
Do you see anyone who has ever done something to hurt or upset you?
When you think about what they did to you, how did you respond?
When others do something wrong to you, you have 3 choices for how to respond.
First, you could ignore what they said or did.
This might seem like a good decision, but you never get the chance to deal with your emotions.
When you hold on something, it eats away at you.
[Share a time when you ignored something and it ate away at you. Talk about how unforgiveness affected you.]
(Optional – Show a picture of a skin infection.)
An infection can get really bad when you ignore it and do nothing about it.
It can get really nasty.
When we ignore a wrong done to us, like an infection, it can eat away at our souls.
The second option is to get revenge.
You could do to them the exact same thing that they did to you.
Or better, you could do something even worse than what they did!
I think we all know that this is not the wisest choice.
For many of us, revenge is what comes naturally.
It’s like a knee jerk reaction.
Your brother hits you for no reason, and you whack him on the head.
A classmate at school plays a prank on you, and you get even doing something even worse to him.
*Share an example of when you got even with someone.*
*Talk about the negative consequences that occurred.*
The third option, forgiveness, is much better than the first two.
You could choose to forgive the person for what they said or did.
Forgiveness allows you to give the whole situation to God and let Him help to fix the broken friendship.
Even if you can’t be friends with the other person, God can work in you to heal your pain.
Forgiveness is always the best option.
It’s not just the best of the three choices; it is also a command from Jesus.
Matthew 18 tells us about a conversation that took place between Jesus and the disciples.
*Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus responded to Peter by saying, “I tell you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:21–22)*
The disciples must not have understood Jesus' response, so He explained it by telling them a story called a parable.
In the story, there was a King who wanted to collect the debts of all his servants. Each of the servants had to go before the King and pay him what they owed. If they could not pay, the custom was to be thrown in prison until the debt could be paid. One of the servants owed a great deal of money to the King.
The Bible says that the debt was equal to 10,000 bags of gold!
I'm going to use these buckets to represent the debt of the servant. There are 10 buckets. Each bucket represents 1,000 bags of gold that the servant owed to the King.
Place 10 large buckets or flowerpots on stage to represent the debt.
Be sure to use large pots to emphasize the magnitude of the servant's debt.
When the King learned that the servant couldn't pay the debt, He ordered that all of the man's possessions be sold. On top of that, the man, his wife, and his children were ordered to be sold as slaves! The servant fell to his knees and begged the King to have mercy on him.
Matthew 18:27 says, "The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go."
Can you believe that?
This massive debt was just erased, and the man was free to go! After he left, the servant went and found another man who owed him money. The Bible tells us that this man owed him around 100 silver coins.
I'm going to use this bucket to represent that debt.
This is nothing compared to that huge debt over there.
Place 1 small bucket or flower pot on stage to represent the second debt.
Make an effort to compare the two debts and the drastic difference in amounts.
The man fell to his knees and begged for mercy because he couldn’t pay his debt.
Sound familiar?
Listen to what happened in the end of this story.
Read Matthew 18:30–34.
This man was forgiven so much (point to large buckets), and yet he couldn’t forgive someone else for this little amount (point to small buckets).
The point Jesus was making was that we have all been forgiven for so much by God. He chose to love us and offer us forgiveness for sin.
If we have been forgiven for so much, how can we not forgive a friend or classmate who has done something wrong to us?
Forgiveness is always the best option.
It’s not easy to forgive others, but it is what Jesus commands us to do.
Even if the other person is not really sorry, we still have to forgive and give it over to God.
Colossians 3:13 says, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
Remember, we should forgive others the way God has forgiven us.
End of Lesson
SMALL GROUPS
Note: This small group activity is optional and would probably work best with junior high/middle school students rather than high school students.
Supplies: Flash paper (1 per student) & Sharpie’s. You can purchase flash paper here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00XKOJCWU/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new.
As of the publication of this lesson, that link is valid.
However, if for any reason it is no longer active, then simply do a Google or Amazon search for “flash paper”.
Take those sheets and cut them into fourths leaving four smaller rectangles.
You can also do a search on Google for – flash paper magic.
You can find multiple other sources for the flash paper.
Each student will receive a piece of flash paper and a marker (Sharpie’s work best).
Ask the students to write something that someone has done to them.
Something that they haven’t yet forgiven.
Remember the paper is small and thin, so remind them they don’t need to write every sin, just something that represents it.
Ask them to take some time and pray over the paper, praying for God to forgive those sins.
Then they should bring you the piece of paper.
Don’t let the students do the lighting!
You should be stationed in an area with no flammable things close by sitting or standing behind a lit candle.
Take the student’s paper and pray over it.
Then light just the edge of the paper and throw it into the air.
The paper will burn in a flash leaving behind no ashes or other residue.
Make sure you practice burning it before the students arrive.
It takes a little practice to get it right.
Discuss the following questions:
What connection does this activity have with forgiveness?
Are some things easier to forgive than others? If so, what actions are easier to forgive?
What actions are harder to forgive?
Have students take out their Bibles. One student reads Matthew 18:30–34 while everyone follows along in their Bible. Discuss the following questions:
What do you think is the point of the story?
Does it make it easier for you to forgive others knowing that Jesus has forgiven you on so many things? Why or why not?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON FREEDOM (MEMORIAL DAY)
For those in the United States, take advantage of Memorial Day, which is on May 30, to do a youth group lesson the "Freedom".
Here in the U.S. we celebrate our social and economic freedom on Memorial Day.
However, Jesus brings us an even greater freedom - spiritual freedom.
Through Christ, we are free from sin and condemnation.
Use this lesson to drive home that point to the students in your ministry.
If you're not in the U.S., then simply use this lesson to talk about how Jesus gives us spiritual freedom.
For many teenagers, Memorial Day also means "freedom" from school...the beginning of summer. No more waking up at 6 a.m., and no more homework....ahhhh...the taste of freedom.
As a young person I remember eagerly awaiting summer as school winded down. I could feel it and taste it.
I spent a big chunk of my summers at a tiny camp my grandfather owned near Biloxi Mississippi.
Eating snowballs (or snow cones) every day. Spending the day at the beach. Swimming in the pool. Fishing with my dad. Crabbing on the pier with my grandfather, Bud. Skiing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Ahhh....those were the days! The days of freedom!
As awesome as those summer days of freedom were, they can't compare to the freedom that Jesus brings.
Jesus brings a kind of freedom we can experience 24/7.
That's a message your students need to experience deep within their soul.
**Bible:** Luke 4:14-21
**Bottom Line:** Through Christ, we are free from sin and condemnation.
**SUPPLIES**
5 large poster boards with one of the following phrases written in large writing in the middle of each poster board: “to proclaim good news to the poor”, “proclaim freedom for the prisoners”, “recovery of sight for the blind”, “set the oppressed free”, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”
Large varied supply of newspapers and magazines
Scissors
Glue sticks
Markers and colored pencils
**OPENING GAME: Jailbreak**
Divide your group into two different teams.
Have each team choose a captain.
Set boundaries for the game that are very widespread, but clear.
Choose a central and easy to access space to be ‘jail’ which all the members of one team could easily fit in and get out of.
Choose a team to hide first. The other team will wait in jail while this team hides.
**HOW TO PLAY THE GAME**
When you are caught by the seeking team, you must walk to jail once you are tagged.
In order to be set free from jail, a member of their team who is NOT in jail must touch the jail and yell "jailbreak".
The game ends when everyone on the hiding team is caught and in jail.
Once everyone from the hiding team is found and in jail, switch sides that are hiding and seeking.
(Note: Game source from wikihow.com)
GAME DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Ask the people who were the last to be caught (or who were never caught) what their secrets were for staying free.
Now that you’ve played the game, what would you do next time to not get caught?
How would you feel if you were really in jail?
What did it feel like to be in jail and not able to get out?
TEACH - FREEDOM
We are close to celebrating Memorial Day, which is a U.S. Holiday in which we honor those who have died while serving in the armed forces to protect our freedom.
Let’s talk about Freedom, and not like ‘Freedom from jail’, but another kind of freedom.
It’s really interesting that when Jesus began his ministry, he talked about freedom, which is surprising to some.
Read Luke 4:14-21
Divide the students into 5 groups.
Instruct students to demonstrate, in a cool visual way, what Jesus might have meant when he said what "The Spirit of the Lord has anointed him" to do in Luke 4:18-19 (which Jesus is reading from Isaiah 61:1-2).
Group 1: "to proclaim good news to the poor"
Group 2: "proclaim freedom for the prisoners"
Group 3: "recovery of sight for the blind"
Group 4: "set the oppressed free"
Group 5: "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor"
**Directions:** In your small group, you will create a collage of the phrase that you have at the top of your poster board using pictures from magazines or drawing.
Cover your entire poster board.
Everyone will need to participate in sharing the amazing things Jesus fulfills.
Give the groups 10-15 minutes to complete their poster and then give each group a chance to share and display their posters while you are teaching.
**Say:** The people hearing Jesus say these amazing words from the scroll of Isaiah should have been amazed, but whether they were or not, we should be amazed. Jesus said that the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. Jesus not only read these words, but his actions backed up what he was saying. Can any of you think of stories of Jesus healing that did fulfill these promises?
Examples: Jesus healing the blind, feeding others, healing those possessed by spirits, etc.
That’s right, and Jesus also comes to bring these things to us.
You might not be in jail like in the game that we played, but Jesus always seemed to be saying one thing on the surface with a deeper meaning, and that’s exactly what he was doing here.
**Read Romans 8:1-2**
Let’s focus on the freedom that comes through Christ.
Imagine that there is a person who is in prison for many, many years.
Now imagine the moment when the judge comes and says that they can go free.
If that was you, what would you do?
Well, now imagine that you decide to just go ahead and stay in jail.
Does that make sense?
The doors are open, the locks are unlocked, and you are no longer chained, and yet, you stay.
That’s the sad reality that many who are Christians still live in when they continue to live as if they are not free.
Can you think of any ways in which Christians could live as prisoners?
Jesus said that he came to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free—all which speak to different ways that Jesus can set us free.
Think of all the people in the world who are poor.
Remember that we are actually very wealthy because if you have clean drinking water or food to eat: you are rich.
But imagine what it must feel like to be poor.
What would it be like to not have food to eat?
What are some of the other challenges that being truly ‘poor’ comes with?
Allow students to share.
Being poor can be a very real sort of captivity, and many who live in these conditions feel like they are in prison.
Jesus is saying that he and his followers have a mission to help those who are poor to find freedom from poverty.
How could Christians help those who are in poverty?
How could you help the poor?
Or how could being blind be a form of imprisonment?
Allow the group to share their thoughts.
And there are other places where Jesus says that though we might have physical sight, many are spiritually blind.
What would it mean to be spiritually blind?
How many times have you felt like you just don’t ‘get’ something in the Bible or wonder what Christ would want you to do?
This might be what Jesus was talking about, but he also said that there are times when those who others think are the strongest in their ‘religion’ are blind to the ways that God is moving or calling them.
It’s a very powerful thought to think that though you might be able to see with your eyes, you might not be seeing with your spiritual eyes?
Next, Jesus also uses the idea of being captive or a prisoner.
Imagine being held somewhere and not being able to go free.
What emotions would you feel?
Listen to student’s answers.
Here is the good news that Jesus comes to bring: You are free.
From whatever kind of chains or bondage or sin or blindness or poverty that you might be experiencing: You are free.
Jesus has set us free from all of the ways that you are not free right now.
So, ask yourself these questions:
Have I truly been set free from sin in my life or am I continuing to do things that I know God doesn’t approve of?
That is slavery.
Slavery to sin.
Do you let worry, fear or anything else stop you from being free in Christ and his power?
That is NOT FREEDOM, and as a Christian, it is like you are living in a prison cell that has been unlocked.
But listen again to the words from Romans 8: Jesus does not condemn you.
He wants you to be free.
Free in every sense.
Free to proclaim his good news and freedom to those in the world who are still captive.
He is calling each of us to fight with him to free people from the chains of poverty and despair.
He is calling us to join him in setting people free to truly live.
But it has to begin with you being free
If you are not free in Christ, let’s ask that he would open your eyes and you would have the courage to accept the freedom that is yours.
Close in this prayer:
Jesus.
Thank you for setting me free:
Free from sin.
Free from despair.
Free from worry.
Free from being held a prisoner of fear, or worry, or whatever it might be that is holding me hostage. Help me to realize that I am free. Amen.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Read Isaiah 61 (entire chapter) with the small group.
What other things were mentioned in this chapter that are being promised?
Where do you see some of these being fulfilled today through the church?
Which of these do you feel passionate about?
Are there people or countries that are oppressed or struggling with poverty that we should pray for?
If you feel comfortable, share an area of your life that during this lesson you’ve become aware that you are not free.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON FRIENDSHIP
Have you ever had a friend let you down?
Humans are certainly not perfect, if it hasn't happened already, inevitably someone who is close to you will do something that hurts you.
(Use a personal example of when a friend let you down or use the example below.)
Several years ago, I had a friend that I was very close to.
We traveled around the country in a worship band.
While he was in the process of moving, I let him live in my house.
Though I did not charge him rent, I asked that he help with some of the utilities.
His stay dragged on and he ended up failing to live up to our agreement, and it ended up costing me a lot of money that he never repaid.
I was hurt, angry, and disappointed. I allowed it to drive a wedge between us.
Years later, I really regret how I reacted.
We just recently began to reconnect, and it now seems silly that I allowed money to separate myself from a good friend.
Have you ever allowed the actions of a friend to drive you apart? (Have students raise their hand.)
What are some common things we do when a friend hurts us? (Get responses)
What's are some better ways to respond?
Let's read these verses and find out..
Read Proverbs 17:9 (NLT)
Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends.
Read Colossians 3:13 (NLT)
Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.
These verses give us some key pointers on how to make friendships last.
As I said earlier, friends will make mistakes. They have faults (just as you do).
How you react will determine the future strength of your friendship.
In Proverbs 17:9 we see that forgiveness is essential, but notice what it says will drive a wedge between you... dwelling on the fault.
Often, when someone hurts me I have a hard time thinking about anything else.
It sticks in my brain whether I want it to or not. This, more than anything, has the potential to destroy a friendship.
True forgiveness means moving past the hurt while giving your friend a clean slate.
Colossians 3:13 reminds us that we, too, have been forgiven.
Think about it. Have you ever hurt a friend? Have you ever done something that you regret?
Jesus forgave you. In turn, we are required to do the same.
Everyone has faults.
Everyone makes mistakes.
The key to a healthy friendship is true forgiveness... the kind that Jesus has shown to you.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Do you think it is easier or harder to forgive a friend who hurts you badly as opposed to when someone who is not your friend does it? Why/why not?
What do you think it means to “make allowances” for your friends' faults?
How do we learn to let go of hurt?
How could I have better handled the situation of my friend owing me money?
What do you think “true forgiveness” really looks like?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON - FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
So often when we talk about the Fruits of the Spirit the core of our message is...
Be more loving, kind, forgiving, etc.
The problem is that we're not designed to live that way in our own power.
It's only when we stay connected to Jesus that those characteristics flow out of our lives.
Instead, the message needs to be...
Stay connected to Jesus and good stuff comes out of your life.
When we nurture our relationship with God, we become more loving, kind, forgiving etc.
It's what naturally happens as a result of what God is doing in and through us.
That's the core message of this free youth group lesson.
Bible: John 15:5, Galatians 5:20-22–23, Proverbs 16:32, Matthew 5:43–48
Bottom Line: Stay connected to Jesus and good stuff comes out of your life.
OPENING GAME: KEEP IT UP
Supplies:
- Masking tape
- 2–3 beach balls (more if your group is large)
Description:
Split the group into two even teams and mark a line down the middle of the playing area with masking tape. Each group takes one side of the playing area.
Players spread out wherever they want on their side.
The game will consist of beach balls being thrown (or hit) and caught between the two sides.
Players attempt to keep the balls moving and not allow the balls to hit the ground on their side of the playing area.
If a ball hits the ground, the opposing team is awarded points.
The team that has the most points at the end of the game wins.
**Variations:**
- If your group is large, consider adding more beach balls.
- If your group is really big, consider dividing it into four parts instead of two.
**After the game, say:**
In life, we often react to others in the same way we are treated.
If your brother hits you, you hit him back. If your parents yell at you, you yell back.
Sort of like what happened in the game we just played.
If one team hit the ball hard, the other team reacted by hitting it hard too.
If one team got real competitive, the other team did too.
Today, we’re going to explore how we can react differently to others.
We’re going to discover how we can break the cycle.
If someone is mean to us, we’re going to learn the secret to how we can react in love rather than hate.
Let’s get started!
**TEACH**
**SUPPLIES**
Jar of small pickles
A few trash bags
Bag of large marshmallows
Good, ripe fruit
Rotten fruit
Say: To get started today, I need two volunteers.
Choose two volunteers to come up front. Have them stand about 10 feet apart.
Give one volunteer an open jar of pickles.
Put a trash bag over the other preteen (so their clothes don’t get pickle juice on them).
Place trash bag or plastic sheeting over the floor where the volunteer is standing.
Give the volunteer an open bag of large marshmallows.
The volunteer then attempts to throw a pickle into the mouth of the other volunteer.
Next, the other volunteer attempts to throw a marshmallow into the mouth of the other volunteer.
They must stay 10 feet apart while throwing the items. Continue, throwing a pickle and marshmallow.
Keep track of how many marshmallows and pickles land in the mouth of a volunteer.
After the activity, congratulate each volunteer for their effort and ask the audience to give them a round of applause.
Say:
Believe it or not, if someone throws a smelly pickle at our faces, we can learn to throw a soft delicious marshmallow back at them!
What do I mean by that? I mean that it is possible for us to react in love rather than anger.
We can forgive rather than seek revenge. But, we can’t do it by ourselves.
Let’s look up a verse in the Bible that helps explain this.
**Read Galatians 5:22–23 (NCV):**
*But the Spirit produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. There is no law that says these things are wrong.*
What do you think these verses mean? (Get responses)
A lot of times people misunderstand these verses.
They think God is saying to be full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. God is saying more than that.
He is saying that those characteristics are formed in our lives when we stay connected to Jesus.
Let’s take a look at another verse that will help us understand this concept.
**Read John 15:5 (NCV):**
*I am the vine, and you are the branches. If any remain in me and I remain in them, they produce much fruit. But without me they can do nothing.*
Jesus is saying that a branch needs to stay connected to the vine in order for fruit to grow. Good fruit will naturally come out of a branch that is connected to the vine.
[Show good, ripe fruit]
The branch doesn’t need to try and create the fruit in its own power. Its job is to stay connected to the vine.
When it does, good fruit will be produced. Like this fruit I’m holding in my hand.
Jesus is saying that we are like the branch. Our goal is to stay connected to Jesus.
If we stay close to him in our everyday lives, then good fruit will come out of us.
The good fruit is the characteristics we read about in Galatians 5:22–23 – love, patience, kindness, goodness, etc.
Like a branch can’t make the fruit, we can’t simply choose to be loving, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and have self-control.
It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to create those characteristics in our lives. Our job is to stay connected to Jesus.
When we do, good characteristics flow out of us.
We find ourselves naturally reacting to the bully at school with love and compassion. We are more likely to forgive our friends. We are more patient.
Sure, it’s a choice we make. But ultimately, it’s God working through us to make us more like Him.
[Show bad fruit]
So, what happens when we don’t take the time and effort to stay connected to Jesus? Well, bad stuff comes out of our lives. Much like if you were to break off a branch from the vine, the fruit goes bad.
Our lives begin to look like rotten fruit, like in this fruit I’m holding. Yuck.
The Bible actually talks about what this bad fruit looks like.
Read Galatians 5:20 (NCV):
…worshiping gods, doing witchcraft, hating, making trouble, being jealous, being angry, being selfish, making people angry with each other, causing divisions among people…
So, when we’re feeling jealous, angry, and selfish or causing drama around us, those things are the bad stuff coming out of our lives because we are not connected to Jesus. We’re unconnected to Him.
We’re not spending time with God in prayer, worship or allowing God to speak to us from the Bible.
Today’s bottom line – Stay connected to Jesus and good stuff comes out of your life.
When we choose to surrender our lives to Jesus, the pollution of sin in our lives is cleaned up.
We now have an opportunity for good stuff to come out of our lives.
We have an opportunity to live the way God wants us to live.
We won’t be perfect. We’ll mess up often. That’s just a part of being human.
In order to have good stuff come out of our lives, we have to stay connected to Jesus.
When we do, the Holy Spirit will make us more loving, kind, patient, etc.
We’ll be able to return a sour pickle with a soft marshmallow.
We’ll be able to react differently than we were treated.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON GIVING
Bible: Luke 6:38
Use this game to help students understand the importance of a giving heart.
SUPPLIES
Different sized jars, cups, and bowls
Pennies
Colored Tape
OPENING GAME
Set up the jars, cups, and bowls on the floor.
You can put some close to each other and some spread out more.
Mark several lines with the tape in front of the jars.
Make the first line right in front of them, the next line a few feet back, the next line further back, etc.
Do this until the final line is all the way across the room from the jars.
Give each student five pennies.
Explain that the goal is to get the pennies into the jars (and cups or whatever else you have put out).
For each penny they land in a jar, they get two more pennies.
If they don’t make it in the jar, they get nothing.
Have the students line up behind the first line and let everyone toss a penny.
Give the students who make it into a jar two more pennies.
The ones who don’t are down one penny.
Once everyone has gone, have them move to the next line and repeat this.
Again, give the winners two more pennies.
Continue going through all the taped off lines.
Once a student runs out of pennies, they are out.
Once you get to the last line, have remaining students compete until there is just one student left. The last student to still have any pennies wins.
After the game, discuss the following questions:
- Was that game harder than you thought it was going to be?
- Do you think you would have had a better chance of winning if you had stayed at the first line the whole time?
- Did it make it harder to win since the only way to get more pennies was to give up the ones you already had?
After the game, say:
That was a pretty interesting game, right?
To win, you had to get more pennies than anyone else.
But in order to get more, you had to give up the ones you already had.
That made it difficult, right?
That’s kind of how it is in life, isn’t it?
God gives us things—money, talents, time—and we have the choice of what to do with those things.
We can have an attitude that says it’s all about us, and we can choose to hold tightly to everything we have, making sure we never give anything away.
Or, we can choose to have a giving heart.
Which one do you think will work out better for us in the end?
Read Luke 6:38
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Does that remind you of anything?
What do you do when a bag is full, but you’re trying to fit more into it?
You press it down, right?
You shove the stuff in, shake it around, and try to make room for more.
That’s what this verse is saying.
The measure in which it will be give back to you will be so much that it’s been pressed down, shaken together, and it’s still running over.
I don’t know about you, but that’s something I want to get in on!
But first, we have to give.
And that just doesn’t make sense, does it?
That we have to give in order to get?
In the game we played, you could have held onto all of your pennies and never tried to make them into a cup or a jar.
But if you had done that, you never would have gotten any new pennies, either.
This verse is not just talking about money; it’s talking about everything.
It can be hard to get rid of that “everything is all about me!” kind of attitude, but that’s what God wants us to do.
See, God has already blessed you.
Think about it!
Sure, some of you probably have money, but that’s not all He’s blessed you with.
He’s given you time, talents, friendship, compassion, and so many other things that you have to give.
You can choose to hold onto those things and keep them for yourself.
You can choose to not have a giving heart.
Or, you can choose to have a giving heart, and in turn, things will be given back to you.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Does it make sense to you that giving leads to getting more than you had in the first place?
Would you describe your attitude right now as one that has a giving heart, or one that is all about yourself?
What are some things that you have that you can give?
Has there ever been a time before where you’ve been blessed because you chose to give?
**Wrap-Up**
Listen, I’m not saying that if you put five dollars in the offering today, that ten dollars will show up in your locker tomorrow.
Of course, it might!
But that’s not what this is about.
It’s about your heart.
Let’s say there’s someone at your school who doesn’t have any friends and who’s kind of an outsider.
God has given you friendship, and you get to choose who to give it to.
Imagine that you befriend this person, giving of your friendship and time.
In turn, God blesses you with the best friend you’ve ever had, because you were willing to give.
That’s the heart of God.
He wants to give back to you, pressed down, shaken together, and still overflowing.
But He can only do that if you have a giving heart.
Having a giving heart blesses others and it blesses you.
I’d say that’s a win-win situation, wouldn’t you?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON GOD’S BLESSING
Opening Game: Unwrap it!
SUPPLIES
Baking soda (for invisible ink)
Water
Paintbrush
Bowl
Paper
A lamp or accessible light bulb
20 (or more, based on the size of your group) varying sized gift packages wrapped up (there doesn’t need to be anything inside of them).
Make the invisible ink before the service by mixing equal parts baking soda and water.
You may want to practice this once without an audience just to make sure you used enough baking soda for the ink to show up when the paper is warmed.
Split the group into two teams. On one side of the room, put the pile of presents. Have the teams line up on the other side of the room.
When you say, “Go”, the first person from each team must run over and select a gift from the pile. They have to completely unwrap the gift without using their hands. Once they’ve freed the package, they then have to get it back to their team—once again, without using their hands. Once they get the package back, they can tag the next person.
If they drop the package at any point on the way back, the next person in line has to pick up where they left off.
The first team to successfully unwrap and retrieve ten packages wins.
TEACH
You guys are pretty good at opening gifts without your hands!
Who knows when you’ll need that skill in life, but hey, it’s good to know!
Tonight we’re going to be talking about gifts.
More specifically, we’re going to be talking about blessings.
It’s a pretty common prayer to ask for God’s blessing on something.
We bless our food, pray that God will bless our friends, and sometimes we even ask Him to bless us.
And we should! He is a wonderful God who wants to bless His children—that’s us!
You do not have to earn God’s blessing.
What I mean by that is that there’s not some cosmic scoreboard in heaven keeping track of all your rights and wrongs, waiting for the good to outweigh the bad before God blesses you.
There are, however, some verses in the Bible that talk about God’s blessing and what type of people He blesses.
Those are the type of people we should strive to be.
Read Psalm 1:1-3:
“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.”
Here we see that the type of person that is blessed.
This type of person doesn’t hang out with those who live in sin, act in wickedness, or mock God or others.
Instead, they find joy in God’s word, which they study.
And what do these things get this person?
Blessed. They are prosperous and fruitful, no matter what the circumstances around them are.
That’s an example of how, though we don’t have to earn God’s blessing, certain types of lifestyles result in being blessed.
Now, it’s important that we get something straight right away.
Sometimes, when we talk about God blessing us, people only think of blessings in terms of things like money, houses, cars, and clothes.
Let me be clear: God’s blessings do not equal material things.
Yes, of course God can bless us financially and provide things like clothes and food for us. And he does that often.
If you have a house to live in, you should be thankful for that blessing!
But God does not only bless us with material things.
He blesses us with things that are worth far more than that. Let’s take a look.
Read Psalm 5:12:
“Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous; you surround them with your favor as with a shield.”
This verse doesn’t say, “Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous; you give them lots of money for fun things.”
Or, “Surely, Lord, you bless the righteous; you make sure they get good grades in all their classes.”
No, the blessing here is God’s favor—something far greater than money or popularity or good grades.
Read Psalm 29:11:
“The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.”
Once again, we have a verse about God blessing His people with things that have nothing to do with material things, but instead, strength and peace.
I’m going to tell you something that may seem difficult to understand, but it’s the truth. You would be far better off living on the streets, poor and alone, and being blessed with God’s strength, favor, and peace than you would be to be living the most extravagant, rich lifestyle you can imagine and be living without those things.
Read Matthew 7:9-11:
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
God’s blessings go far beyond money, and they usually go far beyond the things that we want or think we need.
The amazing thing, though, is that we can be confident that God knows exactly what is best for us and exactly what we need.
If it were money, that’s what He’d give us.
But more often, it’s something like peace, favor, or strength.
And those are incredible gifts.
We can rest assured that God loves us way more than any earthly father could ever love his children.
That means He delights in blessing us with gifts!
He knows the plan He has for us, so He knows what we need to make that possible.
He truly wants the best for us.
I think that we would all agree that we are extremely blessed.
We all have places to live, we’re educated, and we have an awesome group of people to come learn about Jesus with every week.
Chances are, you haven’t had to go days without eating this week.
You’re all wearing clothes, and you all look nice.
We’re obviously very, very blessed.
But sometimes, life can get a little bit hard.
When that happens, it’s easy to forget about all those amazing blessings in our lives.
We can start to feel sad, lonely, and beat down.
When things get tough, it’s easy to feel like we aren’t blessed at all.
Get out the invisible ink and paper.
Now, I’m just going to paint something here for you guys.
Paint with the invisible ink for a few seconds.
Well, it looks like there isn’t anything there. That’s weird.
Oh well, I’ll keep painting anyway.
Wave the picture in the air to dry while you read this next verse.
Read Matthew 5:3-11
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."
So let's get this straight: poor, sad, meek, hungry, insulted, persecuted people are referred to here as blessed?
Yes, they absolutely are.
And look at those blessings: The kingdom of heaven is theirs!
How amazing is that?
Next time you feel like things aren't going so great, and you don't feel God's blessings in your life; remember this verse.
Because the people referenced in this verse aren't having that great of a time either.
But their unseen blessings are worth far more than you could ever imagine.
Hold your painting up over a lamp. It will take a few seconds to warm up, but soon the paper will heat up and your picture will begin to show up.
Isn't that cool? That's just how the blessings in our life are sometimes.
Even when we don't think we see them, we know they are there, because we know God loves us.
He knows exactly what we need, and He knows exactly when we need to see it.
We just have to trust that God knows what's best for us, and that if we live a life that's pleasing to Him, He is going to make sure we get what we need, when we need it.
Small Group Discussion Questions
1. Do you consider yourself to have a life that’s full of God’s blessings?
2. What are some ways God has blessed you?
3. Do you ever feel like you have to earn God’s blessings?
4. Do you think that your life reflects the type of life talked about in Psalm 1?
5. Do you think that God’s blessings like peace and strength are more important than the material things that we think we need?
6. When you go through hard times, do you sometimes forget how blessed you are?
7. How does it make you feel to know that God loves you like a father and wants to give you good gifts?
8. Do you think that God’s plan is better than our plan? That His blessings are better than any we could imagine for ourselves?
9. If there were one blessing you could ask God for, what would it be?
10. Have there been times before in your life where God really blessed you, but you couldn’t see that until later?
Teach - Wrap Up
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how truly blessed we are.
We can get caught up in the mundane, everyday things we have to do, and we can take God’s blessings for granted.
So really quick, before we end, we’re going to go down the line and just shout out one thing God has blessed us with.
Start at one end of the front row and work your way back.
If you have a bigger group, you may just ask for a few volunteers.
If you have a small group, you can ask them to say more than one thing.
Those are a lot of blessings! Wow, we have a great God!
I would encourage you to do that every now and then on your own.
Just take a few minutes and list out all the amazing blessings God has given to you.
It can be so encouraging!
It’s important to remember a few key things about God’s blessings.
First, we need to remember that they come along with certain lifestyles, like those that follow the Bible.
Second, it’s important to remember that His blessings may not be things that we think we want, like money or material things, but they will always be better.
Lastly, it’s important to remember that even though sometimes we can’t always see God’s blessings right away, they are there, and my just come into sight later.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON GOD’S LOVE
Love is a word that we use freely. I love coffee. I love French fries. I love this TV show.
But if we take a moment to stop and consider the word ‘love’, all other loves really do fall short when we consider the great love of God for us.
Sadly, the students in your ministry can easily become immune to the ‘love of God’ talks.
It is pretty basic, right?
God loves us. No matter what.
Yet, many of the students in our ministry live as if they are earning His love.
Some of them even live in fear that they might not be worthy of His love.
Spend time before this lesson really praying for the youth in your group who will experience this lesson.
Pray for those who feel unloved in their lives and in their homes. Pray for those who feel that they are unworthy of God’s love. Pray for those who feel that they have to earn his love.
And then spend the last part praying for yourself: Ask God to show you those ways in which you limit his love for you.
Bible: Romans 8:38-39
Bottom Line: NOTHING can separate us from the love of God.
SUPPLIES
Printed lyrics to love songs
Printed copies of Romans 8:38-39 (one for each student)
OPENING GAME - LOVE, DON'T LAUGH
Have students stand in a circle and then sit down.
Choose one person to be ‘it’ and give them the lyrics to a love song.
They will go around the circle and choose someone to speak the words of the song to and they cannot smile or laugh.
‘It’ continues until someone ‘breaks’ and then they are ‘it’.
Have a few current love songs lyrics ready to give to the students to use.
A great one to use would be “Mirror” by Justin Timberlake or “Story of my Life” by One Direction.
Other great songs: “All you need is love” by the Beatles or any ‘sappy’ 80s love song (just be sure to read the lyrics before hand to avoid a very embarrassing situation!)
TEACH – GOD’S LOVE
It’s a word that is used a lot these days.
I love that food….I love that new song….I love that team… I love that purse…. (add any current examples that might be relevant).
But, sometimes the way that we talk about love, we are really talking about emotions very different from ‘love’.
I’m not sure if any of you have experienced a ‘first love’, but it can be brutal.
Share a story of your first love and try to make it a light-hearted one! If you don’t have one, there are plenty of great stories online.
Especially, if you look for most embarrassing first dates!
Love.
What words come to your mind when I say the word “Love.”
There is a great deal of study that has gone into the importance of love.
Let me ask it this way: What do you think are the things that are key to helping us to live?
What are our basic needs?
Write down their answer on the board as they share such things as shelter, food, clean water, etc.
There was this guy named Maslow who created this great tool showing us the importance of love.
Draw a simplified version of this diagram:
As you can see from this diagram, we all have a basic need for things like food, water, warmth, rest, etc. Those are all basic needs we share.
As you move up the diagram, there are other needs we need once our basic ones are met.
The next set of needs is security & safety, then a sense of "belonging and love".
We ALL need love.
Notice it's a real need...right after food, water, shelter, safety and security (which are all very basic).
Just think of all the books, songs, poems, and movie written about love.
Have students list some that come to mind.
Think about all the fights and wars that have been fought in the name of love.
Love is a powerful thing.
Why do you think that love is so powerful and important?
Here’s the thing about love, though.
As humans, we didn’t create it and we certainly haven’t perfected it, right?
What are some of the things that get in the way of love?
Have youth name some of the issues humans face regarding love.
But, there is one who has mastered love.
Give each youth a printed copy of Romans 8:38-39 and say:
We are going to read this amazing scripture together.
Each person will read one sentence or phrase and then another person can read the next and so on.
You don’t HAVE to read, but it will be very cool for us to read all of this together.
I will begin our reading.
Read Romans 8:38-39 as a group.
Take some time silently now to read this scripture again.
Underline the words that stick out to you.
And as you read this, let the words really soak in: Nothing can separate you from God’s love.
Nothing will ever make Him stop loving you.
Give the youth 5 minutes to read the scripture silently.
Which of these words stuck out to you?
Were you surprised by any parts of the verse?
Give the group a chance to share.
Up front are hearts and Sharpies and tape.
Choose one of the words that stuck out to you or even just write a thought to God about the love that He has for you.
Then, come and get a heart and write your thoughts on the heart and tape it to the wall around us.
*Play soft music as the youth come to write on their hearts and be available for prayer.*
When everyone has had a chance to write on their heart and tape it around the room say:
You are surrounded by love in this room.
Maybe you have never really experienced the love of God.
Maybe you still worry that you aren’t worthy of His love.
But, please listen to these words: God loves you.
And NOTHING can separate you from His love.
Spend some time just trying to wrap your brain and heart around that because it is huge.
God thinks that you are pretty amazing! He loves you.
As you leave, walk around the room and read the hearts and take the scripture we read with you. Whether or not you feel the love of God…. His love is real and it is yours.
He loves you.
So much.
And nothing, not even your doubt, can separate you from his love.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Which part of the scripture stuck out to you the most and why?
If you want to share, what did you write on your heart?
Why do you think it is hard for some to believe that God loves them?
Has there ever been a time when you worried that God might not love you? If so, why?
How does it make you feel to know that nothing can separate you from God’s love?
Close in prayer.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON GRACE
"The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 6:23 (NLT)
Grace is the comma instead of the period.
What do I mean?
Our sad human story could have ended with a period after those first seven words. "The wages of sin is death." Period. We have earned it.
God, however, says, "Wait a second, the sentence isn't over." He added a comma. The story doesn't end. Instead of receiving what we deserve, separation from God forever, we are given the choice of a free gift.
We know what happens if we don't take the gift, and we know what's in the gift: life forever with Jesus!
Grace is the gift that says, "I know you don't deserve this, but I'm yours."
Use this youth ministry lesson on grace to drive this point home to your students.
Bible: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 6:23 (NLT)
Bottom Line: What is so amazing about grace? Although we deserved to be separated from God forever because of our sin, God sent us Jesus as a free gift so we could be forever friends with God.
OPENING GAME
Supplies Needed: None
Space Requirements: Your normal meeting room will be fine.
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
This is a lyric/song battle.
Depending on the size of your group, either split everyone into two teams or grab about 10 volunteers and split into teams of 5.
You will explain that everyone will be given a word, and when it’s your team’s turn, you must sing the lyrics of a song that contain that word.
This will be a battle back and forth.
One team will be chosen to go first.
They only have 10 seconds before they have to start singing.
As soon as their song is accepted, it is the other team’s turn and they have 10 seconds to start singing a song.
The team that fails to start singing within 10 seconds first, loses.
Pick random words for each round. Be sure the last word you choose is grace.
TEACH - Grace
The last word in our game was grace, which is our topic for today.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”
Is there any first long of a song more famous than this one?
It has been sung by more people than most other songs ever written.
But what does it mean?
Grace is at the very core of the Gospel.
It is a word that you will hear all the time if you attend church even just a few times a year.
Still, it is often misunderstood or even ignored.
Let’s look at this universe-altering five-letter word and see how it can and will change your life.
**What is grace?**
First, let’s take a look at its definition according to dictionary.com:
- mercy; clemency; pardon:
- favor or goodwill.
On one hand, grace is similar to mercy.
Punishment is deserved, but because of grace, mercy or forgiveness is given instead.
On the other hand, it could be somewhat synonymous with kindness and love.
If a person is on a teacher’s good side, it could be said that he/she is in the teacher’s “good graces.”
So, we have looked at this definition, but if I’m being honest, this word doesn’t look all that universe-altering.
**What is so amazing about grace?**
**What we deserve.**
From the moment you drew your first breath as a baby, you were born with a problem. You entered a world covered with a thick, sticky substance that makes everything filthy. It coats every person who is alive now, just as it has everyone from the beginning of time.
This substance is called sin.
This sin separates us from God.
God wants to be in a close relationship with us, but this sin separates us all from him.
"For the wages of sin is death" - Romans 6:23 (NLT)
Well, there you have it, folks.
Those are perhaps the most depressing seven words in the Bible.
This "death" is what we deserve for being born with our sin problem.
It basically means we deserve to be separated from God forever.
But God wants to be close to us.
He wants us to enjoy a relationship with Him.
He wants to guide our lives and speak to us.
He wants to be our best friend.
So, where does grace come into play?
Thank God (literally) that those seven words were only the first half of the verse!
"...but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 6:23 (NLT)
Grace is the comma instead of the period.
What do I mean?
Our sad human story could have ended with a period after those first seven words.
"The wages of sin is death." Period. We have earned it.
God, however, says, "Wait a second, the sentence isn't over."
He added a comma.
The story doesn't end.
Instead of receiving what we deserve, we are given the choice of a free gift.
We know what happens if we don't take the gift, and we already know what's in the gift:
life forever with Jesus!
Grace is the gift that says, "I know you don't deserve this, but I'm yours."
**Grace and Forgiveness**
Finally, I'd like to look at one more aspect of grace.
Sometimes we make the mistake of substituting it with the word *forgiveness*.
Forgiveness is also an amazing word. It is powerful, but it pales in comparison to grace.
**Forgiveness is step one. Grace is the completion.**
Imagine that you committed a horrible crime.
You killed someone who had a family that loved him/her dearly.
As you stand before the judge, you already know that you're guilty.
Everyone knows it.
The victim's parents show amazing strength by telling the judge that they forgive you.
How awesome is that!
But does it change what's going to happen next?
Not really. The judge will still sentence you for your crime.
Forgiveness is step one.
Jesus didn't stop there.
He gives us *grace*. Grace says, "I forgive you, *and* I am taking your punishment for you."
Back to that hypothetical scenario, forgiveness was demonstrated by the parents of the victim.
They no longer hold the crime against you, but someone has to pay for the crime.
*Grace* would be like the judge then saying, "What you did deserves the death penalty, but because of how much I love you, I am going to take the electric chair in your place."
**Forgiveness is awesome. Grace is amazing.**
They work hand-in-hand when it comes to the way God feels about you.
What’s so amazing about grace? Everything!
You don’t deserve it. You can’t earn it.
All you can do is accept it.
It’s God’s free gift to you.
(Optional - give students an opportunity to accept personally accept God's grace, surrendering their lives to Jesus).
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What is so amazing about grace for you personally?
What’s confusing to you about the Bible saying we deserve “death” because of our “sin”?
Do you think even “good people” deserve death because of their “sin”?
Is it a hard concept for you to grasp that a relationship with Jesus is a free gift and can’t be earned)? Why or why not?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON HAPPINESS
Happiness. When was a time that the students in your ministry were truly happy?
Do your students know what real & lasting happiness is, and do they know how to get it?
Jesus offers us a view of what it means to be happy (and the path to get there).
This view is radically different from what your students might expect.
Jesus says that happiness comes in ways that we least expect it: through suffering, grief, loss, persecution, and poverty.
When we study “The Beatitudes”, we get the feeling that Jesus is saying something revolutionary here, yet, at the same time it feels like a brain twister or a riddle that is right out of our grasp.
I think that Jesus meant for his words to be this way, though.
He wanted us to scratch our heads and say “What”?
Because if you really think about what Jesus is saying in these few sentences, you begin to realize that he is turning everything we’ve ever believed about happiness upside down.
Happiness isn’t something that comes to us, rather, it seems to be who we are in the midst of whatever happens to us, even the hard stuff.
That is deep.
So, ask yourself as you prepare for this lesson: Are you truly happy and finding that happiness in the kingdom of God as Jesus describes it?
And maybe, just maybe, it comes when you let Jesus help you reframe the circumstances in your life that seem to be the hardest.
In the midst of THOSE times and experiences, you truly to find happiness.
And so will the students in your ministry.
**Bible:** Matthew 5:1-12 (Common English Bible translation)
**Bottom Line:** Jesus helps us to redefine what happiness looks like through His kingdom.
**SUPPLIES**
Encourage teens to bring cell phones to take photos
Either project photos or print off copies for the next week to view
Sharpies
Crowns - Cut out of paper for each student
**OPENING ACTIVITY: HAPPINESS SELFIES**
*Divide the youth up into groups of 4 or 5, making sure that each group has at least one person with a cell phone camera.*
*Give the groups a way to share the photos with you to be projected or printed.*
**EXPLAIN THE ACTIVITY**
Today, you are going to take "Happiness selfies".
What is a happiness selfie you might ask?
Well, each group of you will get some words that Jesus said about happiness and your challenge is to take a group selfies which helps to illustrate the words Jesus said.
These words may seem like a riddle, and they kind of are, but try to figure out a creative way to maybe explain what Jesus was saying.
Read Matthew 5:1-12 to the group and either ask them to choose one of the sentences or assign them!
You will need a group for verse 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.
Give the groups 15 minutes to take their selfies and to send them to you via text or other method.
TEACH
Today, you all are going to teach us a thing or two about some pretty amazing words from Jesus.
If you are able to project the selfies that the groups have taken - that is awesome!
If not, have the group share verbally what their selfie was of the different sections.
Many people call these verses the "Beatitudes", but today we are going to call them the Happiness Selfies because as you read them and really think on them, it seems like Jesus is trying to help us to look at happiness in different ways.
These Happiness Selfies, to the world, should and probably do look crazy.
So, let’s look at each of these words from Jesus.
Either show the selfie that the group took and have them explain, or if you don’t have a way to project the selfies, have each group explain their selfie.
Read Matthew 5:3 - “Happy are people who are hopeless, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”
Can you imagine being hopeless?
Hope is knowing that the future will be ok….so imagine how it would sound to someone who is hopeless that Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is theirs?
Those are amazing words, right?
Maybe someone in this room is sitting here, and you wouldn’t ever want to really admit it, but you feel hopeless.
Then, these words are for you.
Jesus is saying that you have His Kingdom to look forward to.
It is YOURS.
How does that make you feel?
Read Matthew 5:4 - “Happy are people who grieve, because they will be made glad.”
Grieving.
Grief means that death has been there and nothing hurts quite like the pain of someone you love dying, right?
Maybe some of you in this room are grieving.
And Jesus says amazing words to someone who is grieving….you will be glad.
The tears will not only stop but you will smile.
Read Matthew 5:5 - “Happy are people who are humble, because they will inherit the earth.”
Humility is a hard thing to find in our world today. It doesn’t mean that you let others walk all over you…but it does mean that you don’t run for the front of the line or think of yourself as better than everyone else.
Have you ever met someone who was truly humble?
What were they like?
And Jesus says, it’s that kind of person who will inherit the earth.
Read Matthew 5:6 - “Happy are people who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, because they will be fed until they are full.”
What is the longest amount of time that any of you have gone without food or water?
Being thirsty and hungry...many of us haven’t really experienced these at their worst, but can you imagine what it would feel like to not eat for days or to not have clean water?
So, what does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness?
And what does Jesus say will happen to someone who does?
They will be filled....filled with righteousness.
Wow, now that is quite the dinner, huh?
Read Matthew 5:7 - “Happy are people who show mercy, because they will receive mercy.”
Has there ever been a time in your life when you really needed someone to show you mercy...to reach out to you in your greatest need?
How did that feel?
Now, imagine that you are the one giving mercy....Jesus says that when you give mercy, he will give you mercy.
How do you think it would feel for Jesus to reach out to you in your greatest moments of need?
Read Matthew 5:8 - “Happy are people who have pure hearts, because they will see God.”
Purity.
What words come to your mind when we talk about purity?
Imagine having a heart that was pure......clean....innocent.
And then, what is the promise that Jesus gives here?
They will see God.
Wow, makes you really want to get to cleaning, right?
Read Matthew 5:9 - "Happy are people who make peace, because they will be called God's children."
Peace.
What do you think a peaceful world would look like?
How difficult is it to make peace when those around you want to fight and argue or prove others wrong?
Sometimes when we try to make peace, others will tell us that we "don't belong" or that we are living in a dream world, but God says that we will be called his "children".
When we bring peace.....we look like Him.
How could you make peace in the world around you? At your school? In your home?
Read Matthew 5:10 - "Happy are people whose lives are harassed because they are righteous, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs."
Bullying is a big word these days.
Bullies harass people and do it over and over to try to break you down.
Have any of you been harassed or bullied?
What did it feel like?
Jesus says that when you are harassed that you are righteous and that you get what?
The kingdom of heaven.
Kind of tough to harass someone when they have a kingdom right?
And last, but not least:
Read Matthew 5:11-12 - "Happy are you when people insult you and harass you and speak all kinds of bad and false things about you, all because of me. Be full of joy and
be glad, because you have a great reward in heaven. In the same way, people harassed the prophets who came before you.”
Can you name a time when people talked about you and said things about you that were hurtful and untrue?
How did that feel?
Yeah, well Jesus says that if people say bad things about you and lie about you BECAUSE OF HIM…you should be glad because you are getting rewarded.
Now, let me ask you: How do you think Jesus’ words here would sound to the world? Do they make sense in the society that we live in? Do they really make any sense? No.
That’s what’s so amazing about what Jesus is saying: He is turning everything upside down and saying “Happiness doesn’t look like what the world says it looks like. Do this whole living my way thing…and you will be very surprised!”
Which of these words really stick out to you?
Maybe there is one that just doesn’t make any sense to you….chew on that one and take it with you today.
Because Jesus didn’t make mistakes in saying these words. He isn’t clueless or naïve…no, he just sees things in amazing ways Kingdom ways.
Around the room are cut out crowns
I want you to write the words of the Beatitudes that stick out to you on that crown. Because Jesus is offering us a new way to live in his Kingdom. And he wants to change things up.
He wants you to find happiness that this world can never give to you.
Happiness that isn’t based on what others think of you, or what you earn, or even whether you are healthy, wealthy or have a ton of friends.
It is a happiness that is found only in Him.
Give students a few minutes to write out their Beatitude on the crown and take them with them.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Which Beatitude did you write on the crown and why?
Which of Jesus’ words seem to not make sense to you?
What do you think it would look like if everyone lived by these words from Jesus?
Which of the Happiness Selfies did you connect with the most?
Close in prayer.
Youth Group Lesson on Honesty
Bible: Luke 16:1-15
The Big Idea: The power of the truth.
LEADER PREP
Honesty is one of those areas that students that we serve can see Christ very clearly or vice versa.
Teenagers really do watch us, and that’s one of the reasons that honesty is so important.
Ask yourself honestly - what was the last lie that you told? (And if you are trying right now to reason with yourself that ‘it was just a white lie or an omission’ – yes, count that one).
I don’t know about you, but this is one area in which God is constantly sharpening me. When I go to God and really ask him to search my heart, my words, and to let me know how I might have failed - these are the times that I have been not only truly humbled, but I also find that I hear God more clearly.
He helps me to grow in ways that simply were not possible before.
Each of us can probably think of a story of a teenager that we’ve known who was dishonest and it caused them a lifetime of hurt.
This lesson today just might be something that a student will remember in a key time in which they can make a decision to be honest and save them and others from hurt.
OPENING GAME - You Lie
SUPPLIES
Boxes with crazy and creative things to put in boxes for the game (see below)
Room divider or sheet
This game originated on *The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon*.
Click here to see a very funny example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8vNn0WFUnY
**HOW TO PLAY THE GAME**
Choose 2 contestants, one to be the guesser and the other to either tell them the truth or a lie.
Set up a divider between 2 contestants facing one another.
You could even have 2 other youth volunteers hold up a sheet leaving the top open for the 2 contestants to be able to see one another’s faces.
Try to come up with the most random and strange items to put in shoeboxes.
Have the first contestant choose a box.
They will explain or lie and give a made up explanation to the other contestant of the contents of their box.
Their opponent will guess whether they are telling the truth or lying.
This game could go on as long as you wish and you could even show them the clip of Jimmy Fallon and Emma Stone at the end.
**After the game, ask:**
How could you tell when the contestants were lying?
Who surprised you the most with their ‘performance’ in this game?
How is this game like real life?
Why do you think that people lie?
TEACH – Youth Group Lesson on Honesty
Share a story from your life, funny or serious, in which you told a lie and the consequences that followed.
This game and my story show a funny side of lying and being dishonest, but let’s be honest: It really is a big deal.
Think about a time recently that you have lied.
I am not going to ask you to share and don’t worry, your parents aren’t hiding in the back to catch you.
Just think about a lie that you’ve told: Why did you lie?
What were you afraid would happen if you didn’t lie?
Now, whether others figured out that you lied—you knew right?
See, that’s the lie that you can tell yourself about lying: That no one will know.
But, that’s not true is it? Because you know.
Maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but I would argue that it does.
I need 2 volunteers to help act out a parable that Jesus told:
Read Luke 16:1-8a.
Choose a person to be the rich man and another to be the manager.
Read the Scripture and have students act it out as you are reading.
When you get to the part where they bring in other debtors, just have the manager grab people from the crowd!
Have the volunteers sit down.
Jesus told parables to share deep kingdom ideas in simple ways……so what do you think that Jesus was trying to say with this parable?
I am going to have you get into groups of 5-6 and I want you to come up with 2 theories of what you think Jesus was trying to teach: and yes, one will be a truth and the other will be a lie.
We might all be completely confused by the time this lesson is over, but have fun with it.
Give the group about 5 minutes to think of their theories and then, if time allows, give them a chance to present their theories to the large group.
Try to guess which is the truth, and which is the lie, or if there are more than 6 groups, have groups pair up to try to guess on each others’ theories.
Jesus actually does go on to give us more clues into what he was trying to get at with his parable:
Read Luke 18:8a-15
So, which of our theories do you think was the closest to what Jesus was trying to say?
Ok, here is my theory on what Jesus was trying to teach - creatively:
Honesty doesn’t make sense to the world.
The world deals in money and profit, getting ahead and protecting yourself, and covering your back.
And when we desire those things more than we desire for God to be first, we let those things master us.
We begin to say, do, and think things are ok that we never would have before, and sometimes we even come up with rationalizations that sound good to us.
They probably sound good to the world and others might even tell you that what you are doing is just fine.
By the world's standards it might be fine, but those aren't the standards that matter to God.
Can you think of an example in our culture in which lying is actually 'ok'?
*Give the groups a few minutes to think of examples to share.*
And here is a really important question: if nobody knows, is it really lying?
Is it still ok if no one knows or no one else is hurt?
Because Jesus is saying that even the small things matter.
If you are not honest with a small thing like an answer on a test or telling your parents what time you REALLY got home, can you be trusted to be honest when the stakes are much higher?
What do you think Jesus would say in those instances?
Does it matter?
I believe that the answer is 'yes'.
Because if we played that game for days and days on end, training ourselves to lie and how to not give away that we are lying....lying does get easier.
There are probably some of you in this room who can really convince someone that you are innocent. Right?
Jesus is basically saying that as his children, we are to live differently.
He even pointed to the Pharisees, the leaders, and basically told them that they are fooling everyone but not God...because God knows the heart.
Today, I hope that you take some time to look into your own heart.
Don't worry about the person who is here that you know has lied this week, because that is not the point, here.
The point is to be honest with yourself about how you have been dishonest.
Not to beat yourself up, but to start today being honest.
God knows the truth and he is actually looking for people He can trust to be honest with themselves.
The more we lie, the more we dull the ability to hear His voice and be led by His example.
Take some time tonight to be quiet and honest with God and then, this week, when you are tempted to lie, remember that when you are honest in small things….God can trust you with big ones.
It says more about you and your character than you can ever know.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
On a scale of 1 to 10, how honest are you right now?
Can you think of another example of how our culture seems to make it easy to tell lies?
Is it ever ok to lie? If the answer is yes, how do you know when it is ok or not?
What do you think Jesus meant when he said that “if you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones” (Luke 16:10)?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON HOPE
Bible verses: Psalm 25:5, Psalm 42:5, Psalm 62:5
Bottom Line: Jesus is our only hope of surviving and thriving in this world.
OPENING GAME: LIGHTSABER DUEL
Items needed: 1 2x4 wooden plank, two pool noodles of different color. Two Blindfolds.
Directions: Ask for two volunteers.
Blindfold players and give them a pool noodle.
They have 60 seconds to “use the force” to swing their noodle and hit the other player.
Volunteers keep track of how many hits are landed for each player.
At the end of 60 seconds, the player with the most hits is the winner.
If one player is knocked off of the plank, they automatically lose.
Note: Be sure to lay the wooden plank on the ground rather than propping it up in the air. You don’t want anyone getting hurt.
Transition – Use the game as a transition into talking about the Star Wars movie (which will lead into the topic of hope).
TEACH - JESUS IS OUR HOPE
A few months ago the first of the third Star Wars trilogy was released: Star Wars - The Force Awakens.
Who saw it and liked it?
Well, it’s the first of three more to come.
Now, let’s go back a little…
The very first Star Wars movie that ever came out was “Episode IV: A New Hope.”
This story takes place after the fall of Anakin Skywalker, the rise of Darth Vader and the conquering Empire.
It follows a young boy and a young girl who are separated by galaxies but connected by bloodline and destiny.
One of the most famous lines of the movie is spoken by Princess Leia as she is trying to get a message out for help.
She says, “Help Me Obi Wan Kinobi, you’re my only hope.”
Leia is under the impression that he is her “Only Hope.”
Before we unpack that idea, we need to focus on what happened in between Episode III and Episode IV.
**Death and Destruction**
Everything that has happened in between episode III and episode IV can be summed up in those two words.
The empire’s reach knows no limitations.
The universe is in turmoil and disarray.
The galaxy is hopeless.
Kind of like all of us.
Just turn on the news and you’ll see how our world is a mess.
Terrorism, murder, lying, cheating, etc.
It’s not only the world around us, but it’s you and I too.
We’re not terrorists or murderers, but in our own way we’re all messed up.
None of us are perfect, we all have our weaknesses.
We all struggle with sin. It looks different for us all.
You might struggle with lust, pride, anger, or greed. Those are just a few of the countless ways sin shows its ugly head in our lives.
Sin is the underlying problem all of humanity faces.
It's what brings chaos to the world around us.
When we watch the news, it's easy to feel hopeless.
When we look at the crazy things that happen in our own schools, it can seem pretty hopeless too.
There is one problem with this idea. The Bible tells us differently.
Our hope is in Jesus!
Read Psalm 25:5 - "Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long."
Read Psalm 42:5 - "Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."
Read Psalm 62:5 - "Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him."
God brings us real hope. Hope we can count on.
In fact, Jesus came to earth to bring us hope.
God saw that the world was a mess. It was chaos.
We were separated from God because of our sins.
Because of Jesus' death and resurrection, we can be right with God.
The more people who turn their eyes and hearts to Jesus, the better the world will be.
Your hope for a better life is in Jesus.
When you turn to Jesus, he makes you right with God.
He transforms you to become more like Him.
He shows up in the midst of your problems and difficulties.
He brings peace in the middle of chaos.
He gives you the power to overcome your weaknesses.
He gives you purpose in life. A reason for existing here on earth.
He enables you to make a difference in the lives of other people.
Luke and Leia eventually discovered they had a purpose - to bring hope to a hopeless situation.
With God's power, you can too.
**Small Group Discussion Questions**
What situations in the world do you think are hopeless? Explain.
Have you ever been in a situation that seemed like it was hopeless? Explain.
What’s difficult about placing your hope in Jesus?
Talk about a time when God showed up and did something amazing in your life?
Ask students for prayer requests, especially those who currently face a difficult or hopeless situation.
Have students pray for each other.
Bottom Line: As human beings it’s natural to focus on yourself – what you want and the problems you face. Jesus teaches us a different way to live. He teaches us to be humble, which means we focus on serving others rather than being consumed with ourselves.
Bible: Matthew 20:25 (NLT)
OPENING GAME
This is a timed trivia game.
You will need four volunteers that will become two teams of two.
In each team, you will have the clue giver and the person who tries to answer.
The clue giver will be given a set of “phrases” that they must get their teammate to guess. They may not say any word in this phrase while giving the clues.
If they use a word in the phrase, that phrase must be skipped and may not be counted in their final total.
Each team will have 30 seconds to correctly guess as many of their phrases as they can.
Either person on the team may pass at any time, and if time allows at the end, they may come back to that question.
If both teams complete all of their phrases, the team to do it in the shortest amount of time, wins.
Phrases to use for Opening Game (feel free to add or create your own):
PHRASES USING THE WORD HUMBLE
In my humble opinion, Humble Pie, Humble Abode, Humble Beginnings
HUMBLE PEOPLE THROUGHOUT HISTORY
Mother Teresa, Dahli Lama, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi
WORDS THAT RHYME WITH HUMBLE
Fumble, Jumble, Tumble, Rumble
PLACES TO VISIT IN HUMBLE, TEXAS
George W. Bush Airport, Botanical Gardens (can accept gardens), Luke Church, Golf Courses
RECENTLY VOTED MOST HUMBLE CELEBRITIES
Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Russell Brand
MOVIE TITLES WITH HUMBLE (OR HUMILITY) IN IT
Humble, Humble the Poet, Humble Heroes, The Humble Bee
**Game Tie-in**
Though some of the categories were intentionally corny, maybe the others (especially the first two) had you examine how the word “humble” has been associated with popular phrases and famous people.
What does it mean to be served “humble” pie? What was it about Abraham Lincoln that gave him the reputation of a very humble man?
Remember some of the questions as we continue to dive into the topic of humility.
**TEACH**
As a human being it’s natural to mostly think about the things you want and need.
It’s easy to get consumed with the problems you face in life and the things you don’t like about life at the moment.
You need a new iPhone, you want to be the star player on the basketball team, you need to get an A in Math this year, you really don’t like your brother, your coach yells too much, the list goes on.
When you focus mostly on yourself – what you want/need, the problems you face – you become self-absorbed.
This doesn’t happen consciously, it’s simply a natural result of focusing on ourselves.
Jesus teaches us a different way to live.
He calls it “humility.”
The world around us has a much different perspective on this topic.
Professional athletes, actors, singers, and politicians thrive on big egos.
We flaunt our status with tech devices and clothing and social media basically exists to show off to the world (controversial, maybe, but true).
Because of this, humility is often greatly misunderstood. At best, a humble person is seen as someone who is quiet, hiding in the background while avoiding attention.
At worst, humility can been seen as a weakness. Even one of my most trusted resources gets it wrong!
Humble: adjective… dictionary.com - not proud or arrogant; modest:
So far, so good. Humility is the act of not acting proud or arrogant.
- having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.:
Wait, what?
- low in rank, importance, status, quality, etc.; lowly
Do you see how the English language has warped the word “humble” to the point that it can be associated with inferiority or low status?
Does this mean that humility is only for the weak? No!
- So, what is true humility, and is it really all that important?
**The Humble Servant**
Before coming to earth, Jesus resided in heaven at the right hand of the Father.
He was and always will be King over all of the universe.
He created everything. He is the most awesome (in the truest definition of the word) Ruler.
So, one would expect Him to come to earth and correct everything we did to mess things up by acting like the all-powerful King that He is right?
Wrong.
When Jesus came to earth, He chose to be born in a barn (or cave).
He was born the child of a simple family living in an oppressed country.
He was born a Jew, a lowly race of people living under the thumb of the mighty Roman Empire. He never became an earthly king.
In fact, He lived out His adult ministry as an iterate (i.e. homeless) preacher and teacher.
In short, He was humble in every sense of the word.
He didn’t stop there.
The moment that He started that would later be called Christianity was founded on this very principle.
Humility was at the very core of what it meant to be His follower back then, and it still is today.
Look at what He said to His followers about humility and “status”.
“and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Matthew 20:25 (NLT)
Whoever wants to be first (the most important, the most popular, the greatest, etc.) must become a slave.
Is there any people group more lowly, more unimportant than slaves?
In our modern world, slavery is considered evil, but throughout the vast majority of human history it was a common practice.
Slaves were hardly viewed as human.
They were property, not unlike oxen or work horses.
What is Jesus saying?
Is He saying that humility requires this worthlessness of us? No.
To stop there would allow the message to get lost in translation.
Let’s look at the second half.
Even the Son of Man (Jesus) came to serve, not to be served.
Was Jesus worthless? Was He just a slave? No!
Jesus never stopped being the Ruler of all the universe. He never stopped being King.
So what is He saying? Jesus did not come to be treated like an idol, a revered hero that sits around letting people serve Him.
He came as a servant, Someone so humble that He put other people’s needs before His own.
He came to give His life so that others could live.
That is true humility. He knew that He was the King.
He knew that He was and is our Lord. Still, He came to serve.
Jesus is who we are supposed to emulate. After all, the word Christian means “Little Christ” or “Jesus wannabe”.
He washed His disciples’ feet. He gave up comfort for hardship so that we could have eternal life.
He tended to the needs of others long after He had reached the point of exhaustion. He was both King and Servant.
To be like Christ, we must do the same.
We will never be King, but we are God’s hands and feet on earth.
Humility is not thinking of yourself most of the time.
It means we think of what other people around us need and want.
The ultimate goal is to put other people’s needs and wants above our own, but that may seem like a big jump at the moment.
For now, stop wasting so much time and energy on what you want and need. Stop dwelling so much on the problems you face or what you don’t like about your life right now.
Open your eyes to those around you. Your parents, siblings, friends, and community.
What problems do they face?
What small or big things can you do to help them with their problems?
How can you serve them? What can you do to bring them a little happiness and joy today?
Jesus told us to wash each other’s feet just like He washed ours.
Jesus did it for us. Now, He asks us to pay it forward.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Before today’s message, what is the first thing that came to mind when you thought of the word humility?
Take a moment to think about a person in your life that strikes you as very humble. What makes them seem humble to you?
A common phrase in Jesus’ ministry was “the first will be last, and the last will be first.” What do you think He meant?
Who can you serve this week? What can you do to serve them?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON IDENTITY
There is an ancient Indian story that tells of six blind men who attempted to describe an elephant based on what part of the elephant they were examining with their hands. Because of their blindness, they drew some pretty comical conclusions.
One felt the leg and decided the elephant was a pillar.
Another touched the tusk and determined it was a solid pipe.
Still another grabbed the tail and proclaimed it to be nothing more than rope.
The story goes on and in the end a man blessed with sight enters and sees the whole picture, that it was, in fact, an elephant.
This story is often used by world religions to describe what they incorrectly believe to be the different paths to God, but I want to use it to illustrate how incomplete our view and understanding is of ourselves.
Often, we make the mistake of finding our identity without realizing that in our blindness we have seen only a tiny part of the big picture.
For example, a guy may play a sport really well so he finds his identity in the fact that he is an athlete.
A girl might be really pretty and therefore she's finds her identity in her external appearance.
The problem is, this is such an incomplete picture.
Jesus sees so much more when He looks at us.
Read 1 Peter 2:9-10
“...for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you
out of the darkness into his wonderful light. Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy.” (New Living Translation)
What is wrong with finding your identity in the things that you can do, the way you look, the friends you hang out with, or so on?
For starters, everything I just mentioned in that sentence can be taken away from you. Your actual identity, the part of you that truly and accurately describes who you are at the core of your being, cannot change.
Someday you may no longer be the athlete you once were.
What you see as “good looks” may change.
Your true identity, is an amazing gift from God.
Let’s look at a few of the things that are mentioned in those verses.
**Chosen People**
God, in all His amazing power and wisdom, has looked at you and said, “This is a person that I love.
I want to know this person better. I chose you.”
**Royal Priest**
You are “royalty”, which means that you are an adopted child of the Creator of the Universe.
He loves you, not as a friend or a follower, but as a son or a daughter.
You are a priest.
That carries so many meanings.
You have the ability to help lead others to that same incredible love that God has for you.
**God's People**
You are a part of the Chosen People, those whom God has set aside as special to Him. You have the ability to change the world with His love and grace.
These are just a few of the things that the Bible says are your true identity.
The best part is that no one can take that away from you.
Nothing you do, no matter what life throws at you, *your identity in Jesus Christ cannot be shaken or destroyed*. Jesus sees the full picture of who you are.
Allow Him to remove your blindness so that you can step into His wonderful light.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
In your own words, what is “identity”?
What are some of the “false” identities that people around you cling to? (for example: John’s identity is that he is the “smart kid”)
Why is it important to know what your identity is?
What is dangerous about finding your identity in something that can change or be taken away?
1 Peter 2:9-10 touches on a few of the ways the Bible describes our identity. Can you think of any more?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON INTEGRITY
Bible: Psalm 139:23-24
Bottom Line: Living with integrity is possible when you walk with God.
SUPPLIES
Balloon for each student
A long piece of yarn that will make a large ball when wound.
Integrity quotes written on individual cards for volunteers to read.
OPENING GAME
Give each student a balloon which they blow up and tie.
The challenge of this game is for everyone to keep their balloon in the air by hitting it.
Last person standing wins, but you have to sit down if any of these things happens:
Your balloon touches the ground: sit down.
Anyone else’s balloon touches you: sit down.
You look ANYONE in the eyes: both sit down.
If you say anything: sit down.
Say: Ok, sound simple?
We will see: GO.
Leader: Watch carefully for students who might be ‘stretching’ the rules such as looking at someone and not sitting down, accidentally getting touched by another balloon, or talking.
Hopefully, these rules will prove more challenging for students, and they might begin to try to tell others who break the rules to sit down, which is one of the things that means they have to sit down.
Once the first round is over, which means that only one person is standing, ask the group if they have any questions about this game.
Ask them which rule was the toughest to remember.
**Say:** Ok, let’s try this again, and remember the rules.
Play the game again.
Gather the group together and be sure to take all of the balloons!
**TEACH - INTEGRITY**
What was the toughest part about this game?
Here is a strange question, but an important one: How tempting was it to cheat at this game?
What are some of the ways that you could have cheated at this game?
Come, on, someone HAD to have cheated at this game, right?
How simple was it to ‘act’ like someone’s balloon didn’t really touch your arm, or maybe you did look at someone, but you both kinda had this secret ‘look’ and acted like neither of you looked at the other.
**Leader:** Share a personal story about a time in your life in which it was very easy or tempting to cheat.
**Say:** Integrity.
How would you define integrity?
(Give youth a few minutes to share their thoughts on integrity and if possible write them down for the group to see.)
Ask for volunteers to read the following famous people’s takes on integrity and hand them one of the quotes below:
**Integrity Quotes:**
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” — Albert Einstein
“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” — C. S. Lewis
“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.” — Oprah Winfrey
“The time is always right to do what is right.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Today I shall behave as if this is the day I will be remembered.” — Dr. Seuss
(Leader get a long piece of string and as you talk in this next section, wind it into a ball.)
Think about integrity like this piece of string.
As we read, in these quotes, integrity seems to begin small.
“Integrity is who you are when no one is looking”, one person said.
But think back to a time when you told a ‘small lie’.
Then you had to cover with another lie.
And another.
It became more and more difficult to remember who you told what.
And with each lie, things became more and more complicated.
Think of how many times you see on TV that some famous person, everyone thought was an example and honest, actually messed up big time.
Do you really think that one day this person just woke up and thought “I’m going to lie, steal, or do something to disappoint everyone?”
No, it begins in those small decisions - telling one small lie or changing that one detail. Thinking to yourself “No one saw me, so it’s not that big of a deal”.
One day you will wake up and what started out so small, has become a big giant ball of lies.
Some of you may have heard about King David in the Bible.
He was an awesome king and was called a ‘man after God’s own heart’.
Yet, this amazing king made one small choice, which led to one lie, which led to another and another.
Up to the point that David, the King, had stolen another man’s wife, committed adultery, had her husband killed in battle, and still seemed to not admit that he had done anything wrong until he was confronted.
David messed up big time.
Look at this huge snowball. (hold up the ball of yarn)
It took David coming face to face with the huge mess that he made to realize that he had betrayed God.
He had sacrificed his integrity.
It’s easy to look at others and wonder how they could put themselves in that type of situation, but let’s be honest: **All of us have fallen and been less than honest - if we are honest!**
Maybe you talked about a friend behind their back, or told your parents that you finished homework that wasn’t finished.
Or watched that video you know you shouldn’t have or said something you regret.
You reason with yourself that it was a small thing.
Or that nobody knew about it.
But there is something that we all tend to forget: Someone DOES know.
God.
What if I were to tell you that I have a video of your darkest secret?
A video that would show every single lie that you’ve ever told?
Some of you might be thinking: it’s not possible, but just imagine for a moment that it could be possible.
What would you worry would show up on this video?
What would you never want anyone to know or to see?
Because this imaginary test will help you to answer this tough question: Do you live with integrity?
Ask anyone who has made bad choices and they will tell you that it started small.
They never realized that it was THAT moment, behind that closed door, or on that one text message that they compromised who they were.
In those moments, you realize that who you are and who God wants you to be are very far apart.
The good news is that God can help you, but first, you must let him help you to be honest with him and honest with yourself.
Read Psalm 139:23-24
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
David wrote this amazing prayer to God.
Yes, the same David who stole a man’s wife and had him killed.
David, the man who it would be so easy to look at and whisper to your friend “Wow, he really messed up, didn’t he?”
The man who realized his sin and came to God pleading for forgiveness.
The man God restored.
Isn’t that amazing?
I am going to read this prayer once more and I want you to spend some time quietly letting God search your heart.
Ask God to point out those things in you that are ‘knotted’ up.
The ways that your integrity is less than God wants.
Remember, for each of us, this should be a daily thing.
I challenge you to pray this prayer each night before you go to bed, and see how God helps you to live the life of integrity that He is calling each of us to live.
Reread Psalm 139:23-24.
Living a life of integrity is possible, but only with God showing us our true selves every step of the way.
God is patient and loves us and WANTS us to live lives of integrity.
God will forgive you for the ways that you have failed to be who he created you to be.
Let’s pray.
Pray: Lord, walk with us.
We need your guidance every single step of the way.
Help us to see those times when we have a decision to make about who we are and who we are not.
Help us to follow you and not our own desires.
And show us the way that we need to walk, talk and think to stay in step with you.
Amen.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What are some of the greatest tests of integrity that youth face today?
Which integrity quote did you identify with the most?
If time allows, read each of the integrity quotes again and discuss them.
Do you think integrity is valued today in society? Why or why not?
What do you think is the biggest challenge that youth face in keeping their integrity today?
Share a time when it was very tempting to lie or be less than God would want you to be.
What types of situations test your integrity the most?
Years ago I almost got arrested while spending some alone time with God.
I know, sounds crazy right?!?! Let me explain.
I was praying alone in a tennis court by my apartment. I liked to pray outside.
It was around 11pm. I was a busy seminary student and in full-time ministry, so that was when I prayed and spent alone time with God.
Oh, and I may have been praying out loud without even realizing it. I know...I have issues.
The neighbors saw a strange young man talking out loud to himself late at night and called the cops.
They arrived expecting to find someone drunk or on drugs. I was neither.
They asked for my license, which I gave them right away.
For some strange reason, my license was flagged with a warrant out for my arrest due to an unpaid speeding ticket.
But I knew I had paid that ticket!
So, I begged them to not arrest me.
I told them I was praying.
They probably thought I was crazy and hopefully felt sorry for me.
After about 15 minutes of sitting in the back of the cop car...they finally let me go.
Whew...I was free!!
The next day I went to the DMV to straighten out the situation.
Lesson learned. I shouldn't have been praying out loud at 11pm in an open tennis court.
Didn't do that again :)
But at least I made it a priority to spend alone time with God :)
It's a habit we all need to develop.
Jesus got away from the crowds and the demands of ministry...to be with God.
The students in your ministry can learn from his example.
Use this lesson to help them do that. Enjoy!
**Bible:** Mark 1:35-39
**Bottom Line:** We need to follow the example of Jesus - he was crazy busy and in demand, and made time to get away and pray.
**OPENING GAME - CROWD TAG**
*Take the group into a large area and define the boundaries (preferably no larger than a basketball court size).*
This game is called Crowd Tag.
It is like tag, except I will call out a number and you need to get in a group of that size, link arms and try to tag other crowds.
When you tag another crowd, they have to join your crowd until there is only one crowd. But here is the catch - when I call out another number, the game starts over and you have to get in a group with the number of people I called out.
Also, if you don't find your way into a crowd and you get tagged by yourself....you are out.
*Play game as many times as you'd like.*
TEACH
Reflect on Crowd Tag.
Ask: How did it feel to be in the crowd versus being alone?
Which did you prefer: being in the crowd or being alone?
Ok, I’m going to poll the group: Raise your hand if you would rather have been alone than in the crowd?
These are the introverts, the ones who would much rather stay home with Netflix and a comfy blanket than go out with a crowd.
Now, raise your hand if you love the crowd.
These are the extroverts, the people who love a crowd.
People are different and while some of us love to be in a big crowd of people, others of us like to be alone.
Imagine that you were a celebrity.
And every single time you went ANYWHERE the crowds followed you.
How would that make you feel?
Sure, some of you extroverts might love the thought that the crowd would follow you wherever you went, but then the introverts in the group are freaking out right now even thinking about people following you, right?
Share with the group your preference: are you extroverted or introverted and maybe a funny or meaningful story about what this might look like for you.
But imagine that the crowd was ALWAYS there.
When you woke up.
When you wanted to eat lunch.
When you needed to just take a nap.
The crowd was always there, wanting your attention.
And soon you realize that the days when you could just relax or choose what you want to do are gone...because the crowd is there and they want and need something from you.
Raise your hand if you feel like you might faint from the stress of even thinking of this?
Because what I just described is what Jesus lived with during his time in ministry.
Have you ever thought about what it must have been like to be Jesus??
Think of what it would have been like for people to know that here was this man who could heal diseases.
If you were blind, you wanted to get to Jesus.
If you were sick, you wanted to get to Jesus.
All of these people desperately needing to get to Jesus.
Remember the song you might have sung when you were little about this short guy named Zaccheus?
He climbed up in a tree to be able to see Jesus because the crowds were so thick.
Jesus was one manned everyone needed him and was desperate to just even touch him.
It stresses me out even thinking about it!
If you had been Jesus, what would you have done?
Think about it this way, who of you here have felt stressed out?
Maybe you are sitting here thinking about all of the homework that you have to do.
You have practice and school and maybe work.
You have to keep your grades up while you go to basketball, football, baseball, track, dance, and on and on.
And just imagine what it would be like when you are an adult.
With a job.
And kids.
Stress is real, right?
And pretty much everyone you know feels super busy.
But think about the stress and busyness that Jesus must have felt?
I mean, really think about what it must have felt like to be Jesus.
To know that you have been sent TO SAVE THE WORLD!??
Crazy, right?
And this is where we learn an amazing secret from Jesus.
A secret that we all should learn, but sometimes miss.
Ask for volunteer to read Mark 1:35-39.
What was the secret that Jesus can share with us here?
When things got crazy and people were needing him here and there.
To fix this, heal this person, etc.
What did Jesus do?
He went off by himself to pray.
He got up early, even.
Imagine how tired he must have been.
In verse 32-34, it says, “That evening after sunset the people brought Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The WHOLE TOWN gathered at the door and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons....”
The WHOLE town gathered at his door.
Can you imagine how late Jesus must have been up, and casting out demons is some pretty serious work, right?
And what does Jesus do?
He wakes up early.
He goes off by himself.
And he prays.
If Jesus needed to do this, what about you?
What is the cure for stress and being so busy you can hardly remember what to do next?
Go off by yourself…and pray.
When are you going to do that this week?
Maybe some of you right now, just need to leave this room and find a quiet place to pray.
Spend some time right now….spread out in this room.
Let the distractions leave you.
Don’t think about all that you have to do or the crowd around you and pray.
That is a great secret from Jesus - Go and pray.
Give the group some silent time to pray or play some quiet music to give them a chance to pray.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Talk as a group about the things that are in their lives that are stressing them out? Is it a busy schedule, demands, expectations, or something else?
How do you think it would have felt to be Jesus with all the demands he had?
When is a time and a place that you could get away to spend time praying?
What is keeping you from spending time with God?
Commit to pray for one another this week that they take the time to spend time alone with God.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON JOB
Bible: Job 38-39
Bottom Line: Life can and probably will be hard, but God is with us and wants to speak to us in the storms.
LEADER PREP
The Book of Job is a really tough book to read and even tougher to understand. The testing of Job can raise real questions about God from youth and even adults. It is important that you, as a leader, think about how you explain the problem of suffering, if and when the youth ask, because the question will come up.
Why is there suffering?
Why is there evil?
Does God cause it?
Why doesn’t God stop it?
This lesson doesn’t dig into these questions per se, but speaks more about how God speaks to Job in the midst of his pain. But the question really might come up as to why God allowed Satan to test Job. That is a tough one to answer, isn’t it?
I will say this: There is pain and suffering in this life. We simply cannot deny that, and at some point, each and every one of us will be touched by this fact.
Why is there pain and suffering?
I would point to the Garden of Eden and the fact that God gave humans a choice: A choice to love him, to obey him, and to live a life that is more blessed than any of us can imagine.
And the humans chose to live life their way and there has been pain, suffering, and misery ever since.
We live in a fallen world that simply is not the paradise that God designed it to be.
But…and this is a big but: God is redeeming creation and redeeming us through Christ.
The pain and the suffering will not win because God loves us.
He will save us and redeem us.
Just like he did for Job.
Be sure to read the book of Job for yourself, but especially the last few chapters in which God really gives Job and all of us an amazing reminder of just how amazing God really is.
This is highlighted by the beautiful fact that God came to Job in the storm to remind him that God is there.
God is not done redeeming us and saving us from the misery.
THAT is the answer to the problem of evil and suffering.
SUPPLIES
This week’s opening game will be messy and will require clean up.
Let the youth know the week before that they need to dress to get dirty and wet.
Cooked oatmeal
Coins
Gummy worms
Kiddie swimming pool
Water balloons or hose to wash off with.
Whistle
Handouts with Job 38 and 39 for each youth (Use The Message version)
Brown paper on the floors spread throughout the room
Sharpies
**OPENING GAME – I AM JOB**
**GAME PREP**
Set up the kiddie swimming pool filled with cooked oatmeal, gummy worms and coins that youth will have to dig through to find the coins.
Be sure to have a lot of coins in the pool, but also make sure to blow the whistle after only 10 to 15 seconds to allow everyone a turn.
Divide the group into 3 to 4 teams and have them stand on opposite sides of the pool. Have the teams line up and when you say ‘go’, the first person from each team will run to the pool filled with ‘treasures’ and collect as many coins as they can until you blow the whistle.
They will then run and tag the next person and they will take a turn until each person in the lines has gone.
For a fun twist, have adult chaperones have buckets of oatmeal to throw on the teams! The messier the better.
Use a garden hose or water balloons after the game to clean up.
The team with the most coins and gummy worms wins.
Today’s game was meant to illustrate just how messy life can get.
Let’s face it, how many times have you watched the news and wondered why things happen?
The question of suffering and why people hurt and why some people don’t is a question that people have asked since the beginning of time.
How many of you have asked why there is suffering, but worried that asking this makes you seem like you have little faith?
Well, the book of the Bible called “Job” is God’s way of saying that these are normal questions to ask.
The book of Job is about a man who seems to have a really great life and family. And then everything, and I mean EVERYTHING seems to fall apart.
Can I have a volunteer who would like to be Job for us today?
Be sure to choose someone who is going to have a good time with acting out Job’s life.
Can I have 5 volunteers to come, read, and tell us about Job.
And “Job”, I want you to act out what we read about you, ok?
Reader 1: Job 1:1-3
Say to Job: Job, you got it pretty good huh?
Here’s where this story gets good. Get ready, Job, ok?
Reader 2: Job 1:14-15
Reader 3: Job 1:16
Reader 4: Job 1:17
Reader 5: Job 1:18-19
Job, how are you feeling now?
**To the Large Group:** How would you be feeling about right now?
Well, this is what Job did: Read Job 1:20-22
*Be sure that Job doesn’t completely act out this verse.*
But wait, Job, because this story isn’t over. Let me keep reading: Job 2:7-10
Give Job a hand and Job, you can go ahead and have a seat and thank God that you aren’t Job, right?
**To the Large Group:** Ok, imagine that you were friends with this poor guy at this point? What would you say to him?
Well, that’s how this story plays out.
Job’s friends come to sit with him to help, but to make a long story short (read the Book of Job) they tell him that he must have really made God mad for all this to happen.
And through it all, through all 42 chapters of this book, Job never loses his faith in God. He asks God questions, though, and in one of the most amazing passages in the Bible, it says that God answered Job in the storm.
You gotta love this: God spoke to Job through the storm.
And God gives this amazing reminder to Job: God Is God.
I want you to read the words that God says to Job silently right now and think about the words that really strike you.
Imagine that you are Job and God is saying this to you: What would you think?
Pass out Handouts with Job 38-39 to each youth.
I want you to spread out throughout the room and take the time to really read the reply that God gives to Job.
Pick out a phrase that sticks with you.
Now, go to the brown paper that is on the floor and write those words with the pens.
Please do this in silence and keep on reading and re-reading God’s words until I call you back together.
Give the group 10 minutes to do the reflection, but allow for longer if you see that they are still reflecting and writing.
Grab the brown papers and read what the youth have written to the group.
Job didn’t just stay in this sad state.
The book of Job ends as God restores Job and gives him above and beyond what he ever had to begin with, and you get the idea that Job knew God in a very real and profound way.
Read Job 42:10-17
There are a lot of things that you can learn from this amazing book of the Bible.
But what we learn about God in this Book is that he is sovereign and that our suffering does not go unnoticed.
And that God will bring redemption out of the tough things that happen in our lives if we allow him to.
The pain and the suffering will not last forever.
And here is something really important to remember: God did not create us or this world to be this way and someday make things how He wanted them to be before we messed it up.
He will deliver us through Christ from the suffering.
God loves us so much that he simply will not leave us in that storm alone.
Close in prayer.
God, You are mighty.
You are more powerful than any of us can imagine.
Yet you are with us. You speak in the storm to us.
Not with easy answers. But with reminders
That life is fragile, We are weak But you are not.
You are God. You alone save us.
Redeem us in the pain. We are thankful. Amen.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What things that happened to Job would have been the toughest for you to endure?
What would you have done if you were Job?
How could the book of Job help someone who is suffering in life?
Which of the things that God said stuck out to you the most?
Has there been a time in your life when God spoke to you in a hard time?
I really wanted to do something from the book of Joshua that wasn’t this passage, but let’s be honest - How much better can you get than Joshua 1:9?
Just imagine being Joshua.
You are following Moses…enough said.
You have an entire nation waiting on you to get them safely home and enter a new land. What more fitting words and assurance could God have given Joshua than to be strong and courageous?
And what more fitting words God wants to speak to you and to the students he has placed in your path.
Be strong and courageous because God is with you.
It’s possible that someone reading this lesson is feeling anything but strong and courageous at this point, and to you, I say don’t lose faith.
Remember that God wouldn’t have repeated these words over and over to Joshua if God didn’t think that he would need to be reminded.
And that is why God reminds us that He is with us.
He will do the ‘being strong and courageous’ thing for us even when we don’t feel it.
God is with us.
**Bible:** Joshua 1:9
**Bottom Line:** Be Strong and courageous because God is with you.
**SUPPLIES**
Funny trophy for the Thumb Wrestling tournament such as a strange ring for their thumb or a statue!
Poster board for the Thumb Wrestling tournament
Paper, markers, scissors
Poster board
Double stick tape
**OPENING GAME — OLD SCHOOL THUMB WRESTLING TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS**
Create a funny Championship bracket poster for the Old School Thumb Wrestling Tournament.
Have a ‘Loser’ and a ‘Winner’ side.
Challenge the youth to grab a piece of paper, some washable markers and make a thumb print on a piece of paper.
Then, they can decorate it and create a character to represent themselves on the amazing Championship bracket poster.
Give them time to make and cut out their thumb character and then using removable double stick tape have them tape their character on the ‘winner’ side.
If possible, have one made already for you that is funny and strange, yet clearly your thumbprint to get them excited!
Explain that the winner will receive a prize worthy of such a test of strength.
Instruct the students that as they battle one another, to move their thumbs either to the winner or the loser side.
After each battle have students come and move their thumb to the correct side and then find someone in that same ‘bracket’ to challenge.
The rules: Players must put one arm behind their back.
The thumbs attack after saying “1, 2, 3, 4 - I declare a thumb war.”
You can also ask the group to create one other rule for the thumb war to really make it funny, such as they must do the chicken dance as they thumb wrestle or stand on one foot.
This tournament might go on forever so set a time limit and if there is no one winner, then have fun determining a winner!
TEACH
Winners and Losers.
Share a time in which you truly felt like a loser and make it a funny one.
No crying in thumb wars!
It really stinks to feel like a loser, right?
Yet, if we are all honest, it just isn’t possible to be best, the brightest, the strongest, the top dog every single moment.
We all face these moments in which we just might be in over our heads.
What is the most impossible situation that you have been in?
You remember the phrase they would always say at the beginning of the Hunger Games?
“May the odds be ever in your favor!”
Well, sometimes, let’s just face it – the odds really don’t seem to be in your favor, right?
Share a time in your life when the odds truly did not seem to be in your favor.
How many times do you feel like this?
There are always those people who seem to have it all together and are fearless, but I bet if you were to ask them and they were totally honest with you, they have moments of fear, doubt, and weakness.
Because I will let you in on a little secret - that’s what it means to be human.
We all reach points in our lives, some of us much sooner than others, when we see the mountain in front of us; or the assignment we procrastinated on; or the sickness of a loved one; or on and on until we reach the end of our strength and courage.
Maybe you can think of a situation in your life or someone else’s life right now where it’s truly scary to see what they are facing.
The decisions are just too much.
The risks just too high.
The expectations too crushing.
Well, today we are taking a look at someone who had every right to feel this way.
He was following arguably the greatest leader of all time.
Someone who parted water and made river turn to blood and entire countries fall to knees and God used him in mighty ways.
Moses.
The leader of all leaders, right?
Even though what we often forget is that Moses begged God not to choose him. Repeatedly!
Then, Moses dies and God’s people are still not home yet after the world’s longest road trip of 40 years!!!!
And Moses is dead.
Now, imagine being the leader who follows.
How would you feel?
All of these eyes...on you.
That is Joshua.
And that is when God says these words to Joshua that are so amazing that we are going to really chew on them today.
Ask a student to read Joshua 1:9.
Ask another student to read Joshua 1:9.
Ask ANOTHER student to read Joshua 1:9.
Then ask the group if we need to read it again.
What did God say to Joshua?
Be strong and courageous.
Don’t be afraid: check.
Don’t be discouraged: check.
Why?
Because God will be with him wherever he goes.
Wow.
Think about the situations in your life.
The challenges.
The worries.
And then put them up against these words that God gave to Joshua.
See, God isn’t telling Joshua to just suck it up and be strong and courageous.
No, God is giving Joshua some pretty amazing punch behind his command: God himself will go with him.
THAT is why Joshua and you can be strong and courageous is because NO MATTER what you face…who is there with you?
See, some many people think that when you are a Christian that your road will be easy because God will make the path full of rainbows and flowers, right?
Wrong!
God knows that life is hard and that people die and get sick and you face challenges that scare you to the core of who you are.
And it is for THOSE reasons that God doesn’t make you walk alone.
He goes with you.
God KNOWS it will be tough.
And He goes with you.
That is an amazing gift, right?
So, be strong and courageous.
And when you face the next battle or failure or worry or whatever….take heart and know that you are not alone.
You are never alone.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What situation in your life do you need to remember that God is with you?
What is the hardest for you - being strong or courageous?
Who is someone you know who needs to be reminded that they are not alone and that God is with them? Commit to remind them that they are not alone this week.
Write the words “Be strong and courageous…I go with you. From God” on your mirror in your bathroom when you get home where you can see it and remember!
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON JOY
Bible: Romans 15:13
Use this lesson to show students that with the God of Hope, it’s possible to have joy in all circumstances.
SUPPLIES
Glow sticks
Tape
Balls (soft, ones that wouldn’t hurt if they hit a student)
OPENING GAME
Before the game, tape the glow sticks to all of the balls except for one.
Split the group into two teams, and have each team split into four groups, with the two groups of each team standing facing each other, a couple steps apart.
Show the students the ball that does not have the glow stick taped to it. Ask them if they think throwing it and catching it between the two groups of each team seems possible.
Get a leader to turn the lights off.
Ask the group if they think it’s possible now that the room is dark. If they do, ask them if they think it will be harder without the light.
Then, bring out the balls that are glowing from the glow sticks. Ask if they think it is possible now, with the glow sticks.
Give the balls to one group from each team. Have them toss the balls to the group across from them. Anyone who does not catch a ball is out, and all the balls that were not caught are out of play.
Have that group throw the balls back. Again, the students who do not catch any are out. Continue with this pattern until all of the students on one team are out.
The last team standing wins!
**After the game, discuss these questions:**
Before I explained that there were glow sticks, did you think that catching the balls in the dark was going to be impossible?
Have you ever experienced circumstances where it seemed really hard to have joy?
Do you think that it’s possible to have joy when you’re not feeling happy?
**TEACH**
So when I first asked you if you thought throwing balls back and forth was possible, it seemed pretty obvious, right? It’s something we all learned pretty early on. But when the element of light was taken away, it suddenly seemed very difficult. Something that had just seemed very possible moved into something that seemed impossible, just because of the circumstances.
It’s like that with joy sometimes, isn’t it? When things are going good, joy seems easy. You don’t even have to think about it, it just comes! But when you take away the good circumstances, joy turns into something that seems very hard, and at times even impossible.
But just like the glow sticks introduced a way to make something that seemed impossible, possible, I’m going to introduce you to something that makes joy possible at all times, even when the circumstances are bad.
Read: Romans 15:13
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Say: That’s a pretty cool image, isn’t it? An image of God filling you with joy. See, that verse doesn’t say, “May you have joy all the time.” It doesn’t say, “May God help you keep your joy.” No, it says, May God FILL you with joy.
There are going to be circumstances in your life where you just don’t have any joy, no matter how hard you try. Just like in the game we played, there are going to be situations where life seems so dark, you can’t imagine joy being possible.
And that’s when you have to turn to God.
This verse calls Him the God of hope, because that’s exactly what He is. He is our hope. And it’s because of that hope that we’re able to have joy, no matter what the circumstances are.
I don’t know about you, but overflowing with hope sounds like something I want to do! And doesn’t joy seem like something that would just happen if you were overflowing with hope?
Just like those glow sticks provided a way to toss the balls back and forth in a dark room, the hope that God gives us provides a way for us to be filled with joy when our circumstances seem dark.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What’s an example of a way God is your hope?
Is joy something that is hard for you to have sometimes?
Have you ever asked God to give you joy?
Can you remember a time where it didn’t make sense that you were joyful, but you were able to have joy because of God?
Do you think it’s truly possible to have joy, no matter what?
WRAP UP
While it would be nice to never have to go through any hard times in life, we know that we will. They’re going to happen, it’s just a fact of life. But as Christians, we also know another fact—that we can have joy no matter how hard things get.
When you lose your joy, remember where your hope comes from. Remember that it comes from God. Ask Him to fill you up with joy, and He will!
He is your hope. No matter how dark life gets, He will be there to light it up with joy.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON JUDGING OTHERS
Bible: John 8: 3-11; Ephesians 2: 8-9; Mark 2: 15-17; Matthew 7: 1-5 (NLT)
Say: Let me start off with telling you a story.
You see there was this lady.
She was caught doing something, well, pretty bad.
She was caught in the act of adultery, cheating on her husband.
And all the people where she lived found out about it, and wanted to punish her.
Severe punishment!
They wanted to kill her!
Then there was this dude...who told them if they never did anything wrong in life, they could be the one to kill her.
And everyone kind of just backed down.
Because he made a good point.
You see that dude is Jesus, and those people were all the religious people!
But it’s not about what Jesus told the religious people.
It’s what he told the lady.
Go and sin no more!
Why do we find that so hard to do?
John chapter 8 verses 3-11 depicts what I want to talk about today:
The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught
in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
"No one, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
I want to talk about something that I know we all struggle with...
Judging others!
We are going to look at why we judge and condemn ourselves. Then we are going to look at how we judge other people.
So speaking about judging ourselves...why are we so hard on ourselves when we mess up?
Jesus wasn’t hard on the lady!
**POINT #1 - We condemn ourselves**
Jesus told the lady to go now and leave your life of sin.
How many people here have ever done anything wrong before?
How many of us still beat ourselves over the head about doing those wrongs? Why is that?
Is it because we don’t think we deserve to be forgiven?
Is it because we don’t trust that God has forgiven us? Or, is it because we don’t trust that God has the capability to forgive us?
You beat yourself up because you got mad and cursed some dude out.
Or you were on the computer the other day and looked at something you shouldn’t have.
We are constantly mad at ourselves for messing up!
Why can’t we ask for God to forgive us and be done with it?
In John, Jesus tells the lady to GO! An act! He told her to MOVE!! And sin no more.
**POINT #2 - We don’t have to earn it**
We condemn ourselves because we think that we have to earn God’s forgiveness and love!
We think we have to be good enough.
We have to go through the motions of being a Christian…
Read a chapter in the Bible a day.
Pray for an hour a day.
Go to church.
Read all the books…
We then give up on God because we try so hard to earn his love.
When we fail, we start to beat ourselves up all over again.
**Read Ephesians 2: 8-9**
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
Let’s break this verse down.
“It is by grace”
Who can give me a definition of grace? (Get responses)
It is the infinite, never failing, love and mercy, and favor, that God shows to us.
Has anyone here ever been given a break before?
Have your parents let you off easy on a punishment? Well then, that was grace.
“Through faith”
How many people here sat in your chairs and didn’t have to think if they were strong enough to hold you? That’s faith - placing your trust in something.
“The gift of God”
What gifts does God give you?
His love
His mercy
His grace
His son
His provision
His comfort
His invitation to you to be a part of what he is doing in the world
The list goes on…
“Not by works”
You don’t have to earn God’s great gift, as if you are competing in the Olympics or something. We don’t have to be “good” enough for God to love us, or accept us!
**POINT #3 - We think we are beyond hope**
We condemn ourselves because we think we are beyond hope.
We mess up and think there is no way God can STILL love us.
**Mark chapter 2 verses 15-17 gives us hope,**
"While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
There is hope!
Jesus came for those who had no hope, sinners, me and you. He desperately loves us, wants to do life with us, give us hope!!!
**POINT #4 - We judge others**
It is so easy to judge someone else isn’t it?
We see someone messing up…and we are quick to give our opinion of how it should be done.
We see someone smoking a cigarette and we immediately think that they are going to hell.
We see someone with tattoos and immediately put them into a social class.
Why are we so quick to pass judgment on people?
Let’s see what Jesus has to say about the topic of judging others.
Read Matthew 7: 1-5
“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.
“And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.
What is all this talk of a piece of wood in our eye?
Maybe your friend got drunk at this party last week, and you just saw them actually singing in worship.
You think to yourself, “They got drunk last week, and they have the nerve to sing to God!”
But then, you struggle with your own “sins”, don’t you?
In fact, you might drink too much sometimes, but you do it in private.
And if it’s not that…then it’s something else. You have your own “sin” issues to deal with, so why would judge someone else?
POINT #5 - When we judge others, we are comparing ourselves to them.
What are we really doing when we judge others?
We are comparing ourselves to them.
Our stuff
Our reputation
Our looks
Our identity
We are trying to convince ourselves that we are better than them, and we actually think we deserve more!
And anytime we want to be better than everyone else...
Anytime we think that we deserve better than anyone else, what are we doing?
You and I are saying that...
I am the man...
I am the woman...
The truth is there really is only one "I AM" and that is God.
He’s the only one who can judge, because He is the only one who is perfect, he is the only one who can purely judge without any evil intentions or hidden agendas.
God doesn’t love one person more than another.
He doesn’t love me more than he loves you.
So, just like Jesus told the religious people (you without sin throw the first stone)…
Don’t judge people because they don’t have what you have.
Don’t make the same grades you do.
Don’t like the same things you like.
But show them the love of God by not condemning them, or making fun of them, but just hanging out with them and getting to know them.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What’s your name, school, and dream car?
Why are we so hard on ourselves when we mess up?
Do you live like you have to earn God’s love (have to do certain things to gain favor with God)? Why or why not?
Why is it so easy to judge other people?
Have you been judged by someone? How did it make you feel to be judged by that person?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON KINDNESS
Bible: Colossians 3:12; Job 6:14
Lesson Overview: We often think about kindness in terms of a single “act of kindness” instead of a lifestyle. However, the Bible tells us that we are to clothe ourselves in kindness, which goes far beyond just doing kind things for others every now and then.
OPENING GAME: All Wrapped Up
SUPPLIES
- Roll of gauze, tulle, or some other type of fabric that can be wrapped around like a mummy (toilet paper works well too)
Divide the group into two teams and place them on opposite sides of the room.
Have a volunteer from each team go and join the opposing team. When you say go, the teams must start wrapping the fabric around the player from the other team, making them into a sort of mummy.
They have one minute to get creative and wrap the player up the best they can so that it will be difficult to unwrap.
When time is up, the players who are wrapped up must hobble, jump, or otherwise make their way across the room where their team will try to unwrap them as fast as they can.
The first team to completely unwrap their player wins.
TEACH
Kindness is a fruit of the Spirit. That means if you are living the way you are supposed to be living, according to God’s Word, then kindness will be a fruit that grows out of your life.
When you think about kindness, what comes to mind? Probably an action, right? Doing something nice for someone else?
What if we stopped thinking of kindness as an action and started thinking of kindness as an entire lifestyle?
Colossians 3:12 “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”
In the game we just played, you wrapped the fabric all around the player from the opposite team. Now, let me ask you—was it easy to get all of that off? No! Eventually you were able to, but you weren’t able to get rid of all the fabric instantly, because you were clothed in it.
This verse says that we are supposed to clothe ourselves with kindness. Now, when you get dressed for the day, do you just wear your clothes long enough for someone to see them before taking them off? Of course not! That would defeat the entire purpose of wearing clothes!
In the same way, kindness should not be a single action completed and then forgotten. Instead, it should be something we put on, wrapped all around us, and wear all day long.
Do you think that it’s really possible to clothe yourself in kindness and wear it all day long? Do you think it’s really possible for kindness to be something that filters into everything you do all day?
And I’m going to tell you three ways you can keep kindness wrapped around you all day: with your words, with your actions, and with your attitude.
**Kindness with your words**
It’s incredibly easy to be unkind with your words. Saying the first thing that comes to mind, or not taking time to think about your attitude before you speak can result in a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of regretted words.
However, it can also be incredibly easy to be kind with your words. How? By taking a little extra time to think about your words before you speak them out loud.
This may sound like a lot of work, but it’s really not. Actually, it’s pretty easy. You just need to ask yourself one question: *Are these words kind?*
If the answer is yes, that’s awesome. Clothe yourself in kindness with your words! If the answer is no, then just don’t say them. Think of a different way to say what you want to say, this time using kindness.
**Kindness with your actions**
Our actions should be kind. This may seem like a “duh” point, but ask yourself—do you take the time to think about whether or not your actions are done in kindness?
In the busyness of everyday life, kindness can quickly become something that is shoved aside in favor of convenience. Why? Because it’s just not convenient to be kind! It’s way easier to just be selfish.
So this week, as you’re going about your normal routine, take the time to purposefully make sure your actions are kind. Don’t only think about how your actions affect you, or what people think of your actions. Think about how you can exhibit kindness with your actions. And then do it!
**Kindness with your attitude**
This can be a tricky one. How many of you struggle with having a kind attitude all the time?
Think about it—when someone is getting on your nerves, is your attitude toward them kind? What about when someone is unkind to you? Or what about when things don’t work out the way you wanted them to—does your attitude show kindness?
There is only one person who has complete control over your attitude, and that one person is you. So take control of it! When a situation happens that makes you feel irritated, or selfish, or any other unkind emotion, take a deep breath and choose to react with kindness.
If this is something you struggle with, ask God to help you! When you feel yourself struggling to have a kind attitude, pray and ask Him to help you have more kindness in your heart and less of whatever else is going on. God loves you and wants to help you—so ask!
**Job 6:14** “Anyone who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty.” –
In this verse, fear doesn’t mean to cower in the corner, terrified. It means to revere, or to respect.
Here it says that withholding kindness from a friend is forsaking the fear of God. In other words, if you’re not being kind to those around you, you aren’t respecting God. That doesn’t sound too good, does it?
But that’s how important kindness is to God. It’s so important that His Word says that withholding kindness from a friend is withholding fear and respect from Him. That’s a big deal!
It’s so important to show kindness to everyone, even the people who you don’t feel like being kind to. No matter what people look like on the outside, and no matter what their life looks like from the outside, you never know what they are going through on the inside. It can never hurt to be kind to someone, but it can hurt to be unkind.
Have you ever heard the saying that “You may be the only part of Jesus that someone ever sees?” It means that there are some people in your life who may never go to church or open a Bible, so you are the only exposure to Jesus that they have.
In the same way, there may be some people in your life who think of Jesus as mean and scary, because they’ve never truly been introduced to Him. So you may be the only example of His kindness that they ever see. That’s a big responsibility!
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean to you to clothe yourself in kindness? What are some ways you can do that?
2. Have you ever regretted not showing kindness to someone?
3. Do you think that kindness is more of an action or a lifestyle?
4. When you talk without thinking about what you’re going to say, is the result usually kind or unkind?
5. Do you take the time to think about whether or not your actions are kind? If not, is that something you want to start doing?
6. Do you think that others would describe your attitude as kind? Why or why not?
7. What are some ways that God has shown you kindness?
8. Do you think it’s possibly to live an entire lifestyle full of kindness?
9. Have you ever withheld kindness from a friend? How does it make you feel to know that the Bible says that’s like forsaking the fear of God?
10. What are some ways you can practice kindness this week?
**WRAP UP**
**Supplies**
- Four clear glasses
- One pitcher of water
Every single day, you are going to be faced with a choice: be kind, or be unkind. Your words, your actions, and your attitude...these are all things that you’ll have to choose kindness in.
Kindness will not always be the easiest choice. In fact, sometimes kindness will be the hardest choice. But it’s *right* choice.
*Play this video:* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1KCzrTg9ic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1KCzrTg9ic)
While that video was playing, were you thinking of any specific person or situation? Here’s the deal—most likely, you’re going to have a few regrets in life. You’ll make mistakes, miss opportunities, and do other things that will make your stomach hurt when you look back on them.
I’m telling you right now…don’t let a lack of kindness cause those regrets. You have no idea how much your kindness could mean to someone. It could mean just a little, or it could mean everything. But as a follower of Jesus, as an example of Jesus, it’s your responsibility to be kind.
Before we close, I want to tell you one more thing about kindness.
The more you’re kind, the easier it is to be kind. The more kindness you show to others, the easier it is for them to be kind. Kindness is contagious!
Line up the cups. Pour water into them in the following way:
Fill the first cup up almost all the way.
Fill the second cup up about a quarter of the way full.
Fill the third cup up halfway full.
Pour the fourth cup up about a quarter of the way full.
I want to show you guys an example of how kindness works. We’re going to use water as an example of kindness. Hold up the first cup. Let’s pretend this cup is you, and that you’ve chosen to clothe yourself in kindness. So when you have an interaction with someone else (hold up second cup), you choose to act in kindness, even though they don’t seem very kind.
Pour about half of the water from the first cup into the second cup, bringing the second cup to be about three-fourths full.
So you act in kindness towards them. And then, they leave. You don’t know what kind of impact your kindness had, but you know that you did what you should have by acting in kindness.
So then this person you were kind to, let’s say they bump into someone else. While their first reaction wouldn’t normally be to be kind, they were impacted by the kindness you showed them, so they decide to act in kindness.
Pour about half of the water from the second glass into the third glass, bringing the glass almost all the way full.
Now this person (hold up the third glass) is just brimming with kindness because of their interaction with the person that you were kind to. So what happens when they see someone (hold up the fourth glass) who seems to be completely empty of kindness, they don’t even think twice—they just act in kindness!
Pour until the fourth glass is almost full.
See how all the cups have water in them now? It’s the same with kindness…it just spreads and spreads, and the more you give of it (pour fourth glass back into the first glass until the water overflows), the more you’re filled with it!
If you want to overflow with kindness, start acting in kindness towards others. It won’t be long until you’re so full of kindness that you just can’t contain it!
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON LABELS
Bible: 1 Samuel 16:7
Bottom Line: We are so much more than the labels that we or others give to us.
LEADER PREP
We all label others whether we want to admit it or not.
To prepare your heart for this lesson, though, you need to really ask God: What are the labels that I give to others that I need to be aware of in my own life?
As leaders, it can be very tempting to try to quickly figure out who are the students that are leaders? Who are the troublemakers?
We do it with parents of students: Are they the high maintenance parent or the trustworthy parent?
Yet, before we can ask the youth to examine the way that they label others, we must honestly ask ourselves: Am I part of the problem?
Today’s scripture is a not so gentle reminder that God often chooses the ones that we tend to overlook.
Samuel was a leader and even he would have passed over David.
Samuel thought that he found the next king based on who was the strongest, oldest, etc.
We do the same thing in ministry, don’t we?
When the seniors graduate, we begin to wonder who will be the next set of leaders.
Let this lesson be a reminder to see others as God sees them - at their heart.
Because it would be a true tragedy to skip over the ‘Davids’ in our midst because we are looking and labeling on our own.
No one person can be summed up with a simple category, yet we attempt to define others and ourselves in these simplistic and one dimensional labels every single day. As leaders, we must first be aware of the tendency to label others and quickly try to ‘sum them up’ and also be a gentle and loving voice to the students we serve because God sees their heart.
He sees so much more than the things that the world is choosing to define them by. And God also sees those things in them that they are simply blind to because of the ways that they have chosen to let others label them.
Our prayer is that through this lesson, students will see that God does see the richness of each and every person and that He has such amazing things planned for every person if they simply allow Him to be the one who defines who they are in Him. And God wants to give us new labels that He gives from seeing who we really are.
**OPENING GAME – Label Mania**
**SUPPLIES**
Label Sticker sheets (1 sheet per student)
Pens/markers (1 per student)
Large roll of paper or post it pad on a stand
Cardstock with ‘God’s labels’ - words written on each piece and extra cardstock to write more.
*Note the list of the labels that is in the teaching part of the lesson and write these labels one per cardstock paper, but feel free to add prayerfully other labels that would fit your group.*
Say: For today’s game, I need your help.
Each of you will have a sheet of stickers and a pen.
I will give you about 5 minutes to fill this page with the labels that we give to ourselves and to others.
What am I talking about?
Well, when I was a teenager, I labeled myself as ______________ (fill in the blank). And I labeled others with these words: __________(fill in the blank).
Your labels can be serious or funny even, but write one ‘label’ per label and you will use these for the game.
Give the students 5 minutes to make their labels. Be sure to walk around and help those who might struggle and give them funny labels to add!
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Say: Now that you’ve written down your labels on your labels (J), everyone get ready because we are going to play a game called “Label Mania” and it will be just as crazy as it sounds. When I say “Go”, you will run with your label sheet and try to stick a label on another person.
Of course it goes without saying, but maybe it still needs to be said, that these labels should not be placed on someone else in any place that a bathing suit would cover, ok? Also, avoid violently placing your label as we do have a lesson afterwards.
Once all of your labels are gone, you can still play by taking off the labels that are on you and placing them on someone else.
I will call “time” when I think that we are close to total mania!
Say “Go” and let the mayhem begin.
End the game when you can tell the mania is truly setting in.
Tell the youth to keep their labels on them and have a seat.
TEACH – Youth Group Lesson on Labels
Now that we have experienced true labeling mania, let’s look at some of these labels.
I am going to have each of you come up, read all of the labels that are stuck on you, and place them on the large pad of paper.
Ask for a volunteer each time and have them come and place all of their labels on the pad for all to see.
Some of these labels are funny, but some of these are really harsh, right?
Are there other labels that you would add that you know people use to label others?
Add these label to the post it paper.
Labels are real.
And the hurt that some of these labels inflict is real too.
Raise your hand if you’ve been labeled in a way that hurt you.
Now ask yourself, have you labeled others in ways that hurt them?
Why do you think labeling others is so common?
Give students a chance to think and share about this, as it will give some good insights into the cultures that they are living in at school.
Here’s the sad thing - labeling others is nothing new.
Share about the labels that used to be around when you were a teenager. For some youth ministers of a ‘certain age’, using a clip from *The Breakfast Club* or *Clueless* movies might be great to use here.
The Bible is full of stories in which others quickly labeled someone and God showed that he had other ideas.
Take the story of King David, for example.
King David was THE king that the Jewish people would point to hundreds of years after his life as THE king; yet, he wasn’t anyone’s first choice.
Hey, he was WAY down on the list as he had older brothers who were perfect candidates.
So when God told the prophet, Samuel, to go and anoint the king from the sons of Jesse, Samuel went down the list of 7 seven brothers and God said these words to Samuel when he thought he’d found the king in one son who really impressed him:
Read 1 Samuel 16:7
One by one, Jesse’s sons came until there were none left and Samuel still hadn’t found the king.
He asked if there were any other sons and Jesse says “Well, the baby is out in the fields’ as if David wasn’t even on the radar with Jesse as a possibility.
But God had chosen David when no one, not even David’s dad had ever considered him.
Maybe you are a “David” - the one everyone underestimates.
This scripture is a reminder to you that God sees your heart.
And God just doesn’t see us as the world sees us, does he?
It’s as if God is saying “throw these labels out the window” because he sees our heart.
Share a personal story about someone you’ve seen in ministry who was underestimated or a ‘misfit’ who God saw something awesome in them.
And here is the important thing to remember about how God sees us: He labels us by our heart.
And by ‘the heart’ it really does seem like this is just a way of saying that God sees who we truly are at our depth.
And not the person that we fear others will see.
No, God sees the amazing potential in us.
When we might look in the mirror and see words like “the shy one” or “the popular one”…. God sees things such as “the one who loves others greatly” or “leader”.
Around the room are more of the labels with new words on them that I pray might be new for you.
Labels that could only come from God who loves you.
Labels like:
Beloved
Child of God
Mighty Leader
Listening ear
Friend to the friendless
Beautiful
Precious
Righteous
Blameless
Chosen
Say: Can you think of other labels that God might give to us?
Write these labels down as well and place these labels around the area where you are speaking.
Please add labels that you prayerfully feel are applicable to your group.
I want you to take some quiet time and I will lead us in a prayer in which we ask God how he sees us.
For some of you, these words might be slow coming.
But know this, God sees amazing things in each and every one of you.
And for some of you, it might take a Samuel, someone who loves God and listens to God, to remind you that you are NOT forgotten.
To remind you that God does have great plans for you that will absolutely amaze you.
I pray that each of you might get a small glimpse today of what God sees when he looks at your heart.
Pray a prayer such as:
God, you see our hearts.
You also see those labels that we have allowed ourselves to hear and think are true from others.
But it is YOUR opinion that matters most.
So, erase those labels we might have on us that don’t come from you.
And help us to let you write new labels on us.
Amen.
Say: As you leave, please come forward to choose a new label or write your own to take with you.
And remember, God sees the heart.
He sees you and He loves you.
Close in prayer.
Leader: Be available to help youth find or write labels that God would give them, as some youth will have a tough time with this.
This would be a great time to pray with them and share with them the beautiful and amazing things that you see in them.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What are some of the labels that people give to others at your school and in society today?
What are the labels that others give you or even that you give to yourself?
What label did you choose or write that you feel comes from God about you today?
Where can you put this label to help be a reminder to you about how God sees you?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON LEADERSHIP
Bible: Daniel 1
Bottom Line: God’s idea of leadership is very different from the world’s idea of leadership.
OPENING GAME – Lego Battle
SUPPLIES
3 Lego Sets (try to find sets that could be complicated but doable in about 15 minutes)
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Divide the group into 3 teams.
Give each team a Lego set.
Your challenge is to put this Lego set together in the shortest amount of time.
Everyone must participate and no pieces can be left out of the Lego creation.
Give the teams time to complete the structure and then have a fun Lego judging time.
Adult leader Tips:
Observe how teams work together as they build.
Resist the urge to step in to help the groups and remind any adult leaders to also resist intervening.
Give the groups time to struggle (if needed) and watch for leaders and also quiet leaders.
Keep watch for youth who show leadership skills and note how they get the others on their team to participate.
Watch to see which youth stay to the end to help and clean.
Display the completed sets and have a completion ‘ceremony’.
**GAME DISCUSSION**
In your group talk about these questions:
How did we work together as a team?
What different roles did people on the team seem to take?
Who was a vocal leader?
Who followed directions?
What was the most challenging part of this task?
What would you do differently next time?
**TEACH - Leadership**
The world is looking for leaders.
What are the qualities that you think great leaders possess?
Name some great leaders.
What made or makes them great leaders?
*Write down their answers for the group to see.*
Share observations that you made as your watched the teams try to put together their lego sets.
*Try not to single anyone out, but be sure to note if obvious leaders emerged and help the group to reflect on how this happened?*
Were there any leaders that seemed to emerge in this activity?
How did they lead you?
Activities like this are very interesting because you notice that people seem to take on different roles.
There are those who are very vocal and loud.
But there are also quiet leaders.
The ones who might not say much, but will be the last one there finishing the job.
Did you notice, because I did, the ones who stayed to help clean up after the rest of the group left?
Leadership.
Leadership is a skill that the world really does value.
Yet, the way that the world defines a leader can be very different from the way that God defines a leader.
The world says that to be a leader, you have to be first and the best.
And that sometimes to ‘get to the top’ you have to do things that might go against your conscience.
What are some other ways that you see that the world defines leadership?
Today, the world is looking for leaders.
But more importantly, God is looking for leaders.
Leaders who don’t lead like the world might expect.
We are going to read about some young leaders in the Bible.
They faced major challenges and made some major decisions.
And they had to go against the flow in some amazing ways.
Read Daniel 1.
Daniel and his friends were the best of the best from Israelite families and now they were in a foreign land.
They had been chosen to join this 3 year ‘training’ and to eventually be in the king’s service.
Yet, Daniel seemed to be very clear about who and whose he was.
He belonged to God.
What were some of the decisions that Daniel and his friends made?
Why do you think that it was important for them to take these stands?
Daniel was young, and yet he knew that he was different.
In a good way.
In a “God way”.
And Daniel wanted it to be obvious that it was God that set him and the others apart.
They didn’t eat what everyone else ate.
The Bible says that he didn’t want to be ‘defiled’ by what the king was eating.
Daniel had the courage to stand up and challenge the leaders.
Daniel belonged to God and he wanted that to be obvious.
And God gave Daniel understanding and knowledge.
Think about people at your school.
Who are the leaders?
And I’m not talking about the people who THINK that they are leaders, but the people that others listen to.
Are they positive leaders?
Why are they leaders?
Why do others listen to them?
These are really important questions that sometimes we don’t take the time to ask, right?
Now, imagine that Daniel were to come to your school and live out a similar challenge? What would people think about him? Would you have the strength to join him?
Maybe it wouldn’t be that Daniel only ate vegetables or refused the food from the ‘king’s table’, but think in modern terms, what might Daniel refuse to do? Would he hang out with your friends? Tell the same jokes? Listen to your music? Go to the same places on the weekend? Or would he refuse to do those things because they were going to weaken him?
See, what Daniel and his friends knew was that they couldn’t be like everyone else. They were different. They led.
Today as we watch the news and everything seems to be about choosing a leader, these are important questions to consider.
What makes a great leader? What makes people follow that leader? And how can you become the kind of leader God wants?
Imagine that you decide to make the commitments like Daniel made. You have choices that you must make about what you eat, wear, and do.
Do those things make a difference?
To Daniel they did because they said something about who he was.
It was about identity for Daniel and the choices he made were very purposeful.
He wanted everyone in Babylon to know that He belonged to God.
And God blessed Daniel and his friends.
**God is looking for “Daniels” today.**
Young leaders who are not afraid to be different, but in a good way.
Leaders who don’t just go along with the crowd.
Leaders who won’t compromise who they are to ‘fit in’.
Ask yourself this: In what ways are you tempted to just fit in?
Why not take a stand and decided to stand out?
Make a conscious decision about what you put in your body, what you do with your time, what you watch, or how you speak.
Imagine if Daniel had Twitter or Instagram: What would his feed look like?
Now ask yourself this question: when others look at you, do they see a leader or someone trying to fit in?
It is a very tough question, but one that I want you to consider very honestly.
Who are you living to please?
God or everyone else?
What changes do you need to make starting today to be the kind of leader God wants you to be?
Because Daniel didn’t wait until he was ‘older’, but knew that God was calling him even as a young man to be different.
And God is calling you to the same.
Pray and ask God what things you need to ‘not defile’ yourself with and how you could live as Daniel lived.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Who would you consider to be some of the greatest leaders and why?
In what ways are youth today challenged to ‘fit in’?
What are some things that you thought of today that you could give up in order to be like Daniel?
How could you be a leader at your school? In your youth group? With your friends?
What is holding you back from really being a leader?
INTRODUCTION & OVERVIEW
This lesson is designed to help make the centuries-old tradition of Lent more meaningful for today’s youth.
It helps students to understand that Lent is not just about self-denial for its own sake, but that it can be a time of meaningful sacrifice, service, and self-reflection.
This lesson is designed for a small group but can easily be adapted to larger groups.
For larger groups, divide students into teams and have them send a representative up for each of the games.
The games are used to break up the lesson to keep students engaged, and are meant to reinforce the theme of the lesson (Lent is about giving something up to achieve a greater good).
The way this works is that students (or teams) start out with a prize (candy works well) and, with each new game, have the option of giving up their prize for the opportunity to win extra candy or prizes if they win the next game.
(It looks and sounds a lot like gambling, but “spin” it so that it is about giving up something small to achieve a greater good).
SUPPLIES
- Computer or tablet (one that can be connected to a projector or big screen TV if you have a large group)
- Scratch paper or personal whiteboards and pens/markers for quiz
- Cotton balls & Q-tips
• Petroleum jelly
• Paper bowls
• Straws
• Highlighter markers
• Candy - M&M’s or Skittles
**OPENING GAME: Deal or No Deal**
Use an online version of the once-popular game show [like this one](#).
The rules of the game will vary depending on which site you use, but should be pretty self-explanatory.
Have students (individually, or a representative from each team) take turns playing the game.
As each student/team finishes their turn, give them a piece of candy.
At this point, they can choose to eat the candy now or save it to use in the next game.
**ACTIVITY: Lent Quiz**
Before you begin with the quiz, offer the students the opportunity to give up their piece of candy they received after the previous game.
If they give up their candy and win the quiz game, then they get their piece back plus two more.
If they keep their original candy, they get one piece for winning. *(Give up something small to achieve a greater good)*
Give students a piece of paper or whiteboard and a writing utensil.
Ask them the following questions and have them write down their answers.
Go over the answers at the end.
The winner gets a piece of candy (or two, if they gave up their candy before the game).
1. How long does Lent last? (40 days)
2. When does it begin? (Ash Wednesday)
3. What is “Fat Tuesday”? (A day to indulge before fasting)
4. What does Lent commemorate? (Christ’s 40 days in the desert)
5. What is the purpose of Lent? (spiritual renewal)
6. What day of the week does not count in the 40 days of Lent? (Sundays)
7. When does Lent end? (Easter Sunday)
MINI-GAME: Sticky, Fluffy Noses
Before the game, offer students the chance to give up one piece of candy for the chance to get two pieces if they win the game.
Set up two tables about 25 feet apart.
On each table place a paper bowl for each student playing the game.
In the bowls on one table place five to ten cotton balls, and on the rim put a glob of petroleum jelly.
The object of the game is for students to get all the cotton balls from the bowl on the table into the bowl on the other table.
They do this by dabbing jelly on their noses and sticking their noses in the bowl of cotton balls and getting a cotton ball to stick to their noses.
They then walk over to the other table and get the ball to drop into their bowl on the other table.
They may not use their hands in any of this.
If they drop a cotton ball before putting into their bowl, they must pick it up (they can use their hands for this) and put it back in the starting bowl.
The winner is the first to get all their cotton balls from one bowl to the other.
LESSON 1: What is Lent? Why do we celebrate it by giving things up?
Lent is a time of self-reflection and self-denial in preparation for the celebration of Christ's death and resurrection during Holy Week.
Before Jesus began his earthly ministry, he spent 40 days in the wilderness (Luke 4: 1-13; read this with the youth if you like).
We don't know much about that time, other than the fact that he fasted and prayed and was tempted by the devil.
So, in the same way, we ought to spend time fasting and praying in preparation for our ministry of bringing the good news of the risen Christ to the world.
Our celebration of Holy Week often coincides on the calendar with the Jewish celebration of Passover.
In preparation for Passover, our Jewish friends must do a thorough cleaning of their houses and kitchens and get rid of all their old food.
The Passover meal must be prepared with all new and fresh ingredients.
In the same way, we ought to use this time of Lent to do some “spring cleaning” ourselves.
Traditionally, Christians will fast from something (usually certain foods or drink or certain activities) during the 40 days of Lent (with the exception of Sundays, which is a weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection).
This is to remind us of the great sacrifice that Christ made for us.
Jesus gave up so much to restore our relationship to God (Philippians 2), is it too much to ask of us to give something up for 40 days?
MINI-GAME: Q-tip Shooting Gallery
Before the game, ask participants if they want to give up one piece of candy for the chance at winning two pieces in this game.
Stand five to seven highlighter markers up on a table, placing them in a line about two inches apart from each other.
Place them near the edge of one of the long sides of the table.
Give each player a straw and ten Q-tips.
Taking turns, players will stand or squat on the side of the table opposite the markers. They use the straw like a peashooter to try to knock over the markers with the Q-tips. The player who knocks over the most markers is the winner.
In the event of a tie, place one marker in the middle (lengthwise) of the table and have the two players who tied go to either end of the table.
In this “sudden death” showdown, the players will shoot their Q-tips simultaneously at the marker.
The one to knock it over is the winner.
LESSON 2: Ideas of Lent: Fasting, Feasting, & Service
Below are some ideas for your students on ways they can celebrate Lent and make it a meaningful experience for themselves.
If they choose to give something up, it should not be for its own sake, but rather for the sake of gaining something greater (like the candy prizes with the games).
There are some great ideas here:
20 ODD LENT IDEAS FOR STUDENTS
20 MORE ODD LENT IDEAS FOR STUDENTS
Celebrating Lent is not just about giving things up; it can also be about adding good things to our lives, as well as about serving others.
Encourage your students to make a thoughtful choice that will provide them a meaningful Lenten experience.
Ideas of things they can fast from:
- **Social Media**. Giving it up altogether may be difficult since many students use social media for school or athletic purposes, but perhaps limiting their use is a good start.
- **Texting**. Like social media, texting does have its practical purposes and is necessary in many situations, but encourage students to call their friends and family members rather than texting them. A phone call is much more personal and meaningful.
- **Junk food**. If students are in the habit of buying a soda or candy bar or coffee drink on a regular basis, encourage them to give that up for Lent. Also encourage them to use the money they would have spent on junk food to help others. Perhaps they can treat a friend to a soda or coffee drink, or they can donate the money to Heifer International or some other charity.
• **Sarcasm**. This can be a tough one for students, but attempting to give this up can encourage students to think about what they say and to look for ways to lift others up.
• **Sleeping in**. Emphasize again, that students should not do this for its own sake, but should use that extra time on Saturday mornings to do something meaningful and productive.
**Ideas of things they can feast on:**
• **Reading the Bible**. Encourage students to set aside time each day for reading their Bibles, if they don’t do so already. The Gospels are a good place to start during the Lenten season.
• **Memorizing Bible Verses**. Students can memorize a verse a day, or a verse a week. Give them suggestions of some of your favorite verses to start with.
• **Prayer**. Students should set aside a time each day for prayer, whether in the morning when they first get up or at night before bed. Or perhaps during passing period between classes.
• **Time with family**. It can be difficult for families to connect with all the busyness in everyone’s schedules. Parents will appreciate the initiative if their students want to set aside time for family.
**Ideas for service:**
• **Do your siblings’ chores once a week**. Not as a trade of chores, but simply to do something nice for a sibling.
• Treat someone to a soda/coffee. When out with friends, students can offer to pay for their friends’ treats.
• Write a thank you note to one of your teachers. Teachers get a lot of calls and emails from parents and students complaining about things. A thank you note will be very appreciated.
• Help a neighbor with yard work. Offer to rake leaves or cut the grass or shovel the sidewalk.
• Bake cookies for an elderly member of the church. A small gesture like this will be very meaningful for both the giver and receiver.
MINI-GAME: Sucking up candy
Before the game, ask participants if they want to give up one piece of candy for the chance at winning two pieces in this game.
Or, since this is the final game, you can offer a larger candy bar for the winner.
Using a similar set-up as the first game, put about ten M&M’s or Skittles in a bowl on one table and an empty bowl on the other table.
Give each player a straw.
They must use the straw to “grab” the candy by sucking through the straw and carry the candy to the empty bowl on the other table.
If they drop any candy, they must take it back to the beginning.
The first player to get all their candy from one bowl to the other is the winner.
SMALL GROUPS: How will you celebrate Lent?
Break into small groups and have students brainstorm ideas of what they might want to give up for Lent.
Remind them that whatever they choose should be meaningful to them and beneficial to others.
Give each student a note card and writing utensil.
If they decide to make a commitment during Lent (feasting, fasting, or service) have them write that commitment on the card along with their name and phone number or email address.
Have the small group leaders collect the cards, then call, text, or email the students during the week to see how their commitment is going.
This will provide students with some encouragement and accountability in their decisions.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON MISSIONS
Bible: Acts 1:1-11
Bottom Line: Missions is more than a trip in the summer, but our calling as Christians - Right where we are.
SUPPLIES
A map of Ancient Palestine including Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and beyond. A good site is http://www.bible-history.com/maps/southern_palestine_judea.html
Poster boards for small groups
Markers for each small group
Leaders: This lesson is a great group preparation for summer mission trips or projects, and will hopefully inform that ministry.
Missions is more than a trip.
It is a way of living to witness about Christ.
This can happen far away, but it should truly be happening right where we are, every day.
Be in prayer in your own life as you prepare for this lesson about the ways that Christ might be challenging you to live on mission for him.
Be open to how Christ might be challenging you, your family, and the ministry.
OPENING ACTIVITY
The opening activity this week is a challenge is to bless the church where you meet. This could be a project that has needed to be done or a creative way to show them the love of Christ.
Below are some ideas that you can choose beforehand or even give your group the opportunity to choose.
If your group is larger, prepare different projects for smaller groups beforehand.
‘Missions’ ideas: (choose options that are ‘close to home’ such as in your church, but not moving out to the community necessarily, as that will be the next challenge)
Clean the outside of the church doing yardwork, landscaping, etc.
Paint a room of the church needing sprucing (be sure to get this approve with necessary church leadership and let the students know to wear painting clothes prior)
Clean windshields of church member’s cars who might be present for other meetings and leave a note that they are loved.
Send notes to elderly or those in the hospital.
Make posters sharing how God loves them to put around the church.
Hold up signs outside the church if it sits on a busy street that say that God loves them for those driving by.
Be creative.
After the Opening Activity ask:
How did it feel doing the ‘mission’ to bless people that you know?
How would you feel if they didn’t notice?
TEACH – Missions
When I say ‘missions’ what other thoughts or words come to mind?
Give the group time to really brainstorm and write down their ideas.
Today, as a group, we were on a mission.
We did (talk about the project) and did it to bless those closest to us.
Jesus gave his disciples and us a very specific mission.
**Read Acts 1:1-11**
If time allows, divide the group into smaller groups.
Give each group a poster board and markers.
Here is your mission: I want you to create a ‘meme’ for the mission that Jesus gave to his disciples in the scripture that I just read.
His words in verse 8 are really important.
*Invite the youth to use their cell phones to look up Acts 1:8 - which they will use for this activity.*
Be creative, but really try to get ‘at the heart’ of what Jesus is saying is the mission that he was leaving with his disciples, but also with US.
*Give the groups 10-15 minutes to create their ‘meme’ poster.*
*Have each group share their poster ‘meme’ and post them around the room.*
Jesus had some very specific things to say to the disciples right before he left.
Jesus knew that these were the last words that he would say before he ascended into heaven, so you know that these words were chosen carefully.
They were important.
Jesus knew that life would be very hard for his disciples, or the apostles as they were called following his resurrection.
He had been killed and those who killed him would not stop with him, especially if his followers continued his teaching and ministry.
Times were very dangerous to follow Jesus.
So for Jesus to say that they were to be his witnesses - that was serious.
What do you think it means or looks like to be a witness for Jesus?
*Give the group time to share their thoughts.*
The Book of Acts is a very cool book to read because we see just what it meant to be a witness of Jesus.
Basically, his followers just did what Jesus did.
They ate with people, they healed in his name, they shared his teachings, and they lived as Jesus lived.
They were witnesses to all that he had done, and their LIVES spoke his witness.
Let me ask you this: Does your life LIVE as a witness to Jesus?
Do your friends and family know that you love Jesus?
That you follow Jesus?
Because, even today, following Jesus can be challenging.
What will people think of you?
Will it change the way that you live your life?
It should.
But, I want to challenge you about what living as a witness of Jesus could look like.
It doesn’t mean that you are standing on a street corner with a sign or that you carry about a big huge Bible at school.
It is about *being* a witness.
About *living* as Jesus lived.
*Loving* those around you, but especially those who are outcasts.
Forgotten.
Ridiculed.
It means that you eat with those that nobody else will eat with, and yes, those that will cause others to talk about you.
That’s exactly what happened to Jesus.
It means that you care deeply about those who are hurting.
What if being a witness for Jesus meant that you loved others, cared for their needs, listened to their heartaches, and prayed for them?
Notice that Jesus said some very specific places, though: We are to be his witnesses in “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth”.
Does that mean that we need to get on an airplane to go to Jerusalem in order to be his disciples?
I think that Jesus was saying something very deep here, but something that really does apply to us today.
Show a map of Ancient Palestine.
Point out Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was the city where the apostles mostly lived. It was ‘home base’.
Judea was the country…think of it like the state where you live.
We live in (name your city) which is in the state of (where you live).
What was Jesus doing?
He was saying: this is where you are (point at Jerusalem on the map).
Widen the circle.
Go to ‘Judea’ (point to Judea area on the map).
Don’t just stay in Jerusalem or (name your city).
Go out.
Share that witness beyond where you are right now.
And then he said to go to ‘Samaria’.
Point out Samaria on the map.
What do you notice about Samaria?
Yes, it’s farther away.
But what you might also not know is that Samaria was a place that Jews would definitely NOT want to go.
Is there an area you can think of that isn’t too close, but definitely not a place where you would feel comfortable going?
That’s Samaria.
It’s not home, it’s not next to home, but it is close enough that not going there is definitely saying something.
Jesus said that once you’ve gone to Jerusalem and Judea, you must then go to that place where you think “Oh no, he wouldn’t want me to go THERE”.
Yes, he does.
I want you to think about where is our ‘Samaria’.
We need to pray about where Jesus is calling us to go after we love our church, like we did today.
And then love our city, which we will be doing the next few weeks.
Then we need to really spend time thinking and praying about where is ‘Samaria’.
And Jesus didn’t stop there, did he?
Where else did he say that we need to go?
To the ends of the earth.
What do you think that Jesus is saying here?
He is saying this: Be my witnesses EVERYWHERE.
Jesus knew that is was a challenge to his disciples and to us.
It can be very scary.
But the main point is this: You cannot stay where you are to be his witness.
A deep part of being a witness of Jesus is NOT STAYING WHERE YOU ARE.
This amazing life you’ve found in Christ is NOT JUST FOR YOU.
But for the whole world.
Now, THAT’S missions.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What do you think that Jesus meant by telling us to be his ‘witnesses’?
How can you be a witness to Jesus?
For the next questions, please write down your answers and share them with your leader as they can be used to pray about where God is leading the group in mission.
Think about where would be your ‘Jerusalem’: A place nearby that you feel safe. How could you be a witness of Christ there this week?
Think about where would be your ‘Judea’: Maybe the town that you live in. It’s close but not your ‘home’. How could you be a witness of Christ there this month?
Think about where would be your ‘Samaria’: Somewhere that feels ‘far away’ and even dangerous or foreign. How could you be a witness of Christ there in next few months?
How is Jesus challenging you to be on mission for him?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON MOSES
Awe.
That’s what I thought the first time I watched the movie, The Prince of Egypt.
I had never seen in such vivid Technicolor what this passage in Exodus described.
As corny as it might sound, it deeply moved me to see the awesome power of God, yes, even in a cartoon.
Let’s face it, many of us adults have simply lost our sense of wonder.
That wonder that sneaks up on you as you see God working in mighty ways.
That awe that comes when you know in your head that God can do anything, but then the grip it takes on your soul to really see with your own eyes His power and might.
Or maybe you are still waiting for these moments.
Well, your students are probably in one of these camps also - either they believe it could happen or they just don’t.
And that is okay because God is in the business of surprising us.
That’s what we can pray for as we prepare for this lesson - that God would wow us again with his power and his might.
And that waters would again be parted in the lives of our students as we come to this story with fresh eyes.
Bible: Exodus 14: 21-31
Bottom Line: Moses believed that God could do amazing things and he helped others to believe too. God still does amazing things today!
SUPPLIES
Prince of Egypt movie clip of Moses parting the Red Sea -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjJi6mu_Rg0
Balloons (can be filled with water if students are notified to wear clothes that can get wet)
Glass rocks (blue or clear)
White board or large post-its with pens, to write on and display
OPENING GAME: DODGE BALLOON
Divide the group into two teams.
The size of your play area will be determined by how many students are on each team.
Choose one team to go first and have that team divide their crew in half.
Next, form two parallel lines facing one another.
Take 6 steps back from one another - if using regular balloons.
If using water balloons they need to be farther apart because the other team will be running in between their lines trying to avoid being hit by a balloon.
Explain to this team that they must stay within the boundary of the other crews parallel lines and try to avoid being hit with a balloon.
If they are hit—they are out.
The team will run and try to avoid the balloons until there is no one left on their team OR they are able to catch the balloons which would then cause the person who threw the balloon to be out (in dodgeball fashion).
This will be even more difficult if using water balloons, but much more fun to watch!
Switch the teams once everyone is out.
Each team will get a chance to be the ‘Blue Crew’ – which simply means they will be running through the center and having blue balloons (can be water balloons) thrown at them from each side by the other team.
If you use balloons just blown up, then have the boundaries be a few feet.
TEACH
After you have played a few rounds of the game…
Ask: Was there anything about the game that we just played that caught you off guard?
When was the last time that you were truly surprised?
When was the last time that you were left speechless?
Share with the group a time in which you were left speechless by seeing the power of God.
If you don’t have an example, take some time before the lesson to talk with other Christians (would be a great Facebook question) about times when they’ve been truly wowed by the power of God in action.
Say: Some of you might have seen this movie - it’s an old one, but a good one.
Play the clip of the parting of the sea from the Prince of Egypt.
OK, imagine that you had been there when God parted the sea for the Israelites: In a word, what would you have thought?
Write these words on the board or on large post its around the room.
Say the words slowly.
Ok, now when was the last time that you said these words from seeing God do something amazing?
Ask a student to read Exodus 14:31.
I know that some of you are thinking that maybe this is just a story from the Bible and things like this don’t happen anymore.
But, what if it isn’t that things are not happening, but that we aren’t seeing them or recognizing them as being from God.
Here is something I want you to think about not only today but for a while: God hasn’t stopped doing amazing and powerful things.
Sometimes the things that He is doing can seem strange to our human minds.
Sometimes even small, yet when you stop to consider just WHO is doing these things it really is quite huge.
Maybe you have been praying for someone and then BOOM they text you out of the clear blue, or your think of something at just the perfect time.
It might even be things that you would have never considered were God - like maybe you actually left your house late but didn’t realize that if you’d left just a few minutes earlier things might have been really different.
Small, yet miraculous.
Maybe some of you sitting here today ARE miracles.
I could sit here all day and give you examples of ways that God is still at work and yet there would be so many other things that even I wouldn’t even consider are things from God, but they are.
God is still at work; we just have to be on the lookout, and unfortunately sometimes those things are not as obvious as a big wall of water forming on either side of us.
But that doesn’t mean they are any less a show of His power, right?
He still changes people.
God takes lives that others think are wasted and makes them whole again.
*Share a personal story or a story of someone you know who has been changed by God.*
Today God is still *(read the words the group shared earlier that you wrote down)* and this week I want you to carry around a reminder with you everywhere you go to be looking for God.
*Hold up the blue glass ‘water’ stone.*
Each of you are going to get a ‘water stone.’
You can use a pen to write one of these words on your stone to remind you that you are supposed to watch for these *(say some of the words again)* moments because God is still up to amazing things because that is who He is.
Play the Prince of Egypt clip again and invite the students to come forward to get a water stone and write their word on the stone.
Challenge the group to share their ‘water stones’ on Instagram or Snapchat to remind one another to be watching this week for God!
Close with prayer.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Share a moment in which you have been in awe or ‘wowed’ by God.
What were your thoughts after watching the movie clip?
Why do you think that some people say that God doesn’t do miracles anymore?
Which word did you write on your rock and why?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON MOTHER’S DAY
Bible: Proverbs 31
Bottom Line: Mother’s day is an opportunity to thank God for the women in our lives who have helped to shape our faith.
OPENING GAME - Mommy Relay Race
SUPPLIES
Adult Depends
Baby food
Spoon
Bib
Band-aids
Kleenex
Blankets
Pillows
Brown bags for each challenge (4 bags per station)
Poster boards
Markers
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Divide the group into teams of 5 members each.
Set up a station for each team with the following items in each challenge bag:
Diaper: Depends
Boo-boo: Band-aids
Feeding: Baby food, bib, and spoon
Nite Nite: Blanket
This is a relay to see which team will win the “Super Mom race”.
When I call ‘go’, send a ‘Mom’ and a ‘baby’ to go up and complete a challenge.
When that challenge is done, both of you run back to your team and then another ‘Mom’ and ‘Baby’ will go up to do the next challenge.
The team that finishes each of the challenges first, wins.
Let me explain what each of these strange challenges will be:
First, the diaper challenge.
Each ‘mom’ will help their ‘baby’ to put on a diaper over their clothes.
Then the baby will crawl back with their mom to their team.
Next will be the boo-boo station:
A ‘mom’ will put band aids on each of her ‘baby’s’ elbows and then give a get well ‘kiss’ on each boo-boo.
Then run back to your group.
The next challenge will be for the ‘mom’ to feed their baby by putting on a bib and then using a spoon to feed them the yummy baby food.
And finally, a ‘mom’ will put their ‘baby’ to bed by covering them with a blanket, tucking them in, singing a nite nite song, and both run back to their team.
The first team to complete all of these challenges first, wins.
TEACH – Mother’s Day
Large Group Question:
What do you think are some of the most important qualities that a Mom should have?
What do you think the hardest things would be about being a mom?
Being a mom, as we saw from the game can be a hard job.
I am sure that many of us here have probably made our moms feel like they were in some twisted relay race, right?
Share a funny or ridiculous story here (if you have one) of a way in which you challenged your mom.
What in the world would we do without our moms?
But while this day is usually full of smiles and cards and love, Mother’s Day can be a complicated day for some people.
I want us to take a few seconds to think and to pray for those who might be hurting on Mother’s day.
Maybe you know someone who has a tough relationship with their mom - say a prayer for them right now
Or maybe you know someone who has lost their mom: Think of them and pray for them.
Think of the many children who are in foster homes and are away from their mothers today.
Pray for them.
Or the mother who selflessly gave her child for adoption to give her child a life she couldn’t provide.
Pray for her.
Just think about how difficult this day would be for women who long to be mothers but for whatever reason can’t have children.
Pray for them.
So, while we want to honor our Moms and tell them how awesome we think they are, let’s take this discussion a little different way.
Let’s talk about women who have made a difference in our lives.
Can you think of a woman in your life who has influenced you in a positive way?
Maybe you immediately think of a teacher or a friend.
(Give the group a chance to share a few examples).
The scripture today paints a picture of what a godly woman looks like, and while some of the examples might seem strange, we will talk about what this might look like for a woman to live like this today.
Read Proverbs 31:10-31
Divide the group into groups of 5 students each and give each group a posterboard and markers.
Each group is going to take a section of this proverb that you want to highlight and create a ‘wanted ad’ like the kind that you might put in the newspaper.
Think about what the qualities described in your passage might look like creatively today.
Give each group a chance to share their ‘wanted ad’ and then display them around the room.
Have you ever met someone who lived out these “Proverbs 31” characteristics?
Maybe she would use her gifts like cooking or sewing or drawing and would bless others with them.
And there are so many other ways that we can bless others, but things like caring for others’ basic needs is something special that we often overlook, isn’t it?
Can you think of any other ‘talents’ that seem simple and easy to ignore that can really make a big difference if shared with someone?
Give the students a chance to share these simple ‘talents’ and be prepared to share a few which have blessed you.
It is sadly easy to overlook many of the things that the “Proverbs 31” woman does that bless others isn’t it?
But part of what makes her so special is that she isn’t doing these things to get praise.
It almost seems like her actions flow out of who she is.
Who is she?
You get the idea when you read this that this woman first of all, loves God.
She loves her family and she loves to care for them.
Have you ever known someone who truly loved to care for others?
The Proverbs 31 woman reminds herself that “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting”.
Those few words are really something that everyone in our society today should stop and think about.
Imagine how life might change for you today if you were to remind yourself that beauty and popularity and all of the things that the world seems to think are everything……are fleeting or short lived.
What if, instead of worrying about how you look or how others see you, you were to live like this woman in the scripture today and focus on your character?
Let’s think about what character traits are important to this woman.
Share the words of the character traits that you think she would value and I will write them on the board for us to talk about.
Write down their words and add other character traits as needed.
Now, look at this list and ask yourself: How do I measure up today?
Do I care for others?
Do I try to make this world a beautiful place?
Do I use my time to bless others?
Do I love God and help others to feel his love through me?
Because it is THIS kind of person who God truly will honor.
It is this kind of person that their family will one day say how they were blessed by this person.
Wouldn’t you love for your family and friends to remember you THIS way?
Because they really will not remember the cool outfit you wore or the car that you drove or even the way that you looked for more than a few minutes.
Let’s face it, everyone is too concerned with what everyone else is thinking about them, right?
But what they will remember years from now is what you probably remember about the special woman that you mentioned who affected your life: That they cared.
The love that they showed you.
Well, it’s time for you to start becoming that type of person for someone who will one day mention your name as one who affected their lives for good.
Don’t leave here feeling guilty that you don’t measure up.
Instead, choose one or two of these qualities that you want to become a part of who you are and start today.
Then, choose one or two women in your life thank for the ways that they bless you and love you.
Go home tonight and write them a letter or give them a call.
Just that small act of blessing someone else will start you on the same path of being a blessing.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Which part of this proverb was a challenge for you to understand?
What do you think a woman like the one described in Proverbs 31 might look like today?
Share about an influential woman in your life. How did she affect you?
Which of these qualities from the proverb do you want to show in your life?
Reflect on the saying: Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting”. What do you think this means?
Have the students write a letter to their mother thanking her for the many way that she blesses their lives.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON NEHEMIAH
Bible: Nehemiah 1:1-4
Bottom Line: We are called to care for and help others when they suffer.
SUPPLIES
Jenga games (you can also make inexpensive ‘Jenga’ games by getting small pieces of wood to use)
Balloons
Current newspapers (Or print current stories from the Internet about suffering in the world the students might not be aware of happening.)
Double stick tape or masking tape
OPENING GAMES - JENGA WALLS
Play this game in a large room and divide the room into 4 equal spaces.
Divide the group into 4 teams of equal size.
Give each team a designated space in the room.
Place building supplies (Jenga blocks or blocks of wood) in the middle of the room and explain that each team will race to see who can build the tallest wall.
Give them hints that it would be ‘wise’ to build their wall close to the back of their space because other teams will try to break their wall down.
But, here’s the other challenge: Each team will also be given balloons that they will try to throw at the other team’s wall to break it down.
Team members must stay within their space and cannot cross over into another team’s space to throw the balloons.
Set a time limit and at the end of the time, the team with the tallest wall still standing - wins!
TEACH
You just experienced a very tiny bit of what the Israelites experienced in the book of Nehemiah.
To make a long story short, the Israelites used to have this amazing protective wall around Jerusalem and it was broken.
Nehemiah heard about his people and the wall and felt God call him to go and rebuild the wall.
Ask a youth to read Nehemiah 1:1-4
Nehemiah wasn’t even living in Jerusalem, but was serving in the palace for the King of Persia.
When he heard about the terrible condition in Jerusalem, with a wall that was in ruins, he cried.
It is very easy to sit in comfort while others suffer.
Think about places in our world today that are suffering.
Maybe they don’t have enough food…or there is war….or suffering.
There are newspapers spread all around this room.
I want you to choose a newspaper and find a story from the world in which people are suffering.
Then, tape those stories to the walls around us.
Give the youth 5-10 minutes to find stories.
Direct the students to walk around and pray while they read the stories on the walls around them.
Have students return to their seats.
Ask: Which of these stories really struck you?
How did these stories make you feel?
Why do you think that we don’t know that this kind of suffering is going on around us?
Nehemiah could have stayed in the palace and just kept bringing the cup to the King. He had it good.
But instead, when he heard about his fellow Israelites, he cried.
He left the palace and he went to rebuild the wall which kept Jerusalem and the people living there safe.
And it wasn’t easy.
Later on in Nehemiah, while they were busy rebuilding this massive wall, the enemies around them begin attacking.
They basically had to hold a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other.
They had to take shifts - a building shift and then a guarding shift to keep one another safe.
Times are different now, and yet, as you can see around the room, people still need us to help them.
To stand around them and protect them.
To help them build up what has been ruined.
What are some ways that we could help __________? (choose one of the photos/stories posted around the room)
(Repeat this process with a few other stories)
And maybe you are thinking, what can I do?
We can start where Nehemiah started - he prayed.
And then he acted.
And he didn’t give up.
The world is honestly full of ‘walls that are falling down’ and sometimes it can be overwhelming to see all of the need around us, right?
But, what you cannot do is to do nothing.
This generation is one that loves to find a cause and fight for it.
You hear stories everywhere of teenagers who see a need and find a way to meet that need.
Maybe they see that kids need clothes and plan a clothing drive.
Or maybe there is a need that is tugging at your heart that you are the one who could build that wall to help.
Today we are going to take some more time in our small groups and then gather back together to share some ways you are feeling God calling you to build.
Each group will create a poster or some form of art to share with the group where they see a need.
Pray for the groups as they go to share and pray.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What are the stories or the needs that tug at your heart?
Where do you look in your school or town or country or the world and want to weep?
Where do you think God could use us to bring healing and rebuilding of what is broken?
What are your fears in going to do this work?
Spend time praying as a group to know where God is calling them to serve.
**LARGE GROUP - CLOSE**
*Give the groups a chance to share about the needs they see.*
*Then, have them post their poster around the room.*
We can’t build all of this today, but today is a big start.
Walk around the room and take pictures of the posters and spend the next week praying and looking at these photos.
Post them on your social media and let’s see where God is leading us.
God lead us to where you need us.
NEW YEAR’S YOUTH GROUP LESSON
Bible: Deuteronomy 6:1–12; 8:11; Gen. 12:7–8; 13:3–4; Psalm 105:1–5
Bottom Line: Reflect on what God has done last year in your life.
TEACH
I hope you’re excited about the new year!
Today we’re going to start off the new year by reflecting on what God has done in your life over the last year.
Let’s read a story about the Israelites in the Old Testament and what God told them about how to live.
Read Deuteronomy 6:1–12
“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your
hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
“And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
What was the main commandment that God told the Israelites to follow in this passage?
Near the end of this decree, the Israelites are told to make sure they don’t forget the Lord.
Why do you think that the Israelites would forget the Lord?
They just were taken out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea and it collapsed onto their enemies.
Why would the Israelites ever forget God?
When things are good, we tend to do what is natural to us.
The danger for them isn’t a problem of forgetfulness, it’s more about disobeying the law that God gave to them.
It’s like when I was young and my mom told me to stop playing Mario Brothers and clean my room.
I continued to play and didn’t clean my room.
Was my problem that I forgot to clean my room or that I disobeyed my parents.
In fact later on—just two chapters later—we read this verse:
Read Deuteronomy 8:11:
"Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today."
This verse tells us that the way that we forget is by disobeying God's commandments.
So today we want to remember and reflect on what God has done.
Have you been thinking about this last year?
What is it that you truly are thankful for?
In order to remember specific events that happened, the people of God built these things called altars.
Abraham, Isaac, Noah, Moses, and Jacob all built altars after a significant event happened in their lives.
Read Genesis 12:7–8:
"Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him."
"From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord."
Abraham built an altar after God told him that this was the land that was Abraham's.
Later on Abraham goes back to that altar and calls on God.
Read Genesis 13:3-4:
"And he journeyed on from the Negev as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord."
Abraham not only built something to signify an important event in his life, but also traveled back to connect with God at that place again.
Today for discussion, we are going to take a moment to reflect on what’s happened in our lives in the past year and thank God for all the blessings that he’s given us.
In my life this year: (be sure to make these personal for you)
- I had a son named Cannon
- We lost our dog Rico and he came back!
- Best Camp Ever with Switch in Awanita,
- We launched C-Groups in Switch. It’s changed our ministry so much for the good.
As you break up into small groups for discussion, be thinking of what God has done in your life over the last year.
Have students break up into small groups.
If your group is already small, then use this time to allow students to discuss the following questions.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
1. Name the top 3 best things that happened in your life in the past year?
2. Do you think God had something to do with your “best things”? Why or why not?
3. What was your biggest problem or difficulty over the past year?
4. Why do you think God allowed that problem or difficulty in your life?
5. What’s one thing you look forward to in the upcoming year?
WRAP UP
Today you had the opportunity to remember the things that God has done in your life in the past year. You’ve got some cards with you that you’ve completed and we want you to look them over right now.
Now after you’ve looked them over listen to the words from Psalm 105:1–5 and reflect on what God has done in your life.
Psalm 105:1–5
“Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name;
make known his deeds among the peoples!
Sing to him, sing praises to him;
tell of all his wondrous works!
Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!
Seek the Lord and his strength;
seek his presence continually!
Remember the wondrous works that he has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he uttered.”
(End lesson)
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON PEACE
Bible: Matthew 5:9
Bottom Line: We are meant to experience God's peace & share it with the world around us.
SUPPLIES
- T-shirts for each student (or ask the youth to bring t-shirts, but also bring extra for visitors!)
- Masking tape
- Water balloons with different colored water (Battle Balloons Color Burst available on Amazon.com)
- Copy of the "Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace" prayer for each student
- Chalk for each student
St. Francis Prayer ("Make me an instrument of your peace") is attributed to St. Francis (12th century saint):
(Cut and paste to hand out to students.)
"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life."
OPENING GAME - WAR AND PEACE
Note: Be sure to let the students know the week before this lesson that they will need to bring a change of clothes and a white shirt! This entire lesson is designed to be held outside.
Explain to students that they are going to experience ‘Peace’ and ‘War’ – beginning with ‘Peace.’
The challenge is to create a peace sign on their t-shirt using masking tape.
Once they have their peace signs on their t-shirts, now begins the ‘War’ part.
Divide the group into two teams.
Have the water balloons divided by colors on different sides.
When you say ‘war’, they begin throwing the water balloons at one another until all of the balloons are gone.
At the end they should have a really cool ‘tie dyed t-shirt’.
They will need to let the t-shirts dry and then take off the masking tape to reveal a cool peace sign t-shirt.
TEACH
Peace.
Write the word ‘peace’ the ground outside with chalk with space around it.
What words come to your mind when I say this word ‘Peace’?
Without spending a lot of time thinking about what you write, I want each of you to write a word around ‘Peace’ that came to your mind.
For the next few minutes, continue writing words that come to mind about peace or about the other words that people have written.
Give the youth 5-10 minutes for this exercise; helping out the youth who struggle by showing them words they could add their word alongside.
Choose some of the words that the youth wrote to point out how they illustrate peace.
Say: We look around the world and so many places and people and situations seem anything but peaceful, right?
Let’s name a few places, people or situations that you pray will find peace.
Write those names, people or situations around the other’s words that we wrote for peace as a way of praying for these things.
Give the youth 5-10 minutes to write these words.
Let’s pray for areas of the world that do not know peace.
Write the names now.
Who are people you know who need peace in their lives?
Where in your life do you need peace?
Ask for a volunteer to read Matthew 5:9.
Each of us are children of God, which means that we are each called to be peacemakers.
But what does it mean to be a ‘peacemaker’?
Find one of the words written by the youth and ask how we could be peacemakers in that situation.
Here is a very powerful prayer that some people believe was written by a saint in the 16th century named St. Francis of Assisi.
Maybe you’ve seen statues built with a saint who has animals around him…that is St. Francis of Assisi and this prayer is really powerful.
It says so much about how we can be peacemakers.
Give each youth a copy of the prayer and ask them to read a line of the prayer (only if they want to read...don’t ever force a youth to read if they do not wish to read).
Invite them to really think about the words as you read the prayer and to choose one line that really ‘jumps’ out at them as you read.
Read the poem as a group with youth reading one line each.
Ask the group: What lines jumped out to you?
As each youth reads their line, ask them why it meant something to them, and how it might look to ‘sow love’ where there is hatred or how they could share light.
Ask: Where do you see hatred at school? In the country? In the world?
What would it look like to ‘sow love’?
Think about the line: where there is injury, pardon.
Think of a person in your life who has hurt you.
What would it look like show them pardon…forgiveness?
Say: Peace is not easy, and maybe that is why the world desperately needs peace.
Maybe you need peace.
And first, remember that this peace isn’t something that we can just ‘make’ happen.
Ask a youth to read John 14:27.
We are given an amazing gift when we let Jesus show us his peace - because he has given us his peace.
It is easy to forget that, right?
We watch the news or we go to school, or for some of you, you go home and peace feels like a dream.
Peace begins when we give Jesus those things that we are worried about.
Take time each day to do what we did with the chalk and share with him the places in your own life that you need his peace.
Pray for the people you know who need peace.
Pray for the world and let his peace fill you.
Because nobody ‘does’ peace better than Jesus, right?
And then, go and be a peacemaker.
Where in your life right now could you be a peacemaker?
Maybe it’s at home….at school….with friends….or in your town.
Write down what came to your mind with your chalk on the ground.
Think about the shirts that we made with our water balloon war.
Wear that shirt to remind you that you can be a peacemaker.
Because you are all children of God!
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Spend some time talking about the words that they wrote for places or people or situations that need God’s peace.
Is there anything that they could do to bring peace to these places or people?
Share if they feel comfortable about where they needed peace in their own life and spend time praying for each person.
What are ways that you could encourage one another to be peacemakers?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON PENTECOST
Bible: Acts 2:1-13
Bottom Line: We experience Pentecost every day when the Spirit lives in us as Christians.
SUPPLIES
Red stickers or tape (you will need a lot of these)
Red, orange and yellow construction paper
Sharpie markers
Double stick tape
Scissors for each youth
A Note to Leaders:
This lesson can be a very powerful experience for your students as we talk about the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost.
The prayer with this lesson is that the students will experience that same Holy Spirit today, so please spend time in prayer and personal reflection before this lesson.
Think about how you first experienced the Holy Spirit.
And for some of you, maybe you are still waiting to really experience the Holy Spirit.
Don’t be ashamed, but know that this lesson is for you.
There are many who serve in the church and work with youth who have answered a call, but have yet to truly experience the transforming work of the Spirit.
Our prayer is that you will experience the Holy Spirit of Christ today even as you prepare.
And to the seasoned youth minister: It can be easy to lose that fire.
Today is for you.
May you remember that fire and may it inspire you today.
Share how Christ and the Holy Spirit have moved in your life and the lives of others.
Refer to this great article at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdroberts/series/what-is-pentecost-why-does-it-matter/ about what Pentecost is, the meaning of the word, and history.
Determine whether your group would be interested in the history of the word “Pentecost” which simply means “fifty” and also the tie into the Old Testament Festival of Weeks.
Some groups will enjoy the history, but for youth groups with younger students or more seekers, this would possibly bog them down from really delving into the activity of the Holy Spirit which is really the main point of the lesson.
**OPENING GAME – Fire**
Choose one person to be the “Fire Starter” and give them a large supply of red stickers. Also, set up a ‘Fire Station’ where more of the red fire stickers are located when the Fire Starter or the students who get stickers placed on them.
The Fire Starter will begin in the center with the rest of the students in a circle around the Fire Starter.
When you say “Go”, everyone can run and spread out in the designated area, while the Fire Starter runs and tries to stick a red ‘Fire’ sticker on people.
Once a person has had a Fire sticker put on them, they can run to the Fire Station to get Fire stickers to help the Fire Starter.
The game is over when everyone has been tagged with a Fire Sticker.
If your group is a smaller group, this will go quickly unless the students are very creative about where they hide, so you can play the game more times choosing a different Fire Starter.
TEACH – Pentecost
Say: We all know that playing with fire can be a very dangerous thing.
Can you remember the first time that you realized just how quickly fire could spread?
Give the students time to share. Also, feel free to share a wise or unwise experience that you had with fire as a teenager, but be sure to remind them not to follow in your footsteps.
Yes, fire can be very scary, but it is also the one thing that can save you when you are trying to survive. You know - like watching Survivor when they are left with no food and fending for themselves: fire is critical.
Today, we are going to be talking about fire, but a different kind of fire.
Can anyone here tell me what “Pentecost” is about?
The word Pentecost literally means “fifty”. In the Bible, we read about a time when the Jews were gathered in Jerusalem fifty days after the Passover for the Festival of Weeks.
This is where you can use the information from the article above if your group would find this interesting or direct them to the site to read later.
Long story short, there were Jews from all over gathered and something amazing happened…
Remember that at this time, Jesus had died, risen, hung out for 40 days and then went to Heaven.
Yes, it was 50 days after the Passover.
And something amazing was about to happen.
So imagine that you are in this scripture.
You are in the room.
Close your eyes.
Think about where you might be from….maybe you don’t speak the language but you are here to celebrate.
As I read this scripture, I want you to use all of your senses.
What do you see?
Hear?
Smell?
Feel?
Read Acts 2:1-13.
Open your eyes.
What did you see?
Hear?
Feel?
What just happened??
Give students time to talk about what they experienced and felt.
Pentecost by many is called the “Birthday of the Church” because the Holy Spirit came on the apostles and all of those gathered from many different places.
Why would it be a big deal that these different places were gathered?
Let the students give their ‘theories’.
Up until this point, the good news of Jesus had been kept really close.
But at this time, all of these people were gathered from all over in Jerusalem.
Just imagine when you left this place after the Holy Spirit literally coming over you like fire.
You go back home.
Nothing is the same because you are not the same.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote in his journal these words “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
The Holy Spirit is the very spirit of Jesus, and Jesus promised that his Spirit would come and is available to all of us.
And when this Spirit comes, amazing things happen.
People are changed.
Just think about Peter.
Remember the one who denied Jesus three times and then the rooster crowed?
The one who walked out to Jesus on the water, but then got scared and began to sink.
Now, can I have a volunteer who would like to act out the part of the disciple, Peter?
Read Acts 2:14-31
Choose a volunteer who you know has a relationship with Christ and will read the scripture in a meaningful way for the group.
Close with a prayer such as:
Jesus, we are gathered here today, in a simple room.
Fill us with your spirit.
Empower us to be changed.
To be on fire for you.
Amen.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How was Peter changed from before Jesus’ death to now at Pentecost in his amazing speech?
Share about what you experienced while reading the Pentecost scripture.
How do you think your life would have changed if you had been there?
Share about a time when you sensed that the Holy Spirit was at work.
Challenge the group to choose a color of construction paper, cut out a flame, and using a sharpie to write out a prayer for the Holy Spirit to come.
It could be a simple prayer such as “Come Holy Spirit”
Then have each student get a piece of double stick tape and tape up their flame around the room as a visible reminder that the Holy Spirit is at work.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON PERSEVERANCE
Bible: Hebrews 12:1-2; 2 Timothy 4:7; Romans 5:3-5
Bottom Line: Perseverance is hard, but it is important. It is possible to persevere through hard times because rather than destroying us it can build character, because Jesus persevered for us, and because we know who Jesus is and who we are through Him. If you keep persevering, you cannot fail.
Opening Game: Marshmallow Toss
Supplies
Marshmallows
Plastic cups (enough for every student)
Bowls (enough for each team of two)
Split the students into groups of two. Give each team two plastic cups, a bowl, and some marshmallows.
Have the teams start arms-length apart, each holding a plastic cup. They must toss a marshmallow from one plastic cup to the other.
Once they successfully get the marshmallow transferred between cups, they must put it in their team’s bowl.
After that, one team member must take a step back before they toss the next marshmallow. Once they successfully toss the marshmallow from one cup to the next, they put it in the bowl.
For every marshmallow that hits the ground, they must remove one from their bowl.
This continues until the team is ten steps apart and has ten marshmallows in their bowl.
If all the marshmallows have been removed by the time they get ten steps apart, the must continue tossing from this length until they get ten marshmallows in their bowl.
Once they have ten marshmallows, they must eat them all.
The first team to get ten marshmallows in their bowl and eat them all wins!
**Teach - Perseverance**
Do you know what’s pretty fun? Eating marshmallows.
Do you know what’s not pretty fun? Not being able to eat marshmallows until you perfect tossing them between cups.
Perseverance really isn’t a fun topic to talk about, because it’s **hard**. It’s hard to persevere through hard times. It’s hard to press on when things are tough. There’s really nothing fun about it, but it’s incredibly important.
In the dictionary, perseverance is defined as “**steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success**.”
Steadfastness. Staying steady. Holding steadfast to something and sticking out the situations that are difficult, where success seems really far away.
So tonight, while we talk about perseverance, I want you to be thinking about the answer to this question: What are you holding steadfast to?
**Read 2 Timothy 4:7** - “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
Have you ever heard that verse before? It’s the essence of perseverance. Fighting the good fight, finishing the race of life, and keeping the faith the whole time.
Don’t you want to be able to say that? When you get to the end of your life, don’t you want to be able to confidently say that you persevered through the hard circumstance, that you kept fighting your way through the tough times? Or do you want to look back on your life and just see time after time where you chose quitting over perseverance?
Perseverance is really, really hard. But it is possible! Let’s look at why it’s possible to persevere through hard times.
It’s possible to persevere through hard times because we know that Jesus persevered for us.
Read Hebrews 12:1-2 - “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Here, the race comes up again. And here, we see that in order to run the race marked out for us, we have to have perseverance. But that’s not all we see in this verse. We see that not only do we need to have perseverance, but that we need to fix our eyes on Jesus. Why? Because He persevered.
Look at that—for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.
Jesus endured so much for us. He had to go through far worse than any of us will ever have to go through. He persevered for us.
Jesus is the example we are supposed to follow. He is the pioneer and perfecter of faith, and we see here just how much He endured. So we know that it’s possible to
persevere through hard, tough, sometimes even terrible situations, because He persevered for us. So we can certainly persevere for Him.
**It’s possible to persevere through hard times because it builds character.**
*Romans 5:3-5* - Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
When perseverance is necessary, it’s usually because there’s some sort of suffering involved. We’re suffering through a tough situation, suffering through a confusing time, suffering through a time where accomplishing anything seems very far off. So suffering causes the need for perseverance.
So what does perseverance cause?
Character, which causes hope. So having perseverance leads to hope. And not just any hope—hope that doesn’t put us to shame, because it’s the hope of God’s love, which He’s poured into our hearts.
So no, perseverance isn’t really fun to think about. And it’s certainly not fun to have to do. But the result of perseverance is a really beautiful, incredible form of hope. And it is well worth it.
**It’s possible to persevere through hard times because we know who Jesus is and who we are through Him.**
*Romans 5:6-8* - “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a
good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Jesus Christ died for you. Before you were godly, before you were righteous, and while you were still a powerless sinner, Jesus Christ died for you. Why? Because He loves you with a crazy, overwhelming kind of love.
If you were worth dying for, you must be pretty amazing.
Knowing who Jesus is—the King and Savior of us all—and knowing what He did for us should give us confidence to persevere.
We know we can persevere through anything, because Jesus knows we can. He gave His life for us because He thought we were worth it. Knowing that, there’s no other choice but to persevere and keep running the race He has marked out for us!
I want to show you a video that I think really highlights perseverance and why it’s so important.
Play this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IpQLkxqIKA
If there’s anything we can learn from that video, it’s that if you keep persevering, you cannot fail. Did he win? No, he didn’t. In fact, he came in last place. But did he fail? Absolutely not. Because He ran the race and fought the fight, even when his race got incredibly difficult. He finished the race.
Just like that man’s father came to help Him, our heavenly Father helps us. His father couldn’t do it for him, and he couldn’t take his pain away or make it any easier, but he could walk right beside him and encourage him.
When we persevere in life, even when it’s incredibly hard we know that God is walking right beside us, cheering us on, and helping us persevere.
It’s not worth it to give up. It may feel like it, and there may be times where you don’t know how you can possibly keep going. Quitting may sound like a really incredible idea at some points in a tough situation.
When that happens, you just have to remember: if you do not quit, if you keep persevering, then you cannot fail.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Have there been times in your life where you had to choose if you were going to persevere or quit? What did you choose?
Does knowing that Jesus persevered for you make you want to persevere for Him?
At the end of your life, do you want to be able to say you fought the good fight, finished your race, and kept your faith? If so, do you think you’ll need perseverance to be able to do that?
When you think of how much Jesus had to endure and persevere through, does that make the situations you have to persevere through seem less difficult?
Perseverance can sometimes be viewed in a negative way because it implies hard situations. Now that you know it leads to hope, does it seem like more of a positive thing to you?
Does knowing that Jesus died for you make you feel more confident?
Have you ever had an experience where you feel like the fact that you persevered through a situation built character?
Do you agree that you should keep your eyes on Jesus while you are running the race of life?
Do you think Jesus is a good example of how we should persevere and run our race?
Why?
Do you think that persevering and keeping our faith is something that makes Jesus happy? Does that make you want to do it more?
**Teach - Wrap-Up**
Do you remember the question I asked you at the beginning of tonight? I asked what it was that you were holding steadfast to.
So, what is it? When you’re in a time that is hard, what do you hold on to?
Is it selfishness? Wanting to get out of the situation by making it as easy as possible for yourself?
Is it a friend? Clinging to friendship to help you get through a situation?
Is it Jesus? Fixing your eyes on Him and holding steadfast to Him while you persevere through tough circumstances? Because that’s what it should be.
All that you’ve learned tonight doesn’t make perseverance any more fun. It isn’t going to make the next tough situation you go through any less tough. It isn’t going to make a hard time into sunshine and butterflies.
But now you know that it’s possible to persevere, and you have some reasons to persevere. You know that Jesus persevered for you, and He’s there to encourage you as you persevere for Him.
You can persevere, or you can be a quitter. Those are really the only choices you have when it comes to hard times and tough circumstances. Sure, it’s going to be tempting to quit sometimes. But when that happens, just remember all we’ve talked about tonight. Remember who is on your side and what’s at stake.
And remember: if you don’t quit, you can’t fail. If you keep going, if you persevere, then you win no matter what. And that is so much better than quitting.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON PRAYER
Say: A couple of weeks ago while I was on a business trip, I was talking on my cell phone with my wife (yes, they do more than send text messages!).
I had just received some great news and was excited to share it with her.
Suddenly, I realized that she hadn’t said anything for several seconds.
I looked at my screen and it said that we still had a connection.
I said her name several times and waited for a response but did not get one.
I was frustrated because I was pretty sure that she was still on the line, but for some reason my conversation was only working one-way.
After hanging up and trying again, we were able to resume the conversation, but later I got to thinking about my experience and realized that prayer can sometimes feel the same way.
I know that God can hear me when I pray, but when His voice feels silent in my life, I sometimes wonder if the connection only works one-way.
Read 1 Kings 19:11-13
“Go out and stand before me on the mountain,” the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave…”
Say: In this story, Elijah was searching for God. First, he looked for Him in a windstorm, then a powerful fire, but God was not in either of those things.
This was a very significant experience for Elijah because God had established a pattern of appearing in these ways over hundreds of years when communicating with His people.
God appeared in a burning bush to Moses in Exodus 3 and in billows of smoke on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 19 with winds that shook the ground.
Despite these patterns, Elijah does not feel God’s presence until he hears the faintest of whispers.
Do you ever find yourself expecting God’s voice to come in windstorms and explosive fireworks?
I know that when I am desperately seeking God in prayer, I most often want to hear or see His response in very obvious, visible ways.
If I am sick, I pray for healing and want to feel better immediately.
If I need help with a problem, I want a clear solution.
If I am in emotional pain, I want God make the pain go away.
Sometimes, though, I feel the same way I did during my dropped call with my wife. I talk to God in prayer and feel and see no change.
It is in those moments that I need to remember that God’s voice sometimes comes in a gentle whisper.
He doesn’t always work in dramatic ways.
Sometimes it is in the little things that God moves the most.
I might not feel healthy right away, but He may nudge me toward the help that I need.
A solution may not present itself to fix my problems, but He can use those problems to make me stronger.
The pain may not always go away immediately, but He sometimes uses that pain to remind of all that He has blessed me with.
These are just a few tangible ways that God speaks through a whisper.
How are you looking for God to respond to your prayers?
Maybe the connection hasn’t been lost.
Perhaps you are just not listening carefully enough.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How has God spoken or moved in your life in a way that seems like a powerful wind or fire?
How has God spoken or moved in your life in a way that seems like a gentle whisper?
What things in your life can make it difficult for you to hear God’s whisper?
Why do you think that God uses a whisper sometimes instead of a dramatic experience?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON PRIDE
Bible: Luke 18:9-14
Bottom Line: Pride puts ourselves in the center of everything instead of God.
SUPPLIES
Large amounts of cooked spaghetti in a big bucket
Sheets of paper
Markers
Before you begin:
Leader - Pride is a tough topic, especially when you are serving in a church with imperfect people who sometimes think they are perfect.
We all, at some point or another, find ourselves on one side or the other of that ugly equation of pride.
Spend some time before you teach this lesson reading the parable.
Write your own humble prayer to God like the tax collector did, and confess to God those ways in which you have been prideful.
And know that God sees you and knows you and loves you.
Pride and all.
OPENING GAME: Pride, Prejudice and Zombies
DISCLAIMER: While this game is meant to be played in fun, please use discretion as to whether or not a game about "zombies" is a good fit for your youth group.
You might have heard of the new movie based on the book, *Pride, Prejudice and Zombies*.
Yeah, we aren’t going to watch the movie, but this game is a fun second.
Set the game boundaries (the size of a baseball field or smaller) and explain that no-one can go out of bounds.
Pick two youth to be “zombies”.
The rest of the group are the “townspeople”.
The townspeople will be given a few minutes to spread out while the zombies get their ‘brains’ from the center of the field. ('Brains' are cooked spaghetti.)
Zombies can only walk on one leg while dragging their other leg, and they will chase the townspeople with the brains.
If a townsperson gets touched by the ‘Brains’, they become a zombie also.
The game is over when there is only one townsperson.
This game can be played as long as needed and you can choose zombies for the game and just gather up the brains to reuse! (The grosser the better)
TEACH - YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON PRIDE
Today, we are going to take a look at “pride”, which is a word that can have different meanings to different people.
What are some instances in which pride is considered a ‘good thing’?
What does pride look like when it has crossed the line into being a ‘bad thing’?
Listen to this quote from CS Lewis: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.”
Pride turns rotten when it involves comparing yourself to others and finding that you think that you are better than others.
Can you think of a time when you looked down on someone else or you were happy when they failed?
*Share a personal example from your life when pride showed itself in you in a negative way.*
Today, you are going to help us bring our scripture to life.
I need two volunteers (*Leader, be sure to choose very animated youth for this task*).
I will read the parable from Jesus and one of you will be the Pharisee, a religious leader in Jesus’ day, and the other will be a tax collector.
As I read the parable, each of you just act out the parts of the parable that apply to you and make us think!
*Read Luke 18:9-14 from the Message to add some character!*
Thank you, Pharisee and Tax Collector!
It can be very tempting to compare yourself to others.
Let’s be honest: Who in here hasn’t looked at someone else and thought “I’m glad I’m not THAT person”.
And it can be super easy to fall into that type of thinking when you are trying to live as a Christian because you don’t have to look too far to find all kinds of people who are messing things up, right?
The tax collector in Jesus’s time was considered the worst of the worst.
Can you think of a profession today that if you ask someone what they do for a living that they don’t want to answer because of the eye rolls that they will get?
Ask the group to share some of these jobs.
And the Pharisee was supposed to be the one who was close to God, right?
Yet, what do we see in this parable?
The Pharisee is looking DOWN on the tax collector.
The Pharisee is judging the tax collector for whatever reasons and then patting himself on the back.
And then what does the Pharisee do?
He is praying and it’s like he is reminding God of all the awesome things that he does….for God, of course?
Or is he doing it for God?
Do you think it is possible to ‘do all the right things’ and not ‘get it right’ with God?
That is pride.
See, God knows our hearts.
He KNOWS what ‘makes us tick’.
He knows if you are saying one thing and doing another.
He knows if you are just going through the motions.
He knows WHAT YOU THINK.
He isn’t fooled by what you do.
Think on that….
This parable of Jesus probably upset the religious leaders.
It was really a ‘mic drop’ from Jesus, though, because he meant for them to be upset.
He was making a very important point.
God isn’t playing and we can’t play God.
And pride is that ugly part of us that wants to ‘look good’ and then look down on others.
Just look at the tax collector: What did he do right?
The tax collector saw that he was flawed and humbled himself before God.
See, we sometimes forget that NONE of us are perfect.
Maybe you are watching some of your friends or acquaintances at school or even in this group doing things that you know wouldn’t make God happy.
But ask yourself this: Are you secretly judging them rather than praying for them?
Are you measuring yourself to their failures?
Because we truly can lose sight of God when we measure ourselves by what we think we see in others.
Why? Because we miss the own mess in our own lives.
God isn’t playing and we can’t play God.
As you leave to go to your small groups, there are pieces of paper and pens scattered around this room and I want you to take a few minutes to write out a ‘Tax collector’ prayer to God.
What does that mean?
The tax collector KNEW that he needed God.
The tax collector humbled himself before God and didn’t pray to be seen….he just poured out his heart to God.
Write out a very simple prayer to God from your heart.
Take that prayer with you to your group and with you throughout this week.
Let it remind you in those times when you might want to compare yourself with others that it doesn’t matter what they think.
The only opinion that truly matters is the only person who really knows you: God.
*Give the students time to write out their prayers and be available to pray with them as needed.*
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Give the group a chance to share their prayers written on the papers, but only if they feel led.
Share a time recently when you felt prideful or better than someone.
Share a time when you felt judged as ‘less than’ by someone and how it made you feel.
Why do you think that pride is such a challenge for Christians?
How can we help one another not to compare ourselves to others?
End with prayer.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON PRIORITIES
Topic: Priorities - So Much to Do, So Little Time
Bible: Psalm 90:12; Ephesians 5:15-17; James 4:14
We live in a generation that demands instant gratification, yet spend hours and hours on things that don’t really matter.
This can leave us with little to no time to focus on what’s important and the stuff that actually need to get done.
Learning time management isn’t only helpful with this, it’s Biblical!
As we approach back to school time, use this lesson to help students with “priorities”.
Opening Game: How Much Is Too Much?
Divide students into teams. For a small crowd, have the whole team vote to choose an answer. For a larger crowd, have them select one person to represent their team by giving the answers. Ask the following trivia questions about how the average person spends their time. The answers are in bold.
1. How much time per month does the average American spend social networking?
1. 2 hours
2. 1.7 hours
3. 9.3 hours
4. **6.9 hours**
2. How much time per month does the average American spend watching television offline (meaning on an actual television, not on Hulu or Netflix)?
1. 12.5 hours
2. **59.4 hours**
3. 17.3 hours
4. 23.9 hours
3. The peak time for watching television online is:
1. On a lunch break
2. Right before bed
3. During the workday
4. Right after work
4. According to a report by NBC News, if you added up the minutes spent on social media in July of 2012 in the United States, how many years would they add up to?
1. 230,060 years
2. 9,612 years
3. 143,462 years
4. 64,586 years
5. How much time does the average American spend on Netflix per month?
1. 14.2 hours
2. 10 hours
3. 7.6 hours
4. 13.7 hours
Information found on: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100275798 and http://www.mashable.com/2012/11/28/social-media-time/
TEACH
There's no arguing that we live in a day where everyone desires instant gratification. If we have to wait too long in a drive thru, we get mad.
We get impatient while waiting on our food to come out of the microwave, because when you’re craving popcorn, three minutes seems like an excessively long time. Any amount of waiting time at a doctor’s office or a restaurant seems unbearable. At the same time, one could say that this generation wastes more time than ever before. That doesn’t make sense, does it? In fact, it seems like an oxymoron.
If having to wait more than 90 seconds for a cheeseburger and milkshake is something that upsets us, surely we must hate wasting time.
Yet, as we learned a few minutes ago, the average America spends 94.2 hours per month on social networks, phone, email, and watching television.
Think about that--that's almost four days a month wasted on things that probably have no significant importance.
So we act like we hate wasting time, yet we gladly give away four (maybe even more!) of our 30 days a month.
With that in mind, I think it's safe to say that we could all benefit from learning to manage our time better.
High school is the best time to learn good time management, and the beginning of a new school year is the perfect time to learn something new.
If you want to actually graduate with grades above D's this year, you're going to have to learn time management.
If you learn good time management now, it will be easier to manage your time when you go off to college.
If you can do that, it will be easier to manage your time when you graduate college and get thrown back into the real world. And if you think time management is essential in high school, just wait until adult life hits you.
As with any issue, the first thing we should do is see if the Bible has anything to say about it.
**Read Psalm 90:12**
“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
What does it mean to number your days? Let’s think about it.
While we may not know the exact number of days we have to live, we do know that we don’t have forever to live on this earth.
So keeping that in mind—that we have a small number of days that make up our life—how do you feel about the way you spend your days?
Are you a planner, who takes care of the important things before moving on to do the fun things?
Are you a procrastinator, who pushes everything of importance to the last possible minute?
Or do you even think about how you spend your time, just letting whatever happens happen? And most importantly: Where does God fit into any of that?
**Read Ephesians 5:15-17**
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”
Have you ever had a test that you just didn’t study for? You knew it was happening, you knew when it was, you knew what you needed to study for it…and you just didn’t?
Maybe you didn’t because life got in the way of studying, or maybe because your priorities weren’t exactly how they should be.
Either way, when this happens, there’s a common prayer that happens: “God, give me wisdom for this test!”
Did you ever think that maybe God already gave you wisdom for the test?
You know, that test that you knew about.
The one where you knew what to study, but just didn’t, even though you had the time and resources.
Wisdom would have been using the time God gave to you and the brain God gave to you and studying!
This verse says to be careful to live as wise.
How does that relate to time management? More than you might think.
Look at it this way: how you spend your hours adds up to how you spend your days.
How you spend your days adds up to how you spend your life.
So if you’re spending your days wasting time and avoiding what you need to do, that is essentially how you are spending your life.
And that, my friend, is not wise.
This verse also urges us to “make the most of every opportunity…do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”
Do you know the best way to understand what the Lord’s will is?
By spending time with Him! By praying and reading the Bible.
The more you are spending time with Him, the easier it will be to make the most of every opportunity.
Read James 4:14
"Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."
Ouch. That one stings a bit. Your whole life—the one you're so concerned about, the one filled with good and bad and happy and sad—it's but a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
In other words, your life is just a little blimp in the grand scheme of time.
So why not make the absolute most of it?
There's this idea that to enjoy life, you need to be a free spirit who is spontaneous and goes with the flow, never planning anything.
Sure, many people choose to live that way. But the bottom line is this: if you want to make the most out of your life, you can only do that by learning to manage your time.
Whether or not you decide to take charge of your time, it's going to pass you by anyway. Monday-Friday you are going to go to class, get homework, have exams, write papers. The four years of high school are going to happen regardless of if you manage your time.
But if you want to make the most of them, and you want to live them the way the Bible says you should, managing your time in a wise way is a must. So how do you do that?
Here are three simple ways to get the most out of your time.
1. Make God your number one Priority.
No matter how busy you get, no matter how much you have to do, no matter what, spending time with God needs to be your number one priority. If that means you have to get up earlier, then wake up earlier. If that means you have to sacrifice something extra, then so be it. This is one choice you will not regret making.
2. Prioritize the things in your life.
Regardless of how you may feel, high school is a priority right now. That means that for the school year, classes, tests, papers, and projects come before late night movies and weekends spent doing nothing with your friends. One of the best ways to remember your priorities is to get a planner or a calendar and write down when things are due, when you need to study, etc.
3. Hold yourself accountable.
After you know what your schedule should be, pray over it. Ask God to help you achieve all you need to achieve in the time that you need to achieve it. Ask Him to help you manage your time better. Then, find someone who will hold you accountable to this. Maybe that’s a leader here, or maybe it’s another person who’s also trying to manage their time better. Either way, getting a weekly text asking how you’re doing with your time can be a great motivator! Another way to hold yourself accountable is to write these verses down—the ones that talk about how we should spend our days—and put them somewhere you can see them. After all, spending hours on twitter isn’t really enjoyable when you’re looking at a verse that reminds you of how short your life is.
Closing
You will learn a lot of new things this school year, and I hope that time management is one of those things. It isn’t just a good skill to have; it’s also a step in the direction of living how God has called us to live. You only live once and you only live for a short time. There are going to be things you have to do, there are going to be things you want to do, and there are going to be things that God calls you to do. It can seem like a lot and can pile up fast. If you’re prepared by having the right mindset—the mindset that knows God has blessed you with this life and you want to make the most of it that you can—this year will be so much better for you.
High School is only four years of your life. If you want to make the most of those four years, learning to manage your time is one of the best places to start. And God is the best one to help you with that. Ask Him to help you this year—He loves you more than anything and wants to see you succeed with the life He has blessed you with.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Why do you think it is so easy to waste time?
When you’re wasting time, do you think you’re taking time for granted?
What effect does wasting time have on your relationship with God?
In the past, is time management something you’ve taken seriously?
Have you ever thought about time management as something that God would want for you?
What are some steps you could take this week to help you manage your time?
Do you think time is a gift from God? If you do, does that change the way you think about spending your time?
Would you say that the way you are managing your time now is bringing honor to God?
What is the biggest challenge you face in your personal life when it comes to managing your time?
One of the verses compares our life to, “a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” How does that make you feel when you think about the way you currently choose to spend time?
How do you think this school year could be different from previous years if you manage your time?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON QUIET TIME
Bible: James 4: 8-10
Bottom Line: Spending time with God can be the best part of your day - so be creative!
OPENING GAME
SUPPLIES/SET-UP
Paper plate for each student
Pen for each student
Set up a table in the room with Post-it notes (broken into small stacks) and pens.
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
I want you to pick out the most stressful day over the past few weeks that you’ve had.
Can you think of one? Yup, I can too.
Now, here is what I want you to do: (Give each person a paper plate and a pencil/pen).
On this paper plate, draw a clock face, and no, not a digital one.
Then, once you’ve drawn the clock, I want you to fill in what you did for each minute of that most stressful day that you thought of just a minute ago.
(Give students 5-10 minutes to complete the activity)
Now, get in groups of 2-3 people and choose one of your clocks to act out in less than 25 seconds - being sure to act out every single activity that was listed.
I will give you 5 minutes to work on your stressful day reenactment.
(Gather the groups together and tell the group to be sure to try to guess as many activities in each groups’ day as possible.)
This should lead to everyone being stressed out!
**TEACH - QUIET TIME**
Raise your hand if you are now officially stressed out.
Let’s face it: The stress that you face each day is real, isn’t it?
(Tell a personal story from when you were a teenager – how the stress, pace and technology (or lack thereof) made life very different.)
But, things today are different.
The pace is different.
How many times this week have you felt stressed, overloaded, or overwhelmed?
Your schedules are crazy.
The stress is real.
How in the world could you add one more thing to your schedule?
And yet, how many of you listed time alone with God as one of the activities on your calendar?
Here’s the thing: God doesn’t want you to feel guilty if he wasn’t on your schedule.
He wants to offer you rest and peace.
And believe it or not, spending time with God, or as some people call it, a ‘quiet time’ is probably the only thing in this life that can help with the stress and pressure that we all feel.
**Read James 4: 8-10.**
*Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your*
laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
First, God cares about what is going on in your life.
God cares about those things that you felt were too small or even dumb to list on your clock.
He is with you in every single thing that you do.
**God is there in the midst of the stress.**
What were some of the emotions that this scripture lists?
Weeping, grieving, joy, and laughter: God WANTS to be there with you in it.
And his request is simple: Draw near to Him, and he will draw near to you.
It really is as simple as that: Take a step to God, and he will take a step to you.
You may think: “I don’t know how to spend time with God”.
Hopefully today, you will see that it isn’t fancy or difficult.
**Spending time with God is not meant to be another stress in your life.**
He wants to help you live with joy and freedom.
Today, we are going to do a very simple ‘drawing near to God’ activity.
(Point out the Post-it notes and pens on the table.)
We are going to do a ‘Stress Dump’ and here is how this works:
You will take a stack of Post-it notes and a pen.
Find a quiet place and sit in this room - free of distractions.
Write out all of the things that you brought with you today that are stressing you out.
I will guide you with some ‘stressors’ that you can also reflect on in your quiet time.
As you write these stresses down, just talk to God about how these things are weighing on you.
He really does want to hear.
Please write one thing per Post-it and feel free to get up and get more if needed.
Leader: Give students about 5 minutes in silence or play some quiet music.
(Suggestion: “Rest Easy” by Audio Adrenaline).
Then, begin with prompts of things to write down such as:
Worries, Friendships, Family, School struggles, My Future, People hurting, Decisions to make, Worries about my faith
(Give students about 10-15 minutes to write their worries and offer more Post-its.)
Now, look at your stack of Post-its.
Even in this simple act, you drew near to God.
You poured your heart and worries out to him.
And here is the amazing thing: God doesn’t want you to bear all of this without him.
And he certainly doesn’t want you to leave this room with a stack full of worries and stress.
Now, go and put your Post-its around the room, wherever you want.
As you place your Post-it, let this be a physical act of drawing near to God and giving him your worries.
Does it mean that these things will magically go away?
No.
But, what it does mean is that God is with you and you are drawing near to him.
Sometimes the sheer act of voicing how we are feeling to God can make all of the difference.
So, get your stack and take some more prayerful time of giving these worries to God. Put the Post-it there and leave, knowing that God is with you in all of these things, but also look around the room and know that you are not alone in your stress.
(Give students a few minutes to post their Post-its, and then, direct them to walk around the room and pray for one another.)
Ask God to be with the person who wrote each worry.
Resist the urge to try to guess who wrote what, because you will miss the joy of praying for one another.
(Give students 5 minutes before they go to their small groups to read the Post-its on the walls prayerfully.)
We just spent time with God.
Quiet time with God as a group.
For some of you, this might be mind-blowing: YOU JUST SPENT TIME WITH GOD!!
Let that sink in for a minute.
The God of the universe wants to hear from you.
He can handle every single worry and stressor on this wall.
And, He can give you His strength to face them and even grow closer to Him in the process.
There are amazing things that happen when you spend time with God.
And there is no ‘one’ or ‘right’ way for you to spend time with God.
It will and should look different for every single one of us.
There are so many other ways that you can spend time with God doing things that you enjoy.
(Share a personal way that you spend time with God that is creative or one that you have heard from others such as listening to music, journaling, singing, or even taking photos.
Close the teaching in a time of prayer, thanking God for drawing near to us, and praying for the prayers on the wall.)
Before you leave, walk around the room once more and choose 4 or 5 of the Post-its from the wall and commit to pray for these worries this week.
Put this Post-it somewhere in your room or your locker: somewhere it can remind you to pray.
Sometimes, having a quiet time is as simple as reminding ourselves to pray.
This will give you a visual reminder to pray not only for your worries, but for others.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Were you surprised at how many worries and stresses there were in this group and how did that make you feel?
Reflect on this statement: Spending time with God is not meant to be a burden.
How could you take the time this week to spend time with God?
What are the things that get in the way of spending time with God and how can we encourage each other with these?
How might spending time with God affect your life in a positive way?
Create a list together of ways that you could creatively spend time with God.
How can we help one another to keep this time with God?
Commit to pray for one another and remind one another to spend time with God.
Give each student a stack of Post-it notes to take home and try this activity in their room.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
Bible: Luke 10:38-42
Bottom Line: Use this youth group lesson to help students make time to develop their relationship with God.
This lesson is a great tool to help teach youth about discipleship.
OPENING GAME: What’s Your Schedule?
Divide students into groups of 3-5.
Give each small group a large sheet of butcher paper.
Ask leaders to write the days of the week (Sunday-Saturday) along the top of the butcher paper.
Instruct the small groups to talk about their weekly “schedule.”
Have students write their daily chores and activities on the schedule under the particular day.
Encourage them to think of things like school, sports, homework, chores, family time, getting ready, etc.
The point of the activity is to get a visual representation of the extremely busy schedules we all have.
After the activities have been listed on the butcher paper, allow groups to share some of the activities with the entire youth group.
After the activity, say:
We all have some really busy schedules.
From the time we wake up to the time we go to bed, we have to go-go-go to get it all done.
Do you ever feel like you’re going to forget to do something you’re supposed to do or be somewhere that you’re supposed to be? Do you ever get tired?
All of these things are good things.
We have to do chores around the house, go to school, eat, and shower (hopefully)….right?
And it’s a great thing to be able to play sports, play an instrument, spend time with friends, and all those things, right?
These are all good things, but sometimes we get so busy with good things that we miss out on some great things.
Let’s read the story of 2 sisters, Mary and Martha.
Read Luke 10:38-40
While Jesus and his followers were traveling, Jesus went into a town. A woman named Martha let Jesus stay at her house. Martha had a sister named Mary, who was sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to him teach. But Martha was busy with all the work to be done. She went in and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me alone to do all the work? Tell her to help me.”
Say: Jesus was very close to Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus. Jesus loved them enough to decide to come to their home and spend time with them.
Can you imagine if Jesus was coming over to your house? Do you think your parents would make you clean up if Jesus were coming over?
Probably so, and this is exactly what Martha was doing. She wanted everything to be just right for such a special guest.
Martha was very busy playing hostess. She had to cook. She had to clean. She had to make sure everyone had a place to sit down and relax.
She had to make sure that there was water and towels to wash everyone’s feet. The list went on and on.
There was just so much to do!
Meanwhile, her sister Mary is not doing anything to help her!
She’s just sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to Him talk and teach.
You can imagine how this made Martha feel. She was MAD! In fact, she’s so mad that she goes to Jesus and tattles on Marry.
She says, “Make her help me!” Now, listen to how Jesus responds to Martha.
Read Luke 10:41-42
But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things. Only one thing is important. Mary has chosen the better thing, and it will never be taken away from her.”
Say: Jesus understood why Martha was so upset. He understood why she was working so hard to make everything right.
But Jesus wanted Martha to see that there was something more important. She was doing good things, but she had missed our on the most important thing.
The most important thing is spending time with Jesus. Just like Martha, we can get so busy with other things that we miss out on the most important thing, spending time with Jesus.
In our busy lives, we need to focus on spending some time with Jesus.
You still need to do those other things, especially the things you’re asked to do by parents or teachers.
However, we need to be sure that we make time in our schedule to meet with God. He loves us and wants to speak to us, so we need to take the time to listen.
Jesus told Martha that Mary had “chosen what was better.”
Mary has chosen to spend time with Jesus so that she could learn and grow closer to Him.
Jesus wants us to choose time with Him over anything else. This is the most important thing.
We can get busy doing lots of important things, but we need to make sure that we remember the main thing.
The main thing is spending time with Him and growing in our relationship with Him.
Spending time with God is a choice.
Just like we put all our other activities on the calendar, we need to set a time to meet with God.
Whether it is in the morning or evening, in the car or in our room, with our parents or by ourselves, find time to spend with God and grow in your relationship with Him.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Was the work Martha was doing a “bad thing”? How did Jesus respond to her work and her complaining?
What was the “one thing” that Mary did? How did Jesus respond to Mary?
How does spending time with someone (God) show your love for them?
Which personality are you more like: the to-do list Martha or the laid-back Mary?
If Jesus spent a day at your house, what would be some things He might say are distracting you from spending time with God?
What are some ways or activities you can do to spend time with God?
OPTIONAL ACTIVITY - Make Time for God
Take another look at the schedule created in the opening activity.
Give students time to think about the places in their schedule that they would make time for God.
Encourage them to think hard about a consistent time that they could spend with Him. It may mean they wake up 10 minutes earlier or spend less time on fun things, but encourage them to make time for God.
At the end of the discussion, give each student an index card and have them write down their chosen time.
Ask them to place the card in a visible place to remind them of their commitment to spending time with God this week.
If students have a smartphone (who doesn't these days), lead them to set a calendar reminder on their phones.
This is a great way to help them remember the main thing!
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON RESPECT
Bible: 1 Samuel 24:8-10
Have you ever had a hard time respecting someone in authority over you?
(Share an example from your own life or use the example below.)
I can remember a teacher that I had in high school that I felt had not "earned" my respect.
He was short-tempered, rude, and often showed dislike toward me and my friends.
One day, he lost his temper and yelled at me in front of my classmates even though I did nothing wrong.
I was so angry that I just snapped.
I treated him exactly how I felt he should be treated by yelling back and saying some very hurtful things.
Later, I found myself sitting in the principal's office.
She agreed that the teacher was out of line, but it did not excuse my actions.
I walked away confused. How could I respect someone who was always acting wrongly? Do I even need to?
David and King Saul
Before we read a passage from 1 Samuel, let me give you some backstory.
God never intended for Israel to have a king, but after they begged for one, He relented.
King Saul was chosen by God to lead His people.
Things did not end up going so well.
Eventually God appointed Saul's replacement—a shepherd boy named David.
It would be many years before David became king.
In that time, Saul went from David's caregiver to trying to murder him.
David was forced to live a rough life on the run from his king.
One day, Saul enters a cave not knowing that David is hiding in the dark.
David finally has a chance to kill Saul and take his place as King of Israel. His friends urge him to go through with it.
David does not. Let's read why he spares Saul's life:
Read 1 Samuel 24:8-10 (NLT):
David came out and shouted after him, "My lord the king!" And when Saul looked around, David bowed low before him. Then he shouted to Saul, "Why do you listen to the people who say I am trying to harm you? This very day you can see with your own eyes it isn't true. For the Lord placed you at my mercy back there in the cave. Some of my men told me to kill you, but I spared you. For I said, 'I will never harm the king—he is the Lord's anointed one.'
To this point, Saul had definitely not "earned" David's respect. He had lied to him and tried to murder him.
Basically, Saul's chief ambition in life seemed to be making David miserable even though David had never done anything wrong to him. But look how David responds to Saul.
First, he bows before him, showing him the respect a king deserved. Second, he explains that he will never harm the king because "he is the Lord's anointed one."
As difficult as it must have been for David, he realized that by showing Saul the respect a king deserves, he was actually showing God respect. Saul was God's chosen king.
David realized that it was God's choice when and how to remove him.
When I think back to how I treated that teacher I realize what my principal was trying to teach me.
There are times in life when those in authority over me will make mistakes. Does that mean I do not have to respect them? No. God is in control.
He has the power to place people in authority and also to remove them.
By showing restraint and respect, I am honoring God and trusting in His power.
It is no wonder that David was so incredibly close to God. He understood that respect is not earned but is required.
Following Jesus requires a tremendous amount of humility. More than anything it requires faith that God will always support and defend us in His timing.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Do feel that there is a point that we no longer need to show respect to an authority figure? Why/why not?
Why is it so hard to show respect to an authority figure that has not "earned" it?
Is it possible to show respect while standing up for myself? How so?
Learning from David's example, how should I have responded to the teacher in my story?
After I realized I had reacted wrongly toward my teacher, what should my next steps have been?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON SELF-IMAGE
Self image is such a critical subject for youth.
As adults, it can be easy to forget what it was like to be a teenager: Your body is like an unknown alien, everyone seems to be at a completely different developmental stage, and let’s not even talk about how awkward it is when you have to shower for gym! Yikes!
Before you teach this lesson, try to take a possibly painful walk down your teenage memory lane to remember what it was like for you.
If you were one of the few teenagers who looks with longing to your early teen years, then try to think about what it was like for that awkward kid in your class because believe me, it was painful.
Some adults still carry around the hurt and rejection they felt from this time, and if you are one of these adults, take some time to really talk with God before this lesson. Remind yourself that you are NOT a teenager anymore and to forgive if you need to forgive.
Remember that you can be a source of comfort and encouragement to youth who might feel as awful as you felt.
And spend time thinking and reflecting on this very important question: how does God see me?
Here’s what I know: God loves you dearly and he loves each and every youth in your group dearly.
My prayer is that they leave this lesson with a deep and reassuring sense that God sees them for who they really are and loves them dearly.
Self-image built on what God thinks is radically different from what their peers or the world will say, but in the final analysis, it is the only image that is genuinely honest. Hold onto that!
**Bible:** Psalm 139:13-15
**Bottom Line:** We truly see ourselves when we see ourselves through God's eyes.
**SUPPLIES**
Stickers with the names of current popular artists, athletes, leaders, star etc
2 Large mirrors
Dry erase markers
List of scriptures
Individual mirrors
Dry erase marker for each student
**OPENING GAME - WHO AM I?**
As the students walk in, place a sticker on their back without them seeing it, with the name of someone who the youth will know from pop culture: Could be the name of a movie star, athlete, person in the news, character in a movie, or artist.
Try to pick names of people who will be entertaining to try to identify.
Tell the students that they need to help one another figure out who they are by giving them clues about the name that is on their back.
The clues cannot mention names but should be clues that would make it very simple to identify the person.
Have extra names ready as some of the youth will figure their name out quickly.
You could even offer a prize of a strange item for the person who guesses the most names.
**TEACH**
*Reflect on the game they just played by asking these questions or similar ones:*
What were some of the clues that you were given to identify the famous person on your sticker?
Were there any names which stumped you?
Imagine this game: What if I put your name on one of these stickers and then we gave clues to help someone guess your name?
What kind of things do you think people would say?
*Share a quality or something about yourself (even from when you were their age) of clues that would have been used to identify you that would possibly be less than positive.*
Pull out a large mirror and have dry erase markers ready to write down the words the youth give to you.
How many of you think that others might be surprised to hear how you see yourself?
Let’s face it, we are often our toughest critics and sometimes the things that we say to ourselves when no one else can hear are the words that stay with us.
But have you ever stopped to really question those things that you think?
*Share a time in your life, or even in the life of someone who is famous, in which you realized that the way that you saw yourself was unfair, unkind, or inaccurate.*
Think about the people at your school.
How do you think that they see themselves?
Write down the words or phrases on the large mirror with the dry erase marker as the youth share their thoughts.
Or you can invite the youth to come up and write the words one at a time silently for added effect.
Now, ask yourself honestly, how many of these words do you identify with?
When have you felt ______________ (insert words from the mirror)?
Read Psalm 139: 13-15.
What if we instead, viewed ourselves as God sees us?
Do you think that God sees you as ___________ (choose one of the words and then erase that word)?
No, God sees you as wonderfully made.
Erase the words on the mirror and write “Wonderfully made”.
What other words do you think God would choose to write for you?
Add the following words as needed from scriptures:
You are: Beloved, Bought with a price, Adopted, A child of God, Loved, Known, A saint
See, God tells us in scripture that He thinks we are worth dying for…that is how much we matter to him.
It's possible that some of us have chosen to believe lies about who we are, and those words have been written on our souls and have rewritten our self image…but with lies.
But why would we give words spoken against us, or even by us, more value than words from God?
Maybe you don't believe that you are precious or worth more than anything…but God does.
Why not just for a moment consider this: What if you let God and what He thinks about you be the voice that you listen to?
How would this change the way that you think about yourself? And others?
Just look at these words……read them again……or invite youth to read them out loud.
Whether you believe it or not…He thinks these things about you.
Is there one of these words that jumps out at you?
Maybe you think “Yeah, that word definitely doesn’t apply to me”.
That’s your word, then.
And each of you is going to come and get one of these tiny mirrors and a pen and choose a word to write on this mirror.
Carry this mirror with you this week.
Place it in a place where you can see it.
And look at the word that you write.
Try to let it sink in that God thinks this about you, regardless of what you think or what others think: God thinks you are wonderful.
He loves you.
I pray that you can see this word reflected in you because it is the truth from God for you.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Which word in the first set of words on the mirror surprised you? How does it make you feel to know that someone feels that way about themselves?
Which of the words we first wrote on the mirror (that we sometimes think about ourselves) would describe how you have been feeling about yourself?
Which of the words that we wrote on the mirror (that God would think) is sticking with you?
Why do you think that word has stuck with you?
How do you think life could be different for you if you chose to believe these words from God about you?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Bible: “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
Colossians 3: 16-17 (NIV)
Bottom Line: Use this lesson to encourage students to "look up" from their devices, in order to pay attention to real life relationships & what God is doing in their lives.
OPENING GAME
SUPPLIES
Notecards 1 per person
1 pen per person
Group of 20 or smaller: Whiteboard or area to write for the group to see.
Group of 20 or larger: each group of 5-10 students will need poster board and a marker.
SPACE REQUIREMENTS
Space to sit as a group in a circle.
GAME DESCRIPTION
Give each youth a card and a pen with this challenge: write a ‘Tweet’ describing yourself in less than 40 words (yes, we know that you can use 140 characters on Twitter, but let’s make this a challenge).
Do not write your name or any other identifying places such as school, last name, etc.
Keep your tweet hidden and pass it to the leader.
Leader, mix up the cards and then allow each student to draw one of the tweets.
Go around the circle and have the student read their tweet one at a time and then attempt to guess which student wrote the tweet.
If they cannot guess or guess incorrectly, others in the group can try to guess one at a time, starting at the student’s left and moving left until the correct ‘Tweeter’ has been guessed.
Whoever guesses the tweeter gets to keep the card, and the student with the most cards at the end of the game wins.
**GAME TIE-IN**
Social media has become a way of life for us.
We attempt to ‘sum up’ who we are in tweets.
Do you think it is possible for others to fully ‘know’ you through only your social media?
**TEACH - SOCIAL MEDIA**
**Group Discussion**
What are the biggest challenges that you face personally with using social media?
In what ways does social media help you connect with others?
We are going to watch a video about technology and some of the challenges that we probably all face.
Listen for phrases or points that ‘hit home for you’ or that make you think.
Even listen for statements that you don’t agree with and want to discuss further.
Write them down on the notecard and we will talk about them after you watch this video.
Caution: The word "bastard" is used once in the video.
Play video: https://youtu.be/Z7dLU6fk9QY
Spend 10-15 minutes allowing the students to share the phrases or statements in the video which stuck out to them.
Group of 20 or smaller: As a large group, write down the items students share for all to see.
Group of 20 students or more: break them into small groups of 5-10 students each and give each group a poster board and marker to write down their phrases.
After the groups are done, ask them to display their posters in front for all to see.
The video hopefully challenged you to think about the impact that technology and social media has on your life.
We really do live in a world that is radically different from the one that even your grandparents grew up in because we can 'stay connected' with friends and family and even people we don’t know at all times it seems.
But what the video points out, many of us are ‘talking’ with others or looking at their tweets or photos, and yet feel very alone.
Ask yourself honestly if you’ve felt alone even when being connected with so many people.
Think about a time when you were sitting in the room with your family or with friends and spent that time looking at stuff on your phone.
I want you to take a moment right now and think about this: imagine you were looking at a photo collage of the best moments of your life up to this point.
What would the photos be in this collage?
(If time allows, ask for students to share some of these photos with the group).
Now ask yourself this question: which moments could be in this collage, but you missed because you are on your phone?
What if, though, social media isn’t all a ‘bad thing’.
How many of your parents or teachers complain about how much time you spend looking at your phone?
Well, adults get that complaint also.
But what if there could be a happy medium?
What if social media could be something that draws you closer to God and to others if used in an intentional way?
Ask a student to read Colossians 3:16-17.
“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
What if we were to creatively look at social media through this scripture and it’s challenge to do EVERYTHING in the name of Jesus?
Here are a few ideas of ways that we could live out this challenge using social media:
What if we pulled up our Twitter feed and prayed for each person who posted something?
Or what if you took a moment to look at the photos posted on Instagram and ask God to help you see his creation in a new way or to see that person as God sees them?
What if someone shared that they are hurting, or it’s obvious that they are hurting and instead of ‘liking’ it, you call them up or better yet, go find them in person?
Maybe just let them know that you are praying for them.
How do you think even these small steps could radically change the way that each of us interact with our phones and social media?
See, your phone or social media or technology isn’t bad.
It’s when it crosses the line of being THE sole connection with living, breathing people in your life that there becomes a problem.
And usually that problem is that you become more and more isolated until one day you realize that you feel alone.
But what if God is offering a reminder that ANYTHING and EVERYTHING if done for his glory can be redeemed.
Yes, even social media.
What if we took this passage seriously and challenged ourselves to do EVERYTHING in the name of Jesus and to give thanks.
What if each time you look at your phone’s texts or social media, you give thanks for every single person who comes across your screen and even let them know that you thank God for them?
Your friends and acquaintances share more with you than anyone realizes, don’t they? Why not stop and pray right at the moment for the person who posted the picture from the party this weekend or shared that they are hurting?
Take the information that they share with everyone and give it and THEM to God.
We have a unique picture into the lives of our friends and family, and many of us just look and go to the next photo or tweet.
Many of them are hurting, feel alone, hopeless, or are making choices that we all know are going to hurt them.
What if, each of us committed this week to look at our social media in the name of Jesus?
What if, we each committed to pray for every single person who posts something or sends us a text?
And give thanks to God that they are in our lives.
If time allows: Invite the students to take out their phones (or share if they do not have a phone) and to prayerfully look at their social media.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
What are the challenges that youth today face with social media?
What are your biggest challenges with technology or social media?
In what ways were you challenged today to change the way that you approach your phone or social media?
How do you think ‘doing social media in the name of Jesus’ will change the way that you look at your feed this week?
Think through your feed from this week: who do you need to commit to pray for?
Close in prayer.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY
Title: “What’s Your Shamrock?”
Bible: Romans 10: 13-15 (NLT), Romans 12: 6-8 (MSG), Matthew 5: 13-16 (MSG)
Introduction
Hold up or show a picture of a shamrock. Ask students if they know what it is, and what holiday is associated with a shamrock. Once they answer St. Patrick's Day...ask them if they know why.
Give brief history of shamrock being associated with St. Patrick's Day:
St. Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland by using the shamrock to explain the Trinity...you know God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
So, you may be asking a few questions right now. What does St. Patrick and a shamrock have to do with me? Why is this person talking about it in church?
Point #1: Why did St. Patrick share Christianity with Ireland?
St. Patrick was born in Ireland, but moved away at a young age. He was told about Jesus and what he did on the cross, and he loved his home country so much, he felt compelled to go back home and tell other people about Jesus.
Can you think about someone you love dearly? Do you know if they have a relationship with Jesus? Do you know if they need to be saved from stuff like...
Depression?
Addictions...like drugs, alcohol, and lust?
Parents just split up and they feel like everything is falling apart?
You know there is someone willing to save us from this stuff right? It isn't Dr. Phil or Oprah Winfrey, it's God.
Read Romans 10: 13-15 (NLT)
13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. 14 But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? 15 And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, "How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!"
So you are probably thinking "Oh great! Now they are going to tell me that I need to walk around school and work and home holding my Bible, yelling bible verses at people, beating them in the head with my bible"!
Nope, that's not what I'm going to tell you!
Point 2: Let your life and interests tell people about Jesus
What did St. Patrick use again? A shamrock...very easy and very simple, right?
Think for a minute. What are you passionate about? What wrongs would you like to see made right in the world?
World hunger ended?
Children educated?
Elderly taken cared of, not taken advantage of?
People following Jesus?
Making sure everyone knows they are worthy and lovely and encouraged?
Read Romans 12: 6-8 (MSG)
6-8 If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
You might be saying…“it’s that simple”? Yes!
You don’t have to be a pastor to do these things (nothing against pastors we need them)!!
Take your talents, your interest and passions, take what you are good at, and use them as a way to show other people the love of Jesus!
Another question running through your mind might be “Why me”? “Aint nobody got time for that”!!
Point 3: The World needs YOU!
Wait what? Someone needs me…you must be joking?!
Read Matthew 5: 13-16 (MSG)
13 “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage. 14-16 “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting
you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine!
Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.
The world needs you!
Your talents,
What you are passionate about,
Your convictions about the wrongs in this world,
The world needs you to use all of this, and show it the love of Jesus!!
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What is your favorite holiday and why?
2. When was the last time you needed someone to save you? From a bad grade, from feeling alone, from a bully?
3. What talents, passions, or gifts do you have that could be used to tell people about Jesus…St. Patrick used the shamrock, what could you use?
4. How could you take your answer to question 3 and make a difference in your home, neighborhood, or school?
Lesson Outline
I. Introduction
- The history of St. Patrick and significance of the shamrock (use an illustration)
II. Why Did St. Patrick Share Christianity with Ireland
- He loved his home country
a. Romans 10: 13-15 (NLT)
III. Let Your Life and Interest Tell People about Jesus
- What are YOU Passionate About?
a. Romans 12: 6-8 (MSG)
IV. The World Needs YOU!
- Your talents, passions, and gifts
a. Matthew 5: 13-16 (MSG)
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON STRESS
As you know, teenagers feel stress in many areas of their lives. At home, school, baseball, dance, football, etc.
Trying to figure out what their priorities should be can be stressful, but having the wrong priorities can be even more stressful.
When students don’t have their priorities in the right order, it can lead to a very stressful life.
Thankfully, the Bible offers students a lot of advice on the topic of priorities. Because when students have the right priorities, a lot of stress can be eliminated from their lives.
Use this FREE lesson to help students minimize stress in their lives by getting their priorities in order.
Bible: Matthew 6:31-34
SUPPLIES
2 Large white t-shirts
Paint
Paintbrush
2 ropes
Tape
Before the game, tape the two ropes together, forming one long rope. Tape them tight enough that they will stay together, but not so tight that they can’t be pulled apart when tugged on.
Ten stackable items, varying in size. Example: books, plates, etc. Anything flat that can be stacked on top of something else.
A timer
**OPENING GAME: STACKABLE**
Divide the group into four teams. Lay out the stackable items in any random order, as long as the biggest item is not first and the smallest item is not last.
Tell the students that the objective of the game is to be able to stack all ten items in the order that they are in and carry them to the other side of the room. If they drop the stack, they have to start over.
Let the first team go and time them.
Once they've completed the task, rearrange the items again in any order, as long as it is not largest to smallest. Let the second team go and time how long it takes them. Repeat for the third team.
When you are laying out the items for the fourth team, lay them out from biggest to smallest, in the order they will stack the easiest. Their time will be the shortest.
**TEACH**
In the game we just played, you guys tried carrying a stack of items four different ways. The last team was able to complete the challenge in the shortest amount of time. Now, how many of you think that their success was because of the order the items were in?
The challenge worked best when the bigger things were first on the stack and the smaller things were on top, right?
Well, it's like that in life, too. It's least stressful when the most important things are first. If the less important things are first, things can get messy and unbalanced, just like they did in that game.
Not having your priorities in the right order can be really, really stressful.
If you’re confused about what your priorities should be, then you’re in luck! The Bible has a lot to say about it. Let’s take a look.
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. – Matthew 6:31-34
As humans, our most basic needs are food and water. It’s how we survive! So if we’re without them, it would definitely be cause for worry and stress, right?
This verse tells us not to worry, but it doesn’t just say not to worry about superficial stuff or things out of our control. It says not to worry about the most basic of things! And if we shouldn’t get stressed over the most basic of things in life, we certainly shouldn’t get stressed over other things, right?
This verse also lays out what our priorities should be when it tells us to seek God first, before anything else.
The words “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” can seem close to impossible. I mean, not worry about tomorrow? If we could figure out the secret to not worrying about tomorrow, we’d never be stressed! How are we supposed to do that?
It’s simple, really. If we really do seek God and His kingdom first, above all else, then we won’t have to worry about tomorrow. Why? Because when you seek God and His
will first, you’re acknowledging that He is in control, so there’s no need to worry about tomorrow or the day after that or the week after that.
This is a great example of how having your priorities in order can greatly decrease the stress in your life - seeking God above anything else leads to not worrying. Can you imagine how much less stressful life would be if you didn’t worry? It would be amazing!
Let’s look at another way the Bible talks about what your priorities should be.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will. – Romans 12:2
This world that we live in isn’t all good. And the pattern of this world - the “normal” way of doing things - is a sinful one. One that we don’t need to conform to.
See, it’s not normal to make it a priority to not conform to the world around you. But being a Christian isn’t about being normal; it’s about following Christ!
Conforming to the world around you and caving into a lifestyle of sin may be tempting, and may even seem fun at times but trust me, it’s not worth it. Nothing leads to stress faster than knowing you’re living a sinful life and being worried about the wrong things you’re doing.
Instead, you should make it a priority to not conform to the lifestyle of this world. See, you may think that’s not really necessary. Sure, you’ll avoid doing the “really bad” stuff, but you don’t need to actually spend time and energy focusing on not conforming to the world around you, right?
Let me show you what that’s like. I need a volunteer to help me out.
Give the volunteer the white shirt to put on over their clothes, and you put one over your clothes, too. Get out the paint and paintbrush.
Okay, we’re going to pretend that this paint represents things in a sinful lifestyle that I’m living. Begin to paint on your own shirt.
Now, you’re a Christian, but you don’t think it’s really important to focus on not conforming to this type of lifestyle. After all, you love Jesus, and you actually know this stuff is wrong, so as long as you don’t do any of it, you’ll be fine, right?
While you’re talking, start to stand closer to the student. Swing your arms around, bump into them, etc.
But here’s the thing—the more you’re around me, the more you’re around my lifestyle and actions, the good and the bad.
Make sure you’ve touched the student’s shirt enough the some of the paint has gotten on them.
Regardless of what you’re actually participating in, it’s all around you, and it’s going to influence you. Because what’s on your shirt right now? Paint!
I don’t understand! How did it get there? You didn’t put it there! You didn’t even hold a paintbrush!
But you also didn’t make a decision to be sure to keep paint off your shirt.
Had you made the decision that you weren’t going to get any paint on you, you could have done that! We still could have hung out and talked, but you could have stood a little further away from me. You could have been more aware, and when I got too close to you with the paint, took a step back.
It’s the same way with conforming to the patterns of this world. You cannot escape sin – it’s all around you. But you can make the decision not to conform to it. You can always be thinking about the way you should live, making sure to not let certain things become a part of your life.
If anyone else walked in right now and we asked them who they thought had been painting, they would think we had both been painting. They wouldn’t be able to tell that you hadn’t touched any paint or even held a paintbrush.
You aren’t meant to conform to the patterns of this world. You are meant to be set apart. When you think of having your priorities straight and how that can cause stress, this may not be something you think about. You probably think of good priorities as being something more along the lines of making sure your homework is done before you hang out with your friends. But let me explain this to you.
I need two volunteers.
Hand each volunteer one end of the rope that’s been taped together in the middle. Have them stand close enough to each other that there is a lot of slack in the rope.
There’s no doubt about it; being a Christian is difficult. We’re supposed to be in this world but not of it. We’re not supposed to conform to the patterns of this world, yet we still have to live here.
That’s why having clear priorities is so important. Because when you don’t – when you think that you can just coast along and everything will be fine – this is what happens.
Ask the students to both take a step back, lessening the slack of the rope, but not pulling it tight yet.
On one hand, (point to one end of the rope) you know what’s right and wrong. You know what you should and shouldn’t do. And hey, maybe you even make sure you don’t do the things you know are wrong.
But on the other hand (point to the other end of the rope) you haven’t exactly made it a priority to not conform to the world around you.
Have students step back until there is no slack in the rope at all.
Without clear priorities, you’re pulled each way. If you don’t decide to make sure certain things don’t influence you, then they’re going to influence you.
Being pulled in two different directions? That’s extremely stressful.
Have the students pull on their ends of the rope until the rope snaps in the middle.
How can you expect to not be stressed when you’re being pulled two different directions? Eventually, you snap.
Can you see how having the right priorities is essential to fighting stress?
Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” - Matthew 22:37-39
Lastly, let’s talk about the most important priority of all.
While there are a lot of things in life that will probably always be a little unclear, this is not one of them. In this verse, Jesus laid out exactly what our main priority should be. He even helped by adding what the second one should be!
Your number one priority in life should be to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And once you get that in place, your number two priority should be to love others.
Your heart, soul, and mind...that’s all of you! It’s everything you have! Your very top priority should be to love God with everything you have.
Let me just tell you this...if you can truly make this your top priority, the rest of your priorities will fall into place, and your life will have much less stress.
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
When you think about the stress in your life, how much of it do you think comes from not having the right priorities in the right order?
Is worry something that causes a lot of stress in your life?
Do you think that seeking God first, above everything else, would decrease stress?
What do you think it means to not conform to the patterns of this world?
When you think about your priorities, is not conforming to the world one of them? Do you think it should be?
Do you agree that if you don’t make clear decisions about the lifestyle you have that you will be pulled in different directions and that it will cause a lot of stress?
Do you think it’s helpful that Jesus laid out exactly what your number one priority should be?
Is loving God with everything you have your number one priority right now? If not, is that something that you want to change
How do you think that loving God above all would make you less stressed?
**CLOSE**
Today, we covered a topic that you maybe hadn’t thought of before. I mean, sure, you know that not having your priorities straight can lead to stress. But maybe you were
thinking of responsibilities like homework and chores as priorities, not the things we discussed in this lesson.
I hope that now you see how important it is to consider these things.
Like I said, if you make loving God with everything you have your top priority, I guarantee the amount of stress you have in your life will go down. Why? Well, for starters, it helps you make a lot of decisions without even thinking about it.
Because if you love God with everything you have, you’re going to want to follow His word the best that you can.
So those verses that we talked about - about not worrying, about seeking God first, and about not conforming to the patterns of this world - well, those are no-brainers! Because you want to do everything you can for the one you love more than anything else, right?
If you have a lot of stress in your life, look at your priorities and ask yourself these questions
Am I loving God with everything that I have?
Am I loving those around me?
Am I purposefully not conforming to the world around me?
Am I worrying about what may happen instead of trusting in God to take care of me?
A lot of the unnecessary stress in your life could be taken away by dealing with those four questions.
Jesus loves you guys so much, and He doesn’t want you to live a life full of stress. He loves you so much that He actually told you exactly what your priorities should be in the Bible. Why not try listening to them?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON TEMPTATION
Bible: 1 Corinthians 10:12-13
Bottom Line: Temptation happens, but with God, you can remain faithful.
SUPPLIES
‘AWESOME’ PRIZES such as a dollar bill, gift card for $5, candy: enough for each youth to choose a prize. Also, include some funny and weird prizes!
The ‘Awesome prize’ box
Bell or buzzer
Trivia questions (app such as Trivia Crack works)
Index cards for each youth
Pens
OPENING GAME: Temptation Game Show
There was a game show on TV in 2007 called “Temptation” and this game is our version.
Create a fun ‘game show’ set with a table at the front of the room with 2 buzzers or bells at each end.
Leader stands in the middle as the ‘announcer’.
Divide the students into two teams.
Now using your best ‘announcer’ voice explain:
Today we are going to play a game called “Temptation”, and for each round, send one member from your team to the table to answer a question.
The first person to ring the bell (or buzzer) gets to answer the question.
If they guess wrong, the other team can answer the question.
When you guess the question correctly, here is where this game gets tricky: the winner each battle can choose between a point for their team or the ‘awesome prize’ which they will draw from the ‘Awesome prize box’.
*Explain that in this ‘Awesome prize box’ are AWESOME PRIZES!!! (include maybe a dollar bill, gift card, candy, etc.).*
**TEACH - YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON TEMPTATION**
Which prize was the most tempting for you to choose in this game?
What did you risk if you were to choose a prize over the points for your team?
This was just a game, but let’s be honest, in real life the stakes can be much higher can’t they?
It is very tempting to think that your choices don’t matter, isn’t it?
I wish that I could tell you that choices in your life will never get more difficult than the choices between earning your team a point or choosing an ‘AWESOME PRIZE’ from our game today, but you would all know that’s a lie, right?
Life is filled with choices, and the choices that you make can change your life and the lives of those around you.
Just think about someone you’ve seen on the news who seemed to have it all in life and then some type of scandal comes out….
An amazing person who seemed to have it all makes a choice that affects the rest of their life.
Can you think of a famous person who made a choice that seemed to surprise everyone and yet affected their life in a really negative way?
If there is a story in the news of a famous person who has been tempted, share with the group or ask for examples of famous people who have been tempted.
We might look at these examples and think “Why did they do that?”, but honestly we have ALL done things that we regret, and sometimes it is really easy to look at someone else’s mistakes and think “Oh, that all never happen to me” or “I would never do that”.
But ask yourself, do you really think that these people said “Hey, I really want to do something illegal, or hurt my family, or lie and get caught”?
No!
They probably started out thinking exactly what you are thinking…
Ask yourself if you’ve ever thought any of these common thoughts that often lead us right into temptation:
That would never happen to me.
Just one lie won’t matter that much.
No one else will know.
Everyone else is doing it.
You get the point, right?
See, every single one of us are very, very close to the line of temptation.
Read 1 Corinthians 10:12-13
Did you hear the first part of this scripture about temptation?
It’s basically saying: “Hey, you over there who thinks that you are safe from temptation. Yeah, You! Watch out, because you are closer than you think.”
Ok, so let’s be honest, here: Being a teenager can be super challenging, and the temptations that you each face or will face can be intense.
We are going to get in groups and I want you your group to make a very short skit of common temptations that teenagers face.
You can choose a situation, or if you need help, I have some suggestions.
I will give you 10 minutes to come up with your skit that you will then share with the rest of the group.
Suggestions for skits as needed:
Friends encouraging you lie to your parents about where you will be tonight.
Cheating on a test or paper.
Joining in on teasing someone at school.
Stealing something ‘small’ at a store.
Lying to an adult or teacher.
Give each group a chance to share their skit.
Nobody said that being a teenager would be easy, and you probably don’t want to hear this, but, the struggles get even more difficult as you get older.
Can you think of other temptations that you’ve seen others face?
Write these examples on the board.
The struggle is real, isn’t it?
Add other temptations if not mentioned such as: partying, trying to fit it, bullying others, physical romantic relationships, sex, drugs, etc. as you think appropriate for your group.
Here’s what we have to remember:
God wants to help you fight temptation.
He will provide a way out.
God wants to help you fight temptation.
Now, some people read the scripture that God will never let them be tempted beyond what they can bear and think it is a ‘Free Pass’.
That doesn’t mean that they can walk right up ‘to the line’ and God won’t let them pass.
That’s not what this scripture is saying, is it?
God gives us reminders of how we should live.
WE know that we shouldn’t lie or steal or kill, right?
God gives us those reminders of how to live to help us to fight temptation before it strikes because he knows TEMPTATION WILL STRIKE US ALL.
But here is the tricky part: God knows when we are trying to push those lines or those rules.
You can’t fool God.
Share a time in which you were tempted to do something you know that you shouldn’t and how you could look back and see the ways that God offered you an ‘out’ that you didn’t take.
God will offer you a way out, but often it starts at the very beginning.
Those small decisions or the tiny lies.
But it is THOSE moments where God wants to help you.
THOSE are the ‘get out of it’ moments that He is giving to you before that snowball starts down the hill.
We’ve all known people who do one small thing that then leads to another small thing, and another until the problem gets to be really big.
Nobody sets out to get into trouble or to be addicted to alcohol, drugs, or pornography.
No….it begins when you click on that one picture on the internet or take that one drink.
Any addict will tell you that it started with just one.
But God wants to offer you a way out before that snowball starts, and it really does require you to be honest with yourself and honest with God.
It will require you to make some tough choices, and it might mean that you spend some time NOT following the crowd.
But ask yourself this: think about that person you know that has major problems in their life….where did those problems start?
Trace it back to that one decision.
Because you WILL be faced with those same decisions and God is offering you a way out before disaster hits.
He WILL offer you a way out, but He doesn’t promise that the way out will be easy or popular.
NO, usually that way out means that you are the lone person making that decision or not going to that party or not hanging with those friends.
You might be standing alone…but remember this: when you make those choices you are not alone because God stands with you.
And maybe you are sitting here tonight knowing that you’ve already started making those decisions….you’ve giving into temptation.
Maybe tonight’s lesson is God offering you the way out.
Confess to him that you are being tempted or that you’ve made those decisions, and stop right now.
If you need help, ask Him for help.
If you feel weak, cry out to Him.
Because God wants to give you the strength, and it is no accident that you are here tonight.
Close in prayer.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Share about a time when you were tempted when you were a child?
What are other ways that teenagers are tempted?
How are you being tempted?
How does it make you feel to know that God is with you in the temptations that you face?
Pray for one another and the temptations that each of you face.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON THANKFULNESS
Bible: Colossians 2:6-7; Ephesians 5:20; 1 Chronicles 16:34
Description: God has blessed us with so much, but sometimes, we take that for granted and forget to be thankful. We should take the time to be thankful for all the things in our life, so that we can live our lives in Him, overflowing with thankfulness.
SUPPLIES
Water balloons
Two buckets
A tarp or towels (If you’re going to play the game inside)
A roll of paper (for the students to write on)
Pens or markers
OPENING GAME: Make it Overflow
This game can be played outside in order to minimize the mess. If you choose to play it inside, lay down a tarp or some towels before beginning.
Split the group into two teams and have them line up. On the opposite side of the room, put a bucket for each team.
On the side of the room where the teams are lined up, put all the water balloons.
Explain that the object of this game is to be the first team to get their bucket to overflow with water.
One at a time, students from each team must get a water balloon to their bucket without using their hands. They then have to pop it and get the water in the bucket, still without the use of their hands.
The first team to get their bucket to overflow wins!
Teach - Thankfulness
How often do you complain? No, really. Think about it. How often do you complain about something, big or small?
Sadly, you probably can’t even think of a real answer, because we tend to complain so much that we don’t even know we’re doing it.
How often do you say the things you’re thankful for?
Probably not nearly as much as you complain, right? Because for some reason, it just seems easier to complain than to be thankful.
Do you feel happier when you’re complaining or when you’re being thankful?
Personally, I’m much happier when I’m living a thankful life. It’s just easier to be happy when you’re thankful!
How can you *not* be thankful when you think of all that God has done for you?
“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” – Colossians 2:6-7
Do you want something to be thankful for? How about the fact that you’ve received Jesus? That’s worth being thankful for, right?
This verse is telling us how we should live. It says we should live our lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in faith, and **overflowing with thankfulness**.
Isn’t that a cool thing to think of? Overflowing with thankfulness. Being so full of thankfulness that you just can’t keep it to yourself, and it just bubbles out of you. Just like in the game we played, where you filled up the bucket again and again, until eventually it overflowed!
I would say that most of the time, you’re overflowing with something. Even if you don’t realize it and even if it’s not on purpose.
Sometimes, during the school year, you guys come in here and you’re overflowing with stress. Stress about homework, assignments, projects, and studying. It’s all you can think about, and you can’t help but overflow with it.
Sometimes, you’re overflowing with happiness. You’ve had a great day hanging out with your friends, you guys have plans for tomorrow, and you’re having so much fun that you’re just overflowing with happiness.
I’ve also seen people overflow with jealousy, wanting what someone else has so badly that they just can’t help the emotion from flooding out of them. I’ve seen people overflow with compassion, so moved by someone else’s situation that the desire to help just overflowed.
Whatever you’re feeling the most, or thinking about the most, that’s what you’re going to be overflowing with.
So how do you overflow with thankfulness?
Well, you first have to try.
You have to make a decision to start being thankful more than you are now. Make an effort to be thankful on purpose. Don’t just wait for something to come along that makes you feel thankful, but instead, actively look at all of the things in your life that you’re thankful for.
Another way to overflow with thankfulness is to be thankful for the big things and for the little things.
Don’t just be thankful for the big things that happen, like getting an A in your toughest class, or getting exactly what you wanted for your birthday. Be thankful for the small things too, like when your mom makes you breakfast, or when the bus is on time.
You don’t only complain in the big things, do you? Of course you don’t. We complain about pretty much everything, big or small.
If you’re wearing shoes that are uncomfortable, what do you do? Well, you probably complain about them. About how they are pinching your feet, about how your feet hurt, and about how you’re so uncomfortable.
When was the last time that you were thankful because your shoes were comfortable?
Do you see where I’m going with this? If it’s big enough to complain about, then it’s certainly big enough to be thankful about. So be thankful! For comfortable shoes, for good friends, for the piece of pizza you got that had the perfect ratio of cheese and sauce…be thankful for it all!
Another thing that is sure to make you overflow with thankfulness is to make being thankful a part of your prayer life.
Sure, most of us would say that we’re very thankful to God and all He’s done for us. We would probably all say that we’re extremely thankful for the things God has blessed us with. But when you pray, is it usually to say thank you, or is it to ask for something?
“…always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” – Ephesians 5:20
When was the last time you just said thank you to God?
This verse says we should be *always* giving thanks to God for *everything*. It’s easy to read a verse like that and kind of skip over its actual meaning. Because seriously—give thanks for everything? Is that even possible?
I need a couple of volunteers to come up here.
Okay, I want you guys to start at the beginning of your day today, and tell me some things that happened that you should be giving thanks to God for.
*Let each student say just a couple of things, or as many as they want—it’s up to you and how long you have.*
Okay, great. Those are some awesome things, and you’re right, you should definitely give thanks to God for those.
But, I think you missed a few things.
First of all, you woke up today. That’s something to be thankful for all on its own. You woke up, you were breathing, and you were physically able to get out of bed. Don’t you think God deserves some thankfulness for that?
Also, the sun was rising when you got up. A beautiful sunrise brought the good news that, surprise; you’re not going to freeze to death today!
Then, you got to go to a bathroom with a working shower, toilet, and sink. You got to brush your teeth with running water without being afraid about whether or not the water was going to give you any diseases. Most of the world can’t say the same, so that’s something worth being thankful for!
And let’s not forget that when you woke up, you woke up into a promise of eternal life, not death. You woke up forgiven, because Jesus has died for your sins.
All of these things you have to be thankful for in your day, and your day hasn’t even really started yet!
But, did you thank God for all of those things this morning? Probably not. We become so used to them that we start to take them for granted, and we forget to be thankful for them.
If you want to overflow with thankfulness, start telling God thank you every single time you encounter something that He’s blessed you with. You won’t stop saying thank you all day!
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” - 1 Chronicles 16:34
When things get tough in our lives, it can become a little hard to be thankful. We tend to focus on the bad stuff instead of the good stuff, complaining instead of saying thank you. And sometimes, things are just going to be hard. Things in life are going to get pretty bad every now and then, but that doesn’t mean the thankfulness should stop. Even if you’re going through a hard time where it’s hard to think of things to be thankful for, you have this. The Lord is good, and His love for you endures forever.
No matter what else goes wrong in your day, or week, or month, The Lord is good. No matter how many times you mess up, make mistakes, and fail, His love for you endures forever. And that’s worth thanking Him for.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Do you think there are things in your life that you forget to say thank you for? Like what?
Is saying thank you to Jesus something you need to do more often?
What do you think you overflow with most often? Is it thankfulness or something else?
Do you think that taking the time to think about all God has blessed you with will cause you to overflow with thankfulness?
Do you spend more time complaining than you do being thankful? Is that something you want to change?
Do you think it’s possible to give God thanks for everything?
What are some small things you’re going to work on being thankful for this week?
Do you agree that you’re happier when you’re thankful than you are when you’re complaining?
How do you feel when you do something really nice for someone and they don’t say thank you? Do you think Jesus ever feels that way?
We have eternal life through Jesus. Is that something you think about every day? If not, do you think it’s something that you should think about every day?
**Wrap-Up**
At the beginning of the night, overflowing with thankfulness for everything in our life seemed like it may be difficult to do.
But after remembering all that God has done for us and all that we have to be thankful for, it doesn’t seem hard at all.
It’s so important to be thankful, and we have so much to be thankful for.
But if you’re used to complaining all the time and not really used to being thankful, it’s going to take a little bit of effort.
I thought we could get started on that tonight, all together.
*Roll out paper and pass out pens or markers.*
On this, I want everyone to write a couple of things they’re thankful for.
Whether they’re big things or small things, it doesn’t matter.
Just write some things on here that are worth being thankful for.
Allow some time for students to do this.
I’m going to hang this banner (in my office, in this room, etc…wherever you can).
And then next week, we’re all going to write something else we’re thankful for, until it’s completely full of thankfulness.
So if you find yourself having a hard time being thankful this week, I understand. It’s a new thing and can be difficult.
But if nothing else, I want you to come back with three more things to write on this banner.
So at least three times this week, stop and be thankful for something.
We all have so much to be thankful for because of Jesus.
And I know that if we make an effort, and really start thinking about all He has done for us, it won’t be long at all until we’re overflowing with thankfulness.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON - THANKSGIVING
Bible Passage: Luke 17:11-19
Bottom Line: Because of all that God has done for us, we should respond with an attitude of gratitude.
OPENING GAME – TEXT IT BATTLE
Supplies: One mobile phone per small group.
The game leader will also need a mobile phone with texting capabilities.
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Break up into small groups.
Each group sits in a circle.
On GO, one student at a time types one they’re grateful for in text (don’t yet send it) and then passes the phone to the next player.
No duplicates within the group.
Once every player in each group is done, send the message to the game leader.
The group that gets their text through to the game leader first wins the round.
The winning team gets 100 points.
Play a few rounds.
Each round, individual players have to text something different.
No repeats.
The team with the most points at the end wins.
The point: What a great way to create an attitude of gratitude. Now that we’re focused on the things we’re thankful for, let’s get started!
TEACH – ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE
Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and we’ll soon be gathering together with family and friends to celebrate the holiday.
When you think of Thanksgiving, what comes to mind?
(Take responses that might include football, turkey, grandparents, family, etc.)
Thanksgiving is about all of those things, but the main purpose of Thanksgiving is to pause from our busy lives to give thanks back to God for who He is and what He has done for us.
Gratitude means expressing thanks for someone or something.
So, what do you think it means to live with an “attitude of gratitude”?
(Allow students to respond)
Living with an attitude of gratitude means that you live in a way that shows thankfulness for everything – both in the good and bad circumstances in life we face.
Open your Bibles to Luke 17.
If we all take the time to think about it, we have lots of things for which we should be thankful.
The problem is that we take these things for granted.
Instead of living with an attitude of gratitude, we go on with our day and forget to give thanks for these blessings.
This is what happens in the Bible story we’re reading today.
Jesus was traveling on his way to Jerusalem when he came across a group of lepers.
Now, leprosy is tough stuff. It is a skin disease that causes the person to have sores all over their body.
The disease would spread and worsen until eventually the person would be crippled by the pain and irritation.
It was a nasty disease.
Those who had leprosy were outcasts.
They were pushed out of their homes, their cities, and they were forced to live with other lepers away from normal life.
Needless to say, being a leper meant a miserable life.
When Jesus came passing by, these lepers knew that He would possibly heal them.
Let’s read how the story unfolds.
**Read Luke 17:11-14**
What did the lepers want Jesus to do? (Have mercy)
What do you think they meant by “mercy?”
These ten lepers wanted Jesus to heal them from this disease.
Can you imagine the sight of them running into town with no more leprosy and being reunited with their friends and family that they haven’t seen in years?
Jesus had just spoken the words and they were healed, but let’s take a look at how they responded to what Jesus had done.
**Read Luke 17:15-19**
Only one out of ten came back to thank Jesus.
How do you think Jesus felt when He saw that only one had returned?
Jesus had healed them of a horrible disease, he made a way for them to return to their homes and live a normal life, and yet only one of the ten took the time to say “thank you.”
By asking where the other nine were, Jesus shows that he is shocked and disappointed by their reaction.
**Our bottom line for today is:** Because of all that God has done for us, we should respond with an attitude of gratitude.
The one that returned is a great example of living with an “attitude of gratitude.” When he realized what Jesus had done for him, he stopped everything that he was doing and he returned to give thanks to Jesus. He fell at Jesus’ feet and, “with a loud voice,” began to express his thankfulness through praise.
He was thankful because God had changed his life.
God has done so much for us. He loves us, provides for us, protects us, and guides us. And most importantly, He sent His son to die on the cross for us.
We know that God has done these things, but we often forget to express our thanks. We need to remember that God deserves our gratitude.
Because of all that God has done for us, we should respond with an attitude of gratitude.
Let’s say that together: **Because of all that God has done for us, we should respond with an attitude of gratitude**
This means that we need to live in a way that shows thankfulness to God for all that he has done. We should take time in our day to thank Him when he protects us, guides us, or simply reminds us of His love.
We can show our thankfulness when we pause before lunch to thank God for providing food, or when we pause after a test to thank God for giving us wisdom.
When you realize what God is doing, take a moment to say ‘thank you’ to Him.
End Lesson
[Break up into small groups for discussion]
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
As a small group, discuss the lesson using the following questions:
Do you think the other 9 lepers were thankful for Jesus’ healing? If so, why do you think they did not return to thank Him?
How hard do you think it was for the one man to leave the others and be different (return to Jesus)?
How do you think the others reacted to his actions?
Who do you identify with most in this story: the one man who returned or the nine who did not? Explain.
What excuses do people usually use for not being more thankful or saying ‘thank you’ more often?
What is one thing that God has recently done in your life that you could thank Him for today?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON TRUST
Bible: Proverbs 3:5-6
Bottom Line: Following God is more about trust than understanding.
OPENING GAME: 3 BLIND MICE
SUPPLIES
- 3 blindfolds
- Chairs
- Masking or gaff tape
HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
Set up 3 "paths" that each "mouse" will be walking down.
You can use masking or gaff tape on the ground or even set up chairs as barriers.
The length of the path depends on how long you want this race to go.
The complexity of the path will depend on the difficulty you want.
For example, need a quick game or have a small space?
Make a short path that is straight or relatively straight.
Need a game that takes some time or is more challenging?
Then create a longer path with some curves or even sharp turns.
Divide your group of students into three teams.
Pick one person from each team who will be the mice.
Give them each a blindfold.
Say: On "Go!", each of you will put on your blindfold and try to be the first one to make your way through your path to the end.
However, nothing in life is that simple.
So we have a few surprises.
First, before you can start down the path, you have to spin around in circles five times.
Second, you must choose one of the following, but once you choose, you can not change your choice.
Here are your choices: 1) do the race on your own; 2) have a fellow student be your guide; or 3) have a leader be your guide.
Third, and finally, because you are mice, you have to stay on the path.
If you cross the line or touch a chair, it's like setting off a mouse trap.
You get two close calls.
The third time it happens, you are caught and out of the game.
*Have "mice" pick their choice, get on the starting line, put on the blindfold, and then spin them around.*
*If any "mouse" crosses a line/hits a chair, allow them two warnings.*
*The third time they are out.*
*If they have chosen a guide, the person can talk to them but can not touch them.*
Ready? Set? Go!
*It's okay if no one wins.*
*That will add to the teachability.*
And if you get done sooner than expected, simply run another time with three different people.
**INTRODUCTION**
We've started a new calendar year.
That's an exciting thing for adults.
They have parties.
Many make resolutions or goals.
Some even keep them!
*If you have a good story about a new year’s resolution you kept or epically failed, share it here.*
But, for you as students, this is more like what you experience in the fall when school starts.
You're in a new calendar year, but right now, you're still in the middle of your school year.
**COMMON GROUND**
However, both adults and students need help when it comes to following Jesus.
Today, we’re going to find some advice on that adventure from a little book in the Old Testament called "Proverbs."
**BIBLE TEACHING**
This is a strange little book.
You don't read it like a normal book.
It's not a story.
It's a collection of wise sayings, similar to what you might find in a fortune cookie at a Chinese Restaurant, but these were inspired by God.
And, if you're hoping to read your Bible more this year, this is a great book to try for a one-month challenge.
It has 31 chapters.
So, you can read one chapter a day and be done in a month!
The verses we'll be reading today come from near the beginning in chapter 3.
Let's read these verses and see what they have to do with following Jesus and that strange game we just played.
**Read Proverbs 3:5-6. (New Living Translation)**
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take."
You don't have to be a genius to understand these verses.
But, it does take some work to obey them.
It starts off by saying to trust God "with all your heart."
That means you really trust God.
This idea expands in "do not depend on your own understanding."
Well, this is something you can probably relate to.
How many of you have felt confused about something, at some point, since school started?
It could have been a lesson from a teacher.
It might have been a book you read.
It could have simply been trying to understand a story your friend was sharing.
Sometimes, I get confused trying to figure out what students are saying when they tell me about their day!
There are a bunch of slang terms that you use without thinking that I have to have translated.
In the third part, it says to "seek His will."
This means that we learn all we can about what God wants us to do and try to do that.
It's much easier to describe than to do.
But that's why we're here studying the Bible and helping each other live it out.
Finally, this ends with God showing us which path to take.
**APPLICATION**
We need to start by understanding that for all of us, **following Jesus is more about trust than understanding**.
In the "3 Blind Mice" race, each "mouse" was able to see the path before the race started.
But once they put the blindfold on, were spun around, and started walking, it was a little more confusing.
That's similar to how you might feel when you come to church and learn about how to live like Jesus from the Bible.
Then you go into your everyday life with family, neighbors and school, trying to figure out how to put all this into practice there.
This is why we are instructed not to depend on our own understanding.
Sometimes, it's just not going to make sense.
We have to accept that.
We don't have to like it.
But we have to understand that we can't always understand everything, especially when it comes to following Jesus.
The "seek His will" part is also easy to understand but takes discipline to do.
We need to read and study our Bibles.
We need to be connected to church and a small group of people who can help us by challenging us and holding us accountable.
And now the part we're waiting for: "He will show you which path to take."
So, why doesn't God answer my prayers specifically?
Why are there so many things that I'm confused about that God doesn't seem to be giving me clear answers?
Well, remember: Following Jesus is more about trust than understanding.
The "path" is a symbol for how we live our lives.
Our way of living is supposed to look like Jesus.
The way he thought, spoke and acted is our example.
That's the path to take.
Those principles apply in our families, communities, schools, athletic practices and competitions, lunchrooms, hallways, bus rides and more.
But when you think about it, a lot of the stuff we learn by reading about Jesus is confusing.
He cared about people that no one else cared about.
Sometimes when people asked him questions, he answered with questions or a story.
He said to love our enemies.
He said to pray for people who persecute us.
He said we're supposed to be like salt and light.
And he said if we want to be first we have to be last.
But once again: Following Jesus is more about trust than understanding.
We have to trust that God's instructions in the Bible and the way Jesus lived out his obedience to God is the best way, even if it doesn't always seem like that to us at the time.
We have to trust that God will help us when obeying and following is hard.
And we have to trust that God cares about us more than we can possibly imagine.
**INSPIRATION/CHALLENGE**
What would our homes, neighborhoods, schools, church and community look like if those of us in this room started taking these two little verses in Proverbs seriously?
Imagine students who say "yes" to following Jesus, even when they don't necessarily know where that will lead.
Imagine students reading their Bibles like it provided the most important information for their lives! (which it does if you want to know more about the Jesus we're following)
Imagine adults, coaches, parents and teachers who receive respect from students.
Imagine students who are usually lonely or bullied who now find people caring for them and loving them.
And let's move from just imagining it to making it happen.
How do you do that?
The same way you win the "3 Blind Mice" race: One step at a time.
Let's move into our small groups and help you figure out what your first step is this week.
SMALL GROUPS
The goal here is to help students understand . . . and put that into action this year and this week.
JUST FOR FUN (5 minutes)
These students need a little fun to help them relax and transition into this small group time.
Don’t skip over this.
It is an intentional part of building relationships and setting up your group to have a great discussion time!
Probably all of us have woken up in the middle of the night and tripped on something or walked into something.
Anyone have an unusually funny story of a time you tried walking through the house when you weren't really awake or just couldn't see because of the dark?
Or has anyone spent the night at a friend's house or at a hotel and woke up, not realizing where you were and have a hard time finding the bathroom or something similar?
(When you have spent about 5 minutes on this section, transition into the discussion questions.)
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
The goal is to guide the students as they talk, to have a discussion.
Get them to do most of the talking.
Make sure you watch the clock and save 5 minutes at the end for the closing, even if that means you skip some questions and don’t discuss them all.
Is it easy or hard for you to trust God?
What does it look like for you to trust God in your everyday life? How do you do that?
What are some things that you just don't understand about God or following Jesus?
How is trying to follow Jesus without any help as frustrating as going through the "3 Blind Mice" race without any help?
How can other students your age help you follow Jesus? How can you help them?
How can older believers, like high schoolers, college students and adults help you in a different way with following Jesus than your peers? What about older adults like grandparents?
We could easily get overwhelmed with all the instructions that Jesus has for us, especially those that are confusing.
So let's get real basic.
Which one of these will you work on this week as your step in following the path God is showing you?
Reading the Bible
Studying the Bible
Acting on something you learned from the Bible recently
Allowing us to hold you accountable
CLOSING CHALLENGE
Following Jesus is more about trust than understanding.
If you trust God, then take that first step this week in going down the path where God is leading you.
When that time is up, close your group in prayer - or even better, ask one of the students to close in prayer.
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON UNITY
Unity.
There is something really beautiful about finding unity in a group, especially in a youth ministry.
Yet, probably all of us have seen the exact opposite of unity happen in our youth ministries at one time or another.
It is painful and it is debilitating.
This week’s lesson will help your group dive into what it means to be united in Christ…to be “one”.
Spend time praying for the specific people in your group.
That hurts and differences could be put aside.
That Christ would truly make all of you one in His love.
Bible: Galatians 3: 26-28
Bottom Line: Being one in Christ requires love and forgiveness.
SUPPLIES
Puzzle (with enough pieces for each youth to take a piece with them)
Sharpies
OPENING GAME—Pieced
Prior to the lesson, hide pieces of a puzzle around the building.
Make sure to hide these pieces in very difficult places that would require the youth to work together to find.
Today’s game is a challenge.
There are pieces of a puzzle hidden throughout _______. (Share the area where the pieces are hidden.)
You could try to find pieces all on your own, but I will save you the trouble by saying that you will need to find these pieces as a team.
There are ___ pieces and the game is only over when all of those pieces are found.
When all of the pieces are found, reflect with the group on these questions:
Which pieces did you need someone else to help you find them?
Do you prefer to do things by yourself or with others help? Why?
What are the challenges in doing things together?
TEACH
Today, we are going to start this time by taking a photo of our group…including everyone.
But, here is the challenge: We will take this photo as a selfie with my camera.
So, we have to figure out how to get everyone in the picture!
And I cannot help you…I am only here to take the photo!
But I have to see every single one of you in the picture!
Observe how the youth work together to take the photo and include everyone, and make sure to not say anything or help with ideas.
Ask the group to reflect on taking the photo:
How did they manage to get everyone in the photo?
What were the challenges?
It might have been simpler to take this photo without everyone in the frame, but it wouldn’t be “us”.
Can you think of a time when you were left out of a group?
How did it feel to be left out?
Now, has there been a time when you left someone else out of a group?
Why did you make the decision to leave someone out?
What do you think is a key to finding unity in a group?
Is it simpler to choose a few to be in the group?
Sure.
But in the end, the whole suffers, right?
Read Galatians 3: 26-28
We might not be able to identify with being Gentile or Jew (and Gentile basically meant anyone who wasn’t a Jew).
But, we can get a better sense of what this scripture is talking about by saying “slave or free”.
What would be the main differences in being a slave and being free?
Imagine what it would be like to not be free.
You are told what to do… What to eat…
And your decisions are not your own.
It was a way to divide people: Jew or Gentile. Slave or free.
What are some ways that we divide people today?
Give the youth a chance to share ideas and be ready to give other ideas of differences that they use to divide themselves.
Write their examples on the board.
If they need prompts, include difference such as politics, wealth, age, etc.
Even in this group, we have differences.
We won’t go into what they are, but we all know that they are present, right?
Even watching the news with the election, we seem to spend a lot of time looking at our differences, don’t you think?
So, ask yourself this question: Do differences bring us closer together or farther apart?
As Christians, we are supposed to be “One”.
What do you think it could look like if we really did live as if we were ONE….
What would have to change for us?
In the world….in our country….in this group?
Give the group time to share their thoughts and ideas on each of these distinctions.
Being one in Christ requires a couple of things from us, though.
Love - we genuinely need to learn to love one another. Warts and all!
Does it mean that we always agree?
No, but what it does mean is that we give each other the benefit of the doubt.
We take the time to try to understand one another.
**Forgiveness**
Being one in Christ means that we forgive each other.
Doing life together means that unfortunately, we will hurt each other.
In order to move forward, we must forgive one another because we will probably need others to forgive us one day as well!
And we ALL need the forgiveness of God.
Can you think of any other things that being ‘one’ requires of us?
Write the ideas on the board as youth share.
Now take a minute to look at these words, and honestly ask yourself which of these things you need to work on to truly find unity in Christ.
Each person should get a piece of the puzzle that we used for the game and write that word on the piece to keep with you to remind you of what you need to work on to find Unity.
And each and every one of us bring something different to the whole…. the puzzle just isn’t complete without every single piece.
There will be days that you might feel like you aren’t important, and on those days, look at this puzzle piece to remember that the puzzle just isn’t complete without you.
We are one in Christ.
And the things that divide us, simply do not matter as much as the fact that Christ makes us one.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Which differences do you think are the most difficult for Christians to overcome?
Which differences do you struggle with?
What word did you write on your puzzle piece and why?
What do you think it would look like if we were truly one in Christ? What needs to happen for that to occur?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON VALENTINE’S DAY
Title: "What is Love?"
Bible Verse: John 3:16 (MSG)
Introduction: (Nice touch would be to play the song "What is Love" by Haddaway while the speaker is approaching to talk to the audience)
Who here loves Valentine’s Day?
Why? (take a few answers from the audience)
So, the gifts, the candy, the fact that someone you love is expressing their love for you!
Great answers.
For one day love is expressed…
It's the focus…
It's on display!
Anyone know the history of Valentine’s Day? (take a few answers from the audience).
Back in 496…that's the year 496…not an area code…St. Valentine was martyred for marrying persecuted Christians.
There is also another story that says he prayed for the daughter of his jailor and she was healed.
Another story says right before he was executed, he wrote a letter to the girl that was healed and signed it "My Valentine".
So why does this matter?
Because we can see parallels from what St. Valentine did, to what God did for us.
So to answer the question…what is love? It's sacrifice!
How is the meaning of love sacrifice? Well let's break it down.
St. Valentine SACRIFICED his freedom to marry persecuted christians.
St. Valentine SACRIFICED his integrity and reputation by having the faith to pray for the daughter of his jailor.
St. Valentine SACRIFICED his life and was obedient to God.
Speaking of God...what does all this talk of St. Valentine have to do with God?
Read John 3:16 (MSG)
You may be saying really...the most played out bible verse in history...and you want me to sit here and read this again?
Yes!
"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again."
POINT #1: God sacrificed His Son.
It says it right there in the beginning of the verse...God loved the world so much, he gave his one and only son...
Do you know any fathers that would give up their one and only son so someone else can live?
Can you even imagine how difficult that is?
Tell me one thing that you can not live without (this doesn't have to be deep and spiritual, it can be material).
Maybe your iPhone...
Your tablet or laptop...
Maybe your blanky...hahaha!!
Not take that thing...image it, picture it...
Now think about giving it away to someone you don't even know.
You know what that is called...love, sacrifice!
**POINT #2: God sacrificed control.**
What do I mean by that?
God is God. He created the universe and everything in it.
Mountains...
Mars...
Cute little puppies...
Coffee...
If He really wanted to, he could have accomplished everything he did in and through Jesus from heaven.
He could have snapped his fingers and made us believe in him...but that isn't love...that's control!
Just like St. Valentine didn't have to go to these persecuted christians and marry them...
Just like St. Valentine didn't have to pray for the daughter of his jailor...
God didn't have to come to earth,
Wait 30 years to finally begin his ministry; go through 3 years of persecution and people hating on him; then die a painful, embarrassing death...to beat sin's biggest weapon (death).
He could have done that some other way, He could have controlled all of us like robots, but he sent his one and only son, something very near and dear to him, and sacrificed it!
**POINT #3: God sacrificed time.**
From the creation of the universe to the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve messing up to all of the events of the Old Testament to Jesus to the church as we know it...
God has sacrificed a lot of time!!
Like I said, God could have fixed this thing in like 2 minutes if he wanted to, but he didn't.
At the end of the day, how do you know that someone really loves you?
Because they buy you flowers and chocolate one time out of the year?
Because they spend a bunch of money on one present on one day in February?
Because they gave you a tear jerking greeting card that has a bunch of words that you never actually hear from this person throughout the rest of the year?
No! When it seems like your life is falling apart, they are right there holding you hand...crying with you...spending time with you!
Why do you think Jesus waited 30 years to start his ministry? Because he took the time to be with the people he wanted to minister to!
He didn't heal people just on February 14th...
He didn't teach just one day out the year...
He sacrificed.
Life.
Control.
What is love? That is love!!
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What is your favorite Valentine's candy?
What is that one thing that you feel you can not live without? How hard would it be to sacrifice that one thing?
How does giving up control go hand and hand with love? In other words, how does giving up control of something show that you love it?
How does spending time with someone or something reflect your love? This could be relatives, boyfriend/girlfriend, hobbies, sports, etc...
Outline of Lesson
I. Introduction
- Brief history of St. Valentine (pass out Valentine Day candy if possible)
II. God Sacrificed...
1. John 3:16 (MSG)
a. His Son
b. Control
c. Time
YOUTH GROUP LESSON - WHO GOD SAYS YOU ARE
Description: What the rest of the world thinks about you does not matter in comparison to what God thinks about you. Based on what the Bible says, He thinks some incredible things about you!
Supplies
- Printed handouts (included below) with scripture references
- Four white t-shirts
- Vaseline
- Two different colors of pompoms (little cotton balls). Feel free to substitute anything else here.
OPENING GAME: MAKE IT STICK
Split the group into two teams and choose two volunteers from each team to be “it.”
Have each team cover the entire outside of the two t-shirts with Vaseline.
Important—do this before they put the t-shirts on in order to avoid any awkward moments.
Once the shirts are covered in Vaseline, have the two volunteers from each team put them on.
Put one team on each side of the room and give them each a color of pompoms.
Each volunteer must run across the room twice—once while the other team is throwing their colored pompoms and trying to get them to stick to their shirt, and once while the other team does the same.
Volunteers cannot block their t-shirts with their arms or hands.
(Note: If the volunteers are running too fast and no pompoms are sticking, then change it up. Have the volunteers stand still 10-12 feet away from the other team while they're throwing the pompoms.)
The objective is to avoid the opposing team's pompoms and to try to get as many of their own team's pompoms to stick to their shirt as possible.
Once all four volunteers run through, count up what's on their shirts.
For every pompom that is their team's color, they get a point. For every pompom that is the opposing team's color, they lose a point. The team with the most points wins!
TEACH
In this world, you are going to constantly be bombarded with what different people think about you.
Whether it be your family or friends, strangers, or companies who are only telling you what they think about you because they want to sell you something, it seems that everyone has an opinion.
You're going to constantly hear negative things about yourself—that you're too big, too small, too shy, too outgoing.
Standing in the line at grocery stores and reading the headlines on magazines will reveal things that you had no idea were wrong with you, but surely must be wrong with you since so many magazines are talking about something that you don't have.
It's impossible to live life without hearing what other people think about you.
But just like in that game, you need to be careful about what you let stick to you and what you don't.
Pretty much everyone you come into contact with is going to have an opinion of you, but the most important opinion is God's.
And based on what I've read in the Bible, He thinks pretty highly of you.
So, what exactly does God think about you?
**God thinks that you are worth fighting for.**
“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” – Exodus 14:14
Here’s the deal—God doesn’t need you, He wants you.
He didn’t *need* to send His only Son to die for you so that your sins would be forgiven. But He loved you so much that He wanted to be with you forever, so He made the ultimate sacrifice to fight sin and make a way for your salvation.
Obviously, you are worth fighting for!
**God thinks that you are His masterpiece.**
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” – Ephesians 2:10
Another word for handiwork is masterpiece.
You are God's masterpiece!
Can we just take a second to think about how amazing it is that the Bible says we are God's handiwork (masterpiece)?
When a famous artist creates a new painting, fans from all over the world will fly in to see it.
People will *ooh* and *ahh* over it before paying incredible amounts of money just to be able to hang it in their home and look at it every day.
And the artist who made you is so much better than any of those artists.
Next time you don’t like the way you look, or the next time someone tells you what they think of your looks and it’s something less than amazing, just remember:
You are God’s masterpiece.
**God thinks that you are more than a conqueror.**
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
— Romans 8:37
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like I am nothing like a conqueror.
I feel like a coward, not a soldier.
There are times when I feel so useless that I can’t imagine anyone ever thinking of me as a winner.
But here we have the Word of God saying not only are we winners, but *more* than conquerors.
How? Through Him who loved us.
Next time you’re feeling down about yourself, remember that not only are you loved by the creator of the universe; you’re also more than a conqueror through Him.
**You are loved and accepted as-is by God.**
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” — Jeremiah 31:3
I think we can all agree that there are times where we don’t feel very loved, or times where we don’t feel like we deserve to be loved.
No matter who else in your life you have—whether you have a wonderful family who loves you and tons of loyal, loving friends, or whether you have parents who could not care less about you and no friends to speak of—none of that matters when it comes to how loved you are.
Because God just goes ahead and blows everyone out of the water when it comes to love.
He doesn’t just love you; He loves you with an everlasting love.
When He thinks of you, it’s with that love. You are worth loving with an kind of love that lasts forever.
He loves you just the way you are. When you mess up, he loves you. When you’re doing life your way, he loves you. He loves the way you are right now, in this moment, as-is.
God thinks you are delightful.
*The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.* – Zephaniah 3:17
Can you even wrap your mind around this?
The Mighty Warrior who saves takes great delight in you.
It would be nice to hear from anyone that you are worth delighting in, but from God? That’s just plain incredible.
We often allow what others think of us to shape how we think of ourselves.
But that needs to stop.
From now on, you need to think about yourself the way that God thinks about you.
When you have the creator of the universe saying these things about you, does it really matter what anyone else thinks about you?
No, it doesn’t. Once you’ve heard these things, it just seems silly to worry about what anyone else says.
TEACH - WRAP UP
Think about how you feel when you know that someone thinks or says something mean about you.
Now, think about how you felt just now hearing those things that God thinks and says about you.
Don’t you wish you could share that feeling with everyone?
We have a responsibility to stand up for each other and to shine the light of Jesus on each other.
That means that when you talk and think about others, you should do so with how they feel in mind.
Do you want them to feel the way you know how it feels when someone says something mean about you, or do you want them to feel the way you how it feels to know what God thinks about you?
We’re going to do an activity that may seem a little awkward at first, but it’s a good reminder of how we should act with each other—we should act supportive, reminding each other of what God thinks of us.
Pass out the handouts to everyone (copy and paste “handout” below).
Starting with a student on the end of a row, have them turn to the student next to them and read the first thing on the paper, “You are _____ in God’s eyes.”
Have everyone do this out loud to the student next to them.
When you get to the end of the paper, just start over, going around until everyone has had a chance to remind someone of what God thinks of them.
HANDOUT
(Copy & paste on a sheet of paper)
You are fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s eyes. (Psalm 139:14)
You are the salt and light of the world in God’s eyes. (Matthew 5:13-14)
You are complete in God’s eyes. (Colossians 2:10)
You are loved in God’s eyes. (Jeremiah 31:3)
You are worth delighting in. (Zephaniah 3:17)
You are forgiven and redeemed in God’s eyes. (Ephesians 1:7)
You are anointed and have a purpose in God’s eyes. (Isaiah 61:1)
You are beautiful in God’s eyes. (Psalm 45:11)
You are more than a conqueror in God’s eyes. (Romans 8:37)
You are chosen, holy, and dearly loved in God’s eyes. (Colossians 3:12)
You are God’s handiwork. (Ephesians 2:10)
You are worth fighting for in God’s eyes. (Exodus 14:14)
You are set free in God’s eyes. (Galatians 5:1)
You are a new creation in God’s eyes. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Isn’t it amazing to hear what God thinks of you out loud?
—
Remember that when you talking about other people.
When you have the opportunity to say what you think to other people, use these words whenever possible.
Take this handout home with you.
Hang it on your wall.
Put it somewhere you can see it every day.
Look up these verses this week and really soak in just what God thinks about you.
No one else’s opinions matter when you’ve got God thinking such incredible things about you!
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Break up students into small groups to discuss the following questions:
1. Have you have felt something was worth fighting for? If so, what? Why? What does that say about how God thinks we are worth fighting for?
2. How often do you worry about what other people think about you?
3. How does the fact that God calls you His masterpiece change the way you think about yourself?
4. What are your thoughts on the fact that God delights in you? How does that make you feel?
5. In your own words, what does it mean to be more than a conqueror?
6. How can you choose what opinions you let stick to you and which ones you let slide off?
Lesson Overview
Bible: "Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." - Proverbs 1:7
The Point: Wisdom is living life God's way. It's not just knowing the right thing to do, but doing actually doing the right thing. Three steps to being wise: 1) Rely on God. 2) Think before you act. 3) Use failure as your teacher.
OPENING GAME
Supplies Newspaper, masking tape, chairs, soda cans.
Space Requirements
Large enough space for teams to be able to work building a bridge between two chairs.
Game Description
Split your entire group into equal teams of five or so. Each team will get equal amounts of newspaper, one roll of masking tape, and two chairs. The goal is to see which team can create the strongest bridge from chair to chair, with the chairs being 2 feet apart, using only the newspaper and masking tape. Give them a good amount of time to do this, maybe 10 minutes. Once the time is up, they will all need to step away. The strength of their bridge will be measured by how many soda cans it can hold. The team whose bridge holds the most cans before breaking, wins.
Game Tie-in
If your bridge wasn't built right, it didn't hold too many soda cans. Today we're going to be talking about how we need to build our lives on the strong foundation of "wisdom", so that we don't make big messes in our lives.
TEACH
In the Bible, there is a book called Proverbs. It is filled with information about wisdom. Let's look at a verse that is the underlying theme for everything that is found in Proverbs. "Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." - Proverbs 1:7
Respect for God
The "fear of the Lord" is a frequently used phrase in the Bible. The word "fear" used in this phrase has a different meaning than what we use the word for today. When we say we fear something, we usually mean it scares us. In this context, it means utmost respect, honor, or reverence. In other words, true respect and reverence of the deepest kind for God is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom starts here. You respect, revere, and have faith in God that He knows what He is doing, that His plan is the right plan.
Two Parts to Wisdom
Now, let's tackle the word "wisdom". When we think of wisdom, we might think of an old smart dude with a beard, wearing glasses and a robe...or something like that. Ha! The word wisdom to us means "smart". You know a lot of stuff. Kinda like you studied really hard in history all year and got an A. So, you're pretty wise when it come to history. The Biblical definition of wisdom is much different. There are two parts. #1 - You know the
right thing to do (how to live God's way). #2 - AND you do it! In the case of living a "wise" God honoring life, it means you know how to live God's way AND you actually do it.
**Wisdom is Protection**
There is an amount of "protection" when you are "wise" and put God's way of life into action. Check out this verse: *Don’t turn your back on wisdom, for she will protect you. Love her, and she will guard you. Getting wisdom is the wisest thing you can do!* - Proverbs 4:6-7a (NLT) Wisdom—living life according to God's plan—protects you. If you think about it, it makes sense. God's plan is the best plan for your life. The ability to live that out can protect you from the alternatives that are not what is best for you. Now, of course, just because you make wise choices you're not protected from bad things happening to you. Sometimes, others make choices that affect you, and you have to live with those consequences. But when you live a "wise" life, you're protected from the negative consequences of your bad choices.
*Here are three steps to living a "wise" life:*
#1 Rely on God.
This one seems like a no brainer, right? But how often do we make choices because it's what we want to do, and then end up paying the price for a bad decision? I've been there about a thousand times. It's always best to rely on God for the best thing to do in a situation. Even if what you want to do is different, trust that God's way is better. *(Share a story where you relied on God for making a decision. Talk about the struggle of what you wanted to do verses what the right thing to do. Then, talk about what happened as)*
The starting point to being "wise" is relying on God, trusting that his way is always the best way.
#2 Think before you act.
Not too long ago, I was furious at a guy behind me driving just a few feet behind my rear bumper. He was really irritating me, so I stopped the car, got out and started yelling at him. As I did, I was humbled when realizing it was a 75 year old man! Ha :) Next time it could be a 250 pound weight lifter who eats me for lunch! After a few minutes of cooling down, I realized how stupid that was. How often do you NOT think before you act? You just react to a situation without thinking. You yell at your mom because you think she's nagging you. You drink a few beers and then drive home. You're stressed about passing the test so you cheat. Just this one time. The list goes on. You would make a lot more "wise" decisions if you just paused before acting and took a second to think about the possible outcomes of that decision. Doing this one thing would save you a lot grief. Seriously.
3. Use failure as your teacher.
The truth is, you're going to make a lot of stupid decisions that have negative consequences. You're human. We all mess up. Welcome to the club. When you do mess up, use it as a learning experience. Don't just go through the pain of your bad decision. Learn from it. In fact, think back to your last dumb decision you made. Take a second to think of it. (Pause for a minute) Now, think about the consequence of that decision. (Pause for a minute) The big question is... What did you learn from it? When you learn from your mistakes, over time you become wise. Some of the wisest people I
know made some of the most stupid decisions in their past. But they didn't keep making them over and over. They learned from each one. Do the same. **End in prayer.**
**SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS**
Why is it hard to trust God's way rather than your way?
Share a time when you went your way rather than God's way. What happened?
Do you think it's a good idea to think before you act? Why or why not?
Share a time when you really messed up and did something stupid. What happened?
What did you learn from the experience?
YOUTH GROUP LESSON ON WORRY
Bible: Matthew 6:25-27
Supplies:
- Enough blindfolds for half of the group.
- A screen that can play a Youtube video.
- Water Balloons.
Opening Game: Traffic Jam
Have everyone pair up in groups of two. One person will act as the car; one person will act as the driver.
The person acting as the car puts on the blindfold. Have the pairs scatter throughout the room. When you say go, the player acting as a car has to follow your instructions. Yell things like:
- Red light!
- U-Turn!
- Reverse!
- Turn Left!
When you yell something, the player acting as the car has to immediately follow your instructions. The player acting as the driver must help the “car” avoid hitting other cars by using only their words.
For example, if you say “turn left” and the player acting as the car turns left, but there’s another car there, the drive would yell, “stop!” When a car hits another car, both of those cars and drivers are out of the game.
The final team who has not crashed or been crashed into wins!
**Lesson - Worry**
Say - That was quite the fiasco! Now, I have a question for all the people who were cars. Where you worried at all that your driver was going to steer you the wrong way and you were going to crash?
If so, why didn’t you take the blindfold off and stop playing? Well, because then you would have missed out on the fun of the game.
It’s the same way in life—the things we worry about are either going to happen or not happen, and sitting around worrying about them only makes us miss out on life.
If we were to all go around the room and list out all the things we worry about, we would be here all week. But do you know what else? We would probably also laugh at each other. Because there are some things that, once you say them out loud, you realize just how silly it is to be worrying over them.
If you look in the Bible, though, you’ll see that worrying isn’t only just silly. It’s actually the opposite of what God wants us to do.
**Read Matthew 6:25-27:**
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Say - When you read the end of the verse, doesn’t it make worrying seem so stupid? Because it’s right, worrying doesn’t add any amount of time to our life. In fact, it does the opposite—it takes away from the life we already have.
Now, I need a volunteer. I need someone who is willing to get wet.
Okay, you’re going to stand here and worry. Why? Because I’m going to throw these water balloons at you, that’s why. But the good news is, I’m going to give you a few seconds to worry. Maybe if you worry hard enough, the water balloons won’t hit you. Let’s try it.
Throw a few water balloons.
Okay, so that’s a silly example. But isn’t that how we act sometimes? We know that worrying won’t change anything.
So why do we still worry?
This is one of those verses where it’s almost like Jesus is talking right to you through it. Like He’s saying, “Hey, you worry a lot. Why do you do that? What’s the worst that can happen? So what if you don’t have any food or clothes. Don’t you think I’ll take care of you?”
And really, when we worry, we act like we don’t think He’s going to take care of us. We worry over things that, in the grand scheme of life, are pretty small. We worry about grades and friendships, curfews and colleges, opinions and jobs. And yes, all of these things are important, and they’re things we should work hard and care about.
However, if we spend our time worrying, it’s basically like we’re saying, “Hey Jesus, I know You said You’d be there for me no matter what, but I’m not sure that I believe you. I know You’re supposed to be enough for me, but I’m not sure that you are.”
That’s just crazy talk!
Put on the video of the flowers blooming while you read this verse. You can mute the music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lENTji39i4k
Read Matthew 6:28-34:
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
To me, this is one of the most beautiful passages in the entire Bible. It’s like there’s a picture being painted of just how much God really cares about us, and just how much He is always going to take care of us.
Let’s look at how.
“If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you?”
Let’s be honest—how many of you have worried about clothes? Isn’t it funny that this verse, which is so many years old, references a problem we still deal with today?
Of course we worry about clothes. We worry about money to buy clothes, and then we worry about which clothes we should buy. We worry about which clothes we should wear to which places. We worry about what other people are going to think about our clothes. We worry, worry, and worry.
And it’s ridiculous.
Have you stopped and looked at any flowers lately? I mean, look at those in that video! Sure, flowers are gorgeous. But when you think of how all that color and beauty and shape and smell just grew right out of the dirt—that’s amazing.
And this verse is right, flowers are more beautiful than even the richest king’s clothing. The God who created those flowers—those stunning, incredible flowers that outshine royalty—loves us so much more than He loves those flowers. So why would we even waste a second of our lives worrying about clothes?
"Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them."
These are such reassuring words. They just reiterate that God already knows what we need. Our heavenly Father is well aware of exactly what we need. It’s like a little love letter from Heaven, reminding us that everyone needs these things, but we don’t have to worry about them, because He already knows we need them. That’s just amazing.
"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
Well, if that isn’t the clearest instruction, I don’t know what is. We’re very clearly told not to worry, but to place our focus somewhere else. And that somewhere else is seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness. After that, everything will fall into place exactly how it should.
Isn’t that a relief? Now, this doesn’t mean that you have permission to just slack off of everything and throw caution to the wind, claiming that God will take care of everything as long as you read your Bible and pray.
That’s not what this verse means. There’s a difference between working hard and worrying. God calls us to work hard and not be lazy. But instead of worrying about those things, He calls us to seek eternal things, not temporary things. Seek what really matters, and everything else will follow.
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Now isn’t that just the truth. Tomorrow is going to happen whether you worry about it or not, so just let tomorrow worry about itself. There’s too much to think about and to do today to have the time or energy to worry about tomorrow.
It’s an incredible gift to be able to lay your head on your pillow at night and be able to tell the God who created everything you see that you trust Him. You may have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but you know that He’ll be there and that, because He cares for you, He will take care of you.
Now, how do you avoid worrying?
Read Philippians 4:6
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."
Next time you start to worry about something, I want to remember this verse. This verse gives you a clear formula for how to deal with worry. Are you ready?
1. No matter what the situation is, do not be anxious.
2. With a thankful heart, pray and tell God what you need.
That’s it! Seem too easy? Well, when you have a God who’s got your best interests in mind, who you can talk to at any time, it really is.
Small Group Discussion Questions:
1. What are some things you spend a lot of time worrying about?
2. Do you agree with the statement that worrying is acting like you don’t believe God’s promises?
3. How does it feel to know that God cares about you and is going to take care of you?
4. Does the flower analogy put into perspective how silly it is to worry about clothes?
5. What are some ways you can seek the kingdom of Heaven first?
6. Why do you think we worry so much, even though we know God will take care of us?
7. Why do you think God tells us not to worry?
8. Does talking to God about the things your anxious about help you worry less?
9. Would it hurt your feelings if you told your best friend you were going to bring them lunch, but they spent the whole morning telling everyone they were worried that they weren’t going to have anything to eat that day? Do you think that’s how God feels when we worry about things He’s already said He’d take care of?
10. What can you do this week that will help remind you to not worry?
**Teach - Closing**
The temptation to worry is never going to go away. There are always going to be things in your life that you *could* worry about. You just have to choose to not worry about them. But here’s the thing—after reading those verses and seeing how much God loves and cares for you, how could you *not* choose to give up worry?
The next time you start to worry, do like that verse in Philippians says, and talk to God about it. If you still struggle with worry, sit down and open your Bible. Google “God’s Promises” and look those verses up. Read those promises, and decide if you believe them or not.
If you don’t, then yes, you’ve definitely got a lot to worry about. More than you could ever deal with on your own. But if you do trust in those promises, what an amazing gift you have. It’s a gift of knowing that someone is looking out for you and providing for you. It’s a gift of knowing that someone is taking care of you.
It’s a gift of knowing you don’t have to worry. | ec21fbb6-b444-400e-a7ef-ed4fb5d02e24 | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://ministrytoyouth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/71-Youth-Group-Lessons.pdf | 2023-09-28T00:47:24+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510334.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20230927235044-20230928025044-00481.warc.gz | 436,829,294 | 120,226 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997662 | eng_Latn | 0.99863 | [
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1477,
3611,
5756,
7066,
8723,
10242,
11647,
13363,
13520,
14603,
16237,
17762,
19061,
20601,
21987,
23615,
24819,
25817,
27259,
28990,
30549,
31106,
32349,
34110,
36130,
36445,
38079,
39584,
41231,
42464,
44064,
45284,
46604,
48366,
49807,
50049,
51411,
52962,
54970,
56176,
57648,
59139,
60060,
61554,
63459,
64831,
66303,
67852,
69609,
71079,
72341,
72810,
74885,
76574,
78076,
79286,
80731,
81117,
82345,
84480,
85539,
85900,
87186,
88464,
90173,
91683,
92951,
94889,
96447,
96809,
98282,
99417,
100742,
102504,
103998,
105761,
106816,
107809,
109825,
111648,
113200,
115009,
117168,
119116,
120728,
122293,
122981,
124525,
125985,
127258,
128528,
129980,
130376,
131933,
133656,
134621,
136140,
137886,
138258,
140001,
141189,
143160,
144573,
145622,
146882,
148376,
149548,
150754,
151776,
152233,
154017,
155440,
156773,
158236,
159475,
160834,
161621,
162971,
163968,
165156,
166575,
167891,
169191,
170424,
171188,
172739,
174098,
175233,
176409,
177613,
179146,
180682,
181360,
182432,
183624,
184905,
186009,
186528,
187675,
189037,
190333,
191799,
192987,
194884,
196238,
197044,
198218,
199294,
199994,
200635,
201783,
202909,
203320,
204571,
205794,
206941,
208108,
209464,
210168,
211569,
212706,
214086,
215302,
216501,
217817,
219127,
219805,
220997,
222220,
223509,
224888,
226279,
227281,
228504,
229680,
231066,
231878,
233523,
235456,
237107,
238708,
239970,
241429,
242605,
243714,
244652,
245854,
247239,
248610,
249913,
251092,
251872,
253110,
254235,
255427,
256751,
257661,
258731,
259216,
260228,
261419,
262561,
263716,
265131,
266459,
267138,
268235,
269347,
270569,
271848,
272616,
273776,
274087,
275066,
276439,
277903,
278752,
279839,
281118,
282223,
283082,
284427,
285770,
286868,
287162,
288282,
289792,
291126,
292515,
294101,
295436,
296871,
297966,
299285,
300653,
302083,
303432,
304835,
305661,
306825,
307495,
308471,
309451,
310593,
311714,
312848,
314121,
314677,
315933,
317020,
318310,
319858,
321253,
322453,
323740,
324955,
325665,
326783,
328150,
329534,
330653,
331859,
332972,
334263,
335517,
336823,
338151,
339626,
340854,
341414,
342704,
343872,
345264,
346603,
347917,
348849,
350033,
351113,
352302,
353578,
354125,
355615,
357056,
358461,
359690,
360435,
361567,
362843,
364158,
365517,
366669,
367739,
369225,
370613,
371403,
372854,
373865,
374999,
376526,
378160,
379698,
381324,
382696,
384187,
384345,
385879,
387300,
388128,
389171,
390572,
392000,
393066,
394436,
395059,
396259,
397083,
398467,
399771,
401169,
402595,
404120,
405694,
406171,
407355,
408546,
409937,
411163,
412480,
413890,
414063,
415204,
416584,
417930,
419299,
420300,
421554,
423114,
424268,
425660,
426845,
428196,
429497,
430491,
431067,
432244,
433560,
435006,
436413,
437828,
438950,
440244,
441536,
443036,
444138,
444344,
445422,
446838,
448540,
450210,
451693,
453283,
454903,
456370,
457818,
458822,
460296,
461656,
462883,
464295,
465611,
466054,
467311,
468845,
470256,
471780,
473292,
474863,
476273,
477163,
478214,
479577,
480825,
482127,
483098,
484105,
485265,
486254,
487502,
488771,
490054,
491304,
492505,
493483,
493775,
494718,
495947,
497093,
498443,
499626,
500700,
502009,
503025,
504309,
504999,
506159,
507601,
508913,
510122,
511459,
512788,
513961,
515015,
516160,
517682,
519308,
520946,
521478,
522449,
523905,
525512,
527011,
528497,
529985,
531530,
532596
] | [
2.03125,
1.203125
] | 2 | 0 |
PROGRAM VISION
MIDDLE SCHOOLS
A PLACE OF ENGAGEMENT AND COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY
Development of the Educational Specifications began with the MDUSD Graduate Profile developed by the district and approved by the Board in 2014. The Educational Visioning Workshop described on the following pages took a deeper dive into these competencies, investigating their relation to physical spaces.
The Mt. Diablo Unified School District Graduate is a(n):
**Effective Communicator:** Is proficient in writing, speaking and listening adapted to audience, task, purpose and discipline.
**Community Contributor:** Uses acquired cultural awareness and sensitivity to work in teams to share ideas and responsibilities, solve problems, and achieve shared goals.
**Complex Thinker:** Thinks critically and creatively by identifying problems, assessing evidence and solutions and draws on multiple perspectives when approaching complex issues and adapting to challenges. Applies knowledge and skills while investigating, interpreting and analyzing information in order to develop and implement creative solutions to complex problems.
**Effective & Ethical User of Technology:** Ethically and thoughtfully employs a variety of digital media and technology to communicate, analyze and organize information, and create products and solutions.
**Self-Directed Learner:** Independently seeks and uses resources including teachers, peers, print and digital references with perseverance and endurance to engage in new learning toward academic, professional and personal goals.
**Global Citizen and Responsible Worker:** Demonstrates integrity, adaptability, and ethical behaviors by acting responsibly and working effectively in an ever-changing society.
**Health & Wellness Advocate:** Demonstrates a commitment to physical and mental well-being of self and others to make positive and healthy choices.
Teachers, Principals, Counselors, and other members of district leadership came together on September 25, 2018 to envision the future of learning spaces within Mt Diablo Unified School District. Over the course of a day, participants explored the following topics:
- **What is the wind in your sails?** Understand the purpose of the workshop within the context of the Facilities Master Plan;
- **Part I - Preparing for the journey.** Understand how space helps or hinders the aims of the MDUSD graduate profile;
- **Part II - Sights [and connections] along the way.** Identify the ideal ecosystem of the campus (adjacencies, opportunities, missing components, etc); and
- **Part III - Our Destination: the experience of core learning spaces.** Identify space implications and design features by brainstorming what the student is doing, thinking, seeing, hearing and by understanding the role of the teacher.
**What is the wind in your sails?**
*(Why do you teach/lead at MDUSD?)*
MDUSD educators are drawn to their work to empower students and co-workers, to advance education as a form of equity, and to provide service to their community.
*Empowerment*
- All students can learn
- Each person brings a unique vision
- Focus on students
- Giving voice to students and parents
- Investment in people; providing opportunities
- Students and teachers growing and learning
- Teach students how to manage their world
*Justice*
- Education is the great equalizer
- Fairness in public education
- Investment in people; provide opportunities
*Service*
- Give back to the community that gave to me
- Product of Mt. Diablo USD
- Moved to this calling; choiceless
- Sense of pride, duty
- Joy and fun
**What are you leaving behind** that is not in support of the Graduate Profile?
MDUSD educators are leaving behind unhealthy, uninspiring, un-supportive, old-school environments.
**What are you taking with you** in support of the Graduate Profile?
MDUSD educators are moving toward a flexible, agentic learning environment that supports student choice and wellness.
- Ubiquitous and functional *technology* supports 21st Century learning needs.
- Flexible and agentic *furniture* supports innovative teaching goals and student choice.
- Dynamic *indoor spaces* support a variety of classroom grouping arrangements and attend to student wellness.
- *Outdoor spaces* support a variety of learning play needs and provide an essential connection to the natural environment.
- *Specialized spaces* support the unique needs and interests of the student.
- *Campus-wide spaces* welcome and inspire the learning community and provide healthy choices.
Core learning spaces are places of...
- Communication and Collaboration
- Exploring and Developing
- Experimenting and Creating
- Guiding and Facilitating
- Relating and Understanding
In an environment that offers...
- Ample Space and Movement
- Connection to Nature
- Flexibility and Variety
- Leading Edge Technology
- Safety and Wellness
With a learning experience that unfolds and develops over time...
- Elementary School as **a place of exploration and experimentation**.
- Middle School as **a place of engagement and collaborative community**.
- High School as **a place of active dialogue and deeper understanding**.
- Special Education as **a place of support and opportunity**.
Provide student choice in environment (seating, shaded v. sunny, independent v. small group v. large, active v. passive).
Utilize various materials in manicured spaces.
Promote curiosity and engagement.
**SPACE DESCRIPTION**
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Provide electrical access points to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Consider edible and drought-tolerant planting.
- Utilize furniture and surfaces that are durable and have a low heat conductivity, ensuring surfaces stay cool even when exposed to full sun.
**NOTE:** The square footages above are net areas to assist in developing new or reconfiguring existing floor plan layouts. The final plan layout will include circulation factors to achieve the gross square footage. This figure will vary depending upon the layout of the building (single story or multi-story) and type of program spaces.
• Really engaged, moving, talking, writing; wheeling around into various groups
• Using academic language and a variety of technology
• Seeing a variety of teaching styles and starting to express preference
The teacher is:
• Creating lessons with variety of outcomes to demonstrate learning
• Facilitating, guiding students
• Conversing with students in small groups
• Efficiently and quickly transitioning
• Listening
SPACE DESCRIPTION
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
• Flexible furniture can include individual, movable chairs and small group tables with locking wheels that can fold and “nest” into one another for easy storage.
• Tidy, accessible storage for teacher supplies and student supplies.
• Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
• Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
• Provide one digital display monitor capable of wirelessly connecting to teacher and student devices. A hard-wired connection should also be provided.
• Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces.
The student is/has:
- Flexible seating (student choice)
- Skills to manage materials for multiple subjects, teachers, classrooms
- Building strategies to manage transitions
- Using technology
The teacher is/has:
- Culturally proficient and equity-focused
- Promoting independence with community responsibility
SPACE DESCRIPTION
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Flexible furniture can include individual, movable chairs and small group tables with locking wheels that can fold and “nest” into one another for easy storage.
- Tidy, accessible storage for teacher supplies and student supplies.
- Select finishes that enhance the acoustical qualities of the space.
- Select lighting that is dimmable/adjustable and limits glare and sensitivities.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Provide one digital display monitor capable of wirelessly connecting to teacher and student devices. A hard-wired connection should also be provided.
- Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces.
- Analyzing, using microscopes
- Applying essential skills
- Engaged in collaborative group work
- Creating, innovating
- Integrating technology with labs
- Applying environmental principals and concepts
- Experiencing lab activities that allow understanding of cross-cutting concepts
The teacher is:
- Collaborating with colleagues
- Facilitating, circulating, monitoring
- (gives) Reduced direct instruction
SPACE DESCRIPTION
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Stable lab tables with chemical-resistant tops that can easily move to form lab peninsulas, or clear to provide an open floor. Provide adjustable-height stool seating.
- Tidy, accessible storage for teacher/student supplies and equipment. Prep room should have lockable chemical storage.
- Select resilient flooring that is durable and easy to clean.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration. Consider outlets that drop down from the ceiling to maximize flexibility.
- Each lab station should be equipped with a computer for data collection/manipulation.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection as well as the ability to plug into a hard-wired internet connection.
- Provide one digital display monitor capable of wirelessly connecting to teacher and student devices. A hard-wired connection should also be provided.
- Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces.
- Collaborating
- Creating
- Using mixed media including ceramics, clay, inks, paints, chalk, etc.
- Experimenting with light and shading
The teacher is:
- Facilitating
- Circulating
- Coaching
- Role-modeling
- Demonstrating
- Curating
SPACE DESCRIPTION
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Stable and flexible furniture can include individual, movable chairs and small group tables with locking wheels that can fold and “nest” into one another for easy storage. Consider light tables.
- Tidy, accessible storage for teacher/student supplies and equipment.
- Large sink(s)
- Increased ventilation to remove odors from paint and other media.
- Provide resilient flooring that is durable and easy to clean.
- Provide similar technology integration (internet access, presentation technology, electrical outlets, etc) as a standard classroom.
- Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces.
The **student** is:
- Collaborating with other bands, including high school
- Practicing
- Presenting
- Performing
The **teacher** is:
- Leading, conducting
- Recording
- Rehearsing
- Demonstrating
- Moving around the room, checking student posture, hand position, etc.
**SPACE DESCRIPTION**
*(furniture, finishes, equipment)*
- Furniture should encourage healthy posture for musicians and have the ability to be moved/stored easily. Utilize portable, retractable risers and music stands as appropriate.
- Provide lockable instrument storage of varying sizes.
- Finishes should contribute to the acoustical qualities of the space.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Provide one digital display monitor capable of wirelessly connecting to teacher and student devices. A hard-wired connection should also be provided.
- Incorporate audio recording equipment with playback capabilities.
- Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces (consider the use of magnetic white-boards).
**NOTE:** The square footages above are net areas to assist in developing new or reconfiguring existing floor plan layouts. The final plan layout will include circulation factors to achieve the gross square footage. This figure will vary depending upon the layout of the building (single story or multi-story) and type of program spaces.
- Collaborating
- Creating
- Hands-on
- Analyzing
- Integrating technology
- Problem-based and project-based learning
- Engaging directly with ideas and content
The teacher is:
- Facilitating, supporting students in their understanding of content
- Establishing policies and procedures that support learning
- Collaborating with colleagues
SPACE DESCRIPTION
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Stable and flexible furniture can include individual, movable chairs and small group tables with locking wheels that can fold and “nest” into one another for easy storage.
- Tidy, accessible storage for teacher/student supplies and equipment.
- Select flooring that supports the activities of the space, is durable and easy to clean.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Provide one digital display monitor capable of wirelessly connecting to teacher and student devices. A hard-wired connection should also be provided.
- Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces (consider the use of magnetic white-boards).
- Collaborating
- Creating; hands-on
- Analyzing
- Integrating technology
- Problem-based and project-based learning
- Exploring digital arts and video production programs
The teacher is:
- Facilitating, supporting students in their understanding of content
- Establishing policies and procedures that support learning
- Collaborating with colleagues
SPACE DESCRIPTION
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Stable and flexible furniture can include individual, movable chairs and small group tables with locking wheels that can fold and “nest” into one another for easy storage.
- Select flooring that supports the activities of the space, is durable and easy to clean.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Provide one digital display monitor capable of wirelessly connecting to teacher and student devices. A hard-wired connection should also be provided.
- Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces (consider the use of magnetic white-boards).
- Collaborating
- Creating
- Exploring expression of self through acting
- Rehearsing
- Improvising
- Developing technical skills
The teacher is:
- Facilitating
- Circulating
- Coaching
- Role-modeling
- Demonstrating
- Curating
SPACE DESCRIPTION
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Furniture should be varied and flexible; easy to rearrange and move/store out of the way to produce a clear floor.
- Tidy, accessible storage for teacher/student supplies and equipment.
- Provide flooring that is durable and easy to clean.
- Provide similar technology integration (internet access, presentation technology, electrical outlets, etc) as a standard classroom.
- Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces.
A flexible environment that is centralized to the school campus and shared with the community after-hours.
Create an engaging environment with book hubs and comfortable, quiet reading zones.
Movable and reconfigurable to support group activities.
Utilize laptops instead of desktop computers.
Students can experience the full design process and have the ability to present-back.
**SPACE DESCRIPTION**
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Flexible furniture can include individual, movable chairs and small group tables with locking wheels that can fold and “nest” into one another for easy storage.
- Consider varied furniture types, including soft seating.
- Low book stacks on locking wheels. The height of the book stacks should promote visibility/supervision and be sized appropriately for middle school students.
- Select finishes that enhance the acoustical qualities of the space.
- Provide carpet flooring that is durable and easy to clean.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Provide at least one digital display monitor capable of wirelessly connecting to teacher and student devices. A hard-wired connection should also be provided.
- Promote the curation of student work by providing a mix of writable and tackable surfaces.
PROGRAM VISION | MIDDLE SCHOOL LEARNING CENTER
activities / design objectives
- A suite of offices for small groups and individual meetings.
- Enhance student communication skills.
- Locate central to the school campus, providing availability to students and their parents.
- Space for IEP’s and similar meetings.
- Parent support is welcome and should be encouraged.
- Design with confidentiality in mind, balancing light with shading.
- Address needs for sensory, self-care, and mindfulness.
SPACE DESCRIPTION (furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Flexible furniture can include individual, movable chairs and small group tables with locking wheels that can fold and “nest” into one another for easy storage.
- Provide carpet flooring that is durable and easy to clean.
- Provide ergonomic work stations within the offices. Include locking file storage.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Provide one digital display monitor capable of wirelessly connecting to teacher and student devices. A hard-wired connection should also be provided.
- Walls should have a mix of writable and tackable surfaces (consider the use of magnetic white-boards).
Create a welcoming and inviting environment that de-stigmatizes being ‘sent to the office.’
Create a secure, single point of entry to the campus.
Provide parent/family resources.
Provide a mix of private offices (for those who require confidentiality) and open-concept offices for collaboration and flexibility.
**SPACE DESCRIPTION**
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Provide soft seating in the lobby waiting area.
- Provide ergonomic work stations within the offices. Include locking file storage.
- Provide carpet flooring that is durable and easy to clean. Utilize resilient flooring where appropriate.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Provide one digital display monitor for announcements and the display of student work.
- Consider ‘hoteling stations’ in un-owned (flex) offices where staff members can plug in a personal device (suitable for teachers on special assignment and counselors serving multiple sites).
Create flexible, comfortable spaces for various tasks related to class preparation and teacher collaboration.
Teacher collaboration space should be centralized on campus.
Size appropriately to house all teachers in a professional development setting.
Accommodate both informal (socialize, dine, decompress) and formal uses (professional development, class preparation).
**SPACE DESCRIPTION**
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Flexible furniture can include individual, movable chairs and small group tables with locking wheels that can fold and “nest” into one another for easy storage. Also consider soft furniture to promote decompression.
- Tidy storage solutions.
- Provide flooring that is durable and easy to clean.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Provide one digital display monitor for announcements and the display of student work.
- Consider ‘hoteling stations’ in un-owned offices where staff members can plug in a personal device (suitable for teachers on special assignment and counselors serving multiple sites).
PROGRAM VISION | MIDDLE SCHOOL MULTI-USE ROOM
activities / design objectives
• Hosts school events such as assemblies, family nights, and school plays.
• Primary functions are food service/dining, social engagement, and performance.
• Indoor Physical Education space.
• Food service / indoor dining.
• Shared community use for events, scouts, parents clubs, etc.
• Design to accommodate easily-accessible drinking fountains, student restrooms, and custodial supply storage.
• Locate central to campus core, with direct access to hardcourts for student dining and a rear service area.
SPACE DESCRIPTION (furniture, finishes, equipment)
• Furniture should accommodate student dining, with tables that can easily be stored to produce a clear floor. Seating should also be able to re-arrange from dining to audience seating for performances and assemblies.
• Provide flooring that is durable and easy to clean.
• Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
• Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
• Provide at least one digital display monitor with integrated sound system for music and voice amplification.
• Incorporate curtains and lighting appropriate for small-scale performances.
• Provide receptacles for multiple modes of disposal (landfill, recycling, compost).
PROGRAM VISION | MIDDLE SCHOOL GYMNASIUM
activities / design objectives
- Hosts athletics programs and is shared with the community.
- Locate in close proximity to the core of campus, with easy access to the perimeter for parking and service.
SPACE DESCRIPTION
(furniture, finishes, equipment)
- Provide bleacher-style seating.
- Lobby to include casework for the display of awards, and a digital display monitor for announcements.
- Lobby flooring should be sealed concrete or resilient that is durable and easy to clean.
- Gymnasium flooring should be a bio-cushion wood floor with court striping.
- Finishes should contribute to the acoustical qualities of the space.
- Ceiling height should allow for recreational activities such as basketball and volleyball.
- Provide multiple electrical outlets to support flexibility and technology integration.
- Provide reliable wireless internet connection.
- Integrated sound system for voice amplification.
- Provide a water bottle filling station and receptacles for multiple modes of disposal (landfill, recycling, compost).
- Incorporate scoreboard system and athletic equipment as appropriate (basketball hoops, removable volleyball posts/nets, wall padding, etc).
- Fitness room should have a bio-cushion wood floor and removable mat, to accommodate both dance and wrestling activities. Provide storage for mat. | 39596c57-d053-431c-85ee-d1298665f883 | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://lpamasterplans.com/mt-diablo-usd-fmp/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/02/MDUSD_03Vision_cMiddle.pdf | 2022-11-26T17:11:14+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446708010.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20221126144448-20221126174448-00581.warc.gz | 407,074,001 | 4,225 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.943043 | eng_Latn | 0.995086 | [
"dan_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
80,
1885,
4530,
5225,
6154,
7212,
8313,
9713,
10616,
12053,
13179,
14245,
14966,
16312,
17565,
18599,
19741,
21065,
22433
] | [
2.296875,
1.1484375
] | 1 | 0 |
ANNUAL HIGHLIGHTS 2021–2022
The Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiāo continues to be a go-to resource for students, teachers, and wider communities.
- 500,000+ New Zealand users
- 6.8 million+ users internationally
TELLING THE STORIES OF SCIENCE
EXPLORING MĀTAURANGA MĀORI
Purpose
- To develop our understanding of kaitiakitanga
- To share pūrākau connected to kaitiakitanga
- Te iwi may be reflected on your inclusion of this concept in your teaching
ENRICHING TEACHING & LEARNING
"The Science Learning Hub is widely used and hugely valued by students and teachers at our kura. It really does keep the classroom dynamic, the students are engaged and inquisitive in their science learning." – Secondary school teacher
New this year
- 100 articles
- 36 activities
- 56 videos
- 15 interactive digital objects
- 169 images
TELLING THE STORIES OF SCIENCE
AOTEAROA IN SPACE
“The content that the team has developed and the contributions from the sector have surpassed our expectations. The resources really demonstrate how diverse the space sector is and shows the applications and impacts of space on our everyday lives in a relevant way. We think this is going to be an amazing resource for students and teachers to engage in space education.”
— Hannah Doherty, MBIE
SUPPORTING TEACHERS
“It is the best website a teacher can visit because the lessons and activities contribute to knowledge building with a focus on the future of science education – where teachers are preparing students to be active problem-solvers and creative thinkers and demonstrate confidence with communication skills.” — Primary school teacher
PROMOTING ENGAGEMENT WITH REAL DATA
“We are once again excited to partner with the Science Learning Hub in developing material to support the Environment Aotearoa 2022 report. We believe that the work that they do in the education space will be having meaningful engagement with our tamākī.” — Nigel Wong, Ministry for the Environment
PAPA KĀINGA HOME LEARNING TV
Forty junior and middle science episode scripts written for the Ministry of Education to support home learning during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
22,300+ Registered users
13,300+ Newsletter subscribers
@NZScienceLearn 8,694+ followers
Science Learning Hub 6,099+ followers
Science Learning Hub 4,537+ followers
@sciencelearninghubnz 1,083+ followers
The Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao is an integral component of the New Zealand Government’s Science in Society Plan – A Nation of Curious Minds, He Whenua Hihiri i te Mahara and is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. | b7b09823-207c-4513-b6ea-b32d7067d533 | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://static.sciencelearn.org.nz/documents/files/000/001/196/original/SLH_Annual_Highlights_2021%E2%80%932022.pdf?1665090247 | 2023-01-29T22:51:50+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499768.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20230129211612-20230130001612-00254.warc.gz | 569,929,105 | 607 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.986262 | eng_Latn | 0.989648 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
838,
2615
] | [
2.15625
] | 1 | 0 |
(Im)possible Parade
Created by SJ Blake
An augmented reality experience. Find all fifteen stations along the Rotary Walkway
1. Scan the QR code
2. Click the link to launch Zappar (you may need to give it permission to use your camera)
3. Point your phone camera just off the path, where the images feel good to you
4. Zoom in or out till they are the right size
5. Click ‘Place’ and turn the volume up
6. Keep an eye and ear out for other walkers and cyclists while moving around and mind the edge
| Stop 1. | Historic docks & stockyards
Stand facing the inlet and the metal rails of the old stockyard. Place the item on the grass.
GPS 36.90612s, 174.86088e
https://webxr.run/azwYZAwOM5gg0 |
| --- | --- |
| Stop 2. | Boat sheds with a Pohutakawa overhang.
Stand facing the water and place the item in the water.
GPS 36.90710s, 174.86510e
https://webxr.run/76JXoXbWZDwm6 |
| Stop 3. | Boat sheds
Find a spot between the boat sheds and place the item in the water.
GPS 36.90799s, 174.86704e
https://webxr.run/MWAi0zkwLGgzW |
| Stop 4. | Pakuranga Mall exit
Go up the path towards the Pakuranga Mall and place the item on the grassy knoll.
GPS 36.91079s, 174.87014e
https://webxr.run/oPxpGk7wd671n |
(Im)possible Parade
Created by SJ Blake
An augmented reality experience. Find all fifteen stations along the Rotary Walkway
1. Scan the QR code
2. Click the link to launch Zappar (you may need to give it permission to use your camera)
3. Point your phone camera just off the path, where the images feel good to you
4. Zoom in or out till they are the right size
5. Click ‘Place’ and turn the volume up
6. Keep an eye and ear out for other walkers and cyclists while moving around and mind the edge
| Stop 5. | St Kents Dock |
|---------|---------------|
| | Walk out onto the pontoon and place the item on it, near the end. |
| | GPS 36.90612s, 174.86088e |
| | https://webxr.run/V21e037JX4y84 |
| Stop 6. | Storm drain |
|---------|-------------|
| | Facing away from the water observe where the storm drain runs into the bushed area. Place the item here. |
| | GPS 36.90540s, 174.87601e |
| | https://webxr.run/og1zx8y4NrZzv |
| Stop 7. | Park bench with rubbish bin |
|---------|-------------------------------|
| | Find a park bench with a rubbish bin. Place the item there. |
| | GPS 36.90173s, 174.87691e |
| | https://webxr.run/Wo9OmOkJpLOJ9 |
| Stop 8. | Old slipways by park benches |
|---------|------------------------------|
| | Find a park bench with a slipway near it (a small concrete boat ramp). Place the item here. |
| | GPS 36.90066s, 174.87865e |
| | https://webxr.run/7lJxNyNeor8rp |
(Im)possible Parade
Created by SJ Blake
An augmented reality experience. Find all fifteen stations along the Rotary Walkway
1. Scan the QR code
2. Click the link to launch Zappar (you may need to give it permission to use your camera)
3. Point your phone camera just off the path, where the images feel good to you
4. Zoom in or out till they are the right size
5. Click ‘Place’ and turn the volume up
6. Keep an eye and ear out for other walkers and cyclists while moving around and mind the edge
Stop 9. Volcanic ash & Ignimbrite deposits
At the tip of the point place the item on the path.
GPS 36.89777s, 174.87731e
https://webxr.run/WxZR2dO77xX6o
Stop 10. Old path, new path
Where the new concrete meets the old concrete place the item on the grass.
GPS 36.89452s, 174.88078e
https://webxr.run/xvomm6GpNyyWL
Stop 11. Sailing club and snakes & ladders playground
Place the item on the grass between the sailing club and the playground.
GPS 36.89169s, 174.88097e
https://webxr.run/2ADJ7mrbakOMg
Stop 12. Wakaaranga Creek mouth
Place the item in the mangroves.
GPS 36.89177s, 174.88585e
https://webxr.run/z4ExVGP2NNn3e
(Im)possible Parade
Created by SJ Blake
An augmented reality experience. Find all fifteen stations along the Rotary Walkway
1. Scan the QR code
2. Click the link to launch Zappar (you may need to give it permission to use your camera)
3. Point your phone camera just off the path, where the images feel good to you
4. Zoom in or out till they are the right size
5. Click ‘Place’ and turn the volume up
6. Keep an eye and ear out for other walkers and cyclists while moving around and mind the edge
Stop 13. Creek Dock
Looking out to mangroves, near wooden dock, place the item on the grass.
36.89314s, 174.89180e
https://webxr.run/z47eeQPVDwR6N
Stop 14. Pest control
Place the item just off the path.
GPS 36.89394s, 174.89450e
https://webxr.run/vOdEgrE09lnDD
Stop 15. Suburban Housing
At the path’s T junction face housing and place the item on the grass.
GPS 36.89231s, 174.89690e
https://webxr.run/GWmb77k7DID6e | c621d130-369a-4c2a-b898-dfea89719db0 | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | http://urbanwalking.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/impossible-parade-print-guide.pdf | 2023-01-28T23:01:36+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499695.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20230128220716-20230129010716-00052.warc.gz | 50,749,965 | 1,414 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.983508 | eng_Latn | 0.983915 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1224,
2732,
3863,
4786
] | [
2.296875
] | 1 | 0 |
Organic Chemistry
A huge variety of molecules in living organisms, are based on carbon with just a few other elements e.g. O and H.
This is possible because carbon always forms 4 bonds (valency = 4), so it can be bonded to other atoms in many different configurations.
Isomerism
Molecules with the same numbers of each type of atom can still have these atoms bonded together in different spatial arrangements. This is called isomerism.
e.g. $C_2H_6O$ could be...
- Ethanol: \[ \text{H} - \text{C} - \text{C} - \text{O} - \text{H} \]
- Methoxymethane: \[ \text{H} - \text{C} - \text{O} - \text{C} - \text{H} \]
Types of chemical formula
**Molecular formula** e.g. \( \text{C}_2\text{H}_6 \) (the one we normally use)
- a list of the atoms in a molecule, and how many of each
**Empirical formula** e.g. \( \text{CH}_3 \)
- the simplest whole-number ratio of the atoms present in the molecule
(divide the numbers by highest common factor)
**Displayed formula**
- shows each atom and ‘sticks’ for the bonds between them, so we can tell isomers apart
**Structural formula** e.g. \( \text{CH}_3\text{CH}_3 \)
- lists each carbon atom and what it is bonded to, so this too can tell isomers apart.
**Practice:** (answers at the end of the topic)
Write the displayed formula for the substance \( \text{CH}_3\text{CH}_2\text{CH}_2\text{CH}_3 \)
Write the empirical formula for the substance \( \text{C}_6\text{H}_{12}\text{O}_6 \)
Write the molecular formula for the substance \( \text{CH}_3\text{CH(CH}_3\text{)CH}_2\text{NH}_2 \)
Write the structural formulae of all the isomers of \( \text{C}_3\text{H}_8\text{O} \)
The ALKANES – a chemical family
A homologous series is a family of molecules with similar groups of bonded atoms that have the same reactions and trends in their physical properties.
Each successive member of the series differs from the other by $-\text{CH}_2-$ which means that all the members of the series are related by a general formula.
The alkanes are a homologous series with general formula $\text{C}_n\text{H}_{2n+2}$. ($'n'$ is the number of carbon atoms in the molecule)
| | molecular formula | structural formula | displayed formula |
|---|------------------|--------------------|-------------------|
| Methane | $\text{CH}_4$ | $\text{CH}_4$ |  |
| Ethane | $\text{C}_2\text{H}_6$ | $\text{CH}_3\text{CH}_3$ |  |
| Propane | $\text{C}_3\text{H}_8$ | $\text{CH}_3\text{CH}_2\text{CH}_3$ |  |
| Butane | $\text{C}_4\text{H}_{10}$ | $\text{CH}_3\text{CH}_2\text{CH}_2\text{CH}_3$ |  |
| Pentane | $\text{C}_5\text{H}_{12}$ | $\text{CH}_3(\text{CH}_2)_3\text{CH}_3$ |  |
The alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons:
Definitions:
Hydrocarbons: compounds containing only hydrogen and carbon atoms
Saturated: containing no carbon-to-carbon double bonds
Isomerism in the alkanes
There is only one alkane with 2 carbon atoms, and only one alkane with 3 carbon atoms, but we can have two different isomers with 4 carbon atoms:
butane
a branched isomer of butane (methylpropane)
Note that the chain of carbon atoms can be bent, but this does not make a different isomer. Branches can be on either side of the chain, or counted from either end of the chain (mirror images), but the isomer still the same. For different isomers, the atoms have to be connected in a different sequence. *(Although there are other forms of isomerism which you may meet if you study Chemistry beyond IGCSE)*
**Practice:**
What are the structures of the two **branched** isomers of pentane (with 5 carbon atoms)?
Hint: You may come up with more than two structures, but check that they aren’t the same structure just rotated or twisted!
Crude Oil: a mixture of very many different compounds, mostly hydrocarbons, mainly alkanes.
[Mixture: can be separated by physical means such as distillation – not chemically bonded together]
Crude oil is not useful itself – we have to separate out alkanes of similar number of carbon atoms.
Each group of these is called a fraction, and has different properties and uses. e.g. the fraction from 6 to 9 carbons long is petrol.
Fractional Distillation of Crude Oil on an Industrial Scale
Crude oil
Furnace
<30°C refinery gases
100-150°C gasoline (petrol)
190-250°C kerosene (jet fuel)
250-320°C diesel oil
320-400°C fuel oil
>500°C bitumen
3 – 4 carbons: used for domestic heating and cooking e.g. LPG, and camping gas
6 – 9 carbons: used for fuel in cars
11-16 carbons: used as aviation fuel, and as paraffin for heaters and lamps
14-20 carbons: used as fuel in lorries, buses, trains and some cars
20 – 27 carbons: used for ships' boilers, and for some industrial heating
> 35 carbons: used, mixed with rock chippings, for the top surface of roads
Properties of alkanes vary with size of the molecule
With increasing length of the carbon chain (increasing size of the molecule):
- Boiling point increases
- Melting point increases
- Viscosity (thick, sticky) increases
- Flammability decreases
- Burns less cleanly (more smoke)
Most fractions (except the longest chains) are used as fuels.
- We probably want the fuel to go down fuel lines and through pumps, so it should be runny not thick and sticky – we should avoid very long chain hydrocarbons.
- We want the fuel to burn cleanly rather than with a smoky flame – we should avoid very long chain hydrocarbons.
- We don’t want the fuel to ignite too easily – otherwise it will be difficult to store and handle safely – we should avoid the shortest chain hydrocarbons.
- We usually want our fuels to be liquids as they take less space to store than a – we should avoid the shortest chain hydrocarbons.
- Given these criteria we can see why there is huge demand for petrol for use in cars, which typically contains chains from 6 – 10 carbon atoms long.
Separating crude oil
- The process is called **fractional distillation**.
- It takes place in a **fractionating column**.
- It works because as the **number of carbon atoms** in an alkane increases, the **boiling points increase**.
- It is **NOT** a reaction (no substances changed) – just a separation.
**How it works:**
Each fraction contains molecules with similar numbers of carbon atoms and similar boiling points. Different size fractions will therefore condense at different temperatures.
The crude oil is vapourised and enters the bottom of a fractionating column which has a temperature gradient. (hot at the bottom, cooler towards the top).
At different levels in the column, different fractions cool down to their boiling points and condense, and are collected.
Complete combustion of alkane fuels
When hydrocarbons burn in a plentiful supply of air (oxygen) they are fully oxidised. No matter which hydrocarbon you burn, the products are the same: carbon dioxide and water.
General equation for complete combustion:
\[
\text{alkane} + \text{oxygen} \rightarrow \text{carbon dioxide} + \text{water}
\]
e.g. \( \text{CH}_4(g) + 2\text{O}_2(g) \rightarrow \text{CO}_2(g) + 2\text{H}_2\text{O}(l) \)
Incomplete combustion of alkane fuels
When hydrocarbons burn in a limited supply of air (oxygen) we get incomplete combustion – the fuel is partially oxidised.
This might happen if a domestic fire is not properly maintained and air-holes are blocked, for example. If there isn’t enough oxygen available to form carbon dioxide we can get carbon monoxide or solid carbon (soot) formed.
\[
\text{alkane} + \text{oxygen} \rightarrow \text{carbon monoxide} + \text{water}
\]
e.g. \( 2\text{CH}_4(g) + 3\text{O}_2(g) \rightarrow 2\text{CO}(g) + 4\text{H}_2\text{O}(l) \)
Carbon Monoxide (CO)
- colourless, odourless
- poisonous when inhaled because it reduces the capacity of the blood to carry oxygen.
- from domestic fires/heaters,
- from traffic exhaust
Other combustion products
Suphur dioxide, $SO_2$, and nitrogen oxides, NOx, are also produced when fossil fuels are burnt in power stations and factories, and in motor vehicles; they cause acid rain.
Sulphur dioxide comes from traces of sulphur in fossil fuels, which oxidise to sulphur dioxide when burnt.
$$S + O_2 \rightarrow SO_2$$
Sulphur is therefore removed from liquid fuels such as petrol before sale (it is then used as the raw material in the Contact Process).
Sulphur dioxide dissolves in water droplets in the atmosphere to form sulphurous acid, making acid rain.
$$SO_2(g) + H_2O(l) \rightarrow H_2SO_3(aq)$$
The wind can carry the gases and droplets a long way, so acid rain can fall on regions far from where it was produced.
Acid rain can kill or stunt the growth of plants and trees, and harm or kill aquatic animals. Buildings made of limestone or marble are corroded, and some metals such as iron can also be corroded by acid rain.
The nitrogen oxides come from the very high temperature inside car engines, which causes the nitrogen in the air to be burnt (i.e. react with the oxygen in the air). Nitrogen oxides in the air contribute to the formation of smog, and can lead to respiratory illnesses.
Catalytic converters are used in the exhausts of cars. They convert NOx to N₂, and CO to CO₂, but have no effect on SO₂.
\[ 2\text{NO}_{(g)} + 2\text{CO}_{(g)} \rightarrow \text{N}_2_{(g)} + 2\text{CO}_2_{(g)} \]
Catalytic converters only work when the catalyst is really hot, so are not effective on short trips.
Reaction of alkanes with halogens
Alkanes can also react slowly with halogens such as bromine, but only in the presence of **uv light**, e.g. from sunlight.
This is a **substitution reaction**. One of the hydrogen atoms in the alkane is substituted for a halogen atom.
\[ \text{CH}_4_{(g)} + \text{Br}_2_{(g)} \rightarrow \text{CH}_3\text{Br}_{(g)} + \text{HBr}_{(g)} \]
methane bromine bromomethane hydrogen bromide
The brown colour of the bromine slowly disappears, as the products are colourless.
**Practice – reactions of alkanes:**
Write a balanced equation for the complete combustion of ethane, \( \text{C}_2\text{H}_6 \), and of propane, \( \text{C}_3\text{H}_8 \).
Write a balanced equation for the incomplete combustion of ethane to give carbon monoxide and water, and the incomplete combustion of propane to give carbon (soot) and water.
Write a balanced equation for the reaction between chlorine and ethane, and name the products formed.
Alkenes – another homologous series
The alkenes are a homologous series of hydrocarbons with general formula $C_nH_{2n}$. They are unsaturated as they contain one carbon-to-carbon double bond.
ALKANES are SATURATED hydrocarbons
ALKENES are UNSATURATED hydrocarbons
| | molecular formula | structural formula | displayed formula |
|-------|------------------|--------------------|-------------------|
| ethene| $C_2H_4$ | $CH_2=CH_2$ | |
| propene| $C_3H_6$ | $CH_2=CHCH_3$ | |
| butene| $C_4H_8$ | $CH_2=CHCH_2CH_3$ | |
We use a number in the name to show between which carbon atoms the double bond is located.
Ethene is the simplest alkene
Isomerism in the alkenes
There is only one alkene with 2 carbon atoms, and one with 3 carbon atoms, but we can have three different alkenes with 4 carbon atoms:
- but-1-ene
- but-2-ene
- a branched isomer (methylpropene)
Test for alkenes:
Add a few drops of bromine water (orange) to the hydrocarbon, and shake.
- Alkenes can decolourise bromine water.
- Alkanes cannot do this (the bromine remains orange)
This is an addition reaction. The double bond in the alkene breaks and the two bromine atoms are joined one to each carbon atom.
\[
\begin{align*}
\text{H} & \quad \text{H} \\
\text{C} & = \text{C} \\
\text{H} & \quad \text{H}
\end{align*}
+
\text{Br-Br}
\rightarrow
\begin{align*}
\text{H} & \quad \text{H} \\
\text{C} & - \text{C} \\
\text{Br} & \quad \text{Br}
\end{align*}
\]
ethene bromine 1,2-dibromoethane
The numbers in the name indicate which carbon atoms the bromine atoms are attached to.
Other halogens e.g. chlorine or iodine react with alkenes in the same way.
Practice: Write a balanced equation for the reaction between propene and iodine, and name the products.
Where do we get alkenes?
Short-chain hydrocarbons (e.g. in petrol) are in high demand as fuels, because of the very large number of cars we use. Fractional distillation produces less than we need of the short-chain fractions so they are in short supply.
There is lower demand for the longer-chain hydrocarbon molecules such as fuel oils (we have much fewer ships than cars). Fractional distillation produces more than we need.
A reaction called cracking is used to make long chain hydrocarbons into shorter, more useful alkanes, and also produces useful alkenes.
Catalytic cracking
- creates more of products (short chains) which are in demand and in short supply
- makes more efficient use of finite crude oil reserves (uses longer chains)
- The reaction is an example of thermal decomposition
Conditions: Long chain alkanes are converted to alkenes using silica or alumina as catalysts and a temperature of 600 – 700°C.
The long chain gets broken into two shorter parts. One will be an alkane, and one will be an alkene.
Where the chain breaks is random, so cracking creates a mixture of products which can be separated by further fractional distillation.
E.g. An alkane 6 carbons long can break into a 4-carbon alkane and a 2-carbon alkene. We can write this equation as:
\[ \text{C}_6\text{H}_{14} \rightarrow \text{C}_4\text{H}_{10} + \text{C}_2\text{H}_4 \]
hexane butane + ethene
There are some other possibilities to be aware of...
1) hydrogen can be a product, instead of a shorter alkane
e.g. butane \( \rightarrow \) butene + hydrogen
\[ \text{C}_4\text{H}_{10} \rightarrow \text{C}_4\text{H}_8 + \text{H}_2 \]
2) the chain could break twice to give an alkane and two alkenes
e.g. octane \( \rightarrow \) butane + ethene
\[ \text{C}_8\text{H}_{18} \rightarrow \text{C}_4\text{H}_{10} + 2\text{C}_2\text{H}_4 \]
Another route for making alkenes
Alkenes can also be made by dehydration of alcohols; alcohols can be made as sustainable and as renewable resource by fermentation of sugars (see later).
e.g.
\[
\begin{align*}
&\text{H} & \text{C} & \text{C} & \text{O} & \text{H} \\
&\text{H} & \text{H} & \text{H} & \text{H} & \text{H} \\
\text{ethanol} & \rightarrow & \text{ethene} & + & \text{water}
\end{align*}
\]
The alcohol vapour is passed over hot aluminium oxide, which acts as a catalyst.
Apparatus for dehydrating ethanol
Products from alkenes – Ethanol
Alkenes are used to manufacture many useful substances:
Ethanol can be manufactured by passing ethene and steam over a concentrated phosphoric acid catalyst at a temperature of about 300°C and a pressure of 60-70 atm.
\[
C_2H_4 + H_2O \rightarrow C_2H_5OH \\
\text{ethene} + \text{water (steam)} \rightarrow \text{ethanol}
\]
Advantages of this method of making ethanol:
- rapid – continuous process with few steps
- makes pure ethanol
- manufacturing cost is low
- higher % yield
- best method in countries with good supplies of crude oil
Disadvantages of this method of making ethanol:
- Uses ethene from crude oil – finite resource
- Lots of energy required – high temperature, which means lots of fuel burnt and high CO₂ emissions leading to more global warming
Ethanol can also be manufactured by fermentation of sugars from sugar cane or sugar beet, at a temperature of about 30°C. The enzyme zymase in yeast catalyses this reaction, but at higher temperatures the enzyme is denatured.
\[
C_6H_{12}O_6 \rightarrow 2C_2H_5OH + 2 CO_2 \\
\text{sugar} \rightarrow \text{ethanol} + \text{carbon dioxide}
\]
Simple distillation is used to extract the pure ethanol from the resulting aqueous solution that is produced, which works because ethanol and water have different boiling points.
**Advantages of this method of making ethanol:**
- uses renewable resources (plant matter)
- fuel is carbon-neutral
- low energy consumption, reducing carbon dioxide emissions and resulting in less global warming
- best in countries with good availability of sugar cane and poor supplies of crude oil
**Disadvantages of this method of making ethanol:**
- slow – batch process involving more steps
- labour intensive
- product impure – has to be distilled to purify
- product is more expensive to manufacture
Products from Alkenes – Addition Polymers
Fire resistant polymer fibre suits for F1 pit crews
Polymer canopy on military aircraft is light and tough
Breathable weather-resistant sportswear uses polymer fibres
Modern climbing ropes are woven from polymer fibres
Common household objects made from polymer materials
Plastics and manmade fibres consist of very long chain molecules. These are made up from lots of small molecules that have joined together.
We call the small molecules **MONOMERS** and the long chain they make, a **POLYMER**. The name of the polymer comes from the monomer, with ‘poly’ in front of it.
Alkenes can act as monomers because they have a C=C double bond, which allows them to join together.
This reaction is called **addition polymerisation** because the alkene monomers add on to one another to make one product only.
Changes that take place when a polymer forms
- The **double bond breaks** in each monomer, ‘opening up’ to join with the next monomer.
- **Many monomers** join together in this way to make a **very long chain**.
ethene $\rightarrow$ poly(ethene) common name: polythene or PE
the monomer, ethene
Poly(ethene) is a really useful plastic. It is easy to shape, strong, and transparent.
e.g.
plastic bags, drinks bottles, dustbins, clingfilm
BUT it melts easily and catches fire easily!
a repeat unit of poly(ethene)
How to write an equation for the reaction:
$$n \text{ C}=\text{C} \rightarrow \left[\text{C}–\text{C}\right]_n$$
propene $\rightarrow$ poly(propene) common name: PP or polypropylene
the monomer, propene
Poly(propene) is more rigid than poly(ethene), tough and durable.
It is used for making crates, ropes and fibres in some carpets
A repeat unit of poly(propene)
How to write an equation for the reaction:
\[
\begin{align*}
\text{Propene} & \rightarrow \text{Poly(propene)} \\
\text{H}_2\text{C}=\text{CH}_2 & \rightarrow \left(\text{CH}_3\right)_n
\end{align*}
\]
chloroethene $\rightarrow$ Poly(chloroethene) common name: PVC
the monomer, chloroethene
PVC is also useful e.g. for window frames (because it is stiff, and doesn’t bend easily) and insulation on wires (because it does not catch fire easily, and is easy to add a colour to)
a repeat unit of poly(chloroethene)
How to write an equation for the reaction:
$$n \quad C=C \quad \rightarrow \quad \left[ \begin{array}{c} H \\ C \\ Cl \\ H \end{array} \right]_n$$
Given a repeat unit for a polymer, you should be able to draw the monomer from which it was formed:
1. remove the connecting bonds and any brackets
2. make the bond between the two carbon atoms of the chain into a double bond
Practice: Draw the monomers that formed these two polymers:
PTFE
poly(styrene)
Problems with polymers
Because they are very inert (unreactive) addition polymers are not easily broken down by micro-organisms – they are not biodegradable.
Being non-biodegradable can be good - plastic structures used outside don’t need painting or maintaining like wooden objects.
But this does cause problems when we want to dispose of polymers...
We currently have three options:
- dump plastic waste in landfill
- incinerate plastic waste
- collect, sort and recycle it
Landfill is a poor solution:
• the plastics never rot away
• more and more space is needed, and land is valuable
• wildlife may be harmed by eating plastics or getting entangled.
Burning (incinerating):
- Incinerators are expensive to build
- Toxic fumes can be released
- Energy from burning is useful e.g. for home/factory heating
Sorting and recycling plastics:
- very labour intensive to collect and sort
- plastics must be washed before sorting into different types
- not all types of plastic can be recycled
The cost of recycled plastic can be higher than new plastic!
Condensation Polymers
Unlike addition polymers, when the monomers in condensation polymers join together there is a small molecule released, such as water, when each link is formed.
Condensation polymers are often formed by reacting two different monomers together.
e.g. nylon is a condensation polymer.
Answers
Write the displayed formula for the substance \( \text{CH}_3\text{CH}_2\text{CH}_2\text{CH}_3 \)
Write the empirical formula for the substance \( \text{C}_6\text{H}_{12}\text{O}_6 \)
Write the molecular formula for the substance \( \text{CH}_3\text{CH(CH}_3\text{)}\text{CH}_2\text{NH}_2 \)
Write the structural formulae of all the isomers of \( \text{C}_3\text{H}_8\text{O} \)
What are the structures of the two branched isomers of pentane (with 5 carbon atoms)?
Hint: You may come up with more than two structures, but check that they aren’t the same structure just rotated or twisted!
Write a balanced equation for the complete combustion of ethane, $C_2H_6$, and of propane, $C_3H_8$.
$$2C_2H_6 + 7O_2 \rightarrow 4CO_2 + 6H_2O$$
$$C_3H_8 + 5O_2 \rightarrow 3CO_2 + 4H_2O$$
Write a balanced equation for the incomplete combustion of ethane to give carbon monoxide and water, and the incomplete combustion of propane to give carbon (soot) and water.
$$2C_2H_6 + 5O_2 \rightarrow 4CO + 6H_2O$$
$$C_3H_8 + 2O_2 \rightarrow 3C + 4H_2O$$
Write a balanced equation for the reaction between chlorine and ethane, and name the products formed.
$$C_2H_6 + Cl_2 \rightarrow C_2H_5Cl + HCl$$
chloroethane hydrogen chloride
Write a balanced equation for the reaction between propene and iodine, and name the product.
$$C_3H_6 + I_2 \rightarrow C_3H_6I_2$$
1,2-diiodopropane
Write a symbol equation for the cracking of heptane in which propane is one of the products
\[ C_7H_{16} \rightarrow C_3H_8 + C_4H_8 \]
Draw the monomers that formed these two polymers:
- **PTFE**
- Monomer = \( \text{F}_2\text{C}=\text{C}\text{F}_2 \)
- **poly(styrene)**
- Monomer = \( \text{H}_2\text{C}=\text{C}\text{H} \) | 1871a63e-2166-46c3-af8c-531d71e46369 | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://chemistryklipz.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/igcse-organic-chemistry.pdf | 2020-10-30T07:32:29+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107909746.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20201030063319-20201030093319-00355.warc.gz | 248,984,158 | 6,030 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.943874 | eng_Latn | 0.990884 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
615,
1622,
2871,
3736,
4167,
4810,
5870,
6649,
7847,
8597,
9395,
10362,
11329,
12204,
13133,
14054,
14579,
15383,
16418,
16738,
17487,
17909,
18369,
18833,
19143,
19804,
20202,
20510,
21112,
21901,
22237
] | [
3.828125,
3.984375
] | 1 | 0 |
A Whole School Approach to Supporting Loss and Bereavement
© 2013 Glasgow City Council
Education Services
City Chambers East
40 John Street
Glasgow G1 1JL
www.glasgow.gov.uk
0141 287 2000
How to use the resource
This resource has been developed to support staff wishing to increase their knowledge and understanding on the subject of bereavement, loss and change. This document is a reference toolkit which contains information, further reading and signposting to local and national organisations and supports.
To get started, go to the Contents page, select the topic on which you would like further information and click on it. This will take you to the information you require.
In 2011 a scoping exercise was carried out by the Children and Young People Mental Health Short Life Working Group, consisting of representatives from NHS, education services and voluntary organisations. The purpose of the exercise was to establish the range of services and activities available to support child and youth mental health throughout Greater Glasgow and Clyde, including educational establishments.
A total of 37 Glasgow schools participated in the survey and the results obtained reflect the wide variety of curricular programmes and activities taking place across the city in order to support children and young people’s mental health. These included programmes such as *Seasons for Growth*, *Bounce Back*, *Positive Mental Attitudes*, *Respect Me*, *Creative Confident Children* as well as peer support programmes, buddying, mentoring, counselling services, drop-in services, group work, circle time and citizenship.
The results also detailed training undertaken by education staff in the last two years as well as highlighting any training needs relating to mental health. Training on bereavement and loss was highlighted by school staff as an area requiring further development.
In 2011 Education Services launched *Managing Critical Incidents* guidelines for establishments. This resource will enhance the guidance contained in *Managing Critical Incidents* and provide information and advice to assist staff in the day to day support that they provide to children and young people coping with bereavement, loss and change.
Our Vision
Background and rationale
How children and young people grieve
A guide to supporting children and young people when they return to school... and when time passes
Supporting a bereaved pupil with additional support needs
Appendix 1
Case Studies/Examples of good practice
1. Katy’s Story (adapted from Winston’s Wish)
2. One school’s journey: Royston Primary School
Appendix 2
Lesson Plans from Child Bereavement Charity and Winston’s Wish
Appendix 3
Our Vision – self-evaluation
Wider reading
Small Creature – British Heart Foundation Resources
Websites with resources for schools
Websites with general information
Appendix 4
Suggested Books, Videos and DVDs
Early Years
Primary
Secondary
Other helpful books (on wider issues of loss, not specific to bereavement)
Resources appropriate for children and young people with additional support needs
Appendix 5
Working group membership
Our Vision
In our establishments we strive to be **prepared, supportive, informed**.
**Prepared**
- We have policy and procedures in place to support children, young people and staff to deal with bereavement and loss when it presents itself within our establishments and during the months and years that follow.
**Supportive**
- Our educational establishments will work to support children and young people, their families and staff through periods of loss and change, within a caring environment.
- Our communication is open and honest with children, young people and their families. We use age appropriate language.
- Strategies are in place to support bereaved children and young people for as long as they need.
- By offering curricular opportunities, we proactively support the development of children and young people’s resilience in coping with the impact of loss and change caused by bereavement.
- We are aware of staff support needs before, during and after periods of bereavement, loss or change.
**Informed**
- Our teachers and support staff have access to appropriate training and resources.
- Our teachers and support staff are aware of local and national support services.
- Our teachers and support staff work in partnership with local agencies to provide support and signpost children and young people, families and staff for further support if required. Parents are aware of the levels of support they can receive from us.
Approximately 1 in 25 children and young people have experienced bereavement of a parent or sibling – that’s about the same as one child in every school classroom in the country.\(^1\)
Many children and young people will experience bereavement, through the loss of a parent, sibling, grandparent or friend. Children can also face the loss of a loved animal or pet which can be as significant for them as losing a relative or friend. The term ‘bereavement’ refers to the process of grieving and mourning and is associated with a deep sense of loss and sadness. It is a natural process; however its effects can be overwhelming. Indeed, in 2000/01 Childline received 1,146 calls and letters from children about bereavement. At any one time, 70% of primary schools have a recently bereaved child on their roll.\(^2\)
One of the country’s leading childhood bereavement charities, Winston’s Wish, reports that children often feel isolated during their grief experience and may feel that nobody understands their feelings. Although experience of bereavement will be unique to the individual and it is very difficult to predict how someone will respond. Certain reactions are common to children as well as adults.
During bereavement, children and young people can experience a great number of emotions, including sadness, anger, anxiety, guilt, fear, denial, disbelief and confusion. With the right help and support, most children and young people will not require professional help or a ‘bereavement expert’; rather, as highlighted by the Child Bereavement Charity, what they do need is people who care and the understanding of familiar and trusted adults. Schools are well placed to provide such support. The Child Bereavement Charity goes on to state that, just by carrying on with their usual day-to-day activities, schools can do a huge amount to support a grieving child.
**Policy context**
The need to support children and young people at a time of bereavement has been highlighted by a number of national and local policy documents. The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2009 and a Curriculum for Excellence set out an entitlement for all children and young people.
Children and young people are priorities within *Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland*\(^3\) and *No Health without Mental Health*\(^4\) for Greater Glasgow and Clyde. *Getting It Right for Every Child* (GIRFEC) aims to ensure that the health and wellbeing of all Scotland’s children is paramount. Support through loss and bereavement is part of this.
---
\(^1\) Winston’s Wish, 2012
\(^2\) Holland, J. (1993) ‘Childhood Bereavement in Humberisde Primary Schools’ *Educational Research* 35
\(^3\) *Towards a Mentally Flourishing Scotland: The Future of Mental Health Improvement in Scotland 2008-11*
\(^4\) *Strategic Framework for Mental Health Improvement*, Glasgow City Council, Final version June 2011
The negative impact of unresolved childhood bereavement, as identified by the Butterfly Project, (Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice), may be a factor in:
- reduced self-esteem: two years following the death of a parent, self-esteem is significantly lower in comparison to peers. (Silverman & Worden, 1992)
- reduced academic achievement (Van Eerdewegh et al 1985)
- increased risk of offending behaviour (London study found that 22% of young offenders were bereaved: 4% of young people aged 5-15yrs) (Liddle & Solanki 2000)
- increased incidence of teenage pregnancy (Young 1994)
- increased risk of developing psychological distress & the link with adult depression (Weller et al, 1991. Black & Young, 1995, Berman et al, 1998)
In addition to the above, the Childhood Bereavement Charity also states that bereaved children report experiences of being bullied as a result of their bereavement. In addition, they can experience difficulties with concentration and a lack of interest in school. Bereavement can also interrupt a pupil’s school attendance and may be a factor in behaviour in school. Certain behaviour changes may need special attention, for example: truancy, bullying behaviour, risk-taking behaviour, mood swings, becoming withdrawn, psychosomatic symptoms, poor school work or overworking.
**What can schools do?**
*Preparing for bereavement, loss and change*
The purpose of this resource is to support school staff so that they feel more confident and equipped when helping a child or young person who is going through a period of bereavement, loss or change. In this resource you will find further information on children and young people’s understanding of death and bereavement, the impact of such bereavement and ways in which bereavement can be introduced into the curriculum to enable children, young people and staff to explore experiences and feelings associated with bereavement.
Useful websites and local contact information is provided for further information and support. Guidance is also provided to support establishments to develop their own school bereavement strategy in order to be prepared to support children, young people and staff through difficult times.
Children and young people are clear about the benefits of support and communication around bereavement and loss in schools. Staff may be reluctant to initiate what they perceive to be painful conversations due to a fear of making things worse for the child or young person. If a child or young person is experiencing loss or grief, speak to SMT in the first instance regarding referral or further support.
The Child Bereavement Charity has identified a variety of supports that schools can offer children and young people experiencing loss and grief. The following points may help staff to put their advice into context which is appropriate for their own establishment.
Normality
For the majority of children or young people whose life has been turned upside down the routines of school life can give a sense of normality. Everything else may have fallen apart but school and the people within it are still there, offering a sense of security and continuity.
Relief from Grief
For children and young people, school can give relief from an emotionally charged atmosphere at home. They may feel overwhelmed by a grieving family. There may be a constant stream of visitors expressing their own grief. Children and young people can find this difficult to deal with.
An Outlet for Grief
When a parent or sibling has died, children and young people can try to spare their surviving parent by hiding their own grief and appearing to be OK. School is often seen as somewhere safe to express this grief.
A Listening Ear
Family members struggling to deal with their own grief can overlook children. For a child who wishes to, school staff can provide an opportunity to talk about what has happened with a familiar and trusted adult in relative peace and calm.
The Opportunity to be a Child
Even when deeply sad, children still need to be children. School offers the chance to play, laugh, sing and generally just be a child without feeling guilty.
General Support
Systems should be in place to keep in contact with home. Discuss concerns but also successes. Grieving children and young people can display altered behaviours in different situations. Good communication with home will help school be aware of this and provide a more realistic picture of how the child is coping.
Resources
It may be useful to have a selection of resources on the subject in school. Stories are an effective way to gently introduce young children to the concept of death. Novels and poems offer young people a chance to learn through reading, listening and discussion.
Taking care of yourself
Talking to a child or young person about the death of someone close may be among the hardest things a teacher will ever have to do. As the Hands on Scotland website points out, “Supporting a bereaved child can be exhausting and bewildering and may also bring back painful memories of your own.
Staff should do what they can to support the child, without expecting too much from themselves and should talk to someone if they need support.” (www.handsonscotland.co.uk).
How children and young people grieve
Given the complex and varied needs of children and young people, it is difficult to gauge how the loss will affect them as individuals. However, the developmental age of a child does have a direct impact on their level of understanding, and it is useful to have some knowledge of what death means to children at various stages in their development. Children at various stages of development respond to grief differently. Their response is also influenced by the behaviour and support of the adults around them.
Helping a child or young person who is grieving
How a child or young person understands and reacts to the death of someone close varies with age. Teachers can help a child cope with the loss by having several simple, direct conversations and supporting the child or young person to express his or her feelings in a healthy way.
Children grieve differently from adults. Most children do not experience the sustained intense emotions experienced by adults. Children may show their sadness only occasionally and for brief periods, or may complain of physical discomfort, such as having a sore tummy or head, rather than expressing sadness. A child’s grief comes and goes, and a child may experience it in a new way as he or she grows older or passes a developmental milestone, such as starting school. Even into adulthood, events such as graduating from university may trigger renewed grief.
How children understand death at different ages
Children at different stages of development have different understandings of death. Development influences the way children react to a loss and the type of support they need. Children’s reactions are also influenced by other factors, including personality, previous experiences with death, and support available from family members. Note that children do not move abruptly from one stage of development to the next and that characteristics from each stage may overlap.
Infants (birth to 2 years)
At this stage of development children are not able to understand about death, but will experience the loss as a separation from someone to whom they may have an attachment. Due to limited ability to communicate verbally, children may express this loss in other ways, for example, becoming withdrawn, crying and so on. The emotional state of people around them may also have an adverse effect, and normality and routine are very important.
**Key Points at this age**
- Have no understanding of death.
- Are aware of separation and will grieve the absence of a parent or carer.
- May react to the absence of a parent or carer with increased crying, decreased responsiveness, and changes in eating or sleeping.
- May keep looking or asking for a missing parent or carer and wait for him or her to return.
- Are most affected by the sadness of surviving parent(s) and carer(s).
Preschool-age children (2-5 years old)
At this stage of development children believe that death is reversible. They may also be convinced that it was something that they said or did which caused the person to die. Abstract concepts are not easily grasped, and so it is important that the child is spoken to in very concrete terms. In order to make sense of what has happened children at this age may often ask the same questions over and over again.
**Key points at this age**
- Are curious about death and believe death is temporary or reversible.
- May see death as something like sleeping—the person is dead but only in a limited way and may continue to breathe or eat after death.
- Are characterized by ‘magical thinking’ and understand the world as a mix of reality and fantasy.
- Are naturally egocentric and see themselves as the cause of events around them.
- Often feel guilty and believe that they are responsible for the death of a loved one, perhaps because they were ‘bad’ or wished the person would ‘go away’.
- May think that they can make the deceased come back if they are good enough.
- Will worry about who will take care of them and about being abandoned.
- Are still greatly affected by the sadness of surviving family members.
- Cannot put their feelings into words and instead react to loss through behaviours such as irritability, aggression, physical symptoms, difficulty sleeping, or regression (such as bed-wetting or thumb-sucking).
Primary school-age children (six to 12 years)
Children begin to develop the understanding that death is irreversible and something that happens eventually to all living things. Death may be regarded as something that is a bit ‘spooky’, and they may display what seems to be an unhealthy curiosity in the more morbid aspects of the death. Children at this age may complain of headaches, a sore tummy or other ailments. These are referred to as ‘somatic’ complaints and are generally physical manifestations of emotional pain. Behaviour may change, but it is important to encourage children at this age to express their feelings and understand that what they are feeling is perfectly natural.
Key points at this age
- Understand that death is final, but see it as something that happens only to other people.
- May think of death as a person or a spirit, like a ghost, angel, or a skeleton.
- Understand that death is universal, unavoidable, and will happen to them (by age 10).
- Are often interested in the specific details of death and what happens to the body after death.
- May experience a range of emotions including guilt, anger, shame, anxiety, sadness, and worry about their own death.
- Continue to have difficulty expressing their feelings and may react through behaviours such as school phobia, poor performance in school, aggression, physical symptoms, withdrawal from friends, and regression.
- Still worry about who will take care of them and will likely experience insecurity, clinginess, and fear of abandonment.
- May still worry that they are to blame for the death.
Adolescents and teenagers
At this stage of development, young people are developing their own ideas about who they are and what is important to them in their lives. They are more aware of their future. Death may cause them to reflect on the meaning and purpose of life, or they may not want to reflect, and hide their feelings. As adults our job is to let them know that we are there if they need to talk, or that we can find someone else to help if necessary. Although the grieving process at this age is much like adults, teenagers are still developing emotionally, and need support. By now young people are much more aware of the finality of death, and the impact that the death has had on them. The death of someone important may make them feel different, at the very time that they want to be the same as everyone else. They are aware of the longer term impact of their loss, when future milestones will not be shared with the person who has died. Relationships with others are becoming increasingly important, and any loss can lead to feelings of anger or severe distress.
Key points at this age
- Have an adult understanding of the concept of death, but do not have the experiences, coping skills, or behaviour of an adult.
- May ‘act out’ in anger or show impulsive or reckless behaviours, such as substance misuse or fighting in school.
- May experience a wide range of emotions, but not know how to handle them or feel comfortable expressing them.
- The reality of death contradicts a teenager’s view of himself or herself as invincible, and teenagers may question their faith or their understanding of the world.
- Developmental issues of independence and separation from parents can interfere with the ability to receive support from adult family members.
- Coping strategies may create tension with family members, as adolescents may cope by spending more time with friends or by withdrawing from the family to be alone.
Significance of the relationship with the deceased
The grieving process of the child is more intense when the relationship between the child and the person who died was close. For instance, the death of a parent or a sibling has a much greater impact than the death of a grandparent whom the child rarely saw. Beyond the immediate sadness, the significant influence of a parent or sibling on the ongoing development of a child means the effect of his or her death will be felt repeatedly as the child grows up. The death of a parent or other close family member also directly changes the child’s day-to-day life. Family routines and roles change, such as a surviving parent having to return to work and spend less time at home. These changes represent significant losses and add to children’s overall grief.
Content adapted from various sources:
www.bbc.co.uk/health/emotional_health/bereavement/bereavement_effectschildren.shtml
www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/supportivecare/bereavement/HealthProfessional/page6
www.cancer.net/
www.mourningcloak.org/about-grieving-children.html
When the bereaved child or young person returns to school
Before the child or young person comes back to school, the headteacher or class teacher should explain what has happened to classmates and/or year groups as appropriate. The headteacher is best placed to decide on how this is done most sensitively and appropriately.
Approaches may differ slightly, however it is important for the key worker, class teacher, year head or pastoral care teacher to acknowledge to the child what has happened. This will have been discussed with parents or carers prior to the child returning to school.
Things to consider:
- Do not be afraid to use the words dead or death “I was very sorry to hear of the death of your…”
- Children and young people need honesty. Although sometimes difficult, it is better to answer awkward questions truthfully.
- Recognise the full tragedy for the child. Do not try to comfort with comments such as “at least it is not as bad as…” You might think this is helpful, it is not.
- Reassure them that they are not responsible. If this is an issue (it may not be for all children and young people), reassure them that the death was not their fault.
- Whether a pupil is returning to school quickly or after a period of absence, staff should ensure that there are systems in place to support them, for example:
- Time out cards – special cards giving the young person permission to leave the class when feeling overwhelmed, emotional. Young people often feel embarrassed about showing their emotions and do not want to cry in front of their peers. By offering time out the young person can express their grief away from the classroom.
- Support the young person to express their grief if appropriate.
- Access to a quiet space for time out and reflection if required.
- More intensive support from pastoral care staff.
- Access to a school counsellor, if there is one, and/or local services as appropriate.
- Grief is a very personal experience, every child and young person will experience it differently, give them space to deal with their feelings in their own way.
(Extract from Child Bereavement Charity and a Secondary School Policy)
As time passes…
- be prepared to listen, again and again and again.
- give bereaved pupils time. It may be many months before they can fully cope with the pressures of school work. Remember that they will be grieving for life and the loss will always be with them.
- offer tailor made support if required, for example, Seasons for Growth or by referring into a local service provider.
- be aware of important dates such as the anniversary of the death, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and so on.
Supporting a bereaved pupil with Additional Support Needs
(taken from the Child Bereavement Charity)
Children and young people with Additional Support Needs are sometimes assumed to need protection from death and dying more than most or not have the capacity to understand. It can be easy to underestimate their ability to cope with difficult situations. The challenge is finding creative ways to communicate when words are sometimes not appropriate.
If using words, use the real ones, for example dead and dying, not euphemisms.
Expressing their grief
Children do not need protection from the feelings and emotions associated with grief but support to express them and reassurance that these sometimes powerful and overwhelming emotions are normal and necessary. This is even more the case for children with additional support needs.
For further information refer to the Child Bereavement Charity website
www.childbereavement.org.uk/
The following takes the hypothesis of a primary school setting, a sudden unexpected death of a parent (we’ll make it her father) at the weekend, and a young person (we’ll call her Katy) aged around 10. It raises some of the stages and issues that may prove helpful in managing the impact of the death on your community or school setting. It makes some assumption, (for example, that Katy returns to school after a few days rather than the same morning) and may need some adaptation depending on who has died and the age of the child/children involved. This was one school’s response, your journey will be your own but there will be some similarities and some useful things to consider.
**Short Term**
- The school is informed of the death on Monday morning. Katy and her family are consulted on how the rest of the school will learn about the death.
- The head refers to *Managing Critical Incidents* and *A whole school approach to supporting loss and bereavement*.
- Katy’s class teacher, Mr Sharples is informed.
- The rest of the staff are informed. It is discussed whether each class teacher will tell their class or if the headteacher will visit all the classes to tell what has happened to Katy’s family. This would be determined by who actually knows Katy in the other classes or if she has relatives attending the school – it may not be appropriate for the whole school to know about Katy’s situation, a decision like this should be made by the school’s own Incident Management Team.
- A quick reminder of any other child in the school who has been previously bereaved is given to teachers to prepare them to offer additional support if required.
- If considered appropriate, a letter is produced for everyone/the class in the school to take home to their parents, outlining what has happened along with additional information on some possible reactions and responses that children may show. (*Managing Critical Incidents*, Education Services).
- A letter of condolence is sent to Katy’s family.
Medium Term – before Katy’s return to school
- The school stays in touch with the family to find out what Katy’s wants to happen on her return to school. It may be that Katy wants to tell the whole class what has happened or that she would prefer Mr Sharples to say something simple to acknowledge her return. Katy decides she wants to say something herself.
- Staff are kept informed and encouraged to acknowledge the death to and with Katy.
- They are encouraged to talk with their class about how Katy and her family may be feeling and how they will support her on her return. A simple form of words such as ‘I am really sorry to hear about your father’s death, Katy’ is suggested for those who are unsure of what to say.
- Katy’s own class and group of friends might have an additional session focusing on feelings connected with loss and grief.
Medium term – when Katy returns to school
- Mr Sharples is waiting when she arrives and they have some time together. During this time, he will check that Katy is still happy with their plans for her return to class.
- Katy and her teacher identify an adult support for her and she is told that she can dip in and out of lessons whenever she needs to for the next few days and seek out her chosen supporter. This may be her class teacher, the school secretary or one of the other teachers.
- Katy and her teacher rejoin the rest of the class. Katy tries to tell people what has happened but gets a little upset. Her teacher gently finishes the account, giving the class as much information as is known that Katy’s family are comfortable with being shared about the death.
- Both Katy and Mr Sharples make the point that she wants people to talk to her about what has happened and to understand that she will cry sometimes.
- Time is set aside at the end of the day for Katy to spend a little time with Mr Sharples checking out how things have been during the day, any changes she would like to make to the next day (where possible) and agreeing a plan for the following morning. Maybe a group of Katy’s friends could wait outside and walk in with her.
Longer term
- In partnership with the family, it is agreed how the school will mark the funeral. It may be that some staff attend and some friends of Katy’s. Other members of the school may wish to contribute memories of Katy’s father.
- Mr Sharples, in agreement with the rest of the staff, arranges a system for Katy whenever the pressure of grief builds up. She may be allowed “time out” or to seek out her supporter.
- The school ensures that Katy’s family knows about any local child bereavement service and also provides information on national services. This may involve making a referral/working in partnership with a service for example, Glasgow Psychological Service, local organisation, Glasgow based organisations.
- Mr Sharples compiles a ‘calendar of memories’ – noting any dates that will be especially sensitive for Katy – the anniversary of the death, her father’s birthday, Fathers Day, and so on. This calendar can follow her through the school and a note is made that this information will pass at transition to the secondary school next year.
- All those who teach Katy have a heightened sensitivity to issues that may affect her – for example, consider the circumstances around the death, and the nature of proposed learning contexts to ensure Katy is not unnecessarily upset.
Bereavement and Loss… one school’s journey
This account was kindly written by Agnes Galbraith, Royston Primary School.
Sadly the school community suffered a series of tragedies in a very short period of time. We are indebted to Agnes and the staff of Royston Primary for sharing this with us. This journey was first shared at a one-day ‘Supporting loss and bereavement’ course organised by Education Services in collaboration with the Hospices and Health Improvement Officers in February 2012.
A P4 child was murdered in June 2004 on the last day of school. On looking back we realised that each member of staff had spoken to him at some point on that day.
- Staff met in school on the day after and visited his family at home and attended his funeral.
- The interval between returning to school and his death went some way to help us deal with this terrible event.
- It was at this point that we began our memorial garden.
- On return to school we took the lead from the children, answered questions as best we could, reassured and listened. We worked hard to allay their fears and to build an ethos of safety.
A much loved member of staff died in tragic circumstances in May 2005 in the school building.
- Everyone was devastated, staff and children alike – he was a much loved figure who ‘high fived’ every child in the school each day.
- Staff had one day when they worked in groups and were given support by Psychological Services.
- Again we took the lead from the children. Staff and some of the older children attended his funeral. Staff also accompanied his family to a meal afterwards and the headteacher spoke at this time expressing how much he was loved in Royston Primary. Support for his family was ongoing for some time and they often spoke to staff.
- We compiled a book of our memories to which everyone contributed - staff and children. – We called our book ‘From all of us, to all of you’ and this was given to his family.
- We planted a Kilmarnock Willow and flowers in our memorial garden and remembered our P4 child at this time also.
- Both families still lay flowers on birthdays and anniversaries. They do this privately, usually when the school is closed and no one is about. It’s poignant to come back to flowers in this way.
At this point we had feelings of ‘it can’t get any worse’…
In May 2008, a P2 child and his little brother were murdered by their father.
- We had to address a new set of fears on the children’s part: “Why did their daddy kill them?” Again we took the lead from the children, answering questions and providing reassurance as best we could.
- Staff attended the funeral and as the cortege passed the school the children gathered in the playground to watch. Some children cried and some waved. Royston Road was lined with local people.
- We arranged a service for parents and children in May led by our minister who had also provided support at the time of our P4 child’s death.
- A table was laid out with candles lit to represent the four lives
- The clarsach, a small Scottish harp, was played. The headteacher and minister spoke for a very short while and then the whole school went out to the memorial garden where we planted another tree during which time each child tied a message to the railings around the garden. These were left on the fence. Local musicians played throughout. The parents left and the children came back into school to talk and take part in enjoyable, relaxing activities. Staff reassured children, and shared their feelings with them. It was alright to be sad.
- In June we had our end of term service and it was at this time that we let go of our balloons. The boys’ family was invited. Mum didn’t attend. Everyone was given a balloon. Music was played and the balloons were let go. It was a bright sunny day and the children were able to watch the balloons disappear. Before the summer holiday the messages were collected and brought into school so that in August we could start again.
Later that year we were contacted by the Notre Dame Centre regarding the possibility of work taking place with the P2 class. This involved Steven Fischbacher the writer of ‘Fischy Music’ and, a poet, Stewart Henderson.
The children had four sessions of *Seasons for Growth* with various trained workers. They met Steven and Stewart to discuss their likes and dislikes about Royston and these were written on a flip chart.
Inevitably the subject of the children’s deaths came up and these thoughts were added to the list. The class talked about our memorial service, the ribbons, the messages, the balloons, and so on.
Steven and Stewart explained how they would go away with all the ideas and come back with lyrics and a tune. On their return visit the children heard the song for the first time – it was very emotional. This time was kept private – only the children in this class and their teacher were present at this first hearing of the song.
The song was to be recorded and put on to a CD. The children practised in school, but needed the help of P7s as they found it too emotionally difficult to sing it on their own.
At our end of year service, the class managed to sing *Letting go of our balloons* – but only just. The silence in the hall at this time was palpable.
The song was made into a CD and each child in Paul’s class was given a copy to keep.
The service ended with another Fischy music song *May you find Peace*.
Finally,
- We’ve learned that the best way to deal with such awful tragedies is to be honest and to make time to talk with the children and with one another.
- We’ve learned that there’s no simple fix and that in order to move on you have to let go. This doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten.
- Small things bring it rushing back – finding a photograph of our P2 child dressed up as The Hulk for Hallowe’en in the October just before he died. Recently finding some of our P4 child’s handwritten stories, as we tidied a cupboard, dated April – 2 months before he died.
- Some of our members of staff made use of Royston Stress Centre counselling services and an explanation was given was that things like this leave a ‘bruise’ – there will always be hurt there which can be triggered by the smallest thing!
- Constant remembering. We can all talk about these people now, even the children. We can laugh about our colleague’s funny habits; our P4 child’s cheeky grin and our P2 child’s quiet way of going about things… but the sadness is still there and we’ll never forget.
Child Bereavement Charity: Father’s Day Activity
Experiences & Outcomes: HWB 0-01a/1-01a/0-02a/1-02a/0-05a/1-05a/0-08a/1-08a.
Level: First and Second
Curriculum Areas: Languages, H&WB, Expressive Arts.
Lesson Aims
To celebrate fathers and men who act as father figures.
Objectives
Pupils will
- think about what sort of person their father or father figure is and understand that all Dad’s are different.
- have fun and produce a creative image of an animal that reminds them of their Dad or father figure.
- be more aware that some children find Father’s’ Day difficult because their father has died or no longer lives with the family.
Father’s Day
Introduce the session by explaining to the children that they are going to think about their dads, or father figure and what sort of person he is.
Which words would they use to describe him?
They are then going to think of an animal that reminds them of their dad or father figure, for example a solid dependable elephant or a sleepy, slow sloth, or a hairy orang-utan!
Without putting the spotlight on any particular child, explain that in some families there are different types of dad, or more than one dad, for example step dads, foster dads, uncles, and in others it might be a granddad, or other special person.
Explain that there are lots of different reasons for this but in some families it is because the children’s father has died.
However, those children, as well as children whose father no longer lives with them, often still like to think about and remember their dad in just the same way as everyone else on Father’s Day.
Remind children that dads are not perfect, they are human and make mistakes like the rest of us (some children may have dads in prison or have been told that their dads are bad people).
But all dads have something that makes them special to us.
Ask some prompt questions
- Words I would use to describe my dad or father figure are...
- When I picture my dad or father figure the animal that I see is...
- My dad or father figure is special because...
Explain that Father’s Day is an opportunity to remember all the reasons why their dad or other special person is important to them and to say thank you.
Then ask the children to paint an animal that reminds them of their dad, for example if they think that their dad is a very patient person they might paint a tortoise. If they think he is a bit fierce sometimes they might paint a tiger. If they think he is always chattering, a monkey.
They can then paint or write on the image the adjectives they would use to describe him.
The art can then be taken home as a thank you gift or displayed in school.
**Note**
For some children who do not have a biological father at home, this day can be difficult.
It is for this reason that this activity has been based around fathers in the broadest sense of that role. It is perfectly OK for the children to produce a portrait of whoever they consider to be their special person or father figure.
Teachers may want to start things off by talking about their own dad or father figure and their memories of him, his strong points, his faults and funny ways!
Teachers could then model the choosing of an animal. If their own father has died or is absent, this may prove challenging but will greatly help to encourage pupils in similar circumstances to participate and feel less alone.
It is always good practice to let any child whose father has died, or a child for whom this activity may be particularly difficult, know in advance about the content of the lesson.
Once forewarned they usually prefer to do the same as the rest of the class and welcome the opportunity to ‘flag up’ to their peers that they too have a dad, just like everyone else. If another option is requested by the child they could paint a memory of their dad or something that reminds them of him.
Child Bereavement Charity: Mother’s Day
Experiences & Outcomes: HWB 0-01a/1-01a/0-02a/1-02a/0-05a/1-05a/0-08a/1-08a.
Level: First & Second
Curriculum Areas: H&WB, Languages and Expressive Arts
Lesson Aims
To celebrate Mother’s Day and appreciate their primary carers.
Objectives
Pupils will
- think about the role of their mother or special person.
- have fun and paint a portrait.
- be more aware that some children find mother’s day difficult because their mother has died or no longer lives with the family.
Mother’s Day
Introduce the session by talking to the children about how, because they are still growing up, there are lots of things that other people do for them.
Get the children to say what these might be, for example cook meals, drive them to activities, and so on.
Ask the children who does these things for them. There will be a variety of answers including dads, grandmothers, and so on, as well as mums.
Without putting the spotlight on any particular child, explain that in some families there are different types of mum, or more than one mum, for example some families have step mums, foster mothers and in others it might be a grandmother, a dad, or other special person.
Explain that there are lots of different reasons for this but in some families it is because the children’s mother has died.
However those children, as well as children whose mother no longer lives with them, often still like to think about and remember their mum in just the same way as everyone else on Mother’s Day. Explain that the children are now going to think about their mum or other special person, they can choose who.
Ask some prompt questions
- When I think about my mum or special person I feel...
- When I picture my mum or special person I see...
- My mum or special person is special because...
Explain that Mother’s Day is an opportunity to remember all the things that mums and other special people do for us and to say thank you.
Then ask the children to paint a portrait of their mother or special person which they can then take home as a thank you gift.
**Note**
For some children who do not have a biological mother at home, this day can be difficult. It is for this reason that this activity has been based around mothers in the broadest sense of that role.
It is perfectly OK for the children to produce a portrait of whoever they consider to be their special person or mother figure.
It is always good practice to let any child whose mother has died, or a child for whom this activity may be particularly difficult, know in advance about the content of the lesson.
Once forewarned they usually prefer to do the same as the rest of the class.
If another option is requested by the child they could paint a memory of their mum or something that reminds them of their mum.
© Child Bereavement Charity
Phone 01494 568900. Web: www.childbereavement.org.uk
The End of Life
Experiences & Outcomes: HWB 0-07a/HWB 1-08a
Level: Early and First
Curriculum Areas: Languages, H&WB, RME and Sciences.
Lesson Aim: To enable children to explore their natural interest in ageing, death and dying.
Objectives
Pupils will:
1. become more aware of the permanence of death.
2. become more familiar with words associated with death and dying.
3. develop some strategies for coping when sad things happen.
4. appreciate the importance of remembering happy times with dead people or pets.
Time
Flexible, but approximately 30 minutes
Resources
- A collection of objects from the natural world, which were once alive, for example seashells, dried flowers, seed pods, dried roots, bark, drift wood, dead leaves, small animal skeletons, dead insects.
- A bunch of seedless grapes.
- Some raisins.
Setting the scene
Display the objects to arouse the children’s curiosity.
Invite the children to pick up the objects, and to say what they feel like:
- Hold a piece of bark and feel the texture and the pattern. Trace grooves in the driftwood with fingers.
- Hold a seashell to your ear. Can you hear anything? Explore the hole with fingers.
- Scrunch dry leaves and listen to the crackling sound; look at the beautiful shapes of the seed heads.
- Notice that nothing moves.
It is hoped that the children will decide that the objects are dead or that they are part of something that has died. Ask how do we know that they are dead? Encourage words such as ‘still’, ‘dry’ and ‘not moving’.
© Child Bereavement Charity.
Phone 01494 568900. Web www.childbereavement.org.uk
The Language of Death and Grief
Experiences & Outcomes: HWB 3-01a/4-01a
Level: Third and Fourth
Curriculum Areas: Languages, H&WB, Expressive Arts.
Lesson Aim
To get pupils used to discussing death in an open way and to explore why our society has difficulty using the “real” words such as death and dying.
Objectives
Pupils will
1. explore the word ‘death] and the many euphemisms used.
2. think about what the word means to themselves and to others.
3. consider why it is difficult to use the ‘real’ words.
4. consider the origins of these words and phrases.
5. design and produce a condolence card (extension work).
Time
Approximately 40 minutes (not including design of condolences card).
You will need:
a selection of condolence cards and/or death notices from a newspaper.
a large sheet of paper for pupils to write down words and phrases. (One for each pair).
felt tip pens
The Language of Death
1. Introduce the session by explaining that pupils will be exploring the many words and phrases used rather than the actual words of dead, dying and deceased. Have on display the selection of condolence cards, and/or death notices.
2. Split into pairs and give each pair a large sheet of paper.
3. Pairs to write down all the different words and phrases they find in the cards and obituary notices plus any others of their own that come to mind.
© Child Bereavement Charity.
Phone 01494 568900. Web www.childbereavement.org.uk
Lesson Plans from Winston’s Wish
Cultures and Customs
Experiences and Outcomes: RME 3-03a/4-03a/3-03b/3-04a/4-04a/3-06a/4-06a
H&WB 3-10a/4-10a/3-11a/4-11a
Level: Third and Fourth
Cross Curricular Areas: Religious and Moral Education and H&WB.
Materials Needed:
Textbooks, internet access, paper, pens and pencils.
Introduction:
When a death occurs within a school community it may be the first experience of death for many pupils. In multi-ethnic areas it will also highlight the different cultural and religious practices that exist around the world. This may lead to many questions from pupils.
Begin by asking pupils to share any experiences they have had of funerals and customs surrounding burial and remembrance. Also ask if they are aware of any other practices around the world.
Main Activity:
Split the class into groups and assign each group to a different religion, culture, custom or country. Ask them to research what followers of that religion/culture/custom/nationality believe about death, the afterlife and the way in which they conduct a funeral and the grieving period.
Each group is to present back to the rest of the class a summary of what they have found, detailing how it is similar and how it is different to experiences shared at the start of the class.
Pupils should be aware of the various faiths and beliefs held by members of the class and understand how they might help an individual who holds those beliefs.
Plenary:
It is important that students are aware of the many different practices, beliefs and customs that exist around the world, and that they grow to become tolerant of each of them. They should also begin to understand the reasons for these practices and realise how they might aid a grieving family.
© Winston’s Wish
Me and My Feelings
Experiences & Outcomes: LIT 1-02a
HWB 1-01a/1-02a/1-04a/1-05a/1-07a.
Level: First
Cross Curricular Areas: Literacy and H&WB
Introduction:
Being able to recognise and describe our feelings is an important part of growing up.
This session simply allows pupils to express and communicate their feelings in an open and honest way. Following a death of someone they know (possibly the first time this has happened in their lives) they will have many mixed thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories.
Begin as a whole group by creating a huge brainstorm of all the different feelings, thoughts and emotions that the class have – prompt feelings that you know exist but which they may be too embarrassed to say in front of peers.
Main Activity:
Leave the brainstorm displayed. Ask each student to work individually and write a poem, a short story, a diary article, a news report, or a rap about a memory that they have of the person who died and the way it makes them feel now.
Allow honesty. Some students will have been close to the person who died and may be quite upset. Others may not have known them so well and so be struggling with guilt or shame about that now. It is fine for them to admit to this.
Ask each student to read or perform his or her piece at the end of the session. It is important that they are all heard if they want to be and that their memories and thoughts are treated with respect.
Plenary:
Thank the students, paying particular highlight to any students who may have been exceptionally brave or honest. You may want to collect the work and bind it together into a book of memories and thoughts.
© Winston’s Wish
Creating a Memory Wall
Experiences & Outcomes: HWB 0-01a/1-01a/0-02a/1-02a/0-05a/1-05a/0-08a/1-08a.
Level: First and Second
Cross Curricular Areas: Languages, H&WB, Expressive Arts.
Materials needed:
Photos, paper, paints, paper mâché, art materials of your choice
Introduction:
Begin by asking the class to brainstorm memories that they have of the person who died. It may be that the memories are a little slow in coming to begin with, but they will soon begin to flow – you can help by sharing a memory first. The class may find it easier to break into groups and think of memories first. It can include their smile, laugh, mannerisms, favourite hobbies, funny moments, best clothes, trips out to town, and so on.
Main Activity:
The task is to create a wall display of memories and stories. Pupils can use photos, models, poems, artefacts from home... anything that they want.
Hopefully the wall display will be full of great memories of their life with stories of moments spent with the person who died.
Include notes that detail the story behind each memory and explain the artwork or the model that is displayed.
Plenary:
Spend some time looking at the wall display once it is finished and get each pupil to share the story of the piece of the display that they worked on.
Taking the wall display down will also be a big thing for some students. It is important that they are involved in this and able to keep the bits that they made. Coming in to class one Monday morning to find it taken down and thrown in the bin could feel as though it is disrespectful, especially to those who were close to the person who died.
© Winston’s Wish
What actually happens?
Experiences and Outcomes: 4-15a
Level: Senior Phase
Cross Curricular Areas: H&WB
Materials Needed:
Access to internet, large sheets of paper, pens and pencils.
(Further resources optional): Medical dictionary. Models of parts of the body.
Introduction:
This task is especially pertinent after someone within the school has died from an illness. Even increasingly common illnesses still leave us with many questions. Ask the class what they know about the illness: for example, cancer. What causes it? What does a cancer cell actually do?
How does it spread? What treatment is available and how does it work? Is it possible to prevent the illness?
Help the students to realise that although we often know what the illness is called we often don’t know much more.
Main Activity:
Split the class into groups and task them with putting together a presentation about a certain aspect of the illness.
You may wish to give each group areas to cover. For instance: what is Leukaemia? How can it be treated? How could it kill someone? What is being done to prevent it, and by whom?
Allow the students to use the Internet and medical encyclopaedias to find out the answers to some of these questions.
Ask them to report back in groups, presenting their findings. They could present a poster, a leaflet, a PowerPoint presentation, or use models of different parts of the body in order to help them.
Plenary:
Begin the plenary by reminding the pupils of the reason for their research today. It is a tough thing to research a medical condition that has just killed someone you know or love. Ensure that all the pupils are ok; they may have found this session hard.
Point out that there is much that we still don’t know about the human body, but that doctors and scientists have made huge advances over the years.
Affirm that pupils will probably still have many questions that have not been answered today – maybe they will be in the future.
© Winston’s Wish
What does dead mean?
Experiences & Outcomes: SCN 1-01a
HWB 1-01a/1-13a/1-14a/1-47b
Level: First
Cross Curricular: Science, H&WB
Materials Needed:
Leaves, plants, insects, possibly a pet such as a hamster.
Introduction:
Ask children what they think the word ‘dead’ means. You may have a storybook that you could read about a character dying, or you may like to ask if any of the children have ever had a pet that has died. If so, get them to share their stories... maybe write the name of all the pets that have died up on the board.
Main Activity:
Display an object, for example an old dead leaf from a plant or a tree.
Pass it round and ask children to think of some words that they could use to describe it.
Repeat this exercise for some dead insects; again asking children to say how they know it is dead, and what it feels like.
Now bring out a live plant. What are the differences between this and the dead leaf? What do the children notice? After doing this, bring out a live animal, this could be a butterfly, or hamster, or dog, something that is obviously alive.
Make a list of all the characteristics of something that is alive, and something that is dead.
This may also be a good opportunity to bring into discussion different parts of the body such as the heart and the brain. What do they do? How might someone die if there is a problem with these organs?
Plenary:
It is important that children begin to hear that once something or someone is dead, it can’t come back to life. Also, that when someone has died, they no longer have any feelings. They may worry that a person who has been buried gets cold, or that if a family member is cremated, it will really hurt them.
© Winston’s Wish
Appendix 3
Resources
Our vision: self-evaluation
Prepared
- We have policy and procedures in place to support staff to deal with bereavement and loss when it presents itself within our school community and during the months/years that follow.
Supportive
- Our school community work together to support children and young people, their families and staff through periods of loss and change, within a caring environment.
- Our communication is open and honest with the establishment, children and young people and their families. Age-appropriate terminology is used.
- Strategies are in place to support bereaved pupil(s) for as long as they need.
Resources
Our vision: self-evaluation
Supportive, continued
- By offering curricular opportunities; we proactively support the development of children and young people’s resilience in coping with the impact of loss and change caused by bereavement.
1 2 3 4 5 6
- We are aware of staff support needs before, during and after periods of bereavement, loss or change.
1 2 3 4 5 6
Informed
- Our staff have access to appropriate training and resources.
1 2 3 4 5 6
- Our staff are aware of local/national support services.
1 2 3 4 5 6
- Our staff work in partnership with local agencies to tailor support and signpost children and young people, families and staff for further support if required. Parents are aware of the levels of support they can receive from us.
1 2 3 4 5 6
Wider Reading
- Curriculum for Excellence: Health & Well Being: Mental, Emotional, Social and Physical Health Experiences & Outcomes
- Managing Critical Incidents Document, Glasgow City Council Education Services, 2011.
- Glasgow City Schools Healthy & Well Being Survey 2010 Reports, Traci Leven Research, 2011. (Reports available for each Secondary School).
- Suicide Prevention for looked after children & young people: A Practice Guide, Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland, 2011.
- GAMH Young Carers Promoting Mental Health & Wellbeing Evaluation, 2011.
- Growing Up In Scotland, National Centre for Social Research, 2011.
- Broke, not Broken, The Prince’s Trust, 2011.
- Through the looking Glass, Demos, 2011.
- Research Report Running Away & Future Homelessness – The Missing Link, Shelter, 2011.
- What’s it worth now? – The social and economic costs of Mental Health problems in Scotland, SAMH, 2011.
- Joining the Dots: A better start for Scotland’s children, An Independent Report by Professor Susan Deacon, 2011.
- Self Harm in Children and Young People Handbook, National CAMHS Support Service, 2010.
- HBSC Scotland National Report - Health behaviours in school aged children, WHO Collaborative Cross National Study (HBSC), 2010.
- Count Us In: Mind Over Matter, Promoting & Supporting Mental & Emotional Wellbeing, HMIE, 2011.
- Principles for Effective Action: Promoting children and young people’s social & emotional wellbeing in educational establishments. A self-assessment tool for strategic partners delivering health and well being within Curriculum for Excellence. Primary School, HMIE, 2011.
- Principles for Effective Action: Promoting children and young people’s social and emotional wellbeing in educational establishments. A self-assessment tool for strategic partners delivering health and well being within Curriculum for Excellence. Secondary School, HMIE, 2011.
- Mental Health: Poverty, Ethnicity & Family Breakdown. Interim Policy Briefing, The Centre for Social Justice, 2011.
- How Happy are our children? Measuring children’s well being and exploring economic factors. The Children’s Society, 2011.
- Issues facing parents with mental health issues, Discussion Box, Outside the Box, 2011.
- Go Well; Researching Community Safety, Young People and Anti Social Behaviour – Seminar Report. Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2010.
- Children & Young People, Health & Well Being Profiles 2010 – Scotland Overview. NHS Health Scotland, 2010.
Have you lost someone who was very special to you?
We have made a new story book and activity pack which might be able to help you.
You see the colourful creature at the top of this page? Well that’s Small Creature and his story can help children who are missing a loved one.
All the activities in the pack could help you and an adult think about all the things you never got to say to that person and how to hold onto all the memories you have of them.
The pack is free to order from the British Heart Foundation online shop. What is included in a Small Creature Pack:
- Small Creature Story Book
- Felt Toy
- Play Scene Card
- Memory Bag
- Activity Cards – Memory Wall/Message Tags/Buttons
- Audio CD
www.bhf.org.uk/cbhf/default.aspx?page=442
Websites with resources for schools
- Help the Hospices resources for schools
www.helpthehospices.org.uk/our-services/running-your-hospice/school-resources/
- Samaritans Developing Emotional Awareness & Learning (DEAL) Programme
www.samaritans.org/our_services/work_in_schools/welcome_to_deal.aspx
- Child Bereavement Charity lesson plans
www.childbereavement.org.uk/For/ForSchools/LessonPlans
- Child Bereavement Charity other lesson ideas
www.childbereavement.org.uk/For/ForSchools/LessonPlans/
Other Lesson Ideas
- Winston’s Wish downloads for schools
www.winstonswish.org.uk/page.asp?section=00010001000300020008&pagetitle=Downloads+for+schools
- The Place2Be information for schools
www.theplace2be.org.uk/
- Cruse Bereavement Care information for schools
www.crusebereavementcare.org.uk/Schools.html
- Teachers Media
www.teachersmedia.co.uk/videos/coping-with-bereavement
- Childhood Bereavement Network
www.childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk/publications.htm
- Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care
www.goodlifedeathgrief.org.uk
Websites with general information
www.breathingspacescotland.co.uk
www.samaritans.org
www.handsonscotland.co.uk/
www.livinglifetothefull.com
www.stepsforstress.org
www.bbc.co.uk/headroom
www.glasgowsteps.com/information
www.youngminds.org.uk/my-head-hurts
www.dawsonmarketing.co.uk/youngminds/shop/
www.mentalhealth.org.uk/information/mental-health-overview
www.childline.org.uk
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|-----------------------|----------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|
| Book | *I Miss My Sister* | Sarah Courtauld | Recommended for children aged 4-10 years old. The beautiful and expressive colour illustrations help to guide the child through the different emotions they may encounter following the death of a sibling, as well as the different categories of grief over a period of time. ISBN 13: 978-0952166115 | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Book | *Remembering* | Dianne Leutner | A keepsake/memory book for children when someone special in their life has died. ISBN 13:978-0952166184 | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Book | *My Brother and Me* | Sarah Courtyard | The simple story deals with the issues surrounding a sibling’s serious illness, and stays in hospital, and how his brother copes with different emotions and feelings. It is for children aged 4-10 years old. ISBN 13: 978-0952166122 | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Book | *Someone I Know Has Died* | Dianne Leutner | An activity book with many unusual and interactive features, written for bereaved children to help them understand what it means when someone dies and to explore their thoughts and feelings with an adult. Although designed with preschool and early years age groups in mind, some older children may also enjoy this book. ISBN 13: 978-0952166139 | Child Bereavement Charity |
| DVD/video | *Not Too Young To Grieve* | Narrated by Alison Steadman | This animated DVD/video is designed to help parents and carers give support to babies and children under five who have been bereaved. It is suitable for viewing by parents at home, on their own or with their children; and can also be used with groups from a wide range of backgrounds, to raise awareness or start a discussion. The film has been produced by Leeds Animation Workshop in partnership with the Laura Centre, the Childhood Bereavement Network and the University of Leicester. There is a free downloadable training package based on this film. Running time: 14 min. ASIN: BOOtK3CHL6. | www.leedsanimation.org.uk |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|-------|--------|------------------|--------|
| DVD/video | *Grief in the Family* | Narrated by Michael Rosen | Looks at the ways children and young people respond to grief, and what the adults around them can do to help. It gives parents and carers an insight into the process of grieving, its physical and emotional effects, and the special needs of children and young people. The video shows families from a wide range of backgrounds dealing with bereavement. It offers practical advice to parents who need to learn how to find support for themselves, while helping their children to express their feelings and handle confusing emotions. Stressing the importance of listening to children and answering their questions honestly, it encourages the development of communication and a supportive family environment. The pack is designed as a resource for those working with families and bereaved children. It raises awareness and facilitates discussion in parenting education classes, training courses or schools. It is also suitable for viewing at home by parents, carers, and children. No ISBN available. | www.leedsanimation.org.uk |
| Book | *A Child’s Grief. Supporting a child when someone in their family has died* | | This book is a very useful and informative introduction for any adult who is supporting a child through bereavement. It covers a variety of issues that may affect a child when a person close to them dies, both immediately and in the longer term. The book offers practical suggestions and ideas for activities to do together with a child and includes a section on suggested further reading and where to find additional support. ISBN 13: 978-0953912360. | www.winstonswish.org.uk |
| Book | *Goodbye Mousie* | Robbie H. Harris | This beautifully illustrated picture book tells the story of a little boy who’s told that his pet mouse has died. At first he doesn’t believe it, thinking it is just asleep, but by asking lots of questions and with the help of his family he begins to accept Mousie’s death. This is a great story and would be very helpful to introduce death to young children and a starting point to discuss what happens after someone dies and the different feelings one may have. ISBN 978-0689871344. | Amazon |
| Book | *I Miss You: A First Look at Death* | Pat Thomas | This bright and colourful picture book very simply talks about life and death. It briefly covers a range of issues such as why people die, how you may feel when someone dies and what happens afterwards. It includes questions for the reader to answer about their own experiences and a section at the back for adults on how to best use the book. An excellent educational book, which could be used as a starting point for discussion. ISBN 978 – 0764117640. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------------|----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------|
| Book | *When Uncle Bob Died (Talking It Through)* | Althea | Suitable for very young children this book tells the story of what happened and how Miffy felt and coped when Grandma died. ISBN 978-1405219013. | Amazon |
| Book | *Dear Grandma Bunny* | Dick Bruna | This book is a very useful and informative introduction for any adult who is supporting a child through bereavement. It covers a variety of issues that may affect a child when a person close to them dies, both immediately and in the longer term. The book offers practical suggestions and ideas for activities to do together with a child and includes a section on suggested further reading and where to find additional support. ISBN 13: 978-0953912360. | www.winstonswish.org.uk |
| Book | *Heaven* | Nicholas Allan | Dill, the dog, knows his time is up, so he packs his case and tells Lily, his owner, that he’s off “up there”. “Can I come too?” asks Lily. “Err…not yet,” replies Dill. While he is waiting for the angels to collect him, Dill explains to Lily what he thinks heaven is like: hundreds of lampposts to pee against, lots of whiffy things to smell and bones everywhere - with meat on them! But, Lily completely disagrees; she thinks heaven is quite different. Luckily, they agree to disagree just in time for a fond, and very poignant, last goodbye. ISBN 978-0099488149. | Amazon |
| Book | *The Red Woollen Blanket* | Bob Graham | Even before Julia was born she was given a red woollen blanket that she used “right from the start.” PW said, “Graham’s colourful paintings show a humorous, tender regard for a preschooler’s inexplicable attachment to a particular object.” Ages 2 to 4. ISBN 978-1406316490 | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|--------------------------------------------|--------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|
| DVD | *When a Child Grieves* | – | A two part training video, incorporating a video for children and teenagers “Someone Died – It Happened to Me”. Girls and boys aged 7 to 18 years, talk about their feelings when someone special dies. Includes a primary school case study describing when two pupils died in different circumstances. Useful for promoting classroom discussion or training staff. ASIN: BO05GoIQMQ. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| DVD | *Good Grief: A professional’s guide to bereavement.* | – | Yorkhill Family Bereavement Service and Glasgow City Council Education Services collaborative DVD resource. | Yorkhill Family Bereavement Service and Glasgow City Council Education Services. |
| DVD/video | *Grief in the Family* | Narrated by Michael Rosen | Animated video/DVD looks at the ways children and young people respond to grief, and what the adults around them can do to help. It gives parents and carers an insight into the process of grieving, its physical and emotional effects, and the special needs of children and young people. The video shows families from a wide range of backgrounds dealing with bereavement. It offers practical advice to parents who need to learn how to find support for themselves, while helping their children to express their feelings and handle confusing emotions. Stressing the importance of listening to children and answering their questions honestly, it encourages the development of communication and a supportive family environment. The pack is designed as a resource for those working with families and bereaved children. It raises awareness and facilitates discussion in parenting education classes, training courses or schools. It is also suitable for viewing at home by parents, carers, and children. Grief in the Family is also available with subtitles for deaf people. A booklet containing background information is supplied free with the video/ DVD. Running time: 14 mins. No ISBN available. | www.leedsanimation.org.uk |
| Book | *Childhood Bereavement – developing the curriculum and pastoral support* | Job & Francis | Using case studies and drawing on best practice, this resource aims to help those working in schools address death, dying and bereavement from a pastoral care and educational perspective. It provides lesson ideas for how to achieve this through the curriculum. ISBN 13: 978 – 1904787143. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|
| Book | *Good Grief – exploring feelings, loss and death with under 11s* | B. Ward | Very comprehensive, gives information, guidance and full of ideas for classroom activities (also separate book for over 11s). ISBN 13: 978 – 1853023248. | Amazon |
| Book | *Then, Now and Always* | Stokes | Published by Winston’s Wish. More suitable for those with pastoral care responsibilities, this guide for supporting children as they journey through grief includes a section on enabling a school community to respond positively to a death. ISBN 13: 978 - 0953912353 | Amazon |
| Book | *A Teacher’s Handbook of Death* | Jackson & Colwell | Offers ideas for including death and bereavement in the curriculum, factual and informative around rituals and processes associated with death and dying. ISBN 13: 978 – 1843100157. | Amazon |
| DVD | *A death in the lives of...* | – | A group of young people discuss the support they needed to help them cope with bereavement. Includes a section where they talk about what was, and what was not, helpful at school. No ISBN available. | Childhood Bereavement Network |
| DVD | *You’ll always remember them even when you’re old* | – | This video, made with the help of Jigsaw4u, features a group of children from a range of backgrounds aged 6-12 who have been bereaved of a parent. The group discusses the impact of bereavement on their lives, the support they received from family, friends, hospitals, bereavement service providers and schools. No ISBN available | Childhood Bereavement Network |
| | *Muddles, puddles and sunshine* | Diana Crossley | This activity book offers invaluable practical and sensitive support for bereaved younger children. The book offers a structure and an outlet for the many difficult feelings which inevitably follow when someone dies. It aims to help children make sense of their experience by reflecting on the different aspects of their grief. At the same time, the book manages to find a balance between remembering the person who has died and having fun. ISBN 13: 978 – 1869890582. | www.winstonwish.org.uk |
| | *A Child’s Grief. Supporting a child when someone in their family has died* | | This book is a very useful and informative introduction for any adult who is supporting a child through bereavement. It covers a variety of issues that may affect a child when a person close to them dies, both immediately and in the longer term. The book offers practical suggestions and ideas for activities to do together with a child and includes a section on suggested further reading and where to find additional support. ISBN 978 – 0955953903. | www.winstonwish.org.uk |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|
| | **A Child’s Grief. Supporting a child when someone in their family has died** | | This book is a very useful and informative introduction for any adult who is supporting a child through bereavement. It covers a variety of issues that may affect a child when a person close to them dies, both immediately and in the longer term. The book offers practical suggestions and ideas for activities to do together with a child and includes a section on suggested further reading and where to find additional support. ISBN 978 – 0955953903. | www.winstonwish.org.uk |
| | **A Birthday Present for Daniel** | Juliet Rothman | Told by a young girl whose brother, Daniel, has died, she talks about how things have changed in the family. She also talks about the things she does when she is sad and how these differ from other members of her family. This book has small black and white pictures with minimal text but it conveys some important issues. It would be particularly useful to broach the subject of birthdays as it describes how the family remembered Daniel on his birthday. ISBN 13: 978 – 1573929462. | Amazon |
| | **Always and Forever** | Alan Durant | Otter, Mole and Hare miss Fox when he falls ill and dies. They stay at home and don’t want to talk about him because it makes them sadder. Then Squirrel visits and reminds them of all the fun times they had together. They all find a way to remember Fox and get on with their lives. Colourful, detailed pictures in this book emphasise the importance of holding on to memories. ISBN 13: 978-0552548779. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| | **Badger’s Parting Gifts** | Susan Varley | Badger is old and knows he is going to die soon. When he does, the other animals think they will be sad forever, but they begin to talk about the memories they have of the things Badger taught them and learn to cope with his death. A lovely picture book that emphasises the importance of remembering the person who has died. ISBN 13: 978-0006643173. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| | **Drop Dead** | Barbette Cole | A humorous book with comic-like pictures, two ‘bald old wrinklies’ tell their grandchildren about their life growing up and how one day they will just drop down dead. It is a light-hearted book about life that emphasises the normality and inevitability of dying. It is very direct and some readers may not like its style. ISBN 13: 978 – 0099659112. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|--------------------------------------------|--------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| | **Flamingo Dream** | – | In this bright and colourful book, a young boy tells the story of his Dad who is seriously ill and dies soon after a trip to Florida to see the place where he grew up. The collage style illustrations capture the things the boy collects to remind him of his Dad. A sensitive but honest book which emphasises the importance of memories. ISBN 13: 978-0688167967. | Amazon |
| | **Fred** | Posy Simmonds| A light-hearted book with detailed illustrations about Fred, Nick and Sophie’s lazy cat that dies. After burying him in the garden, they wake up at night to find all the cats in the area have come to say goodbye to Fred, the famous singer! This funny and touching story would be useful to introduce death to children. ISBN 13: 978 – 0099264125. | Amazon |
| | **Grandpa – The Book of the Film** | John Burningham| This beautifully detailed picture book has very few words but tells the story of a little girl’s relationship with her Grandpa. It takes the reader through many happy times they spent together playing games, telling stories and on outings. On the last page, Grandpa’s chair is empty, signifying that he has died. Children may benefit from reading this book with an adult to talk about the pictures and to elaborate some of the messages it conveys. ISBN 13: 978-0721414768. | Amazon |
| | **Saying Goodbye: A Special Farewell to Mama Nkwelle** | Frances Lincoln | This book has large bright colourful photos and follows a little boy, Ikenna describing what happens at the ceremony after his great-grandmother’s funeral. It gives ideas of different ways to remember someone and an insight into Nigerian culture. A lovely book that could be used in many different situations, including schools. ISBN 13: 978-0711217010. | Amazon |
| | **There’s NO Such Thing as a Dragon** | Jack Kent | *There’s NO Such Thing as a Dragon* (1975) by Jack Kent, part of the Family Story time series, relates the charming tale of Billy Bixbee, who awakens to find a dragon “about the size of a kitten” sitting on his bed. The dragon grows by leaps and bounds, until Billy dares to pet the attention-seeking creature and it shrinks back down into an adoring little lap dragon. ISBN 13: 978-1899248957. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------|
| | *The Sunshine Cat* | Miriam Moss | Sunny the cat is loved by all his human family, but one day there is a knock at | Amazon |
| | | | the door - Sunny has been killed in an accident. A sensitive story which aims | |
| | | | to help children come to terms with death. ISBN 13: 978-1841215679. | |
| | *Heaven* | Nicholas Allan | Dill, the dog, knows his time is up, so he packs his case and tells Lily, his | Amazon |
| | | | owner, that he’s off “up there”. “Can I come too?” asks Lily. “Er…not yet,” | |
| | | | replies Dill. While he is waiting for the angels to collect him, Dill explains | |
| | | | to Lily what he thinks heaven is like: hundreds of lampposts to pee against, lots| |
| | | | of whiffy things to smell and bones everywhere - with meat on them! But, Lily | |
| | | | completely disagrees; she thinks heaven is quite different. Luckily, they agree | |
| | | | to disagree just in time for a fond, and very poignant, last goodbye. ISBN 13: | |
| | | | 978-0099488149. | |
| | *The Huge Bag of Worries* | Virginia Ironside| Jenny begins to worry about lots of different things and these worries build up | Child Bereavement |
| | | | and get out of control. She just can’t get rid of them, until she meets the old | Charity |
| | | | lady next door who helps her feel better. A lovely story with fun illustrations | |
| | | | encourages children to talk about their worries. ISBN 13: 978-0340903179. | |
| | *The Tenth Good Thing About Barney* | Judith Viorst | A young boy’s cat dies and his parents suggest that he could think of ten good | Amazon |
| | | | things about Barney to tell at the funeral. But he can only think of nine, until| |
| | | | he talks to his Father about what happens to someone after they have died, and he| |
| | | | discovers the tenth. A carefully written book with black and white pictures, that| |
| | | | sensitively deals with death and lets the reader make his or her own decisions | |
| | | | about what happens after the funeral. ISBN 13: 978-0689712036. | |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| | **When Dinosaurs Die** | Laurie Krasny | This factual picture book uses cartoon dinosaurs to illustrate the text and comment on what is said. It is a bright and colourful book that explains death in a simple and unthreatening way. It covers many issues including ‘why does someone die?’ ‘feelings about death’ and ‘saying goodbye’. It would be an excellent resource for anyone caring for young children. ISBN 13: 978-0316119559. | Amazon |
| | **Beginnings and Endings with Lifetimes in Between. A beautiful way to explain life and death to children** | Bryan Mellonie and Robert Ingpen | This thought-provoking book has large pictures complemented with small sections of text. It clearly explains about life and death focussing on plants, animals and insects before moving on to people. It emphasises that death is part of the life cycle and is natural and normal whenever it occurs. A simple book with a powerful message. ISBN 13: 978-1855617605. | Amazon |
| | **Death: What’s Happening?** | Karen Bryant-Molee | This factual book has clear text and large photos. It uses stories of young people to discuss issues surrounding death such as feeling frightened, the funeral and the future. It includes advice on how to feel better and cope with difficult situations after someone has died. Using straightforward language, this book may reassure the reader there are other young people who have had someone important to them die and answer some of their questions and concerns. ISBN 13: 978-0750213790. | Amazon |
| | **The Cat Mummy** | Jacqueline Wilson | Verity’s Mum died the day she was born but she rarely talks about her. Verity doesn’t want to upset her Dad or Grandparents. This humorous but sensitive story mainly focuses on Verity’s missing cat Mabel but reveals some of the misunderstandings and anxieties children can have about death. It also shows it can be good to be open, honest and to talk about difficult issues. ISBN 13: 978-0440864165. | Amazon |
| | **The Ghost of Uncle Arvie** | Sharon Macmillan | This fun and humorous book is about Danny, an ordinary nine-year-old boy. However, once or twice a year a ghost visits him. This time it is the ghost of his Uncle Arvie who follows him, persuading him to make his three wishes come true. As a result Danny and his dog get into adventures which make him think about his dad who has also died. This book has some important messages and talks about death in an open way, but is primarily fun and imaginative. ISBN 13: 978-033656327. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|-----------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| | *The Mountains of Tibet* | Mordical Gerstein | Based on Tibetan teachings, this book tells of a small boy who grows up to be a woodcutter. When he dies, he discovers there is a chance to live again but first he must make a number of choices. A simple tale with deep meaning but the theme of reincarnation could be confusing. ISBN 13: 978-1898000549. | Amazon |
| | *Losing Uncle Tim* | Mary Kate Jordan | This picture book for slightly older children explains how a young boy finds out his Uncle Tim has AIDS and is going to die. It is a serious and sensitive book covering many of the issues, changes and difficult feelings that can occur when someone has a serious illness. ISBN 13: 9780807547564. | Amazon |
| | *Michael Rosen’s SAD BOOK* | Michael Rosen | This book has large illustrations and small snippets of text. It is wonderfully honest and will appeal to children and adults of all ages. We all have sad stuff, but what makes Michael Rosen most sad is thinking about his son who died. This book is a simple but emotive story. He talks about what sad is and how it affects him and what he does to cope with it. In true Michael Rosen style, this book manages to make you smile as well. ISBN 13: 978-1406313161. | Amazon |
| | *Milly’s Bug Nut* | Jill Janey | A short, simple story with black and white pictures, of a young girl who’s Dad has died. It talks about the ups and downs of family life and how things slowly get easier as time goes. Milly misses her Dad and things are just not the same anymore. She knows when people die, they can’t come back but she still keeps a wish to see her Dad one more time. (available from Winston’s Wish). ISBN 13: 9780953912346. | Amazon |
| | *The Best Day of the Week* | Hannah Cole | This storybook tells of two young children who spend Saturdays with their Grandparents when Mum is at work. It has three chapters, with stories of three different Saturdays. The first is a happy day; the second is at the hospital and sad as Granny dies, the third at the theatre. It is a lovely story that gives an important message that it is still okay to have fun after someone dies. ISBN 13: 978-0744554670 | Amazon |
| | *Water Bugs and Dragonflies* | Doris Stickney | | |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------------|----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| | **Explaining death to children** | – | This pocket size booklet with small black and white pictures is based on a fable, associating death with a water bug’s transformation into a dragonfly. It portrays the mystery around death but may need an adult to explain the analogy and help a child relate it to their own experience. It uses Christian beliefs with a focus on life after death and also contains advice for parents. ISBN 13: 978-0264674414. | Amazon |
| | **What on Earth Do You Do When Someone Dies?** | Trevor Romain | This book for older children is a factual guide, answering questions such as ‘why do people have to die?’, ‘is it okay to cry?’ and ‘what is a funeral/memorial service?’ It is written in a straightforward way, with practical tips, advice and information about different faiths and beliefs. ISBN 13: 978-1575420554. | Amazon |
| | **Ways to Live Forever** | Sally Nicholls | If I grow up,” 11-year-old Sam informs readers, “I’m going to be a scientist.” He says “if” because he has acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and knows he probably won’t. With the encouragement of his tutor, he starts to write a bit about himself, then more, until he is using his writing to sort out his death. Interspersed with Sam’s lists, questions and odd bits of mortality facts on notebook paper, his narrative proceeds in short, candid chapters that reveal a boy who, though he’s not ready to die, nevertheless can confront the reality with heartbreaking clarity. As his parents wrangle about treatment (he doesn’t want it), his little sister grapples with the changes to the household and his best friend and fellow cancer-sufferer dies, Sam methodically works through the things he wants to do before he dies, from going up a down escalator to the more problematic ride in an airship and seeing the earth from space. ISBN 13: 978-1407105154. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|--------------------------------------------|--------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|
| | **When A Child Grieves** | – | A two-part training video, incorporating a video for children and teenagers “Someone Died—It Happened to Me”. Girls and boys aged 7 to 18 years, talk about their feelings when someone special dies. Includes a primary school case study describing when two pupils died in different circumstances. Useful for promoting classroom discussion or training staff. ASIN: BO05GoIQMQ. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| | **Good Grief** | | Yorkhill Family Bereavement Service and Glasgow City Council Education Services collaborative DVD resource. | Yorkhill Family Bereavement Service and Glasgow City Council Education Services. |
| DVD/video | **Grief in the Family** | Narrated by Michael Rosen | Animated video/DVD looks at the ways children and young people respond to grief, and what the adults around them can do to help. It gives parents and carers an insight into the process of grieving, its physical and emotional effects, and the special needs of children and young people. The video shows families from a wide range of backgrounds dealing with bereavement. It offers practical advice to parents who need to learn how to find support for themselves, while helping their children to express their feelings and handle confusing emotions. Stressing the importance of listening to children and answering their questions honestly, it encourages the development of communication and a supportive family environment. The pack is designed as a resource for those working with families and bereaved children. It raises awareness and facilitates discussion in parenting education classes, training courses or schools. It is also suitable for viewing at home by parents, carers, and children. Grief in the family is also available with subtitles for deaf people. A booklet containing background information is supplied free with the video/DVD. Running time: 14 mins. No ISBN available. | www.leedsanimation.org.uk |
| | **Childhood Bereavement. Developing the Curriculum and pastoral support.** | Job & Francis | Using case studies and drawing on best practice, this resource aims to help those working in schools address death, dying and bereavement from a pastoral care and educational perspective. It provides lesson ideas for how to achieve this through the curriculum. ISBN 13: 978-1904787143. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|--------------------------------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|
| | *A Resource Bank on Loss and Grief* ‘it hurts’ | M. Harvey | Includes guidelines on facilitating sessions around loss and grief with 11 photocopyable activities, brief information about the nature of loss and grief and its impact on young people. Good for PSHE. ISBN: 978-090795064. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| | Supporting Young People Coping with Grief, Loss and Death | Weymont & Rae | A complete teaching programme designed to be delivered to whole classes or groups of students age 11-18. The aim is to enable them to understand about loss, grief and death but also to promote emotional health and literacy. Information on Loss and Grief, facilitator notes and copiable activities are included for twelve sessions. ISBN 13: 9781412913126. | Yorkhill Family Bereavement Service and Glasgow City Council Education Services. |
| DVD/video | *Then, Now and Always* | J. Stokes | Published by Winston’s Wish. More suitable for those with pastoral care responsibilities, this guide for supporting children as they journey through grief includes a section on enabling a school community to respond positively to a death. ISBN 13: 978-0953912353. | Winston’s Wish |
| | *A Teacher’s Handbook of Death: A death in the lives of…* | Jackson & Colwell | Offers ideas for including death and bereavement in the curriculum, factual and informative around rituals and processes associated with death and dying. A group of young people discuss the support they needed to help them cope with bereavement. Includes a section where they talk about what was, and what was not, helpful at school. ISBN 13: 978-1843100157. | Child Bereavement Network |
| Leaflet | *A Teenage Guide to Coping with Bereavement* | | Contains practical advice and guidance for a young person managing confusing emotions when someone important in their life dies. Written by a young person whose father died. | Free to download: http://www.childbereavement.org.uk/For/ForSchools/ResourcesforStaff |
| Workbook | *Finding a way through when someone close has died* | Mood & Whittaker | A workbook by young people who have experienced the death of someone close. They offer advice based on their own experiences. The activities encourage young people to express their feelings and responses. ISBN 13: 978-1853029202. | Amazon |
| Workbook | *Grief Encounter* | S. Gilbert | A workbook to encourage conversations between adults and bereaved children. Hands on, user friendly, with many ideas to encourage communication and provide support. ISBN 13: 978-0954843403. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|
| DVD/video | Teenage Grief | Narrated by Lenny Henry | This animated DVD/video contains six separate episodes about young people from a wide range of backgrounds, facing different kinds of bereavement. The pack aims to help parents and others understand the ways young people grieve and how best to support them. It can be used with parents and with groups to raise awareness or start a discussion. There is a free downloadable training package based on this film. No ISBN available. | www.leedsanimation.org.uk |
| Booklet | | | | |
| | Out of the Blue: Making Memories Last When Someone Has Died | Winston’s Wish | This book has been written and designed specifically for teenagers with aim of supporting them through their bereavement using a range of activities. Narrated throughout by teenager’s words and stories, the book talks openly about the real feelings they may struggle with when someone important in their life dies. The activities in the book allow those feelings to be worked through and safely explored. Each character in the book reinforces the message that “I’m not alone”. Out of the Blue can be completed by a teenager on their own or with the help of a family member or appropriate professional. ISBN 13: 978-1903458716. | www.winstonwish.org.uk |
| | A Child’s Grief. Supporting a child when someone in their family has died | – | This book is a very useful and informative introduction for any adult who is supporting a child through bereavement. It covers a variety of issues that may affect a child when a person close to them dies, both immediately and in the longer term. The book offers practical suggestions and ideas for activities to do together with a child and includes a section on suggested further reading and where to find additional support. ISBN 13: 978-0955953934. | www.winstonwish.org.uk |
| Book | Double Act | Jacqueline Wilson | Ruby and Garnet are 10-year-old twins. They do everything together, especially since their mum died three years ago. When their dad finds a new partner and they move house, Ruby and Garnet find it hard and get into all sorts of trouble. Eventually, they settle down and learn to live with the changes. A lively and humorous book that deals sensitively with change. ISBN 13: 978-0440867592. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------|
| | *Dustbin Baby* | Jacqueline Wilson | April was abandoned in a dustbin as a baby on the 1st April. Having spent all her life in a children’s home and with different foster parents (one of whom committed suicide), things haven’t been easy and April is struggling. Now she’s fourteen and on her birthday, determined to find out more about her past, sets off to find some important people. This is an emotive book with a great storyline in usual Jacqueline Wilson style. It is open and honest. ISBN 13: 978-0552556118. | Amazon |
| | *Straight Talk about Death for Teenagers: How to Cope with Losing Someone You Love* | Earl A. Grollman | This book was written after the author spoke to thousands of teenagers and found they often felt forgotten after someone has died. Written in short, clear sentences that are easy to read, it covers feelings, different types of death and the future. This book gives the reader many options of what can happen, how s/he may feel, giving advice and reassuring readers grief is normal. ISBN 13:978-0807025017. | Sagebrush Ed Resources |
| | *The Charlie Barber Treatment* | Carole Lloyd | Simon’s Mum died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage and he came home from school to find she had died. With his GCSE coursework piling up and having to help around the house, Simon finds it hard and doesn’t go out much with his friends. He then meets Charlie, who is visiting her Grandma, and believes their meeting was fate. Simon starts to enjoy life again and to re-build relationships with his family and friends. A sensitive and realistic book that conveys some of the thoughts and emotions of a teenage boy. ISBN 13:978-0744514889. | Amazon |
| Book | *The Lost Boys’ Appreciation Society* | Alan Gibbons | Teenage life is difficult enough for Gary and John, but when their Mum dies in a car accident, things get steadily worse. John struggles to keep the peace as Gary goes off the rails, saying his new mates are now his family. With GCSE exams looming and his Dad going out on dates, things become unbearable for John. A gripping book exploring relationships and how different people react to life events. ISBN 13:978-3425048512. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------|--------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| | *Before I Die* | Jenny Downham| With only months left to live, 16-year-old Tessa makes a list of things she must experience: sex, petty crime, fame, drugs and true love. Downham’s wrenching work features a girl desperate for a few thrilling moments before leukaemia takes her away. Although Tessa remains ardently committed to her list, both she and the reader find comfort in the quiet resonance of the natural world. Tessa’s soul mate, Adam, gardens next door; a bird benignly rots in grass; psychedelic mushrooms provide escape; an apple tree brings comfort; and her best friend, Zoey, ripens in the final months of pregnancy. ISBN 13: 978-1849920452. | Amazon |
| | *The Spying Game* | Pat Moon | Joe’s dad died in a car accident and he feels really angry towards the man who killed his father. He decides to set up a secret ‘Nightmare Plan’ to vent his anger and begins to persecute the man and his family by scratching his car and sending hate mail. This powerful book reveals the difficult emotions Joe faces both at home and at school. A very readable and fast paced book that would appeal to many young people. ISBN 13: 978-0435124465. | Amazon |
| Book | *Two Weeks with the Queen* | Morris Gleitzman | Twelve-year-old Colin, an Australian boy, is sent to stay with relatives in England when his brother becomes ill with cancer. He is determined to find a way of curing his brother, which leads him into all sorts of adventures including trying to visit the Queen! Colin finds a friend in an older man named Ted who helps him express his feelings and understand what he has to do. (Also on audiocassette.) ISBN 13: 978-0141303000. | Amazon |
| Book | *Up on Cloud Nine* | Anne Fine | Stol falls out of a top floor window and ends up unconscious in hospital with lots of broken bones and no-one knows whether it was attempted suicide or an accident. This book is written from the perspective of his best friend Ian whilst he is sitting by his bedside. He recalls all the fun times they have had together as well as acknowledging the slightly different way Stol sees the world. Ian captures the emotions of his own adoptive parents as well as Stol’s family and the hospital staff in an amusing yet moving way illustrating how Stol has had an inspirational effect on everyone. ISBN 13: 978-0552554657. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|-------------|------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| Book | *Vicky Angel* | Jacqueline Wilson | When Jade’s best friend Vicky, is run over by a car and dies in hospital everyone at home and school starts treating her differently. ‘Vicky Angel’ then starts following Jade around, distracting her and getting her into trouble. This moving but amusing story illustrates how hard it is to carry on with every day life after a tragic accident. ISBN 13: 978-0440865896. | Amazon |
| Book | *Ostrich Boys* | Keith Gray | It’s not really kidnapping, is it? He’d have to be alive for it to be proper kidnapping.’ Kenny, Sim and Blake are about to embark on a remarkable journey of friendship. Stealing the urn containing the ashes of their best friend Ross, they set out from Cleethorpes on the east coast to travel the 261 miles to the tiny hamlet of Ross in Dumfries and Galloway. After a depressing and dispiriting funeral they feel taking Ross to Ross will be a fitting memorial for a 15 year-old boy who changed all their lives through his friendship. Little do they realise just how much Ross can still affect life for them even though he’s now dead. ISBN 13: 9780099456575. | Amazon |
| Book | *Broken Soup* | Jenny Valentine | When the good-looking boy with the American accent presses the dropped negative into Rowan’s hand, she’s sure it’s all a big mistake. But next moment he’s gone, lost in the crowd of bustling shoppers. And she can’t afford to lose her place in the checkout queue – after all, if she doesn’t take the groceries home, nobody else will. Rowan has more responsibilities than most girls her age. These days, she pretty much looks after her little sister single-handedly -- which doesn’t leave much time for friends or fun. So when she finds out that Bee from school saw the whole thing, it piques her curiosity. Who was the boy? Why was he so insistent that the negative belonged to Rowan? ISBN 13: 978-0007229659. | Amazon |
There are a number of books that do not directly deal with death or bereavement but may help the reader face difficult feelings.
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|---------------------|--------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| Book | *Angry Arthur* | Hiawyn Oram | Its time for bed but Arthur wants to stay up so he gets really angry. Every time someone tells him ‘that’s enough’ his anger gets bigger and bigger and takes over the world until he wonders why he was so angry in the first place. A wonderful imaginative story that many children (and adults) will be able to relate to. ISBN 13: 978-0099196617. | Amazon |
| Book | *No Matter What* | Debi Gliori | A rhyming story with large, bright pictures about Small, a young fox who is feeling cross because no one loves him. Large, then reassures him that she’ll love him no matter what. A fun and imaginative book that only briefly talks about death but would be a useful story to help support a young child through difficult times. ISBN 13: 978-0747563310. | Amazon |
| Book | *Nothing* | Mick Inkpen | A ‘little thing’ has been stuck in the attic for so long, he has even forgotten its name. When the owners move house and leave him behind, he sets off on an adventure to discover who he really is. A lovely book about families and the feeling that you belong. It could be used in many situations, particularly with a child who is feeling unsettled. ISBN 13: 978-0340918166. | Amazon |
| | *Nothing Scares Us* | Frieda Wishinsky | Lucy and Lenny are the ‘fearless two’, best friends who have all sorts of adventures. Lenny then starts watching a scary programme on TV, which gives Lucy nightmares and she dare not tell Lenny in case he laughs at her. With bright colourful pictures, this fun book is a comforting story about friendship and adventure. ISBN 13: 978-0747550433. | Amazon |
| | *Something Else* | Kathryn Cave | Something Else doesn’t belong and has no one to be friends with, until one day Nothing knocks at his door and although they seem very different, they get along and become friends. These unusual looking characters capture the feelings of young people in a sensitive and fun way. A lovely book that could reassure children who feel unsettled within their peer group. ISBN 13: 978-0140549072. | |
## Appendix 4
### Other helpful books (on wider issues of loss; not specific to bereavement)
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------------|--------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------|
| Book | *Supposing* | Frances Thomas | Little Monster starts telling his mother a wonderfully imaginative but scary story about what might happen tomorrow. Mother then gives him an alternative, happier story and takes away his fears. This story is reassuring as well as fun and imaginative. ISBN 13: 978-0747541738. | Amazon |
| Book | *The Huge Bag of Worries* | Virginia Ironside | Jenny begins to worry about lots of different things and these worries build up and get out of control. She just can’t get rid of them, until she meets the old lady next door who helps her feel better. A lovely story with fun illustrations encourages children to talk about their worries. ISBN 13: 978-0340903179. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Book | *Five Minutes’ Peace (The Large Family)* | – | This humorous book with lovely detailed pictures tells the story of Mrs Large who is desperate for five minutes peace from her three children, but it is harder to find than she expects! A lovely book that can be enjoyed by both adults and children and may help to explain that every so often, grown-ups need time to themselves. ISBN 13: 978-0744581195. | Amazon |
| | *There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon* | Jack Kent | Billy wakes up to find a tiny dragon in his bedroom. His mother insists that there is no such thing as a dragon but the dragon gets bigger and bigger until it fills the whole house. When the family finally acknowledge that the dragon exists, it returns to its normal size. This colourful picture book is a useful tool to use with children to talk about difficult feelings and other issues that can increase when they are ignored. ISBN 13: 978-1899248957. | Amazon |
Other helpful books
There are also many books where death is not the main focus of the story but features bereavement or the main character has been bereaved. These include:
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| Book | *A Little Princess* | Frances Hodgson Burnett | Motherless Sara Crewe was sent home from India to school at Miss Minchin’s. Her father was immensely rich and she became ‘show pupil’ - a little princess. Then her father dies and his wealth disappears, and Sara has to learn to cope with her changed circumstances. Her strong character enables her to fight successfully against her new-found poverty and the scorn of her fellows. ISBN 13: 978-1853261367. | Amazon |
| Book | *Charlotte’s Web* | E. B. White | The tale of how a little girl named Fern, with the help of a friendly spider, saved her pig Wilbur from the usual fate of nice fat little pigs. ISBN 13: 978-0141317342. | Amazon |
| Book | *Danny the Champion of the World* | Roald Dahl | “My father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvellous and exciting father any boy ever had”. Danny feels very lucky. He adores his life with his father, living in a gypsy caravan, listening to his stories, tending their gas station, puttering around the workshop, and occasionally taking off to fly home-built gas balloons and kites. His father has raised him on his own, ever since Danny’s mother died when he was four months old. Life is peaceful and wonderful … until he turns 9 and discovers his father’s one vice. Soon Danny finds himself the mastermind behind the most incredible plot ever attempted against nasty Victor Hazell, a wealthy landowner with a bad attitude. Can they pull it off? If so, Danny will truly be the champion of the world. Danny is right up to Roald Dahl’s impishly brilliant standards. An intense and beautiful father-son relationship is balanced with subtle escapades that will have even the most rigid law-abider rooting them on. ISBN 13: 978-0141322674. | Amazon |
## Appendix 4
### Other helpful books
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------------|--------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| Book | Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone | J. K. Rowling | Say you’ve spent the first 10 years of your life sleeping under the stairs of a family who loathes you. Then, in an absurd, magical twist of fate you find yourself surrounded by wizards, a caged snowy owl, a Phoenix-feather wand and jellybeans that come in every flavour, including strawberry, curry, grass and sardine. Not only that, but you discover that you are a wizard yourself! This is exactly what happens to young Harry Potter in J. K. Rowling’s enchanting, funny debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In the non-magical human world – the world of ‘Muggles’ – Harry is a nobody, treated like dirt by the aunt and uncle who begrudgingly inherited him when his parents were killed by the evil Voldemort. But in the world of wizards, small, skinny Harry is renowned as a survivor of the wizard who tried to kill him. He is left only with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, curiously refined sensibilities and a host of mysterious powers to remind him that he’s quite, yes, altogether different from his aunt, uncle, and spoilt, pig-like cousin Dudley. A mysterious letter, delivered by the friendly giant Hagrid, wrenches Harry from his dreary, Muggle-ridden existence: “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”. Of course, Uncle Vernon yells most unpleasantly, “I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!” Soon enough, however, Harry finds himself at Hogwarts with his owl Hedwig... and that’s where the real adventure – humorous, haunting, and suspenseful – begins. ISBN 13: 978-0747532743. | Amazon |
| Book | James and the Giant Peach | Roald Dahl | When poor James Henry Trotter loses his parents in a horrible rhinoceros accident, he is forced to live with his two wicked aunts, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. After three years he becomes “the saddest and loneliest boy you could find”. Then one day, a wizened old man in a dark-green suit gives James a bag of magic crystals that promise to reverse his misery forever. When James accidentally spills the crystals on his aunts’ withered peach tree, he sets the adventure in motion. From the old tree a single peach grows, and grows, and grows some more, until finally James climbs inside the giant fruit and rolls away from his despicable aunts to a whole new life. James befriends an assortment of hilarious characters, including Grasshopper, Earthworm, Miss Spider and Centipede – each with his or her own song to sing. ISBN 13: 978-0141311357. | Amazon |
## Appendix 4
### Other helpful books
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|---------------------|-------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| Book | *Little Women* | Louisa May Alcott | Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth – four ‘little women’ enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England. ISBN 13: 978-1587261329. | Amazon |
| Book | *Oliver Twist* | Charles Dickens | The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves. Dickens’s tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters – the arch-villain Fagin, the Artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. ISBN 13: 978-0141439747. | Amazon |
| Book | *The Secret Garden* | Frances Hodgson Burnett | Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as truculent as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, cooped up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire Moors, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; “It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together... ‘No wonder it is still,’ Mary whispered. ‘I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.’” As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin’s sour natures begin to sweeten. ISBN 13: 978-185326. | Amazon |
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|-----------------------|-------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------|
| Book | *When mum died* | Sheila Hollins and Lester Sireling | Simple pictures. They adopt a more direct approach to death which may be more suitable for ASN students. Guidance is given on how to answer any questions plus information on other resources available. ISBN 13: 978-1904671039. ISBN 978-1904671046. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Book | *The Invisible String* | Patricia Karst | The Invisible String is a very simple approach to overcoming the fear of loneliness or separation with an imaginative flair that children can easily identify with and remember. Here is a warm and delightful lesson teaching young and old that we aren’t ever really alone and reminding children (and adults!) that when we are loved beyond anything we can imagine. “People who love each other are always connected by a very special String, made of love. Even though you can’t see it with your eyes, you can feel it deep in your heart, and know that you are always connected to the ones you love.” ISBN 13: 978-0875167343. | Amazon |
| Book | *Grandpa* | J. Burningham | A simple picture book which can elicit discussion with students about how they feel, and so on. ISBN 13: 978-0099434085. | Amazon |
| Book | *Always and forever* | A. Durant | A story book which reinforces the fact that the person who has gone is still in our hearts and that memories will last forever. ISBN 13: 978-0152166366. | Amazon |
| Book | *Grandpa’s Slide Show*| G. Gould | A useful book to use when a grandparent dies. ISBN 13: 978-0688069728. | Amazon |
| Book | *Grandma’s shoes* | L Hathorn | A book about the healing process after bereavement. ISBN 13: 978-0316351355. | Amazon |
| Book | *Fred* | P. Simonds | Fred is an adored family cat (now deceased) who slept all the time - on the ironing board, on the washing, on top of the fridge, on cars, dustbins, walls and particularly on beds - although he took a little time off to sit on laps purring and to eat. Only after his death do Sophie and Nick discover that, by night, he was the Elvis of the cat-world, Famous Fred, the most famous cat in the world, with hordes of devoted fans. ISBN 13: 978-0099264125. | Amazon |
## Appendix 4
### Resources appropriate to children and young people with additional support needs.
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------|
| Book | *Remembering* | Dianne Leutner | It’s part book, part scrapbook and was created to help keep a child’s memories alive after the loss of someone special and to give children a place to return to whenever they wish. ISBN 13: 978-0952166184. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Book | *Finding a way through when someone close has died* | Mood and Whittaker | A workbook by young people who have experienced the death of someone close. They offer advice based on their own experiences. The activities encourage young people to express their feelings and responses. ISBN 13: 978-1853029202. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Book | *When Someone Very Special Dies* | M. Heegard | A simple workbook designed to be used by a bereaved child with adult help. It will help a child or young person to understand and express the many feelings that they will have. Communication is increased and coping skills developed as they work their way through it. ISBN 13: 978-0962050206. | Child Bereavement Charity |
| Book | *Grief Encounter* | S. Gilbert | A workbook to encourage conversations between adults and bereaved children. Hands on, user friendly, with many ideas to encourage communication and provide support. ISBN 13: 978-0954843403. | Child Bereavement Charity |
### Dealing with the death of a pet
| Format | Title | Author | Description/ISBN | Source |
|--------|------------------------------|-----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| Book | Badger’s Parting Gifts | S. Varley | A lovely book to illustrate death and the legacy of friendship. ISBN 13: 978-0006643173. | Amazon |
| Book | I’ll always love you | H. Wilhelm | A book about the death of a boy’s pet dog and the close relationship that they shared. ISBN 13: 978-0517572658. | Amazon |
Please also refer to the Education Resource Centre *Resource Book List* for further resources on the topic of bereavement and loss.
Appendix 5
Preparing for Bereavement, Loss and Change:
Working Group Members
Jane Kelly, Working Party Lead, Health Improvement Senior (Schools) North East Sector, c/o Eastbank Academy
Jackie Chalmers, Health Improvement Senior (Schools) South Sector, c/o Bellahouston Academy
Michelle Guthrie, Health Improvement Senior (Schools) South Sector, c/o Castlemilk High School
Catherine Jennings, Psychological Service South
Linda McEnhill, Manager, Family Support Services, Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice
Jacquie Lindsay, Education Lecturer, St. Margaret’s Hospice
Jane Miller, Education Facilitator, Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice
Emily McCurrie, Health Improvement Senior (Schools) North West Sector, c/o Drumchapel High School
Andy McIlwain, Marie Curie Hospice
Loretta Scott, Quality Improvement Officer (QIO) Pastoral Care, Education Services, Wheatley House
Jim Doyle, Quality Improvement Officer (QIO), Education Services, City Chambers East, 40 John Street, G1 1JL
Heather Sloan, Health Improvement Senior (Mental Health)
Vicky Tindel, Psychological Service North East
Acknowledgements
The information in this resource has been put together from a range of sources. Thank you to staff for sharing their resources.
The Place 2 B
Help the Hospices
Child Bereavement Charity
Winston’s Wish
Samaritans
Cruse Bereavement Care
Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice
St. Margaret’s Hospice
St. Andrew’s Hospice
Marie Curie Hospice
Yorkhill Family Bereavement Service | <urn:uuid:3c37e66e-2e9a-4247-8086-9251b77dbe68> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | https://www.seemescotland.org/media/8151/whole_school_approach_to_lossandbereavement.pdf | 2018-01-16T11:43:30Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084886416.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20180116105522-20180116125522-00094.warc.gz | 953,742,260 | 26,576 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.969036 | eng_Latn | 0.998393 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
189,
685,
2233,
3149,
4598,
7510,
10386,
12764,
14725,
17096,
18685,
20623,
21711,
22305,
24380,
25323,
27331,
29444,
30749,
33010,
36167,
37237,
39088,
41115,
42939,
44015,
45610,
47054,
48828,
50495,
52148,
54132,
55841,
56496,
57293,
59785,
60537,
61989,
64461,
67301,
69405,
72333,
75879,
79355,
82036,
85922,
89345,
91915,
94101,
97015,
100204,
103852,
106889,
109542,
111704,
114216,
116409,
118686,
121631,
123442,
126103,
128669,
130171
] | [
2.859375,
2.78125
] | 1 | 0 |
Bean and Veggie Enchiladas
with the Super Crew®!
Ingredients
Vegetable oil spray
1 can (16 oz.) fat-free, reduced sodium refried beans
1 cup fresh or frozen (slightly thawed) chopped, mixed color bell peppers
½ cup shredded carrots
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp. olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped (about ½ cup)
1 medium garlic clove, minced or finely chopped
6 whole-wheat or corn tortillas (approximately 8-inches in diameter)
¾ cup (6 oz.) enchilada sauce
½ cup shredded low-fat cheddar cheese
Shredded Romaine lettuce (optional)
Low-fat or nonfat sour cream (optional)
Prepared salsa for garnish (optional)
2 Portobello mushrooms, thinly sliced (optional)
1 Tbsp. of balsamic vinegar (optional)
1 Tbsp. of soy sauce (optional)
1 tsp. of olive oil (optional)
“Before cooking check out our Cooking with Kids Tips to learn how kids can help in the kitchen.”
-Carlos
Directions
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Kids can set the timer.
• Have the kids lightly spray a 9-inch square pan with vegetable oil spray; set aside.
• In a medium bowl, combine refried beans, peppers, carrots and tomatoes; set aside.
• Pour olive oil into a small non-stick skillet and heat over medium-high heat until oil is hot.
• Add onions and cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until onions are tender, stirring occasionally.
• Add garlic and cook for 1 to 2 minutes more, stirring.
• Spoon cooked onions and garlic into reserved bean mixture; stir until ingredients are thoroughly mixed.
• Have the kids spoon 1/6 of bean mixture down center of each tortilla; roll up. Place filled tortillas side-by-side, seam side down, in prepared pan.
• Have your children taste the enchilada sauce. Pour over tortillas.
• Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes; remove from oven and sprinkle with shredded cheese.
• Bake an additional 5 minutes or until cheese is melted and tortillas are heated through.
• If desired, top each tortilla with shredded lettuce, sour cream and salsa.
• Optional: In separate pan, mix balsamic vinegar, soy sauce and olive oil. Add mushrooms and sauté over low heat as directed above until tender, then combine into bean mixture.
Makes 6 servings.
Per serving: 180 calories, 3 g total fat (1 g saturated fat), 33 g carbohydrates, 9 g protein, 8 g dietary fiber, 430 mg sodium.
“I love eating all different kinds of foods like red, yellow and green peppers, black, white and brown beans. But my favorite foods are white and beige foods like garlic and onions, which give food extra flavor.”
- Carlos
Use your own words to fill in the blanks below.
The Super Crew Kids often eat foods with Fight-O-Chemicals to shield themselves from the ____________ effects of free radicals! Free radicals harm our ___________ and cause diseases like cancer and heart-disease. The best way to make sure _____________ is getting plenty of protective Fight-O-Chemicals is by ______________ lots of fruits and vegetables! It is helpful when ______________ eats lots of different ____________ of fruits and vegetables! The many colors of the foods tell us that special compounds exist that ____________ our cells and DNA from damage!
So besides being tasty, ___________ and nutritious, fruits and vegetables are also a strong shield and a great way to make sure you __________ up to be strong and healthy!
Do you have enough Fight-O-Chemicals on your plate?
- Make ½ your plate fruits and vegetables
- Choose 100% whole grains more often
- Eat more plant based proteins
- Choose low-fat or fat free dairy
- Always remember to eat a variety of colors!
Did you know 1 in 3 cancers are avoidable?
- By eating at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day AND doing moderate exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, you can cut your cancer risk dramatically.
Visit www.aicr.org and www.superkidsnutrition.com to learn how to make healthy eating and living easy for your family. | <urn:uuid:ee421218-1b75-45bf-b530-f8c4599d18ed> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://www.superkidsnutrition.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/02/powerful-plants-recipe-1.pdf | 2019-06-18T17:18:38Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998808.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618163443-20190618185443-00378.warc.gz | 918,386,463 | 894 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.995932 | eng_Latn | 0.997262 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2269,
3859
] | [
2.96875
] | 1 | 0 |
Public Participation & Communication
1. All members of the community have opportunities to be aware of and involved in governing and decision-making processes of interest to them.
2. The City’s active outreach to the community supports high-quality public participation.
3. All members of the community feel confident that their voices will be taken seriously and given respect in City decision-making processes that are important to them.
4. Public information is easily accessible to members of the public.
5. All members of the community know how to access information about decisions being made and what information is informing those decisions.
1. The city’s role as the economic, social, and cultural center of Tompkins County has been strengthened by attracting and retaining a larger proportion of the County population, reversing a half-century trend of population loss to the County.
2. Additional housing provides opportunities for people of all incomes, ages, and abilities to live in the city.
3. Neighborhood character is preserved and enhanced.
4. Green space surrounding the city is preserved to minimize sprawl.
5. Transportation and housing options reduce commuter traffic.
6. Housing is located so that jobs and services are easily accessible.
7. An increased tax base reduces the tax burden for residents.
8. Permitted land uses promote business expansion and job growth within the city.
9. The community is economically vibrant and offers a high quality of life.
10. New development is consistent with the City’s land use goals and map and is of high-quality design.
11. Land use planning decisions and investments are coordinated with the goals of the Mobility & Transportation chapter.
Economic Vitality
FISCAL HEALTH
1. The City maintains a strong financial position through sound fiscal stewardship.
2. The City balances available resources with reasonable spending to provide services that meet the needs of the community.
3. City services are delivered to the community in the most efficient way possible.
4. The local property tax base is expanded, in coordination with the goals of the Land Use chapter.
5. The City shares services with surrounding municipalities where appropriate.
6. City services and infrastructure are financed by diverse and innovative sources.
7. Costs for City services and infrastructure are equitably shared between the City, local educational institutions, tax-exempt organizations, and surrounding municipalities.
Economic Vitality
**ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT**
1. The City attracts and retains firms valued by the community, including low-environmental-impact manufacturing, green businesses, locally-owned businesses, and businesses owned by under-represented groups.
2. The economic environment retains, nurtures, and grows new and existing businesses within the city.
3. The creation and expansion of local employment, particularly well-paying jobs, provide opportunities for all income levels and age groups.
4. A variety of businesses diversifies the economy and reduces economic dependence on a single sector.
5. Business start-ups and expansions have adequate access to capital.
6. Tourism is a vital component of the city and regional economy.
7. The educational sector is recognized and supported as a driving force of the local economy.
8. There are no structural barriers that prevent people from overcoming poverty.
9. Brownfield sites are remediated and redeveloped.
**WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT & JOB TRAINING**
1. There is a strong and diverse local workforce whose skills and training align with the needs of local employers.
2. There is access to job readiness and skill development programs, particularly for low-income residents and young adults.
3. Barriers to employment, such as lack of child care and insufficient transportation, have been eliminated.
**Housing**
1. Ithaca has an adequate supply of safe, accessible, and affordable housing available to all residents, regardless of their life circumstances or special needs.
2. The city is home to a range of housing options, including different levels of affordability and housing types, in each neighborhood.
3. New residential units are compatible with the essential character of established neighborhoods, in coordination with the goals of the Land Use chapter.
4. Homeownership and owner-occupancy of residential units has increased throughout the city.
5. The existing stock of affordable housing has been preserved and well-maintained.
**Historic Preservation**
1. The community understands the importance of historic preservation and takes pride in the collective history represented in the built environment.
2. All historic resources worthy of preservation are protected, whether formally designated or not.
3. Improvements to designated structures conform with the Historic Preservation Ordinance.
4. Existing historic buildings are rehabilitated or adaptively reused rather than demolished.
5. New construction within or adjacent to historic districts or individually listed landmarks is compatible with the existing built environment.
6. Historic preservation is recognized as an economic development tool.
**Public Safety**
1. The city is a safe and secure environment for all members of the community.
2. The City provides a timely and appropriate response to emergencies.
3. All segments of the community have strong relationships with first responders that encourage collaboration, communication, trust, and understanding.
4. The community is well-educated on personal safety and emergency preparedness.
5. Members of the public have a way to communicate with neighbors or first responders in an emergency situation.
Community Livability
PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
1. City infrastructure and private utilities are regularly maintained and upgraded to ensure continued operation and service to the community.
2. Physical infrastructure is designed to be compatible with the built environment.
3. Investment in infrastructure is prioritized based on existing condition and level of use as well as impacts on commercial activity and quality of life.
4. Construction activity by City departments, New York State, Tompkins County, the Town of Ithaca, utility companies, and private developers is well-coordinated.
HEALTH, WELLNESS, & SUPPORT
1. The community’s use of active modes of transportation improves individual health and wellness, as well as environmental sustainability.
2. All residents and visitors have access to parks, trails, recreational facilities, and community activities that support social interaction and physical activity.
3. Recreational opportunities are provided for youth throughout the city.
4. Preventative, on-going, and emergency health care is accessible and available to all.
5. There are no physical, economic, and social barriers to health and wellness.
6. Public spaces are welcoming to all residents and visitors.
7. The built environment is accessible for people of all ages and abilities.
8. Public and private properties are free from contamination.
INCREASING TRANSPORTATION CHOICES
1. Ithaca provides an interconnected transportation network that makes it convenient, routine, and feasible for all residents and visitors to walk, bike, and use transit.
2. Ithaca’s transportation infrastructure has been designed to increase multi-modal connectivity, creating an interwoven network that extends to adjacent municipalities.
3. To reduce auto dependency, transportation modes are prioritized in the following order: pedestrian, bicycle, transit, private cars and goods movement.
4. Every City street is a complete street that accommodates multiple modes of transportation, including active transportation modes.
5. Pedestrian travel is supported on all City streets through well-maintained and enhanced facilities that meet, at a minimum, Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
6. Attractive new pathways run along natural features – such as creeks and gorges - and connect to the street system, enhancing neighborhoods and serving as active transportation corridors.
7. Convenient, well-designed and well-maintained bike facilities encourage increased bicycling on City streets.
8. Frequent transit service, along with improved stops and shelters, throughout a broad service area offer increased comfort and accessibility, particularly in areas serving low-income and elderly people.
9. The public parking supply is managed to enhance vitality in the Urban Mixed Use areas, support programs that provide alternatives to private car use, and be cost-neutral to the City.
10. Innovative ways to improve the delivery of goods and services are in place.
11. Pedestrian, bike, and transit improvements are spread equitably throughout the City so people of all income levels and abilities will benefit from them.
12. Shared transportation services, such as bike and carsharing programs, ridesharing and vanpooling, are actively supported.
13. Coordinated regional transportation improvements - ranging from better pedestrian, bicycle and street connections with adjacent municipalities to better bus, rail and airline connections with other states and cities - help ensure convenient regional mobility.
**Connecting Land Use & Transportation**
1. Transportation planning decisions, management strategies, and investments are coordinated with the goals of the Land Use chapter, helping to foster compact, connected, and walkable neighborhoods and mixed-use areas.
2. The City’s transportation infrastructure is designed with sensitivity to the surrounding land use contexts to strengthen and enhance the livability of city neighborhoods.
3. All city streets meet transportation needs while knitting together, rather than separating, adjacent city neighborhoods.
4. Streets, trails, intersections, and sidewalks have been designed and maintained as attractive public spaces using sustainable design principles.
5. An official City map clearly depicts planned future multi-modal transportation corridors to facilitate the reservation, acquisition, and construction of these corridors.
6. The environmental review process for development projects employs a balanced multi-modal (rather than auto-centric) analysis of transportation impacts.
**Efficiency and Innovation**
7. The construction quality and design of transportation infrastructure reflects community goals as expressed throughout Plan Ithaca.
8. Design principles, policies and operational strategies allow the adoption of innovative transportation and communication technologies.
9. The public parking supply is managed using innovative technologies.
10. Transportation infrastructure maintenance is evaluated and prioritized to ensure preservation of the asset (e.g., ongoing maintenance to extend the lifespan of bridges and avoid the need for premature replacement).
11. The transportation system is managed to promote safety, provide fiscal and operational efficiency, and minimize negative environmental impacts.
COMMUNICATION & EDUCATION
Well-supported, on-going programs are in place to promote awareness of:
- Active transportation options;
- Transportation safety;
- Personal and public cost of transportation options;
- Environmental and energy-use impacts of transportation choices; and
- Transportation Demand Management concepts and programs.
Information and communication techniques and technologies are up-to-date, reflecting evolving means of disseminating information.
NATURAL RESOURCES
1. The City provides and adequately funds well-maintained and safe parks, trails, and natural areas.
2. Community partnerships support the maintenance, enhancement, and promotion of parks, trails, and natural areas.
3. The City maintains and enhances its existing recreational facilities.
4. Gorges throughout the city are protected to ensure their continuation as critical natural assets for current and future use.
5. Steep slopes are preserved to protect ecologically sensitive areas and to enhance the character and aesthetics of the city.
6. Facilities within City parks are accessible and can be equally enjoyed by all members of the community.
7. City parks, trails, and natural areas form a well-established network of interconnected green space.
8. All members of the community have access to the waterfront.
9. Existing green space in the city is preserved and opportunities for additional green space are strategically considered.
10. Distinctive, noteworthy, and characteristic community viewsheds are protected.
11. City trees and plantings help preserve and enhance local vegetation diversity. Existing tree canopies in City parks and on streets and right-of-ways are maintained, enhanced, and, where appropriate, expanded.
CULTURAL & HISTORIC RESOURCES
1. The City provides and adequately funds City-sponsored events, programs, and other resources, such as GIAC and Ithaca Youth Bureau programming, the Martin Luther King Jr. Walkway, neighborhood investment programs, and public art.
2. Privately-sponsored events and organizations are supported.
3. The community is aware of events, exhibits, and other programs open to the public.
4. Collaboration with community partners helps preserve and promote cultural and historic resources.
5. Cultural and historic resources are accessible to the entire community.
Sustainable Energy, Water, & Food Systems
ENERGY
1. Ithaca is a leading model, facilitator, and educator for small-city transitions to higher energy efficiency, energy conservation, and waste reduction.
2. The city’s energy supplies meet the highest standards of security and reliability.
WATER RESOURCES & STORMWATER MANAGEMENT
1. Cayuga Lake, its tributaries, and the local watershed are protected from pollution, sedimentation, erosion, flooding, invasive species, and other threats to drinking water supplies, wildlife, recreation, and economic development.
2. Community water consumption has been reduced through more efficient water use.
3. Stormwater run-off has been significantly reduced.
FOOD SYSTEMS
1. All city residents enjoy food security.
2. Ithaca’s community food network improves food accessibility by connecting food entrepreneurs with policymakers, permitting agencies, and community members.
3. Ithaca is home to local food-production and food-processing enterprises that capitalize on our location at the heart of a thriving agricultural region. | 174311ea-ec5b-4881-bcc7-a1363337af49 | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | http://cityofithaca.org/DocumentCenter/View/2840/PlanIthaca-Presentation-Spring-2015 | 2021-10-26T09:39:14+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323587854.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20211026072759-20211026102759-00451.warc.gz | 13,877,823 | 2,633 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.994255 | eng_Latn | 0.997277 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
656,
1726,
2497,
3864,
5716,
7096,
9265,
11052,
11524,
12792,
13385,
14465
] | [
2.015625
] | 2 | 3 |
International Space Station transit of the Moon
Composite image: Marc Polansky
Six-Day-Old Moon mosaic captured with an antique telescope built by John Benjamin Dancer. Dancer is credited with being the first to photograph the Moon in England in February 1852.
Apollo 11 and 17 landing sites are visible in the images, as well as Mare Nectaris, one of the older impact basins on the Moon.
Photos: Bill Cloutier
| Topic | Page |
|--------------------------------------------|------|
| Out the Window on Your Left | 3 |
| Valentine Dome | 4 |
| Rocket Trivia | 5 |
| Mars Time (Landing of Perseverance) | 7 |
| Destination: Jezero Crater | 9 |
| Revisiting an Exoplanet Discovery | 11 |
| Moon Rock in the White House | 13 |
| Solar Beaming Project | 14 |
| Remembering Dr. George Carruthers | 15 |
| Meteorite Spotlight - Allende | 18 |
| Twenty Years Ago: Discovery’s Final Mission| 19 |
| Soviet Moon Program | 20 |
| John Glenn and the Flight of Freedom 7 | 21 |
| Sunrise and Sunset | 22 |
| Astronomical and Historical Events | 22 |
| Commonly Used Terms | 26 |
| References on Distances | 26 |
| Lagrange Points | 26 |
| International Space Station and Starlink Satellites | 27 |
| Solar Activity | 27 |
| NASA’s Global Climate Change Resource | 27 |
| Countdown to Mars | 27 |
| Contact Information | 28 |
It’s been more than 51 years since Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon’s surface and 48 years since Gene Cernan left the last footprint. As a nation founded on exploration and the conquest of new frontiers, today’s commitment to return to the moon has been as fleeting as the funding. But what if the average citizen had the means to visit our only natural satellite; what would they see out the window of their spacecraft as they entered orbit around the moon? This column may provide some thoughts to ponder when planning your visit (if only in your imagination).
A broad, low-profile lava dome is visible as the waxing Moon achieves its first quarter phase on February 19, and the Sun is low in the lunar sky. Valentine dome is located on the northwestern shore of Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity), along the base of the Caucasus Mountains, and just north of the breech that runs into the Imbrium basin (30.9° latitude, 10.1° longitude). It is one of the largest domes visible on the lunar surface, measuring approximately 18.6 miles (30 km) across its heart-shaped surface.
Lava domes are volcanic protrusions created by an upwelling of magma. On average, the top of the Valentine dome rises 400 feet (122 meters) above the mare. The dome’s north-south profile (shown below) was generated from data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Older peaks poke through the surface of the dome -- several are visible in the photo on the following page, as well as a faint rille (fissure) that traverses the dome in an east-west direction. A second, much smaller dome, lies just to the north of Valentine.
For scale, crater Linné is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) across, and craters F and B are 3 miles (4.8 km) in diameter. Despite its small size, Linné brightens as the Moon waxes, becoming a bright white spot under the sunlight of a Full Moon.
Photo: Bill Cloutier
Lunar seas are actually expansive low-lying plains formed by ancient lava flows
LROC ACT-REACT-QuickMap http://target.lroc.asu.edu/q3/
Valentine Dome
Caucasus Mountains
Mare Imbrium
Dome 2
Valentine Dome
Linné
Mare Serenitatis
Photo: Bill Cloutier
Rocket Trivia
Today you can find the solvent WD-40, in its classic blue and yellow can with the red top, in almost every workbench or garage, but what does WD-40 have to do with John Glenn’s historic February 20, 1962 orbital flight? The product was developed by the Rocket Chemical Company in San Diego, California. At the time (circa 1953), the company, with a staff of three, were attempting to create a rust-prevention solvent and degreaser for the aerospace industry.
Water Displacement formula was perfected on the 40th attempt. Convair, a local aerospace contractor, was the first to use WD-40 to protect the stainless steel outer skin of the Atlas missile from rust and corrosion.
The San Diego company, Convair formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft, was contracted by the U.S. Air Force to develop a ballistic missile, in response to a mounting Soviet threat. Convair’s engineers came up with an innovative and controversial design using paper-thin stainless steel as the structural material. Nicknamed the “gas bag,” the booster was pressurized with helium for rigidity (or it would collapse). The balloon design offered a significant reduction in the missile’s weight (estimated at less than two percent of the propellant). Not everyone was enamoured with the design, including U.S. Army contractor and German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun who viewed the Atlas as “inflated competition.”
As America’s first operational Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), the early Atlas had an innovative staging feature. Its three engines were started at launch but after a few minutes of flight, as the rocket’s fuel was consumed, the two outer engines dropped off. The weight reduction allowed the Atlas to achieve orbit with just its central or “sustainer” engine.
Despite some early development issues with its turbopumps and fuel sloshing, ten Atlas-B missiles (the Atlas A was an earlier suborbital version, with only two booster engines and no sustainer engine) were launched during 1958 and 1959, with three failures. On December 18, 1958, an Atlas-B carried a communication experiment to orbit, known as SCORE (Satellite Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment). Messages were sent to the satellite by ground stations, recorded, and then retransmitted back to Earth, including a prerecorded broadcast of a Christmas message by President Eisenhower.
Atlas-D was the first operational version of the Atlas and, with the miniaturization of thermonuclear warheads, able to deliver its payload over a 6,300 mile range. It also became the United State’s best hope to challenge the Soviet’s early domination of the “high ground” – launching John Glenn’s Friendship 7 Mercury capsule into Earth orbit in 1962.
The Atlas was eventually retired as an ICBM in 1965, replaced by the solid-fueled Minuteman missile that had entered operation in early 1963. The rocket went on to serve as a reliable launch platform for both manned and unmanned science and exploration missions. An Atlas booster launched all of the Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter probes to the Moon, paving the way for the Apollo manned mission. It was also used to launch robotic missions to Mercury (Mariner 10), Venus (Mariner 2), Mars (Mariner 4), Jupiter (Pioneer 10), Saturn (Pioneer 11), and Pluto (New Horizons).
Courtesy U.S. Air Force
Mars Time (Landing of Perseverance)
Cruise Stage
Backshell
Descent Stage
Rover
Heat Shield
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
On February 18, around 3:30 in the afternoon (EST on Earth), after a journey of seven months and almost 300 million miles (480 million kms), the Mars 2020 spacecraft will enter the Martian atmosphere for a seven-minute, high-speed ride down to the surface. At that time, Earth will be 127 million miles (204.85 million km) or 11 light-minutes from Mars, so by the time engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory receive the signal from the spacecraft that Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) has begun, the rover will have been on the surface for four minutes.
Since launch on July 30, 2020 atop an Atlas V-541 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, the solar-powered cruise stage has been supporting spacecraft operations. Its systems have provided power to the spacecraft/rover, maintained communications, and adjusted course, as needed, to stay on target. About ten minutes before the spacecraft encounters the top of the Martian atmosphere, the cruise stage is discarded. The backshell then orients the heat shield for the plunge.
The spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere at approximately 12,000 mph (about 20,000 kph). While only one percent as thick as Earth’s, the Martian atmosphere provides sufficient drag to slow the protective aeroshell to about 1,000 miles an hour (1,600 kph). In the process, the 15-foot (4.5 meters) diameter, gold-colored heat shield, reaches a peak temperature of about 2,370°F (about 1,300°C), approximately 80 seconds after entering the atmosphere. As the spacecraft descends, small thrusters on the backshell keep the heat shield aligned at the required entry angle and direction of lift.
Four minutes into EDL, a supersonic parachute is released using a new technology (called Range Trigger) to time the opening at an expected altitude of 7 miles (11 kms). The parachute, 70.5 feet (21.5 meters) in diameter, rapidly deaccelerates the aeroshell and, twenty seconds after the deployment, the heat shield drops off, exposing the descent stage and rover.
With the heat shield gone, another new technology (Terrain-Relative Navigation) is activated, as well as the cameras and landing radar needed to assess the fast-approaching landing zone. Surface features are compared against an onboard map to chart the course to the most favorable landing area within the zone.
Despite its size, the parachute is only able to slow the spacecraft to about 200 miles per hour (320 kph). Almost 6 minutes into EDL, the descent stage (with the rover) separates from the backshell and powers up its eight rocket engines. The descent stage, with its onboard computer still evaluating landing options, slows to about 1.7 miles per hour (2.7 kph), as it hovers about 66 feet (20 meters) above the surface of Jezero crater. At this point, about 12 seconds before touchdown, the descent stage lowers the Perseverance rover to the surface using a set of 21-foot (6.4 meter) long cables. Once the rover is safely on the ground, the cables are cut and the descent stage flies away for an uncontrolled landing.
If all goes according to plan, the six-wheeled, robotic astrobiologist is then ready to roll.
NASA has selected an ancient river delta (the larger of two within the Jezero crater) to explore with the Perseverance rover and look for signs of early microbial life that might be preserved within the clay strata. The crater, 28 miles (45 km) across, is located on the perimeter of a level plain called Isidis Planitia, just north of the Martian equator. Based upon the data collected by orbiting spacecraft, the 3.9-billion-year-old Jezero crater appears to have been flooded in the distant past, with a paleolake containing as much water as Lake Tahoe on Earth. The preferred landing site is near the front of the delta located along the western rim of the now-dry crater, and at the mouth of one of the river channels thought to have fed the lake.
Just south of Jezero is one of the other high-value science areas that had been evaluated by the engineering and science teams planning the Mars 2020 mission – Northeast Syrtis (there were originally three sites that made the final cut). The Northeast Syrtis area is characterized by several distinct volcanic features, that likely formed during each of Mars’ three geologic time
periods or Epochs (from oldest to youngest: Noachian, Hesperian and Amazonian). Samples from this region could be useful in understanding the planet’s evolution from wet and warm to dry and cold. Late in the site evaluation process, a fourth site was added – Midway. As the name implies, the site is halfway between Jezero crater and NE Syrtis. It could be a future destination for the Perseverance rover, should the rover’s primary mission be extended.
Topographic Map from Mars Global Surveyor’s Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA)
Credit: NASA/GSFC/MOLA Team
Jezero Crater from the High-Resolution Camera on ESA’s Mars Express
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
Revisiting an Exoplanet Discovery
On March 7, 2009, the Kepler space telescope was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The telescope’s prime mission, to continuously monitor more than 150,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region for transiting exoplanets, ended after 4 years when the second of four reaction wheels (used to point the telescope) failed. Within a year, the project team had found a way to continue a modified search with the two remaining wheels – a quest that would continue for another five years and identify thousands of additional candidates.
Kepler finds planets by monitoring stars over time for small decreases in their brightness – as a result of one or more planets passing in front and blocking a tiny bit of light from the star reaching the telescope. Once a planet is detected, its orbit can be calculated from the time it takes to complete a circuit around its parent star (as well as the star’s mass), its size deduced from the amount of star light the planet blocks, and its physical parameters from the temperature of the star and the planet’s distance from it.
Shortly after Kepler commenced operations in 2009, the telescope detected a potential planet around the multiple star system KOI-5 (the telescope’s second finding). Designated KOI-5Ab, the discovery was ultimately set aside, with questions as to whether the signal was real or an artifact of the multiple star system, and as additional, more easily confirmed, candidates were identified. By the time the telescope was decommissioned in 2018, almost 2,400 new exoplanets had been discovered by Kepler, with almost an equal number of candidates that needed additional confirmation – including KOI-5Ab.
Planet KOI-5Ab crossing in front of or transiting the A Star of the triple star system located 1,800 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation
Credits: Caltech/R. Hurt (Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, or IPAC)
With the retirement of Kepler, the search was taken up by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, and a number of ground-based telescopes. TESS is designed to survey the 200,000 brightest stars closest to our Sun, working much that same way as Kepler (detecting transits). When one of the TESS surveys included a portion of the sky where the KOI-5 system resides, it too detected a potential planet within the system. Astronomers then turned to another method of planet finding, radial-velocity, to confirm the discovery (the technique measures the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet by the “wobble” of the parent star, as both the star and the planet orbit their common center of mass). Ground-based instruments at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii were able to reveal a planet, about half as massive as Saturn, orbiting the A star in the system with a period of about 5 days.
The KOI-5 star system consists of three stars, labeled A, B, and C, in this diagram. Stars A and B orbit each other every 30 years. Star C orbits stars A and B every 400 years.
David Ciardi, chief scientist of NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI), located at Caltech's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), presented the findings at the 2021 virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Ciardi noted the planet is unusual in that its orbit is skewed from the plane of the two stars (A/B) – tilted about 50°. Planets and stars form out of the same disk of material (comprised of gas and dust) so that, initially, all bodies occupy the same orbital plane. It is likely that star B may have disrupted the planet’s orbit at some point in the star system’s history, sending into its current inclination, and possibly moving it closer to the A star.
Few planets have been discovered in triple star systems (making up only about 10% of all star systems surveyed), and planet KOI-5Ab is unusual in its skewed orbit. Astronomers don’t know if planet formation around multiple star systems is rare or that the sample size is currently too small from which to draw such a general conclusion.
Moon Rock in the White House
At the request of the Biden Administration, NASA delivered a Moon rock (on loan) to the Oval Office. The display is intended to represent the accomplishments of earlier generations and future support for the Moon to Mars initiative. The 332-gram piece (less than a pound) was collected by the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972 – chipped from a large boulder at the base of the North Massif in the Taurus-Littrow Valley. The 3.9-billion-year-old sample is believed to be a remnant of an impact event that created the Imbrium basin.
Photo credit: NASA
Solar Beaming Project
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is working on a space-based solar power transmission system that would be capable of delivering power anywhere on the globe, at any time, and in any weather. AFRL recently received the spacecraft “bus” (the first flight hardware) for its Arachne spacecraft, the flagship experiment within the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research project. The bus, named “Helios,” was provided by Northrop Grumman and is the part of the spacecraft that includes the components for controlling the spacecraft’s orientation, managing power and communications, as well as serving as the platform for experiments. Helios is a commoditized spacecraft bus – developed from AFRL technology that was transferred to the commercial industry and that is now available at a cost savings to the government as a platform for future spacecraft. The bus can host multiple payloads.
AFRL will customize the bus for the Arachne spacecraft to host the Space Solar Power Radio Frequency Integrated Transmission Experiment or SSPRITE. The demonstration project will assess technologies that convert solar energy to radio frequency power, as well as the feasibility of transmitting and converting that power to a usable form back on Earth.
Launch of the Arachne spacecraft with the Helios and SSPRITE components is currently forecasted for 2024.
Image courtesy of AFRL. AFRL is the primary scientific research and development center for the Department of the Air Force.
Dr. George Robert Carruthers passed away on December 26, 2020. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Carruthers earned his bachelor's degree in physics, masters in nuclear engineering, and Ph.D. in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, while studying at the University of Illinois. In 1964, he began working at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, where he perfected an ultraviolet camera/spectrograph for NASA that was carried to the Moon on the Apollo 16 in 1972.
Dr. George Carruthers (on the right) next to his invention - the gold-plated ultraviolet camera/spectrograph, which he had patented several years earlier
Credits: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
The first lunar observatory was located in the shadow of the Apollo 16 lunar lander, Orion, on the Moon’s Descartes highland region in April 1972. The tripod-mounted, f/1.0 electronographic Schmidt camera, with a 3-inch aperture lens, weighed 48.5 pounds (22 kg). It had a $20^\circ$ field of view in the imaging mode.
Astronaut John Young used the camera/spectrograph to photograph star clouds, nebulae, and Earth's outermost atmosphere. In all, 178 useable frames of film were exposed and returned to Earth for analysis (the camera remained behind) – 85 imagery, 68 spectra, and 25 combined frames of the 10 preselected target areas in the lunar sky. Exposures varied from minutes for bright objects (like Earth) to several hours. When asked to explain the significance of the observations, Carruthers said "the most immediately obvious and spectacular results were really for the Earth observations, because this was the first time that the Earth had been photographed from a distance in ultraviolet (UV) light, so that you could see the full extent of the hydrogen atmosphere, the polar aurorae and what we call the tropical airglow belt."
Carruthers' other achievements included the first detection of molecular hydrogen in space using a sounding rocket (in 1970), development of UV detectors to image Comet Halley, carried aboard Skylab and the space shuttle, and on Defense and research satellites. In 2012, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. In the 1980s, he helped launch a program called the Science and Engineers Apprentice Program, and also taught science classes at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
The UV images taken by Carruthers' telescope show the Earth's outermost atmosphere, or geocorona. The camera/spectrograph recorded light in a wavelength invisible to the human eye and too short to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. In this region, atomic oxygen and molecular nitrogen glow brightly in the UV on the Sun-facing side of the Earth.
Streamers extending into the night side are produced by charged particles as they spiral towards the Earth along the planet's magnetic field lines.
Meteorite Spotlight – Allende
In the summer of 2018, the Observatory greatly expanded its meteorite teaching collection with the addition of a diverse and comprehensive set of meteoritic specimens from a reputable collector looking to convey his collection to someone who would maintain its integrity and capitalize on its intrinsic educational value. The collection includes whole stones, slices and fragments, numbering more than 200, from historic and scientifically-significant falls and meteorite finds dating back to 1492. From time to time, we will highlight one or more of the specimens from the collection in this newsletter.
A fireball in the sky over the southwest province of Chihuahua, Mexico on February 8, 1969, was followed by detonations and a rain of stones from the sky. The meteorites were strewn over an area of 19 square miles (50 square km). Samples were collected quickly, minimizing terrestrial contamination (the first meteorite was discovered in village of Pueblito de Allende), with several of the meteorites taken to NASA’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, Texas for analysis. The newly commissioned laboratory was preparing to receive lunar material from the Apollo missions (Allende was the first extraterrestrial rocks analyzed in the lab). Two tons of material are reported to have been collected, to date, from the fall.
Allende is a stony meteorite, classified as a carbonaceous chondrite. Radioactive dating (based upon two isotopes of lead) yielded an age close to that of the Sun (about 4.6 billion years old). The meteorite has abundant calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (some of the oldest and most primitive material to condense out of the solar nebula). Allende also contains presolar grains (composed of silicon carbide) that predate the Sun – relatively rare since presolar grains are typically degraded or destroyed in the environment where the inclusions are formed (closer to the Sun), where the temperature of the solar nebula increases. In Allende, researchers found presolar grains inside the inclusions.
Researchers also found evidence that isotopes (forms of the same element that contain equal numbers of protons but different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei) inside the meteorite were likely produced by a nearby supernova. The rest of the meteorite was comprised of debris from supernova, but arrived later. The discoveries will help improve the theories of solar system evolution.
There are three samples of the Allende meteorite in the collections at the McCarthy Observatory. They include a 2.0-gram fragment, a 3.9-gram slice and 23.0-gram stone.
Two of the smaller samples of Allende in the McCarthy Observatory’s meteorite collection
Image: Gerard Bianchi
Twenty Years Ago: Discovery’s Final Mission
180 people have flown aboard Discovery, including first female shuttle pilot and commander, first African American spacewalker and first sitting member of Congress.
Delivered Hubble Space Telescope to LEO and first to rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir.
Payloads included the Ulysses solar probe and the Japanese Kibo laboratory ISS module.
38 Missions
352 days in Space
Final Mission: STS-133
Launched 24 Feb 2011
Photo: Bill Cloutier
February marks the beginning of the end of the Soviet Moon program. While publicly denying its intentions to send cosmonauts to the Moon during the 1960s, the Soviets were secretly constructing rockets of mammoth proportions (rivaling the Saturn V). On February 21, 1969, the N1 moon rocket exploded during its first test flight. The rocket fell back to Earth after a safety system mistakenly shut down all 30 engines when a fire was detected in the first stage less than 70 seconds after liftoff. Three more failures would follow before the Soviet government would abandon their manned-Moon program.
The historic photos on the right show 1) the N1 under construction with the 30-engine first stage, 2) the Soviet lunar lander and 3) two N1 rockets on pads at the Baikonur Cosmodrome (also known as Tyuratam) in Kazakhstan. The five stage rockets stood approximately 340 feet high.
John Glenn and the Flight of Freedom 7
On the morning of February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth aboard a Mercury space capsule that Glenn named Friendship 7. Originally scheduled for the previous December, the launch was delayed by several technical and mechanical issues, including a fuel leak, and by weather.
Glenn served with the Marine Corps prior to being selected by NASA for its manned spaceflight program. As a fighter pilot, he flew 59 combat missions in the South Pacific during World War II. Following service in the Korean War (baseball Hall of Fame legend Ted Williams was one of his wingmen), he set a speed record for a transcontinental flight on July 16, 1957 when he flew a Vought F8U Crusader from California non-stop to New York in 3 hours 23 minutes in a test of a new Pratt & Whitney engine (it did require 3 mid-air refuelings).
Astronaut John Glenn entering the Mercury capsule
Credit: NASA
Glenn’s trip around the Earth lasted 4 hours and 55 minutes and 23 seconds, completing 3 orbits before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean southeast of Bermuda. While a public relations success, the flight was not without problems, the most serious of which was an indication that the capsule’s heat shield had come loose and its landing bag deployed. Not knowing whether it was a faulty indicator, mission control asked Glenn to leave the retro-pack on during reentry. (The retro-pack consisted of three small rockets that were used to slow the spacecraft down. It was
attached to the spacecraft by three straps that extended over the heat shield.) Fortunately, the indicator was faulty and the flaming debris that Glenn saw streaming by his window during reentry was from the retro-pack and not the heat shield.
John Glenn would not return to space for another 36 years. In 1998, at the age of 77, Glenn joined the crew of the space shuttle Discovery for a nine-day mission. He was the oldest person to fly in space. John Glenn died Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016 at the age of 95. He was the last of the original Mercury 7 astronauts selected by NASA in 1958 for the agency’s fledgling manned spaceflight program.
**Sunrise and Sunset (from New Milford, CT)**
| Sun | Sunrise | Sunset |
|----------------------|---------|--------|
| February 1st (EST) | 07:05 | 17:07 |
| February 15th | 06:48 | 17:25 |
| February 28th | 06:29 | 17:40 |
**Astronomical and Historical Events**
1st Aten Asteroid 2016 CL136 near-Earth flyby (0.035 AU)
1st History: loss of the space shuttle Columbia upon reentry (2003)
2nd Amor Asteroid 5620 Jasonwheeler closest approach to Earth (1.911 AU)
2nd Asteroid 10 Hygiea closest approach to Earth (2.220 AU)
2nd History: Soviet space station Salyut 4 reenters the Earth’s atmosphere (1977)
3rd Moon at perigee (closest distance from Earth)
3rd Apollo Asteroid 2020 SO near-Earth flyby (0.001 AU)
3rd Atira Asteroid 1998 DK36 closest approach to Earth (0.181 AU)
3rd History: Apollo 14, with astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell, lands in the Moon’s Fra Mauro region; 3rd manned Moon landing (1971)
3rd History: Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 becomes first spacecraft to soft land on the Moon (1966)
4th Last Quarter Moon
4th History: launch of Lunar Orbiter 3; photographed potential Apollo landing sites (1967)
4th History: Clyde Tombaugh born (1906); discovered the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930
5th Aten Asteroid 2018 PN22 near-Earth flyby (0.033 AU)
5th Apollo Asteroid 2018 CH2 near-Earth flyby (0.037 AU)
5th Apollo Asteroid 29075 (1950 DA) closest approach to Earth (0.494 AU)
5th Atira Asteroid 459883 (2014 JX25) closest approach to Earth (2.181 AU)
5th Amor Asteroid 18106 Blume closest approach to Earth (2.459 AU)
5th History: flyby of Venus by the Mariner 10 spacecraft on its way to Mercury; first U.S. spacecraft to photograph Venus, first to use gravity of one planet to propel itself to another, and the first spacecraft to visit Mercury (1974)
6th History: Soviet space station Salyut 7 reenters Earth’s atmosphere (1991)
6th History: Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard attempts to golf on the Moon (1971)
7th Mars Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere
7th Apollo Asteroid 2018 RB near-Earth flyby (0.047 AU)
7th History: launch of the Stardust spacecraft for a rendezvous with Comet Wild 2 (1999)
Astronomical and Historical Events
7th History: Bruce McCandless makes first untethered spacewalk using a jet-powered backpack (1984)
7th History: Astronomical Society of the Pacific founded (1889)
7th History: William Huggins born, pioneered work in astronomical spectroscopy and first to differentiate nebular and galactic spectra (1824)
8th History: Allende Meteorite fall (meteorites from the fall were the first extraterrestrial rocks analyzed in the NASA Lunar Receiving Laboratory which had just been completed in September of 1967 to support the Apollo program) (1969)
8th History: discovery of the SAU 094 Mars meteorite in Sayh al Uhaymir, Oman; one of the largest Mars meteorites recovered and the only one with a documented strewn field (2001)
8th History: discovery of GRV 99027 Martian Meteorite on the ice sheet near the Grove Mountain region of Antarctica; the 9.97-gram meteorite was later characterized as a shergottite (2000)
8th History: flyby of Jupiter by the Ulysses spacecraft on its way to study the polar regions of the Sun (1992)
8th History: return of Skylab III crew (astronauts Gerald Carr, William Pogue and Edward Gibson) to Earth after a 3 month stay on the space station (1974)
8th History: Jules Verne born, author and futurist (1828)
9th Kuiper Belt Object 420356 Praamzius at Opposition (42.039 AU)
9th History: launch of the ESA’s Solar Orbiter on an Atlas 5 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
10th Aten Asteroid 2019 YP5 near-Earth flyby (0.021 AU)
10th Apollo Asteroid 2008 DB near-Earth flyby (0.034 AU)
10th History: flyby of Venus by the Galileo spacecraft (for a gravity assist) on its way to Jupiter; the encounter provided the first views of mid-level clouds on Venus and confirmed the presence of lightning (1990)
10th History: flyby of Mars by the Soviet Mars 4 spacecraft; failed to enter orbit but did detect night-side ionosphere (1974)
10th History: MIT, using Millstone Hill radar in Westford, MA, bounces radar off Venus (1958)
10th History: discovery of Asteroid 624 Hecktor, largest Jupiter Trojan, by August Kopff (1907)
11th New Moon
11th China’s spacecraft Tianwen-1 enters orbit around Mars
11th History: launch of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory from Cape Canaveral, Florida; the first mission in the space agency’s “Living with a Star” program; five-year mission to study the Sun's energy and its influence on space weather (2010)
11th History: launch of the space shuttle Discovery (STS-82), second Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission; shuttle tire on display at the Observatory is from this mission (1997)
11th History: launch of first Japanese satellite: Oshumi (1970)
12th History: landing of the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) – Shoemaker spacecraft on the asteroid Eros (2001)
12th History: Soviet spacecraft Mars 5 enters orbit around Mars, providing information on surface temperatures, CO₂ concentrations, and detecting a thin ozone layer and water vapor concentrations near the Tharsis region (1974)
Astronomical and Historical Events (continued)
12th History: Sikhote Alin meteorite fall in Russia, one of the largest modern falls at 28 tons (1947)
13th McCarthy Observatory– Virtual Second Saturday Stars
13th Binary Kuiper Belt Object 79360 Sila-Nunam at Opposition (42.448 AU)
14th Amor Asteroid 5879 Almeria closest approach to Earth (0.199 AU)
14th History: flyby of Comet Tempel 1 by the Stardust spacecraft (2011)
14th History: NEAR-Shoemaker enters orbit around Eros, one of the largest of the near-Earth asteroids (2000)
14th History: Voyager 1 points its camera back towards the Sun and takes a family portrait, capturing six planets (Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) from a distance of approximately 4 billion miles; Mercury was too close to the Sun to be seen and Mars was lost in the scattered sunlight (1990)
14th History: launch of the Solar Maximum Mission (1980) to study the Sun during the peak of the solar cycle; a malfunction less than a year later cut the mission short. However, the satellite was recovered and repaired by the Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1984; operated successfully until burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere in December 1989
14th History: launch of Luna 20, Soviet Moon sample return (1972)
14th History: launch of Syncom 1, the first geosynchronous satellite (1963)
15th United Arab Emirates spacecraft Hope (Al-Amal) enters orbit around Mars
15th Scheduled launch of a Russian cargo-carrying Progress spacecraft to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
15th Atira Asteroid 2019 LF6 closest approach to Earth (1.264 AU)
15th Amor Asteroid 5324 Lyapunov closest approach to Earth (3.754 AU)
15th History: meteor explodes over the Russian city of Chelybinsk causing hundreds of minor injuries (2013)
15th History: discovery of Centaur Object Chariklo by Jim Scotti (1997)
15th History: flyby of the Moon by the Hiten spacecraft; Earth orbiting satellite designed by the Japanese Space Agency to test technologies for lunar and planetary missions (1992)
15th History: Pioneer 10 becomes the first spacecraft to traverse the Main Asteroid Belt (1973)
15th History: Galileo Galilei born (1564)
16th Centaur Object 32532 Thereus at Opposition (11.283 AU)
16th Kuiper Belt Object 2014 AN55 at Opposition (44.740 AU)
16th History: Gerard Kuiper discovers Uranus’ moon Miranda (1948)
17th Apollo Asteroid 1864 Daedalus closest approach to Earth (1.502 AU)
17th History: discovery of the Plutino 90482 Orcus with its large moon, Vanth, by American astronomers Michael Brown of Caltech, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, and David Rabinowitz of Yale University (2004)
17th History: Ann Harch discovers Dactyl, the first natural satellite of an asteroid (Ida) discovered from Galileo Images (1994)
17th History: launch of Ranger 8; lunar impact mission (1965)
17th History: launch of NEAR spacecraft, asteroid orbiter/lander; first of NASA’s Discovery missions and the first mission to go into orbit around an asteroid (1996)
17th History: launch of Vanguard 2; designed to measure cloud-cover distribution over Earth (1959)
18th Moon at apogee (furthest distance from Earth)
Astronomical and Historical Events (continued)
18th Scheduled landing of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover in Jezero crater
18th Aten Asteroid 367943 *Duende* closest approach to Earth (1.046 AU)
18th History: Mike Brown and Jean-Luc Margot's discovery of *Romulus*, the larger of two moon that orbit Asteroid 87 *Sylvia* (2001)
18th History: American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto (1930)
19th First Quarter Moon
19th Apollo Asteroid 161989 *Cacus* closest approach to Earth (0.723 AU)
19th Amor Asteroid 3102 *Krok* closest approach to Earth (2.131 AU)
19th History: Nicolas Copernicus born (1473)
20th Scheduled launch of a Cygnus cargo freighter to the International Space Station from Wallops Island, Virginia, on a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket
20th Flyby of Venus (4th) by the Parker Solar Probe, sending the spacecraft closer to the Sun
20th History: Clementine spacecraft enters lunar orbit and starts photographic survey; joint project between the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and NASA, first of a new class of small spacecraft to enable long-duration, deep space missions at low cost using lightweight satellite technology (1994)
20th History: launch of the core module of the Soviet space station Mir (1986)
20th History: launch of Mercury-Atlas 6 and Friendship 7 with astronaut John Glenn; first American in orbit (1962)
21st History: launch of Israel’s SpaceIL, privately-funded, lunar lander aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
21st History: Soviet moon rocket (N-1) explodes during first test flight (1969)
22nd Atira Asteroid 418265 (2008 EA32) closest approach to Earth (0.925 AU)
22nd Apollo Asteroid 2102 *Tantalus* closest approach to Earth (1.872 AU)
22nd Kuiper Belt Object 55565 (2002 AW197) at Opposition (44.168 AU)
22nd History: launch of Viking, Sweden's first satellite (1986)
22nd History: launch of Soviet spacecraft Kosmos 110, with dogs Veterok and Ugolyok (1966)
22nd History: Max Wolf discovers asteroids 587 *Hypsipyle* and 588 *Achilles* – the first Trojan asteroid (1906)
23rd Aten Asteroid 2015 EQ near-Earth flyby (0.046 AU)
23rd Apollo Asteroid 2009 BD closest approach to Earth (0.923 AU)
23rd Kuiper Belt Object 308193 (2005 CB79) at Opposition (37.748 AU)
23rd Kuiper Belt Object 148209 (2000 CR105) at Opposition (62.173 AU)
23rd History: Supernova 1987A detected in the Large Magellanic Cloud (1987)
24th History: launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-133) on its final mission. The shuttle delivered space parts and critical components to the ISS (2011)
24th History: launch of Mariner 6; Mars flyby mission returned images showing the south polar cap as being composed predominantly of carbon dioxide; refined estimates of the mass, radius and shape of Mars (1969)
24th History: Jocelyn Bell announces discovery of rapidly rotating radio sources, later determined to emanate from neutron stars or pulsars (1968)
24th History: launch of Bumper WAC, first two-stage liquid-propellant rocket and the first human-made object to achieve hypersonic speeds (1949)
25th History: flyby of Mars by the Rosetta spacecraft (2007)
25th History: Soviet spacecraft Luna 20 returns lunar soil sample (30 grams) to Earth (1972)
26th History: launch of the first Saturn 1B rocket booster (1966)
Astronomical and Historical Events (continued)
27th Full Moon
27th Centaur Object 121725 Aphidas at Opposition (24.073 AU)
27th History: discovery of Jupiter’s moon Herse was by Brett J. Gladman, John J. Kavelaars, Jean-Marc Petit, and Lynne Allen (2003)
28th History: original crew of Gemini 9, Elliot See and Charles Bassett killed in plane crash at the McDonnell Aircraft building in St. Louis (1966)
28th History: flyby of Jupiter by the New Horizons spacecraft bound for Pluto (2007)
28th History: launch of Discoverer 1; first of a series of satellites which were part of the Corona reconnaissance satellite program and first satellite launched into polar orbit (1959)
Commonly Used Terms
- **Apollo:** a group of near-Earth asteroids whose orbits also cross Earth's orbit; Apollo asteroids spend most of their time outside Earth orbit.
- **Aten:** a group of near-Earth asteroids whose orbits also cross Earth's orbit, but unlike Apollos, Atens spend most of their time inside Earth orbit.
- **Atira:** a group of near-Earth asteroids whose orbits are entirely within Earth’s orbit
- **Centaur:** icy planetesimals with characteristics of both asteroids and comets
- **Kuiper Belt:** region of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune (30 AUs to 50 AUs) with a vast population of small bodies orbiting the Sun
- **Opposition:** celestial bodies on opposite sides of the sky, typically as viewed from Earth
- **Plutino:** an asteroid-sized body that orbits the Sun in a 2:3 resonance with Neptune
- **Trojan:** asteroids orbiting in the 4th and 5th Lagrange points (leading and trailing) of major planets in the Solar System
References on Distances
- the apparent width of the Moon (and Sun) is approximately one-half a degree ($\frac{1}{2}^\circ$), less than the width of your little finger at arm’s length which covers approximately one degree (1°); three fingers span approximately five degrees (5°)
- 1 astronomical unit (AU) is the distance from the Sun to the Earth or approximately 93 million miles
Lagrange Points
Five locations discovered by mathematician Joseph Lagrange where the gravitational forces of the Sun and Earth (or other large body) and the orbital motion of the spacecraft are balanced, allowing the spacecraft to hover or orbit around the point with minimal expenditure of energy.
The L2 point (and future location of the James Webb telescope) is located 1.5 million kilometers beyond the Earth (as viewed from the Sun).
International Space Station and Starlink Satellites
Visit www.heavens-above.com for the times of visibility and detailed star charts for viewing the International Space Station and the bright flares from Iridium satellites.
Solar Activity
For the latest on what’s happening on the Sun and the current forecast for flares and aurora, check out www.spaceweather.com
NASA’s Global Climate Change Resource
Vital Signs of the Planet: https://climate.nasa.gov/
Countdown to Mars (and landing on February 18, 2021)
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Contact Information
The John J. McCarthy Observatory
P.O. Box 1144
New Milford, CT 06776
New Milford High School
388 Danbury Road
New Milford, CT 06776
Phone/Message: (860) 946-0312
www.mccarthyobservatory.org
| | |
|---|---|
|  | www.mccarthyobservatory.org |
|  | @McCarthy Observatory |
|  | @McCarthy Observatory |
|  | firstname.lastname@example.org |
|  | @JJMObservatory |
|  | @mccarthy.observatory | | c557be7b-8508-443b-9d13-4e620843bb38 | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | http://www.mccarthyobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/jjmo-news-02-21.pdf | 2021-02-26T10:40:02+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178356456.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20210226085543-20210226115543-00202.warc.gz | 146,218,333 | 9,901 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.907925 | eng_Latn | 0.993917 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
78,
413,
1772,
3785,
3906,
4381,
7300,
7423,
10569,
11704,
12363,
14296,
16409,
16986,
18506,
19162,
20308,
21306,
24039,
24537,
25421,
26948,
29777,
32788,
35991,
39296,
41619,
42308,
42859
] | [
2.625,
3
] | 2 | 0 |
See what some of the little ones have to say in JUNIOR CORNER
Chennai Model United Nations @ AISC!
An interview with youtuber and our very own APL student AKASH SABHARWAL
WINDOW
Get to know the Founder and Managing Trustee of the Aseema Trust, V R Devika
| Page | Section |
|------|--------------------------|
| 2 | EDITORIAL |
| 3 | READERS’ RESPONSE |
| 4 | HOT NEWS |
| 7 | Voice |
| 8 | WINDOW |
| 10 | DAZZLING SCIENCE |
| 11 | OPEN BOAT |
| 13 | JUNIOR CORNER |
| 16 | POTPOURRI |
| 17 | TEACHERSPEAK |
| 19 | PARENTSPEAK |
Since the last edition of SnapShot, things have calmed down quite a bit. With Synergy over at last, we’ve been able to take a step back and get in gear academically. Yet even with CIEs and semesters fast approaching, none of us could wait to deliver to you this edition of SnapShot.
This edition of SnapShot will showcase some innovative ideas, alongside several tales of exciting experiences. We’ve done our best to ensure that the diversity and individuality of our school is well represented in our online magazine.
This time around, you’ll get to see another side of some of our students, parents and teachers. Regardless of how it’s conveyed, through our poetry, artwork and interviews, SnapShot will be sure to open your mind to new perspectives.
Whether it’s about food, social activists or science, as with every previous edition of Snapshot, this magazine will have something to interest everyone.
So sit back, grab a mug of something warm (for this surprisingly chilly weather), and read on!
Mathura Samaram, Grade 11
Editorial team -
Content: Kavya Sridharan, Mathura Samaram
Layout and Design: Sasha Ahuja, Kavya Sridharan
Disclaimer:
We acknowledge that some of the images used are from the internet, modified to suit our school magazine, not intended for commercial purposes.
I heartily congratulate the editorial team of the student magazine, SnapShot, on the quality of the magazine. The content is fresh and layout imaginative. The articles and opinion pieces vividly portray the everyday life of students at the school.
May I also put forth some suggestions here, mainly based on my experiences as a journalist? The potential of the magazine is huge and some exposure to magazine and newspaper writing, and design can make this a publication of excellence. It would also introduce to your students the art of proof reading. I would be very happy to share resources available to me such as style books.
I am looking forward to your future editions.
Regards
R. Krithika,
Mother of Kiran, Grade 1
First hand experiences - is a good forum to expose 90+% of APL-ites to "how cool" an inter-school competition can be. Please continue to share about all such events. This will help the entire APL parent community be informed about outside events where APL is a participant.
"The egg in the bottle trick" is an interesting trick to share. It may become even more interesting if a fixed time - may be one assembly period a month or some other appropriate time - a student from the science club / SnapShot team can have a "fun corner" where such tricks are performed and followed by e-sharing in the magazine.
Roopa Narayan
Faculty, Maths
READERS’ RESPONSE
This issue started well, with a well-rounded Editorial, which reflected the issue as a whole. A majority of the articles were quite sound, giving plenty of information - like in First Hand Experiences. I did miss school badly, when I saw the Synergy section - a lot of exciting stuff does appear to be going on! (I also hope that the Business club keeps people well fed and hearty - and that the counsellor re-lays the foundry road sometime soon!)
I was quite impressed with the poem - An Angel’s Wish; the poetry here is of a very high standard. The Amazing Experience, an article by Charan, in the Junior Corner, struck me as very funny - it was complete, but for one small detail, that is - the name of the place they all went to.
The science section was a bit disappointing, though. A trick?? - at the least, there should have been a whole section of magical tricks, where science comes into play. There also could have been more info on the Higgs; it was heavily covered in the press recently. By info, I don’t mean its energies and stuff - but about how its discovery could help mankind, the particles beyond Higgs and other things people don’t already know.
No need to hurry along the next issue; just work along at the pace that is possible. We readers are patient enough to wait. :)
Harsha
APL Alumnus
Cambridge Outstanding Learner Award
Two of our students received the ‘Cambridge Outstanding Learner Award, India’ certificates for being India topper in the Oct-November 2011 examination session.
Sanjana Chandrasekhar achieved this distinction by gaining the highest marks in AS level Art and Design and Sidharth K., by gaining highest marks in A level Business Studies.
Congratulations!! You have done APL proud!
Eight of our students were selected for Stage 2 (District Level) Science Quiz 2012 – conducted by FIITJE. Congratulations to all!!
Grade 8 Ananya Iyer
Grade 8 Varshini
Grade 8 P.G. Rahul
Grade 8 Anirud R.
Grade 10A Nivasini
Grade 11 Shriniketh Bharadwaj
Grade 11 Adithya Sahasranamam
Also a comprehensive analysis of Stage 1 result is available in the quiz website www.thesciencequiz.com
Mohammed Malik of Grade 5, and Sneha Sriram Kannan of Grade 7 are selected for Level-II Examination of 12th SOF National Cyber Olympiad. Keep it going!
CHEMUN 2012 was not only one of the most beneficial and enjoyable experiences of my high school years, but it also became an effective platform for students of various cultures and nationalities to share their ideas and thoughts on various issues and events of today’s world. About 11 delegates represented our school in the committees and everyone had undoubtedly had a blast in all three days of sessions. Although I must say that one of the main highlights was “the social night” event that was held at the Asiana Hotel, as it was not only an occasion to have fun and dance our limbs off (which I did) but it also became the juncture where all barriers broke down between delegates and all got to know one another a lot better. A highly anticipated “Emergency Situation” took place on the last day and Chennai Model United Nations ended off with everyone going back to their realities of school life, but however, accompanied by several unforgettable memories and the joy of having made great new friends.
Sakshi Krish
On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanthi, Dr. V. R. Devika, the founder of Aseema Trust, was invited to our school to give a lecture on Gandhi’s life. She kept us all alert and craving for more through her lecture which included lots of images and video clippings on Gandhi. She explained how the Mahatma was greatly favoured even by the English when he went travelling to London and Manchester. Gandhiji gave up dressing formally, way back in the 1920s, when he saw his fellow Indians deprived of even basic clothing. When Gopal Krishna Gokhale, his teacher, expired, Gandhiji gave up wearing footwear for a year as a symbol of mourning.
Gandhiji inspired not just Indians but the entire world. There were many famous people around the world who were greatly inspired by his philosophy of Truth and Non-violence. Some among them were Martin Luther King and Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin was very keen on meeting Gandhiji. When he visited London and attended the meeting, he noted down all that was told by Gandhi. He later made a film named “The Great Dictator” ridiculing Hitler and his ideas. In this movie Chaplin brought in the words spoken by Gandhi during his meeting.
Gandhiji was known for his practice of vow of silence. He would still carry out all his activities through writings on the days of this vow. Devika Ma’am also showed us a Charkha and she actually spun thread on it. She has promised to teach us spinning on a Charkha!
We also saw a video on the Salt Satyagraha undertaken by Gandhiji as a protest against the tax imposed by the British. Finally, we were all moved to tears when we watched the assassination of this great Mahatma by a misguided person named Nathu Ram Godhse. Gandhiji’s teachings will ever remain a source of inspiration for all the youngsters in these times of turmoil and violence.
P.G. Rahul, Grade 8B
Everyone has their favorite hobbies or extracurricular activities they like to do, such as sports, music, etc. But Akash Sabharwal, of grade 11, has gone the extra mile. He has an interest in visual effects and motion graphics, and so he decided to pursue his passion on a website known to all, YouTube. Two of his other friends, Rahul and Sagar, and he, had started their own channel two years ago. I sat down with Akash to find out a little bit about his experiences and how he got to doing what he loves.
**How did you and your friends come up with the idea of making your own Youtube channel?**
It was a crazy and fun idea we just came up with at that moment, but we were definitely inspired by other channels we’ve watched.
**Who are some of those inspirations?**
Smpfilms, Niggahigga, Smosh, and Computernerd01 are just a few of our inspirations.
**What do you contribute to the channel, what role do you play?**
In most videos I’m the main actor. I also edit all the videos and direct them.
**What are some of your favourite videos and why?**
A: My favourites are Bamboozled, Aerated drinks, CSI: Parody, and Chick Flick Deo (Featuring our very own Varun Vinod and Jitthen Kumar. :) I’ve had the most fun on these videos, there was never a dull moment while shooting!
**How do you go about shooting? Describe a typical day of shooting.**
We usually plan the video we’re going to do a week before, to get the scripts and props ready. On the day of shooting we go by the script, maybe add whatever we think would be good, and we just have fun. There’s never a serious day of shooting, we have tons of bloopers because we mostly just have fun with what we’re doing. Shooting takes at least 1-2 days and editing all the footage takes another 1-2 days.
**Since you and your friends are in different cities, how do you manage to keep the channel going?**
It’s not like communication’s a problem; we stay in touch through the internet and phone, and discuss our ideas a lot. Since there’s three of us, we all come up with some pretty crazy and funny ideas.
**Where do you see your channel in the next year or so?**
I would love to be a partner, which basically means we would get a profit from YouTube whenever someone watches our videos.
**Does being part of this channel get in the way of your schoolwork?**
At times, when I have to desperately put a video up because of the big gap between the previous video and the current one I am editing, it tends to come in the way, but otherwise no, I find a good balance between the two.
Technology nowadays gives a variety to kids in this generation to display their talents and in a way allows them to practice what they love, opening up many opportunities so they can reach their goals. Akash has taken full advantage of this fact and continues to work hard towards his goal, but he never forgets the most important thing—to always have fun in whatever you do.
Recently I visited Kuveshi, which is in Karnataka. It is an evergreen forest which is rich in wildlife. This trip was organized by the Madras Crocodile Bank. Only 500 people from around the world were invited, and among the 500, only 12 of us were selected for the trip. Time just flew when I was there, and those four days are unforgettable!
On the first day we were supposed to cross an old riverbed but unfortunately, we couldn’t because it was flooded. Instead we crossed a shaky, old wooden bridge, and when I looked down, it seemed like a big fall and suddenly, somebody screamed “DON’T LOOK DOWN.” It was a long trek through rain and mud but we finally reached HRS (Hypnale Research Station). HRS is named after the snake Hump Nosed Pit Viper, because the reptile was first discovered there.
After we reached the HRS, we got ready for the first trek. We did not see many reptiles but we did see a baby forest lizard and a few cool insects. We came back to HRS hoping that we might see some more animals in the night trek. We started our night trek and saw, a common vine snake, a Malabar Pit Viper, a short nosed vine snake and a swamp eel. We went back to HRS and had a good night’s sleep.
The next morning, we woke up at around 7.00 am and got ready for the morning trek. During the trek, we saw another Humpnosed pit viper, a common Red tailed skink, a baby cobra and a scorpion. Sadly, in the dusk and night treks, we hardly saw any animals. The next day, we visited a resort called Canopy. There we saw yet another Hump nosed pit viper, a Striped keel back, and a Travancore Wolf snake. Soon after, we saw a documentary called “One Million Snake Bites” by Romulus Whitaker.
On the last day of the trip, we made our way to a site called Plateau. There was a wealth of animals there. We saw an Indian bull frog, two saw scale vipers, and the greatest thing that I have ever seen – it was a Zebra! At the end of the trip, we went to a wildlife sanctuary and we saw a tarantula, a Travancore wolf snake and a bio-luminous fungus.
Aadhithyan G, Grade 8
We had the privilege of having V R Devika, Founder and Managing Trustee of the ‘ASEEMA’ (Without Boundaries) Trust for linking traditional performing arts, education and Mahatma Gandhi, as one of our Chief Guests for our interschool cultural fest Synergy 2012. We caught up with her for an interview, which was quite an eye opener.
Some excerpts:
**You started the Aseema Trust. How do you link the performing arts and education with Mahatma Gandhi?**
Mahatma Gandhi often said that basic education begins in villages. It is a unit of development, leaving cities affected when people leave from villages to the big cities. So villages must be understood. At the Aseema Trust, we open a window to the villages through education and traditional arts.
**In your lifetime, you’ve been to many different countries. Which one is your favourite and why?**
India is my favourite. I’m comfortable here. I know I’m Indian. India’s resilience and its colours are my favourite aspects. Admittedly, there is no civic sense (which I find to be very annoying). However, I do still love every country I’ve been to. The clean streets of Sweden, the vast space in America… these are all things I’ve loved. Still, India is my home and my favourite place to be.
**What contributions have you made in the field of the arts?**
I started off as a young school teacher. I saw a lack of opportunity for rural arts. I ended up working with 300-400 schools to try to impress this upon them. This created a ripple effect. At this stage, I have helped 40,000 plus children in rural areas to spread their craft. I’ve done this through storytelling, power points and other forms of communication.
**Why do you think cultural events are important?**
Art is a manifestation of culture. All places of worship have art. They are places of congregation. Even the Ajantha caves, which were just meant for the monks to meditate, were filled with art. It’s life’s breath, for in the instance you create something, you become God for that moment. Our way of dress is different from person to person – it’s a part of who we are. Cultural events are important, to showcase an aspect of our identity.
**What are your thoughts on Synergy?**
I love the interaction, the different kinds of people coming together. It’s a window between the various schools and ways of education. It teaches responsibility and event management, which is really important at this age.
*Mathura Samaram, Grade 11 & Vishveshwaran V. Grade 12*
*Photo credits: Sasha Ahuja, Grade 12*
Do you know?
1. Our Prime Minister said India will send a mission to “Mars” to collect scientific information. What is the name of this mission?
2. Which Indian institute developed a web-based system for advising farmers the right quantity of fertilizers that they should use in their soils for a particular type of crop?
3. On which date in August 2012, did the Ring-planet Saturn and Red planet Mars come together in Western Sky after sunset?
4. Scientists in the second week of August 2012 found a stem cell therapy to prevent which disease?
Charan Krishna Jaikumar, Grade 7 A
Answers: 1. Mars Orbiter Mission 2. Indian Institute of Soil Sciences 3. August 15 4. Osteoarthritis
Use Fruit to Generate Electricity for a Light Bulb!
Fruit Battery:
With a juicy fruit, a couple of zinc and copper nails, and wire, you can generate electricity to turn on a light bulb. Learn how to make a fruit battery. It’s fun, safe, and easy.
Make a Fruit Battery:
• Set the fruit on a table and gently roll it around to soften it up. You want the juice to be flowing inside the fruit without breaking its skin. Alternatively, you can squeeze the fruit with your hands.
• Insert the zinc and copper nails into the fruit such that they are about 2” or 5 cm apart. You don’t want them to be touching each other. Avoid puncturing through the end of the fruit.
• Remove enough insulation from the leads of the light (about 1”) so that you can wrap one lead around the zinc nail and one lead around the copper nail. If you like, you can use electrical tape or alligator clips to keep the wire from falling off the nails.
• When you connect the second nail, the light will turn on!
COLOURS AND SEASONS
You painted my world black,
Without leaving any white blanks,
And now I can't stop bleeding red,
But I still wanna say thanks.
You had given me a pretty pink rose,
'Cause I cheered you up when you felt yellow,
And I still wanna say thanks, because,
Now I can see all the colours show.
And this vision is beautiful, really.
I know I'm feeling better now, clearly,
I wouldn't have it any other way,
'Cause this is the most positive I can be.
I'm hurt, but you must've had a reason
It was expected; it's the heartbreak season,
I'll just play some John Mayer, singing the blues,
And just sit back, head held high, and listen.
So if there was one last thing I could ask you,
It would be your feelings, if you were in my shoes,
But still, I'd rather not have it any other way,
With all these pretty colours running loose.
Ayesha Mitra, Grade 11
La semaine
Lundi, je vais à l’école.
Mardi, je vais au cirque.
Mercredi, j’ai surfer sur l’internet.
Jeudi, je joue au football.
Vendredi, je baigne mon chien
Samedi, je vais à mon lit et je rêve
Dimanche, je me couche
et c’est à la fin de la semaine.
S. Girish, Grade 7 B
A Day I Felt Happy
I felt happy when I got an award for my thinking skills. When I was in sixth grade, I was studying in an IB (International Baccalaureate) school. They follow 10 learner profile traits. They are: Caring, Reflective, Risk-Taker, Balanced, Knowledgeable, Thinker, Inquirer, Communicator, Principled and Open-Minded. All the sixth grade teachers thoughtfully vote on the students and those students are recognized on Awards Day. Each student is carefully watched and judged during the entire school year. Out of 200 students, two are picked for each trait and are presented with awards. I was chosen for the “Thinker” trait. A Thinker is someone who applies thinking skills critically and creatively to solve complex problems. Every child would have the aim to get this award but it comes along only with hard work and confidence. It was my first year in the school and I felt happy that I was recognized before leaving the school!
Sneha Kannan, Grade 7A
How I made an owl
1. I used two coconuts, bottle caps, and scissors.
2. I stuck the bottle cap on the top of the coconut.
3. I cut out the eyes, nose, mouth, and I stuck it on the shell.
It looked nice and beautiful. Ma’am taught me to do this. I was very happy, and it was great fun.
Song, Grade 2
How to make a duck
Materials:
1. Paint
2. Paper plate
3. Paper
Steps:
1. Take a paper plate.
2. Paint it yellow.
3. Fold it, and cut it.
4. Cut the paper in the shape of feet.
5. Stick it to the plate.
6. Cut the paper again in the shape of a head.
7. Stick that to the plate.
8. The duck is ready!
Akhil W, Grade 2
Recently there have been heavy rains in the APL primary campus! It is affecting our school in quite some ways. When we are having our lessons the rain comes crashing down on our roof, and we can barely hear our teachers speak! It is also making the campus muddy and is forming huge puddles. All the mud and dirty water, makes my shoes very dirty! It is also affecting the preparations for Grandparents’ Day. The stage is really wet, so now we don’t know where we’re going to have the show, but we’re going to have the show anyway. You know what they say, “The show must go on.”
-Aishwarya Alla, Grade 5A
On Thursday there was a lot of heavy rain, this distracted most of the APL students. This didn’t allow them to write their science exam very well! Some students even lost their stationery because of the rain. The heavy rain has made APL primary school a lake.
-Sahna Kurra, Grade 5
APL primary campus has been flooded since the monsoon season has started! Monsoon season has been tough for all the children in APL. One student said, “I like the rain, but my shoes get wet and cold.” While another student agreed, “I don’t like it, because I am not able to write my exams properly, when the thunder hits it disturbs me.” The rain is bad at this time, because it is almost Grandparents’ Day, and we are all worried because we all prepared very hard for that day.
-Simran Sabharwal, Grade 5A
Heavy rain lashes down in the APL primary campus. The field is full to the brim with water; the whole place is like a giant swimming pool! The rain kept pouring, while the students were having the time of their lives! All most of the students could think about was Grandparents’ Day! We all hoped the rain in Chennai would stop by then.
-Tharun, Grade 5A
Moving to the New Block
Moving to the main block sounds happy because we get together with other grades! The classrooms will be bigger and there’ll be 3 floors, and the road will be good. The great part is, we will have a smart board, 2 ACs, and the cafeteria is on the second floor! There will also be a big library! We will also have a computer! The best part is, we all get to make many new friends!
Pranav P., Grade 4B
I feel happy because the building is big and new. I want the new building to have big rooms and a really big playground like the one we have in our primary school. I also want there to be more lights. I want everything that was in the primary campus to be in the new school.
Darshini, Grade 4A
The one thing I am happy about in the new building is the auditorium. We will have our very own auditorium, especially for annual day! I am also very happy that there is a big playground!
Sairam, Grade 4B
Moving to the new school is exciting for me. We are all eager to know how it will look like. Our class is very boring without any chart paper on the walls, but the new class will be full of colour with our new charts. I hope our class won’t have chalkboards though. I also hope we have science, math, and all other types of labs!
Varsha, Grade 4
A basic risotto recipe
Ingredients
- approx 1.1 litres stock (chicken, fish or vegetable as appropriate)
- 1 knob of butter
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- ½ a head of celery, finely chopped
- 400g risotto rice
- 2 wine glasses of dry white vermouth (dry Martini or Noilly Prat) or dry white wine
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 70g butter
- 115g freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Method
This is a great recipe for making risotto. You want it to be smooth, creamy and oozy, not thick and stodgy.
Stage 1
Heat the stock. In a separate pan, heat the olive oil and butter, add the onions, garlic and celery, and fry very slowly for about 15 minutes without colouring. When the vegetables have softened, add the rice and turn up the heat.
Stage 2
The rice will now begin to lightly fry, so keep stirring it. After a minute it will look slightly translucent. Add the vermouth or wine and keep stirring — it will smell fantastic. Any harsh alcohol flavours will evaporate and leave the rice with a tasty essence.
Stage 3
Remove from the heat and add the butter and Parmesan. Stir well. Place a lid on the pan and allow to sit for 2 minutes. This is the most important part of making the perfect risotto, as this is when it becomes outrageously creamy and oozy like it should be. Eat it as soon as possible, while the risotto retains its beautiful texture.
Stage 4
Once the vermouth or wine has cooked into the rice, add your first ladle of hot stock and a good pinch of salt. Turn down the heat to a simmer so the rice doesn’t cook too quickly on the outside. Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and almost massaging the creamy starch out of the rice, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will take around 15 minutes. Taste the rice — is it cooked? Carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. Don’t forget to check the seasoning carefully. If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, add some boiling water. If you take care of all this, your risotto will be yummy!
Janavi Ahuja, Grade 11
Daughter Woman
You brought the world alive to me
with your new born limbs and blink-staring eyes
My body changed shape, contours felt soft and swollen
as you grew from me
Your baby flesh, soft clinging arms all moulded,
flowing in and out of me
The cord stretched and loosened,
sometimes felt like a snap
I received with a pang
Years fluttered by
like a swift bird in the sky
You baby-girl, now young woman stand
Stepping out on the threshold
leaving your caresses in gray
strands adorning my thinning hair
My world, your world, where end, where begin
Deep in the comfort of my home
I traverse vast spaces
through your youth adventure steps
Distances dissolve
I am renewed
Abundance rushes in, I
Snap open, vulnerable.
Usha K R, Faculty- English Language & Literature
APL was represented at TEDxChennai by 12 students shining like knights in their uniforms. It was a pleasure to be present in the conference not just for the intellectual shower but to watch the efficiency of volunteers in organizing the event. Over 1000 people, food, seating, registration, time management - all very effectively done. The event began bang on time explaining TED as a non-profit venture run by an ex-Wall Street entrepreneur Chris Anderson. It was an interesting reflection by the Indian ambassador for TEDx that TED gained its popularity in the last 5 years after it was declared a non-profit venture. For youngsters it is an important learning to recognize that money follows good intentions and not the other way round.
There were over 15 speakers from several countries and my favourite was Sergio Sedas Gersay – Robotics Expert and Motivational Speaker (Mexico), holding a Ph.D from Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked on developing Dante, the first robot in history to enter an active volcano in Antarctica. He focused on motivating and inspiring youth to learn. It felt like I was back at APL where we adopt methods to motivate our young learning community. He gave amazing examples of how youngsters built robots by experimenting with real stuff and were in a position to help much younger kids do the same. So dear all, when your teachers ask you to do a scientific enquiry or a project based learning, remember you are the biggest gainer.
Roopa Narayan, Faculty, Maths
Three women stood side by side,
with feelings that had no place to hide.
Looking lost and in despair,
at the sky in the cool night air.
"Why?" cried the mother, "Why me and for what reason?"
She grieved.
The others stood like rock,
still reeling from the shock.
They gazed at the moon,
so quiet and cool.
Impassive and distant,
it seemed like the only constant.
Day after day,
Night after night.
They had waited for their little angel.
She did appear, like an answer
to a fervent prayer.
A delicate beauty,
who left soon,
despite the mother's entreaty.
The middle sister, strong and patient
gazed at the moon
with dewdrops in her lovely eyes,
a silent question and sadness.
For it was she who held dreams in her eyes
for the youngest sister who she loved with great tenderness.
The eldest of them,
no stranger to loss of some measure,
said to them with love and learned composure,
"She will come, my dears.
She will come to you.
In the right season,
like a little homing pigeon.
"This is life sometimes,
a disjointed puzzle at times."
"After we put all the pieces together,
we will see the big picture."
"Do not fret,
hope yet.
For the law of Nature says
that when one door closes,
another will open.
Till that day, we will wait."
As the sisters,
bonded heart and soul,
gazed at the night sky,
a twinkling little star came upon them
and startled them like a sudden little cry.
"Oh mothers", said a dulcet little voice,
heard by them over the city's noise.
"I am here always,
and you will see me in time.
"I will come to you,
now it is not yet time,"
the little voice promised.
"Like day follows night, Mother,
I will follow your path."
I will make my presence in your heart."
'Be happy, be patient,
Be a constant for the one by your side,
for he looks at you with his heart in his eyes.
I look at him and you, and know that love is Omniscient."
The lovely little star shone her Divine light,
and the mothers looked on in delight.
For now they understood,
what is an age old truth,
that where there is Love,
there is always Hope.
Padmini Vijayan
Mother of Rahul, Grade 7 & Arjun Rambhatla, Grade 1
Students, Teachers, Parents,
Want to share your thoughts and ideas?
Send us your articles, stories, poems, jokes, artwork, photographs or whatever you feel is interesting. (150-300 words)
We would love to have your feedback too!
Write to us at firstname.lastname@example.org or Click on the link below and leave your comments:
“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/embeddedform?formkey=dGx3aVAOcnFsbHloNnhOcnFPbEd1b2c6MQ” | 1af40a8b-bc13-4638-91fc-b6e2ad1c6684 | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | http://aplglobalschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Issue-No4-SnapShot-Nov12.pdf | 2021-06-25T13:35:32+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623487630175.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20210625115905-20210625145905-00557.warc.gz | 3,846,986 | 7,143 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.990978 | eng_Latn | 0.99891 | [
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
258,
726,
2024,
4725,
5687,
6711,
8559,
11485,
13551,
16080,
17755,
18621,
19870,
20495,
22251,
23528,
25661,
26432,
27939,
30040,
30456
] | [
1.6640625,
3
] | 1 | 0 |
Trees and bushes, home sweet home for warblers
Featured scientists: Hankyu Kim, Matt Betts, and Sarah Frey from Oregon State University. Written with Eric Beck from Realms Middle School and Kari O’Connell from Oregon State University.
Research Background:
The birds at a beach are very different from those in the forest. This is because each bird species has their own set of needs that allows them to thrive where they live. Habitats must have the right collection of food to eat, places to shelter and raise young, safety from predators, and the right environmental conditions like temperature and moisture.
The vast coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest provide rich and diverse habitat types for birds. These forests are also a large source of timber, meaning they are economically valuable for people. Disturbances from logging and natural events result in a forest that has many different habitat types for birds to choose from. In general, areas of forest that have been harvested more recently will have more understory, such as shrubs and short trees. Old-growth forests usually have higher plant diversity and larger trees. They are also more likely to have downed trees or standing dead trees, which are important for some bird species. Other disturbances like wildfire, wind, large snow events, and forest disease also have large impacts on bird habitat.
At the Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research site in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, scientists have spent decades studying how the plants, animals, land use, and climate are all connected. In the past, Andrews Forest had experiments manipulating timber harvesting and forest re-growth. This land use history has large impacts on the habitats found in an area. Many teams of scientists work in this forest, each with their own area of research. Piece by piece, like assembling a puzzle, they combine their data to try to understand the whole ecosystem.
Matt, Sarah, and Hankyu have been collecting long-term data on the number, type, and location of birds in Andrews Forest since 2009. Early each morning, starting in May and continuing until late June, teams of trained scientists hike along transects that go through different forest types. **Transects** are parallel lines along which data are collected. At specific points along the transect, the team would stop and listen for bird songs and calls for 10 minutes. There are 184 survey locations, and they are visited multiple times each year.
At each sampling point, Matt, Sarah, and Hankyu carefully recorded a count for each bird species that they hear within 100 meters. They then averaged these data for each location along the transect to get an average number for the year. The scientists were also interested in the habitats along the transect, which includes the amount of understory plants and tall trees, two forest characteristics that are very important to birds. They measured the percent cover of understory vegetation, which shows how many bushes and small plants were around. They also measured the size of trees in the area, called basal area.
Using these data, the research team is looking for patterns that will help them identify which habitat conditions are best for different bird species. With a better understanding of where bird species are successful, they can predict how changes in the forest could affect the number and types of birds living in Andrews Forest and nearby.
Wilson’s Warblers and Hermit Warblers are two of the many songbirds that these scientists have recorded at Andrews Forests. Wilson’s Warblers are small songbirds that make their nests in the understory of the forests. Therefore, the team predicted that they would see more of Wilson’s Warblers in forest areas with more understory than in forest areas with less understory. Hermit Warblers, on the other hand, build nests in dense foliage of tall coniferous trees and search for spiders and insects in those coniferous trees. The team predicted that the Hermit Warblers would be observed more often in forest plots where there are larger trees.
**Scientific Question:** What are the habitat conditions where the most Wilson’s Warblers and Hermit Warblers are found?
Scientific Data: The tables below show the data from 20 study locations in Andrews Forest, averaged across 11 years of long-term data collection.
Use the data below to answer the scientific question:
| Location along transect | Number of Hermit Warblers detected (1-year average) | Understory Cover (%) | Coniferous tree basal area |
|-------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------|----------------------|----------------------------|
| PA329 | 10.0 | 36 | 4.4 |
| PA309 | 14.6 | 16 | 3.8 |
| PA322 | 11.8 | 25 | 4.0 |
| PA304 | 13.6 | 5 | 5.8 |
| PA246 | 10.0 | 16 | 2.8 |
| PC017 | 20.0 | 0 | 4.2 |
| PB225 | 24.6 | 34 | 4.8 |
| PA018 | 8.2 | 26 | 3.8 |
| PB264 | 26.4 | 64 | 2.4 |
| PA256 | 1.8 | 27 | 2.4 |
| PA207 | 4.6 | 30 | 3.0 |
| PC007 | 19.1 | 4 | 6.4 |
| PA009 | 9.1 | 11 | 6.0 |
| PB201 | 11.8 | 6 | 3.8 |
| PB244 | 10.9 | 17 | 3.8 |
| PB335 | 13.6 | 44 | 0.4 |
| PB014 | 11.8 | 70 | 4.4 |
| PA249 | 17.3 | 16 | 4.0 |
| PA210 | 5.5 | 25 | 4.0 |
| PA341 | 7.3 | 17 | 3.8 |
| PA080 | 10.0 | 5 | 4.2 |
| PA064 | 17.3 | 41 | 3.8 |
| PB337 | 11.8 | 20 | 2.0 |
| PA044 | 7.3 | 6 | 4.6 |
| PA340 | 8.2 | 23 | 1.2 |
| PA032 | 18.2 | 10 | 6.0 |
| PB316 | 34.6 | 22 | 3.6 |
| PA328 | 20.9 | 2 | 5.8 |
| PB278 | 26.4 | 3 | 6.0 |
| PA265 | 24.6 | 20 | 2.2 |
| Location along transect | Number of Wilson’s Warblers detected (1-year average) | Understory Cover (%) | Coniferous tree basal area |
|-------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------|----------------------|----------------------------|
| PB052 | 11.8 | 88 | 2.6 |
| PB264 | 1.8 | 64 | 2.4 |
| PA241 | 0.9 | 86 | 2.4 |
| PB269 | 0.9 | 60 | 2.4 |
| PA062 | 3.6 | 51 | 1.6 |
| PA317 | 0.0 | 54 | 2.2 |
| PA041 | 10.9 | 100 | 0.0 |
| PA076 | 1.8 | 91 | 3.0 |
| PB022 | 2.7 | 58 | 4.0 |
| PB268 | 2.7 | 54 | 2.6 |
| PA019 | 0.9 | 4 | 5.6 |
| PA328 | 0.0 | 2 | 5.8 |
| PA020 | 0.9 | 3 | 4.4 |
| PA204 | 0.0 | 1 | 2.6 |
| PB278 | 0.0 | 3 | 6.0 |
| PA259 | 1.8 | 6 | 1.6 |
| PB067 | 0.9 | 6 | 6.0 |
| PA032 | 7.3 | 10 | 6.0 |
| PA077 | 0.9 | 4 | 4.4 |
| PA304 | 0.0 | 5 | 5.8 |
| PA306 | 0.0 | 9 | 6.8 |
| PB302 | 0.0 | 13 | 4.2 |
| PA351 | 1.8 | 16 | 3.8 |
| PC017 | 2.7 | 0 | 4.2 |
| PA017 | 0.9 | 7 | 3.4 |
| PA334 | 0.0 | 9 | 2.8 |
| PA349 | 0.0 | 14 | 3.4 |
| PA258 | 2.7 | 20 | 2.6 |
| PA324 | 0.9 | 0 | 5.6 |
| PC018 | 1.8 | 23 | 4.0 |
* Understory cover (%) is a measure of the amount of area covered by understory deciduous shrubs. Coniferous tree basal area is a measure of the amount of coniferous trees and is strongly related to the size of the trees in a given area. The basal area is measured as square feet per acre, and expressed as 100 square feet per acre
Which data will you graph to answer the question?
Independent variable(s):
Dependent variable(s):
Draw your graphs below: Identify any changes, trends, or differences you see in your graphs. Draw arrows pointing out what you see and write one sentence describing what you see next to each arrow.
Interpret the data:
Make a claim that answers the scientific question: What are the habitat conditions where the most Wilson’s Warblers and Hermit Warblers are found?
What evidence was used to write your claim? Reference specific parts of the tables or graphs.
Explain your reasoning and why the evidence supports your claim. Connect the data back to what you learned about the two warbler species and their preferred habitats.
Your next steps as a scientist:
Science is an ongoing process. What new question do you think should be investigated?
What future data should be collected to answer your question?
Independent variable(s): ______________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
Dependent variable(s): _______________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
For each variable, explain why you included it and how it could be measured.
What hypothesis are you testing in your experiment? A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for an observation, which can then be tested with experimentation or other types of studies. | f229196e-75db-4886-84c0-df56066fd5a8 | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://datanuggets.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Homesweethome_studentC.pdf | 2021-10-22T16:49:37+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323585516.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20211022145907-20211022175907-00529.warc.gz | 299,722,212 | 2,536 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998111 | eng_Latn | 0.999319 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1939,
4213,
13491,
13690,
14122,
14849
] | [
4.03125
] | 3 | 0 |
Shek Wu Hui Public School
Shek Wu Collection
2021-2022
Fruit song
So Yui Lam, Gladys (1A)
Oh, what is it? Oh, what is it?
It is an apple. It is an apple.
What colour is it?
What colour is it?
It is red. It is red.
Yum!
A person in my family
Ng Tsz Ki, Solar (1A)
This is my sister.
Her name is Mika.
She is short.
She has long hair.
She has a small nose.
She has big eyes.
She has a small mouth.
Penguins
Chan Pui Man, Mika (1A)
They are penguins.
They are black and white.
They can swim.
They cannot climb.
They have short feet.
My things
Tang Sum Yi, Zoe (1B)
I have three erasers.
I have six pencils.
I have one pencil sharpener.
I have one pen.
Hayden has seven pencils.
He has one eraser.
He has one ruler.
He has one pencil case.
My monster
Hui Chun Ho, Hugo (1B)
It is fat.
It has no hair.
It has three big eyes.
It has no noses.
It has a big mouth.
It has no tails.
It has four long legs.
It is green.
A riddle
Ip Ning Ning, Lorraine (1B)
I can see something.
It is tall.
It is green and brown.
What is it?
Answers: a tree
My things
Wan Tsz Kin, Lucas (1C)
I have four pencils.
I have a school bag.
I have a book.
I have an eraser.
Kelvin has a pencil.
He has a ruler.
He has two erasers.
He has two pens.
A person in my family
Cheng Wan Lik, Nick (1C)
This is my brother.
His name is Kyle.
He is young and cute.
He has short hair.
He has a big mouth.
He has small eyes.
He has a small nose.
My paper doll’s outfit
Liu Ching Lam, Ava (1C)
Susan is wearing a pink T-shirt.
She is wearing a colourful skirt.
She is wearing a pair of purple shoes.
She is wearing a purple hat and a pair of purple earrings.
My friend
Li Yunfan, Kevin (1D)
This is Gardun.
He is my classmate.
He is seven years old.
He is in Class 1D.
He is friendly.
Things at home
Xu Chi Yan, Bella (1D)
The apple is on the desk.
The toy car is under the bed.
The ball is in the basket.
The bananas are next to the desk.
The teddy bear is on the bed.
The orange is under the chair.
The lamp is next to the basket.
Penguins
Li Kam Chau, Torry (1D)
They are penguins.
They are black and white.
They can swim.
They can waddle.
They cannot fly.
They have a fat body.
Myself
Chau Tsz Chun, Kelvin (2A)
My name is Kelvin. I am seven years old. I am a boy. I am fat. I have big eyes and a small mouth. I live in Yuen Long. I go to Shek Wu Hui Public School. I am in Class 2A. I go to school by minibus. My family has parents, uncles and me. Amy and Jack are my good friends. I like red, yellow and blue. I like strawberries, apples and cantaloupes. My pet is a little turtle.
A letter about my day
Lau Lok Fei, Edison (2A)
Dear Mary,
How are you?
Let me tell you about my daily activities.
I get up at six o’clock in the morning and leave home with my daddy. School begins at eight o’clock. I have lunch at one o’clock in my school. I have one more lesson after school. I leave school at around five o’clock.
I arrive home at five fifteen and do my homework for about an hour. I have my dinner at seven o’clock. After that, I watch TV. I usually go to bed at ten o’clock.
I enjoy my day. Please write soon.
Love,
Edison
My favourite season
Zheng Yu Sum, Madonna (2A)
My favourite season is summer. It is very hot and sunny. So I usually wear colourful T-shirts and shorts in summer.
In summer, I eat ice cream every day and it tastes yummy. I often go swimming with my mum at weekends. I sometimes go to the beach and build sandcastles with my brother. I also have a barbecue with my family. It is exciting.
I like summer because I can eat a lot of delicious food and there are many interesting activities in summer. I am busy in summer but I feel happy.
My dream school
Liu Sze Yu, Zoe (2B)
In my dream school, there are six floors. There are a pet room and a game room in my dream school. The pet room is on the fifth floor. The art room is on the sixth floor. I feed the pets in the pet room and I play card games in the game room.
I think my dream school is amazing and fantastic. I like my dream school. I want to play card games and feed the pets with my classmates there.
A birthday present
Luo Xiao Yang, Jack (2B)
Tom’s birthday is coming. I want to buy a birthday present for him. I want to buy a toy gun for him. It is black and white. It is twenty dollars. It is hard and long. I buy it for Tom because it is cool. I think he likes toy guns.
Lily’s birthday party
Chau Ka Lung, Evan (2B)
It is Lily’s birthday today. She has a birthday party at her home. It is a great party. There are potato chips. They are salty but yummy. Also, there are some sandwiches and pizza. They are indeed very delicious. However, there isn’t any water. Luckily, there is some milkshake and orange juice. They are tasty.
Lily and her friends feel happy, pleased and overjoyed. Finally, they play games and enjoy the party very much.
A birthday present
Fung Chung Ho, Bruce (2C)
Tom’s birthday is coming. I want to buy a yo-yo for him. I can buy it at the toy shop. The yo-yo is red and hard. It is fifty dollars. It is expensive. I only have thirty dollars so I buy a kite for Tom because it is cheap. I hope Tom will like it.
About me
Chan Tin Long, Kingsley (2C)
My name is Kingsley. I am seven years old. I am thin. I have big eyes. I have a small nose. I have short hair. I live in Shenzhen. I go to school by school bus. I go to Shek Wu Hui Public School. I am in Class 2C. I like to eat apples. I have some robots. I often play with them.
My favourite season
Tam Sin Chi, Sophie (2C)
My favourite season is spring. It is warm and wet in spring. I usually wear trousers and a raincoat. I go to flower shows and go on picnics in this season. I can plant trees too.
I like spring because I can see many beautiful flowers and green trees.
About me
Yeung Sum Ching, Olivia (2D)
My name is Yeung Sum Ching, Olivia. I live in the New Territories. I go to school by bicycle. My hair is short. I am short.
I am seven years old. I like dolls. I like long dresses and high heel shoes. My family has sister, mom and dad. My sister is tall. She is twelve years old. I like her very much.
A letter about my day
Chan Ka Ying, Kelly (2D)
Dear Mary,
How are you?
Let me tell you about my daily activities.
I get up at seven o’clock in the morning. I go to school at seven fifty in the morning. I have lunch at one o’clock in the afternoon. I do my homework at two o’clock in the afternoon. I watch TV at seven o’clock in the evening. I have dinner at eight o’clock in the evening. I go to bed at ten o’clock at night. I enjoy my day!
Love,
Kelly
My favourite season
Dang Long Sha, Sasha (2D)
My favourite season is winter. In winter, it is cold and snowy. In winter, I usually wear a coat, gloves, a scarf and a hat. In winter, I build a snowman in the snow. It is fun! I like winter because I can drink hot chocolate. I leave some cookies for Santa to eat!
Friendly dolphins
Lee Cheuk Ying, Selina (3A)
Dolphins are blue, white or pink. They live in oceans.
They have two brains. Dolphins and sharks are enemies! They are about one hundred and twenty centimetres long. They weigh about two hundred kilograms. They can swim fast.
They like eating fish. I think they are cute and smart.
Classroom Cleaning Day
Tsui Ching To, Twinkle (3A)
On Monday, we join a school event. It is Classroom Cleaning Day. It starts at ten o’clock and finishes at eleven o’clock in the morning. My classmates and I feel excited.
Then, we clean up the classroom. I clean the desk. Sally sweeps the floor. May wipes the blackboard. We are happy. Suddenly, a bee flies in the classroom.
We are scared of the bee. We run out of the classroom and stay in the corridor for a long time.
Finally, we come back to the classroom. The bee is gone. We continue to clean the classroom. We are hardworking.
A letter to my penfriend
Law Wai Chun, Andy (3A)
20th September, 2021
Dear Mike,
How are you? Let me tell you about my school life. I am good at PE. I like doing exercise in PE lessons. I like to have PE class on the playground with my classmates. During recess, my classmates and I like reading books in the library. I like reading Chinese books. After school, I like playing games in the park with my classmates. We play hide-and-seek in the park. We feel happy. I enjoy my school life very much because I like learning and playing in my school. Tell me more about your school life next time!
All the best,
Sally
The school picnic
Chau Nga Wai, Sophia (3B)
It is the school picnic at Zoe’s school. Zoe and her classmates go to Sai Kung Country Park by coach. It is a windy day.
When they arrive, they are happy. They have a picnic. They eat some sandwiches and drink juice. The food is yummy. They feel excited. After the picnic, Zoe flies a kite because it is windy. The kite flies very high. ‘Woo hoo! It is fun!’ Zoe giggles. Zoe’s kite flies into the tree. ‘Oh no! My kite is in a tall tree! I need some help!’ Zoe cries very sadly.
In the end, so many birds come and get the kite but the kite is dirty and the thread is broken. Zoe cannot play with it anymore. Zoe is upset.
At last, Zoe takes a coach and goes to the market to buy a new kite.
Buying a present
Chau Nga Wai, Sophia (3B)
On Saturday, Sam is outside the toy shop. He wants to buy a doll as a present for his sister, May’s birthday next Saturday.
Sam is in the toy shop. He sees some robots and dolls. He wants to buy a robot because he likes robots. The robot is red, yellow and blue. It can talk, walk and dance. It is very cool. It is eighty-eight dollars. Sam feels excited and happy.
Then, Sam buys a very big robot but he forgets to buy a doll. ‘Oh no! I forgot to buy the doll for May!’ Sam cries sadly.
Sam is in a panic and does not know what to do! He returns to the toy shop and buys a cute and beautiful doll. He thinks May will like the doll. When he takes out his wallet, he discovers there is not enough money. He cannot buy the doll but there is a fifty dollar coupon in his wallet. Then, he can buy the doll. May sees the doll. She is very happy.
My diary
Lai Cho Kiu, April(3B)
Date: 20th June, 2022
Weather: windy
I got hurt during the school picnic today!
We arrived at Sai Kung Country Park at ten o’clock in the morning. Today was a windy day so I flew kites with my friends, Alan and Sam. We were excited.
We felt hungry and tired after flying kites so we sat on the grass to have a picnic. We saw many flowers and trees. They were very beautiful. We drank cola, orange juice and lemon tea and we ate some sushi, sandwiches and chicken wings. We enjoyed the food. ‘The food is so yummy!’ Sam said.
After that, we started to play football. Suddenly, Alan kicked the ball and the ball flew towards me. It hit my leg and it was broken! It was bleeding. I shouted, ‘Help!’ ‘Are you ok?’ my friends were nervous.
In the end, the teachers heard us and found us. They sent me to the hospital. I am in the hospital now. What an unlucky day!
Buying a present
Choi Ngai Fei, Faye (3C)
Sam is at the toy shop. He wants to buy a present for his sister. It is because his sister’s birthday is coming. He wants to buy a doll for her.
But Sam sees his favourite robot. He feels excited. It is big and special. He thinks this robot is special because it can run and do lots of sports.
He buys the robot and he leaves the toy shop. But he feels worried because he doesn’t buy the doll.
He does not have enough money to buy the doll. Sam thinks of one idea. He goes to his friend’s home and draws a birthday card for his sister. In the end, he feels happy again. He finishes the birthday card and he goes home to decorate the room for his sister’s birthday party.
The school picnic
Ip Bing Bing, Icy (3C)
It is the school picnic at Zoe’s school. Zoe and her classmates are so happy. Some of them are excited! They go to Sai Kung Country Park by coaches. Zoe is so happy. She jumps up in the air!
Then, their class teacher says, ‘It is lunch time, kids.’ So Zoe and her classmates go to have lunch. ‘Yummy!’ says Zoe.
After that, Zoe wants to fly a kite. She is excited. She flies her kite up in the air! ‘Woo hoo!’ says Zoe.
Suddenly, Zoe’s kite is on the tree! She is so worried because she doesn’t know how to get the kite. She finds a stick to get the kite. In the end, Zoe gets back her kite. She is so happy!
My diary
Choi Pui Lam Michelle (3C)
7th May, 2022
Windy
I got hurt during the school picnic today!
We arrived at Sai Kung Country Park at ten o’clock in the morning. It was windy. I flew kites with my classmates. We were very happy.
Then, we were hungry, so we sat down and ate our lunch. There were sandwiches, chicken wings, sausages and sushi. ‘They were yummy,’ said Sam. I saw some red and yellow flowers and tall big trees. We felt relaxed.
In the afternoon, we played football in the garden. Suddenly, I fell down carelessly. ‘Ouch!’ I said. My leg was hurt. I felt pain.
In the end, Miss Mak helped me bandage the wound. I said, ‘Thank you’ and Miss Mak said I was polite.
I am thankful for the help of Miss Mak.
A letter to my penfriend
Chan On Sum, Yuki (3D)
Dear Mike,
How are you? Let me tell you about my school life.
My favourite subject is Visual Arts. I am good at it. I like doing crafts and drawing pictures in Visual Arts lesson. What subjects are you good at?
During recess, I like eating chocolate and reading Chinese storybooks. After school, I like playing games in the playground. I like to go swimming after finishing my homework. Because swimming brings me happiness.
Do you like swimming?
Tell me more about your school life next time.
Best wishes,
Sally
A visit to Joyful Children’s Centre
Kwan Sin Yu, Sherry (3D)
On Friday, my classmates and I visited Joyful Children’s Centre. Before the visit, we prepared some snacks for the children. The sausages and chicken wings were very tasty. Then, we painted the bookshelves blue because the children like blue.
In the afternoon, we played some games with the children. They loved playing hide-and-seek most. Suddenly, a boy started to cry. I thought no one played with him and he was lonely. I gave him a toy car and he stopped crying. ‘Thank you! I like it very much,’ the boy said. ‘You’re welcome. Let’s play together,’ I replied.
I felt happy to make new friends. I thought the visit was very meaningful and I hope I can visit them again soon.
My diary
Sha Iris (3D)
27th June, 2022
I got hurt during the school picnic day!
We arrived at Sai Kung Country Park at ten o’clock in the morning. I flew kites with my friends, Alan and Sam. I felt great! I was in a good mood.
At noon, we had sandwiches, chicken wings and sushi for lunch. I saw some beautiful flowers and very tall trees. Sam said the food was so yummy and I thought the drinks were so sweet!
In the afternoon, we played football. Alan kicked the ball to me accidentally and I fell down. ‘Ouch!’ I shouted. My leg was hurt. I felt so painful.
Sam was worried and he spoke to a worker. The worker helped me bandage my leg. I didn’t play football but I could play other games.
I still enjoy a good time with my friends.
My diary
Xiong Elaine (4A)
29th October, 2021
Sunny
I had a wonderful day today. This morning I went to a toy shop and saw a cute robot cat. I was very excited and bought it home!
I think the robot cat is really amazing because it could speak with me. It said ‘Hello’ to me! I said happily, ‘Hi! It is amazing that you can talk with me. What else can you do?’ It answered me friendly.
After eleven o’clock, it’s time to go to school! I wanted to show my robot cat to my friend, Lisa, so I brought it to school.
Lisa thought my robot cat was cute. She asked me, ‘Where did you buy it? I want a robot cat too!’ I told her that I bought it at the toy shop. It was two hundred dollars. When Lisa knew the price of my robot cat, she was shocked. She looked disappointed. She said, ‘Oh! It is too expensive!’.
Today was Lisa’s birthday, so I gave the robot cat to her and said, ‘Don’t be sad. Please keep this robot cat. It is your birthday present. Happy birthday!’ Lisa was amazed. She had a wonderful birthday!
Preparations for Open Day
Chan Qing Hai, Iris (4A)
Open Day will take place on the 27th of February. Many guests will visit our school. Our parents, teachers, sisters, brothers and friends will join this event. Our school supervisor, Mr Chong, will also be invited to visit our school. He will be our special guest.
We will have many events on Open Day, such as a game time, an arts and crafts workshop, a guided tour around the school and a bookmark-making workshop. My classmates and I will do preparations to welcome our guests tomorrow, for example, decorating the classrooms and the school hall, preparing the souvenirs and setting up the game stalls. People who win the games can have souvenirs for prizes, they will be delighted! I will be hard-working to prepare the events.
I feel excited and happy about Open Day because I can’t wait to join it!
Getting lost
Yu Yu Han, Amy (4A)
Phoebe and Annie were good friends. One day, Phoebe wanted to play badminton. She called Annie and asked, ‘Hi, Annie, what are you doing tomorrow?’ Annie replied, ‘I am free. I have no plans.’ Phoebe asked excitedly, ‘Shall we play badminton?’ Annie said happily, ‘What a great idea! I love playing badminton. How about we go to sports centre tomorrow?’ ‘Which sports centre are we going to go to?’ asked Phoebe. Annie proposed, ‘Let’s go to the Athletic Sports Centre.’ Phoebe asked, ‘How do I get to this sports centre?’ ‘Go out of Kwai Fong MTR station Exit A. Turn left and go straight ahead. Then, turn right and walk across the Xianjing Street. The sports centre is in front of you!’ said Annie.
The next day, Phoebe got lost when she walked to the sports centre. She felt worried. Later, a woman helped her. She asked Phoebe, ‘Little girl, are you ok?’ Phoebe replied, ‘I wonder how can I get to Athletic Sports Centre?’ The woman said, ‘Walk past Sky Convenience Store. Walk across the Xianjing Street. The sports centre is in front of you.’
Finally, Phoebe found the direction to the sports centre successfully. She enjoyed playing badminton with Annie.
Defeating Evil
Hu Charlie Ka Yeung (4B)
Professor Power is the brave hero who protected his planet. He found that some evil power was approaching. ‘Alright team, we have to find a way to defeat Cyborg Cyber!’ said Professor Power. Fragrance Flamer said, ‘If we somehow find a way to control the Minigun Minions get into CC and attack him instead of us, we might have a chance!’ ‘Good idea! Technology Tank, any plan to do that?’ asked Professor Power. ‘There is a micro chip which can control the Minigun Minions. We have to steal it from one of them, thus, we may get a chance to win!’ Without saying anything, Professor Power nodded his head and the trios set off.
The two teams met and battled with confidence as Technology Tank stole the chip without Cyborg Cyber’s notice. Technology Tank put the chip in his body and controlled the Minigun Minions to attack Cyborg Cyber. Cyborg Cyber could not response and not for long he died quickly. The trios defeated Cyborg Cyber! Professor Power once again, protected his planet.
An email to Aunt Lily
Zheng Zihan, Kitty (4B)
Dear Aunt Lily,
How are you? Are you busy at work? Sorry for not writing to you before. I was busy working for Sports Day at my school. Let me tell you about it. Let me tell you about my school life. Our Sports Day took place in the North District Sports Ground on 21st June.
Mr. Lee and the school supervisor opened the event. We wore sports shoes and sportswear on Sports Day. My friends and I took part in many events. Peter and Eric were in the high jump. Peter was fast but Eric was faster and stronger and he won the event. Alan and Amy were in the 100m race. Alan was faster than Amy. He won the race. Katy and I were in the beanbag throwing event. I threw farther than her. I won the event. I think Sports Day was fun and amazing. I hope I can win the beanbag throwing event next year.
Write to me when you have time. I’d love to hear from you soon.
Best,
Kitty
A perfect day
Pang Kwan Yee, Karen (4B)
It is a perfect day.
I have coexisted with the virus, and now there is no COVID-19.
I can see my friend, and we don’t need to wear any masks.
I can go to school, and this is not a dream.
I feel so satisfied.
It is a perfect, perfect day!
My diary
Zhuo Zhi Yu, Kitty (4C)
I had a sad day today.
In the morning, I got up very early and went to a toy shop. In the toy shop, there were many toys, such as dolls, teddy bears, toy guns ... They were interesting. Before I left the shop, I bought a robot cat. It was cute. I was excited.
After that, I went home. I put my robot cat on a table. Suddenly, the robot cat said ‘Hello!’ to me. I was amazed. I wanted to show it to my classmates, so I decided to take it to school.
In the afternoon, I put the robot cat in my school bag and brought it to school. I was happy. I showed my robot cat to my classmates. One of my classmates was jealous that I had a robot cat. He ran outside the classroom and told a teacher. Then, my teacher came and took away my robot cat. He called my parents. I am so sad. I hate my classmate very much now.
Preparations for Open Day
Law Wing Hei, Cathy (4C)
17th February, 2022
Open Day will take place next month. Many guests will go to our Open Day. Our teachers, parents and children from the kindergarten will go to this event. Our school supervisor, Mr Chong, will be invited to visit our school.
Many activities will be held on Open Day. There will be a game time, a lucky draw and a magic show. We will also have a guided tour around the school, a storytelling time and an arts and crafts workshop.
Before Open Day, we need to do a lot of preparations. Paul and I will put up the posters during the recesses. May and Cathy will decorate the classrooms. On that day, Pat and Coco will serve the guests. Kitty and Alice will perform on the stage.
I think Open Day will be interesting and exciting. I hope the visitors will enjoy the event. I will try my best to finish all the preparations with my friends before next month.
Getting lost
Fan Sze Yuen, Frankie (4C)
Phoebe and Annie were good friends. One day, Phoebe called Annie. ‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’ asked Phoebe. ‘I am going to play badminton with my brother in a sports centre. Would you like to play together?’ said Annie. ‘How do I get to the sports centre?’ asked Phoebe.
‘Take the MTR to Kwai Fong. Go out of Kwai Fong MTR station Exit A. Turn left and go straight ahead. Walk past the bakery and the convenience store. Turn right and walk across the road. The sports centre is in front of you,’ said Annie. ‘OK. See you tomorrow then,’ said Phoebe.
The next day, Phoebe went out by herself and got lost! ‘Where am I? Where is my phone? Oh no! I got lost!’ said Phoebe. Thankfully there was a kind man told her where to go. Phoebe listened to the man and found the sports centre and played with Annie and her brother. She was excited.
My diary
Lin Boxian, Jonny (4D)
I had a happy day today.
Today, my dad and I went to a toy shop. Suddenly, I saw a toy cat. It was very cute and beautiful. I asked my dad, ‘Dad, can I buy this toy cat, please?’ Dad asked, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because it is cute.’ Dad said, ‘OK, but you must study hard.’ Then, we bought it with fifty dollars. At home, I wanted to play with it. The toy cat said, ‘Hello!’ I clapped my hands and said, ‘It is amazing.’ I was very excited.
The next day, I brought it to school because I wanted to show it to my classmates. At school, many students gathered around. The toy cat said, ‘Hi!’ Everyone was amazed.
Preparations for Open Day
Zhou Alina (4D)
12th March, 2022
Open Day will take place on 18th March. Many guests will go to our Open Day. Our teachers, parents, schoolmates and children will go to this event. Our school supervisor, Mr Chong, will be invited to our school. A lot of activities will be held. There will be a guided tour around the school.
Children can play games in the playground and watch the magic show in the school hall. Before that day, we will do a lot of preparations. My classmates and I will decorate the classrooms, put up the posters and prepare the souvenirs. Our Principal, Miss Shum, will send out the invitation cards. I think Open Day is interesting.
Getting lost
Xu Man Ting, Ada (4D)
Phoebe and Annie were good friends. One day, Phoebe called Annie, ‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’ Annie said, ‘How about playing badminton together?’ Phoebe said, ‘It’s a good idea!’ Annie said, ‘We need to bring a badminton racket and shuttlecocks.’ ‘OK,’ said Phoebe. Annie said, ‘Let’s meet at eight o’clock in the morning at the sports centre.’
Phoebe asked, ‘Sorry, can you tell me how to go to the sports centre? Annie said, ‘First, go out of Kwai Fong MTR station. Then turn left and walk past the bakery and the convenience store. Turn right and walk across the road. The sports centre is in front of you.’
The next day, Phoebe got lost. She was worried. Phoebe called Annie and said, ‘I can’t find the sports centre. I am in front of the MTR station.’ Annie said, ‘OK. I know you need to go straight ahead and turn right rather than walk across the road. Then, you can see the sports centre in front of you.’
In the end, Phoebe found the sports centre and they played badminton happily.
An empty seat
Chan Yuk Fung, Andy (5A)
When I was five, my mum and I went to visit my grandmother by bus. When we got on the bus, there were crowds of people standing inside. There was no seat free. So my mum and I held onto a handle near the driver. When the bus started to move, it was very shaky. I tried my best to stand still by holding my mum’s leg but I still couldn’t stop my head knocking toward my mum’s leg.
When the bus reached the next stop, an old lady got onto the bus. I thought that she’d just finished her shopping because she was carrying a huge bag full of turnips. She was walking very slow because of the weight of the bag. The driver told her to hurry even though she walked as fast as she could. Then a teenager gave her a seat but the old lady didn’t sit on it. What she said moved me. She said, ‘Thank you for your help. Although I am old, I can still manage the journey without a seat. We should give the seats to people who need them the most.’ Then the teenager suggested to give the seat to me because my legs were shaking and I could not stand still. Then my mum said to me, ‘My honey, there’s a seat over there. I know you are tired. You can go and have a break.’ But I shook my head because there were a lot of people on the bus and I recognised that there must be somebody who needed the seat most, so everyone on the bus decided to leave the seat empty to let someone who needed the seat most to take a rest.
At last, a pregnant woman got onto the bus. She sat on the seat and all of the people on the bus were happy because we had helped someone who needed help.
There are many instances of good people and good deeds nowadays and we should commend them and help the needy.
My dad is a kind-hearted person. He is full of sympathy for animals, especially the abandoned pets.
One day, there was a parrot on the way to my dad’s office. It looked too exhausted to fly away. ‘Maybe it has been abandoned by its owner.’ My dad thought, ‘What a poor bird! May I help you?’ My dad walked closely to the parrot and put it on his hand. The bird was very timid but it was really tired and couldn’t fly away. So my dad took it home, fed it with some food and water and put it into a bird cage. Day by day, it became better and better. It began to sing every day and looked pretty energetic. My dad thought it might be boring if there was just one parrot, so he bought another one as its partner. They played happily every day. A few months later, they laid some eggs! When my friends heard that, they all came to my house to see what the parrot eggs looked like. After two weeks, the baby parrots were born. Many of my friends wanted to adopt the baby parrots.
One morning, my dad saw a hedgehog, which was curled into a ball on the lawn, when he was walking around a park. It was sick and dying. It seemed that nobody had taken care of it for a long time. He took it home immediately because the weather was very cold and it might die if nobody adopted it. He used a box for its home and made a little nest in it. He looked after it carefully. Two days later, it recovered. We could touch it with gloves at first. After a few days, we could just use our hands directly because we became friends. My dad gave it a lot of food every day, so it became very fat and cute. It ran home quickly with its short legs. How cute! My neighbours always come to my home and enjoy watching and playing with it. Except the parrots and hedgehog, there are also lots of fish and some tortoises in my home. All of them are living happily. I think my house looks like a zoo, doesn’t it?
My dad is really a good person. He always teaches us that we should take the responsibility of taking care of our pets if we keep them. Even though it might be laborious, it is enjoyable when you see your pet becoming better and healthier. Animals and humans can be friends. We should pass this feeling to evoke the sympathy of other people for animals. I do hope no pet will be abandoned by its owner anymore.
Always ready to contribute
Ge Yung (5A)
It was the first day of winter holidays. My mum and I went to be volunteers. We helped the Covid-19 Test Area in our residential district. At the very beginning, I felt excited but a bit nervous. ‘Can I do the job well?’
Before we started to work, we needed to wear our masks and gloves carefully. Our first task was to do some preparation. We tied the ribbons on the guardrail to let people know the right way to queue. Once we found that the ribbons were not enough. I ran to the nearest store and quickly fetched some. Then, the preparation would be finished well.
It was nearly two o’clock. A long queue had already been formed outside the Covid-19 Test Area. We needed to give some instructions about how to activate the testing code. Our team leader, Miss Wang, told us that we should maintain social distance. I remembered an old man needing help on that day. He didn’t know anything about the test and asked me how to activate his code. I taught him to click on his mobile phone patiently. He was satisfied that I solved the problem. I felt good.
Also, I had to remind people to keep a distance of at least 1 metre from one another. I saw a man with a long beard shouting loudly to a lady in front of him. He was so rude. It frightened me. At this time, Miss Wang came. She explained to the man patiently about the necessary of ‘safety distance’. What we did was protecting everyone. After a while, the man became calm and felt sorry for his rudeness. I admired the way my team leader handled that situation.
I also saw a woman with a big stomach and her movement was extra slow. So I took the lead to talk to her, ‘Hi, you can go to the special channel. You do not need to line up here. Let me show you the way.’ When she heard that, she followed me and thanked me a lot.
In the end, we had to tidy up the place before we left. During the working hours, I saw my friend, Holi, came. I said hello to him. I was really glad to see him. But we didn’t chat a lot because I was a bit busy. Many people came to ask for help. Although I felt exhausted after the five-hour workday, it was really a joyful and unforgettable day for me. I learned a lot and enjoyed helping people. I am proud of being a volunteer and I will always be ready to contribute to society.
A person I admire
Peng Ho Li, Holi (5A)
Have you ever heard of Wang Yaping? Do you know the information about her?
Wang Yaping is an astronaut in China. She was born in 1980 and grew up in Yantai, Shandong Province. In 1997, she registered for the pilot recruitment program. She passed all the tests, as well as physical examinations and became part of the seventh batch of female pilots in China.
In 2009, Wang Yaping was still in air force. She has been a pilot for about 12 years. In May 2010, she became a member of China’s first batch of female astronauts. Although she had to face a lot of difficulties, she did not give up. She improved her performance by doing extra core-strength exercises every day to strengthen her muscles. She reached the top level finally at the end of 2011.
In 2013, she gave her first lecture in space from Tiangong-1, inspiring 60 million primary and secondary school students across the country. She has many achievements. She is amazing!
Wang Yaping is a person I admire. She teaches us that we need to be brave when we face difficulties.
My brave dog
Ge Yung (5A)
10 July 20XX (Sat) Foggy
I went to the park after lunch today. I went to the park with my dog, Lucky. I thought he was so smart that he could learn a lot of tricks quickly. We had a good time playing games near the bushes.
Suddenly, a robber with a mask jumped out from the bushes and shouted, ‘Give me all your money!’ I was very scared of him because he had a knife. Then I said, ‘Lucky, attack him!’ Lucky rushed to the robber and bit his leg at once. The robber was in pain and dropped his knife carelessly. I called the police.
When the policemen came, they saw the robber on the street and caught him. Lucky saved me today so I bought him a hamburger to thank him. He is my loyal friend!
Life in the past and at present
Huang Haoming, Henry (5A)
Nowadays, our lives are more convenient than 30 years ago. Do you know the changes between the 70s and now? Let me tell you more about them.
In the past, technology did not develop very well, so our lives were not convenient. My mum had to walk 1.5 km to her school. If you wanted to watch TV after dinner, you had to watch a blurry black and white TV. It was inconvenient because you had to adjust the TV aerial.
In the 70s, we had to buy a lot of things such as a record player, paper books, etc. Now, with a cell phone, we can read without books, draw without paper and listen to music without a record player, so our lives are very convenient now.
In the future, I believe our lives will be more and more convenient. We may have maglev cars and buildings with hundreds of storeys. Space travel may become very popular.
Besides enjoying my present life, I am also looking forward to my future life. Are you looking forward to your future life? I think the future life will be more convenient than nowadays. We’ll see how convenient our lives will be in the future.
A birthday party for Mum
Lau Hin Wang, Season (5B)
Last Saturday, it was our mum’s birthday. My sister and I organized a birthday party for her because we wanted to make her happy.
At the supermarket, I received a phone call from my sister. ‘Have you bought the things for the party yet?’ she said. ‘Yes, I have already bought them,’ I said.
When the birthday party began, a lot of people showed up. They were excited about the party but something terrible happened. I forgot to buy the birthday cake. A lot of people blamed me. ‘Are these guys disappointed just because of a single cake? How funny!’ I thought at first. And then I found out that was the most important part of the party. I realized I ruined the party! I felt bad.
Then Mum said, ‘Nothing is more important than a family.’ So we baked a cake together but we failed. Luckily, Mum said, ‘It’s okay! At least we had fun!’ We all laughed.
At a Chinese restaurant
Chan Lon Him, Maxton (5B)
This afternoon, we went to a Chinese restaurant. When we sat down, we saw a boy and his mum. Soon, they spoke with food in their mouths and threw a piece of bone on the floor. They were very impolite!
After they finished the meal, the boy ran around the restaurant. His mum kept talking loudly on the phone and didn’t care about it.
Suddenly, the boy knocked into the waiter carelessly and the noodles spilt onto his clothes. The boy and his mum were angry and shouted at the waiter. We were very annoyed, so we stared at them impatiently. We didn’t want to eat anything.
Finally, the manager came and saw that. He said, ‘What happened here?’ I said, ‘They made me lose my appetite.’ The manager apologized and compensated us.
A hot summer night
Wong Cho Kiu, Yobi (5B)
It was a hot summer night. At eight o’clock, Ann’s family was finishing their dinner when Mum turned on the air-conditioner and the lights. Everyone was in the living room. Ann was playing with her baby brother, Sam, while her mum was reading some books. They were sitting on the sofa.
All of a sudden, the lights and the air-conditioning turned off. Ann and Sam were scared because it was very dark. Later, her mum found a torch in her bedroom and she turned it on. They felt hot and heard some noises. They came from Sam. He was crying loudly. Mum was calling for help.
In the end, Ann used a paper fan to keep cool. They waited for a long time until the air-conditioning and the lights came back on.
A birthday party for Mum
Li Yue Han, Jack (5C)
Yesterday was Mum’s birthday. My sister, Kitty and I decided to celebrate with her. First, we made a to-do list. After that, I went to the supermarket to buy the food.
When I went out to the supermarket, Kitty used her phone to call me. ‘Have you bought the food yet?’ she asked. ‘Yes, I have already bought the food.’ I replied and then asked her, ‘How about you? Have you decorated our house and written the birthday card yet?’ ‘I have already decorated our house but I have not written the birthday card yet. I’ll write it then,’ she replied. ‘Ok, I’ll come back soon.’ I said.
One hour later, Mum came back and she was surprised by the party. Dad asked, ‘Where is the cake?’ ‘Oh, sorry! I forgot to buy the cake,’ I said. But Mum didn’t feel disappointed and said, ‘No problem, we can eat bread.’
Finally, we all felt happy at the birthday party.
At a Chinese restaurant
Yu Yue, Angel (5C)
This afternoon, I had lunch with my family and we had a bad afternoon, because there was a rude woman and a boy who sat at the table next to us. Their behaviour was so impolite. At first, the boy spoke loudly with food in his mouth and the woman threw a piece of bone on the floor. After they finished the lunch, the woman talked on the phone loudly and the boy ran around the restaurant. We felt so bad.
Suddenly, the boy knocked into the waiter and the noodles spilt onto the boy’s T-shirt. The woman shouted loudly, ‘What are you doing? I will complain about you!’
At that moment, my dad said, ‘Your behaviour is so rude and impolite! You shouldn’t throw a piece of bone onto the floor and you should talk on the phone softly! You need to say sorry to the waiter.’
Finally, the woman realized they were wrong and they said sorry to the waiter.
This was a terrible afternoon.
Life then and now
Huang Erin Tsz Ham (5C)
Things have changed over the years. People’s living has changed in the past and at present.
The technology has changed our lives in different ways. In the past, people listened to the news on the radio. Now, people watch the news on a tablet. In the past, people kept in contact with friends by writing letters with pen and paper. Now, people send text messages on mobile phones to keep contact with their friends. In the past, people kept cool with a paper fan. Now, people keep cool with an air-conditioner.
I prefer life now because life is comfortable and it is easy to contact other people by mobile phone.
At a Chinese restaurant
Lee Wa Keung, Jacky (5D)
This afternoon, my father, my mother, and I had lunch in a Chinese restaurant because it is my mother's birthday today. However, the people sitting next to us were impolite.
The boy ran around the restaurant, and his mother talked loudly on the phone. I thought they were very rude.
‘Oh!’ the boy shouted. He knocked into the waiter suddenly and all the noodles spilled onto the floor.
His mother ran to see what had happened. She was angry and slapped his face. She said sorry to the waiter with embarrassment.
I have learned that we should not run around and talk loudly in public places so that we will not disturb other people.
Today is my mother’s birthday. My sister and I were organizing a birthday party for her. We had already planned this for a week. But we couldn’t get time to work on it, so this morning my sister and I were home alone. I could finally use the to-do list that prepared before.
First, we tidied up the living room to make space for decorations. My mum liked roses so we put rose patterns everywhere. We even put some stickers of roses on balloons.
After that, I went to the supermarket to buy her a present and a bunch of snacks and drinks while my sister was writing a birthday card at home. I bought my mum her favourite necklace. She always wants it, but she doesn’t want to waste money.
Suddenly, my sister called me. ‘Calvin, Mum is home. Have you bought the presents and the other stuff yet?’ I replied, ‘Yes, I have. I’m gonna come home now.’
After I went back home, I set all the snacks and drinks on the table. Then, my dad asked, ‘Calvin? Where’s the cake?’ I have never felt so disappointed in myself. I got upset but my mum consoled me and said, ‘It’s okay. It is just a minor mistake. And we can replace the cake with cupcakes.’ I felt a lot better and was relieved that she wasn’t angry at me.
In the end, everyone enjoyed the party. My mum was so pleased when she saw that I got her the precious necklace and she cherished it. This was the best day of her life.
My brave dog
Li Yin Lam, Lucas (5D)
Believe it or not, even a small dog can do a great job!
Yesterday morning, I walked my dog in the park. When I was walking, my dog had a dump. So I put on my gloves and laid a piece of newspaper on the ground. When I was throwing out the newspaper, I saw a strange man pointing a knife at a woman. She was scared and said in a trembling voice, ‘Don’t hurt me! I’ll give you all my jewels!’
I was shocked. I grabbed my phone and called the police, but my phone ran out of battery midway through my call! My dog was barking when the thief ran away. My dog chased him and kept barking. The thief did not pay attention on the path. He tripped over a rock and his head smashed onto the ground!
When I got there, his head was gushing blood. The woman took her purse back and called the police. When the police were checking the thief’s head, the ambulance arrived. They finally took him to the hospital and arrested him.
When the woman found me, I was on my way home. She said ‘thank you’ to me gratefully. I felt pleased that we helped the woman and stopped a crime.
Forces of nature
Wu Jiaqi, Candy (6A)
Long time ago, there was a girl called Lily. Lily did not like helping the needy. She had never donated money to charity, sold flags or visited the elderly home. She was not kind or helpful. At school, all her classmates joined activities to raise money for the charity, only she refused to join them. She was very selfish.
One night, Lily was watching TV at home. She watched a documentary which was about a powerful earthquake in Japan. In the TV programme, an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale struck northern Japan! The buildings shook severely. Everyone was panicking. A man was very frightened. He hid under a table quickly so he wouldn’t be buried by the broken ceiling. But Lily thought the TV programme was boring. ‘I’m not interested in anything about natural events or disasters. This TV programme is so tiresome!’ Lily said. Then she went to bed.
Lily went to bed after watching TV. At first, she slept soundly. But at midnight, she had a terrible nightmare. It was upsetting and scary. In her dream, a powerful earthquake occurred. It caused severe floods and tsunamis. The earthquake caused enormous damage to the houses and buildings, and destroyed everything. All the people lost their homes. Somebody even lost their family members! Lily lost her home too. She could only live in a tent. She was cold at night because she did not have any blankets. Nobody helped her. She felt lonely and helpless.
The next morning when Lily woke up, she was very worried about the people who lived in the earthquake zones. She finally understood that they needed help! She regretted that she didn’t help them before.
From then on, Lily was willing to help the people in need. She enjoyed joining the charity work and always donated money to the charity.
A detective story
Zhang Jenny (6A)
Yesterday at three o’clock in the afternoon, a theft happened outside Rose Restaurant. A woman’s smartphone was grabbed by a man after she had lunch by herself. She rushed back to the restaurant and asked for help. She was very afraid. Her face was as pale as a ghost. One of the waitresses helped her to call the police.
Ten minutes later, Detective Mel arrived. The woman who called Mandy was really delighted. She thought she found someone who could help her. Detective Mel asked her to describe the thief. She said, ‘The thief is a man wearing sunglasses, jeans and sandals. Please help me to find him.’ Detective Mel walked around nearby and asked some passers-by about the thief. Finally, she found three suspects. Detective Mel asked Mandy, ‘I’ve found three suspects. Can you identify the thief?’ ‘They look too similar, sorry I can’t,’ Mandy replied. Detective Mel thought for a while. Suddenly, she had an idea. Detective Mel asked Mandy her phone number. Ring…Ring… ‘Got you!’ Detective Mel shouted and pointed at one of the suspects.
My dream job
Jiang Sai Hung, Daniel (6A)
I want to be an astronaut when I grow up because I want to explore the universe.
I will travel to space and go to all the planets, like the moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter… Maybe I can also explore the galaxy. Therefore, I am very interested in this job!
To make my dream come true, I need to study hard and learn more knowledge about science and Maths. Moreover, I also need to have a healthy body to go to space. Therefore, I will do sports regularly to keep fit.
Yang Li Wei is my role model because he is the first Chinese person who went to space and stayed in space for about 21 hours. It was amazing! Yang Li Wei inspires me to go the extra mile.
At last, I had my heart set on becoming an astronaut when I was small. I will do everything I can to make my dream come true.
A detective story
Chek Sin Wah, Candy (6B)
Yesterday at three o’clock in the afternoon, a woman came out of Rose Restaurant. A man took her smartphone and ran away quickly.
Then, the woman was afraid. She went into the restaurant and called Detective Mel to catch the thief.
After ten minutes, Detective Mel arrived. She asked the woman to describe the thief. The thief was a young man wearing sandals, a white T-shirt and jeans. Also, he was wearing sunglasses and he had short hair.
Soon, Detective Mel found suspects who matched the woman’s descriptions. The men looked similar, so the woman felt confused.
Suddenly, Detective Mel thought of a good idea. He asked the woman to give her phone number to him. Then, one of the men’ smartphones rang.
In the end, the woman found her smartphone. Detective Mel did another good thing.
A special festival
Luo Liren, Lawrence (6B)
Chinese New Year is a special festival that is celebrated by people in China. It is celebrated by many people. It is usually celebrated in January or February. People celebrate this festival because it is a new year in the lunar calendar.
Before the festival, people usually decorate their homes using Chinese calligraphy, Chinese knots or flowers.
Reunion dinner is usually served at Chinese New Year’s Eve. Traditional food like sticky rice cakes, dried oysters and Chinese sweet dumplings are served. Each of them represents a good wish.
Everyone has a great time at this festival. Red packets are received by children.
My dream job
Yip Ka Yan, Michelle (6B)
When I grow up, I want to be a teacher because I like children. I want to teach them knowledge so that they can be very smart and clever. I want to share my thoughts and experiences with the children. Therefore, I want to be a teacher when I grow up.
To make my dream come true, I need to study hard and have good results. Therefore, I will read a lot of books, do revision and make notes in lessons.
I hope one day I can be like Mr. Li because he is patient. If I don’t know how to do homework, he will teach me how to do it.
If I become a teacher, I can work at a school. Being a teacher is very meaningful! I will try my best to make my dream come true.
Developing good habits
Chen Li Sha, Angel (6C)
I am going to develop some good habits to improve my health and make me a better person. I have some bad habits and I want to change them.
I always spend too much time after school playing computer games and I often forget to do my homework. I should spend less time playing computer games because I want to finish my homework on time. Moreover, playing games for too long hurts my eyes. I think it is very difficult to get rid of this bad habit, but I will limit my computer game time to fifty minutes per day.
Since I sometimes get up late in the morning, I have to skip breakfast and get to school late. Skipping breakfast makes me feel hungry and tired. I should go to bed earlier and be punctual because I want to stay awake during the day, and I do not want to miss out on anything in my lessons.
Additionally, I always bite my fingernails because they are too long. Keeping fingernails long is dangerous because it is dirty and unhygienic. I should cut my fingernails regularly to prevent germs from entering my body.
I hope I can develop these good habits since they are very important for me and my wellbeing.
A special festival
Ling Ying Ying, Cherry (6C)
Chinese New Year is a special festival that is celebrated by people in January or February. It is celebrated in many places all over the world. People celebrate this festival to welcome the new year.
Before Chinese New Year, people clean their homes and decorate them with couplets and Chinese knots. People also buy flowers and tangerines from the flower markets. Gifts are bought for relatives too.
During Chinese New Year, people eat reunion dinner with their family. They wear new clothes in bright colours like red. The adults give red packets to the children. On the second day of Chinese New Year, people set off fireworks to watch in the evening.
Everyone likes this festival because they can enjoy a few days of holiday. Children are particularly happy because they can get red packets.
My dream job
Chau Wing Yi, Yurika (6C)
When I grow up, I want to be a singer. I love this job because I love singing, just like Lalisa Manoban!
To make my dream come true, I need to be good at singing. Therefore, I will listen to more songs. In order to fulfill my goal, I need to be fit and beautiful. Therefore, I will learn how to keep fit. I hope one day I can be like Lalisa Manoban. She does exactly what I want to do so I will follow her footsteps and become a singer. I think she has inspired many people, not only me.
If I become a singer, I can go to different places to perform. Being a singer would be a dream for me. I will try my best to make my dream come true and inspire others with my songs one day.
Feeling sick
Chau Lok Hin, Issac (6D)
9th September, 2021
Sunny
I was absent from school last week because I had a fever and a runny nose. My mum put her hand on my head and checked my temperature. My mum told me to see a doctor but I was too sick to move. I had to force myself to move.
When I went to the clinic, I saw a lot of patients who were not wearing masks. The person sat next to me was sneezing a lot, so I moved to another seat.
When it was my turn, the doctor said, ‘You have a cold. You need to take some medicine, take more rest and wrap up warm.’
A few days later, I felt much better. I could play and go to school!
A diary entry
Sung Shi Ngai, Owen (6D)
Sunny
Today is my friend Macy’s birthday. I baked a birthday cake for her birthday party this afternoon. I was as busy as a bee in the kitchen this morning. I felt very excited.
My mum asked me, ‘When do you go to Macy’s birthday party?’ I answered her, ‘I need to go to her home before 1:00 p.m.’ My mum asked me, ‘How long does it take to go from our home to Macy’s home by bus?’ I answered her, ‘It takes about 30 minutes by bus.’
The bus was very crowded and slow. I stood on the bus for over 20 minutes. I felt tired. I thought I would be late.
In the end, I was over an hour late for the party. I gave the cake to Macy, but she still felt sad and disappointed.
Shek Wu Hui Public School
Address: Tin Ping Estate, Sheung Shui, New Territories
Tel: 2672 1225
Fax: 2668 5507
Website: www.swhps.edu.hk
Email: email@example.com | 5cb69190-9c9b-4e75-92da-c083739391b3 | CC-MAIN-2024-22 | https://www.swhps.edu.hk/gallery/webcontent/e35a91d2e95f08cee368db2b720966bd.pdf | 2024-05-21T14:01:54+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-22/segments/1715971058484.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20240521122022-20240521152022-00126.warc.gz | 888,636,716 | 12,851 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.97484 | eng_Latn | 0.999748 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"ekk_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
56,
540,
1052,
1642,
2174,
3136,
4382,
5474,
6579,
7819,
9182,
10973,
12348,
13650,
15141,
17019,
19251,
20455,
22232,
23763,
25491,
27207,
29504,
31817,
33625,
35666,
37200,
39032,
40379,
41759,
42864,
44676,
46584,
48097,
49972,
51544,
52897,
53062
] | [
3.03125,
3.078125
] | 1 | 0 |
Poland Rights Available 2023
Up in the Canopy
Explore the jungle layer by layer with a huge fold-out surprise at the end.
- James Aldred’s book *The Goshawk Summer* won the 2022 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.
- Written from the perspective of real-life Emmy-nominated cameraman and explorer, James Aldred
- Stunningly illustrated - with artwork as rich and dense as the rainforest itself
- Huge fold-out tree at the back of the book, which readers can pore over.
- Matt lam and spot UV finishes.
Welcome to the emergent layer – the rainforest’s tree-top canopy.
Like this laptop, some of the largest trees in the Amazon stand head and shoulders above the rest. They form the topmost layer of the rainforest; these emergent trees are exposed to strong winds and intense sunlight for most of the day. This is a hot place, and the sun is a lot hotter up here, making it feel more like a desert than a rainforest. The trees have adapted by growing thick bark to protect them from evaporation. In addition, tall trees are often exposed to fierce storms. Lightning strikes a tree’s canopy several times each year, and the bark can be charred or even ripped away by high winds. This is the most extreme environment in the rainforest and only the toughest plants and animals can survive here.
Reaching the top of your tree, you are rewarded with far-reaching views, despite the wind. You can see the forest stretching out before you, and the rivers that meander gently in the distance, and sea mile your climbing helmet off to find the wind in your hair. You look down at the forest floor, where the canopy has been lifted by a strong storm, you assemble into a writing position. Settling down to eat a snack, you immerse yourself in one of the best views anyone could wish for: You’ve made it!
| Pub Date | 24/10/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781835870945 |
| H x W | 300 x 238mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | James Aldred |
| Illustrator | Good Wives and Warriors |
| Extent | 20pp |
| Word Count | 4319 words |
| Freight On Board| 09/08/2024 |
| Rights Available| World |
From Cells to Ourselves
From the Big Bang to the abundance of life that surrounds us today, this beautiful book is the story of evolution, from the very first cells to ourselves.
- The third title in the Balloon to the Moon series, which won the 12-16 category in the British Book Design and Production Awards 2019
- A wonderful combination of mythology, science and history that takes readers on a journey through one of the most fascinating subjects in natural history
- Gill Arbuthnott is a former secondary school science teacher.
- Cover treatments: 100% foil, uncoated varnish
**EARLY IDEAS ABOUT EVOLUTION**
How long is a million second? Have you been alive for one billion seconds? What was happening a million days ago? What will happen a million years from now? We don’t know, but we do know that over millions and millions of years, life has come incredibly complicated into systems of amazing complexity of parts! This is one reason why some people have a problem with evolution. The idea that single, primitive cells evolved into all the species that have ever lived seems incredible, unless you get to grips with the timespan involved.
---
**GRADUAL CHANGES**
In the early 1800s Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a Frenchman of the time, was ‘translating’ and ‘fleshing’, more or less, the ideas of Darwin’s father, Erasmus Darwin, on the subject of the development of life on Earth via evolution. He believed that life had originated by spontaneous generation, rather than creation by God, and that it could change in response to its environment. He also suggested how this could happen. His ideas are often called the ‘Theory of Evolution by Descent’. Charles Darwin, who was born in 1809, was taught by his father, Erasmus Darwin, about Lamarck’s ideas. He believed that the more well-developed it would become and that these changes could be inherited by subsequent generations.
---
**THE EVOLUTION OF THE GIRAFFE’S NECK, ACCORDING TO LAMARCK:**
1) Early giraffes had short necks.
2) Giraffes reach upward to grasp on leaves.
3) This stretches their necks very slightly over their foreheads.
4) The next generation of giraffes inherit their slightly longer necks.
---
**THE PROCESS ALSO WORKED THE OTHER WAY:**
1) Early penguins had wings with which they could fly.
2) Penguins spread out of their home continent over very large distances.
3) Their wings became webbed, with smaller feathers, from back to front.
4) The next generation of penguins inherits these smaller, more flapping wings.
5) This process is repeated over many generations until we end up with flightless, webbed penguins. Eventually, we end up with birds that look nothing like their ancestors.
---
**THE END OF THE DINOSAUR AGE**
As the Earth’s climate changed, the dinosaurs began to die out. The last dinosaur was the Tyrannosaurus Rex, which lived around 65 million years ago. The first mammals appeared around 200 million years ago, and the first birds appeared even earlier, around 150 million years ago.
---
**Pub Date** 15/02/2024
**Pub Price** £16.99
**ISBN** 9781800781368
**H x W** 300 x 235mm
**Binding** Hardback
**Age Range** 7-9 years
**Author** Gill Arbuthnott
**Illustrator** Chris Nielsen
**Extent** 80pp
**Word Count** 12000 words
**Rights Available** World
From sandy beaches to mysterious, inky depths, this beautiful book is the story of ocean exploration.
- Sequel to *Balloon to the Moon*, winner of the 12-16 category in the British Book Design and Production Awards
- A wonderful combination of mythology, science and history that takes readers on a narrative journey though one of the world’s most fascinating stories of exploration
- Gill Arbuthnott is a former secondary school science teacher.
- Made in consultation with the Maritime Museum.
From Shore to Ocean Floor
DEPTHS OF THE IMAGINATION
On old maps the oceans were often marked by the Latin words *hic sunt dracones* (Here be Beasts) or *Hic sunt dracones* (Here be dragons), because no one knew what might really lie there.
Over time people came up with all sorts of explanations, some of them more plausible than others.
STRANGE CREATURES
When sea creatures like giant octopuses, floating islands and mermaids were first seen on 15th-16th ships, they had often disappeared into the mists of time. The sea was full of legends of sea monsters like the fire-breathing *Lilith* and the *Kraken*.
MERMAIDS AND MERMEN
Sailors reported sightings of strange creatures, including mermaids and mermen, all around the world. They weren’t told exactly what these Christian Angels looked like, but they were described in Greek mythology and the German Lorelei (real sailors) is said to have been inspired by the legend of the mermaid.
Christopher Columbus described three different sea monsters – large aquatic mammals, fish-like creatures and a creature that lived on the beach, it can look like long, green hair.
POPULAR CULTURE
Books and films often use the fact that we know so little about what lives under the ocean to create stories. Some of the most famous include *20,000 Leagues Under the Sea*, *Jaws*, *The Deep Blue Sea*, *The Lost World*, *Finding Nemo*, and the giant white shark in the 1975 film *The Deep Blue Sea*. In 1948, the *Titanic* sank after hitting an iceberg, and the *Deep Blue Sea* was named in a real event – the sinking of the US submarine *Thresher* by a storm which in 1963.
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
Myths and legends from around the world tell of gods, goddesses and heroes who explore the deep, protect and transform marine phenomena like stars, animals and humans.
How the Sea Became Salty
In Jules Verne’s novel *20,000 Leagues Under the Sea*, the Nautilus crew are searching for a giant octopus only to find it’s a submarine. In reality, the first submarine was built in 1776 by the American Captain James. His Nautilus has many features that we still see today, such as a conning tower, including a way to blow underwater air bubbles and an object to shoot water.
| Pub Date | 30/09/2021 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £16.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787418349 |
| H x W | 300 x 235mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Gill Arbuthnott |
| Illustrator | Chris Nielsen |
| Extent | 80pp |
| Word Count | 12000 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Can you make a face with vegetables? How do you paint a dream? This bright and busy book provides a fun first look at art concepts, and is jam-packed with things for busy little fingers to try!
- Contents: Hello, Art World!; Mannerism; Impressionism; Cubism; Fauvism; Symbolism; Surrealism; Abstract Expressionism; Pop Art; Op Art; Contemporary Art; Make Your Mark!
- A vibrant new series for 4-6 year olds exploring the creative arts
- Fun artwork by Big Picture Press debut artist, Eleonora Marton
**MANNERISM**
What do you find beautiful? Discover the art of Mannerism with this new book from award-winning author Eva Wong Nava.
The Mannerist period, which lasted for about 100 years in the 16th century, was a time when artists from the Italian and northern European schools of “MANIERE” (“style”) competed to create the most beautiful and elegant works of art.
**IMPRESSIONISM**
Sunset! Outdoors! Light!
How can you create beautiful paintings using only a few simple tools? Learn how to paint like an Impressionist artist by following these easy steps:
1. Choose your subject matter (a sunset, a landscape, or a still life).
2. Sketch your composition on paper.
3. Mix your colors (you’ll need yellow, blue, red, and black).
4. Paint your masterpiece!
**BUSY LITTLE FINGERS: ART**
**Pub Date** 06/07/2023
**Pub Price** £9.99
**ISBN** 9781800784642
**H x W** 246 x 189mm
**Binding** Flexiback
**Age Range** 0-5 years
**Author** Eva Wong Nava
**Illustrator** Eleonora Marton
**Extent** 48pp
**Word Count** 2001 words
**Rights Available** World
Ancient Love Stories
A striking collection of love stories from ancient history.
- Final contents - Sappho (ancient Greek), Nebuchadnezzar II and Amytis (Babylonian), The Sacred Band of Thebes (ancient Greek), Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun (Chinese), Mark Antony and Cleopatra (ancient Rome), The Lovers of Pompeii (ancient Rome), Hadrian and Antinous (ancient Rome), Eloise and Abelard (French), Frances Howard and Robert Carr (English), Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal (Indian), The Sanchos (USA)
- Written by award-winning classicist and author, Emily Hauser.
- Featuring a range of true stories from around the world, discover the astonishing lengths humankind have gone to in the name of love.
- A list of Sander’s publishers: US - Penguin Random House; Germany - Knesebeck Von Dem GmbH
Automotive celebrates the ingenuity and usability of cars, trucks and motorbikes past, present and future.
- Sample contents: Steam and Electric Automobiles, Early Engines, Monte Carlo Rally, Mass Production, Motorways, Motorbikes, Isle of Man TT, Daytona 500, Concept Cars, History of Formula One, Iconic Bridges, Trucks and Road Trains, Monster Truck Races, Hot Rods, Drag Races, Special Cars, Cars in War, The Future of the Automobile
- The follow-up title to the stunning *Locomotive*
- Perfect for car lovers of all ages
- Super cool artwork by award-winning artist Ryo Takemasa
Aviation celebrates the ingenuity of aeroplanes, biplanes, monoplanes and helicopters past, present and future.
- The third title in this beautifully illustrated series about vehicles
- Sample contents: Ancient Aviation; The Wright Flyer; How Planes Fly; The Spirit of St. Louis; Airships; War in the Air; The Spitfire; Unsung Heroines; Airports and Aerodromes; Sea Planes; Concorde; Light Aircraft; Air Force Once; Jets and Rockets; Weird Planes; Vertical Take Off and Helicopters; Cargo Planes; The Future of Flight; Record Breakers
- Perfect for plane lovers of all ages.
- Cover treatments: Uncoated and 100% foil.
- Celebrating 10 Years of Extraordinary Illustrated Books
Myths, Mummies and Magic in Ancient Egypt
A vivid and contemporary retelling of the ancient Egyptian myths - now available in paperback.
- The myths are broken up with a series of ‘theme’ spreads, which take a broader look at certain aspects of Egyptian mythology (mythical beasts and monsters, the pharaohs, gods etc.)
- Striking artwork by renowned illustrator and comic artist Núria Tamarit (75k followers on Instagram)
- Mythology is an evergreen subject with strong backlist potential
- Growing demand for graphic novels and comic books for children
Myths, Mummies and Magic in Ancient Egypt
THE CREATION STORY
A creation myth is a story about how the universe was created. Ancient Egyptians believed that the gods created the world from nothing. They believed that the gods were all-powerful and that they could create anything they wanted.
MYTHICAL MONSTERS AND CREATURES
The ancient Egyptians tried to use gods, creatures and monsters to explain things that they didn’t understand. They believed that these creatures had the power to control the weather, the sea and the land.
CLEOPATRA
Cleopatra was the last Pharaoh of Egypt. She ruled for 21 years and was known for her beauty and intelligence. She was also a skilled politician and was able to keep Egypt safe from invasion.
A MYTHIC MAP OF ANCIENT EGYPT
The ancient Egyptians lived in the Nile Valley. The landscape was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt was in the south, and Lower Egypt was in the north. The Nile River flowed through both regions, providing water for irrigation and transportation. The ancient Egyptians believed that the Nile River was sacred and that it was the source of life.
Pub Date: 02/01/2025
Pub Price: £10.99
ISBN: 9781835870068
H x W: 297 x 216mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 7-9 years
Author: Stephen Davies
Illustrator: Núria Tamarit
Extent: 64pp
Rights Available: World
Celebrate the achievements made in medical engineering and take a glimpse into the future.
- Winner of the 2024 SLA Information Book Award Judges’ Choice Category 8-12
- As told by UK Sepsis Ambassador Patrick TJ Kane
- Phenomenal artwork by highly acclaimed artist Samuel Rodriguez
- The first of its kind - a book that celebrates the history of medical implantables and prosthetics
- The forefront of diversity - featuring stories from celebrities and people around the world
**INTRODUCTION**
Imagine a world where all children are played with bionic limbs, have their own personal robot and can hear through implants. This is not science fiction; it is already happening today. In the past few years, medical research has made incredible progress in the field of bionics, which means to have or work on parts, and people have suffered from injuries that would have been fatal just a few decades ago. This book will take you on a journey into the world of bionics, where you will learn about the latest developments and how they could change your life.
**THE FIRST PROSTHESES**
For as long as humans have been around, we have been missing limbs from accidents, illness or war. The first prostheses were made by a carpenter named Hanno, who had his right leg amputated after being wounded in battle. He used a wooden peg to replace his missing limb. Later, Hanno’s son continued to use the peg, but he also added a metal socket to make it more comfortable. This was the first known prosthesis, and it was made over 2000 years ago!
**BIONIC LIMBS AND IMPLANTABLE DEVICES**
A prosthesis can be internal or external to the body. The ways in which people can replace parts of their body can largely be broken down into two groups: bionic limbs and implantable devices.
**Implantable devices** is a broad term describing anything that is surgically implanted inside the body. Because surgery is required to gain access, these devices cannot easily be removed, and are typically designed to stay inside the body forever. Examples of these include pacemakers and cochlear implants.
**Bionic Limbs** are artificial body parts, which are intended to replace the function of a human body part, such as an arm or a leg. These are attached to the body, usually via a belt, strap or socket, and can be easily taken on and off by their wearer.
If either a bionic limb or an implant has batteries that need to be changed, they are called ‘active’. Those that do not are called ‘passive’. Some implants, such as cochlear implants, have a battery that is placed outside the body and attach to the implant via a wire, so the user does not need surgery every time the battery runs out (see pages 28–29).
**COUNT GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN**
In 1476, Count Götz von Berlichingen was shot in the face by an arrow while hunting. The arrow went through his cheek, broke his jaw and entered his neck. He survived, but his face was disfigured. To hide his scars, he wore a mask made of leather and metal. This mask was so effective that it earned him the nickname ‘Götz the Iron Face’.
**WHAT IS BIONIC?**
Bionic refers to the transfer of technology between artificial objects and living organisms. It comes from the Greek word βίος (bios), meaning ‘life’, and the Latin word ικνευμα (ikneuma), meaning ‘imitation’ or ‘copy’. The first bionic device was created in 1958 by Dr. Charles Jennings, who developed a heart pacemaker for a patient named James Hall. Since then, bionics has become an important area of research, with many scientists working on developing new technologies that can help people with disabilities.
Art is Everywhere
A playful introduction to art history.
- Growing demand for children’s art books that aren’t biography or activity
- Fresh, inspiring take on a strong topic
- Highly accessible angle - discusses ideas and techniques that can be applied to art anywhere and everywhere
- Author is a knowledgeable art historian with a witty, unique tone, and years of experience with leading art workshops for children
- Both UK and international sales have seen demand for more ‘art’ titles. A great opportunity for us to show support for suffering creative arts scene and fill a gap on our list.
- Subjects covered – Why Do we Make Art?, Brush Strokes, Patterns, The Power of Colour, Art Can be Anything, Symbols
Love Is...
A beautifully illustrated mini gift book celebrating love in all its forms.
- A beautiful mini picture book that brings poetry and nature together in the most stunning of ways, perfect for gifting
- Promotes emotional awareness, empathy, and love in all its different forms
- Cover: graining with gold foil
- Sarah's bold, expressive artwork captures a creature's characteristics or the forces of nature in just a few swoops of ink, bringing each page to vivid life
- Sarah was selected as an It's Nice That Graduate in 2011 and her most recent work includes illustrations for the Natural History Museum's 2018 Whales exhibition.
- *Sometimes I feel* won the 2021 ALCS Educational Writers' Award
Love is...
But sometimes love sings a quieter song, soft as the evening chorus, but no less strong.
Love is PLAYFUL, like meerkats rolling in the dust.
But love can be serious too... looking out for each other, when times are tough.
Love is DARING, like a bear cub exploring the world for the first time.
| Pub Date | 05/01/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £5.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800782259 |
| H x W | 169 x 132mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Lily Murray |
| Illustrator | Sarah Maycock |
| Extent | 48pp |
| Word Count | 250 words |
| Rights Available | World |
There are Mammals Everywhere
An illustrated introduction to mammals.
- A combined quantity of over 100,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022) has sold for Britta’s *There Are…* series
- Britta’s ‘One is Not a Pair’ series has sold 250,000 copies internationally
- Contents: There are mammals everywhere; It’s a mammal! So what is that that?; Mammals have been around for ages; Where do mammals live?; The savannah; Staying alive; Feeding; Moving (elephant spotlight spread); Mammal parents; Mali elephants; Birds and people
- The colourful exploration of mammals follows on from Britta Teckentrup’s *There are Fish Everywhere*, *There are Bugs Everywhere*, *There are Reptiles Everywhere* and *There are Birds Everywhere*.
There are Mammals Everywhere
WHERE DO MAMMALS LIVE?
Nearly all species of mammals live on land – about 97 per cent of them. However, there are groups of mammals that spend most, or all, of their lives in water. These include porpoises, whales and dolphins. Other groups of mammals are superb swimmers and spend lots of time in the water, but choose to stay on land when they give birth or raise their young.
WHALES AND DOLPHINS
Whales are perfectly adapted to life in the ocean. They have smooth skin and tiny hairs called bristles that help them swim through the water. They have flippers instead of arms and a large, strong blowhole on the top of their heads.
BEAVERS
Beavers belong to a group of mammals called rodents that have a pair of strong front teeth. They use these teeth to gnaw trees and branches and to build dams across rivers and streams in the middle of a pond or slow-flowing river.
TUNDRA
The tundra is near the Arctic, a cold flat area with very little vegetation. It’s a difficult place to live because the ground inside your feet is so soft and cold. Musk oxen have thick fur coats to keep them warm and they struggle up to each other to get the benefit of some��s body heat!
FORESTS
Tropical forests are packed with tall trees that bloom all year round, providing plenty of fruit for one mammal in particular: the orang-utan (or orang-utan) that climbs the branches, using their strong arms to swing from tree to tree, following the fruit as it ripens.
CAVES
Many species of bats gather together in caves to hibernate safely during winter. They nest during the day by hanging upside-down from the cave roof with their tails wrapped around them. Bats can hibernate more than five million bats!
DESERTS
Deserts are very dry places that experience extreme temperatures. Bactrian camels store fat under their skin and eat as much as fat as they need to survive. They grow extra thick fur coats in winter and shed it for the hot summer months.
MAMMALS HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR AGES
Mammals have been around for ages. The first mammals evolved over 200 million years ago, long before dinosaurs. They were small, furry animals that lived in the trees. Over millions of years, mammals evolved into many different shapes and sizes. Some became big and strong, like elephants and rhinos. Others became small and fast, like mice and rabbits. Some mammals even learned to fly, like bats and pterosaurs.
WHY ARE MAMMALS UNIQUE?
Two main features set mammals apart from other animals. First, mammals have hair or fur covering their bodies. This helps them keep warm and cool, depending on the season. Second, mammals give birth to live young. This means that mammals can take care of their babies until they are old enough to look after themselves. Other animals lay eggs, which hatch into baby animals that look like miniature versions of their parents.
Pub Date 24/11/2022
Pub Price £12.99
ISBN 9781787419940
H × W 300 × 235mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Camilla De La Bedoyere
Illustrator Britta Teckentrup
Extent 32pp
Word Count 4000 words
Rights Available World
There are Birds Everywhere
Explore the world of birds in a sumptuously illustrated non-fiction book
- Contents includes bird anatomy, habitats, flight, feeding, hunting, courtship, migration, and the relationship between birds and humans.
- Britta’s *There Are…* series has sold a combined quantity of over 100,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Lush and colourful illustrations to immerse young readers in the natural world
- Lively text and use of search-and-find element make these books informative and interactive.
- Britta’s ‘One is Not a Pair’ series has sold 250,000 copies internationally
There are Reptiles Everywhere
An illustrated introduction to reptiles, now in paperback.
- The colourful exploration of reptiles follows on from Britta Teckentrup’s *There are Fish Everywhere* and *There are Bugs Everywhere*
- Lush and colourful illustrations to immerse young readers in the natural world
- Lively text and use of search-and-find element make these books informative and interactive.
- Britta’s ‘One is Not a Pair’ series has sold 250,000 copies internationally
Our Time on Earth
This book about animal life cycles is a celebration of creatures big and small.
- WINNER of the Association for Science Education Award 2022
- Sample contents: Mayfly; Honey Bee; Monarch Butterfly; Opossum; Etruscan Shrew; Giant Pacific Octopus; Axolotl; Trapdoor Spider; Grizzly Bear; Brandt’s Bat; Orangutan; Laysan Albatross; African Elephant; Saltwater Crocodiles; American Lobster; Galapagos Giant Tortoise; Bowhead Whale; Greenland Shark; Immortal Jellyfish
- Consulted by wildlife cameraman and producer Fredi Devas, who has worked on David Attenborough’s One Planet: Seven Worlds BBC series.
- Discover creatures who are born within a day of their mothers, or others who stay infantile for almost one hundred years.
September and October sees the hatching of the fourth generation. These monarchs are different from those that have come before. They will live for six to eight months, and in that time they will make the incredible, 4,800km journey all the way back to Mexico. For a human, that is the equivalent of travelling twice around the world.
The monarchs use thermal (patches of warm, rising air) and air currents to help them on their journey, flying by day, and roosting together at night in trees. Each morning they head out in the sun to warm their wings, before beginning on their journey once more.
When they reach Mexico, they gather in huge clusters at the oaks in the trees and sleep till spring.
| Pub Date | 09/06/2022 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £15.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787417083 |
| H x W | 300 x 235mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 9-11 years |
| Author | Lily Murray |
| Illustrator | Jesse Hodgson |
| Extent | 64pp |
| Word Count | 12000 words |
| Rights Available| World |
101 Dogs
Gorgeous canines of every shape, size and colour bound through this book – all 101 of them!
• The perfect gift for dog lovers big and small
• Beautiful cover treatments including foil and ribbon
• Humorous and engaging text written by dog expert Nicola Jane Swinney
What Do You See When You Look At A Tree?
Immerse yourself in this gentle picture book that encourages us to explore our connection with nature, now in paperback.
• Now available in beautiful paperback - with printed interior cover, flaps and 100% foil.
• In association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• Critically acclaimed picture book by Greenaway and Flugge-nominated artist, Emma Carlisle
What Do You See When You Look At a Tree?
Point and notice the trees all around you. Look at their shapes, sizes and colours. Trees are all different, special, unique… just like the trees long before.
Is this tree more like any other? Do any of these trees look the same?
Do they have branches, leaves and a trunk? Are each of the trees special in some way?
Does it lean on its friends? Does it swing down low? Does it have branches perfect for climbing?
Or does it stand proud on a faraway hill, waiting for the sun to start shining?
Pub Date 19/01/2023
Pub Price £8.99
ISBN 9781800784383
H x W 300 x 235mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Emma Carlisle
Illustrator Emma Carlisle
Extent 40pp
Word Count 800 words
Rights Available World
Time Runs Like A River
This lyrical picture book by award-winning artist Emma Carlisle explores the passage of time and change through the metaphor of a river, combining beautiful illustrations and themes of mindfulness.
• Winner of the Award of Excellence in Literature for Children from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries
Time runs past like a river.
The seconds drip by like drops.
Each minute trickles, an hour ripples,
But time never slows down and stops.
| Pub Date | 03/07/2025 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £8.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800785953 |
| H x W | 300 x 235mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | Emma Carlisle |
| Illustrator | Emma Carlisle |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 1812 words |
| Freight On Board | 01/05/2025 |
| Rights Available | World |
Welcome to the Arts: Dance
TIMES BEST CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF 2023!
• The first title in the new dazzling new Welcome to the Arts series.
• The perfect gift for anyone who is a fan of Strictly Come Dancing or Dancing With the Stars
• Phenomenal immersive artwork by multi award-winning artist, Jason Raish
• Expertly written, lively text by Sadler’s Wells CEO, Sir Alistair Spalding
• Published in conjunction with Sadler’s Wells Theatre - one of the world’s leading dance organisations
• Beautiful large format artwork makes the reader feel they are really there
Welcome to the Arts: Dance
Morris Dancing
A group of English people who dance in a circle and perform a set of steps in a regular rhythm. Morris dancing is one of the oldest forms of folk dancing in Britain, with evidence of its existence dating back to the 14th century.
The dancers wear brightly coloured costumes and carry sticks or bells. The dance is usually performed on special occasions such as May Day or St George's Day.
Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
Martha Graham
Born in 1894 in Pennsylvania, Martha Graham showed an early interest in dance, but her parents did not approve of her becoming a dancer. It was only after her father’s death in 1914 that she was able to pursue her passion for dance. She studied at the Denishawn School of Modern Dance in Los Angeles. The eventual pioneer and creator of modern dance, Graham allowed all women to participate in her performances, which was revolutionary at the time.
Graham created a dance technique that allowed the performers to become aware of their bodies and how they move. She used the principle of contraction and release, allowing dancers to appear weightless. Graham also worked on the principle of ‘contraction and release’. In her technique, dancers contract their muscles and then release them, allowing the tension in the muscles and during the spine. The flow of energy is then released from the body when it straightens out. This technique allowed dancers to create more complex movements, often resulting in slow but with more exaggerated movements. It was used in many of Graham’s greatest movements, including the solo dance *Lament* and larger group works such as *Chroma*. Her style still influences today’s modern dance and contemporary choreographers.
The main themes of Graham’s work include Greek mythology and American history. Works such as *Appalachian Spring*, *Letter to the World*, and *Diversion Ballet* were created by Graham, prompting her to explore new themes. For example, the staged work *Appalachian Spring* (1944) was inspired by the American landscape and the lives of the people who lived there. By presenting ideas and images that were unfamiliar, Graham introduced a new era in dance. She also collaborated with other artists, including composer Aaron Copland, painter Hans Hofmann, and dancer Doris Humphrey. She taught actors including Lisa Minnelli and Gregory Peck and inspired future dance greats, such as Merce Cunningham (see page 30) and Twyla Tharp.
New Shows!
Martha Graham stars in *Lamentation*, presented by JUNO FRIDAY at Maurice Béjart’s Theatre, New York City | Choreographed by Martha Graham | Music by Edgard Varèse
Uncredited, unless otherwise stated, this book is for the Dance of Service and is a Supplement with please be gathered by Alistair Spalding. The contents of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission of the publisher except for personal use. All rights reserved.
Explore a hospital with 30+ flaps
- New spin-off series of the bestselling LITTLE EXPLORERS novelty non-fiction series, which has sold more than 1.25 MILLION copies worldwide
- This series explores familiar places we go. Future titles will explore a Fire Station and Airport.
- More than 30 sturdy flaps to lift
- Fun, child-friendly artwork with a diverse range of people
- Introduces new concepts and vocabulary in a simple and accessible way
- Ideal for the littlest book lovers as well as those starting to read independently
- CONTENTS: Welcome to the Hospital; Arriving; Outpatient Department; Emergency!; Broken Bones (Radiology); Staying in Hospital (children’s ward); Having an Operation; Having a Baby; Lots of Jobs (other jobs in the hospital)
Explore a building site with 30+ flaps
- New spin-off series of the bestselling novelty non-fiction LITTLE EXPLORERS, which have sold more than 1.25 MILLION copies worldwide
- This series explores familiar places we go. Future titles will explore a Fire Station and Airport.
- More than 30 sturdy flaps to lift
- Fun, child-friendly artwork with a diverse range of people
- Introduces new concepts and vocabulary in a simple and accessible way
- Ideal for the littlest book lovers as well as those starting to read independently
- CONTENTS: Welcome to the Building Site; Preparing to Build; Building New Homes; Heat, Power and Water; A New Road; Building A Tower; Amazing Machines; Tidy-Up Time
Little Explorers: Let’s Go! Building Site
A BUSY BUILDING SITE
New houses, schools and skyscrapers are made on a building site. It takes a team of people to put a new building together. These workers are getting started on a new job and there is lots to do.
Bright and early
Workers arrive at the building site early in the morning ready for the rest of the day.
Dressed for the job
The building site can be very dirty. A hard hat and tough boots protect you from falling objects. A bright hi-vis jacket makes them easy to spot.
Useful tools
Workers carry some tools in their tool belt and some in a toolbox.
Muddy boots
The building site can get very muddy! Workers can clean up their boots at a boot wash station.
KED OUT!
A building site can be dangerous. There are big machines going around and deep holes in the ground. Signs and high-fences keep people out.
Office work
This is the site office where the workers in charge keep the build on track.
Pub Date 27/04/2023
Pub Price £10.99
ISBN 9781800782181
H x W 220 x 200mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Catherine Ard
Illustrator Ben Whitehouse
Extent 16pp
Rights Available World
Explore the lovingly kept journal of a lost adventurer.
- Special 20th Anniversary Edition of the bestselling *Egyptology*
- Packed with curious details, letters, trinkets and fold-outs this interactive book will have readers of all ages exploring its pages for hidden treasures
- A thrilling adventure story packed with true non-fiction material, guaranteed to excite and educate in equal measure
- The Ology series has sold over 18 million copies worldwide
- Cover: printed on foil paper, embossing, gold foil & inset jewels
This book imparts to readers the secrets of the ancient science of dragonology …
- Full of novelty items such as letters, booklets of riddles and spells, dragon scales, dragon wing membranes, library cards, gems, and dragon analysis cards.
- The Ology series has sold over 18 million copies worldwide
- An exciting mix of facts, stories, and activities, sure to foster an enthusiasm in young readers to engage with their books
- Cover: Faux leather cover with silver foil, encrusted with three dragon gems.
**Dragonology: New 20th Anniversary Edition**
**Pub Date** 20/07/2023
**Pub Price** £25.00
**ISBN** 9781800787087
**H x W** 300 x 254mm
**Binding** Hardback
**Age Range** 9-11 years
**Author** Dugald Steer
**Illustrator** Wayne Anderson, Helen Ward, Douglas Carrel
**Extent** 30pp
**Rights Available** World
---
**Chapter III.**
**The Natural History of Dragons. Dragon Biology & Physiology**
Most species of dragons are reptiles and share many features of this animal type, such as egg-laying, although they also have some unique characteristics that set them apart from other reptiles. For example, some dragons can breathe fire, while others can speak with amazing speed from their mouths. However, not all dragons have mastered fire-breathing, and it seems likely that it is only the oldest, most experienced dragons who have developed this skill.
---
**Differences Between Eastern & Western Dragons**
By comparing this Chinese dragon skull with the Western dragon skull on page 16, we can see the essential shape of eastern and western species can be seen.
---
**Dragonology**
Dragons have the best eyesight of any animal in the world, and their eyes can see in the dark. This means that they can see in the dark, but they cannot see in the light. Dragons have excellent hearing, and they can hear sounds from very far away.
---
**Flight**
Dragons can fly for miles at a time without stopping to rest. They can also fly for hours at a time without getting tired. Dragons have strong wings, which allow them to fly for long distances.
---
**Feeding & Digestion**
Digestion in birds is straightforward. In dragons, it is more complicated. Dragons have a stomach that is small enough to eat. A dragon's food must be soft and easy to swallow. Dragons can eat raw meat, cooked meat, or even bones. Dragons can also eat fish, insects, and other animals.
---
**Wings**
In this section, we will learn how the wings of dragons work. We will also learn about the different types of wings that dragons have, including the large wings of the great dragon, the small wings of the little dragon, and the tiny wings of the tiny dragon.
---
**Scales**
The hard scales on dragons' bodies are capable of revealing secret messages, and can be used to tell special stories using symbols.
---
**Claws**
Many of America's largest birds have long, sharp claws, and dragons must be careful to avoid breaking their own claws when they land.
---
**Bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/books/9781800787087**
Little Explorers: Science
A fun, novelty introduction to science.
- Over 30 flaps included
- A new title in the successful and long-running Little Explorers series which has sold over 1.25 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- An easy first introduction to the fundamental areas of science, perfect for a child starting school
- Contents includes: biology, chemistry, Earth science, physics, space, periodic table, energy and forces, inventions
**Little Explorers: Science**
**What is Science?**
Science helps us to learn about the world and find answers to our questions about it. There are lots of types of science. Each one looks at a different part of the world around us.
- **Biology**
Biology studies things that are alive.
- **Chemistry**
Chemistry studies chemicals and what they do.
- **Earth Science**
Earth science studies the planet we live on, including the land, climate and atmosphere.
- **Physics**
Physics studies energy, forces and what things are made of.
**All kinds of science!**
Each scientific area has its own special name. Here are just a few of them.
**What is a scientist?**
Scientists are people who study science. They come up with new ideas, then test them with experiments to discover new information. Some scientists work in laboratories, but others work outdoors. A few scientists even work in space!
**What’s the big idea?**
An idea is something that scientists want to test. It is called a hypothesis. Scientists don’t make guesses. They use things they already know or can see called observations, to help them come up with their hypothesis.
**Step by step**
Scientists work very carefully to avoid making mistakes. They often carry out an experiment several times, following the same steps.
**What is data?**
Data is the word scientists use for the information they collect when they do an experiment. The data might be measurements, or things that they have noticed.
**DID YOU KNOW?**
Some examples of different plants and animals are shown here. Scientists study all sorts of living things, not just plants and animals. For example, they also study fungi, which aren’t plants, and microorganisms, which are too small to see without a microscope.
**BURSTING WITH LIFE!**
There are millions of different plants and animals in the world. Scientists study all of them. They look at how they live, what they eat, where they live, and how they grow. They also study how plants and animals change over time.
**CELESTIAL ANIMALS**
Don’t forget to look up at the stars!
- **Terrestrial**
Animals that live on land.
- **Aquatic**
Animals that live in water.
- **Aerial**
Animals that fly.
**What is this scientist doing?**
Scientists ask questions and try to answer them. They do this by carrying out experiments. They use their results to help them understand more about the world around them.
**What is this scientist doing?**
Scientists ask questions and try to answer them. They do this by carrying out experiments. They use their results to help them understand more about the world around them.
---
**Pub Date:** 05/01/2023
**Pub Price:** £10.99
**ISBN:** 9781800782587
**H x W:** 220 x 200mm
**Binding:** Board Book
**Age Range:** 5-7 years
**Author:** Dynamo Ltd.
**Illustrator:** Dynamo Ltd.
**Extent:** 16pp
**Word Count:** 1500 words
**Rights Available:** World
[bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/books/9781800782587]
A fun, novelty intro to maths.
- Over 30 flaps included
- A new title in the successful and long-running Little Explorers series which has sold over 1.25 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- An easy first introduction to the fundamental areas of maths, perfect for a child starting school
- Supports the KS1 core curriculum with topics including: numerals, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, measurements, shapes and probability
Little Explorers: Maths
ALL KINDS OF NUMBERS!
Odd and even numbers
- Odd numbers end in 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9.
- Even numbers end in 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8.
Negative and positive numbers
- Negative numbers are less than zero.
- Positive numbers are greater than zero.
Fractions
- A fraction is a part of a whole.
- The top number (numerator) shows how many parts we have.
- The bottom number (denominator) shows how many parts the whole is divided into.
A WHOLE WORLD OF MATHS!
We use maths every day in lots of different ways. Often, we don’t even realise that we are using it! Can you spot different uses of maths? Can you spot them in this scene?
WHAT CAN NUMBERS DO?
Pirate Grid!
The map to the treasure is on the grid below. The numbers on the grid tell you which square to go to next. The first number tells you how far to move along the row. The second number tells you how far to move down the column. You can find the treasure by following the clues.
Numbers can tell us how hot or cold it is.
Maths helps to keep us safe.
Maths can help with stacking these boxes so they don’t topple over.
Maths can help us to buy the right amount of things.
Maths helps us to make choices.
Signs with numbers on give information to help us make choices.
Maths helps us to be on time.
We can tell the time using the clock.
Today it is a sunny 25 °C.
Pub Date 05/01/2023
Pub Price £10.99
ISBN 9781800782570
H × W 220 × 200mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Dynamo Ltd.
Illustrator Dynamo Ltd.
Extent 16pp
Word Count 1500 words
Rights Available World
Discover Pop-up Prehistoric Animals
- *Prehistoric Pets* (2020) was shortlisted for ASE Book of the Year 2021.
- Features 7 wild animals and their fascinating animal ancestors
- CONTENTS: Dragonfly / *Meganeura* 305-299 mya (before dinosaurs!); Great White Shark / *Megalodon* 16-3.6 mya ago; African elephant / Woolly Mammoth 400,000-4,000 ya; American Alligator / *Deinosuchus* 82-75 mya; Emperor penguin / *Icadytes* 36 mya; Sloth / *Megatherium* 100,000-10,000 ya; Blue whale / *Pakicetus* 50-45 mya
- Dean is a palaeontologist, as well as a science communicator, author of *Dinosaurs of the British Isles* and expert presenter on ITV’s *Dinosaur Britain*. He has discovered 6 new species, including a Velociraptor-like dinosaur.
- Fold-out pages reveal pop-up prehistoric animals that ‘jump’ out of the page
Prehistoric Beasts
African Elephant
Next door to the African bush elephant, Nil colo de elephant, lives the smaller forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis. The elephant family is called Loxodonta, which means 'elephant' in Greek.
MAMMUTHUS
Mammuthus was a large elephant that lived during the Ice Age. It had long tusks and a thick layer of fat under its skin to keep it warm. Mammuthus was one of the last of the woolly mammoths to go extinct.
INJURY RECOVERY
In 2014, scientists discovered a fossil of a baby mammoth with a broken tusk. The baby mammoth was only about 3 months old when it died. Scientists think the baby mammoth may have been attacked by a predator or fell into a hole.
IT'S AMY!
In 2016, a 50,000-year-old woolly mammoth was found frozen in the Siberian permafrost. It's named Amy after the author's daughter. Amy was the first baby mammoth to be found in the author's lifetime.
SMALL TUSK
Mammuthus had two tusks, but they were not as big as those of the African elephant. The tusks were used for digging and fighting.
A TOT ON THE GO!
Mammuthus was a fast runner and could run up to 30 miles per hour. It had long legs and a short neck. Its ears were small and round, like those of a dog.
Fossil File
- **TAXONOMY**
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Class: Mammalia
- Order: Proboscidea
- Family: Elephantidae
- Genus: Mammuthus
- Species: Mammuthus primigenius
- **FOSSIL FILE**
- **AGE:** 10,000 years ago
- **LOCATION:** Siberia, Russia
- **DISCOVERED BY:** Paleontologist
- **DESCRIPTION:** Woolly mammoth with long tusks and thick fur
- **FACTS**
- **SIZE:** 12 feet tall at the shoulder
- **WEIGHT:** 10 tons
- **DIET:** Herbivore
- **LIFESPAN:** 30-40 years
- **EXTINCT?** Yes
- **REASONS FOR EXTINCTION?**
- Climate change
- Human hunting
- **OTHER INTERESTING FACTS:**
- Mammuthus had a thick layer of fat under its skin to keep it warm.
- Mammuthus had long tusks and a short neck.
- Mammuthus was one of the last of the woolly mammoths to go extinct.
Pub Date: 02/03/2023
Pub Price: £16.99
ISBN: 9781800782099
H x W: 250 x 250mm
Binding: Hardback
Age Range: 7-9 years
Author: Dean Lomax
Illustrator: Mike Love
Extent: 16pp
Word Count: 5000 words
Rights Available: World
Welcome to the world of Leaflings, the secret guardians of the trees.
• Contents: Introduction; Meetings with Leaflings; Ireland - HOLLY; Japan - CHERRY BLOSSOM; Ecuador - Kapok; Britain - OAK; Tree Talk - Wood Wide Web; Green Streets - City Trees; Madagascar - BAOBAB; Sweet Chestnut - Central Europe; US - Giant Redwood; India - Peepul; China - Huangshan Pine; New Zealand - Kauri; Australia - Red River Gum; Conclusion; Children, Trees, Leaflings
• Illustrated by Niamh Sharkey, former Children’s Laureate of Ireland author and illustrator of I’m a Happy Hugglewug, executive producer of the TV series Henry Hugglewug.
• A picture book format with 8 stuck-on flaps inside.
A paper-cut book about the body
- Vibrant paper-cut artwork by award-winning British artist Gail Armstrong
- Deep die-cuts and integrated flaps on every spread provide a unique interactive look at the human body
- A fact-packed text reveals fascinating facts about the human body
- Striking cover design with a large die-cut through the cover and title page
- The Paper World series has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide
- Book 4 Paper World: Oceans coming 2024
- CONTENTS: Organs & Systems; Skeleton & Muscles; Heart & Lungs; Digestive System; Digestive Organs; The Senses; The Brain; Reproductive System; Growth of a Baby; Glossary
- Fact-checked by Dr Jennifer Paxton of the University of Edinburgh
Paper World: Human Body
| Pub Date | 16/02/2023 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £16.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800782365 |
| H x W | 330 x 225mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Ruth Symons|
| Illustrator | Gail Armstrong |
| Extent | 30pp |
| Word Count | 5500 words |
| Rights Available | World |
A one-of-a-kind paper-cut book where space comes to life!
- Also in the series: *Paper World Planet Earth*, published 2019
- Vibrant paper-cut artwork by award-winning British artist Gail Armstrong
- Deep die-cuts and integrated flaps on every spread, with an incredible double-gatefold for the Solar System
- A fact-packed text reveals fascinating facts about space
- Contents: Looking at space; The Solar System; The Sun; The Moon; Comets and Asteroids; Stars; Galaxies; The Big Bang; Space Station; Mars Living; Glossary
- Striking cover design with a large die-cut through the cover and title page
Paper World: Space
Pub Date 17/09/2020
Pub Price £16.99
ISBN 9781787415768
H × W 330 × 225mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Gail Armstrong
Extent 26pp
Word Count 5500 words
Rights Available World
A one-of-a-kind paper-cut book where geography comes to life!
- Fantastic flaps and paper cuts offer a 3-D look at our planet
- Vibrant paper-cut artwork by Italian studio Bomboland
- Deep die-cuts and integrated flaps on every spread, and a large die-cut through the cover
Paper World: Planet Earth
Our planet’s green-blue surface is a patchwork of continents and oceans. The land we live on is made up of a thin layer of rock called the crust. If you were to lift this off, you would find even more layers beneath it, leading you all the way to the centre of the Earth.
Just above the crust is a very thick layer called the mantle. Here, the rock is hot and soft, and can flow a bit like a liquid. Sometimes it even bursts through the crust at volcanoes. Beneath that is the core – a solid ball of iron and nickel. And beneath that, you finally reach Earth’s centre – its inner core. This is a solid ball of iron, hotter than the surface of the Sun (5,000°C), but is under so much pressure that it is completely solid!
Atmosphere
Our atmosphere is a blanket of gases around Earth. It contains oxygen, which we need to breathe, and protects us from the Sun’s harmful rays.
Mid-ocean ridge
The mid-ocean ridge running down the Atlantic Ocean was formed by movements inside Earth’s crust.
Earth’s crust
Can you guess what part of the land is the thinnest? The crust may be just 30m thick – that’s less than the height of Big Ben!
A moving piece
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean a huge slab of Earth’s crust is moving. The whole area is very seismically active.
Pub Date 21/02/2019
Pub Price £15.99
ISBN 9781787410411
H x W 330 x 225mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Bomboland
Extent 30pp
Word Count 5500 words
Rights Available World
A one-of-a-kind paper-cut book all about our planet’s oceans
- The Paper World series has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Contents: Water World; The Shore; Mangroves; Kelp Forest; Coral Reef; Ocean Zones; Ocean Depths; Polar Waters; Tides and Waves; Humans and the Ocean
- Vibrant paper-cut artwork by award-winning British artist Gail Armstrong
- Deep die-cuts and integrated flaps on every spread, with an incredible double-gatefold for the coral reef
- A fact-packed text reveals fascinating facts about the ocean - fact-checked by marine biologist Dr Helen Scales
- Striking cover design with a large die-cut through the cover and title page
Paper World: Ocean
Pub Date 29/02/2024
Pub Price £16.99
ISBN 9781800783317
H × W 330 × 225mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Gail Armstrong
Extent 30pp
Word Count 5500 words
Rights Available World
Molly and the Mathematical Mystery
Find the clues and lift the flaps on this mathematical mystery
• An interactive maths adventure with a narrative feel – think ‘The Crystal Maze’ with maths
• With flaps and wheels throughout, and further non-fiction information at the back of the book
• Written by eminent British-American mathematician Eugenia Cheng, the book explores Key Stage 2 mathematics in visual and creative ways.
• Illustrated by Aleksandra Artymowska, illustrator of bestselling Around the World in 80 Puzzles and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: A Puzzle Adventure. Ola’s puzzle books have sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.
• Molly sets out to encourage curiosity and creativity in a subject often dismissed as dull and difficult.
Molly and the Mathematical Mystery
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS...
This is Molly. She’s an ordinary girl with an ordinary bedroom. But look, what’s that on the floor?
It’s a note with Molly’s name on it. How strange! She picks it up and starts to read. It’s an invitation to do something extraordinary. But what? And why? What the note is asking her to do? Let’s give it a try…
Molly opens the window and imagines pushing her room right through it. She takes a deep breath and her voice gets louder and louder. Suddenly Molly is swept up into the room beyond and everything becomes a blur…
Push open the window to follow Molly on her adventure.
Turning inside out
Can you imagine turning a room inside out like Kurt Vonnegut did in his book Cat’s Cradle?
Think about holding a sock for once that’s real sock to see how it feels. Now imagine the sock has a hole in it. Now try to push the material through the round opening. Now imagine the sock is a room. Can you imagine it to be more? Turning your bedroom inside out doesn’t seem so impossible now, does it? After all, isn’t that what this is all about? All about.
Pub Date 15/10/2020
Pub Price £16.99
ISBN 9781787415683
H x W 305 x 248mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Eugenia Cheng
Illustrator Aleksandra Artymowska
Extent 30pp
Word Count 4000 words
Rights Available World
This beautiful lift-the-flap book lets children explore small worlds in nature close-up.
- A nature series illustrated by Lara Hawthorne, author and illustrator of *The Night Flower* and *Alba the Hundred Year Old Fish*
- A hands-on exploration of how small areas in the natural world act as habitats to a wide range of plant and animal life.
- Part of a two book series which includes *Small Worlds Earth* and *Small Worlds Water.*
- More than 70 flaps inside
- Lara Hawthorne was nominated for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Award and shortlisted the AOI’s World Illustration Award for *The Night Flower.*
ALPINE MEADOW
The meadow, sitting on a high mountain meadow in the Swiss Alps in southern Europe, Even a small area of the meadow is full of life. Flowers and long grass, low trees and shrubs.
GRAND CANYON RIM
The rim of the canyon overlooks the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA. The high rims, or cliffs, of the canyon are where most of the animals live. The canyon experiences warm dry and cold wet seasons.
LEAF LITTER
The leaf litter on a forest floor is a busy small world. In this North American forest, the many animals hide from predators and find food amongst fallen leaves.
Pub Date 01/10/2020
Pub Price £12.99
ISBN 9781787415638
H x W 260 x 236mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Camilla De La Bedoyere
Illustrator Lara Hawthorne
Extent 18pp
Word Count 2500 words
Rights Available World
This beautiful lift-the-flap book lets children explore small worlds in nature close-up.
- A nature series illustrated by Lara Hawthorne, author and illustrator of *The Night Flower* and *Alba the Hundred Year Old Fish*.
- A hands-on exploration of how small areas in the natural world act as habitats to a wide range of plant and animal life.
- Flaps integrated with artwork and Lara Hawthorne’s immersive illustrations give young readers a sense of exploring nature close-up and hands-on.
- Part of a two-book series which includes *Small Worlds Earth* and *Small Worlds Water*.
- More than 80 flaps inside
MANGROVE TREE
Mangroves are trees that grow along tropical coasts. The warm, salty water they live in is so salty it actually kills most plants. But mangroves provide a home for many incredible habitats. In Florida, USA, the mangrove swamps are home to more than 100 marine species, including fish, turtles and amphibians.
WATERHOLE
A waterhole in Australia’s Outback is a vital moist spot during the dry season. But strong sun and predators dried out swallows in the fields. Large areas of arid young flat land are covered with salt. The waterhole is a rare oasis that provides a safe haven for animals. It also attracts birds and insects that come to the waterhole, bringing an explosion of life.
CORAL REEF CLEANING STATION
The coral reefs of the Red Sea, located off the coast of Egypt, are home to thousands of different species. Fish, crabs and shrimp gather at a place known as a cleaning station. Their customers come from all over the area to get their scales and skin removed by the cleaner fish.
ROCK POOL
As the tide goes out, it leaves behind pools of sea water trapped in gaps between the rocks. Each rock pool has its own unique treasure trove of plants and animals.
A rock pool may look safe, but it’s a harsh world – battered by waves and heated by the sun.
Pub Date: 01/10/2020
Pub Price: £12.99
ISBN: 9781787415621
H x W: 260 x 236mm
Binding: Board Book
Age Range: 5-7 years
Author: Lily Murray
Illustrator: Lara Hawthorne
Extent: 18pp
Word Count: 2500 words
Rights Available: World
The Incredible Pop-up Mummy
A pop-up guide to Ancient Egyptian mummies
- Incredible paper-engineering - with flaps to lift on every page and three complex multi-layered pop-ups (The Great Pyramid; Tutankhamun’s Death Mask; Tutankhamun’s Tomb)
- A beautiful non-fiction novelty title to mark the centenary of Howard Carter’s opening the tomb of Tutankhamun.
- Made in consultation with expert Egyptologist Stephanie Boonstra, Collections Manager at The Egypt Exploration Society and Managing Editor of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.
- Illustrated by award-winning Vietnamese illustration duo Quang and Lien
- Cover finish: gold foil + spot UV
The Incredible Pop-up Mummy
Glossary
A collection of words and terms used in the book, with definitions.
Cartouche
A cartouche is an oval or rectangular shape with a gap. The top shape can be decorated with hieroglyphs, some occur in the form of a ring or oval.
Coffin
A coffin is a container for the body of a dead person. It is usually made of wood and lined with linen or cloth.
Death Mask
A death mask is a cast of the face of a deceased person. It is usually made of plaster or wax and is used to create a likeness of the person.
Mummy
A mummy is a preserved human body that has been dried out and wrapped in bandages. It is usually found in ancient Egyptian tombs.
Pub Date 13/10/2022
Pub Price £25.00
ISBN 9781800781412
H x W 320 x 240mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Moira Butterfield
Illustrator Phung Nguyen Quang & Huynh Thi Kim Lien
Extent 16pp
Word Count 4500 words
Rights Available World
Talking History
150 years of world-changing speeches
• An accessible look at political and social history, and issues that remain pertinent today
• Contemporary design and illustrations from André Ducci accompany engaging text
• Authors are experienced children’s writers and academics with expert knowledge on the topics discussed. In 2021, Joan Haig was selected as one of prestigious Scottish Book Trust’s authors in residence, working with a school in Aberdeen
• Sample contents: Abraham Lincoln, ‘The Gettysburg Address’, 1863; Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘A Tryst with Destiny’, 1947; Nelson Mandela, ‘Speech from the Dock’, 1964; Harvey Milk, ‘The Hope Speech’, 1978; Angela Merkel, ‘Address to 68th Session of the WHO’, 2015 and Severn Cullis-Suzuki, ‘Listen to the Children’, 1992,
Over 2500 years of incredible ideas from some of the world’s greatest minds.
• Contents
1. Looking for answers in a time of war (Confucius)
2. The illusion of motion (Zeno of Elea)
3. The Socratics (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)
4. Being a bridge (Ibn Rusdh/Averroës)
5. The man who thought in a cave (Zera Yacob)
6. The age of reason (Rene Descartes, Jeremy Bentham, Mary Wollstonecraft)
7. To change the world (Karl Marx)
8. Experiments with Truth (Gandhi)
9. The existence of nothing (Nishida Kitaro)
10. We are the symbol makers (Susanne Langer)
11. The trolley problem (Philippa Foot)
12. African philosophy (Henry Odera Oruka)
13. People of the long white cloud (Maori philosophy)
14. Animals and us (Mary Midgley)
15. An accident at the crossroads (Kimberlé Crenshaw Williams)
Zeno was born around 490-487 BC in Elea, a city in Magna Graecia – a Greek-speaking area of southern Italy. Little is known about his life and there are no surviving records of any of his own writing since and nothing details about him are sparse. But we do know that his ideas about the nature of motion were revolutionary.
**THE ELEATIC SCHOOL**
Zeno was also home to one of the most influential philosophers of the time, Zeno of Elea. Although little is known about his life, some sources suggest he was an important person in the city even helping to write its laws. He is best known for his paradoxes which challenged our understanding of space and time. In fact, he showed that motion and experience often yield different conclusions, which led to the development of modern physics.
**MONISM**
Philosophers of the Eleatic school believed everything was connected. Zeno’s ideas state that the world around us must be made of something single, homogeneous, and eternal. If this is true, then reality is real – or it cannot be divided into parts. This idea of monism was later developed into more complex theories, such as atomism, which states that matter is made up of indivisible units, and no longer the same as water.
**PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY**
When Zeno was around forty years old he and his friend Parmenides travelled to Athens. There they met a young man called Xenophanes who was teaching at the Academy of Plato. It was here that Zeno first heard the teachings of the Presocratic philosopher Leucippus. Xenophanes was teaching young from the age of seven, and he was very popular. He used his philosophy to challenge the beliefs of the ancient Greeks. His ideas were so powerful that they were later adopted by other philosophers. Today, Zeno’s work is considered as Presocratic – that is, it predates Socrates. The Presocratics were the first philosophers to develop a systematic way of thinking. Their philosophy originated with the teachings of Thales, who taught that all things come from water. This book explores the lives and works of these great thinkers.
---
**Pub Date**
14/09/2023
**Pub Price**
£16.99
**ISBN**
9781800783539
**H × W**
280 × 216mm
**Binding**
Hardback
**Age Range**
9-11 years
**Author**
Joan Dritsas Haig
Joan Lennon
**Illustrator**
André Ducci
**Extent**
80pp
**Word Count**
20000 words
**Rights Available**
World
My First Book of Weather
A bright first book about the weather
- *My First Book of Nature*, the first title in the series, has sold over 60,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Comprised of four clear sections
- Sample contents: What is weather? Up in the air/The sun/The wind; What’s the weather today? Land and sea/Nature’s weather warnings/A storm is on the way; World Weather Cold Earth/Warm Earth/Climates; Extreme Weather Wild Weather Events/Hot and cold/Weird weather
- Includes a search-and-find element to look for in every scene and 4 tear-out wipe-clean spotting cards, with writing and drawing activities
- Consulted and *endorsed* by the Royal Meteorological Society
- Illustrated by Taiwanese artist Cinyee Chiu – bold, bright, fun and appealing to early readers
Explore the wonders of the cosmos in this gorgeously illustrated first guide to space.
- Split into four clear sections for guided reading and learning about the topic
- Charming illustrations by award-winning illustrator Aaron Cushley (won the SLA Information Book Award 2021 for *How Many Mice Make an Elephant*)
- Large format for lap-time reading, with busy pages to pore over again and again
- Includes a search-and-find element featuring a shooting star on every page
- *My First Book of Nature* has sold over 64,000 copies worldwide (as of September 2023)
My First Book of Space
THE BIG BANG
The Big Bang happened in a tiny space. It started to stretch and expand into something much, much bigger. This is called the Big Bang.
SOLAR SYSTEM
The Solar System is made up of the Sun at its centre, eight planets that travel around the Sun, and thousands of moons, asteroids and meteors.
EARTH AND MOON
Earth is the third planet from the Sun. It is the only place we know where there is life on Earth. The Moon is Earth’s closest neighbour. It is the only other place we have visited.
THE UNIVERSE
Space is enormous! It starts way above Earth’s surface, about 100 kilometres up. Planets, stars, asteroids and comets are some of the things found in outer space.
Everything in space is called the Universe. It was formed about 13.8 billion years ago.
The Solar System has nine planets, including Earth. It formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is one of the most famous space agencies in the world.
Scientists use how far light travels in one year – a light-year – to measure distances in space. One light-year is about 9.5 trillion kilometres.
Sure what we’ve seen, the Universe is 93 billion light-years across.
Pub Date: 01/02/2024
Pub Price: £9.99
ISBN: 9781800784741
H x W: 338 x 230mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 5-7 years
Author: Camilla De La Bedoyere
Illustrator: Aaron Cushley
Extent: 64pp
Word Count: 8000 words
Rights Available: World
The World’s First Rollercoaster
Amazing inventions stories in comic-book form by Blue Peter Award-winner Mike Barfield.
• An irresistible way into science and technology with a dash of history from the brilliant Mike Barfield, author of *A Day in the Life of a Poo*, *a Gnu and You*, winner of the 2021 Blue Peter Award for a Book With Facts. Mike’s books have sold in over 40 territories.
• Featuring the greatest inventions in architecture, travel, the home, food, fashion, toys, sports, technology and more, this book is packed with facts for curious minds. Includes tops tips on sending in a patent and profiles of young inventors alongside greats such as Diebedo Kere, Bertha Benz, Percy Spencer, Momofuku Ando, Kano Jigoro and Jawed Karim.
The World’s First Rollercoaster
| Pub Date | 11/04/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £10.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800783720 |
| H x W | 280 x 215mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Mike Barfield |
| Illustrator | Franziska Höllbacher |
| Extent | 96pp |
| Word Count | 7000 words |
| Rights Available | World |
80 inventions from around the world
- A fun and accessible look at history and STEM with ties to the curriculum
- Written by emerging author Matt Ralphs, who has titles published with Nosy Crow, DK and Flying Eye
- Exciting talent Robbie Cathro has worked for clients including Aquila Magazine, Natural History Museum and Kingfisher.
- A travel theme inspired by postcards and travel posters gives this book a fun and engaging aesthetic
- Expertly checked by science writer Anne Rooney
**Wheel**
“The revolutionary design that makes the world go round”
Can you imagine a world without wheels? Apart from planes and ships, there would be no vehicles—no carts, cars, bikes, buses, trucks, or trains. The wheel was invented in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. It was first used to make two-wheeled, horse-drawn carts with solid wooden wheels. They were invented in Mesopotamia because the region had plenty of trees for making wood and stone for the wheel. These carts carried cargo to market and heavy loads, such as stone and clay. The wheel was so useful that it didn’t take long to invent some next. In about 2900 BCE, chariot wheels were spoked rather than solid, which made them lighter and therefore easier to pull and fight. The wheel may be one of the simplest inventions ever created, but without it our world would be completely different.
**Potter’s Wheel**
The very first wheels were used to make pottery. The art of pottery has been around for thousands of years. Originally, potters used their hands to shape clay into pots. This took a long time. The Mesopotamians invented a better method in about 3500 BCE. They used a potter’s wheel, which was a paddle balanced on a stick called an “axle,” which could be spun by hand. As the paddle turned, the clay on top of it would spin too. A potter could shape the clay quickly into pots. We don’t know who invented the potter’s wheel, but the potter’s wheel led to the invention of the vehicle wheel.
**Internet**
“The world at your fingertips”
The invention of the Internet—a network of computers that “spoke” to each other—was a concentrated effort in the United States during the 1960s. The first computer networks were built in the early 1960s during the Cold War (1947–1991), a time of hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union. At that time, computers had when computers were the size of an entire room. This is why the Internet was created as a communication system that couldn’t be easily destroyed. To do this, they created ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network): a series of linked computers located in different locations, which allowed information to be relayed along telephone lines. The first message was sent in 1969. It read only one word: LOREN, but only the “L” and the “R” were typed before the network crashed. By the end of 1969, the four computers were connected to ARPANET. It took years to create the “network of networks” that allows computers to transfer data and information. In the late 1990s this network grew into the global Internet, which connects billions of devices. Today, whatever you want to know, wherever you are, with just a few clicks, you can find it online. Social media sites allow people all over the world to connect, share news, consume films, television shows, music and video games, and even talk to each other.
**World Wide Web**
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a gateway to the Internet. It’s made up of search engines like Google and Safari, the blogs and websites we visit every day, and the videos and websites that appear on our screens. It was invented by a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while working at CERN, a science research laboratory in Switzerland. The web is not just for scientists and academics; everyone, not just scientists and academics.
An exploration of rivers with fold-out pages
• A stunning look at geography, exploring the physical features of rivers, the unique wildlife they support and how they have shaped human history.
• Featuring 6 mighty rivers from around the world, one from each continent
• CONTENTS: A World of Rivers; Where do rivers get their water?; Source; Heading Downhill; Waterfalls; Underground Rivers; Gorges; Rapids; Dams; The Danube; Around the Bend; River Life; River Highway; The Ganges; Making Lakes; The Amazon; River City; The Murray; Extraordinary Rivers; Floating Islands of the Sudd; The Nile; Deltas; Estuaries; The Mississippi; Mangroves; Salmon Run
• Includes fold-out pages throughout
• Cover treatment: matt lam + spot UV + 5th colour
Gorges: The Grand Canyon
The most famous gorge in the world, the Grand Canyon winds its way through the semi-deserts of the Southwestern United States. It is 600 metres deep and over 400 kilometres long. It sprawls across the Colorado Plateau, a chunk of the Great Basin Desert area (so it’s the ‘Basin’), which means the ‘mountain turned upside down’. But the Colorado is no great Mississippi or Amazon. It is only 100 metres wide on average as it passes between the canyon’s rock walls. So how did it cut so deeply into the earth?
Gorges are formed by waterfalls eroding back swiftly, caves collapsing or by the slow but relentless erosion through rock, and this takes time. Six million years in the case of the Grand Canyon!
The sedimentary rock that the Colorado River has carved through is made up of sand and mud that was once at the bottom of an ancient sea. The sea receded higher up the same earth, increasing the height of the land to form the nearby Rocky Mountains.
For most of the year the Colorado finally reaches the sea beneath the White Sands desert, but this doesn’t happen when snow in the Rockies melt and swell the volume of the river to many times its usual size.
In the past, before people built dams across the Colorado, nearly 40 times as much water flowed through the canyon. During these floods, the force of these floods washed fossils from the surrounding mountainside where the river meets the sea over 500 kilometres away.
Swirling currents can create rocks, called eddies, that produce circular hollows called potholes in the riverbed.
Rock layers of the Grand Canyon
Laying 500,000 tons of tiny broken rock each year, the waters of the Colorado are responsible for the eroded canyons and the towering valley sides.
Water erosion has worn and softens sandstone, the rock which has created the Grand Canyon’s distinctive shape.
“A PERFECT HELL OF WAVES”
The Colorado River was first explored in 1869 by a group of men led by geologist Colonel John Wesley Powell. They set out with minimal tools, and knowing what they would discover. Over three months, they travelled through hundreds of rapids, one of which they also lost all their equipment. After one of the boats was wrecked by a storm, three of the team deserted to take their chances in the desert. But they survived, and he drew astonishing local maps. Through the canyon Powell became famous, and because of his achievements, Powell took another expedition down the Colorado in 1871, taking cameras and equipment to map the river’s course.
Meet the adventurers who have tried, failed and succeeded against the odds!
- Alastair Humphrey’s *Great Adventurers* won the Stanford Travel and Teach Primary Book awards and has sold over 45,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Sample contents: Junko Tabei, Juanita Harrison, Ffyona Campbell, Bernard Moitessier, Goran Kropp, Terry Fox, Matthew Henson, Frank Wild, Joe Simpson, Jack Swigert, Jeanne Baret, Robert Smalls, Zheng He, Emile Leray, Karen Darke, Beth French and Marianne Du Toit.
- Author Alastair Humphreys - National Geographic Adventurer of the Year 2012 - has hand-selected 20 inspiring adventurers and retold their stories in his own words
**ROBERT SMALLS**
Robert Smalls was born into slavery in 19th-century America, deep in the South. He was desperate for his family to escape to a better life. But the outbreak of the American Civil War seemed certain to end his hopes of freedom and safety.
At 17, Robert got married and was desperate to buy his family’s freedom, but for every $3 he earned as an enslaved man, he had to spend $2 to keep a single dollar. This made it impossible for him to save enough money to buy his family’s freedom. Robert was trapped, as his people had been for centuries, and he knew that if he wanted to be free, he would have to come up with a spectacular plan.
In 1862, Robert was forced into service on a transport ship for the Confederate Army called the CSS Planter, one of the most powerful warships along the coast. The ship was led by Captain Healy, with two other white officers and a crew of enslaved Black men.
The Captain always wore a wide-brimmed straw hat to protect his head from the bright southern sun. This gave Robert the first glimmering of an idea.
---
**JEANNE BARET**
Jeanne Baret was a young woman who loved sailing and exploring. She was determined to become a sailor, even though it was not common for women to do so at the time. In 1766, she set sail on a French expedition to the Pacific Ocean, disguised as a man named Jean-Baptiste. She worked hard and proved herself to be an excellent navigator and scientist. Her contributions to the expedition were invaluable, and she became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.
---
**JUNKO Tabei**
Junko Tabei was the first woman to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. She was born in Japan and grew up loving the outdoors. At the age of 20, she began climbing mountains and eventually set her sights on the summit of Everest. After years of training and preparation, she finally reached the top in 1975. Her achievement inspired many women around the world to pursue their own dreams of adventure and exploration.
---
**DREAMS OF FREEDOM**
The American Civil War began in 1861 between the Southern States (the Confederacy) who wanted to remain part of the United States and the Northern States (the Union), who did not.
---
**Pub Date** | **20/07/2023**
---|---
**Pub Price** | **£16.99**
**ISBN** | **9781787410169**
**H x W** | **280 x 216mm**
**Binding** | **Hardback**
**Age Range** | **9-11 years**
**Author** | **Alastair Humphreys**
**Illustrator** | **Pola Mai**
**Extent** | **96pp**
**Word Count** | **20000 words**
**Rights Available** | **World**
Day and Night
A narrative non-fiction story of a day on Earth
- Sample contents: TWILIGHT Mule deer and mountain lion (North America); DAWN Spiders weaving webs (Australia); EARLY MORNING Hummingbirds & sweat bees (Mexico); LATE MORNING Andean condor (South America); NOON Cicadas (Western Europe); EARLY AFTERNOON Caracal, python (Africa); EARLY EVENING coral reef (Fiji); DUSK Moonflowers & sphinx moth (South Asia)
- Glow-in-the-dark ink on the nighttime pages
- This book can be read as a gentle story at bedtime or to learn more about the world
- Cover treatment: matt lam + spot UV + glow-in-the-dark-ink (cover and nighttime pages)
Day and Night
A Guide to Day and Night
Dawn
Before the sun has risen above the horizon, the sky lightens. This time of day is also known as twilight.
Sunrise
The sun rises higher, eventually coming up over the horizon line, warming the air.
Daytime
The period between sunrise and sunset, when the sun peeks up over the horizon line but doesn’t set completely in the sky. It is warmer than at night and there is more food around, but animals are more vulnerable to predators in the light.
Animals and plants that are active in daytime are called CIRCADIAN.
Sunset
The sun sinks below the horizon line, ending the light and warmth to fade.
Dusk
The sun ceases even rising, leaving only darkness to see now. The sky grows darker but there is still some trace of light. This time of day is also known as twilight.
DIURNAL animals and plants prepare to rest for the night.
Animals and plants that are active during dusk and dawn are called CREpuscular.
Night
The period between dusk and sunrise is called night. The air is cool and more humid than during the day around at night but under the cover of darkness animals can avoid getting caught by predators.
Animals that are active at night are called NOCTURNAL.
Pub Date 27/04/2023
Pub Price £12.99
ISBN 9781787419346
H x W 300 x 235mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Lela Nargi
Illustrator Xuan Le
Extent 48pp
Word Count 3000 words
Rights Available World
Weather, Camera, Action!
A new take on a weather book – through the lens of a weather presenter
- Sample contents: Jet Streams; Worldwide Winds; Tropical Winds; Air Masses; Atlantic Hurricanes; Thunderstorms; Rarest Clouds; Precipitation; Lightning; Rainbows; Heat Waves; Winter’s Wrath; Wind Chill; Humidity; Dust Storms; Dust Devils; Weather Bombs; Satellites; Air Pollution; Climate Change
- Written by expert meteorologist Liam Dutton; a bold, striking tour of our weather, guided by his lived experience of being a weather presenter
- Weather from a truly global perspective, showcasing phenomena from every continent on Earth
Weather, Camera, Action!
**JET STREAMS**
AN ATMOSPHERIC SUPERHIGHWAY
Sparks of electrically charged bright light that flash across the sky – some striking the ground and others remaining in the air. Lightning is both fascinating and scary at the same time. Whilst it has the ability to momentarily burn right into your skin, it can be deadly and damaging if it hits an object on the ground.
Lightning is caused by the collision of air particles with each other. This results in a build-up of electrical charges, which creates negative charges. The ground and the top of the cloud end up with a positive charge.
Eventually, the negative and positive charges become so strong that they create a spark of electricity. This spark is a huge spark of lightning that travels through the air, striking the ground, tall objects or other objects.
**WIND**
STIRRING THE AIR
Wind is the movement of air from high pressure areas to low pressure areas. It is caused by differences in temperature and air pressure.
**PRECIPITATION**
WATERING OUR PLANET
The precipitation may be caused by clouds in the sky. As clouds form, a mixture of water droplets and ice crystals fall from the sky. When these droplets and ice crystals collide, they merge together to form larger drops and ice crystals. These larger drops and ice crystals continue to fall until they reach the surface of the earth.
**LIGHTNING**
A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM
Gone in a Flash
A lightning strike travels at 200,000 miles per second (320,000 kilometres per hour). That means it would take just 40 seconds for a bolt of lightning from London to New York, London to Sydney, London to Cape Town and so on.
Thundering Past
As lightning travels through the air, it makes a loud boom. This causes the air to vibrate, creating sound waves to be created, which is what we hear as thunder.
First Light
Light travels much faster than sound. Therefore, it takes only 1/5th of a second for lightning to be seen and heard. The first lightning flash is called the leader, which travels to hit the thunder.
Blasting the Tree
When lightning strikes a tree, it is often destroyed. If the lightning strikes the ground, it can cause a spark inside the tree, causing it to explode. This often causes the bark of the tree to peel off, leaving the wood inside to split.
Hot Shot
The actual heat released from lightning is not intense enough to cause a temperature change. However, the heat generated is enough to melt the surface of the sun.
Striking the Hour
On average, there are almost four million lightning strikes on Earth every single day. That’s about 100 strikes per second, or 44 strikes per second!
**BOLTS AND BURST**
Sometimes, clouds produce rain as well. When they erupt, there is a sudden release of water and dust into the sky. Sometimes, the electrical charge happens in the same way as lightning – but it’s much more powerful, resulting in a huge explosion of water and dust.
**Pub Date** 29/09/2022
**Pub Price** £16.99
**ISBN** 9781787418844
**H x W** 300 x 235mm
**Binding** Hardback
**Age Range** 9-11 years
**Author** Liam Dutton
**Illustrator** Giordano Poloni
**Extent** 80pp
**Word Count** 15000 words
**Rights Available** World
What a Wonderful World
Explore our planet, meet the Earth Shakers
• Selected for Books for Topics.
• 35 stories from Earth Shakers all around the world, most interviewed by Leisa herself
• Foreword by Lee Durrell MBE, of Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
• Written by exciting new children’s author, Leisa Stewart-Sharpe, who wrote the BBC’s children’s book companion to Blue Planet II
• Practical tips and handy resources for how to make positive changes, big and small
• Joyously illustrated by fresh talent Lydia Hill
• 8 chapters: Mountains, Rainforests, Temperate Forests, Grasslands, Freshwater, Deserts, Oceans and Ice Worlds
Tell Me About: The Human Body
Big science for little readers
- The first in a brand-new series of non-fiction books for readers 4+.
- Written in friendly and engaging language by science educator and CBeebies writer, Emily Dodd.
- Vibrant, eye-catching design and playful illustrations by Chorkung
- Cover finishes: matt lam and spot UV
- CONTENTS: Brilliant body; The skin; Skeleton; Muscles, Brain; Thinking; Nervous system; Eyes; Ears; Mouth and Nose; Digestive System; Blood; Water; Pumping blood; Lungs and breathing; Immune system; Feelings; Helping your body
Tell Me About: The Human Body
Brilliant Body
So many amazing things happen in your body right now! Let’s take a look at some of it first of all.
As you breathe, oxygen has called lungs are sucking in or out depending on what you think.
Your body is made from lots of different parts that work together to keep you alive. All of these parts are called organs.
If you look at the pictures in this book, you’ll see some organs and other parts of your body. You can’t see all of them, you can see organs called the brain.
When you think or laugh or smile, your brain is working. The energy comes from the food you eat. Your blood carries oxygen, blood and oil around your body.
Tape electrical signals are telling your heart best. Your heart is pumping blood around your body.
Did you know…? The brain is bigger than a grapefruit!
The Skin
Let’s begin our tour with your skin. This stretchy waterproof layer wraps around your body and protects you by keeping your insides inside!
Your skin is full of sensory cells that help you to touch and feel. It also helps you to sweat and the tiny hairs on your skin are reacting to your skin.
Touch receptors help you to find out how hard it is press when you’re holding something so you don’t drop or break things.
Your hair and nails are made from the same thing as your skin – it’s called keratin.
Your skin feels your body too. One way it does this is by making tiny hairs called hair follicles.
When sweat drops are warmed by a hot surface they evaporate, taking the air with them away with them.
Skeleton
The thing that gives you your wonderful shape and height is a skeleton. It is made from 206 bones that get together at hinges called joints.
The spine is your biggest bone. The bones are the hard part of your skeleton where your fingers bend.
The skull protects your head too. The bones that make up your lungs and heart and your brain are all there protecting your brain.
Inside your biggest bones is a place called marrow. New blood cells are made here. They’re like little soldiers that protect you.
Ribs are full of tiny holes that let in fresh air. But they also give you strong ribs.
Strong bones mean useful muscles. If you want to run fast and jump high, you need and skeleton full of good ribs.
Muscles
Muscles are stretchy cords that pull body parts to make them move. If you wiggle your eyebrows and stick out your tongue, you did it using muscles!
Muscles can pull, but they can’t push so they need to work in teams. One muscle pulls a body part one way, and another muscle pulls it back again.
1. Bend your arm. The set of muscles at the front of your arm, called triceps, pulled it up by getting shorter.
2. Now straighten your arm. Another set of muscles at the back of your arm, called biceps, pulled your arm down to straighten it.
Cardiac muscles make your heart squish to pump blood.
Sheletal muscles help you to move parts of your body.
Smooth muscles line the tubes in your body. They help push things through the tubes.
Did you know…? Muscles help you hold in pee until you’re ready to let it go.
Pub Date 02/02/2023
Pub Price £9.99
ISBN 9781787418097
H x W 210 x 148mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Emily Dodd
Illustrator Chorkung
Extent 48pp
Word Count 4000 words
Rights Available World
Tell Me About: Plants
Big science for little readers
- The first in a brand-new series of non-fiction books for readers 4+.
- Written in friendly and engaging language by science educator and cBeebies writer, Emily Dodd.
- Vibrant, eye-catching design and playful illustrations by Chorkung.
- Partnering with Kew Gardens for the UK edition. Kew are also acting as consultants.
- Cover finishes: matt lam and spot UV
- CONTENTS: Plants are wonderful; Parts of a Plant; Flowers; Fruit; Getting Planted; Growing from a Seed; Drinking Water; Making Food from Sunlight; Leaves; Plant Families; Flowering Plants; Grasses; Trees and Seasons; Types of Tree; Plant Defences; Plant Attack!; Record Holders; Thank You Plants!; Glossary
We Are Palestinian
Celebrating all things Palestinian!
- Reem Kassis is a bestselling writer and cookbook author, popularising her cuisine with *The Palestinian Table*.
- Full-colour illustrated hardback with gloss lam finish.
- Chapters include: Geography, Cultural Symbols, Creative Minds, Agriculture, Cuisine, Performing Arts and History and Religion.
We Are Palestinian
Geography
There are so many beautiful places in Palestine, but we wanted to tell you about them all. In this section, we’re going to explore some of the most important and well-known cities that are special. Some of these cities are new in recent years, while others have large populations, and our culture is deeply rooted in their lands.
Jericho
People believe that Jericho is the oldest city in the world. It is also the lowest city on earth, sitting 258 meters below sea level. To understand what that means, picture yourself walking away from home, and head down a valley – you would have to go down about 80 flights of stairs to reach Jericho.
The name of the valley it sits in is Wadi Qelt, which itself sits in the larger Jordan Valley in the West Bank.
People have always lived in Jericho, from the age of hunter gatherers to the present day. It’s also one of the first places in the world to have agriculture, and probably water irrigation, the process of supplying water to plants, was invented. It is the kind of city you call an oasis, or a fertile land in a desert environment. Ein es-Sultan (or The Sultan’s Spring), which produces about 1,000 gallons of water per minute, is what waters the whole area.
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a history dating back over 4,000 years. It has been destroyed, captured, and rebuilt several times, and remains a very special place. There are three main religions in Jerusalem: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Dome of the Rock are all located at the heart of the city, and attract millions of visitors every year.
Did you know?
When archaeologists explored Jericho, they found remains of early settlement going back 31,000 years!
Fun Fact
More than 90,000 people visit Hisham’s Palace each year.
Gaza
Gaza is Palestinian territory that borders Israel and Egypt. It is a small strip of land, about 36 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide. It is the largest of which Palestine consists. Gaza is known for its beautiful beaches, and its rich cultural heritage.
The streets are modern, but there are still areas that cannot draw inside the city, with which you can live.
Did you know?
“Here we are about 10 million people, and we have only 36 kilometers of land. We are the 10th of the world’s most populated countries.”
Fun Fact
In Gaza, you can find art from both ancient and modern times along the walls of buildings. You can see paintings of traditional Palestinian life, like fisherman, farmers, and women working in the fields. You can also see modern art, like portraits of famous Palestinian artists.
Pub Date
02/03/2023
Pub Price
£13.99
ISBN
9781800783287
H × W
230 × 190mm
Binding
Hardback
Age Range
9-11 years
Author
Reem Kassis
Illustrator
Noha Eilouti
Extent
112pp
Word Count
15000 words
Rights Available
World
Together We Can
40 inspirational stories about teamwork
- Sample contents: Science Dark Matter (US), Marie and Pierre Curie (France) Medicine Penicillin (UK), Louis and Marie Pasteur (France), Technology Apple Inc. (US), Conservation and Rescue The Black Mamba Anti-Poaching Unit (South Africa), Politics and Activism The Magna Carta (UK), The United Nations (global) Sport The Olympic Games (global), The All Blacks (New Zealand), Culture LEGO (Denmark), BTS (Korea)
- A fully-illustrated anthology of 40 true stories about what human beings can accomplish when they work collaboratively.
- Includes stories from the fields of science, medicine, technology, conservation, politics and activism, sport and culture.
CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) is the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It is an international scientific research organization that specializes in high-energy particle physics. Thousands of scientists work on the border between France and Switzerland, collaborating with thousands of scientists from all over the world to collaborate on groundbreaking science research. Over 12,500 scientists of more than 100 nationalities collaborate at CERN.
CERN promotes the Open Science movement, which aims to make scientific research accessible to everyone. This means that all of the data from CERN authors can be accessed by anyone, and the data and software are also available.
Sharing research means that scientists all around the world can collaborate and build on each other’s discoveries.
CERN is the home of the Large Hadron Collider, which is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world. It costs around $10 billion to operate. It is a 27-km (17-mile) ring of superconducting magnets, which is big enough to circle the entire city of Geneva. It works by accelerating particles to near-light speed, then firing them at each other to create a collision of light. When the beams hit each other, they collide and the particles smash into each other and break apart, revealing a glimpse of the building blocks of matter. The Large Hadron Collider is used to study the nature of the universe, and to understand how matter is formed. It is a crucial part of the scientific community, and it has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of the universe.
The Large Hadron Collider was built to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is a subatomic particle associated with the Higgs field, which gives mass to other particles. The Large Hadron Collider is the first machine in the world where Higgs bosons can be created. Scientists had predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, but they did not have the equipment to study it until the Large Hadron Collider was built. It is a symbol of human ingenuity and a testament to the power of science. It is a symbol of the power of discovery and helps us understand not only the past, but also the future of our universe. Hundreds of scientists, engineers, and programmers worked together to build the Large Hadron Collider to make this discovery possible.
Value is one of the most important pieces of scientific research. In 2008, when the Large Hadron Collider was turned on, there was a lot of outside influence. Astronauts were sent up to the International Space Station to observe the Large Hadron Collider, and there was even a power outage in 2009 when a bird dropped a lot of spaghetti onto electrical equipment.
The Wild Verses
A striking poetry collection by Helen Mort.
- The book will be split into different sections/feelings - joy, hard times, love, loss etc.
- Tapping into the phenomenal success of books like *The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse* and *The Poetry Pharmacy*.
- An opportunity to reuse Sarah Maycock’s artwork in a new format - for an adult audience
- The perfect offering for the Christmas gift market
- Luxy cover finishes – quarter binding and foil
- With poems by award-winning Helen Mort
The Wild Verses
Safely, he remembers
Why your smile is brighter when you can run
to quiet, to offer it
the chance to shine?
Watch those orange
wings in the sunshine,
this head of rabbit
twitching like a head on
morning, always moving
as one.
The Bull
Today, you want
to sweep the world and feel
the day fall away
Send them
into the sunshine
and they will step
in peace. Fly up
your wilderness
like a bird flying.
The Peacock
If I could paint the world
I’d colour it with the light which is yellow
because for the sunshine men,
there’s no need to close their eyes,
listen for diagnosis, pink gold
for every year that flowers in darkness.
Unfold
Sometimes you want to hide
your crimson, teal and green.
Sometimes you fold.
It’s time to catch the light. Be bold.
You open the fan of yourself
and you brim with gold.
Pub Date 10/11/2022
Pub Price £16.99
ISBN 9781800784765
H x W 225 x 173mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range Adult
Author Helen Mort
Illustrator Sarah Maycock
Extent 112pp
Rights Available World
Tales of the Damned
An anthology of terrifying tales from around the world.
- Stories will be broken up with a series of ‘theme’ spreads, which will add a non-fiction element to the book. These spreads cover everything from the rise of the horror genre to famous monsters and vampire mass hysteria.
- There’s a gap in the market for striking, beautifully illustrated horror anthology.
- Contents: The Mask of Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe; Edgar Allen Poe and the Birth of Horror Literature (NF); Dracula; Vampire Mass Hysteria (NF); The Monkey’s Paw; Zombies and the Undead (NF); Red Riding Hood; The Original Dark Fairy Stories (NF); Frankenstein; Mary Shelley and the impact of Frankenstein (NF); Whistle and I’ll Come To You; Ghosts and the Victorians (NF); Baba Yaga; Witches (NF); Bluebeard; Blood and Gore (NF)
I woke up early and bravely drove the car up the steep hill out of town on to the main road.
When I arrived at the next house, they, the Count and his daughter, were waiting for me in the kitchen. The Count was a sinister-looking man with a long, thin face and a cruel smile. His daughter was a beautiful young woman with long, dark hair and bright blue eyes. She seemed scared and confused.
Finding food and supplies in the car, I decided to stay for a few days. The Count offered to help me find work, but I refused. He seemed too kind and gentle, and I didn’t want to be around him any longer.
One night, while I was sleeping, I heard strange noises coming from outside. I got out of bed and went to investigate. As I walked towards the door, I heard a loud thud and a scream. I rushed back into my room and closed the door behind me. I heard the Count’s voice outside, calling me by name. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I called out for help, but no one answered.
I lay awake all night, afraid to sleep. The next morning, I packed my bags and left the house. I never saw the Count or his daughter again.
---
Another long night with the Count in the attic and I took a deep呼吸 to try and calm myself down. I had been thinking about what to do for the rest of the night. I decided to leave the house and go to the nearest town. It was a long journey, but I knew that I would be safe there. I packed my bags and left the house, not looking back.
The next day, I arrived in the nearest town. I found a job working in a factory and lived in a small apartment. I worked hard and saved money. I also started to read books about the supernatural and the occult. I became interested in the idea of becoming a vampire.
One day, I met a man who claimed to be a vampire. He told me that he had been turned into a vampire by a witch. I was skeptical, but I decided to believe him. I started to study the ways of vampires and how to become one myself.
I began to experiment with different methods of turning into a vampire. I drank blood, ate raw meat, and slept in coffins. I also started to wear black clothes and carry a stake and a silver cross.
After several months of experimentation, I finally succeeded in turning into a vampire. I felt powerful and invincible. I began to hunt other vampires and humans alike.
I continued to live a life of darkness and secrecy, never revealing my true identity. I became known as the Count of Darkness, and people feared me.
---
The Birth of a Monster
In 1897, Bram Stoker wrote a novel called "Dracula". The story is set in Transylvania, where a Count named Dracula lives in a castle. The Count is a vampire, and he has a daughter named Mina. One day, the Count invites Mina's fiancé, Jonathan Harker, to visit him in the castle. Harker is a lawyer, and he is staying in the castle to write a report about the Count's business dealings.
While Harker is in the castle, he meets the Count's daughter, Mina. Mina is a beautiful young woman, and she is very kind to Harker. She tells him about her father and his strange ways. Harker becomes interested in Mina and wants to get to know her better.
One night, while Harker is in the castle, he hears a noise coming from the attic. He goes up to investigate and finds the Count's daughter, Mina, lying on the floor. She is unconscious, and Harker tries to wake her up. But when he touches her, he feels a cold, icy sensation. He realizes that Mina is a vampire.
Harker tries to escape the castle, but the Count追上他 and kills him. Mina then turns Harker into a vampire. Harker becomes a monster, and he starts to hunt other vampires and humans alike.
The Count and Mina continue to live in the castle, and they become more powerful over time. They turn more people into vampires, and the world becomes more dangerous. The Count and Mina become known as the most powerful vampires in the world.
---
I poke my head from the window – by God this cold nearly takes my breath! – and yell to the driver, “How much further?” He doesn’t turn or speak, just lashes his straining horse all the harder. Why this terrible hurry? Are the hounds of hell chasing us? And even as that thought enters my mind, I hear the bone-chilling howl of a wolf.
A moment later from my seat as the coach makes a full circle and comes to a rattling halt facing back the way it came. The driver hangs on the roof. “We’re here, young Herr,” he shouts, “Quaint little place.” And the moment my feet touch the ground, I feel an awful disappointment in the place I have come to.
“Where?” I ask, looking up at the evening sky. “Where am I now?”
Feeling painfully alone, I turn, case in hand, and see the answer to my question. Castle Dracula, home to the man I’ve come all this way to meet, rises jaggedly up against the moonlit head of the moonlit sky. I cross the courtyard, draw my sword, gather up my gear through the keyhole into the chains below – bang my fist on the iron-studded door and walk, teeth chattering with cold and, I’m ashamed to admit, a tinge of fear.
I gaze up at the heavy stone walls, raised battlements and lines of windows letting out not a single scrap of light and think I’m just a humble solicitor! How did I end up here?
---
Dracula
The Diary of Jonathan Harker, 6th May, 1875
I’m terrified that my journey from London to Transylvania is doomed to end with a plunge off this precarious road and down the mountain side. All I can hear are the sounds of the horses’ hooves and the crack of the whip, which echoes in the crack of the driver’s whip. I grip my seat with white-knuckled hands as we career around another bend and mount a narrow road sloping steeply up.
The soft green woods and pretty villages of the Transylvanian foothills are for tomorrow. Night and snow falls on the Sturge Plain. Overhanging branches claw the rain-lag power from between the pines, and I’ve not seen another person for hours.
---
| Pub Date | 14/09/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £20.00 |
| ISBN | 9781800781696 |
| H × W | 230 × 190mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | Adult |
| Author | Matt Ralphs |
| Illustrator | Taylor Dolan |
| Extent | 128pp |
| Word Count | 25000 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Henri and the Machine
Join Henri at the gallery and be AMAZED by the creative potential of art.
• A beautiful picture book about the nature of art and its endless creative possibilities.
• From the creator of the best-selling picture book, *Leo and the Octopus*, which has sold over 47,000 copies worldwide.
• Illustrated by an exceptional new talent Olga Shtonda, an award-winning artist from Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Henri and the Machine
Everyone seemed happy. Except for Henri.
He didn't want to go to an art gallery. He wanted to go to the beach instead. To collect seashells and to swim in the ocean.
But then there was a painting that he liked. It was all blue. The smell of blue. Blue was Henri's favourite colour.
The next day, Henri went to the art gallery with his family. He looked at all the paintings. But none of them made him feel happy.
Then he saw a painting of a machine. It was blue too. And it had lots of different parts. Henri thought it looked like a big, friendly animal.
He asked his parents if they could take him to see the machine again. They said yes.
When they got to the museum, Henri ran straight to the machine. He climbed on top of it and hugged it tight.
Everyone watched him. They thought he was crazy. But Henri didn't care. He was happy.
In 1942, the artist who painted the machine died. Henri never forgot about her. He always remembered how she made him feel.
And now, when Henri looks at paintings, he thinks about the machine. He knows that even though they look different, they can all make people feel happy.
Pub Date: 06/07/2023
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781800783751
H x W: 265 x 228mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 5-7 years
Author: Isabelle Marinov
Illustrator: Olga Shtonda
Extent: 32pp
Word Count: 529 words
Rights Available: World
A monkey counting adventure
- A stylishly clever counting adventure from surrealist author-illustrator Ximo Abadiaiaiaiaia
- Encourages counting from 1 to 100, which children learn around age 5
- The number of monkeys to spot on each page increases through the book
- High-contrast black, white and red illustrations are both stylish and engaging for young readers
- Ximo’s previous titles (including picture books Toto, 2018, and I Can’t Sleep, 2020, and the STEM series including The Speed of Starlight, 2018) have sold more than 80,000 copies worldwide.
- Cover: matt lam + spot UV
The Escape
1 monkey had to go to the living room.
A monkey went to the city.
7 monkeys went to the classroom.
1 monkey went to the park.
Pub Date: 03/08/2023
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781787419308
H x W: 250 x 250mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Ximo Abadía
Extent: 32pp
Rights Available: World
The Dream Book
A fun, wacky dreamworld adventure from a debut talent!
- With a lot of interest, Templar snapped up Bia Melo’s debut picture book after she graduated from the prestigious MA in Illustration from the Cambridge School of Art.
- Bia’s work was showcased in an exhibition at Fortnum & Mason as part of the Queen’s jubilee celebrations in 2022, as well as at the Illustrator 65 exhibition in New York and the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles Illustration West exhibition in 2023.
- Bia has already been shortlisted and awarded a number of awards including, a finalist at the Golden Pinwheel Young Illustrator awards, a new talent finalist at the World Illustration Awards and been awarded highly commended at the Macmillan Prize.
Faruq and the Wiri Wiri
A Caribbean celebration of family and food – with a spicy twist!
• A family-centred story that celebrates Caribbean culture and food by author Sophia Payne, whose distinct voice reflects her Indo-Guyanese heritage
• A picture book that challenges gender roles around cooking
• Stunning artwork from Sandhya Prabhat, an Indian illustrator based in California
• Includes a recipe for Guyanese Lime cookies!
Faruq and the Wiri Wiri
The ball bounced off the mango tree and rolled straight into the wiri wiri plants. Faruq felt around with outstretched arms.
A small voice drifted out from deep inside the bushy branches.
"What's so special about you anyway?"
"Hello Faruq, would yuh like me to show you?"
---
| Pub Date | 16/03/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800782624 |
| H x W | 265 x 228mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Sophia Payne |
| Illustrator | Sandhya Prabhat |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 1300 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Mrs Owl’s Forest School: The Moonlit Campout
A non-fiction picture book series set in a forest school.
- A perfect mix of picture book and non-fiction - ideal for curious explorers or Forest School pupils
- Forest schools are growing in popularity in the UK and internationally, and sessions are now widely incorporated into the school curriculum at primary level
- Includes kit lists, how-tos and campfire recipes you can try at home with an adult
- With a page of tips at the end for bringing forest school activities into your own home, garden or park
- Written in consultation with outstanding certified forest childcare provider Lizzie Noble
It’s a bit different to usual. She’s taking us on a campout! They’re all very excited.
“Are we there yet?” asks Fox, jumping out the gate.
“No, but it’ll take me half an hour to get everything ready,” says Mrs Owl. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The forest is dark. Don’t you dare try to do anything silly!
“Not tonight!” says Mrs Owl.
All the animals are having snacks after their long journey.
The Owl family have been home for two weeks, before that they lived in a tree.
When the evening falls, the campout is delicious!
There are lots of other ways to cook a fire. Why not try these fun campfire recipes?
**Mrs Owl’s Campfire Recipes**
| Item | Quantity |
|------------|----------|
| Firewood | 1 |
| Twigs | 3 |
| Matches | 1 |
| Pot | 1 |
| Fork | 1 |
| Bananas | 2 |
| Bread | 4 |
1. Take an empty tin and put the firewood inside.
2. Put the matches next to the firewood.
3. Light the matches and wait for the fire to start.
4. Put the bananas and bread on top of the fire.
For a campfire recipe, use the firewood and matches to make a fire. Then add the bananas and bread to the fire.
**Mrs Owl’s Guide to Night Vision**
Come and see how your eyes work in the dark! All animals can see in the dark because they have special eyes. Some animals have extra-sensitive eyes, like owls. They can see in the dark because they have special eyes. Some animals have extra-sensitive eyes, like owls. They can see in the dark because they have special eyes.
“Can we have a story now?” asks Fox, rubbing his nice full tummy.
“What a brilliant idea!” says Mrs Owl. Everyone snuggles down to listen to Mrs Owl’s tale.
But Squirrel can’t enjoy the story. Squirrel is looking anxiously at the dark. Suddenly there is a loud rustling behind them.
“EEEEEP!” squeaks Squirrel, leaping into the air!
“Hush, little one,” says Mrs Owl. “They all worked together to build a fire and cook a tasty snack and Egbert discovered this night sky is wonderful! But there’s more left for you to discover too!”
Discover forest school in this gentle story packed with facts
- A perfect mix of picture book and non-fiction - ideal for curious explorers or Forest School pupils
- Forest schools are growing in popularity in the UK and internationally, and sessions are now widely incorporated into the school curriculum at primary level
- Includes kit lists, how-tos and campfire recipes you can try at home with an adult
- With a page of tips at the end for bringing forest school activities into your own home, garden or park
- Written in consultation with outstanding certified forest childcare provider Lizzie Noble
Mrs Owl’s Forest School: The Very Big Den
"Today, we’re going to build a den!" says Mrs Owl.
"What’s a den?" says Rabbit.
"It’s a shelter, made of things we find in the forest. We’ll need wood, leaves, grass and a coil of rope."
Mrs Owl holds up some rope. "That’s one thing off our list," she smiles. "But can you help me find everything else?"
The animals set off into the woods, looking carefully at the ground around them.
What can you see on the ground? Can you see any creepy crawlies among the branches?
---
**Pub Date:** 03/08/2023
**Pub Price:** £7.99
**ISBN:** 9781800785755
**H x W:** 250 x 250mm
**Binding:** Paperback
**Age Range:** 0-5 years
**Author:** Ruth Symons
**Illustrator:** Sebastien Braun
**Extent:** 32pp
**Word Count:** 1640 words
**Rights Available:** World
What happens when the famous fixer of broken things finds a problem that she can’t solve?
- From the author and illustrator of *Number 7 Evergreen Street*, winner of the Royal Institute Of British Architects’ Student Choice & Teacher’s Choice for 5-7 year olds
- Julia Patton is an up-and-coming picture book talent in both the UK and the US. Bartleby from *The Very Very Very Long Dog* (Sourcebooks) is on the Barnes and Noble character wall of fame in the US.
- A wonderful story about sadness and how talking to a support network can help. The ‘broken thing’ Bea finds is a clockwork heart and speaking about her problems is what makes it work again.
The Fixer of Broken Things
...and not played the famous 'catch' game.
It was the biggest thing that Ben had ever been asked to fix.
But Ben and his friends bring the broken - without cement clods, which one had a tail that was half as wide.
Ben could be lucky things like Mr Babkin's clever running machine.
He could be lucky things like Mr Babkin's clever running machine.
The moment he saw it, he felt a rush of joy.
The moment he saw it, he felt a rush of joy.
Mr Babkin turned some levers and activated the cage.
Mr Babkin turned some levers and activated the cage.
Bursts from around him and made a wish.
Bursts from around him and made a wish.
Then, one evening something very unexpected happened.
Then, one evening something very unexpected happened.
Pub Date 23/02/2023
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781787418356
H x W 287 × 247mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Julia Patton
Extent 40pp
Rights Available World
The Baker by the Sea
A seaside storybook about community and family
- Atmospheric pen-and-ink artwork from debut author and illustrator Paula White. Paula was winner of the 2019 Templar Design and Illustration Awards.
- Reminiscent of the Greenaway winning Town is by the Sea (Walker, 2018).
- The story offers a window onto the past, guiding us around the Beach Village that once stood where Paula grew up, in Lowestoft, Suffolk. This busy, bustling place once made its living from the sea - but was eventually swept away by those very same waves.
- A moving exploration of the importance of community, with a strong father-son relationship at its heart.
- An artistic fishing village story which should be popular with retailers in seaside locations.
The Baker by the Sea
This is my home.
Our home, our beach village by the sea.
We have fish merchants,
and smokem that smoke the fish,
blacksmiths and boatmakers,
and a baker too.
There are cozy cafés and tiny shops that sell everything you might need.
Pub Date: 26/05/2022
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781787419186
H x W: 300 x 235mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 5-7 years
Author: Paula White
Illustrator: Paula White
Extent: 40pp
Word Count: 500 words
Rights Available: World
The Ever-changing Earth
A spell-binding journey through the evolution of planet Earth.
- Previous books from Grahame published by Templar include the Greenaway shortlisted *Leon and the Place Between*, *FArTHER* which won the Kate Greenaway medal in 2011, and the first title in this series; *The Rhythm of the Rain* which won the English 4-11 Picture Book Awards.
- *The Rhythm of the Rain* has sold over 83,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Narrative non-fiction that follows an extraordinary journey across planet Earth
- The fourth title in Grahame’s *Elements* series will be published in 2024 - *The Flickering Fires*.
The Ever-changing Earth
Kai loves dinosaurs. They rove free when Kai was little. Millions of years ago the sky buzzed with the wild bees of Pterosaur wings, and the roar of Tyrannosaurus Rex shook the mountains. In forests cool and ancient, strange birds opened beaks studded with tiny rows of teeth, filling the branches with the first birdsong.
| Pub Date | 26/10/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800782327 |
| H x W | 287 x 247mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | Grahame Baker-Smith |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Rights Available | World |
The Fawn Who Chased the Sun
A lushly illustrated storybook about savouring the miracles of the everyday.
- Lush, stylised illustrations from award-winning Vietnamese duo Quang and Lien
- A lyrical modern-day classic with the feel of a fable, delivering a gentle message about the dangers of losing sight of the things that really matter
- High production values and a beautifully foiled cover make this the perfect gift to treasure and enjoy
The Fawn Who Chased the Sun
On the first bright day of spring, the fawn was born to a family with nowhere to go. He set off on the long, winding road towards the sun.
As darkness crept in the fawn grew tired and decided to rest for the night. The fox watched him sleep and decided to take him home.
The fox grinned, "Why did you chase the sun all day? After the sun sets - where does it go?"
The fawn sighed, "Tomorrow I will find you, Sun," he said.
But he did not know where to look.
Glancing up, he spotted a row of great, green frogs, peering down at him from along the water's edge.
"Excuse me," said the fawn, "Do you know? After the sun sets - where does it go?"
"The sun lives over that hill," croaked the frogs. Then they hopped into the cool, dark pool, and the little fawn was alone.
Pub Date: 10/11/2022
Pub Price: £14.99
ISBN: 9781787410787
H x W: 320 x 190mm
Binding: Hardback
Age Range: 5-7 years
Author: Joanna McInerney
Illustrator: Phung Nguyen Quang & Huynh Thi Kim Lien
Extent: 48pp
Rights Available: World
I’m More Than A Sheep
One sheep’s farmyard odyssey.
• Our third picture book with Bethany Christou, following Nervous Nigel and Slow Samson which has sold over 34,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
• A tale of identity, self-discovery and personal potential for children discovering their interests.
• A hilarious countryside adventure with a host of familiar animals
Banana Hunt
A joyous read-aloud and laugh-out-loud rhyming romp!
- Bringing bestselling, brilliantly funny and rhyming-genius author, Suzy Senior, to the Templar list.
- This bubbly text is brought to life by Josh Cleland’s vibrant illustrations that are packed with added humour and lots of fun critters to spot!
- A light-hearted rhyming text that reads fantastically out loud, with both a group or individual child.
- Includes a hidden pink banana to spot on every spread so the reader can be part of their own banana hunt!
- Cover treatments: matt lam, SPUV and emboss.
Banana Hunt
"Hello," said Bernardo. "I've come round to play."
"Perhaps we could go on a bear hunt today," said Bernardo.
"Oh no, that's too scary!" declared Auntie Dot. "Let's find something else, something safer, to spot."
Bernardo thought harder: "On leaves or trees... or floating or sweet..."
"Bananas!" he cried. "We can have them instead."
He found a huge bunch, then he struggled away so little bears couldn't get them.
He put some in trees, and one under a rock.
Bernardo hid in a big old tree, and the bears couldn't find him.
"I'm exhausted," he said. "Let's have our whole bunch more!"
Pub Date 06/06/2024
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800784734
H x W 287 x 247mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Suzy Senior
Illustrator Josh Cleland
Extent 32pp
Word Count 600 words
Rights Available World
A Bad Day for Bear
The lovable bear is back - this time he’s having a VERY bad day indeed!
- Duncan’s Waterstones Children’s Book Prize shortlisted *The Bear Who Stared* has sold over 40,000 copies worldwide
- Children will engage with the lovable bear who is having a bad day!
- Universal theme which will strike a chord with all parents
- Illustrated with Duncan’s trademark vibrant and quirky art style
A Bad Day for Bear
Bear strode out of his cave and felt the warm sun on his face. It was a great day to be outside, but it was also a very important day. All his friends were coming and he had a very important job to do. He was in charge of building the bonfire.
Please let me off to collect some more wood.
He found a big stick that looked perfect, but when he picked it up …
He got a splinter in his paw. It hurt a lot.
The ladybird heard Bear’s cries. “Ouch, that looks sore,” said Daisy Ladybird. “You need to find some wood that isn’t so splintery.”
When all the wood was gone, they carried the logs to the clearing.
Frog helped Bear with his very important job.
Soon the campfire was lit and the party was in full swing.
“Oh dear!” he sighed. “I’ve got a splinter in my paw, a big bump on my head and now all the firewood is soaking wet too. Today really is the worst day EVER!”
Then Bear had an idea. He would go and visit his wise friend, Frog. Frog always knew how to make everything better.
He was lugging the wood towards the pond, when …
No Sleep for Bear
Bear is back in this sequel to The Bear who Stared.
- A follow-up to the bestselling Waterstones Children’s Book Prize shortlisted *The Bear Who Stared*, which has sold over 40,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Children will engage with the lovable bear who doesn’t quite get things right
- Universal theme which will strike a chord with all parents
- A funny take on hibernation, a topic which is covered in the National Curriculum
- Illustrated with Duncan’s trademark vibrant and quirky art style
- A perfect bedtime story
No Sleep for Bear
The branch was uncomfortable on Bear’s bottom. He fidgeted and he fussed until the sky turned pink.
It was morning again!
That day, Bear walked even further. He saw Badger burrowing into his sett for a snooze.
Perhaps a cozy underground burrow is what I need? thought Bear.
| Pub Date | 07/07/2022 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787419865 |
| H x W | 287 x 247mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Duncan Beedie |
| Illustrator | Duncan Beedie |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Rights Available | World |
The Midnight Panther
A stunning fable about acceptance of who you are from Greenaway-shortlisted Poonam Mistry
- Author-illustrated Poonam Mistry, was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway for both *How the Stars Came to Be* and *You’re Safe with Me*.
- Strong themes of acceptance, identity and finding the beauty in the colour you are.
- 100% foil on cover.
- Longlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration 2024.
The Midnight Panther
From behind the clouds, Sun shone down, flooding the forest with her warmth.
She beamed down brightly onto Panther. "That's better," Sun smiled as the dry leaves fell.
Shadow engulfed the forest. Panther sank into the soft earth. "I don't belong anywhere," he said.
Panther slept over and under the tangled vines and weeds. Soon he reached a dense cluster of trees.
Up in their branches was a window as far as the eye could see.
Each day they vanned back and forth. Panther was a little less keen, until one day he saw the sun rise.
And so he set off, hoping to find his home.
When the morning was just breaking, Panther looked after his mother's garden.
He saw the sun rise and they did not like the sight. "It is bright as the sun," said Lion.
"Like the moon," said Leopard.
"Like the stars," said Panther.
Pub Date 20/06/2024
Pub Price £8.99
ISBN 9781787418936
H x W 300 x 220mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Poonam Mistry
Extent 48pp
Rights Available World
A wealthy man has everything he could ever want on Earth... and now he is reaching for the moon.
- Frann Preston-Gannon is a multi-award winning illustrator and author. In 2011 she was the first UK recipient of the Sendak fellowship. Her first picture book, *The Journey Home*, won the 2012 Waterstones Prize, *I am the Seed that Grew the Tree* was the 2019 Waterstones Gift of the Year and *In the Swamp by the Light of the Moon* was Bank Street College of Education’s 2020 Best Children’s Book of the Year.
- *The Swamp in the Light of the Moon* has sold over 19,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- A captivating story with a message about the true value of things at its heart.
Many moons later that small boy was grown. He was now a tall man and was very well known. He was rich and important, he lived like a king.
He had all that he wanted except for one thing . . .
Like most little children, the boy often cried. His parents soon got tired of crying so they tried all the usual remedies. They bought him toys, giving way gifts and treats to keep the child quiet.
Mom and more things. The moon seemed high, But whatever they did he still wanted more. Then one day, one day, the moon came down and someone screamed. The boy’s parents could just keep up the screams.
They thought a new friend might help and therefore they wouldn’t play them with the key from some door.
But things did merge according to plan. “YOU’LL WIN IT AFTER” Then the fighting began.
“I’M NOT GONNA” said the grown-ups, they went once more to go, but the boy was too big to be quelled by his.
One fateful night, the boy reached a peak of excitement and he wriggled with happiness. He danced and laughed. Loudly until their ears were ringing. And all of the sudden “WHY DON’T YOU WANT WE WILL BUY IT!” the moon said.
“I want the moon,” the child has replied. “We can’t give it to you yet.” The moon said. “The answer isn’t that far away, in fact it is not far at all.”
But the boy was distraught and sat up in his night, the moon’s position hasn’t been fixed in sight.
Pub Date 21/07/2022
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781787419254
H x W 287 x 247 Portraitmm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Frann Preston-Gannon
Extent 40pp
Word Count 500 words
Rights Available World
Leo and the Octopus
A stylish, sensitive picture book focusing on Asperger’s Syndrome in a unique and humorous way.
- Gently raises awareness of Asperger’s Syndrome, featuring a friendly giant Pacific octopus and a curious child.
- Striking text by Isabelle Marinov and Chris Nixon’s humorous illustrations bring the lovable characters to life.
- “The sensitive descriptions throughout the book of what it is like to have autism are accurate and perceptive on so many levels” (Professor Tony Attwood, author of Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals)
- Over 47,000 copies sold worldwide (as of July 2022)
Leo and the Octopus
At home, Leo could talk to the octopus but he couldn’t talk to his friends. This is so weird! Maya.
Because life on the wrong planet was stressful. And boring. And lonely.
Until the day Leo met Maya.
Maya was an octopus.
“She looks like an alien,” said Leo’s mum. “We should get along.”
Leo knew everything there was to know about lots of things. But he wasn’t very good at knowing about octopuses yet.
He went to the library to find out more.
“Maya, I think I’m going to be your best friend!”
“Maybe Maya and I could become friends,” Leo thought to himself. He didn’t know much about friendship but he was determined to give it a try.
Edgar was impressed. So impressed that he had an idea. “Would you like to meet Maya?” he asked. “You can touch her if you like.”
The week after, Leo went back to the aquarium to see Maya. He told Edgar the octopus keeper everything he had learnt about octopuses.
Leo was nervous. What if Maya didn’t like him? He reached into the tank and stroked Maya’s head, just like Edgar showed him.
Pub Date 07/01/2021
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781787416550
H × W 265 × 228mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Isabelle Marinov
Illustrator Chris Nixon
Extent 32pp
Word Count 575 words
Rights Available World
Ratty’s Big Adventure
A mysterious creature from a secluded volcano crater explores the outside world for the very first time – now available in gifty paperback format.
• From the Greenaway-nominated author and illustrator of *The Night Flower*, which won the 2020 CBHL Annual Literature Award of Excellence in Children’s and Young Adult Literature and *Alba the Hundred Year Old Fish* which has sold over 59,000 copies worldwide (as of May 2024).
• Lara Hawthorne writes and illustrates some of the best narrative non-fiction on the market.
Deep in the rainforest there stands a majestic volcano. It soars high above the treetops. Undisturbed for thousands of years, its deep crater is home to many curious creatures...
| Pub Date | 02/01/2025 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £8.99 |
| ISBN | 9781835870792 |
| H x W | 280 x 216mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | Lara Hawthorne |
| Illustrator | Lara Hawthorne |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 800 words |
| Rights Available | World |
Meet the Wildlings
A hilariously relatable story about learning to share and tantrums.
- A hilarious twist on a universal theme that creatively encapsulates the emotions that come with learning to share, teamwork and kindness.
- Includes representation of a blended family.
- Humorous back matter that includes a ‘how to spot a Wildling’ checklist for all readers big and small to make use of!
- Our first book with Gwen Millward as author-illustrator, the very talented illustrator of another Templar title One Tiny Dot.
- Gwen’s second book as author-illustrator, My Friend Leafy is scheduled to publish with us in 2025.
- Cover treatments: matt lam and SPUV.
Meet the Wildlings
| Pub Date | 04/01/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787419339 |
| H x W | 265 x 228mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Gwen Millward |
| Illustrator | Gwen Millward |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 540 words |
| Rights Available | World |
One Tiny Dot
A charming exploration of the power of kindness, embodied by a simple dot.
- A distinctive and creative treatment of emotions with an important message
- A warm narrative and deceptively simple allegory of kindness and its ability to spread joy to all
- Brought to life with Gwen Millward’s stunning, bold and colourful art
They walked through the fields,
The dot led the way.
Behind them flowed KINDNESS,
throughout the whole day.
| Pub Date | 14/04/2022 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787418868 |
| H x W | 265 x 228mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | Adult |
| Author | Lucy Rowland |
| Illustrator | Gwen Millward |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Rights Available | World |
What is black and white? A word-juggling penguin called Norman.
- From the author and illustrator of the bestselling *I Say Ooh, You Say Aah*, which has sold over 160,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- John Kane is a master of interactive storytelling and child-centric humour.
- *I Say Ooh, You Say Aah* won the English Picture Book Awards 4-& category; won the Children's and Teen choice Award in the US; and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year.
What is black and white, can’t fly, likes to swim, is called Norman, is cool, fast and HUNGRY?
Norman, on a skateboard.
What is black and white, can’t fly, likes to swim, is called Norman, is cool, fast, full, tall and warm?
Norman, eating a taco, on skis, on a skateboard.
What is black and white, can’t fly, likes to swim, is called Norman, is cool, fast, full, tall, wears magic, not so dirty still showing off and is now falling?!
My penguin.
What is black and white, can’t fly, likes to swim, is called Norman and is COOL?
| Pub Date | 28/03/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800782303 |
| H x W | 260 x 260mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | John Kane |
| Extent | 32pp |
| Word Count | 320 words |
| Rights Available| World |
The Boy, the Troll and the Chalk
A touching picture book about the power of art and the imagination, brought to life by David Litchfield’s stunning illustrations.
• “A perfectly pitched, heartfelt meditation” *The Guardian* on *A Shelter for Sadness*
• Anne Booth is known for the exceptional warmth and authenticity of her writing.
• Award-winning artist David Litchfield and author Anne Booth come together again, following on from the international success of *A Shelter for Sadness*. *Shelter* was a 2022 Empathy Lab selection and has sold over 60,000 copies worldwide (as of September 2023).
• Cover treatment: matt lam, SPUV and foil.
The Boy, the Troll and the Chalk
Pub Date: 19/06/2025
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781800783065
H x W: 287 x 247mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Anne Booth
Illustrator: David Litchfield
Extent: 40pp
Word Count: 474 words
Rights Available: World
A Shelter for Sadness
A poignant and heartwarming picture book exploring the nature of sadness.
- Over 22,000 copies sold worldwide (as of July 2022)
- A poignant and heartwarming text addressing the hugely important and topical issue of sadness and depression
- Dealing with abstract emotions in an approachable and child-friendly way
- Anne Booth is known for the exceptional warmth and authenticity of her writing. She was inspired to write this book by the words of Etty Hillesum, a Holocaust victim.
- With superb illustrations from multi-award winning David Litchfield, who has sensitively visualized the nature of Sadness
A Shelter for Sadness
The shelter I will build
for my Sadness
will have light from the sun
or from the moon and stars.
But the windows will have curtains
that Sadness can draw when it wants to,
And there will be candles or lamps
if Sadness needs them.
Pub Date 24/02/2022
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800780873
H x W 287 x 247mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Anne Booth
Illustrator David Litchfield
Extent 40pp
Word Count 460 words
Rights Available World
The BEST BEAR TRACKER in the world is on the lookout! But can she find a bear?
• Emerging talent John Condon is an exciting addition to Templar’s list
• A quick witted laugh-out-loud read, with some non-fiction elements included
• Humorous and vibrant artwork that children will love
• Cover treatments: matt lam and spot UV
The Best Bear Tracker
BEAR TRACKER RULE NUMBER 2
When playing hide-and-seek, always be honest!
WHERE ARE YOU, BEAR?
BEAR TRACKER RULE NUMBER 3
Bears are always climbing trees on their tummy.
ARE YOU UP THERE, BEAR?
BEAR TRACKER RULE NUMBER 4
Bear proof isn’t real bears.
YOOHOO! ARE YOU IN HERE, BEAR?
BEAR TRACKER RULE NUMBER 5
Lure the bear out into the open!
OH, BEAAAAAR I’VE GOT A JAM SANDWICH FOR YOU!
Pub Date: 18/08/2022
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781787418073
H x W: 265 x 228mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: John Condon
Illustrator: Julia Christians
Extent: 32pp
Word Count: 400 words
Rights Available: World
A bookish family faces pirates.
- A modern pastiche of a classic tale, updated for the readers of today
- A hilarious pirate adventure showing the true treasure of books
- The original ‘Swiss Family Robinson’ is soon to be a major Disney+ series
One morning, the Robinsons decided to go on a sailing holiday. They carefully selected a selection of their books with them, but what a storm! So in the end, they had THE LOT. They loaded the books onto the boat and set sail into the middle of the ocean.
Feeling lucky to be alive, they began – with the help of a few good books – to make themselves at home.
The next morning the Robinsons found themselves – and all of their books – washed up on the shore of a desert island.
As they searched through the books, they discovered a map of the ground floor of a house on a deserted island called 'Puffin Island' that was written by a pirate.
Eventually spotted by a rather scary type of monkey, the family made their escape from the island and continued their search for books to build the Robinsons' first home on the island.
---
**Pub Date:** 03/03/2022
**Pub Price:** £6.99
**ISBN:** 9781800781313
**H x W:** 247 x 287mm
**Binding:** Paperback
**Age Range:** 5-7 years
**Author:** Jonathan Emmett
**Illustrator:** Sam Caldwell
**Extent:** 32pp
**Word Count:** 600 words
**Rights Available:** World
Sam Usher’s boy and his Grandad mend, reuse, recycle and build contraptions that take them on incredible journeys around the world!
• Following Sam’s stunning Seasons quartet, Snow (2014), Rain (2016), Sun (2017) and Storm (2018) and Nature quartet, Free (2019), Wild (2020), Lost (2021), and Found (2022), this third series follows Boy and Grandad putting their skills to the test to mend, reuse, recycle and build contraptions that take them on incredible journeys as they learn about the world around them.
• Sam Usher’s Nature quartet has sold over 44,500 copies worldwide. His Seasons quartet has sold over 201,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
When I went to bed last night, I couldn’t sleep. It was the hottest day of the year.
We plotted the intergalactic star charts, went through asteroid clouds, could it quasar …
The astronauts were very pleased to see us. “Feel lucky at our end too,” they cried.
and finally reached the planet.
But it was so exciting I couldn’t sleep.
ZOOM!
Pub Date 14/09/2023
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800786097
H x W 300 x 220mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Sam Usher
Illustrator Sam Usher
Extent 40pp
Word Count 400 words
Rights Available World
Boy and Grandad find themselves on an old steamship that takes them on an incredible adventure around the world!
• A joyful observation of a boy’s special relationship with his grandfather.
• Following Sam’s stunning Seasons and Nature quartets, this is the second title in his new series in which Boy and Grandad put their skills to the test to mend, reuse and recycle. The follow-up to intergalactic adventure, Zoom!
• Sam Usher’s Nature quartet has sold over 44,550 copies worldwide. His Seasons quartet has sold over 201,000 copies around the world.
So we bashed and clanged,
knotted and stringed,
ironed the tea towels,
and spliced the mainbrace.
At last we were ready.
| Pub Date | 12/09/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800786264 |
| H x W | 300 x 220mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Sam Usher |
| Illustrator | Sam Usher |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 600 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Boy and his grandad discover the wonder of the natural world as they search for a lost dog.
- Sam Usher’s Nature quartet has sold over 44,500 copies worldwide. His Seasons quartet has sold over 201,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
- In this second series by Sam Usher, Boy and Grandad explore the natural world in a series of encounters with animals.
- The full Nature quartet contains: Free (Boy and Grandad care for a little bird); Wild (Boy and Grandad look after a cat); Lost (Boy and Grandad search for a lost puppy); Found (Boy and Grandad free a trapped baby seal).
- A joyful observation of a boy’s special relationship with his grandfather.
- With embossing and spot-UV on cover.
I said, “Grandad, I want to do absolutely nothing all day.”
Grandad said, “We’ve just got a few errands to run . . .”
First we went to the glasses shop.
I said, “Why do you need spectacles, Grandad?”
And he said, “Because I have some very important reading to do.”
Next we went to the library.
I said, “What do you read from here, Grandad?”
And he said, “We have some very important instructions to find.”
Then we went to the tool shop.
I said, “What are we doing here, Grandad?”
And he said, “We have something very important to make!”
So we took home our important equipment.
We were ready to begin!
| Pub Date | 30/09/2021 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787419872 |
| H x W | 300 x 220mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Sam Usher |
| Illustrator | Sam Usher |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 300 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Boy and Grandad discover the wonder of the natural world as they help to free a baby seal.
- Sam Usher’s Nature quartet has sold over 44,500 copies worldwide. His Seasons quartet has sold over 201,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
- In this second series by Sam Usher, Boy and Grandad explore the natural world in a series of encounters with animals.
- The full Nature quartet contains: Free (Boy and Grandad care for a little bird); Wild (Boy and Grandad look after a cat); Lost (Boy and Grandad search for a lost puppy); Found (Boy and Grandad free a trapped baby seal).
- A joyful observation of a boy’s special relationship with his grandfather.
- Usher explores living with nature and learning to enjoy the natural world.
I said, "Grandad, we can go rock pooling,
and build the best sandcastle in the world!
And have an ice cream
And swim in the sea
And find pirate treasure."
Soon we were ready to go.
I could hear the sea
Then I could smell the sea
And then I saw it!
We found the perfect spot and set up base.
It was a long way down,
but we made it.
First we looked for some sea creatures –
and I found one!
Then we started construction . . .
We built for hours.
Pub Date 15/09/2022
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800781207
H × W 300 × 220mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Sam Usher
Illustrator Sam Usher
Extent 40pp
Word Count 400 words
Rights Available World
Boy and grandad discover the wonder of the natural world and look after a cat for a friend.
- Sam Usher’s Nature quartet has sold over 44,500 copies worldwide. His Seasons quartet has sold over 201,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
- In this new series by Sam Usher, Boy and Grandad explore the natural world in a series of encounters with animals.
- Usher explores living with nature and learning to enjoy the natural world, but letting it be FREE.
- A joyful observation of a boy’s special relationship with his grandfather.
Grandad said, "They'll be here any minute!"
And I said, "All we have to do is play with her, find her, and cuddle her! Easy!"
We said hello.
And first we tried playing with her.
But did she want to play?
I said, "Grandad, I don't think she likes me."
And he said, "It's okay, cats have a mind of their own. Why don't we try feeding her?"
So we tried to feed her.
But was she hungry?
NO!
Pub Date 23/07/2020
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781787416857
H x W 300 x 220mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Sam Usher
Illustrator Sam Usher
Extent 40pp
Word Count 300 words
Rights Available World
Boy and grandad discover the wonder of the natural world and take care of a little bird.
- Sam Usher’s Nature quartet has sold over 44,500 copies worldwide. His Seasons quartet has sold over 201,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
- In this second series by Sam Usher, Boy and Grandad explore the natural world in a series of encounters with animals.
- The full Nature quartet contains: Free (Boy and Grandad care for a little bird); Wild (Boy and Grandad look after a cat); Lost (Boy and Grandad search for a lost puppy); Found (Boy and Grandad free a trapped baby seal).
- A joyful observation of a boy’s special relationship with his grandfather.
"I said, 'Grandad, we have to do something!'
As we made him a cosy bed and Grandad found his book of bird facts.
We gave him a drink of water and Grandad said, "Let's go and get him a picnic today! Let's put some fruit in the garden for him."
I said, "OK, do we have it?"
And Grandad said, "Yes I think so. He won't want to be cooped up in here."
So we got him back outside and we thought, that's that.
It was time for breakfast so we weighed the flour, poured the milk, cracked the eggs, whisked it up...
...and flipped the pancakes.
And I said, "Grandad? Look who it is!"
"Maybe he's hungry. Can we give him some of our pancakes?"
And Grandad said, "Let's see if he likes berries instead."
So we put him by the blackberry bush, and we thought, that's that.
---
| Pub Date | 05/09/2019 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787415164 |
| H x W | 300 x 220mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Sam Usher |
| Illustrator | Sam Usher |
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 300 words |
| Rights Available| World |
A fantastically funny farmyard fiasco to read aloud!
- Taking recognisable and familiar farm animal characters to create a funny and fresh picture book for the very young.
- Featuring bold and bright illustrations from Mike Byrne, well-known for *This Book is Full of Unicorns*.
- Catherine Cawthorne is fresh to the picture book world but is already making her mark with: *We Went to Find a Woolly Mammoth* (Hachette, 2023), *We Went to Find a T.Rex* (Hachette, 2024) and *The Big Bad Wolf Investigates: Fairy Tales* (Bloomsbury, 2024).
- The light-hearted text and repeated ‘OH NO, FLO!’ refrain to join in with, makes it the perfect book to share with a group or individual child.
- Cover treatments: matt lam and SPUV.
Just the Way You Are
A heartwarming book celebrating unconditional love.
- Emma Dodd’s foiled picture book series has sold a combined total of over 1 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- A continuation of Emma Dodd’s bestselling series of foil books
- Dealing with universal themes that will resonate with every reader
- Featuring a super-cute tiger cub
- Cover treatments: matt lam & foil; 50% of pages foiled throughout
Just the Way You Are
There’s not a thing about you that I would ever change, not one hair upon your head that I would rearrange.
I love you when you’re cheerful, I love you when you’re sad.
I love you when you’re fearful and when you’re quiet and sad.
I love you when you’re grumpy, and even when you’re mad.
I’ll always be beside you so you never feel alone.
Pub Date 05/01/2023
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800781627
H x W 200 x 200mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Emma Dodd
Extent 24pp
Word Count 150 words
Rights Available World
Spread Your Wings
A heartwarming book about growing up and exploring the world around you
• A continuation of Emma Dodd’s bestselling series of foil books
• Dealing with universal themes that will resonate with every reader
• Featuring an adorable baby cockatoo
• Cover treatments: matt lam & foil; 50% of pages foiled throughout
• Sales of the foil books for UK and International now total 240,000 copies
As we cuddle here together, going at the sky,
I know that soon the day will come when you’ll spread your wings and fly.
And when the time is right,
I know that you’ll be free.
Stretch out your wings and you will see
that they are strong, like mine.
For I will be right by your side,
and with you all the way.
You’ll find me here, within your heart,
and that is where I’ll stay.
Swinging, diving, circling in the wild blue sky.
| Pub Date | 28/09/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800781764 |
| H x W | 200 x 200mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Emma Dodd |
| Illustrator | Emma Dodd |
| Extent | 24pp |
| Word Count | 150 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Aloha Albatross
A beautifully illustrated LGBTQ+ picture book celebrating the relationship between two female albatrosses.
- Lyrical text accompanied by artwork set against the dramatic backdrop of O’ahu, Hawaii.
- Based on the scientific observations of the Laysan Albatrosses of O’ahu, where up to 31% of pairs are female-female.
- Includes an information page by Dr Lindsay Young, a Wildlife Biologist who led the research into the Laysan Albatrosses.
- A celebration of same-sex parents and true love, this proud picture book publishes ahead of Pride Month (June 2023).
On the island of Oahu, the Gathering Place, live thousands of albatross albatrosses.
This is a story about three very special birds.
Anuenue and Paliile dance together for many moons, their wings light up like stars.
One bright morning, Paliile decides to leave Anuenue. Together they watch as a tiny chick appears on their egg.
Paliile has been flying over the ocean for many weeks and feels her home calling to her.
Anuenue dances by herself. She wishes she had someone to dance with, like the other albatross couples.
Just one chick opens an eye. It’s a fluffy grey head swaying.
Pub Date 25/05/2023
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800783768
H x W 250 x 250mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Francesca Dryden
Illustrator Kimberlie Clinthorne-Wong
Extent 32pp
Word Count 650 words
Rights Available World
From talented duo comes a FLAP-TASTIC garden bird adventure.
- From the creative duo behind *A Field Guide to Leaflings*.
- Niamh Sharkey is creator and executive producer of *Henry Hugglemonster* on Disney Junior and launched a new series called *Eureka!* with Disney Junior in June 2022.
- It takes a timeless theme and familiar characters to create a quirky and fresh picture book for the very young.
- Niamh’s recognisable artwork style is achieved through ink outlines and watercolour washes.
- Cover treatment: matt lam and SPUV.
Hello Bird
Topsy-turvy, Bird likes to look at things from a different point of view.
Hello Bird! You're the wrong way round!
From here, it looks like you're the one who's upside down.
Screech... Squawk... Cough!
Bird finds her voice.
I like it better when we all join in!
Oh no!
Pub Date: 14/03/2024
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781787419247
H x W: 250 x 250mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Owen Churcher
Illustrator: Niamh Sharkey
Extent: 32pp
Word Count: 250 words
Rights Available: World
I Am Feeling Shy
A reassuring picture book about feelings.
- With a die cut running throughout.
- Encourages discussion about, and normalisation of, difficult feelings for young children.
- Written by father-daughter duo, Dr Leslie Ironside and Haia Ironside - they combine their experience as psychotherapist and teacher to create this series.
- Also includes a ‘notes for carers’ spread at the back of the book, to empower adults to support the children under their care.
- Cover finish: mat lam with die-cut shape.
I Am Feeling Shy
"I have a look we could play together, or a ball. We could play outside!"
"It's a dinosaur, and it's trying to hide!"
"Are you feeling shy? That's okay! Everyone feels shy sometimes."
"I remember when I felt shy. I didn't want to go outside to play."
"My friends helped me by playing in the garden where I could see them."
"I watched them playing and I realised I wanted to play too!"
"Soon, I began to feel braver."
"One day I went out to play with them. It was so much fun!"
Pub Date 27/04/2023
Pub Price £8.99
ISBN 9781787417847
H x W 230 x 230mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Stephanie Milton Haia Ironside and Dr Leslie Ironside
Illustrator Charlie Alder
Extent 32pp
Word Count 350 words
Rights Available World
I Am Feeling Scared
A reassuring picture book about feelings.
- Encourages discussion about, and normalisation of, difficult feelings for young children.
- Written by father-daughter duo, Dr Leslie Ironside and Haia Ironside - they combine their experience as psychotherapist and teacher to create this series.
- Also includes a ‘notes for carers’ spread at the back of the book, to empower adults to support the children under their care.
- Cover finish: mat lam.
- With lift-the-flaps throughout.
"I feel scared every time I climb up high," said Monkey.
"My friend told me feeling scared helps us to stay safe. I've learned to keep my balance, but I sometimes still feel scared."
---
| Pub Date | 27/04/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £8.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787417830 |
| H x W | 230 x 230mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Stephanie Milton Haia Ironside and Dr Leslie Ironside |
| Illustrator | Charlie Alder |
| Extent | 32pp |
| Word Count | 350 words |
| Rights Available | World |
Down the Sleepy River
A calming bedtime picture book using simple mindfulness techniques.
- This beautiful, relaxing book helps to create calm bedtimes.
- Uses mindfulness techniques to bring children’s awareness to the present moment, let go of the day and settle down for a good night’s sleep.
Down the Sleepy River
Goodnight, Lion, sitting on your mountain top, the sun is setting and the darkness sets.
As the sky begins to turn pink, take a breath and let your body relax and slowly let it all melt.
Goodnight, Eagle, flying high in the golden sunset. Fly like the evening wind.
Feel the cool breeze at your face through the trees.
Breathe in, breathe out. Feel the air fill your lungs.
Goodnight, Parrot, smiling in your nest as the last of the sunlight disappears becomes.
Listen to the leaves blow gently in the breeze and the sounds of nature calm.
Breathe in, breathe out as sounds come and go.
Imagine your breath can reach to the tips of your fingers and your toes.
Goodnight, Monkey, resting safely in the tree as the daylight fades.
Breathe in, breathe out. Let the relaxing feeling flow.
Pub Date: 01/09/2022
Pub Price: £6.99
ISBN: 9781800782457
H x W: 250 x 250mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Emma Drage
Illustrator: Carmen Saldana
Extent: 32pp
Rights Available: World
Daisy’s Dragons
A delightful picture book which explores the importance of emotions.
- Frances Stickley is a former primary teacher and now full-time writer. Her debut titles Love you Always and What will you Dream of Tonight were published in 2019.
- Annabel Tempest’s illustrations bring a humour to the text, with colourful growing and shrinking dragons throughout.
- Thoughtful title which introduces children to the concept of positive and negative emotions and the importance of balance between the two.
Daisy’s Dragons
Angry got so angry that the ice-cream shop was closed, that she stomped around in circles breathing fire from her nose.
Then Scared got so afraid of all the shouty, roasty sounds, she screamed and flung her wings out knocking Brave down to the ground.
And as the noises grew louder, Sad just grew and grew until Happy was so squashed that she was almost turning blue.
Calm was sleeping soundly when she heard an angry ROOOOOGAAR! And the heat of Angry’s flames began to spread across the floor!
Daisy couldn’t bear it! Then, when she turned around...
How usually they got on in their own peculiar way, but today they decided to have a special ride to play.
And Daisy went left stack, Brave went one next, she wanted to meet up with Red Luck.
Pub Date 19/08/2021
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781787418974
H x W 250 x 250mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Frances Stickley
Illustrator Annabel Tempest
Extent 32pp
Word Count 720 words
Rights Available World
Poppy Pickle
A vibrant, lift-the-flap story about a girl with a big imagination!
• A reissue of an early title from bestselling author-illustrator Emma Yarlett (Orion and the Dark, Nibbles the Book Monster, Dragon Post).
• Now filled with lift-the-flaps that bring Poppy’s imagination to life - perfect for sharing and reading together.
• A fun, likeable protagonist who reaffirms the joy of nurturing our imagination.
• Cover treatment: matt lam and spot UV.
Poppy Pickle
Alive! It was incredible, it was amazing, it was magic!
BIG!
Soon Poppy’s room was filled with weird and wonderful creatures.
Poppy was having the time of her life.
Until...
Pub Date: 05/01/2023
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781800783898
H x W: 250 x 250mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Emma Yarlett
Illustrator: Emma Yarlett
Extent: 32pp
Word Count: 327 words
Rights Available: World
Five Little Chicks
A lift-the-flap Easter book
- Lift the flaps to find the chicks - with 20 flaps to lift
- Full of spring-time baby animals and their parents, this is the perfect gift to give for Mother’s Day or Easter
- An engaging and affordable gift book for little readers 1+
- Written by Lily Murray, and beautifully illustrated by Holly Surplice, illustrator of Guinea Pig Party and I Love You, Little One
- Perfect for fans of We’re Going on an Egg Hunt
Five Little Chicks
FIVE little chicks went out one day, over the hills and far away...
Pub Date 17/02/2022
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800782396
H x W 250 x 250mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Lily Murray
Illustrator Holly Surplice
Extent 24pp
Rights Available World
Five Little Penguins
A lift-the-flap Christmas book
- Lift the flaps to find the penguins - with 13 flaps to lift
- Full of festive winter scenes, this is the perfect gift to give in the run-up to Christmas
- An engaging and affordable gift book for little readers 1+
- Written by Lily Murray, and beautifully illustrated by Holly Surplice, illustrator of Guinea Pig Party and I Love You, Little One
- Perfect for fans of We’re Going on an Elf Hunt
- Sturdy board book format with casebound cover, with mat lam and foil finishes
Five Little Penguins
| Pub Date | 28/08/2025 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781835872246 |
| H x W | 180 x 180mm |
| Binding | Board Book |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Lily Murray |
| Illustrator | Holly Surplice |
| Extent | 24pp |
| Freight On Board | 26/05/2025 |
| Rights Available | World |
The Snow Queen
Award-winning illustrator Lesley Barnes brings a magical touch to this pop-up edition of The Snow Queen.
- Illustrations by Lesley Barnes, author and illustrator of Jill and Dragon and Jill and Lion (Tate).
- A beautifully produced gift edition for the Christmas market.
- Clever paper engineering from the renowned in-house team at Templar.
- Lesley Barnes has created product ranges for both the V&A and Tate Museums.
- 100% foil on the cover. Printed with gold ink on every pop-up page.
The Snow Queen
| Pub Date | 21/10/2021 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £11.99 |
| ISBN | 9781787416888 |
| H x W | 200 x 180mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | Lesley Barnes |
| Illustrator | Lesley Barnes |
| Extent | 12pp |
| Word Count | 1200 words |
| Rights Available | World |
A magical pop-up edition of *The Nutcracker*.
- Brought to life by intricate folk art by Zanna Goldhawk, illustrator of *Winter Tales*.
- E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Christmas classic is retold with elegance by Steve Patschke, author of *Don’t Look at it, Don’t Touch It*.
- Clever paper engineering from the renowned in-house team at Templar.
- 100% foil on the cover.
The Nutcracker
From the Princely Frost King’s icy court to the magical land of Christmas, this pop-up book brings the classic tale to life.
On Christmas Eve, a young girl, Clara, is given a nutcracker for her birthday. The next morning, the nutcracker comes to life and takes Clara on an incredible journey through the magical world of Christmas. Along the way, they meet a variety of characters, including the Snow Queen, the Sugar Plum Fairy, and the Mouse King. The story is told in a beautiful, illustrated format with pop-up elements that bring the characters and scenes to life.
The Nutcracker is a perfect gift for children who love the magic of Christmas and the classic tale of Clara and the nutcracker. It is sure to be a favorite for years to come.
Pub Date: 12/10/2023
Pub Price: £11.99
ISBN: 9781800783614
H x W: 200 x 180mm
Binding: Hardback
Age Range: 5-7 years
Author: Steve Patschke
Illustrator: Zanna Goldhawk
Extent: 12pp
Word Count: 1200 words
Rights Available: World
Baby Steps: Faces and Feelings
Trace the shape, name the feeling - features a real mirror!
• With trace-the-trail elements on every page AND a mirror!
• Featuring S&B®’s innovative anti-bacterial finish on all pages: 100% natural, plant based and sustainable, offering 99.99% germ control including covid-19, MRSA, E-coli, mold and yeast. This green formulation is safe for babies and contains no microplastics.
• A simple rhyming text is fun to read aloud and easy for little ones to join in with.
• This book will help little ones learn to recognise and name a range of emotions.
• Illustrated by London-born illustrator, Richard Merritt.
Baby Steps: Faces and Feelings
Sometimes bear feels happy.
He smiles up to his ears.
Sometimes bear feels sad.
And down fall big wet tears.
Sometimes mouse feels scared.
Her lip begins to wobble.
Sometimes mouse feels brave.
She can take on any trouble!
Sometimes frog feels angry.
His face gets hot and red.
Sometimes frog feels calm.
And all thoughts leave his head.
Pub Date 04/01/2026
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800786424
H x W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Richard Merritt
Extent 10pp
Word Count 115 words
Files To Printer 18/03/2025
Freight On Board 18/06/2025
Rights Available World
Baby Steps: Spot the Shape
Peep through the shape, learn the word!
- Introduces first shapes, and builds early language skills.
- Featuring S&B®’s innovative anti-bacterial finish on all pages: 100% natural, plant based and sustainable, offering 99.99% germ control including covid-19, MRSA, E-coli, mold and yeast. This green formulation is safe for babies and contains no microplastics.
- Peep-through windows stimulate little readers.
- Illustrated by London-born illustrator, Richard Merritt.
Baby Steps: Spot the Shape
| Pub Date | 04/01/2026 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £6.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800786431 |
| H × W | 180 × 180mm |
| Binding | Board Book |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Ruth Symons |
| Illustrator | Richard Merritt |
| Extent | 10pp |
| Word Count | 120 words |
| Rights Available | World |
A series that grows with your baby
- Written in consultation with Early Years Expert, Lizzie Noble, each book perfectly suits your baby’s needs at every stage of their first year
- Fills a gap in the market: parents are told to read to their baby every day, but black and white books usually have little text. Reading aloud soothes babies from birth, promotes baby-carer bonding, builds children’s language skills, and increases the chances that parents will continue to read to babies as they grow older
- Perfect for parents who use the Wonder Weeks App, read Your Baby Week by Week, or use milestone cards to mark big moments
- 4 books in the series, all featuring the same animal characters: 0-3 months; 3-6 months; 6-9 months; 9-12 months
Jane Foster’s Baby’s First Stories: 0–3 months
SLURP...
... she sucks up water,
And sprays it in a cloud.
She watches all the droplets
As they shimmer to the ground.
Where is Little Panda?
He’s resting in a glade.
See him gently snoring
In the cool and dappled shade.
Little Bunny’s hopping home,
Her tail a flash of white.
She dives into her burrow . . .
It’s time to say, “Goodnight!”
She sings her song out loud again,
And trumpets just to say,
She’s such a happy elephant
And ready for her day!
Pub Date 03/08/2023
Pub Price £10.99
ISBN 9781800785137
H × W 200 × 200mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Lily Murray
Illustrator Jane Foster
Extent 32pp
Rights Available World
A series that grows with your baby
• Written in consultation with Early Years Expert, Lizzie Noble, each book perfectly suits your baby’s needs at every stage of their first year
• Fills a gap in the market: parents are told to read to their baby every day, but black and white books usually have little text. Reading aloud soothes babies from birth, promotes baby-carer bonding, builds children’s language skills, and increases the chances that parents will continue to read to babies as they grow older
• Perfect for parents who use the Wonder Weeks App, read Your Baby Week by Week, or use milestone cards to mark big moments
• 4 books in the series, all featuring the same animal characters: 0-3 months; 3-6 months; 6-9 months; 9-12 months
Here’s Panda! Worried Panda,
What’s that on your nose?
It’s a buzzy bumblebee –
Achoo!
And off she goes!
Here’s a funny bunny.
Do you think she ever stops?
Round and round and round she spins,
Loppity-hoppity-hop!
Tickle, Tickle
Little Whale, here’s a fish
Tickling your nose.
Tickle, tickle everywhere,
That’s the way it goes.
Little Elephant, rest your head.
Little Elephant, curl up tight.
Little Elephant, close your eyes.
Little Elephant, say “Goodnight!”
| Pub Date | 03/08/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £10.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800785144 |
| H x W | 200 x 200mm |
| Binding | Board Book |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Lily Murray |
| Illustrator | Jane Foster |
| Extent | 32pp |
| Rights Available | World |
Imagine if... Fruits!
Zany new slider books from Aya Watanabe!
• A playful and engaging novelty title all the family will love. Push, pull, slide and spin the wheels on every page: with 5 spreads and a mechanism on the cover!
• A playful rhyming text is perfect to read aloud with little ones - introducing first concepts such as colours and shapes
• Vibrant artworks from rising talent, Japanese illustrator Aya Watanabe
• Also in the series: Veggies!
• Search and find element: find the ant on every page!
• "The world of true imagination found in this book, brings joy and creativity for a never-ending gateway to learning" - Lizzie Noble, Early Years expert
Imagine if... Fruits!
A wobbling watermelon, with juices red and happy.
But I imagine if...
...it was an umbrella, wet and drippy!
Rolling, round, ripe oranges, so full of vitamin C!
But I imagine if...
...they made a bicycle for me!
Hooray for all the fruits we eat, they’re whooey, who are free.
With my imagination...
...there is nothing they can’t be!
Hello yellow bananas, all bunched up side by side.
But I imagine if...
...they were a super-slippy slide!
Pub Date 22/06/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800784666
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Aya Watanabe
Illustrator Aya Watanabe
Extent 10pp
Word Count 100 words
Rights Available World
Imagine if... Veggies!
Zany new slider books
• A playful and engaging novelty title all the family will love. Push, pull, slide and spin the wheels on every page: with 5 spreads and a mechanism on the cover!
• A playful rhyming text is perfect to read aloud with little ones - introducing first concepts such as colours and shapes
• Vibrant artworks from rising talent, Japanese illustrator Aya Watanabe
• Also in the series: Fruits!
• Search and find element - find the ant hiding on every page!
• “The world of true imagination found in this book, brings joy and creativity for a never-ending gateway to learning” - Lizzie Noble, Early Years expert
Imagine if... Veggies!
Corn cobs sweet and yellow,
the tastiest I’ve tried.
But I imagine if...
Asparagus, purple, green or white,
it’s summer dipped in plain.
But I imagine if...
Hooray for all the veggies,
this taste is good so me.
With my imagination...
there is nothing they can’t be!
But I imagine if...
Green and crunchy cucumbers,
as cool as they can be.
But I imagine if...
...they were a hammock in a tree!
Pub Date 22/06/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800784659
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Aya Watanabe
Illustrator Aya Watanabe
Extent 10pp
Word Count 100 words
Rights Available World
Imagine if... Flowers!
Zany new slider books from Aya Watanabe!
• A playful and engaging novelty title all the family will love. Push, pull, slide and spin the wheels on every page: with 5 spreads and a mechanism on the cover!
• Also in the series: Veggies!, Fruits! and Bugs!
• Search and find element: find the ant on every page!
• "The world of true imagination found in this book, brings joy and creativity for a never-ending gateway to learning" - Lizzie Noble, Early Years expert
Imagine if... Flowers!
Beautiful blooming bluebells, each bell like a jingling star.
But I imagine if...
Yellow smiling sunflowers, with petals bright as flames.
But I imagine if...
Perfect purple pansies, your petals are so pretty.
But I imagine if...
Woozy for all the flowers, from roses to sweet peas.
Wish me imagination...
...there is nothing they can't be!
Imagine if... Bugs!
Zany slider books from Aya Watanabe!
• A playful and engaging novelty title all the family will love. Push, pull, slide and spin the wheels on every page: with 5 spreads and a mechanism on the cover!
• Vibrant artworks from rising talent, Japanese illustrator Aya Watanabe
• Also in the series: Veggies!, Fruits! and Flowers!
• Search and find element: find the ant on every page!
• “The world of true imagination found in this book, brings joy and creativity for a never-ending gateway to learning” - Lizzie Noble, Early Years expert
Imagine if... Bugs!
A big brown ground beetle, with nighties jutting from his head.
But I imagine if...
...they hung for washing out instead!
A glorious green mantis, with bulging eyes and legs so soft.
But I imagine if...
...it was a bee-saw for us all!
Busy yellow honeybees, in their bonnets making honey.
But I imagine if...
...what nice bee lights we brighten one summer!
Beautiful bright butterflies, flit-fluttering everywhere.
But I imagine if...
...they were the ribbons in my hair!
Animal Homes: Ocean
Dive in and explore the ocean in this introduction to habitats for the very young.
• Using Natasha Durley’s striking and recognisable animals from *Creature Features* and newly illustrated plants and environments, her colourful and engaging artwork will be enjoyed by a whole new age of reader.
• The first spread starts on the lowest layer of the ocean (the ocean trench) and each subsequent shaped spread introduces the next layer of the ocean (the abyss, the midnight zone, the twilight zone and the sunlight zone). Add a new layer with each page turn until the final spread reveals the full habitat. This tactile, die-cut board book format is a new way to explore and introduce animal habitats, making this series an essential addition to parents’ and educators’ STEM library.
Animal Homes: Ocean
Near the surface, it is very colourful. The coral reef is like a busy underwater town!
How many creatures can you spot on the reef?
Above the rolling waves, island birds float on the ocean.
Hope you will see these penguins in the sky and making in the pink peals.
Pub Date 20/07/2023
Pub Price £8.99
ISBN 9781800782082
H × W 228 × 165mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Amelia Warren
Illustrator Natasha Durley
Extent 14pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Animal Homes: Rainforest
Explore the rainforest in this introduction to habitats for the very young.
- Using Natasha Durley’s striking and recognisable animals from *Creature Features* and newly illustrated plants and environments, her colourful and engaging artwork will be enjoyed by a whole new age of reader.
- The first spread starts on the lowest layer of the rainforest (the forest floor) and each subsequent shaped spread introduces the next layer of the rainforest (the understory, the canopy, the emergent). Add a new layer with each page turn until the final spread reveals the full habitat. This tactile, die-cut board book format is a new way to explore and introduce animal habitats, making this series an essential addition to parents’ and educators’ STEM library.
Animal Homes: Rainforest
High up in the trees, it is very busy and noisy. The thick trees are like a roof, making the perfect home for many animals. There is also plenty of fruit and seeds to eat.
Pub Date 20/07/2023
Pub Price £8.99
ISBN 9781800782266
H x W 228 x 165mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Amelia Warren
Illustrator Natasha Durley
Extent 14pp
Word Count 175 words
Rights Available World
Jane Foster’s I Love Green
A collectible and stylish series celebrating colour
- With a read-aloud rhyming text and stylish artwork from an award-winning illustrator and textile designer
- Jane Foster’s books have sold over 700,000 copies worldwide
- 4 books in the series: blue, yellow, green and pink
- With a Pantone and spot UV on the cover
- Written following Jane’s diagnosis with autism, each book features some traits common in autistic and neurodiverse children, so every child can see themselves reflected in the books.
Jane Foster’s I Love Green
I love riding on my bike – of course my bike is green…
…I also have a shiny bell, the brightest green you’ve seen!
DING! DING!
I have a little gecko. (other pets are SO much duller).
We have one thing in common – green’s our favourite colour!
A roaring stegosaurus, making lots of noise!
ROAR!
Pub Date 11/04/2024
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800786950
H × W 200 × 200mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Jane Foster
Illustrator Jane Foster
Extent 24pp
Word Count 160 words
Rights Available World
Jane Foster’s I Love Yellow
A collectible and stylish series celebrating colour
- With a read-aloud rhyming text and stylish artwork from an award-winning illustrator and textile designer
- Jane Foster’s books have sold over 700,000 copies worldwide
- 4 books in the series: blue, yellow, green and pink
- With a Pantone and spot UV on the cover
- Written following Jane’s diagnosis with autism, each book features some traits common in autistic and neurodiverse children, so every child can see themselves reflected in the books
Yellow, yellow, yellow!
Nothing else will do.
My mummy asks me, "Why not red, or green or maybe blue?"
It wouldn't be the same if my bedroom were all white. It wouldn't feel like me. I just wouldn't feel alright.
I also have a yellow bus and a yellow boat!
| Pub Date | 11/04/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £7.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800786943 |
| H x W | 200 x 200mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Jane Foster|
| Illustrator | Jane Foster|
| Extent | 24pp |
| Word Count | 160 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Baby on Board: Train
All-new slider novelty
- A brand-new novelty pre-school series all about things that go! Baby on Board: Car is publishing in 2023, and Baby on Board: Tractor and Baby on Board: Aeroplane are lined up for 2024.
- With a sturdy slider, wheel or tab on every spread and the cover. Mechanisms keep young children engaged, and help the development of fine motor skills.
- A fun rhyming text, perfect for reading aloud, and full of sounds for little ones to join in with!
- Seb Braun (illustrator of Spinderella by Julia Donaldson, the Daddy Grizzle books by Mark Sperring and author-illustrator of Raj and the Best Day) creates friendly, action-packed scenes, full of detail and warmth.
- The Baby on Board series has already sold over 400,000 copies in 19 territories.
Baby on Board: Train
All aboard the baby train.
Up the hill - very slow.
Over the top and down we go!
All aboard the baby train.
Into the tunnel, dark and wide.
Out again the other side!
All aboard the baby train.
Speaking home along the track.
All aboard the baby train.
We're going on a ride today!
The whistle PEEPS – we're on our way!
Pub Date 13/04/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781787419261
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Sebastien Braun
Extent 8pp
Word Count 100 words
Rights Available World
Baby on Board: Car
All-new slider novelty
• A brand-new novelty pre-school series all about things that go! Baby on Board: Train is publishing in 2023, and Baby on Board: Tractor and Baby on Board: Aeroplane are lined up for 2024.
• With a sturdy slider, wheel or tab on every spread and the cover. Mechanisms keep young children engaged, and help the development of fine motor skills.
• A fun rhyming text, perfect for reading aloud, and full of sounds for little ones to join in with!
• Seb Braun (illustrator of Spinderella by Julia Donaldson, the Daddy Grizzle books by Mark Sperring and author-illustrator of Raj and the Best Day) creates friendly, action-packed scenes, full of detail and warmth.
• The Baby on Board series has already sold over 400,000 copies in 19 territories.
Baby on Board: Car
All aboard the baby car. Stepping at the traffic light.
All aboard the baby car. Steering wheel turns left and right.
All aboard the baby car. Rain falls with a SPLASH and SPLASH.
All aboard the baby car. Windscreen wipers SWISH SWISH!
All aboard the baby car. What a lot of driving fun!
All aboard the baby car. With a VROOM and a HONK and a BRUM-BRUM-BRUM!
All aboard the baby car. Buckle up and off we go!
All aboard the baby car. Driving fast or driving slow.
Pub Date 13/04/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800781573
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Sebastien Braun
Extent 8pp
Word Count 100 words
Rights Available World
Baby on Board: Tractor
All-new slider novelty
• A brand-new novelty pre-school series all about things that go! Baby on Board: Train and Car publish in 2023, and Baby on Board: Aeroplane comes out in 2024.
• With a sturdy slider, wheel or tab on every spread and the cover. Mechanisms keep young children engaged, and help the development of fine motor skills.
• A fun rhyming text, perfect for reading aloud, and full of sounds for little ones to join in with!
• Seb Braun (illustrator of Spinderella by Julia Donaldson, the Daddy Grizzle books by Mark Sperring and author-illustrator of Raj and the Best Day) creates friendly, action-packed scenes, full of detail and warmth.
• The Baby on Board series has already sold over 400,000 copies in 19 territories.
Baby on Board: Tractor
All aboard the baby tractor. SUPP-SUPP over the muddy ground.
All aboard the baby tractor. See the wheels go round and round.
All aboard the baby tractor. What a lot of seeds to sow.
All aboard the baby tractor. Sunshine helps the plants to grow.
All aboard the baby tractor. Animals all tucked up snug.
All aboard the baby tractor. Let's look around the farm today.
All aboard the baby tractor. The trailer pulls us on our way!
Pub Date 14/03/2024
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800785786
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Sebastien Braun
Extent 8pp
Rights Available World
Baby on Board: Aeroplane
All-new slider novelty
• A brand-new novelty pre-school series all about things that go! Baby on Board: Train and Car publish in 2023, and Baby on Board: Aeroplane comes out in 2024.
• With a sturdy slider, wheel or tab on every spread and the cover. Mechanisms keep young children engaged, and help the development of fine motor skills.
• A fun rhyming text, perfect for reading aloud, and full of sounds for little ones to join in with!
• Seb Braun (illustrator of Spinderella by Julia Donaldson, the Daddy Grizzle books by Mark Sperring and author-illustrator of Raj and the Best Day) creates friendly, action-packed scenes, full of detail and warmth.
• The Baby on Board series has already sold over 400,000 copies in 19 territories.
Baby on Board: Aeroplane
All aboard the baby plane. Seat belts on, the engines BRRRRT!
All aboard the baby plane. It's time to go - and up we soar!
All aboard the baby plane. See the world from way up high!
All aboard the baby plane. Soaring through the bright blue sky.
All aboard the baby plane. Down the stairs - we're landed near.
All aboard the baby plane. With a WOOFER and a ZOOM and a MEALROOM!
All aboard the baby plane. We're going on our holiday!
All aboard the baby plane. Watch the aeroplanes fly away.
---
| Pub Date | 14/03/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £6.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800785779 |
| H × W | 180 × 180mm |
| Binding | Board Book |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Ruth Symons |
| Illustrator | Sebastien Braun |
| Extent | 8pp |
| Rights Available | World |
Pop and Peek: Babies
Big flaps and pop-up surprises!
- Stylish preschool pop-up series
- 5 big flaps reveal 5 animal pop-ups in each book
- Sweet illustrations with young appeal by Australian artist Mel Matthews
- Ideal gift for babies and toddlers from 12 months +
- Cover finish: matt lam + spot UV
Can you find the baby?
Pub Date: 31/03/2022
Pub Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9781800780897
H x W: 180 x 180mm
Binding: Cased Board Book
Age Range: 0-5 years
Author: Carly Blake
Illustrator: Mel Matthews
Extent: 10pp
Word Count: 100 words
Rights Available: World
Pop and Peek: Hatch
Big flaps and pop-up surprises!
- Stylish preschool pop-up series
- 5 big flaps reveal 5 animal pop-ups in each book
- Sweet illustrations with young appeal by Australian artist Mel Matthews
- Ideal gift for babies and toddlers from 12 months +
- Cover finish: matt lam + spot UV
Pop and Peek: Hatch
An oval egg is on a cosy, straw nest.
What will hatch?
It's a chick!
A soft, white egg is in a leafy nest.
It's a puggle! (a baby duck billed platypus)
What will hatch?
Pub Date 31/03/2022
Pub Price £7.99
ISBN 9781800780880
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Cased Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Carly Blake
Illustrator Mel Matthews
Extent 10pp
Word Count 100 words
Rights Available World
Join Bug on the journey from caterpillar to beautiful butterfly.
- The Little Life Cycles series has sold over 58,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
- A stunning introductory STEM board book series on life cycles for the very young.
- With tactile, die-cut pages, the reader can easily follow and connect to Bug’s journey to becoming a beautiful butterfly.
- The next book in the successful series, after Pip and Drip.
- Cover treatment: gloss UV varnish.
Little Life Cycles: Bug
Something is hiding in the plants. Can you see it peeking out?
It's Bug eating on a leaf!
Bug is a tiny, furry caterpillar. A very hungry caterpillar!
You can always tell where Bug has been...
Bug likes to nibble the lily pads on the pond.
But frogs need food too...
Watch out for the sticky tongue, little Bug!
Snap!
Bug loves apples...
There are lots of delicious apples to munch and crunch.
...but so does the big bird!
Pub Date 16/02/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800780903
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Maggie Li
Illustrator Maggie Li
Extent 26pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Join Frog on the journey from tiny egg to fully grown frog.
- The Little Life Cycles series has sold over 58,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022).
- A stunning introductory STEM board book series on life cycles for the very young.
- With tactile, die-cut pages, the reader can easily follow and connect to Frog’s journey of becoming a fully grown frog.
- The next book in the successful series, after Pip and Drip.
- Cover treatment: gloss UV varnish.
Little Life Cycles: Frog
Can you see the jelly dots floating in the water?
Inside one of these dots is a frog.
Each dot is a tiny egg. Together they are called frogspawn.
Which tiny egg will grow into frog?
The eggs have a long journey ahead!
Some eggs are washed away from the safety of the pond reeds . . .
. . . and the wind blows others far away from the water.
Exciting things are happening.
Frog keeps growing and growing.
With four legs, Frog is called a froglet.
Now Frog’s legs grow longer and stronger, and the tail starts to shrink.
Soon, it will be time to leave the pond.
Pub Date 16/02/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800780910
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Maggie Li
Illustrator Maggie Li
Extent 26pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Pip is a tiny seed. Learn how he will turn into a mighty tree.
- The Little Life Cycles series has sold over 58,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Part of a gorgeous board book series by Maggie Li, which explores different cycles in nature.
- A die cut hole provides a simple novelty element that perfectly ties into the theme of the book
- Cover treatment: matt varnish
Some seeds land in the sea where the water is too salty.
But out Pip. Pip lands in a river where there’s fresh fish. But beware hungry fish!
Some seeds get stuck in mountains where it is too cold.
But not Pip. Pip is carried by the flowing river to a calm lake.
A little girl finds Pip by the banks of the river.
She buries Pip deep in the ground. “Grow little seed!” she whispers.
The sun warms the land. The rain soaks the ground.
Wake up little Pip! Inside Pip is a tiny plant waiting to grow. With sunlight and water, something magical starts to happen!
But down in the deep, dark earth everyone seems to be asleep.
Pub Date 17/02/2022
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781787418462
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Maggie Li
Illustrator Maggie Li
Extent 26pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Drip is a little drop of water. Learn how he will travel through the water cycle.
- The Little Life Cycles series has sold over 58,000 copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
- Part of a gorgeous board book series by Maggie Li, which explores different cycles in nature.
- A die cut hole provides a simple novelty element that perfectly ties into the theme of the book
- Cover treatment: matt varnish
Little Life Cycles: Drip
Drip falls deep into the underground network of tunnels and pipes. Where will it lead?
Finally, Drip comes out the other end!
...pushed along with all the other drops of water.
The river winds around mountains, past farmers working hard in the fields.
Drip is carried all the way to the sea.
Small streams join it, and it grows deeper and wider.
Drip is swept along by the current.
The river flows fast through the bustling city, full of lights and sounds.
Pub Date 17/02/2022
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781787418479
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Maggie Li
Illustrator Maggie Li
Extent 26pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Join Bee on the busy journey to collect nectar and pollen throughout the spring and summer.
- *Drip* won a Right Start Award in 2022.
- The *Little Life Cycles* series has sold over 154,000 copies worldwide.
- A stunning introductory STEM board book series on life cycles for the very young.
- Addresses a poignant and timely topic, reinforcing the need for us to protect bees and the importance of the pollination process.
- With tactile, die-cut pages, the reader can easily connect with the buzzy bee as they follow it on its journey.
- Book five in the successful and well-established series.
- Cover treatment: gloss UV varnish.
Little Life Cycles: Bee
Whose bee going next?
But some places don’t have enough.
Oh no! Poor bee is very hungry!
For wind, wind, high and low, Bee flies a long way to search for flowers …
But look!
Someone special is looking by …
It’s Queen Bee!
It’s her job to protect the hive.
Buzz!
Bee and the colony help her by keeping their home strong and clean.
Until spring comes around and Bee’s adventures begin again.
Without Bee’s hard work, many plants, fruits and vegetables wouldn’t grow.
Luckily, this little child wants to help Bee. They know exactly what to do.
Grow pretty flowers!
Pub Date 01/02/2024
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800785960
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Maggie Li
Illustrator Maggie Li
Extent 26pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Join Whale on the journey from tiny calf to the biggest creature in the ocean!
- *Drip* won a Right Start Award in 2022.
- The *Little Life Cycles* series has sold over 154,000 copies worldwide.
- A stunning introductory STEM board book series on life cycles for the very young.
- The first mammal to be added to the series, offering a new range of life cycle structures.
- With tactile, die-cut pages, the reader can easily connect with and follow the whale on its journey across the ocean.
- Book six in the successful and well-established series.
- Cover treatment: gloss UV varnish.
Little Life Cycles: Whale
Pub Date 01/02/2024
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800785977
H × W 180 × 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Maggie Li
Illustrator Maggie Li
Extent 26pp
Word Count 200 words
Rights Available World
Be Resilient! (Mindful Kids)
Activities to build resilience
- Mindful Kids is an activity book series designed and written for children about emotions and feelings.
- Targeted specifically at children aged 7+ and focused on experiences that will affect this age group.
- Use creativity to build resilience with writing and doodling activities.
- Written by Dr Sharie, Child & Family Psychotherapist.
- Combined, the Mindful Kids series has sold 1 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
Hello Happy! Mindful Kids
Children can colour and doodle their way to happiness, calm and confidence.
- *Mindful Kids* is an activity book series designed and written for children about emotions and feelings.
- Includes an introduction to the book, and notes for grown-ups by consultant Dr Sharie Coombes, Child & Family Psychotherapist.
- Use creativity to combat negative feelings, work out worries and put anger back in its place with the writing and doodling activities.
- Combined, the *Mindful Kids* series has sold 1 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
No Worries!
- Includes an introduction to the book, and notes for grown-ups by consultant Dr. Sharie Coombes, Child & Family Psychotherapist.
- *Mindful Kids* is an activity book series designed and written for children about emotions and feelings.
- Use creativity to combat stressful moments, work out worries and put anxiety back in its place with the writing and doodling activities.
- Combined, the *Mindful Kids* series has sold 1 million copies worldwide (as of July 2022)
No Worries! Mindful Kids
COLOUR YOUR FEELINGS
Do you think feeling better has its own colour? Colour in each of these feeling words with the colour that you think suits them best!
ANGER Happy
Sad Fear
Laughter Worry
YOGA POSE
Try these poses before bedtime or when you want to feel calm.
TREE POSE
Put your feet on your ankle or knee and hold for 30 seconds. Then change to your other leg.
"Say 'I am balanced'"
BUTTERFLY POSE
Sit on the ground with your feet together, and lift your knees up towards your chest.
"Say 'I am safe'"
CAT POSE
Bend at the waist, letting your head drop down. Breathe in and arch your back, lifting your head as high as you can.
"Say 'I am me'"
LADYBIRD POSE
Put your hands on your shoulders, look at yourself and smile together.
"Say 'I am happy'"
SLEEP POSE
Lie on your back and relax those muscles. Close your eyes if you want. Try to imagine a peaceful place. If your mind wanders away, refocus by counting from one to ten, then return back to your breathing.
"Say 'I am home'"
COLOUR THIS IN
YOUR SAFE PLACE
Draw or stick a picture of somewhere you feel completely safe and happy.
EVERY PROBLEM HAS AN ANSWER
Take a Breath!
Try this breathing exercise to help you relax.
STEP 1
Make sure you are sitting comfortably in a quiet and safe place. When you feel ready, close your eyes. Notice your breathing. Think about how it feels breathing in and breathing out. Try to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
STEP 2
Place your hand on your tummy and focus on the feeling of your stomach rising and falling with each breath. When you breathe in, quietly say ‘I’m myself’, and when you breathe out, quietly say ‘and out’ to yourself.
When you’ve had lots of practice at the breathing exercise, you can think about a happy memory at the same time. This way, your happy memory will take up all the space in your brain, and there won’t be any room for the worries.
DO THIS FOR 2 MINUTES
Pub Date 27/07/2017
Pub Price £9.99
ISBN 9781787410879
H x W 235 x 190mm
Binding Paperback
Age Range 7-9 years
Author Lily Murray Sharie Coombes
Illustrator Katie Abey
Extent 96pp
Rights Available World
A stunningly illustrated gothic puzzle adventure!
- Expanding our high-end activity offering - a core part of the Big Picture Press list
- Perfect for introducing readers to classic horror stories
- A fresh approach to an evergreen, universal subject
- Adam Allori’s immersive artwork will appeal to readers of all ages
- Strong backlist and series potential - our follow up title could focus on classic adventure stories
We all have a shadow, an inner demon. Dr Henry Jekyll wanted to see his a little closer. Alas, his experiments split his mind and transformed his body. Behind his soft, civilised exterior lurks the monstrous Mr Hyde.
Jekyll has hidden the formula for a cure in six two-part clues beyond Hyde’s understanding. Mark your progress with the clues found in his laboratories. Combined, they will point you to a solution to the mystery.
Collect them all and Jekyll will have his cure!
1. FAN FRIGIDUS GEL.
2. SINGE YOUR MOUTH WITH BASKET.
3. STAND STAGGER.
4. SCARABEOUS TO PUNCH A GLINT.
5. DRAW YOUR ANTELOPE FOR THE MEDAL METAL.
6. TO BRIDGE YOUR BIST. JUST HEAT AND PRESS!
7. THIS PARABLED BODY FLEES NEAREST THE SUN
| Pub Date | 12/09/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800783423 |
| H x W | 340 x 270mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 12+ years |
| Author | Sam Fern |
| Illustrator | Adam Allori|
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 2000 words |
| Rights Available| World |
A retelling of Disney Encanto featuring beautiful concept and development art.
- Building on our Disney Animated Classics series, this is the first title in our line of Disney Modern Classics that feature more contemporary Disney films.
- Encanto made around $255 million at the global box office and is a huge hit on Disney+ - it’s first full week on Disney+, Encanto was watched for 2.2 billion minutes.
- We Don’t Talk About Bruno was a viral sensation on TikTok, bringing Encanto to a wider audience than other Disney animations.
- Encanto won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2022.
- Cover features a custom illustration with arlin and foil finishes.
- Disney Modern Classics: Moana will follow in July 2023.
As the Madrigals got ready for the day, Mirabel explained that she came from a family of stars. At their centre, Abuela Alma made sure everyone knew their place.
When the family left for work, Mirabel introduced them to the children, explaining each of their gifts.
First was her Tía Pepa who controlled the weather with her emotions. Mirabel also had a Tío Bruno who could see the future, but Bruno disappeared and nobody talked about him. Mirabel’s mother, Julieta, could heal people with the food that she cooked.
Mirabel said that the family grew larger when her Tía Pepa married a man named Félix and had children, and when her mother married her father, Agustín and had Mirabel and her two sisters. The children were confused. They didn’t know who were Mirabel’s sisters and who were her cousins.
Mirabel explained that her cousins were Dolores, Camilo and Antonio. Dolores had the gift of being able to hear the quietest sounds and Camilo could shapeshift to look like other people. Mirabel said Antonio would find out his gift that evening.
Mirabel’s sisters were Luisa and Isabela. Luisa was incredibly strong, Isabela could make flowers bloom wherever she walked.
Mirabel told the children everything she could but when she tried to leave, the children had one more question.
“What is your gift?” asked a little girl.
Two years later, the story of the Madrigal family ends in the very same way it began, with Mirabel gifting something. It is a gift that will change her life and Mirabel wanted to give it to her family. She is not the only one to do so; the house, the land and help from the community are all part of Mirabel’s gift. The Madrigals are all changed, thriving together and the community is grateful for what Mirabel created to share their story.
---
**Pub Date** 16/02/2023
**Pub Price** £13.99
**ISBN** 9781800784512
**H x W** 250 x 174mm
**Binding** Hardback
**Age Range** 9-11 years
**Author** Sally Morgan
**Extent** 64pp
**Word Count** 6500 words
**Rights Available** World
---
Celebrate 100 years of Disney magic with vintage posters to colour!
- Over 65 vintage posters from classic Disney films, Mickey Mouse animations and Disney Parks
- Part of our adult-focused Disney colouring range, including The Fashion Collection Colouring Book, The Christmas Collection Colouring Book and Hocus Pocus Colouring Book
- Vintage Disney posters are very popular on social media - featuring on Instagram in both Disney-focused and general interior accounts
- The cover will feature foil and spot UV
| Pub Date | 16/03/2023 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £10.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800784390 |
| H x W | 276 x 216mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | Adult |
| Author | Walt Disney|
| Extent | 80pp |
| Rights Available | Disney Territories |
Celebrate 100 years of Disney magic with this beautifully illustrated coffee table book!
- Sample contents: Walt’s Early Years, Mickey and Friends, Spellbinding Classics, The Art of Animation, Long Live the King, TV Toons and More, Drawn by Hand, The Frozen Phenomenon, Disney Channel Smash Hits, Live-Action Adventures, Bringing Animation to Life, Reimagining the Classics, Disney Publishing, Disney Stores, Disneyland Park
- Features original imagery from the Disney Archives and Animation Research Library documenting the company’s history
- Covers everything from the Golden Age of animation and original shorts to live action films and Disney+
**LONG LIVE THE KING**
On 24 May 1937, in a ceremony that was a little like a coronation, Walt Disney presented his latest feature film to the world. The King’s Jesters was the first Disney cartoon to be released on film and the first to be shown in cinemas. It was also the first Disney feature to be released in colour. The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation.
**THE FROZEN PHENOMENON**
In 2013, Disney released its first animated feature film in colour, *Frozen*. The film was a massive success and became one of the most popular animated films of all time. It was also the first Disney film to be released in 3D. The film was based on the classic fairy tale *The Snow Queen* by Hans Christian Andersen. The film was directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee and was produced by Peter Del Vecho. The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation.
**SWASHBUCKLING PIRATES**
In 1950, *Peter Pan* was released as a feature film. The film was directed by Walt Disney and was based on the classic novel *Peter Pan* by J.M. Barrie. The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation. The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation.
**BELoved CHARACTERS**
Disney classics provide strong source material for a number of Disney films. Alice in Wonderland (1951) is Disney’s version of Lewis Carroll’s children’s novels, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. The Dark Crystal (1982) is based on the Jim Henson’s Muppets’ television series Fraggle Rock. Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s animated joint live-action/stop motion Alice Conceived and since then he had bought the rights to the book, Disney decided to make a live-action film. The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation. The film features more songs than any other Disney film at the time. One of the film’s most extravagant scenes, the “Fruit Basket” sequence was really intended live-action to provide an extra dimension to the film. The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation.
**THE GOLDEN AGE**
In 1953, *Peter Pan* was released as a feature film. The film was directed by Walt Disney and was based on the classic novel *Peter Pan* by J.M. Barrie. The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation. The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation.
**KEY TO PLATE**
1. *Peter Pan and Friends*
- The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation.
2. *Cinderella*
- The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation.
3. *Swashbuckling Pirates*
- The film was a huge success and was a major step forward for Disney animation.
---
**Pub Date**
12/10/2023
**Pub Price**
£25.00
**ISBN**
9781800782754
**H x W**
370 × 272mm
**Binding**
Hardback
**Age Range**
Adult
**Author**
Walt Disney
Simon Beecroft
**Extent**
96pp
**Rights Available**
Disney Territories
[bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/books/9781800782754](http://bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/books/9781800782754)
Celebrate 60 years of web-slinging with the story of Marvel Comics’ most beloved super hero, Spider-Man!
- A stylish, must-have addition to any Marvel and Spider-Man fan’s collection.
- Official Marvel product released for the 60-year anniversary of Spider-Man.
- Disney Plus has 87.6 million paid subscribers globally, with an additional 50.1 million paid subscribers for Disney Plus Hotstar. In the UK, Disney Plus has 7.5 million subscribers, which is up 21% from 2021.
- Written by Ned Hartley, author of *Marvel Museum* and *Marvel Heroes and Villains*, and with a Foreword by Stephen Wacker, former Senior Editor of Spider-Man and Head of Content, Digital Media at Marvel Entertainment.
Peter Parker got his powers when he was bitten by a radioactive spider at a science exhibition, which gave him superhuman strength, speed and endurance of a spider. He uses his abilities to formulate for the benefit of a greater good. His web-shooters are strong enough to tie up his enemies and allow him to swing through New York, but which also disorients alien in hours! And the Spider-senses that warn of danger allows him to stay one step ahead of his enemies.
Steve Ditko’s design for the Spider-Man costume is brilliant in its simplicity and its balance between the human and the animal. The mask is a perfect example of how the hero is identifiable from almost any part of his costume because of his bold and striking design, and it is the most iconic part of the costume. The mask is so iconic that it is often worn with his suit, and it could be anyone wearing the suit.
Spider-Man is a character who is always involved in an evolving battle with dangerous, experienced villains who contrast with Peter’s youth and naivety. Spider-Man prioritizes on the safety of others over his own, and he is always willing to sacrifice himself in order to make money to pay for medicine for Aunt May. After finding it impossible to catch a cheque for his TV appearances made out to “Spider-Man”, he tries to join the Fantastic Four, but is rejected due to his lack of experience.
One of the reasons that Spider-Man is so relatable is that we spend so much time in his shoes. We see him as a teenager, a young adult, and even an older man. What sets him apart from other super heroes is the fact that he so often agonizes over the hand that fate has dealt him. He is not a superman, but rather a man who has been given the power of a god. He is a fact people always ask: what made me decide to give Spider-Man so many things? I think it was the fact that I had always wanted to do something that nobody ever did: thought balloons. Quite that way until Aardvark Press’ creative nephew made the scene. Next, I had to think about how to make the character more interesting than just his thoughts. That’s what made me make characters come alive in our imagination. It was as if we saw them. Likewise, in stage plays, and in comics as well, we can get great insights into the human condition. We can see the world through the eyes of a child, or a man crawling or web-slinging. That’s all by himself. He has no one to talk to at such times.
| Pub Date | 27/10/2022 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £25.00 |
| ISBN | 9781800783270 |
| H × W | 370 × 272mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | Adult |
| Author | Ned Hartley |
| Extent | 80pp |
| Word Count | 15000 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Sophie la girafe: Sophie goes to Nursery
A trace-the-shape nursery book
- Part of a new range of publishing for Sophie la girafe - the iconic toy from France which has now sold more than 50 million toys worldwide!
- Embossing on every page to engage babies’ and toddlers’ senses and spark curiosity
- A gentle story for reading together - reading aloud helps develop language skills
- A simple story with soft learning, introducing first words from a daycare setting
- With practical tips for starting at a new daycare setting, consulted by Early Years expert Lizzie Noble
Sophie la girafe: Sophie goes to Nursery
Sophie is on her way to nursery. She can’t wait to see her friends.
Sophie loves going to nursery.
Sophie hangs her bag on a special hook with her name on it.
Look, her friends are all here, too. Hello, everyone!
Look, Sophie. Today you will be doing painting. It’s fun – and messy!
There are lots of toys to play with, too. Everybody plays nicely and takes turns.
Sophie and her friends like playing outdoors. It’s so much fun.
After that, they’re feeling hungry. It must be time for a snack. Yum!
Pub Date 02/03/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800783676
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Vulli
Extent 10pp
Word Count 291 words
Rights Available World Eng Lan ex US, CAN
A first concepts lift-the-flap
- Part of a bright new range of Sophie la girafe publishing - the iconic toy from France has now sold more than 50 million toys worldwide!
- With 25 big, easy-to-lift flaps to encourage interaction and help develop fine motor skills
- Introduces first concepts: colours, shapes, opposites, numbers 1-10
- Search and find element: find the ladybird hiding on every page!
- Features all of Sophie’s adorable animal friends, with vibrant, friendly artwork that even the youngest children will engage with
Sophie la girafe: Early learning lift-the-flap
Shapes
Sophie and her friends have come to the seaside to enjoy the sun. What shapes can you spot?
Opposites
Sophie and her friends are at the park. The playground is always so much fun, all flaps to see what’s happening.
Numbers
Discover the farm. The animals are busy planting and picking fruits, vegetables. Lift the flaps to count the crops!
The farmer’s market has sweet treats that are delicious. What can you smell?
Pub Date 11/05/2023
Pub Price £6.99
ISBN 9781800784758
H x W 180 x 180mm
Binding Board Book
Age Range 0-5 years
Author Ruth Symons
Illustrator Vulli
Extent 10pp
Word Count 235 words
Rights Available World Eng Lan ex US, CAN
Poland Rights Available 2023
Created by Ilina Yosifova
email@example.com
Updated 13 April 2025
bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/collections/Poland-Rights-Available-2023 | 07d2239b-918d-4af5-9b60-1aade2983a47 | CC-MAIN-2024-46 | https://files.circularsoftware.com/DOWNLOAD/Client5352/PDF/COLLECTION/Poland-Rights-Available-2023.pdf | 2024-11-09T01:05:34+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-46/segments/1730477028106.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20241108231327-20241109021327-00157.warc.gz | 225,914,024 | 50,682 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.978738 | eng_Latn | 0.998016 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"dag_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"dag_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
28,
518,
2245,
2831,
5539,
6037,
8649,
9151,
10227,
11020,
11606,
12285,
12843,
14175,
14655,
17782,
18499,
19209,
19913,
20639,
23747,
24354,
24836,
25581,
26677,
26955,
27356,
28111,
28456,
29020,
29583,
32518,
33275,
33972,
35130,
35659,
36168,
38693,
39148,
42109,
42573,
44127,
44942,
47211,
47891,
48596,
49001,
49605,
49840,
50116,
51622,
52293,
52528,
53275,
54615,
55219,
56033,
56644,
58156,
58807,
59731,
60515,
61299,
63699,
64483,
65048,
66496,
67246,
67678,
68166,
71489,
72234,
74776,
75440,
78003,
78645,
80072,
80709,
83908,
84546,
85115,
88421,
89149,
89508,
92429,
93149,
95892,
96403,
97409,
98229,
104545,
104960,
106334,
106921,
107238,
107989,
108421,
109119,
109769,
111863,
112471,
113285,
113943,
114882,
115638,
116116,
116754,
117438,
117883,
118920,
119298,
119875,
120695,
121104,
122166,
122720,
123371,
123795,
124805,
125493,
127074,
127702,
128975,
129521,
130097,
130762,
131176,
131516,
131988,
132478,
133369,
134013,
134273,
134905,
135375,
135702,
136346,
136594,
137720,
138379,
138931,
139489,
139999,
140697,
141701,
142436,
143096,
143631,
144235,
144891,
146056,
146781,
147214,
147761,
148170,
148990,
149567,
150387,
150925,
151438,
151959,
152716,
153218,
153844,
154143,
155164,
155677,
156663,
157126,
157543,
158009,
158291,
158823,
159229,
159737,
160135,
160497,
161490,
162134,
162782,
163282,
163704,
164450,
165147,
165896,
166720,
167385,
168074,
168728,
169364,
169853,
170227,
170785,
171290,
172095,
172601,
173385,
173801,
174334,
174873,
175406,
176056,
176849,
177408,
178201,
178908,
179676,
180330,
181100,
181994,
182298,
182552,
182855,
183270,
183733,
184393,
184849,
185654,
186033,
186870,
187268,
187967,
188603,
189408,
189997,
190232,
190725,
191295,
191777,
193951,
194375,
195482,
196217,
198254,
198768,
199095,
199748,
202974,
203669,
206464,
207040,
207814,
208349,
209049,
209234
] | [
2.484375,
1.640625
] | 1 | 0 |
Storm at Sea: Reading Comprehension
Far, far away, upon the shore of a strange island that was forever wrapped in mists that the sun changed into moving curtains of gold, there sat an ageing man and his young, lovely daughter. They were staring out to sea. About the man’s shoulders was a blue cloak, embroidered all over with silver, and beside him on the sands lay a carved staff and a book as thick and richly bound as a bible. Sometimes his hand rested on the book, and sometimes upon his daughter’s arm, as if to comfort her, his face was calm; hers was pale and frightened.
They were watching a ship that was about to be smashed into pieces. A tempest had seized it, an uncanny fury of the elements that seemed to enclose it in a swirling black bubble. As it heaved and tossed, its masts scribbled frantic messages against the blotchy sky, and its rigging all fell down like a madman’s hair. Tiny figures, black as fleas, and with patched white faces, clung where they could; and shrieks and screams, small as the squealing of mice, drifted to the watchers on the shore. Then it was over. Fire, liquid as blazing ink, ran along the yards. The timbers snarled and cracked, the ship split, and was lost. The tempest subsided, the dark bubble dispersed, and the sea was calm.
“Be collected,” comforted the father, his arm about his daughter’s trembling shoulders: “no more amazement: tell your piteous heart there’s no harm done.”
He spoke the truth. He himself, Prospero the enchanter, has raised the storm and, as he promised his daughter Miranda, not a soul had been lost. He had, by his strange power, brought them all safe to the island.
He stood up, and, frowning, began to pace to and fro, making little yellow tempests in the sand, which his long, heavy cloak smoothed away, so that he seemed to have walked, invisibly, on air. Silently, Miranda watched…
From Shakespeare Stories, by Leon Garfield and Michael Foreman
1. In the first sentence the island is described as ‘strange’. What other description in this sentence supports this idea?
2. ‘There sat an ageing man and his young, lovely daughter’. Which two words in this sentence contrast the ages of the two characters.
3. In the first paragraph what three items suggest to us that this man is able to do magic?
4. Why do you think Prospero sometimes has his arm ‘rested on the book, and sometimes upon his daughter’s arm’?
5. What were Prospero and Miranda watching?
6. ‘It’s masts scribbled frantic messages against the blotchy sky’
If the masts were really writing messages in the sky, what do you think they would be saying?
7. Which two words in the text tell us the ship was being thrown around by the storm?
8. What words and phrases tell us the sailors on board the ship were scared?
9. “Be collected,” comforted the father.’ What does Prospero mean?
10. How many people had died in the storm? Use evidence from the text to support your answer
11. ‘He stood up, and, frowning, began to pace to and fro’.
A Circle the two synonyms for ‘frowning’
smiling glaring grimacing laughing
B Why do you think Prospero was frowning?
12. ‘Silently, Miranda watched’.
How do you think Miranda is feeling? | ba3e932a-0b23-4dbe-b971-53def4562a7d | CC-MAIN-2024-33 | https://www.primaryshakespearecompany.org/_files/ugd/1b6bbb_5744811f08e948fabd87f144c01a85e1.pdf | 2024-08-06T15:04:16+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-33/segments/1722640492117.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20240806130705-20240806160705-00154.warc.gz | 742,535,314 | 754 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998903 | eng_Latn | 0.998851 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2287,
3214
] | [
4.4375
] | 1 | 0 |
July 04, School Reopens:
Students thronged the corridors of their temple of learning after a rejuvenating summer break. They came with heart warming smiles and experiences gathered during their summer vacation. Undoubtedly, our students do not like to be away for long from their school that gives them so much warmth and care. The icing on the cake was the warm welcome accorded on arrival by the Principal and the teaching faculty.
KINDERGARTEN WING
July 05, Special Assembly on Id-ul-Fitr:
“Prayer is when you talk to God, meditation is when you listen to God”
A special assembly was conducted by the students to celebrate Id-ul-Fitr with devoutness and love. Students presented a Talk Show, highlighting the significance of fasting and prayers. The holy festival of Id propagates harmony, brotherhood and is marked with celebrations galore. This message was well displayed by the little ones through this special assembly.
July 13, Stepping Stone Race - UKG:
Physical fitness is one of the most important elements for leading a healthy life. Exercises and sports help the students to maintain fitness, develop muscular strength and increase stamina. Thus, physical sports and games stretch physical abilities to an optimum level. To enhance the true spirit of sportsmanship, Stepping Stone Race was organised for the kids. The ones who reached the finishing line were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------|
| A | Rishima Aggarwal Ashwin Dhingra | Vaanya Khera Suvir Gupta | Hiteshi Anand Tejasveer |
| B | Divyanoor K Dhindsa Ekampreet Singh | Jahnavi Harshdeep Singh | Avi Raghuvanshi Sanyam Bansal |
| C | Varnika Gambhir Nabhya Raj | Seerat Mohindroo Rehaan Kumar | Sunakshi Som Avya Bansal |
| D | Divyanshi Chopra Devansh Bhardwaj | Riya Gurnoor Singh | Anshika Bansal Saksh Ahuja |
| E | Ridhreet Kaur Manjot Singh | Kunjan Atharva Gupta | Priyanshi Saraan Harjap Singh |
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
KINDERGARTEN WING
| Sr. no. | Competitions | LKG | Nursery | UKG |
|---------|-------------------------------------|-----|---------|-----|
| 1 | Thumb Printing | | | |
| 2 | Knowledge Test (Prelims) | | | |
| 3 | Obstacle Course Race | | | |
| 4 | Knowledge Test (Finals) | | | |
| 5 | Quiz (Prelims) | | | |
| 6 | Quiz (Finals) | | | |
| 7 | Caterpillar Race | | | |
| 8 | Tearing and Pasting | | | |
| 9 | Short Story Narration | | | |
| 10 | Story Telling | | | |
| 11 | Grab the Flag Race | | | |
| 12 | Dot to Dot | | | |
| 13 | Quiz-Whiz (Prelims) | | | |
| 14 | Shuttle it Up Race | | | |
| 15 | Quiz-Whiz (Finals) | | | |
| 16 | Clay Modeling | | | |
| 17 | Hindi Recitation | | | |
| 18 | Make and Break Race | | | |
PRIMARY WING
| Sr. no. | Competitions | II-III | I | II-III |
|---------|-------------------------------------|--------|------|--------|
| 1 | Spelling Bee (English) | | | |
| 2 | Spelling Bee - II (English) | | | |
| 3 | Sports for Fun | | | |
| 4 | English Grammar Quiz (Prelims) | | | |
| 5 | Creative Drawing | | | |
| 6 | Long Jump | | | |
| 7 | English Grammar Quiz (Finals) | | | |
| 8 | Discus Throw (Finals) | | | |
| 9 | G.K. Quiz (Prelims) | | | |
| 10 | Elocution (Prelims) | | | |
| 11 | G.K. Quiz (Finals) | | | |
| 12 | Hand Ball Match | | | |
| 13 | Elocution (Finals) | | | |
| 14 | Spelling Bee-I (Hindi) | | | |
ANNOUNCEMENTS
| Sr. no. | Competitions | KG | I-III |
|---------|-------------------------------------|----|-------|
| 1 | Parent Teacher Meeting | | |
| 2 | Parent Teacher Meeting | | |
| 3 | Parent Teacher Meeting | | |
| 4 | Parent Teacher Meeting | | |
July 13, String the Aqua Beads Competition - LKG:
For children, there is nothing more enjoyable than playing in water. Toddlers of Mind Tree beat the summer heat with the Splash Pool Activity. They looked lovely in their swimming costumes. The children thoroughly enjoyed stringing the beads. They were happy and the cooling effect made them feel fresh. The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|
| A | Aamakshi Bhardwaj Bhavya Kumar | Shreya Jain Shashwat Jain | Aradhya Abhav Aggarwal |
| B | Aanvi Dua Shivesh Anand | Kurbaan Kaur Atharva Aggarwal | Kanishka Vihaa Jain |
| C | Pavani Rastogi Kuljit Singh | Panya Ayyukt Kalra | Supreet Kaur Shivaansh Kapoor |
| D | Arisha Jain Arhaan Jain | Saanvi Sharma Madhav Gandhi | Diya Grover Vihaaan Madan |
| E | Ipsita Dilraj Singh | Yahira Jain Arniv | Mishri Ragnav Malhotra |
July 15, Hindi Recitation Competition - Nursery:
Recitation is the art of expression of thoughts in a rhythmic manner. Poetry is the essence of life and brings out the innate feelings of a person. A Hindi Recitation Competition was held for the students. They participated wholeheartedly and recited poems with eloquence and clarity. They were judged for their voice modulation, presentation and diction. Attractive props were an added attraction. The best reciters were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|
| A | Aarnav Gupta | Agamjot Singh Kalra | Moksh Anand |
| B | Navraj Sidhu | Youvika Arora | Varun Chauhan |
| C | Anusha Bansal | Bhavi Bansal | Divgun Kaur Walia |
| D | Aarav Narang | Bhumick Nayal | Aarna Kukreja |
| E | Ganeev Singh Bindra | Aarush Aggarwal | Aaradhya Gupta |
July 19, Special Assembly on Guru Purnima:
‘Guru Purnima’ is a festival dedicated to the spiritual and academic teachers, a day sacred to the memory of the ancient ‘Sage Vyasa’ who wrote the epic, the Mahabharata. The assembly on Guru Purnima was a small initiative by the students to explain the importance of a Guru in one’s life. The assembly started with a prayer “Guru Brahma Guru Vishnu” and students were informed about the importance of celebrating Guru Purnima. The students presented a skit depicting that all the religions of the world attach paramount importance to Gurus.
July 20, Special Assembly on Moon Day:
As each child is brought up on the lullaby ‘Chanda Mama’, the Moon has been in every child’s fantasy. Kids enthusiastically celebrated ‘Moon Day’ with an array of songs and dances. They were further told about the conquest of the Moon by man and its scientific relevance.
July 22, English Recitation Competition - LKG:
Good Recitation improves articulation and expression. It enables a student to exploit his / her inner talents and helps in building confidence. With this idea, an English Recitation Competition on the theme ‘Seasons’ was held for the students. The poise and presentation of the students kept the audience mesmerised.
The winners were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|-------------|------------|
| Siddhant Jain| Samarth Dua | Aradhya |
| Jaskeerat Kaur | Kartik Gupta | Simarleen Kaur |
| Aanya Gaba | Avyukt Kalra | Aarav Goel |
| Japnind Singh | Arisha Jain | Tiana Nayyar |
| Shreya Goyal | Devishee | Anshuman Garg |
**July 27, Best out of Waste Competition - UKG:**
To make the kids aware of the significance of 3 R’s: Recycle, Reduce and Reuse, Best Out of Waste Competition was held for the students of UKG. They reused discarded CDs, bottles, empty tetra packs, boxes etc. to create beautiful handicrafts. The activity was coupled with an interactive session where the urgent need for conservation of resources and waste management was emphasised upon. The winners were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|-------------|------------|
| Karnik Dang | Tejasveer | Taru Sachdeva |
| Divyanoor K Dhindsa | Aadit Jain | Armit Jain |
| Varnika Gambhir | Omisha Bahoray | Samar Sharma |
| Ojaswi Jain | Aarav Dutta | Hiya Adlakha |
| Advik Kansal | Muskaan Goyal | Rakshit Aggarwal |
**July 29, Clean the Path Race - Nursery:**
Cleanliness is a virtue which is instilled in our students right from Nursery. It was taught in a playful manner through the Clean the Path Race. The winners were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|-------------|------------|
| Avya Gupta | Vaanya Gulati | Veelu Kushagra Saini |
| Aarnav Gupta | Vansh Oberoi | Krishnav Moulik Chotani |
| Adravya Zorawar Singh | Japleen Kaur | Eshita |
| Anusha Bansal Agam Goel | Bhuvi Bansal Guransh Singh | Priyanshi Dutt Krishav Sehgal |
| Jaanya Keswani Jasraj Sahni | Khushi Ahuja Agastya Sharma | Veronika Singh Aarush Sharma |
| Eshmita Aarav Gupta | Viha Ahluwalia Ansh Mittal | Pranika Atharv Gupta |
**August 03, Speech on Favourite Freedom Fighter - UKG:**
The best speakers were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|-------------|------------|
| Suvir Gupta | Shaurya Sethi | Gaurish Aneja |
| Sanshia Jain | Divyanoor K Dhindsa | Jahnavi |
| Vinayak Puri | Ayaan Mankolia | Samarth Sharma |
| Myra Goel | Ojaswi Jain | Hiya Adlakha |
| Rakshit Aggarwal | Advik Kansal | Bhuwan Goyal |
**August 05, Hindi Song Competition - LKG:**
A Singing Competition was held in our school. The judges were impressed to hear beautiful and melodious songs by the young children. It was indeed a fine display of talent by all the participants. The little cuckoos and nightingales who captivated the audience and judges were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|-------------|------------|
| Siddhant Jain| Samarth Dua | Garima Narula |
| Jaskeerat Kaur | Aasmi Salwan | Simarleen Kaur |
| Ayaan Singh | Avyukt Kalra | Saanvi |
| Shivansh Mittal | Aiyra Jain | Krish Aggarwal |
| Shreya Goyal | Namya Puri | Ipsita |
**August 11, Thread the Beads Race - Nursery:**
The winners of the race were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|-------------|------------|
| Saanvi Gupta Diyvansh Jangra | Vaanya Gulati Aarav Gupta | Aru Khanna Moksh Anand |
| Sarbanipreet Kaur Moulik Chotani | Eshita Aadvik Dawar | Adravya Raghav Aggarwal |
| Siya Pahuja Prayaan Sethi | Sanisha Jain Athrav Gupta | Preshti Pranshu Khera |
| Veronika Singh Medhansh Goel | Aarna Kukreja Aaditva Singhal | Sonanshi Singh Shrenik Sharma |
| Viha Ahluwalia Ansh Mittal | Aaradhya Gupta Vardhan Kalra | Seerat Dang Savreen Singh |
**August 11, One Legged Race - LKG:**
One legged racing has been one of the most mischievous and fun-filled games for young children. We organised this fun event keeping in mind that children always try to innovate new ways to entertain themselves. The winners of the race were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|-------------|------------|
| Aamakshi Bhardwaj Jashan Rana | Ruhani Garg Abhay Pratap Singh | Eksha Sharma Kartik |
| Aanya Arora Atharva Aggarwal | Kanishka Kapur Shivesh Anand | Simarleen Kaur Arshaan Singh |
| Pavani Rastogi Ruwan Walia | Aanika Kuljot Singh | Savitri Tul Saksham Sharma |
| Saanvi Sachdeva Shivansh Mittal | Naisha Chawla Madhav Gandhi | Aiyra Jain Jaevin Takyar |
| Ananya Dilraj Singh | Mishti Samanyu Goyal | Yuvika Goyal Anshuman Garg |
**'Freedom has its life in the hearts, actions and spirit of countrymen.'**
Kids celebrated Independence Day with great zeal, patriotic fervour and profound devotion for their motherland. The programme began with a prayer, invoking peace and prosperity. A beautiful rendition of 'Saare Jahan se Acha' by the choir lent a celestial aura and filled the air with patriotism. The students paid homage to the supreme sacrifice made by our great freedom fighters with a spectacular and spellbinding dance show. They brought alive the courage, valour and the indomitable spirit of our freedom fighters through a medley of poems. Renewing the pledge to serve the motherland, the celebrations came to a close with the singing of the National Anthem.
August 24, Special Assembly on Janamashtami:
There is one God,
He is the supreme truth
He is omnipresent,
Pervades the universe
By his grace shalt thou worship him’
Celebrating the glory of the supreme and the eternal teachings of Lord Krishna, the children presented a special assembly on the auspicious occasion of Janamashtami. Interspersed with delectable dances, an eloquent narration unfolded the epic tale of Lord Krishna’s birth and life. Melodious rendition of devotional songs by the choir lent a celestial aura and filled the atmosphere with rhythm and symphony.
August 17, Special Assembly on Raksha Bandhan:
Celebration is an expression of love and gratitude. The students participated in special assembly on the eve of Rakshabandhan. They presented a Talk Show and a dance, signifying the tender bond of love and affection between a brother and a sister. It was a great moment where the children propounded the traditional values attached to the festival. The assembly culminated with a mellifluous choral recital by the students.
August 19, Rakhi Making Competition - LKG:
The students were elated to express their feelings for their respective siblings. It clearly reflected in the form of rakhis which they made. The boys too made beautiful rakhis. The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|-----------|--------------|-------------|
| A | Aradhya | Aabhav Aggarwal | Siddhant Jain |
| B | Simarleen Kaur | Arshaan Singh | Bhavesh Bhushan |
| C | Saksham Sharma | Aarav Gupta | Avyukt Kalra |
| D | Shivansh Mittal | Aiyra Jain | Krish Aggarwal |
| E | Shreya Goyal | Yuvika Goyal | Samanyu Goyal |
August 26, English Recitation Competition - Nursery:
To spread the aroma of poetry and involve maximum students, a Recitation Competition was held. The students recited poems beautifully and were dressed well for the occasion. The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|-----------|--------------|-------------|
| A | Ansh Aggarwal | Jaiveer Taneja | Moksh Anand |
| B | Navraj Sidhu | Youvika Arora | Zorawar Singh |
| C | Siya Pahuja | Anusha Bansal | Priyanshi Dutt |
| D | Aarav Narang | Veronika Singh | Dhairya Jain |
| E | Seerat Dang | Ganeev S Bindra | Aarush Aggarwal |
August 26, Puzzle Making Competition - UKG:
Puzzles give “an opportunity for young children to focus on an activity that has an ending.” The kids who were able to put the puzzles in correct order were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|-----------|--------------|-------------|
| A | Arshiya Jain | Shaurya Sethi | Annanya Bindra |
| B | Aarav Sirpal | Sanisha Jain | Avi Raghuvanshi |
| C | Samar Sharma | Ayansh Chadha | Sunakshi Som Rehaan Kumar |
| D | Yajur Mathur | Devanssh Bhardwaj | Neeya Sethi |
| E | Atharva Gupta | Saachi Nanda | Shaurya Jain |
September 05, Special Assembly on Ganesh Chaturthi and Teacher’s Day:
September 7, I Am Creative Competition - UKG:
Children gave vent to their creativity and let the colours flow onto the canvas on the theme - "Market Scene". Beautiful colours and sketches adorned the white sheets and transformed them into sheer masterpieces. The best artists were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|--------------|-------------|-------------|
| A | Shaurya Sethi| Ishaan Bakshi| Yash Verma |
| B | Avi Raghuvanshi| Sanyam Bansal| Moksh Jain |
| C | Avya Bansal | Varnika Gambhir| Aasma Bakshi|
| D | Neeya Sethi | Khanak Prabhakar| Arshnoor K Kohli|
| E | Advik Kansal | Ishaan Biswas| Saachi Nanda|
September 9, Special Assembly on Grandparent’s Day:
Grandparents are a delightful blend of laughter, caring deeds, wonderful stories and love. They hold our hands for just a little while, but our hearts forever. To pay our reverence and gratitude to the grandparents, a special assembly was organised where the little ones performed to their best.
September 9, Special Assembly on Bakr-id:
Id is one of the most important festivals of the Muslims. To mark the occasion, students sang - "Id Mubarak" in the special assembly. The finale to the programme was a beautiful dance performance by the children. Greetings of "Id Mubarak" were extended to one and all.
September 9, Fancy Dress Competition - LKG:
A Fancy Dress Competition on the theme - "Birds" was held for the students. The little ones were dressed in colourful costumes, depicting different birds. It was a delight to watch the children as they came up and spoke about their attires. The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|--------------|-------------|----------------|
| A | Siddhant Jain| Samarth Dua | Aabhav Aggarwal |
| B | Jaskeerat Kaur| Vihan Bansal| Aayush Gupta |
| C | Prastuti Kansra| Vian Choudhary| Avyukt Kalra |
| D | Tiana Nayyar| Japnind Singh| Diya Grover |
| E | Shreya Goyal| Samanyu Goyal| Shaurya Jain |
September 9, Baby Steps Race - Nursery:
The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|--------------------------|----------------------------|------------------------------|
| A | Saisha Jain Medhansh Goyal| Ayva Gupta Sidharth Jain | Aru Khanna Reyansh Aggarwal |
| B | Gurman Kaur Arju Jain | Youvika Arora Aaran Chawla | Aradhya Takkar Aadit Bajaj |
| C | Divgun Kaur Wallia Prayaan Sethi| Siya Pahuja Guransh Singh | Bhavi Bansal Athrav Gupta |
| D | Alia Khanna Shrenik Sharma| Khushi Ahuja Veer Varma | Sonanshi Singh Japhar Singh |
| E | Vaanya Goyal Dhruv Saini | Viha Ahluwalia Aarush Aggarwal| Seerat Dang Vardhan Kalra |
September 14, Special Assembly on Hindi Divas:
A special assembly was held to commemorate Hindi Divas. Children were told about the greatness of our national language, Hindi and the relevance of Hindi Divas. Songs and dances by the students enthralled the audience.
September 23, Wheel Barrow Race - UKG:
The winners were:
| Boys | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|------------|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|
| Daksh Walia - B | Devan Jaglan - B | Saksh Ahuja - D | Satyam Sharma - E |
| | | Moulik Bajaj - D| Kuwarbir Singh - E |
| Girls | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|------------|-------------------|-----------------|--------------------|
| Samar Sharma - C | Varnika Gambhir - C | Kunjan - E | Arshnoor K Kohli - D |
| | | Aanya - E | Riya - D |
September 23, Balance the Ball Race - Nursery:
The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|--------------------------|----------------------------|------------------------------|
| A | Vanya Gulati Kushagara Saini| Saina Bhagotra Moksh Anand | Aru Khanna Divyansh Jangra |
| B | Manya Anush Singla | Rishika Sharma Navraj Sidhu| Aradhya Raghav Aggarwal |
| C | Aashvi Gupta Aarav Sabharwal| Anusha Bansal Athrav Gupta | Siya Pahuja Lakshit Chopra |
| D | Sonanshi Singh Aarush Sharma| Veronika Singh Abhiraj Mathur| Dhanishta Veer Varma |
| E | Eshmita Ganeev S Bindra | Viha Ahluwalia Sumandh Khaneja| Seerat Dang Harshaan Singh |
September 23, Creative Drawing Competition - LKG:
A drawing competition for LKG was held in their respective classes. Children participated whole heartedly on the theme - 'Circus'. The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|--------------|-------------|----------------|
| A | Siddhant Jain| Aradhya | Samarth Dua |
| B | Simarleen Kaur| Arshaan Singh| Jaskeerat Kaur |
| C | Prastuti Kansra| Aanya Gaba | Ayaan Singh |
| D | Shivansh Mittal| Tiana Nayyar| Sheeralee Kumar|
| E | Yuvika Goyal| Yahira Jain | Shreya Goyal |
September 30, Special Assembly on Gandhiji and Lal Bahadur Shastri Jayanti:
A special assembly was conducted to celebrate Gandhi Jayanti and Lal Bahadur Shastri Jayanti. A student of UKG, delivered a speech on the life and teachings of Sh Lal Bahadur Shastri. A play was enacted by the students displaying an incident from Mahatma Gandhi's life where he managed to change his critics to his admirers with his calm, polite and patient nature. Students recited a poem glorifying the virtuous lives of Mahatma Gandhi and Sh Lal Bahadur Shastri. The intention was to teach students various values from the lives of such great personalities.
PRIMARY WING
July 5, 2016: Special Assembly on Id-ul-Fitr:
Id is Happiness, Id is Love, Id is Dedication, Id is Beauty
Id-ul-fitr is an important festival celebrated across many parts of the globe. It marks the breaking of the 30 days fast of the Muslims. Our school too, celebrated this festival. A teacher’s talk by Ms Anshuka Bhardwaj was given on this occasion. Students were appraised about the teachings of the Holy Quran. It was indeed a pious beginning to the new quarter.
July 15, 2016: Photo Frame Making Competition - Grade II & III:
'The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.' We all have a creative streak in us. Our school constantly encourages kids to hone their skills. One such opportunity was the Photo Frame Making Competition using waste material. Innovative ideas, perfect compilation and wonderful presentations made the selection procedure really difficult. Things unthinkable of being put to use like corks, bottle caps, sticks, paper, sacks, ice-cream sticks etc were well utilised. The most creative artists were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|-------|--------------|-------------|------------|
| II | Anureet Sawhney - A | Rehan Kapoor - C | Aamulaya Sharma - C |
| III | Adhiraj Handa - E | Daksh Chawla - C | Hardik Kalra - E |
July 16, 2016: English Recitation Competition - Grade I:
Understanding poems makes a child sensitive, and writing them makes him creative. Students develop confidence as they learn to speak more accurately and persuasively about any piece of writing. Based on this thought, we conducted a Recitation Competition. The theme was 'Moral Values - Need of the Hour'. It was amazing to see the kids having such convincing demeanour and voice modulation. The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|-------|--------------|-------------|------------|
| I | Nandini Raghuvanshi - C | Chhavi Bali - B | Aarav Bansal - E |
July 16, 2016: Relay Race - Grade I:
'Look Up, Not Down; Look forward, not back; Look towards your goals, not back at your failures'
Racing brings delight and lights up the competitive spirit in the young children. It is this spirit which helps them emerge as winners in their lives too. Complete comradeship, willingness to win and giving it their best was exhibited by the little sprinters as they deftly passed the baton cheered up by their team mates. The winning teams were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|-------|--------------|-------------|------------|
| I | Nehmat Arora – D | Prabhav Jain – D | Yuvika Yadavanshi – D |
| | Shaurya Adlakha - D | Niyati Punyani - D | Ranbir Arora - D |
| | Manya - C | Ojus Juneja - B | Hunar Singh - C |
| | Armaan Mahajan - B | Gurman Kaur Walia - C | Divyansh Mittal - B |
| | Trisha Sachdeva - B | Udbhav - C | Parneet Kaur - B |
| | Abhinav Nain - C | Lakshita Bhatnagar - B | Shabd Arya - C |
July 19, 2016: Special Assembly on Guru Purnima:
Guru Purnima is traditionally celebrated by the Indians to express their gratitude to their guru. Students of Grade III presented a beautiful Bharatnatyam performance to appease their gurus. Students of I-B, led by their class teacher Ms Shivani Dua, enacted the life and teachings of Dattatrey. Students of I-E presented a beautiful prayer song on the occasion.
July 30, 2016: Extempore Speech Competition - Grade II & III:
Eloquent speech is not from lip to ear but rather from heart to heart.
W. J. Bryan
Training the kids to speak eloquently and effortlessly is our endeavour. One such platform was provided through this competition. It was indeed a pleasure to hear them speak at length with perfect grammatical skills on the topics provided to them on the spot. Such display is heartening for the teaching faculty and the management. The best speakers were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|-------|--------------|-------------|------------|
| II | Siah Mahajan - B | Japleen K Sabharwal - C | Aksh Chhabra - A |
| III | Savnie Thapar - B | Kulnoor K Dhindsa - D | Soumil Thapar - B |
July 30, 2016: Skating Race - Grade II & III:
Racers on wheels set the rink on fire. Speed, agility, concentration, skill and stamina were put to test. Our students excelled both in the Inline and Roller Skating Races. It's heartening to see the students shining in full glory both in academics and sports. The athletes on skates who shone were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|-------|--------------|-------------|------------|
| II | Sameeha Garg - E | Rehaan Uppal - A | Tanveer Singh - E |
| | Charvi Kalra - C | Dev Kalra - A | Shreyans Kumar - B |
| III | Khushi Kalra - C | Shailyan Sharma - D | Rishank Kukreja - A |
| | Harsimar Kaur - E | Dhaurya - E | Aarush Behl - A |
| | Amisha Gulati - D | Tanmay Jain - E | Harman Sahni - B |
| | Bhuwan Bajaj - E | Parmeet Singh - B |
August 6, 2016: English Story Narration Competition - Grade I:
Great stories happen to those who can tell them. Stories have enchanted kids right from their infancy. It is a great art which, if mastered at an early age, gives perfect expression to verbal skills. The students were at their expressive best and extremely involved in the intricately woven threads of their fantasies. It was wondrous to hear them narrate their stories. The winners were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|-------|--------------|-------------|------------|
| I | Hunar Singh - C | Anika - A | Lakshita Bhatnagar - B |
August 11, 2016: Special Assembly on Independence Day:
Students of Grade I celebrated the 70th Independence Day with great patriotic fervour and zeal. They danced to a medley of patriotic songs and presented an enactment, laden with patriotic feelings. The aura was totally charged up with patriotic spirit.
We strongly believe in our children’s strengths and celebrate their achievements, helping them recognise their accomplishments and experience the joy of learning. The second and third graders of Mind Tree celebrated the spirit of nationalism in a novel way. They etched on our hearts and minds the valour of India's great warrior Maharana Pratap through a cultural programme. The celebrations for the great day were set rolling by the welcome address. The baton was then handed over to the impeccable narrators who through their narration brought alive the life sketch of the valiant Maharana. The narrative was laced up with excellently choreographed dance numbers. The spirit, talent and demeanour of our young children made it amply clear that soon India will be a force to reckon with.
The students of Grade 1 to 5 presented a cultural show on the occasion of Independence Day. The students performed various dances and songs that showcased the rich cultural heritage of India. The event was a great success, and the students displayed their talent and enthusiasm in front of an audience. The show was a celebration of our nation's independence and a reminder of the sacrifices made by our forefathers. The students' performances were a testament to their hard work and dedication, and they were all praised for their efforts. The event was a memorable experience for everyone involved, and it will be remembered for years to come.
August 15, 2016: Independence Day Celebration:
We owe a lot to those Indians, who laid down their lives and taught us how to live with self respect.
'भारत माता तेरी गाथा, सबसे ज़्यादी तेरी श्रान
तेरे आगे शीशा झुकाएँ, वे तुझको हम सब सम्मान'
Independence Day was celebrated with great enthusiasm and respect at Mind Tree school. The teaching faculty, staff and the management sang the National Anthem in unison to express the joy of our freedom as the Tricolour was unfurled. Our music teacher Mr. Ekansh aroused the nationalist feelings with his marvellous rendition of 'ऐ मेरे वतन'.
August 17, 2016: Special Assembly on Raksha Bandhan:
'The priceless thread, Rakhi is the epitome of brother-sister love.'
The bond of pure love between a brother and a sister was celebrated with full zeal. Saanvi Jain and Ananya Biswas, presented a poem brimming with sentiments. Students of I-E then enacted the significance of Rakhi Celebration and culminated the celebration with a foot tapping dance performance.
August 24, 2016: Special Assembly on Janamashtami:
'You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of the work. You should never engage in action for the sake of record, nor should you long for inaction.'
Shrimad Bhagavad Gita
It seemed as if angels dressed in Lord Krishna's attire landed on the Earth to celebrate Krishan Janamashtami. Students of II-C and III-D spoke eloquently on the significance of this festival through their speeches. Wonderful dance performances by the students were appreciated. The threads of celebration were then picked up by the students of I-B and I-C. Students of I-C presented a beautiful dance presentation where they enacted scenes from the life of Makhan Chor and presented a gripping Rasleela on this festive occasion. The celebration stressed on the fact that one needs to be cautious of one's deeds as each one of us has to bear the consequences of his deeds.
August 26, 2016: Flower Arrangement Competition - Grade II & III:
'Each flower is a soul blossoming out to nature' G.D. Nerval
We have a firm belief that each child has a creative side to his/her personality. All of our prodigies, together, form a beautiful bunch. Each of them, has a unique talent which we wish to hone and appreciate. This competition provided a platform to the kids to display their artistic skills and eye for beauty. Marvellous presentations added colour and vibrance to the classrooms. The budding creative souls were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|-------|--------------|-------------|------------|
| II | Arnav Singla - C | Araisha Arora - A | Parul Gawri - C |
| III | Jahanvi Nayyar - D | Daksh Sharma - C | Arnav Aggarwal - B |
September 2, 2016: Special Assembly on Teacher’s Day:
‘To the world you may be just a teacher
But to your students you are a hero’
Birthday of Dr Sarvapalli Radha Krishnan was celebrated with much fanfare by the Mindtreeans. Even before the celebrations began, the little darlings handed their mentors beautiful hand made cards and flowers.
Setting the pace for celebrations were Akshadha and Karan from II-D who traced the history of Teacher’s Day with their speech laced with poetry. Students of II-C paid glowing tributes to their gurus through well recited dohas. Students of II-E sang about the contributions of the teachers. Students of I-A had everyone in rapt attention through their presentation, highlighting the role of gurus in their life. Vinayak of II-C thanked all his teachers on behalf of his friends. Student of II-D sang a beautiful poem to thank their light house of knowledge. The celebration ended with a rocking performance by students of II-B on ‘I love my teacher.’ Poetic titles were awarded to their gurus by the students who also decorated the classes to make them feel special and blessed. Love you dear students!
September 2, 2016: Special Assembly on Ganesh Chaturthi:
The festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, also known as Vinayak Chaturthi was celebrated with great enthusiasm. The significance and history of this festival was elaborately spoken on by Siah Mahajan of II-B. Later, the students of I-A and II-A invoked lord Ganesha through Ganesh Stuti. The little ones looked beautiful as they perfectly performed classical dance to seek the blessings of Vighan Nashak.
September 3, 2016: Devotional Song Competition - Grade II & III:
‘Dear God, In your strong hands I place my life today, choosing to depend on you to light and guide my way’
Talent is in abundance in the corridors of our school. We all were transported to a world of pious aura as soulful renditions of bhajans, shabads and songs filled the air. The students did not just sing but they understood them well. It is heartening to see the future generation so deeply rooted to the morals and values of Indian culture. The budding singers were:
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|-------|----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|
| II | Adviti Bharti Gupta - A | Bhavya Puri - C | Shaurya Kansal - D |
| III | Prachi Sharma - A | Agrima Bali - B | Saksham Jain - A |
September 9, 2016: Principal Ma’am’s Address to Grade III for SAI:
‘There is no substitute for hard work’
Our gracious principal guided and urged the students to put their best foot forward in the upcoming SA-I. We all wished them the very best and prayed silently for a wonderful result.
September 9, 2016: Special Assembly on Grand Parent’s Day:
Grandparents make the world
a little softer, a little kinder, a little warmer
Grandparents are our heritage and are essential members of our families and communities. A celebration of this day in a humble way, taught the students to let their grandparents know their irreplaceable role in their lives. Students of II-B presented a wonderful dance on this occasion. Students of I-B too, impressed one and all by their dance presentation.
September 9, 2016: Special Assembly on Bakr-Id:
‘One who lacks kindness of heart, lacks all good’
The festival of giving and sacrificing was celebrated by our students with full zeal. Arnav Singla of II-C gave a speech highlighting the significance of this festival. He enlightened the audience about this fact that on Bakr-Id, the Holy Quran was completed. The gusto and spirit of the festival was further highlighted by the students of I-E. Indeed, to share with the deprived is true service in the eyes of the almighty. Wishing everyone Id Mubarak. Happy Id-ul-Zuha.
September 14, 2016: Special Assembly on Hindi Divas:
A nation is dumb without a national language.
Our national language - Hindi binds the whole country into a cohesive unit. It adopts the true spirit of Indians in terms of tolerance. It is the third most spoken language in the world. Glorifying the national language were the students of II-D, with their street play where they told each one to be proud of their national language and to adopt it with open arms. Students of I-C too, presented a beautiful act highlighting the importance and beauty of matras in the Hindi language. The celebration of Hindi Diwas culminated with the students taking a vow to take our National language to new heights.
September 15, 2016: Origami Competition - Grade I:
'Paper will no doubt be found interesting by those who take interest in it.'
Crushing paper is one of the first skills which a toddler learns. This enhances and develops hand-eye co-ordination and motor skills. Later, it is mastered as an art when deft and skilled paper folding reveals beautiful and creative pieces. Such talent was put to test through this competition. Wonderful creations depicting animals were a treat for the eyes. The best origami masters were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|--------------|--------------|
| Jai Ahuja - D | Sachkrit Singh - B | Samreet Kaur - C |
September 24, 2016: English Speech Competition - Grade I:
'Speech is the mirror to the soul; As a man speaks, so is he.'
Kids imitate and follow the ones they look up to. Having a worthy role model is of utmost importance. Motivating the kids to choose a role model wisely and sanely after putting in a lot of thought was our motive which was well achieved. Students spoke convincingly about great Indian personalities of their choice. Knowing that the future generation possesses clarity of thought gives us hope for a better tomorrow. The best speakers were:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|--------------|--------------|--------------|
| Nandini Raghuvanshi - C | Chhavi Bali - B | Taara Sethi - C |
| | | Yuki Malik - C |
September 14, 2016: Field Trip to Dairy Farm - Grade I:
'I never teach my students, I only provide the conditions in which they can learn'
Einstein
Giving students hands on experience in livestock farming was the motive of this short trip. Students saw how cattle is reared, milked and cared for. They saw and enquired in detail about how milk is stored in cans and distributed. It was an exciting and novel experience for the first graders.
September 30, 2016: Special Assembly on Gandhiji and Sh Lal Bahadur Shastri Jayanti:
'A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.'
M. Gandhi
Great souls never die, they live on through their teachings and works. We celebrated the birth of two such national heroes. Students of I-D and II-E remembered the valiant sons of our mother land. Speech by Prabhav of I-D set the ball rolling for the day. He highlighted the philosophy of simplicity propagated by Lal Bahadur Shastri. An act on life and works of Bapu was also presented by students of I-D. Students of II-E also paid glowing tributes to these charismatic personalities through their speech and play.
Sporting Wonders of Mind Tree
Students participated in Skating Competition held at Blue Bird High School, Panchkula on 24th & 25th September, 2016. The winners were:
| Name | Class & Section | Medal |
|--------------|-----------------|---------|
| Sameeha Garg | II - E | 1 Gold, 2 Silver |
| Tanveer Singh| II - E | 1 Bronze |
Sameeha Garg of II E bagged the first position whereas Shalyan Sharma of III D and Khushi Kalra of III C bagged the second position at the District Level Skating Championship and qualified for the State Level Championship.
Teacher's Day out
Our staff enjoyed a day of luxurious retreat at Park Plaza, Chandigarh on the occasion of Teacher's Day. Musical performance by a live band was followed by a scrumptious meal bringing smiles and pleasure. | 3b6b091b-d448-46ab-8708-bb1408a7a166 | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://mindtreeschool.com/july-september(2016-2017).pdf | 2023-09-27T19:15:41+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510319.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20230927171156-20230927201156-00775.warc.gz | 438,160,095 | 9,972 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.99759 | eng_Latn | 0.99791 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
5412,
8628,
13703,
16546,
17923,
22684,
28113,
28904,
29551,
32592,
36073,
40170
] | [
2.203125,
2.25
] | 1 | 0 |
Overview
Can the use of texting promote parents’ engagement in early literacy activities with their preschool children? In 2012-2013, Minnesota Children’s Museum (MCM) partnered with two local metropolitan county library systems to develop and implement Text2Learn, a mobile phone texting program for low income parents of preschoolers. The goal of Text2Learn was to promote preschool parents’ knowledge of early literacy, encourage them to increase early literacy activities with their preschoolers, and use community resources that supported early literacy. Texts were delivered over a 12-week period of time and contained information about early childhood literacy, literacy-promoting activities, and opportunities to use early childhood community resources and programming. The Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) at the University of Minnesota conducted an evaluation of the program.
Evaluation results showed that the texts were well-received by this group of parents. Parents reported engaging in more literacy activities with their children after receiving the texts, and appreciated getting reminders about activities. They did not report increased use of community resources, such as libraries, or changes in attitudes about literacy. Overall, this study suggests that texting is a strategy worth exploring because it can effectively provide parents with frequent reminders of ways they can support their children’s early literacy development.
Key Findings
• Low-income parents from ethnically diverse backgrounds were willing to sign up to receive text messages.
• Parents found the text messages to be helpful reminders to engage in literacy activities with their children.
• Parents reported engaging in more literacy activities with their children after they had received the text messages.
• Text messages are an innovative way for community organizations to extend the reach of their information.
Introduction
Improving young children’s pre-literacy skills through parenting programs continues to be an area ripe for intervention. Parents’ own use of language and support of emerging pre-literacy skills is recognized as essential to children’s literacy development (Burgess & Hecht, 2002). Cognitive abilities in early childhood, including literacy skills, lay the foundation for later achievement. Cognitive skills at school entry predict long-term academic performance and educational achievement (Gutman, Sameroff, & Cole, 2003; Duncan et al., 2007; LaParo & Pianta, 2000; Luster & McAdoo, 1996).
However, parental involvement in early literacy development is not always intuitive. Low income parents are less likely to engage in literacy-promoting activities, like talking and reading with their children. In fact, their involvement decreases as risk factors increase (e.g., single parenthood, low maternal education) (Burchinal, Roberts, Zeisel, Hennon, & Hooper, 2006). Limited parental involvement in early literacy development has serious implications, because parent-child involvement in literacy activities predicts the development of literacy and school readiness skills (Bennett, Weigel & Martin, 2002; Bracken & Fischel, 2008; Senechal & LeFevre, 2002). Limited parental involvement may help explain why low-income preschoolers lag behind higher-income peers on literacy and school readiness by the time they enter school (Hindman, Skibbe, Miller & Zimmerman, 2010; Isaacs, 2012). Supporting low-income parents in their efforts to provide a warm, responsive, and cognitively stimulating home may help to close the gap in early literacy between lower and higher income students before formal schooling begins (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). The current study explores a relatively new parenting intervention — the use of text messaging — to improve parents’ stimulation and support of their young children’s pre-literacy skills.
Libraries and museums are in a prime position to reach out to parents to facilitate early learning. They are recognized as community experts in the development of young children (IMLS, 2013). Ninety-four percent of parents view libraries as “very important” for their children, with the most cited reason being that they promote literacy and a love of reading. These institutions are especially valued by lower income families, who are more likely than other parents to say that library services are “very important” (Miller, Zickuhr, Rainie, & Purcell, 2013). Children’s museums promote a playful learning pedagogy that underscores play as a primary means of learning and defines a role for parents that intentionally scaffolds children’s learning. Partnerships between libraries and museums that create and deliver literacy interventions may be a useful strategy. Such partnerships align with institutional goals of promoting early learning, and leverages parents’ willingness to embrace library/museum services for their children.
Sending text messages to parents is becoming a popular strategy for building knowledge and encouraging positive behavior. Text messaging is widely available, inexpensive, and instant. In the United States, 90% of adults have a cell phone, and 81% report using it to send or receive text messages. In addition, 84% of families with incomes less than $30,000 per year use cell phones (Pew Research, 2014). Text messages may be an especially good way to reach at-risk families. Text messaging programs have successfully promoted parenting behavior change in a number of important domains: decreasing the likelihood of abuse and neglect, increasing childhood vaccinations, and encouraging healthy pregnancies (Bigelow, Carta, & Burke Lefever, 2008; Gazmararian et al., 2014; Kharbanda, Stockwell, Fox & Rickert, 2009; Self-Brown & Whitaker, 2008). Text messaging interventions have been well received, even by diverse and low income populations, and parents think they are more effective than phone or mail messages (Kharbanda et al., 2009). Text messages remove some barriers of unpredictable schedules and high mobility that can cause problems for in-person interventions. Interventions that can keep families interested and engaged are more likely to elicit positive outcomes (Gomby, 2005). Thus, text messages show promise as an intervention strategy for promoting behavioral change.
Significance of this Study
This brief describes the results of a texting intervention to promote literacy, which was a cooperative effort of Minnesota Children’s Museum, the Hennepin County and Saint Paul Public Libraries, Way to Grow, the St. Paul Promise Neighborhood, Think Small, and the Center for Early Education and Development at the University of Minnesota. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the text messages at increasing the level of early literacy activities low-income parents engaged in with their children.
This study was also significant in that it was a partnership of many organizations in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul community. It is one example of how such organizations can work together to both do research and further organizations’ goals simultaneously.
“A nice reminder to stay engaged with kids day-to-day.” –Parent
Partnering Organization Roles
MCM, program partners and the CEED evaluation team worked together to design and implement the Text2Learn evaluation. First, they held a series of collaborative discussions to formulate a logic model that guided program priorities, specified intended mechanisms of change, and develop evaluation questions. Second, they developed an evaluation design considering the need to: 1) maximize parental participation in the evaluation since these were families generally unfamiliar with evaluation studies, and 2) implement the most rigorous design possible, which can be challenging in community-based evaluation. Community-based partners decided to recruit families via community events using traditional project descriptions and consent forms. They provided families with the initial survey. Follow-up surveys were also sent to the families.
Methodology
Evaluation questions
As a result of the collaborative partner discussions, MCM and program partners decided they were interested in knowing if receipt of the texts changed parental knowledge and behaviors related to literacy, and how parents perceived this new program.
“Getting friendly reminders to actually do tasks.” –Parent
The following evaluation questions were posed:
1. Does the texting intervention increase parent knowledge, awareness and behaviors related to promoting literacy skills in their preschoolers?
2. What were parents’ perceptions about Text2Learn?
Study Design
A wait-list control design was chosen. This rigorous design maximized parents’ participation and allowed for random assignment. Parents were randomly assigned to receive the texts in a first or second group and completed the surveys prior to and after the first group received the texts. Then the second group received the texts, and completed a survey after receiving them. This way, all eligible and interested parents were able to participate in the Text2Learn program and in the evaluation, maximizing the size of the sample and enabling the research team to make causal conclusions about the impact of the program. By combining the results from both the first and second group after they had received the texts (red Xs) and comparing them to the pre-survey for both groups (blue Xs), we were able to test if receiving the text messages was associated with an increase in reported literacy activities on the surveys.
The following table describes the design:
| | Pre-survey | 1st Round Texts | Post-survey | 2nd Round Texts | Post-post survey |
|----------------|------------|-----------------|-------------|-----------------|------------------|
| Group 1 | X | O | X | | |
| Group 2 | X | | X | O | X |
X = survey given, O = texts received. Blue = pre-survey, Red = post-survey.
MCM worked with the community-based programs Way to Grow, Think Small, and the Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood, who serve low income families with preschool-age children, to obtain lists to send recruitment and pre-survey materials (including a consent form approved by the U of MN IRB). A total of 110 parents from the two community-based programs signed up to participate in Text2Learn and the evaluation. Parents were then randomly assigned by MCM staff to receive the texts in group 1 (N=50) or group 2 (N=60). Of the hundred and ten parents who signed up, 85% were mothers and 10% were fathers (5% did not respond to the question). They ranged in age from 19-50. Parents mainly spoke English at home (72%) with Hmong (13%) and English Bilingual (5%) being the next highest choices. Participants came from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds (45% Black/African American, 20% Asian, 14% White, 10% Multiracial, 5% Hispanic, and 5% American Indian). They also ranged in years of education completed (10% Some High School, 23% High School Diploma, 31% Some College, 14% 2-year College, 22% 4-year College or higher).
The tone and approach of the messages were focused on playful activities that can be easily incorporated into every day routines. Some text messages suggested specific literacy activities:
- Is your child a fire fighter today? Or maybe a chef? GREAT! During pretend play your child is likely talking more, trying new words & using longer sentences.
- Your child’s name is special! Talk together about the letters in their name. What other words do you say that make the same sound as the first letter?
- Scribbling matters! Your child’s masterpieces are important first steps in learning to read & write! Give them crayons & paper to scribble away!
- Earn prizes for reading! The Saint Paul Public Library’s Summer Reading Program is for kids ages 0-18. Visit sppl.org or call 651-266-7000 for more information.
Other text messages gave more general information about child development:
- Literacy begins at birth and continues throughout life! Your preschooler is at the prime of language and literacy development and YOU make a huge difference!
- Has your child asked what a word means yet? If so, that is a sign of progress in their literacy development! If they haven’t, they will! Just keep playing!
- You are your child’s most important teacher! Talking, singing, playing, even smiling is improving your child’s communication abilities.
**The Survey**
A parent survey (pre and post-versions) was developed for Text2Learn. The survey, which reflected the content from the texts themselves, was based upon the libraries’ conceptualization of literacy activities as talk, read, write, play and sing; review of other surveys of parental literacy activities; and specific questions of interest to the program implementers. The survey tool included 21 items covering the 5 areas of literacy activities. Parents rated each item on a scale of 0-5 (rarely or never/few times per month/few times per week/most days/once a day/more than once per day).
Examples include:
- I describe objects, places and other things my child sees.
- My child and I listen to children’s songs together.
• I allow my child to interrupt me and ask questions while I’m reading to him/her.
• My child spends time scribbling or drawing.
• I supply my child with household items to make his/her pretend play “more real” (spoons, cereal boxes, towels, Band-Aids).
Parents were also asked a few open-ended questions about literacy activities, and asked to rate the importance of talking, reading, writing, playing, and singing to literacy development. The post-survey included the same items as the pre-survey, and also asked questions about parents’ perceptions of the text messages themselves.
**Summary of Results**
The first question addressed in the analyses was: Did the texting intervention increase parent knowledge, awareness and behaviors related to promoting literacy skills in their preschoolers?
To answer this question, we first examined the responses to the questions about the frequency of literacy activities. We found that the reported frequency of literacy activities significantly increased from pre- to post-survey when the texts were sent between the surveys. In contrast, when we compared this to periods in which no texts were sent, parents did not significantly change in their reported frequencies (they decreased slightly).
Parents did not significantly increase their library attendance over time. Parents’ average response was that they took their child to the library “every month” and this did not differ before and after they had received the text messages. Furthermore, parents’ attitudes about the importance of the five areas of early literacy did not change over time. From the outset, parents had scores that suggested that they did value the five areas of early literacy, so change in this arena would be difficult to achieve. It is possible that they chose to participate in this project because they already held positive views of literacy.
“It was convenient and I shared what I read with friends. The info was a great reminder about the things we do that make such a big impact on our children’s learning.” –Parent
Parents varied in their responses of if they attended the community events mentioned in the text messages (49% None, 33% 1-2 Events, 19% More than 2 Events).
The second question addressed was: What were parents’ perceptions about Text2Learn?
Of the 51 parents who responded to that question, the majority (80%) of parents felt there that the number of texts they received was “just right” (20% too few, 0% too many). Parents also reported that the text messages helped them do new or more literacy activities with their child, with 49% of the parents being able to describe one activity that they had done with their child because of a text they had received.
Parents also reported what was most and least helpful about the texts. They appreciated that they served as good reminder to engage in literacy activities with their children. For some, the texts reinforced good practices, while for others, they offered new ideas. Parents overwhelmingly liked the ideas for activities, and wanted even more ideas and more specific ideas (they found the general texts to be less helpful).
Conclusions and Implications
Text2Learn showed promise as a way to promote parent involvement in literacy activities. Parents appreciated the content of the messages and wanted even more information! Text messages are a feasible and appealing intervention strategy that can be used to provide frequent suggestions and reminders that promote parent involvement in literacy activities.
It may also be useful to give parents a paper copy of all the messages at the end of the intervention, so they can go back and review the information.
There was also significant attrition between recruitment and return of post surveys, which may affect the generalizability of these results. Similar studies have had similar problems: in a recent text messaging intervention study, final results included 65% of parents, even though 80% of parents had unlimited texting plans (York & Loeb, 2014). In the future, it may be beneficial to explore alternate strategies to facilitate evaluation (e.g. following up with phone calls, asking community partners to check in). Rather than mailing surveys, it may be useful to text an online link to parents to complete the survey. When working with diverse low-income families, it may also be helpful to have options of the languages in which the text messages and surveys are received, so that the intervention can be inclusive of all who want to participate.
Limitations of the study should be acknowledged. First, there were some barriers to parents receiving texts. Five parents noted in their post surveys that they had never received any texts, and it is possible that this was also a problem for parents who did not return a post-survey. Future interventions may want to check early on if parents are receiving the text messages, and/or offer the intervention in multiple formats (e.g. email), so that parents who have difficulty receiving texts can still participate.
These results suggest that continued exploration of how a texting program for parents can be incorporated into the work of museums and libraries would be useful. For example, use of mobile technology could become part of regular museum membership benefits, or of regular library services for parents who sign up to receive texts. This mode of getting information about early literacy activities to parents shows promise, and has great potential for scaling up. In future interventions, it is important to continue monitoring whether parents are receiving the messages and gather feedback about parental satisfaction and topics of interest.
The evaluation of Text2Learn was funded by a grant to Minnesota Children’s Museum from the Institute for Museum and Library Sciences. We want to thank staff from MCM and community partners and parents for supporting and participating in the evaluation.
REFERENCES
Bracken, S. S., & Fischel, J. E. (2008). Family reading behavior and early literacy skills in preschool children from low-income backgrounds. *Early Education and Development*, 19(1), 45-67.
Bennett, K. K., Weigel, D. J., & Martin, S. S. (2002). Children’s acquisition of early literacy skills: Examining family contributions. *Early Childhood Research Quarterly*, 17(3), 295-317.
Bigelow, K.M., Carta, J.J., & Burke Lefever, J. (2008). Txt u ltr: Using cellular phone technology to enhance a parenting intervention for families at risk for neglect. *Child Maltreatment*, 13(4), 362-367.
Burchinal, M., Roberts, J. E., Zeisel, S. A., Hennon, E. A., & Hooper, S. (2006). Social risk and protective child, parenting, and child care factors in early elementary school years. *Parenting: Science and Practice*, 6(1), 79-113.
Burgess, S.R., Hecht, S.A., & Lonigan, C.J. (2002). Relations of the home literacy environment to the development of reading-related abilities: A one-year longitudinal study. *Reading Research Quarterly*, 37(4), 408-426.
Duncan, G.J., Doswett, C.J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A.C., Klebanov, P., . . . Japel, C. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. *Developmental Psychology*, 43, 1428-1446.
Gazmararian, J.A., Elon, L., Yang, B., Graham, M., & Parker, R. (2014). Text4baby program: An opportunity to reach underserved pregnant and postpartum women? *Maternal Child Health Journal*, 18, 223-232.
Gomby, D. S. (2005). Home visitation in 2005: Outcomes for children and parents. Working Paper No. 7, Invest in Kids Working Group.
Gutman, L.M., Sameroff, A.J., & Cole, R. (2003). Academic growth curve trajectories from 1st grade to 12th grade: Effects of multiple social risk factors and preschool child factor. *Developmental Psychology*, 39, 777-790.
Hindman, A.H., Skibbe, L.E., Miller, A. & Zimmerman, M. (2010). Ecological contexts and early learning: Contributions of child, family, and classroom factors during Head Start, to literacy and mathematics growth through first grade. *Early Childhood Research Quarterly*, 25, 235-250.
Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). (2013). Growing young minds: How museums and libraries create lifelong learners. Washington, D.C.: IMLS.
Isaacs, J. B. (2012). Starting School at a Disadvantage: The School Readiness of Poor Children. The Social Genome Project. Center on Children and Families at Brookings.
Kharbanda, E.O., Stockwell, M.S., Fox, H.W., & Rickert, V.I. (2009). Text4Health: A qualitative evaluation of parental readiness for text message immunization reminders. *American Journal of Public Health*, 99(12), 2176-2178.
LaParo, K.M. & Pianta, R.C. (2000). Predicting children’s competence in the early school years. *Review of Educational Research*, 70, 443-484.
Luster, T. & McAdoo, H. (1996). Family and child influences on educational attainment: A secondary analysis of the High/Scope Perry Preschool data. *Developmental Psychology*, 32, 26-39.
Miller, C., Zickuhr, K., Rainie, L., & Purcell,K. (2013). Parents, children, libraries, and reading. Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/05/01/parents-children-libraries-and-reading/
National Early Literacy Panel. (2008). Developing early literacy. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.
Pew Research Internet Project. (2014). Mobile Technology Fact Sheet. http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet/ Accessed 1/23/2015.
Self-Brown, S. & Whitaker, D.J. (2008). Parent-focused child maltreatment prevention: Improving assessment, intervention, and dissemination with technology. *Child Maltreatment*. doi: 10.1177/1077559508320059
Sénéchal, M., & LeFevre, J. A. (2002). Parental involvement in the development of children’s reading skill: A five-year longitudinal study. *Child Development*, 73(2), 445-460.
York, B. N., & Loeb, S. (2014). One step at a time: the effects of an early literacy text messaging program for parents of preschoolers (No. w20659). National Bureau of Economic Research. | aed42cf7-8e2a-47b5-9111-b955265f2350 | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | http://ceed.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Text2LearnPaper.pdf | 2023-12-01T06:10:30+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100276.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20231201053039-20231201083039-00771.warc.gz | 8,864,161 | 4,889 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.955299 | eng_Latn | 0.993442 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1930,
6305,
10101,
13318,
16459,
19259,
23337
] | [
2,
1.421875
] | 1 | 0 |
Christos Anesti! Alithos Anesti!
Metropolitan Iakovos, Bishop Demetrios, Very Reverend Father Timothy and Father Athanasios along with altar boys, junior choir members and SCS families participated in the procession of Holy Relics around the church.
Consecration of St. Catherine Chapel May 6, 2012
His Eminence, Metropolitan Iakovos knocks on the door of St. Catherine Chapel with his staff.
St. Catherine Icons by Sophia Szubert
Mrs. Tsaganos’ fifth graders made icons of St. Catherine for the consecration on May 6th. Each of us created our own icon design and no two are alike. We started out with a carved block of wood with a flat surface. Then, we each selected an icon of St. Catherine from somewhere, like in a program or on the church website. Next, we glued our icons onto the blocks of wood and then we decorated them. I used plastic jewels while others used little pearls. I chose to put the jewels in the shape of a cross. Then we painted on a coat of shimmer glaze to make them look shiny. It didn’t take long to dry. These icons will be blessed by the church and we will all be able to take them home after forty days have passed. I really enjoyed making my own icon, and I know my classmates liked it too! We made special, unique icons to celebrate a special and unique event - the consecration of our beloved St. Catherine’s Chapel. I am glad I was able to participate in this memorable craft experience. I hope some other SCS students will give this a try!
Myrophores: The Myrrh-Bearing Women by Madeline Szubert
On Great and Holy Friday, as well as Great and Holy Saturday, the Myrophores were a part of the services that took place. What are the Myrophores? They are myrrh bearing women which guarded the tomb of Christ during his burial. They cared for his body, and also found the tomb empty on the 3rd day. These women were the first to witness His Resurrection. These women included: Mary Magdalene, Mary (the wife of Cleopas), Martha (sister of Lazarus), Salome, and Susanna. At Assumption, girls, ages 4th grade-high school, played the part of the Myrophores during the services. We dressed in white dresses and held candles while standing around the Epitaphio, which represents the tomb of Christ. On Holy Friday, Myrophores were present for all of both days’ services. On Holy Saturday night, the Myrophores helped light all the candles of the congregation before we sang Hristos Anesti. A total of 19 girls participated under the instruction of Dr. Voula Spyropoulos.
Discuss one of the Great Feasts of the Church. How has this feast become important to you and your family?
by Marika Maggos
For many, August is a busy month. School is just around the corner and people start to get ready for it. Kids eagerly await their schedules coming in the mail. Back-to-school shopping for supplies and clothes is on everyone’s to-do lists. Schools are making sure their buildings are ready. For Orthodox Christians, August marks the time of one of the great feasts of our church: The Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos. This day is dedicated to commemorating the falling asleep of the Virgin Mary and the resurrection of her body and soul to heaven. As Assumption Church being my family’s home parish, this feast is especially important to us. Much like getting ready for a new school year, my family and I prepare ourselves and help prepare our church for this venerable day.
The Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos is celebrated on August 15. Of course before any significant feast day, there is a time period of build-up for us. August first begins a strict fast to cleanse our minds, bodies, and souls. There are also opportunities to attend Paraklesis services each day until the Feast. These beautiful, peaceful services include chanting and hymns to pray for and thank Panagia for her intercessions. As for my church, parish council makes accommodations for all the visitors coming to rejoice in the Dormition. Philoptochos arranges a reception for our guests. We decorate the icons of the Theotokos with wonderful flowers in her honor, too. All of these mental and physical preparations are well worth the value of this day.
It is said there came a time when the Virgin Mary prayed to her son, asking to come be with Him. Soon after, an angel appeared to Mary proclaiming that her prayers had been heard and would be answered. On the day of her death, the Theotokos was very serene and content. She was ready to be reunited with her son. Jesus brought all of the apostles dead and alive, from around the world, to stand next to and support the Mother of God. At the moment of her death, Jesus came down and carried his mother’s soul up to heaven. Following, the Virgin Mary’s body was carried in a procession and laid in a tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane by the apostles. When Thomas goes three days later to see the body, the apostles find it is gone. An angel and an appearance from Panagia notify them of her body’s assumption.
The falling asleep and resurrection of the Theotokos is quite noteworthy. It demonstrates to us that death, although sad, is actually a happy time. Panagia wanted to be with Jesus. We too, should want and strive to be with God. Like the apostles, we surround our loved ones that have passed. Even though it is natural to grieve, we should really be glad the person is now with Jesus. Another major part of our faith is showed by the resurrection of the Theotokos, which manifests entering heaven by God’s will. Therefore, many see the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos as a Feast of hope for life eternal.
When in heaven, Panagia continues to intercede for us. I know as my patron saint, I particularly find comfort in praying to her, and others do too. The vespers at my church for the feast are an amazing experience. Clergy from the different parishes gather to perform the service together. Hundreds of people continuously stream in throughout the service, lighting candles and bringing flowers to place before Panagia’s icon. You can see the burdens carried on some of these people’s faces. Yet, by the end of the service, those burdens have been washed away and replaced with a radiance. Knowing so many people come to respect and thank the Mother of God always makes me beam on the inside. Panagia holds a very special place in my heart. The Dormition is one of my favorite feast days of the church. I love celebrating alongside my family the happy occasion of the Theotokos ascending to heaven with Jesus. It is my goal one year to stay for all the night vigil with my mom. Finally, attending the Divine Liturgy on the day of the feast is the culmination of the two-week period of preparation. Joyously receiving Holy Communion, we, too, become closer to Jesus.
In the Old Testament, there exist many stories about the disagreements between siblings. The first and perhaps one of the most important of these stories is about when Cain killed his brother Abel because he was jealous of the attention that his brother received from God. This tale has a few important consequences such as the fact that Cain had lost God’s favor. According to the Bible, when God asked where Abel was, Cain replied, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9) God knew that he was lying and said: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.” (Genesis 4:9-12) From that time on Cain would no longer be able to farm the land successfully and he became a fugitive and a wanderer of the Earth. Cain was punished but Abel could not be brought back to life.
The Old Testament is filled with stories of siblings disagreeing but this one stood out to me because of the level of violence but also because the relationship between God and Cain and Abel is like the relationship between parents and their children. Today the conflict between siblings is more for the attention of their parents rather than God. Also unlike the story today most siblings do not attack each other over love and attention. When I disagree with my siblings and friends we do not hurt or kill each other. We fight with words which have less severe consequences. Although we can apologize to each other and ask forgiveness from God we cannot take back what we say to each other. We can only try to undo the pain and hurt through forgiveness.
Disabilities. We know what they are, but do we really, truly know what they are? Most of the time we think of disabilities as a medically diagnosed condition that makes it difficult to function in daily life. Is this true? Certainly not. How many of us can say with a pure heart that we know what a disability is? Only one, Jesus Christ.
In the bible, they define a disability as being a physical ailment, such as leprosy, blindness, or muteness. They even say that if you are a leper or are a paralytic, you have been cursed by God. This is not true. Since we are all made in God’s image, even people with disabilities look like God in a way. So why should we have the authority to say to them, “you are cursed”, or “you weren’t made in the image of God”. Neither of these statements are true, because God has never told us why people have disabilities. For all we know they could be a blessing. To show us who are the truly strong and faithful people in the world. With all the abuse and mockery they take, this could be true.
In our society today, people define having a disability as having a medically diagnosed condition that makes it difficult to function in daily life. At least once in your life, you have probably been told not to stare. I’m sure the reason you were staring was because you saw a person in a wheelchair or was blind. In other words, they had a disability. Your parents have told us to be kind to them, help them and overall make their lives easier. This is how we deal with disabilities in our world today. Even us, as Christians treat them this way, as a person who needs to be looked after, who could break at the slightest touch. Our attitude, as Christians, should be to treat them as normal people. Read the bible with them. Teach them about the good news of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
To Jesus, the only people who have disabilities are the ones who don’t know about God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit. The ones who don’t believe. Now, how would you help the people who don’t believe in Christ? Would you bring them to church? Read the bible? Tell them stories of the miracles Jesus performed? If you do at least one of these for a person who does not know the good news, you are helping a disabled person. If all of us did this to one person who doesn’t know, we could get rid of all the disabilities on the earth.
Disabilities. What do you think they are now? I believe that disabilities are the conditions in which you will not or cannot believe in the Holy Trinity. Those are the people who need our help the most. So, share the bible and your faith.
ARE YOU READY FOR THE JUNIOR OLYMPICS?
by Father Athanasios Papagiannis
For so many children in the Chicago Metropolis, one of the best social events of the year is the Junior Olympics, an event that takes place each Memorial Day weekend. The Junior Olympics have been around for almost three decades!
If you like to play sports there are many events to participate in. You can choose bowling, basketball, soccer, track and swimming. If you don’t like physical activity you can participate in chess and checkers. Indeed there is something for everyone.
As we prepare to participate in Junior Olympics there is one question that needs to be asked: How do I best prepare for the Olympics? Everyone knows that there are no short cuts in being a good athlete. You have to work hard and stay dedicated. If you’re running a race, you have to pace yourself and not become upset if you stumble or make a mistake. You also have to keep good form in sports like swimming and bowling, and you have to stay on task, too. In a sport like basketball you cannot be selfish but you have to look for open teammates. All these things help when we compete as athletes.
At the same time, we also have to remember that we are competing in something more than a sport. The game of life is more than game. But the lessons we learn in sports can be very beneficial if we apply them to our spiritual life.
Listen to the words of St. Paul who says, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid upon for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall render to me in that day.” (2nd Letter to Timothy 4 v 6).
The words that St. Paul speaks of are similar to what we hear at the Olympics. He speaks of finishing the course and about the crown he will receive.
The participation in sports works best when we apply the lessons we learn from competing to our everyday lives. The world needs children and adults who are good teammates, work hard, are unselfish and care about others. This is what sports provides people. So if we really want to make the best use of our time we have to baptize the good parts of participating in sports and apply them to other aspects of our lives.
And even though we may not receive all the medals we want to, there awaits for us who play by the rules and work hard in our spiritual life a different sort of crown – the crown of righteousness.
I pray that those who participate in the Junior Olympics represent our beloved Church in the best way possible, not by winning at any cost, but by playing by the rules and by working hard. For when you learn the lessons that being in sports provides you, you learn as you get older that even though the games change, you never really stop being a good athlete. | <urn:uuid:b19d76c0-8153-4fca-86bd-5b125bb2326e> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://assumptionchicago.org/assets/files/news/2012_Saint_Catherines_Newsletter_2_May.pdf | 2018-07-18T23:45:14Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676590362.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20180718232717-20180719012717-00456.warc.gz | 35,405,392 | 3,030 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998249 | eng_Latn | 0.998502 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2504,
6750,
11044,
13848
] | [
2.125
] | 1 | 0 |
Grief in Children
Susanna CHAN
Social Work Officer (Palliative Care)
Hong Kong Children’s Hospital
How do children react when they are facing their own death?
What do the sick kids need psychosocially?
How to talk with children about death and dying?
Grief of family members
How Do Children React When They are Facing Their Own Death
• Infant
• Infants have no concept about death.
• BUT they do react to the separation from parents, painful procedures, change of their daily routine….etc.
• They feel tremendous discomfort if there is a sudden change in their daily life.
• Infants cannot tell us about their need.
• BUT they can express their fear and discomfort by crying.
How Do Children React When They are Facing Their Own Death
• Toddler
• Toddlers have a little concept about death.
• BUT they may feel anxious and afraid because those around them are sad, depressed, scared, or angry.
• Toddlers may not understand the terms "death" or "forever" or "permanent."
• For them, death is not a permanent condition. Instead, death is seen as reversible for this age group.
How Do Children React When They are Facing Their Own Death
• Preschooler
• Preschoolers may sense that adults fear death.
• They may get some concepts about death from cartoon or TV games, which is temporary or reversible.
• They may realize that a dead thing doesn’t eat, sleep, talk, or breathe. Some of them may be told that the dead went to Heaven.
• They are curious about “how” and “why” death happens.
• They may think suffering from terminal illness is punishment for something they did or thought about (magical thinking).
How Do Children React When They are Facing Their Own Death
• School-aged child
• School-aged children have a more realistic understanding of death. They are starting to view death as permanent.
• They may be very curious about the physical process of death and what happens after a person dies.
• Fear of the unknown, loss of control, and separation from family and friends can be the school-aged child's main sources of anxiety and fear related to death.
• Some of them may put their anger to their parents as they thought that their parents could not protect them from pain and sufferings.
How Do Children React When They are Facing Their Own Death
• Teenager
• Most teens understand that death is permanent, and that everyone dies. Some of them may have experienced the death of family members, friends or pets.
• Most teens are starting to establish their identity, independence, and relation to peers. When they are facing their own death, they may feel that they no longer belong or fit in with their peers. They may also feel that they are unable to communicate with their parents.
• Self-image is important to teens. A terminal illness or the effects of treatment may cause many physical changes that they must endure. Teens may feel alone in their struggle, and scared, and angry.
What do the sick kids need psychosocially?
• Being treated as normal kids (age-appropriate)
• Space for kids to express their feelings
• Sense of independence and control (especially for teenagers)
• Spiritual needs
• Wish fulfillment
• Being sick is not their fault
• Reassurance of not being alone
Love, respect, and dignity are all important factors in caring for sick kids.
How to talk with children about death and dying?
• Why talking with children about death and dying is difficult for us?
• We avoid talking about things that upset us.
• We feel uncomfortable when we don’t have all the answers.
• Death is often a taboo subject, especially in Chinese culture.
• We don’t know how to discuss death and dying in children’s language.
How to talk with children about death and dying?
• Do’s
✓ Tell the truth about what happened right away.
✓ Be prepared for a variety of emotional responses.
✓ Make sure to use the words dead or died.
✓ Share information in doses.
✓ Be comfortable saying, "I don’t know."
✓ Cry.
✓ Let the children grieve in their own way.
✓ Prepare to talk about thoughts and feelings often.
✓ Remember to take care of yourself.
How to talk with children about death and dying?
• Do’s (for the siblings/friends of the sick kids)
✓ Allow children to participate in rituals.
✓ Prepare children for what they will see in the funeral home or service.
✓ Prepare children for the future without their loved one.
How to talk with children about death and dying?
• Don’ts
✗ Don’t hide your grief from children.
✗ Don’t avoid connecting with children because you feel helpless or uncomfortable, or don’t know what to say.
✗ Don’t change the subject when children come into the room.
✗ Don’t think that death puts a ban on laughter.
How to talk with children about death and dying?
• Don’ts (for the siblings/friends of the sick kids)
✗ Don’t be afraid to share memories of their loved one.
✗ Don’t change their daily routine as well as yours.
✗ Don’t put a time limit on the children’s bereavement – or your own.
Grief isn’t something you get over; It’s something you go through.
Alan Pedersen
• Parents
• Siblings
• Grandparents and closed relatives
• Formal carers
• Parents
• Parents
• Parental loss is the worst possible grief. It might be a lifetime journey.
• Children is a symbol of future. Losing a child represents a loss of future, hopes and dreams.
• Common responses to a child’s death: shock, denial, yearning, confusion, guilt, powerlessness, emptiness, anger, loss of hope……
• Even both mothers and fathers grieve deeply, they grieve differently.
• Marriage might be affected.
• Parents
• Bereaved parents must be allowed to mourn in his/her own way and time frame.
• Others may minimize or misunderstand the grief of the bereaved parents. It is not because of their ignorance but helplessness.
• Emotions of the bereaved parents might be triggered by some special occasions, such as birthdays, holidays, anniversary of the child’s death, Father’s/Mother’s Day…etc.
• Rituals/Spiritual support may help bereaved parents.
• Continuing bond/maintaining the “role of parents” is important for bereaved parents.
• How can we help the bereaved parent? (Do’s)
✓ Acknowledge the child’s death by telling the parents of your sadness for them and by love and support
✓ Visit and talk with the family about the child who died
✓ Attend the child’s funeral
✓ Remember the child’s special days
✓ Respect the dynamic of each person’s grief
• How can we help the bereaved parent? (Don’ts)
✗ Don’t avoid the parents or the grief
✗ Don’t impose our views or feelings on the parents
✗ Don’t wait for the parents to ask for help
✗ Don’t tell them you know just how they feel
✗ Don’t be afraid to let the parents cry
“There is a need to talk, without trying to give reasons. No reasons is going to be acceptable when you hurt so much. A hug, the touch of a hand, expression of concern, a willing listener where and still are the things that have helped the most...
The people who were the greatest help...were not judgmental. It’s most helpful when people understand that what is needed is to talk about it and that is part of the grief process.”
(DeFrain et al. 1991)
• Siblings
Video – 來不及說再見
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6V3U62QpNY&t=19s
• Siblings - Young children
• Death of a sibling can be a very confusing experience.
• Siblings are an important part of a child’s world. Surviving siblings may experience intense sadness/grief, crying, not wanting to spend time with friends/classmates, loss of appetite, sleep difficulties, decline in academic performance, guilt, searching for the deceased sibling or ask questions about what had happened to him/her.
• Like adults, they may experience “pangs” of grief; Unlike adults, they may display these behaviors more intermittently.
• Siblings - Young children
• If parents are unable to deal with the child’s grief, encourage them to ask for support of a trusted relative to be with them.
• Always be honest with a child about what is happening. Give them information and knowledge which is appropriate for their age and understanding.
• Don’t download adult commentary on the child that is burdensome on him/her.
• Be prepared for rapid changes in mood and behaviors.
• Make sure that it is possible for children to take part in their normal activities and also give them emotional support.
• Siblings - Teenagers
• Developmental task of teenagers: identity.
• Losing a sibling may have an impact on their view of themselves and their world.
• They can feel a sense of being left out or their grief is unrecognized. They can also feel a sense of guilt as they failed to protect their siblings.
• They may take up the responsibility to take care of their parents’ wellbeing and thus they remain at home to look after their parents. However, some of them need space and time away from the family.
• Siblings - Teenagers
• Include them in family discussion/support.
• Don’t assume that they are strong because they don’t air out their feelings.
• Don’t assume that they don’t care when they “disappear” from the family.
• Address their feelings and relationship with the deceased siblings.
• Be aware that direct attempt to enquire into their feelings may be rebuffed. Leaving a space and creating activities where conversations can begin and feelings may be shared can see them raise discussions on what they are feeling.
• Grandparents and closed relatives
• The forgotten grievers
Grief of Formal Carers
- Domestic helpers
- School teachers
- Medical staff
1. Arnold, J. H., Gemma, P. B. (1983). *A Child Die: A Portrait of Family Grief*. Rockville, MD: Aspen Systems Corporation.
2. Broderick, P. C., Blewitt, P (2014). *The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals* (*4th ed.*). Pearson Education, Inc.
3. Davies, R (2003). New Understandings of Parental Grief: Literature Review. *Journal of Advanced Nursing*, 46(5), 506-513.
4. DeFrain, J. (1991). Learning about Grief from Normal Families: SIDS, Stillbirth, and Miscarriage. *Journal of Marital and Family Therapy*, 17(3), 215-232.
5. Dyregrov, A. (1990). *Grief in Children: A Handbook for Adults*. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
6. Field, M. J., Behrman, R.E. (2003). *When Children Die: Improving Palliative and End-of-life Care for Children and Their Families*. Washington (DC): National Academics Press.
7. Fitzgerald, H. (1992). *The Grieving Child*. New York: Simon & Schuster.
8. Rando, T. A (Ed.) (1986). *Parental Loss of a Child*. Champaign, IL: Research Press Company.
9. Worden, J. W. (2002). *Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner*. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
Question and Answer
Thank You
email: firstname.lastname@example.org | 524d8cbf-de8c-41f6-96fd-f857da067f11 | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://hkscpc2017.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/06-grief-in-children.pdf | 2020-11-01T01:42:53+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107922746.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20201101001251-20201101031251-00377.warc.gz | 347,525,138 | 2,604 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.912683 | eng_Latn | 0.995765 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"kiu_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"unknown"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
99,
279,
692,
1102,
1646,
2248,
2954,
3335,
3708,
4140,
4425,
4752,
5041,
5124,
5198,
5209,
5635,
6177,
6506,
6788,
7243,
7324,
7873,
8444,
8957,
9493,
9557,
9635,
10793,
10814,
10850
] | [
3.84375
] | 1 | 0 |
The IMPACT Program: Increasing Employability Skills of High School Students Through Adventure Based Learning
Titina Finch Brown
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.pcom.edu/psychology_dissertations
Part of the School Psychology Commons
Recommended Citation
Finch Brown, Titina, "The IMPACT Program: Increasing Employability Skills of High School Students Through Adventure Based Learning" (2019). PCOM Psychology Dissertations. 496.
https://digitalcommons.pcom.edu/psychology_dissertations/496
This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Dissertations, Theses and Papers at DigitalCommons@PCOM. It has been accepted for inclusion in PCOM Psychology Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@PCOM. For more information, please contact email@example.com.
The IMPACT Program: Increasing Employability Skills of High School Students Through Adventure Based Learning
Titina Finch Brown
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of Degree of Doctor of Psychology
May 2019
This is to certify that the thesis presented to us by Titina Brown on the 18th day of March, 2019, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Psychology, has been examined and is acceptable in both scholarship and literary quality.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS’ SIGNATURES
Chairperson
Chair, Department of School Psychology
Dean, School of Professional & Applied Psychology
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my committee members for their support and assistance throughout not only the dissertation process, but also my recent academic career. I would not be here without the constant support and guidance of my committee chair, Dr. Diane Smallwood. She encouraged me to continue even when I doubted myself. Dr. Katy Tresco believed in me and helped me realize that if I could talk about my topic, I could write about it! I would not be the school psychologist I am today without the professional mentorship, friendship, and coaching provided by Dr. Yvette Line-Koller.
Additionally, I would like to thank my parents. Whether it was all the babysitting provided by my mother or the highway rescue on the day of my proposal defense performed by my father, I have always been able to count on you. You gave up a lot when I was younger to be able to provide Jess and I with opportunities you never had and I am incredibly grateful.
To my husband and two fantastic boys, I am thankful for your patience and understanding. I hope you see that all those missed family functions, frayed nerves, and nights parked with my computer were worth the result. Without your support and love and I could not have finished. This accomplishment is yours to share.
Finally, I want to thank Nicole Stello-Smith. You are a friend and a lifesaver! I could not have a better friend or co-worker. When things felt impossible, you talked sense into me and helped me find a way. I could never thank you enough.
ABSTRACT
High school students face unique challenges following graduation such as the rising costs of post-secondary education, demands from employers for a highly skilled workforce, and the desire of employers to hire workers who are not only technologically proficient, but also effective communicators and team players. Soft skills have become a commodity to businesses. High schools find themselves more and more responsible for adequately preparing students for a rapidly changing economy. Engaging instruction in social emotional learning (SEL) for secondary students is essential in preparing them for this transition. Research shows that Adventure Based Learning (ABL) could be the vehicle for securing students’ interest and promoting generalization of social emotional skills across settings. The objective of this study was to investigate a program designed to foster soft skills in technical education students. Data included in this study consisted of pre-and post-student and instructor questionnaires, lesson feedback forms, and an electronic stakeholders’ survey. The information was obtained from twelfth grade students enrolled in a technical education high school ($n=181$), vocational instructors ($n=9$), administrators ($n=6$), and support team members ($n=5$). The results of the student survey indicated some small improvements in skills for managing emotions.
# Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................. 1
- Social Emotional Learning in the Vocational Environment ............... 7
- Adventure Based Learning ......................................................... 9
- Purpose of the Study ................................................................. 10
- Research Questions ................................................................. 10
Chapter 2: Review of the Literature ............................................. 11
- Competencies Required for Success in the Work Place .................. 12
- School-Based Social Emotional Learning Programs ...................... 18
- Social Emotional Competence in the Workplace .......................... 21
- Supporting Students with Disabilities in Career Education Programs .... 23
- Adventure Based Learning ......................................................... 24
- Enhancing Social Emotional Competence via Adventure Based Learning .... 28
- Program Evaluation in Schools .................................................... 30
Chapter Three: Method ............................................................... 33
- Rationale for the Program ......................................................... 33
- Description of the Program ....................................................... 35
- Program Staff ........................................................................... 36
- Curriculum .............................................................................. 37
- Schedule ................................................................................ 42
- Setting .................................................................................... 43
- Participants ............................................................................. 44
- Data Collection ........................................................................ 45
| Section | Page |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|------|
| Development of the pre-and post-survey | 47 |
| Development of the student feedback form | 48 |
| Development of the stakeholder survey | 48 |
| Overview of Research Design | 49 |
| Research Questions | 50 |
| Chapter Four: Results | 51 |
| Instructor Demographics | 52 |
| Source of Data | 52 |
| Workplace Competencies | 53 |
| Research Question 1 | 55 |
| Research Question 2 | 56 |
| Research Question 3 | 61 |
| Research Question 4 | 63 |
| Research Question 5 | 66 |
| Stakeholders Survey | 67 |
| Student Feedback Forms | 71 |
| Chapter Five: Discussion | 74 |
| Summary of Findings | 74 |
| Limitations of Study | 80 |
| Implications for Practice | 83 |
| References | 86 |
| Appendix A: Sample Activity Description and Lesson | 102 |
| Appendix B: Student Feedback Form | 104 |
Appendix C: Student Survey ................................................................. 105
Appendix D: Instructor Survey ......................................................... 112
Appendix E: Impact Stakeholder Feedback Form ............................. 116
List of Tables
Table 1: Student Demographics .................................................................52
Table 2: Sources of Data ...........................................................................53
Table 3: Workplace Competencies & Corresponding Student Survey Questions...54
Table 4: Pre-Post Comparisons for Research Question 1 ..........................55
Table 5: Workplace Competencies & Corresponding Teacher Survey Questions...57
Table 6: Pre-Post Comparisons for Research Question 2 ..........................58
Table 7: Student Rankings by Program, Based on Teacher Surveys ..............60
Table 8: Adaptive vs Maladaptive Strategies .............................................61
Table 9: Pre-Post Comparisons for Research Question Three .......................62
Table 10: Pre-Post Survey Comparisons by Student Educational Placement ....64
Table 11: Sums of Squares Comparisons by Student Educational Placement .....65
Table 12: Stakeholder Understanding of the Purpose of the IMPACT Program....67
Table 13: Stakeholder Responses who Benefits ........................................68
Table 14: Stakeholder Responses of Increased Skills ................................69
Table 15: Stakeholders’ Recommended Changes ......................................70
Table 16: Average Lesson Rating ...............................................................72
Chapter 1
Introduction
High school students face unique challenges when planning for life after graduation. College costs continue to rise, as does the demand for highly skilled workers (Strauss, 2012). More and more students are choosing programs with a technical focus that will prepare them to enter a specific vocation. These educational programs provide students with multiple opportunities. As graduates of a technical program, students may choose to go directly into the workforce, select an additional technical training program, apprenticeship, or a two or four year school that specializes in their chosen field of interest, or some combination of all of the above. However, these technical programs also find themselves under pressure not only to prepare students with the technical skills needed for their chosen fields but to also make sure their graduates have the soft skills needed to make them highly desired candidates and eventually, employees.
Technical training refers to specific industry related skills such as how to install an electrical panel or correctly measure and record an individual’s vital signs. Soft skills are those that employers look for, but may not have been directly taught in a student’s training program. Soft skills include communication, collaboration, and the ability to manage one’s emotions, conflict resolution, and managing multiple responsibilities, among others.
Recent and ongoing advances in technology have had a profound impact on skills that employers want from business graduates for today’s market (Mitchell, Skinner, & White, 2010). The shift from an industrial economy to an information society and an office economy means that many jobs now place emphasis on integrity, communication,
and flexibility (Zehr, 1998). Historically, technical skills, also known as hard skills, were the only skills needed for long-term employment and commitment to a company for the lifetime of an individual. Today’s workplace is showing that technical skills are not enough to keep individuals employed when organizations are cutting positions to be more nimble and competitive (James & James, 2004). Because intra-and interpersonal skills are critical for productive performance in today’s workplace, current and future business leaders are emphasizing the development of these soft skills (Nealy, 2005).
Recently, more attention has been brought to the importance of soft skills in the workplace. The Wall Street Journal published several articles in 2016 on the desire of employers to find employees that have not only industry-specific skills, but also skills such as taking initiative, communicating clearly and problem solving. These skills have become more highly in demand for several reasons. Many routine tasks have been automated, necessitating the human employees to think more creatively and critically. Additionally, the job market has become more competitive, giving those who can, for instance, make small talk with customers, become more attractive hires. Finally, research also indicates that companies who hire individuals with well-developed soft skills see more employee engagement. Data gathered by Gallup indicate that companies with high employee engagement “were 22% more profitable, have 25% to 65% lower turnover and 37% lower absenteeism” (Zeldin, 2016). Employees who demonstrate mature soft skills lead companies to be more successful and more profitable.
Additional studies (Robles, 2012) indicate that there is a large body of research that supports the importance of soft skills to today’s workplace. One study found that 75% of long-term job success depends on people skills, and only 25% is dependent on
technical knowledge (Klaus, 2010). Another study found that hard skills contribute only 15% to one’s success, whereas 85% of success is due to soft skills (Watts & Watts, 2008, as cited in John, 2009). Because employers are increasingly looking for employees who are mature and socially well adjusted, they rate soft skills as number one in importance for entry-level success on the job (Wilhelm, 2004). The complexity of the global marketplace requires individuals to be flexible, to communicate, and collaborate across not only departments but sometimes cultures as well (Davidson, 2016).
Employers identify and value soft skills. However, students may have a difficult time accurately appraising their skills. NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2018) has found a disconnect between employers’ ratings of recent graduates career readiness skills and the perceptions of those same graduates. When NACE compared ratings from employers on recent graduates with the graduates’ self-ratings, what they found was astounding. In some career readiness competency areas, employers and students have a difference of over 40 percentage points in their ratings. For example, 89.4% of recent graduates rated themselves as proficient in the area of Professionalism/Work Ethic; however, only 42.5% of employers agreed. Another difference is found between employers’ ratings of Leadership skills in recent graduates (33.0%), and the graduates own self-appraisal (70.5%). Graduates rated themselves significantly higher than employers’ perceptions in seven of the eight career readiness competencies. This divide cannot be ignored. Direct instruction in these areas of soft skills must be explored and expanded in order to prepare students properly for the workplace.
Moreover, an effort must be made to increase the accuracy of graduates’ self-assessments of their abilities. Although the focus on the importance of soft skills for the global marketplace has been noted in several studies and in national newspapers, soft skills have also become a focus of local job markets and targeted business publications. Recently, smaller news outlets across the country have had several articles which mention the importance of soft skills for the local employment needs. An article in a local Mid-Atlantic paper, *Lancaster Newspapers*, indicated a focus on teen employment, directed “show initiative and demonstrate both teamwork and customer service skills” (Molitoris, 2015). Additionally, local employers interviewed for the article indicated that the best employees are excited and engage with customers.
These skills are also touted as necessary for those who are hired in order to keep their jobs. *The Chicago Tribune*, in an article by Schawbel (2013), advises young professionals to “focus on soft skills over hard ones”. The article indicates that these skills are necessary, practically, because people move up in a company due to an increased focus on managing people and accomplishing goals. Finally, in an article titled, “Top 7 Job Skills You Will Need in 10 Years if You Don’t Want to be Left Behind,” Jones (2017) states that due to the changing job market, although technical skills top the list, “soft smarts” and “adaptation” also make the list. “Soft smarts” are defined as social intelligence and “adaptation” that allows an individual to go outside of his or her comfort zone. These articles and interviews provide evidence for a need at the local level of direct instruction in workplace soft skills in order to equip the students for the 21st-century workforce.
Adolescence is a crucial time for the development of emotional competence. Fleming and LeBuffe (2014) found that students who scored higher on measures of social-emotional competence were more likely to have a score of Proficient or Advanced on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). The study utilized recent data from a district-wide SEL implementation in a mid-sized, urban school district in the Northeast. The authors examined the relationship between students’ social-emotional competencies and their performances on statewide achievements. Teachers completing the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA, LeBuffe, Shapiro, & Naglieri, 2009) and the DESSA-mini (Naglieri, LeBuffe, & Shapiro, 2010) assessed social-emotional competence. Results are presented as T-scores for both assessments. T-scores of 60 or above represent social-emotional Strengths; T-scores ranging between 41-59 inclusive, represent typical levels of social-emotional competence, and T-scores of 40 and below represent a need for social-emotional instruction. Only 33% of the students who were categorized as Needing Social Emotion Instruction were able to perform in the Proficient or Advanced range, indicating that adequate levels of social-emotional learning are needed in order for students to perform well academically.
In 2017, Stephanie Jones and Jennifer Kahn co-authored a consensus statement from the national Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. One conclusion from this document was that social, emotional, and cognitive domains are interconnected and facilitate or hinder the learning experience. The authors state, “The success of young people in school and beyond is inextricably linked to healthy social and emotional development,” (Jones & Kahn, 2017, p. 4). They point to skills such as working well with others, planning and setting goals, and persevering through frustration.
as necessary skills for students to achieve successfully, not only in school but also to reach their full potential beyond the classroom.
Jones and Kahn (2017) indicate that support for fostering social and emotional development exists within multiple contexts. Educators support these efforts and increasingly call for more supports within the classroom and decreases in barriers to these services. A report by DePaoli, Atwell, and Bridgeland (2017) demonstrated support for soft skills instruction by principals who see soft skills as teachable, believe they should be developed in all students, and know that young people equipped with soft skills will not only be better students but also grow into better adults. Stakeholders such as employers have also recognized the need for efforts that support the development of social and emotional learning in students. Employers recognize that these skills are necessary to prepare the future workforce to fit the needs and values of companies. Finally, policies at the state and federal level have moved the focus of social and emotional development to a higher priority. The Every Student Succeeds Act adds a Career Readiness Benchmark. This new benchmark requires schools to provide evidence that students have explored careers, learned about goal planning and attainment, and also have been exposed to skills that will prepare them to meet the demands of the working world (as retrieved from PA Department of Education, March 17, 2018).
Helping teachers, principals, school counselors, psychologists and parents of transition-age students become aware of the needs of employers can help to make the transition to the working world an easier one. A 2012 survey by The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reported that nearly 80% of surveyed employers search for evidence that the potential employee can work in a team. On the
NACE website, their director, Edwin Koc, states, “Overall, results show that the ability to work in a team is the number one soft skill that employers seek in their new hires,” (www.naceweb.org). Unfortunately, many students report negative experiences in classroom teamwork exercises (Galbraith & Webb, 2013). Many times, assignments are given for team completion before the requisite skills needed to do so are taught. A 2006 study by Prichard and colleagues warns that not preparing students to work in a team can be detrimental. These researchers found that when students are given skills to work as a cohesive group, not only does group performance increase, so does individual performance. Based upon these cited supports and needs, schools are ideal places to support the social and emotional development of students and increase each one’s skills for being a valued member of a team, and as such, an eventual valued member of the workforce.
**Social-Emotional Learning in the Vocational Environment**
The definition provided by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) for social-emotional learning (SEL) is, “The process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” (CASEL, 2017).
Social Emotional Learning programs are intended to build emotional competence. Emotional competence (also called emotional intelligences in the literature) is defined as one’s ability to identify, express, understand, and regulate emotions (Nellis, et al., 2011). Emotional competence encompasses the ability to identify, comprehend, and regulate
emotions effectively for use in communication, cognitive processes, and relationship building and maintenance (Mayer & Solovey, 1997). Individuals who can manage their emotions should be better able to use them to their advantage throughout their careers.
There are many sources of evidence indicating that emotional abilities and dispositions are crucial in adjustment. Individuals who measure higher in emotional competence are likely to have higher academic achievement and higher job performance. The definition of emotional intelligence should be related to one’s ability to build supportive social networks or social capital. Social capital is the connections an individual has built through communication and interaction with others (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Lin, 2001). This social capital can be used to facilitate higher job performance and associated outcomes. Rode et al. (2017) found that emotional intelligence helps individuals gain the “social capital” they need to be successful in their careers.
Emotional intelligence or emotional competence benefits not only individual career goals but also companies as a whole. Many authors equate the emotional intelligence needed for adequate interpersonal skills with soft skills needed in the workplace (James & James, 2004; Perreault, 2004).
Rode et al. (2017) postulate that emotional intelligence becomes even more strongly related to career success at higher organizational levels where leadership skills become increasingly important. By teaching the skills necessary to demonstrate adequate to high levels of emotional intelligence in the workplace, adolescents and young adults are given the skills needed to grow into these future leadership positions, benefiting the company as a whole. Robles (2012) discusses the role that strong soft skills play in the ability to provide excellent customer service. The ability to understand customer needs is
important because it is vital not only to professional success but also to promoting the success of the company.
**Adventure-Based Learning**
Adventure Based Learning (ABL) is described as a valid curriculum model that can be used to encourage intrapersonal and interpersonal relationship skill building (Stuhr et al., 2018). It is built upon Experiential Learning Theory, which was developed and defined by Kolb (1984) and includes six theoretical assertions. It is built upon the idea that knowledge is active and socially created. ABL is used across many professional fields including physical education, human resources, communication, tourism, and behavioral intervention, to name a few.
Although there is literature regarding Adventure Based Programs that are facilitated by school psychologists or other school-based mental health providers, few provide insights into a specific curriculum and how its delivery affects the attainment of skills. Whoever facilitates these programs may influence how skills learned in the activities are processed and generalized to other areas of the students’ lives. Adding facilitators with training in social and emotional development increases the likelihood that the skills needed for successful development will be considered and fostered. Many programs lend themselves to teaching skills needed for the workplace and allow for independence of design and though that appeal to adolescence. With the addition of individuals trained in social and emotional development, the focus can include not only skill building that facilitates the specific skills needed for healthy development, but also incorporates the identification of barriers to the learning process.
Purpose of the Study
The available literature on Adventure Based Learning includes quantitative outcome data, but there is not much available on the review of the programs themselves. There is a lack of data concerning investigating participants’ observations of the program, how individual participants, as well as groups of participants, differ in their perceptions of skills attainment, and finally, application of the learned skills. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a curriculum developed for a regional vocational school that utilizes Adventure Based Learning techniques to develop the social-emotional skills needed to be successful in a workplace setting.
A systematic evaluation of this school-based program will help determine what aspects of the program worked best, provide feedback for improvement, and allow for interaction and observation. The information collected through this evaluation process will enable the program staff to refine aspects of the program to strengthen benefits for students.
Research Questions
1. Do students report an increase in their use of soft skills?
2. Do instructors report an increase in students’ uses of soft skills?
3. Do students report an increase in their use of adaptive skills in response to difficult situations?
4. Is there a difference in the use of soft skills between students who receive specially designed instruction and those who do not?
5. What are stakeholders’ perceptions of the IMPACT program?
Chapter 2
Review of the Literature
Career education is deemed vastly important not only for the individual student’s success, but also for the success of individual states and the country as a whole. The introduction to the PA Department of Education’s Workplace and Career Standards states, “Pennsylvania’s economic future depends on having a well-educated and skilled workforce. No student should leave secondary education without a solid foundation in Career Education and Work” (PA Department of Education, 2018, p. 3).
In recent years, there has been an increase in the need to prepare students not only to pursue post-secondary education, but also to enter the workforce with training in a skills trade. California is spending $6 million to advertise the advantages of vocational education, in addition to $200 million that is allocated for improving technical education delivery (Krupnick, 2017). Although there is a need not only for highly skilled workers, there is also a financial benefit for students who get this type of training. Individuals with what was historically known as a vocational education, but with what we now call career and technical education, are actually more likely to be employed than are their counterparts with traditional 4-year academic credentials. People who received training in a career and technical education field are also significantly more likely to be working in their particular field of study (Krupnick, M., 2017).
Career and Technical Education encompasses a wide range of careers and skills. The Association for Career and Technical Education (2014) defines career education as one that educates students for a range of career options through 16 Clusters and over 79 “pathways”. The clusters include areas such as Hospitality and Tourism, Information
Technology, Law, Public Safety and Security, Health Science, just to name a few. A goal of career and technical education is to prepare students to be college and career-ready. The focus is not only on academic skills, but also on employability and technical skills (Association for Career and Technical Education, 2014).
Technical schools will play a large role in preparing students for the needs of the 21st century economy. According to an April, 2018 report on the radio program, All Things Considered, “Construction, along with health care and personal care, will account for one-third of all new jobs through 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There will also be a need for new plumbers and new electricians. And, as politicians debate a massive overhaul of the nation’s roads, bridges, and airports, the U.S. Department of Education reports that there will be 68 percent more job openings in infrastructure-related fields in the next five years than there are people training to fill them” (April 25, 2018). For these students, technical skills will not be the only skills they need to be competitive. More and more employers are indicating a need for students to have social skills that allow them to problem-solve and communicate in a team. This supports the need for schools to find a program that addresses the “whole student” when choosing a program or curriculum for career education.
**Competencies Required for Success in the Work Place**
The ability to work successfully in any job setting necessitates a combination of technical skills required for the specific job that is to be performed and the less tangible “people skills” that enable workers to get along comfortably with supervisors and colleagues. These multiple “people skills” are not job specific, but are important across all jobs and industries and at all levels of employment (Tsitskari et al., 2017).
Defining skills that are necessary for successful employment is important in order to measure students’ competence in these areas. Research consistently supports the need for direct instruction of employability skill sin order for graduates to gain and maintain employment (Tsitskari et al., 2017, Clark et al., 1994). John Dewey, a 19th century educational reformer, was a proponent of the connection of school to larger society. He recognized the need to educate students in skills such as problem solving and critical thinking, skills he connected to success after formal schooling ended (Webb et al., 2014).
A recent GALLUP poll (2018) echoes these same sentiments about the need for soft skills instruction for life-long success. GALLUP (2018) found parents, teachers, principals and superintendents have varying definitions of non-academic soft skills needed for success after graduation. However, there was a large degree of agreement between and among these same participants that not only are soft skills important, but that they also need to be directly taught and assessed.
An agency that promotes the successful combination of technical and soft skills is The Perkins Collaborative Network. They focus on funding, data collection, and development of programs that increase employability skills for secondary and post-secondary students who pursue an education in a technical career.
The Perkins Collaborative Resource Network is under the direction of the US Department of Education and is responsible for fulfilling the goals outlined in The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (Perkins IV). The Perkins Act is meant to provide grants and support “to develop more fully the academic, career, and technical skills of secondary and postsecondary students who elect to enroll in career and technical education programs” (The Perkins Collaborative Resource Network, 2018).
The Perkins Employability Skills Framework (2018) differentiates between the types of skills needed to compete in specific vocations (hard skills) with those that are needed across disciplines in order to be successful in the workplace (soft skills). The framework outlines employability skills as an overarching concept and breaks it down into three sub-groups: applied knowledge, effective relationships, and workplace skills. The subgroups are further delineated into specific skill areas. Applied knowledge encompasses critical thinking and applied academic skills; effective relationships includes interpersonal skills and personal qualities; finally, workplace skills contains resource management, information use, communication skills, systems thinking, and technology use (US Department of Education, 2018).
Robles (2012) found the following 10 soft skills to be among the most desirable among executives:
- Communication – oral, speaking capability, written, presenting, listening
- Courtesy – manners, etiquette, business etiquette, gracious, says please and thank you, respectful
- Flexibility – adaptability, willing to change, lifelong learner, accepts new things, adjusts, teachable
- Integrality – honest, ethical, high morals, has personal values, does what’s right
- Interpersonal Skills – nice, personable, sense of humor, friendly, nurturing, empathetic, has self-control, patient, sociability, warmth, social skills
- Positive Attitude – optimistic, enthusiastic, encouraging, happy, confident
- Professionalism – businesslike, well-dressed, appearance, poised
• Responsibility – accountable, reliable, gets the job done, resourceful, self-disciplined, wants to do well, conscientious, common sense
• Teamwork – cooperative, gets along with others, agreeable, supportive, helpful, collaborative
• Work Ethic – hard working, willing to work, loyal, initiative, self-motivated, on time, good attendance
The skills mentioned by Robles (2012) and in the Employability Framework for Perkins are strikingly similar to those expressed as competencies by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). A recent article published by NACE demonstrates the disconnect seen between students’ perceptions of career readiness skills and employers’ experiences with new graduates. The article recounts the results of a recent poll of employers regarding recent graduates and their levels of proficiency on the NACE competencies. What they found is that employers tend to rate recent graduates lower in career readiness when compared with the student’s own ratings. The difference between the two groups was greatest when asked about professionalism and work ethics; nearly 90 percent of students rated themselves as proficient in this area, but fewer than half of the employers agreed (NACE Staff, 2017). Although students may be able to get a job, keeping a job requires an understanding of what an employer wants or the company needs.
NACE defines competency as a “combination of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal attributes” (Nunemaker et al., 2017). NACE outlines the following competencies as necessary for career readiness:
• Critical Thinking/Problem Solving: Exercise sound reasoning to analyze issues, make decisions, and overcome problems. The individual is able to obtain, interpret, and use knowledge, facts, and data in this process, and may demonstrate originality and inventiveness.
• Oral/Written Communications: Articulates thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively in written and oral forms to persons inside and outside of the organization. The individual has public speaking skills; is able to express ideas to others; and can write/edit memos, letters, and complex technical reports clearly and effectively.
• Teamwork/Collaboration: Build collaborative relationships with colleagues and customers representing diverse cultures, races, ages, genders, religions, lifestyles, and viewpoints. The individual is able to work within a team structure, and can negotiate and manage conflict.
• Digital Technology: Leverage existing digital technologies ethically and efficiently to solve problems, complete tasks, and accomplish goals. The individual demonstrates effective adaptability to new and emerging technologies.
• Leadership: Leverage the strengths of others to achieve common goals, and use interpersonal skills to coach and develop others. The individual is able to assess and manage his/her emotions and those of others; use empathetic skills to guide and motivate; and organize, prioritize, and delegate work.
• Professionalism/Work Ethic: Demonstrate personal accountability and effective work habits, e.g., punctuality, working productively with others, and time workload management, and understand the impact of non-verbal communication
on professional work image. The individual demonstrates integrity and ethical behavior, acts responsibly with the interests of the larger community in mind, and is able to learn from his/her mistakes.
- **Career Management**: Identify and articulate one’s skills, strengths, and knowledge, and experiences relevant to the position desired and career goals, and identify areas necessary for professional growth. The individual is able to navigate and explore job options, understands and can take the steps necessary to pursue opportunities, and understands how to self-advocate for opportunities in the workplace.
- **Global/Intercultural Fluency**: Value, respect, and learn from diverse cultures, races, ages, genders, sexual orientations, and religions. The individual demonstrates openness, inclusiveness, sensitivity, and the ability to interact respectfully with all people and understand individuals’ differences.
Although NACE concerns itself with skills needed for success in college and beyond, these skills continue to be relevant to high school graduates as well. Both the Perkins Employability Skills Framework and the NACE competencies indicate a need for well-developed intra-and inter-personal skills in the workplace setting. It is important to note that this combination of skills and abilities is part of the definition because the combination is thought to lead to success for an organization, not only for the individual. This dual success is also something soft skills in the workplace and SEL have in common. Although there is a great deal of focus on individual skills and abilities, it is also important to utilize these skills across setting for individual and community benefit.
School-Based Social Emotional Learning Programs
Social emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions (CASEL, 2018). Competence in social emotional skills predicts success “in school, in the labor market, and in life” (Belfield et al., 2015, p.5). Direct intervention to increase student competencies in the area of SEL has economic benefit. Measuring the cost-benefit of SEL interventions can be complicated; however, demonstrating economic impacts is beneficial when a district or community is weighing whether or not to invest in programming for students. Belfield et al. (2015) demonstrated through the utilization of aggregate data from six school-based interventions, that for every dollar spent, a return of $11 for the broader community was realized. Research points both to interpersonal skills (realistic goal setting, positive mindsets, self-control, emotion regulation, and coping strategies) and interpersonal skills (listening, communication, perspective taking, negotiation, and social problem solving) as needed for success (Domitrovich et al., 2017). Longitudinal research indicates that competence in these areas promotes success in key areas over time and that deficits in these areas are associated with poor outcomes over time (Domitrovich et al., 2017). Studies also document that interventions for SEL provide positive outcomes, which endure over time (Domitrovich et al., 2017).
During the early 1990s, it became evident that schools needed to address social and emotional learning (SEL) in order to help all students succeed. Research supported this idea; however, there was little legislative support for the idea of SEL. With the
adoption of No Child Left Behind, many educators were forced to decide between time for academics that would be part of a mandated assessment and used to judge their performance, and skills that many knew were also necessary for a successful future (Ferguson, 2016). However, SEL was included in the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2010, with language that mandated “instructional practices for developing relationship-building skills, such as effective communication” (Ferguson, 2016).
With the addition of language that supported SEL, educators were now faced with the task of defining and measuring this type of instruction for students. Gayl (2018) identifies ways that policy makers can integrate SEL into efforts to redesign accountability systems and points to several examples from states’ consolidated plans. One example is the “Profile of the South Carolina Graduate”, which states that upon high school graduation, students should have skills such as self-direction, global perspective, perseverance, and interpersonal skills (Gayle, 2018). State plans are recognizing the importance of SEL not only for elementary students’ growth, but also as necessary for life after graduation.
Although several states have moved to define the specific social-emotional skills that are deemed important for childhood and beyond, others have made strides in measuring outcomes for students. In 2015, several districts in California formed CORE as a partnership to improve student achievement through collaboration across its eight members: Fresco, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Santa Ana Unified School Districts (West et al., 2018). The mission of these eight “core” districts was to increase, build, and maintain a comprehensive school improvement and accountability system that included innovation and collaboration. In
2013, CORE applied for a waiver from the US Department of Education that would allow flexibility in determining school success (West et al., 2018). Through this waiver, CORE implemented a new accountability system that included measures of social-emotional learning, growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness (West et al., 2018). Although the success of the program is still under review, some conclusions can be made about the importance of measuring the characteristics of SEL. Studying social-emotional characteristics through the utilization of student surveys provides an opportunity to observe how these characteristics change over time and to make judgements about the effectiveness of school-based strategies (West et al., 2018).
“Perhaps most importantly, it provides a setting in which to identify the supports needed to ensure that educators respond to the provision of data on SE skills in ways that help more students succeed in school and life” (West et al., 2018, p. 129).
The need for schools to focus on skills that lie clearly in the social-emotional domain comes not only from increasing pressure to perform well on measures of school success, but also on employers’ needs to have workers who are highly skilled in areas such as communication and leadership. Focus on social skills for the workplace can be found on the US Department of Labor’s occupational Information Network (O*NET) database. This database provides detailed descriptions of jobs and the skills needed for over 850 occupations. Examples of social-emotional skills, such as persistence and social awareness, are required for occupations across a wide variety of domains. “Knowledge and experience aside, employers want to hire rational, socially competent individuals who know how to manage themselves and play nicely with others” (Ferguson, 2016, p. 75).
Research across domains supports the need for competence in social-emotional skills for individual success. Social-emotional competence is fundamental to increasing students’ postsecondary performances and completions, to enhancing workplace success, and for adult life outcomes including rates of incarceration, marital status, and levels of depression (Moffitt, 2011).
**Social Emotional Competence in the Workplace**
Elias et al. (1997) define social and emotional competence as “the ability to understand, manage, and express the social and emotional aspects of one’s life…” (p. 2). However, the authors do not stop there. They also include the importance of this ability to be applied successfully to learning, relationships, problem solving, and adapting to demands. Elias and his fellow authors also include self-awareness, impulse control, the ability to work cooperatively, and caring about oneself and others (Elias et al., 1997, p. 2). This definition shares remarkable similarities with the soft skills outlined by NACE.
Biesecker and Girma-Holton (2015), found that interest in social emotional learning (SEL) is “strong among nonprofits, foundations, educators and economists”. They cited a study by Belfied et al. (2015) that indicated the economic value of SEL is on average for every dollar spent there was a return of $11 through academic achievement and health.
Estimating the financial benefit of having students and employees who are competent in social-economical skills is difficult. Studies that examine the cost-benefit of SEL programs and interventions caution readers that calculations cannot capture all the benefits of each intervention studied. For example, until recently, there has been a focus on how the development of social-emotional skills impact academic achievement, which
dwarfs the available research on the economic impact of these skills (Belfield et al., 2015). What researchers instead focus on is how social-emotional skills impact educational attainment and personal well-being, which in turn impacts economic outcomes (Belfield et al., 2015).
The increased interest in how to improve soft skills for the workplace comes as employers are spending more money than ever on recruiting in order to find candidates with well-developed social skills, including communication. This focus on social skills comes as companies have automated or outsourced many routine tasks. The available jobs often require workers to take on broader responsibilities that demand critical thinking, empathy or other abilities that cannot be automated and are harder to develop in new employees (Davidson, 2016).
One way in which competence in social-emotional skills benefits the workplace is through employee engagement. Engagement is the situation in which an employee feels invested in the work he or she does and reports good relationships with his or her peers and supervisors. Industry research indicates that employees who are engaged are more likely to stay with the company, improve the pace at which goals are achieved, and improve the quality of those results (Forck, 2014).
As the focus of the workforce has changed in response to the demands of a global economy, the skills needed to succeed have changed. The shift from an industrial economy to an information society and an office economy means that many jobs now place an emphasis on social skills such as integrity, communication, and flexibility (Zehr, 1998).
Supporting Students with Disabilities in Career Education Programs
Schools face continued pressure to demonstrate that students are college and career ready. The adoption of Common Core State Standards in 2010 ushered in a movement of increased rigor of content and skills taught (Wagner et al., 2016). This was preceded by the increased financing provided to schools through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with the caveat that schools adopt rigorous college and career ready standards (Wagner et al., 2016). With this additional pressure, schools have turned to career and technical education (CTE) programs to increase positive student outcomes, particularly for students with disabilities. Research shows that students with learning disabilities who participate in CTE programs have lower dropout rates and higher levels of post-graduation income (Wagner et al., 2016).
Finding programs that support positive post-graduation outcomes for students with high incidence disabilities, such as learning or behavioral disabilities, is especially important. Research shows that students with high incidence disabilities, more so than their nondisabled counterparts, can experience volatility in employment following graduation (Rowjewski et al., 2014). Wagner, Newman, Cameto, Garza, & Levine (2005) report that young adults with learning and behavioral disabilities most often find employment in entry-level positions that pay minimum wage or that offer only part-time work. This may be especially true for female students identified with a learning disability. Several studies found that women are less likely than their male peers with disabilities to find employment (Gonzalez et al., 2011). Gonzalez, Rosenthal, and Kim (2011) attributed these disappointing outcomes to possible deficits in interpersonal skills, job-related academic skills, or a lack of specific vocational skills needed.
Under- or unemployment for individuals with disabilities can have significant lifetime impacts. In a longitudinal study by Ra and Kim (2016), findings were consistent with previous research which found that employment is correlated to quality of life. There is a critical relationship for individuals with disabilities between employment and quality of life. Meaningful employment allows individuals with disabilities to maintain independence and functionality and is consistently found to be one of the most powerful determinants of quality of life (Ra & Kim, 2016).
Knowing that employment is a powerful determinant for quality of life for individuals with disabilities and taking into account that young adults with learning or emotional disabilities may lack the intra-and interpersonal skills necessary to obtain and maintain employment, instruction in soft skills becomes of great importance for this population.
**Adventure Based Learning**
Adventure Based Learning (ABL) is defined by Cosgriff (2000) as, “the deliberate use of sequences adventure activities—particularly games, trust activities and problem-solving initiatives—for the personal and social development of participants” (p. 90). The technique assumes that individuals are more capable than they typically see themselves to be. Tasks are structures to appear insurmountable and may be perceived as high risk, physically or emotionally. However the reality is that through group problem-solving and personal challenge, participants learn to overcome self-imposed limits on their own abilities. By utilizing compelling tasks that require individuals to work together, participants become responsible for constructing their own learning (Priest & Gass, 2018).
ABL is focused on both the interpersonal, how individuals interact with others, and the intrapersonal, including concepts such as self-concept and self-efficacy (Stuhr, 2018). Appropriate sequencing of activities, facilitation of the activities, and processing of the activities are key to successful implementation of an ABL model (Stuhr, 2018). The use of debrief techniques is one of the most important aspects of ABL. The debriefing can occur any time before, during, and/or after the activity. This type of discussion allows for the lessons learned during the activity to transfer to everyday life (Stuhr, 2018).
Debriefing following an ABL activity is possibly one of the most important steps in the process. Participation in the activity itself allows for important opportunities for growth; however, it does not automatically include learning or skill building (Powers & Kirkpatrick, 2013). Some of the activities can bring up intense emotions, depending upon the interactions of the group, comfort level of participants, and overall level of difficulty. As stated by Powers and Kirkpatrick (2013), “A skillful facilitator is necessary in the debriefing to bring out a variety of experiences and to ensure that the minority opinion is heard as well as the majority” (p. 53). Typically, facilitators will have planned questions for each activity; however, flexibility is required due to the importance of discussing observations by the facilitators and students alike. Facilitators must be open to new interpretations by participants.
Although there are different models for the debriefing process, they are actually very similar in structure and goals. The founders of the Project Adventure curriculum stress the importance of the debriefing process. Debriefing is described as part of the “Adventure Wave” that happens as part of each activity (Panicucci, 2002). The
Adventure Wave consists of Briefing, which sets the stage for the activity, Doing, which is the actual execution of the activity, and Debriefing. Debriefing is described as the “critical step where students are given an opportunity to glean important learning from what they have done” (Panicucci, 2002, p. 168). In this model, the debrief is not just a discussion, but can also include discussions in pairs or smaller groups, talking the students through a visualization of the activity and its salient points, using manipulatives such as play dough or pipe cleaners, and journaling.
The Sunday Afternoon Drive Debriefing Model utilizes the metaphor that is its title in order to highlight the fact that the teacher or facilitator is the “co-pilot”, with the students taking the responsibility for the “drive to self-discovery” (Stuhr et al., 2015). In this model, initial guidance is given through the presentation of a topic, activity, or question, as well as some basic rules for the process. The students then take control, with the teacher re-entering only if the students veer too far off-topic, stop talking, or start to exhibit signs of frustration that are inhibiting the process (Stuhr et al., 2015).
There is also the Description, Interpretation, and Evaluation (DIE) Model (Bennett & Bennett, 2008). In this model, students Describe the game, Interpret their experience by reporting feelings they experience, and finally Evaluate what they have learned and how it applies to personal, interpersonal, and societal levels (Powers & Kirkpatrick, 2013).
The model for ABL has been around for decades. Walsh and Golins (1976) first described the Outward Bound Model, as founded by Kurt Hahn, which includes a unique physical environment, a unique social environment and a set of problem-solving tasks that create “a state of adaptive dissonance” (Walsh & Golins, 1976). A review of the
current day Outward Bound indicates that these ideas are still at the core of ABL. A quote attributed to the founder, Kurt Hahn, which speaks to the goals of ABL can be found on the Outward Bound website. “I regard it as the foremost task of education: to ensure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self-denial, and above all, compassion” (Outward Bound, 2018). A description of the Outward bound approach indicates that learning can occur in almost any environment, such as a classroom or an outdoor adventure course. Additional critical elements include challenge, adversity, failure, success, and most importantly, the requirement that all participants contribute in some way to the problem-solving process (Outward Bound, 2018). Outward Bound indicates positive outcomes for participants. Course end evaluations for courses that are five days or longer in duration demonstrate that participants are more likely to be leaders in their communities, assist people who need help; accomplish their goals, believe in their ability to succeed; take responsibility for their actions, and participate in service to the community (Outward Bound, 2018).
A contemporary of Outward Bound is Project Adventure. Project Adventure is an international nonprofit that was founded by former Outward Bound instructors. It was created because the founding members saw experiences gained through Outward Bound as powerful, but something not accessible to all who may benefit from adventure based learning (Panicucci, 2002). Project Adventure’s curriculum was developed as a supplement to a school’s current physical education program. It is also based on Kolb’s learning theory model which includes four phases; concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation (Panicucci, 2002).
Project Adventure utilizes the terms experience, reflect, generalize, and apply, which they state allows for learning and application of social and emotional skills (Project Adventure, 2018).
This model of experiential learning is utilized across a wide variety of educational, professional, and vocational environments. ABL has been shown to decrease fatigue and increase self-efficacy among childhood cancer survivors (Li et al., 2018), to increase engagement and intrinsic motivation among science students (Mackenzie et al., 2018), build strengths among juveniles in residential treatment (Nickerson et al., 2004), to enhance personal growth in psychology students (Human, 2004) and increase personal and group development among first year undergraduates (Bobilya & Akey, 2002). ABL can include a wide variety of activities from in-class problem-solving, to outdoor activities, to low- and high-ropes courses, to finally to multi-day adventure activities that are typically very challenging.
**Enhancing Social Emotional Competence Through Adventure Based Learning**
According to Elias et al. (1997), “The social and emotional education of children may be provided through a variety of diverse efforts such as classroom instruction, extracurricular activities, a supportive school climate, and involvement in community service” (p. 2). ABL is a diverse group of lessons that can be utilized across many environments. ABL is focused both on the interpersonal, how individuals interact with others, and on the intrapersonal, including ideas such as self-concept and self-efficacy (Stuhr, 2018). Because of this, it aligns with the focus of many SEL interventions. ABL fits the need for SEL to emphasize social decision-making and problem-solving and encourages students to generalize these skills across settings.
There is evidence that ABL activities are not only an effective technique for education, but also a means to promote retention and generalization of skills. White (2007) studied students age 10-14 with emotional difficulties who participated in an ABL program that contained classroom, outdoor, and adventure components. Researchers gathered both qualitative and quantitative data, with the primary goal to observe gains in trust and social competence that transfer to the school environment (White, 2007). Through semi-structured interviews, 100% of students reported a highly successful experience. Data from the interviews indicated gains in self-confidence, perseverance, awareness of their own needs, ability to regulate emotions, and a deeper level of trust with the other ABL participants (White, 2007). Positive changes in student behavior were also noted across settings. Both secondary school staff and parents indicated improvements in school and home behavior and engagement (White, 2007).
Adventure programming improves functional behaviors such as communication or working as a group to solve a problem. Beneficial outcomes are both interpersonal and intrapersonal. Examples of effective outcomes expected from ABL include newly found confidence, improved self-concept, better reasoning skills, greater trust in others, increased sharing of decision-making, improved conflict resolution skills, and increased leadership abilities (Priest & Gass, 2018). ABL allows participants to understand concepts from a fresh perspective and apply this new understanding to real-life settings such as school or work (Priest & Gass, 2018).
Research has also suggests that the effectiveness of ABL techniques is based upon the same factors that promote effective learning in a traditional classroom. ABL activities typically consist of small class size, cooperative versus competitive environment,
communication of high expectations, the ability to build on success, and the creation of a culture that is supportive and positive (Riggins, 1986).
ABL techniques promote a healthy environment for learning. Doll, Brehm, and Zucker (2014) indicate that several ingredients are needed to create classrooms where all students can be successful emotionally, academically, and socially. These successful classrooms impart the belief that students can be successful, encourage responsiveness to the teacher and attention to the lesson, encourage students to have personal goals and problem-solve, have authentic and responsive relationships with teachers, promote positive and supportive peer relationships, and encourage family involvement (Doll et al., 2014). ABL techniques focus on promoting these same characteristics.
**Program Evaluation in Schools**
Due to increased demands for a highly skilled and prepared workforce, schools bear a greater responsibility to prepare students for college, career, and life. Schools have historically been judged by academic accomplishments measured through standardized testing. This type of measurement does not provide schools with everything they need to make sure they are preparing students adequately for the demands of life after graduation. Students need not only academic content and skills but also critical thinking and problem-solving, communication, and collaboration abilities. Social-emotional learning encompasses these types of skills. Competence in social and emotional skills will be needed not only for the individuals’ success, but also for the continued growth of our democracy and economy (Bae, 2018).
Achieve, an independent, nonprofit education reform organization, which dedicates its resources to working with states to raise academic standards and graduation
requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability, has also reported on the importance of soft skills. Achieve (2018) indicates that college and career readiness necessitates skills to communicate effectively, solve problems, use critical thinking, and analyze information and data. Of additional importance are skills such as collaborating, communicating, and presenting information. It has become necessary for states to prioritize the development of accountability systems that include robust indicators of career and college readiness. Designing systems that measure the effectiveness of teaching soft skills that promote employability is a challenge that school districts around the country are now trying to meet (Achieve, 2018).
SEL can be difficult to define and therefore difficult to measure. Biesecker and Girma-Holton (2015), who work with City Year, a non-profit that works in urban schools to help increase student success and decrease drop-out rates, expanded on the importance of evaluating programs, particularly those that purport to increase social-emotional competencies in students. In 2015, they studied the success of 3,000 AmeriCorps volunteers who supported students in grades 3-9 with tutoring, SEL programming, and afterschool activities. Biesecker and Girma-Holton (2015) found that they needed several years to develop tools that could help them to interpret the data collected. For example, in the first year their chosen assessment tool was helpful in providing a common language to stakeholders; however, since there were no norms for the chosen tool, it was difficult to know what constituted a “good” score. However, they found this helpful because it allowed them to refine their questions for evaluation, such as “How can we connect data from an assessment tool to interventions”? They moved to another tool, the Devereaux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA). The information gathered through this tool
allowed the researchers not only to look at overall progress and compare scores to norms, but also to provide subscales that allow researchers to focus on specific skills. Through each year, they received feedback from stakeholders. By evaluating the program in this manner, they found that, “Within one school year, just over half of the students receiving the City Year SEL intervention are showing significant growth in overall SEL competence.” They attributed their success not only to the strength of the program itself, but also to the multi-year evaluation.
As exemplified by the work of the researchers who consulted on the City Year SEL program, evaluation differs from research because evaluation seeks to help stakeholders make decisions (Alkin, 2011). Evaluations in the early stages of a program enable stakeholders to highlight problems, including those with fidelity of implementation, and may give some early indications about program outcomes (Alkin, 2011).
Not only is there a general lack of systematic review of available ABL curricula, but there are also no known ABL curricula specifically geared toward addressing the needs of transition age (16-21 years old) students who will soon be entering college or the workforce. The primary goal of this research was to provide a review of a curriculum designed specifically for this population. ABL is a competency-based curriculum that is utilized in physical education (Stuhr et al., 2018). ABL is also used in settings such as adjudicated youth facilities, college settings, and the corporate world. Unfortunately, although many resource books on ABL provide lessons for various groups, none offers a specific curriculum for transition-age students that are aligned with competencies for college and career readiness.
Chapter 3
Method
This study used archival data collected in the course of a school-based intervention that was planned, implemented, and evaluated during the 2016-2017 school year in a regional career education center encompassing three secondary-level vocational-technical schools. The intervention utilized Adventure Based Learning (ABL) techniques to deliver instruction to transition-age students in soft skills for the workplace. Data were collected before, during, and following the implementation of the sequence of activities. The researcher/school psychologist received permission from school administrators to utilize data that were collected over the course of the study to address the research questions posed by this study. In accordance with school policy, information for parents was sent home and students were provided with the opportunity to opt out of the lessons prior to student participation.
The Rationale for the Program
During the 2015-2016 school year, the support team, consisting of school psychologists and social workers and the vocational school staff, became aware of an increased number of students who were experiencing significant academic, social-emotional, and behavioral difficulties at all three school locations. This increase led to a need for additional consultation and supportive services from the county-based support team, which included school psychologists and social workers. Typically, supportive services were provided through individual and small-group counseling sessions that pulled students from their classroom programs. Some of these counseling groups utilized ABL techniques.
The format of this traditional counseling program pulled students from various vocational programs (e.g., building trades, health careers, manufacturing, culinary arts, etc.), which grouped students who had no other contact in their school day. The support team and technical high school administration recognized that all students would benefit from direct instruction in social skills and other employability skills. Given the fact that a large number of students in one program were identified as having deficits in social skills, the support team for that location, the school psychologist and social worker, proposed utilizing a whole-class approach to delivering SEL instruction. The ABL lessons were sequenced and organized and a regular schedule for instruction was provided to the whole class. Given the setting for the program in a career and technical center, the program included a primary focus on increasing employability skills for all students.
By the end of the 2015-2016 school year, the vocational instructor reported a significant degree of satisfaction with the program and stated that one of the consequences of this scope and sequence of instruction was that this class demonstrated the highest amount of teamwork and collaboration of any of his previous cohorts of students. The instructor became an advocate to bring this instruction to the vocational high school as a whole. Provision of services to targeted classrooms was proposed for the 2016-2017 school year. The administration reviewed and accepted the recommendation for the new format of social skills for the workplace instructional delivery. Both the support team and the administration predicted there would be benefits to this approach. Increasing employability skills is a stated goal of vocational education. Developing a program that used some of the current adventure based learning (ABL) activities to
deliver social-emotional learning (SEL) content provided for a smoother transition for staff that was already providing this type of instruction. By expanding this program offering to general education students, as well as students who received special education supports, facilitators are better able to mirror the diversity of the real-world work environment. Expanding the program was also better aligned with federal regulations that include instruction be delivered to students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment (LRE).
**Description of the Program**
The development of the IMPACT (Initiative, Managing emotions and conflict, Professionalism, Action toward goal setting, Communication, Thinking skills) program was propelled by the need for the social-emotional learning (SEL) program for transition-age students who attend a vocational high school located in the Northeast United States. IMPACT was built to be consistent with *Adventure Curriculum* from Project Adventure, with some activities being modified and others incorporated from other sources. All activities were chosen with the target competencies in mind. Previous services for students with disabilities included some SEL instruction; however, the delivery model was based on individual need, and not what best fit the overall needs of the vocational high school population.
Input into the development of the IMPACT program, the curriculum that is the focus of this study, was given by a team of transition-age educators that included school psychologists, social workers, and secondary educators. Each lesson is based on a NACE competency and includes an adventure based learning activity, materials needed,
questions designed to elicit discussion and debriefing recommendations to ensure that the discussion remains on the focus of the lesson.
The school psychologist and social worker assigned to one of the buildings in the career and technology high school created the scope and sequence of the IMPACT program by creating a grid that contained the target soft skill competencies and the lessons from ABL resources. Through collaboration and discussion, the school psychologist and social worker decided which lessons and conversation questions best matched the targeted skills. The collaborators also ensured that each targeted soft skill had multiple representations in the scope and sequence of the lessons.
The goal of the IMPACT program is to increase soft skills, such as communication, collaboration, and goal setting, among students who attend vocational high schools. These soft skills, which are based on competencies set forth by NACE, constitute “career readiness” and are in high demand by employers (NACE, 2018).
**Program Staff**
All support team facilitators, which includes three school psychologists and two social workers, received an initial two-day training on ABL techniques and low ropes course facilitation by staff from the Adventure Guild. The two-day training included recognizing safety concerns, such as environmental and participant issues that may impact safety, as well as direct instruction for staff related to activities on and off the low ropes course. Special attention was given to engagement techniques as well as safety concerns that may arise from the physically challenging lessons. Following this initial two-day training, facilitators were and will be re-certified every two years with a one-day refresher training.
Additional staff, such as learning support teachers, para-educators, and vocational instructors, who teach course-specific career skills, receive a preview of the program by the support team facilitators. These additional personnel are the primary staff assigned to sites in the regional vocational high schools. Although these tam members participate in the instruction and debrief for each lesson, they are not responsible for direct facilitation of the lessons or the physical elements on the low ropes course. Vocational instructors whose class is chosen to participate during a given school year may never have seen the material outside of the general preview given. In this way, vocational instructors can be participants in the problem-solving process, which gives them an opportunity to step out of their typical teaching role.
**Curriculum**
A preview of the purpose, lessons, and sequence was provided to all school instructors before classroom selection. The preview consisted of the rationale behind providing the instruction, such as employers’ desires to hire individuals with strong soft skills, how utilizing ABL techniques improve the targeted soft skills, the structure of the lessons, and the purposed sequence and scheduling of the lessons. Time was allotted for a large group meeting for questions and answers. Instructors were then encouraged to contact the facilitators with any other individual questions as well as to discuss their interest in participation with administration.
At one of the locations, the instructor with whom the program was piloted during the 2015-2016 school year was available for input into how IMPACT provided positive learning outcomes for his students. This same instructor also gave feedback during a staff
meeting that included all the vocational high school locations, which occurred before the preview of the program to individual locations.
Each lesson included a problem that needed to be solved by the class as a whole or by smaller groups, which depended on the lesson and the class size. Materials needed for each lesson varied. Materials included items such as large “stones” made from Styrofoam and duct tape, rubber circles used to denote specific areas where students had to step, paper and pencil, foam balls, rubber bands, plastic cups, and other various materials that may not have obvious use to the students. The students were then given a brief set of instructions that were purposely vague, allowing students to be creative in their problem-solving process. Students were encouraged to ask questions throughout the lesson (Appendix A).
An important aspect of the learning process is that most lessons require multiple attempts with varied strategies to reach the goal. Throughout this process, facilitators offer encouragement and observations of student behavior. If needed, students are given clues that may help them to complete the task more efficiently. This is typically done for two reasons; the first is in the interest of time and the second is the possibility of student frustration that may be about to reach a level that is not helpful to learning the concepts of the lesson. All lessons are designed to have elements of difficulty; however, sometimes it becomes apparent that the level of difficulty for the particular class is either under or overestimated by the facilitators. When the tasks prove too challenging for the students, facilitators will make modifications or give clues. Adjusting the level of difficulty is done to encourage engagement of all students in the activity. If some students
find the task well above their conceptual level, there is a risk that they will not participate and therefore will not internalize the targeted soft skills of the lesson.
Conversely, if students reach the intended goal very quickly, they may attain a false sense of competence, when in reality the quick conclusion was due to an underestimation of the skill levels of the students. There are several ways in which the level of difficulty for each lesson can be modified. For example, if students are demonstrating difficulty in solving a particular task, a suggestion is made to have one participant be a leader or to change their perspectives. Also, if the students complete the task very quickly, additional elements can be added such as blindfolding some participants or allowing only non-verbal communication for the group.
Once the goal has been reached, the facilitators then lead the students in a discussion of the activity. Topics for discussion always include the two leading questions: “What worked?” and “What didn’t?” From this starting point, the facilitators listen to the student responses and encourage them to think about how this applies to a workplace setting. Some students can reference their past experiences working in a part-time job. Other students may have very little work experience but are encouraged to think about their chosen vocational fields or examples from the classroom. If communication is difficult for the group, the students are asked to think about how that could impact them on a job site. If students became stuck on one strategy for a solution, despite there being a more efficient approach, questions are posed regarding how this can limit their success in the workplace.
The participation of the teachers and technical education instructors is vital to helping students generalize these soft skills across settings. The teachers and instructors
provide valuable insight into how the students performed during the specific lesson and how that performance is similar or different from what the instructor observes in the classroom or on the job site. Technical education instructors, who come from the various vocational fields, provide awareness about how the target soft skills are needed for the specific vocational environment.
Some discussion questions target how a specific soft skill can impact a specific vocational environment. For example, following the activity, “Never Have I Ever…” students are encouraged to reflect on how learning about what they have in common with new coworkers or individuals who appear different from them can increase collaboration in the workplace.
Conversely, students are also asked to think about how some experiences or interests may not be appropriate in a workplace setting. The particular vocation can influence appropriate topics, or even amount, of conversation. There is likely more opportunity for talking about what someone did on his or her vacation in a setting where co-workers may be seated next to each other on computers or draft tables for most of the day, versus the hustle and bustle of a kitchen. Students are also prompted to reflect on how the diversity of their coworkers may influence conversation, tone, physical and emotional boundaries, as well as how they can learn to navigate differences in experiences and opinions.
At the end of the lesson, students are given the opportunity to provide brief feedback regarding what they learned during the lesson and give a rating of satisfaction (See Appendix B). The feedback provided allows the facilitators to monitor fidelity. For example, do the students agree that the lesson meets their goal of teaching the target
competencies? Student feedback could also inform the sequence of activities. If multiple ratings indicate dissatisfaction, the facilitators could ask for additional comments to obtain specific recommendations from the students on how to improve the lesson. If a particular activity is rated negatively across classes, it could be removed from the sequence the following school year and replaced with an alternate lesson that would continue to encourage learning and reflection of the targeted competency.
Finally, optional instructor-led lessons are included for the “off” weeks in the schedule. The activities are designed to address competencies such as communication and teamwork, but are shorter in duration and easier for vocational instructors to facilitate, with little or no training. For example, one of the lessons, “Salt and Pepper” requires only small sheets of paper that include easily matched separated pairs such as “Scooby” and “Shaggy” or “Bacon” and “Eggs”. These strips of paper are taped to students’ backs and they are instructed not only to figure out what is on their backs, but also match themselves to the other half of that pair. The focus of this lesson is effective communication.
All of the lessons led by vocational instructors are provided in advance by the support team facilitators. The support team prepare bags for each vocational instructor; these include the lessons, materials, and suggested soft skills discussion points. Although not all activities are utilized due to restrictions in instructional time, it becomes clear that certain lessons are preferred. The instructors favor lessons that are quick, hands-on, and require minimal materials.
Schedule
Due to the overwhelming interest of the faculty at the start of the 2016-2017 school year, a staggered schedule was created for facilitation at all three buildings that make-up the vocational high school. The schedule included a preview of content for the selected classes, a pre-test survey for both the students and instructors of the chosen classes, twelve lessons of direct instruction in soft skills competencies, a post-test survey, again for students and instructors, and finally a capstone experience at a low-ropes course.
The eight selected classes (four at Building 1, two at Building 2, and two at Building 3) were divided into two groups at each building so that the first set (Rotation 1) began instruction in October, and the second set (Rotation 2) began instruction in November. Each schedule included four weekly lessons, with four optional instructor-led lessons, alternating monthly. Rotation 1 received direct instruction from the support team facilitators during the months of October, December, and February. Rotation 2 classes received direct instruction by the support team facilitators during the months of November, January, and March. The support team also developed additional lessons that could be delivered by the vocational instructors. The instructors had the option of providing these lessons during the four weeks that their classes did not receive formal IMPACT instruction by the support team. It is important to note that there were only two classes at both Building 2 and Building 3; however, one class at Building 2 contained 44 students, so that class was broken into two sections. All field trips to the low ropes course, which provided a capstone experience for the participants, occurred in either April or May of 2017.
By utilizing a staggered schedule, the support team was able to serve more classrooms than had been originally anticipated. Additionally, providing briefer lessons as well as materials needed for each lesson to the vocational instructors for each classroom, encouraged ownership of the generalization of skills outside of the typical IMPACT time.
**Setting**
IMPACT was provided to high school students enrolled in a regional, three-building vocational high school. Each building contains both half-day and full-day programs that focus on specific career interests. The IMPACT program was presented only to selected full-day program students. In all, the vocational high school gives students the option of pursuing an education in 37 different vocations. Students who participated in the IMPACT program were enrolled in eight different vocational programs including Painting, Commercial Art, Computer Systems, Electrical Construction, Sheet Metal Technology, RV and Outdoor Power Equipment (small engines), Veterinary Assistant, and Commercial Construction. Many of these programs are geared toward preparing students to enter the workforce directly, following graduation; however, some programs also qualify for college credits.
On most occasions, the IMPACT lessons were delivered in the classroom setting, due to many programs being equipped with large “lab” areas. Vocational instructors use these lab areas as “hands-on” practice areas. Students use these areas to hone their hard skills, such as laying pipe, wiring electrical boxes, or painting doors. Building administration and instructors accommodated lessons that required a larger area by allowing the use of the hallways or common areas such as the cafeteria, or by utilizing
the outdoors when weather permitted. Some lessons, particularly those focused on teaching short- and long-range goal setting occurred with students working in pairs at tables or traditional desks.
**Participants**
During the 2016-2017 school year, a total of 181 senior students across three career and technical high schools, participated in the program. The regional career and technical high schools are located in the Mid-Atlantic and their enrollment comes from the surrounding local school districts. The students ranged in age from 17 to 20, with 64 female students and 117 male students. Sixty-nine of the 118 students were identified as students with a disability and in need of specially designed instruction.
Students who attend the career and technical high schools have an interest in a specific vocational field and are accepted following an application process. Acceptance is based upon a point system assigned to each applicant, based on their completed high school credits, grades, participation in half-day vocational programs, and recommendations of their sending district’s teachers or school counselors. Each program offered at the career and technical high schools is specific to a vocational field of interest, such as, but not limited to, veterinary assistant, plumbing or commercial art. Students attend the schools for a full day, consisting both of theory and of application. Students who successfully meet all requirements in the spring are then encouraged to apply to businesses to complete internships that provide additional training and experience in the student’s field of choice while working for a company. Following completion of all program requirements, students can receive certification of completion from the career and technical high school, in addition to professional certifications in their chosen
vocational fields. Diplomas are conferred by the sending school districts. The programs offered at the career and technical high school are highly specialized and are designed to prepare students to enter the working world directly following graduation, although some students do decide to pursue a post-secondary education.
Prior to the start of the IMPACT lessons, a letter explaining the program, as well as an option to opt-out of the lessons, was provided to each student to review with his or her parent or guardian. For the 2016-2017 school year, only two students opted out of the program. During the time the lessons were provided, the students were allowed to complete schoolwork at an alternate location.
IMPACT was offered to classrooms based upon instructor interest as well as administrator and support team recommendations. Instructors were given an opportunity to learn about IMPACT through a PowerPoint preview. Instructors at all vocational high school campuses saw the same presentation. The instructors then contacted administration regarding their interests in the program. The number of instructors who wished to participate in the lessons exceeded the capacity of the support team to deliver the program. It was determined that the support team could provide IMPACT to a total of eight classes. After receiving feedback regarding instructor interest, the support team and administrators discussed their recommendations. These recommendations included giving priority to classes who had a high proportion of students with disabilities. Preference was also given to instructors who were new to the technical high school.
**Data Collection**
After the classes were chosen, each student was asked to complete a survey (Appendix C) that required them to rate themselves on each of the NACE competencies.
The survey was developed by school psychologists and social workers who would be facilitating the lessons. Prior to student completion, a preliminary survey was reviewed by the support team supervisor, as well as the career and technical high school administration. Due to the varied reading levels of the students, all questions were read to the class as a whole and additional time for completion was offered to students as needed, regardless of whether or not they were students with an identified disability. Students were encouraged to ask questions as they completed the survey and all questions were answered by support team members in front of the class as a whole. This was done so that all students would receive the same information.
The student survey included 22 questions, most of which asked the students to rate themselves, using a Likert scale on various characteristics that corresponded to the NACE competencies. Each question included a section for comments.
After the surveys were completed, they were coded according to individual students and their respective classes, with each student assigned a number so that when they completed the post-survey, each student’s responses could be compared. A corresponding instructors’ survey was also completed (Appendix D). The data were entered into an Excel spreadsheet by the support team to be analyzed at a later time.
After the IMPACT lessons began, students were given the opportunity to respond to all lessons in a written, short answer regarding what they perceived as the primary goal of the lesson. They were also asked to indicate their satisfaction with the activity itself (Appendix B). The support team also coded these responses and entered the data into a separate Excel spreadsheet to be analyzed at a later time. The coding of individual responses was based upon the NACE competency that best fit the student’s statement.
For example, if the student’s written response was, “We had to work together to solve the problem”, this was coded as Teamwork/Collaboration. If a student stated, “It worked when one person took the lead”, that was coded under Leadership.
Finally, at the conclusion of the 12-week lessons, the students completed a post-survey in which they again rated themselves, based on the NACE competencies. The post-survey contained the same questions in the same order as the pre-IMPACT survey. Again, students were asked to rate themselves, using a Likert-type scale on characteristics that were based upon the NACE competencies. These ratings were then coded into an Excel spreadsheet to be analyzed at a later time.
An electronic survey (Appendix E) was also sent to all stakeholders for the IMPACT program; these included support team members, technical school principals, and participating instructors and learning support teachers. Students were not asked to complete the electronic survey. Of the 24 individuals who were sent the survey, 19 responded. The purpose of the survey of stakeholders was to gain information regarding what teachers, vocational instructors, administrators, and facilitators liked or disliked about the program in regard to the structure of the lessons themselves, the materials used, sequencing of activities, as well as how the lessons coordinated with the stated goals of the IMPACT program.
**Development of the pre-and post-survey.** The survey was developed in partnership with the support team members. It was then reviewed by the supervisor for the team and administrators of the vocational high school. The items needed to have face validity for the instructors and students and were intended to mirror the content of the NACE competencies. Both the staff and student survey needed to be as succinct as
possible to encourage the use of class time for the student responses and preparation time for the instructors to complete responses for each student.
A Likert-style format was chosen for most of the questions because it allows a researcher to measure emotions, opinions, or perceptions in degrees. Some questions allowed for multiple responses when asking respondents’ reactions to specific everyday situations, such as being frustrated with a task. A multiple response format avoided a “forced choice” where respondents would have to choose their most likely response. Allowing for multiple options encouraged students to give all possible responses to a real-life situation.
**Development of the student feedback form.** Students were also asked to complete a feedback form following the ABL lesson. Students were asked to write a sentence that indicated what they learned from the lesson. They were also able to give a rating of satisfaction by circling one of three pictures. Choices included a picture of a “thumbs up” indicating satisfaction; a picture of a “thumbs down” indicating they did not like the lesson, and a “sideways thumb” indicating that the student liked some aspects of the lesson and disliked others. Students were verbally encouraged to explain their choices. This form allowed for qualitative responses to better understand participants’ experiences and perceptions (Alkin, 2011).
**Development of stakeholder survey.** The stakeholder survey contained twelve questions that varied in format (Appendix D). One question asked the respondents to indicate their professional roles; four questions were multiple choice; five questions asked for stakeholders to rate various aspects of the program on a Likert-style scale, and two questions asked for short answer responses. The support team collaborated to create
the stakeholders survey to understand how the IMPACT program benefitted students and staff. The support team reviewed the responses to determine any modifications to the IMPACT program that would allow it to better meet the staff and student needs.
**Overview of Research Design**
A mixed methods design was utilized because both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed to address the research questions. Instructors, learning support teachers, administrators, and support staff who were part of the vocational high school faculty during the 2016-2017 academic year and who participated in the IMPACT curriculum were asked to contribute to the data gathering process. Data collection included a pre- and post-survey for the student and faculty participants as well as a follow-up stakeholders’ survey regarding the perceptions of fit for the program goals. Student participants were asked for qualitative feedback in the form of short-answer responses after most of the lessons.
The pre- and post-participation surveys for both teachers and students were analyzed, using comparative and descriptive statistics. Although descriptive statistics were also used, the short-answer student responses and the stakeholders’ survey were analyzed for themes that apply to the research questions.
Research into ABL techniques used to teach social-emotional concepts that are important to the transition to college and career is important because it establishes credibility for the ABL method. Research does exist across disciplines on the use of ABLE techniques; however, a specific review of curriculum helps to refine practitioners’ understanding of how and why ABL works, and allows stakeholders to examine how and
if behavior change transfers to a participant’s everyday life and how change is sustained (Priest & Gass, 2018).
**Research Questions**
1. Do students report an increase in their use of soft skills?
2. Do instructors report an increase in students’ use of soft skills?
3. Do students report an increase in their use of adaptive skills in response to difficult situations?
4. Is there a difference in the use of soft skills between students who receive specially designed instruction and those who do not?
5. What are stakeholders’ perceptions of the IMPACT program?
Chapter 4
Results
The purpose of this study was to examine the outcomes of a school-based program for increasing soft skills for twelfth grade students enrolled in a career and technical high school. Student participants were enrolled in various classes that focus on specific areas of technical skills needed in order to graduate and gain employment in that area of vocational interest. Students completed pre- and post-surveys in order to measure their perceived use of soft skills. Students also completed feedback forms following each lesson in order to measure student satisfaction.
Instructors whose classes participated also completed pre- and post-program surveys in order to assess observed increases in students’ soft skills. Instructors, administrators, and support team members also completed an electronic survey examining various aspects including program goals, appropriateness of materials and lessons, benefits to stakeholders, as well as recommendations for future implementation.
This chapter presents data related to the program. The chapter begins with a presentation of demographics for both students and instructors, followed by data associated with each of the research questions. A total of 181 students participated across three buildings. All the three buildings are part of a vocational high school located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Each building contains different vocational programs, with student assignment to a building based on his or her choice of vocational program. Students in vocational programs participated as a whole class and programs were chosen based on a combination of demographics, teacher interest, and administrator
recommendation. Table 1 provides demographic data regarding students who participated in the program.
Table 1
Student demographics
| Location | Programs | Gender | Program | Totals |
|----------|-------------------|--------|---------------|--------|
| | | Male | Female | Special Needs | General Education | |
| Building 1 | Painting | 14 | 0 | 8 | 6 | 14 |
| | Commercial Art | 11 | 10 | 9 | 12 | 21 |
| | Electrical | 18 | 0 | 7 | 11 | 18 |
| | Computer Sys.* | 19* | 0* | 4* | 15* | 19* |
| Total Bldg 1 | | 62 | 10 | 28 | 44 | 72 |
| Building 2 | Construction | 15 | 2 | 9 | 8 | 17 |
| | Sheet Metal | 20 | 3 | 8 | 15 | 23 |
| Total Bldg 2 | | 35 | 5 | 17 | 23 | 40 |
| Building 3 | Small Engines | 22 | 0 | 6 | 16 | 22 |
| | Veterinary Asst | 1 | 46 | 21 | 26 | 47 |
| Total Bldg 3 | | 23 | 46 | 27 | 42 | 69 |
| Total All Bldgs | | 120 | 61 | 72 | 109 | 181 |
*Indicates data were not used in statistical calculations due to a lack of returned surveys.
Instructor demographics
Instructors who participated in this program were employed at the same career and technical high school. Seven instructors were male, with two female instructors who teach in the Veterinary Assistant program. Additionally, seven instructors were employed at the technical high school for five or more years, and two instructors, for the small engines program and the electrical program, were new to teaching in 2016-2017.
Sources of Data
As noted previously, student surveys, teacher surveys, and a stakeholder survey completed by faculty, administrators, and program staff were used to address research questions for the study. Table 2 outlines specific sources of data for each of the research questions.
Table 2
Sources of Data
| Research Question | Source of Data | Analysis |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------|
| 1. Do students report an increase in their use of soft skills? | Student survey, pre/post comparisons of items # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 | Descriptive data, pre/post paired differences, t-test |
| 2. Do instructors report an increase in students’ use of soft skills? | Teacher survey, pre/post comparisons of items # 1-16 | Descriptive data, pre/post paired differences, t-test |
| 3. Do students report an increase in their use of adaptive skills in response to difficult situations? | Student survey, pre/post comparisons of items # 6, 10, 11, and 13 | Descriptive data, pre/post paired differences, t-test |
| 4. Is there a difference in the use of soft skills between students who receive specially designed instruction and those who do not? | Student survey, pre/post comparisons of items # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 x Special Education status (column G) | Descriptive data, pre/post paired differences, t-test |
| 5. What are stakeholders’ perceptions of the IMPACT program? | Teacher survey, pre/post comparisons of items # 1-16 x Special Education status (Column G) Stakeholder survey, questions 1-10 Student feedback form half sheets | Frequency counts, Descriptive data, qualitative data |
Workplace competencies
Student responses to pre- and post-surveys were used to determine their use of skills and strategies to address workplace issues. The student survey form was designed to address specific competencies that have been identified by NACE as being critical for success in the workplace. Table 3 organizes the survey questions according to the competencies and strategies of focus for the IMPACT program.
Table 3
Workplace Competencies and Corresponding Student Survey Questions
| Competencies | Questions |
|-------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Critical Thinking/Problem | 7. How often do you take your time to think about a task or question before answering? |
| Solving | 8. How often can you find more than one solution to a problem? |
| | 9. How often do you use the following strategies when solving a problem? |
| | 9a. Brainstorming |
| | 9b. Research other ways to do a task |
| | 9c. Ask for input from others |
| | 9d. Look for a “work-around” |
| | 9e. Change environments |
| | 9f. Take a break |
| | 9g. Go help someone else with something they are working on |
| Oral/Written Communication | 16. How often, after you make a mistake, do you take the time to look back and learn from what happened? |
| | 4. How often do you share your ideas with other people? |
| | 19. How comfortable are you at talking about the things you are good at? |
| | 20. How comfortable are you at talking about things you would like to improve? |
| Teamwork/Collaboration | 1. How often do you work well with others to get a job done? |
| | 2. How often do you work well with others who have different skills or personal characteristics from you? |
| | 5. How often do you have difficulty working with others to get a job done? |
| Leadership/Initiative | 15. How often are you able to recognize a different point of view and use compromise to meet a shared goal? |
| | 21. How often do you take a leadership role in a group project? |
| Professionalism/Work Ethic | 12. How long does it take you to get back your focus after a set-back? |
| | 17. How often do you apologize after you have hurt someone’s feelings? |
| | 18. How often are you on time for work? |
Career Management
3. How often do you ask for help when you need it?
14. How often do you complete tasks on time?
19. How comfortable are you talking about the things you are good at?
Research Question 1: Do students report an increase in their use of soft skills?
Comparisons of pre- and post- items numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 were analyzed to make this determination. Table 4 presents paired comparisons of this set of pre- and post-survey questions.
Table 4
Pre-Post Comparisons for Research Question 1
| Question | Paired Difference | Mean | df | t | Sig. |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------|--------|-------|-------|------|
| How often do you work well with others to get a job done? | Pre 1-Post 1 | -.022 | 133 | -.345 | .730 |
| How often do you work well with others to get a job done? | Pre 2-Post 2 | -.120 | 132 | -1.443| .151 |
| How often do you ask for help when you need it? | Pre 3-Post 3 | -.0821 | 133 | -.759 | .449 |
| How often do you share your ideas with other people? | Pre 4-Post4 | -.097 | 133 | -.955 | .341 |
| How often do you have difficulty working with others to get a job done?| Pre 5-Post 5 | -.144 | 131 | -1.305| .194 |
| How often do you take your time to think about a task or question before answering? | Pre 7-Post 7 | .046 | 130 | .525 | .601 |
| How often can you find more than one solution to a problem? | Pre 8-Post 8 | -.1692 | 129 | -2.394| .018 |
| How often do you complete tasks on time? | Pre 14-Post 14 | .0644 | 131 | .836 | .405 |
| How often are you able to recognize a different point of view and use | Pre 15-Post 15 | -.1541 | 132 | -1.629| .106 |
| Question | Pre 16-Post 16 | t(132) | p |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------|--------|-------|
| How often, after you make a mistake, do you take the time to look back and learn from what happened? | -.053 | .583 |
| How often do you apologize after you have hurt someone’s feelings? | .008 | .950 |
| How often are you on time for work? | .165 | .057 |
| How comfortable are you at talking about the things you are good at? | .000 | 1.00 |
| How comfortable are you at talking about things you would like to improve? | -.1038 | .332 |
| How often do you take a leadership role in a group project? | -.0423 | .648 |
Overall, there were limited significant differences in student self-report between reported uses of soft skills prior to participation in the IMPACT program, compared with student use of soft skills following completion of the IMPACT program. Question eight asked students how often they could find more than one solution to a problem. The paired t-test showed that there was a significant difference between the pre-IMPACT levels of solution finding compared with the post-IMPACT levels, $t(129) = -2.394$, $p = .018$. Additionally, Question 18 asked students how often they are on time for work. The difference between the means is approaching significance, $t(132) = 1.920$, $p = .057$.
**Research Question 2: Do instructors report an increase in students’ use of soft skills?**
Items 1 through 16 of the teacher pre- and post- surveys were used to answer this question. Table 5 organizes these questions based on association with workplace
Each item asked teachers to use a 1-5 scale to indicate the frequency with which a student uses a specific strategy; 1 indicated "not at all" and 5 indicated "all the time."
Table 5
**Workplace Competencies and Corresponding Teacher Survey Questions**
| Workplace Competencies | Survey Questions |
|------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Critical Thinking/Problem Solving | 4. Obtain information needed to solve a problem |
| | 5. Analyze information |
| | 6. Use information creatively |
| Oral/Written Communication | 7. Shares their ideas with the group |
| Teamwork/Collaboration | 1. Work cooperatively |
| Leadership/ Initiative | 8. Recover from difficult situations |
| | 9. Negotiate and manage conflict |
| | 16. Adopt a leadership role within the classroom |
| Professionalism/Work Ethic | 3. Professional language |
| | 10. Demonstrates personal accountability |
| | 11. Changes behavior in response to critiques or feedback |
| | 12. Arrives to work on time and completes assignments on time |
| | 13. Demonstrates effective work habits |
| Career Management | 2. Advocate for their needs |
| | 14. Identify personal strengths |
| | 15. Identify areas of weakness |
Vocational instructors whose programs involved students who participated in IMPACT completed pre- and post- IMPACT surveys. Their responses indicated increases in observations of some of the soft skills targeted by the program. Table 6 presents the instructors’ responses for the pre-and post- teacher survey questions, with paired t-test comparisons.
Table 6
Pre-Post Comparisons for Research Question 2
| Question/Competency | Paired Sample | Mean | df | t | Significance |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------|--------|-----|-------|--------------|
| Work cooperatively (build relationships with diverse individuals) | Pre 1- Post 1 | .079 | 126 | .827 | .410 |
| Advocate for their needs (ask for help when needed and initiate interaction) | Pre 2-Post 2 | -.079 | 125 | -.821 | .413 |
| Professional language (use professional tone and content when speaking to both peers and supervisors) | Pre 3-Post 3 | .0906 | 126 | 1.101 | .273 |
| Obtain information that may be needed to solve a problem (find information when needed) | Pre 4-Post 4 | -.0984 | 126 | -1.088| .279 |
| Analyze information (interpret and utilize knowledge) | Pre 5-Post 5 | -.1520 | 124 | -1.855| .066 |
| Use information creatively (demonstrates originality and inventiveness) | Pre 6-Post 6 | -.288 | 124 | -3.830| .000 |
| Shares their ideas with the group (communicates relevant information to the group) | Pre 7-Post 7 | -.183 | 125 | -2.034| .044 |
| Recover from difficult situations (manage their emotions while completing required tasks) | Pre 8-Post 8 | -.202 | 123 | -2.151| .033 |
| Negotiate and manage conflict (recognize others’ strengths and use empathy to work toward a common goal) | Pre 9-Post 9 | -.407 | 122 | -4.630| .000 |
| Demonstrate personal accountability (demonstrates ethical behavior and understands that their behavior impacts others) | Pre 10-Post 10| -.0363 | 123 | -.429 | .669 |
| Changes behavior in response to critiques or feedback (learns from their mistakes) | Pre 11-Post 11| -.135 | 125 | -1.740| .084 |
| Arrives to work on time and completes assignments on time (punctuality and time management) | Pre 12-Post 12| .0595 | 125 | .691 | .491 |
| Question | Pre 13-Post 13 | t(124) | p |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------|--------|-------|
| Demonstrates effective work habits (demonstrates organization and ability to prioritize) | -0.0200 | -0.239 | 0.811 |
| Identify personal strengths (able to articulate their skills knowledge and experience) | -0.331 | -3.705 | 0.000 |
| Identify areas of weakness (identify areas in need of skill or professional growth) | -0.312 | -3.907 | 0.000 |
| Adopt a leadership role in the classroom (use empathetic skills to guide, motivate, and delegate work) | -0.290 | -2.754 | 0.007 |
Question six asked instructors to rate students’ creative uses of information, which is related to the competency of Critical Thinking. Instructor responses indicated a significant difference between the pre-IMPACT and Post-IMPACT student skills, $t(124) = -3.830$, $p = .000$. Additional evidence of significant differences between pre-IMPACT and post-IMPACT levels of instructor observed student soft skills are found in question seven, $t(125) = -2.034$, $p = .044$; question eight, $t(123) = -2.151$, $p = .033$; question nine, $t(122) = -4.630$, $p = .000$; question 14, $t(123) = -3.705$, $p = .000$; question 15, $t(124) = -3.907$, $p = .000$; and question 16, $t(123) = -2.754$, $p = .007$.
The mean responses to each question were compared according to program. No post-surveys were provided by the small engines or the computer systems program, so they are not included in this tabulation. Data indicate that there are significant differences between programs and reported improvement by question. Table 7 rank orders the responses by program and survey question. For example, if the painting program is
number 1, the highest ratings are reported for that question. Overall, students in the painting program tended to be ranked comparatively higher on a number of the survey items.
Table 7
*Student Rankings by Program, Based on Teacher Surveys*
| Question | Rank Order |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------|
| 1. Work cooperatively | Painting, vet, sheet metal, commercial construction, electrical, commercial art |
| 2. Advocate for their needs | Painting, vet, commercial construction, sheet metal, electrical, commercial art |
| 3. Professional language | Sheet metal, commercial art, vet, painting, commercial construction, electrical |
| 4. Obtain information to solve a problem | Painting, vet, commercial art, sheet metal, commercial construction, electrical |
| 5. Analyze information | Vet, commercial construction, painting, commercial art, sheet metal, electrical |
| 6. Use information creatively | Vet, painting, sheet metal, commercial art, commercial construction, electrical |
| 7. Share their ideas | Painting, vet, electrical, commercial art, sheet metal, commercial construction |
| 8. Recover from difficult situations | Commercial art, vet, sheet metal, painting, commercial construction, electrical |
| 9. Negotiate and manage conflict | Painting, vet, sheet metal, commercial art, electrical, commercial construction |
| 10. Demonstrate personal accountability | Commercial art, vet, painting, sheet metal, commercial construction, electrical |
| 11. Change behavior in response to critique or feedback | Vet, painting, sheet metal, electrical, commercial art, commercial construction |
| 12. Arrives to work on time and completes assignments | Commercial art, vet, sheet metal, electrical, painting, commercial construction |
| 13. Demonstrates effective work habits | Commercial art, vet, painting, sheet metal, electrical, commercial construction |
| 14. Identify personal strength | Vet, painting, commercial construction, sheet metal, commercial art, electrical |
| 15. Identify areas of weakness | Vet, painting, commercial art, sheet metal, commercial construction, electrical |
| 16. Adopt a leadership role | Painting, vet, electrical, commercial construction, commercial art, sheet metal |
Research Question 3: Do students report an increase in their use of adaptive versus maladaptive skills in response to difficult situations?
Responses on student survey items 6, 10, 11, and 13 were analyzed to make this determination. These questions were divided into those that looked at the degree of growth in adaptive strategies and those that looked at a reduction in maladaptive strategies. Table 8 presents the survey questions utilized to address research question 3.
Table 8
Adaptive vs Maladaptive Strategies
| Student Survey Questions Related to Adaptive Responses |
|------------------------------------------------------|
| 6. When something is not going well at school or work, how often do you use one of the following strategies? |
| 6f. Talk to a supervisor |
| 6g. Ask a peer for help |
| 6h. Use trial and error |
| 6i. Look for missing information |
| 10. How often do you use the following strategies to manage your anger in the workplace setting? |
| 10a. Walk away |
| 10b. Ask for help |
| 10c. Use relaxation strategies |
| 10d. Engage in conflict resolution |
| 10e. Count to 10 |
| 11. How often do you use the following strategies to manage your anxiety in the workplace setting? |
| 11a. Walk away |
| 11b. Ask for help |
| 11c. Use relaxation strategies |
| 11d. Engage in conflict resolution |
| 11e. Count to 10 |
| 13. How often do you respond in the following ways to critical feedback about your work? |
| 13a. Try to apply what was said |
| 13d. Talk about it till you understand |
| 13f. Ask a supervisor for help |
| 13g. Ask for help from a peer who was successful |
Paired comparisons were done for pre- and post-survey responses by students to the questions related to adaptive and maladaptive strategies used to self-manage behavior in school or workplace settings. Table 9 displays the results of these paired comparisons.
Table 9
**Pre-Post Comparisons for Research Question 3**
| Adaptive | Paired Sample | Mean | df | t | Significance |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------|--------|-----|-------|--------------|
| When something is not going well at school or work, how often do you use one of the following strategies? | | | | | |
| Talk to supervisor | Pre 6f-Post 6f | .000 | 129 | .000 | 1.00 |
| Ask a peer for help | Pre 6g-Post 6g | -.1008 | 128 | -.759 | .449 |
| Look for missing information | Pre 6i –Post 6i | .031 | 129 | .300 | .764 |
| How often do you use the following strategies to manage your anger in a workplace setting? | | | | | |
| Walk away | Pre 10a-Post 10a | -.015 | 132 | -.127 | .899 |
| Ask for help | Pre 10b-Post 10b | -.0191 | 130 | -.146 | .884 |
| Use relaxation strategies | Pre 10c-Post 10c | -.0947 | 131 | -.778 | .438 |
| Engage in conflict resolution | Pre 10d-Post 10d | -.144 | 131 | -1.365| .175 |
| Count to 10 | Pre 10e-Post 10e | -.2462 | 131 | -2.294| .023 |
| How often do you use the following strategies to manage your anger in a workplace setting? | | | | | |
| Walk away | Pre 11a-Post 11a | -.1353 | 132 | -1.051| .295 |
| Skill | Pre Score | Post Score | N | t | p |
|--------------------------------------------|-----------|------------|----|-------|------|
| Ask for help | -0.1260 | | 130| -0.963| 0.337|
| Use relaxation strategies | -0.2083 | | 131| -1.451| 0.149|
| Engage in conflict resolution | -0.068 | | 131| -0.615| 0.539|
| Count to 10 | -0.3385 | | 129| -2.780| 0.006|
**How often do you respond in the following ways to critical feedback about your work?**
- Try to apply what was said: 0.083, 132, 0.855, 0.394
- Talk about it till you understand: -0.123, 129, -1.055, 0.293
- Ask a supervisor to help: -0.1654, 129, -1.364, 0.175
- Ask for help from a peer who was successful: 0.023, 129, 0.213, 0.832
**Maladaptive**
When something is not going well at work, how often do you use the following strategies?
- Cursing: -0.1731, 129, -1.361, 0.176
- Arguing: -0.163, 128, -1.351, 0.179
**How often do you respond in the following ways to critical feedback about your work?**
- Get anxious: -0.0885, 129, -0.733, 0.465
- Get angry: -0.1154, 129, -0.999, 0.320
- Argue with the teacher or supervisor: -0.2461, 127, -2.686, 0.008
Students reported an increase in the skill of counting to 10 for managing both anger, $t(131) = -2.294$, $p = .023$, and anxiety, $t(129) = -2.780$, $p = .006$. Additionally, students reported a significant decrease in arguing with their teacher or supervisor, $t(127) = -2.686$, $p = .008$.
**Research Question 4:** Is there a difference in the use of soft skills between students who receive specially designed instruction and those who do not?
Both student pre- and post- IMPACT student surveys, as well as the instructor pre- and post- surveys were examined. Student pre- and post-IMPACT survey items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21, along with special education status were utilized in order to answer this question. A total of 117 students, 51 students who
received specially designed instruction and 66 students who do not, completed the post-IMPACT survey. The post-student survey indicated that students who receive specially designed instruction reported small gains in soft skills; however, they remained significantly behind on several items surveyed. The following table organizes questions and test statistics for those that were found to be significantly different when the factor of special education is taken into account.
Table 10
Pre-Post Survey Comparisons by Student Educational Placement
| Question | Special Education Mean | Regular Education Mean | Mean Square | Significance |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------|------------------------|-------------|--------------|
| 6b. When something is not going well at school or work, how often do you use one of the following strategies? Anxiety | 2.09 | 2.53 | 5.294 | .023 |
| 9d. How often do you use the following strategies when stuck on a problem? Look for a “work around” | 2.82 | 3.27 | 4.891 | .029 |
| 13b. How often do you respond in the following ways to critical feedback about your work? Get anxious | 2.961 | 2.523 | 3.916 | .050 |
| 13e. How often do you respond in the following ways to critical feedback about your work? Argue with the teacher or supervisor | 1.863 | 1.477 | 5.055 | .020 |
Students who receive specially designed instruction reported having an anxious response more often than students who receive only regular education. Those who
receive specially designed instruction are less likely to “look for a work around” or think creatively to solve the problem. Students who receive only regular education services are not as likely to become anxious or argue when faced with critical feedback about their work.
Data of pre-and post-IMPACT instructor survey questions 1 through 16 compared students who receive special education (Pre-N=58; Post N = 52) with those who do not (Pre-N=71, Post-N = 73). The following table organizes the pre-and post-IMPACT tests of between subject effects for the teacher responses for each educational group.
Table 11
Sum of Squares Comparison by Student Educational Placement
| Question | Pre-Mean Square | Pre-Significance | Post-Mean Square | Post-Significance |
|-----------------------------------------------|-----------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|
| 1. Work cooperatively | 20.637 | .000 | 1.991 | .136 |
| 2. Advocate for their needs | 12.250 | .002 | .319 | .575 |
| 3. Professional language | 7.727 | .012 | 4.717 | .036 |
| 4. Obtain information to solve a problem | 17.260 | .000 | 7.065 | .012 |
| 5. Analyze information | 17.328 | .000 | 8.051 | .006 |
| 6. Use information creatively | 9.028 | .003 | 4.054 | .030 |
| 7. Shares their ideas | 18.020 | .000 | 2.082 | .160 |
| 8. Recover from difficult situations | 11.392 | .001 | 9.906 | .002 |
| 9. Negotiate and manage conflict | 12.327 | .001 | 8.719 | .002 |
| Skill Description | Mean (SD) for Specially Designed Instruction | t-value | p-value |
|--------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------|---------|---------|
| 10. Demonstrate personal accountability | 11.926 (6.576) | .002 | .016 |
| 11. Change behavior in response to feedback | 13.510 (7.584) | .000 | .002 |
| 12. Arrives on time | 6.682 (9.846) | .030 | .003 |
| 13. Demonstrates effective work habits | 11.992 (10.340) | .004 | .001 |
| 14. Identify personal strength | 9.294 (3.633) | .002 | .031 |
| 15. Identify area of weakness | 16.051 (4.824) | .000 | .019 |
| 16. Adopt a leadership role | 26.359 (6.206) | .000 | .026 |
Table 11 demonstrates that differences in certain skills decreased between students who receive specially designed instruction and students who do not. Skills for students who receive specially designed instruction likely increased, to shrink the differences reported in the pre-IMPACT surveys. Students’ ability to work cooperatively, advocate for their needs, and share their ideas became less different from their regular education counterparts.
Research Question 5:
What are the stakeholders’ perceptions of the IMPACT program?
Both the Stakeholders’ Survey completed electronically at the end of the IMPACT program and the Student Feedback Forms completed after each lesson were used to answer this question.
Stakeholders Survey
A survey was sent to various stakeholders who participated in the IMPACT program. All respondents participated in the administration of the program in some way. Technical Instructors and Learning Support Teachers aided the Support Team members, who were primarily responsible for the instruction during the lessons. Administrators observed some of the lessons and were the primary authority behind the mandate to implement IMPACT across all buildings and in multiple classrooms. Respondents included the following: seven technical instructors, seven learning support teachers, three administrator, and two support team members.
Nineteen of 24 respondents completed the form for a 79.2 response rate. One respondent did not complete any of the questions asking to rate various aspects of the program, with the exception of the last question that asks to rate the consistency of IMPACT with the goals of Technical school.
Table 12 depicts the number and percentage of each response to the survey questions. Respondents could choose all that apply unless otherwise noted.
Table 12
Stakeholder Understanding of the Purpose of the IMPACT Program
| Response | Number | Percentage |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|------------|
| Increase students’ skills for managing emotions | 16 | 84.2 |
| Increase students’ skills for demonstrating professionalism | 16 | 84.2 |
| Increase students’ skills for setting goals | 13 | 68.4 |
| Increase students’ skills for taking initiative | 15 | 78.9 |
| Who benefits | Number | Percentage |
|--------------------------------------|--------|------------|
| Technical students | 19 | 100 |
| Technical instructors | 18 | 94.7 |
| Technical administrators | 15 | 78.9 |
| Sending school districts | 14 | 73.7 |
| Business owners | 19 | 100 |
| Learning support teachers | 15 | 78.9 |
| Support personnel | 13 | 68.4 |
| Parents or guardians | 16 | 84.2 |
When asked how individuals benefited, some stakeholders responded with the following comments:
“Students are in better control of their actions and behaviors through the development of their social skills learned through the IMPACT program.”
“When students learn how to work with one another in a professional manner it benefits the whole community.”
“Students become more sure of themselves, come out of their shells, communicate more effectively and become more productive members of society, which impacts workplace, home, and overall community.”
One stakeholder responded that consistency was important to noticing positive effects in the areas mentioned.
Table 14
Stakeholder Responses of Increased Skills
| Skill | Number | Percentage |
|------------------------------|--------|------------|
| Communication in the workplace | 17 | 89.5 |
| Problem-solving | 18 | 84.7 |
| Managing emotions | 13 | 68.4 |
| Professionalism | 12 | 63.2 |
| Set goals | 13 | 68.4 |
| Take initiative | 15 | 78.9 |
| No discernable effect | 0 | 0 |
Stakeholders were also asked to rate the engagement level of the activities. The scale provided was a Likert-Type scale with ratings of one equaling, “Not at all engaging”, to ratings of five equaling, “Highly engaging”. The average response rating was a 4.5. This indicates that most respondents found the activities highly engaging.
Stakeholders were also prompted to rate the materials chosen for each lesson. Ratings were also presented in a Likert scale format. A rating of one equaled, “Not at all necessary” to a rating of five which equaled “Essential”. The average rating was 4.6. This indicates that stakeholders found the materials essential to the lessons.
Next, respondents were asked to evaluate the sequence of activities. A rating of one indicated that the sequence was not helpful at all, and a rating of five indicated the sequence was “Extremely helpful”. The average rating was a 4.2, indicating that stakeholders found the sequence helpful.
Stakeholders were also asked about level of agreement with the length of activities presented to the whole group. A rating of one indicated “Not at all agree”, and a
rating of five indicated that they were “Very much in agreement”. The average rating was a 4.5, indicating that they were very much in agreement with the length of activities.
Respondents indicated an overall satisfaction with the program, with the majority of stakeholders stating that they would change “nothing” about the IMPACT program. Table 15 is a summary of their responses:
Table 15
Stakeholders’ Recommended Changes
| What would you change about the IMPACT program? | Number of Responses |
|-----------------------------------------------|---------------------|
| Response | |
| Techniques for engagement | 1 (5.3%) |
| Materials chosen | 1 (5.3%) |
| Sequence of activities | 1 (5.3%) |
| Length of lessons | 2 (10.5%) |
| Nothing | 12 (63.2%) |
Under “Other” statements included, “IMPACT should go into all the programs”, “…some activities make it easy for the leaders to solve the whole game/puzzle and everyone else to take a backseat”, and “Consistency and partnership with instructors so that they play a more active role in the lessons”.
Finally, stakeholders were asked to rate using a Likert-type scale, how consistent the IMAPCT program was with the goals of the Technical High School curriculum. Ratings of one meant that the goals were, “Not at all consistent” and fives indicated “Very consistent”. The average rating of 4.6 means that stakeholders rated the IMPACT program as “Consistent” to “Very Consistent” with the goals of the Technical School. It is important to note that the individual who gave the rating of “2” indicated that this rating reflected his/her belief that the IMPACT lessons should be offered to all classes.
Student Feedback Forms
Each of the students completed a student feedback form following each lesson. The forms gathered information regarding student satisfaction with each lesson as well as a brief open-ended response that asked what students learned. It is important to note that not all students completed a student feedback form following each lesson. The following chart summarizes the total responses for each lesson, based on the forms received.
A total of 1,744 responses were tabulated. The responses were sorted by lesson and by how many fell into each rating category. A “Thumbs Up” response indicated the student liked all aspects of the lesson. A “Thumbs Down” response indicated the student did not like the lesson at all. A “Neutral or Sideways Thumb” response indicated that the student liked some aspects of the lesson, but disliked others. There were a total of 864 “Thumbs Up” responses, 615 “Neutral” responses, and 615 “Thumbs Down” responses. Responses were quantified by assigning a numerical rating to each response. The following values were assigned to each rating: a “Thumbs Up” equaled three, a “Neutral or Sideways Thumb” equaled two, and a “Thumbs Down” equaled one. The ratings for each lesson were then averaged across all classes in which students provided a response. Table 16 summarizes the lesson averages.
Table 16
Average Lesson Rating
| Lesson | Description | Average rating |
|-------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|
| Balloon Question | Balloons containing “Get to know you” questions are popped and answered by students | 2.3 |
| Build a Tower | Students create a tower out of objects such as balloons, cups, plates, and tape | 2.4 |
| Four at a Time | Students start in an line with two groups alternating position (girls/boys, hats/no hats, etc.) and must move all members of a group to one side | 1.09 |
| Four Corners | Four groups must cross to the opposite corner at the same time | 2.32 |
| Goal Setting | Students break down long-term personal goals into manageable steps | 2.24 |
| Juggling at Warp Speed | Students start in a circle with one ball tossed to individuals in a random order. Students must remember the order as more and more balls are added | 2.55 |
| Grid Walk | A path must be discovered and followed in order | 1.79 |
| Knowing Yourself | Students are given an increasingly smaller number of cards that they may keep that describe their most important values | 2.25 |
| Magic Carpet | A tarp placed for the entire class to stand on. They must flip the tarp to the other side while everyone is on it | 2.07 |
| Make a Recipe | Students list necessary skills and available supports to reach their goals | 2.58 |
| Minefield | Students are blindfolded and led by their partner, using only verbal clues, through an obstacle course | 2.58 |
| Mummy Wrap | Various relay races, including one where students are wrapped in head-to-two toilet paper are completed | 2.23 |
| My Adjectives | Students must work with classmates to trade in order to get a hand of five descriptor cards | 2.49 |
| Never Have I Ever | Similar to musical chairs, there is one less spot in the circle than there are students. Students describe something they have done and then race to claim a spot | 2.70 |
| Path Goal | Students create a path to a specific goal | 2.17 |
| Activity | Description | Rating |
|-----------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------|
| Salt and Pepper | Students wear cards on their back that make up one half of a pair (i.e. bacon/eggs). They take turns describing their classmates cards till they find their pair | 2.14 |
| Snack Auction | Small groups of students compete to earn “money” by answering questions related to soft skills. The teams then must bid on snacks using their earnings | 2.57 |
| Stepping Stones | Students use Styrofoam “stones” to move as a group from one “island” to the next | 2.36 |
| Traffic Jam | Two groups of students line up on designated spots with one empty spot in the middle of the line. The groups must move following specific rules to switch sides | 2.25 |
| Two by Four | Students are separated into two groups arranged into a pyramid shape. They must move based on specific rules | 2.45 |
Overall, students gave the highest positive ratings to Juggling at Warp Speed, Make a Recipe, Minefield, Never Have I Ever, and Snack Auction. Juggling at Warp Speed and Never Have I Ever are the first two lessons in the sequence. Make a Recipe asks students to list specific “ingredients” they need to meet a personal goal, Minefield is a highly active game, and Snack Auction involves team decision-making to “bid” on food items.
The least positive ratings were for Four at a Time, Grid Walk, and Magic Carpet. Students indicated that Four at a Time was repetitive when compared with the lesson from the previous week. Grid Walk was also described as similar in form and goal as the previous lessons. Many students described the Magic Carpet lesson as “uncomfortable”. This task required students to be in very close physical proximity to accomplish the group goal of the activity.
Chapter 5
Discussion
There are many challenges for recent graduates entering the job market. These challenges include a quickly changing job market, companies that recruit fewer students, and less time to learn the culture of a company due to cost-cutting that impacts job training (Salingo, 2017). The goal of the IMPACT program is to increase students’ competencies for soft skills in the workplace setting. In a highly competitive economy, businesses are looking for employees who can problem-solve, take initiative on tasks, and get along with diverse co-workers. Teaching these skills is the focus of the IMPACT program, based on the competencies as outlined by The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Career readiness as defined by NACE (2018) is the attainment and demonstration of defined competencies that broadly prepare graduates for transition to the working world. This chapter highlights the successes of the IMPACT program at delivering instruction in these competencies. Limitations of the study as well as implications for practice are also discussed.
Summary of Findings
Post-IMPACT surveys completed by instructors indicate gains across several competencies. Survey questions that examined skills for career management, managing emotions, work ethic, and critical thinking were either significant or approaching significance. Instructor post-surveys indicated improvements in nine of sixteen questions. Specifically, reported increases included the ability to analyze information, demonstrate inventiveness or creativity, share their ideas with the group, recover from difficult
situations, manage conflict, learn from mistakes, identify personal strengths, identify skills that need improvement, and motivate others as leaders.
Pre-survey item responses indicate that at the beginning of the program instructors reported that students who receive specially designed instruction demonstrated use of soft skills well below that of same grade peers. All of the students demonstrated gains in their use of soft skills as evaluated by instructors; however, observed skills for students who receive specially designed instruction remained below that of same grade peers. Students who receive specially designed instruction continued to demonstrate skills below that of their peers for the following competencies: critical thinking, managing emotions, professional work ethic, career management, and leadership. For example, students were less likely than their non-identified peers to use professional language, obtain and analyze important information, recover from difficult situations, manage conflict, demonstrate personal accountability for their actions, change their behavior in response to feedback, demonstrate effective work habits, identify personal strengths and needs, or adopt a leadership role.
Students also indicated areas of significant differences between students who receive special education services and those who do not, in response to post-survey questions. Again, although gains were made based on improvement in mean responses, students who receive special education services continued to be more likely to argue when a task or interaction is not going well, less likely to look for alternative problem-solving strategies, and more likely to get anxious or argue in response to critical feedback. This is similar to some of the instructor observations that indicated a need to increase skills for critical thinking and managing emotions. These responses indicate that
students who receive specially designed instruction may benefit not only from practice with varied problem-solving strategies, but also with increased direct instruction in adaptive coping strategies.
The stakeholder survey completed by instructors and staff indicated an overall positive impression of the program. Stakeholders reported that IMPACT improved students’ skills across targeted competency areas. Instructors indicated the best match between the IMPACT program and targeted competencies included the focus on communication in the workplace, problem-solving strategies, and helping students to take initiative in workplace situations. It was stakeholders who reported the largest benefits of the program for students, instructors, and business owners. Those surveyed also rated IMPACT as “Consistent to Very Consistent” with the goals of the Technical School. Positive perceptions among stakeholders such as instructors and administrators are important to program longevity. For example, when implementing a school-wide Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS), McDaniel et al. (2017) found that administrator support and teacher buy-in is necessary for successful implementation. This is of utmost importance at the secondary level where it is harder to positively reinforce student behaviors. A “framework that is adapted to secondary students—their personal characteristics, setting requirements, and movement toward promoting independence and preparation for college and career—is critical to success” (McDaniel et al., 2017, p. 41). A curriculum that appropriately addresses these needs is just one aspect of teaching Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and is consistent with PBIS research and theory (Barrett et al., 2018).
There were significant differences between the program post-survey means. Differences may be attributed to instructor perception of the intervention, years of experience in their respective fields, experience working with students with varying degrees of learning needs, and their own proficiency with soft-skills. Research indicates that adopting new teaching approaches, such as the ABL activities utilized in the IMPACT program, require changing pedagogical thinking and teacher engagement (Kangas et al., 2017). This can be stressful for teachers who are new to the classroom, or at the opposite end of the experience spectrum, feel comfortable in their long-held approaches. However, teacher expertise informs how flexible they are in using novel pedagogical approaches (Kangas et al., 2017). The difference in results between programs could be due to these factors.
Although instructors reported a more robust effect, students reported somewhat limited areas of significant improvement. One area in which students reported a clearly significant change was in their ability to find more than one solution to a problem. Increasing students’ abilities to be flexible thinkers was an important goal of the program. Students also reported a difference approaching significance in the ability to arrive on time. This was a specific skill addressed during the debriefing of several lessons. Arriving on time for work is important; however, it is not the only requirement for professional behavior. This result shows that students may continue to be limited in their understanding of overall professional behaviors.
Students indicated less of an overall significant change in their use of soft skills following completion of the IMPACT program than was reported by teachers. However, although most of the difference in pre- and post- survey responses were not statistically
significant, mean responses increased for almost all questions. This indicates that students did report some improvement, even if it did not reach statistically significant levels. Given that instructors reported significant increases in many of the targeted soft skills may indicate that although students may have a general sense of decline or improvement in their skills for professionalism, teamwork, taking initiative, and managing their emotions, they are not proficient in gauging these skills in comparison with peers. Students also have difficulty assessing the degree to which these skills improve or approach levels desired by employers.
Improving students’ soft skills for the workplace setting is an important goal of the program. However, additional instruction may be needed for students to realize a more accurate representation of their original skills and then to be able to judge their improvement accurately. Research indicates that graduates not only lack proficiency in the soft skills needed to succeed in the workplace setting, but also they are poor judges of their own levels of these skills (Andreas, 2018; Burns, 2018; Gibson & Sodeman, 2014). The students may have rated their soft skills as artificially high prior to starting the program, which then made it less likely to find statistically significant results. Developing strong skills for self-monitoring and for a more accurate understanding of employers’ expectations would help to address this need.
Students’ perceptions are that their responses to difficult situations did not appear to be greatly impacted by their participation in the program. Students reported gains in the ability to “count to 10”, a strategy used to delay a response. This skill increased for managing both anger and anxiety. Additionally, although students described an increase
in this skill, it is important to note that this skill remained at low levels in comparison with other strategies.
Students also reported a decrease in arguing as a response to criticism by their instructors or supervisors. Although these two skills may be linked, further research would be needed to draw further conclusions. Additional research could ask students to reflect on their responses to criticism during each lesson. This would be in addition to pre- and post-survey responses focused on responses to instructor and employer constructive feedback. By asking students to reflect on a more immediate situation may provide a litmus for responses in other environments. Conte (2015) writes that reflection on one’s behavior within a practical situation enhances the learning experience and provides meaning. This process of learning through reflection and feedback contributes to professional development (Comte, 2015).
Analysis of the student feedback forms indicates that students’ perceptions of the lessons were largely positive. Students reported positive or neutral responses to program activities 84.2% of the time, suggesting that the IMPACT program provided a useful approach to engaging students in learning important social-emotional learning skills. At the high school level, it can be particularly challenging to keep students attentive and engaged in learning activities, and many of the group activities utilized in the IMPACT program supported student engagement.
Positive student feedback included statements such as the activity “…made us prioritize what is important to us”, “Defining yourself is very hard”, “Stay more focused”, “Teamwork is needed in all situations”, “…practice with focusing on multiple things”, “use very good communication”, “that communication is key into team projects”
and “what I got out of this project was a good time”. Many positive student responses indicated a focus on themes such as communication, teamwork, planning and focus, learning about others, and leadership. Negative student responses included statements such as, “too hard”, “quiet, boring, useless, too easy, try again, boring, useless, not fun”, “I honestly only got some exercise out of it, I didn’t learn anything”, and “confusing and unorganized”. Negative responses included themes such as dissatisfaction with the activity itself, frustration with other classmates, and difficulty finding the purpose of the lesson or inaccurate self-reflection. Mixed responses included statements such as, “I feel like if it was one-on-one it would be more effective”, “I got some negative feedback from several people”, “that exercise was a pretty good exercise it was not that bad”, “it was ok,” and “I got that our class does a lot of illegal things”. Mixed responses were interpreted to mean that the participants liked some aspects of the lessons, but they were not a clear endorsement or understanding of the underlying competencies or goals of the lesson.
**Limitations of the Study**
Limitations do exist for generalizability of findings. All students surveyed were twelfth graders enrolled in a career and technical high school which pulls its population from high schools located in the same geographic region. Additionally, the student respondents were overwhelmingly male.
Success of the program could also have been impacted by the way in which classrooms of students who received the instruction were chosen. Some participation was based on percentage of students enrolled in the program who receive specially designed instruction, with a preference for programs with a high percentage of students receiving
support. Other classes were self-nominated for participation. These instructors had heard positive reviews from an instructor who participated in the pilot of the program the previous year. Finally, a small number of classes were asked to participate due to administrator recommendation. These instructors may have felt pressured to participate, which in-turn may have influenced how they participated in the program.
IMPACT was designed as a class-wide intervention that was meant to increase soft-skills for the workplace setting. Research on implementation fidelity indicates there are numerous factors that may be a barrier to the success of an intervention. Perceptions of the intervention or intervention characteristics, such as the perceived ease of use and effectiveness, as well as organizational and participant characteristics, such as administrative leadership, and skill required to implement the intervention can be factors that influence success (Long et al, 2016). Additional time with selected instructors prior to implementation may have been helpful in addressing some of these factors.
Post-IMPACT student survey response rates were negatively affected by attendance. At the end of the school year, students who are performing well within the classroom setting are recommended for a cooperative education experience during which they work in their chosen vocational field in lieu of school attendance. Due to this cooperative educational experience, some classes surveyed at the end of the year did not contain the highest performing students. Some of the students who met with success at obtaining and maintaining employment were not included in these post-surveys. Additionally, these students did not receive all of the lessons in the program.
Another limitation is in the nature of the student measurement. Self-report measures allow for the accounting of a participant’s own experience, not only the
observations of practitioners or other stakeholders. However, self-report measures also may be complicated by response bias. Rosenman, Tennekoon, and Hill (2011) indicate that “There are many reasons individuals might offer biased estimates of self-assessed behavior, ranging from a misunderstanding of what a proper measurement is to social-desirability bias, where the respondent wants to ‘look good’ in the survey, even if the survey is anonymous” (pg. 2). One type of bias that may have affected outcome data is response-shift bias. This occurs when an intervention changes a respondent’s understanding of the measured concept (Rosenman et al, 2011). Participating in IMPACT may have given students a better understanding of their own soft-skills for the workplace. Therefore, students may have answered the questions on the pre-survey with an artificially inflated sense of their skills, the lack of significant improvement may have been due to a more realistic understanding of their own skills.
Two instructors did not complete Post-IMPACT surveys for any student in their classes. This lack of participation may also have had a negative effect on outcome data. Additionally, instructor buy-in appeared to result in improved student participation. Instructors who consistently demonstrated a positive attitude during lessons and worked without prompting to connect the concepts to their vocational area, may have facilitated more positive student outcomes.
Finally, limitations include the challenges that are inherent to research in the school setting. Many factors within schools influence interventions and their implementation. These factors may be environmental, such as limited physical space, or may be chronological, such as schedule changes. Those responsible for the delivery of the IMPACT program had to be flexible due to testing schedules, field trips, snow days,
special events, and room changes. Due to scheduling conflicts, some lessons had to be “doubled-up”, with two occurring in the same week. This decision was made in order to provide the entire sequence of activities. Teachers across the country face this type of pressure when trying to meet the demands of a scripted curriculum. Additional research, with a focus on program fidelity would lead to a greater understanding of how these specific factors influenced student outcomes.
**Implications for Practice**
The IMPACT program targets important skills needed for transition-age students to succeed in the workplace setting. The findings of this study indicate that all stakeholders had generally positive perceptions of the program. Instructors and other staff reported observing greater benefits than student stakeholders, although this may be due to typical adolescent development and a deficit in skills for self-monitoring. Adding direct instruction in self-monitoring strategies may increase students’ awareness of skills gained through the IMPACT program.
Co-facilitated learning is a situation in which both the student and teacher have equal shares in the process (Heritage, 2018). This is consistent with Vygotsky’s concept that learning is “a culturally based communicative process through which knowledge is shared and constructed” (p.53). Although the students have the ability to drive the problem-solving process of the ABL activities, the debriefing portion of the lesson that asks students to reflect on their learning is guided by the facilitators and instructors. Giving students more ownership over this process through increased self-reflection may improve not only their knowledge of the competencies and associated skills, but also an honest appraisal of their own soft-skills.
There are several strategies that facilitate increased self-reflection. One strategy would be to add brief student surveys following each lesson. This could help to improve the quality of student self-reflection. Questions such as, “Did I understand all the directions?” and “How did my participation compare with my peers”, would guide student self-assessment and learning.
Another strategy to increase self-monitoring of soft skills would be to pair the students to answer the student survey following each lesson. This would allow for the opportunity, not only to self-reflect, but to also check for accuracy of perception among peers.
Finally, technology could also improve student awareness of soft skill attainment. Specific lessons could be videotaped, possibly three times in the lesson cycle. This would allow students to observe their own behaviors and reflect upon growth. Multiple taped observations could help students to refine their own goals for the workplace. Students’ understanding of the aims of the IMPACT program and how it relates to their own goals is indispensable for learning and self-monitoring (Heritage, 2018).
Instructors consistently rated students who receive specially designed instruction as demonstrating lower levels of soft skills. Although students did make gains, those gains were not enough to close the gap between general education students and students who receive specially designed instruction. This may indicate that students who receive special education services may benefit from direct instruction in soft skills for the workplace at an earlier age. Just as research for reading fluency has indicated that the earlier interventions for at-risk students are started, the sooner the gap in performance closes, interventions for social-emotional learning for the workplace may need to begin
before students are eligible for employment. This may seem intuitive for students who are identified as having needs consistent with an Emotional Disturbance or Autism Spectrum Disorder; however, students in the IMPACT program demonstrated a mix of needs, with the majority identified as students with a Specific Learning Disability. Studies abound, indicating that students with learning disabilities are at a disadvantage when entering the job market (Kerka, 2002; Madaus, 2006; Wagner et al, 2016), but few of these studies focus on specifically improving soft skills. Transition planning teams should consider not only technical or academic skills development, but also social-emotional skills that will benefit students in the workplace.
Although collaboration was easier due to an already established rapport with the instructors, administrators, and teachers, regular follow-up could sometimes be hindered by the program staffs’ other job responsibilities. The research on the IMPACT program was completed while simultaneously carrying out normal daily job activities. In the school setting, school psychologists and social workers already have extensive professional responsibilities that require excellent time management and flexibility. Adding tasks that are necessary for research to these roles can create additional stress on personnel. Finding ways for currently employed school psychologists and other professionals to lead and participate in research is an important step in adding to the literature on interventions that are not only feasible, but also successful in the school setting.
References
Abbott, J. & Ryan, T. (1999). Constructing knowledge, reconstructing schooling. *Educational Leadership*, 57(3), 66-69.
Achieve (2018). College and career readiness. Retrieved from: https://www.achieve.org/college-and-career-readiness
Achieve (2013). Creating a P-20 continuum of actionable academic indicators of student readiness. 1-24
Alkin, M.C. (2011). *Evaluation essentials: From A to Z*. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Autry, C. E. (2001). Adventure therapy with girls at-risk: Responses to outdoor experiential activities. *Therapeutic Recreation Journal*, 35(4), 289-306.
Bae, S. (2018). Redesigning systems of school accountability: A multiple measures approach to accountability and support. *Education Policy Analysis Archives*, 26(8).
Baena-Extremera, A., Granero-Gallegos, A., Mar Ortiz-Camacho, M. (2012). Quasi-experimental study of the effect of an adventure education programme on classroom satisfaction, physical self-concept and social goals in physical education. *Psychologica Belgica*, 52(4), 369-386
Barrett, S., Eber, L., McIntosh, K., Perales, K., & Romer, N. (2018). *Teaching Social-Emotional Competencies within a PBIS Framework*. OSEP Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. www.pbis.org
Barth, R. (2018). The debate about college shouldn’t be a debate at all. *Forbes*. As retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbarth/2018/06/28/the-debate-about-college-shouldnt-be-a-debate-at-all/#1d940c9676b2
Belfield, C. Bowden, B., Klapp, A., Levin, H., Shand, R., Zander, S. (2015). The economic value of social and emotional learning. Center for Benefit and Cost Studies in Education. Teachers College, Columbia University. New York, New York.
Bobilya, A.J. & Akey, L.D. (2002). An evaluation of adventure education components in a residential learning community. *The Journal of Experiential Education*, 25(2), 296-304.
Bordessa, K. (2006). *Team challenges: 170+ group activities to build cooperation, communication, and creativity*. Chicago: Zephyr Press.
Bowers, R. (2000). A pedagogy of success: Meeting the challenges of urban middle schools. *The Clearing House*. 73(4), 235-238.
Brand, D. (2001). A longitudinal study of the effects of a wilderness-enhanced program on behavior-disordered adolescents. *Australian Journal of Outdoor Education*, 6(1), 40-56
Bridgeland, J., Bruce, M., & Hariharan, A. (2013). *The missing piece: A national survey on how social and emotional learning can empower children and transform school*. Washington, DC:Civic Enterprises with Peter D. Hart Research Associates
Brown, K. M., & Anfara, Jr., V. A. (2003). Paving the way for change: Visionary leadership in action at the middle level. *NASSP Bulletin*, 87(635), 16-34.
Carlson, K.P. & Cook, M. (2007). Challenge by choice: Adventure-based counseling for seriously ill adolescents. *Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America*, 16, 909-919
Clark, G. M., Field, S., Patton, J.R., Brolin, D.E., Sitlington, P.L. (1994). Life Skills Instruction: A Necessary Component for All Students with Disabilities; A Position Statement of the Division on Career Development and Transition. *Career Development for Exceptional Individuals, 17*(2), 125–34.
Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) (2018). What is SEL? As retrieved from https://casel.org/what-is-sel/
Conley, L., Caldarella, P., & Young, E. (2007). Evaluation of a ropes course experience for at-risk secondary school students. *The Journal of Experiential Education, 30*(1), 21-35.
Conte, N. (2015). Preceptors guidance in students’ self-reflection: An invaluable contribution. *Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning, 7*, 395-404.
Cosgriff, M. (2000). Walking our talk: Adventure based learning and physical education. *Journal of Physical Education New Zealand, 33*(2), 89-98.
Daniel, B., Bobilya, A.J., Kalisch, K.R., McVoy, L.H. (2014) Autonomous student experiences in outdoor and adventure education, *Journal of Experiential Education, 37*(1), 4-17.
Davidson, K. (2016, August 31). Employers find “soft skills” like critical thinking in short supply. *The Wall Street Journal*. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/employers-find-soft-skills-like-critical-thinking-in-short-supply-1472549400
Davis-Berman, J., & Berman, D. (2002). Risk and anxiety in adventure programming. *The Journal of Experiential Education, 25*(2), 305-310.
Delphine, N., Ilios, K., Jordi, Q., Michel, H., Fanny, W., Pauline, D., & Moira, M. (2011). Increasing Emotional Competence Improves Psychological and Physical Well-Being, Social Relationships, and Employability. *Emotion*, (2), 354. https://doi-org.ezproxy.pcom.edu/10.1037/a0021554
Doll, B., Brehm, K., & Zucker, S. (2014). *Resilient classrooms: Creating healthy environments for learning* (2nd ed.). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Domitrovich, C. E., Durlak, J. A., Staley, K. C., & Weissberg, R. P. (2017). Social-Emotional Competence: An Essential Factor for Promoting Positive Adjustment and Reducing Risk in School Children. *Child Development*, 88(2), 408–416. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.pcom.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1132605&site=eds-live&scope=site
Duckworth, A. L., & Yeager, D. S. (2015). Measurement Matters: Assessing Personal Qualities Other than Cognitive Ability for Educational Purposes. *Educational Researcher*, 44(4), 237–251. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.pcom.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1061434&site=eds-live&scope=site
Durlak, J. (2016). Programme implementation in social and emotional learning: Basic issues and research findings. *Cambridge Journal of Education*, 46(1), 13-32
Elias, M.J., Zins, J.E., Weissberg, R.P., Frey, K.S., Greenberg, M.T., Haynes, N.M., Kessler, R., Schwab-Stone, M.E., Shriver, T.P. (1997). *Promoting social and emotional learning: Guidelines for educators*. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Ferguson, M. (2016). Washington View. *Phi Delta Kappan*, 97(8), 74–75. https://doi-org.ezproxy.pcom.edu/10.1177/0031721716647028
Fletcher, T.B. & Hinkle, J.S. (2002). Adventure based counseling: An innovation in counseling. *Journal of Counseling and Development*, 80, 277-285
Forck, M. (2014). 7 keys to worker engagement. *Professional Safety*, 59 (5), 31-33
Forgan, J. W., & Jones, C. D. (2002). How experiential adventure activities can improve students' social skills. *Teaching Exceptional Children*, 34(3), 52-58.
Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. *Review of Educational Research*, 74(1), 59-109.
Galbraith, D. D., & Webb, F. L. (2013). Teams That Work: Preparing Student Teams for the Workplace. *American Journal of Business Education*, 6(2), 223–234.
Gatzemann, T., Schweizer, K., Hummel, A. (2008). Effectiveness of sports activities with an orientation on experiential education, adventure-based learning, and outdoor education. *Kinesiology*, 2, 146-152
Gayl, C. L. (2018). Student Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. *Education Digest*, 83(5), 17-24.
Glass, J. S., & Benshoff, J. M. (2002). Facilitating group cohesion among adolescents through challenge course experiences. *The Journal of Experiential Education*, 25(2), 268-277.
Gonzalez, R., Rosenthal, D.A., Kim, J.H. (2011). Predicting vocational rehabilitation outcomes of young adults with specific learning disabilities: Transitioning from school to work. *Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 34*, 163-172.
Gordon, G., & Crabtree, S. (2006). Building engaged schools: Getting the most out of America's classrooms. New York, NY: Gallup Press.
Graham, L. B., & Robinson, E. M. (2007). Project adventure and self concept of academically talented adolescent boys. *Physical Educator, 64*(3), 114-122.
Greenberg, M.T., Domitrovich, C.E., Weissberg, R.P., Durlak, J.A. (2017). Social and emotional learning as a public health approach to education. *Future of Children, 27*(1), 13-32.
Hattie, J., Marsh, H.W., Neill, J.T., Richards, G.E., (1997). Adventure education and Outward Bound: Out-of-class experiences that make a lasting difference. *Review of Educational Research, 67*(1), 43-87.
Helle, L., Tynjälä, P., & Olkinuora, E. (2006). Project-Based Learning in Post-Secondary Education – Theory, Practice and Rubber Sling Shots. *Higher Education, 51*(2), 287-314.
Heritage, M. (2018). Assessment for learning as support for student self-regulation. *Australian Educational Researcher, 45*(1), 51-63.
Human, L.H. (2006). Adventure-based experience during professional training in psychology. *South African Journal of Psychology, 36*(1), 215-231.
Intrator, S. (2004). The engaged classroom. *Educational Leadership, 62*, 20-24.
Jane S., P., Lewis A., B., & Robert J., S. (2006). The educational impact of team-skills training: Preparing students to work in groups. *British Journal of Educational*
Jennings, P.A. & Greenberg, M.T. (2009). The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes, *Review of Educational Research*, 79, 491-525.
Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. (1999). Making cooperative learning work. *Theory into Practice*, 38(2), 67-73.
Johnson, L. S. (2008). Relationship of instructional methods to student engagement in two public high schools. *American Secondary Education*, 36(2), 69-87.
Jones, S. M., Kahn, J., & Aspen Institute, N. C. on S. E. & A. D. (NCSEAD). (2017). *The Evidence Base for How We Learn: Supporting Students’ Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. Consensus Statements of Evidence from the Council of Distinguished Scientists*. Aspen Institute. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.pcom.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED577039&site=eds-live&scope=site
Kallander, K. & Levings, L. (1996). Experiential therapy with homeless, runaway, and street youth. *Spawning New Ideas: A Cycle of Discovery Report*
Kangas, M., Siklander, P., Ruokamo, H. (2017). Teachers’ engagement and students’ satisfaction with a playful learning environment. *Teaching and Teacher Education*, 63, 27-284.
Kayes, A. B., Kayes, D. C., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Experiential learning in teams. *Simulation & Gaming*, 36(3), 330-354.
Klem, A. M. & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. *The Journal of School Health, 74*(7), 262-273.
Kohn, A., (1992). Resistance to cooperative learning: Making sense of its deletion and dilution. *Journal of Education, 174*(2), 38-56.
Koseoglu, S. & Doering, A. (2011). Understanding complex ecologies: An investigation of student experiences in adventure learning programs. *Distance Education, 32*(3), 339-355.
Knudson, J. & Garibaldi, M. (2015). None of us are as good as all of us: Early lessons from the CORE districts. American Institute for Research; San Mateo, CA.
Krupnick, M. (2017). After decades of pushing bachelor’s degrees, US needs more tradespeople. PBS News Hour. As retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-needs-tradespeople. Aug. 29, 2017
Leberman, S. I., & Martin, A. J. (2002). Does pushing comfort zones produce peak learning experiences? *Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 7*(1), 10-19.
Li, W.H.C., Ho, K.Y., Lam, K.K.W., Lam, H.S., Chui, S.Y., Chan, C.F., Cheung, A.T., Ho, L.L.K., Chung, O.K. (2018). Adventure-based training to promote physical activity and reduce fatigue among childhood cancer survivors: A randomized controlled trial. *International Journal of Nursing Studies, 83*, 65-74.
Lightner, S., Bober, M. J., & Willi, C. (2007). Team-based activities to promote engaged learning. *College Teaching, 55*(1), 5-18.
Mackenzie, S. H., Son, J. S., & Eitel, K. (2018). Using outdoor adventure to enhance intrinsic motivation and engagement in science and physical activity: An exploratory study. *Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, 21*, 76–86. https://doi-org.ezproxy.pcom.edu/10.1016/j.jort.2018.01.008
MacTavish, M. D. & Kolb, J. A. (2006). *Encouraging teacher engagement: A new approach to performance improvement in schools*. Online submission. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED492846&authtype=sso&custid=s3915890&site=eds-live&scope=site
Marks, H. M. (2000). Student engagement in instructional activity: Patterns in the elementary, middle, and high school years. *American Educational Research Journal, 37*(1), 153-184.
McDaniel, S.C., Kim, S., & Guyotte, K. W. (2017). Perceptions of implementing positive behavior interventions and supports in high-need school contexts through the voice of local stakeholders. *Journal of At-Risk Issues, 20*(2), 35-44.
McKenzie, M. D. (2000). How are adventure education program outcomes achieved?: A review of the literature. *Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 5*(1), 19-27.
McLeod, B., & Allen-Craig, S. (2007). What outcomes are we trying to achieve in our outdoor education programs? *Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 11*(2), 41-49.
McMahon, B. & Portelli, J. (2004). Engagement for what? Beyond popular discourses of student engagement. *Leadership and Policy in Schools, 3*(1), 59-76.
Merrell, K.W. & Gueldner, B.A. (2010). *Social and emotional learning in the classroom: Promoting mental health and academic success*. New York: The Guilford Press.
Mitchell, G.W., Skinner, L.B., White, B.J. (2010). Essential soft-skills for success in the twenty-first century workforce as perceived by business educators. *Delta Phi Epsilon Journal*, 52, 43-53
Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America*, 108(7), 2693–2698. https://doi-org.ezproxy.pcom.edu/http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1010076108
Moote, G. T., Jr., & Wodarski, J. S. (1997). The acquisition of life skills through adventure-based activities and programs: A review of the literature. *Adolescence*, 32(125), 143-167.
Munns, G. (2007). A sense of wonder: pedagogies to engage students who live in poverty. *International Journal of Inclusive Education*, 11(3), 301-315.
NACE Staff (2018). Are college graduates career ready? National Association of Colleges and Employers. As retrieved from: http://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/are-college-graduates-career-ready/?utm_source=linkedin
National Association of Colleges and Employers (2018). Career readiness defined. Retrieved from https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined/
National Research Council (U.S.). (c2004.). In Institute of Medicine (U.S.) (Ed.), Engaging schools: Fostering high school students’ motivation to learn. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
Neill, J.T. (2003). Reviewing and benchmarking adventure therapy outcomes: Applications of meta-analysis. *The journal of Experiential Education*, 25(3), 316-321.
Newmann, F. M. (Ed.). (1992). Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools. New York: Teachers College Press Columbia University.
Newmann, F. M., Wehlage, G. G., & Lamborn, S. D. (1992). The significance and sources of student engagement. In F. M. Newmann (Ed.), Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools (pp. 11-39). New York: Teachers College Press Columbia University.
Nickerson, A.B., Salamone, F.J., Brooks, J.L., Colby, S.A. (2004). Promising approaches to engaging families and building strengths in residential treatment. *Residential Treatment for Children and Youth*, 22(1), 1-18.
Nunemaker, T., Walker, K., Burton, N. (2017). Competencies: The not-so-unchartered frontier. *NACE Journal, November 2017*, As retrieved from: http://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/competencies-the-not-so-uncharted-frontier/
Outward Bound. https://www.outwardbound.org/ As retrieved on August 21, 2018
Panicucci, J. (2002). *Adventure curriculum for physical education: Middle school*. Beverly, MA: Project Adventure, Inc.
Panicucci, J. (2003). *Adventure curriculum for physical education: High school*. Beverly. MA: Project Adventure, Inc.
Paoli, J.L., Atwell, M.N., & Bridgeland, J. (2017). Ready to lead: A national principal survey on how social and emotional learning can prepare children and transform schools, Civic Enterprises, Hart Research, & CASEL, 1-57, Retrieved from: http://www.casel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ReadyToLead_FINAL.pdf
Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Robinson, J. C. (2008). The effects of choice on intrinsic motivation and related outcomes: A meta-analysis of research findings. *Psychological Bulletin, 134*(2), 270-300.
Pennsylvania Department of Education. Chapter 4, Title 22. As retrieved from: https://www.education.pa.gov/K-12/PACareerStandards/Pages/default.aspx
Powers, R.B. & Kirkpatrick, K. (2013). Playing with conflict: Teaching conflict resolution through simulations and games. *Simulation and Gaming, 44*, 51-72.
Priest, S. & Gass, M. (2018). *Effective leadership in adventure programming*. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Project Adventure (2018). Project Adventure and social and emotional learning: Who is project adventure. As retrieved from www.pa.org
Ra, Y.A. & Kim, W.H. (2016). Impact of employment and age on quality of life of individuals with disabilities: A multilevel analysis. *Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 59*, 112-120.
Rainer, P. (2014, June 13). “The Ivory Tower” examines the rising cost of college in America. *Christian Science Monitor*, p. N.PAG. Retrieved from
Rhodes, H.M. & Martin, A.J. (2014). Behavior change after adventure education courses: Do work colleagues notice? *Journal of Experiential Education*, 37 (3), 265-284.
Robles, Marcel. (2012). Executive Perceptions of the Top 10 Soft Skills Needed in Today’s Workplace. *Business Communication Quarterly*. 75. 453-465.
Rojewski, J. W., Lee, I. H., & Gregg, N. (2014). Intermediate Work Outcomes for Adolescents with High-Incidence Disabilities. *Career Development and Transition for Exceptional Individuals*, 37(2), 106–118. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.pcom.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1034103&site=eds-live&scope=site
Salingo, J.J. (2017, March 10). Why getting a good job is so much harder for today’s college graduates. *The Washington Post*. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com
Schumann, S.A., Paisley, K., Sibthorp, J., Gookin, J. (2009). Journal of outdoor recreation, education, and leadership: Instructor influences on student learning at NOLS. *Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership*, 1(1), 15-37.
Sibthorp, J. and Authur-Banning, S. (2004). Developing life effectiveness through adventure education: The roles of participant expectations, perceptions of empowerment and learning relevance. *Journal of Experiential Education*, 27(1), 32-50.
Strauss, V. (2012, June 5). Why we need vocational education. *The Washington Post*, Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/whyStuhr, P.T. (2018). Adventure based learning as a curriculum model. Retrieved from: https://www.csusm.edu/community/evidence/stuhr.pdf
Stuhr, P.T., Sutherland, S., Ressler, J., Ortiz-Stuhr, E.M. (2015). Students’ perception of relationship skills during an adventure-based learning unit within physical educational. *Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, 18*, 27-38.
Stuhr, P.T., Sutherland, S. Lorson, K., Ressler, J., & Psimipoulos, C. (2010). *A debrief model for adventure-based learning* (paper presentation) Research quarterly for exercise and sport, 81, 72-73.
Thomas, J. (2000). A Review Of Research On Project-Based Learning. Retrieved July 6, 2007 from http://www.bie.org/index.php/site/RE/pbl_research/29
Todd, V. (2014). Public relations supervisors and millennial entry-level practitioners rate entry-level job skills and professional characteristics. *Public Relations Review, 40*, 789-797
Tsitskari, E., Goudes, M., Tsalouchou, E., Michalopoulou, M. (2017). Employers’ expectations of employability skills needed in the sport and recreation environment. *Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education, 20*, 1-9
Wagner, M., Newman, L., Cameto, R., Garza, N., Levine, P. (2005). *A first look at the post-school experiences of youth with disabilities*. National Longitudinal Study 2. Office of Special Education, US Department of Education.
Wagner, M. M., Newman, L. A., & Javitz, H. S. (2016). The Benefits of High School Career and Technical Education (CTE) for Youth with Learning Disabilities. *Journal of Learning Disabilities, 49*(6), 658–670.
Walsh, J. & Aubry, P. (2007). Behavior management through adventure. *Reclaiming Children and Youth, 16*(1), 36-39.
Walsh, V. & Golins, G. (1976). The exploration of the Outward Bound process, Outward Bound School, Denver, CO.
Webb, K., Repetto, J., Seabrooks-Blackmore, J., Patterson, K. B., & Alderfer, K. (2014). Career development: Preparation, integration, and collaboration. *Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 40*(3), 231–238.
West, M. R., Buckley, K., Krachman, S. B., & Bookman, N. (2018). Development and implementation of student social-emotional surveys in the CORE Districts. *Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 55*, 119–129.
White, M. (2014). New college grads are about to get a major reality check. *Time*.
White, R. M. (2007). Adventure Based Learning Experience (ABLE). *Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals, 75–86*.
Wolfe, B. D., & Dattilo, J. (2006). Participants' perceptions of communication during and after a one-day challenge course program. *The Journal of Experiential Education, 29*(2), 126-144.
Wolfe, B. D., & Samdahl, D. M. (2005). Challenging assumptions: Examining fundamental beliefs that shape challenge course programming and research. *The Journal of Experiential Education, 28*(1), 25-43.
Zehr, M. A. (1998, February 18). New office economy putting greater demands on schools. *Education Week, 17*(23), 7.
Zeldin, I. (2016, June 9). Hire only fully formed adults: How soft skills can improve your bottom line. *The Huffington Post*. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ilya-zeldin/hire-only-fully-formed-ad_b_10361688.html
Stepping Stones
The participants are faced with a task to get all of their team members across the “lava bed” safely. To accomplish this task, the group must reach the other side safely using only the stepping stones.
Directions
Place two ropes apart from each other about 15-20 feet depending on the size of your group. Explain the objective to cross the lava bed using only the stepping stones provided. Provide the students with stepping stones (different sized pieces of foam covered in duct tape).
Rules
1. Once the stepping stones cross the line where the lava begins, they must be touched by a body part at all times or they will be lost.
2. There can be no piggy-backing on team members.
Watch the first stepping stones very carefully. It is likely the group will forget about the rule that a body part needs to be touching it at all times and will throw it down without putting their foot down. If this happens, take away the stone immediately.
If the group loses too many stones to make it across the lava bed, you can offer a chance to “buy” back a square by answering a vocational question or doing something ridiculous.
NACE Standard: Manage Emotions and Conflict; Thinking Skills; Action Toward Goal Setting; Professionalism
Objectives: To work together as a team; To differentiate between setting goals and the process; To work together as a team; To develop a process to accomplish a goal
Group Size: 10-20
Time: 45-50 minutes
Materials: Two ropes, stepping stones (half the number of students plus 1), Penalty cards
Lesson: Refer to Activity Description
Debrief Activity: What worked? What did not work?
Was there any teamwork in your group? On a scale of 1-10, how much?
Did everyone have a purpose?
Who stepped up and started brainstorming?
Was this person supported or ignored?
What was our goal in this activity?
What was the process your team used to solve this problem?
How are the goal and process different?
Why is it necessary to have goals?
Appendix C
Student Survey
On a scale of 1 to 5, rate yourself on your ability to demonstrate the following skills. Ratings of 1 indicate not at all, ratings of 2 indicate a little bit, ratings of 3 indicate some of the time, ratings of 4 indicate most of the time, and ratings of 5 indicate almost all of the time. For example, if you arrive at work on-time every day, you would choose a rating of 5. If you are on-time for work 4 out of 5 days, you would choose a rating of 4. If you are on-time for work 3 out of 5 days, you would choose a rating of 3. If you are on-time for work 2 out of the 5 days, you would choose a rating of 2. Finally if you are on-time 1 or fewer days of the week you choose 1.
1) How often do you work well with others to get a job done?
Comments:
2) How often do you work well with others who have different skills or personal characteristics from you?
Comments:
3) How often do you ask for help when you need it?
Comments:
4) How often do you share your ideas with other people?
Comments:
5) How often do you have difficulty working with others to get a job done?
1 2 3 4 5
Comments:
6) When something is not going well at school or work, how often do you use one of the following strategies?
a) Cursing
1 2 3 4 5
b) Arguing
1 2 3 4 5
c) Walking Away
1 2 3 4 5
d) Wait it out
1 2 3 4 5
e) Ignore the problem
1 2 3 4 5
f) Talk to a supervisor
1 2 3 4 5
g) Ask a peer for help
1 2 3 4 5
h) Use trial and error
1 2 3 4 5
i) Look for missing information
1 2 3 4 5
Comments:
7) How often do you take your time to think about a task or question before answering?
1 2 3 4 5
Comments:
8) How often can you find more than one solution to a problem?
1 2 3 4 5
Comments:
9) How often do you use the following strategies when stuck on a problem?
a) Brainstorming
1 2 3 4 5
b) Research other ways to do a task
1 2 3 4 5
c) Ask for input from others
1 2 3 4 5
d) Look for a “work-around”
1 2 3 4 5
e) Change environments
1 2 3 4 5
f) Take a break
1 2 3 4 5
g) Go help someone else with something they are working on
1 2 3 4 5
Comments:
10) How often do you use the following strategies to manage your anger in a workplace setting?
a) Walk away
b) Ask for help
c) Use relaxation strategies
d) Engage in conflict resolution
e) Count to 10
Comments:
11) How often do you use the following strategies to manage your anxiety in the workplace setting?
a) Walk away
b) Ask for help
c) Use relaxation strategies
d) Engage in conflict resolution
e) Count to 10
Comments:
12) How long does it take you to get back your focus after a set-back?
a) Less than 5 minutes
b) 5-10 minutes
c) 10-15 minutes
d) 15-30 minutes
e) 30 minutes - 1 hour
f) More than an hour
g) The next day
Comments:
13) How often do you respond in the following ways to critical feedback about your work?
a) Try to apply what was said
1 2 3 4 5
b) Get anxious
1 2 3 4 5
c) Get angry
1 2 3 4 5
d) Talk about it till you understand
1 2 3 4 5
e) Argue with the teacher or supervisor
1 2 3 4 5
f) Ask a supervisor for help
1 2 3 4 5
g) Ask for help from a peer who was successful
1 2 3 4 5
Comments:
14) How often do you complete tasks on time?
Comments:
15) How often are you able to recognize a different point of view and use compromise to meet a shared goal?
Comments:
16) How often, after you make a mistake, do you take the time to look back and learn from what happened?
Comments:
17) How often do you apologize after you realize you hurt someone’s feelings?
Comments:
18) How often are you on time for work?
Comments:
19) How comfortable are you at talking about the things you are good at?
20) How comfortable are you at talking about things you would like to improve?
1 2 3 4 5
Comments:
21) How often do you take a leadership role in a group project?
1 2 3 4 5
Comments:
22) Which of the following leadership activities have you been involved in?
a) School-related sports team
b) Recreational league sports team
c) Student council
d) Church youth group
e) Band or orchestra
f) Chorus
g) Newspaper or other school publication
h) Skills USA
i) Volunteer work
j) Other:
Appendix D
Instructor Survey
On a scale of 1 to 5, rate each student individually on how often he or she demonstrates the following skills. Ratings of 1 indicate not at all, ratings of 2 indicate a little bit, ratings of 3 indicate some of the time, ratings of 4 indicate most of the time, and ratings of 5 indicate almost all of the time.
1. Work cooperatively (build relationships with diverse individuals)
Initial impressions:
2. Advocate for their needs (ask for help when needed and initiate interaction)
Initial Impressions:
3. Professional language (use professional tone and content when speaking to both peers and supervisors)
Initial Impressions:
4. Obtain information that may be needed to solve a problem (find information when needed)
5. Analyze information (interpret, and utilize knowledge)
Initial Impressions:
6. Use information creatively (demonstrates originality and inventiveness)
Initial Impressions:
7. Shares their ideas with the group (communicates relevant information to the group)
Initial Impressions:
8. Recover from difficult situations (manage their emotions while completing required tasks)
Initial Impressions:
9. Negotiate and manage conflict (recognize others’ strengths and use empathy to work toward a common goal)
Initial Impressions:
10. Demonstrate personal accountability (demonstrates ethical behavior and understands that their behavior impacts others)
11. Changes behavior in response to critiques or feedback (learns from his or her mistakes)
12. Arrives to work on time and completes assignments on time (punctuality and time management)
13. Demonstrate effective work habits (demonstrates organization and ability to prioritize)
14. Identify personal strength (able to articulate his or her skills, knowledge, and experience)
15. Identify areas of weakness (identify areas in need of skill or professional growth)
16. Adopt a leadership role within the classroom (use empathetic skills to guide, motivate and delegate work.)
Initial Impressions:
Appendix E
IMPACT Stakeholder Feedback Form
1. Indicate your professional role
- CTC instructor
- CTC school counselor
- IU13 learning Support
- Administrator
- IU13 Support Team
- Other
2. What is your understanding of the purpose of the IMPACT program? (Choose all that apply)
- Increase students’ skills for managing for their emotions
- Increase students’ skills for demonstrating professionalism in the workplace setting
- Increase students’ ability to set goals
- Increase students’ ability to take initiative
- Other
3. Who does the IMPACT program benefit? (Choose all that apply)
- CTC students
- CTC instructors
- CTC administration
- Sending school districts
- Business owners
- IU13 learning support teachers
- IU13 support personnel (school psychologist, social worker, SEC, etc.)
- CTC students’ parents or guardians
- None of the above
- Other
4. For those indicated above, please describe how they benefit from IMPACT.
5. In your opinion, students who participated in the program were able to increase which of the following: (Choose all that apply)
- Increase students’ skills for communication in the workplace
- Increase students’ skills for problem solving
- Increase students’ skills for managing their emotions
- Increase students’ skills for demonstrating professionalism in the workplace setting
- Increase students’ ability to set goals
- Increase students’ ability to take initiative
- It has no discernible effect
- Other
6. On a scale of 1-5, how engaging are the activities for the students? (answer only if you have observed or taught the lessons)
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Highly engaging |
|----------------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----------------|
| Not at all engaging | | | | | | |
7. On a scale of 1-5, how much do you agree that the materials chosen for each lesson are a necessary part of the instruction? (answer only if you have observed or taught the lessons)
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Essential |
|----------------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----------------|
| Not at all necessary | | | | | | |
8. On a scale of 1-5, how helpful is the sequence of activities in forwarding the purpose of IMPACT? (answer only if you have observed or taught the lessons)
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Extremely helpful |
|----------------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-------------------|
| Not at all helpful | | | | | | |
9. On a scale of 1-5, how much do you agree with the length of the lessons presented? (answer only if you have observed or taught the lessons)
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Very much in agreement |
|------------------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|------------------------|
| Not at all agree | | | | | | |
10. What would you change about the IMPACT program? (Choose all that apply)
- Techniques for engaging students
- Materials chosen for lessons
- Sequence of activities
- Length of lessons
- Nothing
- Other
11. If your above choice indicated something you would change, tell us more about how you would change or alter that aspect of the IMPACT program.
12. On a scale of 1-5, how consistent is the purpose of IMPACT with the goals of the CTC?
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Very consistent |
|------------------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----------------|
| Not at all consistent | | | | | | | | <urn:uuid:a64af4a0-d5d1-4e39-8e99-ee3aeff0e855> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | https://digitalcommons.pcom.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1501&context=psychology_dissertations | 2019-06-27T12:59:05Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560628001138.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20190627115818-20190627141818-00252.warc.gz | 402,987,725 | 41,192 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.935539 | eng_Latn | 0.996 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"por_Latn",
"unknown",
"pol_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
833,
1061,
1457,
2978,
4365,
6312,
8364,
8635,
10025,
11777,
13716,
15490,
17305,
19224,
21121,
22938,
24853,
26563,
28060,
29868,
31772,
33681,
35265,
36871,
38515,
40225,
42144,
44014,
45887,
47704,
49346,
51258,
52991,
54870,
56768,
58675,
60495,
62395,
64224,
66181,
67971,
69610,
71507,
73210,
74970,
76734,
78564,
80461,
82248,
83937,
85713,
87457,
89304,
91131,
93038,
94877,
96717,
98451,
99024,
100718,
103095,
105328,
108167,
110137,
111949,
114849,
116985,
118838,
121866,
123527,
125825,
127941,
129743,
131796,
133640,
135402,
136588,
138383,
140292,
141638,
144170,
146131,
147753,
149667,
151419,
153294,
155138,
156963,
158780,
160710,
162597,
164402,
166244,
167851,
169350,
170799,
172294,
173900,
175256,
176891,
178243,
179733,
181225,
182704,
184145,
185670,
187171,
188547,
190035,
190381,
191526,
192376,
193406,
193910,
194484,
194924,
195586,
196096,
196592,
197350,
198009,
198479,
198613,
199616,
201233,
202282
] | [
1.1640625,
2.6875
] | 1 | 0 |
Take Me Back to Old Lake Shore
By John W. Johnson
In the old days, Lake Shore was a small community located at the western end of White Bear Lake. It was a narrow tract of land bounded on the east by the lake and on the west by the railroad tracks. It extended from Leip’s Cottage Park Resort on the south to Thomas Fulton’s house on the north.
In the 1890s, Lake Shore was the first train stop at White Bear Lake where twenty-five trains stopped daily. Passengers got off at the Lake Shore Station next to Ramaley’s magnificent pavilion. At Ramaley’s one could take a twenty-five cent steamboat trip across the lake or partake in picnics, fishing, sailing, swimming or ball games. In the evenings, there were band concerts, dances and plays in the large auditorium at Ramaley’s.
What were the origins of the Lake Shore community? Land became available after the area was surveyed in 1847. Isaiah DeWebber, an early settler at the west end of the lake built a claim cabin in 1849 and obtained a large parcel of land. In 1851, Villeroy Barmum selected three government lots totaling 175 acres between Goose Lake and White Bear Lake and two years later opened his resort. In 1853, William W. Webber Sr., a native of Maine, came up the Mississippi by steamboat from St. Louis to St. Paul looking for a place to regain his health. He went by horse and carriage to Barnum’s hotel at White Bear Lake. He found the climate invigorating and regained his health. Mr. Webber purchased the claim of Isaiah DeWebber before going back to St. Louis to get his family. The 1860 census for White Bear shows Wm. W. Webber Sr. with his wife, Amanda, and son Wm. W. Webber Jr. and a James Morgan who appears to be a relative.
Lake Shore map – Ca. 1885
Take Me Back to Old Lake Shore continued on page 2
In 1854, the extended family of James F. Murray arrived in White Bear and purchased land along the western shore north of the Lake Shore area. The Murray property extended from what is now Shady Lane to Twelfth Street. James F. Murray and his wife, Amelia, came with their daughter Harriet and sons John B., James C. and Thomas Murray. They built White Bear’s second resort hotel, the Murray House, at Lake Avenue and Second Street.
In 1860, Lucius C. Dunn and his extended family were in St. Paul. Lucius Dunn was born in Maine and his wife, Arabella, and her family were from Massachusetts. The 1860 census included two children as well as Arabella’s 15 year old sister, Adeline E. Dean, and her parents, Ebernezer and Adeline H. Dean. In 1864, Lucius C. Dunn joined Company A of the First Minnesota Heavy Artillery. James Murray and Robert Whitaker of White Bear also joined Company A to fight in the Civil War.
Lucius C. Dunn returned to White Bear after the war and purchased some land from Barnum in Cottage Park, where he built White Bear’s third resort hotel, the South Shore House. Over the years, several cottages were added to the South Shore Hotel. Also, in 1866, Barnum sold his hotel to William Leip who added a sample room and a billiard room. Col. Leip later enlarged the hotel and added some cottages and a lake side pavilion.
Before 1868, the only transportation to White Bear Lake was by horse and buggy. In 1868, the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad completed tracks to White Bear. At the dedication of the railroad in September, 500 people came on the train to White Bear to celebrate the event. The railroad provided quick and easy travel for passengers and efficient delivery of goods for the shops and hotels. White Bear became a popular resort with visitors coming from the south and east to enjoy the healthy climate.
At this time, William W. Webber Sr. owned all the land in “Lake Shore” and a good deal of the land west of the railroad. Sometime before 1865, Mr. Webber’s first wife died. Later, in 1871, 54 year old William W. Webber married 47 year old Harriet M. Murray, the daughter of James F. Murray of White Bear Lake.
The Minnesota 1875 census for White Bear listed an interesting group of people living at L. C. Dunn’s South Shore House. Lucius C. Dunn and wife Arabella with their children, Lucius W., Mary, W. W. and Elsie lived there. Others included William Markoe, 54, born in Pennsylvania; Maria Markoe, 49 of Pennsylvania, Wm. F. Markoe, 23 of Wisconsin; Maria Lipsie, 60 of England, Addie E. Dean, 29, a school teacher from Massachusetts (the younger sister of Mrs. Dunn) and Herbert L. Hinckley, 27, born in Rhode Island.
In the 1860 census, Herbert Hinckley, the son of Isaac and Julia Hinckley, was living with his parents in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1868, Herbert was afflicted with a “disease of the lungs.” A year later, Herbert was sent to Minnesota in hopes of recovering his health. He soon moved to White Bear Lake and took up residence with the Dunn family at the South Shore House. He enjoyed boating and fishing on the lake. The State of Minnesota started stocking the lakes with fish from the hatchery including “California Salmon.” The State Fish Commission’s first annual report, in 1875, contained a note that Herbert Hinckley had found an eight-inch salmon at White Bear Lake.
In the 1880 census for White Bear, at South Shore House, Lucius C. Dunn had died at 1877, so his wife Arabella and her son Lucius W. Dunn were operating the resort. Adeline E. Dean and Herbert Hinckley resided there as well as a Norwegian, Nicholas Peterson.
On May 8, 1880, in Ramsey County Deed Book 96, page 28, William W. Webber Sr. and his wife Harriet sold a tract of land to Herbert L. Hinckley. This was essentially the south portion of “Lake Shore” from what is now Whitaker Street on the south to Merrimac Street on the north, bounded by the lake on the east and the railroad on the west. Apparently, Mr. Hinckley planned to remain here, and in the early 1880s, he donated his collection of books to a public reading room in White Bear.
From the St. Paul Globe newspaper, September 3, 1882 – “A quiet but elegant wedding took place at the charming resort, White Bear Lake, last week. The marriage of Herbert L. Hinckley, the popular boatman of that place and Miss Adeline E. Dean, one of the fairest daughters of White Bear.”
The St. Paul Daily Globe, November 26, 1883 – “Mr. Herbert Hinckley of White Bear left last Saturday on a special car tendered for him by his father who is the president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. He was accompanied by Dr. Hand of St. Paul.”
The St. Paul Daily Globe, January 23, 1884 –
Petition of Adeline E. Hinckley for the state of Herbert L. Hinckley late of said county. Thereafter, the widow Adeline Hinckley owned property that later became Block 3 of the Lake Shore Addition Rearrangement at White Bear. Mrs. Hinckley would later sell a lot to Nicholas Peterson for his home and boat rental business.
Nicholas Peterson of Norway came to America around 1860 and lived for a while in Wisconsin where he met Ingeborg Anna Jensen. Ingeborg’s daughter Mary was born December 1873 in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. Nicholas and Ingeborg went to St. Paul where they were married. In Minnesota, they had fourth children: Nora, Ida, Thomas and Carl. By 1885, Nicholas had a successful boat rental business at Lake Shore. The July, 1885 issue of the “The Northwest” magazine relates: “Nicholas Peterson of Cottage Park has a fine fleet of 40 rental boats, comprising sailboats, rowboats and canoes. Mr. Peterson is an old Norwegian sailor, having an original and amusing way of expressing himself, which gives zest and character to his sailor yarns.”
John D. Ramaley also moved to Lake Shore. He was born in 1834 in Pennsylvania where he later married Sarah Buffum. They had two sons, Florence, born 1864, and J. E. (Eugene), born 1866. In 1878, John moved his family to St. Paul where he started a food and catering service. Later, he established a refreshment business and boat rental at White Bear Lake. In the 1885 issue of the “The Northwest,” he describes Ramaley’s: “Close in front of the depot, standing upon the very water’s edge is Ramaley’s pavilion and lunch room, by far the most popular place of its kind on the lake. All manner of fruits and candies and ice cream and cooling drinks tempt the picnicker.”
On November 11, 1886, in Ramsey County Deed Book 158, page 267, William W. Webber, Sr. and his wife Harriet sold a tract of land to Sarah B. Ramaley, wife of John D. Ramaley. This included land from the lake Shore Addition to White Bear, as well as what became Ramaley Park. The deed specified some exclusions to the Lake Shore Addition, such as the previous transfer of land south of Merrimac Street to Herbert Hinckley. The Ramaleys then owned most of the land from Merrimac Street up to what is now Highway 96 where Lake Avenue turns east.
In 1890, Ramaley built his magnificent lakeside pavilion next to the Lake Shore Railroad Station. The three story structure was 150 by 500 feet with a large auditorium and stage for concerts, plays and dances. The July 2, 1890 St. Paul Dispatch reported the opening of Ramaley’s new pavilion – “The new Lake Shore pavilion was formally opened with over 2,000 people present. A special train of the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad left Union Depot early in the evening and was crowded to excess. Arrived at the pavilion, the pleasure seekers were at no loss for entertainment. An elaborate musical program was presented by Seibert’s orchestra, opening with a new composition of Mr. Seibert’s entitled With Full Sail.”
Ramaley’s pavilion was located where the present day concrete fishing pier is located. One block south, at the corner of Lake Avenue and Merrimac Street (the future location of the Johnson Boat Works), there was a two story frame building that was a saloon and hotel. Just south of Merrimac was Nicholas Peterson’s boat rental. There were at least three steamboats operating from the dock at Ramaley’s pavilion: the Manitoba with captain Wm. W. Webber Jr., the White Bear with captain J. E. Ramaley and the Wildwood with Thomas Peterson as the captain. Some years later, Thomas Peterson, the son of Nicholas Peterson, suffered tragic injuries when the boiler on the Wildwood exploded.
In the late 1880s at Lake Shore, there was a place called the Wahmeota with Edith Miller the proprietor. Possibly this was at the old saloon hotel at Lake and Merrimac, or nearby? She advertised fine wines, liquors and cigars as well as a lunchroom and picnic tables. Edith and her husband, Joe Miller, came to White Bear in 1880. Joe operated a saloon and boarding house on Third Street in the village. It was interesting to read in the White Bear Breeze – Dec. 1, 1888, Joe Miller files for a divorce. - Jan. 19, 1889, Joe Miller plans to marry Katie Kretz. - Feb. 2, 1889 Joe marries Katie. - Sept. 5, 1891, Joe Miller died last week.
John Eugene Ramaley started his boat works in 1895 on the shore of the lake next to Leip’s resort. J. E. Ramaley built the steamboat White Bear as well as sailboats. Gus Amundson had started his boat works in 1887 and was located across the tracks at Hinckley and Railroad Avenues. John O. Johnson started his boat building business in 1896 and in that same year he married Mary Peterson, the daughter of Ingeborg Peterson, the wife of Nicholas Peterson. For a few years both Amundson and Johnson were located at Railroad and Hinckley. Nicholas Peterson died April 7, 1897 and soon after, his widow, Ingeborg, started a lunch room just north of the old saloon hotel that was at Merrimac Street.
In the 1890s, the Lake Shore area was the primary location for most of the boating activities. The White Bear Yacht Club had been using a hotel in Dellwood, but in 1897 and 1898 they rented the ground floor of the Ramaley pavilion as their headquarters. The use of these facilities was donated by Colonel W. W. Price. Ramaley’s pavilion was conveniently located for the yacht races, recreational activities and the Saturday night dances.
The White Bear Yacht Club had challenged the St. Lawrence Yacht Club for a championship race coming up in 1900. The three Lake Shore boat builders - Gus Amundson, John O. Johnson and Gene Ramaley - were each asked to build a sailboat with one of them to be chosen to compete against the Canadians. J. O. Johnson at that time did not have a place big enough to build a 38 ft. sailboat, so he asked his mother-in-law, Ingeborg Peterson, for the use of her lunchroom during the off season winter months. Johnson’s boat was built for C. Milton Griggs who named it the Minnezitka. This boat, the forerunner of today’s Class A sailboat, led to a successful boat building business for John O. Johnson.
By 1900, more people were living in the Lake Shore community. In the 1900 census starting from the south at Whitaker Street we find: Adeline Hinckley a widow from Mass.; Ingeborg Peterson a widow from Norway with children Nora, Ida, Thomas and Carl; William Work a postal clerk from Penn.;
Charles Morgan a sta. engraver born in Minn.; Martin Stone a hotel keeper from Vermont with boarders – Cyrus Wilkins a barber and Edward Nelson a bar tender; John O. Johnson a boat builder from Norway with wife Mary and son Milton; Walter Baldwin a comm. traveler from New York; Wm. Webber Jr. real estate, from Illinois with wife Anna and children; John D. Ramaley a “Florist” from Penn. with wife Sarah and son John E. Ramaley a boat builder; Wm. Webber Sr. age 83 from Maine with wife Harriet also Susan and Arla Murray; Anna Smith a hair dresser from Switzerland.
June 16, 1903, Thomas and Emma Abbott sold the saloon-hotel at Merrimac and Lake to Jeremiah Sullivan for $200. By 1904 a bowling alley was built just north of Ingeborg Peterson’s lunchroom. The Lake Shore bowling team included: H. Blakeley, Gus Amundson, John Johnson, Thomas Peterson and H. Kenyon. Next to the bowling alley, Harry Darling set up his machine shop across the street from the present day V.F.W. Club. Darling had been a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi and had built steamboats. At his machine shop in Lake Shore, he repaired gas and steam engines, autos, motorcycles, bicycles and all kinds of machinery.
Also in 1904, the Twin City Lines started laying street car tracks from Wildwood to White Bear. The tracks followed South Shore Blvd. and in the Lake Shore area, from Whitaker Street up to Ramaley’s Pavilion, the tracks were placed next to the shoreline. The street car service continued until 1932.
Streetcar at Lake Shore – The Twin City Rapid Transit Company ran streetcars from Wildwood Park to downtown White Bear from 1904 to 1932.
By 1907, the large Ramaley’s pavilion had gone out of business and in 1908 it was demolished to make room for an apartment complex. Steamboats continued for a few more years providing cruises across the lake to the Wildwood Amusement Park.
John O. Johnson was still living across the railroad tracks in 1910 when he built his airplane. He had been working on it in the yard behind his house for many months. Finally it was completed and on January 25, 1910,
with the help of his son Milton, he took it onto the frozen lake. The airplane had a 20 h.p. engine to power the light weight craft. The wings were 8 feet wide and 30 feet long giving it the appearance of a giant dragonfly. The aircraft had runners for the icy surface and the engine was strong enough to provide a take off for a short flight. When it landed, much of the plane was damaged, but J. O. Johnson became the first person in Minnesota to achieve powered flight! Note, he must have notified the newspaper before hand, since there was complete coverage, with photos, in the St. Paul Dispatch, Jan. 26, 1910.
In 1912, Gus Amundson moved his boat building operation to the lake. He put up a building next to Ramaley’s Boat Works. In October 1912 John O. Johnson purchased the property where the old saloon-hotel had been on Merrimac from Jerimiah Sullivan for $1000. Johnson used the basement of the old saloon as part of the foundation for a 50 x 100ft. building.
For many years this small community was known as Lake Shore. At some point in time the name was no longer used and it was simply part of the City of White Bear Lake. For wonderful pictures and stories about the Ramaley Pavilion and other Lake Shore establishments see the book – “Looking Back at White Bear Lake” by Cynthia E. Vadnais.
About the author:
John W. Johnson is the grandson of Johnson Boat Works founder John O. Johnson. The author was raised in Lakeshore and has committed extensive time to the research of this subject in an effort to enhance the knowledge of his own family history. We are pleased to be able to share the results of that research here.
WBLAHS Receives Challenge
After the cancellation of the WBLAHS’s spring event a member concerned with the financial stability of the organization has stepped forward with a fundraising challenge. This anonymous individual has committed to donate up to $10,000 with the condition that the WBLAHS must maximize this contribution through a public match in some form.
The funds are to be used to stabilize the general operating budget of the WBLAHS. Not having the spring fundraiser directly impacts our programs and operations during the year. This gift has been initiated through a stock transfer. If you would like more information on how to make a similar gift, please contact Sara Hanson at 651-407-5327
The WBLAHS board is currently planning the best way to utilize this catalyst. Please watch for more details in the near future.
Proudly Serving
The White Bear Lake Area Historical Society is proud to serve the following communities:
• Birchwood
• Dellwood
• Mahtomedi
• White Bear Lake
• White Bear Township
If you have a story, pictures, or any information that you would like to share, please contact Sara at 651-407-5327
Thank You for Your Support!
The success of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society is tied in no small part to the year-end contributions of our supporters and the ongoing efforts of our many volunteers, members and participants. We would like to thank those listed below for your donation. Without the commitment to funding our mission the WBLAHS would not be able to capture the stories and engage our community in preserving its important past.
Thank you!
Jim & Judy Anderson
Lynn & Linda Ault
Rose Bayuk
Edward & Harriet Bissen
Alexandra O. Bjorklund
Lois Bohon
Beverly Bosse
Ginny Brierley
Ellen Bruner
Jack & Betsy Cedarleaf
Shirley Chapman
Craig & Gloria Drake
Ruth Fagen
Tom Farm
Silas & Olivia Ford
Carrie Foss
Neil Franey
Cheryl Frey
Sara & Jeff Hanson
Marshall Hatfield
Louis & Mary Hauser
Liz & Dick Hiniker
Tom & Beverly Horak
Rob & Kate Huebsch
Mina Ingersoll & Michael Hannan
Sid & Sue Jackson
Kurt & Connie Johnson
Fredrik & Sharon Johnson
Michael & Barbara Kelly
Art & Donnalee Kutchera
Jo Long
James & Lillian Markoe
Jud & Joyce Marshall
Edwin & Susan McCarthy
Bruce & Marguerite McConoughey
W. B. Meier
Joan & Ed Michaud
Tracey Montgomery
Jim & Marilyn Muellner
Barb & Curt Nelson In Memory of Ruth & Harvey Chapman
Barb & Curt Nelson In Memory of Mayor of White Bear Lake Fred Bloom Robert Nuffort Jerrilynn Ommen Lilly Otto Patrick & Susan Oven Frank & Jane Pazlar Carolyn Porter Tom & Laura Rasmussen Penny & Jay Rendall Peter & Linda Seed Therese Sonnek Meg Todd Roberta Vadnais David Van Orsdel Susan Ward Adam Westermann Richard & Jane Wicklund Karen Winship Steve & Karen Wolgamot
White Bear Town Hall Preservation Project Update
Goal: To preserve the White Bear Town Hall and restore the structure to a functional, aesthetically appealing landmark in our community that provides educational opportunities to our students.
The WBLAHS is excited to work with the White Bear Town Board on the White Bear Town Hall Preservation Project to further the efforts to preserve this local landmark. The next step in this project is conducting an evaluation of the structure to identify and classify its significance and evaluate the building’s eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places and therefore potential rehabilitation funding.
Residents of current and historic White Bear Township (today’s communities of Gem Lake, North Oaks, Vadnais Heights and White Bear Lake) are encouraged to share their thoughts with Town Board Supervisors (contact information can be found at whitebeartownship.org and the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society at email@example.com.
The Art of the Cocktail: A Celebration of the Anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition Cancelled
It was with great disappointment that the WBLAHS announced that the Art of the Cocktail Event on March 23rd was cancelled due to low reservation numbers. This decision was made after much consideration and careful thought. The Board of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society believes this to be the most prudent decision to be the best stewards of sponsor contributions based on the financial projections for the event.
The event committee has accumulated feedback on the original event and is in the process of restructuring the details to bring this event to you in a new format this summer. Please stay tuned for more information coming soon.
We would like to thank the sponsors who have supported this effort!
Thank You to Our Sponsors!
Memorials
Gift in memory of Ted Arnold by Lynne Arnold & Jon Walker
Gift in memory of Leonard Brunjes by Arlene & Tom Zwickel
Gift in memory of Josie Power by Jeff and Sara Hanson
Gift in memory of Fred Bloom, Mayor of White Bear Lake by Barb Chapman Nelson
WBLAHS Welcomes Kim Godfrey
If you have been to the depot in recent months you may have met Kim Godfrey, Office Manager for the WBLAHS. Kim has joined us as a part-time member of our team. Among other assignments, Kim has been handling the majority of our frequent photo and information requests as well as many tasks related to running an active office. We are excited to have Kim with us and hope you have a chance to meet her soon.
Mission Statement of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society
The White Bear Lake Area Historical Society connects the community to its past, fostering an understanding and appreciation for our history.
We fulfill our mission by….
- Gathering and maintaining historical information and artifacts. *We are safe keepers of our heritage.*
- Educating the community about our history. *We are the community storytellers.*
- Encouraging personal and community responsibility for preserving our physical links to the past. *We are advocates for historical preservation.*
2012 Year-End Financial Report
Income
| Source | Amount |
|-------------------------|------------|
| Municipal Funding | $11,112.00 |
| Dues | 13,736.26 |
| Donations | 25,213.61 |
| Outreach Programs | 4,375.05 |
| Soc. Prog. & Fundraisers | 21,917.50 |
| Sales | 10,701.53 |
Total: $87,037.95
Expense
| Category | Amount |
|---------------------------|------------|
| Administration | $9,599.87 |
| Payroll | 45,660.09 |
| Newsletter | 2,620.09 |
| Soc. Prog. & Fundraisers | 9,923.71 |
| Sales | 5,868.38 |
| Depot | 4,174.17 |
| Outreach & Research | 547.47 |
| Fillebrown House | 8024.34 |
| Pavers | 119.85 |
Total: $86,538.45
Y/E Profit/Loss: $499.50
WBLAHS 2013 Board of Directors
Tracey Montgomery, President
Jenni Corbett, Vice President
Shana Karle, Treasurer
Jo Emerson, At-Large
Chris Johnson, At-Large
Bill Matschke, Out-House
Brady Ramsay, At-Large
*begins term in May 2013
Tom Rice, At-Large
Kirsten Skoglund, At-Large
Gloria Tessier, In-House
Sara Markoe Hanson, Executive Director
Kim Godfrey, Office Manager & Volunteer Coordinator
Office: White Bear Lake Area Historical Society, 4751 Hwy 61, White Bear Lake, MN 55110
Fillebrown House: 4735 Lake Avenue, White Bear Lake, MN 55110
Mailing address: PO Box 10543, White Bear Lake, MN 55110
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
651-407-5327, FAX 651-407-5328
The WBLAHS Greatly Appreciates the Support of its Hometown Business Members
Hometown Business Premium Members ($250-499)
Dave Bossard, Keller Williams
White Bear Area Chamber of Commerce
Hometown Business Plus Members ($100-249)
Grandma’s Bakery
Knutsen Auto
Pine Tree Apple Orchard
Ramsay & Associates
Sunbear Salon & Spa
Hometown Business/Organization Members ($50-99)
Edina Realty of White Bear Lake
Hisdahls, Inc.
Hoffman Corner Heating and Air
Ingredients Cafe
Judy King Estate Sales
Kathy Madore, Edina Realty
Lakeshore Players
Lisa Madore, Edina Realty
VFW Post 1782/VFW Post 1782 Ladies Auxiliary
Washington Square Grill
White Bear Eye Clinic
WBLAHS Launches Options for Hometown Business Membership
The White Bear Lake Area Historical Society is excited to announce our expanded Hometown Business (HTB) Membership Program in response to increased interest from area businesses. Members who wish to remain at the $50 Hometown Business Membership Level will continue to receive the same member benefits as always, but businesses interested in increasing their exposure and presence can do so in a larger way.
Each HTB Membership will receive the standard benefits of membership:
- WBLAHS Newsletter - *The Lake Area Preserver*
- Free admission to Fillebrown House Tours
- Discounted Admission to WBLAHS events
- Invitations and advance notice of WBLAHS Events
- Advance Opportunities to sponsor or participate in WBLAHS Events
- Invitation for two representatives to attend the annual Members’ Holiday Party at the Fillebrown House
As well as additional benefits based on membership level…
**Hometown Business Member** **$50-99**
- Listing in *The Lake Area Preserver*
- Listing on WBLAHS website Sponsor Page
**Hometown Business Plus Member** **$100-249**
- Listing and Logo in *The Lake Area Preserver*
- Listing and Logo on WBLAHS website Sponsor Page
**Hometown Business Premium Member** **$250-499**
- Listing and Logo in *The Lake Area Preserver*
- Listing and Logo on WBLAHS website Sponsor Page
- Listing and Logo in WBLAHS Facebook Sponsor Album
- Listing on WBLAHS email newsletters
**Hometown Business Ultimate Member** **$500+**
- Listing and Logo in *The Lake Area Preserver*
- Listing and Logo on WBLAHS website Sponsor Page and Main Page
- Listing and Logo in WBLAHS Facebook Sponsor Album
- Listing and Logo on WBLAHS email newsletters
From the Director’s Desk…
The flowers will be blooming at the Fillebrown House before we know it and so too will the results of a long-range planning process for the WBLAHS.
Just like spring’s arrival, this milestone marks a cyclical rebirth for the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society. It has been several years since the WBLAHS has engaged in a strategic planning process and we are due. The Board of Directors is in the early stages of redefining their vision for the WBLAHS and creating the road map to take us there.
Over the past twelve years my role with the WBLAHS has changed significantly. It has gone from being hired in 2001 as a contact point and coordinator for the society’s activities to presently functioning as the director of a vibrant organization that has far exceeded my expectations in growth and popularity. With that expansion comes the need for re-evaluation and restructuring.
Through the strategic planning process we intend to identify the priorities for the WBLAHS along with our capacity to attain those goals and meet those demands. If you have comments or information you would like to share, please contact me at 651-407-5327 or via email at email@example.com.
Calendar of Events
For details on these events and more visit whitebearhistory.org, facebook.com/whitebearhistory or call 651 407-5327.
WBLA Historical Society Scrapbooking Quarterly Crop
Saturday, May 18, 2013, 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
White Bear Lake Armory, 2228 4th St, White Bear Lake
Enjoy a fun day with friends working on your scrapbook or craft of your choice. Cost: $30 members/$35 non-members - includes donuts & coffee, lunch catered by Cup & Cone, dinner catered by Donatelli’s, snacks and door prizes. All proceeds benefit the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society and our ongoing efforts to preserve the stories of our community.
Pre-register online http://www.whitebearhistory.org or call 651-407-5327.
Sponsored by:
Bald Eagle: On Record! **
Monday, May 20, 2013, 6:00-7:00 p.m.
Ramsey County Library – WBL Branch, 4698 Clark Avenue, WBL
Through this illustrated program, we will explore the many different types of resources that the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society preserves for our communities. Bald Eagle functions as a wonderful example of a community within a community that is on record through photos, ledgers, minutes and other documents.
Don’t Stop the Presses! **
Monday, June 24, 2013, 6:00-7:00 p.m.
Ramsey County Library – WBL Branch, 4698 Clark Avenue, WBL
Gene and Kathy Johnson will conduct a multimedia presentation illustrating the functions of a newspaper and the equipment used during the 1930s-60s in publishing weekly newspapers followed by an opportunity to ask questions.
Gene Johnson, publisher emeritus of Press Publications serves on the Minnesota Newspaper Foundation Board which sponsors and maintains the newspaper museum at the Minnesota State Fair.
White Bear’s Notorious Gangsters – The Sequel **
Monday, July 22, 2013, 6:00-7:00 p.m.
Ramsey County Library – WBL Branch, 4698 Clark Avenue, WBL
The White Bear area was a haven for the 1920s and ‘30s era gangsters who wanted to get away from it all. Join us to learn some gangster lingo while you hear the tales of infamous visitors such as Ma Barker, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis and Baby Face Nelson. Program updated with stories shared by local residents since the first edition was offered a few years ago.
Pops on the Porch
Thursday, August 15, 2013, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Fillebrown House, 4735 Lake Avenue, White Bear Lake
Join us for our annual Pops on the Porch celebration on the lawn of the Fillebrown House. Bring your lawn chairs, blankets and picnic supper, if you wish and enjoy the sounds of the Moonlight Serenaders. This event is free but donations are always welcome.
WBLA Historical Society Scrapbooking Quarterly Crop
Saturday, August 17, 2013, 10:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
White Bear Lake Armory, 2228 4th St, White Bear Lake
Enjoy a fun day with friends working on your scrapbook or craft of your choice. Cost: $30 members/$35 non-members - includes donuts & coffee, lunch catered by Cup & Cone, dinner catered by Donatelli’s, snacks and door prizes. All proceeds benefit the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society and our ongoing efforts to preserve the stories of our community.
Pre-register online http://www.whitebearhistory.org or call 651-407-5327.
Sponsored by:
The White Bear Water Ski Company **
Monday, August 19, 2013, 6:00-7:00 p.m.
Ramsey County Library – WBL Branch, 4698 Clark Avenue, WBL
Join us to hear the story of the White Bear Water Ski Company of Bald Eagle from Dennis Zerwas, Jr. grandson of the company’s founder, Tom Weinhagen. Today these skis and other recreational products are highly sought after collectibles and it all started in White Bear. This presentation will feature the first glimpse at some of the old photos and films that have recently been rediscovered and preserved by the White Bear Water Ski Co. Project. This is one event you don’t want to miss!
Save the Date!!! Save the Date!!! Save the Date!!! Save the Date!!!
White Bear Area Historic House Tour 2013
Sunday, September 29th, Noon – 6:00 p.m.
Tour 10 fabulous houses on and around White Bear
Tickets: $25 Advance, $20 WBLAHS members, $30 for all the day of the tour. Purchase: by phone 651-407-5327; online at www.whitebearhistory.org; at the WBL Depot - Hwy 61 & 4th St, WBL.
From Our President...
Tracey Montgomery
Happy Spring Members,
Well we hope it’s spring or are we going to move directly into summer? Either way, a change in temperature would be good. I had the opportunity to walk around the Fillebrown house the other day and plants are starting to come up so that is a good sign.
And with spring comes a lot of action around the community and we have many items scheduled around town. Watch our calendar and web site for opportunities to volunteer, we need your help!
We had a setback this year with canceling our spring event, but we will try again during the summer for a social event at the Fillebrown House. Summer, on the lawn at the lake – sounds wonderful! We are still working out the details, so again watch the web site and calendars around town.
There have been several events that have happened throughout our country these days and I think it has us all thinking about our own community and our need to have a sense of place. The towns around the lake have its history to combine us into one family. I am proud to be a part of this community and happy to tell the stories of all the cities that surround the lake. Each city in its own right has a history that combines us all and working together we create a sense of place. A common definition of community emerged as a group of people with diverse characteristics who are linked by social ties, share common perspectives, and engage in joint action in geographical locations or settings.
Enjoy the Spring!!!
As stated beautifully from our Vice President, Jenni Corbett: “Our children are our future. We will be their past.” If you have enjoyed the magic, the memories and the history that the WBLAHS has brought you and your family, support us to make your stories and traditions last. Family supports family, and today is your child’s history.
IN THIS SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE
- Take Me Back to Old Lake Shore by John W. Johnson
- White Bear Town Hall Update
- Upcoming Events Through the Summer
- New Hometown Business Membership Options
TO SHARE YOUR MEMORIES IN FUTURE ISSUES, CONTACT:
SARA MARKOE HANSON
DEPOT MUSEUM
4751 HIGHWAY 61
WHITE BEAR LAKE, MN 55110
651-407-5327 | a12c9b1c-e7c0-466e-9229-bbe0f84209a4 | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://whitebearhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2013-NewsletterfallSummer-1.pdf | 2021-11-27T00:13:43+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964358074.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20211126224056-20211127014056-00616.warc.gz | 655,708,978 | 8,065 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.920184 | eng_Latn | 0.996279 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1789,
4469,
8227,
10811,
12933,
15028,
17809,
20428,
21276,
24140,
24798,
27731,
29956,
31951,
33805,
34137
] | [
2.359375,
0.95703125
] | 3 | 0 |
Thank you for volunteering to serve as a judge for the National History Day® (NHD) contest. Our young historians have labored for months preparing their entries and are eager to share their historical research and conclusions.
**THE NHD FRAMEWORK AND STUDENT JOURNEY**
NHD asks students to select a topic connected to an annual theme. Students research their topic using primary and secondary sources, analyze its significance in history, and share their conclusions through one of five project formats. Students may work alone or in groups of up to five. Students may enter their work into a progressive competition cycle, moving from school to regional, affiliate, and national contests. As students advance, they can revise and improve their work based on judges’ feedback.
**PURPOSE OF JUDGING**
NHD’s goal is to provide young people with a high-quality educational experience—whether or not they win a prize. Your role is to help us achieve this goal through your interactions with the students. Together we succeed or fail based on the quality of the learning experience.
**THE JUDGING PROCESS OVERVIEW**
Every NHD contest is managed by a Contest Coordinator who is responsible for implementing NHD contest procedures. Always defer to your Contest Coordinator’s guidance. As a judge, your responsibilities include:
1. Reviewing all materials sent to you in advance of the contest.
2. Participating in judges’ orientation(s).
3. Reviewing several entries and completing required evaluation forms.
4. Reaching consensus and finalizing winners with other members of your judging team.
**GREET (in-person contests only)**
Greet the students and briefly explain the judging process. A smile goes a long way to set them at ease!
*Note:* To ensure student safety, NHD does not hold interviews at virtual contests.
**READ**
Review the process paper and annotated bibliography. Keep one copy for your judging team to refer back to during your deliberations.
**VIEW**
Students will start their performance when you signal that you are ready.
**INTERVIEW (in-person contests only)**
Ask the students questions about their project, research, or topic. This is a chance for students to share their understanding, though it is not to be an oral presentation. The interview does not weigh heavily in your evaluation.
*Do not offer suggestions for improvement* during the interview. Take notes to include in your written feedback, which students receive after the contest.
**EVALUATE AND RANK**
Return to the judging room to discuss entries, evaluate using the rubric, achieve consensus, rank entries, and select top entries to move forward.
**WRITE**
You and your team members each will complete an evaluation form for each entry. Your written feedback is the most valuable for student learning. Checkmark placement does not need to be identical, but should be similar to those of your co-judges.
PARTS OF AN ENTRY
All student entries contain three required parts. See the Required Written Materials on Page 7 for more information about process papers and bibliographies.
- **Process Paper**: A 500-word description of the research process.
- **Annotated Bibliography**: An annotated list of all sources consulted.
- **Project**: Projects are divided by division (Junior, 6-8 grade, or Senior, 9-12 grade), type (Individual or Group, 2-5 students), and category (Documentary, Exhibit, Paper, Performance, or Website)
PERFORMANCE BASICS
A performance is a dramatic portrayal of a historical argument, research, and interpretation of the topic’s significance in history. It must be an original production and presented live. It must be scripted by the students based on research and have dramatic appeal.
- **Ten minutes maximum**. Timing begins with the first words after the introduction of the project. There is no minimum time for a performance.
- **An original production**. The script must be original, but it can include quotes from historical material and actual historical characters or composite characters based on historical research.
- **Focus on the historical quality, not production value**. Strong stage presence and acting can make for a captivating performance, but, it can’t make up for a weak argument and/or inadequate research.
STUDENT INTERVIEWS (*In-person contests only*)
The interview is your opportunity to clarify your understanding of the content and development of an entry while enabling students to gain valuable communication skills. Students may not give a formal, prepared introduction, narrative, or conclusion. Your team must guide the interview. Ultimately though, an entry must be able to stand on its own without additional commentary and the interview is not evaluated, unless you learn something critical about the students’ understanding of their topic.
**Student Safety**: To ensure student safety, do not ask personal questions (school, age, etc.), take photos of students, or be alone in a room with a student.
ENTRY EVALUATION
You will use a two-page rubric-based form to assess each entry. Whether your Contest Coordinator asks you to complete it online or in-person, the same form is used at all levels of National History Day competitions. Please do not devise your own system or assign points to determine top entries.
PARTS OF THE EVALUATION FORM
Levels of Achievement (Column headers) - These are used to label columns, not used to evaluate an entry!
Judging Criteria (Left column) - These are the elements you will evaluate in each project.
Descriptors (Text in boxes across each row) - These identify the key characteristics you will look for in each criterion.
Written Comments (Bottom of both sides of the printed form) - This is space to provide strengths and areas for improvement for each entry.
Rules Compliance (Yes/No questions on the second page) - These are category-specific requirements for projects.
HISTORICAL QUALITY: 80%
Historical Quality assesses the project’s research, analysis, interpretation of the topic, and relationship to the annual theme. There are eight criteria, each carrying equal weight, and are the same for all categories. These terms are defined in the NHD Judge Glossary.
- **Historical Argument**: The use of analysis and evidence to support the historical argument
- **Theme**: The clarity and connection of the topic to the theme in the project
- **Wide Research**: The use of a variety of types of primary and secondary sources
- **Primary Sources**: The support that primary sources give the argument. They may include, but are not limited to first-hand accounts of the topic such as letters, speeches, diaries, contemporary newspaper articles, oral history interviews, documents, photographs, and artifacts.
- **Historical Context**: The relevant connections the student makes to the topic’s time and place
- **Multiple Perspectives**: The integration of different perspectives into the project
- **Historical Accuracy**: The accuracy, credibility and lack of critical omissions in historical information
- **Significance in History**: The analysis of the impact of the topic in history
PERFORMANCE CLARITY OF PRESENTATION: 20%
This area of the evaluation relates to how well the student used the project to convey their ideas. Be careful—do not be carried away by glitz. Simpler is often better. Conversely, do not discount an entry or assume students had outside assistance simply because a project is of high quality.
- **Performance**: Dramatic arc advances the historical argument. Characters and scenes are developed and connected to the historical argument.
- **Technical**: Speech is clear, effective, expressive, and appropriately paced.
- **Student Voice**: The student’s ideas are clear and balanced with supporting evidence, such as quoted material from primary or secondary sources.
HOW TO USE THE RUBRIC
For each criterion (e.g., historical accuracy, theme, etc.), compare the same elements across the levels of achievement. The key words in the descriptors (consistently, mostly, somewhat, and limited/minimal) indicate the strength of those elements in the project. Together, the descriptors create a spectrum, from consistently to not evident. Pick the statement that best represents the project’s strength in each criterion.
A project’s rating for a criterion is determined entirely by the strength of the project against the rubric, not against any other projects. Do not adjust a rating for a project based on the other entries you view. Ranking is a separate process.
- All checkmarks do not need to be in the same column for the whole rubric (e.g., all exemplary, or all proficient). They will likely vary across different criteria.
- The checkmarks should be consistent, though not necessarily identical, across the judge team. Please ensure consistency during your team discussions. Inconsistency will be confusing to students.
WHICH DESCRIPTOR ON THE FORM IS MOST APPROPRIATE?
Selecting the right descriptor is not about picking an exact match. Pick the descriptor that is most true and use your written comments to provide additional explanation. Think about it like pie. Within a single criterion, you are not comparing different things. Your question is not, “is this cherry or apple pie?”
You are comparing the same thing and trying to determine how much of it is in the project. The descriptors provide a progressive range of options.
For a given criterion, you know that it’s apple pie. Your question is, “How much apple pie is in the pan?”
EXAMPLE: THEME CRITERION
For the annual theme criterion, you will consider the theme connection’s clarity (how well-presented the theme connection is) and strength (how well-connected the topic is to the theme).
Notice the key words in the descriptors that change across the row.
| Theme | EXEMPLARY | PROFICIENT | DEVELOPING | NOVICE | N/E |
|-------|-----------|------------|------------|--------|-----|
| | □ Annual theme is consistently clear and connected to the topic in the project and argument. | □ Annual theme is mostly clear and connected to the topic in the project and argument. | □ Annual theme is somewhat clear and connected to the topic in the project and argument. | □ Annual theme has minimal clarity and the connection to the topic in the project and argument is unclear. | □ |
The theme connection is completely clear and well connected to the topic in the project and argument.
There is a theme connection, but there are one or more major problems with the connection or the way it’s presented.
Not evident
RANKING ENTRIES & SELECTING TOP ENTRIES
Evaluating each project against the rubric and ranking all the entries you view are two different, yet related, parts of judging.
- Evaluating each entry is based solely on the strength of the specific project against the criteria.
- Ranking the entries is done by conferring with your judging team to compare and contrast the entries. The entries that advance should generally have higher ratings than those that do not. Your Contest Coordinator will let you know how many top entries your team will select and the process for turning in your results.
Determining the strongest projects can be more difficult when ratings are similar. When this happens:
- Remember that Historical Quality is 80% of the evaluation. Which entry is strongest in these criteria?
- Aside from the rubric, which entries do you feel are strongest and why? Does the rubric support this?
WRITING FEEDBACK
Both pages of the evaluation form provide space for comments, including about strengths and areas for improvement. Please write positive, constructive comments that will help the student(s) understand why you evaluated the entry as you did. Always be mindful that you are writing to young learners. Your feedback will help them to improve not just this project but their approach to research and presentation for a lifetime.
The key to History Day judging is to provide positive, but critical, evaluations of each entry. Constructive commentary is valuable for:
- Students who are advancing, who want to know how they can improve their work
- Students who are NOT advancing, who want to understand why
| Instead of… | Consider… |
|-------------|-----------|
| - Find more primary sources. | - Providing specific ideas. Try finding more primary sources – such as newspapers from the time period, or accounts from survivors. |
| - Needs stronger argument. | - Giving specific suggestions. Strengthen your argument by going beyond just stating the facts – how did the bombing of Pearl Harbor change military history? |
| - Project lacks focus. | - Thinking about the age of your audience. Your topic covers a lot of time in history. Consider focusing on one event in WWII, instead of the entire war. You could dig deeper and make a more specific argument about impact in history. |
CONTEST RULES
Students and teachers must follow the *NHD Contest Rule Book*, June 22, 2020 Edition. The rule book breaks down the judging criteria described above and provides parameters to enable an apples-to-apples comparison for evaluation. While you are welcome to read the rule book ([http://www.nhd.org/rulebook](http://www.nhd.org/rulebook)), the following instructions contain the essential information you need. In this section, black text is based on what students find in the rule book; suggestions to you in applying the rules are in red.
RULE INFRACTIONS
Rule infractions occur if students violate any of the rules stated in the Contest Rule Book. Failure to comply with the rules will count against the entry. Rule infractions are not grounds for disqualification, except as noted below in the Disqualification section. However, judges will consider rule infractions in their final rankings. Infractions specific to the category are explained later under Category Rules. Not all rule violations are treated the same:
**Minor rule infractions** are those that do not confer a competitive advantage. Examples include putting the school name on the title page; exceeding time, word, or size limits by a small, inconsequential amount; or using inconsistent citation formats. Please mark these as violations on the evaluation form and note them as Areas for Improvement. However, treat them with some leniency. While one or two minor infractions should not keep an entry that is the best in its category from advancing to the next contest level, part of your task is to comment upon these so that students can address them. At all levels, if two entries are otherwise equal in quality, the entry with fewer violations should be ranked higher.
**Major rule infractions** are those that give a substantial advantage over other entries. Examples include significantly and consequentially exceeding time, word, or size limits, or having someone else operating equipment or designing part of the entry. Major infractions should result in lower rankings, and those entries should not advance to a final round or the next contest level. If your judging team feels that an entry with major infractions should advance, please consult your Contest Coordinator.
DISQUALIFICATION
Disqualification is the removal of an entry from the competition. Only the Contest Coordinator has the authority to disqualify an entry. A project may be disqualified for the following reasons related to academic integrity:
1. Entering a project in multiple contests or entry categories within a contest year.
2. Reusing, individually or as a group, a project (or research from a project) from a previous year.
3. Plagiarizing (stealing and passing off another’s ideas, words, or production as one’s own; not crediting a source).
4. Tampering with or removing any part of another entry during a competition.
These reasons are the only grounds for disqualification.
If you feel an entry has a reason to be disqualified, please contact the Contest Coordinator.
GENERAL RULES
Contest Year: NHD projects must be completed during the contest year, which begins immediately after the preceding year’s National Contest has concluded.
Entry: Students may participate in the research, preparation, and presentation of only one entry each year. Revising or reusing an entry from a previous year—whether a student’s own or another student’s—is unacceptable and will result in disqualification.
Individual or Group Entries: Students in the performance category may participate as individuals or in a group of two to five students. All students in group entries must be involved in the research and interpretation of the group’s topic.
Annual Theme: An entry must relate to the annual theme and explain the topic’s significance in history.
- While entries must relate to the annual theme, students often do not need to address every aspect of the theme. For the theme Rights and Responsibilities, students could examine rights OR responsibilities; they do not have to include both, though one often leads to the other.
- Consider whether a topic is only tangentially or questionably related to the theme. “Pickett’s Migration at the Battle of Gettysburg” for the theme Migration in History is quite a stretch.
English and Translations: All entries must be submitted in English unless otherwise approved by the Contest Coordinator. If students use other languages, they must provide English translations. For word count, judges will count only the English translation.
Copyright: The Fair Use doctrine allows for educational use of copyrighted materials for noncommercial purposes. Students are advised not to place their projects in a nonacademic public setting, such as a commercial internet site.
Reasonable Help: Students are responsible for the research, design, and creation of their entry. They may receive help and advice from teachers and parents on the mechanical aspects of creating their entry, such as typing a paper and other written material. They may seek guidance from teachers as they research and analyze their material, but their conclusions must be their own. Students may have reasonable help in preparing their projects. Examples of reasonable help include:
- A teacher provides guidance about research and analysis.
- A technology instructor shows students how to use documentary editing software.
- A teacher reviews student work and offers editing suggestions.
- A parent carries equipment into the contest space.
- A trusted adult is copied on communication with interviewees and accompanies the student to an interview.
Supplying Equipment: Students must supply all props and equipment that a Contest Coordinator does not provide.
Costumes: Only students competing in the performance category may wear costumes related to their entry during judging.
Prohibited Materials: The following items are not allowed in any competition venue: (1) weapons of any kind (real, toys, or replicas), (2) live animals (except service animals), (3) live cultures or organisms, and (4) anything that can cause damage to the competition venue.
Interview with Judges: Students must be prepared to answer judges’ questions about the content and development of their entry. They may not give a formal, prepared introduction, narrative, or conclusion during the interview. Judges must guide the interview, and the entry must be able to stand on its own without additional commentary.
REQUIRED WRITTEN MATERIAL FOR ALL ENTRIES
Formatting of Written Materials: All NHD entries must include written materials presented in the following order: (1) title page, (2) process paper, and (3) annotated bibliography. Students must print written materials on plain white 8.5 x 11-inch paper, with 1-inch margins on all sides, in 12-point font. A4 paper is accepted from international affiliates. Written materials may be single- or double-sided and must be stapled in the top left corner.
Local contests may have unique submission requirements, but written materials are generally provided to judges in print form in the exhibit, documentary, performance, and paper categories. In the website category, students upload their written materials within the site. Your Contest Coordinator will let you know how you will access student materials.
Title: The entry must have a clearly visible title on the title page and the project itself.
Title Page: A title page is required as the first page of written material in every category. The title page must include only the title of the entry, the name(s) of the student(s), the contest division and category, and applicable word counts.
Process Paper: All NHD projects must include a process paper. The process paper must be 500 words or fewer and must not include quotes, images, or captions. The process paper words are counted separately and are not part of the project word counts in papers, exhibits, or websites. Students must address the following questions in their process paper:
1. How did they choose their topic and how does it relate to the annual theme?
2. How did they conduct their research?
3. How did they create their project?
4. What is their historical argument?
5. In what ways is their topic significant in history?
The process paper should not be a summary of the students’ research.
Students do not have to subdivide their process paper into labeled sections for each question.
All words in the process paper count toward the 500-word limit.
Annotated Bibliography: An annotated bibliography is required for all categories. Students must:
1. List all sources consulted in developing the entry.
2. Combine photos or other materials from the same collection into a single citation.
3. Separate the bibliography into two sections: one for primary sources and one for secondary sources.
4. Not attach primary or secondary materials to the annotated bibliography.
5. Not include the annotated bibliography in the word count.
Each citation must include a brief annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to provide information about the research process. Annotations must not be more than two or three sentences that explain how the student used the source and how it helped them understand the topic. Students may use annotations to explain their reasoning for classifying sources that are not clearly primary or secondary.
- If you have questions about how a source is categorized, ask the students or Contest Coordinator.
- A stray comma or a single misplaced source in an otherwise strong bibliography is a minor concern. However, for students who misunderstand bibliography fundamentals or make the same mistake routinely, your feedback is instructive. If bibliographical errors make it difficult to assess the quality of the research, they may affect the entry’s ranking or evaluation.
- Words in the title page and annotated bibliography are not included in the word count.
Style Guides: Citations and bibliography references must follow the most recent edition of one of the two permitted style guides below. The style must be consistent throughout all written material.
1. *The Chicago Manual of Style* by the University of Chicago Press
2. *MLA Handbook* by the Modern Languages Association of America
CATEGORY RULES: PERFORMANCES
Performance Elements: A performance is a dramatic portrayal of a historical argument, research, and interpretation of the topic’s significance in history. It must be an original production and presented live. It must be scripted by the students based on research and have dramatic appeal.
Time Requirements: Performances may not exceed ten minutes in length. Timing starts at the beginning of the performance following the announcement of the title and student name(s). Any other introductory remarks will be considered part of the overall time. Students will be allowed five minutes to set up any props needed for their performance. Five minutes will be allotted after the performance for the students to remove props and participate in the interview with the judges.
- If a performance exceeds ten minutes by a few seconds and does not confer a competitive advantage by providing an opportunity to include additional information or interpretation, consider it a minor rule infraction and note it on the evaluation form.
- If a performance exceeds ten minutes, allowing enough extra time to include additional information or interpretation, consider it a major rule infraction. Major infractions should result in lower rankings, and those entries should not advance to a final round or the next contest level.
Performance Introduction: The title of the entry and the names of the participants must be the first and only announcements before the start of the performance.
Media Devices: Use of projection, mp3 players, computers, or other media within a performance is permitted. Students must run all equipment and carry out any special lighting or sound effects. The students listed as entrants are allowed to be involved in the production of media included in the performance.
Script and Interaction: The script for the performance should not be included with the written material presented to the judges. During the performance, performers may not interact with or require participation by the audience.
Costumes and Props: Students may have assistance in producing costumes or props, but the design, choice of fabrics, etc. must be their own. Students may also purchase or rent a costume or props. | f3cafd60-af04-4b32-87ef-b24ef2ec76e6 | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://clas.ucdenver.edu/nhdc/sites/default/files/attached-files/performance_category_judging_instructions_updated_2022.pdf | 2023-11-29T03:19:36+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100047.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20231129010302-20231129040302-00193.warc.gz | 203,209,102 | 4,941 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997786 | eng_Latn | 0.998034 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2908,
5895,
9510,
12862,
15909,
19339,
23134,
25374
] | [
3.765625,
2.578125
] | 9 | 0 |
The Berry College Longleaf Pine Project
Restoration of Mountain Longleaf Pine on the World’s Largest College Campus
Martin L. Cipollini, PhD.
Dana Professor of Biology
Berry College
Origins of the Berry College Longleaf Pine Project
• 1995 Roger Birkhead’s independent study showed we had trees > 200 years old
• 1999 Plant Ecology class initiated long-term census work
• 2001 SAVE club responded to logging with a tree planting event
• 2002 management plan developed by Karen Vaughn as an extension of a Plant Ecology project
Why develop a management plan?
• Longleaf pine is an ICUN Red List Endangered Species, occupying only about 2% of their original 92 million acre range.
• Old trees and late 1800’s maps suggested widespread longleaf pine community on Lavender Mountain.
• Few new trees since 1920s-1930s – local population was in decline.
• Burning had been restricted for 60-70 yrs, resulting in hardwood encroachment, fuel buildup, and near total loss of understory plants.
• Most of mountain was never plowed, suggesting that recovery of understory plants might be possible (seed bank).
• Southern Pine Beetle (SPB) and wildfires are common problems with loblolly and shortleaf pine forests on campus.
• Most importantly, the college campus context gave an excellent opportunity to engage in a variety of service-learning opportunities.
The forest is a complex ecosystem that provides numerous benefits to society, including:
1. **Habitat for Biodiversity**: Forests support a wide variety of plant and animal species, providing essential habitats for wildlife.
2. **Carbon Sequestration**: Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, helping to mitigate climate change.
3. **Water Quality**: Forests act as natural filters, improving water quality by reducing runoff and sedimentation.
4. **Soil Conservation**: The roots of trees help stabilize soil, preventing erosion and maintaining soil fertility.
5. **Recreation and Tourism**: Forests offer opportunities for outdoor activities such as hiking, hunting, and fishing, contributing to local economies.
6. **Aesthetic Value**: Forests enhance the visual appeal of landscapes, providing a sense of tranquility and beauty.
7. **Economic Benefits**: Forest products like timber, paper, and medicinal plants contribute to economic growth and employment.
8. **Cultural Significance**: Many cultures have deep spiritual connections with forests, viewing them as sacred or symbolic places.
9. **Education and Research**: Forests serve as living laboratories for scientific research and education, advancing our understanding of ecology and conservation.
10. **Resilience in Urban Areas**: Forested areas within cities can help reduce urban heat islands, improve air quality, and provide green spaces for urban residents.
Preserving these ecosystems is crucial for ensuring a sustainable future for both humans and nature.
Southern Pine Beetle Survey
August 2002
Rome District
District 1 GFC SPBS 2002
- Gilmer Co. 318 spots
- Murray Co. 212 spots
- Paulding Co. 180 spots
- Catoosa Co. 127 spots
- Fannin Co. 204 spots
- Cherokee Co. 296 spots
- Cobb Co. 81 spots
- Chattooga Co. 107 spots
- Whitfield Co. 228 spots
- Walker Co. 208 spots
- Polk Co. 238 spots
- Pickens Co. 143 spots
- Haralson Co. 151 spots
- Gordon Co. 321 spots
- Floyd Co. 250 spots
- Dade Co. 200 spots
- Bartow Co. 205 spots
Georgia Forestry Commission
Legend:
- Boundary lines of botanical distribution
- Boundary lines of economic distribution
- Southern pine beetle infested growth
- Minimum limit of Pinus Cembroides
- Areas in which the species occurs scattered
- Yield 1000 to 2000 feet B.M per acre.
- Yield 2000 to 4000 feet B.M per acre.
- Yield 3000 to 4000 feet B.M and over per acre.
MAP Showing distribution of
PINUS PAUSTRIS (LONGLEAF PINE)
PINUS CUBENSIS (CUBAN PINE)
Prepared by Chan Mohr, Agent.
Longleaf Pine Life Cycle
Seeds germinate on bare soil
Remain in “grass” stage for several years
Only grows upward in open conditions
Can live up to 500 years
Longleaf Pine is adapted to periodic surface fires
- Causes of fire
- Lightning strikes
- Native Americans and post 1830s settlers
- Adaptations
- Resistant grass stage
- Fast height growth
- Thick bark
- High sap and needle production
Seedlings and fire
- Seeds require bare soil to germinate
- Needles protect bud
- Fire kills hardwoods and other competitors
- Fire protects seedlings from some diseases (e.g., brown leaf spot).
The decline of Longleaf Pine
- Fire suppression!
- Timber harvesting
- Tapping for turpentine
- Replacement with faster growing pines like loblolly
Combined factors have contributed to a decline from +/- 90 million acres throughout the south to less than 2% of the original range!
Logging in the 1920s and 1930s was a major contributor to deforestation in the region, leading to significant environmental degradation. The images above depict scenes from that era, highlighting the extensive logging activities and the resulting landscape changes.
And then came the “Smoky the Bear” campaign...
PLEASE FOLKS, be extra careful this year!
Remember—Only you can PREVENT FOREST FIRES!
U.S. Forest Service
A Changing Message....
One careless match...Yours?
Remember—Only you can PREVENT FOREST FIRES!
One day these rats were playing in the woods
One lit some matches — and that’s no good!
So if a gorgeous forest is what you desire
Don’t play with matches...
Don’t play with fire!
Only You Can Prevent Wildfires.
www.smokeybear.com
Regional mountains harbor “Montane” Longleaf Pine
Most longleaf is in the Coastal Plain
Longleaf Pine on Berry’s Lavender Mountain
Management plan overview
• 2001 – began planting seedlings
• 2003 – began restoring burning regime on 3-5 year frequency
• 2005 – began controlling hardwoods and invasive species via removal and herbicide application
• 2005 – began establishing local seed sources via cone collection and seed orchard development
• Along the way - research, education, and outreach
• Help from Berry’s Land Resources, Student Work, Volunteer Services, Berry Longleaf Network, Interagency Burn Team, and various internal and external grants.
Imagery ©2011 DigitalGlobe, Geoeye, U.S. Geological Survey, USDA Farm Service Agency, Map data ©2011 Google - Te
The Southern Fire Science Exchange Network (SFSEN) is a collaborative effort to improve fire science and management in the southern United States. The network brings together researchers, managers, and practitioners from across the region to share information, ideas, and experiences related to fire science and management. The network aims to promote the use of science-based approaches to fire management, and to foster collaboration among stakeholders to address the challenges facing the southern forest ecosystem.
The SFSEN is supported by a variety of organizations, including the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the University of Georgia. The network is led by a steering committee that includes representatives from each of these organizations, as well as other interested parties. The steering committee meets regularly to discuss the network's goals and activities, and to make decisions about how to best achieve them.
The SFSEN has a number of ongoing projects and initiatives, including:
- **Fire Science Collaborative Research Projects**: These projects bring together researchers and managers to address specific questions related to fire science and management. The projects are designed to be collaborative, with input from all participants throughout the research process.
- **Fire Science Training and Education**: The SFSEN offers a range of training and education opportunities for researchers, managers, and practitioners. These include workshops, seminars, and online courses.
- **Fire Science Communication and Outreach**: The SFSEN works to communicate fire science findings and best practices to a wide audience, including policymakers, the media, and the general public. This includes developing educational materials, hosting public events, and participating in media interviews.
- **Fire Science Data and Information Management**: The SFSEN helps to manage and share fire science data and information, including through the development of databases and web-based tools.
The SFSEN is committed to promoting the use of science-based approaches to fire management, and to fostering collaboration among stakeholders to address the challenges facing the southern forest ecosystem. The network is open to anyone interested in fire science and management, and welcomes new members and partners. For more information about the SFSEN, please visit our website at [www.sfsen.org](http://www.sfsen.org).
Management: Planting
• Most planting done in SPB clear- and selective-cuts, followed by burning
• Some in areas with hardwood canopy reduced via herbicide injection and burning
• Focus is on low density “conservation” plantings.
• Everybody loves to plant trees!
Logging clear cut.
The forest is composed of a mix of pine and hardwood trees, with a significant presence of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda). The understory is dominated by various grasses and forbs, including goldenrod (Solidago spp.) and other native species. The forest floor is relatively open, allowing for good visibility and access to the understory vegetation. The overall health of the forest appears to be good, with no signs of significant pest or disease issues.
Management: Burning
• Fuel reduction/restoration burns done in “old growth” areas – some areas burned four times since 2003.
• Raking around bases of old growth trees was necessary to control effects of duff smoldering.
• Most planted areas have been burned at least twice since planting.
Management: Student Burn Team
• Trained to meet USFS guidelines.
• S130/S190 Fire Behavior and Safety
• Southern Company/NFWF grant provided needed equipment
Prescribed fire is an important tool for managing forests and grasslands. It can be used to reduce fuel loads, improve wildlife habitat, and promote healthy forest ecosystems. Prescribed fires are carefully planned and managed to ensure safety and minimize environmental impacts. They are typically conducted during specific weather conditions to control the direction and intensity of the fire. Prescribed fires can also be used to mimic natural fire regimes that have been altered by human activities, helping to restore ecological balance.
The forest is a mix of longleaf pine and other species, including oak and hickory. The longleaf pines are tall and slender, with long needles that give them their name. The forest floor is covered in a variety of plants, including grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs. The trees are spaced out, allowing plenty of sunlight to reach the ground. The forest is home to a variety of wildlife, including deer, rabbits, and birds.
The forest is dominated by longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) and wiregrass (Andropogon virginicus). The longleaf pine is a keystone species in the ecosystem, providing habitat for many other species and playing a crucial role in maintaining the health of the forest. The wiregrass is a grass that grows in sandy soils and is adapted to fire-prone environments. It provides food and shelter for many wildlife species and helps to stabilize the soil.
Management: Herbicides
• Direct injection for hardwood control in core management area.
• Directed spray for hardwoods and blackberry in SPB cuts.
• Cut-stump and basal bark spray for hardwoods and shrubs in logged areas.
The forest is a place where nature thrives, providing a habitat for countless species of plants and animals. It is also a place where humans can find peace and solitude, away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The forest is a place of beauty and wonder, with towering trees and lush greenery that stretch as far as the eye can see. It is a place where one can lose themselves in the sights and sounds of nature, and feel a sense of connection to something greater than themselves.
The forest is a place of history and culture, with ancient trails and ruins that speak of civilizations long gone. It is a place where one can learn about the natural world and the ways in which it has shaped our planet. It is a place where one can appreciate the beauty of the natural world and the importance of preserving it for future generations.
The forest is a place of adventure and exploration, with hidden trails and secret caves waiting to be discovered. It is a place where one can challenge themselves physically and mentally, and push their limits in ways they never thought possible. It is a place where one can experience the thrill of the unknown and the excitement of the unknown.
The forest is a place of healing and renewal, with the power to transform the mind and body. It is a place where one can find solace and peace, away from the stress and pressures of daily life. It is a place where one can reconnect with their inner self and find a sense of purpose and direction.
In short, the forest is a place of wonder, beauty, and mystery, a place where one can find a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. It is a place that has the power to change lives and inspire greatness, and it is a place that we should all take the time to explore and appreciate.
A view of a forested area with a mix of young pine trees and other vegetation in the foreground, and a dense forested hill in the background under a clear blue sky.
The left image shows a young pine plantation with small trees, while the right image shows an older pine plantation with taller trees.
Management: Grafted seed orchard
• Offsite source longleaf pine rootstock planted spring 2003.
• Grafting work initiated winter 2005.
• About 100 trees successfully grafted in 2.5 acre orchard; orchard now used in agroforestry project (sheep)
• First cones in 2011.
Pine trees and cones are a common sight in many parts of the world, providing both aesthetic value and practical uses.
Management: Seedling seed orchard
• 530 seedlings from 50 maternal trees grown in pots in summer of 2007
• Planted on a 4-acre clear cut in 2008 – 2009.
• Early growth rates of individuals have been monitored.
The left image shows a young longleaf pine tree, while the right image shows a stand of longleaf pines.
Research and Monitoring
• Plant/Forest Ecology classes: Population dynamics, post-fire mortality, soil chemistry, changes in tree community over time
• Berry Student Work program: Fuel loads, carbon storage, seedling survivorship, herbaceous plants and grasses, birds, reptiles and amphibians
• External research (Univ. West GA, Georgia State, VA Tech, Clemson, etc.) fine root regeneration, soil nutrient dynamics, mycorrhizae, dendrochronology, forest structure
• Berry NSF-REU Program: herbicides and prescribed burning effects, total carbon, herbaceous plants and grasses.
Public Education and Outreach
• Communications majors: helped develop PR plan and website.
• GFC Healthy Forests grant: funded video, pamphlets, other PR
• GA-DNR Interpretive Trails grant: funded Longleaf Trail
• Dozens of service/learning experiences have involved 100s of primary- and secondary-school students, Berry College students, and members of the general public.
Public Education and Outreach
BERRY COLLEGE OUTDOOR RECREATION
HIKING AND RUNNING TRAILS - MORE THAN 40 MILES
Legend
- Hiking and Running Trail Heads
- Longleaf Trail
- Reservoir
- WMA
- Refuge
Map Produced by Berry College Land Resources, LH
March 15, 2008
Berry College Longleaf Pine Project
This project seeks to re-establish a fire-maintained Mountain Longleaf ecosystem on Lavender Mountain, just north of Rome, GA. The mountain is part of the Berry College campus, and is home to one of the few remaining relict stands of Mountain Longleaf Pine. Aside from conservation of biodiversity, two main reasons argue for the restoration of the longleaf pine ecosystem. First, in comparison with other pines, Longleaf Pines are less susceptible to regional diseases and pests, including the Southern Pine Beetle. Second, healthy stands must be maintained by frequent controlled (prescribed) burns, which reduces the likelihood of devastating wildfires in managed areas.
In addition to re-establishing the longleaf ecosystem on the Berry College campus, our project seeks to involve students and other community members actively in the conservation process, and to educate the public on the advantages of Longleaf Pines and proper fire management. | <urn:uuid:71b86c21-9c13-4a1d-b905-decaca47f419> | CC-MAIN-2018-13 | http://www.berry.edu/uploadedFiles/Website/Academics/School_-_Math_and_Science/Departments/Biology/Longleaf_Pine_Project/_Assets/Documents/General%20Longleaf%20Pine%20Project%20Presentation.pdf | 2018-03-23T03:27:30Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-13/segments/1521257648177.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20180323024544-20180323044544-00294.warc.gz | 322,605,859 | 3,655 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.907267 | eng_Latn | 0.994307 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"tvl_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
183,
530,
1360,
2932,
3902,
4063,
4314,
4511,
4795,
5062,
5219,
5553,
5687,
6213,
6327,
8805,
9070,
9090,
9544,
9837,
9997,
10541,
10963,
11411,
11635,
13413,
13579,
13715,
13983,
14103,
14315,
14420,
14999,
15375,
15637,
16627
] | [
2.84375
] | 1 | 0 |
Scene by Scene
In this lesson, students look at a moment in history, break it down into a sequence of scenes and create a graphic visualization (like a portion of a graphic novel) as a way of retelling the events. Students take into consideration text, emotion, setting and point of view in order to convey the many perspectives involved. The lesson will likely take at least two to three class sessions.
STANDARDS
- United States History National Standards: Era 5, Civil War and Reconstruction (1850 – 1877); Standard 2
- Common Core State Standards: English Language Arts, grade 8: Writing 5, 9; Speaking and Listening 1, 2, 4; Reading Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies 2, 6
- College, Career and Civic Life Framework: Dimension 2. History 1, 6-8
Note to teachers: If you are studying the Civil War, take advantage of this lesson to explore how the Civil War impacted families living in a border state like Maryland in unique ways. If you are not studying the Civil War, use this lesson as a way for students to practice sequencing events and communicating visually, with emotion and accuracy. Consider supplies you will need for students’ work including note cards, colored pencils or pens, or even sample graphic novels if you have them available.
PROCEDURE
1. Provide a summary or synopsis of the Shriver family history and the history of Union Mills Homestead in Carroll County, Maryland. Introduce students to the resources from the Content Resources section. This information provides a rich and comprehensive portrait of one family during wartime.
2. Explain that students will be reading material related to the Shriver family (and watching clips from a film) and then creating their own graphic representations, like a graphic novel, in order to recreate essential moments in the storyline. Provide some examples of graphic novels. Remind students that strong graphic novels include pictures, typically arranged in sequential boxes, and text, typically presented as speech bubbles (for dialogue) and text boxes (for narration).
3. Individually or in small groups, students should conduct their own research on the Shriver family. As they scan the resources, students should choose characters and track the arc of a story with a beginning, middle and end. Suggest that they outline their scenes before they start drawing. Use the Scene by Scene worksheet as an organizational tool.
4. Allow ample time for students to create their graphic novels, either on computers or by hand. You can also use the Scene by Scene worksheet provided - make as many copies as you need! Consider pairing up students with a partner to discuss plans and outlines before they begin drawing. Partners can also support each other with work (i.e. one person drawing, the other developing dialogue). Provide plenty of pencils, paper, erasers and colored pencils for final copy.
5. When students have a first draft to share, they should swap with a partner and get feedback on the way the story flows, any missing moments or dialogue and editorial assistance. Once final copies have been produced, consider binding and throw a publishing party to celebrate.
EXTENSIONS
There are lots of powerful examples of graphic novels of all kinds available today. Some are nonfiction, some are memoirs, and of course some are what you might expect – all about superheroes. Once students are more familiar with this form of expression, encourage them to read, write and even experience graphic novels online.
CONTENT RESOURCES
About the Shriver Family
- Clip from Maryland’s Heart of the Civil War film: http://video.mpt.tv/video/2281227012/, 32:50-34:31
- A Collection of Commentaries flipbook: http://bit.ly/cwflipbook, chapter 8, pages 212 - 216
- Video clip from flipbook regarding the Shriver family: https://vimeo.com/101177982*
- Images and story of Shriver family from Crossroads of War: http://www.crossroadsofwar.org/discover-the-story/communities-at-war/civil-war-stories/
- Website of the Union Mills Homestead: http://www.unionmills.org/
About Graphic Novels
- Links to apps and programs for kids to use to make graphic novels or cartoons https://www.commonsensemedia.org/lists/comic-creation-apps-and-websites
- Additional lesson plans about graphic novels http://www.penguin.com/static/pdf/teachersguides/you_can_do_a_graphic_novel_TG.pdf
- Lindsey Fuller, 6th grade teacher in Decatur, IL reflects on using graphic novels as teaching technique http://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-daily/2014/08/13/graphic-novels-for-the-digital-classroom
*Note to teachers: In portions of the video clip, the names of the brothers are switched. Consider noting this with students and even drawing a family tree to keep track of the story.*
SCENE BY SCENE WORKSHEET
Here is a place for you to organize your thoughts and plan out your graphic retelling of a historical scene. Then use the worksheet to draft and publish your graphic novel.
1. What is the basic story you will be telling with your graphic novel? Write it out in three “chunks.” Remember, you’ll be breaking each chunk into a few scene squares so be brief and to the point.
- First (set the scene, introduce your characters):
- Then (what is the big moment, the big thing that happens in your story?):
- Finally (how do things get resolved? How does this all end?):
2. Get some notecards and break up each section of your story into smaller moments in time. Sections might have a different number of smaller moments depending on the amount of detail you want and need to share. On each notecard, sketch or write what you will draw and some ideas for dialogue/narration.
3. Who are your main characters and what is their point of view? Write about them here (names, relation to each other, motivations, major disagreements with each other, point of view). Take a minute to sketch them below. | e368babe-c542-4670-ba40-d3979a2a5f27 | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.heartofthecivilwar.org/media/media/download/1654 | 2022-09-28T13:31:24+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335254.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20220928113848-20220928143848-00172.warc.gz | 881,121,533 | 1,269 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997504 | eng_Latn | 0.997312 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2414,
4751,
5660,
5882
] | [
4.6875
] | 1 | 1 |
Recognizing Drug Use in Adolescents
A Quick Guide for Caregivers and Adults
NCTSN
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Concerned caregivers and adults play an important role in ensuring that youth receive adequate help. However, at times it is hard to tell that youth are developing a problem with alcohol and drugs. This guide summarizes the signs of intoxication, use, and abuse commonly reported by substance users. It is important to recognize, however, that some of the behaviors and experiences described in this booklet may also be present among adolescents who are not using substances. For this reason, when deciding on the best course of action to obtain help for your teenager, make sure to talk with your teenager, gather as much information as possible, and consult with health professionals available in your community.
Alcohol and drug use poses significant risks for the healthy development of adolescents, yet substances of abuse are often readily accessible at school, at home, and in the community. This guide has been developed to facilitate early identification of substance use problems in youth. Included is information about common drugs of abuse and key information to help identify youth at risk. Recognizing the signs of use includes how a teenager might look, act, and feel while intoxicated as well as drug paraphernalia and language associated with each drug.
Signs of intoxication vary by type of drug. Here are common signs a teen has recently used drugs or alcohol:
- Impaired judgment and motor skills
- Nausea and vomiting
- Lack of coordination
- More talkative than usual
- Rapid heartbeat and breathing
- Bloodshot eyes
- Visual or auditory hallucinations
- Marked difference in appetite
- Extreme moods, like euphoria or depression
- Slurred speech
- Agitation, irritability, anxiety, paranoia, or confusion
- Tremors, shaking
- Excessive energy or drowsiness
The following items are often used in connection with illicit drugs:
- Pipes and rolling papers
- Syringes
- Razor blades
- Small mirror or piece of glass
- Metal spoons or foil shaped into a bowl
- Small glass vials or plastic baggies
- Latex balloons
- Pacifiers, hard candy, lollipops
- Sugar cubes, Altoids
- Altered soda cans or bottles
- Empty medicine bottles/blister packs
- Excessive use of incense, cologne, or room deodorizers like Febreze®
If you suspect an overdose or see evidence of a bad reaction to substances of abuse, call 911 immediately.
| Topic | Page Range |
|------------------------------|------------|
| Introduction and Table of Contents | i-iii |
| Alcohol | 1-2 |
| Cocaine | 3-4 |
| DXM (Dextromethorphan) | 5-6 |
| Ecstasy (MDMA) | 7-8 |
| Heroin | 9-10 |
| Inhalants | 11-12 |
| LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) | 13-14 |
| Marijuana | 15-16 |
| Mescaline (peyote) | 17-18 |
| Methamphetamine | 19-20 |
| Mushrooms (psilocybin) | 21-22 |
| PCP (phencyclidine) | 23-24 |
| Tobacco | 25-26 |
| How you can help | 27 |
Alcohol
Other names for alcohol: Booze, liquor, hard A, sauce
Terms for intoxication: Drunk, wasted, tipsy, trashed, smashed, gone
Common settings for alcohol use: Alcohol is consumed in a variety of settings where supervision is limited (e.g., friends’ homes, secluded woods, or parks at night).
Paraphernalia: Shot or bar glasses, a funnel with a long tube attached, product advertising
| HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING ALCOHOL MIGHT: |
|--------------------------------------------|
| **LOOK** | **ACT** | **FEEL** |
| Dilated (large) pupils | Giggly or talkative | Less inhibited |
| Flushed cheeks or ears | Slurring words | Quickly changing moods |
| Staggering or off-balance | Poorly coordinated or slow reactions | Disoriented and dizzy |
| | Aggressive | Excessively calm or generally unconcerned |
| | Making uncharacteristic judgments | Nauseous |
Lingering effects: Consuming large amounts of alcohol can result in a hangover. Symptoms include: headache, nausea, dehydration and thirst, grogginess and fatigue, and sensitivity to light and sound.
Dangers of starting young: The younger someone starts drinking, the more likely it is that he or she will develop alcohol problems at some point in life. Because the adolescent brain is still developing, drinking at a young age can have serious effects on the brain, especially to the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making and impulse control. Heavy drinking in the teen years is also linked to learning and memory difficulties.
Other information: Sweet malt liquor beverages are often an adolescent’s first introduction to alcohol. Kegs (metal barrels containing 15 gallons of beer) are often found at large parties as they are relatively inexpensive and are a convenient mechanism for transporting large quantities of alcohol. A funnel with a long plastic tube attached, sometimes called a “beer bong,” can be used to consume alcohol very quickly.
Overdose information: Drinking too much alcohol, especially in a short amount of time, can result in alcohol poisoning, a potentially life-threatening condition. Symptoms include vomiting, slow or irregular breathing, pale or blue skin, seizures, and unconsciousness. How much alcohol is “too much” depends on a variety of factors including age, weight, sex, rate of alcohol consumption, and whether or not the person has recently eaten. In addition, taking alcohol in combination with other drugs (either prescription or illicit) can enhance the effects of alcohol and increase the danger of overdose. For information regarding drug interactions, consult your pharmacist.
Cocaine
Other names for cocaine: Coke, dust, toot, snow, blow, sneeze, powder, lines, lady, nose candy (powder cocaine), and rock (“crack” cocaine)
Terms for intoxication: Chalked up, amped up, chasing the dragon (inhaling vapors from tin foil), speed-balling (injecting a mixture of cocaine and heroin)
Common settings for drug use: Cocaine is often snorted at nightclubs, dance parties, or other social situations where having high energy levels might be acceptable or desired.
Paraphernalia: Small spoon-shaped items that can fit in the nostrils, rolled bills or straws for snorting, razor blades for making lines of powder cocaine, small bottles with screw-tops or small plastic packets with white residue, small pipes for smoking
HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING COCAINE MIGHT:
| LOOK | ACT | FEEL |
|------|-----|------|
| Dilated pupils | Restless, excited, or agitated | Increased energy |
| Bloodshot eyes | Extremely talkative | Extremely alert and aware |
| White powder on face or clothing | Paranoid (especially at higher doses—see overdose information) | Warm or hot due to increased body temperature |
| Runny or bloody nose | | Racing heart |
| Red or irritated nostrils | | |
Lingering effects: The high from cocaine is relatively short-lived (approximately 15–30 minutes when snorted, and 5–10 minutes when smoked), and many users experience a depressed mood after using, known as a “crash,” that includes irritability, fatigue, and depression. Frequent users who snort may have a chronic runny nose or frequent nosebleeds as a result of damage to their nasal tissues. Prolonged use of crack cocaine can lead to aggressive and paranoid behavior.
Other information: The word “cocaine” refers to the drug in both powder form (previous page) and more potent crystalized form, known as “crack,” (top left), which is smoked. Individual units of crack cocaine are known as “rocks.”
Cocaine is made from the coca plant and causes a short-lived high that is immediately followed by feelings of depression, edginess, and a craving for more of the drug. Cocaine may be snorted as a powder, converted to a liquid form and injected with a needle, or processed into a crystal form to be smoked with a pipe (right). Some of the items used to convert the powder to a crystal form are depicted at the lower left.
Users frequently develop tolerance to cocaine and have to continue to increase their use to achieve the feeling obtained at their first use.
Overdose information: The chemical properties of cocaine cause blood vessels to decrease in size and cause the heart to beat more rapidly. The combination of these two effects can result in a heart attack, burst blood vessel, or a seizure. At high doses, users may exhibit paranoia and aggressive or violent behavior. Additionally, the combination of cocaine and alcohol can result in sudden death.
DXM (Dextromethorphan)
What is DXM:
DXM is an ingredient commonly found in over-the-counter cough medication that produces hallucinogenic and dissociative effects when taken in large doses.
Other names for DXM:
Robo, tussin, robomax (for Robitussin™), skittles, triple-C (for Coricidin Cough & Cold™), Drix (for Drixoral™)
Terms for DXM intoxication:
Tripping, robo-copping, tussing; DXM users also refer to “plateaus” of use (see reverse side for more information)
Common settings for drug use:
Teens report use in both public party settings and in private settings such as the home or a friend’s home.
Paraphernalia:
Ammonia, citric acid, and lighter fluid can all be used to “extract” DXM from cough syrups. Evidence of home-based chemistry experiments, empty bottles, boxes, or blister packs of cough medicine should be cause for concern.
| LOOK | ACT | FEEL |
|------|-----|------|
| Dilated pupils | Uncoordinated or strange, fluid movements or changes in gait | Distorted and disjointed senses |
| Facial redness | Contorting to strange positions or making muscles rigid | Itching or dryness of the skin |
| Lethargic, “slowed down,” or disoriented | Slurring speech | Disconnected, “strobe-like” visual effects |
| Doubled over with abdominal cramps | Irregular heartbeat | Difficulty with memory |
| | | Euphoric and dream-like |
| | | Nauseous |
| | | Irregular heartbeat |
Lingering effects: Lethargy, sadness, or depression are common after use. Unpleasant “hangover” effects are noticeable with increased use.
Other information: DXM users report four levels of intoxication, referred to as “plateaus,” associated with increased dosages. Symptoms and dangers of each are outlined below:
1st — A feeling similar to alcohol or marijuana intoxication, as well as the ability to operate in social situations (associated with drinking the equivalent of 2–3oz of maximum strength cough syrup)
2nd — Visual hallucinations, impaired physical coordination, and some vomiting (3–5oz of maximum strength cough syrup)
3rd — Overwhelming feelings of disorientation, including highly impaired vision, hallucinations, delusions, and lack of muscular coordination (5–8oz of maximum strength cough syrup)
4th — Extreme “out of body” experiences, inability to move or communicate, profuse sweats, extreme nausea, blackouts (more than 8oz of maximum strength cough syrup)
Overdose information: While there is a danger of poisoning from DXM itself, there is an even greater danger from overdosing on a medication with DXM combined with other active medications such as acetaminophen, which can cause liver failure. For more information about possible interactions and overdose information, talk to your pharmacist.
Ecstasy (MDMA)
Other names for ecstasy: E, X, XTC, hug drug, Adam
Terms for ecstasy intoxication: Tripping, rolling
Common settings for drug use: Ecstasy is commonly referred to as a “club drug” and is often found at nightclubs or underground parties called raves.
Paraphernalia: Ecstasy users often use hard candy, lollipops, pacifiers, candy necklaces, or other objects to combat the common side effects of jaw-clenching or teeth-grinding. Candy and mints can also be used to conceal ecstasy tablets. Fluorescent light sticks are also popular accessories.
HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING ECSTASY MIGHT:
| LOOK | ACT | FEEL |
|------|-----|------|
| Dilated pupils | Heightened emotional responses (more empathetic than usual) | Heightened perception to color, texture, touch, and sound |
| Sweaty and thirsty | Fatigued | Thirsty and parched |
| Hyper-alert | Agitated (see “Overdose Information”) | Calmness and well-being |
| Clenched jaw | | Desire to be close to others |
| Overheated while reporting feeling cold | | Nauseous |
Lingering effects: After using, an individual is likely to feel lethargic, sad, or depressed. These unpleasant “morning after” effects intensify with increased use. Longer-term effects can include depression, trouble sleeping, paranoid or confused thoughts, and anxiety weeks after taking the drug.
Ecstasy
Other information: Ecstasy is usually found in the form of a tablet with a symbol or “brand” stamped on one or both sides (below right) but can also be found as a powder. The image below left shows the relative size of various drugs.
Overdose information: Excessive agitation can indicate an overdose, which often occurs when users “stack” doses, taking more than one dose at a time or within a short period. An MDMA overdose is characterized by high blood pressure, faintness, panic attacks, and, in more severe cases, loss of consciousness, seizures, and a drastic rise in body temperature. MDMA overdoses can be fatal, as they may result in heart failure or extreme heat stroke.
Other names for heroin: Smack, H, skag, junk, horse, brown sugar
Terms for heroin use: Mainlining (injecting), chasing the dragon (smoking)
Common settings for drug use: Heroin is now frequently smoked or snorted as well as injected, increasing its attractiveness to young people. The drug is most commonly used in private settings due to its sedative effects.
Paraphernalia: Balloons, metal spoons, straws, syringes, needles, string or elastic cord, aluminum foil, lighters
| HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING HEROIN MIGHT: |
|------------------------------------------|
| **LOOK** | **ACT** | **FEEL** |
| Flushed skin | Nodding head (“on the nod”) | Heaviness in arms and legs |
| Constricted (small) pupils | Slow or slurred speech | Surge of euphoria followed by sense of satiety |
| Droopy eyelids | Slow gait | Dry mouth |
| | Slowed breathing | Constipation |
| | Vomiting | |
Special health concerns: Users who inject heroin are at higher risk for infectious diseases including hepatitis and HIV/AIDS. They may also experience complications such as collapsed veins, abscesses at injection sites, bacterial infections, and infection of the lining of the heart. Additionally, users who smoke or snort, rather than inject, are at just as much risk for overdose as those who inject the drug.
Other information: Heroin is bought in powder form and ranges in color from white to brown. It may be compressed into pills or packaged in small balloons (left). The powder is mixed with water and heated over a flame, often using a spoon. Cord or elastic may be used to tie off an arm before the heroin is injected using a syringe.
Overdose information: Because the purity of street heroin varies, there is no “safe dose.” Impurities in the batch can cause complications and overdose. In addition, users develop tolerance quickly, and a normal dose for a regular user can be fatal for a novice. Tolerance can drop after a period of non-use, and users have been known to die upon returning to their “regular dose” after an abstinence period of a few weeks.
Symptoms of overdose include muscle spasms, slow and labored breathing or no breathing, pinpoint pupils, cold and clammy skin, bluish fingernails and lips, low blood pressure, weak pulse, disorientation, delirium, and coma.
Inhalants
Other names for inhalants: Laughing gas, whippets (nitrous oxide), poppers or snappers (amyl nitrate), rush, bolt, locker room, bullet, climax (butyl nitrite), poor man’s pot
Terms for inhalant use and intoxication: Huffing, sniffing, bagging, glading
Common settings for drug use: Basement, garage, bedroom or bathroom, the woods or secluded areas of parks, areas with no adult supervision
Paraphernalia: Spray cans, paint cans, gasoline, cleaning solutions, office supplies (e.g., correction fluid, permanent markers, glues and other adhesives), saturated clothing, paper and plastic bags, balloons
| LOOK | ACT | FEEL |
|------|-----|------|
| Dilated pupils | Disoriented | Lightheaded |
| Watery eyes | Uncoordinated | Nauseous |
| Runny nose | Slurred speech | Headachey |
| Drowsy or in a stupor | Vomiting | Buzzing in the ears |
| Stains around mouth or nose | Moody | Numbness |
| Slowed breathing | Agitated | Euphoric |
| Fumes on clothing | | |
Lingering effects: Inhalant intoxication is considerably briefer than that of other drugs, typically lasting between 15 and 30 minutes, which may add to its appeal. Users can prolong intoxication to several hours by using repeatedly, but they typically exhibit no symptoms the following day.
Specific signs of inhalant use: Caregivers may notice missing or hidden empty containers of paint, cleaning solutions, gasoline, and office supplies including correction fluid, adhesives, and permanent markers. Users may have stains around the mouth, nose, or on their hands, and fumes on their clothing.
Other information: Inhalants can be ingested in a variety of ways, including inhaling directly from a container (e.g., aerosol can, rubber cement, etc.), sniffing fumes from a paper or plastic bag held over the mouth and nose, inhaling from a balloon filled with the gas, or sniffing a fabric soaked in the substance.
The chemicals in inhalants can be extremely dangerous and potentially damage the lungs, liver, kidneys, heart, and brain. Inhalant use can also cause permanent damage to the nervous system. Long-term use can lead to hearing loss, limb spasms, and bone marrow damage. Because inhalants are highly volatile substances, even a small spark can cause a fire or explosion in enclosed areas. Users may suffer burns as a result.
Overdose information: Inhalant use can result in sudden death in several ways. Users may die from lack of oxygen caused by inhaling the chemicals, suffocate on the bag used to inhale, choke on vomit, or suffer sudden cardiac arrest known as “sudden sniffing death syndrome.” There is no “safe dose” of an inhalant. Overdose is unpredictable and can occur at any time.
LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide)
Other names for LSD: Acid, blotters, tab, orange sunshine, window pane.
Terms for LSD intoxication: Tripping, trippin’. Many terms refer to method of “delivery” (i.e., microdots or tabs), or to the pattern on the blotter paper (i.e., Bart Simpson, planets).
Common settings for drug use: LSD can be easily hidden and can thus be used in many different settings. It is often used in calm, quiet settings, or settings viewed as conducive to hallucinogenic effects.
Paraphernalia: The use of LSD doesn’t require additional objects.
| HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING LSD MIGHT: |
|----------------------------------------|
| **LOOK** | **ACT** | **FEEL** |
| Dilated pupils | Bizarre rambling or strange speech | Out of control |
| Sweaty | Rapid mood changes | Increase in body temperature |
| Tremors | Panicked or anxious | Delusions or visual hallucinations |
| Odor on clothes/in the room | Disoriented | Increase in heart rate |
| Wearing or displaying items that promote LSD use (e.g., clothing, posters, jewelry) | | “Feeling” colors or “seeing” sounds |
| | | Nauseous |
| | | Fearful of dying or going insane |
| | | Paranoid |
| | | Loss of appetite |
Lingering effects: The effects of LSD are long-lasting, and typically take over 12 hours to dissipate, depending on the dose. Other outward signs are not common. Users run the risk of re-experiencing portions of the hallucinogenic experience suddenly and without warning or during other drug use.
Other information: The photograph to the left shows LSD in several forms: from top down, in “microdot” form, on a sugar cube, and on blotter paper. Each square of blotter paper typically represents one “dose,” though the amount of drug in a dose is not standard. Liquid LSD can also be dropped on candy or mints, as depicted in the bottom left.
Below are several examples of different images printed on the absorbent paper used to distribute LSD. These patterns tend to vary by region.
Overdose information: Some users experience a severe loss of control, including having overwhelming and horrifying hallucinations, thoughts, and feelings, as well as an intense fear of death or losing one’s mind. While this experience alone, known as “having a bad trip,” is not known to be lethal, fatal accidents have occurred during states of LSD intoxication.
Marijuana
Other names for marijuana: Weed, pot, herb, ganja, bud, grass, Mary Jane, kif, chronic, skunk, boom, or gangster
Terms for marijuana use and intoxication: Smoking up, down, or out; being stoned, high, or blown out
Common settings for drug use: Marijuana can be easily hidden and can thus be used in many different settings. It is often used in calm, quiet settings, or settings viewed as conducive to hallucinogenic effects, or in settings where the odor of smoke will not be detected.
Paraphernalia: Rolling papers, pipes, water-filled pipes (“bongs”), plastic bags, small clips that may be made from tweezers, electrical clips, etc. (“roach clips”), decorative boxes designed to conceal and store the drug. Other signs of use include odor on clothes and in the bedroom, the use of incense or deodorizers, the use of eye drops, or wearing or displaying clothing, posters, jewelry, etc., promoting drug use.
| HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING MARIJUANA MIGHT: |
|-----------------------------------------------|
| **LOOK** | **ACT** | **FEEL** |
| Red, bloodshot eyes | Silly and giggly | Hungry |
| Dilated pupils | Dizzy | Impaired short-term memory |
| Sleepy appearance | Sluggish | Difficulty thinking or problem-solving |
| Uncoordinated and off-balance | | Less motivated |
| Wearing or displaying items that promote | | Temporarily less anxious or stressed |
| marijuana use (e.g., clothing, posters, | | |
| jewelry) | | |
Marijuana
**Lingering effects:** The immediate effects of marijuana typically take between 2 and 3 hours to subside. Users may feel sleepy as the effects wear off. Users may experience symptoms similar to those of tobacco smokers including coughing, asthma, wheezing, and increased incidence of respiratory problems.
**Other information:** Marijuana is a mixture of dried, shredded leaves, stems, seeds, and flowers from the hemp plant. It is typically green, brown, or grayish in color. Marijuana is most typically rolled into a cigarette called a “joint,” pictured left. Marijuana is also sometimes smoked by slicing a cigar open and replacing the tobacco with marijuana, creating what is called a “blunt.” The drug can also be smoked in pipes or out of a water pipe called a “bong” (also pictured left). Marijuana is also sometimes mixed in food or used to make tea. Use of marijuana has been associated with memory loss and deficits in learning and attention.
**Addiction:** Despite common misconceptions, people can become addicted to marijuana. A person is considered dependent or addicted to a drug if they compulsively seek out and take the drug.
**Signs of a bad reaction:** It is possible to have a bad reaction to marijuana. Users can experience acute anxiety and have paranoid thoughts. In rare cases, typically when very high doses are ingested, a user can have severe psychotic symptoms and may need emergency medical treatment. Other types of bad reactions can occur when marijuana is mixed with other drugs.
Mescaline (peyote)
What is mescaline: Mescaline is a hallucinogenic drug that comes from several species of cactus including the peyote cactus. The drug comes from button-like nodules located on the top of the plant. The effects are similar to, but not as strong as, LSD.
Other names for mescaline: Peyote, buttons, mescalito, mesc, STP
Common settings for drug use: Mescaline is typically used in group settings, such as parties or raves, or in more calm or tranquil settings conducive to its hallucinogenic effects.
Paraphernalia: Aspirin-like pills/capsules, brown powder, brown dried-up disc-shaped cactus buttons, live cactus plants
| HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING MESCALINE MIGHT: |
|---------------------------------------------|
| **LOOK** | **ACT** | **FEEL** |
| Flushed due to increased body temperature | Panicked or anxious | Faster heart rate |
| Tremors | Violent behavior | Muscle tension |
| Dilated pupils | Rambling, sparse, mangled speech | Sleeplessness |
| Sweaty | Uncoordinated | Disoriented |
| | | Paranoid |
| | | Sense of distance and estrangement |
| | | Euphoric |
Lingering effects: The effects of mescaline begin anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour after ingestion and can last up to 12 hours.
Mescaline
**Other information:** Mescaline has been part of spiritual and social rituals in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and South America for hundreds of years. Mescaline is typically ingested orally or smoked. Peyote buttons can be chewed, soaked in water to produce a liquid, or ground into a powder. The drug can also be produced synthetically and put into capsule form.
**Overdose information:** Injury and death resulting from mescaline overdose is uncommon. However, high doses can result in respiratory depression, slow pulse, and low blood pressure. Additionally, users may experience a “bad trip” including frightening visual hallucinations, a feeling of being disconnected from reality, anxiety, and panic. Because the user’s perception of reality is distorted, he or she is more at risk for fatal accidents.
Methamphetamine
Other names for methamphetamine: Meth, speed, chalk, or crank. The crystals that are smoked can be known as ice, crystal, glass, tina.
Terms for methamphetamine intoxication: Tweaking, being amped
Common settings for drug use: Methamphetamine is more common in rural and small-town areas that offer more space for hidden labs. It is also used at all-night dance parties, called raves, and in the club scene. Adolescents may also use it to lose weight.
Paraphernalia: Glass pipes, metal spoons, tinfoil formed into a bowl
| LOOK | ACT | FEEL |
|------|-----|------|
| Dry skin | Anxious | Restless |
| Acne or sores, especially on the face and arms | Incessant talking | Euphoric |
| Dilated pupils | Decreased appetite | Paranoid |
| Poor oral hygiene | Jerky movements | Irritable |
| Decayed teeth after extended use | Insomnia | Nervous |
| | Excessive teeth grinding | Unpredictable emotions |
| | | Insomnia |
Lingering effects: A period of recovery, called a “crash,” may last up to three days, with the user needing many hours of sleep. After several days of no use, the user may experience withdrawal symptoms including sleeplessness, anxiety, confusion, depression, and severe craving.
Methamphetamine
Other information: Methamphetamine comes in many forms and can be taken orally, snorted, smoked, or injected. Crystals that are smoked (middle and right) may also vary in color (including clear, white, yellow, and even pink) depending on the specific chemicals used in the particular batch. Methamphetamine is highly addictive, and users can become addicted after only one use.
Overdose information: Because each person has a different sensitivity and the potency of methamphetamine varies from batch to batch, there is no way to calculate a “safe” dose. Symptoms of overdose include a sudden increase in blood pressure and body temperature, sweating and a high fever, seeing spots, rapid breathing, dilated pupils, and convulsions. Overdose can result in cardiovascular failure, and increases in body temperature and convulsions can result in death.
Mushrooms (psilocybin)
Other names for mushrooms: 'Shrooms, magic mushrooms, caps and stems
Terms for mushroom intoxication: Tripping
Common settings for drug use: Parties, private use, group settings, often used in calm settings or those conducive to visual hallucinations
Paraphernalia: Mushrooms are consumed orally, but users often grow their own mushrooms. Small plastic or metal tubs, bricks of nutrient-rich soil, gardening supplies, and mushroom imagery should be cause for concern.
| HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING MUSHROOMS MIGHT: |
|---------------------------------------------|
| **LOOK** | **ACT** | **FEEL** |
| Dilated pupils | Giggly | Sense of connection to others and the universe |
| Clammy hands | Quick-changing emotions | Heightened perception of color and shapes |
| Wearing or displaying items that promote mushroom use (e.g., clothing, posters, jewelry) | Somewhat uncoordinated | Slightly nauseous |
| | Anxious and paranoid | Butterflies in stomach |
Lingering effects: Lethargy and sleepiness are common after-effects of psilocybin use.
Mushrooms
**Other information:** Mushrooms are usually dried before ingestion (right). They may be eaten alone, with food, or brewed as a tea. One danger of ingesting mushrooms is the possibility of accidentally consuming one of the many poisonous varieties that may resemble a recreational type.
Although it is illegal in all states to possess mushrooms, laws regarding the possession of mushroom spores vary by state and country. In states where it is not illegal, some people grow them from kits (bottom), which are widely available via the Internet.
**Overdose information:** Psilocybin, the active substance in mushrooms, has a very low toxicity. There are no known cases of death from psilocybin ingestion alone. However, when taken in combination with other drugs or during times of emotional instability, it can cause negative experiences, often called “bad trips.” The user may experience frightening hallucinations, anxiety, a deep feeling of disconnection from the self, or a sense of confronting internal conflicts, all of which can cause intense feelings and even panic.
PCP (phencyclidine)
Other names for PCP: Angel dust, ozone, wack, rocket fuel, hog, squeeze, dust, zoot, peace pill, killer joints or crystal supergrass (when mixed with marijuana), space base (when mixed with crack)
Terms for mushroom intoxication: Smoking wet or wetting up (when smoking cigarettes or joints dipped in PCP)
Paraphernalia: Tablets, pills, gelatin capsules, dark-colored cigarettes, paper or cellophane packets, and clear liquid in small glass vials
| HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING PCP MIGHT: |
|----------------------------------------|
| **LOOK** | **ACT** | **FEEL** |
| Sweaty | Speech difficulties | Sleepy |
| Poor muscle coordination | Restless | Numb |
| Increased breathing | Panicked or anxious* | Changes in body awareness |
| Rapid and involuntary eye movement | Hallucinating* | (similar to alcohol) |
| Blank stare | Delusional* | Anxious and irritable* |
| | | Paranoid* |
| | | Delirious* |
* Associated with higher doses of PCP. The effects of PCP vary depending on many factors such as dose, purity, and user’s state of mind. It is extremely hard to predict how someone will react to PCP, as it simultaneously acts like a hallucinogen, stimulant, depressant, and anesthetic.
How is PCP taken: PCP comes in tablet, liquid, and powder form (pictured on the reverse side). It can be ingested orally, snorted, injected, or smoked (typically by lacing marijuana or tobacco cigarettes; sometimes by lacing herbs such as mint or parsley). PCP can also be absorbed through the skin.
Bad reaction/overdose information: PCP is associated with many risks and is considered by some to be one of the most dangerous drugs of abuse. PCP is known for inducing violent behavior and negative physical reactions such as seizures and coma. Its use can lead to death from respiratory repression. Altered perception of the mind and body can lead to reckless behavior and/or loss of touch with reality which can lead to self-mutilation, injury, or death.
Many PCP users are brought to the emergency room due to the drug’s negative psychological effects or because of an overdose.
Tobacco
Other names for tobacco: Cigarettes are also called cigs, smokes, and butts; smokeless tobacco is also called dip, chew, snuff, and pinch.
Common settings for initial drug use: Older children and teenagers may start using as a result of peer pressure, wanting to fit in with friends who smoke or chew, to imitate adults they admire, or as an act of rebellion.
Paraphernalia: Ashtrays, lighters, metal cigarette cases, rolling papers
| HOW SOMEONE CURRENTLY USING TOBACCO MIGHT: |
|--------------------------------------------|
| **LOOK** | **ACT** | **FEEL** |
| Protrusion in the cheek/lip from chewing tobacco | More alert | Light-headed |
| Spitting mucus/discolored saliva | Use room or fabric deodorizer | Depressed appetite |
| Discolored teeth/fingernails | Sneak out of the house for short periods of time | Relaxed |
| Smoky-smelling clothes | | Craving upon awakening |
Other information: About 1 in 10 (11.8%) boys in high school use smokeless tobacco. Twenty-five percent of users started smoking in 6th grade, 75% in 9th grade. In 2003, 3.6 million young people age 12 to 17 reported using tobacco in the past month. Cigarette smokers are fourteen times more likely to use marijuana than are non-smokers. The average age of first cigarette use is 12–13 years. About 90% of adult smokers started smoking before their 19th birthday. After the onset of intermittent smoking, tobacco users typically become dependent on nicotine quite rapidly. Furthermore, compared to boys, girls tend to develop symptoms of dependence faster.
Nicotine is a stimulant and users experience an initial “rush.” Most users report using tobacco products to relax. Users experience this feeling of relaxation when the new dose of nicotine alleviates withdrawal symptoms, which can start as soon as an hour after last use. People who smoke or chew regularly experience a craving upon waking, due to the lowered level of nicotine in their system.
Overdose information: Nicotine is a poison and in high doses can be very toxic. However, overdose most commonly occurs when a person tries to stop smoking or chewing with the aid of nicotine gum or patches. The gum or patch may deliver too-high a dose, resulting in overdose.
Symptoms include dizziness, headache, upset stomach, vomiting, cold sweats, difficulty breathing, seizures, and heart rhythm disturbances.
How you can help...
If you believe that your teenager is using drugs and alcohol, act quickly. Talk to your teenager and seek help. For tips on how to talk to your teen, visit the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information at www.health.org. To find referrals for local substance abuse treatment facilities, visit SAMHSA’s substance abuse treatment locator at http://dasis3.samhsa.gov.
Much of the information contained in this guide was obtained from the following sources:
Drug Enforcement Administration | www.usdoj.gov
National Cancer Institute | www.cancer.gov
National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information (public domain) | www.health.org
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism | www.niaaa.nih.gov
National Institute on Drug Abuse | www.nida.nih.gov
Office of National Drug Control Policy | www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications
The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign | www.theantidrug.com
About the National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Established by Congress in 2000, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) is a unique collaboration of academic- and community-based service centers whose mission is to raise the standard of care and increase access to services for traumatized children and their families across the United States. Combining knowledge of child development, expertise in the full range of child traumatic experiences, and attention to cultural perspectives, the NCTSN serves as a national resource for developing and disseminating evidence-based interventions, trauma-informed services, and public and professional education. For more information, go to www.NCTSNet.org.
This project was funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The views, policies, and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAMHSA or HHS. | e0369988-17c2-4e6a-988a-5903788ff40f | CC-MAIN-2024-30 | https://myflfamilies.com/sites/default/files/2023-05/RecognizingDrugUse.pdf | 2024-07-24T05:57:56+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-30/segments/1720763518157.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20240724045402-20240724075402-00833.warc.gz | 362,313,671 | 8,271 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.987928 | eng_Latn | 0.997374 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
127,
843,
2473,
3264,
5243,
6339,
8006,
9201,
10732,
11922,
13260,
13953,
15732,
16715,
17982,
19398,
21613,
22466,
24624,
26153,
28146,
28980,
30210,
31080,
32510,
33598,
35427,
36312,
37560,
39031,
39975,
40967
] | [
2.171875,
1.7421875
] | 2 | 1 |
THE INSTRUCTIONAL COACHING CYCLE
IDENTIFY
LEARN
IMPROVE
“Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.”
— Atul Gawande (2011)
Atul Gawande’s comment is often used to justify coaching. What people overlook in his comment, however, are the words “done well.” Coaching “done well” can and should dramatically improve human performance. However, coaching done poorly can be, and often is, ineffective, wasteful, and sometimes even destructive.
What, then, is coaching done well? For the past five years, researchers at the Kansas Coaching Project at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning and at the Instructional Coaching Group in Lawrence, Kansas, have been trying to answer that question by studying what coaches do. The result of that research is an instructional coaching cycle that fosters the kind of improvement Gawande describes.
One coach who uses the instructional coaching cycle is Jackie Jewell from Othello School District in Washington. A participant in one of our research projects, Jewell used the coaching cycle when collaborating with Melanie Foster, a new elementary teacher in her district. Foster had sought out Jewell for coaching because she felt she needed to improve the way she gave positive attention to students. While Jewell would happily have focused on increasing Foster’s positivity ratio, instead she suggested that it might be worth confirming that encouragement was the right goal.
To start, Jewell recorded one of Foster’s lessons using her iPad and shared the video with her.
After watching the video separately, both agreed that Foster was effective at encouraging students. But Foster saw something else she wanted to work on: student engagement. Her students were not staying focused during small-group activities. Armed with this new insight, she set a goal that students would be on task at least 90% of the time during small-group activities.
Jewell recorded another lesson, which revealed that students were on task about 65% of the time. It also showed that students didn’t fully understand the expectations for their activities. In other words, students were off task because they didn’t know what to do.
Agreeing that Foster needed to set more explicit expectations for small groups, Jewell and Foster created a checklist describing the expectations, and Jewell modeled how to teach them. Foster also decided that she and her learning
Once students understood their tasks, they hit the goal quickly after only a few modifications. Eventually, students were consistently on task 90% or higher, and this showed up in their test scores as well. Before coaching, students received scores on quizzes that were on average about 20%. After coaching, their scores averaged above 70%. Coaching helped Foster teach more effectively, and her improved instruction led to better student learning.
**HOW WE STUDY WHAT COACHES DO**
Kansas Coaching Project and Instructional Coaching Group researchers have studied instructional coaching since 1996, focusing in the past five years on the steps coaches move through to help teachers set and hit goals.
In the process, we experimented with a research methodology that we used to identify a process to be studied, assess what works and doesn’t work when the practice is implemented, and refine the process based on what is learned during implementation.
To study instructional coaching, Kansas Coaching Project researchers worked with coaches from Beaverton, Oregon, and Othello, Washington. In addition, Instructional Coaching Group researchers conducted more than 50 interviews with coaches around the country. In large part, the instructional coaching cycle is the result of what was learned from these studies and interviews.
Researchers followed these steps:
1. Instructional coaches implement the coaching process.
2. They video record their coaching interactions and their teachers’ implementation of the teaching practices.
3. They monitor progress toward their goals.
4. Researchers interview coaches and teachers to monitor progress as they move through the coaching cycle.
5. Researchers meet with coaches two or three times a year (at the end of each coaching cycle) to discuss how the coaching process can be refined or improved.
6. Refinements are made, and the revised coaching model and research process is repeated.
Researchers have moved through this cycle eight times in Beaverton and Othello. Over time, moving through increasingly effective coaching cycles, we have come up with a simple but powerful way to conduct instructional coaching.
**THE INSTRUCTIONAL COACHING CYCLE**
The coaching cycle that Jewell used involved many steps embedded in three components.
1. **Identify:** Jewell and Foster got a clear picture of reality (by video recording the class), identified a goal (90% time on task), and identified a teaching strategy that would help them hit the goal (teaching expectations).
2. **Learn:** Jewell used a checklist and modeling to make sure Foster understood how to use the identified strategy.
3. **Improve:** Jewell and Foster monitored progress toward the goal and made modifications to the way the strategy was used until the goal was hit. Here is how the cycle works. (See diagram on p. 10.)
---
**IDENTIFY**
The coach and teacher collaborate to set a goal and select a teaching strategy to try to meet the goal.
This involves several steps.
First, the coach helps the teacher get a clear picture of reality, often by video recording the teacher’s class. Then the coach and teacher identify a change the teacher would like to see in student behavior, achievement, or attitude.
Next, they identify a measurable student goal that will show that the hoped-for change has occurred. For example, a coach and teacher in Othello set the goal of reducing transition time from a four-minute average to a 20-second average. Since there were four transitions per period, hitting the goal added 15 minutes of instructional time to each 50-minute period — giving students 40 more hours of learning over the course of the year.
Other data besides video that might be gathered include student work, observation, and formal and informal evaluation results. Video, however, is quick, cheap, and powerful, and, if teachers only look at student work, they may miss some important aspect of their teaching.
Teachers frequently have an imprecise understanding of what their teaching looks like until they see a video recording of their class. When video is used within coaching, it is best if teacher and coach watch the video separately (Knight, 2014).
After data have been gathered, the coach and teacher meet to identify next steps. Coaches can use these questions to guide teachers to set powerful goals:
1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how close was the lesson to your ideal?
2. What would have to change to make the class closer to a 10?
3. What would your students be doing?
4. What would that look like?
5. How would we measure that?
6. Do you want that to be your goal?
7. Would it really matter to you if you hit that goal?
8. What teaching strategy will you try to hit that goal?
Once a measurable goal has been established, the instructional coach and teacher choose a teaching strategy that the teacher would like to implement in an attempt to hit the goal. To support teachers during this step, coaches need to have a deep knowledge of a small number of high-yield teaching strategies that address many of the concerns teachers identify. Coaches in Beaverton and Othello learned the teaching strategies in *High-Impact Instruction: A Framework for Great Teaching* (Knight, 2013).
Goals that make the biggest difference for students are powerful, easy, emotionally compelling, reachable, and student-focused.
**Powerful.** The most effective goals address important aspects of student learning. Also, powerful goals address ongoing issues in the classroom rather than single events.
**Easy.** Not every goal is easy to reach, and goals are not improved if they are watered down or made less than powerful. However, given the choice between two equally powerful goals, take the one that is easier to reach. An easy-to-achieve goal leads more quickly to meaningful change for students, reinforces teachers’ and students’ efforts sooner, and frees up time for other tasks, such as setting other improvement goals.
**Emotionally compelling.** If teachers are going to invest a lot of time in changing their teaching to reach important goals, they have to choose goals that matter to them.
**Reachable.** Reachable goals have two characteristics: They are measurable, and they are ones teachers can reach because they have strategies to do so.
**Student-focused.** Usually these are goals that address student achievement, behavior, or attitude. The power of a student-focused goal is that it is objective and, therefore, holds coach and teacher accountable until meaningful improvements are made in students’ lives.
Once teacher and coach set a goal and choose a teaching strategy, the teacher must learn how to implement the strategy. For the coach, this means explaining and modeling teaching strategies.
When instructional coaches explain teaching strategies, they need to give precise and clear explanations. Coaches are clearer when they use checklists. This doesn’t mean coaches prompt teachers to mindlessly implement every step on a checklist. However, before teachers make adaptations, coaches need to be certain teachers know what they are modifying.
Coaches need to be precise and provisional when they explain teaching practices. They should clearly explain the items on a checklist while also asking teachers how they might want to modify the checklist to best meet students’ needs or take advantage of their own strengths as teachers.
One benefit of establishing objective goals as a part of instructional coaching is that goals provide a way to assess whether teachers’ modifications improve or damage the teaching strategies they use. If teachers modify strategies and hit their goals, their modifications didn’t decrease effectiveness and may have helped students hit their goal. However, if the goal is not met, the coach and teacher can revisit the checklist to see if the strategy needs to be taught differently.
Coaches who explain strategies in precise and provisional ways foster high-quality implementation yet give teachers the freedom to use their professional discretion to modify teaching strategies to better meet students’ needs.
The next step is modeling. To understand how to implement teaching strategies, teachers need to see them being implemented by someone else. The coaches from Beaverton, Oregon, found that modeling can occur in at least five ways.
**In the classroom.** Teachers report that they prefer that coaches only model the targeted practice, rather than the whole lesson. While coaches model, collaborating teachers complete checklists as they watch the demonstration. Coaches may ask someone to video record the model so that coach and teacher can review it later.
**In the classroom with no students.** Some teachers prefer that coaches model teaching strategies without students present.
**Co-teaching.** In some cases, such as when a lesson involves content unfamiliar to the coach, coach and teacher co-teach.
**Visiting other teachers’ classrooms.** When teachers are learning new procedures or management techniques, they may
| COACHING BEHAVIOR | OBSERVATION |
|-------------------|-------------|
| **IDENTIFY** | |
| Teacher gets a clear picture of current reality by watching a video of their lesson or by reviewing observation data. (Video is best.) | |
| Coach asks the identify questions with the teacher to identify a goal. | |
| Teacher identifies a student-focused goal. | |
| Teacher identifies a teaching strategy to use to hit the goal. | |
| **LEARN** | |
| Coach shares a checklist for the chosen teaching strategy. | |
| Coach prompts the teacher to modify the practice if he or she wishes. | |
| Teacher chooses an approach to modeling that he or she would like to observe and identifies a time to watch modeling. | |
| Coach provides modeling in one or more formats. | |
| Teacher sets a time to implement the practice. | |
| **IMPROVE** | |
| Teacher implements the practice. | |
| Data is gathered (by teacher or coach, in class or while viewing video) on student progress toward to the goal. | |
| Data is gathered (by teacher or coach, in class or while viewing video) on teacher’s implementation of the practice (usually on the previously viewed checklist). | |
| Coach and teacher meet to discuss implementation and progress toward the goal. | |
| Teacher makes modifications until the goal is met. | |
choose to visit other teachers’ classrooms to see how they implement them.
**Watching video.** Teachers can also see a model of a teaching strategy by watching a video, either from a video sharing website or provided by the coach.
Coaches can accomplish this by video recording classes and sharing the video with collaborating teachers so they can assess for themselves how they implemented the new teaching strategies and whether students have hit the identified goals.
Many goals cannot be seen by looking at video, so coaches may have to gather observation data, or teachers and coaches may have to review assessment data or student work.
Next, coach and teacher get together to talk about how the strategy was implemented, and especially whether students hit the goal. This conversation usually involves these questions:
1. What are you pleased about?
2. Did you hit the goal?
3. If you hit the goal, do you want to identify another goal, take a break, or keep refining the current new practice?
4. If you did not hit the goal, do you want to stick with the chosen practice or try a new one?
5. If you stick with the chosen practice, how will you modify it to increase its impact? (Revisit the checklist.)
6. If you choose another practice, what will it be?
7. What are your next actions?
(See table on p. 14.)
When teacher and coach meet, they should use these questions to focus their conversation. Many coaches begin by asking teachers what they think went well. Following that, they discuss whether they met the goal.
When teachers reach their goals, coaches ask whether they want to set and pursue other goals or take a break from coaching. When teachers don’t reach their goals, they identify changes that need to be made.
Teachers and coaches keep moving forward by modifying the way they use the identified teaching strategies, trying another strategy, or sticking with an identified teaching strategy until they reach the goal. (See table on p. 16.)
**MEASURE OF EFFECTIVENESS**
The instructional coaching cycle is only one element of effective coaching programs. Effective coaches also need professional learning that ensures they understand how to navigate the complexities of helping adults, have a deep understanding of a comprehensive, focused set of teaching practices, communicate effectively, lead effectively, and work in systems that foster meaningful professional learning (Knight, 2007, 2011, 2013).
However, as important as those factors are, it may be most important that coaches understand how to move through the components of an effective coaching cycle that leads to improvements in student learning.
Instructional coaches who use a proven coaching cycle can partner with teachers to set and reach improvement goals that have an unmistakable, positive impact on students’ lives.
**REFERENCES**
Gawande, A. (2011, October 3). Personal best. *The New Yorker*. Available at www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best.
Knight, J. (2007). *Instructional coaching: A partnership approach to improving instruction*. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Knight, J. (2011). *Unmistakable impact: A partnership approach for dramatically improving instruction*. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Knight, J. (2013). *High-impact instruction: A framework for great teaching*. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Knight, J. (2014). *Focus on teaching: Using video for high-impact instruction*. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Jim Knight (email@example.com) is director of the Kansas Coaching Project at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning and president of the Instructional Coaching Group. Marti Elford (firstname.lastname@example.org) is a special education lecturer in the University of Kansas Department of Special Education. Michael Hock (email@example.com) is director and Devona Dunekack (firstname.lastname@example.org) is project coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. Barbara Bradley (email@example.com) is associate professor of reading education at the University of Kansas. Donald D. Deshler (firstname.lastname@example.org) is former director of the Center for Research on Learning. David Knight (email@example.com) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education. | <urn:uuid:8fb7934b-7ef8-4497-baf5-de22beff241d> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | http://cabooseit.s3.amazonaws.com/makes_sense_strategies/3-steps-to-great-coaching.pdf | 2019-01-22T13:41:42Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583850393.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20190122120040-20190122142040-00158.warc.gz | 40,173,587 | 3,432 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997921 | eng_Latn | 0.998298 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
58,
2452,
7602,
11495,
13019,
17293
] | [
3.265625
] | 1 | 1 |
From the Editor
This newsletter brings to you the stories from the academic year 2014-15 that we are yet to share with you. We invite you to reminisce with us.
SLICE OF LIFE
Work is leisure when children are allowed their space and time on their own!
The school is indeed a fragile but rich ecosystem - of flora and children
At school, we know the value of a tree just as the birds do
"I was once a newspaper with a life span of a day – now I am an eternal piece of art!"
A bit of The School in everything the children do – art from waste
Look who’s hiding here! But nothing at school misses the children’s eyes.
Words are tools of a language; using them right is craftsmanship. To use words in a way that they sparkle is artistry.
- Anita Rau Badami
Interview
The World Wide Web will tell you a lot about celebrated Indian-Canadian author Anita Rau Badami; her books even more. However, when I met her in November 2014 after what I thought was adequate research about her, I was humbled by a lady in love with words and art. I quickly forgot all about my research and carefully prepared questions as we sat together on the Madras Terrace of the school’s office building, watching the trees and birds and chatting as comfortably as only old friends or complete strangers do.
Four successful books and many writing sojourns later, Anita was on a new mission – to get back in touch with today’s India, India’s young and along the way with a part of herself. She said that she fed off the energy of people she is surrounded by. No wonder then that she chose The School and the school welcomed her.
In the two months that she spent at the school, she had regular sessions with the senior school students on literature and art. For someone who had never taught literature before, the experience of sharing what she otherwise took for granted and developing methods of effectively doing so were a revelation to her. She hopes that the time the children spent with her would give those who may aspire, the courage to become writers.
Objective Analysis
- Composing essays on a piece of literature
- How to construct an essay
- How a reader responds to a story
- The stand one takes in analyzing a piece of literature
- Connect various elements in the story to the answer
Dissecting two stories from their syllabus – the art and craft of writing a story
- How a writer constructs a story
- How everything in a story is connected
- What is the mood which is a deliberate choice that a writer makes
- Sense of place, sense of time
- Characterizations linked to the plot
- The writer thinks of everything and does not leave anything to chance
Anita went back to art school after she turned 50 to pursue her life-long dream of making a paint brush work like a magician’s wand. She considers herself and artist and an author and in all fairness to that she also conducted some sessions on art for the students of classes XI and XII.
Indian and Western Art
- Films on Art Appreciation
- Drawing from traditional and folk arts
- Conversations on art
- Playing with oil colors
- Exploring color consciousness
- Creating illusions with colors
- Respect for the tools of an artist
We ended our chat with me promising to send her the first copy of this interview and a suggestion that she write on her experiences at The School. “Maybe I will. Or maybe I will just write my next book”, was her response as she saw me off. I couldn’t help but think of what Norman Mailer once said about writers; ‘The writer can grow as a person or he can shrink… His curiosity, his reaction to life must not diminish.’
Time never stands still... Class XII cooks the customary farewell lunch for the school
Menu
- Hash Browns
- Burrito
- Chocofudge n' cookies
A Preview to the World of Work
As a part of the weekly Wednesday assembly, the students of the middle and senior school participate in discussions with guests involved in various fields of work. Starting from the academic year 2014-15, one Wednesday assembly of every month has been titled "the World of Work", where two guest speakers are invited. The intention of this assembly is to create a space where students from classes 9 to 12 get to interact with the guests with a specific aim to get realistic understanding of the world of work, of how wide and full of options "work" can be and that it need not be understood as the choice of a narrow field, and most importantly how work evolves from what one would like to do to how one would like to do it as an individual evolves.
Guests from the fields of:
- Medicine
- Theatre
- Performing arts
- Visual arts
- Publishing
- Literature
- Engineering
- Science
- Advertising
- Business
- Management
Content of the presentations:
- Description of their work
- How they entered their field of work
- Their beginning years at work
- What they enjoy the most about their work
- A typical day at work
- The contemporary developments in the field
- The qualifications required for the field of work
A pick of questions from the students to the guests:
- What are the challenges you face at work?
- What is the future of the field given the current technological and socio-political developments
- What attitude, strengths and skills does one need for the field of work
- How do you make it commercially viable/is it possible to make a living out of it?
What I see in nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.
-Albert Einstein | 840e88ca-80ad-4de4-9e59-21475372647f | CC-MAIN-2024-42 | https://theschoolkfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/the-newsletter-issue-6-2016-jan.pdf | 2024-10-13T14:38:32+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-42/segments/1727944255197.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20241013122830-20241013152830-00491.warc.gz | 488,662,644 | 1,183 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997951 | eng_Latn | 0.998641 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
620,
3603,
5348,
5525
] | [
2.390625
] | 1 | 1 |
Which would a woodlouse prefer?
Featured scientist: Nora Straquadine from Michigan State University
Research Background:
Woodlice are small crustaceans that live on land. They look like bugs, but are actually more closely related to crabs and lobsters. To escape predators they hide in dark places. They spend most of their time underground and have very poor eyesight.
One day, when digging around in the dark dirt of her compost pile, Nora noticed that there were many, many woodlice hiding together. This made her wonder how woodlice decide where to live. Because woodlice have very simple eyesight, Nora thought that maybe they use dark and light colors to decide where to go. They might choose to move towards darker colors and away from lighter colors to prevent ending up above ground where predators can easily find them.
Nora, along with classmates in her ecology class at Michigan State University, decided to run an experiment to study woodlouse behavior. She collected 10 woodlice from her compost pile and placed them in a jar. She brought the jar into the lab. Then she chose a set of trays to work with from what she had in the lab – white, with tall sides. The sides of the tray were tall and smooth so the woodlice were not able to climb out. On one end of the tray Nora put some dark soil, and on the other side she put lighter leaves. If her hypothesis was correct, Nora predicted that woodlice would more often choose to move towards the dark soil habitat, compared to the lighter leaves habitat.
For each trial, Nora gently picked up a single woodlouse with forceps. She then placed it in the center of the tray. All the woodlice were positioned so they started facing the top of the tray, not at either habitat type. The woodlice then chose to move towards one end of the tray or the other. When they reached one of the piles the students recorded which habitat they chose. It was then picked up with forceps. Nora and her classmates recorded its length and placed it in a new jar so it could be released back into the compost pile once the experiment was done.
After running this experiment and looking at the data, Nora realized it did not work. The small sample size of only 10 individuals was not enough to see a pattern. Also, she realized that after one woodlouse went a certain way, all the others would follow it, maybe because they were following a scent trail. She decided she had to do the experiment again, this time with more woodlice and in a way that would prevent them following each other’s scent trails.
For her second try, Nora increased her sample size and collected 51 woodlice from a different compost pile. Just like the first experiment, Nora placed lighter leaves on one end of a white tray and dark soil on the other. All the methods were the same, except for a few important changes. To get rid of scent trails, this time Nora wiped down the middle of the tray with a clean wet paper towel between trials. She also realized that she had forgotten to control for humidity on both sides of the tray, so she added equal amounts of water to both habitats to control for humidity. This ensured that if woodlice did show a preference for either habitat it would be due to habitat color, not humidity. Nora also used a stopwatch and recorded how long it took for an individual to choose one of the two habitats.
A. Nora collecting woodlice from the compost pile for her experiment, B. Nora measuring a woodlouse with calipers, C. Woodlice in a jar with a moist paper towel for humidity, D. The white tray with light leaves and dark soil habitats.
Scientific Question: Do woodlice have a preference for the dark soil or the light leaves, or neither?
What is the hypothesis? Find the hypothesis in the Research Background and underline it. A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for an observation, which can then be tested with experimentation or other types of studies.
Scientific Data:
Use the data from Nora’s second experiment to answer the scientific question:
Table 1: Individual number, time it took to choose (seconds), individual length (millimeters), and habitat choice (dark soil, light leaves).
| # | Time (s) | Length (mm) | Habitat Choice |
|---|----------|-------------|----------------|
| 1 | 10.06 | 12.6 | Soil |
| 2 | 19.16 | 9.3 | Soil |
| 3 | 9.19 | 8.2 | Soil |
| 4 | 3.91 | 10.4 | Leaves |
| 5 | 1.53 | 12.5 | Soil |
| 6 | 19.47 | 10.8 | Soil |
| 7 | 7.9 | 6.7 | Leaves |
| 8 | 12.85 | 9.9 | Leaves |
| 9 | 15.19 | 7.7 | Leaves |
| 10| 2.44 | 10 | Soil |
| 11| 2.56 | 7.4 | Soil |
| 12| 2 | 7.7 | Soil |
| 13| 3.09 | 9 | Soil |
| 14| 4.44 | 13 | Soil |
| 15| 9.81 | 9.2 | Soil |
| 16| 2.69 | 9.1 | Soil |
| 17| 4.5 | 7.2 | Leaves |
| 18| 4.81 | 12.1 | Leaves |
| 19| 4.37 | 9.3 | Leaves |
| 20| 33.91 | 7.3 | Leaves |
| 21| 35.22 | 9 | Soil |
| 22| 17.12 | 6.3 | Leaves |
| 23| 27.63 | 7.6 | Leaves |
| 24| 2.07 | 8.1 | Leaves |
| 25| 27.09 | 6.5 | Leaves |
| 26| 5.81 | 11 | Soil |
| 27| 47.25 | 8.7 | Leaves |
| 28| 11.97 | 8.8 | Leaves |
| 29| 4.06 | 8.1 | Leaves |
| 30| 9.72 | 10.9 | Leaves |
| 31| 7.09 | 7.3 | Soil |
| 32| 3.84 | 8.9 | Leaves |
| 33| 4 | 7.1 | Leaves |
| 34| 6.78 | 11.3 | Leaves |
| 35| 2.75 | 8.8 | Soil |
| 36| 15.03 | 6.1 | Soil |
| 37| 2.28 | 5.3 | Soil |
| 38| 1.28 | 8.5 | Leaves |
| 39| 6.87 | 8.1 | Leaves |
| 40| 4.29 | 6.5 | Leaves |
| 41| 8.78 | 7.6 | Leaves |
| 42| 3 | 8.1 | Soil |
| 43| 8.22 | 6.7 | Leaves |
| 44| 2.09 | 8.1 | Soil |
| 45| 6.44 | 10.3 | Soil |
| 46| 4.63 | 12.4 | Soil |
| 47| 4.87 | 7.5 | Leaves |
| 48| 3.16 | 10.6 | Leaves |
| 49| 7.54 | 8.9 | Soil |
| 50| 1.41 | 11.5 | Leaves |
| 51| 4.1 | 8.9 | Leaves |
Number of individuals that chose soil
Number of individuals that chose leaves
What data will you graph to answer the question?
Independent variable: ________________________________
Dependent variable: ________________________________
Draw your graph below: Identify any changes, trends, or differences you see in your graph. Draw arrows pointing out what you see, and write one sentence describing what you see next to each arrow.
Interpret the data:
Make a claim that answers the scientific question.
What evidence was used to write your claim? Reference specific parts of the table or graph.
Explain your reasoning and why the evidence supports your claim. Connect the data back to what you learned about woodlice and their poor eyesight.
Did the data support Nora’s hypothesis? Use evidence to explain why or why not. If you feel the data were inconclusive, explain why.
Your next steps as a scientist: Science is an ongoing process. What new question(s) should be investigated to build on Nora’s research? What future data should be collected to answer your question(s)? | <urn:uuid:20019859-de72-4601-ad42-ea1ae39caa54> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | http://datanuggets.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Which-would-a-woodlouse-prefer_studentC.pdf | 2018-10-19T22:03:18Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583512460.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20181019212313-20181019233813-00094.warc.gz | 92,656,936 | 2,046 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.997869 | eng_Latn | 0.999112 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
2088,
3596,
6785,
7216,
7793
] | [
4.75
] | 3 | 0 |
CELEBRATING BALFOUR:
TODAY, TOMORROW, FOREVER
Balfour Accomplished by Beverley-Jane Stewart
A Project of The Israel Forever Foundation
# Table of Contents
**Why Balfour Matters** ................................................................. 4
by Dr. Elana Heideman, Executive Director, The Israel Forever Foundation
**A Pivotal Moment in History** .................................................. 6
**From Herzl to Balfour:**
*Fostering the Jewish National Dream* ........................................... 7
**The Power of Words:**
*The Leadership Behind Balfour* .................................................... 9
**Balfour and Jewish Ancestral Rights** ............................................. 13
**The Declaration Heard Around the World** .................................. 15
**An Innovation in International Law** .............................................. 20
**Steps Toward Statehood** ............................................................. 22
**Turning Dream Into Reality** ......................................................... 23
**Balfour Today and Every Day** ....................................................... 25
**Dear Lord Balfour** ........................................................................ 28
Response by Yaakov Hagoel, Vice Chairman, World Zionist Organization
Written and compiled by Dr. Elana Heideman
Graphic Design by Chana Schiffmiller
©The Israel Forever Foundation, All Rights Reserved
WHY BALFOUR MATTERS
Imagine the world of European Jewry in 1917. So many streams of activity were taking place as World War I neared its end, with political and nationalistic endeavors taking center stage. Simultaneously, Jews were increasingly welcomed in some areas, while increasingly threatened in others.
Few people realize that only at this late date were some Jews finally receiving freedoms previously unknown in Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Russia and elsewhere. While some sought an assimilated social reality in the arms of the cosmopolitan centers of the world, for others, the desire for Jewish freedom could be found in the creation of a home for the Jewish people in our ancient land.
Drawn from a long history of recognition of the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, there was an undeniable link that had been respected by every faith, every race, every nation throughout history. For Jews throughout the world, the dream of a return to Zion has forever been a centerpiece of Jewish prayer and to which we have maintained ties for over 3000 years in exile. The reference to Palestine implied a Jewish land, long before the State of Israel was born. With the Balfour Declaration, this dream was finally affirmed by a world power who sought to help bring that dream to life.
We are now immersed in a different spectrum of activity, where politicized messages convolute the meaningful reality of Israel’s existence. We are surrounded on all sides by messages of hate, and we trust in the good work being done by the advocacy organizations and representational bodies around the world helping to defend and protect the image of the Israel.
In the process of the growing conflict, growing division has occurred. We have forgotten that, with all of the diversity of the Jewish world, it is Israel that has the potential to unite us and provide a common ground. The importance of this concept and the history on which it is founded has been forgotten amidst the whirlwind of differing opinions, political ideologies, and conflicting narratives. Yet, indeed, it is Israel – this very land which bears the name of our People – that affirms our historical lineage and shall, with our collective initiative, continue to persevere.
Of all the nations in the world, it is the Children of Israel who have outlasted every attempt of destruction. It was here we were made into a people; it was here that the first Jewish state thrived. It was here that we won, lost, killed and were killed to defend our right to be here in this one small place of the world we can call our own. After 2000 years in forced exile, the dream of Jerusalem, Zion, Israel has remained a constant part of our Jewish soul, prayer, community and identity.
It makes sense that, in the world of 1917, a statement of support for this dream could awaken a deep appreciation for our ancient heritage that binds us as one.
We at The Israel Forever Foundation hope to reignite that feeling of appreciation and evoke a demonstration of commitment to the continued existence of our one and only Jewish state. As we now arrive at 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, we invite you to honor one of the many steps of history that helped bring about the establishment of the State of Israel by making YOUR declaration, in the spirit of Balfour, to sustain the memory and understanding of this first “international birth certificate,” protecting its legacy, and demonstrating that you, too, recognize our right to exist, as a people, as a nation, and as a state on our only ancestral land.
We each feel, from our different corners of the world, a connection with the hills where our ancestors walked, the communities where they lived and were buried, where our holy Temple once stood, and where our history is rooted. We each embrace differing ideologies and have our own opinions on the state of affairs in Israel today. But in honor of Balfour Day, we invite you to leave your politics at the door.
Let us celebrate what unites us.
Let us always stand up for Jewish rights.
And let us take a moment, every year, to reflect, remind, and celebrate the monumental victories that have achieved throughout the years - on Balfour Day, and every day.
Dr. Elana Heideman
Executive Director
The Israel Forever Foundation
A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN HISTORY
On October 31, 1917, the British Cabinet approved a one-sentence statement of policy regarding its plans for Palestine. Two days later, on November 2, 1917, the Jewish people received public support for the Nation’s ancient hope, when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to the leader of the Zionist Federation, Lord Rothschild, expressing British support of a Jewish State in Palestine:
“His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The first official recognition of Jewish national rights by a significant world power, through the 67 words of what became known as the Balfour Declaration, the British government committed itself to the rebirth of the national home for the Jewish people, recognizing the long-standing philosophical, practical, historical, and spiritual link of the Jewish nation to the Land of Israel and, subsequently, facilitating the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
With one step the Jewish cause has made a great bound forward…a new epoch for our race…Amidst all that is so dark and dismal and tragic throughout the world, there has thus arisen for the Jews a great light. It is the perceptible lifting of the cloud of centuries, the palpable sign that the Jew-condemned for two thousand years to unparalleled wrong – is at last coming to his right.
Jewish Chronicle, 1917
FROM HERZL TO BALFOUR: FOSTERING THE JEWISH NATIONAL DREAM
The Balfour Declaration was the single most significant step in restoring Jewish self-determination in their historic territories through political means. In the spirit of Theodor Herzl and in affirmation of his vision, the Zionist dream was propelled forward toward potential fulfillment.
The Jews who will it shall achieve their State. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die. The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will resound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.
Zionism demands a publicly recognized and legally secured homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people…Our first objective is the obtaining of sovereignty, assured by international law.
Theodor Herzl
Herzl believed strongly in the potential for British support for Zionism. In 1900, Herzl opened the Fourth Zionist Congress in London with a prophetic proclamation: “England, great England, freedom-loving England, overlooking all the seas, will understand and sympathize with the aims and aspirations of Zionism. From here the idea of Zionism will soar higher and further.”
From the onset, the movement for the return of the Jewish nation to its ancestral homeland echoed in the hearts of Jews scattered around the world.
At every opportunity, the leaders of the Zionist movement sought out those who understood the purpose, vision, and goals of creating a place where Jews could finally live free, where the social, ethical, civic, political, and spiritual realms would be continuously intermingled with the essence of Jewish peoplehood and identity in the Land of Israel.
“The opportunities are very great, greater than at any time in eighteen centuries. The non-Jewish world is with us… But the responsibility for success or failure will rest, not upon anti-Zionists or non-Zionists, but upon ourselves. The loyalty, the wisdom, the virtues of the relatively few who have declared their conviction of the truth of Zionism will determine whether the future shall bring success or failure.”
Louis Brandeis
We shall be buoyed up by the spiritual appeal and the irresistible beauty of Palestine. We shall toil in confidence and with the eager impulse for justice for all. There will be developed a new Jewish civilization worthy of the Jewish past, worthy of the aspirations for the future. And from the old Home, restored in fulfillment of prayers and striving, there will go out again to the world in all its troubles the light for which nations will bless Israel again.
Louis Brandeis
In addition to the political and strategic asset of a Jewish state in the region, senior British decision makers, as well as their American and international counterparts who later affirmed the Declaration, were intellectually and spiritually aligned with the goals of the Zionist movement.
What has from the first been the real aim of the Jews? It has been to re-establish in Palestine a Jewish civilization. To the Jew, Palestine is Eretz Israel--the land of Israel--and they call it that for thousands of years. In the mind of Balfour, his adherence to Zionism was due to his belief that if the Jews were enabled to build up their civilization in Palestine once again, it had something of real constructive value to the world, and that the Jews in their old home would again produce, as they did in the past, and release great spiritual forces that fostered a desire to help the Jews from oppression into freedom.
Honorable William Ormsby-Gore, British Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies
Pioneers working the land
THE POWER OF WORDS: THE LEADERSHIP BEHIND BALFOUR
Balfour’s letter to Zionist leader Lord Rothschild was only one of a series of British wartime communications regarding the fate of the Levant with a variety of political leaders, including Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner for Egypt, Hussein Ibn Ali, Sharif of Mecca, and the secret Anglo-French agreement between Sir Mark Sykes and Charles Georges-Picot - all of whom were no less consequential in the shaping of the contemporary Middle East.
Having already entered into negotiations over the region with its wartime allies, Britain’s efforts to divide Palestine began with the Sykes-Picot accord of 1916. The conflicting interests required special consideration, causing David Lloyd George, who became prime minister of Britain at the close of 1916, to seek a redistribution of
the land allocation to the benefit of Britain and, ultimately, the Zionist movement.
Subsequently, at a private meeting on February 7, 1917, Sykes met with the foremost leaders and sympathizers of the Zionist movement, hinting toward a potential conditional recognition of the Zionist endeavor in exchange for their assistance in negotiations with the French. Recognizing the diplomatic talents of Nahum Sokolow, he was sent as the representative statesman of the potential British-Zionist alliance, the resulting success was significant: On June 4, 1917, French Leader Jules Cambon, head of the French Foreign Ministry, issued a letter that emphasized the French sympathy and care toward the just cause of Jewish nationalism:
“You were good enough to present the project to which you are devoting your efforts, which has for its object the development of Jewish colonization in Palestine. You consider that, circumstances permitting, and the independence of the Holy Places being safeguarded on the other hand, it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality [nationalité juive] in that land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago.
The French government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongly attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies.
I am happy to give you herewith such assurance.”
As support for Zionism grew, one thing was clear:
“The Balfour Declaration did not legitimate Zionism. It was Zionism, through its truth, integrity, and diplomatic efforts, that legitimated the Balfour Declaration.”
Martin Kramer
Under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann, the statesmanship of Nahum Sokolow and Lord Rothschild, and the assistance of the Zionist leadership, Balfour’s support of Jewish nationalism bestowed the most prominent step forward for the World Zionist Organization since its inception.
Their combined efforts required an accurate wording of this unique expression of support, requiring many drafts, meetings, and compromises. As early as 1915, the Zionist Federation had issued a petition to the British government asking for, “the establishment of a publicly recognized and legally secured home for the Jewish People in Palestine, as formulated by the Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897,” which, after the liberation from Turkish rule, would recognize Jewish rights, enable free immigration, and legalize the status of Zionist institutions.
On July 17, 1917, members of the British Zionist leadership gathered at the Imperial Hotel in London to advance their goals. Leopold Amery, who had been in attendance and intimately involved with the production of the final proclamation, clarified the purposeful wording when he stated,
The phrase ‘the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people’ was intended and understood by all concerned to mean at the time of the Balfour Declaration that Palestine would ultimately become a ‘Jewish Commonwealth’ or a ‘Jewish state,’ if only Jews came and settled there in sufficient numbers.
At the time, the scope of a “national home,” was uncertain, and how it would be different from a state was unknown. But one thing was clear: the term “home” meant a home for all Jews, not just those residing in Palestine at the time. This national home was to be for the entire Jewish nation, which had been scattered throughout the world since their expulsion from the Land of Israel in 76 BCE when the Romans conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and renamed the land “Palestine” so as to disconnect it from its Jewish roots.
**BAFLOUR AND JEWISH ANCESTRAL RIGHTS**
The bond between the Jewish People and the Land was unshakable, outlasting thousands of years in exile.
A member of the House of Lords once asked Chaim Weizmann, “Why do you Jews insist on Palestine when there are so many undeveloped countries you could settle in more conveniently?”
Weizmann responded: “That is like my asking you why you drove twenty miles to visit your mother last Sunday when there are so many old ladies living on your street.”
Fear of opposition and political implications resulted in the specific language ensconced in the final draft of 67 words. But it was Balfour himself who affirmed the original vision in 1918, expressing fervently that he hoped “Jews will make good in Palestine and eventually found a state.” This sentiment was echoed by Prime Minister Lloyd George who confirmed publicly that when the Jews would be a majority in Palestine, “Palestine would become a Jewish Commonwealth.”
Despite the moderate and careful wording, the Balfour Declaration was the first political triumph for Jewish nationalism and the Zionists. It was the culmination of years of effort to gain global support.
---
**Lord Edmund Allenby, Lord Arthur James Balfour, Sir Herbert Samuel**
*Courtesy of American Colony*
The refusal to accept other geographical locations emphasized this fact, as Chaim Weizmann forcefully stated the case in 1906 after the British-sponsored Uganda Plan: “We cannot possibly sell our birthright. It is like someone giving up one’s religion, giving up one’s self.” This rejection prompted the first meeting between Weizmann and Balfour, one of the proposers of the plan.
Balfour was impressed by the Zionist determination that a homeland for the Jews could only be reestablished in the land of their forefathers. Embedded in the words of his letter to Lord Rothschild was a reflection of his spiritual appreciation of the Jewish heritage that bound them to that small slice of land in the challenging region for the sake of their past, their honor, and their future connection with Zion, their rightful place.
The Balfour Declaration showed an understanding of the desire for the Jewish people to return to their land since the forced exiles that spread the Jewish nation to the four corners of the world.
As Lord Rothschild exclaimed upon receiving the letter, “We are met on the most momentous occasion in the history of Judaism for the last eighteen hundred years.” This acknowledgement lent Zionism an international legitimacy enjoyed by few national movements before or since.
**THE DECLARATION HEARD AROUND THE WORLD**
From England to Russia to Palestine, the United States and beyond, the resounding impact of the British proclamation evoked celebration and elation for the Jews, and increased support from world leaders.
The great miracle has taken place. The mightiest of world powers, whose army is now approaching the gates of Jerusalem has officially declared the ‘establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Ever since our last national disaster, the defeat of Bar Kochba, we The Hebrew nation have not existed as a political or national entity nor been a factor in international affairs. The Jews were hated and despised. Without the framework of a homeland, the nation broke up into little pieces, scattered like fragments of a broken vessel... But a miracle happened and the broken vessel was made whole again. That which we believed in has come to pass: we are again a nation.
It had to be, because our faith in the national resurrection of the Jewish people never faltered. After 35 years of pioneering endeavor in which the nation proved it was capable of restoring ruins of its Land, after 20 years of national-political activity which opens the eyes of the world to the Jewish people’s longing for their homeland—the mightiest of the world powers declared that it officially recognized the existence of the Hebrew people and undertakes to help establish that people’s national home in Eretz Yisrael.
*David Ben Gurion, November 14, 1917*
---
Celebrating the recognition of Israel
---
The love of British People to the People that gave the world the Bible, has found the finest and most energetic expression, during Your Majesties’ reign, in the Balfour Declaration for the founding of a National Homeland for the Jewish People in its own land. Like Cyrus, King of Persia in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, so have Your Majesties called out to this People, scattered and dispersed: Whosoever there is among you whose heart is to Zion, let him go up and build his National Home!
*Meir Dizengoff in a letter to King George V, 1935*
With the good news of the Balfour declaration, the town dressed itself in its festival finery, joyous with happiness. No words can describe the soul-uplifting feeling and raised spirits that gripped the Jews of Sokółka. The Land of Israel for the Jewish people! In Bialystok Street, the group crushed together at a massive national festival: the shops closed, the artisans stopped working, and the wagon drivers rested their horses. The Jews congregated in the synagogues, parades marched through the streets, school-children together with their parents appeared in rows of four wearing homemade colored hats waving flags of Zion they had made themselves. David-Yitzhak and his orchestra claimed a place on the Bimah of the synagogue playing nationalist songs. All present split the air with their raised voices and inexhaustible excitement. Downtrodden, suppressed, a target for contempt and ridicule among the nations who saw them as a scapegoat - they suddenly straightened their backs and stood up straight.
Sokolka, Russia Community Archives
In addition to their support of a political and strategic asset of a Jewish state in the region, many of the key senior British decision-makers, as well as their American and international counterparts who later affirmed the Declaration, were intellectually and religiously aligned with the goals of the Zionist movement. As Lord Balfour proclaimed at the Royal Albert Hall in 1920, the British saw themselves as “partners in this great enterprise.” British Prime Minister David Lloyd George proudly affirmed this when he proclaimed:
The Jews surely have a special claim on [Palestine]. They are the only people who have made a success of it during the past 3,000 years. They are the only people who have made its name immortal, and as a race, they have no other home. This was their first; this has been their only home; they have no other home. They found no home in Egypt or in Babylon. Since their long exile they have found no home as a people in any other land, and this is the time and opportunity for enabling them once more to recreate their lives as a separate people in their old home and to make their contribution to humanity as a separate people, having a habitation in the land which inspired their forefathers. Later on it might be too late.
For a short period, even the leader of the Arab world supported this first step toward the fulfillment of the Jewish national dream and destiny.
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home. We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist. And there is room for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other.
Amir Faisal
The Balfour Declaration was a product of post-colonialism, at a time of growing international consensus towards self-determination for all peoples. In exploring the notion of conflicting promises to Jews and Arabs one must recognize that, in fact, both promises had been fulfilled with the formation of the Jewish State in Israel in 1948, and the formation of 22 Arabs States in a holistic arc around Israel, including TransJordan as the first of them all, created in 1922, which was formed out of 82% of the Palestinian Mandate all of which had originally been designated for the Jewish homeland.
The Balfour Declaration was a welcome British gesture of recognition of Jewish self-determination in their historical homeland as ‘of right not on sufferance’ without in any way compromising the rights of Arabs to self-determination.
Professor David Stone
Unfortunately, in spite of the initial positive reception by Amir Faisal, the Arabs of Palestine focused their attention solely on the defamation and destruction of the Jewish presence, the Zionist agenda, the distortion of historical fact, and the rejection of the numerous opportunities offered to them to establish their own state in the region.
Upon being asked by Musa Kazim el Hesseini, former Mayor of Jerusalem, to denounce the declaration, Winston Churchill responded,
It is not in my power to do so, nor, if it were in my power, would it be my wish. The British Government have passed their word, by the mouth of Mr. Balfour, that they will view with favour the establishment of a National Home for Jews in Palestine, and that inevitably involves the immigration of Jews into the country.
Moreover, it is manifestly right that the Jews, who are scattered all over the world, should have a national centre and a National Home where some of them may be reunited. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated.
The Zionists received many other endorsements as well. One of these endorsement came from Woodrow Wilson whose endorsement eased any doubt as to whether the Balfour Declaration conformed to the new rule of the international order.
There should be no more realization of imperialistic aims, but a general movement toward the self-determination right for the liberation of nations
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
Thus, the Balfour Declaration created the opportunity to propel forward the foundations toward an embryonic Jewish state in Mandate Palestine, establishing a democratic, political, and financial system, for the Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Britain was henceforth responsible for overseeing the political and administrative management, as well as ensuring that economic conditions would secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home, facilitate Jewish immigration, and encourage the settlement of Jews on the land in a manner that would benefit all of the land’s inhabitants.
Officially submitted to and approved by the Council of the League of Nations in July 1922, the crucial message of the Balfour Declaration was inserted in the text of the mandate and was perceived as an integral part of its implementation. As it was written:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed... (according to) the provisions of the Covenant of the League of nations... to entrust the Government of his Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory... responsible for putting into effect the declaration of November 2, 1917...
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish People with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.
Resolution of the League of Nations at San Remo
The Mandate for Palestine was subsequently approved by all 52 members of the League of Nations. Subsequently, the Balfour Declaration was transformed and codified into international law.
If we cast our minds back to the situation that existed prior to the Balfour Declaration, only then can we perhaps grasp the vast extent, the colossal impact of the transformation that was wrought in our status and our prospects for the future; only then can we fully appreciate the magnitude of the achievement. It was a major innovation in international law. It amounted to the introduction of basic concepts of political Zionism into the framework of the laws of nations, and the inclusion of these concepts within the political consciousness of the world.
Second Prime Minister of Israel Moshe Sharett
It was at once clear that a great moment in the history of the Jewish people had arrived through this Declaration ... In the midst of this terrible war, you, as representatives of the Great Powers of Western Europe and America, have issued a declaration which contained the promise to help us, with your goodwill and support, to establish this national center, for whose realization generations have lived and suffered.
Nahum Sokolow, Paris Peace Conference of 1919
The Balfour Declaration paved the way for the United Nations vote on November 29, 1947, when the world echoed Lord Balfour’s sentiments of our ancestral right to a sovereign state on our ancient homeland.
The Basel Declaration was affirmed at the first Zionist congress stating “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.”
The Balfour Declaration in which Britain states that they would support a homeland for Jewish people
The League of Nations confirms the British Mandate. The Balfour Declaration is officially translated into international law.
The San Remo conference where British, French, Italian, and Japanese governments endorse the Balfour Declaration and lay the foundation for British Mandate for Palestine.
Jewish immigration to Palestine increases greatly after World War I.
The Peel Commission sets forth to bring Jews to the national Jewish homeland to develop the Jewish state, in affirmation of the Balfour Declaration.
Exodus arrives in Haifa Port, following the Holocaust of Europe’s Jews which emphasized the need for a safe haven for Jews.
U.N. General Assembly resolution 181 approved Partition Plan granting 56% of Mandate Palestine to a Jewish State.
The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel
Lord Arthur Balfour points out a feature of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to Governor Sir Ronald Storrs during a visit to Jerusalem, April 1925 [Getty]
The White Paper, which informed British policy throughout World War II, blocked Jewish immigration to Palestine at precisely the moment when the Jews of Europe faced destruction. Attempting to set Palestine on a course to become an Arab state with a Jewish minority, the Exodus affair demonstrated the extent to which it was willing to go to impose itself even on the Jewish right of return to their ancestral homeland.
The State of Israel was established by the pen and the law, and defended by the sword, in contrast to most other countries in the world that were established by the sword.
Alan Dershowitz
Despite all of the arguments surrounding the Balfour Declaration, Israel’s legitimacy does not rest on it or even on the 1947 UN Resolution 181 to partition the country to two states: one Jewish and the other Arab. It rests (legally) on the fact of its continuing existence, assertion and vindication of independence by its people and by force of arms, an organized government within territory under its control and recognition by the generality of nations.
Avi Ben Hur
Celebrating in the streets of Tel Aviv after UN Resolution 181.
It was up to the Jewish people to continue to fight for their land and never give up on the Zionist vision. As Zalman Shoval acknowledged, “the State of Israel would have been established with or without the Balfour Declaration,” and it was up to them to build the land and instill in each and every Jew the Zionist dream.
The task is heavy. The problems are many. The difficulties are serious. But the problem can be solved, the difficulties can be overcome. And they will be. Of this we have assurance in notable achievements, wrought by determination and self-sacrifice throughout the long centuries of adversity. This new task will be different. Though the burden is heavy it will be joyously borne. For we shall be buoyed up by the spiritual appeal and the irresistible beauty of Palestine. We shall toil on confident and with the eager impulse for justice for all. There will be developed a new Jewish civilization worthy of the Jewish past, worthy of the aspirations for the future. And from the old Home, restored in fulfillment of prayers and striving, there will go out again to the world in all its troubles the light for which nations will bless Israel again.
US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1916
Balfour today and every day
It was thirty years after the Balfour Declaration that the Jewish people declared independence in Palestine and formally established the modern State of Israel, utilizing its ratification in the League of Nations as part of its historic legitimacy and justification henceforth referenced in the Declaration of Independence signed May 15, 1948. Questions over the integrity of the Declaration have fueled a seemingly unending historical and historiographic debate. Yet one thing is clear: from its inception to its transformation into international law, the Balfour Declaration stands out as a monumental historical milestone in the steps to statehood.
Balfour celebration, Savoy Hotel UK, London 1917
When the fuller story is told, the Balfour Declaration is no longer a British imperial grab but the outcome of a carefully constructed consensus of the leading democracies of the day. It is no longer in tension with the principle of self-determination, but a statement made possible by the very champion of the principle. And it is no longer an emanation of secret dealings but one of the first and most influential instances of public diplomacy.
It is, in short, not a throwback to the 19th century but an opening to the 20th.
Martin Kramer
As the Jewish State continues to fight an enduring battle against delegitimization, demonization, terror as well as attempts to destroy the Jewish State, Balfour serves as a reminder that Israel was
established with the full backing and support of the international community.
The Balfour declaration did not create the right to Jewish self-determination. Nonetheless, that this right was recognised by a world power for the first time suggests that the declaration cannot be seen as anything except a crucial milestone on the path to Jewish independence. It is a cause for celebration.
Israel’s Ambassador to Britain Mark Regev
Balfour provides compelling evidence that Israel's right to statehood was universally recognized and unassailable.
It provides us with a chance, year in and year out, to underline our internationally recognized right to be here, something which far too many people around the world seem to have forgotten.
Michael Freund
Just as the Balfour Declaration declared the historical right to sovereignty in the Jewish Homeland of Israel, so too, must that stand true and be reaffirmed today and forever.
Balfour In Rishon
Official announcement print of the Balfour Declaration, 1917
Courtesy of David Matlow
Honorable Lord Arthur James Balfour,
First and foremost, allow me to express our deep regret over the delay in response.
The Zionist leaders welcomed Lord Rothschild’s message in which His Majesty’s Government provided its recognition to the Zionist desire to establish a Jewish national home in its historical homeland - Israel.
With a profound sense of gratitude for all your efforts promoting this goal, we wish to inform you that the endeavor was successful, and that the State of Israel was founded and serves as the national home of the Jewish people, welcoming Jews from all countries of the Diaspora.
The State of Israel was founded on the basis of our natural and historical rights given by His Majesty’s 1917 declaration supporting the reconstitution and reestablishment of a Jewish national home for the Jewish nation.
We have since witnessed the emergence of a unique country that upholds national and social standards as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.
100 years after the Declaration of the British government, Israel today is a Jewish and democratic country, deeply dedicated to the development of all its citizens and the advancement of freedom, justice and peace. Israel is doing its utmost to ensure equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, and strives to safeguard diversity of language, religion and conscience, regardless of sexual orientation or race.
The Israeli Knesset attracts a wide range of parliamentarians representing different parts of our society’s views, showcasing the diversity and complexity of our culture. Israeli women are actively engaged in key roles in leadership, and serve as judges and high-level officials in our security forces. Israel guarantees complete freedom of worship to all religious groups.
The State of Israel is a Jewish and democratic state which guarantees all minority rights. You can find Arab judges and leading Druze and Bedouin Army officers that are involved in our national security and are fully involved in academia, medicine, the economy and industry. Israel has signed peace agreements with its neighbor to the East – Jordan, and to the south – Egypt. It strives to achieve additional peace agreements with many other countries in the region. It maintains diplomatic relations with over 160 countries and is contentiously involved in a persistent struggle against terrorism. It has demonstrated ways to successfully combat these security issues to dozens of countries around the world.
Israel is a powerhouse of breakthrough innovation in the fields of technology, science, health, agriculture, communications and cyber technology.
The Israel Defense Force is considered as one of the most moral armies in the world. Male soldiers serve alongside female soldiers, all coming from diverse religious and secular backgrounds in units that showcase many non-Jewish minorities. The IDF maintains aid missions to natural disaster-stricken areas and shares its knowledge with many world powers fighting against terrorism.
Yet as it happens in many countries even our country has its vulnerabilities and has to combat acts of violence racism and crime. The State of Israel spares no effort in this regard, and invests considerable resources in order to deal adequately with these issues.
I wish to draw your attention to the fact that even today, 100 years after the Declaration of His Majesty’s Government, the Jewish People still find themselves fighting against rising antiantisemitism, incitement, prejudice, humiliation, and deal constantly with injuries to body and soul. Europe continues to be a major arena for antisemitic and anti-Israel activities.
Sadly, even today, in the year 2017, we are seeing in Britain an alarming rise in antisemitism.
Sadly we observe many antisemitic ideas quietly infiltrating the Labor Party strongholds, weakening and departing from your original values while spreading hatred to various political and media outlets in the British kingdom. We find in many neighboring countries on the European continent like France and Belgium a powerful wave of antisemitism that is forcing many Jews to hide their Jewish religious identity.
Unfortunately, the League of Nations organization that later became the United Nations continuously involves itself with the persecution and hatred of Jews. The treasured values of equality mentioned in your declaration are flagrantly violated by many world nations, who purposely turn a blind eye to this.
Ironically we observe many obsessively point the finger of blame directly towards us - the only country in the region that maintains a staunch commitment to and respect for human rights, and to the minorities living in its midst.
The 2017 United Nations is attempting to officially sever the Jewish people’s ancient historical heritage ties to its national homeland. Our Arab neighbors are currently demanding from Britain to renounce the Balfour Declaration and its implications and are threatening legal action against Britain if it refuses to do so.
Honorable Lord Balfour, 100 years have passed since your government has recognized our right to reconstitute a national home in Israel. Our national homeland gathered millions of Jews from all over the Diaspora; highly educated professionals, well-versed in the sciences and technology, bringing progress and making our country a thriving leader in dozens of fields.
We are committed to a future in which we will build, rebuild and improve, conscientiously sustaining our position as beacon of hope for the entire region, founded on the basis of freedom, independence and equality.
With gratitude and appreciation,
Yaakov Hagoel
Vice Chairman
World Zionist Organization
Join us in commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the Declaration and revive our collective commitment and affirmation of its legacy.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
Explore the Balfour Initiative
Read, Remember, Reaffirm.
About the Balfour Initiative
The Balfour Initiative aims to highlight the history that led to the monumental international recognition of Jewish rights and one of many steps toward the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Content, resources and programs serve to engage learners of all ages in an exploration of the events leading up to and following the declaration, as well as its relevance today as a global recognition of the historic and indigenous rights of the Jewish People.
www.balfourinitiative.org
About The Israel Forever Foundation
The Israel Forever Foundation develops and promotes experiential learning resources and initiatives to celebrate and strengthen the personal connection to Israel as an integral part of Jewish life and identity. Our content and programming aim to engage and inspire Diaspora Jews as Virtual Citizens of Israel to foster understanding, respect, involvement and pride in our ancestral connection with our heritage, history and homeland.
www.israelforever.org
Foreign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
[Signature]
www.balfourinitiative.org | <urn:uuid:33e845bf-4b23-47b1-848c-eacd357b28d4> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://israelforever.org/programs/balfourinitiative/Israel_Forever_Balfour_Info_Booklet_8.5x5.5.pdf | 2018-07-23T11:47:19Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676596336.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20180723110342-20180723130342-00254.warc.gz | 675,728,127 | 8,465 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.936957 | eng_Latn | 0.997507 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
136,
1485,
5791,
8445,
12116,
15046,
17565,
20581,
22890,
25848,
28465,
30530,
33765,
34806,
40516,
42172,
43029
] | [
1.75,
2.234375
] | 1 | 0 |
BPP US rights available
The Waking Wood
Explore the woodland at night time, from dusk until dawn, as you journey deep into the waking wood inside this beautiful new picture book from debut author and illustrator Alexi Francis.
• A stunning debut picture book from author and illustrator Alexi Francis who has a BSc in Zoology. Perfect for fans of The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith and The Fawn Who Chased the Sun by Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Thi Kim Lien
The Waking Wood
A cool, mellow light shines down through moon-dappled leaves of oaks, ashes and beeches, lighting up the earthy paths beyond the badger's sett.
When the badgers hear the call of the owls, they know they are close to their home.
The badger cub looks up at the shimmering night sky. He is keen to explore and discover new things.
From his roost hole high up the trunk of the old oak, a tawny owl emerges, ruffles his feathers and calls to his mate.
A white hare and a stag leap into the heart of the bright blue expanse over the sparkling forest.
The trees then rise up in the starlit sky, tall and proud and dark.
Deep in the forest depths are oak trees that stand apart, with spreading roots and twisted branches.
It is said the oak is the king of the woods.
The tree in the centre of the oak has a family of badgers, who live in the hollows of its trunk.
In the back of the group is a young badger, who has just been born and is exploring for the first time.
This woodland is a wonderful new world for the badgers.
What might be about where the fireflies gather?
bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/books/9781835870136
Pub Date 03/09/2026
Pub Price £14.99
ISBN 9781835870136
H x W 280 x 215mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Alexi Francis
Extent 40pp
Translation Files 22/12/2025
Files To Printer 16/03/2026
Freight On Board 18/06/2026
Rights Available World
Earth Ever After
Step into the world of Earth Ever After, a stunning fusion of graphic novel artistry and ancient folktale, told through the eyes of Mother Earth. This beautifully illustrated book takes readers on an unforgettable journey from Earth’s creation to the present, celebrating our deep connection with nature while offering a poignant reflection on the state of our world.
| Pub Date | 03/09/2026 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £20.00 |
| ISBN | 9781800788671 |
| H x W | 260 x 215mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 9-11 years |
| Author | Elin Manon |
| Extent | 160pp |
| Word Count | 3500 words |
| Translation Files | 22/12/2025 |
| Files To Printer | 09/04/2026 |
| Freight On Board | 02/07/2026 |
| Rights Available | World |
A Year in the Forest
This beautifully crafted year-round treasury offers 365 pages of facts, stories, activities, poems and creative prompts, celebrating the wonders of the forest and providing a meaningful way for all ages to connect with nature throughout the year.
• With 365 pages of facts, stories and activities, this book provides daily inspiration and learning opportunities, making it a perfect companion for all year round.
| **Pub Date** | 03/09/2026 |
|-------------|-------------|
| **Pub Price** | £20.00 |
| **ISBN** | 9781800788176 |
| **H × W** | 234 × 153mm |
| **Binding** | Hardback |
| **Age Range** | Adult |
| **Author** | Christine Modafferi |
| **Illustrator** | Magdalena Konecná |
| **Extent** | 384pp |
| **Word Count** | 20000 words |
| **Translation Files** | 22/12/2025 |
| **Files To Printer** | 13/04/2026 |
| **Freight On Board** | 18/06/2026 |
| **Rights Available** | World |
The Forest of Dreams is a magical picture book that follows a young girl’s imaginative journey through an enchanted forest.
- Merve Atilgan’s debut author-illustrated picture book was selected as a finalist for the Golden Pinwheel Awards 2023
- The story promotes environmental awareness by highlighting the beauty of nature and the universal themes of dreaming and imagination make it perfect for read-alouds in both home libraries and classrooms
- Merve’s richly detailed illustrations immerse readers in the magic of the forest, offering something new to discover on every page. Perfect for fans of Júlia Sardà;
The Forest of Dreams
After the rain, mushrooms spread everywhere – in the trunk of trees, under rocks, in the most unexpected places. Some mushrooms look at me with curious eyes, while others hide shyly from my gaze. Don’t ask me, “Can mushrooms be shy?” I already told you – this is a very strange place.
| Pub Date | 14/08/2025 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £12.99 |
| ISBN | 9781835873465 |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | Merve Atilgan |
| Extent | 48pp |
| Word Count | 1000 words |
| Files To Printer | 24/03/2025 |
| Freight On Board | 05/06/2025 |
| Rights Available | World English Language |
Everybody Has a Fear
A beautifully illustrated and thought-provoking picture book that looks at the relationship children have with fear.
- This beautiful picture book explores themes of fear and anxiety, offering a universal approach that helps explain these emotions to young readers and promotes meaningful discussions, perfect for fans of Maya Angelou’s inspiring poem *Life Doesn’t Frighten Me*
- The book also includes a spread of mindfulness tips designed to help children manage and overcome fear and anxiety
Everybody Has a Fear
| Pub Date | 11/09/2025 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800784123 |
| H x W | 280 x 215mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | Koleka Putuma |
| Illustrator | Amanda Mijangos |
| Extent | 48pp |
| Word Count | 500 words |
| Files To Printer | 25/04/2025 |
| Freight On Board | 03/07/2025 |
| Rights Available | World |
A visual exploration of the science behind sound and music.
- An visually extraordinary take on the subject of sound
- Perfect for primary schools (on KS2 curriculum), but also the ideal gift book for general interest readers
- Engaging text by Trevor Cox - a professor of acoustics and engineering at Salford University.
A Symphony of Sound
When we’re out and about, we’re often chatting to friends, sitting in a car, or listening to music on headphones. We see the world around us, but we barely hear it. A sound walk is a simple way to explore what we’re missing. Try walking around your home or school and listen carefully to notice the different sounds around you. Notice how the sounds change as you move through different areas, and how they make you feel.
Bringing you help reduce stress and anxiety, and improve focus. How many different birds can you hear?
Jack hammers can damage hearing. All construction workers need to wear hearing protection.
Church bells have been used to summon people for about 1500 years. They are played at certain times of day, and on special occasions.
The sound of a street musician can make you want to dance around or roll your eyes, depending on your personal music taste!
Tree branches creak and leaves rustle in the wind. Tree songs change depending on the leaf types and wind speed.
Large fountains can help hide dangerous noises like cars. Small fountains create a soothing, trickling sound that reduces stress.
People chatting in a café might make you smile because humans like to socialise and spend time with each other.
Children playing in a park or playground creates sounds of laughter and squealing. It might remind you of some of the joyful memories of your own.
Sound walking was popularised by Canadian composer and environmentalist R. Murray Schafer in the 1970s. He saw it as a way for people to connect to the sounds around them and raise awareness of the problems created by noise pollution.
Car noise may be a familiar sound, but over long periods it can create stress and even damage health.
---
**Pub Date:** 06/08/2026
**Pub Price:** £16.99
**ISBN:** 9781800783249
**H x W:** 300 x 235mm
**Binding:** Hardback
**Age Range:** 7-9 years
**Author:** Trevor Cox
**Illustrator:** Sophie Escavy Lim
**Extent:** 64pp
**Word Count:** 15000 words
**Translation Files:** 24/11/2025
**Files To Printer:** 16/03/2026
**Freight On Board:** 21/05/2026
**Rights Available:** World
A vibrant illustrated poetry series celebrating cities around the world. This bright and bold book takes a tour through ‘the city that never sleeps’: New York.
- Each book in the On the Streets series is written by a poet from the city who celebrates the hidden parts of the city, as well as the main landmarks
- Each spread acts as a snapshot of a different part of the city. A non-fiction spread at the back of the book adds further information about landmarks and history
- Beautifully presented and produced with strong branding and a collectable feel
A vibrant, illustrated poetry series celebrating cities around the world. This beautiful book takes a tour through the captivating streets of Paris.
- Each book in the On the Streets series is written by a poet from the city who will be able to celebrate the hidden parts of the city, as well as the main landmarks
- The poetry spreads act as a snapshot of a different part of the city. A non-fiction spread at the back of the book adds further information about landmarks and history
- Beautifully presented and produced with strong branding and a collectable feel
- Aimed at young readers aged 7+ and perfect for reading aloud together
Big Brilliant World
- A fun and educational way to encourage children to learn new vocabulary and discover 12 cities from around the world
- A vibrant, fun and engaging book that will appeal to design-conscious parents looking to keep children busy
- The opportunity to work with an exciting up-and-coming award-winning artist, who we would like to market as a ‘new Mizielsinski’ for the Big Picture Press list
- Chic paperback format with flaps and spot UV makes this the ideal gift
Monster Anatomy is a visually stunning and informative exploration of mythical creatures, offering unique insights into their anatomy, origins and the legends that brought them to life.
- Designed for readers of all ages, *Monster Anatomy* is a must-have for anyone fascinated by the fantastical, providing a deeper understanding and appreciation for the creatures that have haunted folklore for centuries.
- This book is a must-have for monster and myth enthusiasts, perfect for fans of Big Picture Press's *The Atlas of Monsters*, *Terra Ultima* and Templar's Ology series.
Myths, Mummies and Magic in Ancient Egypt
A vivid and contemporary retelling of the ancient Egyptian myths - now available in paperback.
- The myths are broken up with a series of ‘theme’ spreads, which take a broader look at certain aspects of Egyptian mythology (mythical beasts and monsters, the pharaohs, gods etc.)
- Striking artwork by renowned illustrator and comic artist Núria Tamarit (75k followers on Instagram)
- Mythology is an evergreen subject with strong backlist potential
- Growing demand for graphic novels and comic books for children
Myths, Mummies and Magic in Ancient Egypt
THE CREATION STORY
A creation myth is a story about how the universe was created. Ancient Egyptians believed that the gods created the world from nothing. They believed that the gods were all-powerful and that they could create anything they wanted.
MYTHICAL MONSTERS AND CREATURES
The ancient Egyptians tried to use gods, creatures and monsters to explain things that they didn’t understand. They believed that these creatures had the power to control the weather, the sea and the land.
CLEOPATRA
Cleopatra was the last Pharaoh of Egypt. She ruled for 21 years and was known for her beauty and intelligence. She was also a skilled politician and was able to keep Egypt safe from invasion.
A MYTHIC MAP OF ANCIENT EGYPT
The ancient Egyptians lived in the Nile Valley. The landscape was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt was in the south, and Lower Egypt was in the north. The Nile River flowed through both regions, providing water for irrigation and transportation. The ancient Egyptians believed that the Nile River was sacred and that it was the source of life.
Pub Date: 02/01/2025
Pub Price: £10.99
ISBN: 9781835870068
H x W: 297 x 216mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 7-9 years
Author: Stephen Davies
Illustrator: Núria Tamarit
Extent: 64pp
Rights Available: World
Myths, Monsters and Mayhem in Ancient Greece
A vivid and contemporary retelling of the Greek myths - now available in paperback.
- Contents: Pandora's Box; Theseus and the Minotaur; Perseus and Medusa; Orpheus and Eurydice; The Trojan Horse; What are the Greek Myths?; Meet the Greek Gods; How the Myths Explained the World; Mythical Creatures and Deadly Beasts; A Journey through the Greek Underworld
- These myths will be broken up with a series of ‘theme’ spreads, which will take a broader look at certain aspects of Greek mythology (mythical beasts and monsters, the gods, heroes etc.)
Myths, Monsters and Mayhem in Ancient Greece
WHAT ARE THE GREEK MYTHS?
The ancient Greeks were a culture steeped in stories of gods, heroes and monsters. These myths were passed down through generations and became an integral part of Greek culture.
SO WHO WERE THE ANCIENT GREEKS?
The Greek civilization flourished from around 1200 BC to 338 BC. They were known for their advanced knowledge in mathematics, science, philosophy and art. The Greeks also made significant contributions to literature, drama and architecture.
CHAOS AND CREATION
In the beginning, the Earth was a chaotic place with no order or structure. The first beings created were the Titans, who were powerful and mighty. They were followed by the Olympians, who were the gods of Mount Olympus. Zeus watched over Earth and protected its inhabitants from harm.
PANDORA’S BOX
In the beginning, the Earth was a beautiful place with no chaos or disorder. The first beings created were the Titans, who were powerful and mighty. They were followed by the Olympians, who were the gods of Mount Olympus. Zeus watched over Earth and protected its inhabitants from harm.
MEET THE GREEK GODS
Zeus was the king of the gods and the ruler of Mount Olympus. He was known for his lightning bolts and his ability to control the weather. Hera was the queen of the gods and the wife of Zeus. She was known for her jealousy and her ability to control the winds. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and war. She was known for her intelligence and her ability to use her sword. Apollo was the god of music and poetry. He was known for his lyre and his ability to inspire others. Artemis was the goddess of the hunt and the moon. She was known for her archery skills and her ability to hunt animals. Ares was the god of war. He was known for his strength and his ability to fight. Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty. She was known for her beauty and her ability to attract others. Hades was the god of the underworld. He was known for his power and his ability to control the dead. Poseidon was the god of the sea. He was known for his trident and his ability to control the waves. Hermes was the god of commerce and travel. He was known for his speed and his ability to communicate with others. Dionysus was the god of wine and revelry. He was known for his ability to get people drunk and his ability to bring joy to others.
Pub Date: 11/04/2024
Pub Price: £10.99
ISBN: 9781800787520
H x W: 297 x 216mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 7-9 years
Author: James Davies
Illustrator: James Davies
Extent: 64pp
Word Count: 12000 words
Rights Available: World
Myths, Gods and Gladiators in Ancient Rome
A historical and humorous comic book retelling of the ancient Roman myths.
- The myths are broken up with a series of ‘theme’ spreads, which will take a broader look at certain aspects of Roman mythology (mythical beasts and monsters, the gods, heroes etc.)
- Following on from the success of *Myths, Monsters and Mayhem in Ancient Greece* (which has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide as of July 2024) - this is the next title in a growing series for Big Picture Press
- Growing demand for graphic novels and comic books for children and adults alike
- Cover treatments: Deboss and pantone
Myths, Gods and Gladiators in Ancient Rome
WHO WERE THE ANCIENT ROMANS?
Some 2000 years ago, the people who lived in what is now Italy, called themselves Romans. They were a very powerful nation, and they conquered many other lands. They built great cities, and they had a strong army. They also had a lot of money, which they used to build beautiful temples and palaces.
WHAT ARE THE ROMAN MYTHS?
The Romans believed in many gods and goddesses. They thought that these gods and goddesses controlled everything that happened in their lives. The Romans also believed in many heroes and heroines. These were people who did amazing things, and they were often the ones who saved the day.
THE CREATION STORY
According to Roman mythology, the world was created by a god named Saturn. He was the first god, and he created all the other gods and goddesses. The Romans believed that Saturn was the father of Jupiter, the king of the gods. Jupiter was the most important god, and he ruled over all the other gods and goddesses.
MEET THE ROMAN GODS
The Romans believed in many gods and goddesses. Here are some of the most important ones:
- **Jupiter**: The king of the gods, and the god of thunder and lightning.
- **Juno**: The queen of the gods, and the goddess of marriage and family.
- **Mars**: The god of war, and the god of agriculture.
- **Venus**: The goddess of love and beauty, and the goddess of fertility.
- **Neptune**: The god of the sea, and the god of storms.
- **Apollo**: The god of music and poetry, and the god of prophecy.
- **Diana**: The goddess of hunting and the moon, and the goddess of the hunt.
- **Mercury**: The god of commerce and travel, and the god of eloquence.
- **Hercules**: The greatest of all the gods, and the god of strength and courage.
- **Janus**: The god of beginnings and endings, and the god of doors and gates.
DIDO AND AENEAS
In the ancient city of Troy, there lived a queen named Dido. She was a great warrior, and she loved her people very much. But when her husband was murdered, she decided to leave her home and start a new life in Africa. She met a man named Aeneas, and they fell in love. Together they built a magnificent city, which today stands as the birthplace of Rome.
Pub Date: 01/01/2026
Pub Price: £14.99
ISBN: 9781800788770
H × W: 297 × 216mm
Binding: Hardback
Age Range: 7-9 years
Author: Stephen Davies
Illustrator: Laurie Avon
Extent: 64pp
Word Count: 12000 words
Translation Files: 30/03/2025
Files To Printer: 05/05/2025
Freight On Board: 12/06/2025
Rights Available: World
A vivid comic-strip retelling of the greatest Norse myths.
- Contents: Myths - The Creation Myth; The Theft of Idun's Apples; Treasures of the Gods; Thor’s Journey to Utgard; The Deal of Balder; Ragnarok; Sigurd and Fafnir Theme spreads - What are the Norse Myths?; Meet the Norse Gods; How the Myths Explained the World; Meet the Vikings; Mythical Creatures and Deadly Beasts; The Afterlife; How the Norse Myths Came to us; A Mythic Map
- Following on from the success of *Myths, Monsters and Mayhem in Ancient Greece* (which has sold over 50,000 copies worldwide as of July 2024) - this is the next title in a growing series for Big Picture Press
Norse Myths, Monsters and Viking Voyages
| Pub Date | 11/09/2025 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800786745 |
| H x W | 297 x 216mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Stephen Davies |
| Illustrator | Seaerra Miller |
| Extent | 64pp |
| Word Count | 12000 words |
| Freight On Board | 03/07/2025 |
| Rights Available | World |
Explore the legendary world of fairies in this stunningly illustrated guide to the mythical realm.
- An incredible collection of fairies to be enjoyed by children and adults alike.
- *Faedom* also includes facts about the natural world including lunar cycles, astrology, crystal healing and herbology, bringing the world of fairies to life.
- Stunning ethereal artwork by debut talent Nadzeya Makeyeva.
- Large format and foil cover finish makes this the ideal gift.
- Agnes Monod-Gayraud is an award-winning translator and editor. Lorna White is a writer and researcher whose focus and expertise is in Ancient Mythology and Folklore.
- Celebrating 10 Years of Extraordinary Illustrated Books
A vibrant introduction to gardening.
- A vibrant first introduction to gardening for ages 6+
- Includes DIY activities to try at home.
- Text by expert ecologist and educator, Michael Holland.
- Colourful, charming artwork by illustrator Maria Dek.
- Expanding the younger side of the Big Picture Press list.
- Gardening is a subject only growing in popularity.
- Arlin quarter binding and matt lam cover finishes.
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Gardening!
Whether you have a big garden or a small windowsill, you can make the world a greener place. Gardening is one of the best hobbies in the world and it’s good for you, your neighbours and the planet! People have been gardening and growing food for thousands of years, so you will be continuing a very long and important tradition.
In this book, you’ll learn about how plants work, how to grow your own vegetables, how to encourage wildlife to your garden and why protecting plants is important for our future. Also included here are lots of fun games and activities and experiments for you to try for yourself – most using everyday materials you can find at home.
What are you waiting for? Let’s begin!
Aviation celebrates the ingenuity of aeroplanes, biplanes, monoplanes and helicopters past, present and future.
- The third title in this beautifully illustrated series about vehicles
- Sample contents: Ancient Aviation; The Wright Flyer; How Planes Fly; The Spirit of St. Louis; Airships; War in the Air; The Spitfire; Unsung Heroines; Airports and Aerodromes; Sea Planes; Concorde; Light Aircraft; Air Force Once; Jets and Rockets; Weird Planes; Vertical Take Off and Helicopters; Cargo Planes; The Future of Flight; Record Breakers
- Perfect for plane lovers of all ages.
- Cover treatments: Uncoated and 100% foil.
- Celebrating 10 Years of Extraordinary Illustrated Books
Nautical
A stunningly illustrated tribute to all things maritime.
- The fourth and final book in this beautifully illustrated series about vehicles
- Perfect for boat lovers of all ages
- Cover treatments: uncoated plus 100% foil
**ANCIENT VESSELS**
Before the invention of the steam and petrol engine in the 19th century, ships were powered by wind. The sails on these ancient vessels were used to catch the wind. The largest ships could carry up to 2000 people.
The Viking longship had a distinctive shape with a pointed bow and stern. It was designed for speed and could sail through the waves. The design also allowed them to land easily.
**EXTRAORDINARY VESSELS**
**DRAGONSHIPS**
During the early Middle Ages, the Vikings were known for building large, long ships called dragonships. These ships were designed to be fast and agile, allowing the Vikings to explore new lands and trade with other cultures.
**MEDIEVAL VESSELS**
Although many medieval ships were built for war, some were also used for trade. The caravel was a type of ship that was used for long-distance voyages. It was designed to be able to sail in rough seas and was equipped with a rudder for steering.
**MARY ROSE**
On the 19th July, 1545 England faced an invasion. Francis I, King of France, had assembled an armada of around 200 vessels - sailing ships and armed galleys - and planned to invade the narrow English Channel at the head of the Solent. With a fleet of 30,000 men, Francis I, King of France, had assembled an armada of around 80 vessels, would need to prevent the armada from landing. As evening fell, and taking advantage of a fresh rising breeze, the English sailed out to meet their enemy. At the head, pennants fluttering in the wind, was the flagship, the mighty 600-tonne warship, warship, Mary Rose, pride of the fleet and King Henry’s favourite vessel.
Smoke and flames erupted along the Mary Rose’s forecastle deck as its cannons fired at the approaching French ships. To the thousands of people watching from the cliffs, the noise would have sounded like thunder. Then, to bring the portside guns into the action to bear? As the others were released, the grand old ship began to turn around. The wind caught the sails, but part of it was lost as its sails, causing it to tilt. Water poured in through the still-open gunports, flooding the lower decks.
Realising their ship was doomed, the sailors and suddenly scrambled to reach the open weather deck and leap overboard, only to be trapped by the anti-surfacing netting strung over it. Seawater foamed around them, rising higher and higher. Even its vintage paint job - Scarborough Castle, King Henry’s most beloved ship, the Mary Rose capsizes and disappears beneath the waves. Of around 600 men onboard, only 35 managed to flee from.
---
**Pub Date**
05/06/2025
**Pub Price**
£16.99
**ISBN**
9781800787353
**H × W**
300 × 235mm
**Binding**
Hardback
**Age Range**
9-11 years
**Author**
Matt Ralphs
**Illustrator**
Dieter Braun
**Extent**
64pp
**Word Count**
12000 words
**Rights Available**
World
Automotive celebrates the ingenuity and usability of cars, trucks and motorbikes past, present and future.
- Sample contents: Steam and Electric Automobiles, Early Engines, Monte Carlo Rally, Mass Production, Motorways, Motorbikes, Isle of Man TT, Daytona 500, Concept Cars, History of Formula One, Iconic Bridges, Trucks and Road Trains, Monster Truck Races, Hot Rods, Drag Races, Special Cars, Cars in War, The Future of the Automobile
- The follow-up title to the stunning *Locomotive*
- Perfect for car lovers of all ages
- Super cool artwork by award-winning artist Ryo Takemasa
Locomotion
A stunningly illustrated tribute for train lovers of all ages, celebrating the ingenuity of trains past, present and future.
- Sample contents: The First Railways; Steam Locomotions; The Ffestiniog Railway; The Orient Express; Freight Trains; The Baikonur Cosmodrome; Mail by Rail; The California Zephyr; Mountain Railways; The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway; Trams; Sky Lines; Railways At War; The Princess Christian; High-speed Rail; The Shinkansen
- Beautiful artwork by multi award-winning artist Ryo Takemasa
- Stunning journey through the history of locomotives, suitable for all ages
- Expertly written by railway historian, Alastair Steele
**The First Railways**
Early railways used steam locomotives to move coal and passengers from one place to another. The first railway was built in 1825, and it was called the Stockton & Darlington Railway. It was built to transport coal from the mines at Stockton to the port at Darlington.
**The Gauge**
The gauge is the distance between the two rails on a railway track. The gauge can be either narrow or wide. The gauge is important because it determines the size of the train and the type of locomotive that can be used.
**Steam Locomotives**
Steam locomotives use the power of steam to move trains. Steam is created by heating water in a boiler. The steam is then used to turn a piston, which moves the wheels of the train. Steam locomotives were used for many years, but they have been replaced by diesel and electric locomotives.
**Railways of the World - The Ffestiniog Railway**
The Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales is a narrow-gauge railway that was built in the 19th century to transport slate from the quarries at Blaenau Ffestiniog to the sea at Porthmadog. The railway was built using horse-drawn carriages and later steam locomotives. The railway is still in use today and is a popular tourist attraction.
**Electric Locomotives**
The first electric train was tested out for just six miles in 1837. Unlike steam trains, electric locomotives do not carry fuel on board. Instead, they are powered by electricity which can be supplied from overhead lines, a third rail or storage such as batteries. Because electric trains can be powered by electricity, they are considered less polluting than steam or diesel trains.
**Diesel Locomotives**
In a diesel locomotive, the power comes from an engine that burns diesel oil. While a steam locomotive needed two people to crew it and hours to attain the right steam pressure, a diesel locomotive could simply be switched on and driven away, making them much easier and much cheaper to run. The first Diesel Locomotive was built in Germany in 1895, but it wasn’t until around 1912 that they were first used in a locomotive.
---
**Pub Date**
03/03/2022
**Pub Price**
£16.99
**ISBN**
9781787417502
**H × W**
300 × 235mm
**Binding**
Hardback
**Age Range**
9-11 years
**Author**
Alastair Steele
**Illustrator**
Ryo Takemasa
**Extent**
64pp
**Word Count**
10000 words
**Rights Available**
World
[bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/books/9781787417502](http://bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/books/9781787417502)
This lively periodic table book presents the extraordinary elements as you’ve never seen them before.
- Easy-to-access, visual information
- Fun characters help commit scientific facts to memory
- Lightweight and pocket-sized - ideal portable format
- Perfect for KS3 students or general interest readers
- Matt lam, 100% spot UV and deboss cover treatments
The Extraordinary Elements
How do we Discover the Elements?
There was a time when we thought that there were only eight elements in the world. But then, in 1803, John Dalton came up with his atomic theory and the number of elements grew to 92. In 1940, Glenn Seaborg discovered 10 new elements, bringing the total to 102. Today, scientists have identified 118 elements.
Discovering the elements is not easy. It requires a lot of hard work and dedication. The first element, hydrogen, was discovered by Henry Cavendish in 1766. He used a chemical reaction to produce hydrogen gas and then collected it in a glass tube. He then burned the gas and observed that it produced water. This was the first evidence that hydrogen was an element.
The discovery of new elements has been a gradual process. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev published a table of elements that showed how they were arranged in order of increasing atomic weight. This table helped scientists to predict the properties of unknown elements. In 1913, Henry Moseley discovered that the atomic number of an element is equal to the number of protons in its nucleus. This discovery allowed scientists to determine the atomic number of an element and to predict its properties.
The discovery of new elements continues today. Scientists are still searching for new elements and are using advanced techniques such as nuclear fusion to create them. The discovery of new elements is an ongoing process and will continue to be an important part of scientific research.
Chlorine
State at 20°C: A yellow-green gas.
Where on Earth?: Found in seawater and salt deposits.
Danger to Life: No known biological role.
Special Uses: Used in the production of bleach and other chemicals.
Radium
State at 20°C: A soft, silvery-white metal.
Where on Earth?: Found in uranium ores.
Danger to Life: It is radioactive and highly toxic.
Special Uses: Used in the production of X-rays and other medical treatments.
Astatine
State at 20°C: A dark, metallic solid.
Where on Earth?: Found in small amounts in rocks and minerals.
Danger to Life: It is radioactive and highly toxic.
Special Uses: Used in the production of nuclear weapons and other military applications.
Radon
State at 20°C: A colorless, odorless gas.
Where on Earth?: Found in volcanic gases and hot springs.
Danger to Life: It is radioactive and highly toxic.
Special Uses: Used in the production of nuclear weapons and other military applications.
Actinium
State at 20°C: A soft, silvery-white metal.
Where on Earth?: Found in uranium ores.
Danger to Life: It is radioactive and highly toxic.
Special Uses: Used in the production of X-rays and other medical treatments.
Thorium
State at 20°C: A soft, silvery-white metal.
Where on Earth?: Found in thorite and monazite.
Danger to Life: It is radioactive and highly toxic.
Special Uses: Used in the production of nuclear fuel and other industrial applications.
Great Gods
State at 20°C: A soft, silvery-white metal.
Where on Earth?: Found in thorite and monazite.
Danger to Life: It is radioactive and highly toxic.
Special Uses: Used in the production of nuclear fuel and other industrial applications.
Pub Date: 06/08/2020
Pub Price: £12.99
ISBN: 9781787417342
H x W: 200 x 200mm
Binding: Hardback
Age Range: 12+ years
Author: Colin Stuart
Illustrator: Ximo Abadía
Extent: 136pp
Word Count: 20000 words
Rights Available: World
Search for animals from A to Z in this bright and busy picture book that follows the story of one little frog on a trip around the globe!
- The follow-up title to *The Parade*
- Little ones will love this book, which combines learning the alphabet and first words with a search-and-find element
- *The Parade* WON the bronze award at the Right Start Awards 2022
- Gorgeous artwork by ARKET childrenswear designer and illustrator, Jana Glatt.
- Beautiful, larger format picture book is ideal for parents and children to read along together.
- Celebrating 10 Years of Extraordinary Illustrated Books
The jungle is too hot and too loud, Frog wants to go somewhere with less of a crowd.
Flying over the savannah, wild and free, Frog marvels at how much there is to see!
| Pub Date | 26/09/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800788060 |
| H x W | 338 x 230mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Joanna McInerney |
| Illustrator | Jana Glatt |
| Extent | 32pp |
| Word Count | 500 words |
| Rights Available| World |
The Parade
A bright and busy counting book from 1 to 100, about a little mouse who just wants to party - now available in paperback.
- Winner of the bronze award at the Right Start Awards 2022
- Little ones will love this book, which combines counting and first words with a search-and-find element
- Gorgeous artwork by ARKET childrenswear designer and illustrator Jana Glatt
- Beautiful, larger format picture book with stylish flaps is ideal for parents and children to read along together
The Parade
| Pub Date | 06/11/2025 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £8.99 |
| ISBN | 9781835872758 |
| H x W | 338 x 230mm |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Age Range | 0-5 years |
| Author | Joanna McInerney |
| Illustrator | Jana Glatt |
| Extent | 48pp |
| Word Count | 250 words |
| Files To Printer | 16/06/2025 |
| Freight On Board | 21/08/2025 |
| Rights Available | World |
Tales from Beyond the Stars
An anthology of classic science fiction stories.
- Stories will be broken up with a series of ‘theme’ spreads, which will add a non-fiction element to the book. These spreads cover everything from the rise of the science fiction genre to how it has inspired real life inventions.
- There’s a gap in the market for a striking, beautifully illustrated science fiction anthology.
- Evergreen publishing with strong backlist potential and global appeal.
- An opportunity to expand the Big Picture Press list into the adult gift market.
- Resurgence of interest in titles that offer readers ‘escapism’ on TikTok, including fantasy and science fiction.
Ancient Love Stories
A striking collection of love stories from ancient history.
- Final contents - Sappho (ancient Greek), Nebuchadnezzar II and Amytis (Babylonian), The Sacred Band of Thebes (ancient Greek), Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun (Chinese), Mark Antony and Cleopatra (ancient Rome), The Lovers of Pompeii (ancient Rome), Hadrian and Antinous (ancient Rome), Eloise and Abelard (French), Frances Howard and Robert Carr (English), Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal (Indian), The Sanchos (USA)
- Written by award-winning classicist and author, Emily Hauser.
- Featuring a range of true stories from around the world, discover the astonishing lengths humankind have gone to in the name of love.
- A list of Sander’s publishers: US - Penguin Random House; Germany - Knesebeck Von Dem GmbH
Tales of the Damned
An anthology of terrifying tales from around the world.
- Stories will be broken up with a series of ‘theme’ spreads, which will add a non-fiction element to the book. These spreads cover everything from the rise of the horror genre to famous monsters and vampire mass hysteria.
- There’s a gap in the market for striking, beautifully illustrated horror anthology.
- Contents: The Mask of Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe; Edgar Allen Poe and the Birth of Horror Literature (NF); Dracula; Vampire Mass Hysteria (NF); The Monkey’s Paw; Zombies and the Undead (NF); Red Riding Hood; The Original Dark Fairy Stories (NF); Frankenstein; Mary Shelley and the impact of Frankenstein (NF); Whistle and I’ll Come To You; Ghosts and the Victorians (NF); Baba Yaga; Witches (NF); Bluebeard; Blood and Gore (NF)
Art is Everywhere
A playful introduction to art history.
- Growing demand for children’s art books that aren’t biography or activity
- Fresh, inspiring take on a strong topic
- Highly accessible angle - discusses ideas and techniques that can be applied to art anywhere and everywhere
- Author is a knowledgeable art historian with a witty, unique tone, and years of experience with leading art workshops for children
- Both UK and international sales have seen demand for more ‘art’ titles. A great opportunity for us to show support for suffering creative arts scene and fill a gap on our list.
- Subjects covered – Why Do we Make Art?, Brush Strokes, Patterns, The Power of Colour, Art Can be Anything, Symbols
The Wild Verses
A striking poetry collection by Helen Mort.
- The book will be split into different sections/feelings - joy, hard times, love, loss etc.
- Tapping into the phenomenal success of books like *The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse* and *The Poetry Pharmacy*.
- An opportunity to reuse Sarah Maycock’s artwork in a new format - for an adult audience
- The perfect offering for the Christmas gift market
- Luxy cover finishes – quarter binding and foil
- With poems by award-winning Helen Mort
The Wild Verses
Safely, he remembers
Why your smile is brighter when you can run
to quiet, to offer it
the chance to shine?
Watch those orange
wings in the sunshine,
this head of rabbit
twitching like a head on
morning, always moving
as one.
The Bull
Today, you want
to sweep the world and feel
the day fall away
Send them
into the sunshine
and they will step
in peace. Fly up
your wilderness
like a bird flying.
The Peacock
If I could paint the world
I’d colour it with the light which is yellow
because for the sunshine men,
there’s no need to close their eyes,
listen for diagnosis, pink gold
for every year that flowers in darkness.
Unfold
Sometimes you want to hide
your crimson, teal and green.
Sometimes you fold.
It’s time to catch the light. Be bold.
You open the fan of yourself
and you brim with gold.
Pub Date 10/11/2022
Pub Price £16.99
ISBN 9781800784765
H x W 225 x 173mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range Adult
Author Helen Mort
Illustrator Sarah Maycock
Extent 112pp
Rights Available World
Love Is...
A beautifully illustrated mini gift book celebrating love in all its forms.
- A beautiful mini picture book that brings poetry and nature together in the most stunning of ways, perfect for gifting
- Promotes emotional awareness, empathy, and love in all it’s different forms
- Cover: graining with gold foil
- Sarah's bold, expressive artwork captures a creature’s characteristics or the forces of nature in just a few swoops of ink, brining each page to vivid life
- Sarah was selected as an It’s Nice That Graduate in 2011 and her most recent work includes illustrations for the Natural History Museum’s 2018 Whales exhibition.
- *Sometimes I feel* won the 2021 ALCS Educational Writers’ Award
Love is...
But sometimes love sings a quieter song, soft as the evening chorus, but no less strong.
Love is PLAYFUL, like meerkats rolling in the dust.
But love can be serious too... looking out for each other, when times are tough.
Love is DARING, like a bear cub exploring the world for the first time.
| Pub Date | 05/01/2023 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £5.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800782259 |
| H x W | 169 x 132mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 7-9 years |
| Author | Lily Murray |
| Illustrator | Sarah Maycock |
| Extent | 48pp |
| Word Count | 250 words |
| Rights Available| World |
Sometimes I Feel...
A mini hardback edition of Sarah Maycock’s beautiful Sometimes I Feel.
- *Sometimes I Feel* has been used by several teachers in lessons, to teach emotional literacy.
- Smaller format and lower RRP to make this a covetable gift purchase.
- Sarah is an extraordinary talent and someone we’d love to publish more with (and is no doubt getting enquiries for other children’s projects).
- Cover Treatments: grained cover with 100% gold foil
Sometimes I Feel...
But there will always be someone bigger than me and sometimes I will feel small.
Sometimes I feel as happy as a lark.
But not all days can be filled with song...
...and sometimes I will need time before I can join in with the chorus.
Sometimes I feel as strong as an ox.
Pub Date 20/01/2022
Pub Price £5.99
ISBN 9781800781283
H x W 169 x 132mm
Binding Hardback
Age Range 5-7 years
Author Sarah Maycock
Illustrator Sarah Maycock
Extent 48pp
Word Count 250 words
Rights Available World
The Wonderful Wild
A box set of 50 beautiful postcards featuring Sarah Maycock’s stunning watercolour artwork.
- 50 full-colour postcards, featuring Sarah Maycock’s stunning watercolour artwork of animals from all around the world
- Sarah’s bold, expressive artwork captures a creature’s characteristics or the forces of nature in just a few swoops of ink, bringing each card to vivid life
- Sarah has notecard sets published by Laurence King: For the Love of Cats and For the Love of Dogs
- The ideal gift - beautifully presented in a box including pantone, ribbon and foil
The Wonderful Wild
Illustrated by Sarah Maycock
| Pub Date | 14/08/2025 |
|---------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781835871478 |
| Age Range | 12+ years |
| Illustrator | Sarah Maycock |
| Extent | 50pp |
| Freight On Board | 29/05/2025 |
| Rights Available | World |
Up in the Canopy
Explore the jungle layer by layer with a huge fold-out surprise at the end.
- James Aldred’s book *The Goshawk Summer* won the 2022 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.
- Written from the perspective of real-life Emmy-nominated cameraman and explorer, James Aldred
- Stunningly illustrated - with artwork as rich and dense as the rainforest itself
- Huge fold-out tree at the back of the book, which readers can pore over.
- Matt lam and spot UV finishes.
Welcome to the emergent layer – the rainforest’s tree-top canopy.
Like this laptop, some of the largest trees in the Amazon stand head and shoulders above the rest. They form the topmost layer of the rainforest; these emergent trees are exposed to strong winds and intense sunlight for most of the day. This is a hot place, and the sun is a lot hotter up here, making it feel more like a desert than a rainforest. The trees have adapted by growing thick bark to protect them from evaporation. In addition, tall trees are often exposed to fierce storms. Lightning strikes a tree’s canopy several times each year, and the bark can be charred or even ripped away by high winds. This is the most extreme environment in the rainforest and only the toughest plants and animals can survive here.
Reaching the top of your tree, you are rewarded with far-reaching views, despite the wind. You can see the forest stretching out before you, and the rivers that meander gently in the distance, and sea mile your climbing helmet off to find the wind in your hair. You look down at the forest floor, where the canopy has been lifted by a strong storm, you assemble into a writing position. Settling down to eat a snack, you immerse yourself in one of the best views anyone could wish for: You’ve made it!
| Pub Date | 24/10/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781835870945 |
| H x W | 300 x 238mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 5-7 years |
| Author | James Aldred |
| Illustrator | Good Wives and Warriors |
| Extent | 20pp |
| Word Count | 4319 words |
| Freight On Board| 09/08/2024 |
| Rights Available| World |
Under the Starlit Sky
A journey from the roots to the canopy of a majestic old oak tree, right in the heart of Europe’s most ancient forest.
- The follow up title to the beautiful *Up in the Canopy*
- As told by real life explorer and tree climber, James Aldred (winner of the 2022 Wainwright Prize for Non-Fiction)
- Illustrated by award-winning duo Good Wives and Warriors
- Published in conjunction with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
- Huge fold-out tree at the back of the book, which readers can pore over
- Cover treatment: Matt lam, holographic foil and spot UV finishes
The upper canopy is the highest level of the forest, home to the tallest trees. Here, the sun’s rays filter through the greens of green plants converting light energy into chemical energy (photosynthesis) takes place, and where the rain that falls from the forest canopy is collected in the form of dew. This is an ideal environment for birds to take full advantage of northern Europe’s short growing season.
**Greater Noctule Bat**
Geographically, the bat is a true nocturnal, exploring out at twilight to roost in trees. With a wingspan of 1m, it is one of the largest bats in Europe. It is also one of the most elusive, with few people ever having seen one in the wild. With large ears, it can hear the slightest rustle of leaves and insects and prey on midges and moths.
**Purple Emperor’s**
Purple Emperors are one of the most beautiful butterflies in the world, flashing their beautiful wings in the sunshine. They are one of the largest butterflies found in the upper branches of trees, feeding on nectar from flowers such as heather, bramble, and the hawthorn.
**Black Storks**
A bird of striking, elegant beauty, the stork is a picture of grace. They recently moved from their breeding grounds in Siberia to the UK, and have been spotted in the UK. They will soon be up and out and their chicks as fast as goshawks in search of food. They are one of the most successful species of different habitats within Britain and beyond.
**Oak Apples Gall**
What looks like an apple growing on the oak branch is actually a gall. Made by the oak tree in response to an insect (the gall wasp), it will taste sweet and delicious to the bird that eats it. The gall wasp lays its eggs inside the gall, and the larvae grow inside until they are ready to pupate. The adult wasp then emerges and provides a safe place for her larvae to grow and pupate in.
**Linnet Spotted Egger**
Just like the black stork, there is now a record of a purple emperor butterfly being spotted in the UK. It is thought that the butterfly has been spotted in the UK because of the increase in the number of purple emperors, which means that the butterflies are more likely to be seen in the UK.
**European Mistletoe**
When mistletoe grows on trees, it produces food for pollinators, such as bees and butterflies. It also provides a home for other animals, including bats and birds. It is also used in traditional medicine for the treatment of arthritis and joint pain.
**Fairy Wren**
The fairy wren is a small bird that lives in the understorey layer of the forest. It is known for its bright colors and loud songs. It is also known for its ability to build nests in the understorey layer of the forest.
**Pine Marten**
Having squinted its way up a tree trunk, it is now perched on a branch, looking down at the ground below. It is one of the few animals that have all four limbs in the understorey. Pine martens are also known for their ability to climb trees and catch prey, such as birds and other birds including eggs, birds, mice, and frogs.
**Understorey Layer**
The understorey layer of the forest is home to many different types of plants and animals. It is also known for its ability to provide a habitat for many different types of animals, including birds, mammals, and insects.
**The Herb Layer**
The herb layer of the forest is home to many different types of plants and animals. It is also known for its ability to provide a habitat for many different types of animals, including birds, mammals, and insects.
**The Brushwood Layer**
The brushwood layer of the forest is home to many different types of plants and animals. It is also known for its ability to provide a habitat for many different types of animals, including birds, mammals, and insects.
**Pub Date** 11/09/2025
**Pub Price** £14.99
**ISBN** 9781800787377
**H x W** 300 × 238mm
**Binding** Hardback
**Age Range** 7-9 years
**Author** James Aldred
**Illustrator** Good Wives and Warriors
**Extent** 20pp
**Word Count** 4300 words
**Files To Printer** 21/04/2025
**Freight On Board** 26/06/2025
**Rights Available** World
A stunningly illustrated gothic puzzle adventure!
- Expanding our high-end activity offering - a core part of the Big Picture Press list
- Perfect for introducing readers to classic horror stories
- A fresh approach to an evergreen, universal subject
- Adam Allori’s immersive artwork will appeal to readers of all ages
- Strong backlist and series potential - our follow up title could focus on classic adventure stories
We all have a duality, an inner demon. Dr Henry Jekyll wanted to see his a little closer. Alas, his experiments split his mind and transformed his body. Behind his veil, Mr Hyde is a monster, a fiend, a beast.
Jekyll has hidden the formula for a cure in six two-part clues beyond Hyde’s understanding. Mark your map and follow the clues to his laboratories. Combined, they will point you to a solution that will save them both.
Collect them all and Jekyll will have his cure!
1. FIND PRINCE GIL.
2. SAVE THE SUN FROM BASTET.
3. SCRAMBLE TO FIND A GLINT.
4. DRAW YOUR ANGEL FOR THE MEDAL METAL.
5. TO BRING OUR BEST. JUST HEAT AND PRESS!
6. THIS PAINFULLY BLOODY FURS HARVEST THE SUN
| Pub Date | 12/09/2024 |
|----------------|------------|
| Pub Price | £14.99 |
| ISBN | 9781800783423 |
| H x W | 340 x 270mm |
| Binding | Hardback |
| Age Range | 12+ years |
| Author | Sam Fern |
| Illustrator | Adam Allori|
| Extent | 40pp |
| Word Count | 2000 words |
| Rights Available| World |
This extraordinarily illustrated book documents the strange new world of Terra Ultima for the very first time...
- Incredible lifelike artwork, unlike anything you’ve seen before!
- A phenomenal exploration of a new fantasy world
- Winner of the 2022 Golden Paintbrush award - one of the Netherlands biggest children’s literary prizes.
- This beautiful paperback edition includes 100% gold foil, 4C printing and flaps
- Celebrating 10 years of extraordinary illustrated books
INTRODUCTION TO TERRA ULTIMA
WRITTEN BY DR. MARIE LEEPER, BIOLOGIST
I thought I was going to be a scientist. I really did. I had always loved animals and nature, and I wanted to learn all about them. But then I got to college and took some classes in biology. And that’s when I realized that I didn’t want to be a scientist anymore.
I started thinking about what I really wanted to do with my life. And that’s when I decided to become an artist instead. I wanted to use my art to tell stories about the world around us, and to inspire people to care about it.
So here I am, finally getting around to writing this book. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m excited to share my vision for Terra Ultima with the world. I hope you enjoy it!
THE SECOND EXPEDITION
BY RYAN JONES - LUCY WILSON
Something has gone wrong. The trees are dying, the animals are disappearing, and the land is changing. It’s up to you to find out what’s happening and stop it before it’s too late.
The Third Expedition
SHOED MUDSUTTER
The shoed mudsutter is a small creature that lives in the back 10 meters of mangrove-forested estuaries. It has a long, slender body and a pair of long, thin legs that it uses to walk on the mudflats. Its diet consists mainly of small crustaceans, molluscs, and insects.
Pub Date: 09/05/2024
Pub Price: £14.99
ISBN: 9781800789210
H x W: 309 x 225mm
Binding: Paperback
Age Range: 7-9 years
Author: Raoul Deleo
Illustrator: Raoul Deleo
Extent: 72pp
Word Count: 11482 words
Rights Available: World ex USA
An extraordinary visual history of medicine - now available in paperback.
- Winner 2023 Information Book Award Judges’ Choice for readers aged 13 to 16
- Expertly written by curator, lecturer and historian Briony Hudson
- Striking artwork from Aquila artist Nick Taylor is sure to make this title stand out from the crowd
- Perfect for students but also the ideal gift book for general interest readers
- Sample contents: The History of Medicine, Ancient Beliefs, Mental Health, How Medicines Work, Opening Up the Body, The Power of Plants, Making Medicines, Poisons, Hospitals Through History, Early Surgery, Plagues and Pandemics, Vaccination, D.I.Y. Medicine, Transplants, Prosthetics
**HOW MEDICINES WORK**
For generations, humans have discovered plants such as willow or poppy and substances such as metals and salts to treat the body.
In more recent history, scientists’ growing knowledge about what causes diseases, coupled with how medicines affect our bodies, has led to an increase in the number of effective medicines. Today, they can improve symptoms such as pain or indigestion, or stop bacteria or viruses from causing infections.
---
**GERM THEORY ESTABLISHED ...**
Before the 1800s, most people believed that diseases came from bad air, bad water, or even bad thoughts and miasmas. French scientist Louis Pasteur (1822–95) was among the first to suggest that diseases were caused by germs or micro-organisms could invade a substance or a body and cause illness. He also discovered how tiny living particles in wine and milk made them turn sour and how these particles caused different diseases. He went on to invent the first vaccine for anthrax, which was a way of injecting a small amount of the virus to stop animals and people catching it.
... AND PROVED
German scientist Robert Koch (1843–1910) was inspired by Pasteur’s work. During his highly productive 18-year period, Koch and his students made many discoveries about the micro-organisms that caused an impressive range of diseases: anthrax, cholera, diphtheria, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and typhus. Koch’s work was a major step forward from the rapidly growing specialties of microbiology, continuing to the ways of preventing the spread of disease.
---
**BACTERIUM OR VIRUS?**
Bacteria are microscopic, single-celled organisms that can cause fatalities, pneumonia, or tuberculosis. Viruses cause colds, flu, chickenpox, and other illnesses that make us feel sick but don’t usually kill us. Both bacteria and viruses need a host to survive. Both of these invading infectious agents are known as pathogens. Medicines can either kill the pathogens, weaken or damage the pathogens, or prevent them from growing or replicating. This is why it is so difficult to find medicines to treat stepping diseases caused by viruses in more difficult cases. Scientists are still working hard to find cures, and they are still working to find effective medicines against many of them.
---
**FINDING MAGIC BULLETS**
Once researchers identify the germ that causes a disease, scientists can search for an active ingredient that harms the pathogen, but doesn’t harm the human body. In 1928, Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) found the first ‘magic bullet’ medicine, meaning a drug designed to treat a specific disease. The same year, Gerhard Domagk (1895–1964) had experimented with 105 substances to treat syphilis before they found success with Salvarsan or ‘Compound 606’.
---
**Pub Date**
03/07/2025
**Pub Price**
£12.99
**ISBN**
9781835872765
**H × W**
300 × 235mm
**Binding**
Paperback
**Age Range**
9–11 years
**Author**
Briony Hudson
**Illustrator**
Nick Taylor
**Extent**
80pp
**Word Count**
15000 words
**Freight On Board**
01/05/2025
**Rights Available**
World
This visually extraordinary book presents the history of money as it has never been seen before – from coins to contactless, bankruptcy to billionaires.
- Vibrant illustrations and dynamic layouts will appeal to the audience.
- Digestible and easy-to-understand text by expert children’s author, Alex Woolf.
- A global topic with growing relevance in today’s world. There is a significant lack of publishing for children on this subject.
- Pantone and 100% foil cover finishes.
BPP US rights available
Created by Unknown!
email@example.com
Updated 13 April 2025
bookshelf.bonnierbooks.co.uk/collections/BPP-US-rights-available | aa78310a-302d-4312-94de-a2969e9781cb | CC-MAIN-2024-46 | https://files.circularsoftware.com/DOWNLOAD/Client5352/PDF/COLLECTION/BPP-US-rights-available.pdf | 2024-11-09T01:22:23+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-46/segments/1730477028106.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20241108231327-20241109021327-00524.warc.gz | 234,071,308 | 13,773 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.991564 | eng_Latn | 0.998009 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
23,
473,
1869,
2256,
2704,
3141,
3620,
4237,
4946,
5466,
5940,
6264,
8413,
8971,
9611,
10097,
10675,
11233,
12565,
13159,
15770,
16406,
18951,
19603,
20064,
20759,
21176,
21926,
22605,
22838,
25701,
26287,
26947,
29447,
29807,
33201,
33801,
34366,
34862,
35324,
36002,
36792,
37612,
38329,
38840,
39846,
40556,
41259,
41719,
42230,
42808,
43149,
43639,
45366,
45948,
50052,
50476,
51552,
52030,
53550,
54240,
57331,
57811,
57972
] | [
2.609375,
2.140625
] | 1 | 0 |
STATE OF CONSERVATION REPORT
JANUARY 2016
BAHLA FORT WORLD HERITAGE SITE
SULTANATE OF OMAN (C433)
State of Conservation Report
January 2016
Bahla Fort World Heritage Site
Sultanate of Oman (C433)
CONTENTS
1. RESEARCHES AND STUDIES
1.1. Draft of legal instrument for the implementation of the Management Plan.
1.2. Updating the Management Plan report.
1.3. A consultancy study for the Development of Settlements Al Auqr, Al Hawiyah and Al Ghuzaily.
1.4. Site Conservation Mater plan.
1.5. Anthropological study of the Market (Souk).
1.6. Archeological study of the Market (Souk).
1.7. Study for the Restoration of the Wall of Bahla (Sur)
2. CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION WORKS
2.1. The Restoration of the Bahla Market (Souk)
2.2. The restoration of Sabah Salem gate.
2.3. The restoration of Mausoleum of Shaikh Bin Baraka and Alkhair mosque.
3. CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES.
1. RESEARCHES AND STUDIES
In consideration to the World Heritage Committee decision number 38com 7B.4, the Ministry of Heritage & Culture of the Sultanate of Oman (MHC), as the responsible authority for the management of the site, undertook a number of actions to implement this decision.
1.1 Draft of legal instrument for the implementation of the Management Plan.
The Ministry of Heritage and Culture commissioned the International Consultant Atkins, who originally drafted the Management Plan for the site, to prepare a legal tool in format of text and plans for a possible Royal Decree and a Ministerial Decree directed to a better definition and implementation of the management of the Bahla Fort and Oasis World Heritage Site.
The proposed Decrees reflect the policies and objectives set out in 2010 Management Plan for the World Heritage Sites, in order to support the Sultanate of Oman’s obligations under the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, 1972, to which it became a signatory on the 6th of October 1981. They also respond to the comments received in 2011 by ICOMOS on the 2010 Management Plan.
The development of the Decrees has been supported by consultation with a range of parties including the Bahla Municipality, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (Nizwa), the Ministry of Heritage and Culture and the Ministry of Housing (Nizwa).
1.2 Updating the Management Plan report.
The revision of the Management Plan was a part of the scope of work, which also included the possible recommendations on the Buffer Zone.
1.3 A consultancy study for the Development of Settlements Al Auqr, Al Hawiyah and Al Ghuzaily.
In April 2014, Omran – a Government owned company – in coordination with the MHC, was requested to conduct a consultancy study to develop heritage tourism in the old “Settlements”, the ruins of Bahla. This request was suggested by the growing
demand for Heritage tourist experiences worldwide, and the consequent opportunity for increasing heritage tourism in Oman.
In August 2014, Omran appointed an international Heritage Consultant in order to design – in association with the local community – a project to revitalize the “Settlements” of Bahla old town by developing and capitalizing existing heritage assets.
The field study carried out by the Consultant suggested to initially develop the three clusters of the “Settlements” at the foot of the Bahla fort, called respectively namely Settlements Al Aqur, Al Hawiyah and Al Ghuzaily. These three clusters were selected mainly for their close proximity to the major attractions in Bahla: the Fort (World Heritage Site), the Oasis and the Market (Souk).
The Consultant prepared a Master plan for the restoration of selected ruins within the three clusters identified and the best adaptive reuse concepts for each unit. Moreover, the comprehensive strategy for touristic development included the institution of outlets, such as bookshops, permanent and temporary handicraft exhibitions, museums, restaurants, coffee shops and accommodation facilities.
This concept would not serve as a flywheel only for the tourism sector, but it would also interest the daily activities of great part of the local community, which would be variously active in providing essential services, such as banks, utilities and service outlets.
These commercial activities will breathe life back into the old restored ruins. The development also includes paving and illuminating walkways and the building, allowing the locals and tourists to take a walk around the old town at night while enjoying a pleasant walk from one location to the other.
The project is developed on the basis of this analysis, hence the decision to identify a guided tour that starts from the main parking area and proceeds up the road that runs along the fort to the mosque, then continues along the square towards the square and finally ends among the residential areas of the village and that leads back to the parking area. The path has been designed to allow also people with disabilities to overcome the gradients present, with the use of ramps (where the gradient is less than 8%) and steps (where it was not possible to use the ramps).
Images of prosed development of the three Settlements
1.4 Site Conservation Masterplan
The initial study by the Heritage Consultant for the development of the three “Settlements” in Bahla old town suggested also that Bahla has the potential to become the major Heritage tourism destination in Oman. Therefore, based on the previous study and the conceptual adaptive reuse, Omran and MHC decided to further expand the project in order to capitalize on Bahla’s heritage wealth.
In early December 2015, Omran floated a tender for consultancy services to develop a comprehensive Conservation Masterplan for the World Heritage Site in Bahla. The proposed Masterplan encompasses the whole World Heritage Site, addressing and/or taking into consideration mainly, but not exclusively, the following points:
- Identification of the main heritage, natural and cultural attractions of Bahla;
- Definition of the most appropriate use of each identified feature and area;
- Necessity of introducing and/or upgrading basic infrastructures, such as electricity and water supply, communications and waste removal/management;
1.5 Anthropological study for the Market (Souk).
The restoration project of the Bahla Market (Souk) created the appropriate occasion to conduct an anthropological and historical study of this space, including full surveys of all its elements, such as trading and merchandises types, vocations, tools, production phases and their manufacturing techniques.
The research has focused not only on the direct material evidence for craftsmanship and trading activities, but also on the history of these operations by studying historical and administrative documents.
This study might provide suggestions for reviving the traditional crafts and commercial activities that characterized the Bahla Market (Souk) and develop them according to the nowadays needs. This operation would turn these specific aspects of the intangible heritage into tangible activities with concrete outcomes on the local community and would also revitalize and preserve skills and expertise that would have otherwise be lost and forgotten.
This study is composed of three main operations:
1. First Phase: creation of a complete inventory of all workshops and commercial activities still active in the Bahla Market (Souk) and of all types of commodities and merchandises they produced and sold, including the required resources, imports and manufacturing techniques employed. The inventory will record also all shops already closed and demolished.
2. Second Phase: study of the different social-economic aspects of the Market (Souk), represented by all productions, merchandises and imports, as well as storing, marketing and promotional activities; a special attention has been dedicated to the study of the economic, social and cultural status of the local merchants and craftsmen.
3. Third Phase: economic and marketing study describing the actual state of the Market (Souk), the reasons of its diminished economic importance and how this affected the commercial activities; the study will also provide the required information to design a strategy for reviving the Market (Souk) and expand its activities, preserving the traditional crafts and traditional marketing practices.
1.6 Archeological study of the Market (Souk)
As per recommendations received by ICOMOS on the restoration of Bahla Market (Souk), the MHC appointed experts to conduct archaeological explorations in the Market (Souk) site.
Dating the Market (Souk)
It was not possible to precisely date the Market (Souk) from the pottery pieces that were retrieved from a number of trenches excavated on the site, mainly due to the lack of comparisons from previous studies. However, the last surveys under the shops and the common areas provided a number of coins from British India dating mainly around the middle of the 19th century AD (1830, 1833, 1835, 1857 and 1862 AD). Some of these coins were in very good condition indicating that they were likely covered shortly after they were released and used. This evidence implies that the Market (Souk) was commercially active in the middle of the 19th century and its construction might date early in that century. The majority of coins dates to 1898 AD, during the reign of Sultan Faisal bin Turki (reign, 1888-1913 AD), attesting that the Market (Souk) was flourishing at the end of the 19th century AD.
Antique archeologically discoveries
The floors of the shops were leveled using soil and gravel brought from outside the Market (Souk). Fragments of prehistoric stone tools that were found in these filling layers, testifying for the existence of most ancient archaeological sites in the area of Bahla. Independent scholars working in collaboration with the MHC, also reported the presence of tiny flakes of carnelian stone in the plastering of both the Fort and city walls, possibly attesting the presence of an ancient workshop of in this precious stone in the surrounding areas. These findings encourage the execution of additional archaeological surveys in the Oasis of Bahla in order to properly regulate the urban development plan and add important information to archaeological and historical population of the area.
Integrating historical, archaeological and anthropological elements in the restoration of the Market (Souk)
The diversified discoveries brought to light in all archaeological explorations from different kinds of coins, local pottery and imported pottery, confirms the continuity of the commercial activities and traditional industries in the Market (Souk) for ages, and encourages the development of a comprehensive program of restoration to ensure this continuity. Since the restoration project does not treat a lifeless site, but rather a living dynamic, commercial and industrial reality characterized by different heritage, historical and anthropological aspects, such program should comprise also the examinations of the remains of agricultural and industrial activities in the Market (Souk) and the old quarters.
The discovery of older foundations
The third survey has shown the remains of a structure that predated the Market (Souk) foundation, possibly dating between the 12th and the 16th centuries AD on the base of pottery comparisons.
1.7 Study for the Restoration of the Wall of Bahla (Sur)
The Wall is considered the actual boundary for the site and one of the important historical monuments in the preserve. Most probably it was constructed for defensive purposes at the times of Nabahina when Bahla became their capital in about five hundred years ago.
The Wall measures around 13 km long and it crosses many valleys and surrounds many important quarters, its height varies from side to side according to the natural terrain, it measures near mountains and hills around 3 meters, and in valleys around 5 to 6 meters. The rampart’s thickness also varies between the base and the top, in the base it is approximately 2 to 3 meters and descents at the top to reach at the highest point around 1.5 meters.
The Wall is traversed by several gates, the large ones allow the passage of vehicles and trucks, meanwhile the smaller ones are used by pedestrians. The most significant gates are the following:
- Sili gate situated at the north of the oasis.
- Kharzaban gate also at the north.
- Badi gate at the west of the oasis.
- Sharjiat gate also at the north.
- Sabah Salem at the south.
- Al Bataha or the mausoleum of Ibn Baraka.
In addition many towers can be found at the edges of the Wall, as much as 36 towers count on its limits.
The study that the Ministry is undertaking aims in the first place to make a full diagnosis of the actual physical state, and to examine the current problems, in order to define the endangered parts, so that the restoration works can commence in a timely manner.
After the initial diagnosis the problems can be listed as follows:
- Major and important deterioration in certain parts.
- Cracking in the adobe walls.
- Destruction in some of the top parts.
- Completely demolished parts.
- Corrosion of mud plastering.
- Demolition of some of the Masonry bricks.
- Destruction and loss of some of the adobe bricks.
Upon this diagnosis a restoration scheme is under study at the moment, it will decide the parts that need urgent intervention to receive the priority.
General plan of the wall
الحالة الراهنة لمكونات السور
مشروع ترميم وصيانة سور بهلاء القديم
وزارة شؤون وظائف
رقم الرحلة: 04
التاريخ: 28/09/2014
Part 1 of the wall (1- Major and important deterioration. 2- Cracking in the adobe walls. 3- Cracks in masonry foundations)
Part 4 of the wall (1- Demolition in the top parts. 2- Cracks and fissures. 3- Crossion of the lower parts. 4- Destruction of the front parts of the tower)
Photos for parts of the wall
Sections of different parts of the Wall
2. CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION WORKS
The old fort, the Market (Souk), the ancient wall and quarters represent the historical and cultural heritage of Bahla. This historical complex testify to the outstanding values worth of being considered as one of the most prominent heritage assets in close connections and continued interactions with all relevant components of the natural environment that allowed for creating the Bahla oasis.
The conservation and restoration works necessary for the historical monuments and sites within the considered area of development are detailed in the General Conservation Plan adopted by the MHC following the Masterplan. The General Conservation Plan aims at conserving the historical monuments of Bahla and removing all disfigurations added in the different periods to eventually restore the structures coherently. Moreover, the traditional social and economic activities will also be revitalized and incentivized to achieve the objectives of the development and conservation plans.
In its first phases, the General Conservation Plan will interest all monumental sites and buildings within the preserve. The active involvement of the local community is considered an essential tool for the success of the conservation plan and the future positive accomplishment of the entire project.
As a World Heritage Site, the Bahla preserve has all the essential prospects and potentials to be conserved, restored and activated as a living historical city, with the restored sites and activities provided with a re-established social and economic role, respecting their historical significance and meaning.
2.1. The Restoration of the Bahla Market (Souk)
In order to restore the authentic commercial activities to this important monument and revive it as a vigorous space, the MHC designed a pilot project for the beginning of the restoration works, which first focused in the eastern areas. In total, 1365 m² and 65 shops (on a total of 142 in the entire Market (Souk)) were subject by various activities and levels of restoration.
Main areas of the Bahla Market (Souk): 1) Pilot project area; 2-4) Next areas
This area of the Market (Souk) was selected for the pilot project of the conservation plan due to the severe and extensive damages to walls and roofs caused by the flooding occurred in the Eighties.
Once the pilot project will be successfully concluded, restoration works will be simultaneously extended also to the remaining three parts of the Market (Souk), which cover approximately 3128 m² and count 80 shops.
When the restoration and reconstruction works within the limits of the pilot project reached their final stages, they will represent a fine and credible example to what the whole Market (Souk) will look like at the end of the project. The following works in the pilot project area have been already accomplished:
- Treatment and consolidation of the foundations according to the requirements of specific conditions.
- Reconstruction and reinforcement of fully demolished or cracked walls with special adobe bricks.
- Roofing of the shops with destructed roofs and restoration of partially deteriorated roofs using traditional materials (Palm trunks, Kandal wood and Daoun).
- Roofing of passageways between the shops using traditional materials and techniques.
- Restoration of traditional original doors and windows, as well as fabrication of new traditional doors and windows to replace the fully damaged ones.
- Beginning of electrical wiring works to facilitate the traditional plaster works.
- Traditional plastering of the exterior and interior walls with Sarooj after completion of electrical works.
- Paving and restoration of water drainage system works after completion of electrical works.
The design of the courtyard is inspired by traditional Emirati architecture, featuring white walls with red accents and wooden doors. The central palm tree adds a touch of nature to the space, creating a serene and inviting atmosphere. The courtyard serves as a gathering place for community events and social interactions, fostering a sense of belonging and connection among residents.
The restoration process involves several steps, including cleaning and repairing the walls, ceiling, and other structural elements. Workers use traditional techniques to apply mud plaster, ensuring that the material is evenly distributed and properly adhered to the surface. This not only strengthens the structure but also enhances its aesthetic appeal.
In addition to the exterior work, interior repairs are also carried out. The team carefully inspects and addresses any damage to the walls, floors, and ceilings, using appropriate materials and methods to restore them to their original condition. This meticulous approach ensures that the historical integrity of the building is maintained while making it safe and functional for future generations.
Throughout the restoration process, close attention is paid to preserving the architectural details and features that make each building unique. From intricate carvings and decorative elements to traditional craftsmanship, every aspect is carefully considered and restored with care.
As the project progresses, regular monitoring and quality control measures are implemented to ensure that all work meets the highest standards. This includes periodic inspections by experts in the field who provide guidance and feedback on the progress and effectiveness of the restoration efforts.
The successful completion of these restoration projects not only preserves valuable cultural heritage but also contributes to the overall development and sustainability of the community. By revitalizing historic buildings, we create spaces that honor our past while providing opportunities for learning, creativity, and social interaction.
2.2. The Restoration of Sabah Salem Gate
Sabah Salem Gate is one of the most important gates on the rampart of Bahla, because of its location that connects Bahla to the main road and to the valley behind the rampart, which permits to oversee the significance of the rampart stretching for 13 km.
The gate appeared cracked from both the right and left sides with total destruction of the roof. Restoration works aimed at restoring it to its original state. After completion of the restoration works the gate returned to its original state and function and people is now able to access the World Heritage Site preserve passing through it.
2.3. The Restoration of Mausoleum of Shaikh Bin Baraka and Alkhair mosque
The mosque and the mausoleum were largely deteriorated and their conservation state endangered the safety of both the visitors and worshipers.
The MHC provided the required budget to save these important monuments by realizing urgent interventions to treat the serious cracking and re-establish their original functionalities.
The restoration works started with the reconstruction of the demolished and badly deteriorated walls. Moreover, the demolished mausoleum dome roof was fully restored its original form reading and analyzing the remains of the original dome.
The accomplished restoration works are summarized as follows:
- Reconstruction of the mausoleum’s demolished walls, using traditional materials and traditional techniques, in addition of applying special treatments to the severely damaged walls risking collapse.
- Treatment of the deteriorated parts of the Alkhair mosque walls, with specific focus on the parts directly connected to the rampart, which were about to be fully destroyed.
- Reconstruction of the mausoleum dome with traditional materials, restoring its authentic form following analysis of the remains of the old dome.
- Applying internal and external plaster to both monuments with traditional local materials (Sarooj).
- Prefabricating of the mosque’s doors and windows with traditional Teak wood.
- Roofing of the mosque using traditional materials and techniques (Kandal wood and Daoun).
- Installation of electrical wiring in both monuments and installation of external and internal lighting elements.
- Furnishing of the mosque with carpets to allow prayers to be held again, and visitors are able to visit the again mausoleum.
The architectural features of the village include:
- **Traditional houses**: These are built with mud bricks and have flat roofs, reflecting the local climate and resources available.
- **Courtyards**: The houses are arranged around central courtyards, which provide natural ventilation and shade.
- **Arches and archways**: These are used to create passageways between different parts of the village, allowing for easy movement and interaction.
- **Walls**: The walls are thick and high, providing protection from the harsh desert environment.
- **Windows**: The windows are small and often have shutters or blinds to control the amount of light and heat entering the house.
These features not only serve functional purposes but also contribute to the aesthetic appeal of the village.
3. CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES
Bahla as a World Heritage Site was presented in a number of Conferences and Seminars, while the Fort as the most iconic elements of the site hosted some activities as well:
3.1 A paper on Bahla Fort site was presented to the “International Conference on Archeological Parks and Site” organized by ICOMOS in the city of Salalah, Sultanate of Oman. Many experts and executives from the UNESCO, ICCROM, and other scientific institutions and organizations participated in this Conference, which aimed to exchange international experiences and examples in managing and conserving world heritage sites.
3.2. Workshop in Bahla Fort under the title “Features from history and civilization”.
3.3. Hosting the literature forum “Readings in the thought of Shikha Aishaa Al-Riami” 20-30 October 2015.
3.4. Hosting seminar on the Historical and Cultural Omani role 20 November 2014.
3.5. World Heritage Day celebration 18 April 2015.
Additional information provided by the State Party on 1 March 2016
Adobe Bricks and Earthen Architecture at Bahla Fort
Introduction
Considered as an essential element and component in the characteristics of the local and traditional adobe architecture in the Bahla Fort site, the Ministry of Heritage and Culture along with all the responsible stakeholders took serious measures to enable the availability of these materials produced using local known traditional techniques and methods.
Since the starting of restoration scheme of Bahla Fort site two decades ago, such materials and techniques were intensively adopted in all conservation works, and applied not only for the Fort as the main iconic element of the site, but been used in all restoration and maintenance works on other elements of the site.
The Ministry where involved closely and directly in the details of the production quality of these materials, to assure the right and proper use of the traditional techniques that preserve the historical values and authenticity nature of all monuments of the site.
The adobe bricks production methods were adopted after consultations with local well-known skilled artisans and workmen, information were collected on the mixing formula of the components, for example to produce a local known plastering called material called Alsrooj, all production process are carried out under direct supervision of site engineers and architects.
In the light of all the previous measures the Ministry established a specialized workshop with 25 workers for the production of Adobe bricks on 2500 m² land, it was arranged to comprise all necessary activities from storing, drying mixing and molding.
Workshop site
The Workshop was located next to the rampart.
Adobe bricks workshop
The workshop has made it possible to monitor the production quality and to improve the characteristics and provide the required quantity with the best possible quality.
This workshop has been producing adobe bricks for the benefit of many conservation projects in the site among them is the first phase of the souk of Bahla restoration, which concentrated on the most deteriorated part in the souk, therefore efforts made on providing the traditional adobe bricks in a timely manner to meet the real needs.
Consequently the process of improving further quality in the production of these bricks will enhance with the ongoing restoration works of the remaining parts of the souk using any outputs for the adopted methods of the first phase that can provide a comprehensive database to support the restoration works of the rest of the souk and other historical monuments in the site with the best tested quality of adobe bricks.
For best overall analysis of the impact, we have conducted our evaluation by examining the use of these materials in the actual context and monitoring their interaction with the natural environment, allowing for a subsequent comparison with the case for the original adobe bricks.
Soaking Kandal wood for treatment
Workshop space and soaking tubs
Adobe brick fabrication
The fabrication method was the inspiration of the skilled and well-practised craftsmen and artisans who learned these techniques by inheritance from their antecedents and who have finely honed the sequential stages of the process. Guided by these experts, we were able to draw up and document the fabrication stages as they were originally pursued:
1- Choice of the most appropriate soil by source: it was found that soil from oases and adjacent areas had the adequate moisture content, along with a tracing of weed that helped in the mixing of adobe, while areas of high salinity soil were to be avoided, as the salinity turned up in the form of white layers during the fermentation stage.
2- Soil fermentation, a long process that takes a month or more to complete, involves watering the soil and then leaving it to ferment until the soil develops characteristics that facilitate its mixing at a later stage.
3- Following fermentation, the soil is transported close to the drying site, where it is mixed in adequate quantities with hay and water to reach an appropriate viscosity. To accomplish this, each trolley of soil is mixed bucket by bucket until it is fully and evenly incorporated.
4- After the mix has been prepared, the moulding begins, in sizes specific to demand, for example 15X15X35 cm and 15X15X40 cm. The mix is placed in moulds and compacted manually to remove all air and thus preempt the development of cracks.
5- The bricks are subsequently removed from the moulds to be air dried, and turned over regularly to ensure the drying of all sides equally. The drying period varies depending on the season and other factors. It takes approximately a week in summer and more than two weeks in winter.
Cracking in the bricks may occur if the mixing of soil and hay is inadequate, allowing air bubbles to form in the mix, or if the quantity of hay in the mix is short. Mixing and compacting are of crucial importance in the fabrication process.
Piling the hay to mix with soil
Soil and water are mixed and allowed to ferment.
Mixing hay and soil
Preparing moulds
Filling the moulds
Compacting the mixture
Removing the mould
Outcome: the adobe bricks prepared by the workshop and constructed in the first phase of Bahla Souk project area have shown no deterioration or degradation since their installation, despite exposure to extremes of nature. The same results can be observed in the intact original structures which have not suffered from demolition. In contrast, some of the original brickwork in roofless structures has experienced some cracking and deterioration as a consequence of exposure to heavy rains. | <urn:uuid:22a4f6f1-5f21-4647-a32d-b1da485ccef6> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://whc.unesco.org/document/139891 | 2019-06-19T04:54:23Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998913.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20190619043625-20190619065625-00292.warc.gz | 197,361,930 | 5,834 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.914434 | eng_Latn | 0.997167 | [
"swe_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"arb_Arab",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
97,
893,
2831,
4568,
5197,
7268,
9556,
11755,
13353,
13531,
13652,
13934,
13964,
14005,
16069,
17081,
17768,
18156,
19839,
20479,
22233,
23026,
23239,
23992,
24060,
25752,
27055,
29046,
29232,
29723
] | [
1.2890625,
2.015625
] | 1 | 0 |
E-Learning Essentials 2020
The first step in the process is to identify the problem or issue that needs to be addressed. This can be done through research, surveys, interviews, or other methods. Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to develop a plan for addressing it. This plan should include specific goals and objectives, as well as a timeline for completing the project.
Once the plan has been developed, it is important to gather resources and support from stakeholders. This may involve working with colleagues, seeking funding, or obtaining permission from relevant authorities. It is also important to establish clear communication channels and ensure that everyone involved is aware of their roles and responsibilities.
As the project progresses, it is essential to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. This may involve revising the plan, reallocating resources, or seeking additional support. It is also important to communicate regularly with stakeholders and keep them informed about the status of the project.
Finally, once the project has been completed, it is important to evaluate its success and learn from the experience. This may involve conducting a formal evaluation, gathering feedback from stakeholders, or sharing lessons learned with others. By following these steps, organizations can effectively address problems and issues, achieve their goals, and improve their performance.
E-LEARNING ESSENTIALS 2020
Participants in EDUC5104G (Winter 2020)
Power Learning Solutions
Sydney, NS, Canada
E-Learning Essentials 2020 by Power Learning Solutions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License, see www.creativecommons.org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author(s).
This book was produced with Pressbooks (https://pressbooks.com) and rendered with Prince.
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Cover Art Acknowledgement 3
Disclaimer 5
I. Learning Theories
1. Social Learning Theory 9
2. Elaboration Theory 14
3. Operant Conditioning 20
4. Situated Learning Theory 25
5. Experiential Learning Theory 29
6. ARCS Model of Motivational Design 35
7. Constructivism Theory 44
8. An Introduction to Problem-Based Learning 49
9. PBL: Another Take 54
10. Connectivism 59
11. Collaborative Learning Theory 63
12. Gamification 71
13. Backward Design 78
14. Social Development Theory 83
II. Instructional Design Principles
15. A Quick Overview of the Multimedia Principle 91
16. Another Look at the Multimedia Principle 96
17. Modality Principle 103
18. Redundancy Principle 108
19. Coherence Principle 113
20. Segmenting Principle 118
21. Pre-Training Principle 123
22. Worked Example Principle 128
23. Practice Principles 134
24. Learner Control 140
25. An Introduction to Collaboration 147
26. The Collaboration Principle 152
27. Thinking Skills Design Principle 161
28. The Personalization Principle 167
III. Tool Reviews
29. Articulate 360 175
30. Buncee 182
31. Canva 187
32. Explain Everything 193
33. Flipgrid 198
34. Google Docs 203
35. Hypothes.is 209
36. Kahoot! 215
37. LiveBinders 222
38. Microsoft Teams 227
39. MindMeister 234
40. Mural 240
41. Nearpod 245
42. Open EdX 249
43. Padlet 255
44. Pear Deck 260
45. Piktochart 264
46. Pixton 269
47. PowToon 274
48. Quizlet 278
49. Seesaw 283
50. Socrative 288
51. ThingLink 292
52. Trello 296
53. Web Knowledge Forum (Web KF) 301
54. Weebly 307
55. YouTube 312
56. Zoom 316
The first step in the process is to identify the problem or issue that needs to be addressed. This can be done through research, surveys, interviews, or other methods. Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to develop a plan for addressing it. This plan should include specific goals and objectives, as well as a timeline for completing the project.
Once the plan has been developed, it is important to gather resources and support from stakeholders. This may involve working with colleagues, seeking funding, or obtaining permission from relevant authorities. It is also important to establish clear communication channels and ensure that everyone involved is aware of their roles and responsibilities.
As the project progresses, it is essential to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. This may involve revising the plan, reallocating resources, or seeking additional support. It is also important to communicate regularly with stakeholders and keep them informed about the status of the project.
Finally, once the project has been completed, it is important to evaluate its success and learn from the experience. This may involve conducting a formal evaluation, gathering feedback from stakeholders, or sharing lessons learned with others. By following these steps, organizations can effectively address problems and issues, achieve their goals, and improve their performance.
WELCOME
Welcome to the eLearning Essentials 2020 eBook! Our focus is to provide evidence-based guidance, useful design tools, and useful examples to guide the creation and design of eLearning Modules.
This digital resource has been authored by participants in EDUC5104G: Analysis and Design of Web-Based Learning Tools — a graduate-level course offered through Ontario Tech University. From the course description:
This course allows students to investigate, analyze and design web-based learning tools. Key areas addressed include establishing an operational definition and categorization of web-based learning tools (WBLTs), exploring learning theories and instructional design principles that support the design of WBLTs, understanding the advantages and disadvantages of using WBLTs, analyzing and assessing qualities of effective WBLTs, and exploring strategies for using WBLTs. After developing a strong foundation of theory and design, students will create their own WBLTs.
Our focus in this eBook is on providing a lasting resource for other educators and instructional designers and developers. The eBook has three main parts:
1. Learning Theories
2. Instructional Design Principles
3. Tool Reviews
Part 1: Learning Theories focuses on background
information, guiding principles for use, and examples of good use in the design and development of web-based Learning Tools. Part 2 focuses on key Instructional Design Principles and, similarly, offers guidelines for use and examples of good use. In Part 3, course participants provide reviews of digital tools that can be used in the creation of your own web-based learning tools.
Each course participant has contributed two chapters to this eBook — one focusing on either a Learning Theory or an Instructional Design Principle, and one tool review.
We hope you find this resource useful to help with your design and development of your own web-based learning tools!
Rob Power, EdD
Assistant Professor, Educational Technology
The editor and contributors of eLearning Essentials 2020 would like to acknowledge Tim Slade of timslade.com. The cover art for this eBook project was adapted from his royalty-free 250+ Free Stock Photos for eLearning collection.
References
Slade, Tim (2017, February 26). 250+ Free Stock Photos for eLearning. [Web log post]. Timslade.com. Available
from https://timslade.com/blog/stock-photos-for-elearning/
DISCLAIMER
This eBook has been published through Power Learning Solutions as a free service to the course participants who wrote and produced the content contained herein. This eBook has been published under a Creative Commons licence, and Power Learning Solutions has no financial stake in the production, hosting, or distribution of this publication.
THIS BOOK WAS PRODUCED USING
PRESSBOOKS.COM
Easily turn your manuscript into
EPUB Nook, Kobo, and iBooks
Mobi Kindle
PDF Print-on-demand and digital distribution
PRESSBOOKS.COM
Simple Book Production
PART I
LEARNING THEORIES
The first step in the process is to identify the problem or issue that needs to be addressed. This can be done through research, surveys, interviews, or other methods. Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to develop a plan for addressing it. This plan should include specific goals and objectives, as well as a timeline for completing the project.
Once the plan has been developed, it is important to gather resources and support from stakeholders. This may involve working with colleagues, seeking funding, or obtaining permission from relevant authorities. It is also important to establish clear communication channels and ensure that everyone involved is aware of their roles and responsibilities.
As the project progresses, it is essential to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. This may involve revising the plan, reallocating resources, or seeking additional support. It is also important to communicate regularly with stakeholders and keep them informed about the status of the project.
Finally, once the project has been completed, it is important to evaluate its success and learn from the experience. This may involve conducting a formal evaluation, gathering feedback from stakeholders, or sharing lessons learned with others. By following these steps, organizations can effectively address problems and issues, achieve their goals, and improve their performance.
The Social Learning Theory, also known as the Social Cognitive Theory was theorized and developed by Albert Bandura in 1963. This theory is described as a bridge between the behaviourism and cognitive learning theory as it involves attention, memory, and motivation. It is
centralized around the view that individuals learn and grow through observation, imitation, and modelling and that learning occurs using a 4 step modeling process; attention, retention, reproduction, motivation.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Attention**
This phase of the instruction involves the observation and modelling process
where the student is required to pay attention to who (the model) or what (skill/behavior) that needs to be observed. Learners have a greater chance of focusing on a model if they are engaged and interested in what is being modeled. Educators must ensure that they have the attention of the learner through the use of unique contexts, discussions, exciting “hooks” or “innovative introductions”, ensuring the learner is engaged thus capturing the learners’ attention.
**Guideline 2 – Retention**
Internalizing the information into our memories is a crucial part of this process. This phase of instruction is where the learner is required to retain what they have observed through the mirroring or mimicking process. The educator or their peers model the behaviour and/or skill allowing the learner to see and practice the skill in order to “retain” or “recall” the observed behaviour and/or skill.
Guideline 3 – Production
This phase of instruction is the process where the learner is reproducing the learned behaviour, skill or knowledge. The learner practices then replicates the behaviour or skill that has been observed on their own without anyone “showing/modelling” for them. By practicing the skill, the learner is able to improve their responses.
Guideline 4 – Motivation
This phase is where the learner becomes motivated or has a reason to continue to produce the skill or behaviour because they see and recall the rewards/outcomes of someone else’s behavior. This then motivates the learner to continue to or avoid the behaviour due to recalling the outcome thus supporting the idea that if learners see positive outcomes of a particular behaviour, they are more likely to repeat that skill or behaviour independently. If the reward is not seen as ‘important’ to the learner, they will most likely not repeat or imitate the behaviour and/or skill.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – YouTube Cake Baking Tutorial
This tool helps teach the learner through the video, the skill of baking a cake. When using YouTube, the video captures the learner’s attention, then the learner is observing the model to attain the skill that is being taught. Once the learner has completed watching the video, they then try to replicate or imitate what the model has taught them. Lastly, once the learner has observed the
outcome, they become motivated to continue to pursue that skill as they have recalled the model’s outcomes, in this case the results of their cake baking.
Example 2 – Khan Academy www.khanacademy.org
This resource tool was created to help students with their homework, giving students and parents access to educational activities, lessons, quizzes and videos in various strands. These videos outline the process of various skills allowing the learner to mimic and practice the skills online.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Bandura – Social Learning Theory by Saul McLeod
This page on the Simply Psychology website was written by Saul McLeod defining and elaborating on various aspects of the social learning theory.
Resource 2 – Social Learning Theory By Albert Bandura
This is a text written by Albert Bandura outlining the theory and implications for its use.
Resource 3 – Video on The Social Learning Theory by Edutopia
This video speaks to the importance of the social learning theory and how it is a human’s first mode of learning from birth.
Resource 4 – Youtube Video (What Is Social Learning?) by Fuse
This video (by Fusion Universal for Social Learning) is a
snippet of a series of videos explaining the social learning theory and how this type of learning best suits the society we live in today.
Research
Bandura, A., & Walters, R. H. (1977). *Social learning theory* (Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall.
Grusec, J. E. (1994). *Social learning theory and developmental psychology: The legacies of Robert R. Sears and Albert Bandura*.
McLeod, S. (2016) *Bandura – Social Learning Theory*. Retrieved from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html
Author
Submitted By: Alana Craigg
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Primary Educator with a focus in Music, Physical Education STEM and Global Competencies
ELABORATION THEORY
Overview
Elaboration Theory (4:30)
Description
Introduced in 1979 by Charles Reigeluth, Elaboration Theory suggests delivering instruction beginning with simple, foundational concepts followed by more detailed, specific and complex concepts. Information should be chunked and sequenced to facilitate anecdotal
connection and allow learners an element of control over consumption of information so they can independently decide what information requires more elaboration or attention in order to best master and understand concepts being taught.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Simple and broad to complex and narrow**
Beginning with a broad and wide view (zoomed out) without specific details allows foundational concepts to be discussed first. With these generalized concepts understood, learners can focus (zoom in) to more specific details and acquire richer understandings. An example could be understanding the shape of the earth before understanding gravity, rotation and revolution concepts later.
**Guideline 2 – Sequencing through strategic organization**
Sequencing delivery and material depending on type of information to be learned is essential. Conceptual Elaboration should be used when many related concepts are to be learned (scientific concepts). Procedural Elaboration should be used when there is order or steps to be taken to get from a means to and end (mathematical concepts). Theoretical Elaboration should be used when several concepts exist, often with a cause and effect relationship (liberal arts concepts).
**Guideline 3 – Synthesize and summarize**
Several times during information delivery,
summarization and synthesis should be encouraged in order to foster opportunities for review and deeper understanding. Comparing prior knowledge with newly understood concepts will encourage bridges between understandings and applications for learners to elaborate on their knowledge base.
**Guideline 4 – Analogies**
Allow learners to identify a familiar idea or conceptual understanding and use that familiarity to help define and build into a new concept. A child with a family dog has plenty of foundational knowledge and experience to apply to adding a cat to the family and can elaborate from K9 behaviour to feline behaviour – same but different but same.
**Guideline 5 – Learner control**
Learners and users should have the ability to self-direct learning through activity relationships. The amount of time spent with material, number of times activities are completed and order the material is interacted with should be in control of the learner so learning can be independently determined and applied.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Typing.com**
Whether a user is learning to type or has a goal to improve typing skills, this program begins with simple, foundational exercises that develop proper use of the homeroom and finger placement and gradually works
towards complex sentences, paragraphs and large blocks of text with complex punctuation.
Example 2 – Khan Academy
Allowing complete learner control, this learning tool offers instruction on many different topics, organized by grade level and by complexity. Lessons are delivered with examples and stories, where applicable with the option for users to complete quizzes to evaluate whether concepts have been understood and mastered. Learners can skip lessons, redo lessons and move between topics, at their leisure.
Example 2 – Google Earth
Google Earth allows users to take a zoomed out look at large geographical areas. Users have control and ability to zoom in to gain understanding, information and context and zoom out again to organize and synthesize the information.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Website: Charles M. Reigeluth
Reigeluth has created and maintains this website that includes biographical, professional and contact information. This is a tool purposed to share theoretical vision as well as opportunities and tools for practice with other educators and institutions.
Resource 2 – Article: A Critical Review of Elaboration Theory
Article written by Brent Wilson and Peggy Cole offering a critique of Elaboration Theory.
Resource 3 – Video: What Education Could Be
Video hosted by Charles Reigeluth describing different roles and technology required to best meet the needs of current educational requirements.
Resource 4 – Graphic: Seven Treatments of Elaboration Theory
Simple graphic illustrating steps and elements of Elaboration Theory.
Research
David, L., (2014, July 25). Elaboration Theory (Reigeluth). [Web page]. Learning Theories. Retrieved from https://www.learning-theories.com/elaboration-theory-reigeluth.html
Reigeluth, C.M. (1999). The elaboration theory: Guidance for scope and sequence decisions. Instructional design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory, 2, 425-453.
Reigeluth, C., & Stein, R. (1983). Elaboration theory. Instructional-design theories and models: An overview of their current status, 355-381.
Author
Alison Sprayson
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: Post-secondary instructor with interest and focus in technology, marketing and instructional design
OPERANT CONDITIONING
Overview
Operant Conditioning (OC) is a method of learning developed by behaviourist, B.F. Skinner, who believed that human behaviour is extrinsically motivated. OP is a process of learning through reinforcers and punishers that result from our behaviours. This learning process
is categorized by positive and negative reinforcers and punishers.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Reinforcement**
Reinforcement aims to increase desired behaviour, and can be accomplished in two ways: positively and negatively. With positive reinforcement, behaviour is increased by rewarding the learner with favourable stimuli. An e-learning module could utilize positive reinforcement by, for example, providing the learner with tokens, badges, or desirable feedback after the completion of a milestone or task; this would encourage further completion of the module. Negative reinforcement refers to the removal of an undesired stimuli to reward behaviour. In an online game-based learning module, negative reinforcement could be accomplished by, for example, removing the added pressure of a timer once the learner reaches a certain level or milestone; this would encourage the learner to continue playing.
**Guideline 2 – Punishment**
Punishment seeks to decrease undesired behaviour, and can also be accomplished positively and negatively. Positive punishment refers to providing a learner with unfavourable stimuli to weaken undesired behaviour. In an online game-based learning environment, positive punishment can be accomplished by, for example, giving a student an loud warning signal for not completing a learning task in the dedicated time-frame; this would
weaken the learner’s relaxed approach to the task completion. With negative punishment, undesirable behaviour is weakened by removing favourable stimuli. In a game-based learning environment, negative punishment could be exercised by, for example, withdrawing a student’s tokens, badges, or rewards for incompletion of a game-based learning task in the dedicated time-frame; this would also weaken the learner’s relaxed approach to the task completion.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 –** [https://tinyurl.com/marketingsimulation](https://tinyurl.com/marketingsimulation)
The linked PowerPoint is a guideline on how to navigate Harvard Business Publishing’s online Marketing Simulation. This simulation provides marketing students with an opportunity to learn about strategic management of segments and customers by playing the role of a company’s new CEO. This simulation uses stimuli (i.e., money, customer satisfaction scale, and stakeholder feedback) to reinforce or punish behaviour to ultimately encourage students to develop the most effective marketing strategy. This simulation creates healthy competition among the class while teaching students marketing curriculum units.
**Example 2 –** [https://www.duolingo.com/](https://www.duolingo.com/)
Duolingo is an example of a gamifying WBLT that fosters language learning through operant conditioning techniques. This WBLT uses stimuli (i.e., experience points to advance levels and gain access to more difficult
exercises) to teach language learners grammar and vocabulary lessons.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html
This is an article that explains Operant Conditioning in-depth, including video summaries and educational applications.
Resource 2 – https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118468135
This is an eBook explaining associative learning, including classical and operant conditioning.
Resource 3 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6LEcM0E0io
This video provides a summary of the differences between classical and operant conditioning, both of which need to be understood to apply associative learning effectively.
Research
Cherry, K. (2019, September 5). *What is operant conditioning and how does it work?* [Web page]. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/operant-conditioning-a2-2794863
David, L. (2015, June 19). *Classical and operant conditioning (Skinner).* [Web page]. Retrieved from https://www.learning-theories.com/operant-conditioning-skinner.html
McFeeney, F. K. & Murphy, E. S. (2014). *The Wiley
Blackwell Handbook of Operant and Classical Conditioning.
West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Author
Submitted by: Amareen Brar
Email: email@example.com
Bio: I have a background in Education administration. I am a Master of Arts (Education) student pursuing my thesis and assisting with research regarding multiliteracy and curriculum development.
SITUATED LEARNING THEORY
Overview
An Introduction to Situated Learning Theory (4:18)
Description
Situated Learning Theory was initially proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in the late 1980s. The concept
of Situated Learning Theory is that learning occurs within authentic context, culture, and activity and that it is widely unintentional. It promotes the idea that students learn better in collaborative group settings and when the activities are based on real-life experiences.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Authentic Contexts**
Learning involves a setting that creates an authentic real-life context. Activities should include opportunities for students to explore and investigate from a wide variety of sources. The investigation should focus on a relatively wide focus rather than smaller fragmented tasks so that relevant information can be sought.
**Guideline 2 – Legitimate Peripheral Practice/ Scaffolding**
Students start at the periphery of the learning as a novice in the subject matter and instructors become more of a facilitator and provide scaffolding of the learning. As the students expand their knowledge, the scaffolding is removed, and they move toward becoming an expert in the subject.
**Guideline 3 – Community of Practice/ Collaboration**
Students move from the periphery within the community of practice circle as they learn and collaborate with one another. Activities are designed with the group setting that allows for various viewpoints and difference of opinion. Opportunities for students to interact with
experts in the subject matter is another important aspect of building their community of practice.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Nearpod**
This tool allows the instructor to create lesson and insert activities such as collaborate, quizzes and virtual field trips. Nearpod lessons could be either teacher led in the classroom or student led. There is an opportunity for reflective practice in open ended questions.
**Example 2 – Google Classroom**
This tool allows the instructor to create lessons that can be student led. There is the ability to insert activities and links to outside sources for discovery. Instructors can facilitate the learning and students can collaborate and work on activities through add-ins such as Google Slides and Google Docs.
**Helpful Resources**
**Resource 1 – Video on Situated Learning Theory**
This is a short 4-minute video explaining the Situated Learning Theory.
**Resource 2 – Situated Learning Theory on Learning-Theories.com**
This website provides a brief overview of the Situated Learning Theory.
Resource 3 – Paper on Using Situated Learning
This paper by Ron Oliver and Jan Herrington is a helpful resource on how to use situated learning as a design strategy for web-based learning.
Research
David L. (2007). Situated learning theory. Learning Theories. [Web page]. Retrieved from: https://www.learning-theories.com/situated-learning-theory-lave.html
Northern Illinois University. (n.d.). Situated learning. [PDF file]. Retrieved from: https://www.niu.edu/facdev/_pdf/guide/strategies/situated_learning.pdf
Oliver, Ron & Herrington, Jan. (2000). Using situated learning as a design strategy for web-based learning. [Web page]. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229439467_Using_Situated_Learning_as_a_Design_Strategy_for_Web-Based_Learning
Author
Submitted by: Andrea Dyack
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: Faculty at Southern Ontario Dental College and current graduate student in the Master of Education program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING THEORY
Overview
Video Description (4:59)
Description
Experiential Learning theory is based on the idea that learning is a cyclical process involving experience, perception, cognition, and behavior in a holistic manner.
where all four stages of the process are necessary for learning to occur. These stages include concrete experience such as a lab or module, observations and reactions, forming of abstract concepts, and applying or testing this knowledge in new contexts. The learning theory states that learners learn best from their experiences and from mistakes that are made.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Prepare the learner**
Make sure the learner is prepared before the learning event so they are aware of the expectations you have and the needs they should be focusing on. The instructor should pose problems, set any necessary boundaries, explain the purpose and objectives of the learning event and facilitate the learning process.
**Sequential Ordering of Cycle Stages**
Although learners can enter the cycle of learning at any stage, it is imperative that those stages follow the sequential order in the cycle. The first stage is concrete experience, the second stage is reflection and observation, followed by abstract conceptualization and then testing knowledge in new situations. Although the cycle must be in this order, the starting point is not prescriptive.
**Be Less Teacher-Centric**
Learning events or lessons should not be teacher-centric. Instead, they should allow opportunities for students to
show agency and active engagement by asking questions, investigating and solving problems, and learning from both success and mistakes with their natural consequences. Instructors should be facilitators of learning and sources of support.
**Holistic Learning & Assessment**
All class materials, readings, assessments, and activities in the classroom or online should be directly linked to the experience so that all learning events are connected. Ideally, there should be a major project that guides the learning throughout the entire course or process, which helps keep students focused on forward momentum, progress, and the ultimate goals of the learning. The learning cycle itself can be seen as a rubric for any lesson.
**Dynamic Matching Model of Roles**
The experiential learning cycle stages should be aligned with the learner focus, knowledge focus, subject focus, and action focus, which in turn connect to certain roles of educators in the learning process, where the instructor may be the facilitator, the subject expert, the standards setter & evaluator, and the coach.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Brock University’s Experiential Education Program**
Brock University has experiential learning opportunities integrated into many of their programs, including the more traditional practicums and internships, but also labs, simulations, design projects, and field experiences.
Example 2 – Prodigy Math Learning Platform
This engaging game based online tool allows students to choose their own avatar and play through a series of complex math challenges and problems. Teachers can link this to course objectives and assignments and design a holistic learning experience.
Example 3 – Experiential Learning at University of Calgary
This article provides five concrete examples that The University of Calgary conducts online and in the classroom or community. This includes community program experiences like tutoring in libraries followed by online reflection exercises through D2L, learning labs on campus, placement opportunities, and intercultural immersion experiences over reading week.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Association for Experiential Education
This website gives a broad definition of experiential learning and provides access to professional development, research, publications, and accreditation programs that are all based on the experiential learning theory.
Resource 2 – Learn Through Experience
This website provides contacts of organizations and projects that offer real-world experiential learning opportunities and categorizes those opportunities based on the type of experience, such as wilderness
opportunities, and the demographic targeted, such as K-12 students or higher education opportunities.
Resource 3 – *8 Things To Know About the Experiential Learning Cycle*
This informative video details the entire experiential learning theory and cycle and explains real life examples and applications of the theory for educators.
Resource 4 – *Ontario’s Ministry of Education*
The Ministry of Education website details the definitions, learning objectives and outcomes, community roles, and assessment and evaluations involved in experiential learning.
Resource 5 – *Experiential Learning Online: A “how to” handbook*
This is an incredibly helpful handbook on eLearning Industry’s website that helps instructors apply experiential learning to online learning and module and course design.
Resource 6 – *Experiential Learning Toolkit*
This resource was created by Niagara College, Brock University, and Georgian College. It’s a resource made for instructors to provide guidance and tools to integrate experiential learning into the classroom.
**Research**
CommLab India. (2011, July 7). *Experiential Learning - An
Effective Learning Method. [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8mtcFh2x04
David, L. (2007, February 13). Experiential Learning (Kolb). [Web page]. Learning Theories. Retrieved from: https://www.learning-theories.com/experiential-learning-kolb.html
Kolb, A.Y; & Kolb, D. A. (2017). Experiential Learning Theory as a Guide for Experiential Educators in Higher Education. Journal for Engaged Educators, 1(1), 7-44. Retrieved from https://learningfromexperience.com/downloads/research-library/experiential-learning-theory-guide-for-higher-education-educators.pdf
Schwartz, Michelle. (n.d.). Best Practices in Experiential Learning. [PDF file] Retrieved from https://www.mcgill.ca/eln/files/eln/doc_ryerson_bestpracticesryerson.pdf
Author
Submitted by: Blair Trewatha
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Blair Trewartha is an educator and instructional designer with a Masters of Education at Ontario Tech University. He holds a Bachelors of Education degree, and over ten years experience working in post-secondary institutions across Ontario.
6
ARCS MODEL OF MOTIVATIONAL DESIGN
Overview
An brief overview of the ARCS Model (6:18)
Description
The ARCS Model of Motivational Design was formulated by John Keller in 1983. Keller was interested in exploring how we might design learning experiences to create and to sustain student motivation in learning new content. Keller was interested in the concept of motivational design because it could systematically produce replicable results over time in improving a learner’s motivation to learn. Keller (2016) defines motivational design as a “process of arranging resources and procedures to bring about changes in motivation.” According to Keller (1983), the ARCS Model of Motivational Design suggests that an instructional designer can routinely improve a learner’s motivation to learn by focusing on Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS).
Guidelines for Use
Guideline 1 – Attention
The first step in instructional design for motivation is to capture the learners’ attention through either perceptual arousal or inquiry arousal. Using surprise, novel, engaging, and incongruous events at the start of a lesson will create perceptual arousal in learners and captivate their attention. Stimulating curiosity, wonder, and questioning by stating challenging problems and questions will create inquiry arousal in learners and capture their attention through intellectual or cognitive engagement. Key Question: is the content catching and keeping the learner’s attention?
Methods to Activate Attention:
- **Active Participation**: encourage active participation by using games, roleplay, simulations, and other hands-on strategies to involve learners.
- **Variability**: use a variety of modalities (e.g. video, infographics, audio, short lectures, discussion groups) for presenting content.
- **Humour**: use cartoons, humourous anecdotes to maintain interest.
- **Incongruity and Conflict**: use debate and play the devil’s advocate with comments that go against the learners’ past experiences.
- **Specific Examples**: provide specific examples of the content through images, stories, and biographies.
- **Inquiry**: Ask questions, present problems or dilemmas for the learners to grapple with and discuss.
**Guideline 2 – Relevance**
Finding ways to connect the content to the learner’s world ensures that the learning process is useful. Relevance helps connect the content to the real world. You can help establish relevance by using concrete language and examples that the learners will be familiar with. To establish relevance, you need to consider how the content connects to the learner’s goals, motives, and past experiences. Key Question: Why should the learner care about this content and how does it connect to the learner’s world?
Methods to Activate Relevance:
- Experience: show learners how new learning will use their existing skills and experience.
- Present Worth: help to show how the content will be immediately useful to them.
- Future Usefulness: help to show how the content will be useful to them in the future.
- Needs Matching: show how the content connects to the learner’s needs.
- Modeling: show learners how to apply the learning and what to do. This helps them to walk the walk, so to speak. Other strategies include guest speakers, videos, and having learners function as tutors once they have the content.
- Choice: Build in choice so learners can use different ways of showing what they know. It allows them to play to their strengths.
Guideline 3 – Confidence
Learners have to feel they can succeed. If a learner perceives the content as being too difficult, they may not even try to learn the content, or they may not try their hardest because they expect to fail. If the difficulty is too high, motivation will decrease. The content has to be organized in such a way so that the learner feels they have the skill and ability to accomplish the task or understand the content. Key Question: does the learner feel like they can succeed in learning this content?
Methods to Activate Confidence
- Provide Objectives & Prerequisites: objectives & prerequisites empower learners to estimate their likelihood of success. Objectives let learners see what is expected of them by the end of the learning. Prerequisites empower learners to self-check if they have the prerequisite knowledge or skills. Learners can then take steps to address any deficiencies.
- Plan for Meaningful Success: scaffold and organize the learning so learners can experience success. The success should be substantial enough, so it is meaningful and represents some accomplishments. There is a fine balance between too hard and too easy.
- Grow the Learners: scaffold and organize content so the learning increases in difficulty. This allows for growth in the learner.
- Feedback: provide feedback that supports the learner in attributing their effort to their success with learning the content.
- Learner Control: learners should have some degree of control over their learning path and assessment. They need to see that their success is a direct result of their choices and effort.
Guideline 4 – Satisfaction
Learning should be rewarding and satisfying for the learner. Satisfaction comes at the end of learning the content as the learner meets the goals and objectives as well as has their needs met by the learning. Satisfaction can also come from achievement and praise. Key
Question: does the learner feel good about their accomplishment in learning this content?
Methods to Activate Satisfaction
- Intrinsic Reinforcement: encourage the pleasure of learning for its own sake or to achieve personal goals. Learning should be useful and beneficial to the learner. Help them to see this benefit by applying the learning in a real-world setting.
- Extrinsic Rewards: give unexpected rewards and direct encouragement to learn.
- Equity: keep standards high so learners know they are achieving. Do not over-reward simple tasks.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – LinkedIn Learning (Formerly Lynda.com)
Linkedin Learning provides over 15,000 online courses on subjects related to technology and industry. You can learn how to analyze big data, develop an app, or leverage digital storytelling and multimedia to communicate a message. Linkedin Learning courses are designed to activate a learner’s attention through active participation in several hands-on activities, variability in modality of content delivery, and by providing specific examples of how and where to use skills and content in a real-world context.
Example 2 – Prodigy
Prodigy is a research-based, online mathematics platform that gamifies the learning of mathematics. The platform assesses the level learners are at with their number sense and numeration skills, and then differentiates content for learners based on that initial diagnostic assessment. Prodigy activates satisfaction by extrinsically rewarding students with in-game content and micro-credentials. Prodigy activates intrinsic motivation by allowing students to set their own goals and seeing growth in their mathematical proficiency.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – ARCS: A Conversation with John Keller (Video)
This 1 hour 13-minute video is a recording of an interview with John Keller. In the interview, Dr. Keller explains the ARCS model and its grounding in research.
Resource 2 – ARCSModel.com (Website)
This website was created by Dr. John Keller to share the concept of the ARCS Model of Motivational Design. There is a section explaining the model in detail, as well as a section documenting and explaining various research themes around the contemporary study of the ARCS Model of Motivational Design.
Resource 3 – The ARCS model of motivational design: applied in practice (Blog)
This blog was posted by Alexander Todorov, and
workshop presenter, that teaches learners how to code. The blog is a reflection piece that shows how the presenter tried to employ the ARCS Model of Motivational Design as he presented a workshop on coding.
Research
David L. (2014) *ARCS Model of Motivational Design Theories* (Keller). [Web page]. https://www.learning-theories.com/kellers-arcs-model-of-motivational-design.html
Keller, J. M. (1983). Motivational design of instruction. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), *Instructional-design theories and models: An overview of their current status*. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Keller, J. M. (1987). Development and use of the ARCS model of motivational design. *Journal of Instructional Development, 10*(3), 2 – 10.
Keller, J. M. (2010). *Motivational design for learning and performance: The ARCS model approach*. Springer.
Keller, J. (2016). *ARCS Model*. [Web page]. https://www.arcsmodel.com
Author
Submitted by: Chad Mowbray
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web Page: https://elearning-essentials-2020.weebly.com
Bio: A graduate student exploring and learning about 21st Century teaching and learning.
7
CONSTRUCTIVISM THEORY
Overview
An Introduction to the Constructivism Theory (4:29)
Description
Constructivism is a learning theory that explains how students learn. All students have prior existing knowledge and by using their existing knowledge coupled with teacher-designed learning activities that are
active, collaborative, and socially constructed, students can cognitively process new information. From participation in student-centered learning activities and experiences, students construct new knowledge and personal meaning.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Use Active Learning Activities**
Develop e-learning modules that are student-centered. Begin the lesson with learning activities that are active and engage the learner’s prior knowledge. Some learning activities may include posing a question, solving problems, performing experiments, posing real-world problems, and/or generating discussions. Ensure learning activities are relative to the field of study. An example is a lesson on mathematical word problems. The lesson is introduced by dividing students into groups, then providing each group with a mathematical word problem and asking each group to explain how and what strategies they can utilize to solve the word problem.
**Guideline 2 – Educator’s Role as Facilitator**
The educator assumes the role of facilitator, guide, coach, and/or mentor whose role is to prob, question, and to relinquish control of the learning to the learner. Students are active learners, not passive learners. An example is to begin a biology lesson about the anatomy of a frog with students using a dissection simulation exercise as opposed to a lecture. Afterward, the educator encourages students to participate, discuss, and engage with others
on what they have learned from the dissection simulation exercise.
**Guideline 3 – Learning is Socially Constructed**
Ensure students are active learners who construct the meaning of their learning in a collaborative environment. Learning must be socially constructed, reflective, and include multiple perspectives. Students take ownership of their learning. Educator’s learning environments include group work, discussion forums, debates, group projects, and/or journal entries. Learners should share their learning with others to ensure multiple perspectives are considered.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Problem-based Learning in Biology**
Problem-based Learning is used as a learning activity in a biology course.
**Example 2 – Classroom Example of Constructivism**
An educator applies a constructivist approach in a primary classroom to conceptualize the need for a formal unit of measurement.
**Helpful Resources**
**Resource 1 – Constructivism in Action**
This website is designed as a workshop aimed at defining, demonstrating, exploring and providing tips on how to
implement constructivism in an educational environment.
Resource 2 – Constructivist Learning Theory
This website is authored by Associate Professor (Emeritus) John Lawrence Bencze on the theory of constructivism and provides learning principles, recommendations on how to implement this theory in education, and has links to additional resources.
Resource 3 – Video Critique of Constructivism Theory
This 8-minute video by Craig Ferguson in 2017 provides a critique, some challenges, and the need for further study of constructivism.
Research
Bates, A. W., & Poole, G. (2003). *Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education*. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
BlueSofaMedia. (2012, December 30). *Use a Learning Theory: Constructivism*. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Xa59prZC5gA
Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2002). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education Inc.
WNET/Education. (2004). Workshop: Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning. [Web page]. *Concept to Classroom*. Retrieved from
Author
Your Name: Charlene Di Danieli
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: @CDidanieli
Bio: A professor with over 13 years of teaching experience in a community college in Ontario.
8
AN INTRODUCTION TO PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING
Overview
An Introduction to PBL (4:30)
Description
In the late 1960’s, PBL was brought to the forefront of education by medical school educators at McMaster University in Canada to breathe new life into traditional teaching methods. It has since been adopted in other disciplines such as education, law, engineering, and the social sciences. The theory positions authentic, real-world problems as the focus of inquiry, and in small groups, students are given the freedom to use their prior knowledge and critical and creative thinking skills to solve problems in unique ways.
Guidelines for Use
Guideline 1 – Present/Identify the problem
Problems are defined by students and initiated by ambiguous triggers provided by the facilitator (teacher’s role in a PBL scenario). Triggers should be multi-faceted and demand a high cognitive load from students. Some examples of triggers are case studies, simulations, and testing hypotheses. There are multiple strategies for reaching a solution, as there are multiple solutions.
Guideline 2 – Group collaboration to develop a plan
Together, students develop a plan for solving the problem. They engage in brainstorming, research, and share their prior knowledge and different perspectives to add layers to the problem and possible solution. The end goal is not so much to solve the problem, but to enhance the final presentation.
Guideline 3 – Implementation of the plan
Here students test out the plan to see if they can solve the problem. Both solving the problem and discovering that there may not be just one, or any solution to the problem, are successful outcomes, as long as students can demonstrate critical thinking and clearly articulate their ideas.
Guideline 4 – Evaluation and Reflection
Students evaluate the implementation of the solution to the problem and/or reflect on the process of inquiry. Assessment is completed by self and peers and is based on the depth and clarity of the final presentation. Constructive and critical feedback is encouraged as opposed to cheerleading.
Guideline 5 – Importance of authenticity
The goal is of PBL is to encourage learners to dream, wonder, imagine, and feel empowered to solve real-world problems. Triggering problems that actually exist in the learners’ context is most effective to increase the interest and motivation of the learners.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – Brainmass
Trello uses a card system which allows team members to interact and collaborate with each other on projects. Users can add comments, links, files, and photos to cards.
Example 2 – Venngage Case Study
Case studies are a classic way to trigger a problem in a PBL unit. Case studies activate analytical thinking and reflective judgement by reading and discussing real-world scenarios.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 Study guides and Strategies (PBL)
This is a great link in that it provides a step-by-step process to implementing PBL, and the descriptions are concise, simple, and motivating to both teacher and learner. Clearly establishing guidelines and expectations of a PBL scenario are critical to successful implementation, and this website delivers!
Resource 2 – PBL An Overview
This is a recent paper (2016) that describes the process of PBL, and through research reviews, examines the efficacy of all phases of PLB – problem analysis, self-directed learning, and reporting to understand the long and short-term effects of PBL on learning.
Resource 3 – PBL in 5 minutes
This is a link to a fun video which describes PBL in less than 5 minutes. It uses simple examples to show how using imagination and creativity is the most effective way to learn.
Research
Gasser, K.W. (2011). Ideas for 21st century math classrooms. *American Secondary Education, 39*, 108–116.
Kay, R. (2016, May 22). Learning Theories and Technology – Part 1. [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8nHtBzSNUw
Spencer, J. (2017, November 12). *Problem-based learning in less than five minutes* [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGojIQYGpYk&t=4s
Yew, E.H.J., Goh, K. (2016). Problem-based learning: An overview of its process and impact on learning. *Health Professions Education, 2*, 75–79. http://dx.doi.org.ezcentennial.ocls.ca/https://doi-org.ezcentennial.ocls.ca/10.1016/j.hpe.2016.01.004
Author
Your Name Deborah McDavid-Pesikan
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: Deborah is an English as a Second Language teacher with research interests in innovative teaching methodologies to advance teaching and learning. She has diverse experience in guiding and mentoring international students, with an inclusive student-centered approach to ensure that learners are supported and encouraged to achieve their academic goals.
PBL: ANOTHER TAKE
Overview
Problem Based Learning (5:03)
Description
Initially developed at McMaster University in the 1960’s, PBL is an instructional approach that uses real-world, open ended problems or scenarios to prompt learners to collaboratively research, test and implement solutions. In PBL, students create their own learning agenda, identify
their own learning needs and hold each other collectively accountable for contributions (Wood, 2003). Tasks may blend individual and group study. The goal is not necessarily for learners to solve the challenge, but to engage in the process of self-directed researching, knowledge sharing, collaborative work and problem solving.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Prepare and support students in the rigour of collaborative work.**
Scaffold in expectations for productive group collaboration by using community agreements and regular meetings with groups.
**Guideline 2 – Incorporate across curriculum planning**
PBL usually forms a core basis of curriculum planning and design, rather than individual lesson planning or course delivery (Wood, 2003). Expecting learners to engage frequently and consistently in the tasks of PBL will enhance their intrinsic motivation, research skills, and collaboration skills over time.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – PBL in Practice** by The University of Hong Kong (via Coursera)
This video both explains and shows the PBL approach in action in a university tutorial.
Example 2 – *Using Project-Based Learning in the Classroom* by LD@School
This Ontario-specific resource shares examples of the ways PBL is used in classrooms to promote global competencies, engagement and differentiation. Scroll down to the PBL in Action section for concrete examples, tied to Ontario curriculum.
Example 3 – *Problem Based Learning: Project Examples* from Learning is Open
These examples outline the cross-curricular integrations and processes of applied PBL approaches in K-8 contexts in the United States.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – *Instructional Guide on PBL* from Queen’s University’s Center for Teaching and Learning
This resource gives an overview of this approach, why it is in use, and its processes. It outlines advice for designing and developing a PBL course, along with suggestions for assessment.
Resource 2 – *The Tutor in PBL* by Dr. Allyn Walsh
Intended as a guide for faculty new to teaching in PBL in the post-secondary context, this resource from McMaster University clearly identifies steps, the role of the educator, and processes to get groups started with PBL.
Resource 3 – What Works? Research into Practice tip sheet on
Problem Based Learning in Mathematics
This 4 page tip sheet is backed by research and gives examples of PBL use across K-8 classrooms.
Resource 4 – *Fifty Years On: A Retrospective on the World’s First Problem-based Learning Programme at McMaster University Medical School* by Virginie Servant
This article contextualises the history of how and why PBL was developed, and offers insight into how this method succeeded in its infancy in the McMaster medical school.
Research
Barrows, H. (1983). Problem-Based, Self-directed Learning. *Journal of the American Medical Association*, 250(22), 3077-3080.
Capon, N., and Kuhn, D. (2010). What’s so Good about Problem-Based Learning? *Cognition and Instruction* 22(1), 61-79.
Hmelo-Silver, C. (2004). Problem-Based Learning: What and How do Students Learn? *Educational Psychology Review* 16(3), 235-266.
Wood, D. (2003). Problem based learning. *British Medical Journal* 2003; 326:328. doi: [https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.326.7384.328](https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.326.7384.328)
Author
Submitted by Jesslyn Wilkinson
Contact Info: @jesslyndw
Bio: Jesslyn is the Educational Technology Officer at Conestoga. An Ontario Certified Teacher, and a M.Ed candidate, Jesslyn researches and promotes new technologies for faculty to enhance pedagogical practices. She brings to the role her experience as a Google and Microsoft certified technology trainer and as a classroom teacher internationally and in Ontario, focusing on special education, tech-integrated learning and assistive technologies.
The Connectivism theory founded by George Siemens explains learning in the digital age. Information is circulated across networks and connects us to new information over these networks. Without technology, the information wouldn’t be able to be shared worldwide as quickly as it is now.
Guidelines for Use
Guideline 1 – Using the Web to Expand Knowledge
The key feature of this theory states that learning can happen over networks online. (Learning Theories, 2017) When designing an online course taking a connectivist way would mean to step away from the idea of teaching and guide the students to do research online to find answers and expand their knowledge. A module activity can take what the student already knows and connect it to new knowledge they will find online.
Guideline 2 – Connecting to Others
The second way to use connectivism in an e-learning module is by using the connections the student has outside of the classroom to gain knowledge. By using twitter, email, and other social networks students can ask questions to their peers to help obtain knowledge outside of the classroom. This way they gain knowledge but as well could receive an opinion and new viewpoint.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – Canvas
Having access to classes online is key to being able to access knowledge anywhere and anytime. Using Canvas provides a community of individuals where you can connect and share information no matter the location that you are.
Example 2 – YouTube
Nowadays students aren’t just in the classroom and we use online platforms such as YouTube to teach us how to do tasks we don’t know how to do. For example, if a student wants to learn about editing they can search a YouTube video about how to edit a picture and follow the instructions from the experts in the video.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8kqcs2aR9c
This is a 3-minute overview video on Connectivism from YouTube.
Resource 2 – https://www.learning-theories.com/connectivism-siemens-downes.html
This article provides some overview of the Connectivism theory.
Resource 3 – http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Connectivism
Wiki with information on connectivism created by the University of Geneva.
Research
Accounting Videos (2016, April 22). Connectivism. [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8kqcs2aR9c
Connectivism (Siemens, Downes). [Web page]. (2017, February 4). Retrieved from https://www.learning-theories.com/connectivism-siemens-downes.html
EduTech Wiki (2019, May 17). *Connectivism*. [Web page]. Retrieved from http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Connectivism
Siemens, G., & Conole, G. (2011). Special Issue – Connectivism: Design and Delivery of Social Networked Learning. *The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12*(3), 1.
**Author**
Submitted by: Delaney Jones
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Delaney Jones works with children who have been diagnosed with learning disabilities or ADHD.
Collaborative Learning Theory
Overview
An Introduction to the Collaborative Learning Theory (4:34)
Description
The Collaborative Learning Theory is a process whereby a group (or groups) of individuals learn from each other
by working together to solve a problem, complete a task, create a product, or share one’s thinking. This theory is rooted in the work of Lev Vygotsky’s (1934) social development theory and zone of proximal development, which highlighted the importance of communication and social interaction in learning. In 1972, Kenneth Bruffee introduced the learning method, Classroom Consensus Group, in which the teacher allocated students into groups and assigned them questions to answer or problems to solve together.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Distinction between Cooperative and Collaborative Learning**
Both cooperative and collaborative learning differ from the traditional teaching and learning methods, as both learning processes have students working together in a group/team environment to complete a task. Cooperative learning is a structured approach in which the teacher is directly involved in the learning process by making each member within the group accountable for a specific task, and it is the responsibility of this individual to help others learn their specific task. An example of a cooperative learning activity would be the teacher using a Jigsaw strategy, whereby each student is required to research one section of the material and then teach it to the other members of the group. Collaborative learning is group-structured, whereby the students come together to organize and divide the work between themselves. Each student is responsible for his/her work separately, but are also in charge of the work of the team as a whole. Think-Pair-Share or Write-Pair-Share is an example of
collaborative learning where students are given a discussion prompt, question, short problem, or issue to consider. Individuals work briefly on response and then share with a partner, then to the larger group.
**Guideline 2 – Utilizing Informal and Formal Collaborative Learning Groups**
Informal collaborative learning groups consist of smaller clusters of students assigned to work together, temporarily (usually one class period), on a specific task for a short period. An example of this type of collaborative learning would occur in groups of 3-5 students working on the solution to a problem-solving question. A smaller group helps to keep all students on-task, enabling everyone to participate and share their ideas with the solution, i.e., smaller breakout groups in an online course. With formal learning groups, learners are arranged into specific teams and are required to work together for longer periods on an extensive project(s). An example of this type occurs when an instructor defines the learning objects and success criteria for the activity and assigns the student groups with specific tasks. The instructor continues to monitor the work, evaluates group and individual performance.
**Guideline 3 – Applying Problem-based Learning (PBL)**
Problem-based learning is where a particular problem is introduced for students to solve, often in groups, over a given period. In some cases, the group may only be given the topic and they must develop the problem to solve. It is required that students ultimately understand the problem before proposing a solution or response. The
PBL method can be incorporated effectively into a post-secondary biology class to engage students in solving authentic biological case studies to reinforce learning. This process begins with the instructor forming small groups and then presenting the problem statement. Each group works collaboratively with its members to brainstorm ideas/solutions to the problem and then shares their results with other groups (and the entire class) to come to a final solution, through consensus.
**Guideline 4 – Integrating Technology in Online Collaborative Learning**
Once students have been taught the general skills of working collaboratively during face-to-face group interactions, the next step is to support students in developing their online social presence through the integration of technology. This can be accomplished through various online collaborative tools that provide document collaboration (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Office 365), as well as, class discussions that can extend online through technologies such as, Slack, WebKF, Padlet or other Learning Management System (LMS) discussion board. Technological tools can be a good way for students to exchange information online whether synchronously or asynchronously.
**Guideline 5 – Providing Assessment Through Feedback and Reflection**
Collaborative learning is enhanced through assessment as it encourages students to take responsibility for their participation in teamwork and to help them understand the nature of collaboration as opposed to competition. Assessment is vital to evaluate group productivity and
how well individuals work together as effective members within a group. Grading of individuals can be accomplished through individual contributions and the use of self, peer, and group assessment, feedback and reflection. Examples of individual and group contributions may include tests or assignments, rubrics, performance-based assessments, participation, media works, and/or anonymous feedback.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – G Suite (Google Suite)**
The Google Suite (better known as G Suite) of applications is an easy and effective collaboration tool for users working together on group tasks in a team learning environment. It also allows group members to share their ideas with others, while also receiving valuable feedback and input from group members. Within the G Suite application, there several collaboration tools such as Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites, Forms, and Google Classroom that can be incorporated into any collaborative group dynamics when working together on a problem or project.
**Example 2 – Padlet**
Padlet is an online collaborative tool that can be used as an ‘electronic bulletin board’ for gathering ideas, sharing them and modifying them later. Users can organize the information by adding links, YouTube videos, files, and images to the Padlet notes. The link to the padlet can be shared with others in a collaborative network, as well as, being embedded into webpages.
Example 3 – Slack
Slack is another powerful online collaboration tool that is essentially a chat room environment for an organization, as a primary method of communication and sharing. Its workspace allows for the instant organization of communication by channels for group discussions, while also allowing for private messages to share information, files, videos, etc., all in one site location.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Difference Between Cooperative and Collaborative Learning
The terms collaborative learning and cooperative learning have often been interchanged to mean the same thing, but there are slight differences in each learning mode. This website provides a distinction between learning theories.
Resource 2 – Video on Collaborative Learning by SimplyInfo.net
This is a 4-minute video that explains Collaborative Learning and its benefits. It also provides some general tips and strategies for educators to implement collaborative learning in the classroom.
Resource 3 – A Critical Review of Mobile-Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
This journal article provides a critical analysis for implementing mobile devices as an effective collaborative learning tool.
Research
Educational Broadcasting Corporation. (2004). *Concept to Classroom Workshop: Cooperative and Collaborative Learning*. [website]. Retrieved from https://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/coopcollab/index_sub1.html
Gokhale, A. A. (1995). Collaborative Learning Enhances Critical Thinking. *Virginia Tech University Libraries*, 7(1). doi.org/10.21061/jte.v7i1.a.2
Laal, M. and Laal, M. (2012). Collaborative learning: what is it? *Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences*, 31, 491-495. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.12.092
Stacey, E. (1999). Collaborative Learning in an Online Environment. *International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education*, 14(2), 14-33. Retrieved from http://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/154/379
Author
Submitted by: Gary K. Lew
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Twitter: @GaryLew1506
Bio: Currently, I am an elementary school principal within the Durham District School Board. As a lifelong learner, I am completing my Master of Education program, with an interest in instructional design and leadership in educational technology.
| Name | Position |
|---------------|----------------|
| Dr. Sarah Lee | Director |
| Ms. Emily Kim | Assistant |
| Mr. John Smith| Coordinator |
| Dr. Michael Brown | Instructor |
| Ms. Lisa Johnson | Researcher |
**Contact Information:**
- **Email:** email@example.com
- **Phone:** (123) 456-7890
- **Address:** 123 Education Street, City, State, ZIP Code
---
**Additional Notes:**
- All participants are required to attend all sessions and complete all assignments.
- The course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with both online and in-person components.
- Participants are expected to maintain a professional demeanor at all times.
---
**Course Schedule:**
- **Session 1:** Introduction to Educational Technology
- **Session 2:** Designing Effective Learning Experiences
- **Session 3:** Implementing Technology in the Classroom
- **Session 4:** Assessing Student Learning
- **Session 5:** Reflecting on Practice
---
**Resources:**
- **Textbook:** *Educational Technology: Principles and Applications* by John Smith
- **Website:** [Education.com](http://www.education.com)
- **Software:** [Google Workspace](https://workspace.google.com)
---
**Acknowledgments:**
The authors would like to thank the following individuals for their contributions to this course:
- Dr. Jane Doe, for her expertise in educational technology.
- Mr. Bob Smith, for his guidance in designing effective learning experiences.
- Ms. Mary Johnson, for her insights into implementing technology in the classroom.
- Dr. Tom Brown, for his knowledge in assessing student learning.
- Mr. Jim White, for his reflections on practice.
---
**Disclaimer:**
This course is designed to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of educational technology. However, the content and methods presented are not intended to replace the expertise of qualified professionals. Participants are encouraged to seek additional resources and consult with experts in their field.
Gamification is the incorporation of game-related elements to non-game contexts such as education. In education, gamification is used under the assumption that the type of engagement experienced by gamers can be translated to support students’ learning. After considering the contexts, learning objectives and distinctive needs of their students, educators in a
gamified classroom setting may integrate such game-related elements as progress indicators, fun, narrative, immediate feedback, mastery, player control, social connection and scaffolded learning to impact students’ attitudes, behaviours and actions and enhance their motivation, engagement, creativity, retention and overall learning outcomes. The term gamification was first penned by Nick Pelling in 2003. But gamification in education can be traced back to Thomas Malone’s 1980 study on motivating computer games and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 2002 exploration of game principles in public policy studies. In recent years, Katie Salen, Jessica Hammer, Joey J. Lee, Jane McGonigal, Jesse Schell, and Karl Kapp have further advanced the application of gamification in education.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Identify Context and Learner Audience**
Identify the learning abilities, age group, skill set or current knowledge of students as well as context such as learning environment, time frame, subject or topic. For example, the beginning of a gamified e-learning module would state that it is aimed at biology students in grade 11 who have taken grade 10 biology and are familiar with cell structure, specialization, and mitosis as well as dissections. You would specify that this module is aimed at grade 11 students and will focus on cellular functions, genetic processes, biodiversity, evolution, and the anatomy, growth, and function of plants.
Guideline 2 – Define the Learning and Behavioural Objectives
Define the overall learning goals that you want the student to achieve. For example, at the completion of the first task, the student will understand a particular concept such as taxonomy and, also, be able to work collaboratively with a classmate to identify parts of the concept of taxonomy.
Guideline 3 – Structure the Learning
Decide how you want to structure the learning whether by stages, tasks, levels, or assignments completed, time spent, levels of complexity reached in a challenge, points or badges accumulated, or missions completed in a quest. Assess if you want the learning to be individually focussed or collaborative as part of a team or group or a mixture of both. Identify what students need to achieve, reach, know at each point, level or stage as they progress through their learning.
Guideline 4 – Identify and Define Rules and Means Used to Gamify the Learning
Define the rules that govern students’ progress and achievement of tasks. Identify the tools you will use to track or measure students’ progress throughout the lesson, i.e.: incorporating such game elements as points, badges, deadlines, scores, unlocking a clue, giving them access to the next level, etc. Pinpoint when it is appropriate to measure, i.e.: specific stages or completion of tasks or assignments. Evaluate if the means enable timely and effective feedback to the student and you as the instructor. For example, you may decide that a
student must achieve 100% on a task before progressing to the next task. And you equate achieving 100% with 5 points for a particular task.
**Guideline 5 – Decide What Gamification Elements to Apply**
There are several gamification elements that can be incorporated such as giving students the freedom to choose but also to fail, showing student progress through points, scores, progress bars, dashboards or leaderboards, giving immediate, specific and individualized feedback, creating personalized experiences or challenges, inventing narratives or stories, enabling students to choose different identities or roles or giving them individual or team tasks or a mixture of both. For example, students can choose and have control over the shape, size or colour of a programmed object they create when programming and have the freedom to able to change, adjust and return to it until they are satisfied with it or until they get it right.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Learning Spanish with Duolingo for Schools**
This example shows how teachers can incorporate Duolingo for Schools to create a gamified online classroom for learning Spanish for students in various grades. Teachers can create the Spanish class, share the link with students, schedule the class, add assignments specific to grade level and Spanish curriculum, set up class activities and incorporate game elements such as personalized feedback, flashcards, power practice, accrual grading connecting points to correct answers.
Example 2 – Learning to Program with Khan Academy
This Khan Academy video uses game elements such as freedom to fail by allowing students to return to their program and change the code, showing progress by allowing them to see their coding screen and the results of their coding, providing immediate feedback if they have made an error in coding, enabling them to have freedom of choice in choosing sizes, colours, shapes, and unlocking content by giving them access to other learners’ creations.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – The Innovative Instructor Blog About Gamification
This John Hopkins University blog by an instructor defines gamification and explores the process of gamifying education. It provides links to definitions, research, talks, and websites about gamification.
Resource 2 – Video about Incorporating Gamification Elements in the Classroom
In this video a high school teacher explains how she has incorporated gamification in the classroom environment to motivate and engage her students.
Resource 3 – The Difference Between Gamification and Game-Based Learning.
This University of Waterloo website explains the difference between Gamification and Game-Based Learning, the pedagogical role of game elements, types
of gamification strategies and provides examples of gamification and game-based learning tools.
**Research**
Brunvand, S., & Hill, D. (2018). Gamifying your Teaching: Guidelines for Integrating Gameful Learning in the Classroom. *College Teaching*. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329014473_Gamifying_your_Teaching_Guidelines_for_Integrating_Gameful_Learning_in_the_Classroom
Caponetto, I., Earp, J., & Ott, M. (2014). Gamification and Education: A Literature Review. Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Game-Based Learning. *ECGBL*, 1, 50-57. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266515512_Gamification_and_Education_a_Literature_Review
David, L. (2016, January 26). Gamification in Education. [Web page]. *Learning Theories*. Retrieved from https://www.learning-theories.com/gamification-in-education.html
Dichev, C., & Dicheva, D. (2017). Gamifying education: what is known, what is believed, and what remains uncertain: a critical review. *International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education*. 14(9). Retrieved from: https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s41239-017-0042-5
Huang, W. H-Y., & Soman, D. (2013). A Practitioner’s Guide to Gamification Of Education. *Research Report*
Series: Behavioural Economics in Action. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Retrieved from: https://inside.rotman.utoronto.ca/behaviouraleconomicsinaction/files/2013/09/GuideGamificationEducationDec2013.pdf
Landers, R. N. (2015). Developing a Theory of Gamified Learning. Simulation & Gaming. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268632276_Developing_a_Theory_of_Gamified_Learning
Lee, J., & Hammer, J. (2011). Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother? Academic Exchange Quarterly. 15(2). Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258697764_Gamification_in_Education_What_How_Why_Bother
Author
Submitted by: Ivetka Vasil
Contact Info: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: I am a graduate student in the M.Ed. program in Education and Digital Technologies at Ontario Tech University with an interest in incorporating gamification into healthcare learning environments.
The Backward Design allows instructional designers, educators and/or instructors the ability to create a course, unit or lesson based on a three-stage process. Developed by Wiggins and McTighe, the main idea of this design is based on starting with your end goal first.
and working backwards to unveil what your learners need to know in order to attain the goal. The learner’s knowledge and understanding are assessed through activities provided. It is equally important to collect evidence throughout this process instead of at the end to witness their comprehension of the content.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Identify Desired Results**
Establish your desired outcome also consider the goals and curriculum expectations. Focus on the “big idea” like theories, points of view or concepts. Key questions here are What do you want your learners to know? and What is important for them to know?
**Guideline 2 – Identify What is Acceptable Evidence**
At this stage, assignments and specific tasks are thought out so that learners will be able to practice and demonstrate their skill and understanding. These could include a combination of opportunities like tests, quizzes, papers, presentations, small and/or large group activities, projects, and so much more. This is also a chance to assess and reflect if the activities will develop learner’s understanding and competencies through the collection of evidence. Key questions here are What is the evidence of understanding? and How will you know if learners have achieved the desired results?
**Guideline 3 – Design the Learning Experiences**
Once there is a clear understanding of the outcome, goals
and how the learners are going to tested activities can be designed. The activities should be developed to help learners achieve the learning outcomes but also designed to comprehensively work on assessment tasks. Keep in mind that the learners should walk away with an understanding of the content from the planned activities. This is successful when the learner can transfer the content to new situations or scenarios.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Backward Design Explained**
This video provides a framework on how to use the backward design to create post-secondary courses with instructions on how to create objectives, choosing learning activities as well as designing assessments.
**Example 2 – Youtube Professors Explanation of Backward Design**
This video provides examples of examples professors use to create their backward design models. They discuss and use in detail units or lessons of what their goals are for their students to make a deep connection to the instruction.
**Helpful Resources**
**Resource 1 – UDL in classrooms**
This resource allows educators to learn how to create an inclusive environment using the backward design model.
Resource 2 – *The Logic Of Backward Design*
This website gives a step by step process of how to create a backward design. This guide leads one through from the beginning of the design all the way to the end and also provides process sheets.
Resource 3 – *ASCD Understanding By Design*
This website provides overview frameworks, articles and books that explain the understanding by design framework.
Resource 4 – *Education.com*
This website provides lesson plans in various subject areas. It also gives a quick overview of the learning objectives but also gives the instructor the chance to create with templates provided.
**Research**
ASCD (2020). *Understanding by Design*. [Web page]. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/research-a-topic/understanding-by-design-resources.aspx
*Backward Design*. [Web page]. (2017, September 16). Retrieved from https://www.learning-theories.com/backward-design.html
Graff, N. (2011). “An effective and agonizing way to learn”: backwards design and new teachers’ preparation for planning curriculum. *Teacher Education Quarterly*, 38(3), 151-168.
Author
Submitted by Jamila Bentham
Contact Info: email@example.com
Bio:
I am an Early Childhood Educator working in the full-day kindergarten program. I am also currently in the MEd program at Ontario Tech U. I am interested in technology in education especially at the kindergarten and primary levels.
14
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Overview
Overview of Social Development Theory (2:37)
Description
Social Development Theory explains that socialization directly affects the process of learning by an individual.
By socializing with someone who has more knowledge of the topic to be learned, i.e.: peers or an adult, we transfer knowledge and start the learning process.
There are three concepts of Social Development:
1. Vygotsky states that cultural development develops first on the social level called interpsychological, and secondly on the individual or personal level called intrapsychological.
2. The More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) is a person with a higher level of understanding of the topic than the learner. This person can be a peer who knows more in a given subject than the learner. This person can also be a teacher or a parent.
3. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is the delta between how much is known and what is unknown by the learner. When a learner completes a task with their MKO and then completes the same task independently, this is where learning takes place.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Observation**
When creating a Web-based learning tool, it is important for the learner to observe the instruction or task by someone with more knowledge of the subject (MKO). For example, in teaching a class on how to create a slide show, it is important for a teacher or the MKO to first expose the learner to how they would create it, and provide explanation on how.
Guideline 2 – Application
Once the learner observes the MKO, the learner should be able to apply the learned knowledge by themselves. For example, once the learner observes the teacher create a slide show, the learner will then become more comfortable and knowledgeable in creating their own, independent of the MKO.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – YouTube
Learners have the opportunity to view the MKO over a video. YouTube can be closed caption as well and has the ability to reach more learning types.
Example 2 – Adobe Connect
Learners have the opportunity to interact and participate with their peers and the MKO. Learners can observe their peers or the MKO, discuss, and then apply their understanding.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Social Learning Theory & Web Based Learning Environment
This paper examines the how social learning can be used in design, development and execution of Web-based learning environments (WBLEs).
Resource 2 – Social Development in Human Growth and Development
This video reviews the three major developmental theories.
Resource 3 – A Theoretical Analysis of Social Interactions in Computer-Based Learning Environments: Evidence for Reciprocal Understandings
The Journal of Educational Computing Research analyzes the social interactions between computer-based learning environments.
Research
Hill, J, Song, L. & West, R. (2009) Social Learning Theory and Web-Based Learning Environments: A Review of Research and Discussion of Implications. American Journal of Distance Education, 23(2), 88-103, DOI: 10.1080/08923640902857713
Järvelä, S., Bonk, C. J., Lehtinen, E., & Lehti, S. (1999). A Theoretical Analysis of Social Interactions in Computer-Based Learning Environments: Evidence for Reciprocal Understandings. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 21(3), 363–388. https://doi.org/10.2190/1JB6-FC8W-YEFW-NT9D
Author
Submitted by: Jessica Hunter
Contact info: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio:
Jessica Hunter is a post-secondary instructor; she has a passion for app development and universal design for learning (UDL). She is currently pursuing her M.Ed. at Ontario Tech with an anticipated graduation date of 2021. She has a strong passion for helping students with accessibility needs. She hopes to write policy for the Ministry of Education to help support students access all of the tools they need to succeed. She is an out-of-the-box thinker.
The first step in the process is to identify the problem or issue that needs to be addressed. This can be done through research, surveys, interviews, or other methods. Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to develop a plan for addressing it. This plan should include specific goals and objectives, as well as a timeline for completing the project.
Once the plan has been developed, it is important to gather resources and support from stakeholders. This may involve working with colleagues, seeking funding, or obtaining permission from relevant authorities. It is also important to establish clear communication channels and ensure that everyone involved is aware of their roles and responsibilities.
As the project progresses, it is essential to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. This may involve revising the plan, reallocating resources, or seeking additional support. It is also important to communicate regularly with stakeholders and keep them informed about the status of the project.
Finally, once the project has been completed, it is important to evaluate its success and learn from the experience. This may involve conducting a formal evaluation, gathering feedback from stakeholders, or sharing lessons learned with others. By following these steps, organizations can effectively address problems and issues, achieve their goals, and improve their performance.
PART II
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES
The first step in the process is to identify the problem or issue that needs to be addressed. This can be done through research, surveys, interviews, or other methods. Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to develop a plan for addressing it. This plan should include specific goals and objectives, as well as a timeline for completing the project.
Once the plan has been developed, it is important to gather resources and support from stakeholders. This may involve working with colleagues, seeking funding, or obtaining permission from relevant authorities. It is also important to establish clear communication channels and ensure that everyone involved is aware of their roles and responsibilities.
As the project progresses, it is essential to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. This may involve revising the plan, reallocating resources, or seeking additional support. It is also important to communicate regularly with stakeholders and keep them informed about the status of the project.
Finally, once the project has been completed, it is important to evaluate its success and learn from the experience. This may involve conducting a formal evaluation, gathering feedback from stakeholders, or sharing lessons learned with others. By following these steps, organizations can effectively address problems and issues, achieve their goals, and improve their performance.
A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE MULTIMEDIA PRINCIPLE
Overview
Instructional Design Multimedia Principle Online Learning Quick Overview (3:21)
Description
The multimedia principle simply states that text and relevant images are superior to just text or graphics in isolation. There is a growing consensus that the multimedia principle is one of the most recognized principles of learning. The literature consistently demonstrates that courses with words and graphics are better received and people learn more deeply than just words alone. In 10 studies, learners’ understanding increased by 89% in the material that included images or video compared to text-only resources.
Guidelines for Use
Guideline 1 – Include Both Words and Graphics
Words can include both written or spoken. Graphics can include static illustrations such as drawings, charts, graphs, maps or photos and dynamic graphics such as animation or video.
Guideline 2 – Pictures Should Not Be an Afterthought
When using graphics, they should carefully be integrated and planned together with the words so they create meaning to the learner.
Guideline 3 – Select Graphics That Are Relevant
The type of optimal graphics is organizational, transformational, and interpretive. These are superior to presenting a decorative picture. For example, in a module about cellular biology, a labeled diagram (organizational)
would be superior to a cartoon picture of a cell with a smiley face (decorative).
**Guideline 4 – Multimedia Principle Works Best for Novices**
Novice learners can find more meaning and integrate knowledge better through a multimedia approach. When learners are experts on a subject it may not be as important to have as many graphics as experts tend to create their own versions of images while reading text.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Khan Academy: Genetic Linkage & Mapping**
This page has a good mix between text and carefully thought out graphics. It helps create meaning and connections to the material being taught.
**Example 2 – Crash Course: Biology Videos**
These videos use spoken words and have closed captioning to follow along. There is a great use of animation helping a learner visualize the very complex inner processes of a cell. The only criticism is the material may be presented at too fast of a pace. This can be overcome by pausing and re-watching content that may have been hard to absorb the first time.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Blog Post on Using the Multimedia Principle
11 minutes read titled: 5 Multimedia Principles You Need to Know to Design Interactive Courses
Resource 2 – University of Buffalo
A very brief read summarizing multimedia design theory.
Resource 3 – UW School of Medicine
A summary of Dr. Rich Mayer’s principles of multimedia including links to his talks at Harvard University.
Research
Clark, R.C., & Lyons, C. (2011). *Graphics for learning* (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Fletcher, J.D., & Tobias, S. (2005). The multimedia principle. In R.E. Mayer (Ed.), *The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning* (pp. 117–134). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mayer, R.E., Hegarty, M., Mayer, S., & Campbell, J. (2005). When static media promote active learning: Annotated illustrations versus narrated animations in multimedia instruction. *Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied*, 11, 256–265.
Dr. Jory Basso is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences and has built and facilitated online Science courses in addition to traditional on-ground lectures and labs. He also serves as a Faculty Lead overseeing and training adjunct instructors. You can find many educational videos on his YouTube channel: HybridDrJ
ANOTHER LOOK AT THE MULTIMEDIA PRINCIPLE
Overview
Multimedia Principle (3:26)
Description
The multimedia principle, as set out by Richard Mayer in
2001, recommends that e-learning courses include words and graphics, as opposed to just words. Based on cognitive theory and research evidence, learners are more likely to understand material when they can actively engage with it. Multimedia presentations can encourage learners to engage in active learning by mentally representing the material in words and in pictures and by making connections between the pictorial and verbal representations.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Pictures Should Not be an Afterthought**
Pictures should not be an afterthought. Instead of selecting pictures after the words are written, instructional designers should consider how words and pictures work together to create meaning for the learner. Therefore, visuals as well as words should be planned together as the job analysis is conducted and the course is designed.
**Guideline 2 – Selecting the Appropriate Combination of Content and Graphics**
Depending on the type of information you plan to present, selecting the appropriate combination of content and graphic types is essential to creating material that fosters active learning. See table below for examples:
Table 1
Aligning content and appropriate graphics
| Content Type | Content Description | Useful Graphic Types* | Graphic Examples |
|--------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Facts | Unique and isolated information such as specific application screens, forms, or product data | Representational, Organizational | A screen capture
A table of parts’ names and specifications |
| Concepts | Categories of objects, events, or symbols designated by a single name | Representational, Organizational, Interpretive | A tree diagram of biological species
Three Excel formulas to illustrate formatting rules
Animations of how the heart pumps blood |
| Process | A description of how something works | Transformational, Interpretive, Relational | Still diagrams to illustrate how a bicycle pump works
An animation showing how a virus invades a cell |
| Procedure | A series of steps resulting in completion of a task |
|-----------|---------------------------------------------------|
| | An animated illustration of how to use a spreadsheet |
| | A diagram with arrows showing how to install a printer cable |
| | A video showing two effective sales approaches |
| Principle | Guidelines that result in completion of a task; cause-and-effect relationships |
|-----------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| | Transformational, Interpretive |
| | An animation showing genes passing from parents to offspring |
Table 2
Definitions of graphic types
| *Graphic Type | Definition |
|-------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Decorative | Visuals added for aesthetic appeal or for humor |
| Representational | Visuals that illustrate the appearance of an object |
| Organizational | Visuals that show qualitative relationships among content |
| Relational | Visuals that summarize quantitative relationships |
| Transformational | Visuals that illustrate changes in time or over space |
| Interpretive | Visuals that make intangible phenomena visible and concrete |
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4e5UPu1co0
This short video explains climate change. Through the skillful use of narration and appropriate graphics (in this case animations), viewers can easily connect the words to the images and make connections.
Example 2 – LinkedIn Learning https://learning.linkedin.com/
LinkedIn Learning is primarily aimed at the adult professional demographic group and offers a variety of professional development courses online. Many of these courses demonstrate the multimedia principle with graphics or animations combined with narrated slides.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbvpPdxoJil
This is a short and concise video explaining the multimedia principle.
Resource 2 – http://instructionaldesign.io/toolkit/mayer/
This article provides some background to Richard Mayer as well as an explanation of his multimedia principle. There are also examples of graphic/word combinations as used in real-life webpages.
Research
Clark, R. & Mayer, R. (2008). *E-Learning and the Science of Instruction*, USA, Pfeiffer
Author
Submitted by: Tobie Pilloy
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Tobie Pilloy has been working in education for almost 2 decades. After working as a teacher for almost 10 years, he transitioned into management and is currently the Education Coordinator for English Testing Canada.
The Modality Principle as outlined by Clark and Mayer (2011) is a fundamental e-learning principle that focuses on the need for narration when presenting important information related to a displayed graphic. The goal of this principle is to not overload the learner by using only...
one cognitive pathway such as visual presentation instead, words should be presented as speech rather than onscreen text (Clark & Mayer, 2011; Oberfoell & Correia, 2016). This allows the learner to focus on the visual graphics and listen to the explanation to increase understanding and knowledge transfer (Clark & Mayer, 2011; Oberfoell & Correia, 2016).
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – When to Apply the Principle**
The Modality Principle should be applied in e-learning environments where graphics are complex, terminology is familiar to the learner and the overall lesson is fast paced (Clark & Mayer, 2011). For example, a diagram is displayed illustrating blood flow through the heart after key terms have been presented to the learner. The diagram will include text outlining the anatomical structures while speech narration describes the concept.
**Guideline 2 – How to Apply the Principle**
Choose your graphic, then write out a narrative that can be used to describe the applicable concept. When the narrative is complete utilize appropriate speech media such as Voice Thread or PowerPoint voice-over to provide a detailed description of the displayed graphic (Clark and Mayer, 2011).
**Guideline 3 – When to Avoid Applying the Principle**
Clark and Mayer (2011) recommend that under the
following circumstances both narration and onscreen text descriptions should be present with a graphic:
1. When English is not the learners first language
2. When the words presented are technical
3. When the words are unfamiliar
4. When information is required for future reference
Adding closed captioning to presentations is a simple way to include onscreen text descriptions with speech narration when presented with the above scenarios.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Khan Academy**
When studying Anatomy and Physiology Khan Academy provides video tutorials for specific topics related to the central subject. Within the tutorials, the professor provides narrative descriptions of the graphics being displayed. Learners can turn on closed captioning if needed.
**Example 2 – Mystery Science**
Mystery Science is an interactive website for students of varying ages to learn about several different science-related topics. Information for older students is presented using slideshow videos where the graphics displayed are narratively described by Science Doug. Learners can turn on closed captioning if needed.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Modality Principle Website
This website created by the European Heart Association provides additional information surrounding the Modality Principle and outlines its rationale for use and limitations.
Resource 2 – Video Example By Josh Walter
This video provides a short example and explanation of the utilization of the Modality Principle.
Resource 3 – Current Research Surrounding the Modality Principle
This research paper by Oberfoell and Correia (2016) provides an excellent in-depth explanation of the Modality Principle. Their research focuses on the application of the principle with today’s technology advanced student populations.
Research
Abusaada, A., Lee, L., & Fong, S. (2013). Effects of Modality Principle in Tutorial Video Streaming. *International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Science*, 3(5), 456-466. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/919c/22e5ba072391adcca6f6422ccafa693aac37.pdf
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). Applying the Modality Principle. In R. Taff (Ed.), *E-Learning and the Science of Instruction*. (pp. 115-130). San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
European Heart Association. (2017). Modality Principle: Rationale and Limitations. Retrieved from https://www.heartassociation.eu/the-modality-principle-rationale-and-limitations/
Oberfoell, & Correia. (2016). Understanding the role of the Modality Principle in Multimedia Learning Environments. *Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 32*(6), 607-617. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12157
Author
Submitted by: Kristen Marks-Riberdy
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: Post-secondary nursing professor, Academic and Clinical Coordinator for Internationally Educated Nursing Program.
The Redundancy Principle is an instructional principle that occurs when on-screen text and audio narration about a graphic are the same. When adding on-screen text to a narrated image, the user may experience cognitive overload as multiple pieces of information are...
trying to be processed simultaneously. When experiencing working memory overload, the user may have difficulty learning and understanding the content that is being explored.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Explain a visual through audio or text, NOT both**
When including a visual within your web-based learning tool or presentation, it is important to keep in mind to explain the visual through audio or text. When we choose one or the other, we limit the chance of the learner experiencing cognitive overload. An example of this guideline can be a discussion. When discussing the image, the presenter has chosen to do so through only audio or narration, therefore preventing the chance for cognitive overload to occur.
**Guideline 2 – Do not add on-screen text to narrated graphics**
When including a visual within your web-based learning tool or presentation, it is important to keep in mind to not add on-screen text to a narrated graphic. In the case that we add on-screen text to an image already narrated, the user may fail to understand as their working memory may be overloaded. An example of this guideline can include a presentation in which there are multiple images. The presenter should choose between adding on-screen text to the presentation which they can read, or the presenter can choose to explain the visual through a narration. When doing so, the learners will not experience cognitive overload.
Guideline 3 – On-screen text should only be added with graphics and audio in specific situations
When creating a web-based learning tool or a presentation, we should keep in mind specific situation(s) where it may be applicable to add on-screen text to a narrated image. The situation(s) include a presentation where there is no video or image, when there is ample opportunity to process the visual, when the learner must exert greater cognitive effort to comprehend, including English Language Learners and those who have low vocabulary skills, or when a few key words are presented next to the element in the graphic. When doing so, the learners will not experience cognitive overload, and may instead understand the concept in greater detail.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – Not all Scientific Studies are created equal
The tool includes a video which was created in mind of the redundancy principle. In the video, the creator decided to use audio to reach its users. The users may have little to no chance of experiencing cognitive overload as there is no need to focus on on-screen text while listening to the audio. In the case that an English Language Learner or a student with poor language skills is viewing the video, they may decide to access the closed captions feature.
Example 2 – PowToon Example
The link is a great example of the redundancy principle as the creator of the video chose to only have on-screen
text in their video. Users will not experience working memory overload as no channel is being overloaded with incoming information. English Language Learners or students with poor language skills can read the text and pause the video whenever needed.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – *Six Principles of Effective e-Learning: What Works and Why*
This resource is an article exploring six principles of effective e-learning. Within the article, they explore the various principles of e-learning, such as multimedia, contiguity, modality, redundancy, coherence and personalization. This is a great resource that can be used as an introduction to some principles of effective e-learning.
Resource 2 – *The Redundancy Principle*
This resource is a 3-minute video explaining the Redundancy Principle.
Resource 3 – *Revising the Redundancy Principle in Multimedia learning*
This resource is an article summarizing research done in which where there two groups receiving the same information, the only thing being different is one group experienced redundancy, while the other experienced non-redundancy. Throughout the research, they found that the redundant group performed better on retention but not on transfer.
Research
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R.E. (2002). *E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning*. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer.
Mayer, R. E., & Johnson, C. I. (2008). *Revising the redundancy principle in multimedia learning*. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 100*(2), 380-386. doi: 10.1037/0022-06184.108.40.2060
McCrudden, M. T., Hushman, C. J., & Marley, S. C. (2013). *Exploring the Boundary Conditions of the Redundancy Principle*. *The Journal of Experimental Education*, 82(4), 537–554. doi: 10.1080/00220973.2013.813368
Author
Submitted by: Marta Masnyi
Email: email@example.com
Recent Graduate of the Bachelor of Education Degree which was completed at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
Bio: Current student of the Graduate Diploma in Education and Digital Technologies in which I am studying how to effectively integrate technology within the classroom setting.
COHERENCE PRINCIPLE
Overview
Video presentation on the Coherence Principle (5:25)
Description
The coherence principle refers to the removal of words, audio and graphic that does not support instructional goals. This principle assumes that the learning process is hindered when learners’ working memory is overloaded.
with seductive details that do not contribute to the learning goals. Based on the cognitive theory of multimedia.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Avoid e-lessons with Extraneous Audio**
Learners will experience deeper learning from multimedia presentations which contain less interesting and extraneous sounds and music. Narration, background music and sounds compete for limited cognitive resources and as a result, learners are less able to pay attention to narration when they pay attention to sound and music.
**Guideline 2 – Avoid e-lessons with Extraneous Graphics**
The learner has limited cognitive capacity and is actively trying to make sense of the presented material, adding extraneous pictures, graphics or diagrams can interfere with this process. Extraneous pictures can interfere with learning by creating a distraction, guiding the learner’s attention away from relevant material, they can also be a disruption and prevent the learner from building a link to the information presented and they can serve as a seduction priming inappropriate existing knowledge (Harp & Mayer, 1998). Using a simple visual and diagrams for example during science presentations will lead to a better understanding of the material than a detailed visual.
Guideline 3 – Avoid e-lessons with Extraneous words
Avoid adding words for interest, for elaboration, or for technical depth that would interfere with the learning process creating greater distraction away from relevant material. The inclusion of additional words on a slide during the narration can distract the learner and overload cognitive memory.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – Khan Academy
Khan Academy presents a simple step by step lessons without extraneous sounds, graphics audio that would interfere with students learning. The learner’s attention is directed to the writing on the board the corresponds and supports with the narration.
Example 2 – Duolingo
This free language app. does not include extraneous background music or sounds that do not enhance the learning. Learners can choose to listen to questions after it is presented while viewing appropriate graphics or text that enhances learners’ vocabulary.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Youtube video on the Coherence Principle
This well explained in less than 3-minute animated video on the main ideas of the coherence principle.
Resource 2 – Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning
This site presents a description of the Coherence principle and examples of violations and critiques of the principle.
Resource 3 – A review of research and a meta-analysis of the seductive detail effect
In this review, the writer examines 36 experimental effects of seductive details. The review also discusses the theoretical and practical implications of text passages, illustrations and other kinds of seductive details as well as limitations and future studies.
Research
Harp, S.F., & Mayer, R.E. (1998). How seductive details do their damage: A theory of cognitive interest in science learning. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 90*, 414–434.
Moreno, R., & Mayer, R.E. (2000a). A coherence effect in multimedia learning: The case for minimizing irrelevant sounds in the design of multimedia instructional messages. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 92*, 117–125.
Rey, G. (2012). A review of research and a meta-analysis of the seductive detail effect. *Educational Research Review, 7*(3), 216–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2012.05.003
Author
Submitted by: Melissa Hippolyte
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: Melissa Hippolyte is an OCT and RECE with the Halton District School Board. She is also presently enrolled in the Master of Education program at Ontario tech university.
SEGMENTING PRINCIPLE
Overview
The Segmenting Principle (4:40)
Description
The Segmenting Principle refers to the process of breaking down, or segmenting, complex lessons into smaller parts, which are then presented one at a time. The aim of this process within the context of e-learning is to help learners in managing the complexity of the content/
tasks they are presented with, so as to not exceed the threshold of the learners’ cognitive system. Segmenting provides the learner(s) with the opportunity to manage essential processing; that is, they are able to efficiently and effectively engage essential processing. Most importantly, as the segments are not presented as a continuous unit, the learner is afforded the appropriate level of control to consolidate the information they are being presented with as they make their way through the material.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Gauging the Complexity of the Lesson**
Prior to determining the best approach to take in segmenting a complex lesson, the complexity of the lesson should first be identified. Gauging the complexity of a lesson may be accomplished by determining the number of elements, or concepts, in addition to the interactions between these elements. Though this may imply that the complexity of the material may be alleviated by reducing the number of elements in the explanation, the accuracy (and perhaps even the intuitiveness) of the lesson in its entirety would ultimately suffer as a result.
**Guideline 2 – Determining the Appropriate Delineation of Segments**
An important instructional decision required within the context of segmenting is determining the most appropriate delineation between segments, as these segments must sequentially flow from beginning to end without sacrificing the integrity of the information. To
facilitate this process, the lesson designer has several options, including breaking the lesson down into parts that convey between one to three steps in the process or procedure at hand, or instead explaining between one to three major relations or interactions among the elements.
**Guideline 3 – Facilitating Learner Control**
Learners should have sufficient control over the pace at which they proceed through the segments. Because the segments are inherently not presented as a continuous unit, learners should be able to identify when the appropriate level of knowledge consolidation has taken place and thereafter determine when they are ready to proceed to the next segment.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Gizmos (Cell Energy Cycle)**
Gizmos are a collection of interactive math and science web-based simulations that develop conceptual understanding through inquiry-based learning processes. For instance, in the Cell Energy Cycle simulation, learners are given the opportunity to explore the biological processes of Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration, as well as their cyclical relationship with one another. These processes are also further broken down into their sub-stages (e.g. the stages of Glycolysis, the Calvin Cycle, and the Electron Transport Chain that comprise Cellular Respiration). The delineation between segments is intuitive, and learners are given control over determining their readiness to proceed from one segment to the next.
Example 2 – Animated Overview of DNA Replication
This tool provides learners with an animated overview of the DNA Replication process. The animation is segmented for each step of DNA Replication, and learners can advance to the next step by clicking the “Next” arrow. Learners can also move back and forth between steps, should they choose to do so.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Practical Application of the Segmenting Principle
This article describes the process of applying the Segmenting Principle to geography lessons, and the impacts this had on student performance.
Resource 2 – Relationship between the Segmenting Principle and the Modality Principle
This paper examined the possibility of the Segmenting Principle counteracting another principle of instructional animation, the Modality Principle.
Resource 3 – Video Explaining the Segmenting Principle
This is a video explaining the Segmenting Principle.
Research
Cheon, J., Crooks, S., & Chung, S. (2014). Does segmenting principle counteract modality principle in instructional animation? British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(1), 56–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12021
Clark, R.C. and Mayer, R.E. (2012). Applying the Segmenting and Pretraining Principles: Managing Complexity by Breaking a Lesson into Parts. In Clark, R. & Mayer, R (eds), *e-Learning and the Science of Instruction*. doi:10.1002/9781118255971.ch10
Johanna PG. (2018, April 1). *Segmenting Principle Mayer* [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/KS1xmdUVUA8
Mayer, R., Howarth, J., Kaplan, M., & Hanna, S. (2018). Applying the segmenting principle to online geography slideshow lessons. *Educational Technology Research and Development*, 66(3), 563–577. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-017-9554-x
Author
Submitted by: Zahra Harbi
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZahraHarbi1
Bio: Zahra Harbi is a current Masters student at the Faculty of Education, Ontario Tech University. She received her Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include translanguaging, technology-assisted language acquisition, eLearning and in particular mobile-assisted language learning.
The Pre-Training Principle encourages instructors to introduce key terms and concepts before asking learners to engage with the actual lesson material to reduce cognitive load. This process helps learners progress to
more advanced thinking as a lesson or course proceeds. Evidence suggests pretraining can help improve knowledge transfer and retention. Instructional designers often implement the Pre-Training Principle in conjunction with the Segmenting Principle, which promotes the compartmentalization of lesson content into separate but related components.
**Guidelines for Use**
*Identity important terminology and learning concepts during lesson preparation*
What do learners need to know to accomplish the planned learning activities? Does their learning environment contain new elements? Plan to introduce these ideas and vocabulary first – perhaps with a practice or review exercise, so students understand the lesson context before moving to higher-order thinking tasks such as problem-solving.
*Incorporate the terms and ideas from the pretraining activity into the subsequent activities*
Leverage the content introduced into the core learning events of the lesson or course so students can use them to inform their practice.
*Consider learner’s knowledge level*
While research on the pre-training principle is not yet robust, studies done to date suggest stronger effects for students at an introductory level in a particular subject.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – LinkedIn Learning
A large suite of business and technology self-directed tutorials, LinkedIn Learning starts most courses with short video chapters explaining the topic’s practical value, core principles, and key terminology.
Example 2 – Code.org
The non-profit organization Code.org provides free online lessons to promote computer science learning. Many lessons start with an introductory video and notes that define key terms and offer screenshots to orient users to their learning environment by indicating the various areas of the screen, the available features and where users can find them.
Helpful Resources
How to Use Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning – Water Bear Learning
A simple guide to implementing Mayer’s principles, including the Pre-Training Principle with effective illustrations.
Designing Assistive Technology for Users with Learning Disabilities – IGI Global
This guide incorporates the Pre-Training Principle in its recommendations for creating effective learning
technology solutions specifically for learners with disabilities.
Research
Ayres, P. (2015). State-of-the-Art Research into Multimedia Learning: A Commentary on Mayer’s Handbook of Multimedia Learning. *Applied Cognitive Psychology*, 29(4), 631–636. [https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3142](https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3142)
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning*. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Mayer, R., Mathias, A., & Wetzel, K. (2002). Fostering Understanding of Multimedia Messages Through Pre-training: Evidence for a Two-Stage Theory of Mental Model Construction. *Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied*, 8(3), 147–154. [https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.8.3.147](https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.8.3.147)
Pate, A., & Posey, S. (2016). Effects of applying multimedia design principles in PowerPoint lecture redesign. *Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning*, 8(2), 235–239. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cptl.2015.12.014](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cptl.2015.12.014)
Pollock, E., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2002). Assimilating complex information. *Learning and Instruction*, 12(1), 61–86. [https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-4752(01)00016-0](https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-4752(01)00016-0)
Rich Freeman is a Professor of Computer Studies at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario and a Master of Education candidate at Ontario Tech University.
The worked example principle is based on using solved examples that guide learners through a step by step process to solve a task or a problem to reduce cognitive...
load as they are learning a new concept. Using worked examples allows students to build procedural skills such as setting up an Excel spreadsheet, and strategic skills such as how to negotiate. It focuses on two models: cognitive models, where an individual demonstrates how to solve a problem and an interpersonal skills model that uses an expert individual performing a task. The goal is to help learners transition from relying on worked examples to solving problems on their own. The evidence from research focuses on instructional methods to maximize the benefit of worked examples and can be categorized into five principles.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Transition from worked examples to Problems**
The goal is to fade from a fully worked example to the learner solving the practice problem. Initially, a fully worked example is provided followed by a second example where most steps are solved, and the student is responsible for completing the final steps. Over time, through many faded worked examples the learner has to solve the assigned problem entirely on his or her own.
**Guideline 2 – Promote Self Explanations**
When reviewing worked examples, learners should explain key concepts and principles to themselves to understand it in a meaningful way. To ensure students can identify the rationale that underlies the worked examples, it is beneficial to add questions to worked examples and also encourage this practice through active observation.
Guideline 3 – Include Instructional Explanations of Worked Examples in Some Situations
Adding an explanation for the worked examples helps students form a concrete conceptual understanding shown in the example itself. It is very effective when there are no self-explanation questions provided. A good example of this in e-learning is having a “help” button for the student to learn more details on the worked example.
Guideline 4 – Applying Multimedia Principles to Examples
When needed it is important to provide visuals to complement the steps in worked examples. Complex problems contain a higher cognitive load thus, it is optimal when information is explained with audio alone and should be made the default modality as stated by the multimedia principle and contiguity principle respectively. Finally, students learn best when the content is segmented into smaller chunks and the associated illustrations are familiar to the learners.
Guideline 5 – Support Learning Transfer
The objective is to help learners achieve near transfer, where they can successfully apply the steps learned to similar situations in the work environment. To achieve near transfer, various examples from different contexts should be used to demonstrate the same underlying principles. Moreover, self-explanation questions and encouraging active comparison of given examples increase the likelihood of effective learning transfer.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – Khan Academy
When learning about differential calculus, the video provides a worked example with audio and illustrations of how to solve a problem. It allows users to move through the screen at their own pace.
Example 2 – lorad
This is a tutorial maker that allows teachers to record examples in real-time to create lessons or tutorials for learners.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Teaching Strategies
This web article outlines different teaching strategies that can be used when applying the worked example principles.
Resource 2 – Video on the applications of Worked Example Principles
This 3-minute video by eLearningExpert provides an overview of real-world applications of worked example principles.
Resource 3 – Worked Examples at an Impasse
This paper offers an insightful perspective on the limitations of worked examples.
Research
Atkinson, R. K., Derry, S. J., Renkl, A., & Wortham, D. (2000). Learning from Examples: Instructional Principles from the Worked Examples Research. *Review of Educational Research, 70*(2), 181–214. doi: 10.3102/00346543070002181
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning*. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). Leveraging Examples in e-Learning. In *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 223–247). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Renkl, A. (2014). The Worked Examples Principle in Multimedia Learning. *The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning*, 391–412. doi: 10.1017/cbo9781139547369.020
Renkl, A. (2017). Learning from worked-examples in mathematics: students relate procedures to principles. *Zdm, 49*(4), 571–584. doi: 10.1007/s11858-017-0859-3
Author
Submitted by Riya Patel
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Twitter: @riya_08
Web Page: https://www.weebly.com/editor/main.php#
Bio: Riya Patel is an elementary school teacher and is passionate about fusing technology with education to bridge achievement gaps. She graduated from the University of Toronto, St. George, with a double major in Human Biology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Currently, she is perusing a master’s with Ontario Tech University and leveraging her experience as an educator to connect current research to practice.
Practice in e-Learning incorporates interactions through questions. When creating questions for interactions, creators must keep in mind that the questions being asked should allow learners to be both behaviourally and
psychologically active. Learners should be given a chance to actively apply their knowledge rather than just regurgitating answers. The practice must be deliberate. Any type of practice offered to learners should be relevant to their jobs, dispensed all over their learning space and be offered frequently as it leads to improvement. Six practice principles are set as guidelines for creators of web-based learning tools.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Practice Principle 1 – Sufficient Practice Interactions**
There should be enough practice assignments for learners to help them learn without overloading them with repetitive types of questions. Since the benefit of practice reduces over time it is not helpful to bombard students with the same types of practice questions and/or questions with the same content, and it is not a good use of their time. One way this can be accomplished is to give the students a choice regarding how many questions they wish to practice. If they feel like they have sufficient knowledge of the concept then they can choose to move on.
**Practice Principle 2 – Mirror the Job**
The interactions provided must have job-realistic content. It is important to avoid only knowledge-based questions and should include application questions where learners can respond to scenarios that might happen in real-life at their job. An example of this is a nursing simulation used by nursing students to help them
understand daily circumstances that might occur. A link to that website is provided below.
**Practice Principle 3 – Provide Effective Feedback**
The feedback provided should include relevant explanations – especially when the answer is incorrect. Learners must understand why the answer they chose is correct or incorrect. One way this can be done is to deliver a summary of the learner’s answers after the practice session is complete and provide detailed explanations of each answer.
**Practice Principle 4 – Distribute and Mix Practice**
Research shows that distributing practice produces long-term retention. Therefore, instead of teaching an entire unit and then having a practice session, it is important to divide the unit into smaller lessons and have the learners practice after a few lessons. Also, if the unit has different concepts that need to be learned, mix up those concepts when learners are practicing. An example of this is when students are learning different types of sentences (declarative, imperative, interrogative or exclamatory). Instead of chunking the questions into groups based on their type, it is better to mix them up when students are practicing so they can get a better sense of the differences.
**Practice Principle 5 – Apply the Multimedia Principles**
For students to benefit from practice, make sure to include visuals, keep everything in line and avoid anything extra that might be distracting. If the students
are learning about the solar system, not every slide needs to have a background full of planets as that might be visually distracting.
**Practice Principle 6 – Transition from Examples to Practice**
Slowly release the amount of responsibility given to the learner to practice the lesson by scaffolding. Ensure that students are shown a fully worked out example and can work on smaller parts of the problem before introducing them with a problem to figure out on their own. In math when students are trying to analyze a word problem, ensure that they know how to work the math component of the problem before they are shown how to make sense of a word problem and how to analyze it.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Lippincott Nursing Education**
This tool teaches nursing students how to engage with patients by mirroring the job they would be expected to perform at work.
**Example 2 – Chess**
Learners hoping to get better at the game of chess can navigate this website by learning how to play, watching videos by experts, practicing by engaging in different scenarios, receiving feedback from skilled coaches and much more.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – How to Create an Effective Feedback System for eLearning
This page gives three steps that must be included when giving feedback to ensure that it is effective.
Resource 2 – Mayer’s Multimedia Principles
This gives a quick outline of the twelve multimedia principles and some examples of how they can be integrated into the learning content.
Resource 3 – 10 Ways to Scaffold Learning
The page shows how lessons can be taught so students can effectively transition from seeing examples to tackling a problem successfully themselves.
Research
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Does practice make perfect? In *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 251-276). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Plant, E.A., Ericsson, K.A., Hill, L., & Asberg, K. (2005). Why study time does not predict grade point average across college students: Implications of deliberate practice for academic performance. *Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30*, 96–116.
Shute, V.J. (2008). Focus on formative feedback. *Review of Educational Research, 78*(1), 153–189.
Author
Submitted by: Roohi Jawas
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: @RooJ33
Bio: I am a grade 5 homeroom teacher and I have been an Ontario certified teacher (OCT) since 2009. I am currently pursuing a Master’s of Education degree at Ontario Tech University. I am always looking for new ways to engage and educate my students, and often it is through some form of technology.
LEARNER CONTROL
Overview
Learner Control (4:36)
Description
Learner control is allowing learners to govern the content and the rate at which they navigate topics and instructional elements. It will, however, allow students to bypass what might be perceived as critical information such as examples, practice elements, and/or knowledge
challenges. This learning design is ideal for those that are highly self-motivated and works best with learners that have higher metacognitive skills.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Give Experienced Learners Control**
Most learners want control over the process in which they learn, however, they do not always make the best choices. This design works well if the learner has prior knowledge of the content and/or skills in the module.
**Guideline 2 – Make Important Instructional Events the Default**
Remove the option to bypass the key components. Remove the ‘next’ and ‘skip’ buttons for important content. This forces the learner to deliberately choose to circumvent that component (examples, practice, etc.). By having the learner consciously choose to bypass content, they are more likely to participate in the activity. This, in turn, can reduce the likelihood of a disconnected view of how confident the learner is in their performance versus what their actual performance will score at. This is known as calibration.
**Guideline 3 – Design Adaptive Control**
Allow for a change in difficulty based on the learner and their skill level. Have the content be tailored to the individual and as the learner progresses in their knowledge, we can increase the difficulty of the assignments and reduce the amount of support – called expertise reversal. A difficult balance to achieve. You
want to challenge the learner, but not so much so that it is too challenging. There is a fine line between a difficulty that is beneficial (i.e., desirable) and a difficulty that is harmful (Westlin, Day & Hughes, 2019).
**Guideline 4 – Give Pacing Control**
Divide content into smaller chunks for manageability (segmenting principle). Giving the learner control over the speed of which the material is presented (controls like stop, rewind, replay, etc.), the learners spend almost three times longer on content.
**Guideline 5 – Offering Navigational Support in Hypermedia Environments**
Use links sparingly as many will bypass, but give a short preview of what is behind the link. Too many links are associated with cognitive overload, so use links sparingly. Use navigation options to avoid too much mouse movement. Use headings and descriptions as they help to improve memory and comprehension – just like in a traditional text document.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – AME Engage**
This program illustrates accounting procedures for learners that progresses at their own pace. There are short tutorials where the user can receive a brief overview of the topic. There are navigational buttons that allow the user to go to the next screen, return to the previous screen, pause, play and even replay the same
section. There is a page counter at the top of the screen that will indicate what screen you are on out of how many. Additionally, there is the option to bookmark a spot where the student had to pause the lesson, to return to later. There is also the option to view a full script, or to turn closed captioning on. There are practice assessments, examples and additional help and support. The learner is also able to skip complete sections and increase the complexity of the workload based on their skill level.
Example 2 – Duolingo
This web-based learning tool is designed to assist learners in mastering a new language using segmented lessons. Segmenting the lessons, allows the user to revisit any lessons(s) they choose if need be, implementing the Learner Pacing Control design element. Once the learner had determined which language they wish to pursue, Duolingo will present a short skills assessment to determine their current knowledge, which will then categorize them into a level of prior knowledge. This adaptive control design helps to avoid any redundancy with users that have some previous knowledge to bypass the introductory pieces should it be not necessary to continue.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Segmenting Principle Learning Theory
This theory works well for the overall design and structure for a module with the Learner Control Principle. According to Mayer (2009), Segmenting is best
applied to complex material and when the user is inexperienced with the material. This reference can assist in the completion of this process.
Reference:
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Applying the segmenting and pretraining principles: Managing complexity by breaking a lesson into parts. In Matthew Davis (Ed), *e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 204-220). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Resource 2 – Understanding Calibration Accuracy
Learners tend to overestimate their understanding of a topic. When the estimation of their perception of understanding is compared to their actual performance: this differential is called Calibration Accuracy. To understand this concept in further detail, the following resource will aid.
Reference:
Hacker, D. J., Bol, L., & Bahbahani, K. (2008). Explaining calibration accuracy in classroom contexts: the effects of incentives, reflection, and explanatory style. *Metacognition Learning*, 3, 101-121. DOI: 10.1007/s11409-008-9021-5
Resource 3 – Understanding Metacognitive Skills
Recent research has determined that there is a significant correlation between the Metacognition Awareness
Inventory (MIA) and academic achievement (e.g., GPA, course grades, etc.) Regulation of Cognition is not easily achieved, as these applications are time-consuming to learn and implement. This reference can assist instructors in building the ability for students to improve their own ability to monitor and improve their Regulation of Cognition strategies.
Reference:
Vancouver Island University (2020). *Ten Metacognitive Teaching Strategies*. [Web Page]. Available from https://ciel.viu.ca/teaching-learning-pedagogy/designing-your-course/how-learning-works/ten-metacognitive-teaching-strategies#
Research
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Applying the segmenting and pretraining principles: Managing complexity by breaking a lesson into parts. In Matthew Davis (Ed), *e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 204-220). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Who’s in control? Guidelines for e-learning navigation. In Matthew Davis (Ed), *e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 309-338). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Hacker, D. J., Bol, L., & Bahbahani, K. (2008). Explaining calibration accuracy in classroom contexts: the effects of incentives, reflection, and explanatory style.
Mayer, R. (2009). *Segmenting Principle*. In *Multimedia Learning* (pp. 175-188). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI:10.1017/CBO9780511811678.013
Vancouver Island University (2020). *Ten Metacognitive Teaching Strategies*. [Web Page]. Available from https://ciel.viu.ca/teaching-learning-pedagogy/designing-your-course/how-learning-works/ten-metacognitive-teaching-strategies#
Westlin, J., Day, E.A., & Hughes, M.G. (2019). Learner-Controlled Practice Difficulty and Task Exploration in an Active-Learning Gaming Environment. *Simulation & Gaming*, 50(6), 812-831. DOI: 10.1177/1046878119877672
Author
Submitted by: Roxanne Stewart
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: Completing M. Ed program at Ontario Tech University. Partial Load Professor with Durham College specializing in SAP, Microsoft Office and Basic Accounting Principles.
25
AN INTRODUCTION TO COLLABORATION
Overview
An Introduction to Collaboration (4:16)
Description
Collaboration involves the instructional use of small
groups to facilitate increased learning outcomes through the use of certain conditions. Collaborative learning can improve student achievement, long-term retention, higher-level reasoning, metacognitive thought, problem-solving skills, and perseverance in difficult tasks. Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) requires groups of two to five to work together on synchronous and asynchronous activities that support a learning goal. CSCL is constantly changing with additions of new platforms that allow for multiple users to interact online.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Social Interdependence**
To ensure all group members actively contribute to their learning and the learning of their group members, the grade or goal of each member should be dependent on the achievement of all group members in a group. Incentives or roles can be assigned to ensure that all group members are engaged in the learning activity. In a Jigsaw method, each group member is responsible for a given topic and they are required to become an expert in the topic. The students then meet in expert groups (people who have reviewed the same topic). Finally, they bring all of their findings back to their original group and are responsible for teaching the concept.
**Guideline 2 – Outcome Goals**
When facilitating collaboration, educators must consider whether the goal of the collaboration is for project quality or individual learning. Collaborative learning
does not necessarily result in both of these goals simultaneously, as it depends on a variety of variables including the type of learning and group size. When the goal requires creativity or problem-based learning, virtual collaboration results in the best quality outcomes, as learners have the opportunity to reflect upon the activity. In regards to group size, pairs can better support the goal of individual learning, where groups of three to five support project quality. Educators must determine the goal of collaboration so that they can structure their collaboration approaches to best meet the desired goal.
**Guideline 3 – Quality of Collaboration Discussion**
Collaborative learning relies on effective dialog amongst all participants in a group, which promotes an increased depth of processing. Group members should build off of the statements of others, pose or answer questions, and challenge or clarify what has already been said.
**Guideline 4 – Groupings**
Careful consideration should be given when creating groups, in terms of which learners to place in a group together and the size of groupings. Collaborative learning is most effective when groups are comprised of learners with both high prior knowledge and low prior knowledge or learners with all high prior knowledge.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – G Suite for Education**
G Suite for Education is a platform that includes many
different applications including Docs, Slides, Sites, and Hangouts. All applications allow multiple users to contribute to documents or presentations and provide and receive feedback. All applications provide opportunities for users to engage in discussions through chats, comments, and audio calls.
Example 2 – Explain Everything
Explain Everything is an interactive whiteboard that allows users to create presentations and videos that can be uploaded to YouTube or shared on Google Drive. Explain Everything allows multiple users to collaborate on a project on the same devices or several devices. Users can utilize the voice chat feature to enhance virtual dialog.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Collaboration in Online Learning Communities
A book, written by Donatella Persico and Francesca Pozzi, examines strategies and techniques that can be used to enhance online collaboration.
Resource 2 – The Jigsaw Method
A video that describes a collaborative learning strategy that can be used in a face-to-face learning environment or an e-learning setting, known as the Jigsaw Method.
Resource 3 – A Review and Critique of Online Collaboration
A literature review of the use of collaborative learning in
online university courses, accompanied by a critique of collaborative learning.
**Research**
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). Learning together virtually. In R. Taff (Ed.), *E-learning and the science of instruction* (pp. 279–306). Wiley.
Lou, Y., Abrami, P., & D’apollonia, S. (2001). Small Group and Individual Learning with Technology: A Meta-Analysis. *Review of Educational Research, 71*(3), 449–521. [https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543071003449](https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543071003449)
Resta, P., & Laferrière, T. (2007). Technology in support of collaborative learning. *Educational Psychology Review, 19*(1), 65–83. [https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-007-9042-7](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-007-9042-7)
**Author**
Submitted by: Sarah Baillie
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: @MsBaillie_
Bio: I am an elementary Occasional Teacher with York Region District School Board and Durham Catholic District School Board. I am currently enrolled in the Master of Education program at Ontario Tech University, with an interest in integrating technologies into the classroom.
THE COLLABORATION PRINCIPLE
Overview
An Introduction to the Instructional Design Principle: Collaboration (4:41)
Description
Collaboration is an instructional design principle whereby groups of learners work together to complete
specific tasks, solve problems, partake in discussion, and learn from one another’s thinking, views, and ideas. Individuals may work together in a traditional, face-to-face environment or computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment, either synchronously or asynchronously (Clark & Mayer, 2011; Kirschner, Paas, & Kirschner, 2009). The collaboration process involves discussion, argumentation, and reflection regarding the task at hand, which can lead to deeper processing of the information, resulting in more meaningful learning (Kirschner et al., 2009). In order for collaboration to be effective, group members must actively communicate and interact with one another and share similar intentions of establishing a common focus and achieving a desired goal (Beers, Boshuizen, Kirschner, & Gijselaers, 2006).
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Social Interdependence**
In order to ensure that each team member is purposely contributing to the collaborative group, the learning and grade outcome of each learner in the group should be dependent, in part, on the learning and accomplishment of the individual’s teammates (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Educators must keep in mind the incentives for each learner to interact, participate, and support the learning of the rest of their group members. For example, an educator teaching a Science class may have students work in groups to complete a particular task. In order to ensure each student is participating and everyone is doing their fair share of work, the teacher may provide or allow students to take on a specific role within the group.
The learning of the group and the mark given would be dependent on the completion of each part assigned to each individual. It is important, however, to make certain that the roles assigned to members of the group require collaboration rather than individual completion, as this would defeat the purpose of group work. Careful consideration and planning on the educators part is required.
**Guideline 2 – Quality of Collaborative Dialogue**
Collaborative learning activities must involve communication by all members of a group where each member builds upon the contributions of the other members, clarifies or challenges ideas, and asks and answers mutual questions (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Rather than regurgitating what they already know, learners must critically think and contribute ideas that may expand each other’s knowledge (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Therefore, educators must create instructional conditions that inspire and require in-depth, quality dialogue. Providing students with a model of how effective groups function may prompt meaningful discussion (TeachThought, 2020). This model may include initiating discussion, clarifying points, summarizing, challenging assumptions, providing or researching information, and reaching a consensus (TeachThought, 2020). It is important for educators to provide students with activities or problems that are not too easy but rather, spark curiosity and engagement, with relevance to the learners.
Guideline 3 – Incorporate Problem-Based Learning (PBL)
Problem-based learning involves collaboration in which students work together to solve a real-world problem. Howard Barrows, who was involved in the development of PBL at McMaster University describes it as student-centred, taking place in small groups, whereby the teacher acts as the facilitator and group work is organized around a problem (Graaff & Kolmos, 2003). The type of problem is dependent on the curriculum expectations of a particular subject and can be created by the teacher or can be constructed by groups of students after being given a particular topic. Students are required to come to a consensus on solution(s) to the problem and later present their problem and accompanying solution(s) to the whole class to spark discussion around the problem. Teachers can apply PBL to any subject. For example, in a Grade 8 History class, a teacher can divide students into groups and provide them with the topic of Global Inequalities or a problem pertaining to this topic. Students will communicate, research, and pose solutions to the problem, present their material in an organized way (ex. Prezi), and share their findings and ideas with the class. This activity may take one or multiple classes depending on the complexity of the problem and the learning abilities of the students. Checking in with students’ progress may help to establish a time frame.
Guideline 4 – Utilize Web 2.0 Tools for Collaboration
Allowing students to utilize Web 2.0 Tools to collaborate with others is an engaging and meaningful way to incorporate technology into the classroom. Collaborative tools such as Google Docs, AdobeConnect, Knowledge
Forum, and Canvas are platforms that allow for collaboration through discussion both written and verbal. Students can work on activities simultaneously, while utilizing the World Wide Web to complete research. Utilizing Web 2.0 tools allows students to practice how to effectively and safely communicate online as the use of technology is integral to many career paths. For example, a teacher may have groups of students work together utilizing a tool of their choice, such as Google Slides, to create a presentation on a particular learning strand. It is crucial for educators to introduce netiquette and safe Internet use before the introduction of Web 2.0 tools into the classroom.
**Guideline 5 – Collaborative Learning Process as part of Assessment**
Assessment for learning involves the process of understanding where learners are at in their learning, where learners are going, and how best to get them there. Assessment as learning involves the process whereby students assess their own learning, the learning of their peers, and their group’s learning. As students collaborate with others, it is important to use assessment for and as learning to provide students with appropriate feedback to be utilized to enhance their group work experience. Allowing students to reflect on their learning and their role as a member of a collaborative group as well as reflect on the work of their group, students are able to take necessary steps to improve their role and enhance their learning. This type of assessment should be done throughout the process of learning and working in a group rather than at the end of a finished task. Checking in on students while they work, giving them opportunities to reflect on their learning through
checklists, rubrics, reflection journals and allowing groups time to discuss how the collaborative process is going and how they may proceed for the betterment of the group, are ways to accomplish this.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Edmodo**
Edmodo is an educational website that provides students a platform to communicate, share ideas, share documents, create polls, create and edit assignments, provide feedback, and other features that are conducive to collaborative learning. Teachers can use this site to keep track of their students’ work and provide feedback to learners when needed. This platform can be used by learners both at school or at home, allowing for synchronous and asynchronous contributions.
**Example 2 – G Suite**
G Suite is comprised of a number of Google Apps that make collaboration simple and effective. These Apps include Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Hangouts, Drive, Forms, and Google Classroom. Students and educators are able to use these Apps to collaborate synchronously or asynchronously and work on tasks simultaneously, sharing their ideas and work with one another in a group of learners. Educators and students are easily able to provide feedback to one another through these platforms.
Example 3 – Fleep
Fleep is a communication application that includes built-in collaboration tools to allow groups of learners to communicate online through messaging and virtual online meetings. Students are able to use private group messaging to work exclusively with their group members. This application supports students in discussing their group tasks, making suggestions, sharing ideas and links, uploading files, and providing feedback.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Video on Collaborative Learning by Maddie Edwards
Maddie Edwards, a high school student at Woodgrove High School and the Academies of Loudoun in Purcellville, Virginia discusses her experience with collaboration and how to create a better future through collaborative learning.
Resource 2 – Theory and Practice of Online Collaborative Learning
This book by Tim S. Roberts takes an in-depth look at computer-mediated collaborative learning.
Resource 3 – Collaboration Tools for Learning Online
This article discusses collaboration and online learning. It includes examples of collaboration tools that can be used for educational purposes.
Research
Beers, P. J., Boshuizen, H. P. A., Kirschner, P. A., &
Gijselaers, W. H. (2006). Common ground, complex problems and decision making. *Group Decision and Negotiation, 15*(6), 529–556.
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). *E-learning and the science of instruction*. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
Clifford, M. (2020, February 3). 20 collaborative learning tips and strategies for teachers. [Web log post]. TeachThought. Retrieved from http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/20-collaborative-learning-tips-and-strategies/
Graaff, E.D., & Kolmos, A. (2003). Characteristics of problem-based learning. *International Journal of Engineering Education, 19*(5), 657-662. Available from https://www.ijee.ie/articles/Vol19-5/IJEE1450.pdf
Kirschner, F., Paas, F.G.W.C., & Kirschner, P.A. (2009). A cognitive load approach to collaborative learning: United brains for complex tasks. *Educational Psychology Review, 21*, 31–42.
Author
Submitted by: Chelsea Santoli
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Twitter: @ChelseaSantoli2
Bio: I am currently an Occasional Teacher with Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board and York Region District School Board. I am completing a Master of Education and Digital Technology degree through Ontario Tech University. I am a lifelong learner and passionate educator interested in utilizing technology to enhance the learning experience of my students.
THINKING SKILLS DESIGN PRINCIPLE
Overview
Thinking Skills Design Principle (4:05)
Description
The Thinking Skills Design Principle was developed to build job-specific thinking and problem-solving skills, this approach is real-world focused for progressive
learning and thinking skills that are unique to a specific area of focus. The three main bodies of thinking skills are creative thinking, critical thinking, and metacognition. These thinking skills focus on a whole-task or part-task training process which is applicable for different learners. These two instruction methods separate learners based on their level of complexity and include explicit learning based on a case study approach.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Analysis of Process**
Instruction can begin with an assessment of desired thinking skill outcomes, this should be developed and used as a benchmark to ensure the content is focused on specific outcomes based around creative thinking, critical thinking or metacognition.
**Guideline 2 – Determining your Approach**
The content can be organized using one of the following approaches depending on the skills and context of the case study situation. Part-Task takes content into smaller areas of focus and learners are given smaller amounts of content to practice and build their thinking skills gradually. This approach works well with novice learners as it doesn’t overwhelm them with content. Whole-task takes the approach where an authentic situation is given and integrates the knowledge and skills needed to solve that problem into the learning. This approach works well with more complex learners.
Guideline 3 – Specific Context
Engage learners with expert examples and simulations of content. This process can be done individually or in collaborative group assignments where learners can observe, analyze, describe and act on their case study situation. Taking this element one step further, learners can observe (O) a case study and make a summarized assessment. They can then analyze (A) their observation summary and describe (D) how they would respond in a specific professional experience. From there, the learner can design an action (A) plan and respond to the situation based on feedback from peers, facilitators or mentors creating a deeper understanding of content.
Guideline 4 – Interact with the Resolution
Use a reflection assessment on the learning process as an effective way for learners to further engage with content and analyze why actions were taken. This reflection reviews what they have learned throughout the process inclusive of the solution but also on the problem-solving skills that were used to find a solution.
Guideline 5 – Learner Focused
The learner should have control over their learning through the OADA phases, but the case study can be provided to the learners to ensure it specifically meets the problem where certain thinking skills are required to solve. Implement this by giving the learner a specific problem that related to their professional field, they can work through the OADA phases to solve. This process triggers specific thinking and problem-solving skills.
Good Examples of Use
Example 1 – Minecraft
This interactive learning tool teaches users to build, gather resources and survive in an augmented reality world. Users gather resources to advance and build acquired resources to maintain good health and sustainable life. The further you progress by setting your own goals and working towards their accomplishment, the more complex the game features become.
Example 2 – Science Journal by Google
This documenting tool allows users to pick a general science experiment to start and utilizes the user’s phone to capture photos, sounds, videos, and light sensors. The user measures the content and develops findings to help them explore that area of focus on a granular level. As you develop your skills, you can conduct new experiments and areas of focus and the advancement of learning is controlled by the learner.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Critical Thinking Skills in E-Learning
This research highlights critical thinking in an online learning environment including what design factors play a role in creating interactive learning environments and what kinds of critical thinking skills activities engage learners.
Resource 2 – *Teaching Methods for Inspiring Learners*
This TedEx describes a student’s natural ability to be a problem-based learner and use their critical thinking and creative thinking skills to observe, analyze and act on focused problems. Authentic learning happens when learners engage in inspiring content and importance is based on student-centered learning environments.
**Research**
American Dental Education Association. (2019). *Overview of Critical Thinking Skills*. [Web page]. Retrieved from https://www.adea.org/adeacci/Resources/Critical-Thinking-Skills-Toolkit/Pages/Overview-of-Critical-Thinking-Skills.aspx
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). Chapter 15: e-Learning to Build Thinking Skills. In *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 339–364). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Heath, G. (2003). Connecting Work Practices with Practical Reason. *Educational Philosophy and Theory*, 35(1), 107–111. doi: 10.1111/1469-5812.00008
Ruhl, J. (2015, May 27). *Teaching Methods for Inspiring Learners*. [YouTube video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/UCFg9bcW7Bk
Sahin, M. C. (2009). Instructional design principles for 21st century learning skills. *Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1*(1), 1464–1468. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.258
Author
Submitted by: Sarah Patience
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: @spatience3
Bio: Sarah Patience is a Master of Education Student at Ontario Tech University, where she plans to focus her research on Indigenous Communities of Practice. She graduated from the AEDT program at Ontario Tech University and lives in the Toronto area. She currently works in marketing at AB World Foods and has a passion for food and travel.
The Personalization Principle is one of Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning. The theory views simulating a social discourse as an event that promotes
active cognitive processing, allowing people to feel they are engaged in a conversation with a partner instead of passively receiving information. This theory suggests you can use an informal, conversational style and virtual coaches to increase learning outcomes and increase learner engagement.
**Guidelines for Use**
**Guideline 1 – Use Conversational Style Rather Than Formal Style**
Using an informal conversational style helps learners relate to the presented material. Language should use some first- and second-person language to help create the feeling of conversation. Instructions should be polite by offering suggestions, asking questions, or phrasing as though working cooperatively with the learner. It is important to use personalization in moderation because it is important not to distract the learner.
**Guideline 2 – Use Effective On-Screen Coaches to Promote Learning**
On-screen coaches are characters, real or animated, that guide the learning process during an e-learning episode. Coaches help provide the feeling of being engaged in conversation and should move, sound, and use eye movement in a human-like manner. Coaches should be used for instruction rather than entertainment by providing hints, worked examples, demonstrations, and explanations.
**Guideline 3 – Make the Author Visible to Promote Learning**
Visible authors give information about themselves and
highlight their perspectives. Newer learners may be encouraged by the author as a guide to the topic and can make the topic seem less intimidating. Learners at a middle level of interest also become more engaged in the topic.
**Good Examples of Use**
**Example 1 – Duolingo**
Duolingo uses polite and cooperative language on its instructions to progress to the next steps. The Duolingo owl acts as a coach to new users, providing advice on learning techniques from useful tips to overall learning advice like practicing consistently. Visible authors establish a presence by providing feedback and answering questions on the forum.
**Example 2 – Udemy**
Udemy has a variety of programs available for e-learning. In the course overview, the author acts as the on-screen coach. They provide study techniques, descriptions of course and lesson content, and resources for practice questions.
**Helpful Resources**
**Resource 1 – Applying the Personalization Principle**
Clark and Mayer provide direct advice on how to use the Personalization Principle.
Resource 2 – *The Learning Pod*
In this episode of The Learning Pod, Kell Hansen and Jeanine Sullivan discuss what the Personalization Principle is and how it can be used in the workplace.
Resource 3 – *Contrasting Study of the Personalization Principle*
The study found learners in personalized simulations spent 20% more time on it but no differences in achievement.
**Research**
Brom, C., Bromová, E., Děchtěrenko, F., Buchtová, M., & Pergel, M. (2014). Personalized messages in a brewery educational simulation: Is the personalization principle less robust than previously thought? *Computers & Education*, 72, 339-366.
Clark, Ruth & Mayer, Richard. (2012). Applying the Personalization Principle: Use Conversational Style and Virtual Coaches. In *E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia, 3rd Edition*. John Wiley & Sons. Available from [https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118255971.ch9](https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118255971.ch9)
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). *E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning*. John Wiley & Sons.
Monero, R.& Mayer, R.E (2004). Personalized messages that promote science learning in vertical environments. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 96*, 165-173
Author
Submitted by: Stephen Lizak
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web page: https://elearning-essentials-2020.weebly.com/personalization-principle.html
Bio: Stephen has worked for over a decade educating students across a variety of ages in the math and sciences. He has worked at Conestoga College as a teaching assistant, as a tutor for the drop-in service in the math center, at CHELP Tutor School, and as an independent tutor.
The first step in the process is to identify the problem or issue that needs to be addressed. This can be done through research, surveys, interviews, or other methods. Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to develop a plan for addressing it. This plan should include specific goals and objectives, as well as a timeline for completing the project.
Once the plan has been developed, it is important to gather resources and support from stakeholders. This may involve working with colleagues, seeking funding, or obtaining permission from relevant authorities. It is also important to establish clear communication channels and ensure that everyone involved is aware of their roles and responsibilities.
As the project progresses, it is essential to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. This may involve revising the plan, reallocating resources, or seeking additional support. It is also important to communicate regularly with stakeholders and keep them informed about the status of the project.
Finally, once the project has been completed, it is important to evaluate its success and learn from the experience. This may involve conducting a formal evaluation, gathering feedback from stakeholders, or sharing lessons learned with others. By following these steps, organizations can effectively address problems and issues, achieve their goals, and improve their performance.
PART III
TOOL REVIEWS
The first step in the process is to identify the problem or issue that needs to be addressed. This can be done through research, surveys, interviews, or other methods. Once the problem has been identified, the next step is to develop a plan for addressing it. This plan should include specific goals and objectives, as well as a timeline for completing the project.
Once the plan has been developed, it is important to gather resources and support from stakeholders. This may involve working with colleagues, seeking funding, or obtaining permission from relevant authorities. It is also important to establish clear communication channels and ensure that everyone involved is aware of their roles and responsibilities.
As the project progresses, it is essential to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. This may involve revising the plan, reallocating resources, or seeking additional support. It is also important to communicate regularly with stakeholders and keep them informed about the status of the project.
Finally, once the project has been completed, it is important to evaluate its success and learn from the experience. This may involve conducting a formal evaluation, gathering feedback from stakeholders, or sharing lessons learned with others. By following these steps, organizations can effectively address problems and issues, achieve their goals, and improve their performance.
Articulate 360 is an authoring program used by instructional designers, e-learning developers, and educators for creating innovative and interactive online learning modules, simulations, and instructional or
promotional material. You can sign up with a free sixty day trial, and after that subscribe to a yearly subscription. With an Articulate 360 account, you will have access to several apps that can be downloaded to your desktop, each serving a different purpose, as detailed below.
**Rise 360**
This is a web-based design tool and by far the most user-friendly out of the Articulate 360 suite because it is web-based and does not require any installation of software and very little training in order to create a course, lesson, or assessment. Rise 360 is used primarily to create responsive courses directly in your web browser in a timely manner.
**Storyline 360**
This is a desktop authoring tool used to create customized courses and learning modules. Although there is a bit more of a learning curve, it is still fairly intuitive and the interface is designed to be similar to Microsoft powerpoint to make it an easier transition. Storyline is more commonly used for more cumbersome or complex course design, including customized interactions, scenario based activities, and screencast videos with step by step simulation options for demonstrating software or products.
**Content Library 360**
Provided with each account, the content library contains over five million course assets that users can utilize in their own design projects without any royalties or extra
fees. This includes images, templates, videos, characters, and slide templates. The templates in particular are a great way for new users to design professional looking, effective courses with minimal training.
**Review 360**
This web-based app is where you can publish your courses and invite others to provide feedback. This really brings out the collaborative nature of the program and allows instructors or designers to co-construct courses and lessons.
**Articulate 360 Training**
This section provides numerous tutorials and instructional videos showing you how to use the various features in Articulate 360. There are recorded webinars and also live webinars that subscribers can access for free.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
**Practice Principle:**
Articulate 360 aligns extremely well with many learning theories and instructional design principles. Both Storyline and Rise (the main authoring tools in Articulate 360) offer several opportunities for instructors to create meaningful interactions and formative assessments to practice and test the skills and knowledge learned in the module. This supports the practice principal of effective e-learning design, which states that learners should have ample opportunities to practice the skills learned in the module through multiple question types that can be
distributed throughout the learning event (Clark & Mayer, 2011). In Storyline, designers can create scenario based assessments to provide authentic assessment and feedback can be added for all answer options, which also aligns with the feedback and job-mirroring aspects of the practice principle and the worked example principle (Clark & Mayer, 2011).
**Learner Control:**
In Storyline and Rise, the wide range of user navigation tools like interactive buttons and control buttons for various media allows designers to give learners full control over the pace, navigation, and amount of material that they consume in a learning module, which supports the principle of learner control in effective e-learning design (Clark & Mayer, 2011; Kay, 2001).
**Personalization:**
Personalization of learning, which encouraged personal, informal tone and teacher presence, is also supported in Storyline where designers can custom record their own voices between slides and interactions, giving test instructions and user prompts with a human voice rather than just text or automated voice (Clark & Mayer, 2011).
**Multimedia Principles:**
It’s interactivity and multi-modal capabilities with inserting video, audio, graphics, interactive quizzes, and animation allow for the creation of learning modules with most of Clark & Mayer’s multi-media, instructional design principles in mind, particularly the principles of
multimedia, modality, and contiguity (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Each module can also be organized into different “scenes” so that large, cumbersome modules can be chunked into smaller, more manageable learning events to avoid cognitive overload and promote the chunking of learning material (Doyle & Fountain, 2012).
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – Simulation Practice Exercises**
Simulation Practice Exercises through Screencasting (4:51)
**Strategy 2 – Promoting Learner Control**
Promoting Learner Control through Navigation & Triggers (5:27)
**Helpful Resources**
**Resource 1 – eLearning Articulate 360 Resources**
This website offers tons of examples, tips, resources, and articles related to Articulate 360 and other authoring
tools. It is a great resource for extra training once you have developed the foundational skills in Articulate.
Resource 2 – eLearning Brothers Articulate Resource Bank
eLearning brothers have a wide range of resources available including training videos, templates, and exemplars. This is quite useful for both novice and advanced users of Articulate.
Resource 3 – Udemy: Learn Articulate 360 from Scratch
This is not a free resource, but for only $15.00, it is a great full resource for a completely new user wishing to learn how to use the authoring tool from the very first steps. LinkedIn Learning has a very similar course as well.
References
Articulate Global Inc., (2020). Welcome to Articulate 360. [Web page]. Articulate 360. Retrieved from https://360.articulate.com/
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). *E-learning and the science of instruction*. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
Kay, J. (2001). Learner Control. *User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction.* (11), 111-127. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011194803800
Doyle, K. E., Fountain, S. B. (2012). Learning by Chunking. *Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning*. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6
Blair Trewartha is an educator and instructional designer currently completing his Masters of Education at Ontario Tech University. He holds a B.A. in English/History, a Bachelors of Education degree, and over ten years experience teaching in post-secondary institutions across Ontario.
Buncee
Overview
Buncee (3:43)
Description
Buncee is a fun and easy tool that can be used to create interactive content that is visually appealing and multimodal. This tool is similar to Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides, but with more advanced features. Using Buncee, individuals can create stimulating presentations that can be easily accessed online through tablets or computers. This tool offers the drag and drop feature,
making it easy to use for all. A great advantage of Buncee is that the user can create almost anything, using their imaginations. Although this tool presents great elements, it is not free to use after 30 days.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
The most important feature of Buncee is being able to provide Connectivism. The theory states that the worldwide web has created new opportunities for individuals to learn, connect and share content (Siemens, 2005). Essentially anyone with a Buncee account can access the site with the link. When thinking about this theory through an educational lens, teachers can easily connect and guide students to the information needed to answer any questions.
Buncee is a tool that can be used to create interactive presentations. In order to do so, the innovators need to adhere to the thinking skills design principle. The principle has been developed to build job-specific thinking and problem-solving skills such as creative thinking, critical thinking and metacognition (Clark & Mayer, 2011). When creating an interactive and effective Buncee presentation, the creator needs to be equipped with all three skills for the presentation to be stimulating.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1
Strategy 1 – Buncee (1:16)
Buncee can be used in a variety of ways, including lessons and assessment tools. The educator can create slides that explore a topic or theory. Students can refer back to the presentation when needed. The educator is also able to create slides in which the students need to answer a series of questions. All student answers are stored in the Buncee classroom portal.
Strategy 2
Strategy 2 – Buncee (1:15)
Buncee can be used by students in various ways, including an interactive presentation, personal portfolio, notebook sharing or read aloud responses. When creating an interactive presentation, the tool can be used to engage students while also summarizing learning. After creating the presentation, the students can present their slides to the class and review them when needed. When thinking about a personal portfolio, notebook
sharing or read aloud responses, students are given the opportunity to use their creativity to complete the task(s) designed.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Buncee Tutorial
This Youtube video quickly provides a tutorial on how to use the tool Buncee. It goes through logging into the tool and creating an interactive presentation.
Resource 2 – 10 ways to use Buncee Board in the Classroom
This blog explores ten different ways to use Buncee in the Classroom.
Resource 3 – Buncee for Education Review
This review quickly summarizes the tool and provides teachers with benefits and cons.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). *E-Learning and the science of instruction* (3rd ed.). San Fransico, CA: Phieffer.
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. *International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning*, 2(1), 3-10. Available from http://220.127.116.11/mediawiki/resources/2/2005_siemens_Connectivism_A_LearningTheoryForTheDigitalAge.pdf
Author
Submitted by: Marta Masnyi
Email: email@example.com
Recent Graduate of the Bachelor of Education Degree which was completed at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
Bio: Current student of the Graduate Diploma in Education and Digital Technologies in which I am studying how to effectively integrate technology within the classroom setting.
Overview
Canva assists users in the creation of professional quality media to be used in a variety of applications including both digital and print environments. Both free and paid (pro) subscriptions are available.
Canva makes it very easy to create and re-size graphical social media elements. Users have the ability to save, organize and share their files under individual profiles. Educators are able to easily create professional-looking...
graphics and students can use tools to demonstrate creativity in their work without any real design experience.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
The focus of Canva is to allow users to express their learning through creativity, which, in many ways, is foundational to learning (James, Lederman Gerard & Vagt-Traore, 2010). Embracing the Multimedia Principle which states active learning is more likely when learners are exposed to both words and images that assist with mental integration of material (Colvin Clark & Mayer, 2008) will aid in the success of lesson delivery in the classroom. The Canva platform can be effectively leveraged to add engaging multimedia to everything from handouts to lectures to hands-on learning activities.
In order to best enhance learning, educators should create and utilize their own multimedia material (Babiker, 2015). Canva offers templated and step-by-step creation of everything from newsletters to presentation, from infographics to logos. Equipped with tutorials and collaborative libraries, this application is accessible and necessary to assist educators with the changing multi-sensory learning requirements of today’s learners.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Students
Strategies for use of Canva in the Classroom (for students) (0:49)
Brief overview video created by the author of some of the options Canva offers to students. Get a list of some of the tools students can create using the many templates available in Canva.
Strategy 2 – Teachers
Strategies for use of Canva in the Classroom (for teachers) (0:50)
Brief overview video created by the author listing some of the options Canva offers for teachers to bring some creativity into their classroom. Get some suggestions of the tools teachers can use to spruce up tired material and be inspired to update class material.
Strategy 3 – Creating Certificates
How to create certificates on Canva (2:44)
Educators can use Canva to create certificates of appreciation or achievement to reward students in the classroom. Easily produce formal certificates that can be printed on card stock and sent home as an identifier of notable achievement.
Strategy 4 – Creating Presentations
Canva 2.0: Create better presentations (12:33)
Capturing students’ attention is often paramount when delivering new information and teaching curriculum. A bedrock of delivery is how it is presented. Canva offers tools to best present your information to assist you in captivating your audience.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – How to use Canva in Education (Video Tutorial)
This video points out valuable uses of Canva for educators, in particular. Learn about tools to use for producing teaching materials as well as options to create lessons that allow hands-on learning for students within the application.
Resource 2 – 10 ways to take your lessons to the next level with Canva (Blog)
This blog provides resources and tips to best incorporate Canva with classroom learning, educator collaboration and available resources.
Resource 2 – Canva in the classroom: Getting started, example designs and tips (Blog)
This blog provides a thorough overview of the application and details many of the available uses, requirements and options to best utilize the application.
References
Babiker, E. A. (2015). For Effective Use of Multimedia in Education, Teachers Must Develop Their Own Educational Multimedia Applications. *The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 14*(4), 62–68. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1077625.pdf
Colvin Clark, R., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). *e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and*
Learners of Multimedia Learning (3rd ed.). San Fransisco, CA (USA): Pfeiffer.
James, V., Lederman Gerard, R., & Vagt-Traore, B. (2010). Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology. In M. Orey & D. Anderson (Eds.), Creativity (pp. 104-113). Zurich, Switzerland: Global Text.
Author
Submitted by: Alison Sprayson
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web Page: www.ourbrightideas.ca
Bio: Post-secondary instructor with interest in technology, marketing and instructional design.
32
EXPLAIN EVERYTHING
Overview
Explain Everything Introduction (1:42)
Description
Explain Everything is a mobile and online interactive whiteboard that allows users to create presentations and videos that can be uploaded to YouTube or shared on Google Drive. There are a variety of features including a pen and highlighting tool, the ability to add documents,
images, and videos, and the ability to add voice annotations. These features promote the creation of multimodal presentations or videos. Explain Everything also allows multiple users to collaborate on a project on the same devices or several devices.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Explain Everything is often used as a presentation tool, as its features promote the use of many instructional design principles, including the modality principle and contiguity principle. The modality principle states that audio better supports learning outcomes in comparison to written text (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Explain Everything includes a built-in recording feature, that allows users to narrate a presentation or explain their thinking process. The contiguity principle states that audio and visuals should be presented in an integrated fashion (Clark & Mayer, 2011). The recordings can be paired with live drawings or writing to allow information to be shared through auditory and visual channels simultaneously.
The invite feature in Explain Everything enables computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). CSCL promotes social interactions which allow for deeper mental processing of content (Stahl, Koschman, & Suthers, 2014). A shareable code allows for multiple users to access a project simultaneously, which enables users to share questions, participate in inquiry learning, and share thoughts and opinions.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Collaborative Whiteboard
Collaborative Whiteboard (2:15)
Explain Everything can support student collaboration through the upload of a file feature. Students can utilize the highlight and text feature to improve understanding of course materials, while working simultaneously with their peers.
Strategy 2 – Explain Everything E-Book
Explain Everything E-Book (2:51)
Explain Everything can be used to create an E-Book with voice narration. Students can add multiple pages, which incorporate pictures and text.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Explain Everything Webinar
The video discusses a hope to connect Explain Everything with the Google platform to allow educators
to post content on Google Classroom, and provide a place for students to share their projects on Google Drive. The video also presents a variety of different ways to incorporate the WBLT into the classroom to enhance student learning.
Resource 2 – Creative Uses of Explain Everything
The blog post includes 11 creative and practical uses of Explain Everything in the classroom setting. Explain Everything can be used by teachers to support instruction or by students to promote collaboration.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). *E-Learning and the science of instruction* (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Phieffer.
Stahl, G., Koschmann, T., & Suthers, D. (2014). Computer-supported collaborative learning: An historical perspective. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), *Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, revised version*. (ch. 24, pp. 479-500). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Author
Submitted by: Sarah Baillie
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: @MsBaillie_
Bio: I am an elementary Occasional Teacher with York Region District School Board and Durham Catholic District School Board. I am currently enrolled in the Master of Education program at Ontario Tech University, with an interest in integrating technologies into the classroom.
FLIPGRID
Overview
Flipgrid Overview (5:02)
Description
Flipgrid is a free video-based platform that can be embedded into a website and/or a learning management system. Its purpose is to allow students to respond in video format to a learning activity posed by educators. Video responses by students are limited from 15 seconds – 5 minutes and each video posted is presented in a grid format. Students can post their video responses using...
any camera accessible digital tool. Flipgrid also allows educators to assess, provide feedback, and include attachments to videos. Students may also respond via text to text questions posed. The video responses have accessibility features such as closed captions, immersive reader, and students can add characters, emojis, and graphics. The platform allows for more than one moderator, access to a help center, and access to a library of shared grid templates.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
**Supports Constructivism Learning Theory**
Flipgrid allows students to be active, reflective, and collaborative learners by creating short videos to demonstrate their learning (WNET/Education, 2004).
**Supports ARCS Model of Motivational Design**
When educators have students design videos either before, during or after a lesson as a learning activity, using the Flipgrid platform, it can stimulate students’ engagement and motivation to learn (Mobraw, 2020).
**Supports Personalization Principle**
Flipgrid supports the multimedia Personalization Principle of design as empirical research has shown that using printed and/or spoken conversational style of writing over formal style of writing is more effective, especially in the case of novice learners. Cognitive theories of multimedia communication research have proven that a user’s cognitive processes are further
ignited and engaged when conversational style of communication is used as it simulates human to human conversation (Clark & Mayer, 2011).
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Flipgrid Resource
Flipgrid has over 12,000 topic grids available in the Disco Library for educators to utilize for their web-based learning modules.
Strategy 2 – Flipgrid App and Flipgrid Twitter
Flipgrid’s App and Twitter promote social engagement, collaboration, and is pedagogically beneficial to both educators and students.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Getting Started with Flipgrid Guide
- This online blog provides educators with the foundations of Flipgrid including step-by-step instructions on how to use this tool and lists all the resources available.
Resource 2 – 10 Ways to Use Flipgrid
- An educator provides 10 tips on how to use Flipgrid as a tool and as a solution to teacher troubles.
Resource 3 – A Technological Review of Flipgrid
- This article reviews Flipgrid as a social learning and engagement educational tool along with discussing its strengths and weaknesses.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). Applying the Personalization Principle. In *e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (chapter 9). doi: 10.1002/9781118255971
Flipgrid (n.d.). [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://blog.flipgrid.com/home
Mobraw, C. (2020). ARCS Model of Motivational Design. In Power, R. (Ed.) *E-Learning Essentials 2020*. [eBook].
Power, M. (November 2018). Flipgrid. Pose questions, thoughtful video responses with stellar tool. [Web page]. Common Sense Education. Retrieved from https://www.commonsense.org/education/website/flipgrid
Sweeney, G. (2019, September 9). What to know about Flipgrid. [Web page]. Softonic. Retrieved from https://en.softonic.com/articles/what-to-know-about-flipgrid?
WNED/Education. (2004). Workshop: Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning. [Web page]. Concept to Classroom. Retrieved from https://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/constructivism/
Author
Submitted by: Charlene DiDanieli
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web Page: @CDiDanieli
Bio: A professor with over 13 years of teaching experience in a community college in Ontario.
34
GOOGLE DOCS
Overview
Google Docs Overview (2:27)
Description
Google Docs is an interactive, web-based, word processor that allows students to produce text documents that live entirely on the cloud (Alharbi, 2019). Students can create, share, and collaborate in real time. Google Docs is distinguished from other Web 2.0 tools by its editing feature that enables both author and reviewer to contribute to the text synchronously (simultaneous
editing of writing by learners) and asynchronously (non-simultaneous editing by learners) (Alharbi, 2019). The ability for teachers to monitor their students’ progress and provide feedback on students’ work right on this innovative platform supports students’ Zone of Proximal Development as they are guided by teachers from the start of planning their work to the final stage of editing, through to feedback and drafting practices and activities (Alharbi, 2009).
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Google Docs is an interactive tool that allows users to work on a document simultaneously (Alharbi, 2009), on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis (Desjardins, 2005a). As suggested by a constructivist learning approach, collaborating and conversing with others enriches student understanding (Jonassen et al., 1999). Students can work on the document at the same time, building off each other’s ideas, research, brainstorming, and suggestions. Collaboration using Google Docs is not restricted to the classroom environment, providing flexibility, as students can work together at any time, anywhere, through the doc (Suwantarathip & Wichadee, 2014). Students can also utilize the chat function to partake in discussion with group members or teachers to further enhance knowledge construction (Suwantarathip & Wichadee, 2014). Virtual collaboration can lead to more reflections and sharing of ideas than face-to-face collaboration (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Working collaboratively reflects a wide range of perspectives and as such, results in a more complete and comprehensive product (Suwantarathip & Wichadee, 2014).
Google Docs also supports a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach where a given or student constructed problem is the starting point of the learning process to be solved by a group of students (De Graaff & Kolmos, 2003). Students can use Google Docs as a learning tool, where they come together to understand the problem and document various solutions on the Doc. The immediacy of the tool allows teachers to monitor students’ progress and provide constant suggestions, pose questions, and seek clarification, using the comments feature that the tool provides (Alharbi, 2009; Suwantarathip & Wichadee, 2014). Research shows that the use of constructive feedback can enhance students’ quality of work in terms of content, organization of ideas, language and grammar, conventions, and referencing (Ciftci & Kocoglu, 2012).
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – Feedback**
Google Docs has many features that are conducive to teacher and peer editing and revision. The features available for students and teachers to use for review and editing purposes support writing and learning as a process.
Strategy 2 – Problem-Based Learning
Using Google Docs for Problem-Based Learning (1:35)
Students can utilize Google Docs as a way to collaborate with peers when trying to solve a given or student-created, real-world, meaningful problem.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Getting Started with Google Docs
G Suite Learning Center has created an in-depth guide to using Google Docs. This guide outlines all the functions and features that Google Docs offers.
Resource 2 – Using Google Docs in Education
This video outlines ways to use the basic features of Google Docs and how these features can be used for learning purposes. It also outlines ways to use this tool for collaboration, editing, and providing feedback to learners and group members.
Resource 3 – Using Google Docs to Support Collaboration
This information guide provides the readers with ideas on how to use Google Docs as a collaboration tool in
education. It also provides a description on the features that help to foster collaboration.
References
Alharbi, M. A. (2019). Exploring the potential of google doc in facilitating innovative teaching and learning practices in an EFL writing course. *Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching*, 1-16.
Ciftci, H., & Kocoglu, Z. (2012). Effects of peer e-feedback on Turkish EFL students’ writing performance. *Journal of Education Computing Research, 46*(1), 61-84. [https://doi-org.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/10.2190/EC.46.1.c](https://doi-org.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/10.2190/EC.46.1.c)
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). *E-learning and the science of instruction*. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
De Graaff, D., & Kolmos, A. (2003). Characteristics of problem-based learning. *Int. J. Engng Ed.*, 00(0), 1-6.
Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L. & Wilson, B. G. (1999). *Learning with technology: A constructivist perspective*. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Suwantarathip, O., & Wichadee, S. (2014). The effects of collaborative writing activity using google docs on students’ writing abilities. *The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 13*(2), 148-156.
Author
Submitted by: Chelsea Sontoli
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: @ChelseaSantoli2
Bio: I am currently an Occasional Teacher with Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board and York Region District School Board. I am completing a Master of Education and Digital Technology degree through Ontario Tech University. I am a lifelong learner and passionate educator interested in utilizing technology to enhance the learning experience of my students.
HYPOTHES.IS
Overview
Hypothes.is Intro (3.03)
Description
Study the web with this browser extension. Designed to open up web writing to discussion and annotation, Hypothes.is supports learners, researchers and educators as they critically analyze and reflect on readings online, allowing them to highlight and annotate passages. Annotate privately, as a group, or out in the open as part of a larger community discourse.
Justification for Using this Tool
Social annotation apps and extensions, like Hypothes.is, let learners mark up a digital text much like they would a paper version – adding highlights, comments and margin notes, but in a collaborative and socially connected way (Novak, Razzouk, & Johnson, 2012, citing Huang et al., 2008, Kawase et al., 2009). These annotations and highlights are specific to individuals and the groups they share them with, whether private, in groups or fully public.
In a 2012 literature review, Novak, Razzouk, & Johnson noted little formal or relevant research yet on these types of tools. Of that which is available, there is evidence to suggest that annotation tools support effective learning, enhancing engagement, communication skills, and peer-to-peer learning. Digital annotations tend to be shorter, intended to be searched, shared or commented on in order for digital tools to affect learning in parallel ways to paper, they need to be engaging, easy and shareable, to prompt deeper thinking. The key pedagogical value of these tools are their social sharing features – through the collaborative and social annotation of texts, learners become more able to engage in metacognitive processes, recognizing patterns and synthesizing knowledge (Novak, Razzouk, & Johnson, 2012). Patterns across studies also indicate that social annotation improves learners’ motivation and enjoyment of the reading experience. Learners express enjoyment of these types of tools, and more and better quality annotations is correlated with improved learner performance.
Hypothes.is facilitates collaboration through active
sharing of reading insights and questions in any of the learner-to-facilitator, learner-to-learner, or learner-to-global-community environments. Learners exert a variety of control within this tool – from the quantity and quality of their annotations, responses to peers, and depth of their reading of the text. Depending on how learners are prompted to read and interact with the selections, Hypothes.is can help learners express, and educators measure, critical and creative thinking. If the researchers dashboard is incorporated into learning activities, metacognitive thinking skills may also be addressed. Educators should be careful that there is typically an initial learning curve with taking on a social annotation tool like Hypothes.is. Learners take a while to adjust to their use, and may demonstrate reduced performance as they learn the expectations of a tool use. Learners also report that they often find each others’ annotations interesting to the point where they can become distracted from their learning task. Supporting and directing learners’ attention and purpose in readings is paramount to their success in using these types of tools.
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – Guided Reading**
Guiding Reading (2:01)
Pre-populate a text or reading with questions for learners to discuss. Ask questions that prompt for active reading
strategies, including visualize, clarify, question, predict, connect and evaluate. These prompts should escalate through the reading, culminating in the more challenging prompts.
Strategy 2 – Researching in the PBL Cycle
Researching in the Problem Based Learning Cycle (2:41)
Facilitate the research stage of problem based learning or supervise collaborative research projects. Create groups of students and monitor their research and discussions. Facilitate their work by adding questions or additional resources for them to explore. Using the groups tool, and even the LMS integration, associate marks to these monitored interactions as learners acquire research skills.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Hypothes.is Teacher Resource Guide
This comprehensive guide helps prepare educators to facilitate the use of this tool from a technical perspective. It includes visual and video tutorials, and samples of real student work.
Resource 2 – *10 Ways to Annotate with Students*
This blog post offers 10 ideas for incorporating Hypothes.is into classroom learning exercises.
Resource 3 – *Marginal Syllabus*
Educators globally use Hypothes.is to collaboratively and socially annotate and discuss relevant research on technology equity. Join in the effort to develop participatory research about this valuable topic.
References
Novak, E., Razzouk, R. and Johnson, T. (2012). “The Educational Use of Social Annotation Tools in Higher Education: A Literature Review.” The Internet and Higher Education 15(1), 39–49.
Krouska, A., Troussas, C., and Virvou, M. (2018). “Social Annotation Tools in Digital Learning: A Literature Review,” 2018 9th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA), Zakynthos, Greece, pp. 1-4. doi: 10.1109/IISA.2018.8633609.
Author
Submitted by: Jesslyn Wilkinson
Twitter: @jesslyndw
Bio: Jesslyn is the Educational Technology Officer at Conestoga College. An Ontario Certified Teacher and a M.Ed candidate, Jesslyn researches and promotes new technologies for faculty to enhance pedagogical practices. She brings to the role her experience as a Google and Microsoft certified technology trainer and as a classroom teacher internationally and in Ontario, focusing on special education, tech-enabled learning and assistive technologies.
Kahoot! is an interactive game-based, web-based learning platform that can be accessed on any device and used in a school, work or home environment. Individuals (teachers, facilitators, trainers, students and others) can create, host or play learning games which are called kahoots, reviewing or introducing topics and concepts or elaborating on them. Games (kahoots) can take the form of quizzes, surveys, polls, and other types of interactive content. Kahoot! allows for real-time feedback and engagement, making it a popular tool for educators and trainers to enhance learning experiences.
form of any combination of quizzes, surveys (polls) or discussions (content slides) and can lead to further discussion, collaboration or research. They can consist of various question types that are connected to colours, shapes and music, as well as uploaded images and embedded YouTube videos. Quizzes can consist of multiple-choice, true or false, open-ended or puzzle (sort/sequence) questions. Surveys (Polls) can consist of multiple-choice questions or free form answers that can be visualized in a word cloud and discussion in the form of content slides can contain additional information about a topic or concept. Learners connect to a game through a generated pin on a shared screen and can see their name, nicknames or team names, that they have created, on the leaderboard. They are able to get immediate feedback when choosing, answering or sorting questions. And they can see how their responses rate relative to their fellow learners or colleagues by the number of points they have been awarded for correct and timely answers. Teachers, facilitators and trainers can use the games (kahoots) to help them with formative assessment, evaluating learner knowledge and identifying the learners who may need help. They can also gather feedback about content and structure of their games (kahoots) from learners. The results of each game can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet or Google drive. Games (kahoots) also provide opportunities for learners to assess and reflect on their knowledge. Games (kahoots) can be shared with others, edited, published online and teachers, facilitators or trainers can assign them as homework in the form of Kahoot! challenges for learners to play at their own pace on their own devices at home within a timeline set by them.
Justification for Using this Tool
The most important feature of Kahoot! is its ability to engage and motivate learners to learn. It is tied to “gamification of education” (Dichev & Dicheva, 2017) in employing such “game design elements” (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011) as fun, rewards connected to units of measurement such as points and time, immediate feedback, visual tracking of progress and recognition through a leaderboard, and “social elements” such as “competition and cooperation” with other learners where “their progress and achievements are made public” (Huang & Soman, 2013).
Games (kahoots) can also be used to facilitate discussion “between an entire class” (Plump & LaRosa, 2017) and promote collaboration and problem-solving. Instructors, facilitators, and trainers can also invite learners to create their own games (kahoots) either by themselves or as part of a team, edit them, and share them with others.
Games (kahoots) also offer help with formative assessment. They offer learners opportunities for “self-reflection and self-assessment” (Ismail et al., 2019). Teachers, facilitators and trainers are able to identify which learners are having difficulty with a topic or concept. They are able to see who is answering questions incorrectly and whose name is lower down in the leaderboard. They can then adjust games (kahoots) or create new games (kahoots) to address those areas of difficulty.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Using Kahoot! for Review
Using Kahoot! for Review (1:18)
Teachers, facilitators or trainers can use Kahoot! to review topics, subjects or concepts previously covered in class as preparation for tests and exams. They can also create review quizzes for formative assessment or access public ones and edit them for their own use. Learners can work in small teams to create review kahoots on a particular concept or topic covered previously to prepare for a test or exam, or for simple review, and share them with their classmates.
Strategy 2 – Using Kahoot! to Introduce New Material
Using Kahoot! to Introduce New Material (2:08)
Kahoot! can be used to introduce learners to new material through the creation of “blind” Kahoots.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 - A Teacher Tutorial on How to Create a Kahoot!
In this YouTube video a teacher takes you through the various steps involved in creating a kahoot!
Resource 2 – A Guide to Using Kahoot!
This Kahoot! guide explains how to play and create a kahoot!. It offers suggestions, tips and examples on different ways of integrating it in educational settings.
Resource 3 – A Master Class Video by the Co-Founders of Kahoot!
This YouTube video by Kahoot! co-founders explores different uses of this platform. In it they articulate their vision for Kahoot! And they delve into various features and functionalities of Kahoot!
References
Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R. & Nacke, L. (2011). From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining Gamification. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, Tampere, Finland. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230854710_From_Game_Design_Elements_to_Gamefulness_Defining_Gamification
Dichev, C., & Dicheva, D. (2017). Gamifying education: what is known, what is believed, and what remains uncertain: a critical review. *International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education*. 14(9).
Huang, W. H-Y., & Soman, D. (2013). *A Practitioner’s Guide to Gamification Of Education*. Research Report Series: Behavioural Economics in Action. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Retrieved from:
https://inside.rotman.utoronto.ca/behaviouraleconomicsinaction/files/2013/09/GuideGamificationEducationDec2013.pdf
Ismail, M. A. A., Ahmad, A., Mohammad, A. M., Fakri, N. M. R. M., Nor, M. Z. M., & Pa, M. J. M. (2019). Using Kahoot! as a formative assessment tool in medical education: a phenomenological study. *BMC Medical Education.* 19. Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334017220_Using_Kahoot_as_a_formative_assessment_tool_in_medical_education_a_phenomenological_study
Licorish, S. A., Owen, H. E., Daniel, B. & George, J. L. (2018). Students’ perception of Kahoot!’s influence on teaching and learning. *Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning.* 13(9). Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-018-0078-8
Plump, C., & LaRosa, J. (2017). Using Kahoot! in the Classroom to Create Engagement and Active Learning: A Game-Based Technology Solution for eLearning Novices. *Management Teaching Review.* 2(2). Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313418401_Using_Kahoot_in_the_Classroom_to_Crea
Author
Submitted by: Ivetka Vasil
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: I am a graduate student at Ontario Tech University in the M.Ed. in Education and Digital Technologies program with an interest in incorporating gamification in healthcare learning environments.
LIVEBINDERS
Overview
LiveBinders Introduction (3:27)
Description
LiveBinders is a free online program that allows teachers to create classroom textbooks, evidence-based documentation, and e-portfolios. The free option permits the development of up to 5 different binders with file size limitations. The binders are updated in real time, can be private or public and are easily accessible for students. A pro option does exist which costs $9.99
(USD) per month and allows for unlimited binders with several extra options.
Justification for Using this Tool
Working in education it is extremely important to have the ability to network and share curriculum information with colleagues. Livebinders provides a platform for information to be organized, stored and shared. The owner of the binder can add individuals as collaborators with editing capabilities for content information. This tool can also be used by students when working on projects which require online group collaboration through Computer-Supported Collaborative learning (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Hammond (2016) noted that online group collaboration increases the transferrable skills necessary for employment and societal participation. Graphics and videos can be incorporated into the binder to address various learning needs and increase visual esthetics. Carmicheal, Reid, and Karpicke (n.d.) outline that the inclusion of video stimulates greater course performance and positively impacts students’ motivation, confidence, and attitude towards their course. The Redundancy Principle also outlines that narration improves learning when paired with graphical representations of a concept (Clark & Mayer, 2011). The binder is user-friendly, information is organized into tabs like a table of contents supporting the Segmenting Theory where information is broken down into smaller more manageable topics to help increase understanding (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Students can access the binder for free from different electronic devices with internet capabilities. Incorporating Livebinders into education can help decrease textbook
costs while increasing student accessibility to curriculum tools.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1
LiveBinders Getting Started (2:39)
Short video outlining how to sign up for LiveBinders.
Strategy 2
Creating Your First Binder (5:45)
Short Video outlining how to create your first binder, and different functions available in the program.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Educators Guide to LiveBinders
This blog post provides detailed information surrounding different ways that LiveBinders can be incorporated into the classroom.
Resource 2 – *4 Steps to Creating a Digital Binder for Free*
This tutorial outlines step by step how to easily create a digital binder using LiveBinders.
Resource 3 – *LiveBinders for the Classroom*
This blog post provides detailed information surrounding different ways that educators and students can use LiveBinders. The post also outlines the positives and negatives associated with this tool.
References
Carmicheal, M., Reid, A., & Karpicke, J. (n.d.). *Accessing the Impact of Educational Video on Student Engagement, Critical Thinking and Learning: The Current State of Play*. Sage Publishing. Retrieved from https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/hevideolearning.pdf
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). *E-Learning and the science of instruction* (3rd ed.). San Fransico, CA: Phieffer.
Hammond, M. (2017). Online Collaboration and Cooperation: The Recurring Importance of Evidence, Rationale and Viability. *Education Information Technologies* (22) 1005–1024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-016-9469-x
Author
Submitted by: Kristen Marks-Riberdy
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Post-secondary nursing professor, Academic and Clinical Coordinator for Internationally Educated Nursing Program.
Microsoft Teams is a collaborative tool that allows a multitude of users in various locations to work and share in a common space. It is a workspace that multiple users can edit files collaboratively in real-time. It is linked to the online Microsoft Office suite of products and allows...
for the integration of third-party apps. There are options to work on and off-line. There is also a mobile app so that there is access to work anywhere. It is designed to be a central hub for productivity.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Microsoft Teams connects to various Learning Theories and Instructional Design Principles. The following are just some examples of how Teams has been developed using these principles thus being classified as a good Web Based Learning Tool.
**Segmenting Principle**
Segmenting is best applied to complex material and when the user is inexperienced with the material. This is achieved from being able to break material down into smaller learning ‘chunks’. These are called ‘channels’. The limit for channel creation is 200, giving the user ample opportunities to segment the work appropriately.
**Practice Principle**
The ability for the learner to practice what they are learning is instrumental in them being successful in mastering the content. There are multiple platforms in Microsoft Teams to accomplish this. There is a choice to integrate third Party apps to provide feedback on completed work, or the Assignments option within Teams itself can be used to provide even more detailed grading and feedback. Students can also collaborate with peers for instant feedback with the use of the chat, video call or with the use of the class notebook.
Collaboration Theory
Teams supports this concept by granting multiple users to have the ability to give input on a multitude of topics by allowing collaboration on assignments and projects in real-time. (CLICK) Students can also video call other classmates or their instructor to discuss ‘face-to-face’ for a more personalized experience. The integration of the third-party app Flip-grid will allow participants to record small videos of their progress or words of encouragement to share with the group for an additional motivation to others. Having a designated chat area, allows students to brainstorm with their peers for possible problem solutions.
Learner Control
Students are free to navigate through content while taking as much or as little time as they like with any materials posted within each channel. Teams supports the Learner Control Principle as there is no set way that the student must navigate through content. Students can also revisit any or all material as needed. External resources can be used for students for a deeper understanding of material being presented, and by incorporating third-party apps like ‘Forms’, students can be polled and then placed within a level that is appropriate to their skill set, allowing for the implementation of Adaptive Control for the learner.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Assignment and Rubric Creation
Assignment and Rubric Creation (8:38)
There are so many benefits to using Microsoft Teams for the classroom. The focus of this video is to demonstrate how to create an assignment and a corresponding rubric. Ensuring AODA compliance is also featured.
Strategy 2 – Grading and Feedback
Assignment Grading and Meaningful Feedback (7:26)
There are so many benefits to using Microsoft Teams for the classroom. The focus of this video will be to demonstrate how to grade an assignment submission and to provide detailed and meaningful feedback for your students.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Building a Collaborative Classroom
This website gives great examples on how teachers can use it to work collaboratively with other faculty. Using a quick video call to another instructor in another part of the school will increase the likelihood of collaboration, which leads to better teaching. Using Teams also levels the field for all participants. For the student that isn’t likely to share in a group environment, is more likely to participate when discussions and collaboration is held on-line.
Resource 2 – Best Practices for Teams in Classroom
What better way to learn about a tool, than from the developers themselves?! This website hosted by Microsoft details how to effectively use Teams, by demonstrating the possible ways to set up your ‘channel’ so that everyone is getting the most out of the software as possible. There are many examples on how to set-up, organize, label, and describe the purpose of each channel.
References
Best practices for school leaders creating teams and channels in Microsoft teams for education. (2020). Microsoft Office. Available from https://support.office.com/en-us/article/best-practices-for-school-leaders-creating-teams-and-channels-in-microsoft-teams-for-education-f3663ad9-a835-4971-9acb-6725a543c003
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Applying the segmenting and pretraining principles: Managing complexity by breaking a lesson into parts. In Matthew Davis (Ed), *e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 204-220). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Does Practice Make Perfect? In Matthew Davis (Ed), *e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 251-276). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Learning Together Virtually. In Matthew Davis (Ed), *e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 279-306). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Who’d in control? Guidelines for e-learning navigation. In Matthew Davis (Ed), *e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 309-338). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Gonzalez, J. (2018, August 5). Build a collaborative classroom with Microsoft teams. [Web log post]. *Cult of pedagogy*. Available from https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/microsoft-teams/
Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T., & Smith, K. (2007). The state of cooperative learning in postsecondary and professional settings. *Educational Psychology Review, 19*, (pp. 15–29)
Author
Submitted by: Roxanne Stewart
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: Completing M. Ed program at Ontario Tech University. Partial Load Professor with Durham College specializing in SAP, Microsoft Office and Basic Accounting Principles.
MINDMEISTER
Overview
MINDMEISTER OVERVIEW (3:24)
Description
MindMeister is a cloud-based mind mapping tool where users can create and share their ideas in a visual way. The platform is customizable in nature and allows for multimedia attachments and group collaboration and shareability. Features of this tool are the ability to have multiple contributors, import attachments, graphics,
images and links, export into workable PowerPoint or word documents and customize formats and themes.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
MindMeister is most effective when used for collaboration, brainstorming and presenting ideas and concepts. This tool offers dynamic presentation capabilities where supportive content can be linked to ideas and maps can be turned into engaging presentations. Each idea carries the capability to have media files attached to support learning content and develop metacognition, critical and creative thinking skills. These three main bodies of thinking skills development are led by a whole task approach where complex learning can happen through the exploration of individual learning components (Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E., 2016).
- Collaboration allows students to critically and creatively assess tasks and develop content.
- Mind maps work to create relationship between topics.
- Whole task approach allows students to explore each individual topic for a richer understanding of subject matter.
Mind Meister relies heavily on the connectivity and collaboration theories by allowing the opportunity for multiple users to share information through the use of technology. Within the Connectivity theory, learning happens over online networks (Learning Theories, 2017). This tool functions on a web-based platform where multiple users can revise, edit, upload, share and present
content allowing for learning to happen in a social connectivism manor. This tool is offered in a user-friendly standard web-browser, on Chromebooks, iOS and Android devices.
- Network connections allow for easy use of MindMeister, and connectivism links student ideas and knowledge together into one shareable domain.
- Using this collaboration tool, students are able to socially share their expertise on the subject matter and learn from each others contributions. Easy functions such as comments, chats and voting, make this professional tool a social learning platform.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Media Features
MindMeister is an excellent tool to add notes, media, links and image content to ideas and concepts. Each new component can have media attached to it where further exploration and detail of the idea can be shared.
Strategy 2 – Presenting Features
MindMeister can be used for seamless presentations. Content and ideas can be shared collaboratively and then seemingly transitioned into a PowerPoint presentation.
Strategy 3 – Collaboration
MindMeister is a great way for groups to work together on ideas and concepts by brainstorming and exploring content.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Getting Started with MindMeister
This tutorial and instructional video offers an easy-to-follow overview of the main features of MindMeister, it offers editing tips and tricks and an overview of how to add media content into the mind map.
Resource 2 – How to Create a Presentation in Minutes with MindMeister
This blog resource offers hidden tricks of MindMeister, touching on how to make a great presentation using this tool and how you can communicate your message most effectively, it also walks you through how to export your mind map into PowerPoint which highlights all of the key discussion points for your easy reference.
Resource 3 – Advanced Features
This advanced feature list is an easy to navigate of advanced user features that MindMeister has, each embedded link offers additional information and “how to” guides for areas such as printing, formatting, chat options, zooming, exporting, sharing and presenting.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). Chapter 15: e-Learning to Build Thinking Skills. In *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 339–364). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Devitre, D. (2013, March 25). How to Create a Presentation in Minutes with MindMeister. [Web log post]. Doug Devitre. Retrieved from https://dougdevitre.com/2013/03/how-to-create-a-presentation-in-minutes-with-mindmeister/?_sm_au=_iDVq84W8b4SSL50DVRCQQK6vcF7Gc
Krist2366. (2017, February 4). Connectivism (Siemens,
Downes). [Web page]. *Learning Theories*. Retrieved from https://www.learning-theories.com/connectivism-siemens-downes.html
Siemens, G., & Conole, G. (2011). Special Issue – Connectivism: Design and Delivery of Social Networked Learning. *The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12*(3), 1. Available from https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v12i3.994
**Author**
Submitted by: Sarah Patience
Email: email@example.com
Web Page: www.s.patience.com/MINDMEISTER
Bio: Sarah Patience is a Master of Education Student at Ontario Tech University, where she plans to focus her research on Indigenous Communities of Practice. She graduated from the AEDT program at Ontario Tech U and lives in the Toronto area. She currently works in marketing at AB World Foods and has a passion for food and travel.
MURAL
Overview
Overview of Mural: A Virtual Collaborative Whiteboard (7:08)
Description
Mural is a collaborative, online, cloud-based, virtual whiteboard that excels at supporting problem solving and creative thinking. With Mural students can visually document their thinking using a variety of modalities like text, images, videos, and drawing. The built-in templates empower creative, visual thinking. With Mural a team
of students can plan, brainstorm, evaluate, design, learn, and empathize to solve challenging problems. Mural is an excellent virtual container, or canvas, for making thinking and thinking processes visual. Because Mural is cloud-based, students can collaborate synchronously and asynchronously. Mural is web-based, device agnostic and mobile friendly with apps available on major mobile platforms. It should be noted that Mural was not designed for Educational use; however, it is a great tool for collaboration, thinking and project management.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Mural’s strength is its ability to make thinking and thinking processes visual in a collaborative online environment. Other collaborative tools like Google Docs, or Google Slides, tend to be very linear in nature. The tools themselves do not offer flexibility in design so content can be arranged in a creative way that reveals one’s thinking. In Mural, users can make contributions in the form of pictures, drawings, videos, documents, and even sticky notes. These can be arranged on the canvas/whiteboard in a variety of ways. This open, non-linear organization makes it easier to show how ideas are connected to one another. Mural also comes with a variety of templates that can be used to introduce learners to what Clark and Mayer (2011) call expert thinking models. For example, when designing a new product, or a solution to a user problem, you can select an empathy map template that helps learners to build empathy with a user’s needs by examining what the user says, thinks, feels, and does. The template models the process of empathy mapping and design thinking for
creating solutions. Thinking skills and routines are explicitly modeled.
Learning content designers can also create their own canvases and templates within Mural to create engaging open-ended tasks. For example, a teacher might challenge a group of students to create a social media campaign to target a societal problem they see in their community. This type of task allows students to choose a problem of interest and apply their learning from the class to tackle that challenge. This type of learning is what Bransford (2000) calls anchored learning where students work collaboratively, for a sustained period of time, to solve a problem of interest, much like problem-based learning. Tracking the creative thinking involved in anchored learning can be challenging in a virtual environment; thus, Mural could be used to record the groups’ thought processes as they move through the challenge.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Empathy Mapping for Design Thinking
Empathy Mapping for Design Thinking (3:20)
Strategy 2 – Project Management
Project Management (2:25)
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Interview: Using Mural for Distance Education (Interview)
An interview with Michael Dain, an online instructor at Northwestern University that shows how he makes his lectures come alive using Mural. The transcript of the interview also includes screenshots of how he uses Mural to support his classes.
Resource 2 – Mural YouTube Channel (Link)
The Mural YouTube channel has over a hundred videos ranging from webinars, workshops and short tutorials. The webinars provide background information on the concepts behind the numerous built in templates for supporting creative and visual thinking.
References
Bransford, J.D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R.R. (Eds.). (2000) *How people learn*. National Academy Press.
Clark, Ruth Colvin., Mayer, Richard E. (2011). *E-Learning*
and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning (3rd ed.). Pfeiffer.
Author
Submitted by: Chad Mowbray
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web Page: https://elearning-essentials-2020.weebly.com
Bio: A graduate student exploring and learning about 21st Century teaching and learning.
Nearpod is a web-based tool used to promote active learning and student engagement in the classroom. It is a web-based, interactive version of Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides. PowerPoint presentations or Google Slides easily upload into Nearpod, and the presentations interjected with many interactive activities. Nearpod
presentations can be teacher-led in the classroom or assigned as student-led homework.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Active learning in the classroom is when students engage in the material through collaboration with one another and participation (Stanford University, n.d.). As compared to traditional learning, students are expected to retain information that is presented through teacher-led lectures; active learning allows the student to take on responsibility for their learning and their performance in the course (Stanford University, n.d.). Nearpod promotes active learning and student engagement in the classroom by creating interactive slide presentations. Features of Nearpod that increase interactivity among students include inserting content such as 3D Viewer, videos and live Twitter feeds or activities such as polls, quizzes and matching.
Nearpod also facilitates collaboration in the classroom among students. Collaboration among students develops critical thinking skills as it fosters discussion, sharing of ideas and evaluation of others’ ideas (Gokhale, 1995). Nearpod offers several activities that allow for student interaction with one another. The open-ended questions activity feature can foster in-class discussion while students share different viewpoints and answers. The collaborate feature is a digital billboard-style where students can pin their responses to the board while they brainstorm and work together to form ideas.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Adding Engaging Elements
How to Add Engaging Elements to Your Nearpod Presentation (3:40)
This video outlines how to add fun and engaging activities and content to your Nearpod presentations to promote active learning in the classroom.
Strategy 2 – Collaboration
How to Use Collaboration in Nearpod (2:39)
This video outlines how to create a collaboration activity within your Nearpod presentation.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Top 10 Reasons to use Nearpod in the Classroom
This is a helpful blogpost to get you started on ideas for using Nearpod in your classroom.
Resource 2 – Making Room for Interactivity
The authors of this paper introduce Nearpod into a second-year undergraduate program of bioscience students in order to gain feedback on the student engagement and interactivity.
References
Gokhale, A. A. (1995). Collaborative Learning Enhances Critical Thinking. *Virginia Tech University Libraries*, 7(1). doi.org/10.21061/jte.v7i1.a.2
McClean, S., Crowe, W. (2017). Making room for interactivity: using the cloud-based audience response system Nearpod to enhance engagement in lectures. *FEMS Microbiology Letters*, 364(6). Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnx052
Stanford University. (n.d.). Promoting active learning. [Web page]. Retrieved from: https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/resources/learning-resources/promoting-active-learning
Author
Submitted by: Andrea Dyack
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Faculty at Southern Ontario Dental College and current graduate student in the Master of Education program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
Open EdX is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. As a course provider, it allows multimedia content, learning exercises with potentially immediate grading, online discussion forums, and assessments.
forums, and other tools such as online laboratories to be integrated into the content.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
**Extremely flexible in scale, availability, and course design**
As a MOOC, Open EdX can be scaled to any number of participants, can provide open available content or be monetized, can be used in local networks or openly online, and the content and approach the course takes is up to the creators. Open EdX works across devices and platforms and can work with third-party programs.
**High levels of support and widely available documentation**
Open EdX is a platform widely used by university, corporations, NGOs, and entrepreneurs and has a corresponding amount of documentation and technical support. Documentation assists those who want to self-manage Open EdX or want more customization such as analytics or accessibility (Ruiperez-Valiente, J. A., Munoz-Merino, P. J., Gascon-Pinedo, J. A., & Kloos, C. D., 2016; Sánchez Gordón, S., & Luján-Mora, S., 2015). Full management by service partners is another option, allowing difficult high scale implementations to be available to people and organizations regardless of technical skill level (Aune N., 2015).
**The Open EdX Studio allows for many powerful learning features**
The Open EdX studio allows for a variety of components, including multimedia, interactive elements and tools. Users can be allowed to create their own units for
different approaches such as project-based learning. Collaboration can be done synchronously through chat components with video or asynchronously. Other learning tools can be integrated into Open EdX as components, such as Google Docs or internal wikis. I feel it is an incredibly powerful tool capable of making courses for the 25 learning principles presented by Halpern, Grasser, and Hakel (2007).
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Self-Managed Strategy with Tutor One-Click Implementation
Self-Managed Strategy with Tutor One-Click Implementation (6:26)
Strategy 2 – Full-Managed Strategy with Appsembler
Full-Managed Strategy with Appsembler (4:48)
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Open EdX website
The Open EdX website provides options for starting and content available through the platform in a user-friendly and easy to digest format.
Resource 2 – Open EdX Documentation
This documentation covers the usability of Open EdX across multiple roles, whether as a course learner, instructor, developer, or educational researcher.
References
Aune, N. (2015, August 16). Why Open edX hosting is so complicated. [Web log post]. Appsembler. Available from: https://www.appsembler.com/blog/why-open-edx-hosting-is-so-complicated/
Díaz, H. J. P., Ruiz, J. S., Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A., Muñoz-Merino, P. J., & Kloos, C. D. (2015). Using video visualizations in open edX to understand learning interactions of students. In Design for Teaching and Learning in a Networked World (pp. 522-525). Springer, Cham. Available from: http://eprints.networks.imdea.org/1241/1/using_video_visualizations_in_open_edX_to_understand_learning_interactions_of_students_2015.pdf
Ruiperez-Valiente, J. A., Munoz-Merino, P. J., Gascon-Pinedo, J.A., & Kloos, C. D. (2016). Scaling to massiveness with ANALYSE: A learning analytics tool for open edX. IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, 47(6),
Ruiz, J. S., Díaz, H. J. P., Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A., Muñoz-Merino, P. J., & Kloos, C. D. (2014, October). Towards the development of a learning analytics extension in open edX. In *Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality* (pp. 299–306). Available from: [http://eprints.networks.imdea.org/974/1/TEEM_2014_EDX_cameraReady.pdf](http://eprints.networks.imdea.org/974/1/TEEM_2014_EDX_cameraReady.pdf)
Sánchez Gordón, S., & Luján-Mora, S. (2015). Adaptive content presentation extension for open edX. *Enhancing MOOCs accessibility for users with disabilities*. [PDF file]. Available from: [http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/46252/1/achi_2015_9_40_20227.pdf](http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/46252/1/achi_2015_9_40_20227.pdf)
Stephen Downes (2011). *The MOOC Guide*. [Web page]. Available From: [https://sites.google.com/site/themoocguide/](https://sites.google.com/site/themoocguide/)
Halpern, D.F., Graesser, A., & Hakel, M. (2007). *25 learning principles to guide pedagogy and the design of learning environments*. [PDF file]. Washington, DC: Association of Psychological Science taskforce on Lifelong Learning at Work and at Home. Available From: [http://www.adesignfor.education/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/25-lifelong-learning-principles.pdf](http://www.adesignfor.education/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/25-lifelong-learning-principles.pdf)
Author
Submitted by: Stephen Lizak
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvIMZf8XxLQBRpEG569MUpw
Stephen has worked for over a decade educating students across a variety of ages in the math and sciences. He has worked at Conestoga College as a teaching assistant, as a tutor for the drop-in service in the math center, at CHELP Tutor School, and as an independent tutor. He is now a graduate student at Ontario Tech University.
Stephen’s projects include development of Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) manipulatives and AR/VR online course content.
Padlet is a free collaborative application that allows multiple users to create visual stories, bulletin boards or documents at the same time. You can add pictures, videos, links and more. It is available as a web-based tool as well as available for Android and iOS. It’s a tool that can be used by beginners as well allowing non-designers to produce professional quality content/graphics.
Justification for Using this Tool
Padlet is known for its online collaborative learning capabilities in real time allowing learners to engage in a shared task. Padlet is often used as a presentation tool as well as a mind-mapping tool assisting learners in brainstorming their ideas on a specific topic on an organized bulletin board.
Padlet exemplifies aspects of both the social and collaborative learning theories. Social and collaborative learning theories suggest that learners acquire more knowledge when they are learning from and with others thus allowing them to engage and capitalize from others’ skills, resources and knowledge. (Al-Rahmi, Othman, Yusof, & Musa 2015). Through Padlet, students can collaborate, brainstorm, and learn from each other through an interactive and engaging platform.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Consolidating in STEM
Padlet for Consolidating an STEM Activity (1:11)
This video demonstrates how Padlet can be used to show a consolidation of learning on a specific topic or unit. Using Padlet encourages and fosters creativity, collaboration and critical thinking skills in the classroom.
Students can work on the same Padlet, adding links, pictures or ask questions about how their peers achieved specific results relating to an activity, project or assignment.
Strategy 2 – Ways to Use Padlet
Padlet can be used as a way for students to collaboratively or individually organize their brainstorming ideas. This application is appropriate for a large range of learners, children as well as adults. This video is a compilation of just a few ways that Padlet can be used in and out of the classroom.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – (Video Tutorial) [Padlet YouTube Tutorial](#)
This YouTube page was created by Dear Dises. It is a detailed step-by-step video describing various uses for Padlet and how it can be used in the classroom.
Resource 2 – (Blog) [5 Ideas For Using Padlet](#)
This site is an informational page written by Dyan Branstetter discussing 5 ways to use Padlet in the classroom and how to integrate Padlet into your STEAM lessons.
Resource 3 – (Journal) Using Padlet for Whole-Class Engagement
This is a journal written by Beth Fuchs that speaks to how the use of Padlet supports differentiated instruction within the classroom and also includes some risks and benefits to using online collaborative real-time applications in the classroom.
Resource 4 – (Article) Padlet for Agriculture Teachers
This is an article written by Meghan Wood that describes ways that Padlet can be used in the classroom and speaks to how Padlet is used by agriculture teachers to creatively manage various aspects of their classroom and program.
References
Al-Rahmi, W. M., Othman, M. S., Yusof, L. M., & Musa, M. A. (2015). Using social media as a tool for improving academic performance through collaborative learning in Malaysian higher education. *Rev. Eur. Stud.*, 7, 265
Fuchs, B. (2014). The writing is on the wall: using Padlet for whole-class engagement. *LOEX Quarterly*, 40(4), 7
Stahl, G., Koschmann, T., & Suthers, D. (2014). *Computer-supported collaborative handbook of learning sciences, revised version*. (ch. 24, pp. 479–500). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wood, M. (2016). Padlet: A Graffiti Wall for Today’s Agriculture Teacher. *Agriculture Education Magazine*, 88(6), 20
Author
Submitted By: Alana Craigg
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Primary/Junior Educator with a focus in Music, Physical Education STEAM and Global Competencies
PEAR DECK
Overview
Pear Deck Overview (2:10)
Description
Pear Deck is an educational web-based tool that can be used from kindergarten to grade 12. This interactive tool brings life to a presentation through Google Slides and engages students through active, social and individual learning. This tool can be used by the educator to ask questions, spark inquiry, and quiz knowledge on just about anything.
Justification for Using this Tool
Pear Deck is an important tool as it falls under the constructivist learning theory. Through this theory, it plays on two significant umbrellas which are active learning and social constructivism. Constructivism’s main idea is that students construct new knowledge from prior knowledge and experience (Mc Leod, 2019). While constructing new knowledge educators prompt discussion to engage students in their learning (active learning) (Mc Leod, 2019). Through discussion, students will engage with one another on the lesson provided by the educator building on collaborative skills, problem-solving skills and student motivation increases (social constructivism) (Mc Leod, 2019).
Pear Deck is used through google slides which are a fun and easy platform to use. Using Pear Deck as an add-on in slides makes this tool even easier to use as there are many different templates that can be used to engage learners. Each slide can be tailored to what the lesson is on and explains what the student expectations would be for that particular slide. Since the slides in Pear Deck are well designed with pictures it is difficult to add a lot of text to the slides limiting the educator to segmenting and chunking information on more slides than just one (Clark & Mayer, 2011). This is also a great multimedia tool where educators can use their own graphics and wording to help students grasp the concepts presented in the lesson (Clark & Mayer, 2011). With these design principles, it allows classroom engagement and reduces cognitive load.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – For Educators
Pear Deck for Educator Use (3:04)
This is a quick overview of how educators can get the Pear Deck add-on and some of its many features.
Strategy 2 – Student Session in Pear Deck
Student Session in Pear Deck (2:15)
This is a quick video of a student session. This displays an example of what they would see if they were in a session set up by the educator.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Pear Deck in Google Slides
- This video shows users how to use Pear Deck in Google Slides as an add-on.
Resource 2 – Review Student Answers in Pear Deck
- This video shows educators how to retrieve student answers from a lesson that is no longer live.
Resource 3 – Help in Pear Deck
- This website can help answer questions that one may have when it comes to using Pear Deck.
References
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning*. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. Doi: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118255971](http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118255971)
McLeod, S. A. (2019, July 17). Constructivism as a theory for teaching and learning. *Simply psychology*. Available from [https://www.simplypsychology.org/constructivism.html](https://www.simplypsychology.org/constructivism.html)
Author
Submitted by: Jamila Bentham
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Bio: Jamila is an Early Childhood Educator in the full-day kindergarten program, and also a Master of Education student at Ontariotechu.net.
PIKTOCHART
Overview
Overview – Piktochart (3:40)
Description
Piktochart is a cloud-based infographic application that allows users to use various templates to create infographics, presentations, reports for many purposes. Piktochart is unique from other applications because it creates content that is web-publisher ready and can stand alone as a part of multimedia content. It is intuitive, produces fast templates, and can personalize content and
designs as needed. All projects are stored in an online library which also affords real-time collaboration to streamline the workflow and reach desired objectives.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
One of the most crucial aspects of Piktochart is its ability to embed the multimedia principle. It allows users to showcase their learning by using pictures to support the text which is in accordance with the multimedia principle. People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone and benefit all types of learners (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005). The foundation of Piktochart is to use images, graphics, and designs to communicate meaningful information with intended audiences. Moreover, most of the templates provided by Piktochart contain the option to include both words and graphics and helps viewers engage in active learning (Clark & Mayer, 2011).
Piktochart supports the collaborative learning approach as it encourages learners to share information and collaborate with others to share resources and information. It is a learning environment that provides information and allows opinion sharing between team members to make rich connections when co-creating content (Kearney, Schuck, Burden, & Aubusson, 2012).
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Creating Infographics
Creating Infographics (2:04)
Piktochart can be used to create infographics for elementary, middle, and high school students to showcase their understanding of activity or learning material.
Strategy 2 – Team Template
Team Template: Staying Connected (3:32)
Piktochart is a way for individuals to collaborate with each other to share ideas and perspectives. It also contains a blog and video tutorials for different templates.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – How to use Piktochart to Make Effective Infographic Content
This blog post provides a detailed breakdown of how to create an infographic with Piktochart using the various functions that are offered.
Resource 2 – Piktochart Tutorials
This web page contains video tutorials that are easy to follow when creating infographics, publishing infographics, designing templates, presentations depending on user preference.
Resource 3 – Piktochart Applications and Learning Activities
This blog post includes a brief overview of how the SAMR model of learning can be adapted by Piktochart in the classroom.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). Applying the Multimedia Principle. In *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 67–88). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Fletcher, J. D., & Tobias, S. (2005). The Multimedia Principle. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), *The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning* (p. 117–133). Cambridge University Press. [https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816819.008](https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816819.008)
Kearney, M., Schuck, S., Burden, K., & Aubusson, P. (2012). *Viewing mobile learning from a pedagogical perspective*. *Research in Learning Technology*, 20(1), 14406. doi: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.14406
**Author**
Submitted by: Riya Patel
Email: email@example.com
Twitter @riya_08
Riya Patel has been teaching in an elementary school setting for over three years and is passionate about bringing to light many of the digital tools present today to increase student engagement and achievement.
PIXTON
Overview
Introduction to Pixton (3:14)
Description
Pixton is a web-based learning tool (WBLT) that allows students and educators to create comics. There are various templates/themes (content packs) that educators can choose from to help their students get a better understanding of the topic they are learning and to help them develop their writing skills. Pixton is student-friendly as it allows them to take charge of their learning.
as they process and create their knowledge in ways that makes sense to them.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Since the basic concept of a comic strip is to place events in sequential order, it must follow some of the guidelines outlined by the elaboration theory. Elaboration theory emphasizes the fact that steps must be placed in a sequential order that makes sense and that must be accomplished by strategically organizing them (Reigeluth, 1999). It also emphasizes that learners can make sense of their understanding of the content that students would be able to do as they are creating their comic strips (David, 2014).
When creating the individual panels of a comic strip, there is not a lot of information the creator can place in each panel. Therefore, it is imperative that the comic strip creator carefully divide the information they want to display in small sections that make sense as a whole. This is in-line with the segmenting principle which states that providing too much information to students at once may lead to cognitive overload and it is recommended to break down the information into smaller, easier to manage chunks or segments (Clark & Mayer, 2011).
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Self-Portrait
Creating a Self-Portrait (0:57)
As an introduction to using Pixton, teachers can ask the students to create a comic-strip about themselves.
Strategy 2 – Real World Math
Real World Math Examples (0:44)
Pixton can be used for subjects such as math to help students understand concepts better by asking them to create a comic strip incorporating math in a real-life scenario.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Pixton EDU: Intro for Educators
This YouTube video showcases briefly how educators and students can benefit from using Pixton in their classrooms by giving examples of the different components of the tool.
Resource 2 – How to Effortlessly Use Pixton for Tomorrow’s No-Prep Lesson Plan
This blog post gives a step-by-step guideline on how a new Pixton user can introduce the tool in their classroom.
References
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011). Applying the segmenting and pretraining principles. *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning* (pp. 205-220). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
David, L. (2014, July 25) Elaboration Theory (Reigeluth). [Web page]. *Learning Theories*. Retrieved from https://www.learning-theories.com/elaboration-theory-reigeluth.html
Reigeluth, C.M. (1999). The elaboration theory: Guidance for scope and sequence decisions. *Instructional design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory*, 2, 425-453.
Author
Submitted by: Roohi Jawad
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Twitter: @RooJ33
Bio: I am a grade 5 homeroom teacher and I have been an Ontario certified teacher (OCT) since 2009. I am currently pursuing a Master’s of Education degree at Ontario Tech University. I am always looking for new ways to engage and educate my students, and often it is through some form of technology.
Powtoon allows users to access a vast array of templates and publish their creations directly to a wide range of platforms, including social media plugins like Facebook and YouTube. Powtoon users also have the option to convert presentations from PowerPoint into a video by uploading it into the Powtoon ecosystem.
Justification for Using this Tool
A great feature of Powtoon is the ability to collaborate with peers or colleges. Learning by modelling, feedback and reinforcement is a crucial feature in Bandura’s Social Learning theory. By allowing people to collaborate in the creation of the videos and presentations, they have the opportunity to work through ideas, and share how they would execute their own vision. Also, collaboration allows for team members to provide constructive criticism, and offer additional input and solutions (Bandura, 1988).
The nature of Powtoon is to create and present engagingly. Having templates provided ensures that users are not overloading the audience with too much information. Powtoon is also very accessible with features such as audio and closed caption. Powtoon is more beneficial than a tool that lacks multimedia sources, or on that allows for an abundance of information on each slide. The templates allow users to focus on the content of the presentation rather than the esthetic of it. If the user is a beginner, templates decrease the mental load of the user by allowing them to only focus on the sequence of information as opposed to figuring out how the presentation should look. Cognitive overload, therefore, maybe decreased (De Jong, 2010).
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Powtoon Strategies for Teachers
Powtoon allows teachers to create organized and engaging presentations at a controlled pace.
Strategy 2 – Powtoon Strategies for Students
Powtoon allows students to create content-focused presentations, to collaborate and to share ideas.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – How to Create a Powtoon for Free
- This video walks you through how to create a free Powtoon. It reviews the templates and shows you different options on how to create your own template.
Resource 2 – How to Create a Cool Animated Presentation in Five
Easy Steps
- Learn how to create an animated and engaging presentation in five steps. Instructions are broken down and easy to read.
Resource 3 – Tutorials, Tutorials, Tutorials
- This link will connect you to a multitude of video tutorials addressing the “how-to” in becoming a master Powtoonist. You will find tutorials such as “How to create a script” and “before you start making your Powtoon”. Think of this link as the “outline” of your presentation.
References
Bandura, A., & Walters, R. H. (1977). *Social learning theory* (Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall.
De Jong, T. (2010). Cognitive load theory, educational research, and instructional design: some food for thought. *Instructional science, 38*(2), 105-134.
Author
Submitted by: Jessica Hunter
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Creating presentations since 2010. Actively pursuing my Master of Education, and passionate about creating a positive and intuitive space for learners.
Quizlet is an interactive game-based learning tool used to study information. This tool uses a variety of engaging studying techniques including interactive digital flashcards, matching, and multiple-choice activities. Quizlet is compatible and accessible using most devices and can be accessed on the website or using the apps. Teachers and Students can easily upload information to
create study sets by adding terms and definitions using a combination of words and pictures. Quizlet would then create a study section and play section for the set. This tool is easy to navigate and provides feedback to the learners as they engage in the different modes of learning.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Quizlet employs gamification techniques. Students and teachers can use Quizlet to gamify content that would be otherwise boring or difficult to learn. According to Huang, & Soman, (2013) gamification is the addition of game elements to nongame settings. Many game-like-elements or game mechanics are used to make this tool appealing and interactive. For example, students are timed while playing the gravity and matching games, and while completing the write, spell, test or learn sections learners can see their progress including the number of correct and incorrect answers given. These game elements according to Huang & Soman (2013) help to motivate students to continue learning as well as social aspects such as the Quizlet live features where students work in randomly selected teams motivate students in a community setting and improves the social-elements.
Quizlet is in line with many of the principles of design for e-learning. The practice principle (Clark & Mayer, 2011a) forms the foundation on which Quizlet operates. This principle involves incorporating sufficient questions in the learning process that fosters interactions and improves student learning.
Quizlet also uses a good balance between words, audio,
and graphics that are also aligned with the coherence principle of design. Extraneous materials can be avoided such as advertisements when teachers upgrade their accounts. Students also have the option of reading the questions as well as using audio. Graphics such as pictures and graphs are presented where needed making this tool also in accordance with the Modality Principle (Clark and Mayer, 2011 and Oberfoell & Correia, 2016) as multiple cognitive pathways are used.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Using Quizlet Live in the Classroom
Using Quizlet Live in the Classroom (1:44)
This is an interactive feature in Quizlet where students can collaborate to find the correct answers to questions and teachers can get feedback on students’ knowledge.
Strategy 2 – Quizlet for Assessment
Quizlet as an assessment Strategy (2:09)
In Quizlet teachers can select a set and Quizlet would
generate random customized tests which would include (written, multiple-choice, matching or true or false questions that can be used as formative assessment or self-assessment for students.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Pros & Cons of Using Quizlet in Your Classroom
This blog outlines the pros and cons of using Quizlet for both students and teachers.
Resource 2 – Learn about Quizlet using Quizlet
This resource is a Quizlet study set created by one of its members that is publicly available and gives a quick review of the various features of Quizlet.
Resource 3 – Webinar: Organizing content and tracking progress with Quizlet
This Webinar gives step-by-step instructions on how to organize content and track students’ progress on Quizlet.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011a) Applying the Modality Principle. In R. Taff (Ed.), *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning.* (pp. 115-130). San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E., (2011b). Does practice make perfect? In R. Taff (Ed.), *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of*
multimedia learning (pp. 251-276). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2016). *E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning*. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Oberfoell, A., & Correia, A. (2016). Understanding the role of the modality principle in multimedia learning environments. *Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 32*(6), 607–617. [https://doi-org.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/10.1111/jcal.12157](https://doi-org.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/10.1111/jcal.12157)
Huang, W. H-Y., & Soman, D. (2013). *A Practitioner’s Guide to Gamification Of Education*. Research Report Series: Behavioural Economics in Action. Rotman School
**Author**
Submitted by: Melissa Hippolyte
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web Page: [www.younglearnersedutech.weebly.com](http://www.younglearnersedutech.weebly.com)
Bio: I am currently a Master of Education student at Ontario tech University. I am also an Ontario Certified Teachers and Registered Early Childhood Educator
SEESAW
Overview
Seesaw Overview (2:34)
Description
Seesaw is a free web-based application that can be accessed using any mobile device or laptop. It has been used to engage students and provide accountability to parents as a digital learning portfolio. Seesaw empowers students to create, reflect, collaborate and share their learning with others, including peers, teachers, and parents. Using this app, students can use creative tools to
take photos, draw, record videos, or any other form of media to document their learning in a digital portfolio to share with others, as well as receive feedback.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
One of the most important features of the Seesaw application is its ability to engage student learning by leveraging their digital technology skills. Seesaw aligns well with the Engagement Theory, which is a framework for technology-based teaching and learning. This theory is based on the underlying premise that when students are motivated and meaningfully engaged in the lesson task(s), they learn more effectively, tend to retain the information, and can transfer their learning to other contexts (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998).
Another justification for using the Seesaw app as a communication and collaboration tool, especially at the elementary school level, is its ease of use. Seesaw is very easy to learn for young students and without a strong technological background. It does not require students to have an established e-mail or Google account. Seesaw has been used as a simple way for teachers to teach their students to develop their own digital learning portfolios, and then share with others, such as their parents, (Toner, 2017).
Using Seesaw, students can create artifacts such as drawings, photos, videos, notes, etc. or they can add files from their devices. With the built-in audio and video recording features, they can easily provide reflections of their work to communicate and collaborate with others. Likewise, they can easily share their thoughts regarding
their learning as they post their artifact(s) to their Seesaw digital learning portfolio, (MacLean, 2016).
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – Strategies for Using Seesaw**
*Strategies for Using Seesaw* (1:44)
This video provides strategies for students, teachers and parents to use Seesaw as a digital learning tool to provide classroom and home connections.
**Strategy 2 – Additional Tips for Teachers**
*Additional Tips for Teachers When Using Seesaw* (2:12)
This video provides additional tips for teachers when using Seesaw as a digital tool for student engagement and learning. The information has been summarized from the *Seesaw* website.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Creating Digital Learning Portfolios with Seesaw
This blog provides a rationale for the benefits of using the Seesaw application to enable teachers to collaborate with students in creating digital learning portfolios using mobile devices or laptops. Students can add artifacts to the digital portfolio through Seesaw, and then, teachers can review student assignments and provide feedback. Likewise, students can provide their reflections on their work or the lesson to the teacher.
Resource 2 – How to Use the Seesaw App in the Classroom
While Seesaw has been used mainly as a student-driven digital portfolio to engage learners to create, reflect, collaborate and share information with others, it also facilitates effective home-school communication between teachers and parents. Other suggested uses for Seesaw in the classroom include, using the drawing tool to lessen the need for printing off worksheets; providing teaching and learning through the flipped classroom approach; applying the app as a reading and fluency tool; or providing opportunities for peer collaboration and feedback of student work.
Resource 3 – Tips for Using Seesaw
This website blog provides additional tips and strategies for using Seesaw as a digital tool for student engagement and learning. The information has been gathered from the Seesaw website and placed into one conveniently
accessible location for teachers to easily find the basic information for this web-based learning tool.
References
Kearsley, G. and Shneiderman, B. (1998). Engagement Theory: A Framework for Technology-Based Teaching and Learning. *Educational Technology*, 38(5), 20-23.
MacLean, E. (2016). Document the learning through digital portfolios. *Education Technology Solutions*, 74 (Oct/Nov), 32-34.
Toner, R. (2017). The Relationship Between Digital Portfolio Use, Parent-Teacher Communication, and its Effect on Home-Based Parental Involvement in Middle School. *M.S.Ed. in Educational Leadership Research Projects*, 29.
Author
Submitted by: Gary Lew
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Gary Lew has been in the educational field for the past 25 years and is currently an elementary school principal within the Durham District School Board. He is completing the Master of Education program, with an interest in instructional design and leadership in educational technology.
Socrative
Overview
Socrative – quick review for teachers (4:04)
Description
Socrative is a simple web-based, mobile friendly, assessment tool that allows teachers to create quiz-type content and engage students through quick formative assessment questions or team competitions. Students who may be unlikely to raise their hands in class have an opportunity to respond digitally and anonymously.
Teachers have options in what students can see such as percentages on the screen instead of individual responses.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Socrative can provide a teacher instant feedback and engagement from students. From the constructivist theory of learning, students engage actively in the learning process and build understanding based on their prior knowledge. Reliable just-in-time assessments are the foundation of informed teaching and learning (Irving 2020). The multimedia principle is used well in the design of this platform. On-the-fly online assessments can provide the teacher with important info such as what percentage of students understood the previous lesson outcome. In a recent study, (Lim 2017), the majority of students using Socrative were in agreement that their focus in the class improved which greatly enhanced the learning experience.
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – Teacher Use Case #1**
*Have you ever had students that don’t want to put their hand up in class? Here is a fun and engaging way of getting them active through team based competition.*
Strategy 2 – Teacher User Case #2
Socrative – Teacher Use Case #2 (1:29)
Have you ever finished teaching a topic and your students look like they are lost? Try doing a socrative exit ticket (survey) and find out in real time what percentage of students understood the lesson.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – How to Get Started With Socrative
From the Socrative website a collection of 25 help articles to learn how to get started with your account and help students login.
Resource 2 – What Activities Can You Launch
From the Socrative website a collection of 11 help articles about the types of activities you can launch in Socrative.
Resource 3 – Socrative for Teachers: A Brief Introduction
From YouTube, Aimee Shattock takes you through a basic overview of Socrative and how to use it for formative assessment with students.
References
Irving, K. E. (2020). Technology-assisted formative assessment. In *Learning and Performance Assessment: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications* (pp. 435-453). IGI Global.
Lim, W. N. (2017, April). Improving student engagement in higher education through mobile-based interactive teaching model using socrative. In *2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)* (pp. 404-412). IEEE.
Author
Submitted by: Jory Basso
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web Page: www.hybriddrj.com
Bio: Dr. Jory Basso is an Associate Professor of Biology and has been educating students in health sciences since 2013.
THINGLINK
Overview
ThingLink – An Overview (3:11)
Description
ThingLink is a Finnish-American developer and pioneer of interactive image and video technology that lets users create and share dynamic rich media images, videos, and virtual tours containing various media or 3rd party web content. The purpose of ThingLink is to allow photos and videos to be made into interactive navigation spaces,
mainly for the purpose of education and online publishing.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
There are at least 3 good reasons why ThingLink should be used in educational contexts. Firstly, from an Elaboration Theory perspective (introduced by Charles Reigeluth), instruction should be delivered by starting with simple foundational concepts and then followed by more specific and complex ideas. Information should also be chunked and sequenced to allow learners to connect the content. ThingLink creates conditions for this to happen by presenting an overall view of the information and providing learners with the choice to zoom in on more specific information related to the topic, image, etc. to acquire a deeper understanding of the subject.
Secondly, ThingLink is a good example of the multimedia principle in action. The multimedia principle states that text and images are superior to just text or graphics in isolation. Research consistently demonstrates that courses with words and graphics are better received and people learn more deeply than just words alone. By tagging images with links to further resources (webpages, pop-up boxes, and maps for e.g.) learners are able to tap into a rich variety of information.
Finally, ThingLink provides learners with Learner Control. As mentioned by Clark & Mayer (2008) “Given the high levels of control inherent on the Internet, it is likely that learners will expect the same kind of freedom in e-learning courses.” In the process of linking images
to other resources, students are making decisions and exercising judgment. This provides them with a sense of authorship and they will subsequently be more engaged in the learning process.
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – Projects**
*ThingLink for Projects* (2:15)
ThingLink can be used by middle and high school students collaboratively when working on projects.
**Strategy 2 – Adult Education**
*ThingLink for Adult Education* (2:59)
ThingLink can be used in online adult training modules to explore work spaces.
**Helpful Resources**
**Resource 1 – ThingLink Education Blog**
This blog encourages both educators and students to sign
up and take advantage of the different insights from contributors as well as to share information and participate in webinars etc.
Resource 2 – 5+ Ways to Use ThingLink for Teaching and Learning
An online article providing readers with a list of useful ways to integrate ThingLink into your teaching practice.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (20). *E-Learning and the science of instruction* (3rd ed.). USA: Phieffer.
Author
Submitted by: Tobie Pilloy
Email: email@example.com
Twitter: @PilloyTobie
Bio: Professional working in the adult educational industry for over a decade. Specialising in online education and professional development.
Trello
Overview
An Overview of Trello (1:49)
Description
Trello is a simple-to-use web and mobile task tracking application that allows users to easily collaborate on projects. The free version provides robust functionality, with additional features available to paying users. Trello also offers educational institutions a 30% pricing discount on paid subscriptions.
Leveraging the Kanban board concept of the Agile Project Management methodology, Trello allows users to create separate task lists or “boards”, which include three default lists inside – To Do, Doing, and Done. Users can add tasks within these default lists; add custom lists; assign task due dates, categories, and responsibilities; and track task progress.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Trello provides an elegant online collaboration interface for project-based learning. Users can break a large assignment into individual tasks, assign responsibilities and due dates, and manage progress in real-time. Trello’s visual Kanban boards allow users to view the overall project status at glance and also attach files or have discussions concerning individual tasks. This visual overview also promotes accountability within group projects.
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – Trello for Group Projects**
*Trello for Group Projects* (1:12)
Trello provides an excellent framework for managing project-based learning initiatives, especially for group projects. Students can create boards and customize task
lists to suit their own needs or use one of Trello’s board templates to get them started.
Strategy 2 – Time and Task Management for Students with Trello
Time and Task Management for Students with Trello (0:48)
Trello is a fantastic time management tool for anyone, including students. Unlike calendar applications, which don’t monitor progress and typically can only display 1 month of data at a time, a Trello board works beautifully as a semester planning for any student.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – What is Kanban?
This article explains the origins of Kanban boards and users can implement them for effective project management. While the article situates Kanban in a software development context, other types of projects can also effectively use these boards.
Resource 2 – Trello Essential Training
This tutorial from LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) outlines the basic use of Trello boards including setup, task management, user administration,
progress tracking, and integration with third-party applications such as cloud storage services and calendars.
Resource 3 – Trello For Students
This blog post explains a student perspective on how one could use Trello both for specific projects as well as general task management at school.
Resource 4 – Trello – Online Tools for Teaching & Learning
This article outlines several ways teachers can integrate Trello into their learning environments. It suggests usages at each level from elementary school through higher education.
References
Chen, L., & Chen, X. (2017). How to manage library projects with trello. *Computers in Libraries*, 37(4), 19-23. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/docview/1906364770?accountid=14694
Ray, N. (2016). Prioritize, plan, and maintain motivation with trello. *The Agricultural Education Magazine*, 88(6), 16-17. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/docview/1813882728?accountid=14694
Ruiz-Gallardo, J., González-Geraldo, J. L., & Castaño, S. (2016). What are our students doing? Workload, time allocation and time management in PBL instruction. A case study in science education. *Teaching and Teacher Education*, 53, 51-62.
Wijnen, M., Loyens, S. M. M., Smeets, G., Kroeze, M., & van der Molen, H. (2017). Comparing problem-based learning students to students in a lecture-based curriculum: Learning strategies and the relation with self-study time. *European Journal of Psychology of Education*, 32(3), 431-447. doi:http://dx.doi.org.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/10.1007/s10212-016-0296-7
Author
Submitted by: Richard Freeman
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Web Page: https://twitter.com/sofun22843747
Bio: Rich Freeman is a Professor of Computer Studies at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario and a Master of Education candidate at Ontario Tech University.
WEB KNOWLEDGE FORUM (WEB KF)
Overview
Knowledge Forum (2:35)
Description
Web KF is an educational software that had its nascent
stages at York University in Toronto. It was later adopted by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto, (OISE) and developed to support knowledge building pedagogies. This software encourages users to work jointly, or on their own to contribute information to a communal database, creating a resource for an entire community. Ideas can be revisited, critiqued, and reworked in a variety of ways. As students build on each other’s work, their efforts result in an increasingly elaborated network of ideas.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Web KF is ideal for designing a WBLT in that it facilitates group work, knowledge sharing, problem-solving, online collaboration and distance education. Some learning theories and design principles that are supported by Web KF are outlined below.
In terms of design principles, Web KF reduces cognitive load through the segmenting principle (Halpern et al. 2007). Complex information is broken down into smaller chunks that the learner can navigate at their own pace. In addition, the informal nature of Web KF aligns with the personalization principle (Clark et. al, 2011). An atmosphere of trust is created as participants build knowledge that is based on mutual interests and experience. There is a teacher presence, however the teacher acts as more of a participant.
Web KF is aligned with the following learning theories: Problem-based Learning (PBL) (Barrows, 1983), Collaborative Learning Theory, and Social Development Theory (Vygotsky, 1978). It is aligned with PBL in the
sense that the instructor is able to post an ambiguous trigger, and the rest of the community is invited to opine and share their thoughts and experience with respect to the trigger. In terms of Collaborative Learning, all of the work in Web KF is based on sharing. Students participate in on-line collaboration, ask questions, solve problems, and provide feedback. Social Development theory plays a role in learning in that more knowledgeable participants provide scaffolding to other learners, which helps them reach their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – Engagement and Participation**
*Engagement and Participation* (2:17)
Analytics such as graphs and matrices are embedded in Web KF which allow the user and the instructor to get a clear visual snapshot of the level of participation in the group over time.
Strategy 2 – Thought Development and Leadership
Thought Development and Leadership (2:16)
The ability to analyze and reflect on the communication dynamics of the group has the potential to shape both leaders and influencers within the network.
Useful Resources
Resource 1 - How to Use Web KF
This is a short and easy to understand video on how to use Web KF.
Resource 2 - Using Scaffolds in Web KF
Here is a useful link on ideas of how to use Knowledge Forum scaffolds.
Resource 3 - Student Views of Web KF
This link discusses student views of collaboration and on-line participation in Knowledge Forum.
Research
Barrows, H. (1983). Problem-Based, Self-directedlearning. *Journal of the American Medical Association, 250*(22), 61-79.
Broni, S. (2018, February 15). Why ‘knowledge forum’ & and some tips on the use of the ‘scaffolds’ [Web log post]. *Science Academy (OUASSA) Blog*. Retrieved from https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/ouassa/2018/02/15/why-knowledge-forum-some-tips-on-use-of-the-scaffolds/
Chan, C.K.K., & Chan, Y-Y. (2011). Students’ views of collaboration and online participation in Knowledge Forum. *Computers & Education, 57*, 1445-1457.
Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). *E-learning and the science of instruction*. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
Halpern, D.F., Graesser, A.& Hakel, M (2007). 25 Learning principles to guide pedagogy & the design of learning environments. {PDF file}. Available from http://www.adesignfor.education/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/25-lifelong-learning-principles.pdf
The Learning Exchange. (2018). *How do we use Knowledge Forum*. [Video recording]. Retrieved from https://thelearningexchange.ca/videos/how-do-we-use-knowledge-forum/
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). *Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes*. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press.
Author
Submitted by: Deborah McDavid-Pesikan
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Deborah is an English as a Second Language instructor and M.Ed. candidate with an interest in technology to enhance the teaching and learning experience.
54
WEEBLY
Overview
Weebly Overview (3:37)
Description
Weebly is a free web hosting service. It is recognized for its easy-to-use “drag and drop” website design. Although Weebly offers advanced tools through its paid plans, users are able to create functional and interactive websites with the free version without technical expertise. Weebly offers hundreds of professional-looking website templates that can be easily customized.
by adding, editing, and arranging various multimedia. Teachers have the option of registering for Weebly for Education, an extension of Weebly, that is tailored specifically for classroom use. However, teachers may prefer to use Weebly, as Weebly for Education does not yet offer the same range of tools, such as third-party application integration.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
Weebly as a web-based learning tool has various opportunities to maximize student learning. First, Weebly presents opportunities to integrate multimedia on webpages. Multimedia presentation is important for e-learning as it engages students in active and meaningful learning (Clark and Mayer, 2011). Weebly users can present a diverse array of multimedia on their websites, including text and graphics, including video, photo, and illustration.
Weebly also possesses the ability to achieve the coherence principle, which Mayer and Fiorella (2014) define as removing extraneous content from multimedia to reduce cognitive overload and improve student learning. Weebly accomplishes this by eliminating webpage advertisements and limiting the use of distracting embellishments – such as unnecessary transitions and animations – by offering fixed editing functions that promote webpage minimalism.
Further, Weebly’s App Centre offers various third-party applications that creators can integrate into their website to promote student interactivity that also facilitates meaningful learning. For example, creators can
incorporate quizzes, surveys, social media links, and collaborative discussion boards to engage students with the website.
Weebly also offers collaboration opportunities, which Clark and Mayer (2011) propose have great potential to improve individual learning. For instance, students may work together on a Weebly domain to engage in website development using various design principles. Weebly for Education also promotes student collaboration by allowing students to insert comments and feedback to other users’ webpages.
Although Weebly promotes student learning through different design features, a criticism of this web-based learning tool is that it does not readily respect the modality principle, which states that learning is improved through the verbal narration of content (Moreno & Mayer, 1999). Weebly offers audio integration options, however; this is only available through the paid plans.
**Strategies for Use**
**Strategy 1 – For Teachers**
[Weebly For Teachers](#) (3:08)
This video provides strategies to help teachers integrate Weebly into their classrooms, such as through web-based
lessons, classroom blogs, and collaborative student projects.
Strategy 2 – For Students
Weebly For Students (1:32)
This video provides strategies for students to use Weebly as an educational resource, such as for projects or e-portfolios.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Weebly Review
This article presents an informative review of integrating Weebly into the classroom. It explains what Weebly offers, its pros and cons, multimedia tutorials, and suggestions on how teachers can use it in the classroom.
Resource 2 – How to use Weebly (for teachers)
This is a video tutorial for teachers on how to use Weebly. It explains how teachers can use this design tool to create a classroom blog, however; the same steps and principles can be applied to create a class website or lesson.
Resource 3 – How to use Weebly (for students)
This is a video tutorial for students on how to use
Weebly. It explains how to access your account, add pages, text, and images.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). *E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning*. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Mayer, R., & Fiorella, L. (2014). Principles for Reducing Extraneous Processing in Multimedia Learning: Coherence, Signaling, Redundancy, Spatial Contiguity, and Temporal Contiguity Principles. In R. Mayer (Ed.), *The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning* (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 279-315). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139547369.015
Moreno, R., & Mayer, R. E. (1999). Cognitive principles of multimedia learning: The role of modality and contiguity. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 91*, 358–368.
Author
Submitted by: Amareen Brar
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Twitter: @AmareenBrar
Bio: I have a background in Education administration and Marketing. I am a Master of Arts (Education) student pursuing my thesis and assisting with research regarding multiliteracy and curriculum development.
55
YOUTUBE
Overview
YouTube in the Classroom (1:42)
Description
YouTube is a WBLT that allows educators and students to create educational videos. There are various uses of these videos, it can either be used to upload and share your own content or you can also access videos from others who are experts in the topic.
Justification for Using this Tool
This tool allows students to have learner control. Learner control means that students can control the rate in which they work through the video and information being presented. With YouTube videos, you can pause and rewind at any point during viewing. The multimedia principle states that students understand the content presented in video or images more than content only in text.
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – For Teachers
How to use YouTube in the Classroom 1 (2:00)
Why teachers should use YouTube in the classroom. Teachers can use youtube to create and share content with their students. If they use youtube it allows students to pause and rewatch lectures at any time.
Strategy 2 – For Students
How to use Youtube in the Classroom 2 (1:10)
Students can turn to YouTube to help grasp a concept because videos are a great method to learn concepts. It can help students build on prior knowledge from their lectures. As well YouTube can be used when students are creating assignments to creatively organize their work to present to their classmates and teacher.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – 21st Century Classroom: YouTube
- How YouTube in a classroom transforms the classroom into a 21st-century learning environment.
Resource 2 – How to upload a video to YouTube
- How to upload your video to YouTube and share it with your students.
References
Fletcher, J.D., & Tobias, S. (2005). The multimedia principle. In R.E. Mayer (Ed.), *The Cambridge handbook of*
multimedia learning (pp. 117–134). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Westlin, J., Day, E.A., & Hughes, M.G. (2019). Learner-Controlled Practice Difficulty and Task Exploration in an Active-Learning Gaming Environment. *Simulation & Gaming, 50*(6), 812-831. DOI: 10.1177/1046878119877672 Available from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1046878119877672
Author
Submitted by: Delaney Jones
Email: email@example.com
Bio: Delaney Jones works with children who have been diagnosed with learning disabilities or ADHD.
56
ZOOM
Overview
Zoom Overview (2:04)
Description
Despite the availability of enterprise-level “telepresence” systems for decades now, they were initially both cost-inefficient and exceedingly inconvenient from a user perspective (LaFollette, 2018, p. 76). Zoom was designed “from the ground up” in response to increasing demands for platforms that are capable with respect to performance, stability, and features (LaFollette, 2018,
Zoom is an enterprise video conferencing tool with several real-time messaging and content sharing capabilities. Zoom facilitates the processes of starting, joining, and collaborating with others across various devices through its comprehensive communications platform. Zoom’s integrated messaging features effectively streamline workspace collaboration, leading to perceptible increases in performance, trust, and engagement.
**Justification for Using this Tool**
A well-designed web-based learning tool (WBLT) often incorporates elements from one or more web-based technological tools as part of the effort to support learning in an environment focused on interaction and knowledge acquisition. The process of knowledge retention and eventual transference is both expedited and reinforced through the development of a social community of learners, a notion that is supported by the theoretical framework of constructivism. This model describes the learning process as “an active development of personal meaning through the interaction of current conceptions and ongoing experiences,” in which learners are active participants collaborating in the construction of knowledge (Yakimovicz & Murphy, 1995, p. 203). When learning takes place within a community, even the continual introduction of newcomers enhances the learning process (Lim, 2010). The newcomers not only have access to the knowledge that veterans possess, but their inexperience also encourages reflection (Lim, 2010), which is particularly valuable in virtual learning communities (Clark & Mayer, 2011).
Furthermore, introducing elements characteristic of problem solving can promote further collaboration among learners in such communities (Jahng, 2012). Problem-based learning (PBL) comprises a type of collaborative instruction, whereby groups are tasked with defining and researching issues based on given case problems (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Zoom’s platform is inclusive of these elements, and as such, its integration within a WBLT is significantly beneficial. Zoom’s convenient web interface and apps are not only convenient to use, but are ideal for videoconferencing, demos, webinars, online courses, and even training (LaFollette, 2018). The dynamism afforded through Zoom’s high-quality audio, video, screen-sharing, and recording functionalities are also conducive to group collaboration (LaFollette, 2018). In particular, this platform allows users to share text, image, or audio files to group members instantaneously, who can then annotate shared files (LaFollete, 2018). Users are able to clearly indicate when they have a question or comment, and taking turns is a relatively easy process (Moore, 2018).
Strategies for Use
Strategy 1 – Using Zoom as a Tool for Collaboration
Using Zoom as a Tool for Collaboration
(1:52)
Learners can use Zoom as a way to remotely collaborate with colleagues and/or peers in real-time. They can utilize the platform’s capabilities, including the sharing of text, image, or audio files, in the process of gathering input from one another.
Strategy 2 – Using Zoom for Problem-Based Learning
Using Zoom for Problem-Based Learning (1:40)
A contextualized, real-world problem or issue can be presented to learners, who are then able to capitalize on Zoom’s various features conducive to promoting collaboration as they search for a solution.
Helpful Resources
Resource 1 – Zoom How-To Videos
Zoom has created a Resource Center with links to quick how-to videos on using this tool. These videos are structured on a per topic basis, so users are easily able to find the video relating to the feature and/or functionality they wish to learn more about.
Resource 2 – Zoom For Education
This webpage outlines how Zoom’s video communications capabilities are beneficial in an
educational environment, particularly with respect to enriching teaching and learning, maximizing school resources, improving learner outcomes.
Resource 3 – Using Video Conferencing to Improve Remote Collaboration
This article examines the extent to which video conferencing works to improve collaboration, and also identifies remaining impediments for such tools. The conditions and factors necessary for remote collaboration to succeed are also highlighted.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). *E-learning and the science of instruction*. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
Jahng, N. (2012). An investigation of collaboration processes in an online course: How do small groups develop over time? *The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13*(4), 1. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v13i4.1211
Karis, D., Wildman, D., & Mané, A. (2016). Improving Remote Collaboration With Video Conferencing and Video Portals. *Human-Computer Interaction, 31*(1), 1–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2014.921506
Lafollette, G. (2018). Expanding your apptitude. *Journal of Accountancy, 226*(1), 76–76. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/2068010359/
Lim, J. (2010). Jazz up your curriculum: the Jazz Workshop offers a unique blend of collaboration and
constructivist learning using videoconferencing and Web 2.0. *Learning & Leading with Technology, 38*(1).
Moore, J. (2018). Exploring Five Online Collaboration Tools to Facilitate a Professional Learning Community. *TechTrends, 62*(6), 612–617. [https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-0288-3](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-0288-3)
Yakimovicz, A. D., & Murphy, K. L. (1995). Constructivism and collaboration on the internet: Case study of a graduate class experience. *Computers & Education, 24*(3), 203-209. doi: 10.1016/0360-1315(95)00015-E
**Author**
Submitted by: Zahra Harbi
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Twitter: [https://twitter.com/ZahraHarbi1](https://twitter.com/ZahraHarbi1)
Bio: Zahra Harbi is a current Masters student at the Faculty of Education, Ontario Tech University. She received her Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include translanguaging, technology-assisted language acquisition, eLearning and in particular mobile-assisted language learning. | 70e718d5-fee0-4870-8656-8fe2fb2df36f | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://pressbooks.pub/app/uploads/sites/2500/2022/09/E-Learning-Essentials-2020-1586173112.pdf | 2023-10-03T17:24:37+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511170.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20231003160453-20231003190453-00185.warc.gz | 506,141,328 | 62,060 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.938231 | eng_Latn | 0.993069 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"slv_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"sco_Latn",
"zsm_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"dag_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
26,
1437,
1551,
2010,
2857,
3513,
3628,
5039,
6302,
7033,
7387,
7447,
7802,
8010,
8037,
9448,
9722,
10967,
12386,
13566,
14242,
14576,
15903,
17187,
18284,
19302,
19441,
19744,
21129,
22609,
23677,
24047,
24260,
25612,
26671,
27686,
27932,
29238,
30644,
31899,
33025,
34110,
34202,
35609,
36891,
38148,
39543,
40685,
41949,
42849,
43061,
43374,
44833,
45928,
47039,
47237,
47324,
48664,
49850,
50944,
52068,
52426,
53552,
54730,
55799,
56274,
56562,
57734,
58780,
59269,
59497,
61113,
62711,
64295,
65726,
66922,
68013,
70016,
70379,
71868,
73367,
74875,
76119,
77415,
78347,
78618,
80017,
81191,
82283,
82604,
82818,
84114,
85058,
86064,
86527,
87938,
87980,
89391,
89528,
90771,
91820,
92761,
93084,
93236,
94403,
94455,
95628,
96356,
97817,
98616,
98900,
100213,
101344,
102488,
103104,
103374,
104805,
106237,
107452,
108430,
108752,
110016,
111129,
112243,
112496,
112851,
114324,
115801,
116956,
118004,
118222,
119461,
120503,
121812,
121964,
122131,
123610,
125027,
125903,
127017,
127437,
127657,
129092,
130550,
131691,
132847,
133238,
133578,
134984,
136310,
137727,
138949,
140323,
141181,
141338,
142804,
144224,
145438,
146538,
146772,
148385,
149837,
151533,
153272,
154513,
155701,
156560,
157034,
157295,
158680,
160199,
161373,
162712,
163147,
163307,
164706,
165763,
167092,
167535,
168946,
168970,
170381,
170590,
171966,
173301,
174717,
175462,
176647,
176935,
177370,
178571,
179469,
180479,
180857,
181306,
182490,
183148,
183802,
184988,
185482,
185848,
187270,
187979,
188881,
189257,
189703,
191082,
191587,
192595,
193371,
193821,
195438,
196534,
197450,
198628,
199102,
199528,
201164,
202523,
203457,
204322,
204837,
205431,
207203,
208655,
209401,
210656,
211935,
212208,
212657,
214305,
214842,
215865,
216076,
216367,
217767,
219073,
219700,
220990,
222443,
222696,
223089,
224515,
225356,
225974,
227238,
228068,
228495,
230160,
231172,
232042,
232373,
232702,
234173,
234784,
235831,
236116,
237539,
238197,
239426,
240854,
241458,
241849,
242986,
243952,
245215,
245391,
245801,
247369,
247916,
248920,
249374,
250611,
251098,
252243,
252749,
253197,
254385,
255051,
255868,
256259,
256575,
257863,
258456,
259424,
259809,
261364,
262257,
263445,
264489,
264933,
266524,
267181,
268587,
269570,
269970,
271077,
271915,
272547,
272949,
274463,
275115,
275786,
276158,
277276,
278245,
279480,
280126,
280259,
281820,
282679,
283354,
284503,
284758,
285195,
286700,
287810,
288698,
289829,
290153,
290872,
291670,
292216,
292655,
294228,
295466,
296452,
297734,
298762
] | [
1.5546875,
2.03125
] | 1 | 0 |
EDISON EASTLAKE COMMUNITY
CHOICE NEIGHBORHOOD INITIATIVE HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT
This report is funded by Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Vitalyst Health Foundation
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This health impact assessment (HIA) would not have been possible without the support and collaborative efforts of many people. I would like to thank Jane Pearson, consultant for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation of Phoenix (LISC), whose guidance, mentorship and co-authorship were crucial to this project’s success.
Above all, I would like to thank the residents of the Edison Eastlake Community, particularly those that serve on the Resident Leadership Council, whose interest, concern, and commitment for their community were an inspiration and provided a guiding light for this HIA report.
I would like to thank Phoenix Revitalization Corporation, Eva Olivas, Executive Director, and Jessica Bueno, for their partnership with the Resident Leadership Council who served as the HIA Advisory Committee. Their facilitation and recruitment of key residents were foundational to this HIA.
Thank you to the team of technical experts who offered their time, insights, data and lessons learned to help contribute to this HIA findings and recommendations. These individuals include:
- Dean Brennan, Project for Livable Communities, LLC
- Dave Laney, Cardno/ATC Associates
- David Hondula, Arizona State University
- Maggie Messerschmidt, The Nature Conservancy of Arizona
- Melissa Guadaro, Arizona State University
- Salin Geevarghese, Center for Study of Social Policy
- Adrianne Todman, National Association for Housing and Redevelopment Officials
- Stephen Norman, King County Housing Authority
- Erin Christensen and Heidi Oien, Mithun, Inc
- Allison Parisi and Hovi Nguyen, Maricopa County Department of Public Health
Special thanks to the City of Phoenix Housing Department, especially Berenice Felix-Baca and Bailey Spears, for sharing expertise and time to the HIA process.
I am deeply grateful for Brian Swanton of Gorman and Company, Inc. for championing HIA efforts in the housing community and always offering technical expertise to the process.
Thank you to Michele Scanze for her contribution to the report including her masterful GIS analysis and creation of maps. Thank you also to Genevieve Pearthree, Arizona State University, for support and provision of additional GIS maps.
Special appreciation for the editing provided by Vitalyst Health Foundation staff, Emily Kepner and Stephanie Gallegos.
Thank you to the Arizona Alliance for Livable Communities, especially Kenneth Steel and David Dube, for supporting this and other HIA efforts in the community.
Thank you to the artistic talent of Chalk Design, for providing graphic design to make this report come alive.
This project would not have been possible without funding from LISC and Vitalyst Health Foundation. Deep gratitude for Terry Benelli, Executive Director for LISC Phoenix and C.J. Eisenbarth Hager, Director of Healthy Community Policies for Vitalyst Health Foundation, for their constant advisement and support throughout the HIA process.
Cynthia Melde, Health Analyst
firstname.lastname@example.org
CONTENTS
Executive Summary ........................................ 4
Background .............................................. 4
About this Health Impact Assessment ............... 4
Key Findings .......................................... 4
Recommendations .................................... 6
Introduction and Background .......................... 8
Health, Housing and Neighborhood .................. 8
HIA Overview ......................................... 9
Choice Neighborhoods Initiative ..................... 10
Screening and Scoping ........................... 10
Methodology ............................................. 13
Reinvent PHX HIA .................................... 13
Resident Survey ..................................... 14
Community Interviews ............................... 14
Community Workshops ............................... 14
Quantitative Data .................................... 14
Assessment .............................................. 15
Existing Conditions .................................. 15
Findings and Recommendations for Health Determinants .... 24
Thriving Communities and Families .................... 24
Why it Matters ....................................... 24
Methodology ......................................... 25
Existing Conditions .................................. 26
Evaluating Health Impact ............................ 28
Recommendations .................................... 29
Access to Healthy Affordable Food .................... 32
Why it Matters ....................................... 32
Methodology ......................................... 32
Existing Conditions .................................. 32
Evaluating Health Impact ............................ 36
Recommendations .................................... 37
Environmental Quality .................................. 40
Why it Matters ....................................... 40
Methodology ......................................... 41
Assessment .......................................... 42
Evaluating Health Impacts ........................... 48
Recommendations .................................... 49
Safe, Active Neighborhoods ........................... 52
Why it Matters ....................................... 52
Methodology ......................................... 52
Existing Conditions .................................. 52
Evaluating Health Impacts ........................... 58
Recommendations .................................... 58
Monitoring and Evaluation ............................ 60
Bibliography ............................................. 61
Appendix A ................................................ 63
Appendix B ................................................ 64
Appendix C ................................................ 65
Appendix D ................................................ 66
©2017 Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Vitalyst Health Foundation. All rights reserved.
Most photography provided courtesy of Resident Leadership Council, Phoenix Revitalization Corporation,
Cynthia Melde and other report authors.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Background
Health is defined as more than just the presence or absence of disease. The World Health Organization defined health “as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing” (World Health Organization, 2005). Health starts where we live, learn, work, play and connect. This means that health starts in our homes, schools, worksites, neighborhoods, and communities. Social, environmental, economic, and political factors directly and indirectly determine health and wellbeing. Housing is an important determinant of health. Healthy, safe, accessible and affordable housing can reduce the risk of illness and injury, while improving residential stability and improve physical health. It can also free up family resources, enhance social connections, reduce stress and improve mental and social health (Maqbool, Viveiros, & Ault, 2015).
In 2010, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) developed the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative with the goal to redevelop distressed public housing, improve outcomes for people living in the community and revitalize distressed surrounding neighborhood, ultimately creating revitalized mixed-income communities across the country. To achieve these goals, communities must develop and implement a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization strategy, or Transformation Plan (Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2017). In 2016, the City of Phoenix was awarded a $1.5 million Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant to develop a Transformation Plan for the Edison-Eastlake Community (EEC), home to four public/affordable housing sites. Three of these sites built between 1942-1963 — Sidney P. Osborn, A.L. Krohn, and Frank Luke — are targeted for redevelopment through the Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant.
About this Health Impact Assessment
Health Impact Assessments (HIA) are a six-step process that aims to identify positive and negative health impacts before a decision is made on a policy, project or plan. Using existing baseline conditions and potential health impacts, recommendations are developed for decision makers to consider integrating in the final policy, project or plan. The goal is to maximize the positive health effects while minimizing negative outcomes. Community stakeholders, especially vulnerable populations, are engaged so that possible health impacts on all affected populations are assessed and considered before the proposal is put in place.
This HIA furthers the goal of HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative by making recommendations to create community conditions that promote the health and wellbeing of the current and future residents of the EEC. Health is critical to creating communities of choice.
Key Findings
Based on conversations with the HIA Advisory Group, the Resident Leadership Council (RLC), interviews with residents and other stakeholders, existing community health data and evaluation of potential health impacts affected by the redevelopment, several overarching health determinants were identified and assessed: thriving and resilient community, food environment, environmental quality, and safe, active neighborhood.
Thriving Resilient Communities
Community resilience is defined by a sense of place, shared common perspectives or interests, diversity in relationships and roles, sense of togetherness and joint action and engagement (Hughes, 2003). Central to resilience and community is social cohesion. In the broadest sense, social cohesion is the “glue” that holds communities together and enables them to build bridges to others. There are varying levels of relationships in the EEC, however, many residents do not report a sense of trust or shared values with each other. There is also limited interaction between residents living on either side of Van Buren Street, highlighting the physical and cultural divider that Van Buren Street plays in the community. To promote health, efforts must be made to minimize uncontrollable stressors and increase opportunities for connections among residents of varying ages, levels of ability and diverse backgrounds. There must be increased leadership opportunities for residents, improved family support and more youth engagement opportunities.
Food Environment
While nutrition is about what we eat, our eating choices are influenced by our environment. The location of food outlets, from supermarkets to convenience stores and farmers markets to fast food restaurants, can profoundly affect a community’s collective health. Residents express a strong interest in another grocery store in the community. The existing food retail is limited to ethnic grocery stores or convenience stores. Grocery stores with healthy, affordable food are not as accessible to residents due to walking distance, transportation barriers, or cultural differences. Sidney P. Osborn is more limited in nearby healthy food options than Frank Luke and A.L. Krohn. Adopting policies to support new healthy food resources, enhancing and expanding the existing food retail infrastructure, and offering nutrition education and food preparation classes will improve the health of residents.
Environmental Quality
Where we live matters to our health in part due to the physical environment. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land and buildings around us impact and influence our ability to live a healthy life (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). The EEC suffers from urban heat island impact, being one of the hottest neighborhoods in Maricopa County. There are air quality challenges being near the freeway and an existing superfund site that impacts the community. In addition, there is a high rate of vacant lots increasing the blight of the community. Adopting and implementing heat mitigation strategies in the housing and neighborhood redevelopment is important to the health of residents. In addition, improving landscaping, shading, greening and activating vacant lots can positively improve the health of the community.
Active, Safe Community
Environments that make it easier for people to walk or bike help increase physical activity and make neighborhoods better places to live (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011). Safety of the EEC is a top concern for residents. Edison Park, particularly at night, is reported to host activities that negatively impact the community, such as drug exchanges and gang-related activity. This limits residents’ ability to move through the community particularly for recreation purposes. By adopting policies and practices that improve the safety and ability to be active in the neighborhood design, creating multigenerational opportunities to be active and offering programming to support residents ability to be physically active, the health of the residents will improve.
Recommendations
Recommendations were developed for each of these health determinants. Each health determinant can be positively or negatively impacted by policy changes, infrastructure development and programming offered during and after the redevelopment. Thus, recommendations are categorized by these three domains. Some recommendations overlap between categories and across determinants underlining the importance of integrating community efforts to address health as a whole. For greatest impact on health, recommendations from all three domains — policy, infrastructure, and programming — should be adopted and implemented.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EDISON EASTLAKE COMMUNITY
| THRIVING AND RESILIENT COMMUNITY | POLICY |
|----------------------------------|--------|
| Adopt management policies and practices that prioritize inclusive resident leadership and utilize resident assets. |
| INFRASTRUCTURE |
|----------------|
| Create a community of opportunity by prioritizing healthy child development from birth through college entry through infrastructure development and high quality services for children and youth. |
| Ensure equitable distribution of community infrastructure, facilities and programming on both the north and south side of Van Buren Street. |
| PROGRAM |
|---------|
| Partner with community organizations and allocate resources to provide ongoing trainings and programming on facilitation, mediation, restorative justice and leadership development to all residents to support community participation and engagement.* |
| Support both formal and informal family support programming to strengthen caregiver/parenting skills and families. |
| FOOD ENVIRONMENT | POLICY |
|------------------|--------|
| Promote Urban Agriculture through zoning. Urban Agriculture includes community gardens, urban farms, farmers markets, community supported agriculture, and mobile produce vendors.* |
| Encourage the development of a Farmers Market by adopting supportive policies and practices.* |
| INFRASTRUCTURE |
|----------------|
| Create a small business development initiative, Healthy Corner Store Initiative, to improve access to healthy and affordable food.* |
| Determine the market potential for an additional full-scale grocery store as a long-term strategy to create a community of choice.*
| PROGRAM |
|---------|
| Work with a community-based organization to develop a community garden association lead by residents, including youth.* |
| Partner with residents to determine specific food preparation, food storage, and other nutrition education classes to offer at each housing site. Allow residents to lead classes when appropriate and bring partner organizations onsite to offer free classes to all residents. |
| Work with the local Walmart (36th Street & Thomas Road), Fry’s (30th Street & Thomas Road) and Ranch Market (16th Street & Roosevelt Street) to introduce free shuttle buses for residents of EEC. |
* Denotes similar recommendations made in the Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013.
| ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY | POLICY |
|-----------------------|--------|
| **Urban Heat Island** | Comply with the standards established in the Interim Transit Oriented Overlay Districts specifically as it relates to shade. |
| **Urban Heat Island** | Adopt heat mitigation policies and strategies in the redevelopment of the urban form, including prioritizing the use of surfaces and building materials that provide cooling effects. Placement and orientation of buildings should also maximize cooling. |
**INFRASTRUCTURE**
**Urban Heat Island and Air Quality**
Increase greening and improve landscaping by adding trees, sod and other vegetation throughout the community to help improve the air quality and mitigate the urban heat island effect.
**Air Quality**
Install high efficiency HVAC systems in the housing units and community buildings. Advanced air filtration should be installed through air handling units for all sites.
**Vacant Lots**
With resident leadership, activate vacant lots for community benefits. This may include, but not limited to, urban agriculture, pop-up parks, green spaces, and art spaces.*
**PROGRAM**
**Urban Heat Island**
Continue and expand programming for residents to enhance heat coping mechanism and learn about heat-related illness. Empower residents to share their stories of coping with heat and their visions for improving the conditions.
**Urban Heat Island and Air Quality**
Provide education to residents on how to best use of new energy efficient appliances and HVAC systems.
**Urban Heat Island, Air Quality and Vacant Lots**
Support resident leadership throughout strategies used to address environmental quality. To support green infrastructure, allow residents with landscaping experience opportunity to provide maintenance of common spaces in exchange for housing stipend or community service hours. Support resident leadership to establish community clean-up and other neighborhood beautification efforts. Provide programming support for any activation of vacant lots.*
| SAFE, ACTIVE COMMUNITY | POLICY |
|------------------------|--------|
| **Policy** | Work together with the City of Phoenix Police Department to use Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) guidelines in the design of the properties, including the enhancements to Edison Park. Utilize the Active Design Guidelines in the neighborhood and housing redevelopment plan to incorporate multigenerational physical activity opportunities.* |
**INFRASTRUCTURE**
Implement specific street recommendations found in Table 12 of the full HIA report. Priority should be given to Roosevelt Street, the intersection of 20th and Roosevelt Streets, 20th Street, the intersection of 18th and Van Buren Streets, and 18th Street.*
Work with the City of Phoenix Department of Transportation to design open space and pathways to assure connectivity to Van Buren Street and the light rail from housing sites.
**PROGRAM**
Support resident leaders to form walking clubs in housing areas.
Support programs and resident leadership to address the crime in the community. This includes supporting the community action program or the creation of one or more Block Watches. Providing regular, organized recreation programs in Edison Park and enforce Edison Park hours with active police monitoring at night.*
* Denotes similar recommendations made in the Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013.
Health, Housing and Neighborhood
Health starts where we live, learn, work, play and connect. This means that health starts in our homes, schools, worksites, neighborhoods, and communities. Access to social and economic opportunities; the resources and supports available in our homes, neighborhoods, and communities; the quality of our schooling; the safety of our workplaces; the cleanliness of our water, food, and air; and the nature of our social interactions and relationships all play a role in our health. (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2017). Healthy, safe, accessible, and affordable housing can reduce the risk of illness and injury while improving residential stability and freeing up family resources, thereby reducing stress and other adverse mental health outcomes (Maqbool, Viveiros, & Ault, 2015).
Housing quality, location, affordability and neighborhood characteristics influences health on many levels (National Center for Healthy Housing, 2016). For instance, dampness and mold exposure in a home is accountable for 21 percent of asthma cases in the U.S. (PEW Charitable Trusts, 2016). Housing location dictates a community’s air pollution levels and accessibility to resources. Poorly constructed housing or proximity to heavily traveled roadways can disrupt sleep and result in serious health conditions. Research shows that residents tend to have higher levels of physical activity when they live near parks or open space. Additionally, housing affordability impacts a community’s disposable income. Families navigate trade-offs between paying for essential items, such as rent, utilities and food. Less affordable housing results in less disposable income for medication and other health enhancing resources. Neighborhood characteristics, such as social inclusion and capital, segregation, and concentrated poverty can impact a community’s health. When families move from a community with higher rates of concentrated poverty to a community with lower rates of concentrated poverty, the family experiences a decrease in stress from being exposed to crimes and violence, decrease in anxiety and a decrease in behavioral problems (National Center for Healthy Housing, 2016).
HIA Overview
An HIA is a tool that aims to identify positive and negative health impacts before a decision is made on a policy, project or plan. It is a tool that can be used to demonstrate the relationships (pathways) between health determinates such as housing quality, location, affordability and neighborhood characteristics and physical or mental health outcomes. Through an HIA, researchers apply a variety of methodologies to analyze current and potential health conditions in a community and how these conditions relate to the policy, project or plan. While an HIA uses quantitative and qualitative analytics, data collection might also include participatory techniques, including town-halls, charrettes and other community feedback sessions. Robust community engagement is essential during an HIA to ensure that HIA recommendations do not only represent professional expertise but also community needs. Ideally, community engagement occurs in a collaborative environment that empowers the community and leverages local knowledge.
There are several principles that guide HIA practice (World Health Organization, 1999):
1. **Democracy**: The HIA process should involve and engage the public and inform decision makers and stakeholders.
2. **Equity**: The HIA process should be transparent and inclusive of underserved and hard-to-reach populations. The process should investigate inequitable distribution of health impacts based on socio-economic status, religion, age, gender, ethnic background or other characteristics.
3. **Sustainable Development**: The HIA recommendations should consider the sustainability of the community in terms of equity, economic and environmental impacts. Any development should consider both short- and long-term consequences.
4. **Ethical Use of Evidence**: Any data collected as part of the HIA should be rigorous and based on scientific principles and methodologies. Like any scientific study, data should be collected in a manner to preserve privacy while still providing a comprehensive assessment.
5. **Comprehensive Approach to Health**: The HIA is grounded in emphasizing that a broad range of factors influences physical and mental health.
While the above principles guide the overall HIA project, an HIA should progress through a series of distinct steps (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016):
1. **Screening**: Identify the decision (project, policy or plan) for which an HIA is deemed useful.
2. **Scoping**: Identify how comprehensive the HIA will be and what health risks and health benefits will be examined.
3. **Assessment**: Identify underserved and affected populations and collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data.
4. **Recommendations**: Work with community members and key stakeholders to agree on recommendations that mitigate negative health impacts and enhance positive health impacts.
5. **Reporting**: Present findings and recommendations to decision makers, community members and key stakeholders.
6. **Monitoring and Evaluation**: Determine the HIA’s impact on the decision and health status of the target population.
Realistically, the HIA process is iterative and non-linear, moving back and forth between steps as new information is gathered.
Choice Neighborhoods Initiative
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development developed the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative with the goal to redevelop distressed public housing, improve outcomes for people living in the community, and revitalize distressed surrounding neighborhood, ultimately creating revitalized mixed-income communities across the country. The initiative requires community participation, locally driven solutions, and increased partnerships between organization to catalyze critical improvements in the community, including vacant property, housing, services and education. To achieve these goals, communities must develop and implement a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization strategy, or Transformation Plan. This plan serves as a blueprint for the revitalization of the public and/or assisted housing units and the transformation of the surrounding neighborhood and positive outcomes for families (Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2017).
In 2016, the City of Phoenix was awarded a $1.5 million Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant to develop a Transformation Plan for the Edison-Eastlake Community (EEC), home to four public/affordable housing sites (Appendix A). Three of these sites built between 1942-1963 — Sidney P. Osborn, A.L. Krohn, and Frank Luke — are targeted for redevelopment through the Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant. One million of these dollars will be used to leverage and finance innovative activities that kick start neighborhood change in 2018.
This HIA will further the goal of the national Choice Neighborhoods Initiative by making recommendations to create community conditions that promote the health and wellbeing of the community through the housing redevelopment process. By adopting these recommendations in the Transformation Plan and redevelopment process, the EEC community will grow healthy learners, support healthy workers, and foster healthy families. Health is core to creating opportunities for all.
Screening and Scoping
Should an HIA be completed?
This section describes the steps taken to determine if the HIA was feasible and will contribute to the planning for the targeted Edison-Eastlake Community (EEC). Three main questions, can inform whether or not to complete an HIA:
1. Is the proposal associated with potentially significant health impacts that otherwise would not be considered or would be undervalued by decision makers?
2. Is it feasible to conduct a relevant and timely analysis of the health impacts of the proposal?
3. Are the proposal and decision making processes potentially receptive to the findings and recommendations of a health impact analysis?
Utilizing the Screening Whitepaper developed by Human Impact Partners as a guide, screening was completed in partnership with the City of Phoenix planning team, the consultant hired to assist in the planning process and Phoenix Revitalization Corporation in December 2016 (Human Impact Partners, 2009). It was determined the timing of the planning process would allow for an HIA to be useful. The draft Transformation Plan is due in December 2017, and the final plan due in June 2018. In addition to existing data sources and literature, the HIA could gather health-related information through the Choice Neighborhoods planned community engagement process including resident and employee surveys and community workshops. The scope of the Choice Neighborhood Planning grant includes assessing the social, economic and environmental issues impacting the community.
environmental issues impacting the community; however, the direct connection to how these issues could impact health will not be considered. This created an opportunity for the HIA to explore how the Transformation Plan can improve the health of the community and its residents and influence future revitalization efforts.
The HIA could also partner with Phoenix Revitalization Corporation who is responsible for facilitating the Resident Leadership Council (RLC) for the planning process. The RLC’s role is to ground the Transformation Plan in local context and develop community-driven solutions. Serving as the HIA advisory committee would provide the RLC a leadership opportunity and empower residents to better understand the health of their community and advocate for change. With an appropriate timeline, adequate financial resources provided by LISC, stakeholder desire to contribute to the HIA and decision makers open to the HIA process, it was determined an HIA would be completed.
**What should the HIA assess?**
The second step in the HIA is to determine the scope of the HIA. In this stage, key stakeholders help develop the goal and key research questions for the HIA to assess. A comprehensive list of data sources and methods for the assessment is developed and final scope is developed based on community need, stakeholder input and available data.
The scoping of this HIA was completed in January and February of 2017. The Choice Neighborhoods Planning process was conducting several additional studies, including Housing Market Study, Business Development Study, and Phase 1 Environmental Report. This HIA sought to not duplicate other studies and worked with the City of Phoenix planning team, HIA advisory committee, technical experts, and key stakeholders to determine the scope of the HIA. The HIA advisory group, or RLC, was also formed and engaged during this stage. A list of HIA advisory members can be found in Appendix B. This group was critical to guiding and grounding the entire HIA process.
**HIA Goal** To identify the potential health impacts of the redevelopment of the EEC and provide health-promoting recommendations to be adopted in the Transformation Plan.
**HIA Research Questions:**
1. How will the redevelopment impact the social and community traits of the neighborhood?
2. How can the redevelopment impact access to healthy, affordable food?
3. How can the redevelopment address environmental issues in the neighborhood?
4. How can the redevelopment improve the community safety and active living of the neighborhood?
Using input from residents and other community stakeholders, research questions were further divided into key health issues and concerns. A pathway diagram (Figure 1) was developed connecting these research questions to various downstream health outcomes including respiratory diseases, chronic diseases, mental health, intentional and unintentional injury, and mortality.
**FIGURE 1 PATHWAY DIAGRAM**
| PROPOSED DECISION | DIRECT IMPACTS | IMMEDIATE IMPACTS | HEALTH OUTCOMES |
|-------------------|---------------|------------------|-----------------|
| REDEVELOPMENT OF HOUSING UNITS AND NEIGHBORHOOD AMENITIES | Housing Units | Resident Leadership, Income Disparities | Social Cohesion/Resilience, Mental Health/Stress |
| | Public Spaces and Community Assets | Crime/Violence, Child Development, Access to Health Affordable Food | Social Interaction, Chronic Disease: Cardiovascular Disease, Hypertension, Diabetes, Cancer |
| | Street Design and Infrastructure | Access to Recreation, Landscape Shade, Walkability/Bikability | Nutrition, Outdoor Air Quality, Physical Activity, Respiratory Disease, Heat Related Illness and Mortality, Unintentional Injury |
METHODOLOGY
The following section outlines the methodology and data sources used to assess the health impacts of the Choice Neighborhood Transformation Plan. Additional methodology is provided in later sections that describe the findings for the key research questions this HIA seeks to inform. Overall, the following data sources were used to inform this HIA’s assessment:
Reinvent PHX HIA
In 2012, the City of Phoenix, in partnership with Arizona State University and Vitalyst Health Foundation, received funding from HUD’s Sustainable Communities Initiative. As part of this project, a HIA was completed on the Transit-Oriented Development Plan that this initiative produced. The EEC was included as part of the Eastlake-Garfield District. This HIA sought to build on the Reinvent PHX Eastlake-Garfield District HIA findings and report. Utilizing previously data collected during Reinvent PHX, this HIA assessed implementation of recommendations from the report. For example, in the section on active, safe communities, we assessed any changes that were recommended to improve street safety in the Reinvent PHX HIA.
Resident Survey
In March and April of 2017, the City of Phoenix conducted resident surveys with public housing residents. City of Phoenix housing staff and interns completed surveys with residents and offered residents $5 gift cards in exchange for their time. Surveys were conducted in English and Spanish. There was a total of 83 questions included in the survey asking about transportation, employment, health, grocery shopping, use of amenities and access to the internet. A total of 341 of the 577 (61%) residents completed the survey answering questions about themselves and members in their household. The figures below describe the demographic profile of the survey respondents and household members.
FIGURE 2 DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SURVEY RESPONDENTS
- **RACE/ETHNICITY**
- Hispanic: 68%
- White: 52%
- Black: 24%
- **SEX**
- Female: 79%
- Male: 20%
- **AGE (YEARS)**
- 18-54: 39%
- 6-12: 21%
- 12-17: 19%
- 0-5: 11%
- 55-61: 5%
- 62+: 5%
Community Interviews
Qualitative interviews with various community stakeholders were conducted in-person or via telephone during the scoping and assessment phases to better understand the community and health issues. A total of 11 residents that live in public housing were interviewed. Key service providers and potential community partners were also interviewed to better understand the assets and programming provided for residents. Organizations interviewed included Edison Elementary School, Maricopa Integrated Health System, Mountain Park Health Center, Southwest Institute of Autism Research and Resource, Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Phoenix – Gabel Branch, and First Things First Phoenix South Region. Key departments within the City of Phoenix were included in stakeholder interviews including staff from District Eight, the police, streets, planning, environmental services, and housing.
Community Workshops
The City of Phoenix hosted three community workshops during the HIA process. The first workshop was centered on identifying assets and visions for the future. The second workshop was focused on Edison Park and how to improve the infrastructure at the park. The third workshop was a design charrette where residents shared feedback to the initial housing and neighborhood plan. These workshops provided additional insight into the HIA research questions.
Quantitative Data
Existing quantitative data was collected from numerous resources to assess the existing conditions of the community. This included the 2010 Census and American Community Survey — five year estimates. Crime data was provided by the City of Phoenix Police Department. Health data was provided by the Maricopa County Department of Public Health and sourced from the hospital discharge database. This data represents individuals living in the community that access hospital and emergency services. Arizona Department of Health Services provided a Special Area Report that describes healthcare services and usage for both census tract 1133 and 1139. A variety of data sources are used to develop this report including US Census data, hospital discharge data, healthcare board records, and vital records.
The assessment, the fourth step in the HIA, provides a profile of existing conditions and evaluates the potential health impacts of the redevelopment. The first part of this HIA’s assessment describes the characteristics and health profile of the EEC. In later sections, the assessment findings for the key research questions and recommendations to promote positive health outcomes are discussed.
**Existing Conditions**
**The Neighborhood**
The EEC is comprised of the Edison Park neighborhood and the eastern section of the Eastlake neighborhood located east of North 16th Street. It is bounded by I-10 to the north and east, North 16th Street to the west and the railroad tracks to the south (just south of Jackson Street). A map of the EEC can be found in Appendix A. Most businesses are located along North 16th Street, but there are also concentrations of businesses along Roosevelt, Van Buren, Washington, and Jefferson Streets. The EEC is also home to the largest concentration of public housing in the City of Phoenix. Within its boundaries are three public housing sites with a total of 577 units. Between Frank Luke Homes and A.L. Krohn Homes, located adjacent to one another north of Van Buren Street, and Sidney P. Osborn, located south of Van Buren, these public housing developments account for nearly half of the residential opportunities in the EEC.
**Who Lives in the Community?**
**Poverty**
The percentage of EEC families living in poverty is 66.8%, significantly higher than the City of Phoenix (18.4%) and Maricopa County (12.6%). In 2016, the federal poverty level was an income of $12,228 for a single-person household or an income of $24,563 for a household of four people. People living in low-income neighborhoods are less likely to have access to healthy food and safe places to be physically active. The median income of the EEC is $16,519. (See Table 1)
**Disability**
The percentage of households in the EEC receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is 9.6%, greater than the 4.2% in the City of Phoenix and 3.5% in Maricopa County. Thirty-one percent of households in the EEC have a member with a disability which is also higher than the 21% of households in the City of Phoenix.
| TABLE 1 SOURCES OF INCOME | EDISON-EASTLAKE | CITY OF PHOENIX | MARICOPA COUNTY |
|---------------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
| Median household income | $16,519 | $47,326 | $54,229 |
| Families below poverty | 542 (66.8%) | 61,105 (18.4%) | 118,645 (12.6%) |
| Households with wage/salary income | 627 (53.6%) | 413,407 (78.7%) | 1,088,782 (75.5%) |
| Households with SSI | 112 (9.6%) | 22,051 (4.2%) | 50,703 (3.5%) |
*Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015 ACS 5-year*
Racial/Ethnic Minorities
Of the total population, 13.5% of the residents classify themselves as black (compared to 6.5% and 5.0% in the City and County, respectively), and 79.0% classify themselves as Hispanic (compared to 40.8% and 29.6% in the City and County, respectively). Among the large Hispanic population, a significant percent has difficulty with English. Of the households that speak Spanish at home, nearly 40% are “limited English,” meaning that all members 14 years of age and older have at least some difficulty with English. This is nearly double the rate found in the City and County (Table 2).
| INDICATORS | EDISON-EASTLAKE | CITY OF PHOENIX | MARICOPA COUNTY |
|-----------------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
| **RACE** | | | |
| White | 45.5% | 65.9% | 73.0% |
| Black | 13.5% | 6.5% | 5.0% |
| Other | 33.1% | 18.5% | 12.8% |
| **ETHNICITY** | | | |
| Hispanic/Latino (of any race)| 79.0% | 40.8% | 29.6% |
| **HOUSEHOLD LANGUAGE** | | | |
| English Only | 32.1% | 65.4% | 74.1% |
| Spanish | 64.6% | 26.7% | 18.5% |
| Limited English speaking | 37.2% | 20.8% | 19.2% |
| Not limited English speaking| 62.8% | 79.2% | 80.8% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Decennial Census, 2015 ACS 5-year
Educational Attainment
Educational attainment is low for the residents living in the EEC. Only 7.3% of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to 26.7% in the City of Phoenix and 30.4% in Maricopa County. As Figure 3 shows, most residents have a high school diploma (or equivalent) or less. Of the 71.4% of residents with a high school diploma or less, only 32.2% have an actual diploma or equivalent. This means that nearly half of residents have not completed any school or have completed up to 12th grade but did not receive a high school diploma.
Age
The EEC’s population is significantly younger than the population of the City and County. As shown in Table 3, 48.0% of the EEC residents are under the age of 18, which is markedly higher than the City and County (28.2% and 26.4%, respectively). While living in poverty impacts all ages, children growing up in poverty experience greater mortality and morbidity than adults. They are more likely to become obese, participate in risky sexual behaviors, use tobacco, alcohol and other substances, be a victim of violence and/or have an accidental injury. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2017).
| AGE | EDISON-EASTLAKE | CITY OF PHOENIX | MARICOPA COUNTY |
|-----|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
| POPULATION AGE 0-17 | | | |
| Under 5 years | 13.9% | 8.3% | 7.4% |
| 5-14 years | 26.5% | 15.4% | 14.7% |
| 15-17 years | 7.7% | 4.6% | 4.3% |
| POPULATION 18+ | | | |
| 18 to 24 years | 9.2% | 10.4% | 9.9% |
| 25 to 39 years | 18.2% | 22.8% | 21.1% |
| 40 to 54 years | 14.1% | 20.5% | 20.0% |
| 55 to 61 years | 4.1% | 7.2% | 7.5% |
| 62 and older | 6.4% | 10.9% | 15.0% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Decennial Census
Household Composition
At 70.2%, the EEC has slightly more family households than the City and County (64.2% and 66.1%, respectively). Of the family households, the EEC has a much higher percentage of female heads of household with no husband present (62.7%) versus the City (23.2%) and County (18.8%). There are more large households with 5 or more persons in the EEC (25%) than the City and County (16% and 13%, respectively).
| INDICATORS | EDISON-EASTLAKE | CITY OF PHOENIX | MARICOPA COUNTY |
|---------------------|-----------------|-----------------|-----------------|
| HOUSEHOLDS | | | |
| Family Households | 718 (70.2%) | 330,762 (64.2%) | 932,814 (66.1%) |
| Male Household, No Wife | 77 (10.7%) | 36,234 (11.0%) | 82,206 (8.8%) |
| Female Household, No Husband | 450 (62.7%) | 76,629 (23.2%) | 175,551 (18.8%) |
| HOUSEHOLD SIZE | | | |
| 1-person | 266 (26%) | 139,665 (27%) | 365,212 (26%) |
| 2-person | 191 (19%) | 148,277 (29%) | 463,215 (33%) |
| 3-person | 150 (15%) | 78,692 (15%) | 209,758 (15%) |
| 4-person | 160 (16%) | 68,272 (13%) | 185,929 (13%) |
| 5-person | 141 (14%) | 40,417 (8%) | 101,336 (7%) |
| 6+ person | 115 (11%) | 39,483 (8%) | 86,133 (6%) |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Decennial Census
Health Status
There is a growing body of research that is focused on understanding the root causes of health. For a number of years, researchers have identified particular groups of people that have increased risk for poor health outcomes across the country. These groups include people with low incomes, people of color, people with disabilities, people with less than a high school education, and young and older age groups. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). Neighborhood traits, such as safety, access to jobs, transportation and quality healthcare, can further impact health disparities.
The EEC is home to more vulnerable populations to poor health outcomes when compared to the City of Phoenix and Maricopa County.
Health Conditions
Based on life expectancy maps developed by Virginia Commonwealth University infants born in different parts of the city of Phoenix face a 14-year difference in life expectancy. Infants born in 85006, where A.L. Krohn and Frank Luke housing sites are located, have a life expectancy of 75. With only 85004 having a lower life expectancy, this zip code has the second lowest life expectancy in Phoenix. Unfortunately, there was insufficient data to calculate life expectancy for the zip code that Sidney P. Osborn is located in. (Virginia Commonwealth University, 2015).
The Arizona Partnership for Healthy Communities developed a Healthy Communities Opportunity Index that describes the health need of each zip code in Arizona. Based on the index, the EEC is in very high need zip codes indicating living in this area increases your chances for poor health outcomes.
Note: Zip code need score intervals were calculated using Jenks natural breaks classification method.
Source: Arizona Partnership for Healthy Communities. Data sources: Esri, HERE, DeLorme, USGS, Intermap, IPC, NRCAN, Esri Japan, METI, Esri China (Hong Kong), Esri (Thailand), MapmyIndia, ©OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community
The number of days residents are hospitalized inpatient is double the rate of the surrounding county, 593 days per 1000 residents compared to 272 days per 1,000 residents in Maricopa County. Figure 5 shows inpatient days are higher than the county and state across all ages except for 85 and older. Forty-five to 84 year olds experience significantly more inpatient days than the surrounding county and state indicating that poor health conditions impact residents earlier in life in this neighborhood resulting in early morbidity and mortality and reduced life expectancy. In addition, emergency room utilization is has increased through the years with 1500 more visits in 2014 compared to 2006.
**FIGURE 5 INPATIENT DAYS PER 1000 RESIDENTS BY AGE GROUP**
*Data Source: Arizona Department of Health Services, Hospital Discharge Data, 2015*
In 2014, 19.6% of inpatient stays and emergency room visits are due to unintentional injuries, followed by respiratory diseases (11.1%), and mental illness (5.4%). These conditions have also been steadily increasing over time as shown in Figure 6. Unintentional injuries, including falls, motor vehicle collisions and unintentional poisonings are the 4th leading cause of death in Maricopa County. (Maricopa County Department of Public Health, 2012). In 2014, 19% of respiratory disease visits were due to Asthma compared to 15% in the City of Phoenix.
**FIGURE 6 NUMBER OF INPATIENT AND EMERGENCY ROOM VISITS FOR CENSUS TRACT 1133 AND 1139**
Data Source: Arizona Department of Health Services, Hospital Discharge Data, 2015
Many health conditions if properly addressed and managed through primary care and settings outside of hospitals could prevent hospital stays and emergency room visits. These conditions are known as ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) and are considered an indicator for access to primary care and quality of care in a community (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2001). Examples of ACSC conditions include, hypertension, asthma, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dehydration, urinary tract infections and congestive heart failure. Table 5 shows the ACSC rate for residents living in the EEC census tracts. When compared to the state and Maricopa County, the EEC census tracts have significantly higher rates of ACSC.
**TABLE 5 AMBULATORY CARE SENSITIVE CONDITIONS PER 1000 RESIDENTS, 2016**
| | CENSUS TRACT 1133 | CENSUS TRACT 1139 | BOTH CENSUS TRACTS 1133 & 1139 | MARICOPA COUNTY | ARIZONA |
|--------------------------------|-------------------|-------------------|---------------------------------|-----------------|---------|
| ACSC/1,000 residents less than 65 years old | 97.8 | 86.0 | 95.2 | 24.6 | 24.2 |
| Points Above State Average | 73.6 | 61.8 | 71.9 | 0.4 | N/A |
Source: Arizona Department of Health Services, Hospital Discharge Database
Resident and Community Findings
Resident Survey
Self-reported health among survey respondents is mixed. Respondents were more likely to report good or excellent health for children in the household, but still nearly one in five (18%) children are in fair, poor or very poor health. More than half (53%) of head of households reported having fair, poor or very poor health.
Respondents with children reported nearly universal coverage (98%) among children. Regardless of coverage status, most respondents do regularly seek medical care. Eighty-four percent of respondents reported receiving yearly medical checkups, 18% of whom reported no insurance coverage. However, less than half (47%) reported using a primary care doctor when in need of health advice. Instead, one in four (26%) respondents go to an emergency room when they need health advice (most commonly Maricopa Integrated Hospital and St. Luke’s Medical Center), 30% seek health advice from a hospital, and 12% go to an urgent care center. Overall, respondents highly rated the health care services they receive, with 50% giving a good rating and 33% an excellent rating.
Residents reported various health challenges they are currently facing. Adults were most likely to report high blood pressure and stress/anxiety. Fifty-three percent of respondents identified mental health conditions (depression and stress/anxiety) for adults, followed by cardiovascular conditions (high blood pressure and heart disease combined are 38%). Asthma was the most common health condition reported for children. Respondents identified weight problems for both adults and children. It was the third most common condition for adults and second most common condition for children.
Qualitative Interviews
The following themes emerged from the resident interviews. Most individuals interviewed had lived in their respective housing project for several years. Residents in Sidney P. Osborn project felt safe and liked that everybody watched out for the children. Residents at Frank Luke and A.L. Krohn reported feeling less safe and noted gang activity especially in Edison Park. Most interviewed used private cars for transportation, although adolescents used public transportation to go to school. Most interviewed did grocery shopping at Walmart, Food City and specialty stores. Several stated that they look for the best price and bargains. Few regularly shopped at Ranch Market and no one shopped at Baiz Market. They expressed concerns about the quality and pricing of food at Ranch Market.
Almost all residents thought there needed to be more programming especially for youth. Several residents felt that the properties were not well maintained. Specifically, in Sidney P. Osborn, the grass in the mini-park was dormant because the sprinklers were broken and had not been repaired. At both properties, residents reported that there were issues within their apartment that had not been repaired despite repeated requests.
Service Providers and Community Partner Interviews
Service providers interviewed in the community identified various challenges in serving the community. Many reported low service numbers for residents living in the public housing sites. While not all child care facilities in the area were interviewed, those that were interviewed reported low number of public housing children in attendance. Barriers identified by these providers were limited transportation for families to access services or inconsistent attendance by families in programming. While there are examples of highly engaged parents, service providers generally felt families were less engaged in their child’s school and care. Children with less engaged parents were described to be the youth that were more likely to get in trouble with school or law enforcement. Language barriers were also identified as a challenge. With a large Spanish-speaking population, service providers were limited in bilingual staff which further limited their ability to connect and serve these families. Generally, service providers felt challenged in outreach, engaging and serving families living in the public housing sites.
Residents reported receiving health care in many different places. There was a general satisfaction with their healthcare provider.
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HEALTH DETERMINANTS
The following section outlines the assessment findings, implications for health outcomes and recommendations to improve health for each of the key research questions. Additional background is provided on specific methodology used to assess each health area. Recommendations are categorized as policy, infrastructure or programming strategies. Implementing strategies from all three categories will have the greatest impact on health outcomes for the EEC.
THRIVING COMMUNITIES AND FAMILIES
Why it Matters
A resilient community describes both the resilience of the individuals making up the community and the resilience of the community as a whole. Individual resilience is composed of three components: (1) biological adaptability to stress; (2) attachment, or capacity to form meaningful, caring relationships; and (3) sense of control, or ability to make sense of and/or manipulate one’s environment. A community is defined by a sense of place, shared common perspectives or interests, diversity in relationships and roles, sense of togetherness, and joint action and engagement (Hughes, 2003).
Central to resilience and community is social cohesion. In the broadest sense, social cohesion is the “glue” that holds communities together and enables them to build bridges to others. In 1995, the U.N. World Summit on Social Development defined a socially cohesive society as one in which all groups have a sense of belonging, participation, inclusion, recognition and legitimacy (Chinchilla, 2016). Research suggests that individuals who feel a sense of security, belonging and trust in their community have better health. Conversely, those that feel isolated and not connected are less likely to engage in health-promoting behaviors. Building a community of choice where everyone has the means and opportunity to make choices that lead to their healthiest life greatly relies on the social cohesion and resilience in the community. Strong, meaningful social support — from a partner, friends, or family — leads to healthier, more resilient individuals and communities. These social resources can provide emotional support in difficult times, a ride to work when the family car breaks down, or shared health-promoting information amongst neighbors. Access to social support is associated with protective health effects including improved mental health outcomes, reduced stress, better cardiovascular health, better immune system functioning and more (Berkman & Kawachi, 2000). Children living in thriving neighborhoods with strong social connections, community involvement and supportive family structures are more likely to have upward mobility or improved economic opportunity between generations (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, Saez, & Turner, 2014). Improved economic opportunity is correlated with improved health outcomes (Katikireddi, 2016). Thus, the interdependence of each other in a community cannot be taken lightly. When some residents do not have the opportunity, or means to live healthfully, this affects the entire community. Providing opportunities for all existing and new residents in EEC to forge relationships, foster social support and deepen connections is important for all ages and at all stages of the redevelopment process.
Fostering social cohesion in a diverse, mixed income community can happen in variety of ways from resident leadership opportunities to property management practices and from access to public gathering spaces to opportunities for youth engagement (Chinchilla, 2016). A thriving community has strong social cohesion, strong family support, strong programs for children and opportunities for all including vulnerable populations.
**Methodology**
Although thriving communities can be difficult to measure, relevant research has validated proxy measures for social cohesion including community trust and civic engagement. To measure the level of trust and relationships in the community we included seven questions in the resident survey. Residents were asked to rate their level of agreement with each statement listed in Table 6.
Civic engagement was measured by voter turnout for the 2016 presidential election. The target area falls between two precincts that go beyond the EEC boundaries. The residents north of Van Buren Street, including those that live in A.L. Krohn and Frank Luke, are located in the Edison precinct and the residents south of Van Buren Street, including those that live in Sidney P. Osborn, are located in the Monroe precinct. For benchmarking, the county and state level data were included. State level data was obtained from the Arizona Secretary of State. The precinct and county data were provided by Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. We also interviewed residents and made observations about community leadership roles for residents that can be an opportunity for local engagement.
Family and youth engagement were also assessed as a component of thriving, resilient community, particularly focusing on early childhood development. Early childhood marks a time of peak plasticity in the brain, and early adversity can weaken the foundation upon which future learning will be built; in other words, positive developmental experiences in early life are crucial. (Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2010). Existing data points were limited to help assess the strength of families and early childhood experiences. We used qualitative resident interviews, community workshops and interviewed key service organizations in or near the community that provide services for families with children. Key organizations that were interviewed included Edison School, Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Phoenix – Gabel Branch on 15th Street and McDowell Road, Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center, City of Phoenix Police Department and First Things First.
Existing Conditions
Community Connection and Trust
Based on resident survey results, most residents reported that they had no or only a few family or friends that live in the community. Over half of residents felt people generally get along with each other and help each other out, but fewer residents felt people could be trusted or shared the same values. Table 6 shows that while connections exist in the community, they are often surface level connections. This was reinforced while completing resident interviews. Two interviews with long-term residents that lived in the A.L. Krohn and Frank Luke community for over 27 years reported that they did not know their neighbors. Resident interviews and the RLC also indicated that Sidney P. Osborn and Frank Luke residents rarely interact. This is due in part by the physical barrier of Van Buren Street. Overall, there are minimal deep connections and friendships among residents living in the public housing sites.
| TABLE 6 NEIGHBORHOOD RELATIONSHIPS | STRONGLY AGREE/AGREE | DISAGREE/STRONGLY DISAGREE |
|------------------------------------|----------------------|----------------------------|
| People generally get along with each other | 63% | 23% |
| People help each other out | 58% | 23% |
| We watch out for each other’s children | 55% | 26% |
| There are people I can count on | 50% | 33% |
| People can be trusted | 36% | 44% |
| People share the same values | 27% | 42% |
| There are people who might be a bad influence on my children | 52% | 22% |
Source: Resident Survey
Van Buren is a significant barrier in the EEC. It effectively divides the community into two neighborhoods, one south of Van Buren and one north of Van Buren. Sidney P. Osborn, located south of Van Buren, is surrounded by more industrial land use and somewhat isolated from community assets, such as parks, grocery store, hospital, neighborhood school and the community center at Aeroterra. Even the children living on either side of Van Buren attend different schools. Children that live in the Sidney P. Osborn community live in the Garfield Elementary School catchment area and are bused to the school at Roosevelt Street and 13th Street. Children living at A.L. Krohn, Frank Luke and Aeroterra attend Edison School that is walking distance from the housing sites.
Additionally, the current uses of Van Buren Street are not consistent with the type of neighborhood residents want to cultivate. Originally a major U.S. highway, Van Buren Street was home to numerous motels and motor courts. Some of that lodging still exists today mostly to the east of the EEC. The Reinvent PHX HIA for the Gateway and Edison District reported that many of the remaining motels are now home to registered sex offenders, prostitution and other criminal activities. While, there are no motels in the EEC area, residents have expressed worry about their children being exposed to the adult entertainment business along Van Buren Street. In the EEC, most businesses located on Van Buren Street are convenience stores that are licensed for off-site liquor sales, used car lots, automotive repair, and fast food outlets. There is one adult
entertainment business on the west side of Van Buren Street and 16th Street that residents talk about with concern.
Through observation and resident interviews, it became clear there is a different sense of community on either side of Van Buren. Sidney P. Osborn is physically isolated from the assets north of Van Buren and residents of Sidney P. Osborn are reluctant to participate in activities north of Van Buren citing safety as a major concern. An interview with the neighborhood officer indicated that there is still gang activity in the A.L. Krohn and Frank Luke housing sites that is not at the Sidney P. Osborn site. Residents living in A.L. Krohn and Frank Luke report fear of retribution when reporting incidents to the police. Some residents felt they needed to share their contact information with the police which would lead the police to contact them or identify them in the neighborhood by knocking on their door.
Despite Sidney P. Osborn lacking assets and resources, residents reported neighbors helped watch out for neighborhood kids, neighbors kept “people who do not belong onsite” out of the community, and neighbors helped give rides and provide transportation at times for each other.
**Civic Engagement**
Looking at civic engagement metrics, Table 7 shows that the precincts that include the EEC target area are less likely to turnout to vote when compared to Maricopa County or Arizona. Although still below the county and state, the precinct that Sidney P. Osborn is located in, Monroe precinct, has a higher voter turnout rate than the precinct that includes A.L. Krohn and Frank Luke housing sites.
Furthermore, resident leadership opportunities are limited in the community. There are resident councils at each housing site. However, the meetings are led by the property manager for the purpose of presenting new rules and policies for the tenants. There is one newly formed resident leadership opportunity that was created through the Choice Neighborhood planning grant which is the resident leadership training program and RLC facilitated by Phoenix Revitalization Corporation. There are four churches located within the boundaries, however, these religious institutions seem to serve members outside of the community and lack a strong presence with residents living in the public housing sites.
**Family Support, Youth and Early Childhood**
The EEC is a young community with 50% of the residents under 18 compared to 28% citywide. Of those under 18, 30% are under the age of five. In both neighborhoods, residents report the need for family support and family-driven services. Resident interviews repeatedly expressed concern about parent engagement and unsupervised children in the neighborhood. While parenting programs and other classes are offered onsite, community service providers identified challenges in the community due to poor attendance or low participation rates. The resident survey confirmed low attendance with 91% of residents surveyed reported never using parenting skills classes offered. To meet child care needs, most residents surveyed that had children five and younger reported using informal childcare settings where children are cared for by a family member/friend, a nanny/sitter, or parent in a home setting. Respondents indicated that 41% of young children were enrolled in an early childhood program such as Head Start/Early Head Start, another child care center, pre-K and Kindergarten.
---
**TABLE 7 VOTER TURNOUT 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION**
| GEOGRAPHICAL AREA | VOTER TURNOUT (%) |
|-------------------|-------------------|
| Edison Precinct | 55.11 |
| Monroe Precinct | 62.61 |
| Maricopa County | 74.43 |
| Arizona | 74.17 |
*Source: Maricopa County Recorder’s Office and Arizona Secretary of State*
For school age children, residents report lack of afterschool opportunities, particularly for middle to high school youth. The resident survey indicates that most school-age children go home (68%) after school. Phoenix Elementary School District operates a before and after school program called Phoenix Elementary Enrichment Resources (PEER) Club at each of its schools. The PEER Club is free and operates from 6:30/7:00am to 6:00pm five days a week and is also open during school breaks. Participation by students is low as only 5% said that their children go to PEER Club after school. There is also very low participation (1%) with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Phoenix. The nearest location — Gabel Branch — is located just north of the EEC community on the other side of I-10. When asked for the reason why children do not participate in out-of-school time programs, survey respondents cited cost (29%) and lack of knowledge of available programs (28%) as the most common reasons. Interviews with residents also shared concern for quality of after school programming. Some reported activities did not engage the older school age children. Interviews with the principal in Edison shared similar sentiments that there are no programs that engage the 10-12 year olds and teenagers in the community. This is often the age that residents reported youth getting in trouble with neighbors and police.
While there are challenges to overcome, there is hope among residents for future change in the community that will make a difference for residents. When asked how the community will change in the next five years, a third felt it would get worse and nearly half of the residents surveyed felt it would get better. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed indicated a desire to return to the community after the redevelopment and only 9% did not want to return. The remainder didn’t know or wanted more information to make the decision.
**Evaluating Health Impact**
Fostering a resilient community that is connected, trusting and engaged can improve the health and wellbeing of the community through all phases of the development. There are various challenges that might hinder individual and community resilience throughout the EEC’s redevelopment process. First, the resident population is very diverse, with people of varying ages, household structures, languages and cultures and levels of ability. The redevelopment will add another level of diversity among income levels which can further challenge the social cohesion of the community. In addition, the relocation and replacement of housing communities may disrupt existing social ties among residents as they move into a new, larger mixed income housing. This may make it more challenging at first to reach out and forge new connections among residents. Furthermore, Van Buren is a clear divider in the community. This was found to be consistent with the Reinvent PHX findings and, if not fully addressed, will prohibit community-wide social cohesion.
Given the large population of young children in the community, particular attention needs to be made to support families with young infants and children. Children in low-income families often are exposed to more adverse early childhood experiences and environmental factors that delay or compromise their development and place them at a disadvantage for healthy growth and school readiness (Shonokoff & Garner, 2012). In addition, low-income families are less likely to enroll children in center-based child care. A study in 2010 found that less than half of children in families in the lowest income quartile were enrolled in center-based early childhood education programs (Duncan,
Research shows that every $1 invested in early childhood can yield returns between $4 and $16 (First Things First, 2016). Benefits are realized for young children, families and communities. Young children with positive rich learning environments are more likely to graduate high school and have better health outcomes. Mothers are more likely to gain employment and income. Communities are less likely to experience crime or child abuse and neglect, and schools save from less remedial education (Reynolds, Temple, & Ou, 2010). This makes investing early in life a key opportunity to promote the health of the EEC.
Further opportunities to promote health include minimizing uncontrollable stressors, increasing opportunities for diverse connections among residents of varying ages, levels of ability and diverse cultures, increasing leadership opportunities for residents and improving family support and youth opportunities. These have the potential to strengthen community resilience and social cohesion for the redeveloped EEC, both of which are integral to positive physical and mental health outcomes.
**Recommendations**
The following recommendations are intended to improve the resiliency and social capital of individuals and the community. There are recommendations for policy adoption, infrastructure development and programming support. For best results, policy, infrastructure and programming recommendations should be adopted to maximize the health impact.
**Policy**
- **Adopt management policies and practices that prioritize inclusive resident leadership and utilize resident assets.**
The City should work with the RLC to form one single Resident Council/Tenant Association for each housing site including establishing an incentive for participation in the association. Creating a single organization across tenure can help eliminate power dynamics between market rate and subsidized renters in the community. It will promote collaborative decision making and set shared housing values. The association should be involved in rule making, addressing building management conflicts and programming offered in the community.
Explore ways to employ residents in maintenance and management of the building. This may include offering landscaping/maintenance services, providing onsite programming for youth, or serving as a community health worker.
Allow community spaces to be utilized when staff is not onsite to increase access to resources. Vetted resident(s) can be responsible for opening and closing community spaces with very clear accountability guidelines for this role.
**Rationale:** Creating a resident-driven process will offer community ownership and increase engagement in the community. In addition, these associations will offer opportunities for diverse residents to interact and build connections to one another. Creating leadership roles in the community will also help individual self-efficacy increase which further promotes social cohesion.
Infrastructure
• Create a community of opportunity by prioritizing healthy child development from birth through college entry through infrastructure development and high quality services for both adults and children.
Dedicate appropriate space in the housing redevelopment to offer onsite child care and youth programming. Work with community partners to offer sustainable programming onsite in the space dedicated for children. These programs should provide services to all children living in the community, regardless of income.
Explore how to meet standards to offer in-home family child care regulated by Arizona Department of Economic Security – Child Care Administration, and include these design elements in the housing plan.
**Rationale:** Providing onsite care will improve the opportunity for participation. To promote a cohesive community, all children in the community should be able to participate in the program to further social cohesion across incomes and race. For example, the childcare program may offer Quality First scholarships or Head Start spaces for low-income families while other families may pay full rate for services. Children and families are treated the same and offered the same programming regardless of income or race.
Given many families in the community currently use family, friends or neighbors for care, it is important to improve the quality of these services. Creating units that can serve as regulated family child care homes can support quality improvement of these homes as well as offer employment opportunity for residents living in the unit.
• Ensure equitable distribution of community infrastructure, facilities and programming on both the north and south side of Van Buren Street.
All sites should have onsite community centers that offer computer access and community rooms that can be used by residents and other programming as identified by residents.
Expand the parks and public gathering spaces throughout the community to foster community connections among housing residents. Design the spaces with amenities that best suit the housing units. For example, one to two bedroom units will attract singles, young adults and couples without children, whereas three to five bedrooms will likely house families and adults with children. Particular attention should be given to the Sidney P. Osborn neighborhood where park space is limited and not well maintained. If Sidney P. Osborn is the last housing site to be redeveloped, there should be effort to bring the existing mini-park back to life by fixing irrigation, installing sod, adding soccer fencing to the soccer goal posts for the current families living onsite.
**Rationale:** Creating shared public gathering spaces on site will foster cohesion within each housing site. Van Buren Street is a historical divider in the community and will take time to develop community cohesion across the divider. Fostering social cohesion within the housing sites may improve the ability to create long-term community cohesion.
Program
- Partner with community organizations and allocate resources to provide ongoing trainings and programming on facilitation, mediation, restorative justice and leadership development to all residents to support community participation and engagement.
(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)
**Rationale:** Strengthening residents’ community building and community organizing skills will foster greater social cohesion among residents and help shape more effective neighborhood groups/tenant associations. Simply creating mechanisms for inclusive participation does not ensure their success, and it is important to explicitly take into account social difference and unequal access by guaranteeing representation of marginalized social groups (Young, 2000).
- **Support both formal and informal family support programming to strengthen caregiver/parenting skills and families.**
Offer family-driven support programs such as Cruciendo Unidos, Facts of Life, Home Visitation, Parent Ambassador Program and others. Work with resident leaders and tenant councils to determine type of programming and aid in the outreach and participation of the programs.
Enhance the quality of child care services using Family, Friend and Neighbor programs, such as Kith and Kin.
Encourage the development of mothers’ clubs and sports leagues led by residents with support from the City of Phoenix and/or community-based organization.
**Rationale:** Facilitating opportunities for parents/caregivers to interact with one another will help families build social connection, build support systems with each other and strengthen parenting skills to better support outcomes for children living in the community.
ACCESS TO HEALTHY AFFORDABLE FOOD
Why it Matters
Good nutrition is vital to good health, preventing disease and healthy development of young children and adolescents. Evidence shows that nutritious diets and regular physical activity plays an important role in preventing obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, which together comprise the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S. (CDC, 2017). Changing dietary and lifestyle patterns can dramatically improve population health. Specifically diets that include a variety of vegetables, whole fruits, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat dairy and/or fortified soy beverages, a variety of protein foods, oils, and limits saturated and trans fats, added sugars and sodium (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture, December 2015).
While nutrition is about what we eat, our eating choices are influenced by our environment, where we live, work, play and learn. The location of all food outlets, from supermarkets to convenience stores, farmers’ markets to fast food restaurants, can profoundly affect a community’s collective health. Often income levels of neighborhoods can predict the availability of healthy food in a community. Minority or low-income families are more likely to live in communities with limited or no access to healthy, affordable food, often called low access communities (Rhone, Ploeg, Dicken, Williams, & Breneman, 2017). The lack of conveniently accessible, healthy and affordable retail food outlets, coupled with low family income and high transportation cost, can exert substantial influence over what a family eats. While the EEC does not meet the technical definition of a food desert, the district does face serious barriers to accessing healthy and affordable food.
By improving the food environment of the EEC, the health of its current and future residents can be largely improved.
Methodology
To assess the healthfulness of the food retail outlets, an evidence-based short-form corner store audit tool (SCAT) was completed on 11 food outlets (DeWeese, 2016). Based on type and quantity of food items available and participation in WIC, each retail outlet was rated on a 1 to 7 scale where 7 is the healthiest retail outlet. The scores were further grouped into categories: good (5-7), fair (3-4), and poor (0-2) to describe the healthfulness at each food outlet. (Appendix B)
Geographical information system (GIS) was used to visualize the food outlets in the community and calculate walking distance to food outlets that received a good SCAT score.
We also reviewed the Reinvent PHX HIA that assessed and made recommendations about the food environment.
Existing Conditions
Food Retail
The EEC has 11 food retail outlets, largely composed of convenience stores. There is one supermarket or large-scale grocery store, Ranch Market, located at 16th Street and Roosevelt. Baiz is a small-scale grocery store located on 20th Street between Van Buren and Roosevelt Streets. Both Ranch Market and Baiz are ethnic grocery stores specializing in Hispanic and Middle Eastern foods, respectively. The nine other food retail outlets are convenience stores.
We analyzed the healthfulness of the food retail outlets using the SCAT form found in Appendix B. Only three of the 11 food retail outlets, Ranch, Baiz and Patty’s Market received good scores. The least healthful outlets were the convenience stores that tended to have less variety of fresh produce. It was also noted the convenience stores were all off-premise liquor stores with liquor advertisements displayed.
**FIGURE 9 FOOD RETAIL ASSESSMENT**
*Map Source Elements: Esri World Imagery, QGIS and QGIS community*
The resident survey indicates that only 42% of residents have access to their own vehicle. As such, many residents report walking, using public transportation, or getting a ride from someone to access resources, such as grocery stores. With 45% of residents reporting that walking is often used as their mode of transportation, we analyzed walking distance to the food outlets with a good SCAT score in the neighborhood. Analysis from the National Household Travel Survey indicates that most people who walk for food or meals tend to walk shorter distances than if walking for recreation purposes (Yang & Diez-Roux, 2012). With the added challenge of summertime heat, we used a five-minute walk as our standard and found that only 15% of the residents live within a five-minute walk of Ranch Market, 37% live within a five-minute walk of Baiz Market and 31% live within a five-minute walk to Patty’s Food Mart. Sidney P. Osborn residents have the least access to healthy food retail outlets in walking distance.
**FIGURE 10 RANCH AND BAIZ WALKING MAP**
*Map Source Elements: Esri World Imagery, QGIS and QGIS community*
Food Shopping Experience
Residents are not satisfied with the food retail outlets in their neighborhood. Residents voiced the need for another large-scale grocery store through the community workshops, surveys, RLC, and resident interviews. Seventy-two percent of residents surveyed rated access to grocery stores as good or excellent, however, this is also the number one business (54.1%) they’d like to see more of in the neighborhood. The employee survey revealed similar findings with 55.6% of employees working in the neighborhood indicating that grocery stores are the business they’d like most to see more of in the community. The resident survey revealed that Ranch Market is used frequently, but residents also travel to Walmart located over four miles away to grocery shop to obtain “lower prices and better quality.” The RLC and resident interviews shared concerns about pricing and the quality of food, particularly the meat and produce section at Ranch Market. No one interviewed shopped at Baiz Market. Resident interviews revealed that, when possible, residents chose to grocery shop at the Walmart on 38th Street and Thomas Road or the Fry’s at 30th Street and Thomas Road. Convenience stores are also frequented by residents, likely due to proximity to residents, where the food options tend to be limited and less healthy.
| FOOD RETAIL OUTLET | OFTEN | SOMETIMES | NEVER |
|-----------------------------|-------|-----------|-------|
| Ranch | 58% | 37% | 6% |
| Dollar Stores | 48% | 41% | 11% |
| Walmart | 41% | 48% | 10% |
| Fry's or other grocery store| 37% | 45% | 18% |
| Convenience Stores | 36% | 40% | 24% |
| Church | 13% | 33% | 54% |
| Food Pantries | 12% | 35% | 53% |
| Costco/Sam's Club | 9% | 29% | 62% |
Source: Resident Survey
According to the resident survey, 84% received SNAP benefits and many were concerned about running out of food. Over half of the survey respondents indicated that they were often or sometimes worried that they would run out of food and that they would not have money to buy food when it ran out. Research shows that SNAP participants juggle multiple priorities when food shopping. SNAP participants value nutrition and taste as much as other consumers, but their time and money constraints complicate the task of making healthy food choices. Compared to higher income shoppers, SNAP participants place more importance on price and convenience. This is not surprising given budget constraints trying to meet rent, utilities, transportation, etc. Compared to higher income shoppers, SNAP shoppers are less likely to shop weekly and more likely to shop once a month or less. This may be related to the monthly distribution of SNAP benefits or to having a more difficult time getting to the grocery store — 14% of SNAP respondents reported that it took them more than 30 minutes to get to a grocery store, whereas eight percent of higher income shoppers needed that much travel time (Mancino & Guthrie, 2014).
When consumers shop less frequently, choosing foods that store well make a difference. These types of foods tend to have less nutritional value, leading to less healthy eating.
All food stores accept SNAP, but only Ranch Market accepts the Supplemental Assistance for Women, Infant and Children vouchers (WIC). From the standpoint of making healthy food affordable, WIC plays an important role. It provides food assistance to low-income pregnant or breastfeeding women or families with young children to purchase healthy food, such as milk and fresh fruits and vegetables. WIC has been shown to provide better health outcomes for infants, young children and their mothers, as well as improving the food environments in low-income neighborhoods (Carlson, 2017). With a higher proportion of young children ages zero to five living in EEC, WIC is an important resource for residents.
**Other Food Options**
There is one mobile vendor, Fresh Express, that brings fresh fruits and vegetables to the public housing sites. Fresh Express serves Sidney P. Osborn residents every other Tuesday from 9am to 10am and as of August 2017 serves Frank Luke and A.L. Krohn residents every other Tuesday from 1pm to 2pm. Fresh Express accepts SNAP and offers Double Up Food Bucks Arizona. Double Up Food Bucks AZ is a fruit and vegetable incentive program operated by Pinnacle Prevention and modeled from the Fair Food Network Double Up Food Bucks Program. The goal of is to make purchasing locally grown fruits and vegetables more affordable for those most in need. For every SNAP dollar spent at a Double Up Food Bucks site, like Fresh Express, participants receive a dollar for dollar match, up to $20 additional dollars per day to buy locally grown fruits and vegetables. Research shows that when Double Up is in place, SNAP recipients shop more often and eat more produce (Fair Food Network, 2016).
There are two community garden locations in the EEC. One is located on Aeroterra property and requires a key card to access it. The other is on Sidney P. Osborn where there is a small plot dedicated for residents to garden that was installed in 2012 with the Let’s Grow Phoenix Gardens Program. Today, it is not well used by residents. Resident interviews and the RLC identified a few barriers to the garden. The location of the garden made it hard to keep eyes on the space, and residents report that it was frequently vandalized possibly by the youth living in Sidney P. Osborn. One resident continues to maintain a raised bed, and there are a few fruit trees still growing. The RLC and community members attending community workshops expressed interest in community gardens to grow their own food. Sixty percent of residents indicated that community gardens are very important improvement they would like in the neighborhood and an additional 30% thought they are somewhat important.
**Evaluating Health Impact**
Although this community is not identified as limited supermarket access area, there are clear challenges to accessing healthy and affordable food to support a healthy diet. With the community’s high reliance on public transportation, walking and getting rides from others and getting to and from the grocery store is
---
**PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: FRESH EXPRESS**
Fresh Express by Discovery Triangle is a mobile produce market that provides access to high-quality, affordable produce to residents with little to no access to healthy food. We proudly serve individuals, families, school-age children, senior citizens, educators and many others in the Phoenix and Tempe regions. Our mission is to enhance the health of Valley residents by increasing access, availability, and affordability of fresh produce and providing health and wellness resources to empower community members to make healthy choices.
challenging for most residents. Most residents reported a preference for food shopping outside of the community at grocery stores that had better pricing and quality, from their perspective. In between grocery trips, residents are reliant on nearby food outlets, predominantly convenience stores with less healthy options. Improving the availability and affordability of healthy food, like fruits and vegetables, in the community’s existing food outlets will support residents adopting a healthy diet and improving health outcomes.
During community workshops, interviews and surveys, residents in the community share an interest in urban agriculture. There are residents from cultures that value farming living in the public housing sites. However, spaces to garden, farm, or host a farmers market are limited to nonexistent in the community. Creating shared spaces to maintain and grow food will not only help increase the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables, but also provide opportunities to be physically active and connect with others living in the community (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Thus, urban agriculture has the potential to improve resident’s physical and mental health. Additionally, affordability of food is a concern for most residents due to limited incomes. Nutrition assistance programs, like SNAP and WIC, can help reduce the food price point for residents. Double Up Food Bucks Arizona can help reduce the cost of locally grown fruits and vegetables sold at farmers markets. Bringing in these programs and offering programming as requested by residents can help stretch food budgets and decrease food insecurity in the community. Improving the food environment and nutrition resources in the community can support healthy learners, healthy workers and a healthy community.
**Recommendations**
The goal of these recommendations is to improve access to healthy and affordable food in the neighborhood. There are recommendations for policy adoption, infrastructure development and programming support. For best results, policy, infrastructure and programming recommendations should be adopted to maximize the health impact.
**Policy**
- **Promote Urban Agriculture through zoning.** Urban Agriculture includes community gardens, urban farms, farmers markets, community supported agriculture, and mobile produce vendors.
(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)
Identify dedicated space for farmers markets and community gardens to operate in the neighborhood, possibly at parks, on housing site or on school grounds. Activate vacant lots for urban agriculture purposes. Partner with community based organizations, such as International Rescue Committee or TigerMountain Foundation, to empower residents in establishing and maintaining a community garden. This community is located in the Salt River Project Water District which may be able to offer low cost water solutions.
**Rationale:** Zoning allows or prohibits different types of land use. Including urban agriculture as a land use option will increase access healthy affordable foods for residents. It will also create opportunities for engagement and leadership in the community.
• **Encourage the development of a Farmers Market by adopting supportive policies and practices.**
*(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)*
Streamline the vendor process and agreements to operate and manage a farmers market on public city space. This would include offering an open and rolling solicitation for individuals proposing to operate and manage a farmers market. Additionally, fees should be waived to operate in public city space, particularly in low food access designated communities or low-income census tract. Remove vendor maximum and allowable space requirements to allow markets to best meet community needs and remove requirements for the approval of City of Phoenix for any media or promotions of markets. Lastly, encourage community non-profits to participate in markets by removing non-vendor stipulations.
To reduce the price point of food sold at farmers markets, adopt a policy that requires all farmers markets to accept EBT or other nutrition assistance benefits, like WIC Farmers Market Coupons and Double Up Food Bucks AZ, as appropriate.
**Rationale:** Removing barriers and costs to operate farmers markets in low-income and low food access communities will bring more fresh fruits and vegetables to those who are in most need. Requiring markets to use tools to reduce the cost of food to low-income residents will help make healthy food more affordable.
**Infrastructure**
• **Create a small business development initiative, Healthy Corner Store Initiative, to improve access to healthy and affordable food.**
*(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)*
Partner with residents, Local First Arizona and Maricopa County Department of Public Health to develop a Healthy Corner Store Assistance initiative to improve the existing corner store marketing, availability and quality of healthy food. With the RLC form a small resident committee to work with the grocery and corner store operator to receive complaints, monitor responses and make suggestions. When possible empower vendors to become WIC certified vendors.
Rationale: Making intentional efforts to decrease the time and travel costs of food shopping and increase the feasibility of shopping more frequently to alleviate concerns about how well food keeps and encourage SNAP shoppers to purchase increased amounts of healthy perishables, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. WIC requires certain healthy foods always be stocked in WIC approved stores. This helps improve the healthy food offerings in small stores.
• **Determine the market potential for an additional full-scale grocery store as a long-term strategy to create a community of choice.**
*(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)*
**Rationale:** While this is a long-term recommendation, the expansion of this supermarket to the area is particularly important given the residential units being proposed in the area. This will increase the number of people living in the area who will need access to healthy and affordable food.
Program
- Work with community-based organizations to develop a community garden association lead by residents, including youth.
(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)
**Rationale:** To maximize the use and sustainability of a community garden, it is important for residents to learn to operate and manage the space. This is a leadership opportunity for both residents and youth living in the neighborhood which will lead to community buy-in and less vandalism. A community-based organization to help support residents and youth to formalize and develop a community garden association is critical for its success. Master gardener classes, offered through the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, can help train a core group of residents and youth on how to plant, grow and maintain the garden.
- Partner with residents to determine specific food preparation, food storage, and other nutrition education classes to offer at each housing site. Allow residents to lead classes when appropriate and bring partner organizations onsite to offer free classes to all residents.
**Rationale:** Learning how to store, prepare and how to get and use food benefit programs such as SNAP, WIC and Double Up Food Bucks Arizona to help make ends meet may result in an increase in healthy food purchasing. Residents should be involved in identifying the type of programs that will meet their needs and be able to facilitate classes when appropriate. A potential partner organization is the Arizona Health Zone, operated by the Arizona Department of Health Services and its contractors. This program provides free nutrition education and support to SNAP-eligible adults and children.
- Work with the local Walmart (36th Street & Thomas Road), Fry’s (30th Street & Thomas Road) and Ranch Market (16th Street & Roosevelt Street) to introduce free shuttle buses for residents of EEC.
**Rationale:** Residents are limited in accessing supermarkets due to distance and lack of car ownership. This shuttle service can be modeled on free shuttle services offered in underserved communities by local Walmarts in Michigan or the shuttle service study by University California Davis (Cassady & Mohan, 2004). Shuttle services may remove transportation barriers that prevent residents from shopping at locations that offer healthy food options. This is a short-term solution to offer while efforts are being made to develop and support a healthier community food environment.
---
**COMMUNITY SUCCESS SPOTLIGHT: GARFIELD’S GARDEN ON THE CORNER**
Garfield’s Garden on the Corner is a healthy hub within the city of Phoenix, Arizona. Located on the Garfield Elementary School campus, Garfield’s Garden on the Corner integrates edible education across core middle school subjects during the school day and opens to the community after school hours. Students learn essential life skills through highly engaging project-based activities. Learning is brought to life in the garden through hands-on scientific investigations such as growing, tending, and harvesting seasonal produce while deepening students’ understanding of the world around them. In the kitchen, relevant and animated historic tales are told while consistent peer-to-peer engagement is experienced through shared meals. Through the garden and kitchen lessons, Garfield’s Garden on the Corner empowers students to develop a healthy connection to food, themselves, and others.
Garfield’s Garden on the Corner is open to Garfield Elementary School students, surrounding schools, parents, and neighborhood residents after school hours. Community activities such as tending the garden, harvesting produce, sharing a meal, listening to a story, practicing yoga, painting a mural, and celebrating special occasions empower the Garfield neighborhood with essential and culturally appropriate skills of self-sufficiency to transform their current behaviors to healthier, life-long habits. Community days aim to remove barriers of access and affordability to fresh, nutrient-dense food. By teaching practical life skills and encouraging others to do the same, Garfield’s Garden on the Corner promotes mentorship and a true sense of collaboration.
Directed by the Mollen Foundation in partnership with Phoenix Elementary District, this shared use space includes gardens and fruit trees, a learning kitchen, regional and nutrition integrated food education, fitness activities, volunteer opportunities, art murals and special events always coupled with an appreciation for good food.
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
Why it Matters
Where we live matters to our health in part due to the physical environment. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land and buildings around us impact and influence our ability to live a healthy life (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017).
Urban Heat Island
Extreme heat is considered a public health threat and while it can impact anyone, specific groups are more vulnerable to heat than others. Older adults, infants and children, low-income communities, people with chronic disease, and people working or being active outdoors for work or sports are more likely to be impacted by extreme heat than other groups (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017).
In more populated urban environments, where natural environments are replaced with roads and buildings, heat islands — or areas that are hotter than nearby rural areas — form (Environmental Protection Agency, 2008). The surfaces of buildings and pavements that replace natural vegetation absorb solar radiation and become extremely hot, which in turn warm the surrounding air. Cities that have been “paved over” do not receive the benefit of the natural cooling effect of vegetation (Akbari, 2005). On a hot, sunny summer day, the sun can heat dry, exposed urban surfaces, like roofs and pavement, to temperatures 50 to 90°F (27 to 50°C) hotter than the air, while shaded or moist surfaces remain close to air temperatures (Environmental Protection Agency, 2008). Heat islands can increase energy demand particularly during summertime peaks increasing air conditioning costs, contributing to poor air quality and greenhouse gas emissions, water quality and heat-related illness and mortality.
Outdoor Air Quality
Outdoor air quality contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular health. Asthma and other respiratory diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are affected by outdoor air pollutants. Air pollutants can contribute to the development of childhood asthma and other respiratory symptoms, such as difficulty breathing and asthma attacks (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). Research shows that air pollution can trigger heart attacks, stroke, and irregular heart rhythms — especially in people who are already at risk for these conditions. This includes men over the age of 45, women over the age of 55, anyone with family history of heart disease, anyone overweight or not physically active and all cigarette smokers (Environmental Protection Agency, 2016).
The EPA identifies two key outdoor air pollutants, ozone and particulate matter, that can affect asthma. Ozone, found in smog, tends to be worse on hot days in the afternoon and evening. Particulate matter found in haze, dust and smoke can be bad any time of year, but particularly on calm weather days. Small particulate matter is also the key pollutant that is the greatest concern for cardiovascular health (Environmental Protection Agency, 2017). Traffic is also a major source of both pollutants, as well as other known health hazards such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. Exposure to traffic-related pollution is linked to asthma and other respiratory symptoms, development of childhood asthma, cardiovascular disease and death (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 2007).
Vacant Lots
Vacant lots, unoccupied housing and substandard housing are correlated with lower pre-kindergarten literacy, stunted physical development in children, poor mental health status, loss of social networks, less healthy behavior like exercise habits, and more chronic disease. It contributes to the feelings of being unsafe in a neighborhood, real and perceived, which also contributes to disinvestment in neighborhoods. Furthermore, some researchers attribute the breakdown in social capital to vacant lots and abandoned buildings. This results in a less organized and engaged community that is willing to step in to help each other or prevent crime. Vacant lots are also associated with increased community stress that negatively impacts health (De Leon & Schilling, 2017).
Water Quality
Water quality is critical for public health. Poor water quality can lead to disease outbreak and adverse health effects, including gastrointestinal illness, reproductive problems and neurological disorders. Infants, young children, pregnant women, the elderly and people whose immune systems are compromised because of AIDS, chemotherapy or transplant medications, may be especially susceptible to illness from some contaminants (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017).
Methodology
Urban Heat Island
Heat experts at Arizona State University provided three data sources to assess the urban heat island impact in the EEC:
- **Air temperature records**: Maricopa County Air Quality Department (MCAQD) maintains an air quality monitoring site, Central Phoenix station, within the community boundaries that also records meteorological data. Standard meteorological temperatures are available dating back to 2006. We used a ten-year monthly average temperature to compare with other nearby MCAQD monitors in the area to assess heat.
- **Surface temperature data**: Satellite images at the scale of 100-meters and finer are available from NASA spanning 30 years of observations. Arizona State University collected approximately 100 recent images at 100-meter scale from which comparison of surface temperature across the community can be made.
- **Vegetation data**: The satellite images from NASA can also be used to calculate an index of greenness called Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). This quantifies vegetation by measuring the difference between near-infrared (which vegetation strongly reflects) and red light (which vegetation absorbs). Arizona State University provided maps of the NDVI for the neighborhood and nearby communities for analysis.
We also reviewed the Reinvent PHX HIA that addressed urban heat island in the area.
Outdoor Air Quality
MCAQD maintains an air quality monitoring station in the EEC. Particulate Matter 10 (PM 10) is monitored at this station but not Particulate Matter 2.5. Using PM 10 measurements, we examined the number of days the EPA’s Air Quality Index (AQI) would have designated the air days as “moderate,” “unhealthy for sensitive groups” and “unhealthy” over a three-year time between 2013-2015. The EPA’s AQI was designed to help people understand how local air can impact health. The AQI is divided into six categories from good to hazardous and the thresholds for each category differ based on the pollutant. For PM 10, an AQI of 100 or “unhealthy for sensitive groups” is equivalent to 150 micrograms per cubic meter (Environmental Protection Agency, 2014). A literature review was used to assess traffic-related air pollution.
Water Quality
To assess the impact of the Motorola Street Superfund (M52) Site, an environmental expert reviewed the Environmental reports, the Community Information Group Webinar Meeting by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on October 26, 2016 and the Environmental Phase 1 reports completed by the City of Phoenix recently.
Vacant Lots
City of Phoenix provided data and maps on vacant lots and land ownership for our analysis. Resident feedback and literature were used to assess the health impact of vacant lots.
Assessment
Urban Heat Island
In Phoenix where ambient temperature can be as high as 120°F with a relative humidity of less than 20%, the excess of hardscape exacerbates the urban heat island effect. The nighttime temperature can stay above 90°F (Balling & Brazel, 1987). Central Phoenix Station records the hottest average monthly temperature for all months except August when it becomes the second hottest station. Temperatures at Central Phoenix range from about 2°F higher than the regional average during the peak of the summer to more than 3.5°F higher than the regional average in the winter months. See Table 9 for more information.
Reinvent PHX did a temperature analysis on February 15, 2013 in five locations. Three sites have little or no shade: 20th Street between Roosevelt and Van Buren Streets, and Roosevelt Street between 16th and 18th Streets. The remaining two sites were at Edison Park, one under a tree and the other in an unshaded area of a grassy sports field. At the hottest times of the day, the shade at Edison Park reduced temperatures by as much as 28°F when compared to unshaded sidewalks along busy streets. Even the unshaded grass at Edison Park was enough to reduce temperatures by as much as 10°F, creating a cooler environment for pedestrians and cyclists. Almost 25% of the total land acreage (74 acres) are used as paved surface parking lots, mostly attached to a business, government office, or other institutions. Research shows that paved surfaces can be a strong contributor to pavement warming and this warming has the potential to impact the urban heat island effect in those built environments that experience hot weather and are large enough to generate a heat island (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2017).
Looking at vegetation and surface temperature maps, the area around Sidney P. Osborn neighborhood has higher surface temperatures and less vegetation which can contribute to greater heat island impact. Hotter areas can also be found around Van Buren and 19th Streets, along Madison Street and 17th Street adjacent to St. Luke’s Medical Center where there is a large vacant lot. The coolest area in the neighborhood is at Edison Park that has irrigated grass and shade trees.
FIGURE 11 VEGETATION INDEX
Map Source Elements: Esri World Imagery, NASA Modis NVDI / ASU
FIGURE 12 SURFACE TEMPERATURE
Map Source Elements: Esri World Imagery, NASA GISS / ASU
Outdoor Air Quality
Based on 2013 through 2015 PM 10 data, the EPA’s Air Quality Index would have designated 38 days as “moderate,” three days as “unhealthy for sensitive groups” and one day as “unhealthy.” Compared to other areas throughout Maricopa County, the EEC neighborhood is in the middle when it comes to PM 10 levels. Areas closer to the edge of the urban area where there are more dust sources or at low elevations tend to have higher PM 10 levels.
| TABLE 10 | 2013-2015 MARICOPA COUNTY AIR QUALITY DEPARTMENT PM 10 DATA AT SELECT PHOENIX STATIONS |
|----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| | CENTRAL PHOENIX | WEST PHOENIX | NORTH PHOENIX | SOUTH PHOENIX |
| Number of observations | 1089.0 | 1092.0 | 1093.0 | 1093.0 |
| Maximum concentration | 329.2 | 255.6 | 200.3 | 294.6 |
| Minimum concentration | 4.0 | 3.7 | 2.3 | 4.5 |
| Mean concentration | 31.0 | 33.6 | 25.0 | 35.9 |
| # of days with AQI 51-100 (55-154 ug/m3) | 38 | 97 | 27 | 110 |
| # of days with AQI 101-150 (155-254 ug/m3) | 3 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| # of days with AQI 151-200 (255-354 ug/m3) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
Source: Maricopa County Air Quality Monitoring Stations
The northern and western boundary of the EEC is the I-10 freeway, the main freeway used to get in and out of Phoenix. Additionally, Van Buren Street is a major roadway that also sees heavy commuting during the morning and evening rush hour. With traffic a major contributor to hazardous air pollution, this is concerning for residents in the EEC. One study estimated that 8% of childhood asthma cases in Los Angeles County, California could be partly attributed to living close to a major road (Perez L, 2012). Living near a major road also has been associated with decreased lung function in adults with asthma (Balmes JR, 2009). Increasing the distance from the road to more than 150 meters, or approximately 500 feet, might decrease concentrations of some air pollutants by at least 50% (Karner AA, 2010).
PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: NATURE’S COOLING SYSTEMS PROJECT
The Nature Conservancy’s Nature’s Cooling Systems Project is funded by Vitalyst Health Foundation and is intended to address heat at the landscape and neighborhood level. Project partners include Maricopa County Department of Public Health, ASU’s Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network and the Central Arizona Conservation Alliance. The project approach involves integrating heat mitigation into key tools and plans for use by County planners as well as developing Heat Action Plans (HAP) in three neighborhoods. Neighborhoods were selected based on a variety of criteria to select some of the hottest and least vegetated areas where health is regularly affected by heat. HAPs involve co-designing “cool and resilient” futures with residents, modeling outcomes on thermal comfort and proposing that the HAPs are adopted into redevelopment plans, Village Plans and other City plans for heat mitigation. One of the selected neighborhoods is the Edison-Eastlake neighborhood, where the redevelopment process provides an ideal opportunity to optimize shade, wind paths, cool islands with trees and vegetation, storm water and surface and building materials for a more comfortable and livable community.
The Nature’s Cooling Systems Project intends to provide examples of variation in cooling approaches at the neighborhood scale that should be considered in city- or county-wide resilience plans. Therefore, the project strategically coincides with The Cooler Phoenix project, a cooperative effort between the City of Phoenix and researchers at Arizona State University to provide a suite of evidence based solutions for the urban heat island effect and extreme heat events. A Heat Readiness Toolkit is being developed with the overarching goal of making Phoenix cooler and more comfortable for its residents and visitors. This work will culminate in a “Cooling Plan” that defines specific goals related to heat and its impact on health, well-being and productivity for the city, residents, businesses, institutions and visitors.
Vacant Lots
Currently, approximately 21% of the total land area in the EEC is vacant and encompasses 265 parcels. A portion of this vacancy can be attributed to the overall loss of housing units, due in part to the demolition of homes located in the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport flight path in the southern portion of the neighborhood. The City of Phoenix Aviation Department is in the process of developing a plan with community partners and Federal Aviation Authority to activate the vacant lots in this neighborhood. Additionally, there is a large concentration of large vacant parcels surrounding St. Luke’s Medical Center that have been held in anticipation of possible expansion of the medical center and/or development of additional medical facilities. Of the vacant lots, 74% are owned by private landowners, 8% by the City of Phoenix Aviation Department, 6% by the City of Phoenix Transit Department, 6% by the Arizona Department of Transportation and 5% by Maricopa County.
FIGURE 13 VACANT LOTS
Edison-Eastlake Community
City Owned Housing
Aeroterra (Not vacant)
Freeway
Vacant Lot Ownership
City of Phoenix Aviation Dept.
City of Phoenix Transit Dept.
Maricopa County
Private
Map Elements Sources: Maricopa County (2017), City of Phoenix (2017). Basemap sources: Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Earthstar Geographics, CNES/Airbus DS, USDA, USGS, AeroGRID, IGN, and the GIS User Community
Water Quality
There is a known, federally managed superfund site (Motorola 52nd Street) that impacts a portion of EEC. This is a large area of contaminated groundwater extending from the former Motorola facility and other sources. Because of the size of the site, it has been divided into three areas called Operable Units (OUs) to better manage the cleanup efforts. The EEC is in the OU3 boundary.
According to information provided during the Community Information Group Webinar Meeting by the EPA on October 26, 2016, contaminated groundwater in this area is deeper than in other areas of the site. The EPA is responsible for ongoing testing to evaluate any possible vapor intrusion. Vapor intrusion occurs when there is a migration of chemical vapors from the contaminated groundwater through the soil and into buildings or homes in area (Environmental Protection Agency, 2017). The EPA stated that data collected to date indicates that vapor intrusion related to the superfund site has not been detected in OU3.
Evaluating Health Impacts
EEC is home to many residents that are vulnerable to the physical environment they live in, and therefore, an opportunity to create a healthy neighborhood by improving the environmental quality of the community.
The redevelopment has a strong opportunity to mitigate the urban heat island effect in the community, creating a more comfortable environment for residents. Addressing the urban heat island, through housing designs, vegetation and land use could also help address air quality and vacant lot challenges in the neighborhood.
Given the hospital utilization for respiratory conditions in the community, particularly among children, improving exposure to outdoor air quality can greatly impact the health of the community. The assessment suggests proximity to high traffic volume roadways, like the freeway and Van Buren are large contributors to air pollution. The planned repurposing of Van Buren to reduce traffic lanes and traffic volume on the road will contribute positively to those living near the roadway. In addition, the redevelopment of the housing sites can locate residents most vulnerable to air pollution, such as children and seniors, further away from high traffic volume roadways. This could reduce the development of respiratory and cardiac conditions as well as reduce hospitalizations due to respiratory and cardiac events triggered by air pollution.
In the Phoenix area, drinking water is provided primarily though surface water (95%) and limited groundwater (5%) (City of Phoenix, 2017). (City of Phoenix, 2017) The Motorola 52nd Street Superfund site does not appear to be a health threat to the drinking water in the community. Given the absence of data to clearly indicate a vapor intrusion, it is unclear if there is an impact on health. Therefore, there are no recommendations in regards to water quality or the superfund contamination at this time. However, it should be noted that there is an American Standards for Testing and Materials (ASTM) vapor encroachment standard (E2600-10 Standard Guide for Vapor Encroachment Screening on Property Involved in Real Estate Transactions) that is potentially applicable and useful if consulted prior to new construction or property redevelopment. This approach is believed to be consistent with City of Phoenix Phase 1 Environmental Site Assessment reports completed for properties in the EEC and will provide additional health protection for residents living in the community.
The redevelopment will potentially provide opportunity to activate vacant lots in the community. The City of Phoenix Aviation Department is looking for non-residential uses for the vacant property owned by the department. Greening and beautifying the vacant properties in the community could potentially improve mental health and stress in the community. Depending on how the lot is activated, green infrastructure could also improve the urban heat island effect and potentially address air quality as well.
**Recommendations**
The following recommendations are prioritized to address all areas of Environmental Quality. However, the top environmental challenge the recommendation seeks to address is named before each recommendation. There are recommendations for policy adoption, infrastructure development and programming support. For best results, policy, infrastructure and programming recommendations should be adopted to maximize the health impact.
**Policy**
- **Urban Heat Island:** Comply with the standards established in the Interim Transit Oriented Overlay Districts specifically as it relates to shade.
The standard states that a minimum of 75% of the sidewalk should be shaded. Prioritize shading along Van Buren and 16th Streets where residents access public transportation routes.
**Rationale:** Increased shading, through trees or shade structures, can provide cooling effects to residents moving through the community.
- **Urban Heat Island:** Adopt heat mitigation policies and strategies in the redevelopment of the urban form, including prioritizing the use of surfaces and building materials that provide cooling effects. Placement and orientation of buildings should also maximize cooling.
**Rationale:** A variety of factors, including urban form, surface cover, heat release and climatic conditions interact to create the urban heat island effect. Work with Nature’s Cooling Project to identify comprehensive strategies to best address the urban heat island effect in this neighborhood. While all strategies may not be immediately feasible during redevelopment or at the neighborhood scale, barriers to implementing comprehensive strategies should be identified and communicated to local and regional government, decision makers and to those most affected by increasing urban heat.
**Infrastructure**
- **Urban Heat Island and Air Quality:** Increase greening and improve landscaping by adding trees, sod and other vegetation throughout the community to help improve the air quality and mitigate the urban heat island effect.
Plants having low water use and low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions should be selected. Consult with the Nature’s Cooling Project and residents to identify the best placement and types of vegetation to use.
**Rationale:** It is critical to select the right vegetation to maximize shade coverage, allow heat to rise and use minimum water. Native low water-use trees with broad and dense canopies are one possibility, but trees should be selected only after consultation with heat mitigation experts working on the Natures Cooling Project. Some plants naturally emit VOCs which can contribute to poor air quality.
• **Air Quality:** Install high efficiency HVAC systems in housing units and community buildings. Advanced air filtration should be installed through air handling units for all sites.
*Rationale:* HVAC systems provide effective indoor cooling during hot summer months. HVAC systems provide better filtration of air pollutants than current evaporative coolers. Properly ventilated units will reduce constant exposure to traffic-related air pollution and poor air quality.
• **Vacant Lots:** With resident leadership, activate vacant lots for community benefits. This may include, but not limited to, urban agriculture, pop-up parks, green spaces, and art spaces.
*(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)*
Complete Phase I Environmental Site Assessment on vacant lot prior to use. At a minimum, test soil for lead and arsenic, as these two contaminants are most often seen in our urban environment.
*Rationale:* Creating spaces on vacant lots for the public to use can address the negative health impact of blight. Residents expressed interest in murals, community gardens and safe places for children to play. Given the superfund site location and other potential environmental hazards, environmental assessments should be completed prior to determining best use for the vacant lot.
Program
• **Urban Heat Island:** Continue and expand programming for residents to enhance heat coping mechanisms and learn about heat-related illness. Empower residents to share their stories of coping with heat and their visions for improving the conditions.
*Rationale:* Given the urban heat island impact in the community and the vulnerable population, it is important for residents to be aware of heat-related illness and how to stay healthy during the hot summer months. Providing residents opportunity to discuss and manage the heat in the community will increase the resilience of individuals and the community to stay healthy.
• **Urban Heat Island and Air Quality:** Provide education to residents on how to best use new energy efficient appliances and HVAC systems.
*Rationale:* In previous housing redevelopments, residents were used to keeping windows and doors open with evaporative cooling systems. This resulted in increased electric cost from increased demand on the new air conditioning units. Educating residents on how to best operate new appliances and systems will help residents keep energy costs low, reducing HVAC contribution to heat island impact and air pollutants.
• **Urban Heat Island and Vacant Lot:** Support resident leadership throughout strategies used to address environmental quality. To support green infrastructure, allow residents with landscaping experience opportunity to provide maintenance of common spaces in exchange for housing stipend or community service hours. Support resident leadership to establish community clean-up and other neighborhood beautification efforts. Provide programming support for any activation of vacant lots.
*(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)*
*Rationale:* Residents expressed interest in providing leadership, technical expertise and actual management of landscaping within the community. Using existing skills in exchange or community hours can be beneficial to both the residents and the property management. Providing opportunity for residents to lead efforts can create community ownership and decrease vandalism. It can promote community wellbeing through greening and reduction in blight. This can result in decreased cost of management of the grounds in the community.
Educating residents on how to best operate new appliances and systems will help residents keep energy costs low, reducing HVAC contribution to heat island impact and air pollutants.
SAFE, ACTIVE NEIGHBORHOODS
Why it Matters
Regular physical activity is important to both physical and mental health. It can help control weight, and reduce risk of chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some cancers. It strengthens bones and muscles which prevents falls particularly in older adults. Regular physical activity reduces the risk of depression, helps sleep and keeps learning, thinking and judgment skills sharp (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for physical activity for adults is 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week and for children and adolescents 60 minutes each day.
Environments that make it easier for people to walk or bike helps increase physical activity as well as making neighborhoods better places to live. Some of the infrastructure include the presence and quality of sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, buffers to moving traffic, traffic volume and speed, shade and street furniture (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011).
Methodology
Street Audits
In addition to previous methodology discussed, new data was collected to describe the pedestrian experience of the streets in the community. To assess the quality and safety of the street infrastructure, 11 residents conducted walking audits. Using a tool developed by Vitalyst Health Foundation (Attachment C), they focused on primary walking routes either to school, food stores or bus stops. All major arterial streets (Roosevelt, Van Buren, Washington, Jefferson, 20th and 16th Streets) and several internal streets were audited. Street audit findings were compared to Reinvent PHX recommendations to measure any change over time.
Existing Conditions
On the positive side 84% of adults surveyed reported participating in 20 minutes of moderately vigorous activities during the week.
Residents living in the EEC rely on walking and public transportation to move in and out of the community. Walking is the number one mode of transportation identified by residents, with 86% residents surveyed reporting they often or sometimes walk to get to places. School-age children in A.L. Krohn and Frank Luke walk to nearby Edison School, while children in Sidney P. Osborn take buses to various elementary schools. Adolescents in both neighborhoods take public buses to various public and charter high schools.
Residents living in the EEC rely on walking and public transportation to move in and out of the community. Surveys indicate only 58% of residents living in the EEC report have access to a personal vehicle or a ride from someone else. With most residents walking or using public transportation for their primary mode of transportation the need for multimodal access on streets within and around the neighborhood is important.
According to the resident survey, 84% of adults reported participating in 20 minutes of moderately vigorous activities during the week. Interviews with residents indicated that while residents are walking in the community, it is often for a purpose, such as getting groceries and accessing public transportation. Leisure-time physical activity, or activity done for recreation, exercise, and health is not commonly cited as the reason for walking in this community.
**Safe Streets**
**Roosevelt Street**
Roosevelt Street from 16th to 20th Streets was identified as having significant issues. During a five year period (2011-2015) 48 motor vehicle crashes were reported, including 19 with injuries. It is a busy two-lane street that some children must cross to get to Edison School located on the south side of Roosevelt and residents living in Frank Luke and A.L. Krohn housing must cross to access the grocery store. There are bike lanes and sidewalks on both sides of the street. While the sidewalks are generally in good condition there is no buffer zone between the street and sidewalk except in front of Ranch Market. Residents report inadequate lighting along the entire street and particularly near Edison Park which results in a perceived lack of safety. There is a cross walk at 18th Street. It is a 35 miles per hour speed limit but residents report that cars typically travel much faster.
There is a stop light at the intersection of 16th Street and Roosevelt but the signal light cycle is too short for individuals using strollers, walkers, or wheelchairs to cross safely.
The intersection of 20th and Roosevelt Streets has had 19 motor vehicle crashes with seven injuries. Reinvent PHX recommended installing a traffic light or a four-way stop. To date, the intersection only has stop signs controlling north and south traffic.
20th Street
20th Street is another very busy street. It is a two-lane street with parking on both sides of the street between Roosevelt and Van Buren on the west side of the street and between Roosevelt and Polk on the east side of the street. There are bike lanes in place between Roosevelt and Van Buren. The speed limit is 30 miles per hour between Van Buren and Polk and 35 miles per hour between Polk and Roosevelt, the residential area with lots of pedestrians and children. Much like Roosevelt, the speed limit is frequently exceeded and there is no traffic calming. The sidewalks between Roosevelt and Polk are wide and in good condition although there is no buffer on either side of the street. The sidewalks from Polk to Jefferson are absent, narrow and in poor repair. There is a lot of trash and weeds along the street.
McKinley Street
McKinley between 18th and 19th Streets is one route children from Frank Luke and A.L. Krohn use to walk to school. The sidewalk on the south side of the street is well maintained; however, the north side is a different matter. The sidewalk is in poor condition with uneven paving and many cracks. There are weeds and trash along the fencing. The intersection of 18th Street and McKinley is very busy certain times of the day from children going to and from school and residents entering and exiting the neighborhood for work. There is only a two-way stop on McKinley.
18th Street
18th Street south of Van Buren is a narrow street bordered by the Sidney P. Osborn project on the west and used car lots on the east. There is parking on both sides of the street which results in limited visibility when residents exit Monroe and Adams on to 18th Street.
16th Street
16th Street is a very busy arterial street that parents cross when taking their children to Head Start located at 15th Street and Adams. The street lights are at Washington and Van Buren Streets, but most parents cross the street at Adams.
Finally, street lighting is generally poor throughout the neighborhood with lights typically on one side of street only and dim. Their findings along with crash data and the status of recommendations from Reinvent PHX are summarized in Table 12.
The City of Phoenix Streets Department is in the second phase of the Van Buren improvement project that will include 16th Street to 24th Street. As described by the City of Phoenix, “The primary focus of the Van Buren Street improvements project is to build off the various initial planning efforts that have been completed thus far and the positive features that exist in the corridor. This project is aimed at improving safety and developing a stronger pedestrian and bicycle environment along Van Buren Street that is accessible to future and existing development and all modes of transportation. The improvements will add bicycle infrastructure (per Phoenix’s Bicycle Master Plan) and help create a stronger pedestrian and business-friendly environment (Complete Streets Initiative).
This project is intended to modify the existing roadway configuration to provide buffered bicycle lanes and sidewalk improvements along Van Buren Street between 7th and 24th Streets. The bike lane buffer may be substituted in some areas to allow for on-street parking. Additionally, the current pedestrian access route will be upgraded to incorporate missing sections of sidewalks and construction of accessible curb ramps to meet all Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. Landscape features will be added at certain areas of opportunity along the project. Finally, some street lighting and signal modifications will be included in this project (City of Phoenix, 2017).
**Safety and Crime**
Community safety emerged as one of the most significant issues. Resident surveys indicated that people using drugs (64%), people selling drugs (55%), shooting and violence (52%) and gangs (49%) were all big problems. Crime data from the City of Phoenix reports a violent crime rate over three times that of the City of Phoenix as a whole (20.4 per 1,000 residents vs. 6.1 per 1,000 residents) and drug offenses over twice the rate (15 per 1,000 residents vs. 5.8 per 1,000 residents). Residents living in the Frank Luke and A.L. Krohn housing describe more safety concerns, gang activity, drug use, and fear of retribution than residents at Sidney P. Osborn. Edison Park, adjacent to the Frank Luke and A.L. Krohn housing is known to residents as a public space that allows negative behavior to occur. This directly impacts the level of security and feelings of safety of those living nearby. City of Phoenix Police Department has a dedicated neighborhood officer that has been working in the community for multiple years. Safety is a top priority for this community and resident interviews revealed various levels of trust with police department and response times.
| STREET SEGMENT OR INTERSECTION | REINVENT PHX RECOMMENDATIONS AND STATUS | SAFETY CONCERN | 2011-2015 CRASH DATA | RECOMMENDATION |
|--------------------------------|----------------------------------------|----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| Roosevelt St from 16th to 20th Sts | Highly trafficked street especially in the mornings and evenings
Street lighting on north side of street
Park VERY dark after sunset | 48 Motor Vehicle Collisions (MVC)
16th St – 11
18th St – 9, 8 injuries
19th St – 3, 4 injuries
20th St – 19, 7 injuries | Add traffic calming
Increase lighting on street and in park |
| Intersection of 20th and Roosevelt Sts | Recommended traffic light or four way stop – no change | Stop signs on north/south | 19 MVC, 7 injuries | Add traffic light or 4-way stop |
| Intersection of 16th and Roosevelt Sts | North/south traffic light cycle is too short for individuals in wheel chairs to cross safely | 11 MVC, 3 injuries | Increase crossing cycle and pedestrian countdown clock |
| 20th St from Roosevelt to Van Buren Sts | Recommended bike lanes – in place
Recommended enforcing no parking zones – in place
Recommended traffic calming – no traffic calming | Busy street
From Roosevelt to Polk, sidewalks wide and in good repair
From Polk to Van Buren, narrow sidewalks, no sidewalks in some areas, lots of trash and weeds
Motorcycle club creates loud noises | 50 MVC from Roosevelt to Jefferson St
18 MVC at Van Buren and 20th St | Add traffic calming on 20th St
Add, repair and widen sidewalks from Polk to Van Buren Sts |
| 20th St from Van Buren to Washington Sts | Narrow sidewalks, none in some areas
Bushes, weeds and trash on both sides | Add, widen and repair sidewalks
Trim bushes and pick up trash |
| McKinley and 19th Sts – route to school | North side of street is a narrow street, no speed limit signs, no bike lane, no street lights. About half the sidewalk in poor repair with large cracks, gravel mixed with concrete, little shade. Broken glass and litter on south side of street
Better condition, but poor lighting
No crosswalk | Repair sidewalk on north side of McKinley
Pick up trash
Increase lighting |
| McKinley and 16th St | Recommended installing an enhanced crosswalk or HAWK – not implemented | | |
| 19th St from Villa to Van Buren Sts | Sidewalk on west side of street narrow and only wide enough for one person | | |
| 18th St from Van Buren to McKinley Sts | McKinley and 18th Sts very busy with vehicles and children walking
18th St goes through hospital parking lot making it unsafe to walk to bus stop at 18th and Van Buren Sts | Install a 4-way stop at McKinley and 18th St |
| STREET SEGMENT OR INTERSECTION | REINVENT PHX RECOMMENDATIONS AND STATUS | SAFETY CONCERN | 2011-2015 CRASH DATA | RECOMMENDATION |
|--------------------------------|----------------------------------------|----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| Van Buren from 18th to 16th Sts | | Stop light at 18th St too short to safely cross Van Buren if using a walker, stroller or wheelchair | MVC 11, 3 injuries (one pedestrian) | Increase crossing cycle and pedestrian countdown clock timing at 18th St crossing Van Buren St |
| Van Buren from 16th to 18th Sts | | Pooled water from a leak on the south side of the street | | |
| 16th and Fillmore Sts and 16th and Portland Sts | Recommended increasing crossing cycle and pedestrian countdown clock – not implemented | | | |
| 16th St between Roosevelt and Jefferson Sts | | High traffic street Poor lighting, lots of graffiti, broken glass, trash. Large plants blocking sidewalk Homeless people. Sidewalks in disrepair No buffer between street and sidewalk. Little shading. Vacant buildings and poorly maintained properties | | Widen sidewalks, buffers between sidewalk and street Trim trees and shrubs to increase visibility Brighter lighting Repair sidewalks |
| 16th St at Adams St | Recommended installing an enhanced crosswalk or HAWK – not implemented | Pedestrians cross here to get to Booker T. Washington Head Start No crosswalk or other traffic calming | | Install an enhanced crosswalk or HAWK |
| 16th St at Monroe St | Recommended installing an enhanced crosswalk or HAWK – not implemented | | | |
| 16th St and Washington | Signal is too short for pedestrians to safely cross | | | Increase crossing cycle and pedestrian countdown clock timing |
| 17th St between Washington and Van Buren Sts | | People drive carelessly, fast and do not stop for pedestrians Sidewalks on east side of street are not in good condition. There are cracks and holes. Little shade. There is an ongoing yard sale on a property between Monroe and Van Buren Sts There are no stop signs between Washington and Van Buren Sts | | Add speed limit signs Install traffic calming Clear debris from sidewalks Repair sidewalks Enforce code violations |
| Adams and Monroe between 17th and 18th Sts | | There is graffiti on south wall of property Car lots on east side of 18th St park cars on street decreasing visibility for traffic coming out of Sidney P. Osborn | MVC, Adams and 18th Sts, 2 with 3 injuries | Increase street lighting Paint mural on south wall of property Restrict parking on east side of 18th St Widen streets Add bike lanes Install traffic calming on 18th St |
Evaluating Health Impacts
Communities designed to support physical activity are often called active communities. The Guide to Community Preventive Services recommends three strategies to increase physical activity that are related to walkability — community-scale urban design, street-scale urban design, and improving access to places for physical activity, including providing maps and descriptive information (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011). Studies show more people bike and walk in communities where improvements have been made to biking and walking conveniences.
Improving the street infrastructure and safety can have a direct and indirect impact on the health of the residents in the neighborhood. Better signage and traffic control can reduce unintentional injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes. Indirectly, improving sidewalks and creating buffers between the sidewalks and street adds safety and improves the aesthetics of the community which, in turn, encourages walking. More people walking in the neighborhood offers opportunities for chance encounters, meeting neighbors and increasing social cohesion, in addition to increased physical activity levels.
The threat of real and perceived levels of violence in this community compromises residents’ comfort in the use of Edison Park for recreation, physical activity and social connectedness. It increases the risk of anxiety and depression, especially among girls (White, Bruce, Farrell, & Kliewer, 1998).
Recommendations
The following recommendations are intended to move the EEC to be an active, safe community. There are recommendations for policy adoption, infrastructure development and programming support. For best results, policy, infrastructure and programming recommendations should be adopted to maximize the health impact.
Policy
- Work together with the City of Phoenix Police Department to use Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) guidelines in the design of the properties, including the enhancements to Edison Park.
**Rationale:** CPTED is a multidisciplinary approach based on the concept that proper design and effective use of the built environment can lead to a reduction in both the incidence and fear of crime while also improving the quality of life. Strategies include landscaping, real and symbolic fencing, lighting, public art, the effect of color, parking lot design, and park design. The redevelopment of this property is an opportunity to create a built environment that provides a deterrent to criminal activity. These strategies include approaches that bring residents out of their homes, creating “eyes on the street” that interferes with criminal activity.
- Utilize the Active Design Guidelines in the neighborhood and housing redevelopment plan to incorporate multigenerational physical activity opportunities.
*(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)*
**Rationale:** The active design guidelines outline urban design strategies for creating neighborhoods, streets, and outdoor spaces that encourage walking, bicycling, and active transportation and recreation in communities for all ages.
Infrastructure
• Implement specific street recommendations outlined in Table 12. Priority should be given to Roosevelt Street, the intersection of 20th and Roosevelt Streets, 20th Street, the intersection of 18th and Van Buren Streets, and 18th Street.
(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)
Rationale: Adopting these recommendations have the potential to reduce motor vehicle crashes and unintended injuries creating a safer environment for pedestrian and bicyclists.
• Work with the City of Phoenix Department of Transportation to design open space and pathways to assure connectivity to Van Buren Street and to the light rail from housing sites.
Include trees and other shade structures in the design of sidewalks and open spaces as outlined in the Environmental Quality section.
Rationale: The Van Buren Street improvement project will create a safer, more walkable street that will allow residents better access to downtown resources. Creating safe access from the neighborhood will increase the use.
Program
• Support resident leaders to form walking clubs in housing areas.
Rationale: Residents expressed interest in walking clubs and fitness trails. There are many benefits to walking clubs. There is little to no cost involved — a pair of walking shoes. Walking with a neighbor helps the individual to stay active. Walking in pairs or groups provides some safety which is very important in this neighborhood. Finally, it is a strategy for crime prevention. When residents in a community walk more there are “eyes on the street” which inherently discourages crime and vandalism.
• Support programs and resident leadership to address the crime in the community. This includes supporting the community action program or the creation of one or more Block Watches. Also providing regular, organized recreation programs in Edison Park and enforce Edison Park hours with active police monitoring at night.
(Similar recommendation to Reinvent PHX HIA completed in 2013)
Rationale: These recommendations all address the crime issue, particularly in the Frank Luke and A.L. Krohn area. Edison Park seems to be the hub of the criminal activities. These recommendations would create more “eyes on the park.” Like “eyes on the street,” it will discourage crime and vandalism. Resident feedback indicated that it was critical to enforce park hours since much of the negative activity is later at night.
Walking clubs are a strategy for crime prevention. When residents in a community walk more there are “eyes on the street” which inherently discourages crime and vandalism.
The monitoring and evaluation phase of an HIA, seeks to evaluate whether the HIA achieved its stated goals. Evaluations not only inform the impact of the HIA but also gather lessons learned to shape future HIAs. While funding is limited in implementing a long-term outcome evaluation of this HIA, monitoring of short- and medium-term impacts and effectiveness of process are possible.
The recommendations of this HIA should be monitored to evaluate the impact of the HIA on the City’s Transformation Plan and redevelopment of the EEC. When possible changes in short, medium and long-term health impacts as outlined in the pathway diagram (Figure 1) should be included in progress monitoring. The following are questions that should be considered to evaluate the impact of the HIA:
1) Is there evidence that decision makers used health information in their final decision?
2) Were the recommendations adopted in the Transformation Plan?
3) Were the recommendations implemented in the redevelopment of the EEC?
4) Did the HIA contribute to changes that reduced health inequities and inequities in the social and environmental determinants of health.
The monitoring and evaluation should also gather information about the effectiveness of the HIA process, including how the decision making process was informed, any new capacity built among partners to consider health in future housing and mixed-income planning decisions, and any new partnerships established as a result of the HIA. Key questions to be considered to evaluate the process of this HIA are:
1) Did the HIA Advisory Committee include all relevant stakeholders? How did HIA Advisory Committee contribute to the HIA?
2) What capacity was built for future HIA work in the City of Phoenix and other organizations?
3) Is there evidence that the community has a better understanding of the health needs in the EEC? Did the HIA process built the capacity and ability of communities facing health inequities to engage in future HIAs and in decision making more generally?
4) Have new partnerships formed because of the HIA?
Akbari, H. (2005). Energy Saving Potentials and Air Quality Benefits of Urban Heat Island Mitigation. *Conference: First International Conference on Passive and Low Energy Cooling for the Built Environment, Athens, Greece, May 17-24, 2005*. Athens, Greece.
Balling, R., & Brazel, S. (1987). Time and Space Characteristics of the Phoenix Urban Heat Island. *Journal of the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science*, 75.
Balmes JR, E. G. (2009). Exposure to traffic: Lung function and health status in adults with asthma. *Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology*, 123, 626-631.
Berkman, L., & Kawachi, I. (2000). *Social Epidemiology*. New York: Oxford University Press.
Carlson, S. a. (2017, March). *WIC Works: Addressing the Nutrition and Health Needs of Low-Income Families for 40 Years*. Retrieved August 31, 2017, from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/5-4-15fa.pdf
Cassady, D., & Mohan, V. (2004, March-April). Doing Well by Doing Good? A Supermarket Shuttle Feasibility Study. *Journal of Nutrition Education and Promotion*, 36(2), 67-70.
Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University. (2010). *The Foundations of Lifelong Health Are Built in Early Childhood*. Retrieved from https://developingchild.harvard.edu/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010, June). *Community Garden*. Retrieved September 24, 2017, from Healthy Places: https://www.cdc.gov/healthylplaces/healthtopics/healthyfood/community.htm
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011). *Strategies to Prevent Obesity and Other Chronic Diseases: The CDC Guide to Strategies to Increase Physical Activity in the Community*. Atlanta: US Department of Health and Human Services.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014, November). *Public Health Issues*. Retrieved 09 27, 2017, from Air Quality: https://www.cdc.gov/air/air_health.htm
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015, June). *Physical Activity Basics*. Retrieved August 4, 2017, from https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/index.htm
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016, September). *Health Impact Assessment*. Retrieved from Healthy Places: https://www.cdc.gov/healthylplaces/hia.htm
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017). *Drinking Water*. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from Healthy Water: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/public/water_diseases.html
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017). *Healthy Food Environment*. Retrieved July 13, 2017, from https://www.cdc.gov/healthylplaces/healthtopics/healthyfood_environment.htm
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017). *Respiratory Health and Air Quality*. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from Healthy Places: https://www.cdc.gov/healthylplaces/healthtopics/airpollution.htm
Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., Saez, E., & Turner, N. (2014). Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility. *American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings*, 104(5), 141-147.
Chinchilla, M. (2016). *Social Cohesion and Community Safety in New and Redeveloped Mixed Income Housing*. Expert Group Meeting on Creating an Inclusive Society: Practical Strategies to Promote Social Intergration. San Francisco: University of Berkeley, Department of City and Regional Planning. Retrieved September 8 2017, from https://extxfer.sfdph.org/gis/HOPESF/WhitePaperSocialCohesion_Final.pdf
City of Phoenix. (2017). *Van Buren Street*. Retrieved August 15, 2017, from https://www.phoenix.gov/van-buren-street-7th-street-to-40th-street
City of Phoenix. (2017). *Water Quality*. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from Water Services: https://www.phoenix.gov/waterservices/waterquality
De Leon, E., & Schilling, J. (2017). *Urban Blight and Public Health*. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
DeWeese, R. S. (2016). Short-Form Audit Instrument for Assessing Corner Store Healthfulness. *American Journal of Health Promotion*.
Environmental Protection Agency. (2014). *Air Quality Index: A Guide to Air Quality and Your Health*. Office of Air Quality and Planning Standards, Research Triangle Park, NC.
Environmental Protection Agency. (2008). Reducing urban heat islands: Compendium of strategies. Draft. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/heat-islands/heat-island-compendium
Environmental Protection Agency. (2016, January). *Heart Disease, Stroke, and Outdoor Air Pollution*. Retrieved 09 27, 2017, from Air Now: https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=pubs.heartdisease
Environmental Protection Agency. (2017, 03 06). *Research on Health and Environmental Effects of Air Quality*. Retrieved 09 13, 2017, from Air Research: https://www.epa.gov/air-research/research-health-and-environmental-effects-air-quality
Environmental Protection Agency. (2017, September). *Vapor Intrusion*. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/vaporintrusion
Fair Food Network. (2016). *Michigan Double Up Overview*. Retrieved September 2, 2017, from https://fairfoodnetwork.org/resources/michigan-double-up-overview/
First Things First. (2016, November). *Investing in Kids*. Retrieved September 19, 2017, from Why Early Childhood Matters: https://www.firstthingsfirst.org/why-early-childhood-matters/investing-in-kids
Hughes, R. A. (2003). *Resilience: Health in a New Key*. Phoenix: Vitalyst Health Foundation.
Human Impact Partners. (2009). *Considerations for the Selection of Appropriate Policies, Plans, or Projects*. Oakland: Human Impact Partners.
Karner AA, E. D. (2010). Near-Roadway Air Quality: Synthesizing the Findings From Real-World Data. *Environmental Science and Technology*, 5334-5344.
Katikireddi, S. V. (2016, November). Economic opportunity, health behaviours, and health outcomes in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study. *The Lancet Public Health*, 1(1), e18-e25.
Mancino, L., & Guthrie, J. (2014, November). SNAP Households Must Balance Multiple Priorities To Achieve a Healthful Diet. *United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service*.
Magbool, N., Viveiros, J., & Ault, M. (2015). *The Impacts of Affordable Housing on Health: A Research Summary*. Center for Housing Policy. Washington DC: National Housing Conference. Retrieved September 2, 2017, from https://www.nhc.org/publication/the-impacts-of-affordable-housing-on-health-a-research-summary/
Maricopa County Department of Public Health. (2012). *Maricopa County Community Health Assessment*. Retrieved from http://www.arizonahealthmatters.org
National Center for Healthy Housing. (2016, March). *A Systematic Review of Health Impact Assessments on Housing Decisions and Guidance for Future Practice*. Retrieved from http://www.nchh.org/Portals/0/Contents/Guidance-for-Conducting-HIAs-on-Housing-Decisions.pdf
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2007). *Expert Panel Report 3: Guidelines for Diagnosis and Management of Asthma*. National Asthma Education and Prevention Program. Retrieved from http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/asthma/asthgdln.pdf.
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (2017, September). *Social Determinants of Health*. Retrieved from Healthypeople.gov: https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/social-determinants-of-health
Perez L, L. F. (2012). Near-Roadway Pollution and Childhood Asthma: Implications for Developing “Win-Win” Compact urban development and clean vehicle strategies. *Environmental Health Perspectives*, 1619-1626.
PEW Charitable Trusts. (2016). *Health Impact Assessment and Housing: Guidance for Housing Professionals*. Retrieved from http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2016/03/guidance-for-housing-professionals
Reynolds, A. J., Temple, J. A., & Ou, S.-R. (2010, August). Preschool Education, Educational Attainment, and Crime Prevention: Contributions of Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills. *Child and Youth Services Review*, 32(8), pp. 1054-1063.
Rhone, A., Ploeg, M. V., Dicken, C., Williams, R., & Breneman, V. (2017, January). Low-Income and Low-Supermarket-Access Census Tracts, 2010-2015,. EIB-165.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2017). *County Health Rankings and Roadmaps*. Retrieved August 31, 2017, from http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/
Shonokoff, J., & Garner, A. S. (2012, January). *The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress*. Pediatrics, 129(1).
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture. (December 2015). *2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans*. 8th Edition. Retrieved August 10, 2017, from http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2017). *Choice Neighborhoods*. Retrieved September 13, 2017, from https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/ph/cn
U.S. Department of Transportation. (2017, 07 27). *Pavement*. Retrieved 09 28, 2017, from Federal Highway Administration: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pavement/sustainability/articles/pavement_thermal.cfm
Virginia Commonwealth University. (2015, November). *Mapping Life Expectancy*. Retrieved June 5, 2017, from Center on Society and Health: http://societyhealth.vcu.edu/media/society-health/pdf/LE-Map-Phoenix-Methods.pdf
White, K. S., Bruce, S. E., Farrell, A. D., & Kliwer, W. (1998). Impact of Exposure to Community Violence on Anxiety: A Longitudinal Study of Family Social Support as a Protective Factor for Urban Children. *Journal of Child and Family Studies*, 7(2), 187-203.
World Health Organization. (1999). *Health impact assessment: Main concepts and suggested approach*. Geneva: WHO: Gothenberg consensus paper.
World Health Organization. (2005). *The Constitution of the World Health Organization* (45th ed.). Geneva: World Health Organization.
Yang, Y., & Diez-Rouz, A. V. (2012, July). Walking Distance by Trip Purpose and Population Subgroups. *American Journal of Preventive Medicine*, 11-19.
The following is a list of residents from the Resident Leadership Council (RLC) who served as the HIA advisory council. These residents gave their time, expertise and grounded the findings and recommendations in this HIA report.
**Resident Leadership Council Members:**
- Laura Felix
- Aaron Gipson
- Paula Gipson
- Geraldine Harris
- Imelda Hartley
- Francisca Labate
- Beatriz Martinez
- Lorena Mendez
- Flor Moreno
- Martha Ortiz
- Jose Perea
- Teresa Perea
- Beatriz Rivera
- Roberto Sandoval
- Emma Villanueva
From left: Jose Perea, Roberto Sandoval, Lorena Martinez, Eva Olivas (Phoenix Revitalization Corporation), Martha Ortiz, Jessica Bueno (Phoenix Revitalization Corporation), Laura Felix, Imelda Hartley, Teresa Parea, Geraldine Harris
Short-form Corner store Audit Tool (SCAT)
Rater ID _______ Store ID _______ Date _______________ Start time ____________ End time ____________
In-store version
Look for the presence of each of the following items:
1. Skim or 1% milk (unflavored)
Yes No
2. 5 or more different types of fresh fruits
Yes No
3. 5 or more different type of fresh vegetables
Yes No
4. Frozen vegetables (any type)
Without sauce, salt, or sugar
Yes No
5. Ground meat
Yes No
6. Refrigeration containing fresh fruits, vegetables, or ground meat
Yes No N/A
7. Does the store have WIC signs?
Yes No
Yes: 1 point No: 0 points
Total score _______ Scoring: 7 total points possible
Notes
1. **Milk**: Any size unflavored skim or 1% cow’s milk
2. **Fresh fruit types**: Must be a distinct fruit to count as a “type” (e.g., all apples count as 1 type, regardless of number of different varieties). *Do not* count lemons or limes.
3. **Fresh vegetable types**: Must be a distinct vegetable to count as a “type” (e.g., all onions count as 1 type, regardless of number of different varieties). *Do* count potatoes and onions.
4. **Frozen vegetables**: *Cannot* have any added ingredients such as salt, sugar, or sauces.
5. **Ground meat**: Any type, including beef, turkey, or chicken
6. **Refrigeration**: Must contain fresh fruits or vegetables, or ground meat. Do not include refrigeration for beverages only.
7. **WIC signs**: Signs on door, windows, near cash registers, and/or on shelves indicating that WIC vouchers are accepted.
Street Audit Report
Tips for Using the Street Audit Report
• Please think about your personal safety when conducting this audit, such as: don’t go alone; be alert to potential danger; and don’t go at night.
• Depending upon the weather, you may want to take some water and a hat, or use sunscreen. You may be outside for over an hour, so please take measures to keep yourself healthy.
• Pay attention to the street and your walk. You may have been on this street many times before, but look at your street again with extra attention to details.
• You may need to switch between sections or pages as you complete your street audit. Please review and be familiar with all of the sections and questions before you begin.
• We encourage you to take pictures of the street and to help us understand the condition of the street. Throughout the audit, we have included a camera icon as a reminder. Please make notes on this audit about the photos you have taken.
Section A: Street Information
My Name: ________________________________
Date (m/d/yr): ______ /______ /_______ Day of the Week: ___________________________
Street Name (example: Oak Street): _______________________________________________
Cross Streets (example: 3rd Avenue and 12th Avenue): _____________________________
Approximate Temperature: ______ °F Weather: □Clear □Partly Cloudy □Rainy
Start Time: ___ ___ : ___ ___ □AM □PM End Time: ___ ___ : ___ ___ □AM □PM
Section B: Street, Cars and Drivers
This section asks for general information about the street, its surroundings and its drivers.
As you answer questions, please keep the following definitions in mind:
**Good condition**: looks clean and maintained; for example, minimal rust or graffiti
For most of your walk, how many **lanes** are available for traffic? *Do not count the turning lane.*
________
Do you see a posted **speed limit sign**? □No □Yes
*If yes …* What is the posted **speed limit**? If there are different speeds along your walk, please list all. _______________________
What kind of **neighborhood** do you see on either side of this street? *Check all that apply.*
□Houses or apartments □Businesses □Institutions, like a school or hospital
□Industrial, for example a warehouse □Vacant land □Parks □Abandoned buildings
□Highway or Interstate road, such as I-10
Do you see any **bus or light rail stops** along your walk? □No □Yes
*If yes …* How many? ______ bus stops ______ light rail stops
What kind of **amenities** do you see at the stops? *Check all that apply.*
□Bench or other seating □Covered shelter □Trash can □Public art
Were the amenities at the bus or light rail stop in **good condition**?
□All or most in good condition □About half □None or few in good condition
Did you see anyone **waiting** for a bus or light rail train? □No □Yes
*If yes …* About how many people? ________________
Would you **feel safe** waiting for a bus or light rail train right now?
□No □Yes □I don’t know
*If no …* why? __________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
Do you see any **bike routes or lanes**? *Check all that you see.*
□None □Marked lane □Designated route sign □Share the road signs
What kind of **traffic signals or signs** do you see along your walk? *Check all that you see.*
- [ ] Stop sign
- [ ] Traffic light
- [ ] Speed bump
- [ ] Painted or marked cross walk
- [ ] Yield sign
- [ ] Other: ________________
- [ ] Other: ________________
During your walk, do you see any **drivers** doing the following:
- Not stopping for people crossing the street?
- [ ] Yes, a lot
- [ ] Yes, a little
- [ ] None at all
- Driving faster than the speed limit?
- [ ] Yes, a lot
- [ ] Yes, a little
- [ ] None at all
- Speeding up to make it through a yellow light?
- [ ] Yes, a lot
- [ ] Yes, a little
- [ ] None at all
- Other dangerous driving habits?
- [ ] Yes, a lot
- [ ] Yes, a little
- [ ] None at all
*If yes ... please describe: ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
Does the street have **street lights or lamps**?
- [ ] No
- [ ] Yes
*If yes ... How much of the street could be lit?*
- [ ] less than 25%
- [ ] 25% to 75%
- [ ] more than 75%
---
**Section C: Sidewalks**
This section asks detailed questions about sidewalks along this street. You will need to walk the entire route on both sides of the street. For example, if you are reporting on Oak Street, you will need to walk the entire route from 3rd Avenue to 12th Avenue on the north side (Side 1) of the street, and then 12th Avenue to 3rd Avenue on the south side (Side 2) of the street. *It is important to gather information about both sides of the street.*
As you answer questions, please keep the following definitions in mind:
**Good condition**: looks clean and maintained; for example, not much litter and no cracks in the sidewalk surface
**Side One**
Which side of the street are you walking on?
☐ North ☐ South ☐ East ☐ West ☐ I don’t know
Does this side of the street have a sidewalk?
☐ Yes, all or most of this side has a sidewalk
☐ About half ☐ None of this side has a sidewalk
*If no … Where do people walk?*
☐ In the grass or dirt along the street ☐ On the street
☐ Other: ________________ *If there is no sidewalk, please skip the following questions and go to Side Two.*
What is the sidewalk made of? *Check all that you see.*
☐ Concrete ☐ Asphalt ☐ Gravel ☐ Dirt
☐ Other: ___________
Is the sidewalk in good condition?
☐ Yes, all or most of this side in good condition ☐ About half ☐ None of this side is in good condition
Is there a “buffer” between the sidewalk and the street, such as a grassy or dirt patch, trees or bushes?
☐ Yes, all or most of this side has a buffer ☐ About half ☐ None of this side has a buffer
Are there major obstacles blocking the sidewalk making it difficult to use? *Check all that you see.*
☐ Trees ☐ Large plants, weeds or bushes ☐ Utility or telephone poles ☐ Large cracks, bumps or holes ☐ Other: ________________
About how wide is the sidewalk for most of your walk?
☐ Only one adult can walk on the sidewalk ☐ Two adults can walk side-by-side on the sidewalk
☐ Three adults can walk side-by-side on the sidewalk ☐ Four or more adults can walk side-by-side on the sidewalk
If the sun was directly overhead, how much of this sidewalk would be shaded?
☐ less than 25% ☐ 25 to 75% ☐ more than 75%
Side Two
Which side of the street are you walking on? ☐ North ☐ South ☐ East ☐ West ☐ I don’t know
Does this side of the street have a sidewalk? ☐ Yes, all or most of this side has a sidewalk
☐ About half ☐ None of this side has a sidewalk
If no … Where do people walk? ☐ In the grass or dirt along the street ☐ On the street
☐ Other: _______________ If there is no sidewalk, please skip the following questions and go to Section D.
What is the sidewalk made of? Check all that you see. ☐ Concrete or asphalt ☐ Gravel ☐ Dirt
☐ Other: ___________
Is the sidewalk in good condition? ☐ Yes, all or most of this side in good condition ☐ About half ☐ None of this side is in good condition
Is there a “buffer” between the sidewalk and the street, such as a grassy or dirt patch, trees or bushes? ☐ Yes, all or most of this side has a buffer ☐ About half ☐ None of this side has a buffer
Are there major obstacles blocking the sidewalk making it difficult to use? Check all that you see. ☐ Trees ☐ Large plants, weeds or bushes ☐ Utility or telephone poles ☐ Large cracks, bumps or holes ☐ Other: _______________
About how wide is the sidewalk for most of your walk?
☐ Only one adult can walk on the sidewalk ☐ Two adults can walk side-by-side on the sidewalk
☐ Three adults can walk side-by-side on the sidewalk ☐ Four or more adults can walk side-by-side on the sidewalk
If the sun was directly overhead, how much of this sidewalk would be shaded? ☐ less than 25% ☐ 25 to 75% ☐ more than 75%
Section D: Appearance and Safety
This section will ask about the safety and appearance of the street. As you answer questions, please keep the following definitions in mind:
**Good condition**: looks clean and maintained; for example, minimal rust or graffiti
Do you see any of the following **safety or appearance concerns** along your walk? *Check all that you see.*
| | I don’t see any of this. | I see a little of this. | I see a moderate amount of this. | I see a lot of this. |
|--------------------------------------|--------------------------|-------------------------|----------------------------------|---------------------|
| Poor lighting, for example, absent or limited lighting | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Graffiti | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Vandalism | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Broken glass | | | | |
| Excessive litter | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Heavy traffic | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Excessive noise, for example, noticeable sounds that are unpleasant or annoying | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Vacant buildings or lots, or undesirable uses, for example, abandoned houses or a liquor store | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Poorly maintained properties, for example, tall weeds in yard or broken windows | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Lack of eyes on the street, such as absence of people, no houses or store fronts | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| | I don’t see any of this. | I see a little of this. | I see a moderate amount of this. | I see a lot of this. |
|--------------------------|--------------------------|-------------------------|----------------------------------|---------------------|
| Evidence of threatening | | | | |
| persons or behaviors, | | | | |
| such as gangs, or alcohol| | | | |
| or drug use | | | | |
| Animal waste | | | | |
| Undesirable odors, such | | | | |
| as garbage or sewer | | | | |
| Stray or unleashed dogs | | | | |
| Other: | | | | |
| Other: | | | | |
About how many of the following things did you see during your walk:
Other people walking ____________
People biking on the sidewalk ____________
People biking on the street ____________
People biking in a bike lane ________
Benches (don’t count the ones at light rail or bus stops) ________
If there were benches, were they in good condition? □All or most in good condition □About half □None or few in good condition
Trash cans (don’t count the ones at light rail or bus stops) ________
If there were trash cans, were they overflowing with trash? □All or most overflowing □About half □None or few overflowing
Shade structures, like awnings or pergolas ________
If there were shade structures, were they in good condition? □All or most in good condition □About half □None or few in good condition
Did you feel **safe** during your walk? □No □Yes
If no … Describe why you feel unsafe.
What can be done to make this street safer for people who walk?
If you have other observations or comments about this street, please describe them.
Thank you for your help! Please check that you have filled out the entire report.
EDISON EASTLAKE COMMUNITY
CHOICE NEIGHBORHOOD INITIATIVE
HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT
LISC Phoenix
111 W MONROE
SUITE 720
PHOENIX, AZ 85003
602.256.0015
LISCPHOENIX.ORG
Vitalyst Health Foundation
2929 N CENTRAL AVE
SUITE 1550
PHOENIX, AZ 85012
602.385.6500
VITALYSTHEALTH.ORG | 6238a6bc-4d6e-4826-9752-73685756697c | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | http://livableaz.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/EEC_HIA_FINAL.pdf | 2021-03-05T10:49:40+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178370752.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20210305091526-20210305121526-00347.warc.gz | 59,821,132 | 35,381 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.911785 | eng_Latn | 0.994151 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"pol_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"hat_Latn",
"run_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"nld_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
177,
3187,
6396,
9569,
13238,
16268,
19689,
21910,
25170,
28699,
31645,
32438,
34545,
36741,
39524,
41326,
43046,
45880,
46525,
47369,
49560,
51289,
53847,
57150,
59744,
63220,
67069,
70764,
73757,
76790,
78515,
81714,
82234,
83357,
86533,
90342,
93561,
96621,
101168,
104493,
108535,
110770,
110862,
110951,
112977,
116078,
116493,
120001,
123198,
124509,
126979,
129838,
131685,
133644,
136555,
139254,
142078,
145248,
147856,
149945,
154840,
159889,
160641,
162221,
163680,
165502,
167250,
168807,
170305,
172698,
175172,
175495,
175770
] | [
1.1015625,
2.59375
] | 1 | 0 |
SolidWorks 2009 Tutorial
Introductory Level • Project Based Tutorials • Video Instruction
David C. Planchard & Marie P. Planchard, CSWP
Included in this book:
Exercises and models to prepare for the SolidWorks Certification Exam
SDC Publications
Schroff Development Corporation
www.schroff.com
Better Textbooks Lower Prices
Below are the desired outcomes and usage competencies based on the completion of Project 1.
| Desired Outcomes: | Usage Competencies: |
|-------------------|---------------------|
| • Create three parts:
o AXLE
o SHAFT-COLLAR
o FLATBAR | • Understand the SolidWorks default User Interface. Establish a SolidWorks session.
• Create 2D sketch profiles on the correct Sketch plane.
• Apply the following 3D features: Extruded Base, Extruded Cut, and Linear Pattern. |
| • Create an assembly:
o LINKAGE assembly | • Understand the Assembly toolbar.
• Insert components into an assembly.
• Insert the following Standard mates: Concentric, Coincident, and Parallel. |
Notes:
Project Objective
SolidWorks is a design software application used to model and create 2D and 3D sketches, 3D parts, assemblies, and 2D drawings. The Project objective is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the SolidWorks default User Interface and CommandManager: Menu bar toolbar, Menu bar menu, Drop-down menu, Context toolbar / menus, Flyout FeatureManager, System feedback, Confirmation Corner, Heads-up View toolbar and an understanding of Document Properties.
Obtain the working familiarity of the following SolidWorks sketch and feature tools: Line, Circle, Centerpoint Straight Slot, Smart Dimension, Extruded Base, Extruded Cut, and Linear Pattern.
Create three individual parts: AXLE, SHAFT-COLLAR, and FLATBAR.
Create an assembly using the three created parts and a downloaded sub-assembly from the CD in the book:
- LINKAGE assembly.
On the completion of this project, you will be able to:
- Start a SolidWorks session and navigate through the SolidWorks (UI) and CommandManager.
- Set units and dimensioning standards for a SolidWorks document.
- Generate a 2D sketch and identify the correct Sketch plane.
- Add and modify sketch dimensions.
- Create a 3D model.
- Understand and apply the following SolidWorks features:
- Extruded Base, Extruded Cut, and Linear Pattern
- Insert the following Geometric relations: MidPoint and Equal.
- Download an assembly into SolidWorks and create an assembly.
- Understand the Assembly toolbar.
- Apply the following Standard mates: Coincident, Concentric and Parallel.
Project Overview
SolidWorks is a 3D solid modeling CAD software package used to produce and model parts, assemblies, and drawings.
SolidWorks provides design software to create 3D models and 2D drawings.
Create three parts in this project:
- AXLE
- SHAFT-COLLAR
- FLATBAR
Download the AirCylinder assembly from the enclosed CD.
💡 The AirCylinder assembly is also available to download from the internet.
Combine the created parts and the downloaded AirCylinder assembly to create the LINKAGE assembly.
💡 Screen shots and illustrations in the book display the SolidWorks user default setup and interface for SP1.0.
AXLE Part
The AXLE is a cylindrical rod. The AXLE supports the two FLATBAR parts.
The AXLE rotates about its axis. The dimensions for the AXLE are determined from the other components in the LINKAGE assembly.
Start a new SolidWorks session. Create the AXLE part.
Use features to create parts. Features are the building blocks that add or remove material.
Utilize the Extruded Base tool from the Features toolbar. The Extruded Base feature adds material. The Base feature is the first feature of the part. The Base feature is the foundation of the part. Keep the Base feature simple!
The Base feature geometry for the AXLE is a simple extrusion. How do you create a solid Extruded Base feature for the AXLE?
- Select the Front Plane as the Sketch plane.
- Sketch a circular 2D profile on the Front Plane, centered at the Origin as illustrated.
- Apply the Extruded Base Feature. Extend the profile perpendicular (⊥) to the Front Plane.
Utilize symmetry. Extrude the sketch with the Mid Plane End Condition in Direction 1. The Extruded Base feature is centered on both sides of the Front Plane.
Start a SolidWorks session. The SolidWorks application is located in the Programs folder.
SolidWorks displays the Tip of the Day box. Read the Tip of the Day to obtain additional knowledge on SolidWorks.
Create a new part. Select File, New from the Menu bar toolbar or click New from the Menu bar menu. There are two options for new documents: Novice and Advanced. Select the Advanced option. Select the default Part document.
**Activity: Start a SolidWorks Session**
Start a SolidWorks 2009 session.
1) Click **Start** from the Windows Taskbar.
2) Click **All Programs**.
3) Click the SolidWorks 2009 folder.
4) Click the SolidWorks 2009 application. The SolidWorks program window opens. Note: Do not open a document at this time.
💡 If available, double-click the SolidWorks 2009 icon on the Windows Desktop to start a SolidWorks session.
💡 The book was written using SolidWorks Office 2003 on Windows XP Professional SP3.0 with a Windows Classic desktop theme.
Read the Tip of the Day dialog box.
5) If you do not see this screen, click the SolidWorks **Resources** tab on the right side of the Graphics window located in the Task Pane as illustrated.
Activity: Understand the SolidWorks User Interface and CommandManager
Menu bar toolbar
SolidWorks 2009 (UI) is designed to make maximum use of the Graphics window area. The default Menu bar toolbar contains a set of the most frequently used tool buttons from the Standard toolbar. The available tools are:
- **New** – Creates a new document,
- **Open** – Opens an existing document,
- **Save** – Saves an active document,
- **Print** – Prints an active document,
- **Undo** – Reverses the last action,
- **Rebuild** – Rebuilds the active part, assembly or drawing,
- **Options** – Changes system options and Add-Ins for SolidWorks.
Menu bar menu
Click SolidWorks in the Menu bar toolbar to display the Menu bar menu. SolidWorks provides a Context-sensitive menu structure. The menu titles remain the same for all three types of documents, but the menu items change depending on which type of document is active.
Example: The Insert menu includes features in part documents, mates in assembly documents, and drawing views in drawing documents. The display of the menu is also dependent on the workflow customization that you have selected. The default menu items for an active document are: File, Edit, View, Insert, Tools, Window, Help, and Pin.
💡 The Pin option displays the Menu bar toolbar and the Menu bar menu as illustrated. Throughout the book, the Menu bar menu and the Menu bar toolbar is referred to as the Menu bar.
💡 Until a file is converted to the current version of SolidWorks and saved, a warning icon is displayed on the Save tool as illustrated.
💡 Expand the drop-down menu to display additional options and tools.
Drop-down menu
SolidWorks takes advantage of the familiar Microsoft® Windows® user interface. Communicate with SolidWorks either through the Drop-down menu, Pop-up menu, Shortcut toolbar, Flyout toolbar or the CommandManager. A command is an instruction that informs SolidWorks to perform a task.
To close a SolidWorks drop-down menu, press the Esc key. You can also click any other part of the SolidWorks Graphics window, or click another drop-down menu.
Right-click Pop-up menus
Right-click in the Graphics window on a model, or in the FeatureManager on a feature or sketch to display a Context-sensitive toolbar. If you are in the middle of a command, this toolbar displays a list of options specifically related to that command.
Consolidated toolbar
Similar commands are grouped together in the CommandManager. Example: Variations of the Rectangle sketch tool are grouped in a single fly-out button as illustrated.
If you select the Consolidated toolbar button without expanding:
- For some commands such as Sketch, the most commonly used command is performed. This command is the first listed and the command shown on the button.
For commands such as rectangle, where you may want to repeatedly create the same variant of the rectangle, the last used command is performed. This is the highlighted command when the Consolidated toolbar is expanded.
System feedback
SolidWorks provides system feedback by attaching a symbol to the mouse pointer cursor. The system feedback symbol indicates what you are selecting or what the system is expecting you to select.
As you move the mouse pointer across your model, system feedback is provided to you in the form of symbols, riding next to the cursor arrow as illustrated.
**Confirmation Corner**
When numerous SolidWorks commands are active, a symbol or a set of symbols are displayed in the upper right corner of the Graphics window. This area is called the Confirmation Corner.
When a sketch is active, the confirmation corner box displays two symbols. The first symbol is the sketch tool icon. The second symbol is a large red X. These three symbols supply a visual reminder that you are in an active sketch. Click the sketch symbol icon to exit the sketch and to save any changes that you made.
When other commands are active, the confirmation corner box provides a green check mark and a large red X. Click the green check mark to execute the current command. Click the large red X to cancel the command.
**Heads-up View toolbar**
SolidWorks provides the user with numerous view options from the Standard Views, View, and Heads-up View toolbar.
The Heads-up View toolbar is a transparent toolbar that is displayed in the Graphics window when a document is active. You can’t hide nor move the Heads-up View toolbar. The following views are available:
- **Views are document dependent.**
- **Zoom to Fit**: Zooms the model to fit the Graphics window.
- **Zoom to Area**: Zooms to the areas you select with a bounding box.
- **Previous View**: Displays the previous view.
- **Section View**: Displays a cutaway of a part or assembly, using one or more cross section planes.
- **View Orientation** : Provides the ability to select a view orientation or the number of viewports. The available options are: Top, Isometric, Trimetric, Dimetric, Left, Front, Right, Back, Bottom, Single view, Two view - Horizontal, Two view - Vertical, Four view.
- **Display Style** : Provides the ability to display the style for the active view. The available options are: Wireframe, Hidden Lines Visible, Hidden Lines Removed, Shaded, Shaded With Edges.
- **Hide/Show Items** : Provides the ability to select items to hide or show in the Graphics window. Note: The available items are document dependent.
- **Edit Appearance** : Provides the ability to apply appearances from the Appearances PropertyManager.
- **Apply Scene** : Provides the ability to apply a scene to an active part or assembly document. View the available options.
- **View Setting** : Provides the ability to select the following: RealView Graphics, Shadows In Shaded Mode, and Perspective.
- **Rotate** : Provides the ability to rotate a drawing view.
- **3D Drawing View** : Provides the ability to dynamically manipulate the drawing view to make a selection.
💡 To deactivate the reference planes for an active document, click View, uncheck Planes from the Menu bar. To deactivate the grid, click Options, Document Properties tab. Click Grid/Snaps, uncheck the Display grid box.
💡 To deactivate a single reference plane in an active document, right-click the selected plane, click Hide.
💡 Modify the Heads-up View toolbar. Press the space key. The Orientation dialog box is displayed. Click the New View tool. The Name View dialog box is displayed. Enter a new named view. Click OK. The new view is displayed in the Heads-up View toolbar.
CommandManager
The CommandManager is document dependent. Drop-down tabs are located on the bottom left side of the CommandManager and display the available toolbars and features for each corresponding tab.
The default Part tabs are: Features, Sketch, Evaluate, DimXpert, and Office Products. Below is an illustrated CommandManager for a default Part document.
💡 The Office Products toolbar display is dependent on the activated Add-Ins during a SolidWorks session.
💡 If you have SolidWorks, SolidWorks Professional, or SolidWorks Premium, the Office Products tab is displayed in the CommandManager.
💡 Instant3D and Rapid Sketch are activated by default.
The CommandManager tabs that are displayed are document dependent and can be workflow customize. To customize the CommandManager tabs, right-click on a tab, and select the required custom option or select Customize CommandManager to access the Customize dialog box.
DimXpert provides the ability to graphically check if the model is fully dimensioned and toleranced. DimXpert automatically recognizes manufacturing features. Manufacturing features are not SolidWorks features. Manufacturing features are defined in 1.1.12 of the ASME Y14.5M-1994 Dimensioning and Tolerancing standard. See SolidWorks Help for additional information.
**FeatureManager Design Tree**
The FeatureManager design tree is located on the left side of the SolidWorks Graphics window. The design tree provides a summarize view of the active part, assembly, or drawing document. The tree displays the details on how the part, assembly, or drawing document is created.
Understand the FeatureManager design tree to troubleshoot your model. The FeatureManager is used extensively throughout this book.
The FeatureManager consists of four default tabs:
- **FeatureManager design tree**
- **PropertyManager**
- **ConfigurationManager**
- **DimXpertManager**
Select the Hide FeatureManager Tree Area arrows tab from the FeatureManager to enlarge the Graphics window for modeling.
The Sensors tool located in the FeatureManager monitors selected properties in a part or assembly and alerts you when values deviate from the specified limits. There are four sensor types: Mass properties, Measurement, Interference Detection, and Simulation data.
Various commands provide the ability to control what is displayed in the FeatureManager design tree. They are:
1. Show or Hide FeatureManager items.
Click **Options** from the Menu bar. Click **FeatureManager** from the System Options tab. Customize your FeatureManager from the Hide/Show Tree Items dialog box.
2. Filter the FeatureManager design tree. Enter information in the filter field. You can filter by: *Type of features, Feature names, Sketches, Folders, Mates, User-defined tags*, and *Custom properties*.
Tags are keywords you can add to a SolidWorks document to make them easier to filter and to search. The Tags icon is located in the bottom right corner of the Graphics window.
To collapse all items in the FeatureManager, right-click and select **Collapse items**, or press the **Shift + C** keys.
The FeatureManager design tree and the Graphics window are dynamically linked. Select sketches, features, drawing views, and construction geometry in either pane.
Split the FeatureManager design tree and either display two FeatureManager instances, or combine the FeatureManager design tree with the ConfigurationManager or PropertyManager.
Move between the FeatureManager design tree, PropertyManager, ConfigurationManager, and DimXpertManager by selecting the tabs at the top of the menu.
Press the **s** key to view/access previous command tools in the Graphics window.
Split the ConfigurationManager and either display two ConfigurationManager instances, or combine the ConfigurationManager with the FeatureManager design tree, PropertyManager, or a third party application that uses the panel.
The icons in the ConfigurationManager denote whether the configuration was created manually or with a design table.
The DimXpertManager tab provides the ability to insert dimensions and tolerances manually or automatically. The DimXpertManager provides the following selections: *Auto Dimension Scheme*, *Show Tolerance Status*, *Copy Scheme*, and *TolAnalyst Study*.
**Fly-out FeatureManager**
The fly-out FeatureManager design tree provides the ability to view and select items in the PropertyManager and the FeatureManager design tree at the same time.
Throughout the book, you will select commands and command options from the drop-down menu, fly-out FeatureManager, Context toolbar, or from a SolidWorks toolbar.
💡 Another method for accessing a command is to use the accelerator key. Accelerator keys are special keystrokes which activates the drop-down menu options. Some commands in the menu bar and items in the drop-down menus have an underlined character. Press the Alt key followed by the corresponding key to the underlined character activates that command or option.
💡 Press the g key to activate the Magnifying glass tool. Use the Magnifying glass tool to inspect a model and make selections without changing the overall view.
💡 Illustrations may vary slightly depending on your SolidWorks version.
Task Pane
The Task Pane is displayed when a SolidWorks session starts. The Task Pane contains the following default tabs: *SolidWorks Resources*, *Design Library*, *File Explorer*, *SolidWorks Search*, *View Palette*, *Appearances/Scenes*, and *Custom Properties*.
💡 The Document Recovery tab is displayed in the Task Pane if your system terminates unexpectedly with an active document and if auto-recovery is enabled in the System Options section.
**SolidWorks Resources**
The basic SolidWorks Resources menu displays the following default selections: *Getting Started, Community, Online Resources*, and *Tip of the Day*.
Other user interfaces are available during the initial software installation selection: *Machine Design, Mold Design, or Consumer Products Design*.
**Design Library**
The Design Library contains reusable parts, assemblies, and other elements, including library features.
The Design Library tab contains four default selections. Each default selection contains additional sub categories. The default selections are: *Design Library, Toolbox, 3D ContentCentral*, and *SolidWorks Content*.
💡 Click *Tools, Add-Ins…, SolidWorks Toolbox* and *SolidWorks Toolbox Browser* to activate the SolidWorks Toolbox.
💡 To access the Design Library folders in a non network environment for an new installation, click *Add File Location*, enter: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SolidWorks\SolidWorks 2009\design library. Click OK. In a network environment, contact your IT department for system details.
File Explorer
File Explorer duplicates Windows Explorer from your local computer and displays Resent Documents, directories, and the Open in SolidWorks and Desktop folders.
Search
SolidWorks Search is installed with Microsoft Windows Search and indexes the resources once before searching begins, either after installation, or when you initiate the first search.
The SolidWorks Search box is displayed in the upper right corner of the SolidWorks Graphics window. Enter the text or key words to search. Click the drop-down arrow to view the last 10 recent searches.
The Search tool in the Task Pane searches the following default locations: All Locations, Local Files, Design Library, SolidWorks Toolbox, and 3D ContentCentral.
💡 Select any or all of the above locations. If you do not select a file location, all locations are searched.
View Palette
The View Palette tool located in the Task Pane provides the ability to insert drawing views of an active document, or click the Browse button to locate the desired document.
Click and drag the view from the View Palette into an active drawing sheet to create a drawing view.
Appearances/Scenes
Appearances/Scenes provide a simplified way to display models in a photo-realistic setting using a library of Appearances and Scenes. Note: Appearances/Scenes require graphics card support.
Appearances/Scenes graphics is only available with supported graphics cards. For the latest information on graphics cards that support Appearances/Scenes Graphics display, visit: www.solidworks.com/pages/services/videocardtesting.html.
Custom Properties
New in 2009 is the Custom Properties tab located in the Task Pane. The Custom Properties tool provides the ability to enter custom and configuration specific properties directly into SolidWorks files.
Document Recovery
If auto recovery is initiated in the System Options section and the system terminates unexpectedly with an active document, the saved information files are available on the Task Pane Document Recovery tab the next time you start a SolidWorks session.
Motion Study tab
Motion Studies are graphical simulations of motion for an assembly. Access MotionManager from the Motion Study tab. The Motion Study tab is located in the bottom left corner of the Graphics window.
Incorporate visual properties such as lighting and camera perspective. Click the Motion Study tab to view the MotionManager. Click the Model tab to return to the FeatureManager design tree.
The MotionManager display a timeline-based interface, and provide the following selections from the drop-down menu as illustrated:
**Animation:** Apply Animation to animate the motion of an assembly. Add a motor and insert positions of assembly components at various times using set key points. Use the Animation option to create animations for motion that does not require accounting for mass or gravity.
**Basic Motion.** Apply Basic Motion for approximating the effects of motors, springs, collisions, and gravity on assemblies. Basic Motion takes mass into account in calculating motion. Basic Motion computation is relatively fast, so you can use this for creating presentation animations using physics-based simulations. Use the Basic Motion option to create simulations of motion that account for mass, collisions, or gravity.
To create a new Motion Study, click **Insert, New Motion Study** from the Menu bar.
There are two modes in the New SolidWorks Document dialog box: Novice and Advanced. The Novice option is the default option with three templates. The Advanced option contains access to more templates.
**Activity: Create a new Part**
A part is a 3D model which consists of features. What are features?
- Features are geometry building blocks.
- Features add or remove material.
- Features are created from 2D or 3D sketched profiles or from edges and faces of existing geometry.
- Features are an individual shape that combined with other features, makes up a part or assembly. Some features, such as bosses and cuts, originate as sketches. Other features, such as shells and fillets, modify a feature's geometry.
- Features are displayed in the FeatureManager as illustrated.
You can suppress a feature, as is *Flat-Pattern1* in the Bent Bar FeatureManager. A suppress feature is displayed in light gray.
The first sketch of a part is the Base sketch. The Base sketch is the foundation for the 3D model.
Create a new part.
6) Click **New** from the Menu bar. The New SolidWorks Document dialog box is displayed.
Select Advanced Mode.
7) Click the **Advanced** button to display the New SolidWorks Document dialog box in Advance mode.
8) The Templates tab is the default tab. Part is the default template from the New SolidWorks Document dialog box. Click **OK**.
The Advanced mode remains selected for all new documents in the current SolidWorks session. When you exit SolidWorks, the Advanced mode setting is saved.
The default SolidWorks installation contains two tabs in the New SolidWorks Document dialog box: Templates and Tutorial.
The Templates tab corresponds to the default SolidWorks templates.
The Tutorial tab corresponds to the templates utilized in the SolidWorks Online Tutorials.
Part1 is displayed in the FeatureManager and is the name of the document. Part1 is the default part window name. The Menu bar, CommandManager, FeatureManager, Heads-up View toolbar, SolidWorks Resources, SolidWorks Search, Task Pane, and the Origin are displayed in the Graphics window.
The Origin is displayed in blue in the center of the Graphics window. The Origin represents the intersection of the three default reference planes: Front Plane, Top Plane, and Right Plane. The positive X-axis is horizontal and points to the right of the Origin in the Front view. The positive Y-axis is vertical and points upward in the Front view. The FeatureManager contains a list of features, reference geometry, and settings utilized in the part.
The Tags icon is displayed in the bottom right corner of the Graphics window. Tags are keywords you add to SolidWorks documents and features to make them easier to filter and search for.
In the book, Reference planes and Grid/Snaps are deactivated in the Graphics window to improve model clarity.
The CommandManager is document dependent. The tabs are located on the bottom left side of the CommandManager and display the available toolbars and features for each corresponding tab. The default tabs for a Part are: Features, Sketch, Evaluate, DimXpert, and Office Products.
The Features icon and Features toolbar should be selected by default in Part mode.
The CommandManager is utilized in this text. Control the CommandManager display.
Right-click in the gray area to the right of the Options icon in the Menu bar toolbar. A complete list of toolbars is displayed. Check CommandManager if required.
Another way to display a toolbar, click View, Toolbars from the Menu bar menu. Select the required toolbar.
Select individual toolbars from the View, Toolbars list to display in the Graphics window. Reposition toolbars by clicking and dragging.
Click View, Origins from the Menu bar menu to display the Origin in the Graphics window.
Activity: Create the AXLE Part
Set the Menu bar toolbar and Menu bar menu.
9) Click SolidWorks to expand the Menu bar menu.
10) Pin the Menu bar as illustrated. Use both the Menu bar menu and the Menu bar toolbar in this book.
The SolidWorks Help Topics contains step-by-step instructions for various commands. The Help icon is displayed in the dialog box or in the PropertyManager for each feature.
Set the Document Properties.
11) Click Options from the Menu bar. The System Options General dialog box is displayed.
12) Click the Document Properties tab.
13) Select ANSI from the Overall drafting standard drop-down menu. Various Detailing options are available depending on the selected standard.
Various detailing options are available depending on the selected standard.
The Overall drafting standard determines the display of dimension text, arrows, symbols, and spacing. Units are the measurement of physical quantities. Millimeter dimensioning and decimal inch dimensioning are the two most common unit types specified for engineering parts and drawings.
The primary units in this book are provided in IPS, (inch, pound, seconds). The optional secondary units are provided in MMGS, (millimeters, grams, second) and are indicated in brackets [ ].
Millimeters
Inches
Illustrations are provided in both inches and millimeters.
Set the document units.
14) Click **Units**.
15) Click **IPS (inch, pound, second)** [MMGS] for Unit system.
16) Select .123, [.12] (three decimal places) for Length basic units.
17) Select **None** for Angle decimal places.
18) Click **OK** from the Document Properties - Units dialog box. The Part FeatureManager is displayed.
---
**Activity: AXLE Part-Extruded Base Feature**
Insert a new sketch for the Extruded Base feature.
19) Right-click **Front Plane** from the FeatureManager. This is your Sketch plane. The Context toolbar is displayed.
20) Click **Sketch** from the Context toolbar as illustrated.
The Sketch toolbar is displayed. Front Plane is your Sketch plane. Note: the grid is deactivated for picture clarity.
💡 You can also click the Front Plane from the FeatureManager and click the Sketch tab from the CommandManager.
21) Click the **Circle** tool from the Sketch toolbar. The Circle PropertyManager is displayed.
💡 The Circle-based tool uses a Consolidated Circle PropertyManager. The SolidWorks application defaults to the last used tool type.
22) Drag the mouse pointer into the Graphics window. The cursor displays the Circle icon symbol.
23) Click the Origin of the circle. The cursor displays the Coincident to point feedback symbol.
24) Drag the mouse pointer to the right of the Origin to create the circle as illustrated. The center point of the circle is positioned at the Origin.
25) Click a position to create the circle. The activated circle is displayed in blue.
Add a dimension.
26) Click Smart Dimension from the Sketch toolbar. The cursor displays the Smart Dimension icon.
27) Click the circumference of the circle.
28) Click a position diagonally above the circle in the Graphics window.
29) Enter .188in, [4.78] in the Modify dialog box.
30) Click the Green Check mark in the Modify dialog box. The diameter of the circle is .188 inches.
If required, click the blue arrow head dots to toggle the direction of the dimension arrow.
The circular sketch is centered at the Origin. The dimension indicates the diameter of the circle.
If your sketch is not correct, select the Undo tool.
To fit your sketch to the Graphics window, press the f key.
Extrude the sketch to create the Extruded Base Feature.
31) Click the Features tab from the CommandManager.
32) Click the Extruded Boss/Base Features tool. The Extrude PropertyManager is displayed. Blind is the default End Condition in Direction 1.
33) Select Mid Plane for End Condition in Direction 1.
34) Enter 1.375in, [34.93] for Depth in Direction 1. Accept the default conditions.
35) Click OK from the Extrude PropertyManager. Extrude1 is displayed in the FeatureManager.
Fit the model to the Graphics window.
36) Press the f key. Note the location of the Origin in the model.
The Extrude PropertyManager displays the parameters utilized to define the feature. The Mid Plane End Condition in the Direction 1 box extrudes the sketch equally on both sides of the Sketch plane. The depth defines the extrude distance.
The Extrude1 feature name is displayed in the FeatureManager. The FeatureManager lists the features, planes, and other geometry that construct the part. Extrude features add material. Extrude features require the following: *Sketch plane*, *Sketch*, and *depth*.
The Sketch plane is the Front Plane. The Sketch is a circle with the diameter of .188in, [4.76]. The Depth is 1.375in, [34.93].
**Activity: AXLE Part-Save**
Save the part.
37) Click Save As from the Menu bar.
38) Double-click the MY-DOCUMENTS file folder.
39) Click the Create New Folder icon.
40) Enter SW-TUTORIAL-2009 for the file folder name.
41) Double-click the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 file folder. SW-TUTORIAL-2009 is the Save in file folder name.
42) Enter AXLE for the File name.
43) Enter AXLE ROD for the Description.
44) Click **Save**. The AXLE FeatureManager is displayed.
💡 Organize parts into file folders. The file folder for this project is named: SW-TUTORIAL-2009. Save all documents in the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 file folder.
💡 Copy all files from the CD in the book to the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder.
---
**Activity: AXLE Part-Edit Color**
Modify the color of the part.
45) Right-click the AXLE icon at the top of the FeatureManager.
46) Click the **Appearances** drop down arrow.
47) Click the **Appearance** box as illustrated. The Appearances PropertyManager is displayed. AXLE is displayed in the Selection box.
48) Select a **light blue** color from the Color box.
49) Click **OK** from the Color And Optics PropertyManager. View the AXLE in the Graphics window.
---
The SolidWorks FeatureManager design tree provides an indicator informing you on the status of your sketch. The sketch can either be:
1.) (+) **Over defined**. The sketch is displayed in red.
2.) (-) **Under defined**. The sketch is displayed in blue.
3.) (?) **Cannot be solved**.
4.) **No prefix**. The sketch is fully defined. This is the ideal state. A fully defined sketch has complete information and is displayed in black.
The SketchXpert PropertyManager provides the ability to diagnose an over defined sketch to create a fully defined sketch. If you have an over defined sketch, click Over Defined at the bottom of the Graphics window toolbar. The SketchXpert PropertyManager is displayed. Click the Diagnose button.
Select the desired solution and click the Accept button from the Results box.
**Activity: AXLE Part-View Modes**
Orthographic projection is the process of projecting views onto Parallel planes with $\perp$ projectors.
The default reference planes are the Front, Top and Right Planes.
The Isometric view displays the part in 3D with two equal projection angles.
The Heads-up View toolbar illustration may vary depending on your SolidWorks release version.
Display the various view modes using the Heads-up View toolbar.
50) Click **Front view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
51) Click **Top view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
52) Click **Right view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
53) Click **Isometric view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
💡 View modes manipulate the model in the Graphics window.
Display the various View modes.
54) Press the lower case **z** key to zoom out.
55) Press the upper case **Z** key to zoom in.
56) Click **Zoom to Fit** to display the full size of the part in the current window.
57) Right-click in the Graphics window. View the available view tools.
58) Click **inside** the Graphics window.
Rotate the model.
59) Click the **middle mouse** button and move your mouse. The model rotates. The Rotate icon is displayed.
60) Press the **up arrow** on your keyboard. The arrow keys rotate the model in 15 degree increments.
💡 View modes remain active until deactivated from the View toolbar or unchecked from the pop-up menu.
💡 Utilize the center wheel of the mouse to Zoom In/Zoom Out and Rotate the model in the Graphics window.
View the various Display Styles.
61) Click **Isometric view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
62) Click the **drop down arrow** from the Display Styles box from the Heads-up Views toolbar as illustrated. SolidWorks provides five key Display Styles:
- **Shaded**. Displays a shaded view of the model with no edges.
- **Shaded With Edges**. Displays a shaded view of the model, with edges.
• **Hidden Lines Removed**. Displays only those model edges that can be seen from the current view orientation.
• **Hidden Lines Visible**. Displays all edges of the model. Edges that are hidden from the current view are displayed in a different color or font.
• **Wireframe**. Displays all edges of the model.
Save the AXLE part.
63) Click **Save**. The AXLE part is complete.
---
Review the AXLE Part
The AXLE part utilized an Extruded Base feature. The Extruded Base feature adds material. The Extruded feature required a Sketch plane, sketch, and depth. The AXLE Sketch plane was the Front Plane. The 2D circle was sketched centered at the Origin. A dimension defined the overall size of the sketch based on the dimensions of mating parts in the LINKAGE assembly.
The name of the feature is Extrude1. Extrude1 utilized the Mid Plane End Condition. The Extrude1 feature is symmetrical about the Front plane.
The Edit Color option modified the part color. Select the Part icon in the FeatureManager to modify the color of the part. Color and a prefix defines the sketch status. A blue sketch is under defined. A black sketch is fully defined. A red sketch is over defined.
The default Reference planes are the Front, Top, and Right Planes. Utilize the Heads-up View toolbar to display the principle views of a part. The View Orientation and Display Style tools manipulate the model in the Graphics windows.
Instant3D provides the ability to click and drag geometry and dimension manipulator points to resize features in the Graphics window, and to use on-screen rulers to measure modifications. In this book, you will primarily use the PropertyManager and dialog boxes to create and modify model dimensions.
SHAFT-COLLAR Part
The SHAFT-COLLAR part is a hardened steel ring fastened to the AXLE part.
Two SHAFT-COLLAR parts are used to position the two FLATBAR parts on the AXLE.
Create the SHAFT-COLLAR part.
Utilize the Extruded Base feature. The Extruded Base feature requires a 2D circular profile.
Utilize symmetry. Sketch a circle on the Front Plane centered at the Origin.
Extrude the sketch with the Mid Plane End Condition. The Extruded Base feature is centered on both sides of the Front Plane.
The Extruded Cut feature removes material. Utilize an Extruded Cut feature to create a hole. The Extruded Cut feature requires a 2D circular profile. Sketch a circle on the front face centered at the Origin.
The Through All End Condition extends the Extruded Cut feature from the front face through all existing geometry.
Activity: SHAFT-COLLAR Part-Extruded Base Feature
Create a new part.
64) Click New from the Menu bar. The New SolidWorks Document dialog box is displayed. The Templates tab is the default tab. Part is the default template from the New SolidWorks Document dialog box.
65) Double-click Part. The Part FeatureManager is displayed.
Save the part.
66) Click **Save As** from the Menu bar.
67) Enter **SHAFT-COLLAR** for File name in the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder.
68) Enter **SHAFT-COLLAR** for Description.
69) Click **Save**. The SHAFT-COLLAR FeatureManager is displayed.
Set the Dimension standard and part units.
70) Click **Options**, **Document Properties** tab from the Menu bar.
71) Select **ANSI** from the Overall drafting standard drop-down menu.
72) Click **Units**.
73) Click **IPS (inch, pound, second), [MMGS]** for Unit system.
74) Select .123, [.12] (three decimal places) for Length units Decimal places.
75) Select **None** for Angular units Decimal places.
76) Click **OK** from the Document Properties - Units dialog box.
💡 To view the Origin, click **View, Origins** from the Menu bar menu.
💡 Press the **g** key to activate the Magnifying glass tool. Use the Magnifying glass tool to inspect a model and make selections without changing the overall view.
Insert a new sketch for the Extruded Base feature.
77) Right-click **Front Plane** from the FeatureManager. This is the Sketch plane. The Context toolbar is displayed.
78) Click **Sketch** from the Context toolbar as illustrated. The Sketch toolbar is displayed.
79) Click the **Circle** tool from the Sketch toolbar. The Circle PropertyManager is displayed. The cursor displays the Circle icon symbol.
80) Click the **Origin**. The cursor displays the Coincident to point feedback symbol.
81) Drag the **mouse pointer** to the right of the Origin as illustrated.
82) Click a **position** to create the circle.
Add a dimension.
83) Click **Smart Dimension** from the Sketch toolbar. Click the **circumference** of the circle. The cursor displays the diameter feedback symbol.
84) Click a **position** diagonally above the circle in the Graphics window.
85) Enter **.4375in, [11.11]** in the Modify dialog box.
86) Click the **Green Check mark** in the Modify dialog box. The black sketch is fully defined.
Note: Three decimal places are displayed. The diameter value .4375 rounds to .438.
Extrude the sketch to create the Base feature.
87) Click the **Features** tab from the CommandManager.
88) Click the **Extruded Boss/Base** features tool. The Extrude PropertyManager is displayed.
89) Select **Mid Plane** for End Condition in Direction 1. Enter **.250in, [6.35]** for Depth. Accept the default conditions. Note the location of the Origin.
90) Click **OK** from the Extrude PropertyManager. Extrude1 is displayed in the FeatureManager.
Fit the model to the Graphics window.
91) Press the f key.
92) Click Isometric view from the Heads-Up View toolbar.
Save the model.
93) Click Save.
**Activity: SHAFT-COLLAR Part-Extruded Cut Feature**
Insert a new sketch for the Extruded Cut feature.
94) Right-click the **front circular face** of the Extrude1 feature for the Sketch plane. The mouse pointer displays the face feedback icon.
💡 View the mouse pointer feedback icon for the correct geometry: line, face, point, or vertex.
95) Click Sketch from the Context toolbar as illustrated. The Sketch toolbar is displayed.
96) Click Hidden Lines Removed from the Heads-up View toolbar.
97) Click the Circle tool from the Sketch toolbar. The Circle PropertyManager is displayed. The cursor displays the Circle icon symbol.
98) Click the red Origin. The cursor displays the Coincident to point feedback symbol. Drag the mouse pointer to the right of the Origin.
99) Click a position to create the circle as illustrated.
Add a dimension.
100) Click the Smart Dimension Sketch tool.
101) Click the circumference of the circle.
102) Click a position diagonally above the circle in the Graphics window.
103) Enter .190in, [4.83] in the Modify dialog box.
104) Click the Green Check mark in the Modify dialog box.
Insert an Extruded Cut feature.
105) Click the **Features** tab from the CommandManager.
106) Click **Extruded Cut** from the Features toolbar. The Extrude PropertyManager is displayed.
107) Select **Through All** for End Condition in Direction 1. The direction arrow points to the right. Accept the default conditions.
108) Click **OK** from the Extrude PropertyManager. Extrude2 is displayed in the FeatureManager.
💡 The Extruded Cut feature is named Extrude2. The Through All End Condition removes material from the Front Plane through the Extrude1 geometry.
**Activity: SHAFT-COLLAR-Modify Dimensions and Edit Color**
Modify the dimensions.
109) Click **Trimetric view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
110) Click the **z** key a few times to Zoom in.
111) Click the **outside cylindrical face** of the SHAFT-COLLAR. The Extrude1 dimensions are displayed. Sketch dimensions are displayed in black. The Extrude depth dimensions are displayed in blue.
112) Click the **.250in, [6.35]** depth dimension.
113) Enter **.500in, [12.70]**.
The Extrude1 and Extrude2 are modified.
Return to the original dimensions.
114) Click the **Undo** tool from the Menu bar.
115) Click **Shaded With Edges** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Modify the part color.
116) Right-click the SHAFT-COLLAR Part icon at the top of the FeatureManager.
117) Click the Appearances drop-down arrow.
118) Click the Appearance box as illustrated. The Appearances PropertyManager is displayed. AXLE is displayed in the Selection box.
119) Select a light green color from the Color box.
120) Click OK from the Appearances PropertyManager. View the SHAFT-COLLAR in the Graphics window.
Save the SHAFT-COLLAR part.
121) Click Save. The SHAFT-COLLAR part is complete.
Review the SHAFT-COLLAR Part
The SHAFT-COLLAR utilized an Extruded Base feature. The Extruded Base feature adds material. An Extruded feature required a Sketch plane, sketch, and depth.
The Sketch plane was the Front Plane. The 2D circle was sketched centered at the Origin. A dimension defined the overall size of the sketch.
The name of the feature was Extrude1. Extrude1 utilized the Mid Plane End Condition. The Extrude1 feature was symmetric about the Front Plane.
The Extruded Cut feature removed material to create the hole. The Extruded Cut feature default named is Extrude2. The Through All End Condition option created the Extrude2 feature. Feature dimensions were modified. The Edit Color option was utilized to modify the part color.
Click Options, Document Properties tab, Dimension and click the Smart box to have the dimension leader arrow head point inwards for ANSI.
The SolidWorks Help contains step-by-step instructions for various commands. The Help icon is displayed in the dialog box or in the PropertyManager for each feature.
Display Help for a rectangle.
122) Click **Help** from the Menu bar.
123) Click **SolidWorks Help**.
124) Click the **Index** tab.
125) Enter **rectangles**. The description is displayed in the right window.
126) Close the Help window.
The Help option contains tools to assist the user. SolidWorks Help contains the following tabs:
- **Contents**: Contains the SolidWorks Online User’s Guide documents.
- **Index**: Contains additional information on key words.
- **Search**: To locate information.
Display the SolidWorks Tutorials.
127) Click **Help** from the Menu bar.
128) Click **SolidWorks Tutorials**. The SolidWorks Tutorials categories are displayed.
129) Click the **Getting Started** category. Review Lesson 1. This is a great location for additional information.
130) Close the SolidWorks Tutorial dialog box. Return to the Graphics window.
FLATBAR Part
The FLATBAR part fastens to the AXLE. The FLATBAR contains nine, Ø.190in holes spaced 0.5in apart.
The FLATBAR part is manufactured from .090inch 6061 alloy.
Create the FLATBAR part. Utilize the new Straight Slot Sketch tool with an Extruded Base feature.
The Extruded feature requires a 2D profile sketched on the Front Plane.
The Straight Slot Sketch tool automatically applies design symmetry, (Midpoint and Equal geometric relations). Create the 2D profile centered about the Origin.
Relations control the size and position of entities with constraints.
Utilize an Extruded Cut feature to create the first hole. This is the seed feature for the Linear Pattern.
Utilize a Linear Pattern feature to create the remaining holes. A Linear Pattern creates an array of features in a specified direction.
Activity: FLATBAR Part-Extruded Base Feature
Create a new part.
131) Click New from the Menu bar. The New SolidWorks Document dialog box is displayed. The Templates tab is the default tab. Part is the default template from the New SolidWorks Document dialog box.
132) Double-click Part. The Part FeatureManager is displayed.
Save the part.
133) Click Save As from the Menu bar.
134) Enter FLATBAR for File name in the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder.
135) Enter FLAT BAR 9 HOLES for Description.
136) Click Save. The FLATBAR FeatureManager is displayed.
Set the Dimension standard and part units.
137) Click Options, Document Properties tab from the Menu bar.
138) Select ANSI from the Overall drafting standard drop-down menu.
139) Click Units.
140) Click IPS, [MMGS] for Unit system.
141) Select .123, [.12] for Length units Decimal places.
142) Select None for Angular units Decimal places.
143) Click OK to set the document units.
Insert a new sketch for the Extruded Base feature.
144) Right-click Front Plane from the FeatureManager. This is the Sketch plane.
145) Click Sketch from the Context toolbar as illustrated. The Sketch toolbar is displayed.
Utilize the new Consolidated Slot Sketch toolbar. Apply the Centerpoint Straight Slot Sketch tool. The Straight Slot Sketch tool provides the ability to sketch a straight slot from a centerpoint. In this example, use the Origin as your centerpoint.
146) Click the Centerpoint Straight Slot tool from the Sketch toolbar. The Slot PropertyManager is displayed.
Create the Straight Slot with three points.
147) Click the Origin. This is your first point.
148) Click a point directly to the right of the Origin. This is your second point.
149) Click a point directly above the second point. This is your third point. The Straight Slot is displayed.
150) Click OK from the Slot PropertyManager
View the Sketch relations.
151) Click View, Sketch Relations from the Menu bar menu. View the sketch relations in the Graphics window.
Deactivate the Sketch relations.
152) Click View, uncheck Sketch Relations from the Menu bar. The Straight Slot Sketch tool provides a midpoint relation with the Origin and Equal relations between the other sketch entities.
Add a dimension.
153) Click the Smart Dimension tool from the Sketch toolbar.
154) Click the horizontal centerline.
155) Click a position above the top horizontal line in the Graphics window.
156) Enter 4.000in, [101.60] in the Modify dialog box.
157) Click the Green Check mark in the Modify dialog box.
158) Click the right arc of the FLATBAR.
159) Click a position diagonally to the right in the Graphics window.
160) Enter .250in, [6.35] in the Modify dialog box.
161) Click the Green Check mark in the Modify dialog box. The black sketch is fully defined.
Extrude the sketch to create the Base feature.
162) Click **Extruded Boss/Base** from the Features toolbar. The Extrude PropertyManager is displayed.
163) Enter .090in, [2.29] for Depth. Accept the default conditions.
164) Click **OK** from the Extrude PropertyManager. Extrude1 is displayed in the FeatureManager.
Fit the model to the Graphics window.
165) Press the f key.
Save the FLATBAR part.
166) Click **Save**.
💡 Click **View, Origins** from the Menu bar menu to display the Origin in the Graphics window.
**Activity: FLATBAR Part-Extruded Cut Feature**
Insert a new sketch for the Extruded Cut Feature.
167) Right-click the **front face** of the Extrude1 feature in the Graphics window. This is the Sketch plane. Extrude1 is highlighted in the FeatureManager.
168) Click **Sketch** from the Context toolbar as illustrated. The Sketch toolbar is displayed.
Display the Front view.
169) Click **Front view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
170) Click **Hidden Lines Removed** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
The process of placing the mouse pointer over an existing arc to locate its centerpoint is called “wake up”.
Wake up the center point.
171) Click the **Circle** Sketch tool from the Sketch toolbar. The Circle PropertyManager is displayed.
172) Place the **mouse pointer** on the left arc. Do not click. The center point of the slot arc is displayed.
173) Click the **centerpoint** of the arc.
174) Click a **position** to the right of the center point to create the circle as illustrated.
Add a dimension.
175) Click the **Smart Dimension** Sketch tool.
176) Click the **circumference** of the circle.
177) Click a **position** diagonally above and to the left of the circle in the Graphics window.
178) Enter .190in, [4.83] in the Modify box.
179) Click the **Green Check mark** in the Modify dialog box.
180) Click **Isometric view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
181) Click **Shaded With Edges** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Insert an Extruded Cut feature.
182) Click the **Features** tab from the CommandManager.
183) Click **Extruded Cut** from the Features toolbar. The Extrude PropertyManager is displayed.
184) Select **Through All** for End Condition in Direction 1. The direction arrow points to the back. Accept the default conditions.
185) Click **OK** from the Extrude PropertyManager. The Extrude2 feature is displayed in the FeatureManager.
Save the FLATBAR part.
186) Click **Save**.
The blue Extrude2 icon indicates that the feature is selected.
Select features by clicking their icons in the FeatureManager or by selecting their geometry in the Graphics window.
**Activity: FLATBAR Part-Linear Pattern Feature**
Create a Linear Pattern feature.
187) Click the **Linear Pattern** tool from the Features toolbar. The Linear Pattern PropertyManager is displayed. Extrude2 is displayed in the Features to Pattern box. Note: If Extrude2 is not displayed, click inside the Features to Pattern box. Click Extrude2 from the fly-out FeatureManager.
188) Click the top edge of the Extrude1 feature for Direction1 in the Graphics window. Edge<1> is displayed in the Pattern Direction box.
189) Enter 0.5in, [12.70] for Spacing.
190) Enter 9 for Number of Instances. Instances are the number of occurrences of a feature.
191) The Direction arrow points to the right. Click the Reverse Direction button if required.
192) Geometry Pattern is check by default. Click OK from the Linear Pattern PropertyManager. The LPattern1 feature is displayed in the FeatureManager.
Save the FLATBAR part.
193) Click Save. The FLATBAR part is complete.
Close all documents.
194) Click Windows, Close All from the Menu bar.
Review the FLATBAR Part
The FLATBAR part utilized an Extruded Base feature as the first feature. The Sketch plane was the Front Plane. The 2D sketch utilized the Straight Slot Sketch tool to create the slot profile.
You added linear and radial dimensions to define your sketch. You applied the Extruded Base feature with a Blind End Condition in Direction 1. Extrude1 is created.
You created a circle sketch for the Extruded Cut feature on the front face of Extrude1. The front face was your Sketch plane for the Extruded Cut feature. The Extruded Cut feature removed material to create the hole. The Extruded Cut feature default name is Extrude2. The Through All End Condition option in Direction 1 created the Extrude2 feature. The Extrude2 feature is the seed feature for the Linear Pattern of holes.
The Linear Pattern feature created an array of 9 holes, equally spaced along the length of the FLATBAR part.
LINKAGE Assembly
An assembly is a document that contains two or more parts. An assembly inserted into another assembly is called a sub-assembly. A part or sub-assembly inserted into an assembly is called a component. The LINKAGE assembly consists of the following components: AXLE, SHAFT-COLLAR, FLATBAR, and AirCylinder sub-assembly.
Establishing the correct component relationship in an assembly requires forethought on component interaction. Mates are geometric relationships that align and fit components in an assembly. Mates remove degrees of freedom from a component.
Mate Types
Mates reflect the physical behavior of a component in an assembly. The components in the LINKAGE assembly utilize Standard mate types. Review the Standard, Advanced, and Mechanical mate types.
**Standard Mates:**
Components are assembled with various mate types. The Standard mate types are:
**Coincident Mate:** Locates the selected faces, edges, or planes so they use the same infinite line. A Coincident mate positions two vertices for contact.
**Parallel Mate:** Locates the selected items to lie in the same direction and to remain a constant distance apart.
**Perpendicular Mate:** Locates the selected items at a 90 degree angle to each other.
**Tangent Mate:** Locates the selected items in a tangent mate. At least one selected item must be either a conical, cylindrical, spherical face.
**Concentric Mate:** Locates the selected items so they can share the same center point.
**Lock Mate:** Maintains the position and orientation between two components.
**Distance Mate:** Locates the selected items with a specified distance between them. Use the drop-down arrow box or enter the distance value directly.
**Angle Mate:** Locates the selected items at the specified angle to each other. Use the drop-down arrow box or enter the angle value directly.
There are two Mate Alignment options. The Aligned option positions the components so that the normal vectors from the selected faces point in the same direction. The Anti-Aligned option positions the components so that the normal vectors from the selected faces point in opposite directions.
Mates reflect the physical behavior of a component in an assembly. In this project, the two most common mate types are Concentric and Coincident.
**Advanced Mates:**
The Advanced mate types are:
**Symmetric Mate**: Positions two selected entities to be symmetric about a plane or planar face. A Symmetric Mate does not create a Mirrored Component.
**Width Mate**: Centers a tab within the width of a groove.
**Path Mate**: Constrains a selected point on a component to a path.
**Linear/Linear Coupler Mate**: Establishes a relationship between the translation of one component and the translation of another component.
**Distance Mate**: Locates the selected items with a specified distance between them. Use the drop-down arrow box or enter the distance value directly.
**Angle Mate**: Locates the selected items at the specified angle to each other. Use the drop-down arrow box or enter the angle value directly.
**Mechanical Mates:**
The Mechanical mate types are:
**Cam Mate**: Forces a plane, cylinder, or point to be tangent or coincident to a series of tangent extruded faces.
**Hinge Mate**: Limits the movement between two components to one rotational degree of freedom.
**Gear Mate**: Forces two components to rotate relative to one another around selected axes.
**Rack Pinion Mate**: Provides the ability to have Linear translation of a part, rack causes circular rotation in another part, pinion, and vice versa.
**Screw Mate**: Constrains two components to be concentric, and also adds a pitch relationship between the rotation of one component and the translation of the other.
**Universal Joint Mate**: The rotation of one component (the output shaft) about its axis is driven by the rotation of another component (the input shaft) about its axis.
Example: Utilize a Concentric mate between the AXLE cylindrical face and the FLATBAR Extruded Cut feature, (hole). Utilize a Coincident mate between the SHAFT-COLLAR back face and the FLATBAR front flat face.
The LINKAGE assembly requires the AirCylinder assembly. The AirCylinder assembly is located on the SolidWorks Tutorial Multimedia CD in the Pneumatic Components folder.
**Activity: AirCylinder Assembly-Open and Save As option**
Copy the folders and files from the CD in the book.
195) Minimize the SolidWorks Graphics window.
196) Insert the CD from the book into your computer. If required, exit out of AutoPlay for the Multi-media movies.
197) Right-click your CD drive icon.
198) Click Explore. View the available folders.
199) Copy the folders and files from the CD to your SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder on the hard drive.
Return to SolidWorks. Create a new assembly.
200) Maximize the SolidWorks Graphics window.
201) Click New from the Menu bar. The New SolidWorks Document dialog box is displayed. The Templates tab is the default tab.
202) Double-click Assembly from the New SolidWorks Document dialog box. The Begin Assembly PropertyManager is displayed.
203) Click the Browse button.
204) Double-click the AirCylinder assembly from the SW-TUTORIAL-2009/Pneumatic Components folder. The AirCylinder assembly is displayed in the Graphics window.
💡 If an assembly or component is loaded in a Lightweight state, right-click the assembly name or component name from the FeatureManager. Click Set Lightweight to Resolved.
205) Click **OK** from the Begin Assembly PropertyManager to fix the AirCylinder assembly in the Graphics window. The (f) symbol is placed in front of the AirCylinder name in the FeatureManager.
206) If required, click **Yes** to Rebuild.
207) Click **Save As** from the Menu bar.
208) Select **SW-TUTORIAL-2009** for Save in folder.
209) Enter **LINKAGE** for file name.
210) Click the **References** button.
211) Click the **Browse** button from the Specify folder for selected items.
212) Select the **SW-TUTORIAL-2009** folder.
213) Click **OK** from the Browse For Folder dialog box.
214) Click **Save All**. The LINKAGE assembly FeatureManager is displayed.
The AirCylinder assembly and its references are copied to the SWTUTORIAL-2009 folder. Assemble the AXLE to the holes in the RodClevis.
Display the RodClevis component in the FeatureManager.
215) Expand the AirCylinder assembly in the FeatureManager.
216) Click RodClevis<1> from the FeatureManager. Note: The RodClevis is displayed in blue in the Graphics window.
If required hide the Origins.
217) Click View, uncheck Origins from the Menu bar.
The AirCylinder is the first component in the LINKAGE assembly and is fixed (f) to the LINKAGE assembly Origin.
Display an Isometric view.
218) Click Isometric view from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Insert the AXLE part.
219) Click the Assembly tab in the CommandManager.
220) Click the Insert Components Assembly tool. The Insert Component PropertyManager is displayed.
221) Click the Browse button.
222) Select All Files from the Files of type box.
223) Double-click AXLE from the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder.
224) Click a position to the front of the AirCylinder assembly as illustrated.
Move the AXLE component.
225) Click and drag a position in front of the RODCLEVIS.
Enlarge the view.
226) Zoom in on the RodClevis and the AXLE.
Insert a Concentric mate.
227) Click the Mate tool from the Assembly toolbar. The Mate PropertyManager is displayed.
228) Click the inside front hole face of the RodClevis. The cursor displays the face feedback symbol.
229) Click the **long cylindrical face** of the AXLE. The cursor displays the face feedback symbol. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Concentric mate is selected by default. The AXLE is positioned concentric to the RodClevis hole.
230) Click the **Green Check mark** as illustrated.
Move the AXLE.
231) Click and drag the AXLE left to right. The AXLE translates in and out of the RodClevis holes.
The Mate Pop-up toolbar is displayed after selecting the two cylindrical faces. The Mate Pop-up toolbar minimizes the time required to create a mate.
💡 Position the mouse pointer in the middle of the face to select the entire face. Do not position the mouse pointer near the edge of the face. If the wrong face or edge is selected, perform one of the following actions:
- Click the face or edge again to remove it from the Mate Selections box.
- Right-click in the Graphics window. Click Clear Selections to remove all geometry from the Items Selected text box.
- Right-click in the Mate Selections box to either select Clear Selections or to delete a single selection.
- Utilize the Undo button to begin the Mate command again.
Display the Top view.
232) Click **Top view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Expand the LINKAGE assembly and components in the fly-out FeatureManager.
233) Expand the LINKAGE assembly from the fly-out FeatureManager.
234) Expand the AirCylinder assembly from the fly-out FeatureManager.
235) Expand the AXLE part from the fly-out FeatureManager.
236) Expand the Features folder.
Clear all sections from the Mate Selections box.
237) Right-click Clear Selections inside the Mate Selections box.
Insert a Coincident mate.
238) Click the Front Plane of the AirCylinder assembly from the fly-out FeatureManager.
239) Click the Front Plane of the AXLE part from the fly-out FeatureManager. The selected planes are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Coincident mate is selected by default.
240) Click the Green Check mark.
241) Click OK from the Mate PropertyManager.
The AirCylinder Front Plane and the AXLE Front Plane are Coincident. The AXLE is centered in the RodClevis.
Display the Mates in the FeatureManager to check that the components and the Mate types correspond to the design intent. Note: If you delete a Mate and then recreate it, the Mate numbers will be in a different order.
Display an Isometric view.
242) Click Isometric view from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Display the Mates in the folder.
243) Expand the Mates folder in the FeatureManager. View the created mates.
Save the LINKAGE assembly.
244) Click Save.
Activity: LINKAGE Assembly-Insert FLATBAR Part
Insert the FLATBAR part.
245) Click the Insert Components Assembly tool. The Insert Component PropertyManager is displayed. Click the Browse button.
246) Select Part for Files of type from the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder.
247) Double-click FLATBAR.
Place the component in the assembly.
248) Click a position in the Graphics window as illustrated. Note: Use the z key to Zoom out if required.
Enlarge the view.
249) Zoom in on the AXLE and the left side of the FLATBAR to enlarge the view.
Insert a Concentric mate.
250) Click the Mate tool from the Assembly toolbar. The Mate PropertyManager is displayed. If required, right-click Clear Selections inside the Mate Selections box.
251) Click the inside left hole face of the FLATBAR.
252) Click the long cylindrical face of the AXLE. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Concentric is selected by default.
253) Click the Green Check mark.
Fit the model to the Graphics window.
254) Press the f key.
Move the FLATBAR.
255) Click and drag the FLATBAR. The FLATBAR translates and rotates along the AXLE.
Insert a Coincident mate.
256) Click the front face of the FLATBAR.
257) Press the left arrow key approximately 5 times to rotate the model and to view the back face of the RodClevis.
258) Click the back face of the RodClevis as illustrated. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Coincident is selected by default.
259) Click the Green Check mark.
260) Click OK from the Mate PropertyManager.
Display the Isometric view.
261) Click Isometric view from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Insert the second FLATBAR component.
262) Click the Insert Components Assembly tool. The Insert Component PropertyManager is displayed.
263) Click the Browse button.
264) Select Part for Files of type from the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder.
265) Double-click FLATBAR.
266) Click a position to the front of the AirCylinder in the Graphics window as illustrated.
Enlarge the view.
267) Zoom in on the second FLATBAR and the AXLE.
Insert a Concentric mate.
268) Click the Mate tool from the Assembly tool. The Mate PropertyManager is displayed.
269) Click the left inside hole face of the second FLATBAR.
270) Click the long cylindrical face of the AXLE. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Concentric is selected by default.
271) Click the Green Check mark.
272) Click and drag the second FLATBAR to the front.
Fit the model to the Graphics window.
273) Press the f key.
Insert a Coincident mate.
274) Press the **left arrow key** approximately 5 times to rotate the model to view the back face of the second FLATBAR.
275) Click the **back face** of the second FLATBAR.
276) Press the **right arrow key** approximately 5 times to rotate the model to view the front face of the RodClevis.
277) Click the **front face** of the RodClevis. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Coincident is selected by default.
278) Click the **Green Check mark**.
Insert a Parallel mate.
279) Press the **Shift-z** keys to Zoom in on the model.
280) Click the **top narrow face** of the first FLATBAR.
281) Click the **top narrow face** of the second FLATBAR. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box.
282) Click **Parallel**.
283) Click the **Green Check mark**.
284) Click **OK** from the Mate PropertyManager.
285) Click **Isometric view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Move the two FLATBAR parts.
286) Click and drag the **second FLATBAR**. Both FLATBAR parts move together.
View the Mates folder.
287) Expand the Mates folder from the FeatureManager. View the created mates.
Activity: LINKAGE Assembly-Insert SHAFT-COLLAR Part
Insert the first SHAFT-COLLAR.
288) Click the Insert Components tool. The Insert Component PropertyManager is displayed.
289) Click the Browse button.
290) Select Part for Files of type from the SWTUTORIAL-2009 folder.
291) Double-click SHAFT-COLLAR.
292) Click a position to the back of the AXLE as illustrated.
Enlarge the view.
293) Click the Zoom to Area tool.
294) Zoom-in on the SHAFT-COLLAR and the AXLE component.
Deactivate the tool.
295) Click the Zoom to Area tool.
Insert a Concentric mate.
296) Click the Mate tool from the Assembly toolbar. The Mate PropertyManager is displayed.
297) Click the inside hole face of the SHAFT-COLLAR.
298) Click the long cylindrical face of the AXLE. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Concentric is selected by default.
299) Click the Green Check mark.
Insert a Coincident mate.
300) Press the Shift-z keys to Zoom in on the model.
301) Click the front face of the SHAFT-COLLAR as illustrated.
302) Press the left arrow key approximately 5 times to rotate the model to view the back face of the first FLATBAR.
303) Click the **back face** of the first FLATBAR. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Coincident is selected by default.
304) Click the **Green Check mark**.
305) Click **OK** from the Mate PropertyManager.
Display the Isometric view.
306) Click **Isometric view** from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Insert the second SHAFT-COLLAR.
307) Click the **Insert Components** Assembly tool. The Insert Component PropertyManager is displayed.
308) Click the **Browse** button.
309) Select **Part** for Files of type from the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder.
310) Double-click **SHAFT-COLLAR**.
311) Click a **position** near the AXLE as illustrated.
Enlarge the view.
312) Click the **Zoom to Area** tool.
313) **Zoom-in** on the second SHAFT-COLLAR and the AXLE to enlarge the view.
314) Click the **Zoom to Area** tool to deactivate the tool.
Insert a Concentric mate.
315) Click **Mate** from the Assembly toolbar. The Mate PropertyManager is displayed.
316) Click the **inside hole face** of the second SHAFT-COLLAR.
317) Click the **long cylindrical face** of the AXLE. Concentric is selected by default. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box.
318) Click the **Green Check mark**.
Insert a Coincident mate.
319) Click the **back face** of the second SHAFT-COLLAR.
320) Click the **front face** of the second FLATBAR. The selected faces are displayed in the Mate Selections box. Coincident is selected by default.
321) Click the Green Check mark.
322) Click OK from the Mate PropertyManager.
323) Expand the Mates folder. View the created mates.
Display an Isometric view.
324) Click Isometric view from the Heads-up View toolbar.
Fit the model to the Graphics window.
325) Press the f key.
Save the LINKAGE assembly.
326) Click Save. The LINKAGE assembly is complete.
Review the LINKAGE Assembly
An assembly is a document that contains two or more parts. A part or sub-assembly inserted into an assembly is called a component. You created the LINKAGE assembly.
The AirCylinder sub-assembly was the first component inserted into the LINKAGE assembly. The AirCylinder assembly was obtained from the CD in the book and copied to the SW-TUTORIAL-2009 folder.
The AirCylinder assembly was fixed to the Origin. The Concentric and Coincident mates added Geometric relationships between the inserted components in the LINKAGE assembly.
The AXLE part was the second component inserted into the LINKAGE assembly. The AXLE required a Concentric mate between the two cylindrical faces and a Coincident mate between two the Front Planes.
The FLATBAR part was the third component inserted into the LINKAGE assembly. The FLATBAR required a Concentric mate between the two cylindrical faces and a Coincident mate between the two flat faces.
A second FLATBAR was inserted into the LINKAGE assembly. A Parallel mate was added between the two FLATBARs.
Two SHAFT-COLLAR parts were inserted into the LINKAGE assembly. Each SHAFT-COLLAR required a Concentric mate between the two cylindrical faces and a Coincident mate between the two flat faces.
**Motion Study – Basic Motion Tool**
Motion Studies are graphical simulations of motion for assembly models. You can incorporate visual properties such as lighting and camera perspective into a motion study. Motion studies do not change an assembly model or its properties. They simulate and animate the motion you prescribe for your model. Use SolidWorks mates to restrict the motion of components in an assembly when you model motion.
Create a Motion Study. Select the Basic Motion option from the MotionManager. The Basic Motion option provides the ability to approximate the effects of motors, springs, collisions and gravity on your assembly. Basic Motion takes mass into account in calculating motion. Note: The Animation option does not!
**Activity: LINKAGE Assembly-Basic Motion**
Insert a Rotary Motor using the Motion Study tab.
327) Click the **Motion Study 1** tab located in the bottom left corner of the Graphics window. The MotionManager is displayed.
328) Select **Basic Motion** for Type of study from the MotionManager drop-down menu as illustrated.
329) Click Motor from the MotionManager. The Motor PropertyManager is displayed.
330) Click the Rotary Motor box.
331) Click the FLATBAR front face as illustrated. A red Rotary Motor icon is displayed. The red direction arrow points counterclockwise.
332) Enter 150 RPM for speed in the Motion box.
333) Click OK from the Motor PropertyManager.
Record the Simulation.
334) Click Calculate. The FLATBAR rotates in a counterclockwise direction for a set period of time.
335) Click Play. View the simulation.
Save the simulation in an AVI file to the SWTUTORIAL-2009 folder.
336) Click **Save Animation**.
337) Click **Save** from the Save Animation to File dialog box. View your options.
338) Click **OK** from the Video Compression box.
Close the Motion Study and return to SolidWorks.
339) Click the **Model** tab location in the bottom left corner of the Graphics window.
Fit the assembly to the Graphics window.
340) Press the **f** key.
Save the LINKAGE assembly.
341) Click **Save**.
Exit SolidWorks.
342) Click **Windows, Close All** from the Menu bar.
The LINKAGE assembly project is complete.
Review the Motion Study
The Rotary Motor Basic Motion tool combined Mates and Physical Dynamics to rotate the FLATBAR components in the LINKAGE assembly. The Rotary Motor was applied to the front face of the FLATBAR. You utilized the Calculate option to play the simulation. You saved the simulation in an .AVI file.
Additional details on Motion Study, Assembly, mates, and Simulation are available in SolidWorks Help. Keywords: Motion Study and Basic Motion.
Project Summary
In this project you created three parts, copied the AirCylinder assembly from the CD in the book, and created the LINKAGE assembly.
You developed an understanding of the SolidWorks User Interface: Menus, Toolbars, Task Pane, CommandManager, FeatureManager, System feedback icons, Document Properties, Parts, and Assemblies.
You created 2D sketches and addressed the three key states of a sketch: Fully Defined, Over Defined, and Under Defined. Note: Always review your FeatureManager for the proper Sketch state.
You obtained the knowledge of the following SolidWorks features: Extruded Base, Extruded Cut, and Linear Pattern. Features are the building blocks of parts. The Extruded Boss/Base feature required a Sketch plane, sketch, and depth.
The Extruded Boss/Base feature added material to a part. The Extruded Base feature was utilized in the AXLE, SHAFT-COLLAR, and FLATBAR parts.
The Extruded Cut feature removed material from the part. The Extruded Cut feature was utilized to create a hole in the SHAFT-COLLAR, and FLATBAR parts.
The Linear Pattern feature was utilized to create an array of holes in the FLATBAR part.
When parts are inserted into an assembly, they are called components. You created the LINKAGE assembly by inserting the AirCylinder assembly, AXLE, SHAFT-COLLAR, and FLATBAR parts.
Mates are geometric relationships that align and fit components in an assembly. Concentric, Coincident, and Parallel mates were utilized to assemble the components.
You created a Motion Study. The Rotary Motor Basic Motion tool combined Mates and Physical Dynamics to rotate the FLATBAR components in the LINKAGE assembly.
💡 If an assembly or component is loaded in a Lightweight state, right-click the assembly name or component name from the FeatureManager. Click Set Lightweight to Resolved.
Project Terminology
Utilize SolidWorks Help for additional information on the terms utilized in this project.
**Assembly**: An assembly is a document which contains parts, features, and other sub-assemblies. When a part is inserted into an assembly it is called a component. Components are mated together. The filename extension for a SolidWorks assembly file name is .SLDASM.
**Component**: A part or sub-assembly within an assembly.
**Cursor Feedback**: Feedback is provided by a symbol attached to the cursor arrow indicating your selection. As the cursor floats across the model, feedback is provided in the form of symbols, riding next to the cursor.
**Dimension**: A value indicating the size of feature geometry.
**Drafting Standard**: A set of drawing and detailing options developed by national and international organizations. The Dimensioning standard options are: ANSI, ISO, DIN, JIS, BSI, GOST and GB.
**Features**: Features are geometry building blocks. Features add or remove material. Features are created from sketched profiles or from edges and faces of existing geometry.
**Instance Number**: The instance number increments every time you insert the same component or mate. If you delete a component or mate and then reinsert the component or mate in the same SolidWorks session, the instance number increments by one.
**Mates**: A mate is a geometric relationship between components in an assembly.
**Mouse Buttons**: The left and right mouse buttons have distinct meanings in SolidWorks. Left mouse button is utilized to select geometry. Right-mouse button is utilized to invoke commands.
**Part**: A part is a single 3D object made up of features. The filename extension for a SolidWorks part file name is .SLDPRT.
**Plane**: To create a sketch, select a plane. Planes are flat and infinite. They are represented on the screen with visible edges. The reference plane for this project is the Front Plane.
Relation: A relation is a geometric constraint between sketch entities or between a sketch entity and a plane, axis, edge, or vertex.
Sketch: The name to describe a 2D profile is called a sketch. 2D Sketches are created on flat faces and planes within the model. Typical geometry types are lines, arcs, rectangles, circles, polygons and ellipses.
Status of a Sketch: Three states are utilized in this Project:
- Fully Defined: Has complete information, (Black).
- Over Defined: Has duplicate dimensions, (Red), or
- Under Defined: There is inadequate definition of the sketch, (Blue).
Toolbars: The toolbar menus provide shortcuts enabling you to quickly access the most frequently used commands.
Trim Entities: Deletes selected sketched geometry. Extends a sketch segment unit it is coincident with another entity.
Units: Used in the measurement of physical quantities. Millimeter dimensioning and decimal inch dimensioning are the two types of common units specified for engineering parts and drawings.
Project Features
Extruded Boss/Base: An Extruded Base feature is the first feature in a part. The Extruded Boss/Base feature starts with either a 2D or 3D sketch. An Extruded Boss feature occurs after the Extruded Base feature. The Extruded Boss/Base feature adds material by extrusion. Steps to create an Extruded Boss/Base Feature:
- Select the Sketch plane; Sketch the profile; Add needed dimensions and Geometric relations; Select Extruded Boss/Base from the Features toolbar; Select an End Condition and/or options; Enter a depth; Click OK from the Extrude PropertyManager.
Extruded Cut: The Extruded Cut feature removes material from a solid. The Extruded Cut feature performs the opposite function of the Extruded Boss/Base feature. The Extruded Cut feature starts with either a 2D or 3D sketch and removes material by extrusion. Steps to create an Extruded Cut Feature:
- Select the Sketch plane; Sketch the profile, Add Dimensions and Relations; Select Extruded Cut from the Features toolbar; Select an End Condition and/or options; Enter a depth; Click OK from the Extrude PropertyManager.
Linear Pattern: A Linear Pattern repeats features or geometry in an array. A Linear Pattern requires the number of instances and the spacing between instances. Steps to create a Linear Pattern Feature:
- Select the features to repeat; Select Linear Pattern from the Feature toolbar; Enter Direction of the pattern; Enter Number of pattern instances in each direction; Enter Distance between pattern instances; Optional: Pattern instances to skip; Click OK from the Linear Pattern PropertyManager.
Engineering Journal
Engineers and designers utilize mathematics, science, economics and history to calculate additional information about a project. Answers to questions are written in an engineering journal.
1. Volume of a cylinder is provided by the formula, $V = \pi r^2 h$. Where:
- $V$ is volume.
- $r$ is the radius.
- $h$ is the height.
a) Determine the radius of the AXLE in mm.
b) Determine the height of the AXLE in mm.
c) Calculate the Volume of the AXLE in $mm^3$.
2. Density of a material is provided by the formula: \( \rho = \frac{m}{V} \). Where:
- \( \rho \) is density.
- \( m \) is mass.
- \( V \) is volume.
a) Determine the mass of the AXLE in grams if the AXLE is manufactured from hardened steel. The density of hardened steel is .007842 g/mm\(^3\).
3. The material supplier catalog lists Harden Steel Rod in foot lengths.
| Harden Steel Rod (Ø 3/16): |
|-----------------------------|
| Part Number: | Length: | Cost: |
| 23-123-1 | 1 ft | $10.00 |
| 23-123-2 | 2 ft | $18.00 |
| 23-123-3 | 3 ft | $24.00 |
Utilize the table above to determine the following questions:
How many 1-3/8 inch AXLES can be cut from each steel rod?
Twenty AXLE parts are required for a new assembly. What length of Harden Steel Rod should be purchased?
4. Air is a gas. Boyle’s Law states that with constant temperature, the pressure, $P$ of a given mass of a gas is inversely proportional to its volume, $V$.
- $\frac{P_1}{P_2} = \frac{V_2}{V_1}$
- $P_1 \times V_1 = P_2 \times V_2$
Illustration of Boyle's Law
Courtesy of SMC Corporation of America
The pressure in a closed container is doubled. How will the volume of air inside the container be modified?
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was an Irish born, English scientist, natural philosopher and a founder of modern chemistry. Boyle utilized experiments and the scientific method to test his theories. Along with his student, Robert Hooke (1635-1703), Boyle developed the air pump.
Research other contributions made by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke that are utilized today.
Questions
1. Explain the steps in starting a SolidWorks session.
2. Describe the procedure to begin a new 2D sketch.
3. Explain the steps required to modify part unit dimensions from inches to millimeters.
4. Describe the procedure to create a simple 3D part with an Extruded Base feature.
5. Identify the three default Reference planes.
6. Describe a Base feature? Provide two examples from this Project.
7. Describe the differences between an Extruded Base feature and an Extruded Cut feature.
8. The sketch color black indicates a sketch is __________ defined.
9. The sketch color blue indicates a sketch is __________ defined.
10. The sketch color red indicates a sketch is __________ defined.
11. Describe the procedure to “wake up” a centerpoint.
12. Define a Geometric relation. Provide an example.
13. Describe the procedure to create a Linear Pattern feature.
14. Describe an assembly or sub-assembly.
15. What are mates and why are they important in assembling components?
16. In an assembly, each component has ______# degrees of freedom? Name them.
17. True or False. A fixed component cannot move in an assembly.
18. Review the Design Intent section in the book. Identify how you incorporated design intent into the parts and assembly.
Exercises
Exercise 1.1: Identify the Sketch plane for the Extrude1 (Base) feature as illustrated.
A: Top Plane
B: Front Plane
C: Right Plane
D: Left Plane
Correct answer _______.
Create the part. Dimensions are arbitrary.
Exercise 1.2: Identify the Sketch plane for the Extrude1 (Base) feature as illustrated.
A: Top Plane
B: Front Plane
C: Right Plane
D: Left Plane
Correct answer _______.
Create the part. Dimensions are arbitrary.
Exercise 1.3: Identify the Sketch plane for the Extrude1 (Base) feature as illustrated.
A: Top Plane
B: Front Plane
C: Right Plane
D: Left Plane
Correct answer _______.
Create the part. Dimensions are arbitrary.
Exercise 1.4: FLATBAR-3HOLE.
Create the FLATBAR-3HOLE part.
• Utilize the Front Plane for the Sketch plane. Insert an Extruded Base feature.
• Create an Extruded Cut feature. This is your seed feature. Apply the Linear Pattern feature. The FLATBAR-3HOLE part is manufactured from 0.060in, [1.5mm] 6061 Alloy.
Exercise 1.5: FLATBAR-5HOLE.
Create the FLATBAR-5HOLE part as illustrated.
• Utilize the Front Plane for the Sketch plane. Insert an Extruded Base feature.
• Create an Extruded Cut feature. This is your seed feature. Apply the Linear Pattern feature. The FLATBAR-5HOLE part is manufactured from 0.060in, [1.5mm] 6061 Alloy.
• Calculate the required dimensions for the FLATBAR-5HOLE part. Use the following information: Holes are .500in on center, Radius is .250in, and Hole diameter is .190in.
Exercise 1.6
Create the illustrated part. Note the location of the Origin in the illustration.
- Calculate the overall mass of the illustrated model.
- Apply the Mass Properties tool.
- Think about the steps that you would take to build the model.
- Review the provided information carefully.
- Units are represented in the IPS, (inch, pound, second) system.
- $A = 3.50\text{in}$, $B = .70\text{in}$
Given:
$A = 3.50$
$B = .70$
Material: 1060 Alloy
Density = 0.0975 lb/in$^3$
Units: IPS
Decimal places = 2
Exercise 1.7
Create the illustrated part. Note the location of the Origin in the illustration.
- Calculate the overall mass of the illustrated model.
- Apply the Mass Properties tool.
- Think about the steps that you would take to build the model.
- Review the provided information carefully. Units are represented in the IPS, (inch, pound, second) system.
- $A = 3.00\text{in}$, $B = .75\text{in}$
- Note: The part is symmetrical.
Given:
$A = 3.00$
$B = .75$
Material: Copper
Density = 0.321 lb/in$^3$
Units: IPS
Decimal places = 2
Exercise 1.8
Create the illustrated part. Note the location of the Origin in the illustration.
- Calculate the volume of the part and locate the Center of mass with the provided information.
- Apply the Mass Properties tool.
- Think about the steps that you would take to build the model.
- Review the provided information carefully.
Given:
A = 3.30
B = 2.00
Material: 2014 Alloy
Density = .101 lb/in^3
Units: IPS
Decimal places = 2
Exercise 1.9
Create the part from the illustrated drawing: Front, Top, Right, and Isometric views. Note: The location of the Origin in the illustration.
- Apply 1060 Alloy for material.
- Calculate the Volume of the part and locate the Center of mass.
- Think about the steps that you would take to build the model. The part is symmetric about the Front Plane.
Exercise 1.10
Create the part from the illustrated drawing: Front, Top, Right, and Isometric views.
- Apply 1060 Alloy for material.
- The part is symmetric about the Front Plane.
- Calculate the Volume of the part and locate the Center of mass.
- Think about the steps that you would take to build the model.
Exercise 1.11:
LINKAGE-2 Assembly.
Create the LINKAGE-2 assembly.
- Open the LINKAGE assembly. If required, set the LINKAGE assembly to (Set Lightweight to Resolved).
- Select Save As from the Menu bar.
- Check the Save as copy check box.
- Enter LINKAGE-2 for file name. LINKAGE-2 ASSEMBLY for description.
The FLATBAR-3HOLE part was created in Exercise 1.1. Utilize two AXLE parts, four SHAFT COLLAR parts, and two FLATBAR-3HOLE parts to create the LINKAGE-2 assembly as illustrated.
- Insert the first AXLE part.
- Insert a Concentric mate.
- Insert a Coincident mate.
- Insert the first FLATBAR-3HOLE part.
- Insert a Concentric mate.
- Insert a Coincident mate.
- Perform the same procedure for the second FLATBAR-3HOLE part.
- Insert a Parallel mate between the 2 FLATBAR-3HOLE parts. Note: The 2 FLATBAR-3HOLE parts move together.
• Insert the second AXLE part.
• Insert a Concentric mate.
• Insert a Coincident mate.
• Insert the first SHAFT-COLLAR part.
• Insert a Concentric mate.
• Insert a Coincident mate.
• Perform the same tasks to insert the other three required SHAFT-COLLAR parts as illustrated.
**Exercise 1.12: LINKAGE-2 Assembly Motion Study.**
Create a Motion Study using the LINKAGE-2 Assembly that was created in the previous exercise.
• Create a Basic Motion Study.
• Apply a Rotary Motor to the front FLATBAR-3HOLE as illustrated.
• Play and Save the Simulation.
Exercise 1.13: ROCKER Assembly.
Create a ROCKER assembly. The ROCKER assembly consists of two AXLE parts, two FLATBAR-5HOLE parts, and two FLATBAR-3HOLE parts.
The FLATBAR-3HOLE parts are linked together with the FLATBAR-5HOLE.
The three parts rotate clockwise and counterclockwise, above the Top Plane. Create the ROCKER assembly.
- Insert the first FLATBAR-5HOLE part. The FLATBAR-5HOLE is fixed to the Origin of the ROCKER assembly.
- Insert the first AXLE part.
- Insert a Concentric mate.
- Insert a Coincident mate.
- Insert the second AXLE part.
- Insert a Concentric mate.
- Insert a Coincident mate.
- Insert the first FLATBAR-3HOLE part.
- Insert a Concentric mate.
- Insert a Coincident mate.
- Insert the second FLATBAR-3HOLE part.
- Insert a Concentric mate.
- Insert a Coincident mate.
• Insert the second FLATBAR-5HOLE part.
• Insert the required mates.
Note: The end holes of the second FLATBAR-5HOLE are concentric with the end holes of the FLATBAR-3HOLE parts.
Note: In mechanical design, the ROCKER assembly is classified as a mechanism. A Four-Bar Linkage is a common mechanism comprised of four links.
Link1 is called the Frame.
The AXLE part is Link1.
Link2 and Link4 are called the Cranks.
The FLATBAR-3HOLE parts are Link2 and Link4. Link3 is called the Coupler. The FLATBAR-5HOLE part is Link3.
If an assembly or component is loaded in a Lightweight state, right-click the assembly name or component name from the FeatureManager. Click Set Lightweight to Resolved.
Exercise 1.14: Industry Application.
Engineers and designers develop a variety of products utilizing SolidWorks.
Model information is utilized to create plastic molds for products from toys to toothbrushes.
- Utilize the World Wide Web and review the following web sites: mikejwilson.com and zxys.com.
The models obtained from these web sites are for educational purposes only.
Learn modeling techniques from others; create your own designs. A common manufacturing procedure for plastic parts is named the Injection Molding Process. Today’s automobiles utilize over 50% plastic components.
Engineers and designers work with mold makers to produce plastic parts. Cost reduction drives plastic part production. | <urn:uuid:b3ddf8ad-5956-4e88-a180-be8dff837265> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://www.sdcpublications.com/pdfsample/978-1-58503-494-9-1.pdf | 2018-02-21T11:09:21Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891813608.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20180221103712-20180221123712-00094.warc.gz | 539,998,140 | 19,939 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.966685 | eng_Latn | 0.990991 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
327,
1015,
1023,
2564,
3187,
4380,
5456,
7099,
8674,
10255,
11987,
12647,
14266,
15672,
17221,
18763,
19898,
21246,
23078,
23979,
24908,
25964,
27251,
27932,
28741,
30009,
31151,
32353,
33348,
34634,
36356,
37515,
38473,
40032,
41314,
42556,
43961,
44370,
44994,
46201,
47348,
48617,
49758,
51074,
52156,
53796,
55372,
57152,
58697,
59371,
60789,
62171,
63599,
64877,
65949,
67102,
68258,
69493,
70656,
72434,
72948,
74018,
75850,
77789,
79906,
80898,
81705,
82483,
83751,
84410,
85222,
86270,
87071,
87695,
88227,
88790,
89595,
90294,
91010
] | [
1.265625,
4.125
] | 1 | 0 |
香港的燈塔
Lighthouses in Hong Kong
No lighthouse was existed in Hong Kong before the mid-19th century. In 1867, the British naval surveyor, Commander Reed, was instructed to investigate suitable locations for lighthouses to cover the port approaches to Hong Kong, but the proposal was not further pursued. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 came further impetus to develop trade, the idea of constructing lighthouses was once again raised. As reported by the Harbour Master in March 1873, the government chose the sites of Cape D’Aguilar, Green Island and Cape Collinson. Construction works were then commenced including those of other lighthouses built along the approaches. Before the Second World War, there were seven lighthouses in total in Hong Kong, five of which have been declared as monuments.
Lighthouses indeed played the significant role in the early maritime trade of Hong Kong by facilitating the safe passage of maritime traffic.
鶴咀燈塔
Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse
鶴咀燈塔位於香港島東南面，是香港現存歷史最悠久的燈塔。
鶴咀燈塔於一八七五年四月十六日啟用，英文名稱為「德己立角燈塔」，以紀念香港的陸軍司令德己立少將。燈塔的照明儀器屬固定一級屈光鏡，可射出白色燈光。燈光的焦平面位於平均海平面以上200呎，如天朗氣清，遠至23海里的水域也能看見。一八九三年橫瀾燈塔落成啟用後，鶴咀燈塔失去原有作用，至一八九六年停止運作。一九〇五年，當局決定將鶴咀燈塔上已停用的一級號燈及其附屬設備遷往青洲，以取代青洲燈塔原有的四級號燈。一九七五年，鶴咀燈塔添置全自動設備，重新投入服務。現時的燈塔是一座由花崗石築砌的圓筒形建築，高9.7米，燈塔底座、拱形門口及螺旋式樓梯均由石塊砌成，工藝精湛。入口的鐵門上方飾有幾何圖案，別具特色。
鶴咀燈塔於二〇〇六年列為法定古蹟。
Situated on Cape D’Aguilar on the southeast shore of Hong Kong Island, Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse is the territory’s oldest surviving lighthouse.
Named after Major-General Sir George Charles D’Aguilar, Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse was put into service on 16 April 1875. The illuminating apparatus was a fixed Dioptic of the first order emitting a white light. The focal plane of the light stood 200 feet above mean sea level, and in clear weather could be seen at a distance of 23 nautical miles. With the commencement of operation of Waglan Island Lighthouse in 1893, Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse became superfluous and was thus discontinued in 1896. In 1905, the disused first-order light was removed from Cape D’Aguilar and, together with the light apparatus, was transferred to Green Island to replace the fourth-order light. It was not until 1975 that the lantern of Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse was re-lit and automated. The existing structure is a white, 9.7-metre high round granite tower. The tower base, the arched doorway and the circular staircase are of fine masonry. The door is made of iron and is crowned with a geometric decoration.
Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse was declared a monument in 2006.
燈塔背面
Rear side of the lighthouse
新、舊青洲燈塔
New and Old Green Island Lighthouses
位於港島西面對開的青洲上的燈塔建築群，包括兩座燈塔、一幢前歐籍職員宿舍，以及一幢前看守員房舍。數十年來，新、舊青洲燈塔為數以萬計從西面進入香港的船隻輔航。
青洲燈塔於一八七五年七月一日啟用，較鶴咀燈塔遲約三個月。燈塔的照明儀器屬固定四級屈光鏡，可射出紅色及綠色燈光。燈光的焦平面位於平均海平面以上95呎，如天朗氣清，視野達14海里。細小的舊燈塔呈圓柱形，以花崗石建造，高約12米，門口沿邊飾以凸出的粗面隅石。燈塔的牆上有兩個「十」字開口，供塔內通風和採光之用，這些開口及雕鑿與中世紀歐洲堡壘上的槍眼十分相似。
一九〇一年，政府計劃把鶴咀燈塔的訊號燈搬至青洲，於是需要在青洲建造一座更高更大的塔樓，以容納鶴咀的訊號燈。新青洲燈塔遂建於舊燈塔旁，一九〇四年動工，翌年竣工。新燈塔亦呈圓柱形，以花崗石和混凝土建造，高17.5米，頂部裝設一個銅鑄訊號燈。整座構築物均髹上白漆，不但令航海員易於看見，而且又能發揮隔熱功能和保護構築物本身。螺旋形樓梯以磚石鋪砌，附有美觀的欄杆。入口處和窗戶的頂部則塑造成平圓拱形，並以灰塑裝飾作為點綴。新燈塔在一九七〇年代起改為全自動操作。
青洲燈塔建築群於二〇〇八年列為法定古蹟。
Situated on Green Island, a short distance off the west coast of Hong Kong Island, the Green Island Lighthouse Compound comprises two lighthouses, a former European staff quarters and a former keeper’s house. Both Green Island Lighthouses have served thousands of vessels approaching Hong Kong from the west for many decades and have thus played an important role in Hong Kong’s maritime history.
The lighthouses and former European staff quarters
Exterior of the new (left) and old (right) Green Island Lighthouses
Green Island Lighthouse started operation on 1 July 1875, about three months after Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse was established. The illuminating apparatus at the outset was a fixed Diopptic of the fourth order emitting both red and green light. The focal plane of the light stood 95 feet above mean sea level and was visible at a distance of 14 miles in clear weather. The old lighthouse is a 12-metre tall small circular tower constructed of granite with projected rock-faced quoins distinguishing its doorway. Two cross-shaped openings in its wall provide ventilation and indoor illumination, resembling those found in mediaeval European castles.
In 1901, there was a plan to move the lantern of Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse to Green Island. To accommodate the Cape D’Aguilar light apparatus, a higher and larger tower was necessary. The construction of a new lighthouse adjacent to the old one on Green Island commenced in 1904 and was completed the following year. Made of concrete and granite, the new circular tower stood about 17.5 metres high and had a steel lantern on its top. The whole structure is painted white to increase its visibility to mariners and to provide thermal insulation and protection to the structure itself. The spiral staircase is of fine masonry with beautiful railings while the entrance and window form segmental arches with ornamental plaster mouldings. The new lighthouse was fully automated in the 1970s.
The Green Island Lighthouse Compound was declared a monument in 2008.
橫瀾燈塔位於香港島東南面，它不但負起導航任務，也是收集本港東面氣象資料的地點，所收集的數據會送往香港天文台分析使用。
十九世紀末，香港政府再建議於蚊尾洲和橫瀾島這兩個境外主要航道途經之處興建燈塔。橫瀾燈塔由中國海關委託法國公司興建，於一八九三年五月十日投入服務。當時燈塔設有全亞洲只有兩座燈塔最先採用的先進訊號燈，以石油為燃料，採用一級雙閃燈，其旋轉的照明儀器則浮於水銀上，向四周發射燈光照明，同時可消除旋轉時產生的摩擦力，達到每15秒旋轉一次的速度。橫瀾燈塔最初由中國海關管理，隨著新界於一八九八年租借予英國後，燈塔於一九〇一年一月一日移交香港政府接管及操作。第二次世界大戰期間，橫瀾燈塔遭受嚴重破壞，修復工程於一九四五年後展開。自一九八九年起，燈塔採用自動化操作。圓形燈塔高16米，以鑄鐵建成，並髹上紅、白兩色。
橫瀾燈塔於二〇〇〇年宣布為法定古蹟。
Situated on Waglan Island on the southeast of Hong Kong, Waglan Lighthouse acted not only as a navigation aid, but also an outpost where weather information on the eastern corner of the territory was collected and analysed by the Hong Kong Observatory.
In the late 19th century, a proposal for the construction of lighthouses at the two main approaches to Hong Kong, Gap Rock Island and Waglan Island, was raised again. Waglan Lighthouse was constructed by a French company for the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and entered into operation on 10 May 1893. When first opened, the lighthouse was equipped with a state of the art First Order Light, burning mineral oil with a rotating apparatus floating on mercury, which eliminated friction and permitted revolutions as frequent as once every 15 seconds. It was one of the only two modern pieces of equipment introduced and installed in Asian waters at that time. Waglan Lighthouse was initially run by the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Following the lease of the New Territories in 1898, control of the lighthouse was eventually transferred to the Hong Kong Government on 1 January 1901. During the Second World War, Waglan Lighthouse was extensively damaged. Repairs took place after 1945 and the lighthouse has been unmanned and automated since 1989. The red and white Waglan Lighthouse stands 16 metres high and is constructed of cast iron.
Waglan Lighthouse was declared a monument in 2000.
現時安裝在燈塔頂的照明儀器
The existing illuminating apparatus on top of the lighthouse
燈籠洲燈塔
Tang Lung Chau Lighthouse
燈籠洲燈塔位於馬灣以南的小島燈籠洲（原稱汲星島），地處汲水門水域，又稱為汲星燈塔。
燈籠洲燈塔於一九一二年四月二十九日啟用，高11.8米，以鋼鑄骨架建成，塔頂髹上白色，可射出白色燈光。鋼架及照明儀器均為英國製造。以往的燈塔管理員居於燈塔旁的磚構建築，內設睡房、廚房、廁所及儲物室。由於島上並沒有井水或食水供應，因此只能從屋頂收集雨水，再引入地下儲水箱備用。現時燈塔已改為自動操作，無須派員駐守。
燈籠洲燈塔於二〇〇〇年列為法定古蹟。
Situated on Tang Lung Chau (originally named Kap Sing Island), a small island to the south of Ma Wan in Kap Shui Mun, Tang Lung Chau Lighthouse is also known as Kap Sing Lighthouse.
Tang Lung Chau Lighthouse was put into service on 29 April 1912. It is a skeletal steel tower standing 11.8 metres high crowned with a white lantern. The steel tower and light apparatus were obtained from England. The adjoining brick light keeper’s house has a bedroom, a kitchen, a latrine and a store room. Rainwater was collected from the roof and diverted into an underground tank for use as there was no spring or fresh water supply on the island. The Lighthouse is now unmanned and automated.
Tang Lung Chau Lighthouse was declared a monument in 2000.
香港列為法定古蹟的燈塔位置圖
Location Map of Lighthouses which are Declared Monuments in Hong Kong
1. 鶴咀燈塔 (1875)
Cape D’Aguilar Lighthouse (1875)
2. 舊青洲燈塔及新青洲燈塔 (1875 及 1905)
Old and New Green Island Lighthouses (1875 & 1905)
3. 橫瀾燈塔 (1893)
Waglan Lighthouse (1893)
4. 燈籠洲燈塔 (1912)
Tang Lung Chau Lighthouse (1912)
() 括號內數字為燈塔啟用年份
Figures in the brackets are the operation years of the lighthouses
* 除舊青洲燈塔外，所有燈塔均由海事處管理。基於保安理由及避免影響日常運作，所有燈塔並不對外開放。
All lighthouses are under the management of the Marine Department except the old Green Island Lighthouse. For security and operational reasons, all lighthouses are not open to the public.
查詢 Enquiries
📞 2208 4488
📠 2721 6216
🌐 https://www.amo.gov.hk
© 2024 古物古蹟辦事處 Antiquities and Monuments Office
版權所有，未經許可不得翻印、節錄或轉載。All rights reserved. | 297dea95-1181-4f30-85d8-83eaedf3306e | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.amo.gov.hk/filemanager/amo/common/download-area/pamphlet/lighthouse_in_HK.pdf | 2024-02-21T05:28:50+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473370.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221034447-20240221064447-00499.warc.gz | 667,865,299 | 3,281 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.901222 | eng_Latn | 0.987641 | [
"unknown",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
31,
952,
2567,
3639,
5148,
7058,
8054,
8850
] | [
2.265625
] | 1 | 0 |
Virginia Rail Safety Month
Stakeholder Toolkit
See Tracks? THINK TRAIN™
Phone: 804-303-8700
Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
Mailing Address: 919 East Main Street, Suite 2400
Richmond, VA 23219
Together, We Can Stop Train Tragedies
Every three hours in the United States, a person or vehicle is hit by a train. While passenger rail provides a safe, reliable, and important transportation option, it's vital to know how to stay safe near railroad tracks.
Governor Youngkin has issued a Proclamation declaring September 1-30, 2024, Rail Safety Month in the Commonwealth to raise public awareness of the dangers of ignoring safety warnings at level crossing and trespassing on rail property to reduce avoidable deaths, injuries, and damage caused by incidents involving trains and citizens. In coordination with our partners, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority is promoting educational opportunities and rail safety events throughout the Commonwealth this month.
We hope you will join us in spreading awareness of rail safety throughout the month of September via your website, social media, and other communication methods such as emails and/or newsletters. Together we can stop track accidents and save lives.
To help you get started we have put together a list of actions you can take to educate about rail safety and save lives. A toolkit with expanded resources is included.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about how you can support efforts to increase rail safety and save lives across Virginia, please contact:
Courtney Baytop
(804) 513-4874
email@example.com
CERTIFICATE of RECOGNITION
By virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution in the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, there is hereby officially recognized:
VIRGINIA RAIL SAFETY MONTH
WHEREAS, the Commonwealth of Virginia ranks nineteenth in the United States for miles of rails with 3,200 miles across the Commonwealth; and
WHEREAS, every three hours in the United States a person or vehicle is hit by a train; and
WHEREAS, nearly 2,200 highway-rail grade crossing collisions occurred in the United States in 2023, resulting in 247 fatalities and 757 injuries; and
WHEREAS, more than 60% of collisions occur at crossings equipped with lights and/or gates; and
WHEREAS, over 96% of all railroad fatalities occur from highway-rail grade crossing collisions and pedestrians trespassing on tracks; and
WHEREAS, the Commonwealth of Virginia has had a significant decrease in highway-rail grade crossing collisions ranking 26th in the United States down from 13th in 2021; and
WHEREAS, it is important for citizens to be aware of the dangers of ignoring safety warnings at level crossings and trespassing on rail property to reduce avoidable deaths, injuries, and damage caused by incidents involving trains and citizens;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Glenn Youngkin, do hereby recognize September 2024, as VIRGINIA RAIL SAFETY MONTH in the COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.
[Signature]
Glenn Youngkin
Governor
[Signature]
Kelly Lee
Secretary of Transportation
VPRA
How to Participate
VPRA has compiled the following toolkit of content and resources to make communicating and engaging with your constituents/membership about Rail Safety Month simple and easy. Suggestions for ways to participate include:
- Adding a banner, splash page, or section to your website promoting Rail Safety Month and linking to the VPRA Rail Safety Month landing page (link provided in links section of the toolkit).
- Send an email about Rail Safety or include a section on Rail Safety in your monthly newsletter to your membership/constituents.
- Share and amplify VPRA’s rail safety social media posts and/or create your own social posts with rail safety content tailored for your audiences.
- Promote and participate in Rail Safety Month activities hosted by VPRA and others (calendar of VPRA events included in toolkit).
- Include a brief statement about Rail Safety in your email signature for the month of September (sample language provided in toolkit).
Planned Outreach Events
September 1-30: Rail Safety Outreach and safety messaging at select schools in the Commonwealth
September 16: Staples Mill Station and Operation Lifesaver (OLI)
September 17: Alexandria Station
September 23 - 29: See Tracks? Think Train® Week 2024
September 28 - Children's Museum of Richmond
More than 2,300 people are injured or killed annually in railroad crossing and trespass incidents in North America.
Throughout the month of September VPRA will be posting Rail Safety content on social media (@VaPassengerRail). Follow us and share our posts or create your own using the sample content below and graphics available at the following link: Rail Safety Month Graphics.
- Think you'll hear a train? Think again! A train may be large, but it can come up behind you at high speed and with hardly a sound – until it's too late. #RailSafety
- Think you'll hear a train? Think again! Several hundred tons of metal traveling at high speed would seem impossible to go unnoticed, but this false assumption claims hundreds of lives every year. Don't be the next statistic. #RailSafetyWeek
- Think you'll hear a train? Think again! Train tracks, weather, and surrounding terrain can muffle sounds, making several hundred tons of steel quiet—and potentially deadly. #RailSafety
- Think you'll hear a train? Think again! You may hear a train rumble by while standing on a station platform. But when a train is moving directly towards you, it's barely audible—until it's too late. #RailSafety
Links and Other Content
VPRA Rail Safety Month Landing Page
Operation Lifesaver Rail Safety Education Materials – a database of additional resources searchable by audience, topic, and media type (i.e., audio, video, pdf, etc.)
General Rail Safety Tips
Track Safety Basics
- Freight trains don’t travel at fixed times, and schedules for passenger trains often change. Always expect a train at each highway-rail intersection at any time.
- All train tracks are private property. Never walk on tracks; it’s illegal to trespass and highly dangerous. It takes the average freight train traveling at 55 mph more than a mile—the length of 18 football fields—to stop. Trains cannot stop quickly enough to avoid a collision.
- The average locomotive weighs about 400,000 pounds or 200 tons; it can weigh up to 6,000 tons. This makes the weight ratio of a car to a train proportional to that of a soda can to a car. We all know what happens to a soda can hit by a car.
- Trains have the right of way 100% of the time over emergency vehicles, cars, the police and pedestrians.
- A train can extend three feet or more beyond the steel rail, putting the safety zone for pedestrians well beyond the three-foot mark. If there are rails on the railroad ties, always assume the track is in use, even if there are weeds or the track looks unused.
- Trains can move in either direction at any time. Sometimes its cars are pushed by locomotives instead of being pulled, which is especially true in commuter and light rail passenger service.
- Today’s trains are quieter than ever, producing no telltale “clackety-clack.” Any approaching train is always closer, moving faster, than you think.
- Remember to cross train tracks ONLY at designated pedestrian or roadway crossings and obey all warning signs and signals posted there.
- Stay alert around railroad tracks. Refrain from texting, headphones or other distractions that would prevent you from hearing an approaching train; never mix rails and recreation.
Pedestrian Safety Tips
When walking, jogging, or riding through railroad crossings, it’s important to know what to do when you see railroad signs and signals. Stay alert at places where the roadway crosses train tracks.
- Always expect a train. Trains are quieter and faster than you think, can run on any track, at any time, from either direction, and do not run on set schedules.
- Walking on or beside railroad tracks is illegal.
- The only safe place to cross tracks is at designated public crossings with a crossbuck, flashing red lights or a gate. Crossing anywhere else is illegal.
- Crossing tracks on a bike, with a stroller, in a wheelchair, or on other narrow wheels requires caution and extra attention. Plan ahead when choosing a route. When possible, walk, don’t ride across the tracks. Cyclists, walk your bike across train tracks at a 90-degree angle. If in a wheelchair, consider getting assistance or taking an alternate route.
- Never pass flashing lights or go around lowered gates. Always wait until lights have stopped flashing and gates are completely raised.
- Wait to cross until you can see clearly in both directions. Multiple tracks may mean multiple trains.
- Stay off railroad bridges and trestles. Stay out of railroad tunnels. There is ONLY ROOM for the train.
- Do not attempt to hop aboard railroad equipment at any time. Trains, tracks and railroad yards are NOT playgrounds. Never climb on, under or through railroad cars. Never jump on or off a train while it’s moving.
Find more safety tips at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/walking-safely-near-tracks
Passenger Rail Safety Tips
- STAY ALERT. Trains can come from either direction at any time and can be very quiet. Around train tracks or in stations, obey all warning signs and signals and use caution when using headsets or cell phones.
- WATCH THE OVERHANG. Trains are wider than the tracks; never sit on the edge of a station platform.
- STAND AWAY FROM THE PLATFORM EDGE. Pay attention to painted or raised markings at the platform edge and stay at least three feet from the train while it is coming in or out of the station.
- WHEN ON BOARD, HOLD ON. Hold on tight to poles or seats and listen carefully to directions from the train operator or conductor.
- WATCH YOUR STEP. Be careful getting on and off the train - there may be a gap between the train and platform or steps.
- DON'T TAKE SHORTCUTS WITH YOUR LIFE! Follow directional signs and markings that let you know where it is safe to cross the tracks. Crossing the tracks anywhere else is dangerous and illegal.
Find more safety tips at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/passenger-and-transit-rail-safety
Trains are quieter and move faster than you think. They can run at any time, on any track in either direction.
KNOW THE SIGNS
ADVANCE WARNING
Warns drivers that the road crosses railroad tracks ahead. Reminds the driver to slow down, look and listen for a train.
ADVANCE WARNING Signs for side streets
Warns that a highway-rail intersections will appear immediately after making either a right or a left turn. Reminds the driver to be prepared to stop if a train is approaching.
CROSSBUCK
Marks the crossing and should be considered the same as a YIELD. Most common sign at public highway-rail intersections.
EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION SYSTEM (ENS)
Shows the railroad’s emergency phone number and USDOT Crossing Number. This is the first phone number to call if your car is stuck on the tracks; if it is missing call 911. Each crossing in the USA has a unique USDOT Crossing Number.
REPORT PROBLEM OR EMERGENCY
1-800-555-5555
X-ING 836 597 H
XYZ RAILROAD
Learn more at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/track-safety-basics/rail-signs-and-signals
Safety Tips for First Responders
Train tracks are considered live, active tracks until there is confirmation from the railroad company that train traffic has been stopped. It’s imperative for first responders and dispatchers to be aware that each crossing has a Blue and White ENS sign with a specific 800 number and crossing identification number. Railroad companies need to be notified immediately regarding anything on or near railroad tracks. On-scene responders should be prepared to give their dispatch the 800 number and crossing identification number in emergencies.
Operation Lifesaver offers a Railroad Investigation and Safety Course (RISC) free of charge for first responders to teach safety techniques while responding to incidents on or near railroad tracks and how to maintain on-scene safety at a railroad incident.
Think Ahead, Approach with Caution, Look and Listen, Act Safely
- Slow down as you approach railroad crossings.
- Look and listen for a train. Multiple tracks may mean multiple trains. And remember trains can come from either direction.
- Make sure the railroad has been notified and that train activity has been stopped before personnel or equipment is allowed on or near the tracks. When responding near train tracks, park vehicles at least 15 feet from the nearest rail.
- Never park your vehicle on or near the tracks.
- Whether helping someone else, or if your vehicle is stuck or stalled on tracks, always get everyone out immediately.
- If a train is approaching, move away from the tracks at a 45-degree angle in the direction the train is approaching to avoid debris. Find the Blue and White ENS sign posted at or near the crossing. Call the number on the sign. Give the crossing identification number so the railroad knows your location. Report the problem.
Find more safety tips at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/additional-info/first-responders
Safety Tips for Professional/Commercial Drivers
Professional drivers have critical decisions to make at every turn. If a route includes railroad crossings, it’s important to know what to do when you see railroad signs and signals. Help your members keep themselves and their equipment safe with these educational resources:
PLAN AHEAD—Know your route and be aware of railroad crossings. Be prepared to look and listen for a train.
KNOW YOUR TRUCK SIZE
• If your vehicle won’t fit, don’t commit! Before crossing, be sure there is space to completely clear the tracks. Trains overhang tracks. When driving leave at least 15 feet between the front and rear of your vehicle and the nearest rail. Never stop on tracks.
• Use the highest gear which will let you cross the tracks without shifting.
• Track heights vary. If you drive a low clearance vehicle, be aware of raised crossings.
STEPS TO SAFELY CROSS RAILROAD TRACKS
1. Eliminate all distractions. Turn off noisy fans and radios. Look and listen for a train.
2. Stop no closer than 15 feet and no farther than 50 feet from the crossing.
3. Look carefully in both directions for approaching trains twice before crossing. If necessary, look around visual obstructions. If your view is obstructed, do not attempt to cross.
4. Know the law. Trucks carrying hazardous materials are required to STOP at all crossings unless there is an exempt sign posted at the crossing.
5. Once you begin crossing the tracks, do not hesitate. Cross without stopping. If stuck or stalled on the tracks, evacuate immediately and call the number on the Blue and White sign. Give the crossing identification number so the railroad knows your location.
Note: Refer to state and local laws and company policies for additional information.
Find more safety tips at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/driving-safely-near-tracks/professional-drivers
Safety Tips for School Bus Drivers
School bus drivers play a critical role in ensuring the safety of children, especially when it comes to interacting with railroad tracks. Here are some best practices for maintaining railroad safety:
1. Stopping at Railroad Crossings: School buses are required to stop at all railroad crossings, regardless of whether there is a visible train. This is to ensure that the driver can check both directions for trains.
2. Visibility and Signals: Buses should use their hazard lights and, when necessary, activate the bus's stop arm and red lights to alert other vehicles and pedestrians of their presence.
3. Checking for Trains: Drivers must look and listen for trains before crossing. They should wait for the crossing gates to fully rise and for the lights and bells to stop before proceeding.
4. Educating Students: Drivers should teach students to stay seated and remain silent while the bus is at a railroad crossing. Students should also be instructed never to cross the tracks until the bus has completely cleared the crossing.
Find more safety tips at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/driving-safely-near-tracks/school-bus-drivers
Source: Safety Training Excellence, https://safetyvideos.org/product/railroad-crossing-procedures-for-school-bus-drivers/
Safety Tips for Cyclists
When riding through railroad crossings, it's important to know what to do when you see railroad signs and signals. Help your members stay safe with these educational resources:
ONLY TRAINS BELONG ON THE TRACKS
- NEVER walk, jog or bike on railroad tracks, bridges and tunnels.
- Never try to cross on, under or climb through a stopped train. Railroad tracks, trestles, yards and equipment are private property and being on them is trespassing. It’s illegal. You can lose your life or be seriously injured, fined or arrested.
1. Always expect a train. Trains are quieter and faster than you think, can run on any track, at any time, from either direction, or on a schedule.
2. The only safe place to cross tracks is at designated public crossings with a crossbuck, flashing red lights or a gate. Crossing anywhere else is illegal.
3. Crossing tracks on a bike requires caution and extra attention. Plan ahead when choosing a route. When possible, walk, don’t ride across the tracks.
4. Walk your bike across train tracks at a 90 degree angle.
5. Never pass flashing lights or go around lowered gates. Always wait until lights have stopped flashing and gates are completely raised.
6. Wait to cross until you can see clearly in both directions. Multiple tracks may mean multiple trains.
7. Stay off railroad bridges and trestles. Stay out of railroad tunnels. There is ONLY ROOM for the train.
Find more safety tips at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/walking-safely-near-tracks
Safety Tips for Farmers and Machine Operators
Farmers and Farm Machine Operators may encounter a variety of railroad crossings as they go about their work in the field. Help your members keep themselves and their equipment safe with these educational resources:
DON'T LOSE YOUR LOAD OR YOUR LIFE!
- Check hitch pins to ensure they cannot dislodge while crossing and that your load is secure, so materials are not dislodged onto train tracks while crossing.
- AVOID tips and spills by making sure that farm machinery wheels are properly lined up with the railroad crossing surface. Stop no closer than 15 feet from the crossing and leave at least 15 feet between the front and rear of your vehicle and the nearest rail.
- Be aware that liquids or top-heavy grain wagons are prone to tipping.
If you don't fit, don't commit! Make sure your equipment can completely clear the railroad tracks before starting across.
STEPS TO SAFELY CROSS RAILROAD TRACKS
1. Slow down as you approach a railroad crossing. Be prepared to stop.
2. Stop no closer than 15 feet from the crossing.
3. Look and Listen for a train! You may not hear a train horn. Open cab windows and remove all distractions (i.e., turn off radio and fan, remove headphones, etc.). Rock back and forth in your seat to see around obstacles.
4. Once you begin crossing the tracks, do not hesitate. Cross without stopping. If stuck or stalled on the tracks, evacuate immediately and call the number on the Blue and White sign. Give the crossing identification number so the railroad knows your location.
Find more safety tips at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/driving-safely-near-tracks/farmers-and-farm-machine-operators
Safety Tips for Photographers
No photo is worth the risk. Photo and video shoots on or near railroad tracks are illegal and dangerous. Help your members keep themselves and their clients safe with these educational resources:
NO PHOTO IS WORTH THE RISK!
- Each year, hundreds of people are injured or killed while trespassing on railroad property in the U.S.
- Trains are faster and quieter than you think.
- Railroad tracks, bridges, trestles and yards are private property.
- You can be held liable for damage, injury or worse.
- It can take over one mile, or 18 football fields, for a train to come to a complete stop. Trains can’t stop quickly, and they can’t swerve!
- Sharing photos taken on or near the tracks might promote dangerous, illegal behavior.
Find more safety tips at https://oli.org/safety-near-trains/walking-safely-near-tracks/photographer-and-filmmaker-safety | 96f6f91c-675f-48d3-9d16-1c236450a484 | CC-MAIN-2024-42 | https://vapassengerrailauthority.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024-Rail-Safety-Month-Toolkit_FINAL.pdf | 2024-10-11T10:57:41+00:00 | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-42/segments/1727944253762.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20241011103532-20241011133532-00746.warc.gz | 522,217,244 | 4,343 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.951304 | eng_Latn | 0.998302 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
198,
1616,
3151,
4569,
5878,
7653,
9251,
10439,
11378,
13277,
15156,
16460,
17970,
19654,
20540
] | [
2.25,
3.25
] | 1 | 0 |
What if Mouse had been able to ask all his questions? Travis wouldn’t have known the answers. The town wouldn’t have hired him. So just in case some fake tornado tamer ever tries to trick you, here’s what you need to know:
1. **What is a tornado?** A tornado is rotating, funnel-shaped wind. It connects a thunderstorm to the ground. Tornado winds are the fastest winds on earth.
2. **What is the damage path of a tornado?** It can be more than a mile wide and 50 miles long. But tornadoes don’t always move in straight, predictable paths. They can destroy one house and not harm the one next door.
3. **Where do the most tornadoes occur?** Three out of every four tornadoes in the world happen in the United States. There’s even a region called “Tornado Alley” that includes Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas. Some experts also include Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama in Tornado Alley. On average, there are 1300 tornadoes in the U.S. each year. Some years, there are over 1500.
4. **What time of year do tornadoes most tornadoes happen?** In the southern states, the most likely times are March through May. More northern states have most tornadoes from June through August. But tornadoes can occur at any time of year.
5. **What are waterspouts?** They are tornadoes that form over warm water.
6. **What color are tornadoes?** Some tornado funnels never become visible all the way between the cloud base and the ground. Often, a tornado starts off as a white or gray cloud. If it stays around for a while, the dirt and debris it sucks up eventually turns it black. A tornado’s color also depends on where you are standing. If the sun is behind the tornado, you will only see the tornado’s dark silhouette.
Clouds: a gathering of very fine water droplets or crystals that can be seen near the ground or in the sky. There are many different types of clouds.
Cold Air Mass: a large body of cool air that is either dry or moist. In the U.S., cool air is usually carried by wind coming from the West or south from Canada.
Cold Front: the leading edge of a cold air mass that replaces warmer air. The weather symbol is a solid blue line with triangles pointing in the direction the front is moving.
Funnel cloud: a rotating column of air (vortex) at the base of a cloud that does not touch the ground.
Pressure: a force made when one thing pushes against another—like when you hold something down. Gravity pulling air towards the earth makes pressure too!
Supercell thunderstorm: a rotating thunderstorm with strong air movement going up into the cumulonimbus clouds (updraft). This is the type of storm from which tornadoes form.
Temperature: how hot or cold things (including air and water) are. Temperature can be measured with a thermometer.
Thunderstorm: a rain shower with thunder and lightning. Often found where the air masses (or fronts) collide and always from cumulonimbus clouds.
Tornado: a funnel cloud that touches the ground.
Warm Air Mass: a large body of warm air that can be dry if it forms over land or moist if it forms over water. In the U.S., warm, moist air is carried in from the oceans or the Gulf of Mexico. Warm, dry air blows in from the desert in the Southwest.
Warm Front: the leading edge of a warm air mass that replaces cooler air. The weather symbol is a solid red line with half circles pointing in the direction the front is moving.
Weather: the condition of the air at a certain time and place including wind speed and direction, temperature, precipitation, and cloud cover.
Wind: the movement of air in a certain direction and speed. Wind symbols show how fast the wind speed (feathers) is and in which direction the wind is moving (arrow direction).
Wind shear: the sudden change of direction and/or speed of wind.
Vortex: a powerful spinning current of air or water that pulls things into it. You can see a water vortex when you flush a toilet or drain a bathtub.
Waterspout: a tornado that touches down on water instead of land.
What To Do If A Tornado Approaches
Tornadoes can occur in every state and at any time of the year. Before a tornado comes, you can be prepared by having an emergency plan. Know where to go for shelter. Keep a first-aid kit, water, and a battery-operated radio in your home and car. Learn the name of your county or parish and those nearby—emergency alerts announce tornado watches and tornado warnings by county.
A **tornado watch** means tornadoes are possible. If there is a tornado watch in your area, listen to the local radio or television for more news. A **tornado warning** means there is a tornado on the ground or that scientists who study weather (meteorologists) have found a possible tornado on Doppler radar. If there is a tornado warning in your area, find shelter immediately.
A good tornado shelter is a place where you are low to the ground, away from windows, and protected against flying or falling objects. Wear a helmet if you have one and put on your shoes. If you are near a basement or cellar, go there. If there is no way to go underground, find a room without windows—like a bathroom or closet—on the lowest floor and in the middle of the building. Sit under a table, desk, or strong furniture that can protect you from falling objects. If there is no furniture to sit under, crouch down on your knees and use your arms to protect your head. If you are in a car or a mobile home, try to get to a nearby sturdy building.
After the tornado passes, stay where you are until it is safe to come out. Look for people who might be injured or trapped, but be careful not to put yourself in danger. Watch out for fallen power lines and do not enter damaged buildings.
### Enhanced Fujita Tornado Damage Scale
| Scale | Estimated wind speed of a 3 second gust | Damage |
|-------|----------------------------------------|--------|
| EF0 | 65-85 mph<br>105-137 kph | **Light damage.** Branches torn off trees, small trees pushed over, and road signs damaged. |
| EF1 | 86-110 mph<br>138-177 kph | **Moderate damage.** Mobile homes overturned, moving cars pushed off roads, and roof surfaces damaged. |
| EF2 | 111-135 mph<br>178-217 kph | **Considerable damage.** Roofs torn from houses, mobile homes destroyed, cars tossed, and large trees uprooted. |
| EF3 | 136-165 mph<br>218-266 kph | **Severe damage.** Roofs and walls of houses damaged, trains overturned, and trees stripped of bark. |
| EF4 | 166-200 mph<br>267-322 kph | **Devastating damage.** Houses leveled, buildings blown away, and cars thrown significant distances by wind. |
| EF5 | >200 mph<br>>322 kph | **Incredible damage.** Strong houses destroyed and swept away, cars fly through the air more than 109 yards (100 meters), and high-rise buildings severely damaged. |
Birth of a Tornado
Tornadoes develop over time. They follow a common pattern as they form. Match the vocabulary in bold to the photos.
A large, rotating thunderstorm, called a **supercell**, gathers in the sky.
A column of air starts to rotate horizontally under the supercell. This rotating air is a **funnel cloud**. It looks like a spinning, white or gray cloud. The funnel cloud can tilt vertically to point toward the ground.
The spinning air tightens. Like an ice skater pulling in their arms to twirl, the air speeds up as it tightens. When the spinning column of air touches the ground, the funnel cloud becomes a **tornado**.
Photo Credit: The National Severe Storms Laboratory Collection, a publication of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Answer: A-supercell. B-funnel cloud. C-tornado.
Make Your Own Tornado
For this experiment you will need:
- water
- clear 2-liter plastic bottle with lid
- dish soap
- glitter or colored sand
Pour water into the bottle until it is about 3/4 full. Add a few drops of soap and some glitter or colored sand. Cap the water bottle tightly, so that you can flip it upside down without spilling.
Hold the water bottle upside down. Spin it quickly for a few seconds. Look to see if a tornado is forming (the glitter or sand will help you see it). It may take a few tries. | <urn:uuid:fbd855cf-dd7f-4310-9693-991c2a98b502> | CC-MAIN-2019-26 | http://www.arbordalepublishing.com/ForCreativeMinds/TornadoTamer_FCM.pdf | 2019-06-18T09:48:46Z | crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-26/segments/1560627998708.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20190618083336-20190618105336-00396.warc.gz | 212,771,154 | 1,871 | eng_Latn | eng_Latn | 0.998511 | eng_Latn | 0.999075 | [
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn",
"eng_Latn"
] | true | rolmOCR | [
1761,
4035,
6888,
8239
] | [
4.34375
] | 1 | 0 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.